5 Newsroom Tips to Improve Your Blog Today

Updated 9:51 a.m. Dec. 21, 2008: Reader response requested.

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Very talented writers publish excellent blogs every day, but the training received by most members of the blogosphere came in the time it took to fill out the forms to create the blog.

This lack of training is little problem for people sharing recipes or documenting the first days of their newborn child. However, many bloggers aspire to make a living at the craft, and financial independence is extremely unlikely for untrained hacks.

The print newspaper is dying a rather fast death, but formal journalism training benefits storytellers. With that said, here are five news tips for Bloggers:

1. Don't bury the lead

If you pick up the newspaper or call up the New York Times online, you will notice that few stories are told chronologically. That's because boring stuff usually happens at the beginning. Journalists get to the point. What makes this post interesting? Get that up front, or your readers will move on. In traditional news writing, the first paragraph is called the lead (often spelled "lede" to differential it from the hot liquid metal, lead, from which papers were originally printed).

And good leads contain the most important information.

Embarrassingly, burying the lead came to mind because I got called on it last week by a friend and fellow journalist. D'oh. How could I have been so careless?

2. Write compelling headlines

Clever, well-written headlines draw readers into the story. This was true on newsprint 100 years ago, and it's true today. Every word counts. Take the time present the most important facts compellingly.

A good headline cannot save a bad post, but a bad headline can prevent a good post from ever being read.

When I worked the copy desk at the Albuquerque Journal, I viewed every headline as a contest -- a contest that I wanted to win. Every day I wanted to hear a colleague say, "great headline."

Most people think that reporters write headlines. They don't. At best they suggest headlines, but in my experience they don't even do that. Headlines are written by copy editors, who know the font size and the number of columns that the headline needed to cover. And they have lots of practice at writing good headlines.

Blogs usually have a single-deck headline of a fixed length. Although this is limiting, it is not an excuse for lazy writing (more advice I need to remember, too).

Bottom line: Never, ever write the headline first. The best headlines are written at 10 p.m. when the reporter has been home for four hours. And they are never written before the story.

3. Make every word count

One of the biggest blog problems is excessive prose. Even when newsprint was cheap, there was a fixed newshole. And when it was filled, you stopped. This blog post can stretch to infinity. That's not an advantage.

As an analogy, consider what a former friend used to say to robust women with bare midriffs.

"Just because they make that in a size 13, honey, doesn't mean you should wear it."

Likewise, don't writer every word that comes to mind because you can.

Try to write tight. Sure there's endless space, but extra words are bad. You're probably blogging during spare time, and you don't have a rim and slot editor to trim fat. Be concise anyway.

4. Add color to your stories

I'm not a gifted writer. On my good days, I am a trained writer who tries hard. When I see a writer use powerful, concrete language, I am moved.

You can feel it when just the right detail is added to a story. What is the single aspect of a person or a situation that is crucial to the reader's understanding? Find it. Write it.

Remember that a picture is worth, more or less, 1,000 words. Only you can see what you're trying to say. Fight for exactly the right words to convey that scene to the reader.

5. Avoid adjectives

Excessive adjectives are the comforting crutch of the lazy writer. Sure, even well-trained, dedicated need some colorful descriptive adjectives. But if you're using a lot of them, then you have simply failed to find the right nouns and verbs (hopefully the humor is not lost in this paragraph).

Mark Twain is reported to have said, "When you can catch an adjective, kill it."

Did you really need to say, "violent explosion"?

This would supposedly differentiate it from a peaceful explosion.

We may talk of "future plans," but there's one adjective too many in that sentence. Unless your time machine surpasses mine, future plans are the only plans.

Catch them and kill them.

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I'll be a better writer tomorrow for having reminded us both of these ideas. But surely, you are sitting there thinking, how could he have forgotten ...?

So, tell me. What is the sixth blog improving tip that I should have included?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Learning good writing is not like learning to ride a bicycle (more on clichés another day). Good habits are forgotten. And writing well takes time. Take the time. Your readers will thank you for the investment.

Writing My First Book Update

I thought that I'd take a moment this Sunday morning to share my progress on the textbook I am helping to write.

A lot of people want to write a book, so I thought perhaps this might be of interest. Emphasis on might.

The book is an undergraduate textbook on research methods in advertising and public relations.

My real life continues to get in the way, so I am quite a bit behind schedule. I worked on the book for about 7 hours yesterday. The project of the day was a riveting chapter on data tabulation.

If it were simply a matter of sitting down and writing, it would be one thing. But data tabulation, as one might imagine, involves tables. So most of the day was spent making tables. Seven tables and one figure.

I could have simply made up data. However, being a scientist, hypothetical data is an allergen. So I found a national dataset and spent much of the day mining through the codebook for examples that have at least a chance of being relevant to advertising and public relations students.

As a side note, I have a newfound respect for all examples in textbooks.

Once I found a suitable example, the data were analyzed in statistical program SPSS, and then I could make the tables.

Today will represent another 8 hours on the project. I'll spend an additional hour or so on data tabulation, and then it is on to the fascinating world of quasi-experiments.

In many ways, the work is quite rewarding. In other ways, it is quite frustrating. This type of writing is unlike my journalism training, and it is vastly different from the scientific writing that takes much of my time these days.

And I am writing a little bit more than a quarter of the textbook. This will be a little bit of a rush in a quarter of a year. Thus, the entire thing would have been a rush in a year.

This gives me even more respect for those who can produce quality works far more quickly, including a colleague at Texas Tech.

I'm thankful to have the experience. I've always wanted to write a book. As a child, I'd sit around my parents' advertising agency fabricating books. Long before the days of desktop publishing, I was fascinated by the blank books you could buy at a bookstore. So much waiting to be said.

So I'm glad to know just how much work really goes into it.

This would be a lot more fun if I were writing about an area of research about which I care intensely. Instead, this is serving a need. And as with all things, satisfying wants is more fun thatnneeds.

Tortured Souls of Great Writers, Artists

UPDATE: Several typos fixed. Ugh.

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To write about the range of human emotions, an exceptional writer must have been reduced to the ground in pain and soared among the clouds in ecstasy.

This has been my working theory for years, and I am sure it owes to some intellectual antecedents that I no longer recall. My apologies to those forgotten inspirations.

My case in point has always been Ernest Hemingway. The quintessential American author suffered from alcoholism, bipolar disorder, and eventually took his own life with both barrels of a double-barreled shotgun at age 61.

Writers -- indeed many great artists -- don't seem to be a happy-go-lucky sort. Tortured souls such as Vincent Van Gogh typify the extremely gifted far better than the ever-optimistic Bobby McFerrin.

I was reminded of my theory today as I read the headline "Harry Potter author: I considered suicide" on CNN.com.

[Although] the 42-year-old has spoken before of her battle with depression, it was the first time she had admitted that she contemplated suicide, the newspaper said.

It was then that [J. K.] Rowling began writing the first Harry Potter book, which was eventually published in 1996.

Sadly, it seems, the pain of mental illness drives the creative engine.

It is, I suppose, like method acting taken to the painful extreme. In order to write words that resonate with the lows experienced by the average reader, you must have spent a great deal of time exploring those low places. You must know the shadows of the low places. They must be a part of you. And they must haunt you.

The formula is familiar. Creativity. Greatness. Pain. Depression. Alcohol. Drugs. Rather than hippie indiscretions, these analgesics mask the pain. Creative minds often find a way to self-medicate in order to shut out the darkness.

Although the pain may be numbed, the underlying problem often is made only worse.

I hope that Rowling's days of depression are behind her. She sought proper help for her depression, and luckily the science that helped her has advanced beyond the electro-convulsive therapy that may have descended Hemingway into another circle of hell.

In the meantime, we warm ourselves in the greatness of pained souls only to lose them too soon.

Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Hutchence, Hunter S. Thompson, Spalding Gray, Virginia Woolf.

They either died by their own hands or an accidental overdose. The list is so much longer. The list includes people such as Paul Tilley, the DDB creative chief who fell to his death in February.

I've watched friends who are great talents and writers suffer with depression and mental illness. Sadly, at least one such friend died by his own hand. Another came dangerously close.

There is no cure to link between creativity and emotional pain. Indeed, I believe they are forever fused in a causal link. We can only try to recognize depression and mental illness and reach out to those about whom we care. We can try to reduce the stigma of mental illness and related treatment.

Most people who pick up a pen struggle to rise above mediocrity. Finding the right word is a difficult task, and my words here hardly do justice to the great names listed above. The ability to find the right word is an insight into the human condition. Sadly that insight too often comes from a great deal of pain.