TLNT: Bridging The Gap Between HR Blogs and Publications

Editor’s Note: I work for ERE, the company that publishes TLNT. This isn’t an official press release or anything, just my personal take on the whole shebang. Cool?

I love new blogs, new sites, new technology, new…stuff. So when we first talked about an HR-centric publication at ERE, I was kind of excited. Not only because I think ERE puts together great stuff, but because there is a need.

A need? Really? I hear you doubters. From someone who gets at least an e-mail a week with a new blog or something else, I hear you. But here’s why I like the idea behind TLNT: it bridges the gap between blogs and publications.

I’ve been adamant that bloggers in general do not fit the idea of media, at least the traditional definition. It’s not a knock on bloggers at all (you are, after all, reading this blog by a blogger). And it isn’t like there’s not a need for bloggers. I think it has helped fight much of the media consolidation that was happening (especially in the late 90′s). When you have blogs beating traditional media to the punch or killing them on web traffic, there is obviously a need for that.

Sometimes blogs miss stories or minutia that are important but uninteresting. Bloggers generally don’t try to cover everything that’s important but simply the things that are interesting to them. That’s what I do. It is much easier to write that way when you’re writing on a zero dollar salary a year. So collectively, we miss issues.

I’ve also been a critic of some of the traditional players in the HR media space. Most of the time, they are important but slow to report. By the time you get something in your mailbox, an issue may have already been decided or it was covered weeks ago somewhere else. Even the few that do publish aggressively online put it behind a paywall (HR Magazine) or a kind of useless but free registration wall (Workforce). And still, those publications schedules primarily revolve around print deadlines.

HR people are business people. They demand their news on as soon as it happens. If a stock broker waited until the latest issue of Fortune or Forbes arrived in her mailbox, they would probably be fired. If your IT guy didn’t hear about the latest virus until the next issue of Wired came, you’d probably be in trouble.

That’s where I think TLNT fits in. We’ll have the news and experts you’d expect with a traditional publication along with the frequency and the opinion that comes with blogging. And you’ll get to see me there, talking about HR issues just like I’ve done here.

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