What you are, journalist or specialist?

This post is also available in: Aragonese, Spanish

Days ago, I had a conversation with my friend and blogging-colleague Cristina Arguilé (Ensalada Ilustrada), regarding a recurring topic on the contents creation, on blogs in this case:

to launch and manage the content of a specialized blog, which profile is better, a journalist or a specialist profile?

Despite this is the sort of question that has not a definite answer for all the cases, I will dare to give -at the end of this post- the optimum weighting I think both profiles have in a specialized blog.

Note: in this post, “profiles” are referred to gained “skills”, so that they are not exclusively related to academic qualifications. That is, skills gained throughout the multiple options available nowadays: traditional courses and lifelong training, educational programs on the Internet, the self-tought knowledge, the experience itself or the innate ability that everyone has to learn certain matters.

In the one hand, the journalist profile

Obviously, it is easier to develop this profile if you have a background related to it (journalism, information sciences, communication,…)

If, in addition, the blog in question is about some of these matters related to journalism studies -such as humanities, social sciences, history, politics, economy, etcetera- the journalist profile has in its favour all the factors to be also a specialist.

The mastery of these skills facilitate:

  • from the formal point of view, to create an appropriate content, well structured and drafted;
  • from the management point of view, to publish and disseminate the content in the appropriate time and forum, to address the interaction with stakeholders, to have a strategic and long term content approach.

In a nutshell: communication skills.

The specialist profile

It is basic: without an advanced knowledge of certain matter, it is impossible to talk of a specialized blog.

Despite that the published content must gather some minimum communication requirements, the technical solvency is what makes a blog to be considered a reliable source of information on certain topic and, in the long term, to become well renowned among the community.

Based on that, the more communication elements applied, the better the blog will be. But, if I had to weigh the journalist and the specialist profile of a blogger who runs a specialized blog, I´d apply the following proportion:

20% journalist profile – 80% specialist profile

In the case of my friend Cristina, this share may be different, since her background is journalism  specialized in the topic treated in her blog: gastronomy with a rural and traditional point of view.

In my case, I refer to the 20-80 share expressed above, and I had to gain that 20% of journalist profile by my own means.

And you, how you´d do the proportion?

pesos