‘The main reason media stalwarts couldn’t understand blogging is that they couldn’t see beyond their all-too-familiar containers and distribution mechanisms. They were too entrapped in their dogmas.“
This from media and blogging veteran, Om Malik writing on the future of media.
Media players couldn’t cater to regular readers the ways that bloggers could.
Timothy Lee, an independent journalist who previously wrote for the Washington Post, Vox, and Ars Technica, cited by Malik, puts it well.
“Our salaries were supported by advertising. To make the whole project financially viable, we needed a lot of readers. Practically speaking, that meant bringing in a lot of new readers.”
Legal bloggers do not need a lot of readers. Bloggers cover niches far down the long tail where a small audience looking for relevant information, insight and commentary brings business development success.
Legal bloggers don’t need paid subscriptions, advertising nor any form of revenue directly from their publishing. Relationships and a strong word of mouth reputation in a niche brings revenue in legal fees.
Traditional legal publishers charge subscriptions and/or sell advertising. They need lots of readers to be successful.
Legal bloggers have become a real force in legal publishing. More subjects covered by more experienced legal professionals than we could have ever imagined ten years ago.
The body of legal information and insight in legal blogs, aggregately, dwarfs the legal content generated by traditional legal publishing, whether it be in legal magazines/newspapers or treatises and manuals.
Can legal publishers see beyond their familiar containers and distribution mechanisms to recognize blogging for what it is?
A failure to do so could leave them short in needed legal offerings.