Blogged

What’s in a name?

I visited the gradually-evolving St. Louis Platform today to see how things were progressing with the fledgling all-digital local news source. I noted with some pleasure that Mike Guzy - once a popular columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before the paper showed him the door over an alleged conflict of interest - is now writing for the new Platform. Then I saw that the Platform is changing its name:

The St. Louis Platform is about to become the St. Louis Beacon. Within a few days, you will find us at stlbeacon.org. If you come here to our original address, we’ll send you automatically to our new home.

We’re taking this step to avoid any confusion that might result from the recent appearance of a new blog created for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial page. We were surprised to discover that the blog’s name is The Platform and that the name appears in print announcements with a trademark symbol next to it.

“Surprised,” indeed! Chad Garrison, who has written in the past for the Riverfront Times about the Beacon-nee-Platform, asks aloud if the P-D deliberately gave its new feature the same name as the competition, and gets rather a bland response:

Gilbert Bailon, editorial page editor for the Post-Dispatch, describes The Platform as a blog that “will provide readers a chance to respond to the paper’s editorials as well as engage in conversation with writers and editors.” The blog, says Bailon, takes its name from Joseph Pulitzer’s “platform” that appears each day in the paper and states — among other mantras — that the morning daily will “never tolerate injustice or corruption.”

The editorial page editor dismisses any suggestions that his staff named its new blog in an attempt to undermine the Web site founded by the paper’s former staffers. “There are people here who certainly know the people who are launching the other site,” says Bailon. “But that outfit is going to do what they do, and we’re going to do what we do. I don’t see a big significance.”

Question: Is it standard practice for the Post-Dispatch to trademark the titles of its blogs?

So…what’s in a name, exactly? Considering that the erstwhile Platform was founded by a group of former Posties, and that the name was - as Garrison’s earlier article stated - “a nod to Joseph Pulitzer’s platform that runs each day on the opinion page of the Post,” you don’t need binoculars to detect a shot across the bow. And you can certainly see the P-D being sufficiently ticked off to brusquely undermine that appropriation, thank you very much. Not that anyone will come right out and say so; journalism is a genteel business, after all, except when it’s not.

As for the P-D’s new, trademark-protected “Platform” itself: editorials are opened up for comment and exchange. It’s meant to be a venue in which readers can interact with the editorial “we” more directly than in the usual letters column, but in a more refined environment, perhaps, than one might find in a forum. “Bring your A-game,” warns the site. A worthy endeavor, actually. How is it playing? There seems to be a desire to periodically remind commenters that the staffer who posted the editorial comment did not actually write it - don’t shoot, I’m just the messenger, folks - but I’m not sure how you get around that, since it is one individual’s name at the top of the post and that person represents the editorial board in that instance. Maybe the Post-Dispatch should take a cue from the Supreme Court and provide a space for minority or dissenting opinions from ed board members on a given topic. I’m only half-kidding. It would be nice, though, to see more engagement between the staffer and the commenters, something that is hampered when the staffer can’t really speak for the content under discussion.

In other instances, editorial content is actually presented by the author - the person who, effectively, owns it - and the opportunities for conversation there seem more clear.

Is the tone here more refined, more issues-oriented? Moderately so, I would say. There are blowhards in every port, of course. We’ll see how it looks once this blog has been around for a while, and once more readers come to realize it exists.

And as for the former Platform: long live the Beacon! The relationship between the two news sources is off to a feisty start. So long as the P-D doesn’t start trademarking every concept in sight, things should be fine.

Similar posts @ Waveflux:
At the Post-Dispatch, Drudge equals social networking
Dana Loesch leaves Post-Dispatch
Serendipity, sort of: New blog at the Post-Dispatch
New look for STLtoday.com
The Lumiere Place-Dispatch

Sphere: Related Content