Jour 475 - Genre-specific blogs

As I was looking for a genre-specific blog, I was pleased to come across The Student Newspaper Survival Blog. The blog touts itself as a companion to The Student Newspaper Survival Guide. I think the site does a good job of illustrating how genre-specific blogs can be used as resources for gathering information about a specific topic.

This blog not only works to provide advice to college newspapers, but it also helps connects different college newspapers together. It gives examples of good things that have been accomplished by papers. It also provides information, almost in news story forms, about the state of student newspapers. Recently there was a post about a college newspaper that moved to be entirely online. The focus of genre-specific blogs is what makes them useful. They focus on gathering information and following one particular topic and can become an expert of sorts. The less successful ones try to do too much.

I think the newspaper survival blog hits the right balance by keeping track of the going-ons at different college newspapers in addition to giving general advice. It has become a tool that college newspapers can turn to.