Blogging, that is.
The Birmingham News recently started doing their Breaking News updates on al.com in a blog format, complete with comments. Which is nice--sorta what you'd think a newpaper blog would be best at.
But this one shows they're still--nearly a decade after weblogs began to take off in popularity--not quite up on the protocol: Trussville police investigate Wachovia bank robbery.
What's the problem?
Well, when it first hit earlier in the day, the headline read something like, 'Trussville Police Investigate Possible Bank Robbery.' Sometime later in the day, the entire story was completely rewritten, but no mention was made of the wholesale changes, nor was the time of the update noted. That's why the comments seem so disjointed from the actual story--they were commenting on the peculiarity of reporting a "possible" robbery in the initial version, rather than the updated, more complete version.
Just a tip, folks--either post an update separately, or note the updated time and what was changed.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at February 21, 2007 04:28 PMI have been known to try to click on the end of a newspaper story to leave a comment. An actual newspaper.
My mother invented newspaper blogging. She has been heavily underlining the really important sentences in newspaper op-ed articles for years and sticking the entire ripped-out article on her refrigerator. When people visit, they comment.
Posted by: kitchen hand at February 22, 2007 12:01 AMHeh--I've read books like that--clicking is highly unsatisfactory. The good thing about your mum's version of blogging is that at least the text is static!
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at February 22, 2007 08:16 AM