Good blogs can change the world and bring about justice and social change.

Good blogs can change the world and bring about justice and social change. They can be about anything that people may want to read. As with almost anything else on the Web, information is more valuable than opinion.

“The best blogs look outward, not inward. That is, successful bloggers–those who build and sustain an audience–not only create original content, but also point to other good content on the Web. Linking is part of the formula for a good blog.”

The blog post should be 150-200 words long. It should be written with all of the characteristics of media writing in mind: accuracy, precision, clarity, and efficiency (AP Style). But you should not hesitate to express your point of view about the information you are presenting.

Despite the millions of blogs that have been started, good reporting and writing–concise, coherent, information-rich writing–is still relatively rare among bloggers. The well-written blog, with original information and a good sense of what else is on the Web will gather an audience.

Twitter is a combination of what we might call micro-blogging and social networking. An entry on Twitter can be no longer than 280 characters, including the URL if you are pointing to something on the Web. As a media specialist writing for Twitter, you are trying to inform people who are following you. But remember that as a participant on Twitter, you are part of an ongoing conversation, and you should feel free to react to what others have said as well as to introduce original information to the conversation.

To prepare for your assignment make sure you:

• Read Chapter 7 Writing for the Web.
• Pay close attention to Box 7.1 Guidelines: Writing for Twitter
• Review 7.8.2: Lateral Reporting
• Review 7.9: Writing for the Web

Assignment: Using the information that you gathered and wrote about in the On The Spot News Story as a starting point, you are to write (1) a Blog post and (2) a Twitter post.

Blog Post:

Your post should be about a subject or phenomenon that you discovered and/or wrote about in the News Story. For example, if you wrote about the school sponsoring the Homecoming dance, your post could be about how some communities restrict homecoming activities, dates, dress codes, dance types, etc.

This should also be something that you have an opinion about that you will provide factual information via links to other instances, articles, pictures, graphs, etc.

You are allowed to write using the personal “I” and include information that can be personal observation and/or experience.

Your Blog post MUST:

Be written in AP Style.

Contain a Headline.

Contain 3 live links into other articles, pictures, graphs, etc. The links should be a live link and can be accomplished by using the “Insert” tab then ‘Hyperlink’ command in Word. Links should appear within your writing and MUST BE Boldface OR underlined.

Make sure that all proper names and places referred to are Tagged. Tags MUST be listed at the end of the blog/story.

150-200 words.

25% or less Similarity score.

Times New Roman 12 pts., single-spaced.

The Twitter Post (Tweet)

The tweet should not be more than 280 characters. Please see the guidelines for writing on Twitter in your text. This is what will be used for your rubric/grading. This post should relate directly to your blog post. Think of it as tweeting to get people interested in your blog.

Click this link to learn a little bit about a Twitter Post and making sure you make each character count: https://learn.g2.com/twitter-character-limit (Links to an external site.).

Submit A Word document that contains:

A headline

A Blog Post

A Twitter Post

Use the this to help you organize your work: BLOG PLANNER.pdf