Blogging howto for small city newspapers

Background 

Over the last week I've been visiting three towns in the Carolinas, Greensboro, Chapel Hill and now Spartanburg. In all three cities, the subject of blogging and local newspapers has been a major topic. Since I'm now giving the same advice over and over, I thought it would be a good idea to put it in writing, because it may be useful to other organizations and communities.

These are just ideas, I'm sure there's much more to it, and other ways to accomplish the same or better results. Consider this a starting point for discussion.

It's two-way 

It's important to focus on the two-way nature of blogging.

In this context that means:

1. You should have blogs coming from people in your organization and

2. You should read blogs written by members of the community.

Your organization's blogs 

Blogs written by editors, reporters, even staff people, provide visibility by the community into your process. Editors can document how they make their decisions, reporters can provide full notes on their interviews, perhaps even MP3s, to provide raw data for fact-checking by the community, and to provide in-depth info for people who are vitally interested in a subject. You may think this is as dull as watching the grass grow, and it may be, but it's exactly how you build trust and credibility in the age of blogging. The bloggers will likely do this for you at some point, better to get the real information out there first. Like a software company that welcomes bug reports, let your passion for news drive you, rather than a need to protect yourself from the public. The community can make your product better, if you let them.

Also, by blogging yourselves, you may provide the Pied Piper that's vital to starting a local blogger community. Some cities, like Greensboro, were blessed with a local blogger base before the newspaper caught on. Other cities, like Spartanburg, may have to help it get started.

See also, a howto I wrote in 2002 that explains how a professional reporter can approach a new weblog.

Reading community blogs 

If you run or write for a small city newpaper your community's blogs give you an incredibly efficient window into what your community is thinking and doing. You don't have to go anywhere, talk to anyone, all you have to do is open your browser and read. Nothing like this has ever existed.

When your community reports on itself, for example, when a blogger attends a city council meeting, and writes about it, even if it is highly opinionated, this is news. You can include it in your print paper, but you should certainly make it accessible from the website. Don't worry too much about strong opinion, readers are incredibly good at filtering. Make it clear when it's your reporters speaking and when it's the community.

Provide more information about yourself 

In the past, because news was only printed, there were space limitations that just don't exist on the Web. For every reporter, link to his or her bio page from every story, where you include a reverse-chronological list of articles they have written. If they have a blog, link to it. Say goodby to the notion that reporters are interchangeable parts, readers are right to trust sources that identify themselves, and that goes for reporters too.

Host weekly meetups 

Especially when your blogging community is starting up, you should host weekly meetups, in a conference room in your offices, open to all bloggers and would-be bloggers in your city. It's a discussion, people talk about projects they're working on, stuff they're writing about, problems they want to tackle. Like the discussion on the blogs, it isn't centered on your newspaper, rather it's centered on the community, but it makes sense for the local newspaper to be the organizer of these meetings. It helps you and your community understand the role of your organization going forward. You're a facilitator of information flow, but the story is the community, not you.

While BloggerCons are non-commercial affairs, I believe that there's a place for commercial discussions at the weekly meetups. If there are developers making products in response to needs of the community, this is a good place to talk about them, but only if the discussion is free, and keep the product pitches out of it, just the facts please.

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