What sort of blogs do United Kingdom newspapers have and why should you want to read them?
Blogs are not just for individuals to express their views and then post a few pictures, now most newspapers, including quality newspapers, in the United Kingdom have them, too! So, what is a newspaper blog and why should you bother reading one?
Newspapers were slow to catch the start of blogging, no doubt seeing it as a form of publication that did not involve them. But one paper must have started a blog section and then all were obliged to follow suit.
Initially newspapers were unsure now to use the new idea of blogs and they were simply seen as extensions to the main print stories, a sort of electronic update, but over the years they have matured considerably.
Most of the quality UK daily newspapers boast blogs by their journalists each on their own specialised subject. For example, the content of the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Express feature, as you would expect, strong, quality writing on serious current news stories. These blogs provide in-depth articles and opinion to complement and provide a background to the main stories of the day, allowing the writers to provide more detail and include more comment and quotes.
The Sun (see the ‘My Sun’ section) and the Daily Star (the ‘My Star’ section), however, take a slightly different approach. Both newspapers, in a similar way, offer their own journalist’s blogs but you can also have your own blog (if you agree to a few simple rules). This policy produces a lively ‘community’ feel and also a plethora of entertaining and sometimes thought provoking blogs that cover a much wider scale. Take a little time out and have a look, the links are below.
So why should you bother to read them? The point is, blogs are more personal than newspaper articles, their content reflecting the writer’s opinion in a way that a newspaper column cannot. In its way, this makes them more akin to TV pieces – entertainment rather than just information. They also allow journalists to delve deeper into a subject that interests them.
There’s another reason, too. Blogs give a journalist a chance to write about a subject in a different way to the way a newspaper article is written. Most newspaper articles give you the facts in the first paragraph or so and then spend time below expanding these facts in a sort of top down manner. Blogs, however, allow you to write in a more natural way that lends itself to a more in-depth read.
Blogs, too, have the sense of being written by a real person rather than an institution, with a feeling of more access to the writer. This can make a blog more likely to be read and remembered. Blogs, too, allow the writer to wander off topic and include other, perhaps equally interesting, side issues.
The problem with newspaper blogs (and blogs in general) is one of quantity since there are so many to choose from – or, put the other way – how do you decide what to read? The advantage, of course, is that you can dip into a variety of daily papers for your information and entertainment.
Have a look at the blogs below for a few days and then select your own choice of blogs to read and set aside time to read them each day. It’s a good way of getting and retaining important information about the world as well as providing entertainment in the process.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tone/blog
http://dailyexpress.co.uk/blogs
Mon, Apr 13, 2009, by Mike Taperell
Blogging