Now that I’ve been doing a local portal for over three years, one thing that I realized is that the tone and journalistic style of “local” is not AP Stylebook. When I was taking journalism classes at Ball State, the AP Stylebook was the Bible for journalists. Quote at least three sources for every story. Use third person for your voice. Write in an inverted pyramid so that the editor can cut from the bottom of your story to fill space.

Humbug.

When I interview local writers to write for atGeist.com, the first thing I tell them to do is throw the AP Stylebook out the window and write for your neighbor. Imagine the conversation you have with your neighbor when you bump into them out in your yard. It is a little more personal, first person in voice, and often times references commonly known topics or landmarks. Grammar is still important, but small mistakes are generally not caught by the public, and if they do, they are generally pretty sympathetic given you are their neighbor. You don’t expect your neighbor to be grammatically perfect, use correct sentence structure, or note each restaurant by it’s legal name.