Looking for a reason to blog about work?

A research paper I wrote earlier this year looked at why people blogged about their work.

The findings suggested work blogging serves a range of ends to those brave enough to tell how it is where they work.

On Monday work blogging reached new and dizzy heights with a whole Panorama programme dedicated to following through the claims of one very popular work blogger.

The blogger in question - a police officer called David Copperfield (or Stuart Davidson) - had this to say about why he started blogging about work and what kept him blogging:

"When I went to the Internet to look for information about policing, you could find loads of information about police cars, or loads of information about serial killers, but you couldn't find anything on the Internet about what it's like to be an ordinary policeman.

That's just what I was - an ordinary policeman; I wasn't a detective in some sort of special unit dealing with fire arms, or anything like that.

I was just an ordinary policeman.

And, er, nobody else was writing about what their job was like...

...I think one of the reasons [The Policeman's Blog] has become so popular is because the stories I tell about my life as a policeman are not unique.

Initially I thought they were.

I thought nobody else could be doing things that are so insane, but it transpires that thousands and thousands of other police officers are out there doing exactly the same sort of things, which is completely insane."

There are many things that could be taken from the comments of David Copperfield, but generally, it just goes to show how influential a well-written blog can be - the programme is available on-line here.

It's just a shame more people don't blog about their work.