Clearly a good example of journalistic hocus-pocus in yesterday’s Daily Mail:
His Royal Blog-ness: Prince Charles adds ‘blogging’ to his list of talents […] Prince Charles has latched onto the internet to broaden his appeal with his very own royal ‘blog’.
A blog? Whatever the Prince of Wales’ new website is, it is about as far from being a blog as you can imagine.
The general defining characteristics of a blog are these:
- Chronologically-ordered content, written by the author
- Author’s personality/passion shining through in the posts
- Commenting – the means for visitors to comment on the blog itself
- Trackbacks (links to and from other blog posts)
- Content distribution by RSS
While some may argue that not all of these attributes are essential to call a website a blog, not one of them is present in the Prince of Wales’ website. Indeed, the site itself does not refer to itself as a blog.
The Mail’s story has a cute headline, but it’s most definitely not a blog they write about.
5 responses to “The Prince of Wales is not blogging”
Reverse-chronological would possibly be a more accurate description, I think – i.e. newest on top.
Yours in pedantry
Dave
Hey Neville! I am a student in Robert’s PR style and design class. The title of that blog: “The Prince of Wales is not Blogging” definitely caught my eye. I think I am going to have to go check out the Prince of Wales new website. Maybe he considers his website a blog and hasn’t been properly informed about how to set up a real blog. I must agree with you however that if his website doesn’t include that bulleted list you laid out, then he probably has some work to do before he can really call his website a blog.
It’s definitely not a blog by any stretch of the imagination.
You’ve got to love the Daily Mail for an inventive headline – on a serious note though that kind of mis-labelling can only further confuse the mass market – it’s hard enough explaining what a blog is to your grandma…
sw
Not only that, did anyone else notice that it is slightly broken in IE7?
The “The Prince’s Charity” logo on the right isn’t properly aligned with the text next to it, it also partly covers the “Opportunity and Enterprise” link under it.
Works/looks fine in FF 2.0 though.
The headline would have been fine, Simon, if the article itself lived up to that headline and was worth reading. But it wasn’t – purely an empty attention-grabber. Rachel, it’s only the journalist who says it’s a blog.
Dave, thanks for pointing that out. You’re right of course.
Armin, don’t get me started on IE7!