It seems that the Tribune has changed things up online. The left column used to take you to the different parts of the newspaper, but all within the tampatrib URL. Most of those selections now take you to the TBO url. Which makes sense to me.
Another change, which is of specific interest to me (and a few other bloggers) is the new inclusion of the “Bay Area Blog Watch” included at the bottom center of the Opinion page on TBO.com.
Sticks Of Fire, ShutterBlog, Side Salad, Gonzonia, Running Through Tampa, Seminole Heights Blog and TampaBLAB are the ones they have decided to include so far.
Unlike the St. Pete Times comprehensive list, there is no “what is a blog” or any explanation as to why any Tribune visitors should bother clicking on those links. And I’m not sure how these specific blogs were chosen, or why TBO/Tribune decided to add it to the website (Jeff, any insight?), but I’m grateful nonetheless.
Thanks, TBO dudes!
Brett
4 years ago
Well, THAT explains the recent traffic BLAB’s been getting from TBO.com…
Smitty
4 years ago
Figures. The Trib must know I’m a Times subscriber; that’s why they left me off their list.
Jeff
4 years ago
Insight? Not really. They did it without telling me they were going to include the Salad. I know people think there is this vast channel of collusion between TBO, the Trib and WFLA newsrooms, but it’s largely untrue beyond the sharing of the days news. And there’s nothing to indicate a dark conspiracy behind who gets included. They are only now starting to dip a toe into the blog world, but I can say they are taking it very seriously.
After they posted the above links, they did ask me for an additional list of other local blogs beyond what’s featured now (had to be local, of course. Also not of hugely objectionable content, blah, blah, blah). I gave them a half dozen more links – and applauded them for at least finding the ones they found.
But hey, even a blind pig could find the greatness that is SOF.
If any of your readers want theirs included in the Trib links, feel free to e-mail me and I’ll escort them to the proper folks in the building.
Jeff
4 years ago
One more thing, I’ve yet to see significant traffic to the Salad from being listed on TBO.com. Then again, I was a featured site on SPTimes.com for about a month and only saw a marginal bump at the time.
My guess is that newspaper-related sites are not a place people look for blog links at the moment. That doesn’t mean they won’t be significant blog players, but papers are way late in coming to the blog buffet, and most aren’t doing it in any significant way because they can’t control the content on those local blogs.
tommy
4 years ago
Thanks for checking in, Jeff.
I would agree that readers are not going to newspaper sites looking for blogs. I guess my hope is that newspapers will embrace blogs, and encourage their readers to seek them out. Since some papers view blogs as competition of sorts, I can understand some hesitancy.
But, this is a start, and we’ll see where it heads.
Devon
4 years ago
At first I thought the list was just rotating through an alphabetical list of Tampa blogs and we were in the R-T section (Gonzonia killed that theory). It must be our lack of “hugely objectionable content”. I’ll see if I can fix that.
Bitch | Lab
4 years ago
Hey, I think we should just leave them to their devices. Look at the huge contrast between SPT and TT. It speaks volumes about different ways of approaching Blogoliciousville. And that’s ok.
It happens this way in the rest of Blogoliciousville too. Some blogs have huge blogrolls, such as http://maxspeak.org/mt/, and try to include as many blogs as possible. They want to build community which is precisely what Max told me he wanted many years ago.
In contrast, a feminist blog I saw today refuses to link saying she reads the same thing everyone else does. Well, that’s great, but I found her blog in someone else’s blogroll. So, she free rides off the generosity of others, in my book.
Others, such as the folks at Truth Laid Bear devalue blogs that link to lots and lots of people — devalue the score you get from them in the ranking system. The argument is, if you link to everyone, you aren’t very discerning, so your opinion counts for less.
As for using the paper to find blogs, that’s exactly how I found about 15 blogs initially — including SOF. Their coverage was very helpful and encouraging.
To my mind, the papers can only benefit from blogs which, for the most part (present company excluded ! ) tend to opine on and analyze news stories, not write them. Thus, if I link to an SPT artcile, that’s just more eyeballs for the SPT.
The more eyeballs, the more opportunities for ad.click.drool numbers. It’s all a numbers game, so if the SPT is serious about generating revenue from online readers, as Deggans said the other day, then that’s one piece of the puzzle for them. There’s more. There’s always more.
Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog »
4 years ago
[...] Six papers are officially listed as among the best, along with two special mentions. The Houston Chronicle was given the title of Best, and our very own St. Petersburg Times made #4 on the list. Congrats to the Times, and staff bloggers Janet Keller of Stir Crazy, Rick Gershman of Ill Literate, and Gina Vivinetto and Steve Spears of Stuck in the 80s – all singled out in the article. Blue Plate Special did not rank all 100 sites, so there is no telling where the old Tampa Tribune ended up. Since you cannot find their own blogs from the front page, and you can’t find other local blogs unless you know where to go, my guess is they ended up pretty low. Of course, if I keep ripping Tribster, I’ll end up at the top of a different list, and at the bottom of the blog list. [...]