Every day when I wake up, I have a set routine. I check my email, then my Google Reader, then I make my rotations of newspapers that I read: The St. Louis Post Dispatch, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Southern Illinoisan, The Daily Egyptian, and The Fayetteville Observer.

Many of these sites have blogs written by reporters, but I only read two--the hockey blog maintained by sports reporters at the New York Times, and also the Freakonomics blog...also hosted by the New York Times. Past that, no reporter-written blogs interest me: At my second reporting job, I covered a wide variety of stories. Along the way I had some amazing experiences, and the vast majority of those stories never made it to the newspaper.

I'd been at the paper for a month, when I sat down with my editor to evaluate my experience. I told him that a lot of great things were getting left out of my stories, and I'd thought that the paper should experiment with either allowing reporters more freedom to blog, or we should get the opportunity to add a sidebar with our story. He was incredibly nice in his response to me and even though he told me that he would think about it, I knew what was going to happen.

I feel that today, there isn't enough of a connection between reporters and readers. Personally, I felt best about my work as a journalist when I communicated with the readership. There were ways to contact me listed in my byline, but I received less than 10 phone calls a month (8 would be some form of hatred against me, 1 would be a wrong number, and 1 would be legitimate). The emails I received...well, a lot of them were received late at night, after the sender probably had a few too many Yuenglings.

My problem with a majority of blogs maintained by newspapers today seem like an afterthought. Due to budget cuts, reporters are forced to churn out more stories on a daily basis. When do they have time to update their blogs with worthy posts?

In North Carolina, I worked with a reporter that was grossly overworked, because he was the only reporter covering his beat. In addition to writing 8-10 stories each week, he was expected to update his blog several times a week. He already worked nearly 60 hours a week as is, there wasn't enough time for him to produce quality blog entries. What happened? He resorted to posting links along with a line or two of his thoughts.

I feel that blogging can definitely enhance the relationship between reporters and readership. However, it's important that editors understand that reporters should be given enough time to dedicate to their blog so that it doesn't seem like an afterthought.