According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a blog is defined as an “online journal where an individual, group, or corporation presents a record of activities, thoughts, or beliefs.” The emergence of blogs has given great power to the citizen journalist. Now anyone with access to the Internet can create a blog.
Although I realize that some bloggers don’t consider themselves “journalists,” others, such as Kevin Sites, known for his war reporting, and Rebecca MacKinnon, who co-founded Global Voices, a citizen media initiative, are definitely journalists. I consider blogs to be a form of journalism and blog postings a type of article intended for the public. Countless people are undeniably influenced by the work of bloggers, many of whom herald a new age of citizen journalism. Moreover, blog postings can benefit from the style, structure, and narrative elements that characterize other types of articles.
Jorn Barger, an early blogger and proprietor of the website RobotWisdom.com, introduced the term “Web log” into the English lexicon in December 1997. By 1999, Peter Merholz, another early blogger, started using the portmanteau blog. By October 2005, there were approximately 19.6 million blogs in existence, with that number doubling every five months. Every second, at least one new blog is being started somewhere in the world. Although many of the earliest blogs dealt with current events, today several different types of blogs exist: “filter” or topical blogs that deal with news and political stories; “knowledge” blogs, where people share expertise; travel blogs; blogs for support groups; blogs that serve as personal journals or diaries; notebook blogs, which contain external or internal content written as long-form essays; and open blogs.
The history of the blog is fundamentally tied to the advent of the Internet. In 1992, Tim Berners-Lee, widely credited for inventing the Internet, documented the development of the Web in what can be considered the first online blog. In 1995, Carolyn Burke started publishing Carolyn’s Diary. By 1997, Slashdot aggregated “news for nerds” and linked to sites that became so overwhelmed with traffic that they became known as slashdotted.
From the very beginning, blogs were community oriented and focused on the bloggers and the readers. Blogging software such as Blogger or WordPress had not yet been invented, and bloggers used HTML code to post their blogs on their own websites. These early blogs served to aggregate interesting news and information.
Some of the earliest news and “filter” blogs proved to be highly influential. For example, in 1998, after Newsweek killed a story about President Bill Clinton and how he had “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky, Matt Drudge of the The Drudge Report jumped on the news. Other victories notched by early bloggers include exposing U.S. Senator Trent Lott’s bigoted support of Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential platform in 2002. And in December 2004, thousands of citizen bloggers helped report the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Many citizens used early blogs to criticize media coverage of the news and politicians. In a 2005 article titled “Journalism’s Backseat Drivers,” Barb Palser writes that “bloggers’ charges against journalism begin with gross negligence: omission, laziness, herd-think.”
By the 2004 presidential election, bloggers became a force to be reckoned with. Bloggers famously questioned CBS News’s coverage of President George Bush’s service in the National Guard and called out presidential candidate John Kerry’s military record, too. Furthermore, presidential candidate Howard Dean developed a strong blogger following and enlisted the help of his grassroots campaign to oppose the second Persian Gulf War. Finally, Dan Rather was nudged into retirement by right-wing bloggers who questioned his coverage of the 2004 presidential campaign and aired their concerns on the blog RatherBiased.com.
Soon the blogosphere encompassed more than just citizen watchdogs, war bloggers, political pundits, partisans, and people sharing information and news. More people started blogging about their own feelings, and self-disclosure became popular. A study in the Winter 2005 Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly found that nearly 80 percent of A-list bloggers wrote about their day and their feelings. Additionally, 53.6 percent of A-list bloggers used the work of experts to support their own writing, and 74.2 percent addressed their audience directly. Ultimately, many A-list blogs hosted “mixed” blogs that incorporated both news and external information combined with personal perspectives.
In this study, A-list blogs were defined as web pages that were authored by one person with entries listed in reverse chronological order. A-list blogs also had high readership and were “linked to” by at least one hundred other blogs. Interestingly, many of these A-list blogs had readerships that rivaled small publications and were even more trusted than mainstream media outlets. Although the study doesn’t give great examples of which A-list blogs it sampled, blogs that would probably meet these criteria include PerezHilton.com, written by gossip columnist Perez Hilton, and KevinMD.com, authored by Dr. Kevin Pho, who proclaims to be “social media’s leading physician voice.”
According to the study, A-list bloggers put much thought into managing their online identities and strived to present their “real” selves. Interestingly, this premeditated self-presentation is similar to acting. An actor stages a performance and projects an imaginary identity. Similarly, when blogging, a blogger can stress certain aspects of her personality and minimize others, thus projecting an engineered identity of sorts. These A-list bloggers engaged readers by providing continuous content that reflected their thoughts and feelings. Of note, 83.26 percent of these bloggers used their real names.
Big concerns among A-list bloggers were likeability and competence. Few preferred to show off and would rather “ingratiate” themselves to the public. These A-list bloggers were quick to respond to reader comments and concerns and were highly cognizant that their A-list status was dependent on their readers, including the large proportion of online readers who “lurked” and didn’t comment on blog postings.
In a 2008 article titled “Blogonomics,” published in the Columbia Journalism Review, writer Chris Mooney characterized most bloggers who write for websites such as Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and ScienceBlogs as “political activists or college students or professors or celebrities, or simply opinionated and informed citizens. In many cases, they have day jobs (or are retired) and blog for ‘fun’ or out of devotion to a cause. They don’t expect to be paid well, if at all—or they don’t know that they should expect it.”
Initially, mainstream-media journalists and bloggers were wary of one another. Mainstream-media reporters disregarded blogging for its perceived bias and lack of credibility and dismissed bloggers for their lack of journalism training. Conversely, bloggers argued that mainstream journalists were elitists who had no desire to include the public in deciding what is newsworthy. But it soon became apparent that blogs and mainstream media could synergize. Consider the following excerpt from a journal article titled “Uses and Perceptions of Blogs: A Report on Professional Journalists and Journalism Educators” by Deborah S. Chung and colleagues:
Pundits, however, point out that blogging can benefit traditional journalism by providing different perspectives, by helping to regain trust traditional news organizations have lost, and by increasing interactivity in journalism. …
Bloggers also recognize that they need to learn traditional news values, the benefits of editing, and the importance of original reporting from traditional journalists in order to be perceived as credible sources of news information.
By the late 2000s, blogs had made a transition from media fringe to media foreground, and it seemed as if nearly every news organization hosted blogs: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Discover Magazine, The New Yorker, ESPN, The Atlantic, and many more. Entire news organizations that were built around blogs—for example, Gawker and The Huffington Post—became known as “superblogs.” In a Columbia Journalism Review story titled “The State of the Blog,” blogger Felix Salmon of Reuters writes, “There’s convergence going on—news organizations are becoming bloggier, and blogs are becoming newsier—and that process works to the benefit of both.”
In more philosophical terms, in addition to converging with news, blogs disseminated by everyday citizens (nonjournalists) have converged with and contributed to a collective intelligence and participatory culture. Traditional or mass media doesn’t have a monopoly on this participatory culture. Creation and consumption of media has become a collective process that involves mass media when necessary but is not dependent on it. The threat to traditional media is rooted in capitalism: When newspapers, magazines, cable television, and so forth no longer provide the only entertainment at the party, what happens to the bottom line?
Recently, there has been concern—voiced by bloggers including Salmon and others—that various media organizations that have devoted several members of their staff and whole newsrooms to their team blogging efforts pose a threat to first-person blogging. Obviously, these blogging outfits are better prepared to break news and present new ideas and can engage readers with new information. In all reality, however, if a first-person blog is interesting enough, its readers will likely continue to follow it even with the proliferation of blog sites with more resources and manpower.
Many bloggers have found it extremely difficult to use their blogs to consistently come up with breaking news and original ideas. These bloggers have come to the realization that it’s easier to comment on the news, post their own opinions, and so forth. A cautionary tale may be that of writer and journalist Jonah Lehrer. In 2012, Lehrer was caught self-plagiarizing on his blog at The New Yorker. In this blog, Lehrer reused content from material he wrote for The Wall Street Journal. Lehrer, a prolific writer and lecturer with much on his plate, gave the impression that his material was original, but it wasn’t. Interestingly, Lehrer was later found guilty of fabricating quotations from Bob Dylan in his bestselling book Imagine: How Creativity Works and other unethical acts.
One of the most exciting recent developments in blogging involves science writing. Many researchers, scientists, and physicians use their knowledge to comment on media coverage of research. Examples of such blogs can be found on ScienceBlogs and the Discover Magazine website. Another exciting development in blogging is the niche blog. Many people are finding their own (small) audiences in the increasingly fragmented blogosphere by writing about avocations such as quilting and home-brewed beer.
In the early days of the Internet, many writers followed the 50 percent rule, which was proposed by web-usability expert Jakob Nielsen in 1997. Nielsen advised that in light of “refresh” rates and limited screen resolution, people read web content about 25 percent slower than the printed word. Consequently, web content should be about half as long as a printed counterpart. Although screen resolutions have improved immensely, many experts still recommend that Internet content—including blogs—should be concise.
“It isn’t just a question of word count,” says Jonathan Price, a web writer, consultant, and journalist. “It’s a question of shorter words, shorter sentences, and shorter paragraphs.”
With the majority of blog postings, “short and simple” seems to best suit most audiences. Most of the communication that takes place via the Internet is short, whether it takes the form of e-mail messages or bursts of information transmitted over social-media sites. But it should be acknowledged that short formats might not always be best.
Some people may like long and more structurally complex blog postings for three reasons. First, during the past several years, people have become both smarter and accustomed to increasingly complex media that has taken the form of television shows, video games, and hypertext. Second, interest in online long-form journalism has increased—a trend that the Pew Research Center has acknowledged: “Tablets allow readers to ‘pause, linger, read, and process very important ideas,’ Chris Hughes explained after buying The New Republic, adding, ‘The demand for long-form, quality journalism is strong in our country.’” (Chris Hughes is a Facebook co-founder who, in a prime example of Old Media merging with New Media, purchased The New Republic magazine in 2012.) This increased interest in reading longer and more complex articles online may bode well for longer blog postings. Third, people may be willing to reread a longer, more complex posting as many times as they have to in order to fully appreciate its message.
Because many blogs are inherently serialized, a reader may be willing to refer back to previous blog postings for clarity, further augmenting a blog’s ability to incorporate more complexity. In recent years, this willingness for audience members to repeat and re-view has been apparent to executives in Hollywood who have zealously green-lit television shows with complex narratives—such as The Sopranos and The Wire. These more complex television shows have proven popular with both critics and audiences.
It’s important to distinguish what Sara Quinn, director of the EyeTrack Studies at the Poynter Institute, refers to as lean-forward and lean-back experiences. (The original use of this terminology is likely attributable to Jakob Nielsen, an early web-usability expert.) With lean-forward experiences, a reader is intently focused on the information at hand—maybe she’s sitting in a chair and reading from a desktop computer, laptop computer, or mobile phone screen. With lean-back experiences, a reader will relax with the content and be ready for an immersive experience; a reader reclining on a La-Z-Boy using a tablet to read long-form journalism is engaging in a lean-back experience.
One main advantage of blogs is that they can link to other sources of information. Short, declarative statements can be used to introduce a scientific paper, article, or video clip without having to go into long explanations. By linking out, a blogger can rely on the work of others to provide more detailed, factual information. A blogger who links out also limits liability and avoids the possibility of copyright infringement. Remember, however, to describe the relevance of the information to which you’re linking. The declarative sentence that introduces the link should also be robust enough to facilitate understanding of your article without necessitating that the reader click a link.
As Dr. Tom Linden says, “If you’re describing something and you have access to visuals and audio that give you a fuller picture, you can link to them and they make [the blog posting] that much richer.”
In addition to linking to more-detailed factual information, good links can also boost a blogger’s credibility. “A blog has the ability to link to really cogent thoughts,” says Sara Quinn. “In a book or in print you can write references, but the ability to aggregate really strong links helps bloggers’ credibility. Additionally, if the reader clicks on a link and they find it worthwhile and satisfying, that reflects on you. … You’re actually like a curator of good content, and you’re helping guide people to that content. Everything that you can do that gives people what [they] need and want adds to your own credibility.”
When choosing photos for a blog posting, try to include photos that are specific and relevant to the posting. Furthermore, check the terms in the copyright information. Many people who download images from Google or Wikimedia Commons assume that the images are open source and free to use. Sometimes, however, the images belong to somebody. Other times the owner will allow use of the picture as long as the work is attributed.
The New York Public Library’s website houses a large collection of free images. If you need to buy royalty-free photos for a good price, you may want to check out the “value collection” at iStockphoto (Getty Images owns iStockphoto). You can also purchase cheap photos at Dreamstime.
The EyeTrack Studies done by the Poynter Institute have provided excellent research on reader interaction with digital media. By tracking reader interaction with print and online media, researchers were able to infer various insights that can be applied to online publications, including blogs.
One of the most interesting findings from the Poynter study involved how much of an online article a reader will finish. Online readers on average completed 77 percent of any story they chose to read—more than print readers. Additionally, 63 percent of story text read by online readers was read to completion, which was also more than print readers.
The EyeTrack Studies found that online readers were just as likely to be methodical readers or scanners whereas print readers were more likely to be methodical readers. “A scanner, in our definition,” says Quinn, “is somebody who might read some text … go to a photograph or headline … without necessarily going back to that same spot in that text … where a methodical [reader] always went back to where they began.”
Whereas print readers who scanned were less likely to return to text and complete it, online readers were likely to return to text they found interesting and more thoroughly read it.
“When people scan,” says Price, “they try to get a coherent and consistent picture of what the blog posting is about and whether it’s relevant to their interests. … Most writers make the false assumption that people will read what they write. It’s just not that way on the Web.”
Scanners may engage in a four-part cycle of probing, hypothesizing, reprobing, and thinking—a process originally postulated by games and education scholar James Paul Gee and called the Probing Principle. If engaged in this cycle, scanners are constantly appraising content and hypothesizing about it before deciding on what to read. Consequently, content may be best laid out to appeal to such readers by using design and textual elements that make this process more effective. For example, and as discussed later in this chapter, headers could be made more specific and use proper nouns.
Results from the EyeTrack Studies have design implications for blogs and other forms of online media, too. One possible consideration is that online media must be designed with both types of readers in mind: lists for methodical readers and intuitive design for scanners.
Finally, based on my interpretation of the Poynter EyeTrack Studies, if a blog posting were long, it may be best to base its structure on a lead piece in a newspaper with a prominent headline, big color photos, intriguing captions, and alternative story forms such as infographics, Q&As, time lines, and so forth.
Many experts recommend that, when appropriate, the general tone of a blog should be conversational and personal. “The key difference between print and Web is [that online writing] has to be more conversational,” says Price. “Particularly with blogs and social media, you have to be more personal. It’s sometimes difficult for writers to decide their boundaries. … How far am I going to go in revealing my personal life, my tastes, my friends? … The question is to what extent can you write in a personal style, not a corporate style and not the neutral, bland New York Times style that was the ideal for many years. … Are you revealing something emotional in your attitude and in the details that you provide that gives people a little sense of who you are? … [There should] be emotion in the text and details that suggests your attitude or your life. … For some people it’s too uncomfortable, and for others it comes naturally.”
Based on research and input from various experts, a typical blog posting can be presented in the following way. First, the sentences and paragraphs should be short, written in a fashion similar to newspaper articles and broadcast scripts, with the emphasis on the backend of the sentence. For example, the dependent clause would follow the independent clause. (This idea is very Strunk & White-esque, and I discuss it in Chapter 1.) Second, a good blog posting could incorporate intriguing textual sidebars, pictures, teasers (decks), headers (subheads), and so forth that capture the reader’s attention and serve as points of entry. Third, natural points of entry, including captions, pictures, introductions, and decks or teasers, should be intriguing and hook the reader much like the lede of a typical print or online article. Fourth, headlines, teasers, and headers should use proper nouns and be specific when engaging the reader’s attention—not only because readers tend to scan rather randomly and could benefit from specificity—but also because search engines tend to post blog headlines without any contextual information. Finally, it’s a good idea to avoid disjointing blog postings with pictures, sidebars, and other elements or overburdening your text with too much “extra” information. Breaking the continuity of text could try the reader’s patience. For example, if you want to incorporate several pictures into a blog posting, it may be smart to put the pictures in a gallery with clear, relevant, and engaging captions.
Ultimately a good blog posting may in many ways draw on characteristics of news, features, and opinion pieces. First, the content of most blogs is timely—much like a news article. And like many news articles, which use the inverted-pyramid structure, the paragraphs in a blog are often shorter, with quotations that may also be broken off into different paragraphs. Additionally, sidebars may use alternative story forms that draw the reader in: Q&As, mini-profiles, time lines, and more. Second, a blog posting could make use of some of the more engaging and narrative aspects of feature writing—strong ledes and nut graphs that read like stories; headers or subheads to break up text; and conclusions that provide perspective, look to the future, or tie back to the introduction. Third, much like an opinion piece, bloggers can decide to inject themselves into the posting and make their own arguments based on fact, logic, examples, and secondary sources. Thus a blog posting may in many ways resemble a column. In fact, National Magazine Award-winner Priscilla Long considers her blog, Science Frictions, more of a column.
“I write a weekly column, Science Frictions, on science and how it rubs up against the rest of life, for The American Scholar,” writes Long in an e-mail interview. “Because it appears online, it is called a ‘blog,’ but I in fact call it a column. I work very hard on them, sometimes spending as much as thirty or forty hours on a 900-word piece. So I do not call it a blog. Each one has a core of science and often a personal story and sometimes poetry or mythology. I am a poet and in prose remain very aware of the sound of the language, of words as notes.
“Most blogs are a bunch of blathering. I want substance. How many writers are blathering out their writing existence on blogs? Having said that, there are some superb blogs. To me, a good blog posting has information that I want in it by someone who is following a subject of interest that I do not have time to personally follow.”
It’s important to remember that blogs started as public communication with readers, and many of the best blogs are still interactive. By tuning out your audience, you lose the essence of what blogging is all about. Furthermore, your audience can provide valuable insight or perspective that can help clarify your own thinking or be used as fuel for further blog postings. Of note, EyeTrack researchers found that readers were drawn to reader feedback and comments. Keep in mind that the blogger who is interested in establishing a strong platform, web presence, and following should be wary of dismissing thoughtful comments, even if he disagrees with a reader’s position.
According to Jonathan Price, readers notice when there are no reader comments beneath a blog posting or comments have been selectively expunged. “Being able to see the pros and cons ultimately reassures the reader that this is the straight stuff and that you’re willing to have this conversation.” Superblogs such as Gawker enjoy controversy and conversation generated by comments, and replies to comments drive up traffic.
I write a blog for Psychology Today titled the “Red-Light District.” I once blogged about handshakes and made the observation that many people are starting to forego handshakes in lieu of waves and “pounds.” For a news peg, I used a study that suggested that a firm and friendly handshake makes for a positive first impression. My lede was personal and anecdotal; I discussed how I went to a picnic and somebody refused to shake my hand while they were eating lunch. It peeved me.
One of my readers commented that it’s acceptable for a person to refuse an extended hand while they’re eating and that it’s best that I not take personal offense. What he said made good sense to me and was cathartic. I no longer felt bad about having my extended hand turned away.
On a similar note, I’ve found that the instant feedback provided by readers who comment on blog postings has improved my writing. Under no other circumstance is my writing subject to instant feedback that I can act on—it could take days, weeks, or months before I receive feedback from an editor. If I were to write something that made little sense in a blog posting, however, a reader’s comment served up in short order will help clarify my writing. For example, in a blog posting on medical jargon, I thoughtlessly confused sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value (these are all epidemiology terms). Within hours, an astute reader caught my mistake and corrected me. I thanked the reader by online rejoinder in the comments section of my blog and corrected the posting.
Under certain circumstances, it’s understandable to delete a comment. If a comment is solicitous spam; is bigoted, sexist, or racist; uses foul language; or has co-opted copyrighted information without proper attribution or permission, it’s a good idea to delete it. If hosting your own blog, consider drafting a “Terms of Use” that bars any comments that can be considered disrespectful, unethical, litigious, or illegal.
On a positive note, many interactions in the blogosphere are resoundingly supportive, and bloggers do their best to elicit such interactions and drive up their traffic. Many bloggers generate memes that link back to their blogs in order to drive traffic to it. Inevitably, the success of these memes is dependent on relations with other bloggers and audience members. Bloggers often belong to supportive local, national, and international communities. These bloggers not only respond to each other’s postings but sometimes meet up in person and form friendships.
Ultimately, it takes a lot of work to cultivate a blog, and bloggers must be vigilant in maintaining a balance between comments that add to their blog and those that detract from their site. According to Rebecca Blood, an early blogger and author of The Weblog Handbook, “… You can’t have a thriving comment community without moderation since an unmoderated comment thread, once found, will instantly be filled with spam—which will tell anyone who ventures there that the blogger isn’t paying attention to their own site.
“Trolls are a different matter. They are individuals whose sole purpose is to provoke a fight, either with you or with another commenter. They are not the same as someone who disagrees with you; they are someone who is deliberately disagreeable in order to provoke a response, and they will adopt (and pursue) any position in order to do that.
“The presence of either spam or trolls says to people who might be interested in making a thoughtful comment, ‘No one cares about this place,’ and most commenters will move on to other blogs where they can have the conversations they crave.
“Many bloggers have turned comments off on their sites since it takes time to comb through all submitted comments every day, 99 percent of which are guaranteed to be spam. Those who are committed to cultivating communities on their own sites must be willing to set aside time every day in order to ensure that genuine comments are posted when they are received. It is a big-time commitment, especially since, ideally, this should happen in real time so that those who are reading the post soon after it goes up can see that a conversation has started. Readers are unlikely to revisit an empty commenting thread the day after they’ve read the original post in order to see if any comments were released overnight.”
On a final note, if you’re fortunate enough to blog with a major publication, much of the spam is expunged by the publication’s web specialists. Trolls, however, are less readily recognizable.
Many writers blog regularly, and this regularity can breed mistakes. It’s okay to make an unintentional mistake when blogging. Maybe you misinterpreted a journal article or attributed an idea to the wrong person. Oftentimes your readers will point out your mistakes in the comment section. If you do make a mistake, it’s best to correct the mistake while retaining the text of your original posting, thus retaining your blog’s transparency. You may also want to link to correct information. Most likely, your readers—and, if you’re blogging for a publication, your editor—will accept this act of contrition and forgive this venial sin.
Some transgressions, however, are more serious—they are the mortal sins of blogging. Taking money or gifts for doing a blog post and not apprising your readers of this conflict of interest is one big mistake. (Even if you apprise your readers of taking money to do a blog posting, it’s still most likely an ethical problem.) The mere whiff of financial impropriety can taint a blog’s (and blogger’s) reputation. For example, in 2010, many expert bloggers, including chronobiologist and blog guru Bora Zivkovic, left ScienceBlogs after it became known that the well-respected blog site had taken money to host a nutrition blog for PepsiCo.
Another mortal sin is using your blog to insult, intimidate, or harass others. Racism, sexism, ageism, religious intolerance, homophobia, and so forth should not be promoted in your blog or anywhere else for that matter. In 2007, Tim O’Reilly came up with the “Blogger’s Code of Conduct,” wherein he suggested that “we won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.”
In conclusion, blogs are a form of journalism that offers numerous benefits to writers and readers. Many blogs enable readers to interact with writers—asking questions and making contrary points. They also provide an easy way for readers to access useful information. For instance, the Pew Research Center has found that 61 percent of all people look for health information online, and 42 percent of all people say that they or someone they knew had found useful health information on the Internet. Additionally, the information provided by expert bloggers can inspire other journalists and find its way into other publications. Fifty-one percent of journalists read blogs, and 53 percent get story ideas or sources from blogs. These findings suggest the importance of blogs in disseminating newsworthy information. According to an article in the American Journalism Review titled “Journalism’s Backseat Drivers,” blogs also act “as conduits between mainstream media and the online zeitgeist.” Journalists, activists, political decision makers, and others use blogs as a barometer to evaluate public sentiment on the Internet at any given moment.
Considering that the information provided in blogs has the potential to affect the thinking of countless others, it’s important that the blogger engage in principled journalism and ensure that, when feasible, blog postings be coherent, verifiable, and transparent.