Best blogging tools for *new* bloggers

Hey, fellow bloggers out there, what are the free blog tools that you would recommend for recruiters that want to start a blog?

What are the best aggregator tools for people that want to read blogs?

Us recruiters, we tend to be non-technical folks (most of us aren't hands on), so top priority is decent functionality with a good (read: simple) user interface. If we want to see more recruiters blogging (and get more info on finding jobs in top companies) we need to make it easy for them!