J-blogs: Weblogs for J-school students?

After talking with a couple of students in the news-editorial sequence during finals, I'm going to start posting links to information about how journalism students might use a blog to enhance their careers. The conventional wisdom, at least in academic life, is to stay away from them. Up-and-coming professors have been denied tenure, at least so go the scare stories, because of controversy over their blogs. Middle East expert Juan Cole, who makes no secret of his utter distain for neo-conservative foreign policy, is often cited as an example. So be careful. Be especially careful of satire -- if readers can take something the wrong way, they will. Count on it. They most assuredly will.

But my instinct is certain kinds of blogs might be helpful to people just getting started in the business. ...

Especially appropriate for student journalists, perhaps, would be something like a writer's journal. This is one of those terms that means different things to different people. What I mean by a writer's journal is kind of like a notebook professional writers use to try out ideas, post observations, etc. Something, in other words, an awful lot like the blogs I had my students start fall semester in COMM 337 (advanced writing). Another warning: Don't post finished articles, or even nearly-finished articles, to your blog. Free-lance markets, as a rule, won't touch anything that's been published before. And a few of them might count your blog as a prior publication.

Again, be careful. It's a big, wide, wonderful, dangerous world out there. And the Internet is no less dangerous (and no more) than the rest of it. But you already knew that. Right?

The Helium.com writers' community website collects 15 articles under the heading Tips for keeping a journal like a professional writer. I haven't read them all, but they look very useful. I checked a couple of third-party ratings in an
Pandia Search Engine News webpage and a members' forum with comments by users at Editred.org web. Helium seems kosher, especially for beginners, but not a good way of making money by free-lancing. But in my experience nothing else is, either!

A website called the Internet Writing Journal maintains a list of "The Best Author Blogs" ... check them out. You may find something that's suited

Infed.org is a website put together by a small group of British educators who use it for "exploring informal education, lifelong learning and social action." They have a useful tip sheet "Writing and Keeping Journals" for teachers and education students.