Why Journalists Should Blog

Journalism will be networked and a personal blog becomes a node on the new media network. A journalist starting a blog embraces the power and accepts the responsibility of being a publisher. It means creating an independent publishing platform that isn’t dependent on a corporate entity’s financial fortunes.

Here are five steps for dealing with journalists who want to blog, or try anything else online outside their traditional job description: Encourage entrepreneurship in your newsroom; don’t kill it.

And here are five tips on how to be an effective blogger for journalists who want to take the leap into independent publishing:

1. Use hosted blogging software if you’re not technically inclined
I think WordPress.com is by far the best hosted blogging platform. But you can use TypePad, Blogger, or any of a dozen others. The cost ranges from free to minimal, and it’s easy to set up. Just pick one and do it.

2. Use Feedburner for your RSS feed and your email newsletter
Feedburner will turn your RSS feed into a user-friendly landing page that shows people how to subscribe to your feed in MyYahoo or other feed readers. Feedburner also lets you publish your RSS feed as a daily email for people who don’t currently use RSS. Feedburner provides stats on how many people are reading your RSS feed and email newsletter, and provides basic website traffic analytics so that you won’t be flying blind. Best of all, Feedburner’s basic service is free, with very affordable upgrades.

3. Start with link blogging
You don’t have to commit to writing original content to get started. You can simply publish links to things you read that you think are important, with some brief commentary. Get a Del.icio.us account and start bookmarking what you read. You can set up your “link roll” to automatically publish to your blog every day. Whatever you do, you should link to other sites. The more you link out, the more you get back — this is the fundamental law of the web.

4. Publish whatever you can’t publish through other outlets
Newspapers have finite space. The web has infinite space (which is a double-edged sword). Use your blog to publish what might otherwise have been left on the cutting room floor, or ideas or information that might not otherwise have an outlet.

5. Learn from journalists who blog independently
CyberJournalist has a list of journalists who blog independently and for their publications. Learn from journalists who already doing it.

Article adapted from Publishing 2.0