A blog by any other name

Diane Clarkson | November 12, 2007, 04:24 PM

I had the opportunity to speak last week at the E-Tourism conference in San Francisco. The audience was primarily DMO's and a large proportion of them where in the process of deciding what type of user generated content they would like on their websites.

My session and several others discussed blogs and travel, leading me to wonder what defines a blog. In other words, when does a blog become freelance journalism?

Most current definitions of "blog" focus on the content as appearing on one page in reverse chronological order and updated frequently.

By that definition, wouldn't a company's archived press releases be a blog?

Wikipedia says that "the ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs". Important, but not a defining feature.

Discussions at the conference focussed on authorship: a blogger is not a professional journalist but rather a traveler sharing a story.

This gets complicated when it comes to soliciting the story. Blog integrity is a widely defended principal: there is a level transparency that blog readers expect. Companies have been lambasted for hiding that they have paid people to write blogs to espouse product or service benefits.

Whether it is payment, sponsorship, or goods-in-kind, I believe a company should indicate their role in soliciting blog content. The
catch-22 is that this undermines a savvy reader's belief that there was no editorial process touching the content.

In our 2007 Travel Consumer Survey, only 2% of online travelers used other traveler's blogs as a research resource: 21 percent used city guides or travel articles.

This makes me wonder if it is more effective to write a carefully worded explanation that a blogger has been paid or simply publish a story that celebrates the author as a fellow traveler who has shared an experience.