Advice for blogging journalists from James Q. Lynch

James Q. Lynch, Covering Iowa Politics blogger for The Gazette, offered some blogging advice in an email. This is one of several posts related to Bloggers share lots of advice.

A few quick thoughts:

1. At CoveringIowaPolitics.com we are, for the most part, only posting stories we are writing for print. Some stories are written as breaking news and updated as they develop, but somewhere north of 90 percent are print stories posted on the blog. Whether we should be doing something more, something different is a good topic for discussion.
2.  The blogs I enjoy most are those that have a point of view. The ones I enjoy least are nothing but opinion. Even in cases of blogs that are essentially aggregators, the interesting ones have a point of view. Not necessarily right or left point of view, but a point of view that makes people want to visit again and again. And whatever point of view a blogger chooses probably means some people won’t come back.
3. I don’t think there is one way to blog. Some bloggers seem to succeed as columnist or essayists, commenting on the news, a sports team, the passing parade. Others are useful because of what they aggregate. And others are conversations starters, inviting people in to share their thoughts and, perhaps, take action.

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Bloggers share lots of advice

In my early days as a journalism trainer, I made my mark by compiling helpful handouts. I thought I had a lot of good ideas on the topics I trained on and I compiled tip sheets that people told me they found helpful.

That approach (and sharing those handouts liberally online at No Train, No Gain) built my reputation in the journalism training field more than anything I did. So when I decided to do a blogging workshop this week, my first inclination was to develop a handout with all my tips and advice on blogging. I could have done that and almost did, but two things held me back:

• I’m not that experienced at blogging and still learning a lot myself. I feared that my own advice might be too shallow and obvious (though I’m amazed at how often people express gratitude for advice that I consider obvious, so I will include some of mine).

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