Archive for July, 2008
It’s all about the community, stupid
At BeatBlogging.Org I have noticed that many of our most successful beat bloggers have strong communities around their beats. Community can trump content, but the best sites combine great content with a great community. Community is what makes people want to come back to a Web site over and over again. Ask an active Twitter [...]
We can. We will. We must.
I am strongly disappointed by the out-right negativity permeating through journalism right now. The anger, the negativity, the we-can’t attitude hit a flash point on an intern’s post about job cuts and a newsroom reorganization. Yes, grown-up journalists were using an intern as a punching bag. If you don’t believe journalism can be turned around, [...]
Today’s Thought: No reason to ask if blogging is journalism
Asking if blogging is journalism is like asking if desktop publishing is journalism. The answer is sometimes. Both are just publishing platforms. Nothing more. Nothing less. At BeatBlogging.Org you’ll find many examples of journalists using blogging and other online tools to take their beat reporting to the next level. But most blogs are much truer [...]
Today’s Thought: Institutional memory and inertia
Are institutional memory and inertia killing the newspaper industry? After reading the comments on a myriad of posts from journalists stuck in the past, I can’t help but think that there is no future for newspapers as long as the majority of their staffs (editorial and business) — and their collective institutional memories — are [...]
Today’s Thought: The news hole
Can you imagine tailoring your reporting to fit a space dictated by a medium and not by the actual story? Unreal. Imagine a world in which you write as much or as little as needed. Have one photo to go with a story? Have 500? Want to link to other sites, documents, databases and content? [...]
I may be posting less…
But I’m saving more links to my delicious feed in the right column, and I’m conversing more than ever on Twitter. And, of course, I’m blogging at BeatBlogging.Org. If you’re looking for beat reporters pushing the practice using online tools and social networking, that’s the place to be. Want to modernize your beat reporting? Go [...]