Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Student Journalists "Blogging"(?)

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So I decided to get some feedback from my kids today about their “blogging” exploits to date. Specifically, I asked them to just try to sum up what they’ve noticed and how they’ve felt about the coverage of beat topics they’ve been doing. I got some interesting responses, some of which I’ll share here. I’ll stay away from the “I liked it (or not)” stuff and try to pull out excerpts more relevant to my recent struggles:

  • “I am finding articles and briefly describing key points about them, and then I just write freely-whether it be my opinion or simply whatever comes to mind.”
  • “Is there a special format I sould be following when posting blogs, or should I just write a summery and link it to the story?”
  • “Beside the fact that I personally don’t know what I’m doing, and that I don’t currently have working explorer at my house, I really LIKE reading peoples blogs, and even more so, their responses.”
  • “I am still getting the hang of it but it is getting easier to construct my thoughts and to get my views across in a humorous, yet informative way.”
  • “I like blogging because it’s personal.”
  • “I don’t mind “blogging” since it’s fairly short, and the stories I write about are ones that interest me.”
  • “Now that i have been able to do this i want to make them even more interesting and add pictures and more links and have even more people read them so i am excited that we are going to start advertising them.”
  • “Blogging is something that my friends and I do all the time except we argue about the subject. Blogging is just me writing my arguments and views for others to see.”
  • “I have quite a few feeds in my bloglines account so it gets time consuming going through every single one of them but it is definetly a big help on keeping up with my beat.”
  • “I know how to subscribe to the sites but I’m not sure what it is exactly that I’m looking for.”
  • “I really love to write about the stuff that i am very interested in. I am almost an expert on NBA.”

    Some interesting stuff that I need to think more about, but I do like the fact that some of them seem to be fitting my definition of “blogging” fairly well. Next week we’re going to see if we can increase their audiences.
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