Blogging as a way of reporting

Andrew Sparrow in St Georges LT

ANDREW Sparrow, the blogger of ' The Guardian' visited the University of Sheffield and talked to the students of Journalism Studies about where we are in blogging nowdays.

'Blogging is an exciting, rewarding and effective way of journalism', he said, 'writing in real time in your own voice'.

Andrew Sparrow said that it is a comprehensive way of reporting news and we can report everything we learn.

Blogging is very fast because internet is very fast, faster than newspapers, but 'if you don't feed it, it starts to die', as he pointed out.

However this is not a replacement for all old-fashioned ways of reporting. We don't need only web as a news source. We need to speak to people on the phone for news, because sometimes the access to blogs is not easy.

Although  blogging is sometimes tiring , it is  interesting because  analysis, explanation and comments are  rewarding. There's more that you can say.

However there is a problem with organising material. What we can do is after one-hour blogging take a break for ten minutes to write a summary on what the main points are.

We can also use blogging as a vehicle of covering politics. We should update a story all the time and put the politicians' announcements up.

Andrew Sparrow can self-publish directly to google from time to time. He  always writes his blog in collaboration with the sub-editor back to head office, where he checks spelling and crops pictures.

His news sources are

• ' Twitter'  is the faster news source
• two television  in his office, watching SKY and BBC most of the times
• RSS, although it is slower than  'twitter'
• lobby briefing
• his emails

Finally he suggested us to read 'Why I blog'  by Andrew Sullivan, which describes blogging as a medium.