WKRN Nashville has pulled the plug on its "Nashville Is Talking"
blog forum, saying the weblog medium has been surpassed by faster, more focused
media such as Twitter.
The microsite, which brought together the best of the market's blogs,
launched in the spring of 2005. Then-GM Mike Sechrist hired a local blogger,Brittney Gilbert, to work out of the newsroom and link to the best of Nashville
's blogs.
"'Nashville is Talking' was
a bold step into media 2.0 by WKRN way back when," WKRN President/General
Manager Gwen Kinsey posted last week. "I say way back when because if
digital technology is teaching us anything it is that specific platforms,
unique technologies and the next cool thing all are born, reach maturity and
fade or evolve in what feels like a nanosecond of time."
Kinsey says the station--and its viewers--are using Twitter, Facebook and
live streaming to connect "in ways that blogs do less and less."
Gilbert resigned from the Young station in 2007 and was hired to run a
similar blog aggregator at KPIX San Francisco called "Eye on Blogs"
that launched early in 2008. Her replacement, Christian Grantham, stepped down
last week, reportsNashville City Paper. In
March 2008, A.C. Kleinheider, who ran WKRN's VolunteerVoters.com
microsite, was laid off.
Generally speaking, stations' forays into the blogosphere have been
inauspicious, with GMs and talent often showing waning interest in maintaining
blogs. KINGSeattle, for one, went the innovative "Nashville
is Talking" route with its "Citizen Rain" blog aggregator.
