BendTech

I just received a very interesting email from Ben Salmon, the Bulletin’s music reporter.  He points us at “Frequency“, his new music blog for the Bulletin.  In his words, he “will be providing daily (or close to it) news and commentary about music, with a special focus on Central Oregon’s scene.”

It’s definitely worth checking out – there’s not a ton of content just yet, but there’s enough to get a taste of what’s to come.  If you’re a music buff, this should have your mouth watering for more of the reviews, photos, and videos, and especially the music downloads that Ben’s posting.  But even if you’re not a music buff and have just been following my gloom and doom posts about the Bulletin lately, this blog should be interesting as a possible turning point for the Bulletin.  Unlike the Bulletin’s main site, Frequency actually seems to be firing on all cylinders as far as the Social Web is concerned:

• All content is freely available (read, “no Bulletin-subscription-required” nonsense)
• Good “takeaway” content in the form of MP3 downloads of songs (DRM-free, no less!)
• Comments are open, no registration required.
• Good content syndication support ala  RSS + Twitter feeds
• There’s even the beginning of some crowd-sourced content in the form of a Flickr group for people to post pictures from concerts they attend

I have to confess I’m impressed at how distinctly out of character this is for the Bulletin.  Even Ben’s writing style has a casual “blogger” feel to it that you don’t normally get in the paper.  If it weren’t for the prominent “Bend Bulletin” header and footer on each page, you might almost forget this was a Bulletin property – it comes across a bit like Grandma wearing a pair of Daisy Dukes: tempting in the middle, just try not to focus too hard on the top or bottom bits.  (Okay, okay, I’m being unfair to the rest of the Bulletin site, but some analogies are too good to resist!)

While this alone won’t guarantee a future for the Bulletin, it at least shows a new-found willingness to experiment with things, and this is definitely a step in the right direction.  Will we see other reporters developing similar blogs?  I hope so, because it’d make bendbulletin.com a lot more interesting, but I suspect that depends in large part on how well this little experiment plays out.  To that end, I’d encourage people to spread the word so Frequency get’s a fair shot at success.