South by Southwest, the prestigious internet/music/film conference held each year in Austin, TX, is considering a panel on pet bloggers and the pet food recall for next year. I submitted this idea and will be there, and while Gina says she probably can’t make it, Ben from Itchmo.com, Therese from PetSitUSA.com and ThePetFoodList.com, and David Goldstein from the Huffington Post and horsesass.org have indicated they’d like to be part of it. And I intend to work on Gina.
This is from the panel description:
The massive pet food recall that started in March of 2007 and kept rolling for nearly four months not only claimed the lives of thousands of pets but launched an international food safety scandal. How much of that story would we have ever known without pet bloggers?
“I don’t know of a comparable case,” NYU’s Jay Rosen told the LA Times. “It shows what’s possible when people get outraged and they ask themselves, what’s happening here? They actually have the tools to start finding out.”
Using new technologies and old-fashioned reporting skills, pet bloggers delivered veterinary, corporate and government information directly to dog and cat owners in a way unprecedented in the pet world. They liveblogged FDA media conferences, went into their own pockets to pay for their suddenly-exploding blog traffic, stayed up all night waiting for midnight pet company announcements of new recalls, coordinated lists of recalled foods that were more current and user-friendly than anything the FDA was publishing, and, with the valuable input of their readers, uncovered and reported on government documents that moved the story in the mainstream media.
Industry insiders called pet bloggers “troublesome” and “off the charts,” and complained pet blogs were posting “unfiltered information,” as if there were something unjournalistic about unspun news. Jay Rosen, on the other hand, told USA Today that pet bloggers’ “networked collaboration” over the recall is part of a movement that’s “changing the journalism world.” Paul Grabowicz of UC Berkeley’s New Media Program called their work “crowd sourcing” at its finest.
Pulitzer-winning reporter Abigail Goldman wrote, “Bloggers and owners of sites such as Itchmo, Pet Connection, Howl 911, The Pet Food List and Pet Food Tracker have been deluged by millions of pet owners who are grieving or railing or both — and digging for answers. Their online barking is being heard in Washington’s halls of power, including the Food and Drug Administration and Capitol Hill.”
Even two years ago, when rescue efforts for animals affected by Hurricane Katrina got national media attention, there was no coordinated pet blog community to dig into that story. How did they do it, and what can we take from it to use in the next big corporate, medical, or government scandal that impacts our animals’ health – and ours?
If you’d like to see this panel idea at the 2008 SXSW interactive conference, please visit SXSW’s Panel Picker and give the idea some stars! You do have to register first, but it’s fast and free.
To vote:
Go to the “Pet Blogging: Not a fluffy puppy story” panel submission page here.
If you aren’t already registered, click “sign in” to comment, then follow the directions to create an account. Once you’ve done that, go back to the panel submission page and give it the number of stars you think the idea deserves… five sounds good to me. ;)
Comments are also very welcome!
If you have any questions or problems with the process, please post them here. And thank you!
Comments