Category Archives: Blogging

Chew chew chew

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In a survey of the state of the newspaper business for American Journalism Review, Paul Fahri writes:

Reporting is a labor-intensive enterprise . . .

Particularly labor-intensive are investigative and enterprise reporting, which dig beneath the surface and often turn up the stories that are most valuable for readers.

The question is, if newspapers, online or on paper, don’t provide the resources to report on their communities in depth, who will?

So far, the answer appears to be almost no one.

What about bloggers, you ask?

Bloggers — one of the Internet’s most important info-innovations — don’t offer much hope. Bloggers mainly chew over facts that others have collected — in essence repeating, not reporting. In a survey of the 100 most popular news-related blogs in 2004 — 59 responded — University of South Carolina doctoral students Bryan Murley and Kim Smith found half the bloggers said they got most of their news and information from newspapers. Another 19 percent got most of their information from other bloggers, who in turn were likely to have gotten it from a newspaper or some other mainstream outlet.

2004?

A lot has happened since 2004. A lot.

This guy is writing about blogging without taking 10 minutes on Google to fact-check his aaa. . . ssertion. Someone really ought to show him the door to the other universe.

More tips for bloggers

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Kent Newsome has a post up titled “Five Steps to Good Blogging” which is a must-read. My favorite line, under the tip Don’t Act Like a Rock Star, Because You Aren’t:

If you start thinking you’re a big star just because a lot of other nerds read your online diary, you need to aim higher. Go outside.

lol

(Outside? What’s that? Is that the stuff on the other side of . . . the Door?)

Along the same lines, blogging literary agent Miss Snark (who has just announced a hiatus, but don’t let that put you off: her archives are a treasure trove for writers) passed along a few tips, as well, in a 2/1/06 post titled Trick questions:

I learned how to generate interest by inviting people to ask questions. I stole that directly from Agent 007. I learned that people will write back in the comments section more readily if you pose a question at the end of the post–I learned that by stumbling upon it. And I learned that posting a lot late at night allowed people to comment first thing in the morning, and thus build comment momentum during the day, and I learned that from Ron at Beatrice.com

Good ideas, all.

:-)

If it’s silly, they will laugh

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The Du Bist Deutschland tale: another example of how the old rules of media just don’t work any more:

The idea seemed like a good one: an ad campaign to buck up the German spirit and remind the depressive citizens of Europe’s largest (but struggling) economy that things really aren’t all that bad. Ad agencies, newspapers and a number of celebrities donated some 30 million-worth of advertising space to the nonprofit Du Bist Deutschland campaign launched last September.

It didn’t work.

The ads have spawned so much criticism and satire that a Google search doesn’t even bring up the campaign’s Web site on its first page.

This skeptical reception was spurred, in part, when a very grumpy email from the head of the agency that spearheaded the campaign was leaked to the blogosphere. Karma, perhaps?

Because some blog posts are damn good reading

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Best-posts-medium-static

I was a writer long before I was a blogger. Now that I do blog, I find I spend a fair amount of time polishing my posts before I hit “publish” (and sometimes after). And I also admire other bloggers who craft well-written posts, even when I don’t agree with the blogger’s position on an issue.

So, unsurprisingly, I think Mr. Snitch’s “Best Posts of 2005” concept — a compilation of posts that are compelling and well-written enough to transcend their default “thought of the day” status — is brilliant, and serves an as-yet-unmet market need:

Millions of bloggers, thousands of good posts, all statements that could describe the fabric of a year. But there’s no way to access them, because traffic alone won’t point the way. The 25 most-trafficked blogs (assuming for a moment that traffic is the standard of excellence) produced only 4 of the most-trafficked posts. (Figures from BlogPulse.) This crudely demonstrates our basic contention that compelling posts are not necessarily the product of ‘popular’ blogs.

Beyond that, quality posts don’t necessarily set off traffic alarms. They fly right under the radar, through no fault of their own. For all the self-publishing software tools we enjoy, the primary work of a publisher is not (and never has been) to get books printed. The job of a publisher is to discover, expose, elevate and promote worthwhile work. In that regard, the blogosphere is almost completely barren. Glenn Reynolds and Lucianne.com do the job day to day, but such trusted editors are in short supply. And they don’t produce a yearend archive, a wrapup – a time capsule.

Here are the posts. And here is information on how other bloggers can get involved.

Which came first, again?

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I had a nice chuckle, yesterday, when my dad IM’d me: “So how did you get that blog thing started?”

Hee hee. Couldn’t resist, could you, Dad?

So now he’s put one up, too, with an inaugural post about one of his fave subjects, model trains :-)

As promised . . .

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I’ve now put together a list of Rochester-area blogs for my links.

It was a harder job than I anticipated. I found myself having to balance my own taste, inclinations and, um, respect for spelling against my sense of loyalty to my community.

What I want to do is to give visitors to my blog a chance to sample what other Rochester-area bloggers are up to. But, as I’m sure is true of any city, there is a continuum in the local blogosphere. On one end you find the blogs that are so highly personal and inward-looking that they end up belonging to no community in particular. At the other end are blogs that focus almost exclusively on national stories, which is fine but face it, you have to find something original to say or you might as well just link to Kos or LGF or Instapundit & type “ditto.”

Fortunately there is also a middle, and that is where I found the sites I like best, like this one, Junk Store Cowgirl–local journalist blogging about local topics but with an eye for how it all fits into the bigger picture.

Made my hunt worthwhile :-)

As did this: a Rochester Italian Greyhound club. Not really a blog, so I didn’t put it in my links, but get a load of the pic on the home page!

Roll, roll, roll the blog

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Other bloggers have been very kind to me for the past 10 days, giving feedback and offering suggestions. One of these suggestions, passed along by the estimable Mr. Snitch, was that I really need to put some thought into my blogroll.

I started this job yesterday, tinkering with my WordPress Themes code again so that my post categories list would display below my external links. At some point I am going to create a list of Rochester blogs, too (an idea I lifted from Mr. S, who has a Hoboken category :-)). So if you blog and are from my neck of the woods, be sure to leave a comment somewhere so I don’t miss you. (I ought to have done it while I was putting together my fast ferry post but I didn’t. Oh, well.)

That, however, will be the easy part. I am far from figuring out who else I should blogroll, because until this morning I hadn’t articulated to myself why I should choose any blog in particular.

Then I went back and read a few more posts from A Memorable Fancy, a blog I discovered last night (whose writer was kind enough to comment here as well, thanks!) and found a bit about a relationship that has sprung up between that blogger and another:

Antonella and I then corresponded not only via email, but also through tribe.net, and later through our blogs, taking advantage of various communication avenues, which in turn inflect the quality and nature of our distributed discussion.

And then I got it.

Of the top five things that give me the most pleasure, one is laughing; another is a state I can only describe as having my intellect piqued. I love to be excited by ideas.

So this is it, then. The blogs to which I choose to link will be those that have done at least one or the other. I will link to those that make me laugh, because I can think of few things I would rather do for people I love than to give them a chance to laugh, too. And as for those that excite my mind, I will link, for the pleasure of joining their distributed discussion.

More to come.

[tags]blogroll[/tags]