Argh! Intense Debate (used for comments on this blog) has been having problems today that still aren’t resolved. I know from their tech support folks that they’re working on it. Meanwhile, comments to this blog are stuck in moderation queue and I can’t get to them to approve for publication. I can be patient, but I wonder if many of their others users won’t be.
This points to the dangers of relying for outside services. You have to be prepared for the occasional glitch or outage that’s beyond your control. Not that the same thing can’t and doesn’t happen with internal services.
Apologies to anyone who left a comment here today. Perhaps I can get to them tomorrow.
(Update: Intense Debate did fix this problem and it’s back to normal. Excellent customer service — especially when you consider that the service is free to use!)
Please take a look at my latest column for Editor & Publisher Online, posted today: “How to Create Killer Niche Web Sites Without Hiring.” I think the two initiatives I’ve profiled are truly significant innovations that can move the news industry forward.
For lack of a better term, Examiner.com’s Examiners program and the Mail & Guardian’s Thought Leader initiative might be described as “Citizen Journalism 2.0.” Thought Leader’s developer also uses the term “By Invitation 2.0.”
The key point is to leverage citizen media and blogging intelligently by integrating it with traditional journalism practices like (what a shock!) editing and gatekeeping. I’d like to hear your opinions on these innovations.
He reports on the Capital Conference newspaper convention in Washington, D.C. last week, where Anthony Moor (a smart and innovative guy now at the Dallas Morning News) asked some publishers on-stage: Can you each give an example of one of the most far-out ideas you have heard recently for editorial and/or business? Not necessarily one that you would do, just that you have heard about?
The question was, according to Edmonds, answered with initial silence and then some pretty lame, not very innovative answers. Edmonds: “So after countless references in this conference (as in last year’s) to transformational change and an excellent panel the day before featuring CEOs from other industries who have pulled off huge makeovers, it comes down to this: The publishers can’t think of anything transformational and are into incrementalism instead?”
I read this after spending time yesterday answering criticisms of my last Editor & Publisher Online column, in which I announced that I was suspending my print-edition subscription and warning newspaper publishers to expect a wave of people behind me doing the same thing. A bunch of newspaper editors and publishers berated me; it felt like I was in 1998 again, not 2008.
Geez, perhaps it’s time for some of those folks to retire and hand over the reins to a younger generation of managers who probably could answer Moor’s question in a heartbeat.
My April 1 Editor & Publisher Online column (not an April Fools joke) about ending my long-held subscription to my local newspaper’s print edition generated a fair bit of controversy in the form of letters to E&P. I apologize for not responding more promptly, but it’s been a crazy period for me. Belatedly, here are some of the letters received (previously published on Editorandpublisher.com), and my responses to them.
You know how on the web you’re always serendipitously running into odd (and often interesting) stuff. That happened to me tonight when I was looking up the right way to spell the slang word “biatch.” I spotted this odd video of teen girlfriends “biatch slapping” each other.
Now, I have a daughter around the age of the girls in this video, and I realized after viewing this that Youtube is giving me a glimpse into the once hidden world of today’s teenagers. As a parent, obviously I’m not likely to be aware of this odd behavior (and probably worse) occurring when friends get together. But with this current generation of teens, they don’t keep their behavior (including bad stuff) to themselves; they post it for the world to see!
This is pretty amazing when you think about it. Sociologists must be having a field day with stuff like this.
For me, along with artist Steve Kearsley, last week I launched techGRL.com, an online comic strip that has as its heroine a 15-year-old, tech-crazy girl. So I need to try to get into the heads of girls that age. While observing my own daughter is useful in that regard, even better is the opportunity to peer directly into the world of teenage girls.
To anyone who’s wondering why this site has gone quiet recently (is anyone really out there?), I’m reassessing what to do with this little project. FYI. –Steve
This is my first blog entry produced using Jott. That is a service that allows you to speak into your phone, and have your words converted into text and then post it to another service. In this case, I have dictated this blog entry to Jottfrom my phone and I’m having Jott post to this blog. listen
Here’s a nice feature implemented by the Examiner.com news websites: When a website refers an online user to an Examiner.com story, Examiner.com inserts a text line under its masthead crediting the referring site.
Here’s an example. Below is a link (from this blog, obviously) to an Examiner.com article:
Note that when you click through to that story you see a link that says “go back to www.steveouting.com”. It sticks throughout the site, not just on the page you arrive at.
This is from a new study called Never Ending Friending, sponsored in part by MySpace. … It’s yet another example of how today’s young media consumers are more and more about interacting (two-way, new media) than being passive (one-way, old media). … As usual, consumers are leading the way — and most media and marketers are a step behind, just starting to figure that out.
