Aspiring journalists must specialise, says Malcolm Gladwell. Try stats or accounting… October 20, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , 1 comment so farFrom his interview in Time: "The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter."
SEO basics can help, but great content — and telling people — is what really counts October 18, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentGreat post on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) by Derek Powazek (who ought to know): "If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned. […] The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web.
[…] the One True Way to get a lot of traffic on the web. It’s pretty simple, and I’m going to give it to you here, for free: Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.
That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.
Then tell people about it. Start with your friends. Send them a personal note – not an automated blast from a spam cannon. Post it to your Twitter feed, email list, personal blog.
[…] It’ll take time. A lot of time. But it works. And it’s the only thing that does."
An editor reflects on her use of Twitter October 14, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a comment"Cara Ellen Modisett, editor of Blue Ridge Country, tweets. With two Twitter accounts for business and one for personal use, she tweets with purpose and with creativity.
“The basis of Twitter is conversation,” says Modisett. “Each individual Twitter account has its own voice. When I tweet as an editor, it's more about relationships; when tweeting about the magazine, it's to promote the content of the magazine. I find my instantaneous voice on the web.”
Twitter also serves as her reporter's notebook. “My tweets become my notes. I go back to my Twitter feed to put the story together. Sometimes a tweet becomes a kernel of an idea which can lead to something larger creatively and journalistically.” Recently, Modisett tweeted events and observations live during the Virginia Press Women's conference."
Interesting discussion about professional branding online follows in the comments on the post on Handshake 2.0.
ZDNet retracts story: one unverified source, key player not called October 10, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentSome basic errors in our reporting, admits Larry Dignan, editor in chief of ZDNet:
"Overnight one of our bloggers, Richard Koman, reported that Yahoo handed over user names to the Iranian government. We’re retracting the blog post. Here’s what went wrong.
First, the post was based on a single source who had a clear agenda. That source wasn’t properly filtered and his charges weren’t verifiable by credible sources.
Second, we never called Yahoo to verify the report or get an appropriate response. Blog networks still need to follow journalism 101 and Yahoo should have been called. In summary, our checks and balances went awry. We put a lot of trust in our bloggers to get it right and frankly we let you down with this report.
The chain of events can be found on the post, but we wanted to do a separate item for the record. My apologies again and we will be taking corrective measures to prevent this breakdown."
Three things for newspapers to work on, suggests Google boss Eric Schmidt October 6, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentFrom his Q&A with The Times:
"Personalize the news – at its best, the on-line version of a newspaper should learn from the information I'm giving it – what I've read, who I am and what I like – to automatically send me stories and photos that will interest me.
Make the content available anywhere – as more "smart" or web-enabled phones hit the market there will be even greater access to what can be considered mobile reading platforms. […]
Embrace journalism as a two-way conversation – the advent of real-time reporting […] means micro-blogging and citizen journalism are here to stay. This phenomenon, combined with the potential benefits to the reader of knowing what their friends or others are reading or saying about events, means newspapers now have a chance to be a 21st century community forum. The more this dialog among and between the newspaper and its readers develops, the greater the opportunity newspapers will have to make money from their content."
Are non-profits the future for journalism? October 6, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMichael Massing highlights the US trend of non-profits for journalism (in NY Review of Books):
"For all the impressive projects out there, their [commercial sector's] economic base seems tenuous, and my encounters with them left me feeling sobered by the obstacles they face.
My inquiries into the nonprofit world, by contrast, left me heartened. Here I found all kinds of excited activity. Much of it, I discovered, had been set in motion by an Op-Ed piece that appeared in the Times in late January. David Swensen, the chief investment officer for Yale's endowment management team, and Michael Schmidt, a financial analyst there, argued that in light of the struggles of newspapers, they should consider turning themselves into nonprofit endowed institutions, like universities.
[…]
The opening won't last forever. Lurking in the wings is a potential new class of media giants. Google, Yahoo, MSNBC, and AOL, all have vast resources that could finance a new oligopolistic push on the Web."
When the lack of comments damages your news brand October 6, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentPaul Bradshaw unpacks an example from the BBC news website, concluding:
"What the discussion around the BBC Education news piece highlights is the risk to a news brand in not publishing comments (as is the case – for now – on most BBC News reports. Indeed, I would add that not having bylines to all reports or contact emails makes the organisation look even more opaque.)
Of course having comments on the story would have allowed this discussion to take place in public, from the start, and provide readers of the article with some critical context, turning a single-source ‘He Said’ article into a ‘He Said-She Said’ piece at the very least. That’s a technical issue that is being addressed, but in the meantime the BBC brand suffers."
US guidelines will require bloggers to disclose links with advertisers October 6, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentInteresting to see how this might work (or not?) — due to come into effect on 1 December. From CJR's The Kicker blog:
"In light of recent scandals involving bloggers, advertisers, and the merging of the two in the ethically precarious practice known as “blogger payola”…the Federal Trade Commission has voted on—and, by a margin of 4 to 0, voted for—new guidelines that will require bloggers to disclose any “material connection” to advertisers, including payments for endorsements and free product samples."
Cervical cancer vaccine, online news, Google and SEO October 2, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Journalism, SEO, linking, science , add a commentSEO expert Malcolm Coles kicked off an interesting experiment yesterday, to shift the emphasis in Google’s search results away from “negative and inaccurate information” (eg some news stories) linking a girl’s death to the cervical cancer vaccine and towards NHS pages about the vaccine.
More by Malcolm here about the tendency of some news stories to suggest (or make) a connection between the death and the vaccine.
He has been encouraging bloggers and others to publish web links, with relevant linked text, to influence Google’s search results, such as cervical cancer jab, cervical cancer vaccine, and cervical cancer vaccine Q&A.
So far, the NHS seems to have bought ’sponsored links’ against some search key words, but I don’t see any of the NHS sites in the first page of Google’s search results for “cervical cancer jab”, which continues to be dominated by news stories.
Shifting from mass media to individuated media October 2, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentVin Crosbie highlights the magnitude of the transition he envisages:
"We're now in the early years of this transition from mass media to individuated media, maybe 10 years into a process that will take a generation. The writing is on the wall, but most traditional media companies still think it's only graffiti. Yet the change will come and be sudden and sharp, not gradual. Just ask the newspaper industry, the first to be affected. The radio industry's and the TV industry's affiliate infrastructures will be next. There are pioneers who are ably leading the advertising and public relations industries through the change, but not everyone in those industries will make it to the Promised Land.
If you think you've seen changes in the past 10 to 15 years, you ain't seen nothing yet. […] However, the opportunities to profit and grow careers within individuated media, for those who know how to do it, will be extraordinary. Be one of those people."