Story location: http://archive.pressthink.org/2006/03/01/bps_launch.html
Well, there were the usual glitches and it’s a little late. But PressThink’s Blue Plate Special is here. (It was announced in an earlier post.)
The first one is all about newspaper blogging— state of the art. Students from my blogging 101 class, joined by two grad students, are the core editorial team; we’ve added other contributors from across the Web. I’m the editor.
We have a rolling launch planned. New stuff will be introduced over the next week or two. Coming up:
Kicking things off today: The Best Blogging Newspapers in the U.S (among the top 100 by size.) We looked at every site on the list, and also produced a nifty chart showing the state of blogging at U.S. newspapers. And in the debut package there’s a feature by K. Paul Mallasch on the Houston Chronicle’s blog leadership, plus an interview with USA Today’s Kinsey Wilson.
But you can’t find it here, so head over to blueplatespecial.net.
UPDATE, Nextafternoon…
… Blue Plate Special No. 2, which we hope to put out in March, will be about “how blogs work.” (Roll it around in your mind.)
We plan a close-up look at a bunch of blogs that do work, successful uses of the form, in order to understand from them how they work, and the why of it.
So maybe we’ll call it why blogs work. Point is, we’re telling you—PressThink readers—now. So some of you can help out.
In anthropology they call it “thick” description. We’re interested in that for our next Special: how blogs that work well to inform their users actually work.
If you want to contribute, check out what Mike Andersen did for our launch, and send me an e-mail. Have a clear and powerful idea, execute simply and well… Blue Plate’s formula.
We need people to cooperate like Kinsey Wilson did, as well as writers, reporters, data miners, bloggers who can work independently.
I’m serious: you have to see this chart.