I chose to read two of the blogs from news sources that I follow on Twitter. These two were Gadling, a travel blog, and Jacket Copy, a blog about authors and books from the L.A. Times.

Gadling is not written by one person. Several travel reporters contribute to the blog. Jacket Copy is written by multiple reporters as well. These mostly come from a group of five regular reporters.

Gadling covers a wide variety of material regarding the travel beat. The blog itself says it covers travel “news, stories, deals, and tips.” Definitely the information that travelers, myself included, would want to read.

Jacket Copy, aside from having a clever title, covers the book/author news beat. Following a wide range of writers and books (from Jane Lynch of Glee to Jimmy Fallon to Peter Criss of KISS), the blog gave relevant information to its audience as well.

According to Mark Briggs, good blogs should:

“regularly publish high-quality posts”

“write effective headlines”

“participate in the community”      (Journalism Next, p. 55)

I found that both blogs used these principles to their advantage. They also frequently incorporated photos and video, adding to the depth of the posts.

Both included a comments section. Jacket Copy had fewer comments than Gadling. Gadling had a great deal of comments on some stories, such as this one. Most were relevant, though some got a little out of control. I even noticed some appeared to be removed or moderated, though I was confused because they were still visible, just strangely lightened and difficult to read.

I enjoyed these blogs. Gadling was extremely informative, though sometimes posts were a tad too lengthy. Jacket Copy’s posts were of a good length, but the layout was not as interesting as Gadling’s. Both had good use of links, and I gave both a thumbs-up for having lots of pictures and videos.

If they were my blogs, probably the only things I would change would be length of some posts and layouts.

Both are great, and I recommend them to anyone interested in books and travel!