A graduate student at Stanford University posed a long list of questions about blogging to me last night, and I ripped off this quick response:
Q. What kind of research goes into writing blogs? Do you spend the same amount of time, resources, and interviews as you would for a normal publication?
No. Blogs are a different medium than traditional publications or even Web zines. Because they’re personal journals, each author decides for himself or herself how much research needs to go into each blog entry. More often than not, blogs serve as personal op-ed pages — riffs on current events, personal experiences or whatever is top of mind to the blogger. For the most part, blogs point to other interesting postings, online publications or Web sites, often with personal commentary accompanying the blog entry.
I usually do very little research for my weblog. I fan out to my favorite sites to collect links that I think it’s worth sharing with others who share my interest in new media. If I receive an email I consider worth publishing, I’ll try to obtain the sender’s permission before doing so. And on rare occasions I’ll try to authenticate a Web report or email dispatch that raises important topical issues that I hadn’t heard about in the mainstream media.
Q. What is the economic model of the blog? How does it make money?
Economics? Surely you jest. At this early stage, there is no economic model for weblogs. Andrew Sullivan and a handful of other well-known journalists raise money through charitable donations by readers, but that’s not sufficient to keep us going. Bloggers blog because it’s a creative outlet, because we want to tap into a vital community to discuss niche topics and current events, not to make money. I don’t know of anyone who blogs full-time as their livelihood, other than journalists like Jim Romenesko, whose weblog is paid for by the Poynter Institute, and a handful of others.
Q. What are the restrictions or problems with this medium? Does it make your work easier as a journalist?
Wow, these are great questions.
Most journalists I know don’t keep a weblog for the simple reason that the culture at mainstream news organizations still looks askance at journalists who perform journalism outside the accepted purview of the employer. Newspapers don’t like journalists who have strong independent online presences. Thus, most employees don’t rock the boat, don’t publish online, and don’t blog, especially about anything involving their 9 to 5 jobs.
It’s unfortunate, and a loss of intellectual capital for newspapers, that they discourage this kind of activity.
For those of us who are independent journalists, blogs present a vehicle for expressing thoughts and reportage that doesn’t necessarily fit within the confines of a traditional news report. I happen to be of the school that believes personal journalism works extremely well on the Web, and weblogs are a prime example of this.
Limitations? Sure. The audience for any particular weblog is generally small, often in the hundreds of readers rather than the thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands at some major news publications. But the freedom involved — no filters, no newsroom machinery — makes the smaller readership worth it.
I think most journalists who keep weblogs don’t look upon their blogs as work. It can supplement your work, let you poll your readers, toss a question out into the ether to gain immediate feedback before you harden your position on a particular issue. That’s pretty cool, and quite powerful.
Q. Do blogs provide more info than normal papers, e.g. detailed background research the reporter put into it? Do blogs allow you to put more personal feelings and judgments in their reporting?
Most of the journalists I know who keep weblogs don’t use their blogs to supplement their reporting with background information. But they do sometimes tell “the story behind the story” — how editors at a magazine, like Wired, will rewrite an article, introduce new passages and ideas without the author’s consent, how they’ll screw up something entirely without a deep understanding of the subject matter. That can be quite illuminating. Blogs help shine a spotlight at these abuses of the editorial process.
Most personal feelings and judgments? Absolutely! One of the few criticisms I have of the mainstream media is how the editorial process bleeds any feelings and emotion out of reportage. You’re just not allowed to express a judgment, opinion or conclusion, lest the gods of objectivity deal a swift and terrible blow to your article. Blogs let it all hang out. You know where the writer’s coming from, if the weblog is worth anything.
Q. What is the type of readership and what kind of relationship do you have with the readers?
The readership is generally small. For example, I get a couple of thousand readers per week, though higher-profile bloggers can get readership in the tens of thousands.
The relationship with the readers is entirely satisfying and rewarding. There are regular readers who provide feedback and interact in a positive way, providing ideas, commentary, angles you may have overlooked in your posting. And there are the one-off emails on a given subject that constantly astound. You find yourself plugged into a more interactive relationship with your readers than you ever do in traditional media, where the we-publish, you-receive mindset is still the dominant mindset.
Q. How interactive is the medium? Do the readers get involved in a story? For example, will readers provide more information or give you new ideas? Does blog improve the quality or ease of your work?
On rare occasions I’ll toss out a problem or question on my weblog before I get around to writing the piece. More often than not, it’s just a matter of looking for the right contacts, and the weblog community will toss out suggestions.
Most often, though, the blog is what comes after I publish a piece. I find that the interaction I get through my weblog is generally much higher than I get through a traditional reader forum attached to my article on an online publication.
Q. Is it the main source of readers information, or do they also go to more traditional sites? What do the blogs do for the readers?
A few weblog diehards think blogs will overtake and replace the mainstream media, making reporters irrelevant. I think that’s absurd. Blogs provide a supplement to the mainstream media, and they’re becoming an increasingly important source of news and expertise. See my two-part series in OJR.
Q. How much time do you spend on designing the site and how much on writing and updating it? Does that become a problem or burden?
The new generation of blog software from companies like Blogger and Manila mean that you spend a couple of hours at the very beginning setting up the design and look of your blog, and after that, it’s all automated. Every day is devoted 100% to the writing.
Q. What was the purpose of starting the journal? Was it because you felt that there was something lacking in normal journalistic mediums that they felt compelled to start a blog?
Why a blog? Simple: to connect with other people. Sometimes I’ll have some advice or tidbit of information gleaned from folks I interviewed and I’ll want to pass that along. Other times I’ll have some questions that I’ll throw out to the Weblog community in the hope of being enlightened. But bottom line: This is where I’ll share my personal experiences and gut feelings about issues that matter to me.
Q. Have the unique qualities of the web helped in fulfilling the purpose of the journalist more than a normal medium?
Yep. The Internet is a two-way interactive medium. Traditional news media are not. That’s a world of difference.
Q. How did readers find out your site? Did you advertise or you already have had steady readership in another medium?
Most blogs get noticed because other bloggers spread the word. My weblog has been mentioned by three of the most noted bloggers — Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls and Dave Winer — many times. If you’re doing a weblog right and have something important or interesting to say, people will notice. It’s also important to read other weblogs, share pointers and links, and sow that you may reap.
Q. Is there any connection or correlation between your work as a journalist for a real paper versus the blog?
I think I’ve mentioned some of the limitations of writing for a traditional newspaper. OJR, unlike some of the other publications I’ve worked for in the past, actively encourages my weblog writing and lets me point to my weblog in the taglines attached to my articles.
Q. Have you encountered any legal problems such as libel suits?
No. Libel suits are still relatively rare in the weblog community, and I’ve been a journalist long enough to know what constitutes defamation and reckless disregard for the truth.
Q. How do you learn the technology and how do you become interested in learning it? Do they have any technological background or training?
Look, weblogs are easy to do. Just sign up at Blogger or another weblogs site and you’ll be rolling within minutes. That’s why they’ve taken off — you don’t have to be a techno-nerd to master the form.
Q. How big is the influence? Can you give us an example?
I had a number of news organizations, such as the Dallas Morning News, contact me about a blog entry I posted a day after the World Trade Center terrorist attack, after I wrote about a friend of mine who was on the 100th floor.
I’m told that a lot of news professionals, industry executives and other people whose opinion matters read my blog. Influence sometimes comes in small doses. You write about what matters to you, and you make your case and change opinions one mind at a time.
I’ve answered other students questions about weblogs and journalism here and here.
J.D. Lasica is a free-lance online journalist and former new media director based in the San Francisco area. Contact JD here.
This entry originally appeared May 26, 2002, on my Manila blog.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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