Chuck Welch and Tommy Duncan are both quoted in a recent MediaShift post: Local Bloggers Step Up to Watchdog Local Government.

Well done gentlemen.

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Today, The Ledger published a retrospective article looking back at 21 Leaders of the 21st Century. In 1999 I was picked as a 'future leader' in Polk County and 10 years later they're looking back and checking in with those 21 individuals.

The article is a nice summary of where the county has been and where it is going. However there is some incorrect information in my section. The first sentence states:

In 1999, Josh Hallett owned the computer company Computer Data Networks. He has since sold it.

This is not correct. I was President and a partner in Computer Data Networks. As such I had equity in the firm but I was not the 'owner'. Also I did not 'sell' the company, I left the partnership.

My next venture, Hyku is what I owned, perhaps this is what should have been referenced.

UPDATE: The online article has been corrected.

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I was in Washington DC on Friday for BlogPotomac and word spread quickly at the end of the conference that Tim Russert had passed away. Scott Monty was at Reagan National and said everybody was glued to the TVs. Tim Russert was one of my favorite TV news anchors. He'll be missed.

This past October I saw Tim speak at the PRSA International Conference and was able to get quite a few shots of him.

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Mindy McAdams highlights the skills required in the future journalist. Go check it out.

Journalists who can flourish in both the Web newsroom and the print newsroom today:
- Can package the news online.
- Can create original multimedia.
- Have solid journalism credentials.
- Have strong technical skills.

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Mindy McAdams from the University of Florida blogs about some new classes she is teaching. They focus on new tools available to journalists.

The idea behind this class (and the follow-up, Journalists’ Toolkit 2) is that students will learn to use some of the common tools of today’s cross-platform reporting through assignments based in regular reporting practice. The primary tools in the first class are audio, audio slideshows and blogs. In the second class, the focus will be on video and other motion visuals.

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The second session today at WordCamp featured John Dvorak and Om Malik, it was the eternal blog/journalism debate:

Here are a few choice tidbits from their conversation:

- Why not link? Why waste time/space describing something when you can link?
- Many traditional journalists don't like blogs because they're so annoying, they're always sniping at traditional media.
- Papers that don't allow their reporters to link almost say, "We don't want people to go somewhere else and realize how bad we are by comparison.
- There is this assumption that countries like India and other areas that don't get blogs, Om said the majority of his Indian readers are using mobile devices.
- Om says to be a successful blogger, you need to engage the people that comment.
- People who comment are often smart people that say smart things.

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At BlogPhiladelphia, Emily King, editor on the Intelligent Travel blog for National Geographic Traveler Magazine said that each post on that blog is looked at by at least two researchers and a copy editor before it goes live.

Not really an 'immediate' publishing tool. I wonder how they deal with comments?

As a contrast, I'm sitting next to Benet Wilson who blogs for Aviation Week at Towers and Tarmacs. She says that no editor reviews her posts before they go online.

Update: During the Q&A, Emily said that the posting process normally takes a week.

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As a companion piece to my 'Jaded View of PR and the Blogosphere' here is something about journalists. Once again the caveat that I've been working with traditional media for a number of years on how they can adapt to the world of social media. Also, the vast number of journalists I work for are great people doing great work. It's just a few that spoil it for everybody else.

Generally when you get a group of journalists together on a panel the topic of blogs will come up. One of the often used responses about the blogosphere is, "Blogs are often inaccurate." Each time a journalist says that I will usually respond, "Really, can you give me a specific recent example." Guess what their response is?

Some journalists say that blogs don't check facts or are mostly opinion and as such not real news. It's ironic that when they make those statements it's often based upon generalities and opinion. In a sense, when some journalists speak about blogs they're committing the same sins they say bloggers commit.

Recently, Social Media Club Atlanta held a panel discussion featuring a number of traditional media folk. To say there were some tensions would be an understatement.

Amber Rhea a local Atlanta blogger e-mailed me after the session and conveyed a story similar to one I've experienced. A traditional journalist on a panel will say, "What you do is more......" Just insert your own ending there: 'entertainment', 'fun', 'opinion', 'of a dairy'. In Amber's case her response was, "What 'I' do? Have you ever read my blog? Do you even know what 'I' do?" Hmm, a journalist making a statement without looking at the original source material.

I write a hyperlocal blog and it's a mixture of news, links and opinion. In the year and a half I have run the blog I've only posted incorrect information once and it was more of a writing slip-up than a huge gaffe. I quickly updated the post and pointed out the correction. When a journalist says that blogs are often inaccurate I say, "Really have you looked at my blog or other hyperlocal blogs?"

Making general statements about blogs being this or that infuriates me. Likewise, most newspaper folks will bristle when somebody makes a similar blanket statement such as, "All newspapers have a liberal bias."

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The newspaper in my area published an article today about how local blogs are impacting a CSX development project.

Readers of this blog may find the story familiar. I wrote a post on how the CSX story developed in cooperation between bloggers and traditional journalists.

I've posted my thoughts on the article over at my hyperlocal blog: Empirical Polk.

Of course the story does feature a picture of me 'blogging'. That's what's always funny about stories like this. The photographer shows up and says, "I'm supposed to get some shots of you blogging......so blog."

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Last week I was conducting a training session for a group of journalists from across the U.S. During the course of the session we talked about how blogs allow journalists to create their own brand and build loyalty among their readership.

One of the blogs we looked at as an example was Pop Candy by Whitney Matheson from USAToday. Whitney's blog is a great mixture of her personality and reporting.

I threw the question out there to the audience, "Do you think that Whitney needs USAToday anymore?" Most of the journalists in the audience didn't think so.

What do you think?

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The Orlando Sentinel has created a Twitter account and their first test/use will be for the scheduled launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis tomorrow night.

You can check out their Twitter account here: http://twitter.com/orlandosentinel

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CNN.com is teasing a redesign link on their home page. Currently it directs you to http://beta.cnn.com/. It's a big change, and I like it.

The primary navigation has moved from the side to the top (it was at the top before, I just remember the side for some reason) and the entire content area is now centered (rather than left-aligned). The entire look is cleaner and does reduce the amount of content on the home page.

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Joe Thornley is doing his usual bang-up job of conference coverage from MESH in Canada. Here is the choice quote from Mike Arrington's opening session:

The best thing that traditional journalists can do is to start wrting their own blogs and to build their own brands. This will protect them against downsizing in traditional media.

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"This is a cool way to do the news"

That's what Billy Townsend, a reporter with the Tampa Tribune told me a few weeks ago on a Friday afternoon. We were in the middle of piecing together an interesting local story that would lead to bigger things. The news story would eventually unfold on the newspaper's web site and a number of local blogs. It was also an interesting exercise in how news is transforming, specifically the relationship between newspapers and local bloggers.

Here's the backstory.

CSX, a major rail/transport company is considering building a intermodal facility in Winter Haven, Florida. CSX and the City of Winter Haven are promoting the project as an economic boom for the area that will create jobs and increased tax revenue. With any development of this nature there are concerns over: growth, traffic, environment, etc. For the record, I believe the project will be a benefit to the area, but the proper steps need to be taken.

From CSX's standpoint the project/permitting process was moving along nicely. The surrounding communities in Polk County paid little attention to the project, it was perceived as being a 'Winter Haven' thing. At first, the local newspapers did very little reporting, mostly discussing some of the economic benefits.

I run a hyperlocal blog in our community called Empirical Polk. The first post about the CSX project appeared on EP on February 1, 2006. For the most part, with EP I can only comment on issues or share insights I've found from other news sources. In the case of CSX project, my blog along with other local blogs have all contributed to the ongoing story.

The first newspaper to do any sort of digging into the story was not really a local paper. The Tampa Tribune does not distribute their paper in the area and just recently hired Billy Townsend to cover the region. While Billy does file stories about Polk County for the print edition, his primary publishing tool is the Polk County News Blog. Billy is a reporter that has truly embraced blogging. He posts often, links to the competition and interacts with bloggers in the community.

On his blog, Billy began to look into the CSX numbers and how the development would impact the rest of the county. One of the issues was the increase in rail traffic. In Florida, CSX operates two main freight lines, a North/South and East/West. As part of the Central Florida commuter rail deal CSX will be shifting much of their traffic off of the E/W line to the N/S line. This can also be combined with a general increase in freight traffic related to the intermodal. How much of an increase is still up for debate. Freight traffic on the N/S line will mostly likely double, and might even triple.

On March 28th Billy blogged about Polk County's central location within the CSX freight system. The N/S and E/W lines cross in Polk County. The question was where? At first CSX didn't even know where. For any geek/blogger, of course Google Maps can help with a question like that. The problem was that we were looking for a natural crossing, as in X marks the spot.

On a Friday afternoon, I think I had figured it out. The lines didn't cross in a perfect X, instead they joined and ran along the same corridor for a few miles. In other words, all the N/S traffic would run on the E/W line for a short stretch. The problem though, was that the short, joint stretch runs through downtown Lakeland, FL. Like many towns in the south, the main rail line bisects the downtown Lakeland region. This causes traffic and noises issues downtown. With this discovery, it seems that those problems will double or triple as a result of the increased freight traffic from the Winter Haven intermodal facility.

Billy and I exchanged e-mails discussing my find and we eventually met up at a local coffee shop in Lakeland to go over things. The evolving story was spelled out on Empirical Polk and the Polk County News Blog. Being the reporter that he is, Billy followed-up with CSX to confirm the crossing and then he began talking to Lakeland civic leaders. While they had heard about the CSX project, the increase in rail traffic in downtown Lakeland was news to them.

Suddenly, the 'Winter Haven' project was having a major impact on Lakeland. Lakeland community/business leaders requested a meeting with CSX and the local media finally woke up. Lakeland-specific blogger Chuck Welch began following the story at LakelandLocal.com and has even created a content archive of all things CSX.

To this point the CSX project had avoided a DRI or Development of Regional Impact classification. A DRI brings with it a process to study and approve any development. That process takes time and money. With the increased media attention, the county and surrounding cities began requesting DRI status for the project.

What will happen next remains to be seen.

It was during our coffee break on that Friday afternoon that Billy said, "This is a cool way to do the news." I imagine it was like any group of reporters working on a story, except that I wasn't on the paid staff of the paper.

I have said before that what I do on my hyperlocal blog is in some sense lazy journalism. I don't have the resources to investigate or the contacts to get the interviews I want, but Billy (and the traditional media) does. I can pose a question on my blog and a reporter can follow-up on it. One local news-pro once joked that Empirical Polk was a great tip-sheet for their newspaper staff. The funny thing is that he was only joking halfway.

What can be learned from this?

Obviously we know that the business and reporting of news is changing, and fast. The tracking and reaction to news is just as fast, if not faster. From a PR standpoint the traditionalists might not like this, but there is a some benefit. All of this is happening out in the open. As more reporters blog (and blog more frequently), and hyperlocal blogs become more prevalent, the stories are now out in the open for all to see.

Reporters and bloggers are asking questions first on their blogs and the writing the stories later. Savvy PR practitioners can answer those questions if they're following along. Imagine knowing the question before the reporter calls, of better yet calling them first. Can't get to the reporter? Contact the local blogger, or leave a blog comment. The good local reporters are reading the local blogs.

The media and blog coverage of the CSX project will only increase and leave a detailed digital-paper trail for anybody to read.

So what is a PR person to do? Later this week in Part 2 I'll talk about what CSX and the Winter Haven Chamber of Commerce have been doing with blogs.

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This is an interesting twist on old-meda/new-media. Former Tampa Tribune film critic Bob Ross (he was laid off in the recent downsizing at the Tribune) is now blogging at Sticks of Fire, the Tampa Blog.

After nearly 22 years of loyal (and, if I do say so myself, superior) service, I’ve been downsized. Laid off. Shown the door.

Sure, it hurts. The only reason the Tampa Tribune gives is that my position had to be eliminated. Something about being more “local.” Movie reviews are available all over the world for free. The fact that I did a lot more than just review movies apparently was not a factor. A consistent, local critic is a luxury the struggling paper can no longer afford.

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Has anybody else noticed that the new USAToday.com is very slow to load and sluggish on Safari on the Mac? I've tried on a few machines and have noticed the same thing.

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Orlando Sentinel Columnist Mike Thomas now has a blog. On the surface, nothing shocking there. What is interesting is his column announcing his new blog. This is the choice quote:

I am a citizen journalist. Once I made fun of bloggers, and now I am one. Funny what a paycheck will do to your outlook on life.

It's all about the Web now.

When we produce expensive, looooong stories on issues vital to Central Florida and humanity in general, here is what happens at Click Command: clickclickclick.

When Mike Bianchi writes that the Gators should pay Billy Donovan $1.3 billion to keep him from going to Kentucky, here is what happens: CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK!

Disclosure: The Orlando Sentinel and Tribune Media are clients

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Tish Grier blogs about her new job with Assignment Zero.

Last Monday, I started my first day as Deputy Director of Participation for Assignment Zero

In case you don't know/haven't heard what Assignment Zero is, it's Jay Rosen's project that hopes to find a good working model for how to combine citizens and journalists to create a new paradigm for investigative journalism.

At the past few events I have been to that involve the traditional media I have become somewhat jaded. Basically there are those that talk about the problems and those that are working to fix them. Tish is part of the people wanting to try new things...good for her. New Assigment is something different. Will it work? Time will tell, but at least they are doing something.

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One of the comments to come out of the WeMedia Conference earlier this year was, "There is still this notion that we speak, then they converse." We, being media, they being the readers. It was said by Mike Orren of Pegasus News. For a great example of this, look at a recent post by Jim Johnson on Sticks of Fire.

Jim discusses how the Tampa Tribune is removing comments from their stories and blogs and 'directing' people to the forums of their site for discussion. The change represents a major disconnect from the notion of news as a conversation, back to more of news as a lecture. One of the major issues is general usability:

It’s about giving the readers as many options to communicate as possible. It’s far easier to comment at the bottom of the post than to find a link to the forum, register for the forum (or log in), find the thread on which they want to share their thoughts (or start a new post), and then comment. One step is replaced by four.

Yes we all know that things are changing in the newspaper world, but taking away a feature that readers want/use is not a smart business move.

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Rogers Cadenhead has an interesting post about a Florida paper trying to track down a local anonymous blogger.

I've been reading the Record for a decade. I can't recall a single time where it conducted an effort to catch a rapist, robber or murderer anywhere near the scope of this manhunt for a blogger.

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There are a bunch of posts related to the re-org of the Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning. I'm leading a series of training sessions all day today so I'll post my thoughts later today. For now here are a few links:

- Will Sullivan
- Mindy McAdams
- Leonard Witt
- Grayson has some choice words as well

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In a great post, Mike Manuel provides the chronology of the 90-second news cycle we now live in:

+1 second to hit publish

+2 seconds for a blog to refresh

+3 seconds for feed readers to update

+4 seconds to email, link, tag, rank, or rate a blog post

+5 seconds for readers to form an opinion and/or leave a comment

+1 minute for Technorati to register a server ping, crawl and index a blog post

+8 seconds for alerts, watchlists and saved searches to propagate

+4 seconds for a blog post to plateau, amplify or disappear

+2 seconds for this cycle to repeat from the beginning

+1 second to realize the world's changing...

In a 24-hour news cycle there are total of 960 unique, 90-second news cycles.

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Mitch Glaser posts on the final day of WeMedia. Go read the entire post, but here is the choice quote for me:

Outside in the hall after the panel, NYU professor and PressThink blogger Jay Rosen told me that Lasica and I had not gotten through to them. Rosen had raised his hand but wasn’t called upon, but had a great analogy of what was wrong with MSM’s approach to citizen media.

“They are trying to change the vocabulary without changing the grammar,” he said. “They use the new vocabulary [of new media] but they are not changing their mindset, and accepting a loss of control.”

In other words, they might start blogs or podcasts or accept comments on stories, but they still believe their work is coming down from on high atop the mountain of Eternal Truth. The new truth of we media — lowercased — is that the media elite have lost the lock on media control, the old style of getting into a room and deciding what is news for the rest of us.

What I have always said is that many newspapers adopt the tools of social media, but not the community or methodology.

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I wrote a few things about the WeMedia conference yesterday. Pondering them a bit more during my drive from Miami I wanted to post a follow-up. During the opening session on community there was a bit of soul-searching on the part of the traditional media. They know that the future for them is 'local' and 'community' and 'conversation' but do they really know how to do that?

When I deal with any media client that wants to 'embrace' social media and become more community oriented I always ask the same thing, "Do you know the names of your readers?" I know the answer to this before I ask it, but it's more of an exercise. Compare this to many individuals that run hyperlocal blogs, they know the names of their readers. They have a community.

One aspect of community is cooperation. During the community panel Jan Schaffer from J-Lab said she wanted to see more cooperation between traditional media on citizen's media. To paraphrase what she said, 'why is it that when a local paper looks at a new hyperlocal blog they say, "we need to do that to" and starts to compete, why not work together?'

Many times 'competition' in media is based upon ad sales. However many hyperlocal blogs don't accept advertising. The hyperlocal blogger isn't in it for money, they're just trying to provide the community information and discussion.

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Somebody sent me the URL for a new photo aggregator from the Atlanta Journal Constitution: http://i2i.ajc.com

More thoughts soon.....

Well I was going to say a bit more, but Rex wrapped things up nicely in his comment. Like he says, why create your own, when there are other solutions out there that the majority of people use.

A great example of this is GoGatorNation.com. When the site launched they used a proprietary photo upload tool. As Rex references, you'd have to upload your photos to Flickr then to their site. Duplicating work is something that not many people want to do. Now the site directs user to use Flickr.

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Somebody just brought up the point that the majority of the people in the room at WeMedia are from 'Big Media' and the big issue is the new wave of media from the people. So where are the people? Are they part of this discussion, this conference? Nope. That's what makes events like BlogHer so great...the attendees are the people.

Another attendee, Mike Orren with Pegasus News just stated, "There is still this notion that we speak, then they converse." We, being media, they being the readers.

A friend pointed out it's somewhat arrogant for a room full of 'big' media folks to talk about how citizen's media will work. I wonder what J.D. is thinking...he's in the front row.

Mitch Glaser - The reality is that the majority of 'local' papers aren't owned by local people, they're part of a large corporation. That's why many of these hyperlocal sites are successful. They're run by somebody that is truly local.

Update: Mitch has more to say over at MediaShift.

Thanks to the audience taking control of their media experience and creating their own media in blogs, podcasts, video and social networks, the people who are losing control have decided to meet — and meet, and meet again — until they figure out how they can take back some control of this uncontrollable situation.

Update 2: Jeremiah is attending his first conference that mixes traditional with social media. Read his thoughts.

This was one of my first dunk into a conference focused on the intersection of “traditional press/media” and “social media”.

There was quite a bit of confusion from this group, which was primarily journalists and folks from media. They don’t know how to fit, they don’t know what to do.

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I'm sitting in the first session at WeMedia at the University of Miami, FL. Here are some quick notes:

Lisa Stone, BlogHer - What we're seeing with women bloggers is that they are no longer waiting to receive the news they are actively seeking the news, they're discussing.

Eduardo Hause, Daily Me - 123 Million newspaper delivered each day, 150 million over the weekend, compare that to only 50 million internet users reading news sites in a week

Shel Israel - Shel immediately questions the stats that Eduardo stated.....how many of those 123 million papers are read, what percentage of the paper is read by that smaller portion?

Ian Rowe, MTV - What we're also seeing is the change in the editorial process. Before it was a group of men sitting in a room deciding what stories would be reported and what show would be aired at 9pm on a particular night. That's changing.

Lisa Stone - Did we all really love Lucy or did we all watch it because it was the only thing on? In court reporting there are a number of lawyers that now cover trials via blogs, previously most court reporting was handled by traditional journalists that were not lawyers. There is a new level of expertise out there.

Question from the audience, what is community or is it communities? Many media folks thing community is their local geographic region.

To follow-up on this, just because I live in Central Florida, is that my community? No, I belong to many communities. Some real, some virtual.

The Guardian Unlimited has some coverage of this session as well.

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Michael Eisenberg wonders if/why the AP would edit a quote by Tony Dungy? If you remember Tony mentioned the Lord quite a few times during his trophy presentation speech. In an AP recap of the Super Bowl, this is the quote attributed to Tony.

"I'm so proud of our guys," Dungy said. "We took the hit early with Devin Hester. We talked about it; it's going to be a storm. Sometimes you have to work for it. Our guys played so hard and I can't tell you how proud I am of our group, our organization and our city."

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Just last week I had a conversation with a newspaper client about this subject, SEO in headlines. From the cnet article:

In November, Nielsen/NetRatings ranked Boston.com, the sister Web site of The Boston Globe, as the fourth-most trafficked newspaper Web site in the country, even though its print circulation is ranked 15th by one audit bureau. "We're regularly beating the bigger boys, like the Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal...and part of the reason is SEO," said David Beard, editor of Boston.com and former assistant managing editor of its print sibling, The Boston Globe.

Of course if you're burying your content behind a pay wall then don't bother.

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From Jeff Jarvis:

The newspaper industry is spending $75 million to argue that it’s not screwed. How much better it would be to spend $75 million on innovation so, indeed, it won’t be screwed.

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While chatting with a friend who works for a newspaper they said that the last paper they worked for wasn't that hip on that internet stuff. My friend suggested that they start to put breaking news online. The paper didn't think this was such a good idea since the stories would be in the print edition the next day.

I remarked, that's not breaking news, that's broken news.

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Steve Rubel highlights some recent data on the rise in newspaper blog readership. Like Steve says this is a good thing from a blog adoption standpoint but I want to highlight another important thing related to newspaper blogs, cost.

Many major newspapers are using the traditional blog tools to publish their blogs. In Orlando the Sentinel uses TypePad, so does USAToday. Other papers are using WordPress or MovableType, or in CNN's case, Blogger. These are all very low cost solutions. Compare that to the content management systems that run the rest of the paper (both print and online).

What you have is a platform that accounts for 13% of readership and costs anywhere from free (Blogger/WP) to maybe $100/month (TypePad's business class). While I don't have the numbers on what the total costs of publishing the rest of the paper online are, it's considerably more than the blog tools and I guarantee that from a $/pageviews ratio it doesn't come close.

I should note that I'm not considering salaries of reporters or technical staff in here since they would be the same regardless of the publishing platform used.

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Via Mindy McAdams I found this discussion about local newspapers and local search:

Newspapers have the best local content for local restaurants, movie reviews, local business, school sports, and should be the first search result for any local search. They are not. Greg Linden says Newspapers should own local. I think they don't because they don't think globally. They don't think about how to make their valuable content friendly to search engines.

One issue is that most papers remove their content or put it behind a pay wall. From a pay wall standpoint the papers are just looking to generate revenue by selling access to older articles. For many papers this is easy money. However are they trading this short term revenue for the long term search benefits?

Any blogger that has looked over their stats knows that the real traffic is in the old stuff. I have a few older posts that have thousands and thousands of visits, mostly generated from Google/Yahoo!/MSN.

Like the recent issues surrounding citizen journalism, the traditional papers are just realizing that they need to pay attention to this stuff. However, reworking existing content management systems and tasking over-worked technical producers is easier said than done.

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Last week Robert Niles posted a story about the silliness of arguing about the merits of 'citizen' versus 'mainstream' journalism. Robert asks that we move towards a middle ground resulting in the best of both worlds. In his post Robert provides and example of how a recent LA Times article could benefit from a blend of 'mainstream' and 'citizen' journalism. He wonders why the LA Times reporter couldn't supplement/enhance the story with data from readers.

Collaboration between mainstream/citizen journalists and enhancing stories with user-content are great ideas, but working with newspapers over the past two years has shown me that we're still far away from this ideal. Why? Here are a few basic issues:

Thinking: The majority of reporters I've dealt with just don't think this way. It's not a bloggers-as-enemies thing, it's just that they are stuck in the traditional print publication mode, i.e. the print-edition comes first, the web second. As the next-generation of reporters fill newsrooms across the country this will slowly change. Schools today are doing a great job emphasizing that newspaper journalism is becoming a multi-media experience and involves the citizen/reader.

Bad Apples: Luckily this is only something I have seen on a few occasions, but as the common saying goes, a few bad apples ruin it for everyone. Some reporters don't respect their readers. This goes back to the 'who are these people and why should I care' mentality. Other reporters view anything beyond the basic assignment as more work than they're getting paid for. I remember a year ago many reporters would say, "You want me to write my normal column and a blog?" Don't treat them as different things or assignments, it's all content, it's all reporting.

Training: The majority of reporters don't have the training to 'enhance' their stories on the web. Asking a reporter to do some basic HTML mark-up is sometimes a big stretch. Asking them to add some sort of interactive functionality is an even bigger stretch. However, like the first issue, as newly trained reporters filter in this will change.

Workflow: Most of the time the reporters are merely content producers, i.e. they enter their story into the content management system and their job is done. It is usually the job of the technical producer or web monkey to enhance stories online. Often though, the technical folks are too busy just making everything work to take on a number of extra projects, especially those that don't mesh with the CMS (see next item)

CMS Inflexibility: All major newspaper are run on complex content management systems (CMS). While CMS's are great and allow for some amazing automation of publishing newspapers online they usually don't react well to "Can we do this?" queries. You usually can't go to the internal web team and say, "Hey, at the end of this story I want people to be able to submit data in tabular format along with a picture." More newspapers are adding comments and blogs, but many of those solutions are simple and out-of-the-box relatively speaking.

The larger paper groups have the biggest problems since they have invested millions into their current CMS solutions and if it doesn't do something they can't just scrap it. New functions have to be develop from scratch or they need to out someway to integrate it into the current system. Example: The search system of one major CMS couldn't index blog content on other servers. Corporate response? We'll look at that for next quarter. Smaller papers with a good development team can be more nimble in this respect.

The 1% Rule: The standard line: 100% of us are readers, while only 1% are contributors. The newspaper business is just that, a business, and when a newspaper spends time and money on a project they want to maximize the return on that investment. A user-generated-content project which draws input from that 1% doesn't always impress the bean counters. However, you need to think about the economics in terms of that 1% helping create content (at no cost) for that 100%.

So how can we fix all this?

As I have said, as the new breed of reporters begin to take over things will change, but that generational shift will take some time. Current reporters need to learn new tricks, so-to-speak. Reporters that do a better job of enhancing/supplementing their stories on the web should (in theory) be rewarded with higher traffic to their stories online. Give those reporters the best assignments.

Newspapers also need to beef up their web support staff, but they shouldn't just hire people to 'run' the paper web site. A great solution would be to assign a single technical producer to a small team of reporters. Let this producer follow stories as they are developing to provide suggestions on how citizen/reader input could benefit a story. Some papers do this now, but the ratio of technical producers to reporters is so low that very little can be done.

If papers can't integrate new tools within their current CMS's look for them to build/partner-with other platforms to handle specific types of content uses. I'm not talking micro-sites, but something like integrating Flickr-like tools for photos, etc.

Overall, we've come a long way in 2006 and it will be interesting to watch how newspapers continue to evolve in 2007. I welcome any thoughts/comments you might have.

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After our 'fun' lunch it was back to work with the breakout sessions. As a PR/Hyperlocal blogger and a consultant to traditional media this session really interested me. Are bloggers journalists?

Yes the question has been asked and debated hundreds of times on panels around the world, but my interest is seeing the response/questions from the audience. Discussing the subject today was a great panel including:

David Armon, COO, PR Newswire
Julia Hood, Editor-in-Chief, PRWeek
Henry Copeland, CEO, Blogads.com
Peter Himler, Flatiron Communications

David served as moderator of the panel and opened with some brief intros from the panelists. During Henry's intro he said, "Outside is the new inside." and that he enjoys coming 'inside' to tell that story.

David surveyed the audience to get a perspective on who was in the room. It was a great mix in the room of agencies, corporations, bloggers, journalists and academia.

Q. Are bloggers journalists?

Julia: If she had to do it all over again she might not have gone back to journalism school, she'd be a blogger. She thinks the impetus for bloggers and journalists is to have a voice. Journalists will say they are different because they are objective and have editor...all of those things are debatable. Thomas Paine is the first blogger, Julia though she had that idea first, but no, plenty of other people have made that connection. If the impetus is the same than perhaps the responsibilities are the same.

Peter: I feel they are journalists, but of the citizen variety. The lines of traditional media are blurring, entertainment is mixing with hard news, etc. Media needs to take a look and take stock of where they are at. He feels that blogs are subjective to some degree. There is of course an echo chamber, but it works both ways. Many times it's a AP or Reuters story that is discussed in blogs, but what we're seeing now is bloggers post a story idea and it's picked up by the traditional media.

Henry: I'll be the outsider. He doesn't think it's an issue until substantive words get used. Some of the words used are originator and legitimacy. When we apply those words then we have a debate. The people reading blogs feel the information they're getting out of blogs is valuable. Sure there is spin, but it's obvious and the people reading them understand this.

David talked about how PRNewswire selects bloggers to be included in their programs. The blog must have original content, it must be influential (more than 1000 unique links via Technorati), it must fit the taxonomy of their business and the blog must not be obscene.

Peter: Do bloggers get credentials? What we're seeing now with bloggers, is that client still want to manage messages. The holy grail of the blogosphere is that we can select bloggers that target a specific topic or audience. However a Z-list blogger can still break news, but they may only have limited space at a particular event. If you're managing a news event, you don't have to let everybody in, this doesn't just apply to bloggers, this also applies to journalists.

Henry: Some of the prolific bloggers are just being bombarded by PR flacks. Things are changing, 18 months ago many bloggers would feel flattered if somebody pitched them, now they're being overwhelmed.

Julia: Welcome to the world of being a journalist. You get what you ask for.

Peter: You don't pitch a blog, you build a conversation with a blog.

Q: Julia, you said earlier that bloggers and journalists have the same responsibility, can you elaborate on what those are?

Julia: I don't think they should have the same responsibilities, it's just a responsibility.

(getting behind.....the conversation is too good....)

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A hyperlocal blog I run, Empirical Polk, is celebrating its first birthday today. It's been an interesting experience writing for a smaller/targeted audience and dare I say, reporting, on local issues.

I'm looking forward the the second year.

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Over at Sticks of Fire, Tommy talks about David Banghart moving from one neighborhood to another within Tampa and how he's leaving one blog for another. David ran the popular and informative Seminole Heights blog, but now he'll be posting at the Word from Lutz.

Somehow I missed the St. Pete Times article that profiled David and the Seminole Heights blog. Tommy quotes a bit of it, but I just want to highlight this part:

Before his blog, residents of Old Seminole Heights, South Seminole Heights and Southeast Seminole Heights communicated through e-mail and phone chains mostly within their neighborhoods. Now, attendance is higher at events because everyone in the area sees the same fliers posted on the blog. “You post it on the blog, you’re going to get a turnout,” said Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association president Randy Baron. “I think it’s an excellent place for people to find out about things. It’s a one-stop shop.” And readers aren’t just residents. The media and city officials regularly check blogs for neighborhood news.

Shannon Edge, the city’s director of neighborhood and community relations, is a regular blog visitor. It’s a great gauge for what residents care about and alerts her to neighborhood issues, she said. She often verifies information posted anonymously on the blog with association presidents in order to pass it along to city officials.

But those professionals will need to know where to turn to fill in their own knowledge gaps as well. That's because the citizenry, the ones who live in the communities or who have a niche interest, are going to be powerful within that niche. Mainstream media outlets simply don't have the resources to get as minutely specific as blogging allows for. So not only is Josh smart for knowing what he doesn't know and reaching out for input, so to should reporters learn to know what they don't know and search for those who do....

....But niche bloggers have the time and the passion to cover topics or angles that big news organizations just can't because the return on investment is too low or even non-existent.

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Dan Greenfield has a thought provoking post talking about bloggers as journalists. The opening sentences set the stage:

We have all experienced it – a news story runs about your company, but the reporter never contacted your company for a comment. Makes us mad and clients mad. Journalists should know better we say.

But how about when bloggers post a comment about your company or pull comments from a company blog without contacting the PR department? Are we still as angry? My guess is probably not.

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Over the past few months I have been at a few events where a speaker will say something and then quickly throw out a, "Is there anybody from the media here?" In other words, they just said something incredibly stupid and want to make sure it doesn't leave the room. In most cases there isn't a member of the media present, but as a blogger should I raise my hand?

For the most part I have no interest in exposing some local official's slight slip-up, but there are exceptions.

What officials and speakers need to realize is that we are all media. We might not all blog, but if something stupid/scandelous is said, it's going to get out.

This issue came up earlier this year when Sean Hannity spoke at a local university. The media was not allowed to attend the speech. My question back then was who is going to stop a student from blogging/writing about the speech on their MySpace page or Facebook account?

This isn't a 'blogger threat' it's just a reality. The ability for people to get away with (and say) stupid things is going away, which is a good thing.

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The Society for News Design is holding their annual conference in Orlando over the next few days. Luckily, Ernesto is not making much of an impact here in Central Florida and the designers should be able to enjoy a few days of sunshine.

The reason I mention the conference is because the SND has a pretty good conference blog going over at: www.snd.org/orlandoblog/. With our recent conference blogging efforts for FPRA I've been paying particular attention to these types of blogs.

How did I find out about this event? One of the blogs I read is NewsDesigner and they're running their own conference blog at: snd.newsdesigner.com.

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Steve Rubel talks about USAToday's blog fetish and a little bit about the use of blogs in newspapers. I've been following the USAToday blogs since the first launched in November of last year. They are all run off of TypePad and even they face problems when TypePad goes down (see error message below).

Previous USAToday related posts:
- Defining Blogs - A Misconception - 5.10.06
- USAToday Launches Yet Another Blog - 01.17.06
- Travel Blogs Article in the New York Times & USAToday's New Travel Blog - 01.17.06
- USAToday Rolling Our More Blogs - 11.29.05

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As a parent of a 4-year-old you end up watching your fair share of Noggin, Playhouse Disney and Sprout. In the past the majority of the commercials were kids-stuff, i.e. toys, cereals, fun-yogurt-type-things, etc. Recently though a number of 'adult-themed' commercials are in the mix. By adult, I mean commercials for debt consolidation services and stay-at-home business offers (read: pyramid schemes).

While watching one of the stay-at-home business commercials last week my son said to me, "Daddy, we need to visit that web site so I can buy a pool."

Obviously the firms are targeting parents who often watch these shows with their kids, but explaining debt consolidation to your 4-year old is like explaining a Cialis commercial.

Or perhaps there are thousands of toddlers deep in credit card debt that need our help.

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Update: Here is the Tampa Bay Business Journal article, and Tommy's thoughts as well as Eric's.

Speaking of bad ideas....

A reporter called me a few weeks ago to ask about a new blog that he received a press release about, TampaNewsBlog. It's a product of the BlogSpotNetwork. According to their release:

“Most online news sites are a collection of only national and world news stories designed to appeal to the masses, leaving a great opportunity for the emergence of a local online news source. We have ceased this opportunity and are proud to be the first to provide local web news in the very popular blog format. Most people have an opinion about many news stories, and our news blogs will uniquely allow them to easily have their say for all to see”, said Bert L. Bill, C.O.O. Our mission is to produce the best possible web news blog, which comes from listening to our readers and subscribers, and then providing what it is they want”, he added.

Looking at their site today there is no news. However, when I first looked at their site all they were doing is scraping content from traditional publishers, i.e. local newspapers and web sites such as the Tampa Bay Business Journal and the Tampa Bay Times and posting excerpts. Around each of these excerpts they provided a comment function and Google ads.

So in other words they take other people's content and sell advertising around it. I know that traditional publishers won't be too happy about that. Maybe that's why there is no news on the site now.

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Announcing BlogOrlando, an un-conference to be held in Orlando, Florida on Friday, September 22nd through Sunday, September 24th, 2006. What started off as an informal gathering of friends might just turn into something bigger.

Hyku, in partnership with Rollins College will host this FREE event that is open to bloggers and non-bloggers alike from Florida and anywhere else (so far we have one international attendee). We hope to bring together a good cross-section of folks to discuss blogging, podcasting, public relations, social media, citizen's journalism and other related topics. In addition to the Friday event we are planning some outings at the local theme parks over the weekend. This event is as much a social/family gathering as it is a 'work' gathering, so bring the family (kids included).

Shown below is a tentative schedule for the weekend:

Thursday (9/21): Travel day for most, perhaps an informal dinner that night
Friday - day (9/22): BlogOrlando un-conference at Rollins College
Friday - evening (9/22): Full-on geek dinner somewhere in Orlando
Saturday (9/23): Blogger day at one of the Disney parks
Sunday (9/24): Travel day, or stay an extra day at the Disney parks

As you can see the weekend will feature time at the Disney theme parks. We'll finalize what park we're going to do on which day. If we have a large contingent of families/kids coming in we can look to organize a Friday activity for those folks.

The original concept/title for this event was: Josh is Tired of Traveling Outside of Orlando so Everybody Come Here Con or JTTOOECH-Con. I wanted to get some friends to the area to meet, but more importantly spend some down-time at the theme parks with their families. Thinking about it more I also wanted to bring together some folks from the growing blog community in Florida that normally couldn't afford to travel out of state (and pay) for other events. I hope to achieve the best of both with this event. Of course having a draw like the Disney parks isn't a bad thing :-)

What will it cost? Nothing, well almost nothing. The un-coference will be free, but of course you need to get here and cover your hotel and theme park tickets. If you're from the area and only plan to attend on Friday, then all you're paying is gas and your lunch.

If you want to get a hotel reservation you can contact the EO Inn or the Embassy Suites in Downtown Orlando. Since this is an un-conference we don't have room blocks or special rates.

As more details become available I will post them here and over at BlogOrlando.com. I'll also have a registration form up shortly. For now if you intend on coming leave a comment below. Online registration is now available.

Update: upcoming.org link.

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Some of my clients are traditional media, i.e. newspapers and other publications. Within those industries there is a growing interest in citizen's journalism. What is it, how will it impact their business, how do they work with it, who are these people, why are they doing it, etc. Other major markets (California, New York, etc) have been discussing these issues for quite some time, often hearing from the true masters like Dan Gillmor and J.D. Lasica. Florida, however, is a bit behind the curve sometimes :-)

I often deal with traditional media that is just learning about the world of social media/CGM/citzen's journalism. When I discuss citizen's journalism I break it down into two segments: Active and Passive.

Active:
This segment is made up of individuals that are running hyperlocal blogs, contribute to local blogs or are participating in community publishing experiments such as BackFence or YourHub. The bloggers are actively seeking information and writing about a topic. They are also actively seeking readers that are interested in their topic.

Local Florida blogs such as Sticks of Fire and Urban Jackonville are constantly reporting/posting about news and issues within small markets. Are they actually reporting? That's up for debate, but the active participants have a true passion for local content. Many of the local blogs are updated on a daily basis providing stories and commentary on items that might never make the traditional media. As with most blogs, the comments of the visitors helps drive the conversation and spurs interest in stories.

Why do they do it? Mostly it's an interest in their local community. While some local blogs generate a small amount of revenue via advertising or Google AdSense, it's usually just enough to cover the bills. Some bloggers don't/won't even accept advertising.

What does traditional media do? Sometimes they try to court these bloggers to help provide content for community publishing systems they have implemented. However many of the local bloggers a fiercely independent and are not interested in working with the MSM. In some cases the local reporters will watch the local blogs for story ideas. Perhaps they'll credit the local blog with the tip, perhaps not :-)

Passive:
This segment is made up of the overwhelming population of regular bloggers. By regular I mean they just blog about their lives or a particular topic they are interested in. They might be on MySpace, Blogger or LiveJournal. They don't attempt to report or research and they aren't seeking local readers, they just blog.

So how do they become citizen's journalists? Well they don't don a 50's-era fedora and grab a notebook, they stumble into their role as a citizen's journalist. Or to be more accurate somebody else stumbles upon them.

Every once and a while your average blogger might write about an experience or event they witnessed. Perhaps a post about their recent vacation to Disney, seeing somebody famous, or a car shopping experience. These types of posts are then found by media or general readers via Technorati or Google. Something they wrote a few months or years ago suddenly becomes relevant.

Reporters are slowly becoming more savvy when it comes to using blog searches to find topics and leads. Searching blogs can open up an entire network of viewpoints and witnesses to a particular situation. So don't be surprised if one day you get a call or an e-mail from a reporter and they say, "I was reading your blog and....."

More Reporters:
Whether you want to call them reporters or not there is the reality that there are more eyes & ears on the ground. Yes there is some loss of privacy, but there is also a renewed interest in acting more responsibly because you never know who is watching (and blogging).

Take this recent example: The Future of Satellite Radio - According to Greg Wyatt.

I was at an event where Greg Wyatt proclaimed to an audience of PR folks that satellite radio was doomed and went on to discuss the future of radio. I thought Greg was a bit full of it so I blogged his quote. Somebody in the audience then told me I shouldn't quote Greg, my response, "maybe Greg shouldn't make statements like that in public." The blog post has pulled in a few interesting comments and is now on the front page of a Google search for Greg Wyatt.

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Congrats to Joey Marchy of nGenworks and Urban Jacksonville. The local paper in Jacksonville did a write-up on local bloggers and Joey was featured quite a bit.

In true blogger form, Joey has some comments/clarifications about the article on his blog.

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Over at the media breakfast panel Greg Wyatt a local radio station owner says that Sirius and XM will be bankrupt shortly and that OnStar might buy them.

I don't really agree with him, but it was a bold statement.

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I'm still writing Part III of my series of posts comparing corporate media and personal media (Part I, Part II). In the interim let's look back at something I posted in November of 2004: Feedback: Bloggers vs. Reporters. I looked specifically at the feedback mechanisms available to traditional reporters and bloggers.

With most of the major blogging software any blogger can receive feedback in a number of ways:

Stats
Traditional web server stats, via your server or a service such as SiteMeter, allow a blogger to know basic information about how many readers they may have (i.e. readership/circulation). Stats will let you know page views, session lengths, referrals, search phrases, etc.

Comments
One of the more powerful tools of the blog. Anybody (in most cases) can provide a comment about what you have written. A conversation begins. In some cases a comment may provide a correction, or more information on the subject.

TrackBacks/Links
TrackBacks allow the blogger to know who is linking to their blog. In a sense a blogger can begin to see what type of influence they have on the blogosphere. A-List bloggers often have up to a hundred or more trackbacks for a single post. That's influence.

Read the entire post...

Bloggers have always benefited from these feedback tools. Journalists that are starting to blog might also receive the same benefit.

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Some further thoughts on the relationship/battle between corporate media and personal media. The playing field is not level so it is difficult to accurately compare the two forms. Corporate media has research, staff, resources, etc, while a blogger may only have themselves, their readers and their passion for a subject. Each side attempts to hold the other to their own set of standards, which just doesn't work.

More and more media outlets are creating blogs. But going back to my post on blog misconceptions, are they adopting the tool or the style? Many are adopting the tool, i.e. the quick publishing of content with the ability to receive feedback from readers. But is the news still a lecture? Sure they have a blog, but if they're not linking, commenting and interacting with the readers then its not a conversation, it's a lecture.

The big question of course is will they be successful? Remember that in many cases their measure of success is revenue and page views. So we ask again, will they be successful? Looking at individual blogs there is a good chance they they might not. A blog does offer a beat reporter the ability to connect directly with those interested in their topic, but in many cases we're not talking about thousands of readers.

Taken in whole though, a blog network comprised of niche subjects and broader news and opinion based blogs can have a significant readership. This mirrors what is always been the case with the traditional newspaper, i.e. niche subject areas and the reporters that cover them are in a sense subsidized by the more popular content. That has always been the mission (or burden) of newspapers. If they just printed the popular news we'd have tabloids everywhere.

The newspapers that are learning (and doing it right) realize like many of us that blogs are a low cost way to publish. Suddenly content that could never find room in the print edition can be published online. At the Orlando Sentinel one of the popular blogs is Attention Must Be Paid by Elizabeth Maupin. Elizabeth blogs about theater in Central Florida and around the country. With her blog she has unlimited ink and paper to review and discuss the theatrical arts. But perhaps more importantly, Elizabeth can interact with readers that share her passion and interest. Is it a successful blog? In a passion/interaction sense it is, from a page view/revenue sense we'll have to wait and see.

In the next installment I will talk some more about the downfalls. What happens when they aren't successful? Will we see the traditional media say, 'Blogs don't work?' Those within the industry that never jumped on the blog bandwagon will say, 'told you so' while traditional bloggers will say, 'they weren't doing it right'. In my mind they'll both be right.

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Over at CrunchNotes, Michael Arrington talks about objectivity and to some degree transparency within blogging/journalism. I agree with much of what Mike says. I know that the media strive to be objective but true objectivity will never exist. I'm talking about little things that sometime get overlooked. Not because of personal agendas, but because a reporter just can't research and write about every possible aspect of a story. Mike nails it with this quote:

Or here’s the real mind bender - what if I don’t write about a competitor to a company that I like? Doesn’t inaction count as much as action when we’re talking about conflicts? Am I not writing about them because of the company I like, or not writing about them because I just don’t like the service? Should I write about them simply because they are a competitor to a company I wrote something positive about? Some people say yes, absolutely. Well, if I were to do that the blog would get pretty boring pretty quickly.

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During the Building a Business Case for Podcasting panel at Syndicate, Heather Green from BusinessWeek said this about reporters using new tools such as blogs and podcasting

"Reporters are becoming multimedia. They need to be able to do this."

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Update: Turns out I do have the audio, here it is.

Syndicate-SMS.mp3

I jacked into the audio panel to record this session, but the line level was nill so I have no audio from this session. I didn't take any notes since I was intent on listening/participating.

On the panel were:

Dave Panos - Pluck
Peter Negulescu - San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Horam - AllBusiness.com

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I have uploaded two MP3 files from this morning's Syndicate keynotes. Both of them were simple recordings with my iRiver. Luckily I was right next to the speak the the sound quality is pretty good. There are some jumps as the microphones turned on and off. I think the most interesting one is the conversation with Richard Edelman:

Syndicate-Edelman.mp3
Syndicate-Jarvis.mp3

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Spurned on by Shel's comment on my last post about personal media vs. corporate media here are a few more thoughts about the impact of blogs on society (not just media). I put a version number on this post because I'm really not done with it yet, but I want to get feedback from others. Then perhaps we can get to v 0.9.

The Social Media Revolution v 0.8

During her keynote presentation at New Communications Forum in March, 2006, Rebecca Blood, discussed how the industrial revolution is remembered just as much if not more so for the social changes during that era than the mechanization of industry. Of course during that time in the early 1800's everyone was amazed at the 'new-fangled machines'. In the moment they couldn't see the far-reaching changes that the society was going thru. A hundred years removed it became easier to see.

Like Shel (and many others) I think that the current social media revolution and to some extent the 'blog bubble' we're in right now will be remembered more for the social changes than from a technological/tools aspect. When I speak to groups I always say that one of the higher goals of blogs and all citizen's media is for people and organizations to act more responsibly. Is that what this era will be remember for?

The Renaissance was characterized by the spread of knowledge that led Europe out of the dark ages. Today, the internet allows for an untold ability to share knowledge, but the new part of the equation in this social media revolution is voice. We can all contribute. In a hundred years will the the history books (or e-books) title a chapter: The Social Media Revolution?

They say history is made by those who write it, well the bloggers are the ones doing the majority of the writing now, 1.2 million posts per day at last count. To put things in perspective think about the Civil War for a moment. The letters written by soldiers and early photographs offer a glimpse into their lives as well as society in the mid-1800's. Historians told us what the major events were, and in most cases it was the winner of the war writing this 'history'. Those soldier's letters often let us know what 'real life' was like. Who the people were that participated in that history.

Now back to the present. Today, hundreds of thousands of people will blog about what happened to them and to others. They will upload thousands of photos and video to sites like Flickr and YouTube. The social lives of millions of teens will be chronicled on MySpace. Events, social issues, etc, can all be seen from different perspectives. We don't have to rely on one source for information.

Imagine what historians will be dealing with a century from now when they look to frame this era. Their job will be to sort through these millions of posts, photos, and videos to piece together not only what happened and why, but perhaps more importantly who we were and how the events we saw affected us.

Yes, the overwhelming majority of blogs posts are personal in nature and intended only for a small audience, but so were those soldier's letters.

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The past few times I have spoken as part of a panel or a program at a PR or media event a similar thing happens. Somebody speaking before me that represents what we can loosely term the 'old guard' complains about the current trends related to blogs, new media, citizen's journalism, etc.. The issues are (choose all that apply)

- The youth don't read/watch newspapers/traditional media
- Paid subscriptions are down
- Blog aren't credible
- There is no fact-checking
- We can't make money
- Only a few people read blogs
- (insert your own choice here)

Media worries about revenue, page views - PR worries that they can't just deal with the same contacts/journos they've always dealt with, plus how do they bill for this stuff?

What is my response to the 'old guard'? Depending on the audience I am speaking to it's either: a) Deal with it or b) Like it or not they're not going away. Of course that's not all I say. What I begin with is something like this:

As we've just heard from X, these are the major issues that face your industry. But guess what, these problems, (problem, being your word, not mine) are not going away. You need to learn to work in this new reality. I understand that identifying the problem and acknowledging it is the first step, but consistent complaining about how things are changing (for the worse in your minds) isn't solving anything. Let's start by learning about this new world and how you can live in it.

Will corporate media be able to adapt? Should they? When talking to groups here is an anecdote I always use:

In the early 1900's I used to make a ton of money delivering ice to homes in the city. People needed it for their ice boxes. Then one day some jerk invented the refrigerator and I'm out of business. What do I do?

Let me think. I have all these trucks driving all around the city. Maybe there is something else I can deliver? Like refrigerators!

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Mark Cuban breaks down the difference between traditional/corporate media and blogs. There are a number of great quotes in the post, but here is one:

Bloggers drive blogs, share price drives traditional media. Blogging is personal, traditional media is corporate.

Which is exactly why blog readership is going up, while traditional media is consolidating, if not contracting. Traditional media goes to work, bloggers live their work.

As Mark says, bloggers are not confined to a single role. We can report, opine, question, joke, switch subjects and take a few days off. Reporters often don't have that freedom and flexibility. The next few years will see some interesting changes. Good and bad things always happen when business models are changed drastically.

Will the blog bubble burst? Perhaps, but not in an economic way. Most likely in a hype way. Most bloggers don't do it for money, they do it for 100 other reasons, so an economic bust won't stop them.

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Recently during a meeting with a newspaper client one of the editors stated that "They don't blog". This rather abrupt statement came from a viewpoint that all blogs are opinionated and personal in nature and violate some of their journalistic ideals. I think this stems not from a lack of a definition of 'blog' but from too many definitions.

On one level you can define a 'blog' as being a personal journal, or perhaps a conversational style of writing. Others might define blogs as being frequently updated web content featuring reader feedback via comments. Both of these definitions are correct, and can overlap.

From a purely technical standpoint you can define a 'blog' as an easy-to-use content management system. In that sense, a blog can be pure news with no opinion. Look at what USAToday does with their On Deadline blog or the Orlando Sentinel with their Crime Blog. In both of these cases the 'blog' is used to quickly post breaking news and receive feedback from the readers.

When you look at it this way, that newspaper just might blog after all :-)

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What do you think? Can a blogger drink from a Society of Professional Journalists mug?

I received this as a speaker's gift at a recent SPJ event I spoke at. I guess it really depends on 'what' I am doing when I am using the mug.

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Richard Edelman blogs about some trends he's seeing with mainstream media's evolution/adoption of digital media. As always with Richard's stuff is good reading. At the end he writes what he feels this means for PR:

1) Reporters expect PR folks to send ready to use digitized content or to arrange for CEOs to make the time for a sit-down video interview. Pictures matter more than ever.

2) Don't count on getting thrust of story amended so easily just because it is on-line--we have to work with reporters to get it right from the start

3) MSM on line reporters are ambivalent about bloggers as a news source. Don't count on the bloggers being the on-ramp to stories in MSM on line. Most of the MSM on line reporters are not bloggers and are operating in walled gardens.

4) Don't be disappointed with a placement in the MSM on line version and persuade your client that in fact you may get more traction with this approach as first choice.

Here in Florida we're a bit behind the times, but some of the local media is adapting. With that, the issues above are somewhat less relevant for the smaller organizations that only focus on local Florida media.

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In response to my post yesterday about the candidates for Florida Governor needing to track social media I set up a Blogdigger page to aggregate all blog and news content that mentions their names.

For some reason though, the Blogdigger account is not updating often enough so I created a NewsGator account that features the same information. Go to: http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/WebEd2.aspx and use the following information to login: U: FloridaGovernor P: fl2006

If you want to subscribe to the individual RSS feeds here they are:

Charlie Crist - Technorati / Google News

Jim Davis - Technorati / Google News

Tom Gallagher - Technorati / Google News

Rod Smith - Technorati / Google News

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Last week the Atlanta Business Chronicle had a feature article titled: Businesses wake up to blogs. The story is now online so I'm linking to it now (a week late). The article explores local Atlanta firms that are using blogs.

In that market one of the biggest names blogging is of course Earthlink with their Earthling blog. Earthlink's corporate blogger Dave Coustan was interviewed and when asked about the negative comments that a company might receive with a blog he said this:

To Coustan, the negativity is part of an open dialogue the company cherishes. Nearly every day, Coustan says, he shares the customer opinions he collects with executives and product managers.

"The conversations are going to go on whether you have a blog or not," she said. "Why wouldn't you want to have that conversation in your own home -- where you have the home-court advantage?"

Now that we have had three recent articles about 'big business' blogging: Atlanta Business Chronicle (mentioned here), St. Pete Times article, and the Orlando Sentinel article, I plan to post something later about this lack of big business adoption. My take? Who cares?

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Over In the Garage, Carl wonders if the media's lack of coverage of the Target web site accessibility issue is because they're such a big advertiser?

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The Orlando Sentinel had an article about Central Florida business blogs in the paper today. I was quoted along with quite a few of my friends in the local blog scene. The end result is that not that many businesses in the local area are blogging. Other friends/blogs mentioned:

- blog.websolvers.com
- blogzerk.com
- Buzz Bruggeman
- Keiko Groves

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The St. Pete Times had an article in Monday's business section about blogs: Blogosphere mainly a domain of small business - for now. I was interviewed and quoted in the article. You always fear what quote might get used (or mis-used) but Dave Gussow did a great job and featured this one:

And that's one of Hallett's main messages to companies and groups: A blog doesn't have to be about writing. It can, and perhaps should, be as much about listening.

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Jackie Huba has a great review of how NBC killed off a very successful viral marketing campaign. I can attest to number 3 on her list. Yesterday I went to show some friends the Natalie Portman rap video, but we couldn't view it on my PowerBook. That was 4 viewers lost.

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Update: Roger has posted a new item....the two profiles in question now list their real ages.

Roger Simmons from Orlando wonders if one of the local TV stations is attempting to run a sting operation via MySpace.com:

I received an e-mail late last week saying to check out two postings on the popular site MySpace.com.

The first link was to a 15-year-old girl named Jessica who lives in Orlando. The second link was to another girl named "Lady J," this one saying she is 15, lives in Orlando and "If it weren't for Myspace I'd have no friends."

What's interesting is the "girls" in the photos look very, very similar to WKMG reporters Jessica D'Onofrio and Jessica Sanchez.

So, is this a hoax, a prank ... or possibly part of a Local 6 sweeps story trying to find out if anyone will attempt to pick up these "underage" girls? You decide.

Of course there are two other options: 1. It's a bunch of 15 year-old kids that have created the pages 2. The reporters are actually 15, in that case Local 6 is probably violating some child labor laws.

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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 10:22 PM:

I wish I still had my 'One For The Thumb' t-shirt from 80's.

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At the Florida Public Relations Association's recent Counselors Network meeting in Sanibel, FL I had the pleasure of speaking to a small group of seasoned practitioners about working with social media. My afternoon session was an interesting extension of the morning session led by Joe Epley. Joe talked about some of the higher-level trends that are impacting pr. One of the sub-discussions was the changing media landscape. The themes were the standard talking points:

- Declining readership of newspapers
- The youth's lack of interest in news (except for The Daily Show)
- The emergence of blogs and other 'citizen's media'

Now let's balance these changes against some of the traditional roles of PR. One session attendee that works in healthcare was being directed by the 'corporate office' (read: not local) to increase their media outreach initiatives. This directive came just as the local paper has eliminated the health reporter's beat. How does one reach out to media that is not there? Change your definition of media of course.

When I started my session in the afternoon I said that we'd had a good discussion that morning about the perceived problems with these new trends, but guess what, they're a reality. Over the next week I'll be posting some thoughts on this subject, particularly how practitioners can make those initial steps into a world they have no control over....or do they?

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Orlando Sentinel editor John Cutter blogs about the paper's decision not to post an audio tape of a 911 call.

Yes the Sentinel is one of my clients, but I link to it because it's a great example of how the traditional media can/should use blogs.

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There are a number of reasons why newspaper columnists should blog, but I want to focus on just one aspect.

Many newspapers have a number of columnists with a local following. In the current model I only care about a columnist once a day (or perhaps three times per week). For the other 23 hours and 55 minutes I have no reason to care. If that columnist would start a blog and post a few small items each day, I begin to care about them more.

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USAToday has launched yet another blog: On Deadline (RSS). This new 'breaking news' blog is number eight for the Gannett Gang. If you remember, as of this morning there were seven blogs. It's a busy little blog, 22 posts so far today. Comments are also open, but not a great deal of activity yet.

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Two recent items on transparency in journalism. First up is a blog post and article by St. Pete Times reporter/blogger Eric Deggans. In both locations Eric talks about how media is learning to evolve in this new conversational world. From a blog meme standpoint it's nothing new, but it is new for the Florida market. I'll be interested in seeing what type of response he receives.

Next up is a blog post by Orlando Sentinel Crime Editor John Cutter on why the Sentinel held the story about the death of Chris Penley from the Milwee Middle School shooting. (Disclosure: the Orlando Sentinel is my client)

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Before the holidays I had a conversation with a friend in the newspaper business. He talked about some plans the paper had for citizen journalism initiatives. I told him I wanted to ask the 'higher-ups' a question.

"What are the primary reasons you want to enable citizen's journalism?"

I told him that if I heard 'revenue' or 'page views' as any of the top three I would scream. I want to hear community, reporting, journalism....anything else and your project is flawed.

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Tommy Duncan over at Sticks of Fire, 'the' Tampa blog, posted about the new Tampa Towers building project last Friday. Today the St. Pete Times wrote a story about the project stating that:

News of his project appeared Friday evening on a Tampa blog site. Amon said he didn't plan on announcing Tampa Towers soon and put up the Web site to attract investors. The project Web site and Tampa Towers information on the company site were pulled down after Amon talked with a St. Petersburg Times reporter Monday afternoon.

I suggested that Tommy e-mail the reporter to tell him that the 'Tampa blog site' he referred to was called Sticks of Fire. Tommy did, and the reporter confirmed that it was his blog that got the scoop. But alas, still no published credit.

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Last week BusinessWeek published a cover story on the MySpace Generation. Like Rex, I also go 'ugh' when media, or anybody else that doesn't have a clue discusses a new 'trend' or 'hip' thing. Not that I am claiming to know any more, but that's just it, I don't claim to. The article does confirm what I have been seeing in my talks to students recently.

When talking to a group of PR students at Florida State University last month I asked, "How many of you write a blog?" Between 5-10 hands out of 150+ students went up. Next question, "How many of you have a MySpace account?" Almost all the hands went up. Same thing with Facebook.

Just when media and PR think they 'might' have a handle on blogs the next generation comes along. It will be interesting to see how traditional media and marketing folks will attempt to interject themselves.

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Adrian Holovaty announced the launch of his first project since joining the Washington Post. It's a database of all Congressional vote activity since 1991. This is cool, very cool, and exactly what newspapers need to do more of (no big surprise that Adrian is behind it).

Users can browse by bill, Representative or Senator and subscribe to RSS feeds for an individual. For example I can watch all activity for my local rep, Adam Putnam or subscribe to the RSS feed.

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USAToday has slowly been rolling out new blogs or converting existing columns to a blog format. Back in October, Tom Foremski noted that Kevin Maney was perhaps the first USAToday reporter to do so. The latest is travel reporter Ben Mutzabaugh. Looking around the USAToday site I now count four blogs:

- Kevin Maney: First post Nov 18, 2005. Kevin will continue to write his traditional column, but he will also be blogging.

- Today in the Sky by Kevin Mutzabaugh: First post Nov 28, 2005. Even though it appears the first post announcing the conversion to a blog format was on the 28th the archive shows Nov 2 as the first blog post.

- Pop Candy by Whitney Matheson: First post Nov 7, 2005 . Whitney has been a long time blogger at USAToday but it was previously done in their existing content management system for special events like the 2004 DNC.

- Will Birdie Make It? by Brigid Farrell: First post Nov 11, 2005. This blog not written by a USAToday reporter. It is written by Brigid Farrell an Olympic short track speed skater. The blog will follow her attempt to make the U.S. Olympic team. Brigid also maintains a journal on her site.

Has anybody seen any others?

All the new blogs are now run using TypePad from SixApart. All the blogs feature comments, but no trackbacks. It will be interesting to see how many other blogs USAToday will launch in the future. However, they have a long way to go to catch the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's 40+ blogs.

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The Atlanta Journal Constitution has produced a podcast audio tour for the new Georgia Aquarium which opens on Monday. Visitors can download up to seven different segments that include:

- What to do first
- Georgia Explorer
- River Scout
- Cold Water Quest
- Ocean Voyager
- Tropical Diver
- Dining, shopping, etc.

The AJC has been following the construction of the new aquarium for some time via their FishTank blog.

Even though I'll be in Atlanta (excuse me, 'the ATL') for the next few days I think I'll hold off on visiting till my next trip (crowds will probably be huge).

Update: TastyPiesInc has a Flickr set of the opening

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My friend Barry Friedman over at the Lakeland Ledger started a Wilma Newslog earlier this morning. Lakeland, Winter Haven and the rest of Polk County seem to be riding out the storm without too much damage.

Meanwhile over at the News Chief there is nothing. Unless you count that one small link under 'Community News'.

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Andy Kent reports that there are 5020 people at the Germain Arena (Google Map) a little bit north of Naples, FL.

The latest head count just exceeded the 5,000-mark (5,020), but you wouldn't know it based on the sounds -- or lack thereof. Most of the people are either asleep or carrying on quiet conversations, and you could almost hear a pin drop.

Outside, the rain is coming down a little harder, the winds are whipping up just a bit and the humidity is suffocating. Yet a few brave souls still felt compelled to light up a smoke in an act of defiance aimed at Wilma....

...As I am signing off for the night, with the clock reading 2:50 a.m. and Wilma just about three hours away from making landfall, I can hear the rain pounding the outside of the building, which was built to withstand a Category 4 hurricane.

Now all we can do is sit and wait -- for what we still don't know. But this sure doesn't look like a place supposedly planning to host a hockey game five days from now.

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The Naples and Bonita Daily News staff moved from their offices to Florida Gulf Coast University today in advance of Hurricane Wilma. Writing in his blog Levi Chronister details the move:

Starting at 4 p.m. we loaded four SUVs (two rented, two owned by co-workers) and two cars with all of our food, water and computer gear to head to the arena. My boss bought a final installment of food, water and other supplies so, along with all our work gear and the supplies we'd already bought, we pretty much filled up the SUV. And our mini-fridge took up the entire hatchback part of one of the cars; the fridge was necessary because the one here has a weird funk to it....

...Fortunately, we seem to be set for covering the hurricane for the foreseeable future as our Internet connection here is incredibly fast. Barring a power outage (*knock on wood*), we should be able to get updates to our readers even quicker than normal. We're here for the long haul, and we're looking forward to covering this hurricane for you.

Levi writes that the paper might be sending their print edition over to the Treasure Coast for printing:

We also helped move in some of the print staff's equipment, as it appears they'll be sending their pages to our Treasure Coast paper for printing. It makes the room slightly more crowded, but it will be nice to have some other people around as I have a feeling that a more communal setting will be nice during something like this.

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The Naples Daily News has set up two new blogs:

• Reporter Andy Kent is at a shelter in Naples, FL (RSS)
• Naples Daily News web guru Levi Chronister is blogging about his first hurricane (he just moved from Kansas) (RSS)

I e-mailed Levi to ask if they were going to create RSS feeds for the blogs.

Update: I figured out the RSS feeds.

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Here is another round-up of Florida-based Hurricane Wilma blogs:

Bloggers:

• Florida Cracker is in the Lake Okeechobee area (RSS) (Google Map)
  
• Eric Norlin is on Siesta Key (RSS) (Google Map)
  
• Florida Masochist (RSS)
  
• Boudicca's map of Florida Bloggers (RSS)
  
• Laughing Wolf's list of Florida blogs (RSS)
  
• Right-Wing of the Gods (RSS)
  
• Theodore's World (RSS)
  
• Something and Half of Something (RSS)
  
• Joel's Blog (RSS)
  
• Pamibe is in the Miami area (RSS)

Media:

• Naples Daily News - Storm Edition (RSS) (Podcast)
  
• Reporter Andy Kent is at a shelter in Naples, FL (RSS)
  
• Naples Daily News web guru Levi Chronister is blogging about his first hurricane (he just moved from Kansas) (RSS)
  
• Bill Ward at TBO.com (No RSS)
  
• The St. Pete Times Stormwatch blog (RSS)
  
• Orlando Sentinel's Hurricane Watch Blog (RSS)
  
• Sarasota Herald Tribune's Weather Blog (RSS)
  
• Sun-Sentinel Hurricane Blog (RSS)
  
• Lakeland Ledger's Wilma Newslog

Other media outlets that don't have blogs, but are posting updates:

• NBC-2 Fort Myers, FL
• WINK CBS - Fort Myers, FL
• ABC7 - Fort Myers, FL
• News-Press - Fort Myers, FL
• Hurricane2005.com by Naples News
• WFTV 9 - Tampa/St. Petersburg, FL

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The Naples News has switched to a Storm Edition in advance of Hurricane Wilma. The newspaper staff explain the switch:

For the next few days, the Naples Daily News and Bonita Daily News will be publishing their online content only on BonitaNews.com in order to have one source for all Hurricane Wilma information. BonitaNews.com is more capable of providing our readers quick, accurate and detailed information about the approaching storm and its effects on Collier and south Lee counties.

The new site is being run by some type of blog software a web framework by the name of Django and features a RSS feed of headlines. The Daily News is also producing a podcast (RSS) of hurricane coverage.

The finishing touch? They have a Wilma favicon:

I've updated my list of local media Hurricane Wilma blogs.

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Sticks of Fire reports that the Tampa Tribune used Wikipedia as a source for an editorial and a recent article on intelligent design.

He's asking if it is acceptable for newspapers to utilize Wikipedia as a legitimate source.

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Updated List: Most recent list of Hurricane Wilma Blogs

Doing a quick look around the local media outlets here are a few blogs:

• Naples Daily News - Storm Edition (RSS) (Podcast)
• Bill Ward over at TBO.com is traveling down the coast of Florida from Tampa to Venice. (No RSS)
• The St. Pete Times has their Stormwatch blog which just posted their one and only 'Wilma' item today. (RSS)
• Orlando Sentinel's Hurricane Watch Blog (RSS)
• Sarasota Herald Tribune's Weather Blog (RSS)
• Sun-Sentinel Hurricane Blog (RSS)

Other media outlets that don't have blogs, but are posting updates:

• NBC-2 Fort Myers, FL
• WINK CBS - Fort Myers, FL
• ABC7 - Fort Myers, FL
• News-Press - Fort Myers, FL
• Hurricane2005.com by Naples News
• WFTV 9 - Tampa/St. Petersburg, FL

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The Orlando Sentinel have fired up their Hurricane Blog. Six posts in the past hour. They're off to a good start.

I am watching the Orlando Sentinel feed and NOAA's Hurricane Wilma feed.

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Victor Lombardi of Management Innovation Group (great logo) discusses the issue of corporations needing to give up control of their message in this new social media. He asks, "how much control does one give up?"

Victor points to a graph they created (PDF) to represent the various levels of control/return in three situations: Broadcast, Interactive and Social Media

The graphics and associated text are excellent resources.

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Lots of talk about the inclusion of blogs on Yahoo! News search. Matt thinks that blog searches have become a true companion to mainstream media. I agree with Dave Winer that the blog search results don't belong in the margin.

The blog results appear in the same position that sponsored links usually appear. It might take a while to condition the general user that the links in the box on the left my left, your right are not ads.

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There are 'confirmed' things such as the Weblogs, Inc./AOL deal and then the un-confirmed things like Dave Winer/Weblogs.com sale to Verisign, Gawker/News Corp. and then the SixApart/NewsCorp meme. What's great is Nick Denton points to the source of the Gawker rumor. Perhaps the SixApart folks were also 'talking' at a party.

With all these rumors going around I figured I'd set the record straight on the New York Times rumor.

I have been in low-level talks with the New York Times on a content deal. I was contacted by the NYT to find out if I was interested in subscribing to their newspaper. We're still working out the financial details, but it looks like I might enter into a 9-week content deal with them. It will most likely be an all-cash deal. The NYT will benefit from increased circulation while I will gain valuable knowledge and 'first-look' at NYT content via their paperboy delivery channel.

Update: In the mail today I received competing offers from Newsweek and L.L. Bean. Looking closely though, the L.L. Bean offer is product only, no cash. This is going to be a tough decision.

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The Orlando Sentinel has a reporter in Afghanistan that is blogging. What is interesting though is the comments being left by parents of soldiers in that region.

I am looking forward to reading this column...my son is in the 53 brigade out of Dade City and in Camp Pheonix...we have had limited contact with him and this will give me and my wife a different perspective of the situation over there...

Hi Roger, found your site - our son is serving with the 53rd near Kabul - SSG James Legg - thank goodness someone is there ensuring we get some real information - we live in Fernandina Beach and must serch the net to get any information - we'll be checking in regularly!!

Both of the commenters are looking for 'real information' and a 'different perspective'. They obviously feel that the traditional media and the military is not keeping them informed. Hopefully Roger Roy will be able to help them.

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Last Friday, Duncan Riley from The Blog Herald posted a short item about another blog stealing his content. Today, Duncan follows-up with his case against WebProNews and writer, Jason Lee Miller. In a lengthy post, Duncan provides a number of examples of how he feels Jason has stolen his content without proper attribution.

Mr Miller is creative, I’ll give him this, because when he writes he usually tries to put his own spin on things, or as the case may be, re-writes others ideas and presents them as his own, but it really, really pisses me off when time and time again I see anyone presenting idea’s, qoutes or otherwise as their own, and don’t give attribution. Sure, a lot of bloggers are ametuers and don’t know any better, or if you dug through the archives of the Blog Herald I’ve probably done it by accident once or twice as well, but when your a paid writer for a leading internet portal you shouldn’t just know better, you do know better, and when you don’t play by the rules its not an accident, its a concious decision.

Duncan also provides examples of quotes taken from other publications without credit being given to the original source.

Continue reading "WebProNews Stealing from The Blog Herald?" »

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I usually don't mention political items on this blog, but RatherGate was a defining moment in the blogosphere. For better or for worse, the debate over the 60 Minutes story put the word 'blog' into many people's heads.

Power Line Blog notes that today is the first anniversary of the little post that started it all.

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Interest in a recent Euro RSCG Magnet survey on journalists' use of blogs for reporting has picked up again. Shel Holtz, Editors Weblog, the Blog Herald and Brian Oberkirch all blogged about it recently. The study states that their research:

shows that more than half (51%) of journalists use Weblogs regularly—with 28% relying on them for day-to-day reporting

I will repeat what I said back in June when the report was first announced. I don't believe it. At least when it comes to regional and local newspapers. Yes, as Nick Wingfield says a majority of tech journalists probably use them and political reporters in DC do, but not in Florida.

I say, "who are they talking to?" The overwhelming number of journalists I talk to don't use them. I have had a number of interactions with large newsrooms in Florida and in almost every case the number of reporters using blogs is little to none.

After the initial announcement of the report I asked my contacts at PRNewswire and BusinessWire who interact with newsrooms about their thoughts. Their impressions echoed mine. The majority of journalists they talk to know very little about blogs, let alone use them for reporting.

Kaye Trammell and I traded some e-mails over this study back in June. Her comment:

Do I believe it? Ehhhhh .... I need to look more in to who their sample was first. I can't tell you how many journalists still call me to say, "I've been assigned to write this story about blogs & I don't know what one is ... can you help."

I have requested a complete copy of the report to see if it details the methodology of the sample. The PDF from the announcement does not provide those details. If the survey was web-based I think that would automatically skew their results to more tech-savvy reporters. Does anybody have the specifics of the survey they can share before I receive my copy?

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Whenever Jeff Jarvis mentions Adrian Holovaty he has nothing but good things to say, and he's right. In the past few weeks Jeff has said:

Adrian Holovaty, the single most creative person I've run across in online news..

Who's Doing it Right?...Anything Holovaty touches.

In Jeff's new role with About.com I see him hiring or working with Adrian. Just a prediction.

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Google News has added the capability to create custom RSS feeds based upon searches. Like many, I've been waiting for Google to do this. Not sure why it took them so long.

Up until today, all we've had is the solution that Justin Pfister created last year.

Thanx Justin.

Update: Dave Winer is having some issues with their feeds.

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One of the problems with many independent podcasters is their lack of interviewing skills. I guess that is to be expected since many podcasters are not journalists. I am learning this myself :-)

Do you want to avoid having your podcast interview sound like a segment from the Chris Farley show on SNL? Dan Gillmor has posted some interview basics over at Bayosphere.

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I will be attending a meeting of the Atlanta Media Bloggers this evening in Atlanta, Georgia. The social/networking/discussion event will be held at Manuel's Tavern from 6:30 - 9:30 p.m. The topics of discussion will be blogging of course, but more from a business and media perspective. We're expecting anywhere from 12 to 25 people to show up.

Kevin Howarth of TechLINKS is the organizer of the group. If you are planning on showing up let him know.

I'll post a wrap-up of the event late tonight or on Friday.

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I am in the process of updating my Guide to Media Monitoring I wrote back in January of this year. I am planning on including all the new blog search tools and custom RSS watchlists/feed services. There will also be some information about tags, specifically dealing with monitoring tags via Technorati/del.icio.us/Flickr, etc.

The guide is mostly geared towards communicators, but just about any user can learn something from it. Anything you think I should include? Perhaps some service that I might not have heard of? Leave a comment.

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The Orlando Sentinel has their Shuttle Discovery Blog up and running for the launch attempt today. Robyn Shelton is live-blogging right now with posts every few minutes.

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Robin Sloan has pointed to the story behind EPIC.

For those of you who have not heard of EPIC, it was a Flash-presentation on the 'future of news' developed by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson while they both worked at the Poynter Institute. The presentation spread like wildfire on the net. I hosted one of the original mirrors of the file and was averaging over 10GB per day in transfer. One day saw close to 40GB in traffic for this little 'project'. It was fun looking at my web server logs. The standard practice would be a person in the office viewing EPIC then forwarding the URL on to everyone else, i.e. 1 request from xx.com shortly followed by 45 requests from xx.com.

The story-behind-the-story is an interesting read.

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On Monday I had lunch with Mark Russell and Anthony Moor of the Orlando Sentinel. Here are some notes from that meeting.

Like many of the other newspapers/journalists/media I have met with they are slowly taking steps to embrace this new medium. How many of the newsroom staff are using RSS or blogs to assist with stories? Almost none. But that's something they are going to work on changing.

On the web side they're moving towards integrating external RSS feeds into their content offerings. These external feeds will be topic driven, i.e. business feeds in the business section. The next step would be to integrate the branded RSS reader that the LA Times is beta-testing.

The Sentinel has created a few blogs utilizing TypePad for special projects. The most recent was a Shuttle Discovery Blog to cover the return to flight. A staff reporter live-blogged the recent launch attempt. If you look at the blog you'll see they were posting quite frequently. They had quite a bit of traffic to the blog but asked how I thought they could expand their readership of an event-driven blog such as a shuttle launch. My two quick suggestions were:

1. Utilize Technorati Tags: Recent events such as Live8 and the London terror attacks have shown that information on breaking news can quickly be found via Technorati and other blog search tools. News junkies and bloggers know to use these new tools since they search the 'live' web. The Sentinel should determine the optimum tags for their shuttle posts, i.e. shuttle, NASA, spaceshuttle, etc.

2. Crosslink with other Blogs: Yes it's a basic principle of blogs, but when you tell a newspaper to link to another content source that might compete with them, they usually don't jump right on it. The day before the shuttle launch they should do some searches to find out who else might be live-blogging or providing other good content, then link to them. Chances are, those blogs will link back. I found this to be true during my Super Bowl live-blogging Experiment.

There are a few other things they can do as well, but we don't want to give away all the goods just yet :-)

Continue reading "Orlando Sentinel Lunch Follow-Up" »

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I am having lunch today with two editors at the Orlando Sentinel. Specifically, Mark Russell - Managing Editor and Anthony Moor - OrlandoSentinel.com Editor. We'll be talking blogs, podcasting, participatory journalism/citizen's media and other such topics. Any specific questions you would like to ask? Leave a comment or e-mail me.

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Here are some links to some recent blog articles in traditional publications. Why am I linking to these two articles? Because I was quoted in them. How's that for transparency!

- Ragan's Media Relations Report - Making the case for ‘ghost-blogging’

- Orlando Business Journal - Corporate quandary: To blog or not to blog

The Ragan article discusses whether blog posts should be ghost-written. I did that interview quite a while ago and I think the writer perfectly captured what I said. The subject is a touchy one, and something that I am being asked about quite a bit; actually, the comment is, "can't you write this?" I have helped a few clients with initial thoughts or subject areas, but I make sure the content is in their own words. My only complaint about the Ragan article is that all the other firms mentioned received links, while I did not. (Quick thanks to Morgan McLintic for sending the Ragan ProfNet lead my way)

The OBJ article was a bit different. The writer, Chris Kauffmann, knew very little about blogs. The majority of the interview was spent doing background on the medium. As usual, an hour interview turned into a few select quotes. Most notable was: "It is extremely important that blogs not be done by a company's public relations or marketing personnel, but by 'the people who do the real work'." My friend Matt Gomez of Channel Intelligence (who was also featured in the article), jokingly pointed out that I made it sound like PR and marketing people don't do 'real work'.

The OBJ writer was looking for a number of local business blogs in the Orlando market, but there aren't that many. I told Chris to contact Buzz Bruggeman of ActiveWords fame. Buzz wasn't featured in the article. I'll have to check with Buzz to see if he got a call or e-mail.

As I mentioned earlier, the OBJ article talked about the blogs Channel Intelligence is creating as well as a new service called Blogstar Network from Mind Comet. More on that in a bit....

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The Eleventh Annual Euro RSCG Magnet and Columbia University Survey of Media finds more than half of journalists use blogs. The study lists some interesting stats:

53% of journalist respondents reporting using blogs for such purposes. But respondents also turn to blogs for other uses, including researching and referencing facts (43%) and finding sources (36%). Most notable, fully 33% of journalists say they use blogs as a way of uncovering breaking news or scandals.

I say, "who are they talking to?" The overwhelming number of journalists I talk to don't use them. Kaye Trammell and I traded some e-mails over this study today. Her comment?

Do I believe it? Ehhhhh .... I need to look more in to who their sample was first. I can't tell you how many journalists still call me to say, "I've been assigned to write this story about blogs & I don't know what one is ... can you help."

All we have to go on now is the initial numbers that were released on Monday, June 20th. The full report will be available in July on http://www.eurorscg-magnet.com/. I'll post an update once the full report is out. (We'll see what Kaye has to say as well)

I first learned about the study from a MicroPersuasion link to a Clickz article. I did find it funny though that the Clickz article did give a plug for Cooper Katz's Micro Persuasion practice.

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Jake Parrillo says the Associated Press quoted his blog.

This relates to a subject that comes up quite a bit, do reporters read blogs? My 'non-scientific'* research says that not many reporters in the local newsroom use RSS but those on the national scene are a bit ahead of the curve. Of course there is the trickle-down factor...AP or a NYT reporter writes a national story which eventually gets picked up by the local paper.

*My non-scientific research is: A. Asking every reporter I meet if they use/know-what RSS is B. Personal experience with a few large papers in Florida C. Conversations with reps from national 'BizNewsWire' type firms.

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Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson have released the follow-up to their very popular EPIC video. EPIC 2015 goes one year past the original 'History of the News Wars of 2014'.

Update: Robin has posted that a BitTorrent is available.

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Barney Pell has posted notes from two sessions of the All Things Digital Conference. The first panel was Blogging vs. Mainstream Media Part 1: The Bloggers the second was Blogging vs. Mainstream Media Part 2: The Mainstream Media Publishers.

The notes are great. One item that is interesting is the following observation from Barney:

One thought that struck me while taking notes during the panel was that the bloggers for the most part spoke very quickly, rarely finished a sentence or a thought, offered many provocative and personal statements, and contained some genuinely interesting nuggests admidst the volume of content. By contrast, the mainstream publishers spoke much more slowly, in complete sentences (and even paragraphs), were thorough in their facts, offered broad historical context for their statements, and articulated the principles of journalism that have been the basis for their industry. Hence the different style of the panels mirrored that of the media itself.

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Online news/magazine site Salon recently added a Blog Roundup section. The page is powered by Technorati and lists the most blogged about Salon articles in the past 48 hours. There is also a small feature box on the home page listing the most-blogged articles (screen capture right). In addition, each article now features a link at the end to a Technorati cosmos search for the article's URL.

Salon is not utilizing a standard TrackBack system to determine who is linking to the articles, they rely on Technorati for the data.

The new function serves as a sort of "most-popular" or "most-read" articles feature that many news sites have, except with a blogger focus.

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I recently had a conversation with a newspaper vet about the changing times within the newspaper business. He echoed the comments I have heard from a number of reporters/editors at a number of papers, the managing editor or publisher just does not get new media. In some cases it's the publisher, in other cases it's the editors.

As new blood comes into the newsroom change is slowly happening, but it needs to be top-down effort to adapt quickly enough. The old-guard does not believe in/or refuses to learn new media. It was then that I made the following observation.

If these editors or publishers were interviewing for their jobs now, they would not be hired.

How is it they still have their jobs then?

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CBS announced today that 60 Minutes II is going to be canceled. Does this mean that Dan Rather is out as well? Back in January of this year Jeff Jarvis speculated that Dan's remaining time at CBS would be short-lived. Jeff picked up on a quote by Les Moonves from a NY Times interview

Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS and co-president of the network's parent company, Viacom, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Rather was expected to continue his career at CBS on the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes" after he steps down as the network's primary anchor in March. But Mr. Moonves added the phrase, "provided the show continues."

The show does not continue.

Update: Jeff says Dan dodged a bullet

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This morning's News Chief has an article about a new web site that 'blasts' the Lake Wales Charter School System. (Registration required for News Chief article - BugMeNot Login) The web site, BreaktheCharter.com is a homegrown effort of the husband of a teacher who was recently fired by the Lake Wales Charter School System, so there might be some bias :-)

Nothing shocking there, just citizens wanting to be heard. I will question the validity of some of the comments on the site since they are posted anonymously, but that is a discussion for later. Also the web site creator should have used a blog format rather than a traditional web site format, but once again that's getting off the subject.

The comments from Lake Wales Charter Superintendent Clint Wright sparked my interest though. According to the News Chief here is what Clint said:

"I am not going to give you a reaction to that, I don't have time for that. They can do what they want to do. If people want to talk to me about legitimate concerns, they can bring them to me. As far as I am concerned, I am not going to do anything with the Web site.

Clint looks like you have a ticket for the Clueless express.

There are two options for Clint's quote.

1. He was misquoted: In that case he needs a blog. A blog would allow him to fully present his side of the story/interview and provide his quotes in full context. Just ask Mark Cuban about this.

2. He was quoted properly and he meant it: Where to start?

a. "If people want to talk to me about legitimate concerns, they can bring them to me." Sorry Clint, we're kinda busy. We don't have time to come talk to you; you need to come to us. That line makes you sound a bit like an elitist. Somebody else has created a forum where the discussion is taking place, you should stop by some time.

b. Go buy a copy of The Cluetrain Manifesto and read it.

c. Start a blog, get your side of the story out there. Clayton Wilcox the Superintendent of Pinellas County Schools has a blog. So far the response has been overwhelming, most of it positive. Often the media will highlight the negative aspects of any story (especially with school systems). With a blog you can speak directly to the parents and tell them the good and bad. Perhaps you can answer one parent's question. "what will the future at lwhs (Lake Wales High School) hold for my incoming freshman and my outgoing senior?"

d. If you visit the site in question you will see that not all the comments are negative, some of the comments are positive statements about the program supposedly provided by those working in the system. Clint is missing a golden opportunity to embrace the discussion and put forth his views

e. You need to do something about this site since the media will always be looking at it. Sites like BreaktheCharter serve as a lightning rod for negative stories. Just ask Delta how much they love Ellen Simonetti's blog. Especially the story about how Delta jets are being sent to Mexico for service by non FAA licensed mechanics.

It will be interesting to see how this saga plays out over the coming months. Will the discussion at BreaktheCharter continue to grow or will it fizzle out? Will the local media pick up on stories from comments posted by teachers and parents?

I'll keep you posted.

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The New York Times announced today that they will launch TimesSelect a new paid access model.

While most of the news, features and multi-media on NYTimes.com will remain free and available to users, the work of Op-Ed columnists and some of the best known voices from the news side of The Times and The International Herald Tribune (IHT) will be available only to TimesSelect subscribers beginning in September. Home-delivery subscribers will automatically receive TimesSelect as part of their benefits. TimesSelect will be priced at $49.95 for an annual subscription.

Staci Kramer over at PaidContent has more, including this thought:

the paper will take a hit when it comes to influence webwide

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Last week I was meeting with a long-time friend. We chatted about a variety of topics, some blogging related, some media related. About halfway through the meeting he started to say something, then paused and said, "You can't blog this." Needless to say it was some interesting news, but I can't blog it :-) Perhaps in a few months when the project comes about I can say, "remember that thing I couldn't blog about?"

Morgan posts about a similar topic, Blogging means you are on the record - all the time

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As usual, I am live-blogging so notes will be rough and I won't get everything :-) Dan Gillmor is leading this session. Dan's blog.

Dave Winer is sitting next to me. Dave says "Flickr is for sissies." Dave Winer has uploaded some photos from the previous session.

Packed house for Dan, we're just about to get started.

Continue reading "BlogNashville: Dan Gillmor - Citizen's Media" »

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As usual, I am live-blogging so notes will be rough and I won't get everything :-) Staci's blog http://sdk.typepad.com/ Discussion specific page.

This is not a discussion of journalism vs. blogging. This is not a discussion about what's wrong with media or blogging. What this is about is committing journalism.

The US does not have the right to license journalists. Anybody can do it. It's up to you to build/earn your reputation. Sometimes working for a specific paper can get you started, but you still need to learn and earn your reputation.

Staci's definition of a journalist: They did not sign a oath, it's what they do for a living. Anybody who claims to be a journalist should adhere to certain journalistic ethics.

Bloggers committing journalism should.... we need to fill in the blank

Continue reading "BlogNashville: Staci Kramer - Committing Journalism" »

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The local paper in my town, the News Chief has started to force registration for content (registration page). Looks like I will stop reading that paper until somebody puts up a BugMeNot login.

I wonder if this was a local decision or a directive from Morris Digital.

This is a strange move since the majority of their content is not very compelling. I think on average the web site/paper has about 10 original stories each day, the rest are wire feeds.

You can read my usability review of the New Chief from last year. Even though they said:

Thanks for the feedback. You certainly have some valid points in terms of usibility. We will be addressing some of the items you mentioned in the coming days.

None of the issues have ever been addressed.

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James Clark talks about search engines as media. James' comments were inspired by a Blogspotting post about the automation of PR. Some of his comments are rather valid. Towards the end though he makes these statements:

Stephen mentions a comment by Dan Forbush of PR Newswire and his statement of "RSS is going to our salvation" is another dead leaf on the ground for old line public relations agencies. RSS is not only going to be PR Newswire's salvation, it's going to be the corporate communications person's salvation to move away from paying PR agencies outrageous amounts of money to have entry level account associates pestering the media on a daily basis.

While I agree that having an entry level account associate pestering can be worse than no PR at all, there is still value in a human relationship. How will an RSS feed know the subtle likes and dislikes of a journalist? It is an interesting quote from Dan Forbush, especially since I had dinner with two gentleman from PR Newswire last night....more on that in a second.

James goes on to say:

Journalists are on to the RSS machine, if they want to seek out subject matter experts they will search online for references, articles and blogs about a subject. If they find someone interesting they subscribe to the RSS feed and read the blog and see what the subject matter expert has to say about the topic or subject of interest.

This is becoming a common misconception. A vast majority of journalists are NOT on the RSS machine. This is one of the conversations I had last night with the folks from PR Newswire. They are trying to educate journalists about RSS, but newsrooms are slow to adopt new technology. For another perspective, a friend of mine that works for a medium-sized newspaper recently made a presentation to the entire newsroom staff about blogs and RSS. Only one or two knew anything about RSS.

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National Public Radio Ombudsman, Jeffrey A. Dvorkin says that blogs are amoral among other things.

No need to repeat all of what Blog Herald has written on this.

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The gloves are off. Jason Calacanis has fired back at Molly Wood of CNET in response to her recent editorial claiming that blogs such as Engadget lack ethics. The letter starts like this:

Molly,

We follow the same exact ethical standards as the WSJ, NYT, PBS, and NPR. We do not keep review units and we don't get paid to blog about products. The fact that you're insinuating we do is absolutely false.

Had you taken the time, as a "journalist," to call me or do two minutes of research you would have found this out.

The fact that you're losing scoops has nothing to do with ethics, it has to do with hustle - something you clearly don't have since you couldn't even be bothered to get your facts straight in this editorial.

complete letter

Jason goes on to ask about the ethics of CNET. It should be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few days.

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Dave Aiello from Operation Gadget also blogged about the Tour de Georgia, but unlike me, Dave received media credentials.

What is interesting about cycling (opposed to football or baseball) is that some of the better organizations that cover it are web-based. These includes sites such as Cycling News and Pez Cycling News. Publicity directors for races are used to dealing with web-only media.

I asked Dave how the credential process went, and here is what he had to say:

Operation Gadget was fortunate enough to have a traffic spike that went from the 2004 Tour de France through to January 2005. I would say that the period from July to early November was due to cycling-related coverage, while November through January was due to our coverage of electronic gadgets.

I wanted to extend the cycling coverage traffic spike longer this year, so I looked at the calendar and decided that I would apply for credentials for the Tour de Georgia, the Wachovia Cycling Series including the US Pro Championships, and the NY City Cycling Championship. If I got a credential, I would cover each race in depth.

I applied for a Tour de Georgia credential. Jennifer Vincenzo, the Pubicity Director for the TdG, asked me to provide some examples of the coverage I would provide. I provided a list of 12 different story ideas, most of which were behind-the-scenes or sports technology related. I clearly staked out these areas as differentiators for Operation Gadget.

If you look at the coverage I provided, I did several of the stories that I suggested in my credential request, including:

1) Mavic Keeps the Tour de Georgia Riders on the Road
2) How TV Cameras Follow the Tour de Georgia
3) How Race Referees Police the Tour de Georgia
4) Discovery Uses Personal Media Players to Fine-Tune TT Technique

The icing on the cake was when ThePaceline.com picked up the Personal Media Players article yesterday and made it their lead. We got an extra 100,000 hits from that, which is a significant boost from our expected traffic.

Congrats Dave.

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Longtime USA Today TV Sports columnist Rudy Martzke wrote his final column today. I have read Rudy's column online and in-print for the past five years and have always enjoyed the insight he provided.

I would always be dissapointed when I would check Monday morning's USA Today and find that Rudy had the week off. I guess this upcoming Monday I'll need to get used to it for good.

Thanks Rudy.

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I haven't been following the GM vs. LA Times story that closely, but things are getting interesting. I don't know enough to comment, but Shel Holtz has a good write up.

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A number of recent posts have been talking about the stalling of the RSS momentun and the possible tipping point. I have talked about this quite a bit, and hopefully this will be my last post on the issue for a while.

Look at the quote from Dave Winer that Morgan referenced when talking about the adoption of RSS by the general public:

"We are still waiting for the killer app though. We are still waiting for someone to produce the software that will switch the lightbulb on for people."

It could be that news providers are in the best position to produce that "killer app" for people. They have a chance of understanding news, but technology companies do not, says Mr Winer.

Like Dave, I think the tipping point will be caused by the integration of newsreaders by the web sites of traditional newspapers. Wired had an article last week on this subject.

Although this will not be the perfect solution, it will be the one that the public will be expsoed to. Here is part of what I wrote earlier this year on this subject:

Newspapers are realizing that users are going elsewhere for news and the standard AP feed of 'other news' is not cutting it. So why not get in early, and once again attempt to control the eyeballs.

I don't see many of the early adopters using the LA Times or any other papers' RSS reader, we'll stick with our NetNewsWire or Bloglines. But we're not who the papers are after, they want the other 97% of net users. For many net users their first introduction to RSS will be via a newspapers 'new subscription service' (RSS to the rest of us). I assume that many of the papers will make some mention of RSS, but for the most part they will come up with a catchy name for their news readers. Users will not even know they are using RSS. Ask a tech novice what ISP they use and you may get a blank stare, ask them what online service they use and you'll get an answer.

The term RSS might never be known to the general public. It might become another 'tech thing' like 'http' or 'voip'. It will be just another tech acronym that means something, but they're not sure what.

While all the early adopters will cringe when we see the clunky tools offered to the masses, the newspapers might be laughing all the way to the bank. Remember VCRplus? Any tech geek that had no problem programming their VCR looked at this product and laughed. Well they sold millions of them.

This is what Doc Searls had to say:

I think news-org aggregators will succeed if they're run by editorial people, not by advertising people. Readers come to papers for editorial, not advertising. And the editorial folks could add enormous, and unique, value to the news stream that flows in from the blogosphere. On the other hand, if these aggregators are more about capturing eyeballs than about informing readers, they'll fail, just like all those doomed projects Josh remembers from back in the '90s

Well said, if the emphasis is editorial it might have a chance of working. A key issue is how the suggested feeds are presented. Unfortunately I see a list of RSS feeds titled, "News from our Sponsors" or "Featured Partners." Will the editorial side of the paper be strong enough to list 'Alternative Views on this Issue'?

What is exciting is that we get to see all this play out over the next few months and perhaps provide some feedback. If poorly implemented will newspapers listen to criticism from the blogosphere to change some features of their services? We'll see.

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Wired discusses the new trend for newspapers to incorporate branded RSS readers in their web sites.

None of the infomation is really new, but it does bring the discussion to a broader audience. I have compared this move to when papers tried to become ISPs in the mid 90's

The big issue is of course ad revenue, from the article:

Ferguson said the Times' application, which is in beta testing, can match advertisements to content in the news feed. "If someone is linking to a blog that discusses cell phones, the newsreader could deliver ads about the latest camera phone," he said. Ads will appear between the links and can include pictures, according to Ferguson.

The result might be newspapers generating increased impressions and ad revenue by featuring outside blog content. So does the blogger receive a percentage of that revenue? That's the question. For a quick recap on this subject check out:

Newspapers, RSS & Ad Revenue

Richard MacManus' thoughts

Jason Calacanis on RSS Abuse

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Quite a few people are talking about the updates to Google News. But I have noticed something else interesting that has been added to Google News in the past few days: Wonkette. If you do searches for various political items Wonkette now appears in the results. Of course there is a notation that it is '(Satire)'.

I first saw the results as part of my Google News RSS feed. Anybody else notice this? What's next The Onion?

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Jeff Jarvis wonders if the media elite is out of touch with America? I can't speak about the media elite, but I can tell about a recent encounter with local media.

I recently spoke at a seminar for public relations practitioners. After my session I stuck around for the other sessions. One of the later speakers was a television reporter for a local station (who shall remain nameless, some readers might be able to figure it out though). His session dealt with what he looks for in the way of raw material for segments.

Immediately the 'ego' became apparent. I asked aloud at my table, "Does his ego fit in the car when he drives?" He made statements such as "That's what makes me such a great reporter"

I was tempted to ask a few pointed questions, but what was the point, there was no penetrating that ego. In conversations with other attendees later, one noted, "I had forgotten just how arrogant he was."

I will admit that you must have some self-confidence to make it as a television reporter, but the attitude I saw displayed left a bad taste in my mouth. What's ironic is that I know an anchor at the same station and she is one of the nicest people I have ever met.

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Adrian Holovaty has not been posting that often, but when he does it's usually good. His latest item is about a new web-delivery of a newspaper.

The conversation has begun. It's great to read the comments at Adrian's blog and over at Buzzmachine where Jeff Jarvis linked to the original post.

The two local papers in my market also use a similar solutions to convert special print sections to web pages. Example 1: The Ledger: Health 2004 Example 2: News Chief: Her Voice

Both of these implementations are awful.

Continue reading "Lame Conversions of Print to Web" »

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The Daily Show did another funny segment on blogs last night. Crooks and Liars has a video clip. Here is Wonkette's take on the episode.

If you remember the DS did a segment on blogs back in February.

Obviously the DS is spoofing some of the main stream media's coverage of blogs, but do you think they have other motives? Each time they mention blogs on the show it draws a great deal of interest on the blogosphere.

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Steve Rubel has pointed to a ClickZ article about media branded RSS readers.

This is something I discussed last month, specifically how this move compares to newspapers becomings ISPs in the 90's.

Doc Searls weighed in on whether the RSS tools would be run by the editorial or advertising departments.

The major issue is revenue from advertising.

Futher reading: Even More on Newspapers, RSS and Ad Revenue, Aggregation Advertising Aggravation (Read/Write Web) and RSS Abuse: What’s fair use and what’s abuse (Jason Calacanis)

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I will be interviewed on the Gulf Coast Live radio show on March 10th. The topic will be blogs of course. You can listen to the show live via the internet.

I'll post more details as the air date draws near.

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Blogumentary has posted a video clip of the Daily Show segment on Jeff Gannon and blogs. The commentary by Stephen Colbert is the best part.

See also: Previous entry about the segment

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Wired has an article by Media Hack - Adam Penenberg titled No Protection for Bloggers. The piece discusses if bloggers enjoy the same legal protection that journalists do.

The gist of his article is that many states have laws the define what a journalist/reporter is, and bloggers don't fit the definition. Adam provides details on various state's definitions of a journalist, for example:

Many of the other state laws all contain some provision that you must be employed by a newspaper, radio or television station. Getting the laws re-written to include bloggers is next-to-impossible.

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Wednesday's Daily Show with Jon Stewart had a segment on blogs. (Hopefully they'll post a video online in the coming days)

The segment dealt with the recent firing of Eason Jordan and 'outing' of Jeff Gannon. As always, Stephen Colbert did a great riff on the situation.

Realizing the investigative power of bloggers, he began his segment by saying that his name was not Stephen Colbert, but actually Ted Hitler. He also provided such great lines as: "all they (bloggers) have is the facts, and those aren't very credible."

Talking about the issue of journalists protecting their own, he said, "First rule of journalism is don't talk about journalism...oh wait, that's Fight Club"

I'll need to wait for the video, because there were too many great lines to remember.

Update: Blogumentary has a video clip

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Lawrence Lessig has posted his first podcast. From the entry:

I agree that reading a written column may not be the best idea, but the appeal might be hearing the content, before it is published in the magazine.

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Napster has launched a huge marketing push recently comparing their service to iTunes. Reviews of the subscription service have not been good. Now comes this: Burning through Napster's collection, free

Normally Napter's songs are copy-protected with Microsoft's DRM, but somebody has figured out how to bypass it.

There always seems to be a story about how some company comes up with a business plan based upon some type of copy-protection technology, only to have somebody figure out how to break it within a few days. Napster, welcome to the club.

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After listening to the lastest For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report yesterday, I e-mailed Neville Hobson to ask how much time it takes he and Shel Holtz to produce the podcasts. Here is what Neville had to say:

When you visit the site you'll see how detailed the show notes are. Neville and Shel have decided to double their workload and start producing two shows per week. The next show is due this Thursday and will feature an interview with Steve Rubel.

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The Lance Armstrong Foundation announced that the single-day sales record for LiveSTRONG bands was broken this past Friday. The original record was 382,000 bands, the new mark of 900,000 bands sold was a result of Lance Armstongs' appearance on the Orpah Winfrey show. Plus an additional 300,000 more bands were sold on Saturday.

The current sales total for LiveSTRONG is around 33 million bands!

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Internet Stock Blog has a post about Hollywood Media implementing RSS feeds. Hollywood Media owns Hollywood.com, Broadway.com and 26% of MovieTickets.com. From the post:

A few noteworthy items:

1. Some of these feeds sound interesting, I know I always hit E! Online Sunday evening to check the box office top 10.

2. When you download Pluck or NewsGator from their site, Hollywood.com's RSS feeds are pre-installed. That's the first time I've seen that type of pre-installed option. Does anybody else know of a site that is doing that?

Continue reading "Hollywood.com adds RSS Feeds" »

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Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web has posted an in-depth analysis of the issues surrounding contextual advertising in RSS aggregators. This is the very heart of the matter I blogged about a few days ago. (Doc Searls thoughts)

Richard asks: in what situations is contextual advertising OK? and goes on to offer some scenarios.

Jason Calacanis discussed this issue in December of 2004 under the subject of RSS Abuse.

Somebody needs to create a product to provide RSS feed owners a percentage of the advertising revenue from sites that syndicate their content. Feedburner?

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Last year I wrote a post about incorrect facts in a URL. Often in large media companies the person who creates the URL is not the original writer (similar to headlines in the paper).

In today's New York Times there is an article about some of the issues that public relations faces, the title is Spinning Frenzy: P.R.'s Bad Press. The URL of the page is: ...flak.html

I guess we know the content manager's opinion of PR professionals.

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Doc Searls has posted a follow-up/response to my previous post about newspapers integrating web-based RSS readers.

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There has been some recent talk about how newspaper web sites are rushing into the RSS business following the launch of CNET's NewsBurst and moves by the LA Times. (Reuter's story here)

I see strong similarities between this move and the rush for many newspapers to launch a branded ISP service in the mid 90's. Just like the RSS integration, the newspapers partner or bundle a branded version of another service.

Continue reading "Newspapers & RSS, Thoughts of Newspapers as ISPs in the 90's" »

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Lance Armstrong will appear on the Oprah Winfrey show this Friday, Feb 11. You can check out the details here.

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Steve Rubel has the scoop on CNET's plans to launch a RSS news reader. The site will be called NewsBurst.

Check out Steve's post, he has all the details.

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Update 2: Here are the results for Super Bowl XLI (2007)

Update: Here are the results for Super Bowl XL (2006)

USAToday's annual Ad Meter scoring has been posted. They have declared the Bud Light Pilot Jump the best of the 2005 ads. AmeriQuest scored second with their cellphone-robber commercial.

The worst? Napster and Ciba Vision (contacts).

Check out the complete standings.

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All the ads are online at iFilm.com. GoDaddy.com had a second ad that was to run but was pulled by the NFL. GoDaddy CEO, Bob Parsons tells why.

Stephen O'Grady over at Redmonk says his firm's ad was pulled as well.

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Overall this year's commercials were OK, with not one single awe inspiring ad. You can evaluate the commercials in a number of ways. I think for most people the just look for entertainment value and don't think about the branding implications. (You can read the archive of my live-blogging here)

Continue reading "Super Bowl Ads: Best and Worst" »

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My primary purpose in attempting to live-blog the Super Bowl commercials was an experiment. Would I do it again? Probably not. A Tivo would have made things much easier.

I didn't get a chance to really watch the game, but I am a Steelers fan, so I did not need to give the game my full attention. I had one quick run to the kitchen, where I guess I missed the Brad Pitt Heineken ad.

At times is was difficult to come up with commentary on the fly, or in some cases breaks would come so quickly that I was thinking about overlapping sets of commercials.

I kept a close eye on my blog stats during the process and noted some interesting trends. I estimate I had around 20 visitors constantly watching my blog, with hundreds of others stopping by for a quick look.

What was interesting was to see the incoming referral logs. Technorati showed their power to search "What's happening on the Web right now." Shortly after a series of commercials I would see inbound links coming from Technorati searches for items such as: Pepsi, P. Diddy, Puff Daddy, iTunes, Emerald Nuts, etc. My assumption is that people were hitting Technorati to see if anybody was talking about the commercials. For a conversation evolving in real-time Technorati is the place to start.

The traditional search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN were sending traffic from searches of: Super Bowl Commercials, Live Blogging and similar queries.

I will keep an eye on the incoming traffic for the next day or two and post an update.

So the experiment is over from a technical standpoint. So what were the best commercials? That's the next post.

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To save space on the main page I have moved my live-blogging comments to the Super Bowl category page.

I will post some final thoughts shortly.

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In advance of the Super Bowl Commercial spectacular (yes many people just watch the big game to see the commercials), Jeff Jarvis has a post titled: Nipplegate, a year later.

And today we're sure to see the dullest Super Bowl commercials and half-time show in history.

This wasn't mass hysteria that did this. This was mass-media stupidity.

Yes I expect the commercials to be somewhat lame, but a commercial does not have to feature sex or low-ball humor to be great. Remember the EDS ad Herding Cats? Although not a Super Bowl commercial, eBay's Toy Boat is excellent.

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A reader (or perhaps a jr. PR associate) e-mailed me about Matthew Lesko's new blog. Don't know Lesko? Check out the picture, remember him now? Lesko uses the infomercial format to promote his book on the untold riches in government programs.

Lesko has started his blog to battle the New York Consumer Protection Board.

On December 15, the board issued a press release based on a study about government grant scams -- and unfairly used me and my products to get publicity for it. The board has admitted that I've done nothing wrong, and that they aren't investigating me for anything. Yet they proceeded to make false and libelous statements about me. I've posted a fact sheet on my site that you can read here.

So with this blog, I can take matters into my own hands. Consider it my constantly evolving letter to the editor, as well as an expansion of what I do day in and day out -- helping people make the most of the resources available to them.

I don't know if Lesko is right or wrong in this matter, my interest is that he is using a blog to get his message out.

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Robin Sloan of EPIC fame recently presented an updated version of the 'Future of Media' to a group of online journalists at Poynter. Robin hints that he will be posting the updated version of EPIC shortly.

What's interesting though is the follow-ups and other links coming out of these EPIC presentations. Jess Barron has some thoughts, and a link to The Content Manifesto for Poynter's "Web + 10: The Future of Online Journalism"

There are a number of great tid-bits there:

We must acknowledge citizen journalists:
- recognize that they hit niches
- respect that they have some leverage
- they can be additional eyes and ears
- they provide checks, balances and alternative points of vie

What I love about blogs is the transparency, want to know what journalists are thinking about blogs? how about educators, doctors, etc. You can find it all online.

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I plan on live-blogging reviews of the Super Bowl ads. I'll probably create a special page for it, but things will start here. Planning on doing the same? Let me know and we can set up some links.

Readers can also participate via comments.

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Andy Lark has a post about the viral marketing phenomenom that EPIC has become. The big news is in a chat with Robin Sloan (one of the developers of EPIC)...

keep your eyes peeled -- an update is coming in a week or so that will take EPIC to the year 2015.

So what will the next step be?

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The modern crux of bloggers v. jouralists, with the consumer in the middle. Thomas Ricks recently discussed this in a Washington Post article, Images of Fighting in Fallujah Compel at Different Levels.

Who do you trust? The Pentagon (and by extension the major media) who provide their report on the progress in Fallujah? or the anonymous America blogger (perhaps in his pajamas) who provides a less-than-rosy portrait?

Read the full aritcle.

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Great follow-up to the post I had yesterday about readers picking stories. Lou Rosenfeld blogs about a conversation he had with Guy Valerio of the Financial Times of London. The discussion is about using search logs to predict what stories may be out there.

If a company name shows up with great frequency in the search logs but hasn't been covered recently in FT articles, it may indicate a developing story about to hit daylight. Guy finds that this sort of anomaly is often a useful predictor of what the FT should consider covering in the coming days. Conversely, if a company name drops off the search logs, interest in a related story line may be waning, and FT can choose to invest its reporting resources elsewhere.

On the surface it may sound similar to a per-click tracking, but the search logs can help expose what is not on the site that readers are looking for (they can't click on the story if it's not there).

Of course now that the cat is out of the bag so-to-speak, how long before a PR flak looking to generate interest in a client enters the name of the company in the search tool repeatedly?

I make it a habit to analyze client's search logs and to show them how to as well. It is amazing some of the things that appear. You quickly learn what your audience is looking for.

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USAToday is running a story about a Chilean newspaper web site where readers determine which stories are followed-up on.

If a certain story gets a lot of clicks, for example, that is a signal to Edwards and his team that the story should be followed up, and similar ones should be sought for the next day. If a story gets only a few clicks, it is killed. The system offers a direct barometer of public opinion, much like the TV rating system but unique to print media.

The fear of course is that the paper will turn into more of a tabloid, than a resource for news. In many ways it is.

None of the LUN correspondents have news beats anymore, rather, they compete one against the other. Edwards says he will start financial incentives, with salaries reflecting the monthly clicks each reporter accrues.

The other issue I see is abuse of the system. There have been stories of phantom clicks.

low cost workers in India, China and other countries are hired to boost traffic for online ads by clicking on text links, banners etc.

The scenario would be to drive clicks to a positive story about your product/client or drive clicks to a negative story about your competition. Thereby keeping the story alive through a few more news cycles.

Update: I posted a follow-up today, Readers predicting stories, MicroPersuasion also picked up on the Chilean paper.

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Slashdot has a post, Are Blogs the Future of Journalism?. As always, the comments should be very interesting to read.

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Bloggers are supposed to be the 1000 editors double-checking every story out there. Well in this case they found something. Patterico exposes the NY Times basing a story on Democratic talking points. Ouch.

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After reading about News.com enabling trackbacks and pings for online stories a few weeks ago, I have been thinking about the various feedback mechanisms bloggers have, and what local reporters have.

Continue reading "Feedback: Bloggers V. Reporters" »

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How important is a URL in providing insight into a story or page? Often you can look at a URL and quickly get an idea of what you're about to get, i.e. if I see, www.usatoday.com/sports/nfl/scores/ I know I am probably going to see the scores of NFL games. But what happens when the URL has incorrect information?

In this evening's USAToday there is an article about NBC executice Dick Ebersol surviving a plane crash.

As I waited for this page to load, I quickly looked at the URL:

My first thoughts were... I wonder how Gulfstream handles things like this. Does the crash of one of their planes impact sales? Will a NetJet client be less willing to fly on a Gulfstream? (Think about the post Payne Stewart crash issues that Lear had)

Then I read, the article. The plane was not a Gulfstream, it was a CL-601 Challenger (photos of aircraft), made by Bombardier and owned by Jet Alliance. (more photos of the same type of aircraft)

Obviously I had made some incorrect assumptions based upon the URL. This is a very similar situation to when a another editor writes the headline for a story. In this case, the content manager probably created the URL without reading the entire story. Perhaps the content manager thinks that all private planes are Gulfstreams?

So how much harm is done? I read the whole story, so I realized the error, but how many people don't read the entire article? Of course how many people who did not read the full article are also looking to purchase a Gulfstream in the near future?

Update: I e-mailed USAToday and received a response that they will not use 'gulfstream' in today's URL. They also pointed out that my original post listed Roone Arledge as being involved in the accident, not Dick Ebersol. I have corrected this.

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Corante has posted the first in a series of interviews on the Future of Digital Media. As per Corante's intro, the series...."explores how the empowerment of the consumer over his or her media experience, coupled with the technological innovation that's broadly democratizing media creation, is leading to a revolution in the way people access, consume, share and remake content."

The first interview is with Jeff Jarvis. It's a pretty lengthy interview but very insightful.

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At some time during this election week my local newspaper, The News Chief, updated their web site. It is a change, but not for the better. Newspaper sites are utilized by a wide range of users with varying capabilities. Usability is crucial. There were so many glaring usability issues that I just had to address them.

Continue reading "Usability Review: The News Chief" »

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