I wrote a while back about how much I enjoyed The Guardian's blog coverage of this years' NUJ conference and how reading it almost made me feel as if I was there. The Washington Post's Frank Ahren has an interesting article about covering the Enron trial from a multi-media platform (link via Julian Matthews). I especially find the conclusions he draws from his experiences blogging from the spectacle intriguing – I'm not sure if I agree, but it's certainly food for thought and worth exploring further as more and more media incorporate blogging in their daily news coverage:

"It seems to me this middle ground between straight news and straight opinion is a natural way to write the news of the future. Far too many news stories still cling to the strict, formal English that almost no one uses anymore and that often leaves readers scratching their heads at the end of the story, assuming they get that far.

It should be clear by now that personality is key to building a news audience, be it via print, Web, radio or video. I compare a news blogger to the character of the stage manager in "Our Town": not a player in the drama, but indispensable to its telling. The casting of the role is critical; a boring stage manager will ruin the play.

Only a few topics (the White House, celebrity, sports) can build audiences on their own, regardless of who's writing about them. For the rest of the news we cover, we need stage managers who won't put our audiences to sleep."