Blogging!

Over the weekend, we were assigned to read two chapters on blogging from our books (Journalism Next by Mark Briggs and Be the Media by David Mathison). The chapters were very enlightening - mainly from the standpoint that they made me realize that I have absolutely no idea how to blog. Given the nature of this course, you can see how that might be a bit of a problem. After finishing the chapters, I followed the books' advice on how to become a successful blogger.

One of the suggestions that the books made was for me to familiarize myself with the blogging community. They suggested that I go to www.technorati.com and search the list of the top blogs to find something that I would be interested in, as well as a topic that I am not familiar with, in order to get a better grasp on what exactly I should be typing here.

At Technorati, I found a link to Boing Boing , a site which despite its obvious aim to be more carefree and relaxed, reminded me of CNN.com. There were tabs for all different sections of interest - much like a newspaper's site - top posts above the masthead and even a sidebar of recommended posts. The main difference that I noticed between Boing Boing and a professional news site such as CNN.com was the way that the stories were written. As opposed to the stiff, AP-styled-to-death stories of "old journalism," these blogs had a refreshing, welcoming style that made me realize exactly why more and more people are looking to blogs and "new journalism" as their news sources.

I also found Ben Smith's blog subtitled "A running conversation about politics." This epitomizes what blogs are all about: two-sided journalism. Gone are the days where journalists "talk at" the public, now every person has the ability to be a journalist and talk back.

I hope that as this course continues I learn to create blogs that people besides my professor will read...but as you can probably tell, Prof. Littau...I've got a long way to go.