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Journalism Next by Mark Briggs Chapter 2 Blog

“Advanced Blogging”

“Every college journalist should have a blog,” states author Mark Briggs.

I tend to agree. Every employer is going to love clicking through an interactive website over reading through endless piles of resumes.

With the blog, you should be interactive. Ask your audience what they think about a certain topic and keep it an on-going conversation.

That being said, it isn’t always easy to keep finding new topics to blog about, or new angles to blog from. Always be aware of what is around you and if it could be newsworthy!

Blogs are revolutionizing journalism as I type. They are more localized, more involved with their communities. Blogs are not normally about the overall news community, but about a niche within a community. Some very successful blogs focus solely on politics, celebrities, news or sports. This is because audiences are able to pick and choose what they want to read now.

To operate a blog successfully you must understand the template of blogs:

• Post: to write an entry on the blog
• Permalink: A link to the post, normally with comments available on the page.
• Trackback: technology that allows the blogger to know if someone has linked to their blog
• Blogroll: a sidebar that allows the readers to see what sites the blogger visits
• Vlog: a video blog
• Moblog: blogging from a mobile device

After learning the language, how do you know people will follow your blog?

Author Mark Briggs is here for you.

Briggs says to… “

• Put the reader first
• Organize your ideas
• Be direct
• Be the authority, with a personality
• How’s this, Mom?
  • “Write, the wait 15 minutes before publishing… for you to edit yourself dispassionately”
• Make posts scanable
• Link, summarize and analyze
• Be specific with headlines
• Have a good attitude