"The beatblogging method has already helped us break news stories that
we could not have gotten any other way by letting readers with
knowledge find us and inform us."

The Beat: Digital Music. Where technology and music collide.

The Reporter: Eliot Van Buskirk, blogger on Wired.com’s Listening Post

Description: Evan Hansen, Editor in Cheif of Wired.com writes….

WIRED.com first jumped into blogging in a big way two years ago, and
since then it has become a cornerstone of our news operation.

Our principles from the start have been transparency, iterative story
telling techniques (write what you know when you know it), and
connecting with the readers as a primary source community. The results
have been outstanding. Today, an even dozen blogs, covering specific
beats from gadgets to music to defense tech, account for more than a
quarter of our daily news traffic and 95 percent of the discussions
and conversations with readers on our site.

Unique visitors to WIRED.com have more than tripled in the past year,
from about 2 million to nearly 7 million in October, thanks largely to
the growth of our blogs.

The power of beatblogging isn’t just a hypothetical. Our Danger Room
blog, headed by Noah Shachtman, won an OJA award this year for beat
reporting, winning out over metro daily news teams for this honor. So
beatblogging is coming into its own, and we’ve been pioneering those
efforts at WIRED.com.

One of the lessons we’ve learned is that blogging offers a
fundamentally different relationship with readers than traditional
newsgathering, and with this project we hope to  tap even deeper into
that phenomenon.

The beatblogging method has already helped us break news stories that
we could not have gotten any other way by letting readers with
knowledge find us and inform us. The connections allow us to take even
the slenderest threads of information — say an invitation under
embargo to meet with technology executives (declined) — to build a
complete and accurate news story with the help of our readers.

This is a proven and tremendously powerful technique, and we’re
excited at the opportunity to work with Jay and David to improve both
our understanding and application of it.

The Wired Team: (1. Evan Hansen, editor in chief
(2. Lewis Wallace, culture editor
(3. Eliot Van Buskirk, blogger at Wired.com’s Listening Post

More: Eliot Van Buskirk writes….

I’m intrigued by the project, because it seems like an efficient,
clever way to gather information  for my blog, news stories, and
column.  I’ve had a few successes with using my blog itself as a way
to gather news (example).