Liveblogging as a hireable skill: Outsourcing content creation and curation
I don’t actually follow Jeff Jarvis, but as I told the audience of the HTCE panel yesterday (which featured Darren Barefoot, Gillian Shaw and Dennis Pang), I’m surprised that he would *just* have caught on to the fact that liveblogging is a skill, like any other skill, and that it should be paid for. The funny thing is - liveblogging for hire has been available as an employable skill for a long while. Some of this city’s most known bloggers like Rebecca Bollwitt, Tris Hussey, Lorraine Murphy and of course myself, we all have liveblogged for long, and we’ve been hired to liveblog too.
What gets me is that I have preached to anyone who would listen to me since, at least early 2008, that it was important to value liveblogging as a skill and that we should not devalue it by giving it away for free. With the transformation of mainstream media and how it now necessitates to adapt to the fast-paced, changing world of social media and instantaneous news delivery, mainstream media organizations now realize that they NEED to have someone who is a good liveblogger. AND PAY FOR IT.
It amazes me that things that we’ve been routinely doing for a long while now (and that I’ve preached for a long time) are now being seen as a “trend of the future”. Really? With the advent of social media, content curation, content creation and liveblogging should be valued EVEN MORE. I would rather read a good liveblog than a poorly curated livestream of tweets. Right now I can totally see how much Minna is struggling to curate the live tweets of Freelance Camp Vancouver 2011. It probably would have made sense to have the sessions liveblogged.
Hopefully people will catch on to the fact that good copy writers, excellent content curators and brilliant livebloggers are scarce. And that if brands and corporations and companies need good content (to digest and consume or to publish) they will need to pay for it.
Related posts:
- Liveblogging vs. live-tweeting in social media events
- Review – CoverItLive as a tool for liveblogging
- Personal content
- Digital media content creation – impromptu meetups :) – NDMD ’08
- There will be content, I promise…
I’ve never live blogged but I’m pretty sure I’d be awesome at it. And being paid for it would be awesome too.
I can assure you, being invited to bend over a keyboard and record all the fun everyone ELSE is having at an event, without being able to partake of it yourself, is NOT awesome.
Raul, you’ve been an advocate for liveblogging as a saleable service for literally years. Eventually the rest of the world will catch on. I think it’s funny that we think A Listers are ahead of us on all aspects of social media, but while that’s sort of the default assumption, it’s not true and any A Lister worth their salt will say so.
Congratulations to Jeff Jarvis for getting it. Now pass it on!
What’s the going rate for a liveblog of an event in Vancouver?
Free is a typical rate, because a volunteer often does the liveblogging. I did see this, from SFU Dialogue on Twitter. I’m not criticizing them, because it’s nice to see some money offered at all.
@SFUDialogue SFU Dialogue
Need 2 more volunteers to attend housing workshop Sept 22-23 & tweet notes from the event. $50 honorarium! Contact brendat@sfu.ca
@ David – it really depends, and I think you can contact each blogger for their rates. I have my own rates.
@ Lois – I work hard at making sure people value our work, so I would hope that anybody who looks at hiring a liveblogger realizes that it costs money!