Creating the perfect beatblog

A cutting edge beatblog, and the sites of highest interest to Beatblogging.org, are those using the two-way, social part of the Web, to cover a beat in a networked or user-assisted way.

Here we find information and newsy items, advice and ideas regularly flowing in from readers as the blog becomes a platform for extending the network of the beat outward until hundreds and thousands of people are helping to… cover the beat.

But — truth be told — there aren’t any beatblogs that get it all right. Mostly, this is due to lack of time and resources. Where one blogger spends time on original content, another blogger spends time on two-way communication with readers/commenters.

So, let’s say that it were possible to create the perfect beatblog; that time and resources aren’t an issue. And let’s say that we created this blog using only elements from existing blogs. In other words, a mash-up.

What would this blog look like?

The Creators

First of all, it’s important to note that a beatblog does not have to be run by a large media company. It can be created by a single person or a team, a pro or an amateur journalist. The idea is that the creator(s) whoever he/she/they are, are people who care deeply about regularly covering a beat and focusing on content that is not only valuable to their readers who are interested in the niche topic, but also focus on content that their readers suggest be written or covered.

In other words, the creators “get it” — all of it. From the look and feel of their blog, to its subject to their linking ethics and social media leverage — they focus on truly becoming a “beatblog” and not just a blog that “happens to have a beat.”

They would have the reporting drive of Kent Fischer, the networking savviness of Monica Guzman, the friendly, open-mindedness of Brian Stelter and the entrepreneurial spirit of Daniel Victor.

The Design

It must be stressed that design goes a long way online. As much as “Content is King,” design can really change the way readers approach your blog and interact with it.

A beatblog that really hit the nail on the head in terms of theme and design is GothamSchools. It’s a blog focused on breaking news and analysis of the NYC public schools. If you take a look at the site, you’ll find that it’s header is properly tied in with the subject — it has the New York City skyline and the image of a public school.

The rest of the page is very minimalist and straightforward, designed to look like the pages of a notebook. What is great about GothamSchools is that there is no way anyone can get lost or confused with where to find more information, how to contact the creators or what the site is about. Everything is neatly organized and tagged, exactly the way beatblogs should be.

I’ve stressed before that many beat blogs fail to provide enough transparency and contact information on their pages. This is because so many of the best beatbloggers are attached to legacy news organizations, and thus, their pages are not stand-alone sites but rather limbs of the main news site.

I think the proper way to run a beatblog is to make it it’s own Web site, with it’s own contact information and “about” page. It shouldn’t just be a link from a drop-down menu on a news organization. Of course, if it’s affiliated it should have the proper attributions and links, etc.

But making the beatblog it’s own page can make it more comfortable for readers, easier to find and easier to interact with. Just as a news site’s Twitter feed or Facebook page is separate from the organization and more personalized, so should a beatblog be.

The Strategy/Execution

Properly running a beatblog can be difficult if there are time constraints or not enough helping hands. For example, Pharmalot, a beatblog run by journalist Ed Silverman about the pharmaceutical industry, featured really good daily journalism and link journalism. It was a beatblog that doggedly covered its niche.

But it would have been much stronger if had the same community building as the DISD Blog. Pharmalot might have been the best beatblog from just a pure content perspectiveve, but it always lagged in the two-way communication department. Silverman spent so much time delivering incredible content by himself that he simply couldn’t do more two-way communication.

Then you take Alexander Russo’s District 299 blog, and it has great two-way communication but could be stronger in terms of original content.

Again, if time weren’t an issue, what would the proper mash-up look like?

1. Clear beat: GothamSchools
2. High volume of commentary: SciGuy
3. Harvesting of comments “Here’s what you said about this…”: Come Heller High Water
4. Inquiries/questions asked to readers: Security Fix
5. Daily roundup: The Daily Wrap
6. Filtering and linking: Today in the Sky
7. Comments or e-mails from readers run as posts/used for story ideas/improve stories: Central PA NewsVote
8. Comments hosted in blog entries: Inside Ed
9. Reader blogs: Seattle PI
10. Hoisting Comments: Dallas ISD Blog
11. Live blogging: The Caucus
12. Frequent blog posts by author, i.e. several per day, updates: Glenn Greenwald
13. Contact info/Transparency/Accessibility/Brand identity: Security Fix
14. Good use of Twitter: Alex Roarty of PoliticsPA
15. Quality writing/grammar/style: Slate.com

The Results

In the end, it’s all a time and money game. There’s not enough of either. And that’s okay — for now.

Beatblogs are still in their infancy, and it’s going to take time to evolve into something powerful and profitable. It’s always important, however, to keep fresh ideas in mind and constantly try to break the mold.

Be creative. Think outside the box. Learn from the best.

Run the best damn beatblog that the Internet’s ever seen.

EWA: Social media for better education reporting

Below you’ll find a post I created to go with a beatblogging presentation at the Education Writers Association conference.

For a more in-depth quick start guide on what beatblogging is, how to do it and best practices, check out my post: BCNI Philly: Why beatblog? (and why news should be social)

Best networks for education reporters

• Facebook — Facebook is a no brainer. It originally started as a social network just for college students, then added high school students and now has expanded to allow everyone to join. You’ll find a much higher concentration of college students in particular on Facebook than you will on MySpace. Even many teachers, professors and administrators are joining Facebook these days. It’s the perfect network to find education-related people to interview and even find stories. Every education reporter should at least have a presence on Facebook.
• Twitter – Twitter is a great social network for almost any journalist. In particular, it’s a great tool for crowdsourcing, asking questions and monitoring trends. Check out our screencast on how to use Twitter for reporting and our other screencast on how to use search.twitter.com.

Education beatbloggers to follow

• Tawnell Hobbs/Kent Fischer | DISD Blog — The DISD blog won this year’s EWA award for best multimedia education blog and for good reason. It has been the gold standard for education beatblogs the past 1-2 years. Here are just a few of the lessons you can learn from the DISD blog: Fischer’s readers helped him uncover an A1 story, hoisting comments to build a better community, live blogging to help form a closer connection with readers, providing a public service for readers, etc, etc, etc.
• Alexander Russo | District 299 Blog — Russo has a different kind of beatblog. He centers his blog around “hosting the conversation.” The District 299 is a place where people in Chicago can go to discuss education and the Chicago school district. Russo does original reporting, linking to others content and conversation starting.
• Gotham Schools — This non-profit, new media startup is one to watch. They don’t have an institutional memory and aren’t beholden to how things “used to be.” Instead, they can concentrate on transforming education reporting. We’re big fans of their daily link journalism post too.
• Khristopher Brooks — Brooks use of Facebook is one to emulate. He convinced the University of Nebraska to give him a nebraska.edu e-mail address. This allows him to see most students on the Nebraska Facebook network. Brooks does not grab students profile information without prior permission, however, and he mostly uses Facebook to find students who are studying certain majors or taking certain classes. If Brooks is doing a story where he needs to talk to a student about a controversial class, for instance, he can search the Nebraska Facebook network for students in that class, contact them and get interviews. He essentially uses Facebook as a phone book on steroids. Listen to Brooks discuss how Facebook has made his job much easier.

Best practices

• Be transparent and accessible — Brooks is extremely accessible for Nebraska students because he has put himself on Facebook. If students want to contact him about an issue at Nebraska that he may not know about, they can easily do so via Facebook. It takes far less work on their part to send him a private message via Facebook than it does to hunt down his e-mail address or phone number. The easier you make it for people to contact you, the more likely it is that they will contact you. Get on multiple social networks (with your real name), put a bio and about page on your blog and make sure you have contact info on your blog.
• Be social – This could be as simple as being active in the comments section after stories and blog posts. It also means being an active participant on social networks. If you’re on Twitter, just don’t ask people questions, but answer their questions too. Be social and get to know people. Social media is all about being social. The old way of doing journalism was one-way communication, but today it’s all about two-way communication. Be a part of a conversation.
• Cultivate a community — Being social is the first part of cultivating a community. If you’re lucky enough to be given your own blog, use it to its fullest potential. A blog is a fantastic place to cultivate a community of knowledgeable sources that will send you tips, links and documents. Monica Guzman is the master community cultivator and is someone worth following for ideas on how to build a community.

Monica Guzman on how to be a quality commenter

Expert community builder and comment cultivator Monica Guzman recently gave a talk where she implored people to be quality commenters and not trolls.

I would certainly recommend showing this to your Web site users. Maybe it will help spur some better conversations. But Guzman also says that news organizations and journalists have to take ownership of the comments on their site.

Guzman says this means providing the right tools for community moderation, having enough resources to police that community and recognizing that news is a conversation.

But you knew all that good stuff already. Right? The rest of Guzman’s talk is about how our users can make the whole experience better.

Some of the points that Guzman made:

• Choose your story wisely — Guzman says that no one cares what you have to say on a Britney Spears story or on a liberal/conservative debate. Those comments and debates always turn out poorly.
• Focus on what’s smart — Comment on something that’s smart in a story or something that you like about it. Pointing out accidental misspellings doesn’t forward the conversation along.
• Tell us what you think — But of course think first. You know, read the whole story first.
• Tell us your story — “Quote yourself.” Guzman wants you to tell your story in the comments section. And maybe you’ll become a new source.
• Tell us what you know — Post links, talk about studies, add to the conversation, etc.
• Ask a question — Ask a good question, and you might get a great answer.
• Introduce yourself — Own up to your ideas.

Yes, it’s really that simple (hat tip to Chris O’Brien for finding this video).

What it takes to be a beatblogger

Want to know what it takes to be a beatblogger? Not sure where to start? Who is doing it already? Here is your simple introduction to the new revolutionary practice that is changing the world of digital journalism.

A beatblogger isn’t just a blogger.

Twitter isn’t merely “Facebook Status Updates.” It’s much more. Likewise, beatblogging is more than just a journalist being assigned to blog for a major news publication. A beatblogger, simply put, is a beat reporter who uses their blog as a tool to engage their readers, interact with them, use them as sources, crowdsource their ideas and invite them to contribute to the reporting process.

When a beat reporter uses social networking with the community to create hyper-local and hyper-focused stories – that’s beatblogging. As a result, the beat is better researched because the community that is directly involved with the subject is actively participating in creating news.

Your readers are your new BFF’s. Get to know them. Invite them to dinner.

Okay, so you don’t exactly have to invite them into your home, but you get the idea. Beatblogging requires reporters to start conversations with their readers. But simply replying to a few comments doesn’t cut it. It’s the year 2009. You have to be way more active than that. This means asking questions, replying to comments, seeking out tips, using their story ideas and building stories upon their conversations.

More often than not you’ll be required to continue conversations on older stories even when you are already working on a new project. This can be tiring, time-consuming and hard work. But the trade-off is that much of the researching and source-chasing that journalists used to undergo is eliminated through the first degree contact with the community.

If you haven’t spoken to your audience, if you don’t know who your most loyal reader is, if you haven’t written a story based on a tip from the comments section of your blog and if you haven’t asked the crowd for help — you’re losing. You’re not using 2009 tools to be at the forefront of the digital revolution. And you’re certainly not a beatblogger.

Be everywhere. I’m not kidding.

Journalists in the 21st century can no longer hide behind their bylines. I can’t stress enough how important it is for bloggers to be accessible through all networks and social sites. Where’s your “about” page? Is your e-mail easy to find? Do you have a photo up?  Even some of the most successful beatbloggers today have not been doing a good job of making themselves transparent.

It’s important to bridge the gap between reader and source and build a circle of trust. And the only way this can happen successfully is if both sides agree to be transparent. If bloggers are annoyed by snarky, anonymous commenters, then lead by example. Don’t hide information about yourself either.

Be accessible. That means I should be able to find your name, a photo, e-mail, Facebook page, LinkedIN account, Twitter name and possibly an e-mail. That’s it. It’s not too hard, and it will make your beatblogging experience world’s easier. (P.S. Want to be a top search result when searching for the term ‘beatblogger’? Then make sure to add the keyword multiple times in your various social profiles!).

Learn by example. It’s okay to copy practices. Don’t worry, it’s not plagiarism.

Journalists hate to copy. They don’t like anything that isn’t original or different. They like to be the first to report on a story or have a certain angle. But sometimes it’s okay to copy, especially in the case of beatblogging. What this means is that you should look at what current beatbloggers are doing successfully and emulate their methods to form your own beatblog.

Take a look at Kent Fischer from the Dallas Independent School District Blog, who is building a “blog on steroids.” Fischer’s blog is essentially a micro-site, a niche publication that covers the education system in Dallas, Texas by combining beatblogging with database reporting.

Learn from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Monica Guzman as she innovate with her weekly office hours for readers. Guzman connects with her users on her blog, The Big Blog, on social media sites like Twitter and in person. Guzman is a master conversation starter and uses her networks to get people talking about issues in Seattle and about the PI’s content. The Big Blog is all about cultivating conversations and there is no one better than Guzman at that.

Check out Brian Stelter from the New York Times who is beatblogging at “TV Decoder,” where he covers the day’s on-screen and behind-the-scenes developments, with insights into Nielsen ratings and the machinations of the TV industry. Stelter has found that it’s easier to share stories, ideas, links and be able to ask for advice, contacts, and sources. He is always opening himself up to opinions, more points of view and more sources. Likewise, users send Stelter feedback and actually like to contribute because they feel more connected. He is a real person they can interact with.

Watch Daniel Victor, the twenty-four year old reporter for The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News. Victor is trying his hand at mobile journalism, and he’s convinced that community-building and crowdsourcing are the two biggest keys to journalism’s future. Victor experimented with a Ning network that ultimately didn’t work out, but it hasn’t deterred him from innovating. Victor’s latest venture is a blog where Victor asks his reader’s to be his assignment editor. Readers are, literally, his assignment editors — researching, contributing ideas and suggesting stories.

Lastly… INNOVATE!

The most marked characteristic of beatbloggers is that they all took it upon themselves to pitch new ideas to their editors and take on radical experiments that had never been attempted in the world of journalism. A true beatblogger never stops trying to innovate and create new ways of using the community and social media tools to improve journalism. Don’t be afraid to use your own methods. And when you do, be sure to send us your work our way!

Did this article help? Comments or questions? Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments or send a tweet to @MsBeat.

Podcast: Conducting meetups/office hours to connect with readers

Monica Guzman has been conducting meetups to connect with readers, build sources and find out what her readers want her and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to cover.

The fate of the PI is very much up in the air, but Guzman and her colleagues are still innovating and pushing the practice. Guzman in particular has been innovative with her work on The Big Blog, and her weekly meetups fit in well with her blogging.

Guzman began doing the meetups so she could get out of the office and meet her readers. Guzman’s job is to be a guide to Seattle and to help spur conversations on the PI’s Web site. A big part of her job is connecting with readers and cultivating conversations on the PI Web site, and it made sense for her to continue that in person.

“The way I thought of it was office hours,” she said. “If the point of my blog and the point of what I’m trying to do as a journalist is to find new ways to connect with people, why not do it in person?”

Guzman patterned her office hours after the weekly office hours that her professors had in college. She wanted a regular space for readers to be able to drop in and say hi. She also wanted to give people a forum to express their thoughts.

“I like that idea of being available often,” she said about why she decided to have the meetups weekly.

An average of about 10 people attend each session. She notifies readers about the meetups on her blog and on Twitter, and the meetups are at different venues around the city to encourage different people to attend. While there are regulars, the varying locations help ensure that the crowd is unique each week.

“The conversation is defined by the people there and what they want to talk about,” she said. ”There is no secret formula.”

Guzman has begun bringing along special guests that her readers are interested in. These special guests can be prominent bloggers and community members that have stories and lessons to share. It’s great if a story comes out of the interaction with her special guests, but it’s not a requirement.

The meetups are casual without a set agenda. She doesn’t generate a story out of each meetup, but story ideas have come out of her interactions with readers. She also has written stories based on what readers say at the meetups.

Ultimately, connecting more with her readers has allowed Guzman to do her job better.

“It absolutely helps me get to know the city better,” she said.

Many journalists would balk at spending time on meetups, fearing that they would be too much effort for too little output. Guzman said she has not run into those problems. In fact, it takes very little effort to get a meetup going with Web tools like blogs and Twitter.

“It’s kind of astonishing how little time and effort it actually takes,” she said. “It just starts with, ‘I’m going to be here.’”

Some other topics discussed:

• What problems has she faced with the meetups?
• How do her editors originally feel about the meetups? How did she convince them to let her work on something that doesn’t always generate content?
• How have her editors and her coworkers’ opinions changed of the meetups?
• Do any of her coworkers also conduct meetups?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

Podcast: Levinthal on starting a beat blog to meet users’ needs

Dave Levinthal and his colleague Rudolph Bush started The Dallas City Hall Blog after seeing the success of blogs like the Dallas Independent School District Blog and various political blogs on the Internet.

“We saw that and saw the benefits of them having a blog, and wanted to go ahead and do it ourselves,” Levinthal said.

But there was another reason for starting it too.

“We have a need for this,” Levinthal said.

There was news not being reported because of a lack of a dedicated online presence for the city hall beat, while other news was simply not being reported in a timely manner. 

“[We started the blog] to give ourselves a medium where we could grab in all those snippets of news that fell to the floor,” he said. “Those are little inside baseball nuggets, those are the sort of light hardhearted side of politics, breaking news that often would have to wait until the next day or be buried somewhere else on the Web site.”

Now Levinthal and Bush can even beat their broadcast counterparts to the punch with their beat blog and live blogging efforts. Before the beat blog was established, Levinthal worried if a news item would show up on the 6:00 or 10:00 news, before The Dallas Morning News came out the next day. Levinthal never worries about that anymore. 

Levinthal and Bush have also benefited from going niche on the Web. Before they had their own blog, they used to post to a general news blog for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. That may have been okay for the occasional breaking news item, but it wasn’t a good way to cultivate a beat online.

The Dallas City Hall Blog is a haven for political and government news junkies. It’s the place to go for both in-depth features and up-to-the-second tidbits. 

“You can talk about the decline of circulation for newspapers all you want, but I think the fact of the matter is … that more people are reading about Dallas city news and Dallas political news than they ever have been,” he said.

Before the beat blog, Levinthal relied on a much smaller group of sources. These were proactive sources that would contact him when they wanted to get something out. Levinthal also had to work the phones a lot, trying to find information.

“The fact of the matter is, most people are not going to take the time or want to make the effort to pick up the phone and call you, unless they are a regular, trusted source of yours,” he said. “Now people who may care about a specific esoteric issue … they have no qualms about firing an e-mail off to you saying, ‘hey I have information about this, that or the other thing.’ All the sudden you’re a conduit for information and tips. Some of our better stories this year have come from that kind of interaction.”

Levinthal has had stories that he originally imagined would be blog only published in the print edition. He did a blog post critiquing and rating each Dallas city council members Web site and digital presence. The Web sites ranged from very basic with an about page and some contact information to very elaborate with information on online contributions, blogs, video, audio, etc.

Levinthal gave each council member a letter grade and tried to see who had the best digital presence. It was a fun little feature.

“Editors at the paper ended up really taking a liking to it,” he said. “We ended up doing a whole big spread in print. That’s one example where the blog is driving the print product, as opposed to the print product driving the blog.”

Why should a beat reporting start a beat blog? Levinthal thinks its a necessity in this day and age. 

“It gives you the opportunity to get more depth, more breadth and, again, more immediacy to the news that you’re writing,” he said. “Frankly, although that’s more work for us and you find yourself up at all hours updating the blog and what not, it has really helped our beat reporting, and I think we simply do a better job of covering our beat.”

Some other topics discussed:

• How does a beat blog change print reporting? Is it a major paradigm shift in how you do journalism?
• How to build a relationship with a blog user to make them into a trusted source.
• How have your editors reacted to the blog?
• What is the future of the Dallas City Hall Blog? What does the next year hold?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

100 great blogs to inspire better beat blogging

PC Mag has a list of its 100 favorite blogs, and it’s a must check out for anyone who blogs and wants to become better.

Often the best way to improve at something is to study the best, and you can’t do much better then this list. Yes, many of these bloggers and blogs may not fit the beat blogging profile, but they are all outstanding blogs. Good blogging — let alone beat blogging — is quite a bit different than being a good newspaper reporter.

I would strongly recommend checking out non-news blogs as well. Inspiration doesn’t have to come from fellow journalists.

These blogs highlight a few fundamental truths of good blogging:

• Post variety — The best bloggers mix things up. Some posts are long, some are short, some are lists, some are polls and some are just photos with a little description. There are more options than just those, but you get the point. Newspaper writing can often be formulaic and designed to fill news holes. Blogging is nothing like that. If the best way to get your point across is to make a bulleted list than do that. Never try to make your content be something it isn’t.
• Interaction — The best bloggers interact, and interaction is a must for beat blogging. The biggest strength of the Internet is that it is two way. People can e-mail you, send you direct messages on Twitter, post comments on your blog, respond to your Seesmic videos and more. The best beat bloggers realize that their audience knows more than they do, and they harness that collective wisdom. 
• Be yourself — While blogging is different than writing for a newspaper, it doesn’t mean you should force yourself to be something you aren’t. I often see journalists new to blogging trying to be casual, write in first person, inject opinions and do other things they aren’t allowed to for a newspaper story. The problem is that it often feels forced. If you’re more comfortable writing in a third-person, objective style, than do it. You don’t have to be casual to be a good blogger. You don’t have to write in the first person from time to time to be a good blogger. You just have to be good at blogging and that means being yourself. I let the content dictate how I write. In time, most journalists will find their blogging voices, but my best advice is to drop all preconceived notions as to what blogging is and isn’t. 
• Visual aids — Good bloggers do more than just write. They also post other, more visual content. This could be photos, videos, charts, etc. Digital photo and video cameras are really cheap these days, and there is plenty of Creative Commons-licensed content available to use. Sites like Swivel make it incredibly easy to create gorgeous charts and graphs. And never, ever create a post about something visual (like a YouTube video) without at least linking to said content. This is the Web.
• User interface — Most of the most popular blogs are easy to navigate and are often visually appealing. A great design is entirely optional, but having a site that is easy to get around is a must. Less is often more. And a killer search engine is a must. If I know something is on your site and I can’t find it via your search engine than you’re doing something wrong. 

Hat tip to Will Sullivan for bringing this list to my attention on Delicious.

Podcast: Ryan Sholin on getting the most out of Ning

Many journalists and journalism organizations have considered setting up Ning networks to dive into social networking.

Ning allows people to easily set up custom social networks on virtually any topic they want (some “adult” topics are forbidden). Ning can be a great choice for many uses, but it can be overkill for others. Think of Ning as a way to set up a custom Facebook of sorts for your topic of choice.

Ryan Sholin, the co-creator of the popular Ning network Wired Journalists, has insight into what works and what doesn’t work with Ning. Wired Journalists is the third Ning site that Sholin has worked on, and it’s probably the most successful.

Many things are required for a good Ning network, but first things first, a good network needs cultivation.

“If you build it, they won’t necessarily come,” Sholin said.

Sholin recommends not only promoting the site, but also having someone be a cheerleader for the site, working to create content and stir conversations up.

“You need to have some sort of human interaction with a reporter or someone in the newsroom to draw people to it,” he said.

This is especially critical in the early stages of a network. Any Ning network requires users to log onto another site — and a site separate from your core product. This can be a significant barrier to the success of a social network. To get people into the habit of coming to a Ning network (and, more importantly, interacting), it requires having dedicated people around to create new content and to start conversations.

Eventually when a site reaches a certain critical mass like Wired Journalists, this is less important. It takes time and cultivation, however, to reach that critical mass. Wired Journalists has more than 3,000 members and gets hundreds of visitors a day.

In the beginning, Sholin and the other co-creators, Zac Echola and Howard Owens, discussed developing the site in Drupal. They realized that would be much more time consuming than what they wanted to do. Ning allowed them to set up the site within hours.

“If you don’t have a Web development team in your newsroom, and you’re looking for a way to create a site that at least creates and opportunity to interact with users … Ning is a great way to do that,” Sholin said.

Some other topics discussed:

• Would you choose Ning again if you could start over?
• How specific should a topic be for a Ning site to be specific?
• How many users are needed for a quality Ning network?
• How do you get the most out of Ning?
• What tips or tricks do you have for people interested in setting up a network?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

Leaderboard for week of 12-22-08: The best of the best

We thought we’d end this year with some of this year’s pace setters in the world of beat blogging.

These are some of best beat bloggers out there, and these people are constantly trying new ways to innovate. We do try to present a diversity of beat reporters on this blog, but on any given week, any one of these beat bloggers could be on the Leaderboard. Every week they are pushing the practice.

If you’re a journalist and you want to learn how to harness social media and other Web tools better, I strongly recommend you follow these beat bloggers every week.

DISD blog | The Dallas Morning News

• This award goes to both Kent Fischer and Tawnell Hobbs. They have produced one of the best beat blogs around.
• Who said that people don’t want to read about topics like education? The DISD blog is on track for more than 1,500,000 page views in its first year. That easily surpassed expectations. Just think of the page views that this blog could get if Fischer is able to build that blog on steroids that he is planning.
• Keep in mind that both Fischer and Hobbs also write for the print edition. This is a pretty impressive start for these two reporters, especially since their beat isn’t the easiest to get page views with.
• Perhaps the greatest success of the DISD blog is how active the community is around it. It has really spurred conversation and given people almost a public town hall where they can discuss the Dallas school district. 
• You know how you surpass expectations? You provide in-depth coverage, including live blogging big events. You also provide a fantastic place for people to express themselves. And finally, you provide a community where people want to help you out.
• When you do that, your community can help you uncover big stories. They can also act as a truth squad by fact checking what public figures say.
• People will be more likely to be active in your community if you acknowledge when they write something smart. That’s why Fischer started hoisting comments.

Eric Berger | The Houston Chronicle

• The SciGuy is one of the most innovative beat reporters around. Some of the things he does aren’t exactly social media or Web related per se, but they rock nonetheless. He is the master at building a community.
• No, technically conducting random drawings for science books does not count as beat blogging, but it is one hell of a way to build a community and build user loyalty. 
• Berger is sent many science books over the course of a year for review purposes. He thought it would be a good idea to conduct a random drawing for the five best books he received this year.
• Want to enter the drawing? All you have to do is leave a comment on his post about the book. So, not only is Berger finding a good way to recycle these books, but he also managed to get people talking about science topics. Check out all the wonderful comments left on that post.
• Plus, these posts might be a way to get people who have never commented before to start commenting. Why not do something like this?
• Berger does other innovative things, like asking his readers to be his assignment editor.
• Berger also understands that his users know more than he does.

Monica Guzman | Seattle Post-Intelligencer

• Want to know how to get a conversation started? Just follow what Guzman does. Her job is centered around getting people talking. 
• One of Guzman’s core jobs is to analyze posts to cultivate conservations. She reads what her colleagues write and tries to find interesting jumping off points for discussion. 
• For Guzman, cultivating conversations is a great way to build a community. Ultimately, building a community is at the core of beat blogging. 
• We often call beat blogging a sort of Rolodex 2.0. It greatly expands the number of available sources that a beat reporter has access to. But the only way to meaningfully expand that network of sources is to cultivate a community. 
• Guzman is also one of the most active beat bloggers on Twitter. 

Jon Ortiz | The Sacramento Bee

• Ortiz has only been beat blogging for about six months, but he has easily been one of the most innovative and adventurous around. Perhaps because he is new to blogging he is more willing to take risks and try new things. 
• Whatever the reason, The State Worker blog is a most follow. He has developed several distinct features that help break up the flow of his blog. 
• His “Blog back” feature is something every beat blogger should copy. 
• Ortiz has launched another new feature recently. This one he calls “From the notebook.” This feature is extra tidbits of information that don’t make it into columns or stories that Ortiz writes. 
• This is another one of those features that Ortiz created that doesn’t take a lot of time, but it provides his users with something of value.
• Ortiz launched his blog early so he could cover the budget crisis in California as it broke. It turned out to be a momentous decision for Ortiz. Timing can have a big impact on the success of a blog.

Leaderboard for week of 11-17-08: blog back edition

This week we examine some new ways to get people talking.

You’ll see some familiar faces and a new one. All three are beat bloggers worth flowingly on a daily basis. They have so many lessons to teach us all. 

We tackle cultivating communities and the wisdom of the crowd this week. Keep sending those nominees in!

Jon Ortiz | Sacramento Bee

• Ortiz recently launched a cool new feature, “blog backs.” It’s a great feature to spur better communication and conversations with users.
• This is how Ortiz describes blog backs: “review your thoughtful and provocative online comments, amplify points, answer questions, correct our mistakes and humbly accept your warranted criticism.”
• He takes good comments from users, elevates them and then responds to them. He also links back to the original post that spurred each comment. 
• This feature is a bit like hoisting comments. But the added twist of responding to and clarifying users comments makes this a much richer feature.

Brian Krebs | The Washington Post