Comm 361: Grant Paulsen

Chapter 10: Managing News as a Conversation

I’ve become accustomed to journalists who prefer news as a lecture. That seems to be the way of broadcasting the news today. But that wasn’t always the case, and according to Briggs — that’s not the way delivering news should, or will, be conducted in the future.

Some of the best news anchors of all-time had conversations with their viewers. Briggs mentions Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite as conversationalists. Story-tellers who enjoyed conversing with people who were not talking back. It’s what made them special.

Briggs cites “social networking” as the best new-school way of delivering news through conversation. He wrote that, “Social media represents a new way to connect with people and communicate information. Reporters and journalists always need to do that.” (more…)

Chapter 2: Advanced Blogging

I wish Briggs would have just laid out a bunch of web-writing techniques in a colloquial, no-nonsense kind of way. But he didn’t. The closest he got was to give the 3 characteristics of a good blog, in bullet form.

He defines a blog as: (A) A frequently updated site with entries displayed from newest to oldest.  (B)  Each post has a headline and a body. Most entries include links to other sites on the Web, and many contain photos. (C) It contains a link for comments that lets readers post their thoughts on what the blogger is writing about.

One thing I didn’t realize was that blogs became particularly popular after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (more…)