In honor of the 2010 WordCount Blogathon, which starts May 1 -tomorrow! - today’s edition of my weekly roundup of good reading and good writing is devoted to bloggers, blogging and blogs.

ProBlogger - Whenever I have a question about blogs, ProBlogger is my first stop. Lately I’ve been researching advertising and ProBlogger didn’t let me down. I found the most comprehensive explanation of anywhere I looked on how a solo blogger like me should set blog ad rates. Is this great writing? It won’t win any Pulitzers. But if you’re a blogger, it’s a veritable fount of information.

Break the blogging rules – Do this, don’t do that, make sure you remember SEO. Don’t you ever get sick of people telling you what to do on your blog – including me? If so, you’ll love these blogging rule breakers. First, Seth Godin. An Internet marketing trendsetter, Godin’s blog, which is simply called Seth’s Blog, breaks all the rules: no links (in some posts), titles that are anything but SEO, subjects that are all over the place. But the stuff he talks about – priceless. Next, Lisa Barone, chief branding officer at Outspoken Media, whose recent post The 5 Old Blogging Rules Killing Your Readership has been making the rounds. Barone argues that tried-and-true blogging rules about short posts being better and page views being the end all be all are outmoded ways of thinking. Even if you don’t agree with what she says 100 percent, it’s food for thought.

Writer-bloggers we love – When it comes to blogs on writing or blogging, some writers have it down cold. Susan Johnson is one of them – and I’m not just saying that because she’s a 2010 Blogathon sponsor. Johnson’s blog, The Urban Muse, is well-organized, has lots of extras and above all, is always an interesting read. Other blogs about blogging worth checking out: Blogging Basics 101 – the name says it all – Copyblogger and Daily Blog Tips. Want more? Here’s Daily Blog Tips’ list of top 25 blogs about blogging.

Imprisioned U.S. freelancer ends hunger strike – Roxana Saberi, the freelance broadcast convicted of spying in Iran ended a two-week hunger strike after Iranian authorities agreed to hold an appeal hearing for her next week. The Iranian-American freelance broadcast reporter was arrested in January and convicted of spying in a closed-door trial in April. Saberi’s supporters have created a website, Free Roxana Saberi.

Congress holds U.S. newspaper industry hearings – Plenty of big names held forth on the future of the news business at a May 6 Congresssional hearing. As could be expected, presenters’ POVs varied. HuffPost founder Arianna Huffington was the optimist, declaring, “Despite all the current hand wringing about the dire state of the newspaper industry – well-warranted hand wringing, I might add – we are actually in the midst of a Golden Age for news consumers.” Ex-newspaperman turned Hollywood writer (“The Wire”) David Simon was much more downbeat, saying “High-end journalism is dying in America and unless a new economic model is achieved it will not be reborn on the web or anywhere else.” Replay the entire Webcast here.

Is this what they had in mind? – The Chicago Tribune is working on a new Website called Chicago Now that could be a blueprint for the 21st century news ventures discussed at this week’s Congressional hearings. According to news reports, Chicago Now will combine elements of traditional news coverage with e-commerce, blogs, advertorials and social media. The new site is distinct from RedEye, the Tribune’s free daily paper for “young, urban professionals.” The Tribune and other Tribune publishing holdings filed for federal bankruptcy protection last December.

Other stories, items and websites of interest -

• 2009 Online News Association Awards categories – 14 categories, including four paying a total of $28,000 in cash prizes. Deadline for entries is June 30, 2009.
• The Center for Investigative Journalism is hiring reporters to staff a California investigative reporting initiative funded by $2.4 million in grants.
• The Boston Globe, Las Vegas Sun, ESPN.com and CNN.com each won two 2009 Editor & Publisher EPpy awards for outstanding news industry websites and blogs. See the full list here.
• Neighborlogs – a free service/website template for creating hyperlocal community news sites.
• 17 statistics for monitoring your blog – From ProBlogger.

Twitter tools -

• Tweetmeme – Like a Digg for Twitter, this service finds the hottest stories on the service based on the number of retweets.
• How to integrate Twitter into WordPress – A Web Designer Magazine tutorial that explains in 16 very code-y steps how to weave Twitter into a WordPress.com blog.
• Twitter Secrets – An entire blog dedicated to Twitter apps and tools.

Got Websites, news or tips about the digital media business to share? Send them to me: michellerafter (at) comcast (dot) net.

There’s no getting around the fact daily blogging is work. But there are ways to minimize the extra effort. Writing short, planning ahead, mixing up the types of blog posts you write, creating standing features that run the same day every week -  they’re all paths to daily blogging bliss.

It may be a slog, but there’s a silver lining to posting every day. If you want to broaden your freelance repertoire, learning how to blog is the first step toward pitching yourself for paid blogging gigs. Fees for paid blogging assignments are all over the map, so it’s good to know how to write different kinds of posts, how long it takes to write a post and the basics of driving traffic to a blog, so you can take all that into account when negotiating  rates.

Whether you’re taking part in this blog’s 2nd annual May blogathon, or if you just want to learn how be a better blogger, here are 5 sure-fire strategies for coming up with posts every day:

1. Plan ahead – Let me start by saying, this is the hardest for me to do. I know some bloggers who write a week’s worth of posts at a time, and others who chart out what they’re going to write several weeks ahead of time. I don’t do that very often, normally just to cover myself for vacations. But even planning a few days worth of posts – or even just the next day’s post -  is a start. Especially if it gives you time to think ahead about what you want to say and collect URLs that might related to the subject you’re writing about. However, there’s something to be said for the spontaneous blog post, especially if you’re fired up over something and need to write about it while the idea’s fresh. If you’ve banked a number of pre-written posts on evergreen topics, there’s no harm in slipping a spontaneous post into the front of the queue.

2. Write short – If you’re blogging for yourself, you can decide how much or little to include in a single blog post. Some days you might feel like writing 500 or 1,000 words reacting to a news event or on a subject that’s close to your heart. Other days, you may just want to share a news story or blog post someone else has written with your readers, so your post could consist of a link to the original with a paragraph or two of explanation or commentary. Here are some other suggestions for writing short.

3. Mix it up – Unless your blog is set up to be something very specific – a recipe a day, a daily journal entry, all photos -you don’t have to write the same kind of blog post every time. In fact, mixing it up is a good way to get readers to keep coming back to see what you’re going to do next. In a typical blog, you could include:

• Commentary – Your POV on current events.
• Lists – Readers love ‘em.
• How tos – Learned something new? Share.
• Best ofs – A handful of older blog posts on a certain topic. I’ve use this to cover for vacations.
• Interviews – Some of my best-read posts are Q&As I do with other writers on a variety of writing related topics.
• Links – Lists of links to posts on blogs you read on the same subject as your own.
• Announcements – Tell the world when your articles, books or other work appear.
• Reviews – TV shows, movies, books, music, electronics, software, services – anything related to your blog’s theme.

4. Create standing features – A standing feature is a certain type of post that runs on a regular basis. On WordCount, I have two standing features, a weekly recap of highlights from the online media business that runs on Fridays, and a Q&A with freelance writers that runs on an irregular basis but about every 2 to 3 weeks. Standing features give a blog a sense of regularity, and readers come to expect and appreciate them them – and that’s what brings traffic back to your blog.

5. Pre-publish – As writers, we have deadlines. So some days are harder to devote to blogging than others. Blog software that let’s you pre-publish posts is made for those times. Write whatever posts you need to get ahead and use the publish feature to schedule when they’ll appear. This is also a great way to avoid blogging on the weekends, because really, nobody should work on the weekend, especially if you’re not getting paid for it.

Got your own secrets for writing one or more blog posts a day? Please share.

As luck would have it, around the time I was getting ready to publish the results, I got the opportunity to write a guest post for TwiTip, a guide to all things Twitter run by Aussie blogging guru Darren Rowse, the mind behind ProBlogger.com.

So if you want to see the poll results, check out my TwiTip guest post here.

As more writers start using Twitter, use Twitter for different aspects of their business and take on assignments tweeting for clients, how many accounts you use and how you manage those accounts are definitely becoming points of discussion.

I’d love to hear what your experiences have been. If you have several Twitter accounts how do you keep them straight? How do you do it without having it take over your work life?

ProBlogger guest blogger David Risley explains how he pulls in a six-figure income from blogging – good content is a start, but to be successful you have to be a great marketer too.

The Golden Pencil freelance writing blog author Jennie Cromie explains 8 ways Twitter can grow your freelance business in a guest post on TwiTips, the Twitter tips blog. Earlier this year, I swore I couldn’t fit another social network into my work day. But Jennie post convinced me to sign up. Follow me at http://twitter.com/michellerafter.

Because it’s Christmas, enjoy Bill Dyszel as he pays homage to magazines that have gone out of business in “The Morbid Major Magazine Song,” first performed at the American Society of Journalists and Authors’ recent 60th anniversary party and now a YouTube sensation – well, at least among writers.

<a href=”[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjlvYOmXLc8&hl=en&fs=1]“>

I wrote a weekly newspaper column for more than five years. After that, I wrote a weekly column for Reuters, the financial wire service, for seven years. After a dozen years, writing something once a week – or more – was so second nature that when I stopped working to take care of my kids, I kept writing weekly columns. It’s just that for a time, my “weekly column” was the weekly email update for my oldest kids’ summer swim team. Then it was the weekly report for my son’s middle-school football team. Then it was a weekly newsletter for a charity group my daughter and I belonged to. It didn’t really matter what I was writing about, I was writing.

When I went back to work, I had to get acquainted with the technical aspects of blogging. But on the writing end of things I was good. Because really, I’d never stopped.

All of this is a round about way of saying, if you’re a writer, you need to write, and one of the best ways to practice is a blog. If you blog, it gets you into the habit of writing often. It’s like playing the piano. The more you practice, the faster you get better. The more you write, the faster you get better.

That’s reason No. 1 freelance writers should have a blog. Having a blog can also help you:

Create a Website – Sign up with a free blog hosting site like WordPress (what I use), TypePad or Blogger, and for nothing more than your email address, you get an online home for your resume, bio and clips as well as a blog.

Establish a beat - Whether it’s the 2008 presidential campaign, animal rescue or vegan cooking, blogging about a particular subject can help you stay on top of interesting trends and developments in a specific field, information that you can use for queries and assignments.

Practice different writing styles – If you normally writing in one style, you can use your blog to practice different styles or voices. If you normally write straight news stories for business or trade magazines, use your blog to practice writing opinion pieces, personal essays or comedy bits. If you’re comfortable writing in different styles and genres for yourself, it’s not much of a stretch to pitch those types of stories to potential clients.

Become an expert – If you blog on a specific topic long enough, you can develop an expertise that’s so attractive editors will come looking for you – or at least that’s the hope. You might also draw conference organizers looking for speakers and like-minded writers who want to network. Which leads to….

Make connections – Your blog can be a calling card to introduce yourself to writers, editors and other people in your field. Since I wrote about blogs for writers, a bunch of writers whose blogs I mentioned have asked to put me in their blogrolls and I’m doing likewise. Bingo, instant community.

Interact with readers – When you write for magazines or newspapers, you don’t always get the chance to interact directly with readers. Some publications still don’t run writers’ email addresses with stories and others run a generic address for all letters to the editors. On a blog there’s no barrier between you and your readers, so you can respond to whatever they have to say, which could lead to more things to write about.

Improve your skills – As publications move from paper to the Web, writers have to follow. You don’t need to know everything there is to know about coding HTML, but you should know a little. That goes for podcasts, social networks and other Web-based software too.

Get instant gratification - Send a story idea to a magazine editor and it might take weeks or months to hear back. Seeing a story in print can take even longer. On a blog, you get an idea, do some research, write it, hit the “Publish” button, and there it is, your thoughts for the world to see.

Make money – Although many writers use blogs purely for marketing and networking purposes, some have turned them into money-making ventures. They sell ad space through Google AdSense or sign up for the Amazon Associates program, or use the space to sell self-published books, e-books, webinars, podcasts and related services. You may find that you like blogging so much you want to look for freelance blogging gigs, which you can find on sites like ProBlogger and BloggerJobs.

Other writer/bloggers have weighed in on this subject. You can read their reasons why writers should have blogs here, here and here.