Do you blog?

I also keep a personal blog, although I haven't really updated frequently because I took a new job a couple months ago. I specifically tried to steer away from journalism and tried to use it as an avenue to explore more creative writing, and things like movie and TV reviewing, and treatises on 1990s pop culture. It was not really unique from anything else on the web, except that I wrote it, and it was nice to have a creative outlet that didn't rely on anything I had to do for work.

 

That's pretty much why I started it -- a creative outlet now that I'm more desk-based. My biggest challenge, other than remembering to update it, was trying not to kvetch too much about work.

Success has been mixed, but in my defense, I'd have had a heart attack if I hadn't been able to talk about what happened at my last shop.

 

I have a personal blog related to one of my hobbies, but it's more of a journal than designed for public consumption.

 

We have a blog, it's a work related blog that isn't attached to the paper's site. We Twitter and Facebook too. We don't get paid any extra, but it gets out stuff we want to talk about without taking up newspaper space we wouldn't be given otherwise. I like doing it, it's pretty fun and you get to do some of the more interesting technical stuff. It really helps connect with out niche audiences that don't get a bunch of stuff in the paper or on the website.

 

I created a basic sports blog for our newspaper all by myself (yes, I'm a big boy) three years ago that became an instant hit with nice, simple updates and commentary. We also used CoverItLive for game blogs that got tons of traffic and programmed a simple Flash intro for it. I also got all of my beat reporter's mug shots up in the rotating banner and I just felt like it helped add a personality to between our readership and staff.

Haven't seen anyone really do any updates since I graduated last month, but I'm sure my former assistant editor will get it going for spring.

It would have been nice, however, for our Web Editor to help me with a bit of recoding since there are a few pages with null values that I can't get Drupal to get rid of. Oh well.

CollegianSports.com

 

If I do a blog I will do it on a private site, not a site owned/run by an employer, where everything I write would be subject to censorship and such.

 

As kind of my own year-in-review kind of exercise, it occurred to me that I blogged as many words as I put into print columns in 2010. I don't know that it helped the quality of either, and I sure don't blog as much as others at my publication, but to answer the question, yeah, I blog a lot.

I do have a personal blog primarily for non-sports stuff, but I don't publicize it a lot, and have really slowed posting on there to a trickle in the last six months. (I think my most active spell on there was when I used it to do a few different type things that I'd wanted to do while I was on a furlough. Heh.)

 

I blog on the newspaper's site, and I'm glad to do it.

 

I think it depends. One place asked if I would be interested in doing a pro wrestling blog at one point, and I said no if it was site sponsored. It was a small weekly, so it was unlikely I would get any extra access by using their credentials, so I didn't want any writing I did to benefit them primarily vs. myself. (I wasn't being offered an hourly wage or anything like that for doing it; they were just giving me the option of doing it.)

However, if I was going to blog about a local college team and used my paper's credentials for access, then I would feel obligated to do what they wanted in terms of server space.