Sick of people coming after you in comments about how your post is not factual?!

Stand up for your post with links and facts, and people will stop the smack talk, or at least tone it down. When I first began posting on FDL, i felt slightly helpless in the comments. More educated people on a certain topic were making notes of flaws in my arguments, and asking for proof. Eventually, I learned that proof lies in your ability to provide STRONG sources of with factual evidence, from unbiased press or research.

To help you out with this, I put together a list of sources that are heavily used by some of our most frequent writers at FDL. Suggestions come from Myself,  Kevin Gosztola at The Dissenter, Scarecrow, Masaccio, and others.

– Harpers Magazine Archives

– New York Times (and blogs within; Paul Krugman, Catherine Rampell, Ezra Klein, and many others)

– The Washington Post, Ezra Klein

– Raw Story

– ACLU (Civil Liberties Writing)

– NBC or ABC

– NexisLexis – Legal Matters

-You can always do a Google search then use a link there, but remember to check to make sure you have a credible source. Without credibility you have no reliability. Make people take you seriously, and more importantly, your writing.

Remember to give the links to articles in your post. If you find an article you would like to reference, follow these steps (also shown to the right):

1. Highlight the words that you want to attach a link to and select the “chain” icon.

2. Copy and paste the URL for the article, site, post, etc in the box.

3. Select “open in new window” (this allows people to stay on your post in one window and open the article in another)

4. Click to add link, and you are done!

You have the option to just simply place the link in the actual post, but it is often better to attach the links to written words in your post.

Let us know in the comments what other areas of blogging are a concern for you, and we will try to help!

For more tools of the trade posts, just search “Tools of the trade”