The Media Interview

Two items in the newspaper caught my eye the other day: one quoted Who guitarist Pete Townsend, the other quoted Ken Jennings, the big Jeopardy winner of a few years ago. Nothing unusual in that, except that both pieces were written using only material from the personal blogs of these two celebrities. Of course we see bloggers quoting other bloggers all the time, but here were main-stream wire services quoting from bloggers the way you would quote someone based on a press conference, an interview, or a press release.

In a sense, then, blogging is becoming a new form of media interview but the blogger chooses the “questions” as well as the “answers” (in the case of comments, the questions are posed by outsiders). That means there’s a lot of control in making sure you’re presenting the message you want to present, which isn’t to say someone can’t distort, misquote, etc., but at least your complete message is easily checked.

Of course the other side of this double-edged sword is that ANYTHING you say on a blog has the potential to be used by the media as a quote, so as with any interview, put your best words forward.