Jamestown’s new online community is open to you

Talk about it

There is a community growing through The Jamestown Sun’s Web site. We’re looking for a few local voices to join up.

To understand what I mean, you’re going to have to know what a blog is. If you already know that, skip down to the words “Here at The Sun” (It will be in bold). If you don’t know already, read on.

The word “blog” is both a noun and a verb. It is shortened from the term “Web log,” and refers to a kind of Web site that features regular posts of information with new entries always added to the very top of the page. It also refers to the action of writing for one of these online journals.

As in: I blog at areavoices.com/adams.

Blogs can cover any topic. Many are written as personal diaries, others are used for journalism and commentary on various subjects. Politics is a very popular topic.

Blogs can also vary widely on how frequently they are updated. Some post every week or so, some have multiple posts per day and some are even updated every few minutes.

Anyone can create one of these Web sites, and there are already tens of millions of them up and running.

Here at The Sun, we’re looking to recruit bloggers who want to write about life in this area.

Our Web site has an integrated blog-hosting system (www.areavoices.com) that allows us to feature bloggers in this general area. To see what I mean, log on to www.jamestownsun.com, where, in the center column, you can find boxes titled “Our Voices” and “Area Voices.”

The former features blogs written by Sun employees, while the latter features bloggers who write about this area. Every time a blog is updated, it gets featured at the top of that list with the title of the new post. The more often writers post, the more time their work spends at the top of the list.

For example, The Sun’s “Our Voices” section features blogs written by our sports staff, Reporter Keith Norman and yours truly while the “Area Voices” section features blogs like “North Dakota Outdoors and Beyond” by state Game and Fish Biologist Doug Leier and “All About Food” by Sue Doeden, who also writes a weekly column for The Sun’s Food page.

Also, each of our news sections features an Areavoices tab that allows readers to find blog posts related to whatever category they are reading.

Areavoices.com is open to anyone with something to say. It can be used by sports coaches who want to write about their teams, clubs who want to have a place for all their club news and political junkies who want unlimited space for whatever arguments they want to publish.

And The Jamestown Sun’s Web site is a very good place for getting your voice heard. Our Web site has averaged more than half a million page views per month so far this year.

If you want to be featured by The Sun as a community voice and get your perspectives published before a massive audience, log on to areavoices.com, get your blog set up and start making posts. Once you’re up and running, send an e-mail to ladams@jamestownsun.com so we can review your work to see if it meets our standards for becoming a featured blog.

Our criteria for making it onto www.jamestownsun.com include post frequency, connection to the Jamestown area, appropriate language and appropriate subject matter. We will not feature any blogs, for example, that use strong curse words on a regular basis.

We also reserve the right to stop featuring a blog if it fails to remain within our standards, so writers can’t start out talking about ponies and then switch to cursing out members of the public.

I encourage anyone interested in speaking their minds to try out for a spot on our blog roster. If you have any questions about the process, my contact information is below.

(Logan C. Adams is the assistant editor of The Jamestown Sun. He blogs at www.areavoices.com/adams and can be reached at 701-952-8451 or by e-mail at ladams@jamestownsun.com)

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Check out these blogs online through The Jamestown Sun’s Web site:

Jamestown Sports

areavoices.com/jmstsports/

Jamestown Plus 50 areavoices.com/jmstnplus50/

North Dakota Outdoors and Beyond areavoices.com/dougleier/

All About Food

areavoices.com/sdoeden/

Tags: logan c adams, opinion, editorial, blog, sun, adams