Danny Sanchez at Journalistopia reports on a newspaper blog panel at the National Writers’ Workshop in Fort Lauderdale.
His takeaways are a small sample of what reporters-who-blog think about what they do, and how they do it.
My favorite:
“Don’t take the writing on your blog for granted. Streeter once got 90 comments from rabid fans of American Idol contender Kellie Pickler (See: Kellie Pickler, Evil Genius?). Streeter had suggested that Pickler was faking her whole “Ca-lah-mah-ree” bit. FOX News even reported on the comments in her blog.” [his links, not mine]
The moral of that particular part of the story has a lot to do with understanding how search works, how blogs work, and getting an idea of what sort of blog post will bring in readers from outside your circulation range. If you pay any attention to what makes the front/popular pages of social bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious, you start to notice what gets noticed.
If you’re unfamiliar with those sites, try looking at something like popurls.com first. It aggregates headlines from lots of those more-popular-every-day spaces. Check it once a day, try not to get sucked into the YouTube vortex, and note what you see.
Of course, something else that will always get noticed is a damn good story.
Read Erik Nelson’s blog post about his commute. It kind of makes me want to get dirty fixing up our old bikes.
[Full disclosure for those of you taking notes: I worked with Erik at my internship this summer and designed his current blog template.]
Comments
2 responses to “A slice of newspaper blog life”
I wouldn’t want you to sully your hands working on bikes when you could be tinking with my blog. Thanks for the advice on getting noticed — and for spelling my name correctly.
btw, I’m not authorized to pay you for this advice, but can you tell me how to change my name to something other than enelson?
why don’t these things have spellcheck? I meant “tinkering with my blog,” not “tinking…” One more letter, and I’d really be flushed.