I Must Be Emo...

What’s the point of blogging?

• A portfolio of work
• A two-way method of communication – a conversation
• Comments - allowing you to gain the views and experiences of other people
  Good practice in communicating with the outside world
• An 'active' medium
• A brand-building exercise
• Allows you to demonstrate your expertise and prove your credibility
• Regular updated, attracting visitors and drawing attention to your work
• Providing up-to-date news to your audience
• A thinking ground for ideas
• A space for 'first drafts' and subsequent versions of your work and words
• The storage of posts and, therefore, your history and experiences
• Ability to integrate multimedia – video, audio, images, podcasts, vodcasts, slideshows – and widgets
• An opportunity to write brilliant headlines
• Whatever you want it to be
  

Writing and presenting information for web

• Web users do not sit reading web pages. They scan them
• Therefore, web pages have to employ scannable text
• If people don't like what they see, they bounce right out
• Users often read web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html
• On an average visit, users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less (Harald Weinreich, Hartmut Obendorf, Eelco Herder, and Matthias Mayer: "Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use," in the ACM Transactions on the Web, vol. 2, no. 1 (February 2008), article #5)
• The first two paragraphs are very important and need to be attention grabbing
  one idea per paragraph
• Highlighted keywords (hypertext links, typeface variations and colour)
• meaningful sub-headings that provide information that will lead people to read on
  bulleted lists
• the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
• half the word count (or less) than conventional writing – 200-400 words a page/blog entry?
• use of blog summaries with link to full content
• credibility is extremely important for web users
• use of high-quality graphics, video, audio coupled with good writing and the use of outbound links
• no "marketese", which is akin to spam. Regular users of the web – the web literate - have been raised on free content, they do not want to be sold anything. Don't give people a reason to bounce straight out of your site
  

Want an example?

Now that's what I call the future...
Digital Media Journalism?

News Orgs

BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/mihirbose/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/

Sky News
http://blogs.news.sky.com/

Bad? Telegraph text frenzy
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/
Telegraph's opionated bloggers
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/blogs/

Arts
http://blogs.thestage.co.uk/shenton/

Gaming
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog

The Cartoon Blog
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/christianadams/

Social Commentary
http://www.ideabounty.com/blog

David Hepworth
Word editor
Blogger version
http://whatsheonaboutnow.blogspot.com/
Embedded version
http://www.davidhepworth.com/html/hepworth_blog1.html

Jeff Jarvis - Buzz Machine
http://www.buzzmachine.com/

Cory Bergman (MSNBC)
http://lostremote.com/

Pete Cashmore/Mashable
http://mashable.com/

Beppe Grillo
http://www.beppegrillo.it/english.php

Gigazine
http://www.gigazine.net/

Travel
http://www.brooklynchowdersurfer.com/

Community
http://stroudblog.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/

Blogposts roundup at Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tone/blog

Politics
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/best-of-the-politics-blogs

John Prescott
http://www.gofourth.co.uk/johns_blog

Iain Dale
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/

http://andrew-allison.blogspot.com/

Music
NME
www.nme.com/bloghttp://www.theregoesthefear.com/

The Hype Machine
http://hypem.com/

V-log - Amanda Congdon

http://sometimesdaily.com/

Perfectly branded hacks

Adam Westbrook
http://adamwestbrook.wordpress.com/

Sean Smith
http://seanxsmith.wordpress.com/infuze/

Jonathan Warren - Tog
http://jwarren.co.uk/blog/

Jon Bernstein (former C4 multimedia editor)
http://jonbernstein.wordpress.com/

James Woodcock (gaming & tech)
http://www.jameswoodcock.co.uk/

Andy Worthington
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/

???
Danuta Kean
http://www.danutakean.com/blog/

Sean McManus
http://www.sean.co.uk/

Does Controversial = Bad?
http://perezhilton.com/

Not quite getting it...
Cambridge News
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_blogs/

thepickenpackreport
ttp://thepickenpackreport.blogspot.com/

Bad journalistic video
http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/

Excellent examples of 'digital media journalism'

NY Times multimedia
NY Times - Breaking Through The Ranks slideshow

Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/interactive/bikie-wars/

Interactive Narratives

Audio Test #2

Station Tannoy

Audio Test #1

Go to folder - FileFactory.com