Here’s the point most often missed: Successful beatblogging saves, not costs, reporters their time. In a fraction of the time and effort, it accomplishes all these goals that any reporter would share:
- It can drastically increase your quantity of sources
- It can drastically increase the diversity of your sources
- It can positively develop your relationship with sources
- It allows you to stay in constant contact with those sources without picking up the phone and calling them individually
- It encourages those sources to share story ideas or current happenings
- It can lead you into background or context to your stories you wouldn’t otherwise know about
Along with these additional benefits that the new-media types love:
- It encourages a sense of community
- It gets information to people in the form that they choose
- It allows for a depth that the print product can’t achieve
- It makes the news a conversation instead of a declaration
