Norman Chad on blogging

When newspapers drop comments from news stories, as will inevitably happen, the reader 'conversation' will be concentrated on blogs, making them an even bigger read.

 

One of the problems talking about blogs is that it encompasses different formats. There are, to me, three types of blogs. First there are blogs done by people about something in their field. For example, a computer expert my blog about the computer industry, a stocks expert might blog about stocks, etc. Reporter blogs from their beats fall into this category. They're like Pete wrote about, news from their beat, extra stuff that didn't make a column, mini columns -- a sort of combination column and notes column.

Then there is the other extreme where someone is blogging about everything under the sun or this is what I think about everything or this is what I'm doing now.

In the middle, there are those who simply write about a topic or topics on what they're interested in and have varying degrees of quality and informed opinion or real information. It can range from being real worthwhile all the way down to the blogger in the basement cliche.

So the problem when someone is ripping blogs is exactly what sort of blog and whose blog are they talking about.

 

Backwards. Print versions and blogs should be a complementary tool to our Internet news and opinion distribution.