Editing reporters' blogs?

maybe bob ryan can chime and tell us if his blog is edited by someone:
http://www.boston.com/sports/columnists/bob_ryan_blog/

 

I think Ryan needs to know that a blog post usually shouldn't be a 20-inch column.

 

If you are going to edit, then why blog? Just post more frequent columns.

The purpose of blogs is reader interaction and real time interest.

Outlets debating about editing blogs shouldn't bother blogging. They obviously don't understand what blogs are about and blogging would just be a matter of keeping up with the Jones'.

 

Well, I had to laugh when he wrote "Holy bleep!" On a blog. It's a family blog, we don't cuss here. We'll let you ramble on forever about practically nothing, we'll leave in your mistakes so you can appear au natural, but it's still bleep around here.

This is why it's such nonsense to pretend we have different rules for blogs than for stories. They are both written material by staffers and reflect on the main product. There's still going to be a line we don't cross -- Bob Ryan writing "shit" or "fuck" -- that indy blogs will gladly cross, so in what possible way does having blogs (edited or unedited) offer something to the readers that stories don't? Except for being more time-wasting babble. And a fad.

 

You would edit it if you had the opportunity. But radio and TV are immediate media to the point of being dangerous to one's health (see: "Campanis, Al" "Snyder, Jimmy" and "Imus, Don").

Though blogging is more immediate than the daily print product it doesn't have to be instant -- just timely. There's no reason that a blog shouldn't go though some sort of gatekeeping just to be sure that the mothership doesn't get embarrassed.

 

Gee, I don't know Frank, how about immediacy? Something happens at 9 a.m. - you could have countless of blog posts on the subject (not to mention reader interactivity) instead of writing one story for tomorrow's paper.

I don't think blogs are a fad - but I do think newspapers are trying to figure out on how to capitalize on it (with plenty of hits and misses).

 

Does breaking news have to go through the blog route? Can't/shouldn't it be posted to the newspaper's home page or the index page for the appropriate silo as a regular news story? It can still be posted quickly, but it would presumably go through an editor.

I think this thread is splintering a little bit -- and I haven't exactly helped the cause -- because we need to make a distinction about what sort of content belongs in a blog as opposed to the conventional site.

 

As we shift more editors to the Web site, we edit most blogs after they have been posted. Sure, trust is an issue, but to say that it stops being a blog because it's edited is a distortion of what we do. And saying it's OK to mistype teh is not keeping it real; it's dumb and needless. Type fewer words, then; it's not a word contest.

 

put me in no edit... let the world see the raw copy. Dont censor... sounds like the original editor wants control more than to edit...

 

Yeah, slappy don't need no editing.

 

If it's on the newspaper's Web site, it's property of the newspaper. It should be subject to editing like any content that's in print.

If it's a personal blog that isn't connected to the newspaper, then no way.

 

Except I would think the idea would be that the blog would not be like any content that's in print. That's kind of the idea, isn't it?