2008.07.29
Blogging: The Bane and the Blessing
Before you read this post, read this Doonesbury cartoon about a reporter covering the Obama campaign.
I can sympathize with Richard, but my experience has so far been very different.
Blogging is all the rage in newspapers these days. It's part of the newspaper industry's desperate attempt to move into the online world and offset the continued losses in revenue from tradtional print advertising.
It's also a way, they say, for stodgy newspapers to reach out the Miliennial generation. But that's a story for another post.
No, I'm talking about how blogging is affecting your local reporters -- i.e., me -- and what they do day in, day out. How, in the past two weeks since I started blogging as part of my job, has it affected my reporting?
Has it helped me reach out to new readers? Has it deepened my relationship to my current fan base? Has it netted me juicy tips that have led to kick-a-- investigative stories?
No. It's given me a legitamate way to procrastinate.
Like right now, for instance. I SHOULD be writing my next Sunday centerpiece. But instead, I've spent the past two hours blogging about what it's like to be a reporter doing reporting, rather than actually doing the reporting, or even more importantly, doing the WRITING. Hmm.
Of course, this is unlike posting to my personal blogs. I'm getting paid to waste this time.
-- Tonia Moxley
