Over the past week I’ve received email from two major American newspapers asking me to respond to a series of questions about how I plan to “blog the convention.” One of them was Newsday; the other, a major daily, asked not to be identified until after their story had run, which I will honour.
Here are the Newsday questions:
- What is your general strategy for covering the convention? Where and how
will you spend your time?
- Is there a particular gap that you are trying to fill with your
coverage?
- Please list five questions you would like to have answered in your
coverage of the convention, in order of importance.
- Who is your readership?
- Will your blog be reviewed by anyone before it goes out? If so, how will
that process work?
- What will you do at the convention that a mainstream journalist would
not do?
- Are there any ethical rules that you plan to follow?
- How long will your dispatches be? How will you decide that?
Here are the questions from the other “major daily newspaper:”
- First, the basics: Names of all people from the blog who will be there; ages; occupations; hometowns.
- Describe your blog in 10 words or fewer.
- How do you plan to cover the convention? What kind of content can readers expect?
- Why should people read your coverage?
- What’s the biggest gap in convention coverage by mainstream media in prior election years?
- Moment/speaker/event you’re most looking forward to covering.
- Who did you support in the Democratic primary? (Or, if it’s not applicable, who do you plan to vote for in November?)
I think the questions are interesting in and of themselves: they give a little bit of insight as to how mainstream working journalists view the webloggers. Once both pieces have run, I’ll post my answers to their questions here.