Learning to blog

This blog is a teaching tool for my class on the 2016 Cleveland Republican National Convention. So if you're hoping to learn about the convention itself, you're kind of out of luck today, though I will get to it later. You might learn a bit about blogging, though.

Here is a sample of a convention blog. It's from 2012 and it was done by a newbie to national conventions, reporter Tracie Mauriello from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who was attending her first convention and discovered there were no blogs documenting how it's done. So she made one, and the National Press Foundation appreciated it enough to post the entire thing on its website.

Notice that blogging uses everyday language, so I'm chatty in tone, not formal as you would be in a story. You're also permitted to vent. Express your opinions, but keep within the bounds of what's loosely called "objectivity." In other words, don't say Trump is an ass or Hillary is a dork, even if that's obvious from the stories you tell. Let readers come to their own conclusions about the candidates, the political parties, etc. but give them anecdotes and analysis about what it's like for you to COVER them. Okay?

This is a fine line to tread, and the current election has posed HUGE problems for journalists. Here's an article that explains why it's tough to deal with Trump: he lies all the time. This is a fact. It's not opinion, but it's being labelled that way. Check it out. And notice that this article is clearly labelled with the tag "Opinion writer" even though the author proves his point with facts. 

It used to be that all opinion stories in newspapers were clearly labelled that way. Not today. Opinion is everywhere -- on broadcast news, on comedy shows, online and in print. We can't tell the opinion stories from the straight news. Except in old-fashions papers like the Washington Post, which is where the story on Trump's tendency to lie a lot is clearly labelled Opinion. 

So I'm giving you a space -- a blog -- where opinion is just fine. It will NOT be fine in the stories you write and the tweets you tweet. It will be okay here in your blogs. 

Nuff said for now. 
Dr. B