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Blogs written by members of your community make so much sense, from the addition of local voices to your Web site to the more pragmatic fact: Very little staff time is taken up with managing a good community blogger. But how do you find an expert in your community willing to write daily, someone who understands best blog practices, such as linking and photos and such?
Here's how the Rockford Register-Star answered those questions and more. Executive Editor Linda Grist Cunningham takes some time to explain the newspaper's approach to community bloggers just after rrstar.com successfully added a conservative blogger this month.
Q&A with Linda Cunningham
You have a new community blogger, Ted Biondo. How did you find him? And why did you think he would be a good addition to what you already offer?
The path from Sundstrand aerospace engineer to rrstar.com blogger started in the early 1990s. Ted keelhauled me when I was a guest speaker for a Sundstrand employee “better government” workshop. After taking me and the Register Star apart point-by-point, Ted belligerently demanded: “So, how do I get my point across to the Editorial Board?” “Easy,” replied I. “You can serve on the board as a community member.” He did. And in the years following, Ted has been a strong, loyal contributor to our community conversation efforts.
He’s been a ready source (school board, county board, community college board, engineering, aerospace; taxes and government), a letter to the editor writer, a guest columnist dozens of times over. There are more than 500 Register Star articles since 1998 in which Ted Biondo is a primary figure – and those do not include almost a decade before our electronic archiving began.
Ted is a wonk. Give him a spreadsheet; he’s delirious. The more complicated the finances, the happier he is. Over almost two decades in the public eye, Ted has grown his deserved reputation as a fiscal conservative with the smarts, education and comprehensive context to dissect governmental finances from local schools and county pensions to the federal deficit and Social Security. He’d be the second to say (I am the first) that eyes glaze over when he gets into full-wonk mode. Ted argues with his head and his facts. He loves to debate; for him, an issue is a passionate, intellectual argument. It is his fiscal conservatism that won him the trust of the community. If Ted said spending money on something was a good idea, everyone went along. He believed a significant tax increase for schools was absolutely imperative – and he joined the task force that got it passed. Simply having his name there mattered.
Blogs written by members of your community make so much sense, from the addition of local voices to your Web site to the more pragmatic fact: Very little staff time is taken up with managing a good community blogger. But how do you find an expert in your community willing to write daily, someone who understands best blog practices, such as linking and photos and such?
Here's how the Rockford Register-Star answered those questions and more. Executive Editor Linda Grist Cunningham takes some time to explain the newspaper's approach to community bloggers just after rrstar.com successfully added a conservative blogger this month.
Q&A with Linda Cunningham
You have a new community blogger, Ted Biondo. How did you find him? And why did you think he would be a good addition to what you already offer?
The path from Sundstrand aerospace engineer to rrstar.com blogger started in the early 1990s. Ted keelhauled me when I was a guest speaker for a Sundstrand employee “better government” workshop. After taking me and the Register Star apart point-by-point, Ted belligerently demanded: “So, how do I get my point across to the Editorial Board?” “Easy,” replied I. “You can serve on the board as a community member.” He did. And in the years following, Ted has been a strong, loyal contributor to our community conversation efforts.
He’s been a ready source (school board, county board, community college board, engineering, aerospace; taxes and government), a letter to the editor writer, a guest columnist dozens of times over. There are more than 500 Register Star articles since 1998 in which Ted Biondo is a primary figure – and those do not include almost a decade before our electronic archiving began.
Ted is a wonk. Give him a spreadsheet; he’s delirious. The more complicated the finances, the happier he is. Over almost two decades in the public eye, Ted has grown his deserved reputation as a fiscal conservative with the smarts, education and comprehensive context to dissect governmental finances from local schools and county pensions to the federal deficit and Social Security. He’d be the second to say (I am the first) that eyes glaze over when he gets into full-wonk mode. Ted argues with his head and his facts. He loves to debate; for him, an issue is a passionate, intellectual argument. It is his fiscal conservatism that won him the trust of the community. If Ted said spending money on something was a good idea, everyone went along. He believed a significant tax increase for schools was absolutely imperative – and he joined the task force that got it passed. Simply having his name there mattered.
Ted is polarizing. Folks love him or hate him, not much in-between except that grudging respect for his fiscal smarts. Ted writes well; he states his arguments clearly; he defends them with facts and analysis.
I’d been casting about for a blog “partner” for the popular Pat Cunningham. Pat, a former editorial page editor and columnist for the Register Star, created Applesauce at our suggestion early in the last presidential race. An unabashed liberal, Pat is the top traffic driver among our bloggers. With almost 40,000 page views a month, Pat is a star. I wanted a conservative match for Pat. I knew Ted would have the same passion as Pat, and I knew Ted had the same name recognition, as well as the skills to think it and write it.
How do you work with community bloggers to ensure they update frequently, understand the importance of linking and offering photos within a blog, etc.? How much do you monitor what they write? Do you approve everything before it’s posted?
First we start by selecting the right person. These things are key with any blogger, community or staff:
1. Expertise in a significant local topic or critical issue..
2. Ability to form an idea clearly, support and document it, and write it well.
3. Strong critical thinking skills.
4. Mature judgment in sync with the values (not necessarily the views) of our news organization and community.
5. An understanding of and commitment to work within our Statement of Principles.
6. An existing “brand,” or the potential to shape one quickly.
Then, we teach. From how to post and link to best practices for responding to commenters, we do hands-on training. We don’t open the blog until they’re reasonably comfortable with the technology. We make sure they understand their specific roles and what our expectations are – from civil and civic conversations to posting at least daily. Then we monitor closely, checking in on posts, comments and responses; suggesting better ways of handling technology; making sure they stay on topic and within the agreed-upon guidelines.
We do not edit or approve blogs before they are posted. Staff and community blogs are posted directly by their authors. Bloggers cross-check and often cross-post each other; staffers and other editors parachute in; no blogger goes unnoticed during the day. I recognize the potential for occasional missteps. We choose our bloggers carefully, and we hold them to high standards for ethics, quality and performance. That reduces the chance of bad things happening.
How do you drive traffic to a new blog? What sorts of promotions do you use?
The No. 1 way to ensure decent blog traffic is to choose the content and topics that resonate with readers, and news topics do that better than any soft-feature topic can. No. 2, post often. Multiple times a day is best, but daily will work. Less than an average of four a week? Might as well kill it.
Then, we do extensive “push-pull” marketing. Pushing from the Web to print and pulling from print to Web and vice-versa. That means using blog posts in the carousel with links to posts, biographies and stories they have written. We use in-paper promotion to introduce staff and community bloggers. We link to bloggers from news stories when those bloggers are opining on the same or similar topic. We use Twitter and Facebook, as well as our RockfordWoman.com status updates and “what you know” posts, as push-pull promotion for our bloggers.
Ted is an easy one because he has long had his own brand. Indeed, we probably could have just called the column “Ted.” He, like Pat and Senior Editor Chuck Sweeny, are pretty much one-name divas with great skills and loyal readers.
How well is he doing in terms of numbers? Have you had any other feedback on him?
Ted launched the first of May and he is already in the No. 2 position behind Pat. Pat stands at 20,942 as of May 18; Ted is at 6,537 through the same period. Senior Editor Chuck Sweeny is at 5,514. Those are strong numbers for all three and Ted’s numbers demonstrate just how strong his existing “brand” is.
Read more about community blogging in the News Cube section of the Newsroom Handbook.
Contact Jean Hodges, manager of content development for the News & Interactive Division, at jhodges@gatehousemedia.com.
