Which of these 2 database setups should I choose?

Question

I have 3 types of content: blogs, press releases, and reminders. All of them have a body and entered by fields. The blogs and press releases have a

Answer 1

The first one is the better construct, it allows for a content to have a specific set of required or common data in the content table and then specialized data in the child tables. This also allows you to add more types in the future with other requirements that still reuse the common elements in content but retain any unique data.

One other key question is if that data is required, for example do all reminders require an hour and do all blogs/press release require a title. If they are required then you ensure that those child tables will always be populated. If they are not then perhaps you should look at flattening the structure (yes Virginia you should sometimes denormalize).

So instead your content table simply becomes (nn = not null, n = nullable) id (nn) ,type id (nn), type (nn), body (nn), entered by (nn), title (n), hour (n). The main reason I usually find for doing this is that if the different data entities you are creating are so similar that over time it is possible they will merge. For example reminders at this time do not require a title, but in the future the might.