Maureen Onda Comm 303 Blog

In my Comm372, Sports and the Media, class we had a guest speaker, Steve Gardner, who came in and spoke about his job as a blogger.

Gardner graduated from James Madison University and has had many job in the newspaper industry, but the job he currently works is at USA Today and he is a professional blogger. Gardner not only spoke about his job of maintaining the USA Today’s MLB fantasy baseball site but also spoke about  the many important things to remember when being a blogger and the newspaper industry.

Gardner described how newspapers are most commonly have two challenges. The first  how to cover all the news, and the second, how to figure out what their readers want. An interesting perspective was how he said that, “everyone’s territory is being protected”. He was referring to when writing a blog you must be careful to give credit and to not violate any copyright laws. His example was currently USA Today  has journalists  in Vancouver, Canada covering the 2010 Olympics. The problem that USA Today is facing is that NBC has permission to cover the Olympics, so USA Today must be extremely careful in the coverage that they post on their site to not violate any contracts set up.

While on the subject of blog writing he described what he does to keep viewers reading his blog. He stressed the importance of writing to your audience and to interact back with them. He said that he does his best to answer questions that a blogger leaves and to comment on other posts from viewers. He gave some very good points on making a blog fun and having people enjoy reading the blog.

Not only  did Gardner talk about his blog and the website but he spoke on the different financial difficulities that the newspaper indusrty is experiencing. He spoke on the cut backs that different papers had to make to their staff, and how the budgets are slowly getting smaller and smaller for writers. Something that I found interesting was the furlough that USA Today requires their writers to take furlough. The furlough that writers take at USA Today is unpaid and they are not allowed to do any work relating to USA Today. They cannot even check their work e-mail.  Gardner confessed that having this time off is not as enjoyable as one might think, because the newspaper indusrty is so competitive he feels behind when he returns to work.  Steve Gardner had a very unique perspective on blogging and the news indusrty.