Tavis’ Blog Contest Hate it or Love it

What about our Daughters and Jack and Jill Politics both expressed their dismay for Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union 2009 symposium blog contest, and though I understand their distaste for Tavis’ methods, I absolutely respect his attempt at engaging Black Bloggers in the conversation. Before we delve in, a little background:

PBS Commentator and host of the State of the Black Union Panel, Tavis Smiley, posted a blog contest on the State of the Black Union Blog. The contest offers “One special blogger” the opportunity to sit on stage and ask questions of the panelists. Not so bad right? The contest then explains the vetting process which asks each interested blog to submit three previously posted/published articles demonstrating legitimate coverage of news items of interest to African-Americans, the Blog’s statement of purpose, and a short essay detailing how and why your blog should be chosen. Then on December 5^th the top 5 bloggers will be selected, and the finalists are encouraged to have their readers vote on their behalf. Still not so bad right? They’re creating buzz around the SOBU webcast coverage and event, and what better place to create the necessary buzz than through the black blogosphere. Now here comes the problem. The site goes on to mention that sponsors will randomly (which has since been removed) select the potential contest winners from all eligible entries received during the promotion period, on or around December 5, 2008. That random choice, does not take into consideration the contributions made to the black blogosphere, and doesn’t necessarily put the best representatives of the black blogosphere on Smiley’s panel. But moreover it implies that we’re all the same and as Gina put it “insults the unique vision and intensive labor these new media content creators pour into their blogs”. Couldn’t agree more, but what’s a better alternative? If you have been involved with or watched the Black Weblog Awards, you will know that choosing the best blog for each category is a very daunting task. If blogs are solely chosen on how many unique votes a blog gets, then smaller more specialized blogs with powerful voices may be overshadowed by blogs with content more related to pop culture. The same happens when you try to rank blogs by linkbacks. The BWA has in turn decided to use a mixture of the popular vote and a group of influential people, within the Black Blogosphere, to choose the best blogs (a very difficult and time consuming task to organize and implement). It seems to me that the contest is trying to do the same, weighing a mixture of engaged readers with his staff’s selection, and under the current circumstances and short time frame, I can’t think of too many other alternatives. I’m sure that most of the bad apples will be eliminated long before they settle on the 5 finalist.

Another problem is with the post is the blog’s choice of wording during the explanation the contest. Smiley’s staff used statements like “Bloggers, here is your chance to become a Web Star!” or get this “Without question, this is a chance of a lifetime and a career-changing opportunity for the winning Web journalist.” Funny right! It’s obvious that this stems from a lack of understanding of the new media, and I agree with Gina’s assessment that we don’t need Tavis nor the SOBU Symposium to make us “Web Stars”. All we need is great content, some search engine optimization, and viola we’re creating rich conversations about the topics we care about online.

As blogger, our mission is to engage people, and create conversations around the information that we love and through a perspective unlike any other, and instead of looking at the SOBU’s halfhearted attempt at introducing bloggers into the conversation as malicious, we should use this as an opportunity to promote our medium. With the right representative, we could introduce an entirely new audience both on and off the SOBU stage, to the rich conversations that we have daily on our respective websites. So in addition to checkin’ Tavis and his staff, I think we also need to make sure we get someone on this panel who will best represent and promote our medium to the millions of people participating in this symposium. So let me take this opportunity to call on all black blogs and bloggers, who have the passion and love for this industry, to put their hats in the ring, and do whatever it takes to get on that stage!