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By Michelle Leder
September 20, 2007
Starting a blog is the easiest thing in the world and only takes a few minutes. It's keeping a blog going that is the challenge. By some estimates 40,000 new blogs are launched every day. And while that number seems a bit high to me, there's no denying that blogs are still incredibly popular, especially now that mainstream media -- primarily newspapers -- have jumped in to the fray. A quick skim of the 56 blogs being offered by the Journal-News, my local paper that serves New York City's northern suburbs, gives me a menu of blog choices that seems reminiscent of my local salad bar: from celebrity sightings at a local deli to a blog that provides tips for the time-pressed suburbanite (not included: trying to read 56 different blogs on your newspaper's website).
I've been thinking about blogs a lot lately because footnoted.org, the blog I started to look into the things public companies bury in their routine SEC filings, turned four last month. That may not seem like a long time, but in the blogosphere it is, especially for a non-technology related blog. When I started the site in August 2003, there were only a few business-related blogs, most of which have since "gone dark." But footnoted.org is still plugging away and about to unveil a major redesign. Now, unlike a lot of other blogs out there, I only do one post a day because combing through SEC filings tends to be very time consuming. And, I take a break on weekends. But that still works out to just over 1,000 posts over the past four years.
Not that I'm complaining. Much. Starting a blog has given me a chance to learn new skills at a time when journalism is changing dramatically. And as a freelancer who works from home, it has enabled me to be part of a larger community of smart like-minded people, many of whom have given me lots of excellent (and free) advice over the years. But maintaining a blog -- and not just on the technical side, though that's a constant challenge, too -- takes a lot of work. Newspaper executives who think that simply throwing up a blog will be the answer to their advertising woes still don't understand exactly how much -- and how quickly -- the media landscape is changing.
Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism