- Your blog is as your backup brain
September 06, 2007
On the theme of how to explain blogging and its benefits to journalists, I found this little gem catching up with one of my RSS-feeds:
A blog post is not (or at least, it shouldn't be) a writing assignment you must prep for and deliver as a finished package. Let go of the idea that you must have everything nailed down, organized, and edited before you publish.
Blog your initial brainstorming. Blog your research. Blog your interactions.
The clincher to all this is to use your blog as your backup brain -- or at least as a public notebook. Get more mileage out of work you would have done anyway by changing your habits toward managing information and communication publicly. Instead of keeping your thoughts, notes, and conversations to yourself, post them.
How to Spend More time Blogging
Amy Graham wrote this in response to a question on how to spend less time blogging, do check out the full post, which sparked this useful reaction:
That's a natural question, but the wrong one. The right question is, "How can I spend more time with my blog?" What can I do that I should stop doing? Rather than assume that blogging is an add-on, with the insinuation is that it is taking away time from "serious" journalism, how about treating it as journalism itself?
Fact is, if your blog is all that it can be, you'll be spending more time on it because you'll be part of a conversation with your readers. Talking with people -- blogging -- takes more time than solitary writing. But it has tremendous value. Why, as Amy points out, your audience may help you with your journalism.
Amy also has some interesting thoughts on journalism, conversation and community here, which I hope to get back to as soon as my deadlines will allow
Interesting Kristine,
Although I think that a lot of bloggers see it as a first step in getting published.
But I agree,I use mine initially as a research format,having somewhere to collate the vast amount of media comment on the web which I can use to cross reference for future work.
Posted by: nigel barlow | September 06, 2007 at 09:27 AM
I realised soon after I published this that making a statement about what blogging IS in the headline was a mistake: people use blogs for all sorts of different purposes.
However, I decided not to correct it but rather follow up on it in my next post (which I'll put together as soon as I finish my deadlines).
Posted by: Kristine | September 06, 2007 at 09:55 AM
Good concept of Amy's. I've always pitched to get ideas off your desk and into your blog.
Getting people to know what and how you think has a lot of upside if you are looking to enhance your reputation and grow your network. Plus you can find what you're looking for, rather than asking 'where did I put that?'
Posted by: Kevin O'Keefe | September 09, 2007 at 11:08 PM
Yes, it is pretty brilliant, isn't it? I must admit I didn't really think of my blog this way before I read Amy's post, but soon realised that is how I often use it. Because I'm a media reporter/commentator in 'real life' I can't tell you how many times I've benefited from being able to just do a google search with my blogbar and find whatever I've written on the issue, WITH the links to the original sources. Sure beats saving it on my computer under obscure document names I keep forgetting -and on top of that it also attracts people with more news and views on the things I write about:-)
Posted by: Kristine | September 11, 2007 at 05:42 PM