Mary S. Butler

Earlier this month I participated in the National Writers Workshop weekend in Hartford. One of the most interesting sessions I attended was “Blogs: The Million-Man Newsroom” by Denis Horgan, who is a senior producer and writer for MSNBC’s “Countdown With Keith Obermann” and runs “The News Hole,” the show’s blog. The standing-room-only audience included two reporters who blog for washingtonpost.com, reporters from the Baltimore Sun and scores of others who wanted to learn more about either creating a blog or publicizing an existing one.

Unfortunately, there were a significant number of attendees who were disdainful of blogs. One women prefaced her question with the ridiculous statement that “Bloggers have no ethics.” Some complained about how their bylined articles had been copied and posted in whole onto someone’s site and no link included back to the original article. One questioner wanted to know if he should “sic the paper’s lawyers” on bloggers who republish his work and then intersperse their own comments throughout. Denis was able to steer the conversation in a pragmatic direction and advised how to use bloggers as a way to build your audience. Considering how many former newspaper subscribers are now reading blogs, this is sound advice.

When I was at Forbes.com, one of the audience-development strategies my team and I used was sending a weekly content update to influential bloggers and encouraging them to post a link to the article on the ForbesAutos.com site. This paid off for us in increased pageviews to such niche content as our coverage of The 2006 Bullrun: New York to Los Angeles rally, an invite-only cross-country adventure. Our Bullrun coverage was featured on the homepage of the official Bullrun site, mentioned on car blog Jalopnik.com and linked to from Hayden Christensen fan sites (the actor, who is best known for his role as Anakin Skywalker in two Star Wars films, was one of the drivers for Team Christensen) as well as dozens of other blogs.

Reporters and editors who are blog-savvy recognize this medium as a wonderful way to attract a larger audience to their newspaper and magazine.com site. Rather than attempt to shut down bloggers who aren’t familiar with copyright law, gently educate them and convince them to link to the original article rather than reproducing it in whole.

Do you have a story about how something you posted online got picked up by a blog? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.