How to live blog: tools, tips and journalism quality. Advertisement Live blogging's raw, unedited format constantly feeds content to the most prolific of social media sharers, resulting in high traffic and engagement metrics.
A format that began in the mid-2000s as a way for tech geeks to virtually attend a tech trade show or Apple product launch has now become a mainstream and essential tool for journalists to cover rapidly evolving situations. Live blogging, for those who are unfamiliar, is a content format that uses frequent, short bursts of content featuring embedded video, links, tweets and pictures. It’s a form of mobile journalism that has been used to cover just about anything you can think of: the iPad launch event, the NFL draft, the Arab Spring, and even Lindsey Lohan’s parole hearing. So, what makes for a good live blog? 1. One of my favorite live bloggers, The Nation’s Greg Mitchell, is currently live blogging the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. 2. 3. How can you fact-check when you are reporting in real-time? 4. 5 reasons to liveblog instead of live tweeting. Allow me a moment of nostalgia for the classic liveblog.
“Liveblogging” was this thing we used to do before the rise of Twitter and Storify, much like good old-fashioned blogging itself. You’d have a host and a bunch of guests all watching the same Web page together, and for an hour or so, they’d make magic. I should confess: every now and then, I get a hankering for some of that old magic. I pour some good wine, dust off a CoverItLive console, and invite some friends over.* And every time I do, I’m reminded why genuine liveblogging — real-time, browser-based liveblogging — is still one of my favorite instruments in the modern journalism toolkit. I highly recommend it to you, for reasons I outline below. Why liveblog Joking aside, I shouldn’t oversell the notion that liveblogging’s gone out of fashion. And of course, Twitter has some key advantages.
But Twitter’s also low-fidelity. A liveblog forces you to genuinely pay attention. How to Live-Blog as a Team. Live-blogging is stressful.
First, you need to find a reliable WiFi connection — and a way to sustain your device’s battery. Then, there’s the challenge of transcribing a speaker’s words in real-time. And if you want to go beyond transcription and create a polished piece of writing, complete with links to related resources, the challenge is even greater, especially when a speaker’s presentation isn’t well-organized. Like so many things in life, live-blogging benefits from collaboration. At MIT’s Center for Civic Media, we’ve developed a system for collaborative live-blogging that works very well for us. Here’s how we do it: 1. We live-blog using Etherpad, a lightweight, open-source software application that allows collaborative document editing through a web browser.
It’s also possible to collectively live-blog using Google Docs or countless other web-based text editors. CoverItLive is a flashy paid service with lots of features, but much heavier page loads than a standard blog post. 2. Complete Guide to Live Blogging. If you’re attending a conference or other event related to your blog’s niche, you might want to consider live blogging from the event.
Live blogging is basically just posting regular updates to your blog as the event is taking place, rather than blogging about it after the fact. Live blogging can be a very valuable resource to your readers if done right. If you take the time and keep focused throughout an event to provide useful information to your readers, they’ll often consider your blog the go-to place for event coverage in your industry. If it’s done poorly, though, all those blog posts will likely just be looked at as filler or fluff by your readers, and may even annoy some to the point they unsubscribe from your RSS feed.
Use the information below to guide you through the live blogging process. Before the Event Live blogging requires a bit of preparation that isn’t necessary for regular blogging. Check the event’s website or call the organizers to verify internet access. At the Event. How To Live Blog an Event - Live blogging. As the euphoria of SQLBits X sadly begins to fade, I wanted to take a moment to share with you my experience of Live Blogging the keynote of Europe’s largest SQL Server conference.
To be honest this was not something that I had planned to do but when I received an email from Chris Webb (Blog|Twitter) inviting me to be part of the Blogging/Tweeting panel for SQLBits there was only ever going to be one answer, “absolutely”! To be given an opportunity to author magic alongside community champions such as the likes of Jamie Thomson (Blog|Twitter) and Jen Stirrup (Blog|Twitter) is a privilege. Not to mention the hoards of Twitterati also in attendance, needless to say it’s a bloggers Wrestlemania (i.e. a very BIG deal). This was my first attempt at Live Blogging an event. I had certainly not expected it to be easy but I did underestimate just how tough it would actually be.