Jay Rosen: On Blogging

There's a very brief blurb with Jay Rosen at Fishbowl LA offering little more than that Jay thinks "blogger" will be an ambiguous term as far as distinguishing between journalists on line and traditional bloggers. Rather than addressing that, I've seen so many new more traditional bloggers struggling along out here in this now much bigger sea, I want to briefly list off some insights of old. I've mentored some individually. As I always tell them, for now the hows and whys of successful blogging vary and are in bloggers heads who have been at it for some time. Four to five years ago we discussed these things openly and frequently across several blogs. To the extent any of us actually know anything, that's how it was learned. 

"Blogger will become such a broad term it will lose all meaning," he told FBLA.

So in five years will "blogger" be synonymous with "writer?" Will telling someone you're a blogger need the same follow up question as there is for when you tell someone you're a writer?

Jay Rosen seems to think so.

Some brief notes as per above, assuming you want to grow your blog. Many excellent bloggers aren't concerned with this, they have their audience, they're content and there's nothing wrong in that approach. But if your goals differ:

On the practical side - there are accepted protocols - for email, the Internet, blogs, and just about everything else by now. Don't mass open CC and start 2 - 3 person conversations in 100 inboxes. Nothing will get you kill-filed, or ignored more quickly unless your Larwyn. And if you need this, you probably don't know the old gal. She's an exception, not a rule. Use bcc if you must, but it's generally a weak approach wasting your time.

Reach up and out to blogs one - three steps ahead of you on the traffic scale. Read them, link them, even comment on them if you can and want to. Let them get to know you a bit. Develop something interesting, or especialy worthwile in a post, it can be a fact, or a thought. Send them a brief, personal email: John, Love your blog and often link it. I especially thought you might like this because of XYZ. (Have an XYZ, don't BS) Explain it quickly, two paragraphs is too much. Include the full text in the email with a link. Don't send people a link and say hey, look at this-URL. Most of us have too much to look at already to take the time. Thank them, don't get angry if they don't link you, or quickly assume they hate you and never will.

Target a hand-full for a month, eventually you'll build alliances if you're good - most of all, maintain them while still reaching up and out. Over time, not over night, if you're good and lucky, you'll feel contented that you've built a quality blog with enough stable readers to satisfy and then you'll just blog. Who knows, by then, you might actually be half-way good at it. Who can say? I do alright and there are plenty of days I'm still convinced I suck. But I just keep blogging and that, more than anything, is what you have to do if you ever want to succeed - whatever the hell that actually means.

Network, network, network. Don't get stuck in a small clique and stop reading and exploring outward. The power of blogging lies with the many not the one, or few. Only by reaching and interacting with larger pools of readers from different sites will you ever draw enough people back to yours to read in any numbers.

Use the tools - Twitter, Facebook, join existing blog portals after evaluatng their worth. Make them work for you, don't fritter away your time there discussing your kids if you don't blog about kids.

Concentrate on giving readers something unique, yet with broader appeal - regularly and repeatedly throughout the day if you can. The quality of your blogging, including blog design, are fundamental to success. With few exceptions, lose the white type on black background and the brash neon lights. Unless you're a professional designer, you won't out flash professional sites in the new media game with blogs of their own. If you're a writer, write and make that content the focus of your blog - not every song, buzzer, bell and clang that comes with the latest blog ap. Don't be angry - not all the time. Mix it up.

Know your strengths and your weaknesses, go with your strentghs, minimize the other. If you love crime news, do crime news. Don't try to become a middle-east analyst and top DC-politics watcher if you aren't. So what? Not everyone is, or should be. Relatively few people read about politics anyway. It's a big world, follow your genuine interests. It'll show.

Defne your audience and write for them. Do you want to be read by PhDs, students, average Joes and Janes, people with a high school degrees, or specialized analysts in a particular field because you might be one? You likely get a cross-section of readers eventually, but you can't target, or focus on pleasing them all.

For news junkies, it's fine to see the blog as sort of a reflection of yourself, but don't get your ego too tied up in your blog. If you start suffering, bleeding and pleading with the ups and downs of your sitemeter, you're going to have a hell of a rocky life. Have a life. It's what brings something to your blog in most cases. There are exceptions, but you'd better have a damned compelling, or otherwise interesting life and a unique way of expressing it. Even then, your audience will top out. There are billions of stories out here in the naked blogosphere, your's is only one of them, after all. So what?

I could go on, but I won't. I have to go blog for my audience, not just for you and me. Sorry, that's just how it is if you want anything resembling a broader appeal.

Good luck.

Comments

[mark l.]

nothing has changed the face of journalism more than blogging. beyond the financial losses the papers have suffered, there is something greater(or worse).

journalism used to have at least the veneer of impartiality. blogs took the these thinly veiled news pieces, linked to them, as a group, and fashioned a spear.

the journalists of today have responded, as they too read the blogs. i think they were rather envious at first, but quickly moved to fashion their own pieces into a spear, with an even thinner 'coating' of impartiality.

no paper more typifies this change than the nyt. with the exception of friedman and brooks, their editorial page moved from serving as edict from olympus, into an echo from the toilet bowl. this isn't to say that friedman and brooks are above the fray, but in some sense they are the last at the paper who cling to the remnants of what they once were. when safire left, the legitimacy left as well. dowd, rich, and krugman have the 'privilege' of serving as their own blog writers, not editiorialists.

this is not to say that the nyt could have avoided this fall, but serves more to say that it mirrors journalism at large, especially televised media.

funny things hapen when you sharpen a blade, it cuts faster, but over time the size shrinks. over decades of use, it will eventually snap.

[Ran]

Federal Blogger Institute has a graduate or two in the field...

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9A5GCC80&show_article=1

Heh.

[Lisa Graas]

Dan wrote: "Network, network, network. Don't get stuck in a small clique and stop reading and exploring outward. The power of blogging lies with the many not the one, or few. Only by reaching and interacting with larger pools of readers from different sites will you ever draw enough people back to yours to read in any numbers."

I'd like to point out that the same holds true for conservative online activists who do not blog and who spend their days at Ning sites talking to people who already agree with them. These Ning sites may be a good launching pad, but if you spend all your time there, you won't ever win a convert. In the old days, we used to go out and knock on doors to get candidates elected. (I've done it....with success...and it's not easy.) Now, we have to use the internet to go forth and win new people to the cause. Ning sites can have the same effect as sitting at home and doing nothing at all.

[Reaganite Republican]

Good stuff Dan, thanks for putting it out for us up-n-comers!

[Robert Belvedere]

Thanks.

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