Carolina Alumni Review - March/April 2007

once wrote in a News & Record column. “By linking to documents, articles and each other, bloggers can make their cases both deep and broad. ... I sometimes think of blogs as a way of arming the public for the information age.”

Ian Williams’ blog has brought him to the attention of NPR and The New York Times, and one of his posts — on a Harry Potter-related phenomenon called the Hogwarts Headache — went straight to the Times’ editorial page. Despite occasional slings and arrows from his readers, the ongoing commentary around his posts has given him a sense of community he used to miss. Getting comments has been great, he says. “It’s a logical evolution of what we were doing in college with the DTH and getting instant feedback [on columns] that way.”

“As you get older, your friends scatter around the country. A lot of my best friends are regular commenters. It makes everyone feel as though they’re really up to speed on my life even if I don’t talk to them for months at a time.”

— Kathleen Kearns

Starting Your Own Blog

Blogs are easy to create and maintain, it. Bloggers who blog consistently and often says Anton Zuiker ’04 (MA), who often volun- and develop their writing style, develop their teers to speak with professional groups voice, that’s what makes something worth about blogs and their myriad uses. A senior reading.” communications and publications research Free services such as Blogger, LiveJournal, associate at the Carolina Wordpress and others Population Research allow you to create blogs Center, Zuiker maintains on their servers. Subscrip-an internal project blog tion services such as Type-at his workplace as well Pad offer more publishing as separate blogs for his tools and page design extended family and vari- options, Zuiker says, and ous groups of associ- software programs such as ates. “Most people can Movable Type and TextPat-pick it up in 10 or 15 tern offer powerful tools minutes,” he says. “Then for knowledgeable users. you want to think how you want to use the Zuiker gives a short history of blogs and tool. Is there something specific you want to the basics on how to use them at communicate, a topic area or subject area www.unc.edu/~zuiker/blogging101/. His you want to be an expert on or report on?” blog primer, created for a Carolina Technol-

The best blogs tend to be about a spe- ogy Consultants conference, appears at cific topic, he says. “Find your niche and blog www.unc.edu/~zuiker/blog-primer/.