Blogging 101 with Bryan Murley

I’m going to be honest; it took me a while to wrap my head around the concept of blogging. In fact, I found myself very disillusioned with the whole blogosphere for some time.

As a news junkie, I believed that citizen media was responsible for the downfall of traditional journalistic institutions. More simply, I believed bloggers did not possess the knowledge or the credibility to do what ‘real’ journalists did.

While my views were unarguably cynical, I wasn’t alone. In 2002, no one thought bloggers were akin to journalists. Today, however, everything has changed.

After becoming involved in the world of journalism, I have come to see the change happen before my eyes. Not only has social and participatory media become more prevalent over my few short years as a student journalist, it has become nothing short of an industry essential.

The swift shift is evident in everything from: prominent journalists tweeting and established newspapers setting up Facebook fan pages, to the normalization of blogs affiliated with major news organizations.

Last week, I was a delegate at the Canadian University Press (CUP) conference in Edmonton, Alberta. Not surprisingly, many of the sessions were on participatory, social and new media.

One conference session in particular, was purely on blogging.

The session was led by Bryan Murley, an assistant professor of new and emerging media from Eastern Illinois University. Murley made a number of interesting points which I think any blogger, whether they choose to be a “linker” or a “thinker,” should be aware of.

What I found most interesting, was Murley’s assertion that while “news used to be a lecture, now it’s a conversation.” This could not be closer to the truth.

Murley went on to explain that blogging should be second nature for journalists today. He pointed out a number of situations where a blog could help a journalist to: break news, converse with their audience, or leverage sources.

Furthermore, blogs are updated more frequently than newspapers print. Therefore, having a blog can help a writer break free from their production schedule slump.

According to Murley, in the future of journalism, bloggers will function as curators. Murley said, “As a blogger, you want to be a hub where people go to be sent away.”

Above all, according to Murley, hyperlinks are crucial to any blog. He explained, “If you don’t have any links, then you aren’t doing it right.” This is because, Murley explained, your blog is “not a newspaper on the web.”

Lastly, Murley made it very clear that “a blogger can’t tell you everything.” However, he said, “They can link to places where you can find more.”

After all of this, one is left pondering the day when blogs replace newspapers altogether. As farfetched as it may sound, this day may not be as far off as print journalists would like to think. A recent blog post on Innovation in College Media suggests that this very scenario is already underway on American college campuses.

I can’t tell you whether blogs will take over as the next journalistic medium. However, every time I see CNN’s Christiane Amanpour update her Facebook fan page, view a tweet from The Economist or scan The New York Times posts to their "At War" blog from major conflict zones, I can’t help but think a new media takeover is already upon us.