BEA Day 4: Blogging ethics: Loyalty lessons from journalism

  I know bloggers are not journalists and the “rules” are in flux. Most bloggers are not professionals, and many of them don’t want to be.

To that I say Yeah!

That should be liberating.

 Still, one carry-over question I value from years as a professional journalist and critic at a small newspaper: Who are you writing for?  Who is your audience? As a journalist I knew my audience. I was writing for my readers, not the guy who sent me a book or wrote it.  My primary loyalty was to my audience, not to a publicist and certainly never to an author or theater company (though I was respectful, and knew I needed to maintain a relationship or I would be out of a job).

I was not giving director’s notes or writing lessons.  I was not giving “feedback.” That was someone else’s job. If someone was getting money for a book, the book became fair game.  As paid professional writers, they wrote for their audience; I wrote for mine. 

 I think the best blogs have a focused sense of loyalty. Those that attract many followers often have a conversational voice and a real sense of a blogging community. They have blogging friends they are faithful to.  Their readers, in turn, are faithful back.