Two Truths About Journalists And Blogging

Two thoughts that have invaded my brain as I work on presentations for some of our journalists:

1. Journalists’ pre-existing reputation, and the inherited reputation from the magazine, are only good for one thing in blogging: getting people to the blog. From then on, the only thing that matters is the quality of the individual blogger’s work. This is an unusually harsh, Darwinian world that journalists just aren’t used to. It’s going to be hard in the short term, but great in the long term, because mediocrity cannot survive.
2. Good journalists should already have all the skills needed to make good bloggers. They network with other people, filter and select the best information and direct their readers to the best thoughts out there. However, they do the majority of this offline – either face to face, or over the phone – and only go “online” when they write up the results for publication. They challenge for a blogging journalist is to take that whole research process and move it online.