Are Blogs the New Garden Magazine?
One of the things I’m really excited about right now is the new way I’m looking at setting up online gardening seminars. A few brave souls stuck around for a few hours of webinars, gave me some great feedback and pushed my thinking into the 21st century. While I’ll be making a video this coming week on that, I thought I’d turn the same lessons to blogging.
So here’s what I’m thinking about and I’d love your thoughts.
The old publishing model went something like: editor gets a thought about subject X. Finds writer. Editor and writer to and fro and work out story details. At this point, the story is between the editor and the writer. (and yes, sometimes the details vary – the writer comes up with the story etc)
Bottom line though, the decision to publish is made by the editor and communication is between the editor and the writer.
The editor involves a support team to put out the magazine.
Magazine printed.
Reader reads.
End of story. Oh yeah, the odd reader writes editor and gets published in next issue.
So the established process goes something like writer>editor>reader.
A New Paradigm?
I think the technology of the Net has really given us disintermediation and that the time and technology is ripe to take full advantage of it.
But for the most part we aren’t.
Most writers (and I include bloggers here) are stuck in the old writer>editor>reader model. What has happened is that the writer has become the writer/editor so the process now looks like writer/editor>reader.
And again, a few folks make comments on blogs but every garden blogger I know laments the fact that only a very small proportion of subscribers actually comment.
There’s a message there folks.
Writer/editor>reader doesn’t fully involve the readership.
There’s still an editor in the process and that editor still stands between the writer and the reader. The writer has become the editor.
Look around the Net and figure out how many websites are written by the writer/editor without regard for what readers want to read. Without regard for what’s important to readers. Writers have become their own editors and make decisions accordingly but it’s still a one-way street. The old publishing model isn’t dead; it has simply moved online.
The power of the Net is such that we can now involve our readers in the process. We can ask them what they want to read, what they want to know and then we can respond appropriately.
The process becomes writer>reader>writer. A circular process and an ongoing one.
I already do this in some small way with my web sites. I use software to discover what folks are looking for in the Net and then I write about those things. My thinking is that if you’re looking for something, then I’ll write about it for you. Over the last 3-4 years, there have been some 3000 pages put up on my sites about just about every gardening topic you could think of – and still folks keep asking new questions. 
New software lets me take questions and comments directly on my sites and I can answer them right there. Yes, I still make writer/editor decisions but more and more I’m involving my readers in the process.
In that case it’s reader>writer>reader> Fun stuff.
This leads me back to the seminar series where I’m setting up the same kind of system only much more transparently – it is much more direct and obvious. This system is going to be reader>writer>reader>writer>reader>etc. This will be a circular system and we’re going to harness the power of the Internet (as far as I can push it anyway) in an ongoing loop of having readers determine the nature of what they want to know/read. In that case, I’ll be part of the process but not necessarily determining where it will go.
So what’s the point of all this? I think I’ve got a writer>reader>writer process working as best I can on my websites. I’ve got it designed for the seminar series but I haven’t quite figured out how and what to do with this blog, I think blogging is still pretty much stuck in the writer/editor>reader process (with small proportions of readers commenting) and I have to think about that.
My point (and you knew I was going to get there sooner or later) is that the vast majority of garden blogs and websites are stuck in a writer/editor>reader process and will never grow out of it.
Is this important to you? Is this important to your readers? Or is blogging the place for this writer/editor>reader function?
Are blogs the new garden magazines?
Interesting. I enjoy the blog. I enjoy some kind of continuing communication rather than going to a website and picking and choosing from a lot of links to find something interesting if I am not looking for anything in particular. I read a few blogs on a regular basis and rarely respond to them. I guess I feel like my comments are just sort of blah-blah-blah to the writer, not really important in the scheme of things. I think another part of it is that I am reading a blog to learn something I don’t know so usually am not well versed on the topic. As an example, I have been a nurse for many, many years and I would not hesitate to respond to something medical as I feel very experienced in that area but I am reading your gardening blog to learn something I don’t know.
Sorry. Me again. You may already know this but your picture is very, very blurry in this blog.
Thanks Mary – yes, I do know the pic is blurry – this is an old template so it was an “old” problem. I’m still thinking about the look and feel of this blog but will be changing it in the hopefully-near future.
As for commenting – most writers love it when you comment. Even if only to tell them what you thought of it. Yes, no or indifferent!
And most importantly – why you think or feel that way. (speaking for myself)
it’s a conversation of sorts and it tells writers that somebody’s actually reading what they write.
I really like it when people leave comments even if its just to say hi and that they liked the pictures or found something interesting. I try and leave comments when I visit other blogs for the same reason
At the recent Garden Bloggers’ Spring Fling meet up, we had a discussion about the social aspects of garden blogging. I asked “now that you are reading more garden blogs, do you read fewer garden magazines?” The answer among the 15 – 20 who were in the room seemed to be “yes”, but someone piped up that they still get the garden magazines for the pictures. This was a small group, so I don’t know if this holds true for everyone who reads blogs.
And every blogger likes to get comments. It’s affirmation, after all.
Carol – I would expect garden bloggers to read more blogs – but maybe not fewer magazines (bloggers are the serious “keeners” after all)
And let’s hear it for magazine pics 
A dying art to be sure given how hard it is for photographers to earn decent dollars anymore given Flikr etc.
I suspect that general garden mags are having subscription number issues and will continue to do so. Advertising revenues are moving to the Net and this alone will create huge issues of profitability for them.
Envy you the Garden Bloggers Spring Fling attendance…
I am counting on my blog to help grow my business. There are a TON of blogs out there and thats becoming the problem. I can’ keep up!
I love getting comments, especially from new people who might have never commented before. I understand though if someone doesn’t comment because there are just so many blogs to read.
My guess is that most magazines are going to be toast soon. I see a magazine for sale and the first thought is, “can I get this online?”
Dearest Doug, yours is the only blog I peruse. If the information I seek is not on your blog, in your articles, etc., then I try Missouri Botanical Gardens. If still uninformed then I do the web search.
As for garden magazines, I am an addict. I read and reread them – usually while sitting on the patio, deck or in the sunroom, depending on the weather. I freely rip out pages as I go thru the mags, leaving only the things of interest to me. Sometimes the pages are cut out, 3-hole punched and put in a binder.
What amazes me is that so many gardeners have so much time to play on their computers, especially when the sun shines warmly on the grass. I am still establishing flower beds on my small lot in this fourth summer since I left acreage. My house backs onto a 26 acre private park where I am trying to establish a few perennial beds. There is no landscape funding available, so it is rather a challenge to fill the 600+ sq. ft. bed that the big blue spruce left vacant after a wind storm. (Especially since I am nearing the 3/4 century mark.) This bed is a semi-circle sloping to a walk, that ranges from mostly sun (between tall trees) to complete shade. Superb drainage, windy, extremely moley, and naked.
But I digress. What I really wanted to say is that I love your … creation?, information? … whatever. I rather stick with the old K I S S theory. Am still cursing the new windows! In other words, I love you just as you are, Doug.
Lorra
I am glad to hear that bloggers like to hear comments from their readers. I often feel I would like to participate more but wonder how it is received.
As for info on gardening I find I refer to the internet more and more for info on my particular locale and specific problem. I have a limited amount of time to spend looking for information and being able to tailor the search parameters is a lot better than going through a bunch of dusty old magazines. I quit buying garden-only magazines because they did not contain the info I needed. That said I still buy other magazines for the pictures, especially if they have lush tropical gardens that I can’t have where I garden now
Doug, I enjoy your blog and website. You’re both informative about gardening and the communications side of the business. I struggle with the same issues of interaction and how to best provide the information and context that helps my readers seek and apply solutions in their daily lives. Thank you for sharing your insights to these challenging times for communicators. Carolyn
Katharine – sounds like plant-porn to me.
I confess I no longer buy ‘em but that doesn’t stop me from rolling through the mag at the bookstores to do the exact same thing – lush gardens of places I’d like to spend winter.
Lorra – my goodness I’m blushing.
Trey – emailed you offline – and yes, I suspect a rather large order of toast is getting ready to be served. But interestingly enough, there will always be some to survive *if* they find their niche (like great pics)
Hi Doug,
I still love to read garden magazines, mostly for the visual ideas I get, and I like blogs for their frequent updates. And I have used the internet for searching for information for more than 15 years, so I believe that many forms of information are better than one.
I would like to throw a slightly different idea your way, especially since you are interested in user interaction, ie writer/reader/writer. Perhaps it is time for more wiki type sites, which allow anyone to add information rather than just commenting as a reply to information they have read. There are plusses and minuses to wikis of course. By allowing anyone to add/edit information, you always run the risk of having incorrect, invalid, or simply not relevant stuff put on your website for the whole world to see. On the positive side, people feel more connected and part of the process, and the information grows at a much faster pace then an individual can do it on their own. Just a seed of thought, planted out in left field.
KathyG
KathyG – I was actually working and getting ready to close down when you put your note up.
I asked my readers a while ago in a large survey what exactly they wanted in a website. Things like wiki were so very far down the list that I abandoned the thought. While it is extremely attractive in theory, in practice it turns into a bit of an admin nightmare. For example, I spend more time than folks even know about simply keeping spammers and spam comments off the forums.
So even though we have moderators helping folks inside the forums, I get to spend my time deleting scumbag types of posts rather than writing or gardening. Let’s hear it for Akismet who captures almost all the blog-spam right here or it would be nuts with over 200/day at the current time.
So yes, I think a wiki would be one way to involve a small number of people (and a great one) but the admin headache of trying to keep it “clean” would chew up even more of my time.
This is one reason I’m actually moving some of the seminar work to a more secure and robust site where my hosting company has 24/7 tech folks. I don’t have to deal with the crap there. And I think that some of what I’m thinking will be evident when I launch the seminar stuff in another few days.
Doug,
Consider adding “publisher” to your list. Deciding what gets “press”, where it gets it, and when is in there when you self-publish. It’s not as much how we do it as why we do what we do.
Sid Raischs last blog post..You Are One of Us – Are you Indie Bound?
@Sid Raisch -
Sid – in my current world, I call myself a publisher as one facet of what I do. It took a long time to come to that decision, to move away from being only a writer. And having taken that first step, I’m now well into adopting other roles as well. Much to the delight of my ongoing learning curve mentality. I do think the main thing I’m learning on all of this is that we’re well into a transitional period and how you define yourself, the processes you do aren’t going to remain stable for any length of time. It’s now about change and adapting to that change in the information distribution business.