The influence of blogging: You take the good with the not-so good

Friend of the blog Mike Sando -- better known to most of you as the Seahawks Insider -- and I recently were discussing how blogging has fundamentally changed the job of reporters, especially sports reporters.

It has enhanced the experience of sports fans, who often have an unquenchable thirst for information about their favorite teams. The best ones -- such as Sando's blog -- are updated frequently and include breaking news, analysis of the team and players, little nuggets that never make it into the paper, and interesting and quirky tidbits culled form surfing the Internet.

Sometimes, a reporter's effort to provide those things doesn't always pan out the way they hope.

Check out this lighthearted post by Seattle Times Mariners blogger Geoff Baker. In it, he takes a humorous look at his own failings and inaccuracies in the blog world of trying to provide more and better information.

While it's a pretty funny read, it's also a great case example of how this whole blog revolution in journalism is a work in progress, and how journalism is having to evolve with it. We already have an example of what can happen when blogs go wrong, and I think all journalists would do well to follow Sando's tack: Apply the same level of journalistic standards to your blog as you do to the things that run in your paper. Avoid large amounts of speculation, just as you would in a story for print publication.

Be first, but first be right. That way, you can never go wrong.

(By the way, Baker's blog usually is an excellent read, anyway. Check it out here.)