Blogs and the traditional Media

Great swathes of the more traditional media are now sitting up and paying attention to bloggers. First of all we would get one or two mentions in the IT sections of news papers, but now there is a full dialogue with even the most traditional sections of papers and in the broadcast media. The Guardian has Comment is Free an expansion of their comment pages into a blog style section of their internet but it took the BBC to bring the process full circle.
Up to now the BBC has had one of the biggest feedback systems, answering criticisms of programmes and the corporation itself with blog posts by editors, and in-line with comments on blogs posts on its own site. One of the leaders in this has been the PM blog which even has a "glass box" thread for each day's programme for discussion and comment. This gets read and responded to by the editorial and presenting teams and is a distinct step up from reading comments from the blog out amongst the letters and phone calls on the programme. So it comes as no surprise that this is the team that is going forward with a new idea providing a broadcast and podcast "blog prog" with an agenda steered by the items that are currently top of the list of discussions by bloggers.
It will be interesting to see what the scope of the new programme will be, will they get meta enough to include coverage of stories such as the current spat between Iain Dale and Helen Boaden. I certainly expect to see more of my extended network being name checked as this goes on, given that even those of my friends who don't consider themselves bloggers have had occasionally had items from their online journals referred to by old media commentators rounding up feedback on a story or issue.