Bob Stepno’s Red Liner

We started a good discussion at Berkman last night about ways bloggers might give readers more clues about whether they are “doing journalism” or expressing opinions, or quoting someone else’s blog, or perhaps writing outright fiction… My afterthoughts are on my more verbose blog.

The “doing journalism” link in that last paragraph goes to a related story in the Melrose Mirror, one of the MIT Silver Stringers
projects I pointed to last night when the idea of getting seniors
into blogging came up. Also relevant to the discussion: Check out the journalism tutorials the project created a few years ago, full of good advice from “old pros” Jack Driscoll and Don Murray.

One thing Silver Stringers may have lacked is blogging’s emphasis on
linkage. That Melrose Mirror item, for instance, really could use
links to more information about Ellen Hume and Seth Effron… who, it sounds like, are planning some Democratic National Convention coverage — another topic that came up last night.

(My hobbies are stumbling into coincidences and making connections.)

Blog Reporting Questions: Who Said What and in What Voice? …

I think I’ve come up with a new motto just in time for Bloggercon — and my deadline for an article on RSS aggregators. Enough of my guilt-tripping about not having time to read the Times
plus 1,001 online news items before lunch like some younger bloggers
with healthier eyes and perhaps better histories with Ritalin. I’ll get
around to the things I want to read eventually. Perhaps instead of
grazing on blogs, I’ll disappear to the woods by that pond in Concord
with a leather-covered copy of something by Ralph or Henry, or at least
the Sunday paper…

Actually, sitting down with the dead-tree edition of the Times
at a non-WiFi coffeeshop yesterday, instead of reading the online
edition, I was reminded of the great use the paper makes of large-scale
graphics and full-page photo layouts — while I’ve been reading the
same stories on a 12-inch laptop screen. Sounds like a few master’s
thesis projects to me! Add a comment if you’ve seen any published
research on “big page formats” versus “small screen formats” for
presenting the same stories…

“It’s not sinful, it’s Syndication!” …

“>
Larger
image,  source:
American Antiquarian
Society.

More about how it was really simple syndication back then…
 

Back in the present, for what’s shaping up to be a great discussion of weblogs and journalism, see Jay Rosen’s notes for  Bloggercon, coincidentally on April 17, 2004, the 300th anniversary of that Boston News-Letter.

Bofton Marks 300 Years of News-Aggregating! …