Monday, December 27, 2004

Blogging etiquette

Drew over at Darn Floor discusses blogs as a first source of breaking news in this post, in which he discusses learning about the passing of Reggie White here at Jiblog. While I think he is correct that more and more people are getting their breaking news from blogs (I get a lot of breaking news myself from The Corner, Instapundit, etc, etc.), but his post lead me to think about my failing as part of the news breaking process as a blog: I failed to offer up my sources. It was this part of his post which got me thinking about that:
Obviously Jib heard it first via a traditional news outlet; or even if he read it first on another blog, that blogger might have heard it first by the mainstream news. But either way, it may be that blogs get news out more quickly to more people.

One of the reasons blogs work well as news breakers is because they act as news aggregators, giving their readers links to additional information. A blog that covers a breaking news story but which does not offer its readers additional information sources really is not doing a great job. I did not really do a great job.

On Sunday, My parents had just left our house, heading back up north after a very nice Christmas visit. I had sat down in my recliner when I overheard on the news that a Reggie White had died at age 43. Since I had overheard it, the news was out of context for me. I immediately turned to the web. I went to ESPN, Fox Sports, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the hopes that I had heard wrong, or that it was not "our" Reggie White. All sources I had checked had only very brief information, so I decided against linking to them, instead going with a brief eulogy to White. What I ended up doing was creating frantic searches for information amongst my readers, instead of being the place where they could also immediately link to mainstream sites to confirm what they read here.

A succesful blog is a thorough blog. Lesson learned.

1 comment:

Drew said...

Had I not checked out Jiblog (or any blogs that mentioned Reggie's passing) yesterday, I wouldn't have known. And no one gathered here for Christmas dinner (one day late) would have known either. We just don't turn on the news that much. Blogs have become, for me, a "first source" after which I move on to other sources to get more information. Don't feel bad if you didn't have up links to "hard news" sources. You were the catalyst that set off the search. Thanks.