AT&T works in more places like New Sanfrankota.

Which for some reason doesn’t include Washington, D.C. or Pat’s apartment or Pat’s work.

But it does work in more places Chilondonscow. So, for all of the people in those made up cities, AT&T rocks their world. For me, in the District of Columbia, not so much. But hey, it’s a clever marketing slogan, right?

AT&T has a lot going for it. It has a great product lineup (iPhone anyone?), it has cool services but it also has one big weakness: service. So, why would you try to highlight the one thing you do poorly? The one thing that AT&T constantly gets knocked for?

I’m sure the marketing people are hoping to change AT&Ts image, but how about they pull a Verizon and focus on what they do best? Verizon sucks for everything but call service. That’s the one thing they have going for them and their ”network” ads highlight that.

Those ads make sense. AT&T’s ads, not so much. But at least my AT&T service works in more places like Mordor.

AT&T’s real slogan should be: AT&T works in more fictional places than anyone else.

Too much information is in fact too much information.

Don’t try to put links to every single story and section on your homepage. If you overwhelm users, they’ll get confused and leave your site. Less is more.

A very troubling phenomenon that most newspaper sites have fallen into is the Wall of News. Newspaper editors and publishers mistakenly believe they have to cram as much information as possible onto their homepages. This means putting countless stories from each section of the paper on the homepage, along with links to photos, video etc.

The goal of these sites is to get people to read more stories. What it actually does is cause people to read less, because too much information makes it hard for people to process information.

If people are overwhelmed with the layout of your site and the enormity of your content, they will leave for a less confusing site. The Internet is filled with countless alternatives.

It’s a bizarre phenomenon because newspapers don’t do this with their print editions. Most newspapers have a clear, clean layout in their print editions that offers several access points, but doesn’t try to overwhelm readers by listing countless headlines or promos. Newspapers employ a very measured way of trying to draw interest in the overall product through the cover, and that’s the same mindset that is needed for the homepage of a Web site.

Newspapers editors trust that people who want to read business news can navigate to the business section front and every other section can do the same. So, why can’t newspaper editors and publishers trust that readers can click the business tab on your homepage to go to your business homepage? They should, and if they did, they would have a much better looking product that attracts more readers.

The biggest complaint I have of the current and soon-to-be-replaced Stripes.com is that the section pages don’t look like the homepage. They don’t allow us to have a dynamic layout that highlights each section. Dynamic section pages are what every paper needs.

One of the best examples of how to do this right ironically (or perhaps fittingly) comes from a non-newspaper source — CNN.com. The Health section of CNN.com, for instance, has its own unique look to just display the stories for that section. It really works well and is one of the best section layouts I have seen from a journalism organization.

What CNN does is use their homepage as a showcase for their best and most interesting stories, as well as a place for breaking news. That’s what a homepage should be all about. It should be a place that entices readers to dive in and spelunk around the site.

It should not be a place where almost all the stories of a Web site must be teased. That will serve to overwhelm people. Rather it needs to be a place to showcase why someone should read your news, and it should be a portal to your journalism world.

This is why having dynamic and vibrant section pages like CNN.com has makes all the world of a difference. If a newspaper site has strong section fronts, editors won’t feel the same urge to try to cram everything on the homepage. They’ll realize that have strong section fronts that people want to go to for a specific kind of news.

A lot of this comes down to trusting readers. Trust that readers know how to navigate your site, because if they don’t know how to navigate your site, it’s because your site isn’t easy to navigate.

Fix that. But above all, trust the reader. The best sites understand that often less is more. There are plenty of ways to get people to read more news and one of the worst ways is with the Wall of News.

The Wall offenders:
The Reading Eagle - I don’t know what is going on here. I’m out.

Virtually every local newspaper on earth - Why? The smaller the paper the bigger the distrust of readers? Perhaps. But most smaller papers don’t get usability and why it is so important to users. If a site is unusable, users will go elsewhere.

The Anti-Wall revolutionaries:
The Drudge Report - How else can you explain a site that looks so 1995? Easy, it’s the anti-wall. It has headlines of varying sizes, including one gigantic headline, and the site is just so easy to navigate. The Drudge Report links to countless news sources and yet is so simple. It really shows that simplicity is king.

CNN - The best looking journalism site in the U.S. Bar none. Clean, elegant, easy to navigate and just a joy to use. CNN doesn’t always have the best content, but it’s so easy to discover content I can’t resist.

A great barometer of how good or bad the products you are making is whether or not you use them.

More to the point, do you use your company’s Web site? If you don’t, it’s probably not your fault — it’s your company’s for making a poor product. You know you have a winning product when you and your colleagues use it and enjoy it.

If you go to your company’s Web site while you aren’t at work that’s a big bonus.

Many of us work for journalism companies where we don’t really use our own Web sites or if we do, we don’t really enjoy the user experience. If I was the head of a newspaper or a top editor, I’d be asking the younger workers how they felt about the company’s Web site and what could be improved. Afterall, isn’t it younger readers who are eluding newspapers?

It’s funny how we can all learn so much from people younger than us.

This past week I was giving a talk to my high school’s Web design classes about how to write for the Web. I spent the day explaining what a lede is, how to write journalistically and how to make their stories better and more Web friendly. I also provided one-on-one help to students.

But I might have learned more from them than they learned from me.

One of the first things I noticed is how kids would sit down at their computers and log onto the Kenston High School Web site and view the latest content. They could have logged on and went to ESPN.com, Amazon.com or a myriad of other sites while they were waiting for instructions that day. But they didn’t.

They wanted to check out the latest news going on in their own high school. They wanted to see each others stories and content. And they of course wanted to see the hundreds of photos that were posted to the site since the last time they were in class.

I spoke on a Monday and in-between Friday’s class and Monday’s several big events happened — homecoming football game, homecoming dance and other sporting events. There were a lot of photos to view, and it was one of the first things students logged on to see.

You would be amazed about how much high school students want to be informed. It’s just that high school students care a lot more about stuff that affects them. They don’t care quite as much about local town hall meetings or pancake breakfasts.

Go figure.

But they do care about dances, friday nights under the lights, sporting events, school safety, new policies and other news that directly affects them.

Go figure.

My visit also helped debunk a stupid thought process that is deeply entrenched within the journalism community — readers are only interested in a few photos per story. Yes, that is true for some stories, but it couldn’t be further from the truth for others.

People love photos, especially photos of events they attended. I saw student after student going through the hundreds of photos posted on the KHS Web site the night of the dance. Every student had the ability to have their picture taken for free to go on the Web site and most take the Web site up on that offer.

The same thing applies to the football game. Hundreds of photos are taken and uploaded after every game. In a typical high school football game 75 students or more might see action. Wouldn’t it be great to get all of their photos onto the Web site, in addition to shots of the crowds, sidelines, etc?

Wouldn’t students, parents, relatives, community members and others be interested in checking out these photos? Of course.

Many journalists are still stuck in their ways of placing a few shots into the print edition (usually to take up space or to make the layout look nicer). Unfortunately, the online edition usually gets the same amount, and the shots selected for print can often be random.

What the Kenston Web builders have created is a site filled with content that people want to view, from students to parents to alumni to community members. They have also wrapped their content into an attractive and easy to use package. It’s everything a good Web site should be — something you want to visit and a place you enjoy visiting.

I can safely say that a lot of people don’t enjoy visiting newspaper Web sites. They go there because they want to be informed, but the user experience is less than ideal. The sites are hard to search, too much information is presented on the homepage and the package is either unattractive or really unattractive.

And then to top it all off, newspaper editors have the nerve to complain when people don’t visit their sites or use their products. That’s the funny thing. If you build a product people want to use, they will use it.

That brings me back to my high school’s Web site. There is no justifiable reason a high school of 1,000 or so gets 10s of thousands of visitors a day to its Web site. But they do.

And frankly, tt’s site is substantially better from than any local newspapers’ Web site in the area. It’s better than almost all newspaper Web sites, but that’s not really saying much. At the end of the day it made me realize that if the people who build the product actually use it and enjoy it, it’s a good product — it’s a product that other people will use and enjoy.

And it also pointed out to me that young people do in fact like to be informed. They just want to be informed about their world. Most local newspapers are for the AARP world, and big newspapers aren’t much better.

At the end of the day if you don’t use your newspaper’s Web site why would you expect anyone else to?

So, do you use your newspaper’s Web site?

I’ll say it one more time, the only way to scoop yourself is to sit on a story and allow someone else to break it.

In no way, shape or form can holding a story off the Web so you won’t “scoop” your print edition be a good idea for your company. And I have some first-hand proof of this.

I was looking over the Stars and Stripes traffic stats last week and I noticed a huge spike in traffic over two days. Each day was more than four times the average amount of traffic we had averaged per day in the past week. I looked around and realized that a story we broke was being linked to all over the Web: Sanchez, former U.S. commander in Iraq, calls war ‘a nightmare with no end in sight.’

Would you sit on a story like this?

The former top commander of U.S. troops in Iraq slammed the handling of the war and gave a bleak assessment of the current situation in Iraq.

“There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight,” retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told a convention of military journalists on Friday.

Sanchez commanded U.S. troops in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004. His controversial tenure saw the capture of Saddam Hussein and the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqi government, but also the rise of the insurgency and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Of course not. Any real journalist would want to get a story like that out as soon as possible. We beat the Associated Press and everyone else to the punch, which led to the story being linked on The Drudge Report, Talking Points Memo, The Huffington Post, etc.

We could have waited and just placed it online once it was in our print editions, but that would have wasted a golden opportunity. Stripes is only printed abroad, and our main audience has always been overseas military personal. We have found, however, that our Web audience is increasingly becoming U.S. based, and about two-thirds of our traffic comes from the U.S.

Our visibility in the U.S., however, is still quite low because we don’t print in the U.S. Having a story linked on Drudge is a great way to expand our audience. If 1 percent of the people Drudge linked to come back to our site weekly, it will be a big boon for us. I guarantee you that the majority of people who read that story never even heard of Stripes before or realized that we are one of the best sources for up-to-date Department of Defense information.

The Web is all about being a conversation where people organically link to one another and discuss content and stories. Stories are disseminated by new and foreign means, especially in the eyes of many print journalists. Embrace the Web and your audience and cachet will grow.

Fear the Web and your readers will go elsewhere.

And many of them have.

It’s impossible to scoop yourself.

The very idea of scooping yourself is incredibly ridiculous, but we still hear many old timers cautioning editors to not scoop themselves on the paper’s Web site. The old-school news people contend that if you run a story on your Web site as soon as it is done or the news occurs another paper can pick up on it and file their own version of it.

Thus a paper has “scooped itself.”

This of course is a silly, archaic, print-centric notion. You can’t scoop yourself. You can certainly lose a scoop if you sit on it.

That might be as close to scooping anything as you will ever get. As soon as you get relevant non-feature news stories they need to go online. Every newspaper should be operating in on a continuous-news cycle.

That doesn’t mean you need to do news 24/7, but you should have the capability of posting news to your Web site most hours of the day, and you need the ability to write and edit news in a continuous, non-print deadline centric fashion. This seems like common sense, but I was just relayed a story yesterday about editors and writers worrying about scooping themselves.

 I thought that idea died years ago. Yet, another daily newspaper is having this outdated conversation about scooping themselves.

If your paper is always the first paper to have up-to-date news, people will go to that site first and more often than competitors. Why would I want to go to your competitor’s Web site that doesn’t have up-to-date news stories?

I wouldn’t.

Even if they pick up on your stories and write a version before your print edition hits, you’ll still have several hours lead time at the minimum. Plus, people will recognize that you are the place to go for the best, most current news.

A paper needs good, accurate and up-to-date content to succeed on the Web. Having old and poorly written stories will get you nowhere.

People want to learn about news as it happens. Give the people what they want.

Note: I’ve been visiting people in Cleveland, which is why there weren’t any updates this past week. Expect several good pieces of content in the next few days, including a post about how media companies are quickly losing their assets.

In the oh-my-God-no-way department, the new boss of major record label EMI says that the record industry must embrace digital or die.

I know what you’re thinking, “no way,” but it is true. At some juncture the major media companies, whether they produce music, TV, movies or journalism have to fundamentally understand that digital is the future. They can no longer just pay lip service while trying to hold onto the past as tightly as possible.

EMI does give me hope because they were the first record label to go Digital Rights Management (DRM) free on their music downloads from Apple’s iTunes Store. I think they realize that fighting what users want is futile. And users will get what they want one way or the other.

That other way, of course, doesn’t pay record labels a dime. In fact, trying to attack music sharing services like Kazaa is a losing strategy. All it will do is inspire people to try to find much harder to detect methods of music sharing, like bit torrents.

Suing your own customers is an even worse strategy, especially when you sue them over 28 songs. Almost all the people who have pirated music also purchase music. Trying to attack your own customers is a good way to get less customers.

Working with consumers is the way to the future, and it is just plain common sense. You can’t scare or sue people into liking your products. You can get people to like your product, however, by offering products consumers like in attractive distribution packages.

Yes, it may be a rocky road, but all industries face challenging times when major change occurs. You can either embrace change and help push it forward or resist it.

We have seen what resiting change has gotten music and journalism. No where.

Well, actually it has gotten both industries somewhere — losing customers and profits.

Additional reading: It’s not just a journalism problem, part 1.

Everyone wants to get into blogs and podcasts and vodcasts and social networking and yada, yada, yada, but most don’t know how to do them right — especially news organizations.

New media can teach old media a thing or twenty.

CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast is an excellent example of how to do podcasting right. It’s smart, informative, funny, sometimes caustic and always worth your time. It’s an original podcast for the CNET site, unlike many popular podcasts which are just MP3 versions of existing radio or TV programs.

For those of you who haven’t heard it — but should really check it out ASAP — it’s a daily podcast about technology news. Typically, the podcast deals with several recent topics within the technology world and will often delve into some of the nebelous legal issues surrounding today’s tech world. If you want to be up-to-date on the latest tech news, without spending your whole day reading stories, the Buzz Out Loud podcast is a great resource.

It would be great if other journalism companies made a podcast in a similar vain that dealt with foreign policy or sports or any number of domestic issues. A lot of sites, however, have “podcasts” that are just clips from their radio or TV shows. ESPN is a prime offender of this.

The problem with just taking a radio show and making it into a podcast is that you aren’t utilizing the format properly. Most radio shows are meant to be 1-4 hours in length because listeners come and go. As I listen to some so-called podcasts like Bill Simmons’ BS report, I can’t help but to think how boring these podcasts are. They are long and needlessly drawn out, like they have to fill up a large amount of time.

And even if a journalism company takes the time to break up a radio show into smaller parts to be made into separate Mp3s, those clips are still usually poorly paced. There just isn’t a sense of urgency with those clips, which can often make them poor podcast material.

The Buzz Out Loud podcast is whatever length the show it needs to be based on what is or isn’t in the news, which means the show is fast paced and razor sharp. It’s always interesting and fun. It’s the opposite of most long-winded radio shows and isn’t beholden to any sort of time frame or format.

Making a good podcast isn’t hard, and there are a few things to always keep in mind.

1. You need a good subject and focus.
Making a podcast without any guidance is kind of like making a blog without any guidance.

Chances are it won’t be a good podcast. Buzz Out Loud is about the latest technology news. Your paper could have a local politics podcast or local sports podcast, for instance. But focus is important. And don’t hesitate to be creative like Buzz Out Loud.

2. Make it sound professional
People have more tolerance for low video quality than they do for poor audio quality.

We have been treated to years of stellar audio thanks to movies, radio and TV. Plus, even when the audio is clear it can be hard to understand people or words. When it’s not clear, it can make your podcast very hard to listen to.

This means by a good recorder and a few good mics. It also means making sure the volume levels are consistent. Nothing drives me crazier, and thus leads me to turn off a podcast, than widely differing audio levels. I shouldn’t have to be constantly adjusting my volume levels just so I can know what is going on.

There are plenty of podcasts that sound good. People aren’t going to stick around for the few that don’t.

3. Don’t force the issue
Buzz Out Loud bills itself as “CNET’s podcast of indeterminate length.”

Why? Because you never know how much there is worth talking about for a given episode, especially when you do a daily podcast. This is why daily radio shows often feel forced or why radio hosts seem to be taking an inordinate amount of time to tell a story. They have to fill up a certain amount of time.

You don’t have to on the Web. There are no rules or time slots to fill. Sure, you can general guidelines like a 30-50 minute podcast, but often less is more.

Keep your show fast paced and don’t try to mimic radio. If everyone wanted to hear radio, they would be tuning into it instead of tuning it out.

4. Let the Web tell the rest of the story
Don’t just make a podcast and call it a day.

Use the Web to tell the whole story. CNET has show notes from Buzz Out Loud that link you to the stories they talked about on that days episode. The Web is so much more powerful than either TV or radio.

Harness that power.

CNET also shows e-mail from viewers every day, which you can see on the show notes page. Part of not acting like a radio show is encouraging a stronger two-way stream of communication, kind of like blogs, another new media disruptor. This means soliciting e-mails and comments and utilizing social networking.

Buzz Out Loud also has a message board that people can discuss issues that appear on the podcast. It’s just a great way of giving users more than the minimum. Unfortunately, the minimum is what most news organizations try to get away with.

And, as you probably have seen by now, Buzz Out Loud has its own page dedicated to it on the CNET site. It makes a wonderful package and helps demonstrate how a well-done podcast is unlike anything the old media has seen before.

I’ve been an avid podcast listener for years, and, if you want to do podcasting right, you have to really embrace the format.

The other day I discussed how not everyone deserves a blog at a newspaper, but I think it’s important to point out what makes a blog worth reading.

1. Focus
A focused blog almost always will be more popular and facilitate richer conversations than an unfocused blog.

Now, you don’t have to have a niche. It just will be a lot more difficult for your blog to gain traction. I would argue, however, that a blog at a professional news organization needs to have a clearly defined purpose and hone in on a niche. Maybe your personal blog has no niche, and that’s okay, but that’s not how professional organizations should operate.

You can, however, get around not having an overly focused blog with good writing and a strong personality.

2. Quality writing
You don’t need to be winning Pulitzers or having people on the edge of their seats like a good novelist, but any good blog should at least have clear and concise writing.

I know I am guilty of being verbose at times, but I do make an effort to strive for brevity.

The Web is filled with millions of blogs. A blog will quickly die if the writing isn’t good. It doesn’t matter how good the insight is or how fascinating a writer is, people won’t stick around for something that is hard to read.

3. Humbleness
You can’t own the conversation. I think a lot of journalists and journalism organizations are used to owning the conversation and owning stories.

That’s not how the Web works. A good blog is always part of the larger conversation. A good blog always links to other blogs and welcomes comments from people and other bloggers. A good blogger isn’t just apart of the conversation because he or she reads and posts about a subject — rather a good blogger also reads other blogs and posts on them.

Mindy McAdams points out the need to be apart of the conversation in a recent post:

One of the most important things for a new blogger to recognize, I think, is that the conversation includes many blogs — not just your own blog. Maybe we should say “Blogs are more like a conversation (than they are like other text-based media)” — but that is rather clumsy.

4. Be a good neighbor
You will find it much easier to establish yourself if you play well with others.

This really means being an active member of the blog community and sharing unique insights. It also means recognizing when fellow bloggers make good posts. This is why having focus is important.

Without a focused blog, there isn’t a community for your blog to be apart of. If your blog is just your random musings about random subjects in the world, you won’t really have anyone to consistently connect with.

This is one of the areas where I feel I need to improve on the most. I need to get out in the online journalism and Web development communities more and post more on others blogs. Being a good community member is recognizing that you need others to contribute to the conversation.

5. Links
This one seems basic but is often neglected.

When you are talking about a topic, subject or an event, link to it. Since you are striving to be apart of a conversation, it’s a good idea to link people to other conversation points. Good links often help flesh out a topic.

It might be linking to other bloggers or it might be linking to news stories. But whatever the topic, it’s always a good idea to give your readers background. Think of links as interactive footnotes.

Your readers don’t have to click them, but they can click them to double check your facts or to learn more about a topic. Good links will help give you authority.

Andrew Olson cautions, however, to be focused with your links:

It’s worth pointing out, though, don’t hit the other extreme of just talking about anything that’s popular, there’s a very distinct difference between this model and link-baiting. You don’t just sell out and talk about how great Mahalo is because you know Jason Calacanis will link to you from his twitter – the key is to be extremely honest in what you do and only discuss the great conversations that you personally have knowledge in and that your audience wants to know about.

And it goes without saying that a good blog is updated regularly. It doesn’t have to be daily, but if people can’t expect semi-regular postings they won’t come back.