The view from the 5th floor of The Miami Herald
In another sign that the mainstream media is beginning to look at the blogosphere as a legitimate source of content, The Miami Herald not only plans to unveil a page that will aggregate content from more than 200 blogs throughout South Florida.
It invited a handful of bloggers to its newsroom Monday evening to announce the new feature.
The new page will officially launch next Monday, but check it out here.
Besides myself, other bloggers that attended the meeting at 1 Herald Plaza were Mango and Lime, Bark Bark Woof Woof, 305 Misadventures, Brickell Life,Sex and the Beach and Dayngrous Discourse.
Instant News Editor Shelley Acoca and Multimedia Editor Rick Hirsch explained that it took more than a year to get this page launched. The page will also include blogs from other corporate media companies, including the New Times and the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
There will also be a way where readers can rate each blog post. (I just rated this post a 10, making it the highest rated blog post so far. We’ll see how long that lasts.)
And blogs will be placed in different categories that are listed on the left side of the page. For example, my blog is listed under “media”.
Any South Florida blogger whose blog is not getting aggregated can send them a request here.
The Herald also created a widget that would allow bloggers to embed a feed of all or a portion of the South Florida blogs directly into their own blog.
I’ve already implemented that into my left sidebar, and I just might use this to replace the South Florida Blogroll altogether.
(Update: It appears that the widget is incorrectly coded because I set it to “all”, meaning it should feed all the South Florida blogs, but I am actually getting blogs from all over the country. Hopefully, they will address that issue.)
(Update II: It appears to be working properly now)
A few months ago, the Sun Sentinel launched a blog initiative where it features a South Florida blog every few days or so instead of aggregating all the blogs.
Unlike the Sentinel, the Herald’s blog page will be maintained by an outside company, Blog Net News.
Last April, Random Pixels shared an email he received from David Mastios, who is editor of Blog Net News, about the Herald’s plan to launch this feature.
Not sure why RP did not attend the meeting tonight but it might have something to do with this.
(Update III: RP says he was invited but had another engagement to tend to. So much for conspiracy theories.)
