In digital storytelling many professional journalists would be wise to study and learn from the best bloggers.

Here are some tips.

It has struck me numerous times during the last couple of years: Many bloggers are far ahead of most professional journalists in writing well for the web.

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Here are five areas where I think many journalists could learn from the practice of good bloggers. And yes, I know I do a lot of generalizing here Many journalists are very good at this stuff – and there are some crappy bloggers out there as well. But still I think these are some valid points if you compare the typical news journalist with the better expert bloggers.

1. Linking to sources

It is a shame, really! But far too many professional journalists resist linking to the sources of their stories. And if they link, some of them prefer to link to the main page of the source, and not to the specific URL where the information is.

For an example of this sloppy attitude among many journalists you may check this story from CNN about the Chinese blogger Han Han.  There is not even a link to Han Han’s blog, even though that is the main topic of the story.

The attitude is quite different among many good bloggers out there. In fact most bloggers seem to love linking as much as they can. That makes it easy for readers to check their sources.

2. Updating information

Stories change. Sometimes errors are discovered or readers have good suggestions for how the article can be improved.

In the newspaper it is hard to make any changes – besides including a correction of errors in the next issue. This is all different on the web. Articles can be continuously updated and errors corrected immediately.

Many bloggers readily change their articles if readers point out errors. Often blog articles are being updated on a regular basis. Take for instance this blog post at baekdal.com about how Apple make people pay twice for the same book (I really recommend this blog, by the way). Not how the author has added an update after he first published the article  (and also responds to his readers comments – next point).

I think many media organizations could do much better in this regard. Content is not static and online journalism is not bound by the physical restraints of the print medium. I think that should open up for a more flexible attitude to how many articles can be continuously updated.

3. Continuous dialogue with readers

Here is a test: Go to the news site of your choice and check the comments on the most discussed news stories of the day. How often do you see the journalist herself take part in the discussion?

Then do the same test on the blogs of your choice. Are the authors talking back to their readers?

Chances are that you will find that the best bloggers are far better at keeping a dialogue with their readers than the journalists.

There are many exceptions of course. Some journalists communicate closely with their readers on a daily basis, while there certainly are bloggers who ignore this part. Yet in general I think it is fair to say that most journalists have a lot to learn from the practice of bloggers in this area.

In my opinion there are many reasons why journalists should discuss their own articles with their readers. Some of them are to get story ideas, improve quality of the discussion, correct errors and appreciate the contributions of readers.

But journalists should stay neutral and not share their personal opinions on the stories they cover, you might argue. Well, there are still many ways to participate in a dialogue even if you stick to that principle.

4. Active promotion of own your content

Many bloggers are very good at promoting their articles. Often they use both social media like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Stumbleupon as well as other blogs.

Journalists are typically not used to taking an active role in promoting their own content. They write their articles and leave it to their employer to recruit readers for it.

Fortunately many journalists are fast learners in this area now. In the last few months I have seen many more journalists proudly sharing their own articles in social media. That’s great! Keep it up, fellow colleagues!

5. Embedding relevant content from other sources

The web is all about sharing – and this is evident among many bloggers. Not only do they quote and link to other bloggers, they are also happy to share great content by allowing others to use it.

Many bloggers are very good at embedding great content from other sources. They identify good videos on YouTube, find a relevant presentation on Slideshare or use creative commons photos from Flickr.

Often media cultures are more concentrated on just using their own content. But honestly that is limiting your coverage. I think journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has a very good principle: Cover what you do best and link to the rest!

…………..

These are my thoughts. What do you think? Do you agree? Are there other things professional journalists should learn from bloggers?

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The death of 18 year old Regine Stokke in Norway demonstrates in a tragic way the power of social media. For more than a year ten thousands of people have followed her blog about the fight against cancer - up to the day of her death.

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Not often is the death of a teenage girl front page stories of major national newspapers. But it happened this week. The personal blog of Regine Hansen Stokke has captivated thousands of Norwegians, who have followed closely all the suffering, mourning and emotional outbursts involved in fighting cancer.

Front page of Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, Friday Dec. 4th, 2009

She died on Thursday this week. Only two days earlier she had written her last blog post:

“Things are going really bad for me these days. Today I have been sitting up only two hours in total. Otherwise I have just been in bed …

I can die at any moment now… I have never been so sick in my whole life, and it is an incredibly scary feeling.  But at least I am less scared of death now than before. Maybe it is because I am so exhausted and have so much pain. “

Regine was given the diagnosis MDS/AML in August last year. It is a serious form of blood cancer.

Two months later she decided she would start a blog about having a serious illness. The blog was named Face your Fear – and adding: “Accept your war. It is what it is.”

Since then she has blogged almost daily sharing the pain, her fear, joyful moments, stays in hospitals, the love of her family and her own reflections trying to stay hopeful at the same time as she was scared.

Over time more and more people started following the blog. And they shared their compassion and gave her all their support.  Blog postings frequently had several hundred comments from readers. The last posting, in which her younger sister told the readers about her death, so far has received more than 8.400 comments from readers sending their condolences.

Regine was telling openly about everything which happened in the last year of her life, including posting photos from her childhood.  Sometimes she wondered if she was too open,  for example when she published a photo of herself without hair.

“So far only my parents, my sister and the nurses have seen me like this.”

Regine's blog post from November 23rd, 2008. "Maybe I am little too tough now, but it helps me to somehow accept it."

At some point also the media discovered Regine’s blog. She was interviewed by several newspapers and also appeared in television programs. In her blog she wondered whether she was right to accept all the interview requests.

April 14th this year she gave the shocking message to her readers with a blog post titled “I shall die”.

“The doctors will not do more than give me chemotherapy to prolong my life. That means that I have not long left to live…

I really do not know what to do. I shall die. How will I handle the waiting? I refuse and I am in tenacious pines. My body is getting weaker and weaker. I refuse to die in a hospital bed as a vegetable. I refuse to lie there until I can no longer talk or move. I cannot bear to have pain.”

Some of her readers were so moved that they started to collect money to help fight cancer. A lot of people thanked her for her openness, and wrote that it had been of great support in their own suffering and mourning.

In one of the last blog postings Regine told about how her family had moved the celebration of Christmas Eve one month ahead, knowing that she was about to die.

A few days before her death several hundre people from Kristiansund, the town she lived in, walked through the streets and to her house with torch lights to show here support.

Regine’s blog became one of the most read in Norway and this week has topped the list. Almost 200.000 people visited her blog yesterday.  Several Facebook groups have been formed in her memory. The biggest one has as I write 40.600 member. Also a second group has more than 30.000 members.

Today the death of the blogger has been a major news story in Norway.

I just wanted to share this story with international friends without too much analysis. But as this is a blog about online media trend, I will at least point out how this tragic story demonstrates the power of social media. This was a young girl who decided to share her pain as well as her hopes and captivated a nation publishing from her hospital bed. And by doing so she brought out floods of positive engagement from thousands of people and became a symbol of bravery and strength.

Rest in peace, Regine.

——————

Here is one interview with Regine – in Norwegian:

New York Times‘  alternative home page with links from other sources is a step toward a new potential role for media companies – as aggregators of content.

By choosing Times Extra, you will not only view NYT’s own stories, but are also given en number of links to relevant stories from other sources.

For bloggers this is really no big deal. Bloggers have done this for a long time – and modules showing relevant content is common on many blogs. BetaTales, for instance,  is using a service from Sphere to do this.

Yet it is rather radical for a major newspaper like NYT.  Traditionally media companies have been thinking that they should focus on their own content in competition with other providers.

But sharing is caring. More and more media companies find that they need to show an open attitude in order to have their readers come back again and again.

New York Times explains that the company wants to become “a destination for compelling journalism, not only by the New York Times”.

That is a pro-active attitude, even though it remains to be seen to what extent the algorithm behind Times Extras is able to serve really relevant content to its readers, as Mashable points out.

My guess is that we will see many more similar services from media companies in the years to come. Even large media houses can no longer live in isolation from the numerous conversations going on in the blogosphere. Readers expect to be served with all relevant content at the same time, not only what the web site’s own journalists have written.

In the same way media site probably will also to a much larger extent connect to the big social networks, for instance by including users personal news feeds on the news pages of the media site, as we have discussed before.

After all, roles are changing in the newsroom and journalists must take on new tasks.  To sum up this post, I recommend you to read Paul Bradshaw’s piece “Model for the 21st century newsroom”, in which he identifies “Aggregator-Sub” as one of the new journalist roles.

Extra background

On an extra note. New York Times is aggregating the links through its own company Blogrunner. Her is an interview Beet.tv did with Blogrunner’s creator Philippe Lourier:

There are thousands of blogs out there writing about web and online media trends. Here are five of my favorites.

• ReadWriteWeb Not really a media blog, but yet extremely useful if you want to keep track. It concentrates on web technology trends and is one of the most read blogs out there. This is the place to pick up news about new web applications and cool services.
• Online Journalism Blog Comments and analysis about developments in online journalism and news.
• E-Media Tidbits Media blog from recognized Poynter Institute.
• ProBlogger Extremely popular blog about how to run your own blog. Main author Darren Rowse uses the blog itself as a day to day example of what works and what doesn’t  Lots of useful advice.
• Monday Note It is primarily a newsletter being published weekly (yes, you guessed it: on Mondays). I find the articles by Frederic Filloux, an editor at the Schibsted media group, to be well written and well worth reading.

What are your favorites? Please suggest online media blogs you recommend others to follow!