‘New Media Mini Empires’, Mia Freedman and readership control

Deborah Hutton on cover of Jan 2012 issue of Australian Women's Weekly (reprinted from www.mamamia.com.au)

Founder of BubHub Australia and consultant at Edelman’s @trevoryoung wrote an article a few months ago after his trip to BlogWorld  LA 2011 which at the time I read and then mulled over.  It struck a chord but I wasn’t sure why until this week.

In the article he talks about the growth of the blogger and the turning of some bloggers into effective ‘new media mini empires’. The first blogger that came to my mind that epitomises this at the moment is Mia Freedman and her blog MammaMia. She’s got a team of writers. Tick. She gets access and maybe even sounded out / consulted by politicans. She is sought out by traditional media as an expert (in her case on parenting and women’s issues for example). Tick.

But this week I read an article on Mamma Mia which made me think that perhaps if you are a mini media empire blogger like Mia Freedman then perhaps – just perhaps – you need to reassess who actually OWNS the blog.

Mia Freedman. Image reprinted from www.campaignbrief.com)

The article was in response to the nude posing of Deborah Hutton on the cover of Australian Women’s Weekly.  You’ve probably read the article or heard about it as apparently it got broader media covereage due to the response the post created on the blog (I was on leave when this happened with blissfully no access to online). In short on the first post Freedman wrote that she loved the pic of Deborah Hutton who at 50years old had posed nude on AWW and though some ‘minimal’ airbrushing had obviously been done to touch up, it still didn’t take from the fact the whole pic etc was great.

But apparently a majority of Freedmans readers (all 120 of them from what I could see) weren’t happy.  The accused her of being a hypocrite for saying in the past that she was against photo manipulation and now apparently saying it was okay. They  weren’t happy with the fact that she appeared to be giving a free plug to a ‘mate’ and also that she thought it was okay for a woman to pose nude on a magazine and that she seemed to be playing to the fact women are sexual objects. Freedman issued an update then followed up with another posting where she clarified her first blog posting.

Now reading through all of this when the story had died down was interesting.

I read through the comments on the second post (you can read here) and what struck me was the sense that the 271 comments on the second post were from readers who felt some ownership over the blog. Who seemed to feel that they had a right to express their opinion and that their opinion mattered and was valid. Also that they felt that they wanted Freedman to understand their point of view.

But then I read a sentence from Freedman on this second posting:

“In all this discussion over the past week about AWW, I’ve been disappointed and upset that a very small minority of people think it’s ok to attack Deborah Hutton personally. Not on. Not here. No way. I believe we can debate things without being rude or abusive. If you don’t believe that, bugger off. Deborah is a real person who is online reading what is being written. Remember that before you leave a comment – here or anywhere else.”

Now I will admit that I am not sure what these attack comments said maybe they were over the top but  just imagine if you read an opinion piece in The Age and in this article the journalist wrote about Deborah Hutton and then wrote the above paragraphs in her follow up posting. There would be an uproar I think. People would think what the heck is happening to The Age and free speech? They might even think who gives this writer / journalist the authority to write an article and then when it gets disagreed with to say ” do not attack DH, shes’ my mate and I don’t like it. If you do want to attack her you won’t do it here so bugger off”.

Now I know that a blog is different from a news site (though not always as some blogs grew to be key players in this space – think the Huff Post) and that a blogger is different from a journalist (then again not always as some bloggers see themselves as independent journalists depending on what they write about) but with the massive growth and maturing of blogging and the blogsphere can a ‘new media mini empire’blogger really say to their readers (many loyal fans) if you attack the people in my article (friends) then you can bugger off?

Now I’m not critising Freedman here or commenting on the whole DH postings. This is just an example which came to mind which seemed to respond to my initial thoughts about Trevor Young’s article back in December . But to me to seems that if a blogger’s blog matures such as  Freedman has with her blog MammaMia, then that blogger just might want to do some reassessing.

Can they continue to ”act” like a sole blogger writing what they want when they want and more importantly telling readers who don’t agree with them to go elsewhere but at the same time grow their ‘empire’ with a staff of writers and in short most of the paraphenalia of an online news / magazine / lifestyle site?

I’m not sure they can. I think if you are a mini media empire blog like MammaMia then you need to do some reassessing at some point.  You may need to stop seeing the blog as solely (and this word is key) as your ‘personal’ space for expressing your thoughts, obseverations and opinions with you dictating the houserules and instead cede some control and power to your readers. For without them you will never grow and you certainly would not have got where you are today.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.