Legal Insurrection creator speaks to independent media students at Ithaca College

The story behind William Jacobson’s conservative blog, Legal Insurrection, is unique when compared to other political news outlets and bloggers. Most bloggers begin a blog because they are extremely passionate about a subject. Jacobson however, was not even aware of what a blog was until a friend recommended he begin a conservative blog. Jacobson was also not very politically involved at the time he was just told that he does a good job at presenting an argument for his political views. Shortly after this recommendation he began Legal Insurrection on Google blogger in October 2012.

When I listened to Jacobson’s story it was interesting to hear the process he went through and how his blog grew from nothing into a site that gets thousands of visits per day. From this I was able to see what it takes to create an interest in a blog.

One piece of advice that stood out to me was the need to link back to other blogs. Jacobson explained that at the beginning he somewhat depended on larger blogs linking to his site and thus causing the audience interested in a certain subject to become aware of his blog. After hearing this explanation it makes sense that this is necessary to increase an audience size however, I never fully understood the importance of linking.

Another aspect important aspect of blogging is the comment section. On Google blogger, Jacobson had the choice of to allow every comment to be public or to moderate all comments. This was clearly problematic because all comments are allowed to be posted, they could be completely inappropriate or state something that should not be associated with the blog. On the other hand, if all comments have to be moderated this could interfere with conversations between audience members that could benefit knowledge of the topic and the blog overall. Many blogs have gained contributors from audience members who continuously blog.  Ultimately, once Legal Insurrection moved to its own website, Jacobson decided to have partially moderated comments. This was most likely the best way to block the majority of unwanted comments and still allow influential conversations between readers to occur.

Jacobson’s story was so interesting to me because this blog has become a major part of his life, which he did not anticipate happening at all. This is a clear example that anyone can become a blogger. Also, Jacobson is a fulltime law professor at Cornell yet (with the help of his staff) he is producing real journalism and giving readers in depth looks at important issues. Legal Insurrection and many other blogs show that even if the producer of the stories is not an official journalist, if he/she is producing important content it should be considered a work of journalism.