Hunting for Fashion’s Copycats, in Thursday’s Wall Street Journa is about how a part-time blogger on fashion led to the withdrawal by Channel of a bracelet that was a close copy of bracelet designed by Pamela Love in 2011.
For me, the story was the power of a publishing platform, an egnaged audience, the reward of journalism and the challenge mainstream media will always face if it trys to compete, rather than cooperate against non-mainstream.
Call them fans, amateurs, part-timers, free-lancers, bloggers, whatever — it’s people who are extrememly passionate about topics.It’s a large and visible group in sports, tech, music, books, fashion. It’s a smaller, but no less passionate group in stamp collecting, woodworkng, antique cars, etc.
Mainstream news organizations need to embrace and cultivate the passionate as readers, sourcess, conributors, partners. It’s not a natural role for newsrooms and there will be many lessons learned along the way.