For years individual content producers in news organizations didn’t have an easy way to figure out how popular or useful their content was with people.

But with today’s advanced site analytics, content producers have unprecedented data about users and their surfing habits. I wrote a long post about this subject over at BeatBlogging.Org. Consider this post the Cliff Note’s version with a few added tidbits.

What makes this data so important?

With Web analytics, content creators like writers, bloggers, photographers, database developers, etc can find out which content is getting the most page views and visits and from where those visitors are coming from. Content creators can also find out which search terms most often land people on their content.

Analytics will allow for content producers to make content that is more appealing to their users. For a football beat, it might mean creating more previews and Q&A sessions and less feature stories. For an education blog, it might mean writing more about teachers’ issues and less about the school district as a whole.

It also might mean different kinds of content. Your users might prefer posts that are short and comprised of lists. My users might prefer longer paragraphs. The only way to understand what our individual users want is to track their browsing habits.

The timing of posts is also extremely critical, and this varies per beat per news organization:

In general, after lunch and after work are the two peak times for Web traffic. This, however, is not universal, and detailed Web analytics will allow content producers to know the peak times to release content on their Web sites. In fact, different beat blogs at the same paper might have different peak traffic times.

Now, not every news organization allows content producers access to this information. In fact, most may not, but the content producers I have spoken to almost uniformly say it has helped them do their jobs better. Every news organization worth anything already has detailed site analytics.

It doesn’t cost a company money to give more people access to this information, but site analytics can be complicated and hard to understand without training. Some newsrooms have come up with ways of getting around that.

Suzanne Yada said her newspaper, the Visalia Times-Delta, has a daily meeting at 3 p.m. to discuss traffic figures and which stories are getting the most page views. Ryan Sholin says at the last paper he worked at he sent out a daily “Top 5.” Sholin said, however, that bloggers had full access to their stats.

Whether a news organization gives access to this data to every content producer or whether a news organization has a meeting or e-mail to discuss Web traffic, it doesn’t matter. What ultimately matters is that news organizations give content producers vital information that will allow them to do their jobs better.

To all my blogging readers, could you imagine blogging blind? That’s essentially what many news organizations are asking their content producers to do.

If your company doesn’t allow content producers access to this information, I have a question for you. Why doesn’t your company give individual content producers information about the content they produce?

Do copy editors have a future in journalism?

Will that role be drastically changing? Traditionally, copy editors at most newspapers had to do more than just edit copy. They also had to do page layout, fit stories to fixed spaces, write headlines, write captions, etc. Obviously, page layout is not needed on the Web, and every beat blogger should understand SEO for headline writing. And it might make sense to replace most captions with tags.

Don’t get me started on fitting stories to space either. That skill is dead. Stories on the Web should be as long or as short as they need to be. Copy editors no longer need to spend hours trying to fit a 15-inch story in an 8-inch space.

Every journalism company should have some copy editors, but the era of copy editors heavily rewriting content is over. News organizations can no longer afford to have employees whose main job is to fix the mistakes of other employees. It’s one thing to polish work, but another thing entirely to redo it.

Every beat blogger and online reporter will have to know how to write clean copy. It’s still a wise idea to have copy editors, however, but what will their other duties be?

Maximizing headline SEO? Audio and video post production? Making sure content is properly tagged?

A lot of journalists got into this business because they like to tell stories.

I think that’s one fundamental reason why so many journalists have a hard time adapting to the changing news landscape. For me, it was never about the story — it was always about the information and news.

So, if the format changes, it doesn’t really bother me. I’m not married to the format or the medium. I’m not here to weave intricate narratives and tell stories.

In fact, I’m not very good at telling oral stories. But I can tell you a lot of facts, figures and information.

This post was brought on by two things. First, the other night I was getting some drinks with some journalists and one said, “I’m not a journalist. I’m a storyteller.” He talked about how he had trouble keeping his stories short and didn’t like taking out quotes and information for brevity.

Obviously, his work was more for himself than for his readers. That’s does not serve our readers well, and it certainly doesn’t help journalism.

The second part of this post was inspired by a post by Howard Owens, “Not all information needs to be crafted into a story:”

Storytelling, whether written or visual, then becomes something that is more about serving your own ego than serving your readers.

So check your ego, whether writing or shooting, and give people useful or entertaining information in an accessible package.  Save the storytelling for when you really have a story to tell.

A lot of journalism seems to be ego driven. Some journalists report on what they want to cover, in the mediums they want to report in. It has very little to do with what people actually want.

But we’re in a business. We have to produce a product that people want. And most people just don’t read the whole story (thanks to Owens for the link):

But here’s the thing: journalists have always been far more entranced by ‘the story’ than audiences. Less than a quarter of newspaper readers claim to read to the end of a story, even one they’re interested in … and of those, over two thirds don’t read every word.

Yes, sometimes journalism is storytelling, but as Owens notes, we should save the storytelling for when we have really good stories to tell. I see so many feature, anecdotal and other non-news ledes on stories that are really just news stories.

Let me tell you something: I have stopped reading a lot of news stories because I didn’t want to put up with another boring feature lede on a news story. I wanted the news, and I wasn’t willing to wait for some journalist’s ego to go by. And I’ve read some great non-news ledes and they were usually on great feature stories.

If you’re a storyteller, it’s no fun to have to truncate your stories. Is it really a good story then? Is blogging a good storytelling medium? Probably not.

But if you’re in the business of providing facts, figures, information — news — you’ll find blogging and Web journalism to be amazing. The Web (and its mobile cousin) provide a great deal of immediacy and depth that print never could. The Internet is an awesome vehicle for information.

Too many journalists think of themselves as storytellers and not as journalists. People ultimately want journalism so they can be informed. I think if we concentrate on making journalism that people want, we’ll find ourselves and our industry in much better shape.

And sometimes people want great stories, but let’s not force every news item into the storytelling format.

I’ve spent the last two years producing journalism in a myriad of formats and the last year arguing for ways to modernize and make relevant journalism in the 21st century.

I’ve argued for reinventing journalism. I’ve argued for journalists to let go of everything they’ve ever known.

Ultimately, informing people is my passion. I care deeply about journalism. I hope that’s what you’ve taken home from my blog over the past year.

I don’t care so much what medium or what form it takes. I just care about giving people information. I just want to make journalism better than it is.

I’ve been presented with a great opportunity to do just that, which is why I’m joining the Beat Blogging project with NYU’s PressThinker, Jay Rosen. Together we’re trying to discover how beat reporters are pushing the practice of journalism using Web tools like blogging and social networking.

Jay is one of those professors who gets it. He understands that journalism needs to change, and he has actively been pursuing ways to modernize journalism with projects like NewAssignment.Net, AssignmentZero.com, OffTheBus.Net and, of course, BeatBlogging.Org. It’s an honor to get to work with someone who has dedicated his career to improving journalism.

This project gives me the opportunity to do just that: improve the practice by adapting it better to the Web. It’s something I really believe in. And when I believe in something, I give it my all.

David Cohn did a fantastic job of getting this project rolling. But now it’s his time to push the practice of journalism further with his start-up Spot.Us. David is the kind of person journalism needs more of — smart, dedicated, innovative and, most of all, entrepreneurial. He got the Knight Foundation to give him $340,000 for his innovative idea.

David knows the future of journalism will look nothing like the past. He is actively working to make journalism better. We all need to be.

I’ve been out of college for two years, working to produce content that people care about. But now I can finally say my career has begun, because I’ll get to spend everyday working on the next phase of journalism, adapting the core practice of journalism — reporting — to the web.

That’s what Beat Blogging is all about.  Right now, there are beat reporters rethinking what it means to be a journalist. They are using new tools to do their jobs quicker and more effectively, while also engaging their communities better. Those are the journalists we want to highlight.

Join me as I scour the World Wide Web for the people who are pushing the practice of beat reporting. It promises to be an informational and wild ride.

P.S. Check out Jay’s post about Beat Blogging, where he looks back at the project six months in. Jay lays out how the project has gone and what the future will hold.

Lost in the whole Rob Curley/LoudounExtra “flop” flap is that innovation is never easy.

Heck, six out of 10 start-ups fail within the first four years of operation (let alone individual ideas and products at a start-up). And for some reason people are using the performance of LoudounExtra.com (it’s still going by the way) to cast judgment on Curley, his ideas and hyperlocal journalism in general.

Some people are going as far to use the WSJ piece as a “told you so” to hyperlocal journalism. Some are even personally attacking Curley and calling him a fraud.

With this kind of climate, how many journalists are really going to want to try to stick their necks out and attempt some real innovation? That’s what Curley did. No one ever said innovation was easy or that it always works as planned.

Curley would probably be the first to admit that LoudounExtra could have been better. It could have served its readers better. Lessons were learned from the site.

Innovation is a bumpy road.

But that’s just the thing. Sometimes you can have a great idea with great execution and still not perform as well as you thought you would. That doesn’t make what you did a waste of time.

No one said trying to innovate and build better journalism was easy. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose.

Curley has had many successes. He’ll learn from his lessons in Washington and make better, more useful and cooler products in Las Vegas. People shouldn’t use one site as a carte blanche to dismiss everything he has ever done.

But that’s not the point of this post. This is about the restrictive culture that many journalists seem to foster right now. Jay Rosen of NYU and PressThink probably said it best about the unwillingness of many journalists to try to innovate:

News people who wonder why their industry gets creamed by Google and Yahoo are the same news people who dismiss an idea after it fails once.

Google has a culture where innovation and, gasp, failure are celebrated. To not embrace failure (or stumbling in the case of LoudounExtra) is to basically write off ever taking a risk. Even the best stumble from time to time.

The past few weeks have been filled with rumors about a new version of Apple’s wildly successful iPhone. But no talks about the iPhone’s spiritual ancestor, ???????? ????? ????????the Apple Newton. It was a failure.

The Newton has been an inspiration for much of the PDA market. Perhaps without the Newton, Apple wouldn’t have the iPhone. Everyone talks about another famous Apple product, the iPod, but how many people talk about Apple TV (or about its meager success)?

For every product Apple releases, many more prototypes never make the market. And even some of Apple’s products that do make it to the marketplace, like the Newton, end of failing. Failure has only made Apple work harder to innovate.

Failure must also make journalists work harder to innovate. Many innovative projects will fail. But we cannot allow ourselves to fear failure.

It’s fair to criticize LoudounExtra, because it didn’t go as planned, and we should learn from each other. It’s fair to point out how the project could have worked differently (no one, even Curley’s staff at WPNI is saying that LoudounExtra didn’t have faults or that they couldn’t have done things differently). It’s perfectly fair to dissect the project and what WPNI was trying to accomplish.

It’s not fair, however, to look at LoudounExtra and use it as proof that new, innovative forms of journalism aren’t possible. It’s not far to say that just because one project didn’t do well that another, similar project couldn’t succeed with some tweaking.

What happened with LoudounExtra does not reaffirm the status quo. The status quo certainly isn’t working. Journalism needs innovation.

Nor is it fair to look at the failure of other start-ups like Backfence.com and say that because of them hyperlocal journalism can’t succeed. Mark Potts, one of the founders of Backfence, has been learning from past hyperlocal attempts to try to understand what will and won’t work:

Backfence is gone, LoudounExtra is struggling, and neither Pegasus News nor Outside.In can be labeled a commercial success at this point. So what’s the right formula for hyperlocal?

I think the answer lies somewhere at the intersection of all of these models. You need sharp technology, lots of databases, aggregation of existing blogs and content, and lots of low, low-cost user-generated content. Professional content is good, too, if someone else is paying for it. You’ve got to be intensely local (LoudounExtra, by covering a 520-square-mile county, missed the boat here). And then you’ve got to market the hell out of the resulting stew, with aggressive community outreach, grassroots campaigns and, if you’re fortunate enough to be attached to traditional media, a print counterpart and the boost you get from an attached media Web site.

It’s not fair to look at every journalism start-up that falters or fails and say, “I told you so.” Many of those failures will directly lead to the successes of other start-ups in the future. Some of those failures will teach us the lessons needed to turn this industry around.

Will Sullivan is correct to point out that change doesn’t happen immediately:

Change is hard.

Trying new things at a media organization that’s claim to fame is on the Pulitzer name is especially hard.

99 percent of innovation is failing, then dusting yourself off and trying things a different way. If people in your own company aren’t interested in helping you succeed, then maybe it’s time to move on.

We all get that journalism organizations are facing tough economic times, but it is irresponsible to assume that every new idea or project that is tried will be an overnight success. Maybe even LoudounExtra will be a success if its given more time to marinate.

I’m glad to see journalists like Sullivan standing up to the parade of journalists that want Curley’s hide. I’m going to leave you with some final thoughts from entrepreneurial journalist Steve Outing:

News companies, especially, really need to inject some entrepreneurial folks into their operations. Entrepreneurs fail, learn from it, and move on. They don’t give up.

It’s depressing.

It feels like my girlfriend broke up with me and took my dog with her. Yes, I’m talking about The Wall Street Journal’s assessment of the failure of LoudounExtra.com. Maybe failure is a little harsh, but according to Rob Curley, his sites in Lawrence, Kan. got better traffic than LoudounExtra.com.

For those keeping score, Lawrence has about 80,000 residents, while Loudoun County has about 270,000 residents. And it’s not that LoudounExtra.com is a complete failure, it’s just that it’s not what it could have been or what was expected of it when it launched (it probably has lost a bit of money too).

And of course Curley and his team have left for Las Vegas, which doesn’t give me a lot of faith that LoudounExtra will be getting much better anytime soon. All the Web talent and vision are gone now — so, who is going to innovate on their forthcoming hyperlocal ventures?

To be fair, LoudounExtra is a site with a lot of information, databases and stories. It does cover Loudoun County better than the Post could have ever dreamed of before. But the site doesn’t have a lot of the user-generated content features that were envisioned when the project was announced, and it never really engaged the community.

Simply put: the return on investment wasn’t very good, and there was a hell of an investment in this site. There appears to be a fundamental divide between the Post itself and Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, and that may have been a large part of why this site is failing (and why the Post may not be able to do hyperlocal properly):

Though LoudounExtra.com seemed to promise an ideal combination of innovation and marketing muscle, it has failed to benefit from the reach of Washingtonpost.com. Mr. Curley says whenever a big story breaks involving Loudoun County, the Post typically publishes it on Washingtonpost.com without a link to LoudounExtra. That deprives LoudounExtra of potential traffic. Nor does the Washingtonpost’s own dedicated Loudoun County page send visitors directly to its online sibling. In September, when Time Warner Inc.’s AOL unit announced it was moving its headquarters from Dulles, Va., to New York, the Post linked to the story on LoudounExtra.com for a couple hours before moving the story back to its own site. That window of promotion fueled the Loudoun site’s best traffic day to date, Mr. Curley says.

The Post couldn’t even link to LoudounExtra.com? That’s absurd. The Post site doesn’t interact well with LoudounExtra.com either (there is a separate Loudoun County page at washingtonpost.com that is a hold over from before LoudounExtra.com, which steals traffic from the hyperlocal project).

The mere act of linking to LoudounExtra.com with every story about Loudoun that was posted at washingtonpost.com would have brought in huge amounts of traffic to the fledgling hyperlocal project. It’s called free marketing. It’s also called synergy.

This may be a symptom of a larger problem at the Post — namely the divide between WPNI and the Post. WPNI is in Virginia, while the Post is in D.C. Obviously, that makes combing cultures into a unified newsroom (ala The New York Times) very difficult.

The future of news is a unified operation with the Web (and mobile) taking a lead roll. Currently, the majority of staff resources are still at the print destination in D.C. The Washington City paper had a scathing article about the huge rift between the two operations:

The geographic separation takes its toll on the Post in two ways. It causes frequent communication breakdowns whose remedies invariably involve costly investments in training and outreach, and it creates overlapping functions in which both the print and online operations assign reporters to the same beats. The result is waste, a luxury that no newspaper, including the Post, can afford in this era of slumping print circulation and advertising.

Other newspapers have begun to realize that the idea of separate newsrooms makes little sense. It’s a 1990s-era anachronism when people thought that the Web product would be a rehash of the print product with some Web exclusives filled in. Now people realize that news operations have to be platform agnostic — from the publisher on down to every reporter:

Other papers, meanwhile, have abandoned the Post’s separate-but-unequal model. A year ago, the Los Angeles Times integrated its news and Web functions after an internal report called the paper “Web-stupid.” The New York Times began combining its Web-paper operations in August 2005 and accelerated the process when it moved to a new building last spring. “It’s very much a two-way street,” says Jonathan Landman, the Times’ deputy managing editor and top editorial voice on the Web site.

It doesn’t sound like the Post will be rethinking its separate staffs model, but it will have to rethink how it does hyperlocal if it wants to be successful in that arena. It is going to need to dedicate more reporters to the areas it wants to cover, require its reporters to live in the local areas they are covering at a hyperlocal level, build up a grass roots following, allow for much greater user interaction (allow your local assets to improve your project and become invested in it) and, finally, the Post may have to reconsider its county model altogether.

The D.C. region is largely comprised of transplants like me who have little history in the area. I still consider Ohio my home and probably will be out of D.C. in under five years. D.C. is a very poor area to try to establish a local project, ala small-town Kansas.

But I do think hyperlocal projects can succeed. How about a project dedicated to politics and the political elite/junkies in D.C.? How about a site dedicated to the Redskins? Those are areas the Post could really clean up in.

I do not have high hopes for FairfaxExtra (the second hyperlocal site from the Post has coming this summer), unless the model is drastically changed. We’ll know soon enough if the Post is mixing things up with hyperlocal.

Curley, on the other hand, will probably find Vegas a much better place for his innovative brand of journalism. Honestly, it was probably a good move for his sanity, happiness and career. He told me he is going to work harder than ever in Vegas to make successful products, and I think he will. It sounds like he has gotten a lot of inspiration from what transpired at the Post.

In a year or two the dust will finally settle on the Post’s hyperlocal efforts, and maybe they will be successful with some tweaks and hard work. Or maybe WSJ will write an even more negative piece about the Post’s efforts.

Last June I made one of my most popular posts ever (and one of my first): my Summer reading list.

Basically, the idea was to compile a list of things to read and do to help journalists and journalism students become better prepared for new media journalism. I support the “peace-out method” of suggesting that people have a myriad of skills (or knowledge of several subjects), but that people show know two skills really well to take over a project.

Last year’s summer reading list encouraged journalists and students to learn:

• HTML
• CSS
• How to blog
• Audio/Video
• Flash

The idea is that it’s good to be exposed to a variety of skills. Then journalists should hone on on a few skills to really excel in (and this will vary from person to person based on what people are comfortable and enjoy). All these new media skills, of course, should be combined with strong reporting skills and solid news judgment.

Now I need you to help me make this list better and up-to-date. What would you change? Which resources would you guide people to?

I think some experience with databases and spreadsheets would be a good recommendation. But which resources do you recommend for going about those projects? Social media skills might make sense to, but how does one go about learning social media skills?

Any help would be great. A journalist should never stop learning.

It’s a simple question: What should news organizations stop doing, today, immediately, to make more time for innovation?

And it’s a simple answer: News organizations should stop pretending like it’s the pre-Internet days. Most news organizations are still legacy-first. Newspapers still care more about the print edition than the Web edition. Beats are still centered around making content for print edition.

The same goes for broadcast. Even the best news organizations often have separate Web staffs that produce editorial content for the Web product. But that makes no sense.

Why have two staffs to produce editorial content, when most employees could be creating content that works on multiple platforms? That’s what I mean by rethinking staff resources.

It’s simply a matter of making employees and content work for us. Duplication of work is a great way to stifle innovation, because most news organizations are under a tremendous budget crunch and can’t afford to waste resources like that.

It’s easier to go from Web-first to print than the other way around. Why? Because the Web is incredibly flexible.

It can do all sorts of content incredibly well. Print, for instance, can only do writing, and photos to an extent, well. And print even has major limitations on written content that the Web doesn’t have (arbitrary story lengths, anyone?).

Let’s take the example of a beat reporter. Some beat reporters have begun blogging, but their blogs are often treated as one more thing to do. That’s hardly a way to promote innovative content. In fact, one-more-thing syndrome is a good way to promote staff burnout.

Rather, a blog should be the heart of a beat reporters arsenal — not the 15-inch story. Any time a nugget of information comes in, a beat reporter should blog about it (or post to Twitter or both). As news comes in a blogger can either add to his original post or make a new post.

Twitter updates take seconds to write, but make fantastic notes for longer written pieces later on. This keeps readers updated and interested.

At the end of the day, when the dust has settled, it will be a lot easier to put together a 15-inch story. A beat reporter will already have notes (Twitter is great for this) and several post of content to work with.

But imagine the reverse scenario. A beat reporter concentrates on producing copy for the print edition first. This means no meaningful content will be posted until a story is completed for the print edition (or stories). This also means the story may be an aribitrary length to fit print needs — not the story’s needs. Many beat reporters who operate like this will occasionally dump smaller news items into their blogs.

When people ask “how can we make more time for innovation,” it’s really more about using time more wisely than about making more time. Think about it. Blogging and Twitter are naturally mobile friendly, which saves us even more time while reaching an even broader audience.

That’s another bird killed with the same stone. Any good blog has at least one RSS feed (if not multiple ones for comments and sometimes categories). Google Reader is a fantastic (and free) mobile RSS reader. Without doing any extra work your content is already mobile friendly.

And I don’t have to explain how ridiculously mobile friendly Twitter is. So, now a beat reporter isn’t actually doing any extra work, but he is hitting the Web and mobile with full force. And because of the way blogging and Twitter work, it’s extremely easy to make a print story from all writing that has already been done.

We need to make our content work for us. This means making our content smarter and rethinking how we us staff resources in news organizations.

This is my May post for the Carnival of Journalism. It is currently hosted by Ryan Sholin over at Invisible Inkling.

Paula Froke has jumped headfirst into the world of online and multimedia journalism with her upstart blog, Paula’s Adventures in Multimedia.

While she may not have been born a digital native, she has quickly become an enthusiastic adopter. And as the Deputy National Editor for the AP, she is a manager, not a content producer. So she doesn’t have to learn all this stuff, but she has anyway.

That’s the kind of manager journalism needs. Her blog is helping to inspire other mid-career journalists to try new things. Paula’s blog has been making its way around the journalism blogosphere, and people like Mindy McAdams have been impressed with her work and spirit:

I’m also in love with a new blog called Paula’s Adventures in Multimedia. Paula is a journalist somewhere, I don’t know where, but she’s taking us along for the ride while she and her colleagues learn to make slideshows and do podcasts and shoot video — and it’s really fun!

Below you’ll find an interview I had with Paula recently. The cliff notes of it is this: Learning multimedia and online journalism is fun and not nearly as difficult as you think.

1) I know your time at Poynter in January was one of the inspirations for starting your blog. What were your multimedia skills prior to then?

After 23 years as a print-only editor, I got my feet wet last year by shooting — but not editing — one video and producing one podcast, both as introductory training efforts in what was then our multimedia service for younger readers. That inspired me to buy an HD camcorder and a new laptop. Then I taught myself basic video editing with iMovie and did a couple of personal videos. Howard Owens’ list of 2008 objectives for non-wired journalists gave me more ideas and goals, and that combined with Poynter kicked everything into higher gear at the beginning of this year. Literally. I wanted to start the year off well, so I shot a personal video on Jan. 1, edited it on Jan. 2, and uploaded it to YouTube — a major thrill.

2) What are your multimedia skills today?

My skills are still relatively rudimentary, but I’m confident that if time and my position allowed, I could fairly easily shoot and edit an acceptable news video for Web publication (with iMovie; I still need to tackle Final Cut). I was astonished and delighted when a complete stranger saw one of my personal videos and asked me to produce a video of him for entry in a reality show contest (I declined — I’m not THAT confident — but now he’s trying again and wants me to do part of it.) I could produce audio slideshows and podcasts, again if time and circumstances allowed. I certainly have a far, far greater understanding and appreciation of the power of all of these formats.

3) Why did you end up starting your blog?

I supervise traditional print editors whose job as it’s now defined involves being appreciative of other forms of journalism done in our other departments, but not actually doing it themselves. Like me, I think they were both intrigued and intimidated by the possibilities of the evolving world of journalism — but weren’t at all sure how to get started themselves. As I gained more comfort and appreciation through what I was learning on my own, I wanted a way to share that with everyone on the staff. A blog seemed ideal — I could talk about it in a casual way, and have a multimedia format with which to share the results of my own efforts and theirs. It’s given me a chance to take a “learn as I learn” and “if *I* can do it, you can too” approach and to encourage them to learn in a low-key, fun kind of way. I’ve tried to make it clear that I’m willing to look foolish for the sake of learning, and I think that’s helped. It also gives me a way to let them do guest posts and share their own video, slideshow, podcast and Web site creation efforts.

4) What’s the biggest thing you have learned from it?

How fun, fulfilling and liberating this kind of work is. It’s been absolutely fascinating to learn how to convey stories in ways far beyond what I’ve done all my life. A second thing: There is, in fact, a fair amount of crossover among the formats. A lot, though certainly not all, of what makes a good story and what’s required of a good editor and a good reporter is similar from format to format: compelling detail and quotes, vivid color, strong drama, cohesive structure, and of course, accuracy, integrity and ethics. I think the more you learn in each format, the better you get in all of them.

5) How hard was it to set up your blog and begin producing multimedia content?

The blog itself was remarkably easy to set up. I did it literally in between bites of pasta while hovering over my laptop in the kitchen the night I returned from Poynter. Once I got the idea in my head, I was so excited about it that I just plunged in. After that I just kept plunging. For better or worse, I took a scattershot approach — delve a little into video, a little into audio, a little into HTML, invite others on the staff to share what they’re learning … the result was something not at all structured and therefore perhaps not all that instructive or helpful. On the other hand, it is indeed a recounting of what I learn as I learn it, and I think there’s something to be said for getting a broad exposure to as much as you can in the early goings.

6) How do you see your new skills impacting your journalism career?

They certainly open up a lot more possibilities in every area — as a manager, as an editor and as a multi-format reporter. I mean possibilities for me personally, and possibilities for far more meaningful journalism reaching and touching a far wider audience. It’s extremely exciting.

7) Do you have any advice for mid-career journalists looking to learn new online/multimedia skills?

Short answer: Just do it. And have fun.

Longer answer: While I took a wide-ranging approach, it might be more reasonable to pick one area that’s especially appealing to you, whether it’s creating a personal Web site, starting a blog and uploading photos to it, borrowing a camera and shooting some video, doing a podcast or whatever. Find a knowledgeable co-worker or friend or a cheap intro course — for instance, whatever the local Apple store offers, even if you don’t have a Mac! — to help get you started. Take advantage of a wealth of online resources for tips and techniques. Consider tapping into your personal life for opportunities to practice — I’ve been doing videos of New York Cycle Club rides, which give me plenty of chances to work on shooting and editing. Don’t be afraid to look silly or to fail. Seek feedback from others. Study the work of those who excel at this. And — have fun.

If newspapers don’t have young people in management positions, they need to get some.

Or at least consult them on decisions. This shockingly does not happen at many newspapers, where management is usually determined by time served, not talent or ideas. Let’s face reality here: The average newspaper reader is like 100 billion years old. Some say older.

That’s not the core demographic that most advertisers are looking for. Newspapers need to have a growth mindset to expand their audience, not just move with their existing audience to new platforms.

The only way to expand into new demographics (mostly younger) is to have people in those demographics in management and actively consult younger staffers about what they want. No more guessing.

Honestly, how else are newspapers going to expand their audience if they don’t have people they are trying to court making decisions?

Now this isn’t to say that all management should be young (that’s foolish), but it is to say that some should be (and management shouldn’t be afraid to actively consult younger staffers on what they actually like). Many newspapers are overwhelming staffed by old, white males. And what do you know, the typical newspaper reader is an old, white male.

Are people in charge creating content that largely appeals to them and people like them? Are people in charge favoring platforms that people like them like? I think the answer to both is yes.

I’ll leave you with a little story about why we need staffers in a target demo helping to make decisions. Back in 2005, while I was a senior in college, I did some blogging and writing for a new Tribune publication, Merge Digital (known as just Merge in print).

The content, design and concept of this publication was a gross caricature of people my age. It was supposed to be “edgy” and “hip,” but it was mostly trashy and stupid. It was heavily about sex, drinking, video games, entertainment and other crap.

There was virtually no real news about the target demographic (college students and 20 somethings). And I only agreed to work for this publication because I was a poor college student who needed money.

Frankly, it was insulting.

There were plenty of real news stories that affected college students and 20 somethings in the Lehigh Valley that no one covered. Merge’s sister publication, The Morning Call, almost never covered that demographic, unless it was some fraternity screwing up. You know, news that just serves to support stereotypes.

The target demographic did not take to this new publication and Web site. Less than three years later, it is now just a footnote in history. It folded awhile ago.

Why? Because the people who came up with this new publication/Web site had no idea what the audience they were trying to reach actually wanted.