The big news this week that Patch, as part of a planned overhaul, is recruiting 8,000 bloggers in 8 days to write for their local site hubs. With 800 of these sites in operation, that means 10 bloggers or so per site. The catch, of course, is that these are unpaid blogging relationships which is an interesting move considering it mirrors the Huffington Post model of syndicating writers without paying them. That was a fine arrangement until HuffPo was bought by AOL for $315 million and thousands of contributors realized they weren’t getting a cut.

Local Patch editors have been tasked with finding 4-5 bloggers by May 4, essentially giving them a week to fill those slots (side note: read Patch editor Brian Farnham’s memo comments about running a startup, which are quite interesting). To be fair, the local calls put out by our Bethlehem and Easton editors note that these are unpaid slots, so it’s not like Patch is being underhanded here.

I have mixed feelings about Patch, an enterprise I have blogged little about mostly because it is still developing and becoming the thing it is going to be. It feels too early to judge it with any sort of long-run view.

For now I’m going to leave my larger views about Patch for another post. But this news about the blogger initiative has me a little more concerned.

As I understand it based on the news, the posts will be syndicated by Patch, meaning they will exist on the writer’s own blog and on the Patch site simultaneously. Comments and traffic on those Patch posts will be contained there unless they figure out a way to syndicate comments in reverse, but while that technology shouldn’t be too hard, my guess is most individual writers would find it above their ability. Read more

So one of the things I’m looking to do is hand out a few awards on presentation day for J198, and the blogs they’ve been doing in class are one of them. One thing I’d LOVE to do is give out an award from the community for our class blogs. The students have been working hard on these all semester, so in the spirit of our #winning Morning Call contest initiative (in which yours truly was named Opinion Blogger Heavyweight Champion Of The World or something like that), I figured I’d take a crack at it for the class.

There is no need to read the blog list below. I’m more interested in impact. The students have been posting their individual post links on Twitter this semester. What caught your eye? What was consistently well done?

• “Unheard Voices Of The Undergrad” by Johana
• “Chicks Who Dig Baltimore Ravens Football” by Taylor
• “Callie’s Culinary Corner” by Callie
• “Fit With A Frown” by Allie
• “Technology To Me” by Josh
• “Love Is A Battlefield: How To Survive” by Alyssa
• “All Things Military” by MJH
• “Music From The Underground” by Ben
• “The World: A Classroom And A Playground” by Christine
• “Time To Unwind” by Jessica
• “Adrian’s Music And Theater Blog” by Adrian
• “Antoine’s College Thoughts” by Antoine

So there you go. If you have any thoughts on these blogs, please vote on my survey form. There is a place to leave comments as well. I appreciate all of the help the community gives my classes.

Update: Small change to our slate, but pretty much the same. Use this one when you vote!

I am not really an awards guy when it comes to blogs because I tend to believe that if you blog your passion and people find value, that will be enough. But that said, getting recognized for the value you do bring is enough.

So, I don’t ask for much, but I am hoping you can help me and some of my great blogging friends in the Lehigh Valley here in the Morning Call’s Best Of The Blogs contest. You can vote once a day through March 31 and will need to register an account, but I would appreciate a daily vote from you for both my blog in the Opinion category and those of my friends.

The link to the voting form will take you there, and on the image below is my picks. Help our slate get recognized and cast a vote for everyone on this list in the categories listed if you think us worthy.

Thanks a bunch, you all are the best.

I’ve been thinking lately about how ideas and information make their way from my head to my blog. People who write for a living think about this kind of thing all the time, even if they don’t know they do. We try to find the best strategy, the best mindset, the best-decorated workspace, etc., that will get those creative juices flowing.

The worst, of course, is when this is all a writer thinks about. That would be what we call “writer’s block.”

I’ve been blogging going on six years now, across several different blogs. Some have been discontinued, modified, deleted, or outright killed. It’s part of my creative process. Some like to preserve things because their writing is like some sort of scrapbooking project. For me, my ideas need to be born and then (at times) die a horrible death. Or evolve. Something besides just sit out there in cyberspace. Read more