[US blogger tour] Lesson #3: Research, research, research

As a journalist I always preferred experiential writing. Getting in to the place, the surroundings, descriptions and throwing in some well-researched facts to balance out the story.

I think that’s why I ended up blogging; it’s more expressive than journalism mostly allows for. I like being expressive and opinionated.

But something I have noticed by being surrounded by bloggers who have been blogging for a very long time is this: You cannot be opinionated without doing research and being informed. It really is that simple. I have a bad habit of doing just this. I talk and then deal with the ramifications later. I can recall one rant in particular wherein I badmouthed a blogger/startup CEO and it bit me in the bum. Bad journalism, I say.

Not the Americans on this tour. They walk around with Dictaphones, video cameras and pen and paper wherever they go. They get the names, titles, ages, DNA structures of the history of the ancestors of the people talking! Very detailed information allows you to really get to the meat of a topic and talk with an air of importance and knowledge or understanding. This in turn allows bloggers to move forward as a media structure and become more widely regarded as in the know and reliable sources. One of the main issues for me as a citizen journalist, journalist and blogger is that I don’t think bloggers hold much weight in the face of the public, readers and media players.

I need to learn to research first, talk second and lastly respond.