I don't have anything against news blogs. There is always a place for news blogs in any niche that has a lot of news. However, the problem with news blogs is that they are easy to copy. By their nature, news blogs are basically saying the same things.

You may have heard of the "echo chamber". This phenomenon occurs whenever many of the blogs in a niche begin to link to and talk about a popular news story.

There is nothing wrong with this, of course. However, oftentimes, the bloggers just write a general post about the story. They don't add unique commentary or a unique angle. So, when you browse through the blogs, they're all just "echoing" each other. There is no real difference between the posts. They all say the same thing.

That's the problem with news blogs. If you are going to start the next Engadget , why should I visit your blog instead of Engadget? If I can get the same basic information from Engadget, why should I read your blog?

Unless you have the advantage of getting the news before the other bloggers, it will be tough to be successful. Only a couple news blogs per industry will be successful. These blogs will get the bulk of the links and traffic because of their branding and their dominant positions in the search engine results pages.

Be Different

If you have a news blog, strive to be unique. Do things that will set you apart from the crowd. Write more opinion pieces. Write with a unique angle. Get an attention-grabbing blog design. Add interesting commentary of the news.

Even if you only create one unique piece of content a week while the rest of time you just report the news, that content will go a long ways in setting you apart from the rest of the news blogs.

Exceptions

There are exceptions to my principle. Here are a couple of them.

Big market
Who knows? Maybe the tech industry is bigger than I think. Maybe because of it's huge market size, there is room for another news tech blog to be successful.

Low competition
If there are only a few quality news blogs in your industry, you could be successful.

You're already established
Your news blog has been around. You get a lot of traffic. Many people in the industry know you. Your blog is branded well. My advice is not for you. :) My advice is for people who are thinking of starting a new news blog.

For New News Bloggers

Don't think as a new blogger, you can just enter a niche and expect to get traffic because you're doing what the other news blogs are doing. Remember you're competing against them. They've had time to build their brand, build a lot of links, build relationships with other webmasters, and age their site (Google likes old domains). Be unique and you'll increase your chances of being successful. Also, if you've got the money, one of the best ways to enter a market with a news blog is to buy an established one.

Feedback

What do you think of news blogs?

More and more people are asking the basic question - "Is the mainstream media covering the stories that are important to me?"

The rise in prominence of people-powered news websites gives me a pretty clear answer - no. Well, at least for the millions and millions of people who are looking elsewhere for their news and opinion.

This is just the kind of question that Jason DeRusha asks in his recent article for Minnesota's CBS-4. Here's a little of what he has to say about it:

On the cusp of a presidential election, and the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, there's a move in Minnesota to train an army of citizen journalists.

"We want to be able to harness the power of citizen journalists for the good of the United States," said Jason Barnett, Executive Director and Founder of The UpTake.

According to Barnett - his organization is training over 100 people to be active citizen journalists. Although, I would tend to think that this is close to moving them out of the realm, it's something that could help raise the quality citizen journalism for the event in general.

It's websites like Uptake, Newsvine, OpEdNews, RedState, DailyKos, TownHall, and many others which are brining the writings of citizen journalists to people all over the world. In their own way each provides a space for virtually anyone to report - and the communities that read each site will often determine how much prominence an article will get.

The growth of sites like this is attracting the attention of some major backers too. It's the goal, for example, of the Knight News Challenge, which is giving away development cash of about $5 million for “innovative new media projects that serve the needs of local communities.” Proper funding, long an achilles heel for anyone trying to break into the news market, becomes less of an issue with funding projects like Knight's.

Recognizing that this kind of hi-tech citizen journalism will continue to grow as long as contributors believe they are making an impact, mainstream news outlets are becoming more and more ready to work with sites like these.

According to Associated Press Managing Editor for Sports and Multimedia Lou Ferrara , "More and more people are going to contribute stuff this way," he said. "We want to be in a position where we can capitalize on that."

And that's the key. If citizen journalists weren't providing something valuable - something that a lot of people wanted - there wouldn't be anything for a big business like the AP to want to capitalize on.

As long as the demand for this kind of reporting continues to grow I'm sure that more mainstream outlets will be looking to do the same.

--James Stone

こんばんは
初めて　の書き込み　なんだけど　うまくいく　といいなあ　
なんて　いい感じ　なんだろう
what have you bin now and then do it for me