OK, here goes - and please feel free to join the conversation. After all, that's the strength of blogs. Done well, they help develop a community of readers/viewers/consumers. Those people can help you test ideas, get feedback that you can use to help you report your beat and publish in a timely manner. And as we all know, timeliness is an element of news. This building community is the primary reason I want students at Doane College to blog.
For Multiplatform students, a secondary benefit is learning a content-management system.
A good blog is a conversation, not much different from writing e-mail or even chatting. In the past, news organizations printed or broadcast information and expected their consumers to ingest it all but not interact with the news. Blogs allow that interaction.
They also provide background, context, expertise and interact with people.
Good blogs include other information you find online and link to stories and blogs. They usually are fast, frequently updated, include relevant links, share photos and contain a place for people to post their opinions and information.
To become a blogger, I suggest you:
- Read blogs.
- Scan the top 100 blogs at technorati.com
- Find blogs that cover a beat similar to yours (for Beat Reporting students) or that you want to cover someday (Multiplatform Journalism students).
Notice the post you like the most. Think of how you could fashion your blog using some of the elements you see. Note how frequently bloggers post.
Then, read the next post, which will give more practical advice regarding how to actually do this stuff.
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