I was reading The Total Buzz at the Orange County Register this morning and I was happy to see an entry called “Is this carpetbagging?â€Â
It’s a post by Ellen Pak about Orange City Council Candidate Carol Rudat and the rumors that she doesn’t even live in Orange.
Bloggers are abuzz, digging up property and voter registration records and listing her addresses online. Corona Del Mar? Newport Coast? Laguna Beach?
“The records show that she’s a lawful resident of the city of Orange,” said Janette Littler, Rudat’s spokeswoman in San Diego. ” She’s absolutely not a carpetbagger and I know they’ve tried to paint her in that way…. It’s really disappointing and disturbing that [bloggers] are encouraging citizens and people on the blogosphere to peak in doors and rummage through garbage to see what they can find.”
Carol moved to Orange this summer. She still owns property in Corona Del Mar. I don’t live in Orange, so I don’t have to care.
But the really cool thing about this story is something that I’ve been trying to tell people for a while: Once upon a time, newspaper reporters created buzz. Now, thanks to bloggers, newspaper reporters are responding to it.
“All the blogs are talking about Carol’s residency…I should look into that.â€Â
Blogging has flipped traditional PR on its head. In no way am I discounting what newspaper reporters do. Blogs would be a boring place if there weren’t newspaper articles to cite, link to, quote, and refute. But when it comes to buzz, the 24/7, no-word-limit world of blogging does a much better job than the once-a-day edition of a print newspaper.
It’s an exciting truth that has already seeped its way into the bigger news markets, and has finally started happening here in Orange County.
Despite this, Total Buzz remains a crappy excuse for a blog.
Nothing of interest, investigative, or groundbreaking. Even their daily rundown of relevant stories is gone. Politics isn’t a Monday through Friday 9 to 5 world. The comment registration and screening process is idiotic. There is little there worth commenting on, but you would think that it would attract more than a handful of comments a week (even when Karen seems to be taking her meds).
At least it keeps me from having to wait until Monday to read the Buzz column.
Folks at the OCR need to rethink it entirely.