Live blogging is a dynamic digital format that has fast evolved in a unique way that is changing the whole landscape of interaction and conversation. This year in particular, as the turbulent Arab revolution has unfolded, the domain of live blogging has turned into one of the most dominant platforms for breaking news on the Web.

The form has been deployed by almost all major news organizations on their respective home pages. It has rapidly emerged as the most potent online substitute to 24/7 TV news. For example, The Financial Times has sought to commandeer a Gideon Rachman blog to keep up pace.

Growing in reach and popularity

The styles vary from the BBC’s quickfire updates (complete with its broadcast feed), to the factual and tight technique of Daily Telegraph, to a bit more expansive approach of the Guardian. The rewarding outcome is hugely impressive online traffic spikes, countless comments in the recent months; live blogs (comprising minute-by-minute coverage of major sporting events) on the guardian account for more than 3.5 million unique users, close to 10% of the total user base.

It has though, invited some traditional readers’ wrath who clamor for a more straight-up & down, conventionally written text.  Live blogs have stirred emotions and passions in the field of journalism with conflicting opinions and viewpoints. As the Guardian blogs editor Matt Wells proclaims in a recent article how he is instinctively a blog enthusiast since they offer a useful means of narrating stories that are characterized by incremental developments and multiple thought layers.

Leveraging live blog as a journalistic tool

• The medium is open about is limitations as a journalistic tool, drawing in the expertise even of the audience and also taking inputs from experts.
• On those fast-moving stories and developments, live blogs on different publications infuse the scope to post significant pieces of information in no time as thing happen – quicker than editing and re-editing, writing and rewriting a long news and analysis article.
• They also let us link out to other related coverage, to add comments from Facebook and Twitter, to showcase visual effects of multimedia (pictures, video, audio etc).
• They allow to incorporate the audience in the feedback/ comments below the line; all this in one place.

Underlining the significance of live blog, the Wall Street Journal (Europe) online editor Neil McIntosh, states: “It is a form that’s sure charming in its directness, and at its best it usually does away with any of those writerly conceits. It demands the author just get on with narrating what’s just happened.”

However, are there any drawbacks of the medium? Does an element of fatigue set in on stories sans a defined timescale or deadline like the Arab Spring uprisings. During such developments, live blogs tend to get long, confusing and almost endless.