The first obvious step to beat blogging is starting a blog. That’s what the Cincinnati Inquirer did on January 2nd when they launched a blog to cover Proctor and Gamble.

The first post, written by one of the technical folks, had a big glaring error.

“This new blog will contain subjects of interest to the business reader
following the consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, as well as
the consumers who use its 3,000 brands.”

That’s about 2,700 too many brands.

Our Beat Blogger,

Keith T. Reed was quick to correct the mistake in a follow up post (kudos for thinking on his feet and being honest with the readers). In it he succinctly describes what a beat blog is.

“See, this blog is meant to be a forum where my reporting on P&G is
informed by those who know the company best — its workers, executives,
retirees, customers and anyone else with a close relationship and
vested interest in the company.”

For some this approach to blogging is nothing new. One of the advantages to having a wildly read blog is that your readers act as fact checkers. Still, this is an interesting and great start for a beat blog. First: Kieth is already aware of how advantageous his readers knowledge is and has already had the chance to recognize them publicly. That this was done so early on means Keith will only dive into this relationship further – which is where beat blogging comes in. How can Keith take this one step further?

The next step is building a digital relationship with sources. Taking readers, like the 6 that commented on that first erroneous post, and bringing them into the reporting process, which is much more dynamic than the reading/commenting process. That final shift won’t be easy, but Keith obviously understands the communicative power of blogging. To get it started Keith needs to expand on his plea to readers. The first thing to do if you want to get a community of sources to help your reporting is ….ask. State the terms of what you want, what you expect and what they can expect from you. I call it “the pitch,” Jay Rosen calls it “the contract.” It is the next phase of the beat blogging project.

It might not be a blemish free start, but the Cincinnati Inquirer now has a blog to organize their effort in this beat blogging experiment. The next thing to do is write a pitch letter to sources.