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Newspaper blogs: How not to do them

Posted by Mathew @ 10:02 pm on January 13 2007 |

Sometimes in order to find out what works, it’s useful to look at what doesn’t work. So where might we look to find examples of what not to do when it comes to newspaper blogs? Andrew Grant-Adamson suggests that looking at the Independent in Britain would be a pretty good start — and I would have to agree. In his latest post, Andrew notes that the Indy blogs (which are hosted at Typepad) have gone for 21 days without an entry.

That was only true until a short time ago, however: now there is another blog entry, this one about some reviews of comedy events done by what appears to be the comedy blogger, who also has his own blog (which doesn’t seem to get posts any more frequently than the Independent one). The post before that one was December 16, then before that December 13 and December 10, and before that November 21. Not exactly a deluge.

In a previous post, Andrew notes that “the best thing that can be said about The Independent’s entry into newspaper blogging is that they are wasting very little time on it.” Touche. Martin Stabe has also written about the somewhat, er… lame-rific blogging done by the Indy, saying that “the Independent’s experiment with blogging has only been around for just over a month now, but I think it’s time move it to the central place of (dis)honour in the “blogwagon” hall of shame.”

Someone at the Independent must realize how pathetic their blogs look, because both Martin and Andrew mention a technology blog called the Sony Technology Blog, sponsored (surprise!) by Sony, which is nowhere to be found now. All that appears at the Indyblogs site are three categories: “environment” — which has two posts; “comedy” — which has four posts; and “photography” — which has three posts. Some of the posts have comments, but none of them (as far as I could tell) are from the authors of the posts.

All of which leads Andrew to his five tests for blogging:

1. Does it do anything which cannot better be done in another section of the site?
2. Does it develop the paper’s interaction with the readers?
3. Does it gain a valuable audience? (A particular niche, readers who are new to the paper etc.)
4. Can you give the blogger sufficient time to blog successfully?
5. Have you chosen a writer or writers who have the aptitude to blog successfully?

Good questions to ask. I would wager that the number of those questions the Independent asked is approaching zero. Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis takes a swing at Shane Richmond — who does a great blog at the Guardian Telegraph — for telling bloggers not to discuss newspaper business or “tricks of the trade” in their blogs.

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Mathew posted this article under Blogs, Media 2.0 on Saturday, January 13th, 2007 at 10:02 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. View Technorati Linkbacks.

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