I went to journalism school, which just might make me a “better” blogger. Here’s why I think so.

First of all, I learned to write in the “inverted pyramid” style, which says “start with a lead that exposes the most important elements of the story first, and then work down the page to aspects of the story that are of decreasing importance.” It’s a simple way to organize my writing.

I also learned how to properly use attribution, something which, when done wrong (by my standards) drives me crazy and is borderline dishonesty and/or theft. When I reference someone else’s blog, or an article, I’m very thorough and conscientious about clearly pointing out where the information came from. A typical attribution I might write would look something like this:

Tom Goldstein, writing in the August 21 San Francisco Chronicle, quotes Scott Rosenberg’s Book Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters:

“blogging could be journalism any time the person writing a blog chose to act like a journalist - recording and reacting to the events of the day, asking questions and seeking answers, checking facts and fixing errors.”

It might be a little pedantic, but heck, with that much information, you could find the source of the article I quoted without the link. And by the way, Rosenberg is on to something. There are plenty of bloggers who don’t act like journalists, but should.

As far as I’m concerned, for a blogger to “act like a journalist” is for the blogger to apply a few basic principles to blogging, like research, fact checking, correcting errors, using some kind of consistent style of presentation, distinguishing fact from opinion, and so on.

What else did I learn in journalism school? Keep paragraphs short for readability. There’s no magic number of words or sentences, but if your paragraphs look too dense, break ‘em up.

Emulate the pros. Some great bloggers to learn from are Dave Winer, and Tom Foremski, the first professional journalist/blogger.

Use a style guide. I don’t always follow it, but I do my best to write to Associated Press (AP) style. A style guide will tell you things like “write out numbers that are less than 10, and use numerals after that.” A little consistency is awesome.

Find your own unique voice. I’ve found mine, but I’m not sure it’s the right one. I can be a little too sarcastic, and (You might have noticed), I get all parenthetic. It’s my way of representing online the way I really talk. I tend to wander and introduce tangents, parallels and diversions, hopefully returning to the original thread. But I digress.

Write about something new, but if you can’t, find a new way to write about something that already exists. I recently wrote a column for Talent Zoo titled “Famous Dead People Weigh In On Social Media.” I quoted McLuhan, Einstein, Edith Wharton and others and used their quotes to make various points about the state of social media. I’m not saying this was an act of genius. And I didn’t write about anything “new,” but I did write about something in a new way.

Read voraciously. I mentioned emulating the pros, which I try to do, but I also read constantly. I have a book in bed and another in the bathroom. I read in the bathtub. If there’s nothing else to read I’ll read the ingredients on a toothpaste tube. I have a reading compulsion, and much of it happens offline.

So there’s a bit of what I learned in journalism school. I hope you find it helpful. I went to a state school, so if I was going to charge for this it wouldn’t be much, so you can have it, gratis.

Tags: blogger, journalist, journalism, inverted pyramid, attribution, Tom Foremski, Dave Winer