Over the past weeks we have launched a few Blog Portals for German media companies that invite users to contribute.

First of all there is germanblogs for Holtzbrinck Verlag, a leading German publishing group.  germanblogs is intended to create and market a network of skilled bloggers (very much like Creative Weblogging or WeblogsInc.). As far as I know this is the first initiative by one of the bigger European media networks to launch a 'blog media company'.

Also we have launched two Portals with Group Blogs for regional newspapers which you can see here and here. Both of them are fully integrated with the papers online appearances and allow readers to participate and write 'articles' themselves.

I have pointed out before that I believe that editorial and user-generated content will converge in the future and I feel affirmed by these new deployments as well as this recent article in The Economist about the change of the media industry through participatory media concepts.

As my background originally comes from Corporate Publishing I really love to see how the media industry and brands start working with blogs and user generated content: Here is a list of Portals we currently run for media companies and brands:

BusinessWeek
germanblogs
shz
Ostsee Zeitung
HLX Airline
Edgar Medien