So, why exactly are we doing this again?

This one's primarily for the newspaper side bloggers, but it's probably a question everybody has to ask from time to time.

Why are we blogging?

It's not usually framed in that fashion. More often, it's a reaction instead of a question. It usually comes from someone upset with pageviews, or general public reaction (or lack of it), and said person reacts with the "This isn't worth my time" matra.

Let me be clear on this, as clear as I can be: Even if nobody reads your blog, even if the audience just feels like it's not there and there's no point to this, IT IS WORTH YOUR TIME.

Why? I could go into a long diatribe about "Long Tail" economics and the new media world ... and all that would be valid ... but this post is going to be long enough already.

Instead, I'll push THIS concept: Because we learn by doing.

And, to paraphrase a quote I heard last week, understanding blogging is to understand the direction journalism is going.

Let's break down a list of what people are expecting more and more of as they grow accustomed to getting their news online. All of these are items that a well-executed blog is already providing:

Speed: People aren't waiting until 5 p.m., let alone 6 a.m. anymore to get the details to the stories they care about. Well-executed blogs operate in that fashion, quite often providing information as it's coming in ... providing transparency about where the information is coming from ... and updating as needed.

Choice of Delivery: Mark this down: The ability to choose how news and information is delivered to oneself is going to be a key issue within the next few years ... if not sooner. RSS feeds and other forms of aggregation are only going to become more important as we progress.

Don't understand RSS? Figure it out. Now. I use reader.google.com. I recommend it.

Interaction: The era of "We talk, you listen" is over for journalists. People are going to be more and more inclined to leave their two cents. Respect it or not, reader commentary is only going to grow. (Certainly in some markets faster than others, but best to grow accustomed.)

Specialization: With mass media facing troubling times, people expect to know more about the things they care about. It might not yield massive pageviews, but a narrow focus — in popular parlayance, your niche — is a stronger way to connect with people. In my experience, the people who are blogging about things I never thought anyone would care about tend to get more personal feedback than people who are blogging about more general, popular items.

Thoroughness: Even while people want more specialized content, they want pretty much everything they can find about it. If you don't have it? Link to it. Where it's coming from is of less concern than finding it. If your source is a reliable, updated source for info, they'll revisit you (or subscribe to your feed), even if you're not the one doing all the heavy lifting each time out.

Intimacy: As a collective effect from the other items on this list — and as a definite by-product of the growing strength of social networking sites — people are expecting a more personal, one-to-one experience in media.

This is far from an exhaustive list, but ... again ... if you learn how to blog, and blog effectively, it's going to be easier for you to deal with these various trends, no matter the medium in which you're operating down the line.