Blogging Editorial Process: Write and Publish

Via Active Voice an interesting post from Business Week’s Blogspotting on the Editorial processes: the magazine vs. the blogs. Stephen Baker explains BW’s lengthy process when preparing an article for print, and juxtaposes this with their blogging practice – write and publish.

The editorial process of blogging is far simpler. We write, we publish. This takes our journalism into a new sphere, but carries inherent risks. How do we handle them? First, we reduce risk by avoiding the sorts of stories that require heavy editing. We don’t blog investigative pieces, for example, or heavy financial analysis. Second, we consult our gut. If it looks risky, we’ll push it toward the more edited BW Online or the magazine. Finally, when we make mistakes–which we do–we aim to correct them quickly and ask for your understanding. We’re into something new, and all of us, you and I, are only coming to understand it as we create it.

One of the resulting comments mentions the self-correcting nature of the blogosphere, “from flaming and harsh comments, to reblogging with credits and critique, and other remedies.” This is one of the most important aspects of publishing online – the ability to have a dialogue. Whether through comments, posting a different perspective on your own blog, or updating your post with a changed opinion, the blogosphere tends to police itself. The most recent example of this is the Flickr spam that created a discussion thread, eventually resulting in the offending user deleting his Flickr account.