Here are a few articles I have recently published about blogging for businesses and for individuals.

• An introduction to blogs
  

  I wrote my first blog post on a stone tablet using a crude chisel many years ago. It sounds good, doesn’t it? But blogging, one of the biggest buzz words on the Internet, is just a few year old.

  Blog is short for “web log”. The first people to blog created a personal diary on the Internet. Today, about a decade later, nearly all the blogs in existence are still just a personal diary on the Internet.

• Company blogs and their value for public relations
  

  A company blog brings a great deal of value to a business’s public relations efforts.A company blog is about information. Blogging will allow a business to place important and necessary information in a place that is easily accessible and available 24/7. Companies blog about common product questions, upcoming product improvements, recent changes in the industry, employee promotions and awards and other information which may be of interest to the community of people that surrounds the business.

• The best reasons to continue writing on your blog
  

  One of the most quoted phrases on blogs applies to writing on your blog; “Life happens.” Anyone who writes reaches a point when it becomes difficult to continue. It might be the dreaded “writer’s block.” It could be the writer’s changing interests.

  Everyone who writes a blog does so for a complex set of reasons. Life happens, things change, yet the blog remains. What are the best reasons for continuing to write on your blog?

The deputy commissioner of police argued that the terrorists, who were holed up in two major hotels and became involved in floor-by-floor firefights with police, were gaining tactical information from TV. Using powers under Section 19 of the country’s Cable Television Networks Act, he ordered a blackout of TV news channels.

“Transmission of various clippings/live relay/coverage of the actions being taken by the police against the terrorists in South Mumbai is causing impediment in the police action … thereby endangering the lives of the police personnel as also of the hostages,” the order stated.

Cable and satellite channels went off air for nearly half an hour before the order was rescinded.

Media chiefs present at a meeting between the MIB, the Indian Broadcasting Federation and News Broadcasting Assn. hit back by accusing the government information departments and ministerial interfaces of failing to keep up with developments in the media industry.

They said it was unclear which officials had authority to speak to the media, that government and media had never agreed to procedures for coverage of national emergencies, and that the Press Information Bureau is set up to handle print rather than broadcast and online media.

Through blogs, file-sharing and social networking functions on the Internet, dozens of eyewitness reports, some coming from within the two besieged hotels, delivered information faster than conventional media and challenged some of its reporting. Twitter, a user-generated service that delivers text message-sized “tweets,” for instance, reported that there was still gunfire inside the Taj Mahal long after Indian media had said it was finished. Others transcribed lists of casualties from the hospitals faster than mainstream media could access it.

Variety
By PATRICK FRATER

The Columbia Journalism Review felt it necessary to attack blogs as news sources because of the New York Times’s piece today on Charlie Rangel’s rent-controlled apartments.

Here’s my response, submitted at the CJR site:

I’m not sure just how you decided that blogs don’t do journalism equal to the NY Time’s piece on Rangel.

Little Green Footballs discovered the TANG memo forgeries, and ended the career of Dan Rather.

Confederate Yankee was responsible for outing AP’s use of a fictitious police officer in Iraq as a source.

Blogs reported the Abu Ghraib scandal months before the Times.

My blog alone covered the unique and unprecedented generosity of the American people after the tsunami in South Asia.

It is blogs that are publishing the translated papers from Saddam’s regime. It is blogs that are covering the repression and violence in Yemen.

Blog content coverage of 9/11 was thought important enough that the Smithsonian added it to their collection.

Blogs will not replace good newspapers, only lazy ones.

Thanks to Jay Rosen on Twitter for the pointer.

Oh, God, I’m about to say something nice about the New York Times. Do not adjust your set.

The Times’ Baghdad Bureau has a blog. It’s called Baghdad Bureau – Iraq From the Inside.

It appears to be an outstanding effort at a group blog. It’s full of information, pics, video, and links.

OK, now back to the regularily scheduled critism of the New York Times.