The Lawrence-Journal World, often considered one of the most innovative U.S. newspapers, has made a company-wide to beat blog.

Many papers have at least a beat blog or two. Some have several but the LJ World is experimenting with beat blogs for a wide range of beats. One of the biggest reasons that the LJ World added beat blogs was because they wanted to tap into a broader network of sources.

“Clearly a community of 100,000 will know more than a newsroom of 50 ever will,” online editor Jonathan Kealing said.

One of the blogs that embodies that philosophy is Chad Lawhorn’s Town talk blog about the city of Lawrence, Kansas. The blog is billed as, “Blurbs and bites from newsmakers and your neighbor.” Kealing said it’s the kind of journalism that the LJ World could not do without a blog, especially in print.

Another successful beat blog is Heard on the Hill. This blog about Kansas University owes much of its success to its ability to harness the strengths of the Web.

“It’s short form,” Kealing said. “It’s videos. It’s giving people information in different ways.”

Alex Parker, an education reporter for the LJ World, recently launched a beat blog with fellow reporter Lindsey Slater called Schoolhouse talk. While Parker works for the LJ World, Slater works for a TV affiliate. The two bring different styles and strengths to the blog. 

“The idea was to have an alternative method of interacting with our community,” Parker said. ”Ultimately we want to use the blog as just another way to disseminate news. A way that is a little less formal, a way to link out to other sites, embed videos, link to documents.”

Parker is hoping to get more comments on his beat blog. He believes that will be a big part of the blog’s success or failings, and so far he isn’t satisfied with the amount of traffic to his blog or the amount of comments on it. Schoolhouse talk is only a few months old, and the jury is still out, but typically it takes at least several months for a beat blog to build a loyal base of readers. 

“It hasn’t become a destination for people yet,” Parker said. “We’re still trying to figure it out.”

Parker also reiterated Kealing’s thoughts on the crowd being wiser than them.

“You can bet your house that there are tons of people out there who know more about our beats than we do,” he said. “There is a whole wealth of information out there. We’re comfortable knowing that sometimes our audience does more than us.”

The LJ World hasn’t been beat blogging that long, but Kealing said they have learned several lessons.

1. Not every beat is as well suited to blogging as others — For Kealing, this doesn’t mean not trying blogging with certain beats, but it does mean having reasonable expectations for each beat. The crime beat is immensely popular, while the health beat is less so. The LJ World doesn’t expect those two beats to have the same amounts of traffic or comments. Still, this might mean that a beat blog won’t for some beats.
2. Timing is everything — I’ve mentioned this several times before on here. Kealing has noticed the same phenomenon. Basically, when big events happen, jump all over them. Cover them well. Nobody is looking for dated coverage, and beat blogging allows news organizations to be extremely current with information. Beat blogging also allows reporters to report more in-depth and link to important documents and other Web sites. 
3. Headlines are very important — SEO is a big part of this, but it goes deeper than that according to Kealing. ”That headline has to do a lot to draw people in,” he said. “A lot of times reporters are interested in over-arching headlines that don’t really say anything. You have to be pretty explicit, otherwise people are going to ignore it.” On the Web, being ignored is a death sentence. There are countless Web sites to grab users attention. Don’t give users a reason to go searching for something more interesting. The quality of a headline can be the difference between success or failure for a blog post.