Friday, January 5, 2018

Using Blog This! for News Items



My favorite way to provide news items and to feature other blogs is to use Blog This! from Blogger. They make it easy to copy part of an article and save it as a new blog post. There are several advantages:

  • I can immediately save it as a draft so it is available on Ichabod later.
  • The citation is provided twice, in the headline and in the text.
  • The original text is separated with quotation marks.
  • I can add videos, graphics, and my own commentary.
  • The link at the top of the article makes it easy for readers to look at the entire article without too much copying.


If you wonder why only one paragraph is posted from various news or blog sources, that comes from a common rule in the social media. Unless permission is given, an entire article should not be copied, even with proper citations and quotation marks.

I had a funny experience when I found an interesting story about my hometown, Moline. I began reading and thought, "This person had similar Moline experiences." Then I said, "These ARE my Moline experiences from my Moline Memories blog. No author was cited. No source was cited." I thought it was strange and humorous.