Blogs: Blogs Are Easy

Blogs are easy. But a blog may not be what you think.

A blog can be something that's snarky and opinionated. But it doesn't have to be, in the same way a newspaper can be the National Enquirer but it doesn't have to be.

And a blog for news shouldn't be opinionated. What we do is different in approach, but with the same intents as in traditional journalism.

For example, your writing voice is conversational in a blog, as opposed to something more formal in a news story. You talk like you're talking to your friends in a more natural woulda-coulda-shoulda voice and first-person references, as opposed to talking to people in a lecture-like tone. But you do it to relay information, and not your opinion.

In a blog you use hyperlinks to link to related background information, instead of putting in a bunch of background like a news story would. But in both cases you're doing it to provide factual evidence to your audience and to show and not just tell them stuff.

In a blog a story may be told in a series of short posts instead of a single story like in print. But that's okay; the blog (and not individual blog posts) is the consumption unit as part of a single ongoing and never-ending story. So instead of writing one long post once you've done all your research, you write many short posts, with the next one updating the last one. Each post is like a part of a news story, and not the whole.

In a new blog you still try to write about things that are relevant, interesting and useful to your audience, and not just you.

A news blog is a different style, not a different intent.

I think you may be able to get a sense of how you can turn a news story into a blog by looking at this Gawker.com blog post based on a news story you may have heard about on your own: Michigan's ban a while back on energy drink/alcohol mixes. Oh, and whaddya know, this blog links to -- and even credits -- The State News!

Take a look at the blog and its style and how it presents information, and then look at the State News story and its presentation method. See similarities? Differences? How alike goals are accomplished in differing ways? And see how helpful hyperlinking is to provide background without cluttering the blog or breaking its conversational tone?