There are many software options available for blogging. First, you must determine where the blog should live. Hosted blogs are blogs that, along with the publishing interface, live on the web server of a blog company. You can also get blog software that you install on a separate web host. There are pros and cons to both. Hosted blogs are generally faster and easier to set up, so you can start blogging quickly. However, you can be limited in the amount of customization you can do on a hosted Read more [...]

Writing a blog isn’t rocket science, but it also may not be quite as easy as it looks. A successful blog’s conversational style either comes naturally or it doesn’t. So does that sense of what topics will hit the mark with the blog’s audience. Writing a Blog Blog writing is like an e-mail to a friend: short, on-topic and informative. (Entertaining doesn’t hurt either.) Posts are frequently addressed directly to the audience, and the blogger frequently refers to him- or herself. Be careful, however. Read more [...]

The blog is a simple publishing method that has moved from controversial to essential at most news organizations. It has changed forever the way information is disseminated in our society. But a “blog” is simply a different way to publish content. It’s a technical term that refers mostly to a content management system, not necessarily a writing style. There are essentially three characteristics of a blog: A frequently updated website with entries displayed in reverse chronological order Read more [...]

If you’ve worked with computers for any length of time, you know how easy it is to collect data, and yet how hard it can be to make the best use of that data. In this section, we’re going to suggest some ways you can help your audience understand the raw data you’ve collected. Let’s make sure we’re working from the same set of terms. Data. A set of symbols. It can be characters that make up an e-mail, bits that make up a photo or a fax, numbers in a spreadsheet or a database. Everything stored Read more [...]

There are many kinds of community data available. Much of it exists in electronic format. With a little work, you can turn these into interesting interactive tools and news exercises for your readers. Let’s pick an easy searchable database, such as gas prices. It’s easy to build with free tools, everyone needs gas, the data can be gathered easily by local site readers, and there are several good examples online you can learn from. Our primary example will be the Middletown, N.Y., Times Herald-Record Read more [...]

Some years ago, the Myrtle Beach Sun News was looking for a way to tap what was on the minds of residents in that fast-growing resort community but couldn’t afford a formal community survey. The Internet, with its survey tools and polling software, was only just beginning to make inroads into newsrooms. So, the newspaper went with another simple, low cost tool: It distributed neon yellow postcards with six questions and asked people to write in and mail the cards back to the paper. One of the Read more [...]

Your website is not only a tool allowing you to communicate with your readers, it’s also a good way to allow your readers to communicate with you and with one another. If you have a background in traditional media, this two-way exchange can be a bit daunting. However, you’ll soon find that there are many reasons to encourage this dialogue. One of the most important is that it can significantly improve the quality of what you report. Better product Reporters are only as good as their sources Read more [...]