Why Journalists Should Live Blog

Blogging events in real-time is allowing journalists to get “down and dirty” with the audience in a way they never could before, according to one prolific live blogger.

Sean Ingle from the Guardian recently outlined the benefits of live blogs and claimed that the most popular ones can prove a valuable traffic generator, reports the Digital Content blog.

Speaking at one of the newspaper’s panel events for its current internal conference, the sport editor stated that live blogging is now one of the Guardian’s most popular online formats since it began using it during the 2002 World Cup.

“A good live blog has all the information as well as being quick, but it is also trying to entertain - it needs to be funny and quirky,” he said.

“It’s like a really intelligent pub chat - it might occasionally turn into a bar room brawl but it allows our journalists to get down and dirty with the public in a way they couldn’t before.”

As well as discussing the Guardian’s live blogs (some of which may contain strong language in the comments sections) on sports such as football, cricket and horse racing, the panel talked about the newspaper’s live coverage of TV shows.

The Apprentice and Big Brother live blogger Anna Pickard told the audience that the platform’s strength lies in its ability to create communities.

She asserted: “The exciting bit is that a community builds around the event, and what started as a small group of people who would say ‘I saw that’, now works as a standalone review of a show.

“I think conversation is the best thing about the internet, and live blogs introduce this idea of simultaneous conversation. People have an innate need to join in.”

Further information on the Guardian’s @ Future of Journalism conference can be viewed in this article.