Yahoo Sounds Out Pods & Blogs
By Neil Dodds
12 October, 2005
Yahoo's content revolution continues apace. The search engine - which increasingly looks like a media and lifestyle company - has just added podcasts to its news portfolio. Yahoo's podcast pages were launched in beta version alongside an equally innovative move on the company's hugely popular news search pages, where users now have commentary from weblogs posted alongside search results from traditional media.
Yahoo is not the first big company to attempt to make podcasts more accessible to a mass audience. In June, Apple introduced the recorded audio files to its iTunes software and store, making podcasts easily playable on its phenomenally successful iPod media player.
Back then, Apple called podcasts "the renaissance of radio." It's too early to say how podcasts have taken off on iTunes or iPods, though online mag Slate has complained that output seems to have slowed to a halt on some of the best podcasts.
This is probably to be expected - with any new technology, early adopters get bored and move on before the product becomes truly mainstream. Moreover, as a browse through a podcast library reveals, there is often a reason why many podcasters are unpaid amateurs. With weblogs, the conversational tone is often part of the appeal, particularly when contrasted with the standardised reporting found in newspapers. What reads like good rhetoric on screen can translate as tinny whining on the iPod, though. Even a writer from a respected US publication - who is, we assume, a paid professional - sounds suspiciously like a Muppet in his podcast.
As users become familiar with the technology and discover its appeal, podcasts will generate more possibilities - or so Yahoo hopes. Podcasts are seen as an important part of the appeal of its new Yahoo Music Engine, which is itself part of Yahoo Music Unlimited, launched to compete with Apple's iTunes software and shop.
While podcasting's impact is still up for debate, few would argue with the claim that weblogs have made a massive impact on the news media. Even so, running blog commentary alongside search results from the likes of CNN, the BBC and the New York Times was sure to be controversial, and not just with mainstream media traditionalists who worry that their domination of the news industry is challenged by blogging upstarts.
New media commentator Jeff Jarvis of the excellent Buzzmachine complained that separating bloggers and professional journalists risks depicting bloggers as secondary news sources.
"What made the voice of the people somehow less important than the paid professional journalist?" he asked. "You don't need to have a degree, you don't need to have a paycheque, you don't need to have a byline," Jarvis told Reuters.
"If you inform the public, you are committing an act of journalism."
While only in beta form at this stage, the latest version of Yahoo's news service would appear to confirm Jarvis' concerns. There is a news home page, which aggregates content from major news suppliers such as AP. A deeper news search opens a page with results from traditional media and weblogs in a smaller right-hand column.
While this format doubtless satisfies media professionals and academics such as Robert Thompson of Syracuse University (who defines professional journalism as "reporting which adheres to standards of accuracy and writing subjected to an editorial process, and all done with an eye to journalistic ethics"), Jarvis quickly spotted a flaw.
While running a Yahoo news search for Harriet Miers (President Bush's Supreme Court nomination), he found in the "mainstream" column a story produced by students at a university newspaper, while the blog column was topped by a piece from a blog written by law professionals. "Which is more valuable, more authoritative, more trustworthy? The only way to find out is to read them", he said.
For Yahoo's part, product director Joff Redfern says that blogs were introduced because "Traditional media doesn't have the time and resources to cover all the stories" and weblogs enrich the news experience for readers who want to dig deeper into stories. "We do try to demarcate what is mainstream media and what is user-generated content so that there is no confusion there," he added.
It is a tricky line to police. On one hand, there are Big Bang Bloggers, like Jarvis, who urge that mainstream and weblog news should be presented on an equal basis, "and let God sort them out." On the other side, mainstream media defenders wonder how the "Guy in his pyjamas" can be taken as seriously as a well-established media corporation with professionals reporting from all over the world. Bill Keller, the New York Times' executive editor, says "Most of what you know, you know because of the mainstream media. Bloggers recycle and chew on the news. That's not bad. But it's not enough."
The line gets blurrier, though, where mainstream media fails its readers. Hysterical reporting from New Orleans was countered by on-the-spot bloggers. Troops in Iraq have different versions of events than the often politically-motivated reports that filter home. Less dramatically, journalists "parachuted" into beats often have less experience of the field than blogging professionals with inside knowledge - particularly in law and in science.
Even mainstream media groups themselves have tapped into the energy of blogs. The New York Times might not be able to find room on its home page for weblogs, but France's Le Monde, which is at least as high-minded and as serious, has.
Perhaps with a debate as fiery as this one, it is just as well that Yahoo's news search with blogs is still in beta version. Much may change before its full release.
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