One part of my job here is to advise the reporters who use blogs to cover their beats. Which can be a little tricky when I don't spend much time practicing what I preach. But I like to think I'm a better coach than a player, so occasionally I'll forward some insight or information that I think will help them improve their blogging.

Since a fair amount of the readers of this blog also have their own blogs, I thought I'd share my latest offering. It's from Mike Davidson, the founder of Newsvine, who dissects a prototypical linkblogger named Jason Kottke to highlight what makes his work so compelling.

What separates good linkbloggers from great linkbloggers is a little more subtle though: it’s all about the setup. And this is where Kottke excels.

A linkblogger, for those not familiar with the term, is someone who is fanatical about scanning the web for interesting news, comment, photos and video and then shares the best of what they find with their blog readers. The posts can be short and only provide a link, or the linkblogger can provide analysis and context and tie together seemingly separate links in a way that adds value for the blog reader.

All bloggers link to other material in some fashion and with some frequency, so even if your blog is not primarily a linkblog, you will benefit from Davidson's analysis. "Linkbloggers remember," he writes, "The setup is everything."