Live Blogging

Live blogging can be defined as a blog post which is intended to provide a rolling textual coverage of an enduring event, similarly to live television or radio. In an article published by Matt Wells on the Guardians website he outlines a number of key benefits of live blogging.

Wells says that blogs provide a useful way of telling stories which are characterised by incremental developments and multiple layers. “They are open about the limitations of journalism and draw in the expertise of the audience – and even take input from journalists on rival publications,” he says. One of the key benefits he outlines is that live blogs give the ability to post significant developments quickly without the need for editing and re editing like in a news article. Furthermore they allow the author to link provide links to other coverage such as comments from Twitter or Facebook and multimedia (pictures, video and audio), and also to include the audience through the use of comments below the post. As Neil McIntosh, the online editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe states, "It's a form that's charming in its directness; at its best it generally does away with any writerly conceits, and demands the author just get on with telling you what's just happened.”

However, much like a live news broadcast there certain drawbacks are associated with live blogging. Wells explains that when covering stories without a defined timescale, such as the Arab Spring uprisings, live blogs have the potential to become long and confusing. Robert Mackey, who writes live news blogs for the New York Times, states "You are more or less providing readers with raw material rather than telling them a story. You also tend to get swept up in the rush of events, and don't have nearly as much time as you'd like to think about what's happening and make connections, or write any sort of news analysis."

In conclusion, Wells states that almost everyone involved in live blogging experiences these drawbacks. “The potential for confusion, and the difficulty that users can encounter if they come across a live blog in the middle of a story, is clear,” he says. Despite this however, the beneficial features unique to live blogging including its transparency with regard to sources and audience involvement, significantly outweigh these drawbacks, and as Wells states the live blog is surely the embodiment of the future of journalism.

Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/28/live-blogging-transforms-journalism
http://louseandflea.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/the-guardian-newsblog-and-the-death-of-journalism/
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/87930/live-blogging-how-it-makes-us-better-journalists/