There's a pretty interesting range of perspectives expressed in the comments to my earlier post, What's the Point of Newspaper Blogs? Yesterday, Laura Fries, web editor for the alternative Atlanta-based weekly Creative Loafing, posted some excellent business-oriented insight that, I think, could aid the planning for any newspaper blog.
In her comment to my post, she wrote, "I think it goes without saying that sometimes the excitement over a new blog comes before the work of figuring out what exactly the blog should be. I created this set of bullet point guidelines to help guide editors and writers through the process of setting up a focused new blog."
Excellent work, Laura. I think you're right on target -- and I'd love to hear what our colleagues think of your advice.
One topic you left out that I'd like to address is closing the feedback loop. Having a weblog allows a news organization to obtain a lot of valuable feedback -- from blog comments and private e-mails, sure, but also from carefully watching traffic to the blog. I find that blogs are a great place to float new topics, angles, or approaches before investing in a serious reporting effort. It's also a place to gauge long-term trends in your online audience's interests.
So the "action step" there would be: Monitor clickthrough stats for your blog at least weekly, and periodically trend them over time. Note which postings and categories are attracting exceptional interest. How might you leverage that insight to improve your news stories and other non-blog coverage, both in print/broadcast and online?
