I was gnawing on a huge red apple this morning as I walked along Sixth Avenue to the Online News Association conference. New York City is surprisingly sunny first thing in the morning; the streets are neatly organised to allow the sun through from the east at 9am.

Straight into a session on running successful news blogs.

Gentle persuasion

Both Ryan Pitts of SpokesmanReview.com and Cory Bergman of KING TV said that a large part of their job involves encouraging journalists to make the transition to the blog platform. They estimate that 10 per cent of journalists take to the medium quickly, but the rest take some persuading.

Cory Bergman, runs the LostRemote blog and is director of digital media for KING TV, NorthWest cable news. The station has a newsroom blog with 25 contributors, a sports blog and a breaking news blog.

He described cultivating a blogger mentality as his "number one battle" and tries to inspire staff by highlighting encouraging site statistics, personally explaining why particular posts have been good and encouraging staff to engage with other related blogs. He also gives clear guidelines to journalists so that they apply the same standards they would use for broadcast content.

Mr Bergman has encouraged a creative approach to the channel's collaborative newsroom blog. Reporters, news anchors, news directors and even the station's eye-in-the-sky photographer have all contributed; the latter because he was encouraged to put his unused video and images on the blog.

"TV reporters are fearful about writing in a print style - and there are spelling and grammar issues - but we want them to post straight up," he said.

"The mentality takes time, but you have to be easy on first timers."

During Hurricane Katrina the channel activated its breaking news blog for one prolific journalist who managed to post 500 times each day.

He had only two hours sleep each night, but by aggregating news updates from key sites combined with information from the authorities, blogs and press releases he provided 'rapid-fire coverage' that generated 2.5 million page views in four days.

Post often

"The most successful bloggers are the most prolific bloggers," said Ryan Pitts, online producer for SpokesmanReview.com.

He said that the web will always provide room for material that has been pushed out of the print edition.

"The editor might feel that there is not enough of a niche audience for one topic in the paper, but if there are 1,000 readers online it is serving that readership to let reporters publish that stuff online."

Reporters that are already working on a weekly notes column can easily transfer that format to a blog without extra work, and the reporter can link directly to material.

Blogs also encourage reporters to engage with readers who will often know more about a specialist subject, providing instant feedback and highlighting any holes in a story before it is printed in the newspaper edition.

Dealing with comments

One delegate said that he had been disappointed with the quality and quantity of comments on a newly launched blog project.

Comments are open but filtered for bad language or offensive content, but few comments had been useful or genuine. The delegate wondered if more highbrow bloggers do not want to engage with the site because it might be seen as part of an intellectually third-rate TV network.

Cory Bergman suggested encouraging other readers to self police the comments section, and blogger and editorial consultant Susan Mernit said it was simply a case of being persistent and working at it.

"You need to improve the conversation by hanging in there.

"Be proactive, get your blog distributed and get out into the community where that conversation is taking place so that people come back to your site and engage."

Keeping momentum

The panel offered some solid advice on running successful blogs. Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft blogger for Ziff Davies, said that the 'got a tip?' button on her site generated some valuable story leads and said that strong headlines for a blog's RSS feed are essential; one third of traffic to her blog is generated by RSS.

She also recommended publishing a mix of fun entries and hot breaking news as well as picking up on topics from more off-beat sites within that specialism.

"And you have to understand who your readers are. Mine are Microsoft employees, Wall Street analysts, Microsoft competitors and Microsoft's customers and partners - so I ask if what I'm covering will help one of these groups?"

Blogaholic

One delegate asked the panel how they deal with the almost obsessive, addictive nature of blogging in an already demanding and often workaholic industry.

"Well, you do have to manage your own addiction and your own compulsiveness," said Susan Mernitt.

Ryan Pitts said it is important that reporters blog consistently and often in response to what happens on their beat.

At the very least that should be once a day: "But maybe that's a gateway drug," he said.

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).