bloggers should blog
This is just a low key late night think piece. Basically, there's always this issue about what bloggers should do regarding election time.
Traffic goes up. New readers and eyeballs hit websites. (Not this one much, but I hear rumors of it elsewhere, lol.) There's also pressure for folks to use the blogs exclusively as GOTV tools, to shape content exclusively to match election season.
Well, imo, bloggers should blog. If you do GOTV or you cover political races on your blog, well, by all means you should blog about that. You shouldn't write in a vacuum. (And I remain convinced that if you write about GOTV you should do it too.)
But, in general, the best thing any blogger can do as an election approaches is to do what they do best year round.
That's the point.
General pieces about topics of political interest are FINE. New readers haven't been reading all year...and so they should get a chance to read the latest news AND a blogger's best commentary.
What surprises me is how on community blogs the energy tends to move inward when it should do just the opposite. In some sense, our broadest and most inviting pieces should be written around election time when the most "newbs" will be checking out our sites. It's not necessary to fake anything. The point is to be real and to do what you would normally do.
Imo, now would be an excellent time for a solid piece about the war in Iraq or Social Security. It would also be a great time for coverage of this huge emerging story: how, in state after state, insurgent Democratic candidates are giving GOP incumbents a real run for their money.
I'll try to cover that and the blogs that are part of it these last days before the election.
Traffic goes up. New readers and eyeballs hit websites. (Not this one much, but I hear rumors of it elsewhere, lol.) There's also pressure for folks to use the blogs exclusively as GOTV tools, to shape content exclusively to match election season.
Well, imo, bloggers should blog. If you do GOTV or you cover political races on your blog, well, by all means you should blog about that. You shouldn't write in a vacuum. (And I remain convinced that if you write about GOTV you should do it too.)
But, in general, the best thing any blogger can do as an election approaches is to do what they do best year round.
That's the point.
General pieces about topics of political interest are FINE. New readers haven't been reading all year...and so they should get a chance to read the latest news AND a blogger's best commentary.
What surprises me is how on community blogs the energy tends to move inward when it should do just the opposite. In some sense, our broadest and most inviting pieces should be written around election time when the most "newbs" will be checking out our sites. It's not necessary to fake anything. The point is to be real and to do what you would normally do.
Imo, now would be an excellent time for a solid piece about the war in Iraq or Social Security. It would also be a great time for coverage of this huge emerging story: how, in state after state, insurgent Democratic candidates are giving GOP incumbents a real run for their money.
I'll try to cover that and the blogs that are part of it these last days before the election.
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