From Tom Foremski, publisher/editor /reporter at SiliconValleyWatcher.com.

Dan, you’ve done it again! You’ve sparked a fantastic conversation on the subject of blogging, and the differences between this new form of journalism and the old forms. And I’m glad that Silicon Valley Watcher is a key part of this conversation, because that is what excites us the most.

Dan Gillmor: Oops, he did it again!

My earlier entry about Tibco becoming our sponsor was very important to me and the people that have worked with me on this project. I’ve been so busy trying to produce a quality product that I have had no time to even let anybody know that sponsorships were available.

I’ve been living off my savings since June 2004, and lately I’ve been considering dredging the depths of my sofa; so I was very happy when Tibco approached me about becoming a sponsor. Infineon Systems and others have also approached me about sponsoring Silicon Valley Watcher.

And the amazing thing was that I didn’t have to “sell” my product, the product sold itself! I had discovered yet another fascinating aspect of this “blogging” format: that if you focus on quality you will be rewarded, the world will indeed beat a path to your door!

Dan, you know way more about this stuff than I do. I’m a newbie. I’ve only been doing this for about five months; you’ve been doing it for years. I’m still in awe at the many aspects of blogging there are, and sometimes giddy with the freedom, but also aware of the responsibilities freedom to publish carries.

I love the ability to write in so many styles: I can write news, features, columns; but also write very introspectively, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes flippant, but always upfront and honest. And you can’t fake this stuff; otherwise the authenticity is not there and the voice is lost,

You know more than I do about this stuff; I’m still a goggle-eyed newbie with my jaw on the floor thinking about all the things I can/want to do with this format.

When I left the Financial Times at the end of May 2004 to become a blogger, I wanted to do it the clean way. I didn’t want to start a blog while I was at the FT.

I wanted to see if it was possible for a journalist at a top-tier newspaper publication to leave and set themselves up as a “stand-alone” journalist, as Chris Nolan terms it, and do it straight.

I did not want to first build my “blogging brand” on top of my employer’s brand while they are also paying my salary. I know a lot of publications allow that; but I think that its because they don’t really understand what is going, on and when they do wisen up it will lead to problems.

Somehow, I became the first journalist to leave a top-tier newspaper job to become a full-time blogger, seven months before you left the San Jose Mercury. And I did it the hard way, without having ever blogged before, or built up a prior blogging brand at my former employer.

What is my business model, people kept asking me? I told them it was to make money! I did not know what the business model would be; I guessed it would be a combination of traditional and new models in publishing. And that the value recovery mechanisms for online content were still in development and would be figured out by the broader community, sooner or later.

However, I did know what one half of the business model equation is: to produce a high quality, compelling editorial product. Without a compelling product I knew couldn't complete the second half of the equation: revenues. And so that has been my single-minded focus: to try to give as much value as I can in my work, to focus always on quality and value creation. And to not forget those time-honored principles of great newspapers: scoops, interviews, features, raising hell on occassion, and being involved in the debates and discussions that matter to our communities.

There are also new territories to explore in this blogging format; and we don’t yet know what the best practices are, in many cases. That’s the exciting part of this blogging stuff, being part of the process that figures out some these best practices. I know that’s what excites my team and many of my peers and colleagues around the world.

I’ve been happy to offer my newbie observations on the subject of blogging in this blog. I’ve suggested color coding text for example, to identify relationships such as yellow for a friend, or brown if I’m “brown nosing,” and a green text would indicate a money link, or red if I’m dating them :-)

I’ve also criticized the concept of “stand alone” journalist as being ridiculous, because it quickly leads to very gray areas if you are pitching advertisers, and reporting. I’ve been lucky in that I do not have to go out and “sell” my product or my readership. I sell my product by focusing on creating as best a product as I can.

You asked if a newspaper would announce a sponsor in the same way I did. Probably not. But a newspaper will go out and “sell” its readers to virtually anybody, and also tailor its content to attract a specific readership that it can then sell.

A newspaper will collect as much data as a spyware cookie about its readers and sell it to advertisers! Newspapers crow about the rich demographics of their readers, where they live, what they buy, etc.

I don’t do that, and I have not done that. I am not trying to convince companies to be sponsors by “selling” my readers the way newspapers and magazines sell. And it would be ludicrous for me to sell my editorial values, since they are the very reason I have my readership.

I have no interest in trying to convince someone of the value of a sponsorship in Silicon Valley Watcher if they don’t already see the value themselves. I’m happy to talk about our plans, our editorial focus, some of the innovative media projects we’d like to try in the future, etc. I do not have any plans to fight it out with say, News.com on the size of our traffic and the numbers of eyeballs. We would lose that fight anyway.

I want Silicon Valley Watcher to attract sponsors because they recognize the value we create, and they know full well that our readers are creating the future on a global scale—these are not passive “consumers” with household incomes of such-and-such amounts.

Somebody can try to guess our traffic via an Alexa ranking; but that is a very inaccurate way to guess any web site traffic and is easy to spam. That’s not to say that I won’t talk about our high numbers of unique visitors. What’s important to us is who is hitting on our web site, not how many.

And the type of web site statistics I pay attention to is when I’m out and about and people, from very senior levels all the way through to newly arrived in Silicon Valley, tell me: “I read you all the time and I share you with my team.” I’ll never get tired of hearing that.

My goal has been to attract a small group of sponsors, that way it’s a steady monthly income, there is no “selling” of ad campaigns, no “selling” our readers and their demographic habits. We can concentrate on producing a high quality product.

But I don’t want just any sponsor, I want companies that are interested in what is developing with blogs, and wikis, and all the blogerific stuff that’s going on. And I'd like to hear how they are using those technologies, and engage them in what the best practices are in this new frontier.

There is a new communications medium being forged; and it’s changing the established media, PR, and marketing sectors like nothing we have ever seen before.

This is old news to an old blogging hand like yourself; but my jaw is still on the floor. And I keep getting that stark, staring, bonkers look from people when I talk abut it. (I’m sure you are used to that, Dan!)

When the Tibco sponsorship announcement was criticized as being a puff piece, I was at first taken aback. After all, wasn’t I following the “Blogger code” by clearly labeling it as a piece about my excitement of gaining our first sponsor and giving my honest opinion about Tibco?

I would think that a “puff” piece or pieces would come before landing a sponsorship :-) In fact, there were no pieces about Tibco in SVW; same for Infineon. And my announcement was clearly not a news story, or feature about Tibco and its markets--it was a happy and very friendly welcome.

But I don’t think that bloggers can rely on assuming things are clearly labeled. I think that we need more labeling or tagging as is the current fashion. Just because I think something is clearly stated and labeled doesn’t mean that everyone sees the implicit labels.

I believe blogging should include more labels/tags. Going forward I want to start to label/tag our entries more clearly and I would hope that this might become a “best practice”. For example, the Tibco announcement I would tag as a “Publisher’s note:” (I’ve gone back and done just that BTW.) We’ll tag a news story as “news” and a scoop as a “scoop” etc.

This is especially important as millions of readers become exposed to blogs for the first time. And many walk away confused about what is it they are reading, should they trust the information, etc.

As journalist bloggers we should seek to communicate as clearly as possible and signpost as much of this brave new world as we can. It is important to show that blogging is not some weird gonzo-like form of journalism; but that it might even be a superset of journalism-- able to accommodate all the familiar forms of journalism such as news, features, interviews-- and the wondrously new forms that arise.

-Tom Foremski, publisher/editor /reporter at SiliconValleyWatcher.com.

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