Practicing Blog Techniques

"Writing For Digital Media" by Brian Carroll

 

Chapter 4 - Headlines and Hypertext

This chapter went into details about how to effectively use headlines, hyperlinks, text.  I agreed with all of the information Carroll provided about headlines, though it was relatively uninsightful.  What I found more valuable, was the mention of "chunking".

Chunking is the division of your article into small sections to make it easier to scan and more appealing for the reader.  Chunking is also very hard for me to do.  I've never cared much for writing and consequently I've never given much consideration to my readers.  My preferred writing style is to just keep going and have one big block of boring text that nobody wants to read, but it's there because I was assigned to write it.

I figured it would only make sense to practice these techniques here.  Much of the information we have learned so far in Carroll's book and also in the other articles is somewhat intuitive, but the methods described are one's that I do not practice (or did not practice).

So, the goal here for my posts is to implement everything we learn and hopefully produce work that is structurally and technically comparable to that of a professional blogger.

"Journalism of Verification"

The Journalism of Verification article does a good job pointing out some of the negative consequences that have arisen out of the whole internet/technology boom.  Information is available at an all time high, but credibility is at an all time low.  This change can be attributed to one simple thing: the internet. 

Information flows in a cycle centered around the internet.  Any of us can look up just about anything on the internet with ease and without doing in-depth research.  The second step to the cycle occurs when we share that information, whether through a blog, website, email, facebook, or any other medium that can be accessed immediately around the world.  The third step is a repeat of the first step when someone else stumbles upon the information that we shared.

We all do this without considering ourselves "journalists".  And since we aren't journalists, we don't engage in the practices of good journalism, such as fact checking.  But when I can post information somewhere and it be as easily accessible to someone as mainstream media (though it lacks the popularity), I become a "journalist", in a sense. 

These changes the have moved us from journalism of verification to journalism of assertion make those good journalistic practices that much more important.  Everyone is skeptical of what they read (or at least should be) and the importance of establishing trust with an audience cannot be understated.