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.
