How killing certain press rules and adopting others makes you a high profile blogger
7 April 2009When you’re a journalist who starts a blog, you’ll have to kill some of your darlings. To give you an example: I’ve been in the School of Journalism my whole life. My dad taught me the basic rules for journalism and kept repeating them every time I wrote an article. Like: sub headers consist of one or two words from the following paragraph. For years I obeyed that rule, even when I started blogging.
It took me a while to find out that I should have killed that darling rule as soon as I started blogging. Sub headers in blog posts have a totally different meaning than the ones in newspaper articles. They have to lure the leader into the article, keep him reading, since his attention is gone as soon as your article gets a little boring.
A t-shirt my buddy Renato Valdés Olmos designed
- Trying to explain everything. Now I just link to articles that concern the subject
- Using popular words and “I”. Blogging is about writing in a conversational style, so yes, I do use “I” and “me” now.
- Staying away from marketing techniques. When you’re a blogger, you’ll have to come up with ways to get people to click on your articles in the RSS reader and Twitter. Writing catchy headlines and lists posts are examples of that.
- Acting like the reader doesn’t exist. One of the most interesting aspects of blogging is the discussion below the articles. So yes, sometimes you’ll have to ask the reader something in order to get a reaction.
On the other hand: when you’re a blogger, you can learn a whole lot from journalists.
Combine the new blogging approaches with some good old journalistic values – like fact checking, hearing out both parties, good argumentation, hunting for your own news, and did I mention fact checking? – and you’ll have a blog that stands out from the crowd. It will be a blog that a) is personal and engaging and b) stands for great quality and trustworthiness.
The most bloggers just post stuff as soon as they’ve read it somewhere else. So really, how hard is it to differentiate from them?
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Categorie: blog tips
Tags: fact checking, journalism, press
So, learn the rules than break ‘em? Seems like solid advice to me. On thing got me thinking though. You briefly mention using tactics like catchy headlines to attract visitors. Fair enough, not uncommon. It does seem this is a much easier task when you’re blogging in English than when you’re blogging in Dutch. It could just be that I read way more English blogs than Dutch ones, but I have yet to see examples that live up to the international top blogs standards. What’s your take on that?
It think it’s typically Dutch not to use those techniques too much. Like you said, I haven’t seen many lists posts on Dutch blogs. Yet it helps, it really helps. What do you think about that?
I think it’s maybe an issue of reach. Most professionals I know start their search for those kind of lists in English, so I wonder how much traffic you’d get on a ‘10 Geweldige Wordpress Thema’s’ kind of posts.
You don’t think language is an issue when trying to write catchy blogtitles? I find it easier to do so in English, personally.
I agree with you on that one, English is a much easier language altogether, but especially to write (catchy) blogposts (or titles, for that matter).
This post is like a mirror to me. I encountered the exact ‘darlings’ you mention when I wrote for Editor’s Project. Besides all the rules, old and new, you always have to keep you audience in mind.
That having said, language always evolves and maybe we’re simply in the middle of some transition when it comes to journalism/blogging.