So the brief day that was Blog08 is over and our blogging reporter, Anne Helmond, is back home. She rounds up over on her own blog, with a few after-thoughts. She also rounds up a presentation by a blogging politician, Boris van der Ham, who has been voted the most web savvy of  Dutch House of Representatives members.

She says:

“Overall, it was a good first blog conference and I hope that next time organizers Ernst-Jan Pfauth and Edial Dekker will keep in mind that not every great blogger is a great speaker and that blogging can be approached from even more different angles and perspectives.”

Thanks to Anne for all the insightful and speedy feedback.

Meanwhile, over at the Online Journalism Blog, Paul Bradshaw – who participated in a panel – does a little piece to camera reflecting on the day’s events:

The event was ‘eclectic and random’, he says – just like blogging, but can we please get past the ‘old chestnut’ question of ‘journalism v blogging’? he asks. You can also watch some other video clips here.

• Our blogger on the ground at Blog08
• Blog08: Pete Cashmore – Blogging is dead, microblogging is the future
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – data resources
• Blog08: Journalism versus hearth blogging
• Blog08: The never-ending journalism vs blogging debate continues…

Bloggers Hugh McLeod, Loren Feldman, Pete Cashmore and Elisabeth Winkler get up on stage to answer questions from the floor and the live backchannel at Twitter.

Rick Slagter asks the first question: ‘is blogging is the rescue of slow journalism?’

Loren Feldman is very explicit when comparing bloggers to journalists: “Bloggers aren’t journalists. You’re just a bunch of guys sitting in your livingroom, writing things.”

Pete Cashmore comes to the defence of bloggers and jokes that “sometimes we dress up and we wear pyjamas.” He describes the current media landscape as an eco-system where bloggers and journalists complement each other.

Winkler sees the overlap between journalism and blogging in the connections between opinion and fact. However, a fact needs a context because everyone has an agenda, and the major media aren’t very clear about their agenda. She sees blogging as a little more transparent.

Cashmore compares the discussion to the endless discussion that is still going on surrounding the term ‘web 2.0′. We spend a lot of time and posts on trying to define it, which leads to endless discussion, he says. The whole journalism versus bloggers debate depends on how you define journalism.

Paul Bradshaw from the Online Journalism Blog enters the debate with his opinion that ‘is blogging journalism?’ is an old question and that we need more challenging ones.

The best part of the discussion seems to be happening on Twitter, where Wilbert Baan (Interaction Designer of the Volkskrant newspaper website) replies to Paul Bradshaw’s statement with this insightful comment:

And me? I think the distinction between the medium and practice of blogging is an important one, especially in relation to journalism.

This post originally appeared on Anne Helmond’s blog.

• Blog08: Journalism versus hearth blogging
• Blog08: Pete Cashmore – Blogging is dead, microblogging is the future
• #TNTJ – the return of a blog and information network for young journalists
• Reflections on Blog08 and ideas for next year’s event
• Online commenters are like ‘particularly aggressive sub-editors’ says Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow

As written about earlier today, panelists at Blog08 discussed ‘Journalism versus hearth blogging’… and here’s how it looked. You can follow Anne Helmond’s full Flickr stream here. PS. We’re not sure if it is hearth or heart (see below). We think hearth…

• Our blogger on the ground at Blog08
• Blog08: Pete Cashmore – Blogging is dead, microblogging is the future
• Reflections on Blog08 and ideas for next year’s event
• Live stream from Gaza hosted on Ustream
• Live Twittering from the Oxford Media Convention

Not your average panel with Tim Overdiek, deputy editor in chief at NOS news; Clo Willaerts, marketing manager for Sanoma Magazines Belgium; Paul Bradshaw from the Online Journalism Blog; and Piet Bakker, professor at the Hogeschool Utrecht.

The journalism/blogging panel aims to answer questions gathered via de Nieuwe Reporter, one of the largest Dutch journalism blogs.

Tim Overdiek from NOS News shares that over a hundred NOS colleagues from a total of 400 have contributed to weblogs.nos.nl. Only forty employees are active bloggers but a hundred contributions in the form of either comments or blog posts is a certainly good number.

He remarks that professional journalists often don’t see bloggers as collaborators but as a form of contribution, as something they can use. There is no direct participation. The participating journalism that Dan Gillmor refers to is not happening in the Netherlands, according to Overdiek.

We’re currently moving beyond blogs, and the practice of blogging has gone beyond the medium of the blog and has partly and moved to Twitter for example. There is a whole world to gain for bloggers and also for organisations to actively set out to get people blogging.

It is interesting to note that during one of the previous sessions Tim Overdiek sent out a tweet to remind himself to create a 101 Teletekst Twitterfeed asap.

Teletekst is the Dutch equivalent of the BBC Ceefax and the 101 page is the standard page for news headlines. It is interesting to see how one of the most popular ways to keep up with the news is going to be syndicated on Twitter in the near future. The NOS is focusing on embracing the new social media and sees syndicating existing content on different platforms as the next step.

The question that was selected from the Nieuwe Reporter was a rather odd choice since there was a lot of discussion about the relevance and phrasing of the question in the comments (in Dutch). Unfortunately the question also eventually drived the discussion nowhere:

Imagine there would be a stock exchange for newspapers, broadcasters, magazines, weblogs, and other media. Which stocks would you buy when taking the next five years in account?

Tim Overdiek: Buy stocks in NOS, we have great outlets, we have different platforms such as mobile TV, blogging and Twitter. The NOS media department is pretty tech savvy. However, he advises not to bet on just one company because there are too many interesting things going on in different places.

Piet Bakker would buy stocks in magazines because the problem with blogging and internet is that to monetize it is quite difficult.

Paul Bradshaw would also buy stocks in magazines because all of the advertising on the internet pretty much goes to Google. Offline and online advertising are not on the same level yet and on top of that magazines have a lot of muscle. Bradshaw thinks that they will buy out successful blogs. Newspapers are also trying to be more like magazines which shows the bright future of magazines but they don’t see it quite yet.

Journalists should work with bloggers on a level playing field. He [Bradshaw] mentions the example of a newspaper that recently recruited 40 bloggers but it’s not a top down relationship with one main editor that makes all the decisions. He sees this as a good way forward because journalists and bloggers should treat each other like citizens.

This post originally appeared on Anne Helmond’s blog.

• Blog08: The never-ending journalism vs blogging debate continues…
• Technorati: 72 % bloggers surveyed report no income related to blogging
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• Round-up: Open house event at The Telegraph on political blogging
• International Blogging and New Media Association names new president

Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable, has said bloggers should be finding niches to blog about and focusing on microblogging, according to Anne Helmond, our blogger on the ground at the Blog08 conference taking place in Amsterdam today.

“Apparently blogging is dead, it’s all about microblogging. Blogging is hard now. How do you compete with blogs created by established media empires who create blogs? Find a niche. What’s the future of blogs? According to Pete it is about how do you aggregate the dispersed conversation that’s on FriendFeed and Twitter, or do you want to completely distribute content as a brand?” Anne writes in a post, which appears in full on her own blog

• Our blogger on the ground at Blog08
• Reflections on Blog08 and ideas for next year’s event
• Blog08: The never-ending journalism vs blogging debate continues…
• New Media Knowledge: The UK blogosphere and making money from blogging
• Blog08: Journalism versus hearth blogging

Anne Helmond will be blogging back from Blog08 for us, with a focus on the online journalism aspects.

You’ll be able to follow Anne’s updates on this blog, or directly at this tag.

Blog08 is a one day only event/conference for all things blog, taking place in Amsterdam with the rather exciting theme of ‘Rockstars of the Web’.

Anne Helmond is a New Media lecturer at the Mediastudies department at the University of Amsterdam.

Her thesis entitled ‘Blogging for Engines. Blogs under the Influence of Software-Engine Relations’ aims to contribute to the existing research on blogs and blogging by framing it from a software-engine perspective and describing a different role of the blogger in this relationship.

She continues her research on blogs and blogging with the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam. She blogs at annehelmond.nl.

The not entirely serious video below gives a glimpse of what is in store…
Blog08 Special II from Sacha Post on Vimeo.

• Blog08: Pete Cashmore – Blogging is dead, microblogging is the future
• Reflections on Blog08 and ideas for next year’s event
• Blog08: Pictures from the blogging hearth
• Blog08: Journalism versus hearth blogging
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