This just in -- blogs and AP style

Here's something I found while checking up on blogs for Intro to Mass Comm. Turns out the Associated Press Stylebook is apparently wrong about where the came from. This from the kottke.org blog by Jason Kottke:

Dear New Yorker, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post and others**,

Please stop using the term "web log" to refer to a chronologically-ordered frequently-updated website. The correct term is "weblog". Furthermore, "blog" is not short for "web log", it is short for "weblog".

When dealing with words generated by the Internet, where people stick bits of different words together with reckless abandon, I can understand the need for high-quality newspapers and magazines to use the proper grammatical approach in dealing with compound words, hyphens, etc. At first blush, "weblog" appears to be a shortened version of "web log" which is in turn a shortened version of "World Wide Web log", in which case the usage the media has adopted would be more or less correct ("Web log" would probably be more correct).

And "Web log," of course, is what the AP Stylebook says.

Kotke says that's wrong. He cites three pieces of evidence:

1. The original spelling of the term is "WebLog" as seen on Jorn Barger's Robot Wisdom WebLog page from December 1997. It was never "web log". In subsequent correspondence (like this Usenet post from June 1998), Barger himself referred to his site as a "weblog" and sites like his as "weblogs".

2. After Barger's coining of "weblog", a few early bloggers preferred to use "web log" as an alternative (see Raphael Carter's Honeyguide Web Log from June 1998) but the majority use was and is "weblog" and the use of "web log" has waned (except for its misuse by the media, of course). A search for "weblog" on Google yields 4,620,000 results. A Google search for "web log" yields 383,000 results. The use of "weblog" is in the majority by an order of magnitude. The impact in the search results for "web log" due to its incorrect usage in the media is unknown.

3. Most of the citations for "weblog" and "blog" in the Oxford English Dictionary Online use "weblog", not "web log." ...

So what we supposed to do in mass communications courses?

Easy. We follow AP.

When AP's right, we're right. When AP's wrong, we're wrong.

But at least we're in good company.

COM150: Blog about blogs

Today you're reading a blog about blogs. Got that? I asked you to read up on blogs, sometimes also known as weblogs (or "Web logs" if you follow Associated Press style), and come in ready to discuss them in class. We'll do that, but first do some more reading.

Starting with this blog. That's right. This thing you're reading is a blog. I maintain two or three for my classes.

If you haven't seen it already, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia probably has the best introduction to blogging. Read it over. Follow some of the links at the bottom, too.

There's another discussion I like. It's by a media consultant named Jeremy Goldkorn in Beijing (that's right, in China) who says all it takes is a "kid with a modem" to take on CNN or any of the other mega- content providers. I'm not sure I agree with him 100 percent, but it's worth thinking about.

Another place to look at is the Microsoft Corp. ezine Slate.com. Every morning they update a feature called "Today's Blogs." It's at the top of their start page, right under the standing feature "Today's Papers." You probably ought to read both, just to keep up with the world. Every morning "Today's Blogs" updates with what the political bloggers are saying, and "Today's Papers" tracks the top stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times.

COM209 -- taking notes

Here's something I really ought to copy and paste into the syllabus --

Linked to my faculty webpage is a directory of "Reporting Resources" put up on a website for newspaper journalists called No Train, No Gain It's a project of working journalists at The Omaha World-Herald and The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, and it is very, very practical. It's also very, very good. Bookmark it.

Now scroll down the directory to the 23rd or 24th link. It will say:

Taking Great Notes for Great Stories A handout by Don Fry, writing coach, on taking notes. (MS Word document).

Except it will have a working link. (I'm not computer-literate enough to link here to a Microsoft Word document.) This will tell you what you need to know about how to leave out words, and which words to leave out, as you take notes. And it'll show you how to ethically reconstruct the quote, i.e. put it back together, when you go to write the story. It will pay off bigtime if you study it till you're clear on what Fry is -- and isn't -- doing here.