Pet food scandal inspires bloggers

News about the melamine contamination in pet food is
all over the internet, and most of the time written by journalists. “Now,
consumers are also stepping into the news hunting to supply themselves,” said
Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and writer on online
media.

Blog sites
As the media focused on breaking
news and other significant developments in the story, bloggers took the
“completely logical approach” of finding what specific details pet owners need
and putting them all together, says Paul Grabowicz, director of the New Media
Program at the University of California at Berkeley.
The Pet Connection a pet
care site, links to the Food and Drug Administration’s list of recalled foods,
gives information on poisoning symptoms and provides streaming text from FDA
press conferences.
Itchmo.com, named for a dog who loves to be scratched, went
from a specialty site that founder Ben Huh of Bellevue, Wash., said got “about
two visits a month” to a news source with 1.5 million visitors and a high enough
profile that it has been banned in China. PetFoodTracker.com lists “the latest
in head-exploding news.”
ThePetFoodList.com lists the foods companies describe as safe
for canine and feline consumption.

Related folder:
Weblog: Pet food scare -when will it stop?

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