Yesterday, Anderson Cooper 360° Blog relaunched on our WordPress.com. CNN was one of our first VIPublishers and has more than 40 blogs with us — their team is among my favorite to work with.
Along with CNN’s The Political Ticker, this is one of CNN’s most popularly blogs, so it is great that we know host them both.
I’m also excited Anderson Cooper 360° Blog is joining us, because of Anderson Cooper.1
Although, I don’t reguarly watch CNN or follow closely many of the issues that Anderson Cooper reports on, I’ve long appreciated his journalistic style and integrity. His presence both stands out from the dispassionate old school anchors and the news as entertainment or tragedy tourism reporters.
Describing his philosophy as an anchor, Cooper has said:2
I think the notion of traditional anchor is fading away, the all-knowing, all-seeing person who speaks from on high. I don’t think the audiences really buy that anymore. As a viewer, I know I don’t buy it. I think you have to be yourself, and you have to be real and you have to admit what you don’t know, and talk about what you do know, and talk about what you don’t know as long as you say you don’t know it. I tend to relate more to people on television who are just themselves, for good or for bad, than I do to someone who I believe is putting on some sort of persona. The anchorman on The Simpsons is a reasonable facsimile of some anchors who have that problem.3
Back to the blog. In the announcement yesterday, “The ‘new blog’ blog” David Reisner, 360° Digital Producer wrote “the 360Blog promises to be more interactive and more custom fitted to your daily blog needs. More pictures, more video”. He goes on to describe how “mouse over a link and you get a preview”, Snap Shots,4 contributes to this experience, and how categories can give you “a customized blog”.
Categories (and now tags too) being so easily their own view and having their own feed is one of the 1st WordPress experiences I was wowed by.
The comments so far on the new Anderson Cooper 360° Blog experience have been every positive, though people are disappointed it can’t make them coffee.
The previous version of this blog was on Google Blogger, and what I’m most interested in seeing is how participation improves. Though I wasn’t involved in “selling” WordPress for this migration away from Blogger, I regularly beg people that have blogs that I participate on to move off of Blogger because of how awkward it is to comment in that system. It is not a nice experience. It will be interesting to watch more people commenting more regularly on the new Anderson Cooper 360° Blog.
- And it seems he has a great team backing him up. [↩]
- Wikipedia, Anderson Cooper article [↩]
- Anderson Cooper, 2004 interview with David S. Hirschman, titled So What Do You Do, Anderson Cooper? [↩]
- Snap on WordPress.com announced [↩]
It was specifically for the commenting system that I left Blogger myself.
When the new AC360 Blog went up it was fine, but they recently “worked” on it and I cannot get it to scroll. I do not have any trouble with other similar blogs on CNN such as The Ticker, or the Cafferty File. I sent feedback to 360, but they almost never respond to viewers. Any suggestions?
Hi Jo Ann, thanks for the comment. I’ve sent you an email in the hopes that I can help resolve this issue. In the email I asked: .what web browser and its version are you using? Can you walk me
through the steps for me to experience the problem?
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I left blogger as well because of it’s commenting system.