Last night I was a panelist at an event sponsored by the Newswomen’s Club of New York about blogging and journalism. I was joined by two very interesting media savvy women: Gracey Newman of Spa Finder and Jessica Coen of Jezebel.

Originally I thought we were going to talk about the impact of blogging on journalism but mostly we talked about blogging, life as a blogger, monetizing a blog and blog writing.

Gracey Newman, who works at Spa Finder gave an interesting presentation about search engine optimization. She knows her stuff and she offered many tips to help journalists bridge the gap between traditional and social media.

Jessica Coen was an editor Gawker then moved on to Vanity Fair and New York Magazine. She now runs Jezebel, a popular gossip and women’s interest blog (part of the Gawker empire).

It was interesting to hear her describe a day in the life of a Jezebel editor and the way the blog approaches content and comments.

We talked a lot about the difference between writing for traditional media and blogs. Jessica said that while snark is kind of out right now, the writing voice of the blogger is very important.

The discussion went on for about two hours, which is quite long. It was interesting to answer the many questions from the crowd of newswomen and others. Every third Tuesday the group sponsors a networking event called No-Agenda: Tuesday Mixers at various journalist bars around the city. The next one is at The White Horse Tavern on July 20th starting at 7PM. For info email newswomensclub(at)verizon.net