A couple of my book reviews have recently been syndicated to online news sites. I had published the reviews first on Blogcritics Magazine. The books editor then selected my reviews and passed them on for syndication to advance.net and boston.com. Having little past publishing experience and exposure, I was rather excited to find my writing made available to a much bigger audience through syndication.
Excited as I was to be syndicated, I wanted to find out more about the practice and process of syndication. So I did a little research. The relevant dictionary definition of syndicate is to "sell (a comic strip or column, for example) through a syndicate for simultaneous publication in newspapers or periodicals" (The American Heritage ® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, via YourDictionary.com). The irony here is that, though my reviews are being published on multiple news sites simultaneously, they are not being sold to these sites, at least not by me. The only thing I get out of it is the exposure.
An article by Stephen Bryant on the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review, entitled "Syndicate this! Linking old media to new," reports on the emerging relationship between old and new media. More specifically, Bryant addresses the syndication of blogs content on major news sites. Among them are such papers as The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. Dave Patton, CEO of Pluck, has created BlogBurst to help news organizations select blogs for syndication.
The idea of BlogBurst is basically this: bloggers submit their sites to BlogBurst and their editors then look over each site to determine whether both content and quality are appropriate for syndication. Why can't news editors do this themselves? Apparently, says Bryant, it is less a matter "of ability than editorial control. Newspapers need to pre-approve content for fear of diluting their brand." In other words, they need someone to filter sites. BlogBurst provides that service to them.
I have given BlogBurst some thought, finding aspects of it, particularly the exposure it could give me, appealing, but also have some nagging questions. Once my site is selected as one for syndication, how free am I to speak my mind, to choose what I want to blog about, or even what language to use? I would gladly blog for a news site on specific topics on a regular basis, in which case I know by whose rules and boundaries I am constrained. I am also happy to have individual posts/articles selected for syndication, as is currently the case through Blogcritics Magazine. I am wary, however, of having someone's editorial control, someone's filter, restrict my creative range and freedom on my own blog.
I have only scratched the surface of the complex relationship, a quickly evolving one at that, between old and new media. Even as far as syndication services like BlogBurst are concerned, I have more research to do, so I keep an open mind.
What are your thoughts on the syndication of entire blogs? If anyone has experience with such, please share your insights with me. I'd be happy to hear from all sides on this issue.
