‘Sphere’ of Influence

Despite their increased popularity and use, news organizations still struggle with how to handle blogs. Do you ignore or embrace them? Do you make all your reporters write one or do you rely instead on the blogs that are already out there? The best approach that media critics and scholars have suggested is finding a way to bring them all together, and I was surprised to see that CNN.com has embraced the cause. (See what I’m talking about here.)  Using an application created by Sphere, a start-up that has been around for a little more than a year, CNN is aggregating blog entries that are related to its news stories on the same page.  CNN is just one of the more than 1 million content providers Sphere claims is has partnered with.

My first question is why I have just noticed this. It’s a great idea. In fact, it’s something I’ve been pushing for a long time. Interactivity theory is based on bringing the audience and the news providers together. But I also have to ask if Sphere isn’t typical of how the traditional media has responsed to citizen content.