Using blog copy in features: The Hockey News

Finally catching up on my THN reading, and Adam Proteau has a story/column that was a bit different, at least from what I've seen.

Each team had a capsule and a quote. I'm not sure who wrote the capsules, but the highlighted quote box is from a blog, and it cites the writer and blog address.

From Proteau's part: "The Hockey News canvassed 30 members of the hockey-blogging community to discover what particular aspect of their local team excites them heading into the 2009-10 season."

So it's a rah-rah story for each team, which is blog territory.

My questions on it were how long did it take to find a reputable blogger for each team (not that they're not out there, but in some cases it might have been hard to pick one since a lot say the same stuff) and if there was any compensation for the writer? (More so if they wrote the capsules itself, but again, I'm not really sure who wrote them.)

Actually, if the capsules were written by the bloggers, I also wonder how much editing was involved. (Although the regular Edmonton team capsule in that issue was written by "THN staff" and contained the phrase "spinal chord" I'm not sure reputable blogger-written copy would have been much worse.)

 

Kinda sucks that they didn't find an actual journalist to get quotes from -- especially a well-established joint like THN. So is this an example of bloggers taking away work from real journalists??