Finding your voice as a blogger and journalist

Frank Ahrens of the Washington Post shares what it means to keep switching hats from blogger to journalist.

A snapshot of newspapering, 21st-century style:

It's May 25, and the verdicts are being read in the government's fraud case against former Enron Corp. executives Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling.

They're in a courtroom in Houston, and I'm in Washington, sitting in front of a computer on the Continuous News Desk in the newsroom of the Washington Post. The CND is the Post's intermediary between the newspaper and our Web site, as well as the television networks that feature our reporters and Washington Post Radio, a venture the paper started in March. To my left is a desktop television. To the right, a live microphone to Washington Post Radio. Pressed against my right ear is a set of headphones.

I am listening to the verdicts being read on CNBC with my left ear and hearing the radio host's questions in my right ear. As the verdicts are reported on TV, I repeat them on the radio. Once we reported CNBC's news on our radio station, I would begin blogging. Moments later, I would appear live on CNN Headline News in the small TV studio in the Post's newsroom just behind the CND.

At some point, hours later in this day, I would write an actual newspaper story...

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