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Everybody talks about blogging and how important it has become in the journalism field. The majority of people say, “Oh yeah, if you learn how to do it really well you will create a two-way communication with your audience and that’s good.” I’ve had close friends congratulating me for taking a class on Interactive Media Design. They say with this knowledge I will be able to reach out the target audience for the TV show I started producing recently: high school students. This will be a bilingual TV show  geared towards Latino high school students. The purpose of this show is to encourage them to finish college and take advantage of the resources available out there to get a degree. I don’t want to inundate these kids with too much information although it’s the main purpose of the show. I want to include fun stuff like extracurricular activities, fun facts, movie reviews, and so on. Of course, I’ve had some people telling me it will be a challenge because teens have such a short attention span. Well, we all know they use online social networking sites on a regular basis. So I thought, “It’ll be a challenge to keep them interested, but I will use these tools to my advantage. I will also learn how to blog and be creative to offer news, information, cool stuff. So why not?”

 For this reason, I am thinking of ways to learn as much as I can on blogging and most of the technology to achieve my goals. I couldn’t agree more with many of the aspects mentioned by blog author Robert Niles, who wrote Newspaper Columnists Ought to be the Perfect Bloggers. So Why Aren’t More Doing it Well?  The only suggestion I have for Mr. Niles: Proofreading is a must when it comes publishing any piece of writing. Technology helps a lot. Of course it does. But it doesn’t do everything for us. The spell checker is almost always not accurate. I would suggest checking out a few writing tips for this (By the way, I’ve done it with mine about 10 times. I’m not joking!). However, I do agree that inviting readers into a conversation through blogging is a great way to build an audience. The readers should also have their space to leave feedback and to contact the author. The other aspect that got my attention more is to write about something that one feels passionate about. This is really important. I’m not going to be writing, for example, about the stock market when I have no idea and passion for this topic. I’m not saying I can’t do it. Of course, I would have to do some research. It’s just not one of my favorite topics to talk or write about.

The last thing I want to mention is the only aspect that worries me a little bit about blogging is money. The truth is that relying on only blogging to deliver news or information to an audience will not bring the bucks to pay the bills and rent. Of course, that’s when sponsors help a lot. Obviously, that’s something done by the Public Relations/Marketing department of any news company. As I’m sipping my cup of coffee, I’m learning more and more on how to blog and planning stuff for my new project using my new knowledge. And I keep saying, “Why not learn and do more”?

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