Blogging is a wonderful medium, but I am also a firm believer that we bloggers can elevate our work by taking the best of new media and the best of old media and combining it. It serves us well, and it serves our readers well. I spent 15 years as a newspaper reporter, and now seven years blogging (with some overlap). Here are some ways to blog like a journalist.

Now I will be the first to say that I know many traditional journalist don’t follow all of these 100 percent of the time. I also think in many ways traditional media has forgotten what’s most important, and has strayed from their path. These, however, are ideals that were instilled in me as important while a reporter, and they are just as important to me as a blogger.

Check Your Facts

Blogging is instant gratification. You can get on your computer and publish whatever is in your mind in a matter of seconds. We as bloggers have no editors, no copy editors, no night desk. We just have ourselves. That makes it all the more important to fact check. If you are about to publish something and you aren’t sure without a doubt it is true, check first. Often that only takes a few minutes with Google. Sometimes it means contacting someone to ask.

If something is a rumor or unverified and you still want to run with it, be sure to state that.

Get Both Sides

Blogging by nature is biased and one sided. If you saw my post, “ Guess What News Business? Bias Was OK After All,” then you will see I feel that is fine. Many blogs function more like a traditonal newspaper column than a front page article.

Still, that doesn’t stop you from telling both sides of the story to present something balanced to your readers. It will be a better post for it! Are you ranting about a company? Take five minutes to shoot the company an email asking for a response. Send them a list of questions. And their replying doesn’t mean you can’t run the post. Run it with their replies.

Create Original Content

I see many instances of huge blocks of a post or story being republished, or pictures being used that are clearly not the property of the poster. You cannot use copyrighted material on your blog without permission. There are many great places to find photos that can be used ( stock.xchng, Flickr Creative Commons or a company’s online press room), and even then I recommend attributing the source at the bottom of the post with a link to the original picture.

For content, anything beyond a quick 1-2 sentence blurb with a link to read the full post on its original site is probably a bad idea. Besides copyright laws, if you are pulling half of someone’s post are you really offering much of value? Better to come up with your own words to discuss a topic than to pull from the work of someone else.

Keep Editorial and Advertising Separate

This one is tough for bloggers, but still important to strive for. In old media, there are whole departments who handle editorial and advertising. They rarely cross paths. For many blogs, there is one person. You can still do what you can to handle the two worlds with integrity.

If a post is paid for (I don’t especially care for that, but that’s another topic), then it should be clearly labeled as advertising. If you notice, in newspapers and magazines when this happens, the disclosure content is paid is the first thing you see. It should be that way in blogs as well.

If you receive an item to review, that is not working for a company, as was discussed at length in comments on my post about mom bloggers deserving pay. A review is done for your readers. It requires not feeling beholden to the company or agency who sent it to you. Reviews should have both good and bad. I would even consider telling companies right from the start that you only do fair reviews.

Be Discriminating About Pitches

In any newsroom, station and magazine office on any given day, they easily receive hundreds of pitches. Of those, maybe one or two (or maybe even none) get any attention. A pitch is just that, a pitch. Saying no to it is not only acceptable, but it is standard for many who are pitched to not even reply much less write about the topic or product.

You certainly can reply to be polite, but saying no to a pitch that makes no sense for your readers or that you don’t have time to cover is perfectly OK.

Just like in traditional media, the best PR people will build a relationship with you and not simply pitch you when they want coverage for a client. So next time you say no, maybe initiate some conversation with the PR person and see where that goes.

Be a Skeptic

Many journalists are cynics, and that is a trait that serves them well. It means not taking anything on face value. It means wondering someone’s motives if they want coverage. It means always asking why.

Bloggers could stand a dose of this as well. Don’t assume what you hear or read is true. When you hear a statistic or survey results, look to see who funded that survey or what the source of the statistics are. Always be looking for the wizard behind the curtain.

Edit Your Copy

I see many blogs that have many typos and grammatical errors. It really isn’t hard to edit your posts to clean them up. If you don’t already, get a copy of the AP Style Book and read it through. If you can’t do that, at least have a mental style policy (like you always call it blog and not weblog). A simple spell check can be very helpful, but it doesn’t catch everything (for example, words that are words but the wrong word… or misuse of its vs. it’s).

If bloggers want to command respect as an important part of the media, having copy that is error-free goes a long way towards looking professional.

Even though most bloggers don’t have editors, consider pairing up with a blog friend to read over each other’s posts and look for typos and errors.

Be Ethical

There is no official blogger code of ethics. But Mommy Niri nailed it when she spoke out during the Type-A Mom Conference’s Town Hall Meeting. “If you live ethically, you’ll blog ethically.”

What I read into that is this: we should each have our own barometer to tell us right from wrong. Use it. There was a general rule that we used in newspapers that applies just as well to blogs. If you wouldn’t mind it being published on the front page (translate: home page), then it’s probably OK to do. So that means if you are doing something, ask yourself how you would feel (or your readers would feel) if you posted what you did on your home page. At the top. With H1 tags. Flashing.

Be Transparent

To the last point, always be transparent. I honestly don’t think traditional journalists do enough of it, but we can certainly set the bar for them. Yes, it’s all fine and dandy to have a disclosure page somewhere on your blog. And you always read the fine print, right? Yeah, thought so. Disclosures should happen on any post where they apply, and prominently. That will comply with FTC guidelines, but also ensure your readers really know what is going on.

You can put something at the end of your post to say, for example, a company sent you the product you just reviewed. But there are also natural ways to work that into the copy. Something like, “When Company X sent me the Widget…” This doesn’t have to be rocket science.

Think of Readers First

This is last, but most important. This is one where I think traditional media has dropped the ball, and it is part of the reason I got out of the business. They started caring more about profits and advertisers and statistics about demographic who weren’t reading newspapers anymore and they stopped thinking about the most important priority: readers. The important investigative stories readers need have been neglected so reporters could churn more 5-inch no-brain-cell-required stories into the newspaper machine.

The Watergate story would never happen today.

Your readers should always come first. Without them, you have no blog. Whenever you struggle with a decision, ask yourself what your readers would want. If you’re really torn, ask them on your blog.

Just never forget that the readers are what it’s all about. They are your community, so much more so than with traditional one-directional media. Your readers don’t just read you, they talk to you. They are important.

_{Photo of journalist, © Erik Stabile}

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