During the recent WAMC-NCPR flap, Adirondack Almanack, Musing of a (Fairly) Young Contrarian, and Adirondack Musing, all covered the story (in our opinion) better then the local mainstream media and with deeper insight. While we might not expect local mainstream media outlets to mention by name any of the blogs’ more in depth coverage and commentary, we also would expect that when they draw directly from blogs for content they would give credit where credit is due.

When WAMC withdrew its offending application, the Times Union’s business reporter Chris Churchill committed a journalistic no-no by claiming “Some observers suggested the fight between the public radio networks was about money. Lake Placid, they said, is a relatively wealthy community that’s potentially fruitful for public radio stations largely dependent on contributions for their survival.” Those “some observers” were Adirondack Almanack and MoFYC who the Times Union didn’t bother to mention by name. That’s some reporting despite the absolute failure of local media to cover one of the larger trends to hit our area in some time. There are now more than 75 blogs in the Adirondack region, and hundreds more in the coverage area of local media. Not only does it show the failure of local mainstream media to do anything other than follow the pack, it also hints at just how scared they are of citizen journalism.

This recalls the Blog-Times long bet. In 2002, Blogger Dave Winer bet New York Times executive Martin Nisenholtz that: “In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times’ Web site.” The results show that the blogs won the bet, but the real winner was Wikipedia – you’ll remember the claims the Almanack made about wikis some time ago. Wikis are another topic ignored by local mainstream media.

I decided to conduct a search of the top Adirondack stories of 2007 and see how blogs show up against local mainstream media. Here are the results:

#10 Nature Conservancy Purchases 161,000 Acres
bldgblog ranked fifth. The Albany Times Union ranked seventh. Winner: blogs

#9 Lake George Workers Exploited
Albany Times Union ranked first. Deacon’s Blog ranked eleventh. Winner: mainstream media

#8 The Failure of Big Sky Airlines
Press Republican ranked thirty third. No blog ranked less than fifty. Winner: mainstream media

#7 Adirondack Hermit Alan Como
Adirondack Base Camp ranked first. The Glens Falls Post Star ranked second. Winner: blogs

#6 The NCPR – WAMC Flap
NCPR ranked first. The Adirondack Almanack ranked third. Winner: mainstream media

#5 Adirondack Global Warming Impacts
Adirondack Almanack ranked fifth. NCPR ranked twenty-fifth. Winner: blogs

#4 Changes in DEC, APA, and ORDA (we used Curt Stiles)
NCPR ranked eighth. Adirondack Almanack ranked seventeenth. Winner: mainstream media

#3 Adirondack Health Care (We used Hudson Headwaters)
The Glens Falls Post Star ranked forty-third. No blogs ranked under fifty. Winner: mainstream media

#2 Adirondacks State Tax Payments
Adirondack Musing ranked first. The Press Republican ranked second. Winner: blogs

#1 Northway Cell Towers
The Press Republican ranked first. Adirondack Almanack ranked tenth. Winner: mainstream media

The overall winner, 6 to 4, is the mainstream media. If NCPR was thrown out of coverage of itself, Adirondack Almanack would have made the overall contest a tie.

Obviously this little exercise is not very scientific but it’s clear that over the past year local blogs have begun to take their place alongside local mainstream media on the Internet. Blogs like Adirondack Almanack and Adirondack Musing have been around for only a few years – the mainstream media players in the Adirondack region have been around for decades, and have paid web experts and a stable of reporters on their staffs. Most local blogs are the work of one or two people.

Clearly something is happening in local media – wouldn’t it be nice if local media took notice?