What is the Difference These Days between Blogging and Journalism?

October 28, 2009 | Written by Yan Shikhvarger

A very insightful, yet strangely print magazine-only, Foreign Policy Magazine (Sep-Oct issue) feature asked its columnists and new bloggers about the differences on being columnist versus a blogger. Even though these were all thought leaders/policy people, nevertheless, the key themes they expressed are relevant to any organization/company that wants to allow its experts a public content outlet such as a blog.

Although it is extremely worthwhile to read the entire article and draw your own conclusions, here are the points which resonated with me:

• Experiment with new content formats and user participation: Blog posts are not just columns and op-ed pieces. Stephen M. Walt of the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government found that he could actually develop ongoing pieces based on live developments and included multiple perspectives. Instead of his own single perspective on a certain battle in Afghanistan, he actually began to interact with the battle participants and integrating their perspectives into the analysis. So don’t be limited to column format pieces and truly push the medium.
• Be ready to be challenged and let go of being a perfectionist: Pieces are developed with short lead times and that presents an additional challenge as bloggers: “have to have a much thicker skin because the response is so instantaneous you’re likely to be wrong more often than you would with something you spend months or years working on.” Again, a great piece of insight from Stephen M. Walt. The feedback will range from absurd, to supportive, to challenging so be flexible.
• Don’t be afraid of strong positions and perhaps a bit of sensationalism: Bloggers note that taking on controversial topics gained the most attention and feedback. While not necessarily surprising, it may make sense to create a balance between posts that take on controversial topics that would provide a boost in overall readership.
• Be ready for a real commitment and time investment: This seems to be the biggest challenge. David J. Rothkoff of the Carnegie Endowment found: “My main goal when I started was that it shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes a day. That was not successful.” Evgeny Morozov of the Open Society Institute also noted the key challenge of “feeding the beast.” “Sometimes I wake up and just think ‘I’ve got nothin’. I have to do a lot of prior planning. I have a notebook where I keep ideas, and sometimes I’ll incubate something for several weeks.” Being a frequent blogger is quite a time investment so make sure you’re ready for that type of commitment and idea generation is another key challenge.

Blogging is a great platform to take a thought leadership position within an online space and it makes sense to do it especially since most organizations have such a wealth brain power locked away behind the company walls. However, before opening up these points and challenges are worth addressing, otherwise failure is a very real option.

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Tags: blog strategy, blogging