Archive for May, 2006

This strikes me as funny. In my Editor & Publisher Online column for May, I wrote about a super-busy, multimedia-literate police reporter in Florida, Rochelle Gilken, and noted that she admitted to me that in order to keep up, she uses every available bit of time — including checking e-mail on her Blackberry mobile device when waiting at red lights.

So, yesterday I came across a blog post on BBHub (The Blackberry Weblog), chiding Gilken:

Not a good idea, Rochelle. As police reporter, I am sure you have covered your share of wrecks. Do you want to be the subject of one of those reports, Rochelle?

Hey, at least she doesn’t do it while the wheels are moving. Who among us hasn’t used red-light idle time for a little quick reading?

Anyway, what I thought was interesting was how this item originated. I’m sure that BBHub’s writer uses a news search engine to look for references to “Blackberry” and came across my column — and a blog item was born. Web news and blog search makes connecting the dots so easy now.

Do you ego surf? You really should; there’s no shame in it, and it’s not about vanity. You should know what people are writing and saying about you online — especially bloggers — so that you can respond as necessary and appropriate.

I was reminded of the value in ego surfing when I received an audio e-mail (I guess you’d call it a Web voicemail) from MyChingo.com’s Michael Bailey. He had noticed a blog item I’d written about MyChingo, and responded (using the company’s audio system rather than writing a traditional text e-mail) to my suggestions about and criticisms of his fledgling service.

That’s smart. When bloggers write about you or your company, you should know about it. That’s simple enough to do with blog-tracking services like Technorati and news-tracking services like Google News and Topix.net.

I’d caution you NOT to get defensive. Responding can be a good thing, but if all you’re going to do is blast back, don’t even bother becoming engaged. Use the opportunity to put yourself or your company in a good light by being gracious, and setting the record straight if there’s misinformation involved.

Bloggers may be talking about you. Make sure you’re aware of it and react accordingly.

I left the print media at the end of 1993 and started my full-time Internet career in January 1994. If that seems like the dark ages, The Onion confirms that it was with its story, “Recently Unearthed E-Mail Reveals What Life Was Like In 1995.”

Yes, things were different back then. I too had a Compuserve address and used a 28.8 modem. In 1994 we were just starting to grasp the possible significance of this “World Wide Web” thing. … Geez, I’m truly a digital geezer!

Thanks to Howard Owens for pointing me to The Onion piece. Howard wonders if I still have a record of the conversation that was going on around 1994-95 on the Online-News discussion list, which I founded in 1994 and continues to this day, hosted by the Poynter Institute. I remember some great discussions about the future of online media from those days — but I bet reading them now, they’d be quite amusing.

I don’t know where the Online-News archives are anymore. They’re not online; I vaguely remember backing up the oldest files to a (gasp) floppy disk. It might be in a file or drawer here in my office … but it’d be a trick to find a floppy drive to read it.

I’m in awe of NY Times technology columnist David Pogue. Not only does he write a column for the print edition and NYT website, but he also has a blog, writes a weekly e-mail newsletter (that’s often sort of a supplement to his regular column), produces a nearly weekly video feature, AND now has begun doing a weekly podcast.

While I think you have to be an Energizer Bunny to do all that, I also think that the most successful journalists from now on will work a la Pogue. He’s an example of what I pointed to in my latest Editor & Publisher column.

Are you ready for that work/lifestyle?

You can’t help but see the irony in the screen-grab below:

The story from MediaPost, “Newspaper Outlook Dubbed Deeply Depressing, Ad Business Shifting To Online,” is accompanied by an ad from the Newspaper Association of America, part of a recent (and controversial inside the industry) campaign to encourage more newspaper advertising.

The irony is that as the newspaper industry finds itself increasingly perceived as an old business that’s dying, it chooses as a theme for its ad campaign exactly the look that confirms its status as “old” media.

I’ve commented on the NAA campaign before; I think it should be dumped. The old-fashioned, Rube Goldberg-esque ads send exactly the wrong message. How about a campaign that emphasizes the power of print plus online; that shows how newspapers are no longer about print dominance and have some of the strongest websites on the Internet; that show that newspapers understand the Internet, embrace it, and aren’t fighting it?

Not much time for blogging this week, but I’ll at least share a pointer to my latest Editor & Publisher Online column: How to Get Ahead in the New Media Newsroom.

The digital gadgets that keep coming out are either amazingly cool and you have to have them (that’s often me), or they’re getting ridiculous and nobody really needs them. I had a bit of both of those reactions to Nike’s new shoes, which “talk” to your iPod Nano. The deal is that the shoes keep track of your running pace and announce information about your run periodically (like pace), interrupting the music you’re listening to on the Nano.

Very cool. And also a tad absurd; electronic shoes seem like something I can live without. But then maybe I’m being an old fuddy-duddy, and many runners will flock to these things. I’m not against digital technology assisting running and biking; I’m a fan of heart-rate monitors that track not only HR but also altitude, temperature, etc.

A challenge to this shoe technology is that there are so many different running shoes available. I won’t buy just any shoe; mine have to have lots of motion-control support. Is Nike planning to make every possible shoe in its line available with this technology? If it doesn’t, runners who understand the importance of proper shoes will stay away.

I’ve been checking out MyChingo.com, which has a nifty concept even if not yet great execution. The site allows you to add a “voicemail” inbox to your website or blog. Your readers can leave you a voice message, which you can listen to privately or toggle to be public — so anyone can listen to your voicemail.

I can think of some interesting uses for this, and I’ve been toying with using it my company’s adventure-sports websites. Let’s hope the developers get a bit further along, though, and soon. The interface is bare bones; you can’t customize the voicemail box that goes on your site to my satisfaction; and a couple features in the admin interface (Notify and Chat Admin) are “Currently in development.”

Also, the $45 a year pricetag gets you a single voicemail box. How about an account that offers multiple boxes for a set fee, instead of $45 a pop? The service has promise, but at this point in it’s development I’m not sure if I’ll keep using it after the 3-day free trial.

Hmmm. The annual EPpy Awards winners were announced today. This is the annual competition produced by Editor & Publisher and MediaWeek to select the best news sites on the Web. I was a judge (one of several dozen) again this year, as I have been for years. (Way back when, I was the original organizer of the first EPpy Awards in the mid 1990s.)

Congratulations to the top winners, Washingtonpost.com in the large-newspaper category and Roanoke.com in the smaller category. The former is keeping up its streak in the EPpies; it’s won a lot of awards over the years, and keeps doing so.

I had a light judging load this year (my request, which was granted) and only reviewed one category. Looking at the winner of that category, it didn’t match up with the entrant that I ranked as highest during my judging. That’s no huge surprise, since typically at least three judges review each category and scores are averaged. But I thought one site in particular was so superior to the other entrants, I’m surprised to have been outvoted by my fellow category judges.

Well, it seems I’m not the only one to think that paid newspaper obituaries are a lame and greedy idea. Columbia Journalism Review executive editor Mike Hoyt went through the death-of-a-parent thing recently (as did I last year) and wrote about his experience in writing an obituary for his mother — then being socked with a large bill by the local newspaper that published it.

As I explained in an article written for Poynter Online last fall, in an age where anyone can publish on the Internet for all the world to see — at no to little cost — the idea of newspapers charging for death notices is an anachronism. When someone in a newspaper’s community dies, that’s news, not an ad opportunity. It’s also an opportunity to allow everyone connected to the deceased individual to share their thoughts. Many newspapers miss so much of what they could be doing with obituaries.

I liked Hoyt’s closing line, in response to the person (whoever it was) who devised the idea of paid obituaries:

I would say, Your idea, sir, may mark the precise moment on the timeline when newspapers began a slow drift away from their readers. You forgot what newspapers are for. How about that on your gravestone?