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Feng Jun at MindMeters believes blogs have brought great changes to the opinion marketplace and to the media in general, his thoughts, via Danwei’s translators:

Frequency-wise, there is too much time between columns that appear in the print media once or twice a week. Blogs have a much higher frequency. Moreover, using an RSS reader makes reading even more convenient – when there are new blog posts you will notice them automatically.

Such content is still prevalent in the media, but putting blogified articles in newspapers and magazines is meaningless. Uniqueness is what is needed:

• As in the community pages in international media where the columnist personally experiences various scenarios on behalf of the reader;
• As in greater uniqueness and elegance in language;
• As in a viewpoint that is more unique, or more systematic or professional, or more carefully considered, or a combination of multiple viewpoints;
• As in choosing writers with more star power. Forbes‘ 90th anniversary issue discussed network thinking, and the star writers filling the lineup made it a must-read. And indeed they wrote well. In Time‘s special issue on the 100 most influential people, many articles were written by friends and well-known individuals;
• As in editors who move from backstage to the front to make stronger choices, as in a section like Modern Weekly‘s city pages where each issue has a chosen topic for four writers to address in short pieces;
• As in more refined images, design, and production;
• And finally, this content will continue on: one of its foundations is the credibility and magnifying effect of the media platform. Now, there is an even greater need to put to good use the unique capabilities of the platform of the media.

One slight tangent: many people’s blog-reading experience is similar to how they read chatty columns. Their decision whether or not to read something is based not on the topic, but rather the author, because this is the only way to guarantee the quality of what they are reading.