editorsweblog.org: US: Newspapers connecting with young readers via blogs

This story is about newspapers and the use of blogs to attract new readers but the cool thing is that one of bloggers for the Daily Herald's Beep is Lisa Balde, one of my former students. She always was cool and ahead of the pack.editorsweblog.org: US: Newspapers connecting with young readers via blogs

Chicago Tribune | CBS blog will keep eye on its coverage

Chicago Tribune | CBS blog will keep eye on its coverage

Research on blogs and bloggers

Six Apart who created Movable Type and Gawker Media, two of the best-known names in blogs and blog aggregation commissioned a study of bloggers. The research is based on analysis of over 2 million Internet users and their browsing patterns. They sampled blogs widely to get a sample of big and small blogs to come up with a picture of blog users in 2005.

The cut to the chase points of the study include:

• 50 million U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005. That is roughly 30% of all U.S. Internet users and 1 in 6 of the total U.S. population


• Five hosting services for blogs each had more than 5 million unique visitors in that period, and four individual blogs had more than 1 million visitors each


• Of 400 of the biggest blogs observed, segmented by seven (nonexclusive) categories, political blogs were the most popular, followed by "hipster" lifestyle blogs, tech blogs and blogs authored by women


• Compared to the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections


• Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and they are much more likely to shop online

Coming on the heels of our presentation at the Retreat

A new study shows how important blogs have become in journalism, and thus how crucial they are in education in communication studies, including journalism. editorsweblog.org: US: 51% of journalists use blogs

Our live session on blogging went very well at the Faculty Retreat. The tech stuff all worked except we forgot to bring external speakers, but that part was kind of "fluff" anyway. I think our point that blogging is a process of communication that is here to stay, but is adapting to a variety of uses and disciplines came across clearly.

The blogoteers are planning their next engagement so look for news of that.

Foto(03).jpg

Foto(03).jpg
Originally uploaded by biverson.

The expectant crowd gathers...

Foto(02).jpg

Foto(02).jpg
Originally uploaded by biverson.

This is blogoteer Sharon

Geneva1.jpg

Foto(01).jpg
Originally uploaded by biverson.

Checking out our presentation room.

Links for BR segment of the presentation

I've posted the visuals to accompany my part of the presentation at: http://work.colum.edu/~briley/blogoteers.html

documentary:BLOG

This site about blogs has some interesting links. Dell now combs blogs for complaints and comments that are from individuals and forwards them to their service dept.

Blogroll

Many blogs feature a blogroll (a list of other blogs to read). We haven't got one of those, but I think it would be useful for us to tell you a bit about blogs we read. Here's a list of some I read regularly:

Kairosnews. This is the first blog I started reading regularly. It's what Barbara calls a professional knowledge blog or perhaps a filter blog for the Computers and Writing community. In this vein, see also The Valve and PrintCulture.

Academic-Gamers. While I contribute to this community blog occasionally, it serves as a place to discuss video games from a scholarly perspective. In this vein, see also WaterCoolerGames, GrandTextAuto, and Game Girl Advance.

My favorite blogs to read are scholarly endeavors that often cross the borders between public and private, regularly mixing the personal and theoretical. See Yellowdog, Working Blue, Thanks for not being a Zombie, Colin vs. Blog, CultureCat, and my own blog, The Digital Sextant.

Finally, there are plenty of blogs that are just fun. I like The Comics Curmudgeon quite a bit.

Barbara I

Barbara I
Originally uploaded by biverson.

Notice I could not leave cyberspace comfortably.

Brendan Riley

Brendan Riley
Originally uploaded by biverson.

We took notes on paper.

Russell Porter

Russell Porter
Originally uploaded by biverson.

We even met IRL (in real life.)

fish_drawing

fish_drawing
Originally uploaded by Digital Sextant.

Brendan blogged about this and we needed a image in our blog to liven up the look.

Blogs and photos

One of the best blogging tools is flickr.com which is a photo archiving, tagging and display site. You can upload or download photos from flickr. You can license your work with a range of licenses. By "tagging" work with a descriptive title, you can easily locate photos by topic. For example, at the bloggercon "BlogNashville" held in May 2005, everyone used "blognashville" to tag photos.

Brendan uses flickr to locate images when he needs them. Barbara has used flickr to find a photo to go with a news article. There are now flickr games, too, On the site, they say "Flickr evolved from a game, and is an excellent environment for creative playing. Let's play together!"

Flickr games can be adapted for any classes with a visual emphasis, from photography, poetry, film, advertising, etc.

UsageWatch.org: How many people publish, read or contribute to blogs? 2.0

Three of the blogoteers had a useful meeting in preparation for our presentation and talk at the retreat. I found this story which puts USA blogs at 8 million, but notes that ther are 11 million bloggers in South Korea. UsageWatch.org: How many people publish, read or contribute to blogs? 2.0

Blogswarm forms to oust Korean Soccer Coach

Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea: "Countless angry comments could be found at the bottom of news sites like Naver.com that brought the bitter news of Korea's defeat. The flood of nasty comments was so great that it was hard to access the homepages of either Bonfrere (www.bonfrere.co.kr) or KFA chairman Chung Mong-joon (www.mjchung.com).

Some members of the Red Devils, the fan club that has been a strong source of support for the squad since 2002, even went as far as to call for head-shaving ceremonies as a way of urging Bonfrere to go. Online groups such as at blog site Cyworld formed an online coalition calling for the resignation of the Dutch coach."

A 'Blogswarm' Stings Old Media Into Action | MediaChannel.org

A 'Blogswarm' Stings Old Media Into Action | MediaChannel.org

Time to check: Are you using the right blogging tool?

Here is something we will certainly mention and tell folks about. This article has the "jargon" definitions and the comparison chart of features and options is very helpful.
Time to check: Are you using the right blogging tool?

Beyond blogs?

This is really cool. These journalists set up a Wiki and used it to do a collaborative story on video journalists. I think you could use a blog in a similar fashion as a collective notepad, and then spin off a written summary document. Anyway, its cool.
video_journalists

A professor discusses academic blogging and his career.

Steven D. Krause%u2019s Official Blog %uFFFD Blog Archive %uFFFD What academic blogging means to me (and what it is likely to mean in the coming year or so%u2026)

Choosing a Blogging Package for Students

This looks like it might be useful to teachers. What do you all think?Choosing a Blogging Package for Students