BeatBlogging to connect with communities

I'm listening to Pat Thornton's interview with the Trib's Dan Honigman, the man behind Colonel Tribune (and a cool dude to boot), and he's talking about the importance of linking to connect people. And I realized that I didn't even blog about my interview with Pat. He talked to me and LJWorld.com's Jonathan Kealing a few weeks ago, and talked to us individually about the beat blogging going on at the Journal-World.

The news organization is doing a lot in terms of micro-reporting in order to a) expand coverage of Lawrence and b) further connect with our readers -- and beyond. Personally, I found writing my blog, Schoolhouse Talk, to be a great experience. How else would I report so much on mock elections at Free State High School?

Now I'm working the overnight shift (and anticipating not getting any sleep today...body clock is adjusting), and I'm hoping to install a graveyard shift blog. It would be great fodder for stories like this, that hold probably a limited interest for most of LJWorld's readers. Think a blotter/marketplace of random ideas. Who knows? It might be fun.

But, to be honest, Schoolhouse Talk has had limited success. Perhaps for two reasons. First, we don't update it enough. We're still trying to figure out what kind of news is blog-worthy. In a market like Lawrence, most school news is big enough for a full story, and we don't want to blog about the lunch menu at the high schools.

Second, I wonder if our audience is blog-savvy. Do they see blogs as a snark market, full of opinion? Do they take our blogs seriously? We've certainly had some success with story leads coming out of the blogs, and some of them, like our KU blog, do quite well. The opportunity is there...buffering, I guess.

Our audience knows a heck of a lot more about Lawrence than we do...we take that seriously...and we can use blogs, as an informal reporting base, to learn more from them. Now we just need to start talking back and forth.