Blogging lets us build an online community
My newspaper column
Oh, the places you'll go in today’s newspaper!
You can read about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report due out this week, learn about homelessness in Greensboro, follow the Grasshoppers, discover Basketdoodle, and perhaps find your child on the honor roll.
These are some of today's stories about people and places that help knit Greensboro together as a community.
A community is more than a collection of houses and businesses. Communities are made up of people who share common experiences, interests and values. As a newspaper, we try to help build community by publishing the news you make, the stories you tell and the commentary you give us to publish.
Now we know that our Web logs, accessible from anywhere in the world, build community, too.
During the spring semester, Robin Roger, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studied the people who visit our 18 blogs and comment on what we and others write. Her thesis was to seek "evidence that newspaper blogs build a sense of community, and whether that has an effect on reading behavior."
Her conclusion: "Findings suggest that the effects of high levels of community are cumulative; therefore, creating a blogging community can draw new readers – great news for newspaper marketers. Results from the study also suggest a virtuous cycle: frequent blog reading seems to lead to a sense of community, and vice versa."
Many traditional newspaper readers have told me that they think that blogs are filled with drivel, gossip and innuendo with no redeeming social purpose. And they are partially correct; some blogs are just like that.
Yet, many aren't. In the Triad we're fortunate to have many bloggers -- see today's Ideas front page for one -- who have strong voices that bring unique perspectives to the civic discussion.
News & Record blogs -- located under the Town Square tab here -- are built around the same topics as our newspaper coverage and we apply the same standards of journalism to them. If you want more information on schools, local and state government, business, sports, "racin,'" religion, cooking and editorial opinion, you can find it online. And we have others.
We use the blogs to help us add information, context and further depth to news events. Because the online world is so fluid and natural, we talk with readers, readers talk with us and with each other. Ideas and information are exchanged. Arguments break out; perhaps even understanding and acceptance occur. That’s community. That’s civic engagement.
For instance, visit our blog for local education, The Chalkboard, or editorial page editor Allen Johnson’s blog, Thinking Out Loud, and you'll discover ongoing passionate debates about issues of the day. After a while, the commenters talk to each other as if they are old friends chewing over what happened that day.
When we publish letters to the editor in the newspaper, we also post them on the letters blog. Every day readers debate the merits of the writer's arguments with each other, and while they often go off track, the conversation is dynamic and oddly compelling.
That's community building, too.
Roger couches her conclusions throughout her thesis; 76 people responded to the survey, which is a small sample. More research is needed.
Still, it's an important start, especially for our efforts to build the newspaper and Web site as a virtual town square.
If you'd like to read Roger's thesis, it's here.
In an unrelated note, TV Week, our Saturday tab that features television listings for the coming week, will change slightly beginning with the May 27 paper. We're moving the hourly listings to black and white.
Because of all the color inside, the book takes several hours on the press to print, and we need to open up some of that time for other projects. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.
Comments (3)
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Wow! This topic is just up my alley -- building community through blogs. Thanks for sharing Roger's research and identifying area do-good blogs.
For most of the past two years, I've been confined to bed with health issues for all but a few hours a day, so my keyboard and DSL connection have become vital communication tools for me. I used to naysay the notion of blogging, thinking it was a form of verbal diarrhea, which indeed some blogs are (constant narrative with little substance). But last summer as I lay prone, I had a sudden inspiration that one way I could still make a contribution, from my bed, would be to create a blog that would affirm storytellers who use their gifts to promote peace and healing in local communities. Because blogs are so easy to create compared to websites, I was able to get The Storyteller and the Listener Online off the ground within a week. Since then, it has published two guest essays each month from men and women around the world who have seen storytelling and shared personal narratives used creatively for social change, including a post by Joya Wesley of Greensboro's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It's harder for a blog to be visible online compared to a newsletter with its own domain, but I am not so much driven to seek numbers of readers. I'm more excited by the anecdotal evidence that it is making a difference, e.g., a storyteller/essayist who works with students in a Washington, D.C., school plagued by violence was hired by the Toronto public schools as an anti-violence consultant as a result of his essay. So even small blogs can make a difference.
http://storyteller-and-listener.blog-city.com/
Posted on May 21, 2006 2:21 PM
John, I think that blogging builds community, too, and we have a strong blogging community in Greensboro. One of the things I most like about it is getting to hear and know the diverse perspectives of those who blog. The monthly Piedmont Triad Bloggers Meetup (http://blog.meetup.com/79/) has allowed many of us to get to know each other and develop relationships "in the real" (nod to Sean: http://seancoon.org/), which really strengthens community. And Greensboro 101 (http://www.greensboro101.com/) helps us stay connected to each other.
Thus far, I haven't had that same experience on the N&R blogs. Many of your commenters are anonymous and either don't have or don't link to their own blogs, and there is a great deal of mean-spiritedness. The N&R blogs often feel like more of a battlefield than a community to me, especially the LTEs. I can't help but think that's why most of the comments are written by the same small (anonymous) group of people. I know that it's your desire to create a virtual town square and I wish you well in your continued efforts to find a way to do so. Meanwhile, I'll keep reading... :)
Blessings, CM
Posted on May 21, 2006 2:41 PM
Well, yes, CM, although I've read some stupid comments on non-NR blogs, too. But I agree with you about ours. Even mine attracts its share of people who sweep in, drop a stink bomb of a comment, and slip away.
The bigger the town, the larger the level of crime. The letters won't get any better until people like you wade into the discussion and leave constructive comments. Help us lift it up!
Posted on May 21, 2006 6:49 PM