Blogging the Post

The Washington Post has a very cool feature on their news stories that I’ve been meaning to write about. Many of their articles include a sidebar block like the one shown here titled ‘Who’s Blogging?’. Using the blog search engine Technorati, the Post searches blogs for postings that reference and link back to articles on washingtonpost.com, and then in turn links back to them.

I think this is a very smart thing for the Post to do. Recognizing that bloggers are more likely to be offering some commentary about the news, rather than breaking new news, these links to bloggers who are discussing their stories enhance the news that the Post is providing by showing how it contributes to the online conversations and debates of the blogosphere.

And it can lead to some interesting connections. When I recently wrote a posting titled ‘Holy Ignorance‘ which commented on an article I read in the post about the development of a ‘Creation Museum’ being built in Ohio, the first comment posted in response came from the web developer who manages the web site for the Creation Museum. I’m pretty certain he wasn’t a regular on my humble blog, but found his way there from the list of links from washingtonpost.com.