Saturday, December 27th, 2008...2:59 pm
Top 10 tips for journalists who blog
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So, journalist, you have named your new blog, now what? You need to start blogging.
I’m a big believer in just doing it and learning as you go. You’ll get better as you learn what works and as you read more blogs in your topic area and read blogs about blogging. A good list of blogs to read are listed to your right under “Blogs I like.”
I think one of the challenges for some journalists who blog is that a blog is really a very different medium than a news story. So I’ve come up with some of my ideas of what makes a blog different. I’m assuming as I write this that whoever is reading this has some familiarity with news stories, so I’m not going to going into the rules of the road for them.
These are suggestions based on my experience, writing the Family Life blog for a daily newspaper, reading lots of blogs (and by a lot I mean hundreds) and reading a lot about blogging and the media. You may disagree with some of my points. If so, feel free to comment and explain why. I’m always learning, too, and love to hear other points of view.
Also, like any rules, these can and should be broken when it makes sense. Bear in mind that these guidelines are meant to apply to journalists who blog on a newspaper Web site, so I’m not going into a lot technical tips about the mechanics of your blog because you likely won’t have control over these. With that said, I believe these tips will apply to general bloggers who are doing it for marekting, fun or a cathartic release.
10 DOs when you blog as a journalist
- Start with an introduction: Even though your blog likely (and should) have an “about me” section, your first post should be an explanation of who you are, why you’re blogging and what you hope this blog will accomplish. Blogging is really the opposite of the distanced news story. Readers want to know who you are and why they should listen to you. And if they like you and like what you write, they’ll keep reading.
- Be accurate: The biggest mistake a journalist can make is to be inaccurate. That’s so intrinsic to what journalism is supposed to be. And this doesn’t change on a blog. If you make a mistake, correct it immediately. If the story develops, and your blog post becomes incorrect because it was based on early information — explain that to readers. Don’t just update surreptitiously and say nothing. Explain that you found out more information, so what you said earlier was wrong. Remember, it’s a conversation. And nobody wants to have a conversation with a liar.
- Use attribution: If you’re blogging about an issue that was reported in a news story, both link to the story and credit it. Don’t present other people’s reporting as your own. If you’re repeating an assertion that you don’t know as fact, attribute it in the same way you would in a news story. If you’re writing about a person accused of murder, be sure you attribute any potentially libelous statements to a reputable source — the police, the district attorney’s office — and make it clear that the charge is an accusation, not a fact. You can be sued for libel on the Web just like you can be in the newspaper.
- Know your audience: Blogs are intended to reach a niche, not a mass audience. So you need to figure out first who is your target audience, and then diligently keep your content on track for this audience. This can be tough at a newspaper, which for decades has had the philosophy of trying to be something for everyone. A blog that tries to reach everyone, will end up reaching no one, I believe. When I conceived of my parenting blog, for example, I had a very specific audience in mind: moms with kids from birth to age 12. I picked that audience because I wanted to capitalize on the trend of mommy blogging, and I felt this niche was under-served by the traditional newspaper. Colleagues at my newspapers asked me: “What about single people?” “What about people without kids?” “What about parents of teenagers?” “What about dads?” I think they deserve their own blogs, and, certainly, there are some dads, some single people, some childless people who read my blog. But I can’t resonate with my core audience well if I’m trying to reach all these sub-audiences. In other words, a blog that’s really interesting to a mom of a toddler likely won’t be interesting to a single person without kids. I believe you need to be single-minded in your niche to set it apart, so you can really reach that target audience and serve them in a way mass media doesn’t.
- Give your blog a personality: It’s OK to let the reader get a sense of who you are. In fact, it’s vital in a blog. Include facts about yourself; express your point of view; be candid. A good blog in general does not read like a news story. It’s not a news story. (There are exceptions, of course, that work. My newspaper has a “breaking news blog” that reads just like a news story, but it works because its goal is to give readers news immediately.) Most blogs, though, are intended to complement news stories, not replace them. So they need to give readers something beyond “just the facts, ma’am.”
- Use conversational tone: Blogs are conversations with readers. They are meant to be interactive; they are meant to be engaging. So don’t be stodgy. Use first-or second-person point of view, not the third-person that’s usually used in newspapers. (That means refer to yourself as “I” in a blog and address the reader as “you.”) Use humor if it makes sense. Be chatty if that’s your personality. Be sarcastic if that’s more you. Be yourself.
- Write something: This may seem obvious, but I’ve seen blogs that are just a list of links with no explanation of what the links are. Why would anyone click on them? Why would anyone return to such confusion? A blog is a written document. Or if it’s a photo or video blog, it’s a visual document. But it needs content of some sort or readers won’t want to return to it. Also, you want your blog to index in Google, so it will come up in Google searches, and Google won’t see your blog as content if there is no content. (I’ll get more into indexing and Google searches in a later post.)
- Give readers something new: There are millions of blogs out there, and likely thousands or more on whatever topic you are writing about. You don’t have to be one-of-a-kind to get readers; but you do need to give readers something new. Whatever you do, don’t just repeat content that’s already in the newspaper without any additional context or content. To me, that makes little sense. A blog should complement the content in your newspaper, not compete with it. In my mind, it’s fine to give readers a copy of a story you wrote in the morning newspaper, but also give them something more — extra quotes that didn’t make the paper, an inside look at the interview, your analysis on the subject.
- Give your opinion: The blogs I like the best are those that have an opinion. How much opinion you put in your blog will depend on what you’re blogging about, what you cover for the newspaper and how comfortable you are with expressing your opinion. Journalists are taught to keep their opinions out of the news, so this can be tough. There’s a balancing act here between how much opinion you can offer when it relates to a story you’re writing about. I think it’s fair game to express an opinion about something going on outside your community that relates to your topic. For example, if you blog about the courts beat, you probably don’t want to say whether you think the suspect in the high-profile murder case you’re covering is guilty before the trial is resolved. That would make you appear biased. But you could opine to your heart’s content about a national case, such as O.J. Simpson’s recent conviction for robbing a pair of memorabilia dealers.
- Interact with readers: As I said earlier, blogging is a conversation. So if readers comment, reply to them. If they criticize you, don’t get defensive. Thank them for expressing their point of view. If the comments are really inappropriate, your newspaper will likely have a mechanism for deleting them. To me, this is a real last resort, reserved only for the most over-the-top comment. I like the dialogue that happens among commenters, and I like how commenters end up talking amongst themselves on blogs. Readers should be able to reach you through your blog to complain, to compliment, to share an idea. Provide your e-mail address or a “contact me” section. Invite them to talk to you. And if they do — answer them. Never ignore a phone call or e-mail from a reader.
On my next blog post, I’ll go into search-engine optimization and how it relates to a journalistic blog.
– Gina
I'm Gina Chen, a 20-year veteran newspaper journalist who is studying for a communications Ph.D. I want to see journalism survive. I believe news organizations need to embrace new media, change their thinking, improve their content and innovate. Read more about me 
15 Comments
December 30th, 2008 at 1:22 am
[...] Contact me Top 10 tips for journalists who blog [...]
January 1st, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Good list but I would add one that I think is more important than all the others:
Link. Link out. Link into conversations that are already happening online. Contribute to those conversations. Link, link, and link more. It is through links that you truly join and add to the conversation.
Links are an act of enlightened self-interest, for it is when you link to others that they discover you and what you have to add. That will get you linked back.
I am asked often by blogging journalists how they get readers, as if just putting up a blog will get them an audience. My answer is always – guess what – link out.
I’ll also quibble slightly with your point on accuracy. By all means, be accurate. But don’t be afraid of being incomplete. In blog, we put up what we call half-baked posts. That may sound abhorrent coming from the keyboard of a journalist and journalism teacher. But as Nick Denton of Gawker Media explains it, a half-baked post says to our readers: “This is what I know. This is what I don’t know. What do YOU know?” That is how journalism becomes collaborative, open, transparent, how journalism becomes a process more than a product. It improves and adds to journalism. So journalism becomes a skill of not just saying what we know but also of saying what we don’t know, so we can complete the story.
January 1st, 2009 at 4:48 pm
[...] See also Gina Chen’s blog from a journalist helping journalists with blogs, Twitter, etc. (Here are her 10 tips for blogging and here is my addition in the [...]
January 1st, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Jeff,
Totally agree with you on the linking … Thanks for raising it. I’m planning a whole post on that because I think it’s so important.
And I agree with you that it’s OK to be incomplete. I think that’s different from being inaccurate, but you’re right to make the point I should have made. I think too often journalist bloggers wait to post until they have the whole story, and that’s a real mistake!
– Gina
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:51 am
[...] associate professor who blogs about the media at Buzz Machine, raised a good point about my list of 10 Tips for Journalists Who Blog. I didn’t mention linking. I didn’t because I felt it was such a key topic that it [...]
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:39 pm
[...] lots of links to work with. Gina Chen at Save the Media notes that linking was missing from list of 10 Tips for Journalists Who Blog, and posts about why it’s so important. It is, it really is. One thing I asked A LOT by [...]
January 10th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
The challenge of being a journalist is knowing how far to follow a story. As a citizen-journalist a.k.a. blogger, how does one know when to publish a story that others would prefer to keep quiet?
For example, I found out about a company that had been purchased by another larger one. The small company’s product is used in many school districts. At the request of the small company–whom has served with distinction many customers–I removed a blog entry outlining the purchase…the company’s owner promised an exclusive and yet, also called the customers to let them know of the buy-out.
Should I have left the blog entry up or taken it down? What guidelines/suggestions do you have? Somehow I feel that a proper journalist would have published the story no matter what the personal cost, while another would have pulled the story and waited for the promised exclusive.
I find myself caught between the lure of making the story known to all (great interest) and honoring a request by a company that has served well, including myself and my group.
Looking forward to your shared wisdom,
Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org
http://mguhlin.org
January 11th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Miguel,
You highlight an important issue. Basic journalism philosophy says you should have published, regardless of what the company requested. (Although I’ve been in the newspaper business long enough to know, that many times newspapers hold off on stories to satisfy important people for all kinds of reasons — legitimate or not.)
It sounds like you had a bit of a conflict of interest because the company in quesiton served yourself and your group. That highlights one of the reasons an idependent media is important to a Democracy. It’s difficult to serve two masters.
With that said, though, I think citizen bloggers add a lot. They are connected in a way often journalists can’t be or aren’t.
You need to decide what’s more important — getting the story out there or pleasing a company that has served you. You probably can’t do both.
As long as you are clear with the source that you are going to publish regardless of their concerns — and you’re accurate and fair — I think you’re on firm ground. But you need to be able to live with the fact that you will anger people whom you respect. And that’s hard for anyone, including journalists.
Thanks for sharing.
– Gina
January 12th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
[...] on family issues for her newspaper site and recently began her own online journalism blog, has an excellent 10-point list for blogging-journo newbies that stresses accuracy, conversation and interaction with readers, and [...]
January 26th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
[...] Top 10 tips for journalists who blog [...]
February 8th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
[...] tell it until the next morning (or afternoon.) So now we have the Web. Use it. Don’t wait. Don’t post on your blog “after you write your story.” Don’t drive back to the newsroom even. Use Twitter to break news as it happens and follow up [...]
August 23rd, 2009 at 1:16 am
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