"Aren't you afraid the humiliation of rejection will kill you?"

Elizabeth Gilbert at TED, talking about the fear that lingers behind the nagging need to write, the curious nature of genius and what happens when you keep showing up to do your job.

Bonus points for using Tom Waits as a positive role model.

NaNoWriMo: Back on the horse

After taking a few days off post-TEDx, I'm back on-course, at 13, 339 words. And today is not yet over (though the finale of Mad Men looms, with a giant time-sucking sound.)

MICA's Brown Center was a great venue for TEDx MidAtlantic

I've driven past, or under it nearly a hundred times, but today was the first time I had the opportunity to spend time inside The Brown Center, the glass-curtained building with the thrusting overhang that opened on the MICA campus a few years back.

All I can say is: Wow. Modern spaces can often be cold and odd and, while The Brown Center is certainly quirky, it fits in nicely on MICA's semi-urban campus, reflecting from the outside and providing amazing vistas from the inside.

[caption id="attachment_1103" align="alignnone" width="516" caption="The building sometimes appears mirrored, sometimes clear."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1104" align="alignnone" width="516" caption="Clouds and church reflected in the glass wall."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1105" align="alignnone" width="516" caption="The view out, from upstairs."][/caption]

Tom Stoppard on writing, via Scott Simon at today's TEDx MidAtlantic

It had been years since I'd thought of this beautiful passage about writing until I heard Scott Simon quote it this morning at TEDx MidAtlantic. It comes from the amazing play The Real Thing, by Tom Stoppard:

"Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead."

You can see Scott Simon's magnificent presentation here:



(No direct link, sorry. Select his talk from the scrolling list on the left)

NaNoWriMo inspiration: Laura Lippman

Maybe it's because we used to work for the same newspaper. Or maybe it's because she nails the details of Baltimore in her books. Or maybe it's because the woman can write the hell out of a book and leave you wondering how she does it.

Whatever, I'm a fanboy, a homer. So here's summa Baltimore's pride and joy, Laura Lippman.

"He's a writer looking for inspiration..."

Who remembers this great movie about finding the writer's muse?

It's a Mad Men world

Here's a not-quite-so-random thought following last night's penultimate episode of Season 3 of Mad Men:

What if the next episode jumps as far forward in the timeline as is normally reserved for a new season?

Why? Last night's episode was both a hard ending (Don, crushed and defeated) and a beginning (The real 1960s that got underway following the death of a president).

But the problem is, picking up a week or even a month after the events of the last episode is too soon to accommodate the massive changes to come, both in society and in Ossining.

So, my prediction, based on nothing other that a pinch of logic and a cup of wishful thinking: The final episode of Season Three jumps all the way to December, 1964.

NaNoWriMo: Read this now

Merlin Mann on "The Top ... Habits of Amazing Writers."

In which Mr. Nabokov dissembles while moving to the couch

Somehow I've gotten this far in life without hearing Vladimir Nabokov's voice or seeing him move. Oddly cartoonlike for such a wickedly good writer. I love how he's clearly enjoying the hell out of himself here.

NaNoWriMo Progress, Day One

I'm almost at exactly the daily count that I need to hit if I'm going to be on track for NaNoWriMo, but I'm only about 1/3 of the way toward my Day One goal of 5,000 words. I figure that'll be far enough in to tell whether this idea has some momentum and, if so, to give me a little buffer should things slow down as I'm told they do in week two.

UPDATE: Finished at 4,212 on the day. Not bad - more than double the average quota, though I know for certain I need to bank some excess because of the looming TedX Midatlantic, which looms in all its massive time-suckerness on Thursday.

"It's all in your head, and you take your head home with you"

Nick Hornby, on writing. Thanks, PBS, for the non-embeddable clip. Skip to 5:30 to get the the good bits.

On writing: The guy who wrote the book

Crummy video quality, but worthwhile to hear Stephen King talk about how a story idea can just kind of appear directly in front of you.

Why I've been M.I.A.

This site has been quiet as I burned the midnight oil, along with new colleague Kiel McLaughlin to launch the new Johns Hopkins University web site.

I think it looks pretty good, but then, I'm biased.

Six weeks from start to finish, so there are still (many) rough edges to polish, but we wanted to get this live in time for the Inauguration of our new university president this past weekend.

WordPress blowed up real good

I think I now understand how Windows partisans feel when people like me get all smug about how viruses just seem to like that particular operating system.

Because I'm in a similar sitch at the moment with WordPress. As you may have heard, all hell broke loose this weekend as a worm had its way with WordPress installations that were neither updated to the latest version nor hardened. All of my sites fared well, but not everyone was so lucky, from uber-blogger Robert Scoble to countless tiny sites scattered across the net.

Andy Inhatko has an informative and, well, entertaining wrap-up of what it took for him to get back to normal.

John Gruber casts a much more gimlety-eye at the whole mess, saying, finally, that WP is not for absentee-admins. I'm with him on that.

As with OS X updates, I'm very bullish on WP updates, especially of the security-enhancement variety, as 2.8.3 and 2.8.4 were. I also believe that, if you really, really care about the sites you build (or, especially, build for people who hand you a paycheck on a regular basis), you should go even further in ensuring security by:

• Nuking the "admin" named account as your second order of business, after creating a new admin-level account with a non-obvious name.


• Requiring long, difficult passwords from all users above "contributor" level.


• Renaming your database tables from the standard wp_


• Putting server-level access rules in front of your admin dashboard.


• Backing up your databases regularly. There's even a simple plugin that will do that for you at a set interval.

Is all of this worth what you get from a self-hosted WordPress site? I still say yes, but if you're not willing to take the minimal steps to guarantee the security of your site, then you will probably be happier in the long run with a hosted wordpress.com site or any of the many alternatives out there.

Is wonderful to have your web!

Apologies to the few legitimate commenters, but I had to turn on moderation. It seems this site has picked up a few new friends who really, really want to introduce you to the inexpensive pharmaceutical products they have to offer.

For some reason, Akismet is not working here in the same way it works beautifully on other WP sites I manage. Must investigate when I have the time. Until then, it's moderation for the lot of you!

There is no mobile web

Steve Yelvington has seven points you should consider about what we've been calling the "mobile web," the most interesting one of which is the first:

• There is no Mobile Web. There is only one Web, and it is the real Web. All the pseudo-Webs and WAP-services and walled-garden fakery are dead.

Good stuff. It's all here.

It's our most fuel-efficient vehicle yet!

Car retailer Jack Antwerpen shows us he's the biggest dealer in town in today's full-page cover to the Autos section of The Baltimore Sun.

But, as Norma Desmond might have said, it's not that the dealers have gotten bigger; it's that the cars have gotten smaller. So much smaller.

Yes, this shall be submitted to Photoshop Disasters.

Apple in my eye

I see these a lot while driving around:



Now, maybe it's because I drive a Honda Element with an Apple sticker on the back that I notice everyone else that goes by me in a Honda Element with an Apple sticker, but I think that somewhere at Apple or Honda there's a Venn Diagram on the wall showing a high overlap of Element and Apple customers. Because Element drivers sure seem to over-index for Apple sticker use.

Then again, I could just be seeing patterns where there are none.

Brit makes Baltimore reporters look like gits

Healthy skepticism -- in blogging and in Big Iron reporting for a metro daily -- is a necessary tool to have at all times.

Take yesterday's YouTube embed, allegedly from Baltimore's tourism office, suggesting that Baltimore, the city, is safer than you'd think from watching The Wire on television.

My initial reaction was shock at the thought that someone in Visit Baltimore could make such a colossal mistake in judgment to sell the city on the stacked-up backs of the dead. But after a few minutes, and a second watching, my BS meter pegged. Nobody could possibly be that clueless, even in Baltimore.

Apparently, this makes me more skeptical than several reporters in town. The City Paper took the bait. And so did Peter Hermann of The Sun, who got snared by another piece of the same hoax, a fake Mayor's site.

It was all a hoax by british blogger Alex Hilton. Peter Hermann, to his everlasting credit, corrected his original and wrote at length about what happened.

I hate to say it but this all happened simply because of a Reporting 101 failure: neither reporter bothered to verify it.

When I saw the YouTube video yesterday morning, my second action (after sputtering an some unprintables) was to DM both the Visit Baltimore office and the person who manages their Twitter account and ask whether they had actually created the video. I asked at 8:06 a.m. and had my emphatic answers -- No! -- a half-hour later.

I was able then to change my blog entry  from "this can't possibly be real, right?" to a note that it was, in fact, a hoax.

The old newsroom saying was "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

If she says it on YouTube or elsewhere on the internet, that goes double.

Having my say about "Say Everything"

Say Everything is about people.

But first, the news.

--

The destruction of two buildings in lower Manhattan marked the end of a lot of things -- mainly our assumptions about how the world worked -- and the beginning of a lot more. It also marked the moment when both traditional online news and the then-nascent field of blogging came of age.

If they didn't know it on September 10, 2001, managers of traditional news sites knew it the day after that they had become the primary source for news during the work day. What they didn't realize, as they struggled to restart their servers brought to their knees by the crush of traffic, was at the same moment, individual writers and their comparatively tiny audiences were discovering that there was a second path to enlightenment and information.

The blog.

--

The funny thing about people who think they're smarter than everybody else is that, sometimes, impossibly and wonderfully, they are. And thanks to the rise of blogging, they no longer have to be famous and useful only to their closest friends.

"Say Everything" is a book full of stories of such smart people, each of whom, in his or her own way, thought there was a better solution to the problem of how to communicate better, whether the problem was technical or one of voice.

In a very straightforward and absorbing book that should probably come in a blister-pack with some SPF-90 as the perfect geek beach-read for the summer, Scott Rosenberg, a co-founder of Salon.com, lays out the second-draft of the history of blogging in book form (Rebecca Blood, as he notes, got there first with an online essay, and then the book We've Got Blog.). Wisely, he centers his chapters around individual stories which, given the very personal nature of blogging, often means that the focus of each chapter is one individual.

• There's Justin Hall, who Rosenberg makes the case as being the first actual blogger, even if he didn't use that term himself. Described as "looking like one of Tolkein's elves," Hall is the king of TMI, sharing all details of his life and his body for all to see, until... Well, I won't ruin it, but the ending is a classic story that began long before there were computers, or even clay tablets, I imagine.


• We meet Jorn Barger, the man who probably was the first to describe his frequent jottings online as a "weblog." More importantly, his was one of the earliest and most popular linkblogs, serving up Jeff Jarvis' favorite online currency long before most of the rest of the world.


• And then Heather Armstrong, the woman whose online persona - Dooce - turned into a verb when she was fired from a job -- dooced -- for blogging about, well, her job. Later she emerged as one of the earlier mombloggers and, even later still, as a book author.

The key to the success of "Say Everything" is Rosenberg's focus on all of these outsized personalities. Without the story of how Ev Williams never gave up in the early days of Blogger or the "it just works" philosophy behind the controlled anarchy of Boing Boing or the dueling business plans of Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton, Say Everything could easily have tilted into a battle over the minutia of blogging history worthy more of a Wikipedia article (much-edited) or a conversation with the cast of Fanboys.

And standing in the middle of much of this story is one outsized personality who strikes me as the most important to this story: Dave Winer.

--

If you haven't heard of Dave Winer, you should. Without his efforts, it's arguable that blogging, RSS, podcasting and even, to a lesser extent, online news would not be the way they are. Dave gets his own chapter here, of course (the very appropriately named "The Unedited Voice of a Person), but he's also a presence that is felt explicitly and in the back-story throughout Rosenberg's story of blogging.

You can currently find Winer at Scripting News, the site that, often, has absolutely nothing to do with its name and everything to do with one guy pushing and prodding the rest of us to think in new ways online.

Back in 1995, as noted in "Say Everything," thinking different(ly) meant what we now know as blogging:

In 1995 he sent out a DaveNet (the precursor mailing list to Scripting News) essay titled "Billions of Websites." At the time the number sounded ludicrous, even to Internet optimists, but Winer was serious:

"Every new website begets more websites. If I have one, I want my friend to have one, so I can point to it. And so they can point to my site. Someday, I'll be able to walk a network of friendships, automatically knowing that each of us has mutual friends. It'll be cool ... The breadth of the web is limited only by the available space on hard disks, and the availability of human thoughts and feelings to fill that space ... Every writer can participate in the web. Someday, very soon, I believe, every writer will."

Winer didn't just spout dreams. He shipped code -- "shitty software," by his own admission, but software that could iterate and inspire other efforts -- and he beat the drum. He also famously got into a number of loud online arguments, but that's not the purpose or the focus here; love him or not, there's no denying that Dave Winer helped create the notion and the reality of the web you're using at this very moment.

--

There's more in Say Everything, including a chapter entitled "Journalists vs. Bloggers" that you can read in its entirety on the book's web site. Also, there's a treasure-trove of endnotes to the book featuring link after link to original source material for the book, much of it in the words of the bloggers themselves.

Years from now, Say Everything will serve as a valuable contemporary lens on how we got to the end of the first decade of the 21st century online. Today? It's an entertaining and well-researched look at the early history of blogging that will keep you interested whether you're sampling a chapter at a time or plowing through the entire book in a few sittings.

Baltimore: Not quite as lethal as you think

This is a joke, right? Because, if not, the blowback and the apologies will certainly be entertaining to watch.

Update: It's definitely not the work of Visit Baltimore, the city's tourism board, despite what the snookered City Paper says.

Kaboom!

Hah! It figures that the moment I decide to start writing about WordPress, my fancy-schmancy custom theme decides that it's going to explode on the single posts.

There's work to be done...

EDIT TO ADD: Looks like I've reverted to the stock theme. Marina hated that picture of me anyway. So enjoy the stock imagery for a few days until I have an hour to throw at fixing the theme.

WordPress: It's a great CMS

So, WordPress.

Depending on the day, it's the smile on my face or the knot on my brow. It's probably the simplest thing I've ever monkeyed with behind the curtain and, yet, it's insanely complex.

According to those who know, it's a lousy content management system. And yet, I have to disagree. It's got some limitations, to be sure, but I've found it to be remarkably malleable, bending itself to many of the tasks I've thrown at it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Because just a few months ago, I was very much a WordPress n00b, thinking that "customizing" meant ticking off the options on the expensive (and! virally! marketed!) theme I applied to this blog a year ago.

That was before I grew to understand the magic in a publishing platform for which you merely had to type into Google "Whatever crazy feature you'd like your site to have" and "WordPress plugin."

But again, I'm rushing ahead. First comes the framework.

As Andy Ihnatko said the other day:

Forget about finding a Wordpress theme that looks like it’s just a few tweaks and styles away from what I want. Instead, I’ll start with an utterly blank theme with every piece of WP infrastructure I’ll need, and use it as the starting point.

So here’s where I am right now: I’ve downloaded and installed the K2 theme. There are a couple of (old) tutorials on customizing it, and I’ll prolly be dipping deep into that well.

...

What’s the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen is that I learn something.

That's been my mantra as I try to push and prod WordPress into a CMS: What's the worst that can happen? Is trial-and-error the best way to teach myself PHP? Probably not. But as long as I pay close attention and make a copy of my files as I go along, the worst thing is, as Andy says, I pick up a little more knowledge along with the bruises.

So, sporadically, I'll be sharing what I've found and, more often than not, begging for help out of a bind.

But know this: I believe WordPress is a great CMS.

After newspapers, what?

Because it had been so long since I'd posted, the previous "Why I need a vacation from newspaper blogging" was really more of a "Why I started my vacation from newspaper blogging months ago but neglected to mention before this" post.

So, what now?

I want to write more about what I've been immersed in for most of this year: higher ed digital communications. Or, in english, university web sites and social media.

I may be sick of newspaper companies at the moment, but I'm not at all sick of news, especially very local news as practiced by an exploding number of tiny startups around the country and here in Baltimore. I'll be writing about that.

I want to share some of the tips and tricks I've picked up recently that convince me WordPress has evolved well past a blogging platform into a very robust and flexible content management system.

And I want to write more about my home town, Baltimore.

So, as elegiac as the last post may have sounded to you, in my mind it was merely a buttoning up of that particular topic so that I can focus more on the very positive things I see happening in many aspects of digital communication outside of what Dave Troy calls "Big Iron" media. And if newspapers manage to pull out of the dive, good for them. They can do it -- they just need to hand over the controls to the people inside their walls who can save them (Hint: Most have "interactive" or "online" on their business card).

More to come...

The last newspaper post for a while

Not only have I not written about newspapers for a while, I've also not finished a longish piece I've been working on about not writing about newspapers anymore.

But it really boils down to this: I'm out.

I can't stand to be the guy screaming from the stands that the team is running toward the wrong end zone. If newspapers want to march off the cliff of paid content, they should get on with it so that they can fail faster and make room for what comes next. The industry's endless hand-wringing is neither productive nor entertaining anymore.

As a good friend said to me last night, apropos the notion of "saving newspapers":

"If the patient that's strapped to the table is obese and sclerotic and cancer-riddled, do you give the patient oxygen? Or, to mix the metaphor, do you sprinkle water on the new green shoots coming up over here?"

If anyone asks after me, I've gone watering.

Livetweeting "The End of Local News?"

A reposting, in actual chronological order (not normal reverse), of the Tweets from the recent symposium in Baltimore on the future of local news after newspapers.

missjames: waiting for the merrill panel on local news to start. #localnews

nancethepants : This is the largest group of journalists I've ever seen converge without breaking news or booze. #localnews

pinkgrammar : With @ maryvale , @missjames and @ nancethepants at Merrill panel. #localnews

nancethepants : @ ckrewson yes! The place is filling up. Here with @ pinkgrammar , @missjames, @ maryvale , @johnemcimtyre, lots more #localnews

nancethepants : @ ckrewson sandy banisky just introduced him. He's got his mac with him! #localnews

missjames: panel heavy on print, one tv and one online (@pottsmark) rep. #localnews

maryvale : The audience at the #localnews panel is infiltrated with extra speakers. Huh. Looking forward to seeing what @pottsmark has to say today.

maryvale : The first question was in there somewhere. What is the impact of changing media landscape on cities? #localnews @montycook is first.

missjames: @montycook: we must understand audience patterns in order to figure out how we can keep offering the hallmarks of print news #localnews

talkingheadsTV : @montycook says readers determine life/importance of news stories #localnews

maryvale : So @montycook says our work belongs to readers (viewers, users) once it's out there. Agreed. #localnews

nancethepants : @montycook: "if you read [the news], it's yours." audience now owns the product, but who buys it? #localnews

missjames: sad? Oliver (afro): we came to realize soon that young people will likely never pick up a newspaper. they want more brief items. #localnews

missjames: Oliver: "we're not confounded, we're excited" about possibilities of new tech. "we're not just a local newspaper anymore." #localnews

maryvale : Jake Oliver says the Afro has to be national and international because of the Web. Interesting as we try to go local. #localnews

nancethepants : Oliver: Afro-American expands coverage beyond region because of Internet. #localnews

pinkgrammar : Afro American is excited about social networking. Web is causing it to evolve, reach out to national audience. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : Balt AfroAmer: Internet forced us to have national focus #localnews

davetroy : Roughly 75% of the room here at #localnews summit used to work for the Baltimore Sun. And I'm covering this? The inversion is real.

maryvale : Jayne Miller from WBAL just called for a show of hands of former @baltimoresun employees. Half the room. #localnews

nancethepants : Consensus seems to be that the audience is bigger, but there is little understanding of that audience. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : Whoa. When prompted, half the people at the future of news forum raised hands as ex-Sun reporters #localnews

missjames: jayne miller: when sun got rid of Maryland section, she subscribed to the nyt. if papers lose writers, tv will not replace them. #localnews

davetroy : Jayne Miller: "Only reason Hearst Corp has survived downturn is because it owns 20% of ESPN, and it gets subscriber revenue." #localnews

maryvale : Miller says the answer for her isn't adding more reporters to stations. It's taking advantage of platforms. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : RT @ maryvale Jayne Miller from WBAL just called for a show of hands of former @baltimoresun employees. Half the room. #localnews

missjames: miller: future of tv is not more reporters, it's delivery models. tv will be ok, but loss of print reporters is important. #localnews

nancethepants : Jayne miller calls out the sun, broadcast to work harder, do better. First real emotion we've seen so far. #localnews

pinkgrammar : Twitterberry causing problems. So few updates from me. #localnews

maryvale : Tim Franklin: if anyone tells you they know what the future of news is, they don't know what they're talking about. #localnews

MegMcKeever : Still at work. Keep the #localnews summit tweets coming!

maryvale : @ ckrewson @ davetroy Me and my gals are using #localnews hashtag (4 of us tweeting).

davetroy : Tim Franklin: "Today is much like the days of the penny press; low cost of entry, lots of participants + fragmentation." #localnews

talkingheadsTV : TimFranklin: impossible to predict future of news, but my two cents says we're back to the penny press in form of blogging #localnews

pinkgrammar : Tim Franklin says we're back to beginning, to the penny press. Several new entrants to market chewing away at traditional media. #localnews

missjames: tim franklin: we're back to beginning of republic. comparing new tech to penny press. as then, nearly anyone can publish. #localnews

ckrewson : Four folks tweeting from the Bmore news symposium are using #localnews to track the action.

nancethepants : Tim franklin compares today's industry to penny press era: everyone can start up a news org. Reluctant to forecast next 5 years. #localnews

davetroy : Tim Franklin: "There will be winners and losers in this new market; whoever can capitalize on the opportunity. More job losses." #localnews

maryvale : Franklin: Some of these Web sites couldn't even charge a penny (jumping off penny press model). Zing? Or true about pay walls? #localnews

pinkgrammar : But he says there will be winners and losers. #localnews

michaeltdresser : RT @ talkingheadsTV TimFranklin: impossible to predict future of news, but says we're back to the penny press in form of blogging #localnews

missjames: franklin: more papers will fold, no more two-paper towns, maybe even a major metro area w/out a paper. #localnews

nancethepants : Franklin says cities won't have more than one paper, some less. Gives kudos to espn for mastering many platforms. #localnews

maryvale : Watching @montycook take notes about local ESPN channels. Competition from long arm of national news orgs. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : Franklin:ESPN developing model for behemoth conglomerates to cover local news, so maybe Google will fill in the gap #localnews

missjames: franklin: more localization from big guys like espn will happen, and from small guys too. #localnews

davetroy : Mark Potts giving overview of some of the local websites; like baltimoresun.com afro.com wbal.com mddailyrecord.com citypaper.com #localnews

michaeltdresser : RT @ talkingheadsTV Whoa. When prompted, half the people at the future of news forum raised hands as ex-Sun reporters #localnews

nancethepants : Mark potts says evolution of industry has been continuous. Fragmentation just highlights it. #localnews

davetroy : Potts investigativevoice.com baltimorebrew.com baltimorecrime.blogspot.com bmorenews.com blogbaltimore.com examiner.com/baltimore #localnews

pinkgrammar : @pottsmark shows us traditional media Web sites and some nontraditional ones. #localnews

missjames: @pottsmark: highlighting local news sites: baltimore brew, Baltimore crime, examiner.com (not the paper) (I've missed some) #localnews

nancethepants : Potts points out Baltimore brew, bmore news, blog Baltimore, examiner, baltimore crime, @localist #localnews

davetroy : Potts: localist.com/baltimore whatstoeatbaltimore.blogspot.com 600block.com yelp.com/baltimore baltimore.momslikeme.com #localnews

maryvale : Mention of @localist from @pottsmark. Also Yelp, Momslikeme, Kid Baltimore, @600block. #localnews

pinkgrammar : Baltimore injury law blog! Yes, blogs get VERY specific. #localnews

missjames: @pottsmark: people are starting to slice very thin pieces of the news to report. (pers. injury blog got laughs from audience.) #localnews

nancethepants : Potts mentions lack of "media filter" with company web sites. why do so many assume the filter is always a bad thing? #localnews

missjames: @pottsmark: voice of san diego, chi town daily news, minn post, baristanet, every block good examples of online local coverage #localnews

maryvale : Are these sites part of the future? Who knows. They're part of the present. -@pottsmark #localnews

davetroy : Potts: voiceofsandiego.org minnpost.com baristanet.com westportnow.com everyblock.com dc.fwix.com "Some ppl don't want payment" #localnews

maryvale : "Some of these people don't want to get paid." -@pottsmark #localnews

nancethepants : Potts: on nontraditional news orgs "some of these people don't want to be paid." passion doesn't pay the mortgage. I wish it did. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : Very interested in Fwix.com- news site consisting of roundup of local blog posts #localnews

missjames: continuous invention, continuous failure, continuous restart is name of game, moderator says. #localnews

nancethepants : Tom linthicum: daily record is expanding. Steadier revenues, lack of business coverage competition has helped. #localnews

davetroy : MD Daily Record says "they are expanding" because of non-ad revenues (legal listings); me: is this not parasitic? #localnews

maryvale : Tom from@mddailyrecord says they made their move when @baltimoresun cut freestanding biz section. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : Linthicum said Daily Record is expanding- going for market share when Sun killed daily Biz section #localnews

missjames: linthicum of daily record: expanded when sun lost biz section. "we see an opportunity for us. [with new tech] but it's not easy." #localnews

nancethepants : Linthicum sees changes in technology as opportunity for serious, tough journalists. #localnews

mykeln : Looks like #localnews was a bad hashtag choice. It's getting lost among tons of junk.

howe2skate: Its good to see that #localnews is finally realizing the old Business plan needs changing. Now they are only 2 years behind.

localist: We'll be here tomorrow! RT @ maryvale : Are these sites part of the future? Who knows. They're part of the present. -@pottsmark #localnews

maryvale : Mike Hill says loss of classified advertising happened "overnight." Not true. It was missed opportunity over missed opportunity. #localnews

pinkgrammar : Don't cry for dead print section, says Daily Record. It looks for way to segment biz community, take advantage of new landscape. #localnews

missjames: mike hill, former sun union rep: in 1970s, you could find similar number of former newspaper people bc they couldn't afford it. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : Mike Hill: more peole looking at news content than ever- doesn't matter, loss of classifieds revenue (20-40%) killed print #localnews

davetroy : "Journalism is going to end up being like the peace corps; young ppl do it for 2-3 years and then move on." - Mike Hill #localnews

missjames: hill: last 30 years could have been an anomoly in journalism, but there needs to be more. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : …cont) opportunity. #localnews TRUE THAT

pinkgrammar : News corps were too greedy before Internet age, says Mike Hill, former @baltimoresun reporter. #localnews

nancethepants : Mike hill gives guild perspective, says new journalists will change Industries after only a couple years, like peace Corp. #localnews

missjames: moderator points out health news wire backed by kaiser foundation. will that happen elsewhere? is it viable model? #localnews

dontgetcaught: RT @ davetroy : Roughly 75% of room at #localnews summit used to work for the Baltimore Sun. And I'm covering this? The inversion is real.

nancethepants : No pay wall around entire site, but we need to be compensated for content, @montycook says. #localnews

missjames: @montycook: we're trying out niche sites, new ways to monetize. "but we can't put up a wall" around content #localnews

pinkgrammar : We're hearing about possible pay sites. "Good luck with that," says @pottsmark. @montycook adds: You can't put up a pay wall. #localnews

nancethepants : Advertising will not carry everything, @montycook says. Then consumer will? How? #localnews

maryvale : Coming @baltimoresun Web redesign has "transactional opportunities" built in. Er? #localnews

talkingheadsTV : RT @ maryvale Coming @baltimoresun Web redesign next week has "transactional opportunities" built in. Er? #localnews

nancethepants : Franklin: niche sites with credibility will do well. Yes! That's why we need to protect our own credibility @baltimoresun! #localnews

davetroy : "We will be flooded with commodity news on the web; solid public local journalism is where the value is." - Tim Franklin #localnews

davetroy : "None of the websites we saw can hold a candle to professional journalism." - Jayne Miller #localnews Really? That's the stance?

nancethepants : Miller: smaller sites cannot hold a candle to professional journalism operations. They don't compare. #localnews

missjames: miller: upstart web sites will not be substitute for prof journalism. "when 9/11 happened, the didn't say go to your cpu" #localnews

pinkgrammar : No real answers on how journalism will be paid for. Miller says new Web news sites can't hold a candle to professional orgs. #localnews

davetroy : "These websites don't change policy; they don't get the city council riled up; it's not the replacement." - Jayne Miller #localnews #wow

missjames: miller is obviously not a believer in future of online. #localnews

nancethepants : Miller: sites don't change policy, don't aid debate, can't replace news orgs. // that seems short-sighted to me. #localnews

missjames: oliver: I'm not worried about online. #localnews

davetroy : Potts disagrees -- suggests that Miller check out voiceofsandiego.org and others. Jake Oliver "not that worried about websites." #localnews

talkingheadsTV : …cont) Drudge #localnews

nancethepants : Oliver: not worried about new media, not threatened, they have little new content. // I don't think we go to the same sites. #localnews

missjames: here comes ettlin. asks @montycook about "aggressively trying to burt print edition." @montycook: "we're not." well then. #localnews

missjames: "trying to bury," that is. #localnews

mykeln : Sounds like they've run out of "the Web is cool.. yeah... we really like it" talking points and are starting to be honest. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : RT @missjames here comes ettlin. asks about "aggressively trying to burt print edition." @montycook: "we're not." well then. #localnews

maryvale : Oof. Went to move my car and missed Jayne Miller's divisive comment about upstart sites not matching mainstream credibility. #localnews

missjames: @montycook gives shoutout to @justinfenton, @phpscoop, @laurasmitherman for in-depth reporting. #localnews

nancethepants : Cook defends investigative work of justin fenton, @phscoop, laura smitherman when ettlin questions him. #localnews

nancethepants : Potts says big iPhone will kill kindle. Sad. #localnews

maryvale : Ettlin challenging @montycook on "watchdog" term; MC rattles off list of stories from @justin_fenton, @lsmitherman, @phscoop. #localnews

missjames: ha! @pottsmark: 17 years ago, "problem was you couldn't take a cpu to the john. guess what." (holds up iPhone) #localnews

pinkgrammar : Kindle talk! Franklin has one. I want one, too! #localnews

nancethepants : Franklin reads ny times on his kindle. #localnews

maryvale : Miller: You can't have high def on one hand and and YouTube on the other. Really? Why not? #localnews

missjames: miller: says future is hi def, not YouTube. but welcomes all devices for broadcast delivery. #localnews

nancethepants : Oliver: kindle will add to evolution of industry, not dramatically change. Replace cost of print, push creativity. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : Miller: YouTube not a threat cause viewers want HD- ?? hasn't looked at YouTube lately- HiDef is here. #localnews

missjames: Oliver says you don't absorb digital info same as in print. maybe you don't, but I'm a 5-year old may. where's youth view? #localnews

missjames: sun alum asks about pay models for journalism. #localnews

missjames: franklin: I still don't see pay model in near future. mentions Philly's move to pay, itunes model, cable model. #localnews

pinkgrammar : Ok. My BlackBerry hates me. Follow @ nancethepants , @ maryvale or @missjames! #localnews

jayjudge: props to @ nancethepants , @missjames, @ pinkgrammar , @ maryvale for great tweet coverage of the Merrill forum #localnews

nancethepants : iTunes format for papers? Will reporters sing the news? Traveling minstrels will save news industry! #localnews

missjames: @pottsmark: "I'm highly skeptical of a pay model. ... it doesn't really work ... but I'd like to see them try." #localnews

nancethepants : Potts: niche publications can work with subscriptions, not general news orgs. // exactly!! #localnews

pinkgrammar : @ nancethepants Readers listening to the same story over and over, like their favorite songs! #localnews

missjames: @pottsmark: wsj works bc they've been at it a long time. likely won't work anywhere else #localnews

maryvale : Now we are having the Google argument. Whee. #localnews

missjames: @pottsmark: 30 percent of traffic to papers' sites comes from google. to turn off access would be detrimental. #localnews

nancethepants : Ex-journo critical of reader engagement. Hates anonymous comments on news sites. #localnews

maryvale : Rambling question about "pernicious" user comments and challenge to audience engagement. #localnews

pinkgrammar : Reader engagement: something to celebrate? Former journo says no, and says to get rid of anonymous comments. #localnews

missjames: ex-reporter: anonymous comments should be gone. says @pottsmark's presentation missing watchdog journo. did he miss 1st sites? #localnews

talkingheadsTV : @ nancethepants , @missjames, @ pinkgrammar , @ maryvale who is this former journo yelling over my shoulder??#localnews

missjames: ex-reporter: is there audience for serious news? yes. online does not equal stupid. #localnews

nancethepants : Also poo-poos twitter as not being "intelligent news." #localnews

davetroy : The lack of imagination here at this #localnews summit is awesome. No one can see how things might evolve. #shortsighted

nancethepants : Miller agrees, calls it ad hoc news, doubts demand for nontraditional news orgs in future. #localnews

maryvale : Miller doesn't see how any startup can replace a traditional news organization. Replacement is not the idea. #localnews

missjames: miller says she doesn't see how web sites will replace serious news. worries city will miss key info thx to diminished sun. #localnews

pinkgrammar : When you lose a newspaper, it is sad thing. 100 Web sites don't replace a paper, Miller says. Getting fired up! #localnews

nancethepants : @ talkingheadsTV his name is skip. He also hates @readstreet. @ mykeln , @dumpkopf will remember him. #localnews

missjames: @pottsmark: why do you need 4 photogs to one conf? miller: you get four slightly diff perspectives. #localnews

missjames: @montycook cuts are being made not bc they want to, they're trying to survive. now defending audience engagement. #localnews

missjames: @montycook: "much of these changes are generational. we're trying to walk that tightrope." #localnews

nancethepants : @montycook defends reader engagement. Not talkboards, but connections, new sources, finding communities. // good distinction. #localnews

lisawilliams : #localnews = #whinefest? No? Yes?

pinkgrammar : No gate keepers on examiner.com Web sites. #localnews

missjames: ex examiner guy says there are no professionals on site. says lack of gatekeepers are concerning. @pottsmark says he's not fan. #localnews

blogdiva : YES! LOL RT @ lisawilliams : #localnews = #whinefest? No? Yes?

talkingheadsTV : @lenlazarick says examiner.com has no pro journos, no gatekeepers and is likely to screw up soon. also has paltry page views. #localnews

nancethepants : Concern about lack of gatekeepers, greater possibility of lawsuits. // this is why we need more journalists, not fewer. #localnews

realityck : Wish I was at #localnews forum, but keeping up thanks to fab tweets by @ nancethepants @missjames @ pinkgrammar @ maryvale @ talkingheadsTV

missjames: moderator: lots of anxiety evident. "there's no clear invention of the future." journalism "like canaries in tunnel." #localnews

missjames: miller asks @montycook if papers still profitable. (yes) she says "journalism is one thing, blogging is another." #localnews

nancethepants : After two hours of talking, many admit they have no answers. // but any new ideas? I hope so. We need new thinking. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : Miller: more you shrink, less value you have to readers, more likely they'll drop you. Hint hint @baltimoresun #localnews

pinkgrammar : @nytimes was a failing penny sheet in the 1800s. So why are some people dismissing Web sites of the 2000s? #localnews

maryvale : Debate over what makes someone a professional journalist. It's a good question, but is it *the* question? #localnews

davetroy : The one thing that's clear to me is that the current journalism *companies* are not going to be the ones to find the answer. #localnews

missjames: @pottsmark: printing press invention wasn't novel, was 15 years later w the book."we're still waiting for the book." #localnews

jonathanjulian : RT @ davetroy : The lack of imagination here at this #localnews summit is awesome. No one can see how things might evolve. #shortsighted #SAD

missjames: franklin worried about short term effect on society. even w. 300 reporters, he was worried about quality of journo. #localnews

nancethepants : Concerned about democracy in the short term, franklin says we have critical oversight role, must find new model quickly. #localnews

agahran : @ lisawilliams What is #localnews? Ongoing topic or current event?

talkingheadsTV : I'll just say 22,000 reporters have lost their jobs in past 18 months. I hope Franklin is right and new model gets here soon #localnews

missjames: @montycook papers aren't at death's door yet. we're trying new things. couldn't always say that, he says. #localnews

missjames: Oliver: I'm not concerned with burying then sun. brand of sun lends credibility others have. sun will survive he says. #localnews

nancethepants : Oliver: praises sun brand, stamp of credibility, says new sites can't compete. // agree with sentiment, not arrogance. #localnews

missjames: Oliver: "I get the sense this is a wake. [for the sun] I'm not there." #localnews

muckrack "> muckrack : Now trending on Muck Rack: #localnews http://bit.ly/TVnrF (expand)

davetroy : "This was about 'keeping alive' a news force in Baltimore" - S. Banisky; Anything that needs 'kept alive' is nearly dead. #localnews

pinkgrammar : Oliver says Sun format may evolve. He gets a sense that this is like a wake, but he's not there. Neither am I! #localnews

missjames: iPhone battery dying. luckily panel's wrapping up. I'm out. #localnews

nancethepants : Banisky closes us out. #localnews

talkingheadsTV : RT @ muckrack Now trending on Muck Rack: #localnews http://bit.ly/TVnrF (expand)

agahran : Folks at #localnews event today -- what exactly *is* that event? Link? Name at least? :-/

justinemaki : Thanks @ nancethepants , @missjames, @ pinkgrammar , @ maryvale for great tweets from the Merrill forum! #localnews

timwindsor : RT @ davetroy : The lack of imagination here at this #localnews summit is awesome. No one can see how things might evolve.

EdBennett : Fascinating updates from @ davetroy - from a conference on the future of #localnews

tgdavidson : Debate at #localnews on what makes a pro journalist. Me: Irrelevant. 1st amend. belongs to everyone, not a priesthood. (thx @ maryvale )

tgdavidson : @ agahran Event details here: http://bit.ly/yiz2v (expand) Panel featured @montycook and @pottsmark among others. #localnews

tgdavidson : And DC3s sucked vs Pullmans. RT@ davetroy : "None of the websites ... can hold a candle to professional journalism." - Jayne Miller #localnews

tgdavidson : Sorta happy wasn't at #localnews. Love @montycook and @pottsmark - but woulda blown a vein at some of the comments, based on Tweets...

cathro : #localnews: Some are missing that increasingly sophisticated users determine content's credibility. You don't dictate it w/press passes.

agahran : @ talkingheadsTV Link for #localnews conference?

GusSent : The #localnews event in Baltimore, abt future of journalism, sounded interesting. I couldn't make it, sadly. Too busy blogging!. #balttech

kbilly21 : Searched Twitter for #localnews: http://tinyurl.com/qlnef9 (expand) Whoa, 13 pages of tweets from last night's Future of Journalism conference!

talkingheadsTV : Searched Twitter for #localnews: http://tinyurl.com/qlnef9 (expand) Whoa, 13 pages of tweets from last night's Future of Journalism conference!

umbcinsights : RT @ talkingheadsTV : Searched Twitter for #localnews: http://tinyurl.com/qlnef9 (expand) Whoa, 13 pages of tweets from last night's Future of Jour ...

Recent posts at Nieman Journalism Lab

As I've been doing all my journalism-related posting at Nieman Journalism Lab, and my higher-ed posting hasn't yet ramped up here, my blog has gotten cobwebby in the past month.

So, this list of what I've been up to lately. I'd be honored if you follow any or all of the links below. You can also find all my posts aggregated on one page at Nieman Lab as well.

More here soon, including a long-promised (to myself, at least) redesign.

• I reported on a great new weekly podcast with Dave Winer and NYU's Jay Rosen called "Rebooting the News."


• I reported from a talk by Baltimore Sun editor Monty Cook where he said, among other provocative things, the days of 6-part series may be numbered.  “Watergate was beat reporting, not a series.”


• I took on David Carr, of all people, for his drumbeat in favor of paid content.


• I started a robust discussion by suggesting that the backlash against the DiggBar was a sign that users are much more in control than the publishers.


• I chided the Los Angeles Times for their front page fake news article advertising, not because it was bad journalism, but because it was bad advertising.


• I suggested a few items that were missing from Dean Singleton's speech to the Associated Press. Stuff like vision. And ideas.

Thanks for reading.

I continued on my soapbox rant against useless and insulting robolinks at news web sites.

And I suggested that Ben Cardin's "Newspaper Revitalization Act," while well-intended, would kill innovation with its kindness.

How Apple media swarms the news

On the Nieman Journalism Lab today, I point to the semi-yearly ritual of Apple-focused media covering today's iPhone 3.0 announcements as a great example of distributed reporting, well-suited to a web and mobile delivery model.

For more, and links to all the iPhone 3.0 action, please join me at The Lab.

Why won't news sites link?

It's a great story. A magician posts videos of him shipping himself to Vegas from upstate New York via UPS. The Feds investigate. Turns out it's a hoax and a publicity stunt. Hilarity ensues.

So far, so good. But you're reading this online. What's your first thought?

Right: Where's the video?

You won't find it in the AP retelling on the Newsday.com site.

You won't find a link to the YouTube preview, or the special microsite set up to detail the fake journey.

You won't find the links in the original story, in which the Syracuse Post-Standard is punked by the magician. (You will find the non-linked name of the web site, a sure sign that this is an automated port of a newspaper story)

And you won't find them in the follow-up story on the Post-Standard either.

I'm picking on this one story, but it's typical of far too many news web site stories that have obvious link potential: You won't find links there.

Full post at Nieman Journalism Lab.

More evidence that social media works

Susan Mernit -- another prolific and incisive writer that may not be yet be among the bookmarks of enough journalists -- shares a long excerpt of an even more exhaustive White Paper on how she and her team used social media to significantly raise awareness of the most recent Knight News Challenge.

In "Case study, using social media for social good: The Knight News Challenge 2008/09," Mernit shows, step-by-step, why you weren't imagining things when you thought that there was an awful lot of publicity about the Challenge this time around.

Click here for the rest of this post at Nieman Journalism Lab.

"Predisposed to miserabilism"

While we're thinking Big Thoughts about what to do after the last press wheezes to its end, I thought I'd share this funny graf about newspapermen from James Lileks, newspaperman:

You can’t avoid being tagged as habitual downers when you’re in the news business, because the Truth Hurts, or at least Hurts Someone Else - but sometimes I suspect many people in the news business are temperamentally predisposed to miserabilism, because the idea of an unjust world run by monied smileys explains why the cheerleader turned them down for a date in high school. But I know too many who don’t fit that mold. So ignore the above, except when it seems to explain something. Except when you read someone who seems to think that by afflicting the comfortable, the afflicted are automatically comforted. As if writing is charity.

From today's Bleat.

Einstein proves advertising and content are not necessarily opposites

The current newspaper business revenue crisis has led to some old ideas being dusted off and presented as new (Paid content! Micropayments! Preservation of print circulation!), and who knows? Maybe some of the experiments rumored and foreshadowed in Long Island and Seattle and across the Hearst Empire will net some needed dollars for the ongoing operations.

But what about advertising, which remains a huge part of any revenue strategy? Surely the banner ad isn’t the sum total of our creativity in commerce? Google couldn’t have managed to build the most perfect form of commercial speech on their first try, could they? Where is the creativity in commercials? How can local newspaper companies — with their deep ties into their communities, their newsrooms full of subject-matter experts, and their platoons of sales people — have managed to not move the needle more than a few notches in 15 years of building and selling ads online?

I was wondering this last week as found my mind drifting away from the evening clot of sheet metal and tires inching northwards toward the ‘burbs and thinking about the life of Albert Einstein. My Einstein reverie wasn’t out of the blue; it was prompted by an equal parts funny and entertaining riff by The Chicago Sun-Times’s tech columnist Andy Ihnatko, who was recommending — at length — an audio book about the atomic genius.

And here’s the point: it was an ad. It’s part of a weekly feature on the popular podcasts from Leo Laporte’s TWiT network in which journalist panelists on the showstep ever-so-slightly out of their traditional roles to talk about a book that they love that happens to be available for download as part of an Audible.com subscription.

Listen below as Ihnatko and Laporte talk about Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson.



Forget TiVo-proof 30-second spots, that’s a 12-minute ad! Or, to be more precise, it’s 10 minutes of interesting and entertaining content that happens to also be the largest part of an ad.

(More at the Nieman Journalism Blog)

The “new newsroom” is being created one reporter at a time

(Cross-posted to Nieman Journalism Lab)

What does the journalist of the future look like?

PR whiz Steve Rubel says he looks a lot like Peter Abraham, who is not some vaporware demo from 2015, but a flesh-and-blood reporter covering the Yankees spring training camp in Florida.

Abraham is the Yankees beat writer for the Journal News in Westchester county (a NYC suburb). According to Burrelles Luce, it's the 94th largest newspaper in the US with a daily circ of 100,000 readers.

Abraham is on the scene in Tampa where the Yankees are training and he's doing it all - in addition to filing regular reports for the paper that appear in print. Here's an inventory of his social media footprint....

First, he has a blog with a full-text feed that includes several posts/day and hundreds of comments/day from readers. It dates back to 2006.

In addition, Abraham has a Facebook group that has about 1600 members.

He is posting photos from spring training using his iPhone. Note the gear the others are using by comparison.

There is a podcast up on iTunes that right now is updated daily with audio.

Finally, today he was using both CoverItLive and Mogulus to have a live video/text chat with readers.

While Abraham is still a bit of an Edge Case, what's really heartening is that, with each passing day, stories like this become less amazing, as they become more common. What examples have you seen in your market or nationally of journalists redefining the profession?

Will paid content work? Two cautionary tales from 2004

Given the recent secret memos and TIME cover stories, the topic of "paid content" has once again grabbed the spotlight, offering at least a slim hope of revenue redemption to some newspaper people -- largely on the print side, but with some notable digital advocates as well.

For those of us who went down these paths previously, there's definitely a bit of Groundhog Day to the increased media thumb-sucking, but at least this time some of the people doing that thumb-sucking are in better positions to make actual change. At the very least, ideas are bouncing around and occasionally creating new synapses. (At the very worst, of course, we're polishing the glassware behind the bar on Deck Three of the pride of the White Star Line.)

But can we learn anything from paid content attempts in the past? After all, this has been tried at varying levels before. Until The New York Times opens the books on its mothballed Times Select service, which kept certain content -- mainly columnists and archives -- behind the pay wall, these two examples, from 2003-2005, will have to serve as examples:

(Continue reading on Nieman Journalism Lab)

Paying for foreign reporting requires creative financing

Whether the shuttering of foreign bureaus by metropolitan newspapers and some TV networks in recent years -- to refocus efforts stateside as budgets tightened -- was a good thing or bad is certainly worthy of debate.

But what is certain is that, as a result, there are now fewer reporters covering fewer stories in foreign countries for American news organizations.

Some of those that do remain are still in the employ of the few remaining deep-pocketed organizations with bureaus. But an increasing number are independent or loosely confederated reporters, chasing stories first and finding buyers for them second.

Read more at The Media Lab...

How to grow local revenue, despite the ad inventory glut

So, what to do about this over-abundance of advertising inventory in our local markets?

Unlike some in this industry who are looking, again, at some form of paid content as the solution to the revenue crisis, I still believe that there's a lot of life left in the ad-supported model. We haven't been particularly creative in building ad solutions that work well for advertisers and that generate sustainable revenue for newspaper companies.

Given the diminishing returns of the CPM market outlined yesterday, the move is on to find a better model. Recently, The New York Times' David Carr looked to Apple for inspiration:

Those of us who are in the newspaper business could not be blamed for hoping that someone like (Apple's Steve Jobs) comes along and ruins our business as well by pulling the same trick: convincing the millions of interested readers who get their news every day free on newspapers sites that it’s time to pay up.

For a long time, newspapers assumed that as their print advertising declined, it would be intersected by a surging line of online advertising revenue. But that revenue is no longer growing at many newspaper sites, so if the lines cross, it will be because the print revenue is saying hello on its way to the basement.

The iTunes Solution.

And yet there is no parallel between selling songs -- which customers will play over and over -- and selling a recap of the City Council meeting. Apple didn't simply say "What do we have that we could sell to people?" They looked for a need in the marketplace -- a better way to buy music -- and created it.

Continue reading at The Nieman Lab...

Five people I wish Jim Romenesko quoted more

(This is a follow-up to Friday's list of five people outside journalism that all journalists should read.)

I will forever be in Jim Romenesko's debt for a number of reasons.

• First, he's a great read, reporting as he does every last scrap of news about the journalism biz.


• Second, he's wicked fast, an example many of our local market reporters could still learn from. If there's a document that has news, he doesn't rewrite it -- he links to it (or reproduces it whole). The joke is that he's already published the internal memo before the publisher has finished writing it.


• Third, for about a year in the early 2000s, he was my handy answer to any reporter or editor who asked, with clear disgust at the word, "What's a blog?" Instead of spending ten minutes explaining the blogger ethos, I'd just start out with, basically, "You're soaking in it!" by pointing out that the venerable Romenesko "page" or "site," as it was called, was essentially a very robust and well-done linkblog. From that point, the conversation was much simpler.

But one thing I've always wished was that he would open up his stable of industry types that he'd quote or link to. For every Howard Kurtz or David Carr, there are dozens of other industry thinkers, some writing and saying quite interesting things.

That's not to say that the voices in Mister Romenesko's Neighborhood haven't grown in number in recent years. If I were writing this in 2007, I'd be complaining about the absence of Jeff Jarvis, Mark Potts, Alan Mutter and the incomparable Jay Rosen, NYU professor (one day of his @jayrosen_nyu Twitter feed features a week of challenging ideas), all of whom are featured with some regularity now on the premier industry blog.

But, never being satisfied, here are a five writers I wish were exposed more frequently to the newsrooms of America:

1. Morris Digital's Steve Yelvington has been striving mightily to get newspapers to look over the horizon for years. So it's no surprise that his recent posts, while acknowledging our current sour turn, often focus on ideas for how to move forward. For instance, he's been offering a peek behind the curtain as his team moves Morris's Jacksonville.com from a legacy system to a home-brewed Drupal solution more attuned to the needs of readers. Also, his post from December, Explaining Twitter to journalists, is a great elevator pitch to colleagues for using Twitter as a listening tool:  "It's like a big caffeine party. Everybody's talking at once. Really fast. But you have magic ears."

2. Roy Greenslade, the media columnist for the UK Guardian, offers the view from Blighty. He's prolific, occasionally maddening, and always a good read. I like that he gets me out of my US-centric view of the journalism business. Bonus points for working at a paper that got blogging and other social media while many news organizations here in the US were still refusing to utter the words.

3. Terry Heaton, a former TV producer and current "blogger for hire" at Audience Research & Development, focuses on the emergence of newer, more participative forms of media. In his essay "2009: The Great Beginning," he uses the example of Kodak's reinvention in recent years as a beacon of hope for the news business:

Kodak embraced the disruption that was decimating its film business. The company is riding the disruption into the future by never looking back at the "good old days." It did not come without real pain, however, for reinvention has no respect for those who fight or otherwise refuse the future it offers, nor does it — or can it — concern itself with the unfortunate souls who are, through no fault of their own, caught in its need to save the many at the expense of the few. Note that 60 percent of Kodak's workforce wasn't there four years ago.

It's like that when customers demand something other than what they've been getting.

4. Paul Gillin is a double-threat, with two essential blogs. The first, Newspaper Death Watch,  is a chronicle, not a celebration, with solid reporting and analysis about the death throes of the old ways, and the shoots of new life that are appearing amid the carnage. His other blog is simply PaulGillin.com, where he reports on the growth of social media. And he writes books. Because writing two high-volume blogs apparently leaves him with entirely too much free time on his hands.

5. As I wrote elsewhere recently, Gina Chen is really no different than the thousands of journalists in newsrooms around the country, trying to make sense of where the news business is heading. Except this: She's doing something to help her colleagues along. In her Save The Media blog, she's been presenting a comprehensive course of steps that reporters and editors can take to be sure that their journalism is ready for the post-paper era. Chen isn't wringing her hands; she's pointing the way.

So that's five. The list clearly could be a lot longer. Who did I miss? Who else should more journalists be reading on a daily basis? Add them in the comments.

Why it's so hard to move revenue from print to online

It's shorthand for the chief problem of transitioning a local news operation's business model from print to online: Newspaper revenue dollars become online pennies. Despite increasing readership online, advertisers continue to pay a much higher price when they place their ads in print.

A lot of that has been laid to inertia on the part of advertisers and a lack of sales imagination at papers. But there's also something very real at play as well: the loss of scarcity.Why it's so hard to move revenue from print to online

Post continued at The Nieman Lab...

Six essential non-journalism bloggers for your feed reader

I have a confession. My feed reader is half-full of journalists writing about journalism.

Which, in itself isn't all that bad, I suppose. But perspective is welcome after an hour wallowing in twelve takes on the latest bad news from the world of publishing.

So that's why the other half of my feed reader is full of people who do not hold journalism degrees and don't work in newspapers or television stations. These are people that are brimming with ideas, many of which are either directly relevant to the business of news, or which fire off some synapses in reaction.

Here are six that I can't imagine going a day without.

1. Chris Brogan. More than even many journalists, Brogan has been exploring what the incredible proliferation of easy-to-use tools and cheap and accessible publishing platforms has meant for average people who suddenly find themselves in the role of publisher. His goal is simple: He want to help you become a better blogger. You can start at his "Best-of" page and dig from there. Side benefit: Brogan shows by example how to manage a highly readable and useful blog. Blogging journalists are urged to crib liberally.

2. Guy Kawasaki. Here's why I know Guy is smart: Earlier in his career, his job was to convince developers to write programs for a computer -- the Macintosh -- that almost nobody owned. And he succeeded! Guy recently bundled up a year's worth of blog posts from his blog called "How To Change The World" into a book called "Reality Check." More significantly,  in the past year, he created Alltop.com, a simple idea that newspapers could have owned if they'd tried: aggregation by category. As he explains, "We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from 'all the top' sites on the web." Among the latest categories: cities.

3. Seth Godin. Seth is the guy who recently wrote that real estate agents with free time on their hands should start hyper-local newspapers. So you can start your hating now. But face it, he's right. If newspapers don't start doing a better job of reporting the kind of local news that matters to community members, someone will -- and they just might just be underemployed mortgage-jockeys. Godin's the kind of guy who'll show them how. When he's not suggesting that newspapers are replaceable, Godin can be found dispensing equally provocative ideas on an almost daily basis.

4. Dave Winer. If you called up Central Casting and said, "Send me a post-hippie programmer-genius with questionable social skills," you'd get Dave Winer, or someone very much like him. But understand this: Dave is the real deal. He created RSS. He helped invent podcasting. He's been promoting the concept of a river of news that flows past as an organizing concept for headlines. And, yet, if you called him a journalist, he'd probably hit you, or at least write some withering comments about you on his blog. And then he'd probably use the experience to inspire work on yet another cool tool. Reading Dave Winer isn't a constant love-fest, but it's guaranteed that your mind will be expanded.

5. Robert Scoble. Appropriately mentioned here, as he's something of the cheerful flip-side of Dave Winer. Technically, Scoble's a journalist at Fast Company, but he's really more of a fan with a camera. That's not a knock; his enthusiasm can be catching, especially when he's raving about a new technology he's just seen that is The Future of All Things (until the next thing comes along). Recently he and Steve Rubel (below) got into an exchange -- that generated much more light than heat -- about whether video or text is the better tool for storytelling and journalism.

6. Steve Rubel. If it's true that great PR people think like journalists (and, often, are former journalists), then Steve Rubel is a great PR guy. His blog offers a window not just into the craft of public relations and how it's being put to use in this time of micro-media growth (think bloggers and citizen journalists), it's also a great ongoing conversation about communication. It doesn't hurt that the man leading the conversation was among the first to move PR into the social realm, taking it online and introducing such now-common concepts as transparency long before other practitioners.

What non-journalists do you read when thinking about journalism? Share your favorites in the comments.

Buy a newspaper or save a newspaper: Your choice

What's the better way to save the newspaper business?

Sign a pledge on Facebook to buy a newspaper on February 2nd?

Or work from within to show journalists how to use Facebook (or MySpace or Twitter or Google or just how and why to link) to advance journalism beyond the old business of ink on paper?

The first may briefly make you feel good about yourself, but the second just might change you, whether you're a journalist or not.

Read more...

CNN and Facebook create the next great news-watching experience

There's no shortage of post-Inaugural commentary available on the web today. So I'll keep this short.

But I have to say that the CNN/Facebook integration absolutely rocked. Look at this:



Read the whole post at The Nieman Lab.

Some news about this blog and me

Starting on January 21st, my journalism-focused blogging is moving to The Nieman Journalism Lab, thanks to a gracious invitation from Josh Benton, the director of the lab. I'll be joining Martin Langeveld and Mathew Ingram as the new additions to the Lab.

In case you haven't already discovered it, The Nieman Journalism Lab is a terrific site focused on the future of journalism. It's a welcome island of hope and energy in these relatively bleak times for daily journalism. As explained on the site, this is the mission:

We want to help reporters and editors adjust to their online labors; we want to help traditional news organizations find a way to survive; we want to help the new crop of startups that will complement — or supplant — them.

We are fundamentally optimistic.

For now, I'll also be cross-posting j-blogging links from here to the Nieman site. And remaining forever optimistic.

I'll also be stepping up blogging around higher ed digital communication and web strategy. Those posts will have their home here.

Confusing enough? At least you don't need to remember all the Wordpress passwords!