Would-be journalists can use blogs in various ways.
As a showcase for your work
Blogs offer 'push-button personal publishing'. You can write what
you think and publish it immediately, for the rest of the world to see.
So the first use for blogs is as a way to get your
writing/ideas/stories out there.
Beyond this, if you're already writing for established
sites/publications, a blog can work as a kind of online ‘cuttings
file’. You can put the things you write on your blog. If you write
something for another site, you can link to it.
The American journalist Clive Thompson does something like this on his blog, Collision Detection. If he writes something for the New York Times or for the online companion to Wired magazine, he'll put links and sometimes the full story on his blog
Even if you're not being published 'officially', a blog can still be
a useful showcase. If you want to write a particular kind of journalism
(music reviews, football news), start doing it on your blog. If you
keep at it, you'll build up a selection of work you can then show to
editors of both online and real world publications.
As a place to develop your technique and ideas
Writing regularly on your blog will help develop your basic
technique and your personal style. With things like reviewing, editors
are looking for an interesting take and a distinctive style. You can
use your blog to help develop those.
Think of it as a kind of ‘mind gym’, a place where you can test out
styles and ideas, where you can tone and hone your prose style. Blogs
allows for a kind of thinking aloud in public – just writing a post can
sometimes help you figure out what you think.
Lots of high profile writers use their blogs in this way - for
example the American science writer Steven Johnson has written about
how writing his blog (and responding to comments) has helped him develop ideas.
As a vehicle for ‘personal reporting’
Lots of blogs are very personal affairs. People write about their
relationships, their jobs, their families and more. This may sound
mundane, but many blogs that specialise in ‘personal reporting’ are
well written, entertaining, illuminating and newsworthy. Good enough to
appear in the mainstream press, which has an obvious appetite for
‘confessional writing’ and specialist columns that lift the lid on
specific professions/workplaces.
Blogs are a good place to practise that kind of journalism, develop
your style and potentially even build an audience. The most popular
workplace blogs – Call Centre Confidential,
for example, now sadly defunct – are read by lots of people and have
received mainstream attention as a result. We’ve talked before about
how there’s space for a blog that details the realities of modern
student life – from dealing with debt to working to supplement the
student loan.
As a media filter
In the mainstream media/press, there’s an awful lot of coverage
about other coverage – press digests about what other papers are
saying, TV shows about other TV shows. Blogs are built for this kind of
journalism – ‘media filtering’. As you read things online, you can link
to them and give your take on them. For many people this is what blogs
are all about. They’re a way for ordinary individuals to participate in
the media and feedback their views, even take over and develop certain
stories.
Journalists need to be highly media literate, aware of stories and
trends, able to offer their own take or angle. Blogs let you develop
and showcase this skill. If you direct people to interesting stories
online (and/or offer an interesting interpretation) people will enjoy
and return to your blog.
As a research tool
Blogs offer a great way to keep track of things you find online –
and the ideas you have about them as you’re browsing. As you find and
read things, you can make notes and link to the story on your blog.
That way you have a record of what you were thinking about. The
American SF writer Cory Doctorow refers to blogs used in this way as 'outboard brains'.
Crawford Kilian (a specialist in writing online) has an interesting research blog tracking news coverage of Avian Flu – he’s done it to keep himself informed. But his blog is turning into a useful general resource.
These kinds of blogs can help people pool their research. For
example, say you were trying to track media coverage of student
attitudes to the General Election – you could create a blog, then work
together to post links to different stories you found in different
news/media sites, with your comments. By working together, you’d soon
build up a really useful journalistic resource.
As a way to build contacts and develop your social network
Bloggers love to comment on, and link to, other blogs/sites. As you
do that, you build up potentially useful contacts, people who may refer
other people to your journalism and help raise your profile in general.
Some bloggers leave comments on big news/media sites, often with a link
back to their own blogs. A few have succeeded in creating a lot of
traffic as a result – some have even got work as mainstream media pundits as a result.
So there’s a careerist benefit that can come from using your blog as
a social networking tool. Beyond that, this kind of social networking
can enable a new kind of collective journalism, in which a group of
people work together to develop a story, find out more abut something
already covered in the media, or perhaps even expose/correct mistakes.
An old example of this, from a few years back, is the way bloggers/contributors to MetaFilter worked together to expose what’s become known as the Kaycee Nicole Cancer Hoax – you can still read some of the original Metafilter threads in which people discuss the story.
