Ryan Sholin

10 blogs your newspaper needs to rip off

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by

Ryan Sholin
in

I’m making a short list of frequently updated news blogs published by mainstream news organizations that post breaking news and link out to other sources.

If you run a newspaper.com and you don’t have a blog like this to put together links and short updates, ask yourself why not.

These are all great examples of blogs that get news up in a timely way without a great deal of waiting around for a daily-print-cycle-based editorial process to wrap up.

  1. The Lede – New York Times – Notes on the news in the Times and all over the place. Links to blogs, other news sources, YouTube videos embedded on the page, etc. See also: City Room for the local NYC version.
  2. Blotter – ABC News – “Brian Ross and the Investigative Team” provide lots of detail on current news stories. Not much in the way of links, but there’s lots more here than you’d find on the nightly newscast.
  3. On Deadline – USA Today – Breaking news, including frequent updates on whatever’s breaking right now this minute, plus links to outside sources.
  4. The Trail – Washington Post – Campaign trail notes from WaPo staffers. Less links and more reporting, but short and sweet for the most part, far ahead of the print cycle.
  5. Wonkette – Gawker Media – Washington DC gossip + snark.
  6. Instapundit – Glenn Reynolds – A classic example of a political blog, but the links are the content here.
  7. Romenesko – Poynter – I’d guess this is the single most widely-read blog in U.S. newsrooms. All the news industry news you can shake a browser at, all links, all the time.
  8. Epicenter – Wired – Lots of technology business news here, often in the form of short posts with links to other news sources, blogs, and research.
  9. L.A. Now – L.A. Times – Daily links, photos, and bits of news.
  10. TechBlog – Houston Chronicle – OK, so this is more topical than timely, but Dwight Silverman is probably the most prolific individual newspaper blogger out there, with really frequent updates and lots of links, focusing on consumer technology, not venture capital news that no one outside of Silicon Valley cares much about.

Feel free to add more examples in the comments.

I’m looking for the best news linkblogs out there to use as examples of what a newspaper.com should be doing with an all-purpose breaking news blog or a topical linkblog.

See also: Scott Karp on “link journalism.” 

Comments

12 responses to “10 blogs your newspaper needs to rip off”

  1. Chris Amico Avatar
    Chris Amico

    I’ll stick with giving some global/China examples here:

    http://www.Shanghaiist.com – I’ve mentioned this before, but it really is a great round-up of all things Shanghai.

    http://www.ChinaDigitalTimes.net – UC Berkeley’s China news aggregator. Also has some original reporting coming in.

    With most China news/link blogs, there’s another important layer not found in the US: translation. That in itself is worth the bandwidth.

    Oh, and for US politics, http://www.PoliticalWire.com is on my daily read list, too.

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  2. Zac Echola Avatar
    Zac Echola

    Sweet! This list is exactly what I’ve been looking for.

    Also the king daddy of all link blogs: Drudge.

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  3. Zac Echola Avatar
    Zac Echola

    Slashdot and Fark are perfect examples.

    Plus they have the added benefit of commenting to build communities around linked content.

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  4. Dave Brooks Avatar
    Dave Brooks

    How about a small, very focused blog? Smaller papers might do better to try those rather than a sweeping “blog about politics”. So here is mine:

    http://www.granitegeek.org – GraniteGeek “Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire.”
    (how do you make hot links in these comments?)

    It’s an offshoot of my weekly science column, more of a story tracker than a commentary blog. I’m happy when daily page views hit 200, so even after a year it’s dinky – but it brought in a few hundred bucks from GoogleAdwords last year. And it’s fun.

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  5. Ryan Avatar
    Ryan

    Awesome stuff.

    Dave – Your blog is a great example. Mostly links, topical, sending folks away so they come back for more.

    I’m not trying to address newspaper blogs as a whole here (tried writing that master’s thesis, in the process of abandoning it quietly by the side of the road).

    What I’m looking for, ideally, are general news/link blogs. The NYT Lede might be the best example – all-purpose links about the news of the day.

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  6. Digidave Avatar
    Digidave

    Zac Echola brings up an interesting pivot in his second comment about Fark and Slashdot.

    To me, those aren’t blogs – they are niche aggregators – and those play an important role in today’s “link journalism” as Scott Karp calls it.

    What are some niche aggregators (or social news sites as I call them) people should be watching?

    The key word here is Niche (so Reddit, Digg, Propeller don’t count).

    NewsTrust.net
    Pub2.0
    Hugg.com

    More examples here.

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  7. Brian Cubbison Avatar
    Brian Cubbison

    Here’s a somewhat unpolished effort to aggregate local bloggers, but it might suggest some ideas that local newspapers can try. Outside blogging groups had done things like this in various places, but not too many newspapers have gone this way.

    http://blog.syracuse.com/newstracker/2008/02/upstate_blog_network.html

    And here’s a newsy links blog with a somewhat different purpose.

    http://blog.syracuse.com/indepth/

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  8. Dwight Silverman Avatar
    Dwight Silverman

    Ryan,

    Thanks for your kind words!

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  9. Ryan Avatar
    Ryan

    One I found in the last 24 hours: cbs5.com eye on blogs.

    Brittney Gilbert is curating this local Bay Area linkblog for a local TV station.

    See also the rail of links to local blogs on the right. Major bonus points for that.

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  10. Tom Mallory Avatar
    Tom Mallory

    We have a growing little family of newsblogs on our site. Great tools for speedy news reporting, from the field or anywhere. (Actually, I’m often editing them from my commuter train.)
    These are edited (gasp!) blogs. We’ll be starting another family of more personal single-author blogs.
    Tom

    newsblog– Our breaking news blog. Everyone on staff except for Opinion editors and writers can contribute.
    Sportsblog– Sports staff
    U-T Chargersblog –
    U-T Padresblog
    UU-T Polblog – Politics & local government teams
    U-T Trafficblog – Breaking News team, with help from Metro
    Out There – Stories we had to share. Everyone on staff can contribute.

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  11. Ryan Avatar
    Ryan

    @Tom – The breaking news blog is really what I’m interested in – but where can I find it on the signonsandiego.com homepage?

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  12. Mike Carney, USAT Avatar
    Mike Carney, USAT

    Thanks for the kind words, Ryan.

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