Small Dead Animals 1,000; Us 1

Alan D. Mutter, a former newspaper guy and now Silicon Valley CEO type, writes in his blog, "Reflections of a Newsosaur," about an odd phenomenon he experienced over the last couple weeks.

Seems "Reflections" had a few posts that were linked to by various sites ... a number of "traditional" news sites (Business Week, San Francisco Chronicle, etc.), which he deems "Large Ones," and a blog built and maintained by a Canadian schnauzer breeder called "Small Dead Animals."

Traffic surged into the thousands thanks to the Dead Animals blog. From the "Large Ones"? Not so much. He counted one reader showing up via the Business Week link.

He has a theory why:

Small Dead Animals is a creature of the web, by the web and for the web. Unlike the blogs grafted as an afterthought onto the sites of Forbes, Business Week, the WSJ and the rest, Small Dead Animals is a primary destination for readers hooked on what, in this case, is the bracing point of view of Catherine McMillan, an airbrush artist and schnauzer breeder who resides in a small town in Saskatchewan.

Although the Large Ones deserve a C+ for making an effort to add blogs and a few other modern touches to the print content they recycle at their staid and static sites, the banal results please neither their traditional readers nor the connoisseurs of such sites as YouTube, Gawker or the Huffington Post.

He continues ...

Readers of the traditional media have been conditioned over the years not to look to the Large Ones for the quirky news, dorky videos and (knee) jerky opinions that, for the most part, saturate the blogosphere. And Kos-inistas largely view the mainstream media, when they view them at all, as fodder for future potshots.

With the formidable creative talent, market reach, commercial relationships and financial capability they possess, the Large Ones ought to have an enormous edge over Canadian schnauzer breeders in creating editorially compelling and commercially successful online content. But they are failing, because they try to confine their new media ventures to the tightly edited and carefully modulated conventions of their existing brands.

If they want to be serious about the new media businesses, the Large Ones are going to have to establish skunkworks where people who really get the new media are given the resources and support necessary to develop original, independently branded fare. And the Large Ones will have to restrain themselves from over-managing these necessarily alien efforts.

I posted this as food for thought, but it does suggest that, for our purposes, we continue to push the envelope wherever possible. We've a lot of people to convince we're more than just car crash and crime news ... and that we're as plugged into the world at large as much as your garden-variety schnauzer breeder.