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Online Journalism News

Telegraph.co.uk launches 'style' guide for bloggers

Posted: 23/05/06 By: Robert Andrews
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Telegraph.co.uk has produced an editorial style guide for its growing band of bloggers.

The news site launched its first blog in 2005 and now boasts 14 journals following a relaunch of its blogs commentary portal in April.

Now the editorial team has launched a style bible, a document common to most newsdesks, to ensure consistency of output in the new medium.

"Many of our journalists wanted to start a blog but were new to the medium," news editor Shane Richmond told journalism.co.uk. "They wanted to engage more with readers, to share observations and thoughts about their work and the field in which they operate as reporters - but they needed a little guidance.

"The style guide sets the parameters for our blogs and offers a few pointers about how to approach this new medium. What it doesn't do is specify word use or set a standardised structure for blog posts."

The publication encourages staff to make their message clear in the first three paragraphs of a post and to frequently direct readers to background posts on other blogs using hyperlinks. It suggests using personal opinions, anecdotes, backgrounders and replies to readers as fodder for new material.

The guide will be distributed to new writers as a Microsoft Word document, but was also published on the newsroom's public blog, Upload, to give readers an insight into the processes behind production.

"I wanted to show it to readers to invite comment on our in-house practices," Mr Richmond added. "After all, there is far more collected experience of blogging 'out there' than there is 'in here'.

"And also to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to transparency, of which the Upload blog is a key component."

Telegraph.co.uk is expected to build on its multimedia newspaper ambitions, having recently advertised more vacancies for podcast production staff.

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