Aviation Blogs … They’re Not Your Dad’s Newspaper

By Robert Mark on September 7th, 2007

I was thinking about blogging as I tend to do these days with the first anniversary of Jetwhine approaching. What makes blogging valuable to those of us in the aviation industry is the direct link we offer between the writer and the reader, something few other media sources do.

For instance, if you’d read the Boston Globe the other day, you’d have read their editorial – Fly the Miserable Skies – a story that tries to make readers believe that if the fat cats took their big fancy Gulfstreams out of places like Logan, the airlines would have more breathing space.

And to encourage this habit of avoiding hub airports like Logan, the Globe thinks business aviation user fees might be a pretty sound idea, not to mention that they’ll help offset the massive debt FAA wants to take on to rebuild the nation’s aging ATC system.

Of course, the Globe’s editorial staff doesn’t seem to be aware of how tiny the percentage of business airplanes is relative to airline flights, or the fact that the tiny user fees being bantered about right now for biz av will do very little to finance a new system.

So what does this have to do with blogging?

The Globe website, for instance, does not offer readers a mechanism to respond to the piece, other than as a Letter to the Editor.

On a blog, reader’s comments would have been available almost instantaneously.

At the Globe, the letter to the editor might be printed, it might not.

Most good blogs will publish all comments … minus any profanity of course.

At the Globe, the Letter to the Editor, if it were published, would be found on a letters page with little direct reference to the story that generated the letter leaving most readers wondering about the point in the first place.

On a blog – like Jetwhine – you’ll see not only the comments, but the story that generated the comments so it all makes sense.

Newspapers are nice, especially since most have an online presence, but few will probably move to the direct comment mode, I think. It’s a bit too risky to think you might hit “send,” and see a note posted about your story within the hour.

But I’ll take the risk. C’mon, try me!

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2 Responses to “Aviation Blogs … They’re Not Your Dad’s Newspaper”

  1. Bill Palmer Says:

    Perhaps part of the reason for the lack of immediate (and readable) feedback, is that the writers often don’t know what they’re talking about, as any of us can attest as to any newspaper article having to do with aviation.

  2. Robert Mark Says:

    You make an interesting point Bill. I had a conversation with someone in tne magazine publishing industry just the other day about this.

    His company doesn’t care that much about reader response because it does little to drive sales. It only seems to make some people feel better.

    It is pretty tough to get people fired up about anything these days, until the sky caves in at least.

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