1. My commute to work and walking around the city

• Doing work on the train — I do work on my Marc train trips to and from Union Station. I don’t do any heavy duty work. I’m mostly checking my e-mail and responding to messages before I arrive at work and getting a jump on our social media for the day (on the way home, I mostly concentrate on Twitter, Facebook and our own social network, RarePlanet.org). My Macbook + Verizon MiFi works pretty well, but there are some issues with the setup, mostly related to size and form factor.
• Weight — The iPad weighs in at just 1.5 lbs. That’s a big deal for people who live in urban areas and take computing devices around with them on a daily basis. My Macbook weighs 5.2 lbs. and while that may not seem like a lot if you throw your laptop in a bag and then into your car, it is a big deal if you do a lot of walking. When I’m in my office in Arlington, I usually walk at least 5 miles a day. I don’t always have my Macbook with me the entire time, but weight does become a concern. A device as light as 1.5 pounds would be something that I’d consider taking a lot of places with me. On weekends, I could see going to a coffee house with a iPad and sitting around and reading it like a newspaper. I do not bring my Macbook with me when I go to Starbucks on weekends. Back to weight, even a 10.1-inch netbook (the closet screen size to an iPad) weighs in at 2.9 lbs. I’d much rather take something half the weight of a netbook around with me, especially as something I just throw into a bag and go.
• Size – Along the lines of weight, size is an important consideration for many. My laptop barely fits in my messenger bag. Instead I usually take a larger book bag because I can fit other things like a power cord, lunch, papers, etc in it comfortably. A netbook would solve this issue, but the weight is still rather high, but more importantly the form factor of a notebook/netbook kind of sucks for on the go.
• Form factor — One of the main reasons I have resisted the urge to get a netbook is the form factor. It’s not just the size of my Macbook that is an issue but also the form factor. Much like how broadsheet newspapers such as The New York Times are awkward to use on public transportation, so is anything with a clamshell design that all current notebooks and netbooks offer. On a bigger commuter train, one can get by with a clamshell notebook, but on the subway, it’s just not worth it. I almost always shut my laptop down as I’m getting of the Marc and don’t turn it back on until I get on the Marc at night. Using it on the DC metro system is just too much of a hassle. A smaller, lighter, non-clamshell iPad, on the other hand, could be something that I use all the time on the DC Metro. It’s something that I could hold in one hand, that doesn’t require my elbows to be poking into people next to me like I would be doing if I were using a notebook or netbook and it starts up lightening fast.
• Start up and shutdown time – The iPad boots up in 10 seconds, and Google is promising very quick start up times for their Chrome OS. Start up time matters when you’re talking about a device that you’ll just pick up and use whenever. If I’m taking a 10-15 minute subway ride, I don’t want to bother starting up my computer. The same can be said of a laptop sitting near a couch that is turned off. If the hope is for tablets to be something that people just pick up and use on a whim like a magazine — but with the ability to surf the Web, play video games, etc — it has to be so quick and easy to start up that one doesn’t even half second thoughts about using it.
• Battery life — This is paramount for any tablet. Any tablet that gets 3-4 hours of battery life won’t be particularly useful. Book reading is out of the window immediately, and it is really a hassle to always have to be charging a device or near an outlet. If the idea is to hold a tablet like a book, it can’t spend most of its time tethered to a power outlet like laptops currently do. There are days when I don’t carry my Macbook power cord with me (and I later regret this), but there are many days when I do if I think I might need more than 3-4 hours of battery life. Unless I’m traveling, it appears the iPad could get through an entire day of use without needing a recharge. This is big. Below I mention some uses that I could see for the iPad (such as a PDF reader for work) that would be less useful if this device had poor battery life. Ultimately, if you’re traveling around over the course of a day, carrying around and using a device like the iPad, battery life is going to be really important. A power cord is just one more thing to carry in an already crowded and heavy bag.

2. At the office

• Notes — I usually take light notes with pen and paper in the meetings that I attend. Occasionally I need to take really detailed notes, and I’ll bring my work laptop,which is docked to a Dell docking station. It’s a bit of a hassle to undock and redock, especially since I have an external monitor hooked up to it. Undocking my laptop tends to mess up the resolutions of my monitors and causes some issues and wasted time. If I had an iPad, I’d just grab that and take it to most meetings. OmniOutliner — which many consider the gold standard in outlining programs — is coming to the iPad this year. For most meetings, that’s what I’d bring. The iPad starts up in 10 seconds and would do just fine for most note taking. If I needed to take heavy notes, I could still bring my work laptop, but otherwise a tablet makes a lot more sense. I don’t really like taking notes on pen and paper, especially since I often retype them when I get back to my desk.
• PDFs — Like many people, I come into contact with a lot of PDFs at work. Some are from coworkers, others are guides and resources relevant to my work. So yes, I’ve printed out the most important ones and have them handy. The iPad would make a fantastic device for storing these PDFs, making them searchable and making them quite portable. My work laptop is OK, but it’s not really handy if I need to go somewhere with said PDFs. Having a smaller, lighter device that boots up much faster (my work computer with XP can take five minutes or so to boot) could be huge for office documents.

3. At home

• Reading — I do a lot of reading of blog posts, news stories, magazine pieces, comments after stories and posts, message boards, etc, etc, etc. I either do this reading at my desktop computer in my home office or on my laptop, which is usually in the family room by the couch. Both work fine for much of my reading, but both have limitations. Laptops work fine when sitting up, but lying down with one is always an awkward experience. For longer reading, neither my laptop nor my desktop make an ideal experience. I’d much rather have something that I could lie down with. Eventually I — like just about everyone — will cancel all of my print subscriptions and go digital only. For something like The Economist, the iPad would could really be a great experience. The Economist is something that I often sit down with for hours. I’ve never done this with their Web site on my laptop, but I could see doing this on a lightweight tablet that I can hold.
• Casually surfing the Web — Like many people in my generation, I often surf the Web, use social networks and chat while I watch TV. A laptop is fine for this, but it’s not a great couch experience. The biggest problem with the clamshell design is that it limits the different ways you can sit comfortable with it (or keep it from sliding around). A tablet would be much easier to recline or lie down with.

4. The car

• I don’t spend much time in cars, but when I do, they are usually longer trips to either visit my family or my fiancee’s. I can count on one hand the amount of times that I have ever used a laptop while riding in a car. I have used my iPhone countless times under the same situation. I think with mobile Internet, I’d be much more likely to actually use an iPad than a laptop while in a car. This wouldn’t be a main reason that I would buy an iPad or similar tablet, but it’s something to consider.

4. What about the missing stuff?

• Won’t you miss Flash? — Yes. And no. I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Flash 10.1 on mobile devices to see how it performs. If it performs well, doesn’t suck down a lot of battery power and fits in well with how mobile devices work, I will miss it, at least in the short term until it is eventually replaced (proprietary technology is always being replaced on the Internet). But if Flash would cut the iPad’s battery life in half, I wouldn’t want it. Battery life is really important for mobile devices, tablets are much more of mobile devices than even laptops. Ten hours is the low end of what I think a tablet should get battery wise. Adobe has had a terrible track record on OS X when it comes to Flash’s performance and reliability. Simply put, it doesn’t run as well on OS X as it does on Windows. Apple doesn’t want to rely on an outside vendor, nor do they want people despairingly their products for something a third-party has created. But I’ll reserve judgement on Flash until I see it on other mobile devices this year.
• But what about Hulu? — This is as close to a deal breaker as you can get for me. Hulu uses Flash and unlike YouTube, TED and Academic Earth, Hulu doesn’t serve up versions of their video in H.264 format that the iPhone and iPad can use. My sense is that Hulu will create a mobile friendly version of Hulu this year, unless Flash 10.1 really takes off on mobile devices (my guess is that it won’t). But Hulu is one of those experiences that can make or break a new device. All that being said, I mostly watch Hulu in 480p mode on one of my 22-inch desktop monitors. A tablet won’t be an ideal way to watch TV shows, especially ones that require the mobile Internet (I have Verizon 3G for my Macbook, and I have no faith that I could use Hulu reliably on it).
• Don’t you already have two computers? — Well, yes, if you don’t count the two PowerMacs that aren’t hooked up right now. If I get an iPad, it would be with an eye towards selling my Macbook. My desktop with dual 22-inch monitors is a much better work environment than my Macbook (or for playing games or for watching video or etc, etc ,etc). On the go and the couch, the iPad could very well be the superior experience. The iPad isn’t a device that you can replace all your computers with, but I do believe that it can replace one.
• So are you buying one? — I’m leaning toward yes. I believe an iPad would legitimately be a superior device to my laptop for traveling to and from work, walking around DC and surrounding communities, going to coffee shops, lounging around my apartment, in the car and while at work for certain tasks. It’s not about what the iPad can’t do for me but rather what it can do better. All that being said, I think I’ll try it before I buy it.

This is a must watch TED Talk from Bill Gates. He thinks our ultimate goal as species should be to emit zero carbon emissions. He believes the best way to get there is through technology, investment and innovation. He shares several promising ideas in this video.

Desktop computers with desktop-metaphor OSes will be around for years to come and will continue to work well for people using them at work. Power users get a lot out of the current computing arrangement, but how many computer users are really power users? A lot of people yearning for a simpler, more intuitive experience for their non-work needs.

Many people find it more difficult to operate and own a computer than a car. That seems incredibly backwards. Non-technologists would love a computing platform that just works and isn’t based on a decades-old user interface concept meant to replicate a messy desk.

Whether or not the first iPad is a hit is anyone’s guess, but the idea of a computing device that is based on human touch and presents a far simpler computing experience is here to stay. People simply want to stop fighting with their machines.

Sure, I love my desktop computer with its dual 22-inch monitors, but I also know that my parents spend a lot of time fighting with their computers to get them to do what they want (and calling me, asking for help). My Dad was already talking about the iPad the day after it came out. He has never spoken about Windows 7 or OS X Snow Leopard.

Technologists and geeks always want more — more power, more features, more bling. Most people just want something that works. I mean works like a coffee maker works, not works like a machine that needs to be defragged regularly or have its permissions repaired or asks to have updates installed regularly (why isn’t this automated on every OS?).

I don’t drive the same kind of car as a race car driver. So why does the average computer user use the same kind of computer as a programmer or someone editing a feature film?

For all the techies out there bemoaning the fact that the iPad “doesn’t have full OS X,” you don’t get it. That’s not what most people want. Most people want something far different. The iPhone has shown us this.

The iPad represents the first true salvo into making a computer for the masses. Google is going down the same path with its Chrome OS. It’s not a coincidence.

In a few years, it won’t be uncommon for households to have one main computer that has a standard OS that can handle heavy computing and work, while also having several tablet computers for consuming content, being social and doing most computing tasks.

If you fail to understand why the iPad is such a big deal, you fail to understand how broken the current computing landscape is for most people.

I strongly believe that all human knowledge should be free. Wikipedia is the leading project to help make human knowledge free and accessible. We still have a lot more human knowledge to unlock, but Wikipedia has been an indispensable tool for millions of people all over the world. Making knowledge only available to those who can afford to purchase it or who have direct access to a large, physical library isn’t ideal. The Internet is the perfect place to store and disseminate the world’s knowledge.

And that knowledge should be free for all.

Wikipedia still has a long way to go. There is still a lot more knowledge that needs to placed on it and much of the best content is only in English. There are all issues with the editing and writing processes. But, overall,  it’s a fantastic start.

Beyond sites like Wikipedia, it’s my dream that we can make education free and accessible for all. I don’t mean by government subsidies to attend existing educational institutions but rather by harnessing the power of crowd sourcing and distributed knowledge.

Wikipedia and similar sites can serve as educational tools (I’d donate to Encyclopedia Britannica too if they changed their business model), but I believe there is a place for creating wiki-text books and wiki-classes. There will always be a place for physical institutions and in-person classes (and smart universities such as MIT are already making many of their course lectures free for all), but I believe we can make great strides in educating people around the world by creating a strong and vibrant wiki-university (or better yet, wiki-universities) that combines the knowledge of online encyclopedias with wiki-text books (professors and other experts could get together to write these), wiki-classes (educators could design classes based on wiki-texts, wiki-encyclopedia articles, Web sites, etc), wiki-degrees (a combination of wiki-classes) and more. People around the world could even get together to work on group projects and research together.

Traditional educational systems will continue to produce many of the best and brightest around the world, but opening up education has the ability to lift up many who could not afford a top-notch education or don’t have access to one. In addition, I strongly believe that opening up education will also encourage people to continue their educations for their entire lifetimes. After all, if the last time you were educated was when you were 21 — or 17 — then you won’t learn much in your lifetime.

It’s important to remember that knowledge will provide light for all. Let’s illuminate the world.

Watch this TED Talk about not trying to create the perfect product and how we should instead try to create the perfect products to target distinct groups. Apply this logic to journalism. What do you come up with?

So why are news orgs trying to create the perfect product? Shouldn’t they be trying to create the perfect products?

If you want to succeed on social media (and the Web in general) you have to be willing to lose control. This fantastic TED Talk should be a must watch for anyone engaged in social media and for marketing departments around the world.

Social media is nothing like the tightly controlled, sterile communication messages of the past. Want to get good at social media? Be passionate about something and let that passion show through.

It’s really that simple.

Well it came. And I’m no longer a full-time journalist.

There are a lot of reasons that I’m no longer a full-time journalist. The main reason is that I don’t want to be. These are incredibly difficult times in journalism, and it was sapping my energy away.

I had increasingly become a bitter, angry person. Angry at the established media outlets who were pissing it all away. Angry at all the editors and publishers who couldn’t see that big, radical change was necessary.

I started as a professional journalist in 2006. I’ve never known prosperity in journalism. I’ve known layoffs, furloughs, paper closures, infighting and inaction.

And that made me an angry person. But that’s not who I am. That’s not who I want to be.

There were so many days when it felt like I was running to stand still.

I want to keep moving forward. I want to help make this world a better place. It became clear to be me that journalism was not going to be the best way for me to accomplish that.

Most of the work I’ve done in journalism has been with newspapers. I’ve worked for them and most of the people I chronicled at BeatBlogging.Org worked for newspapers.

Loss and destruction have been almost all that I’ve ever known in journalism. Sure, there has been great work along the way, almost always at the individual level. But many of those innovators that I chronicled at BeatBlogging.Org moved on to other jobs and other fields.

And that was depressing. These were our beacons of light, and they couldn’t make it. The journalism industry has lost a lot of journalists and many of those that it lost were the best, brightest and most innovative.

But the real problem isn’t a journalism problem. Journalism is moving forward. It’s a business model problem, and that’s something I can’t help that much with.

But enough on newspapers. There isn’t much more to say about them. And soon most of what will be said about them will be said in history books.

Journalism will live on. It will one day thrive again. The people that will be producing it and how they will produce will be foreign to us. We’ll know the light at the end of the tunnel when we see it.

For now, journalism is just beginning its trek underground, searching for a ray of light and fresh air. I needed a break from that long, dark trek.

Will I ever return? I don’t know. I’ve stopped worrying about what the future will hold for me.

I will be continuing my work at BeatBlogging.Org because I believe it is important work. If I’m going to be involved with journalism, it will be focused on the future of journalism, not on what journalism was. BeatBlogging.Org doesn’t have anywhere near full-time funding, and I don’t know how much longer we’ll have money for.

But we’ll find a way to tell the stories that need to be told.

I’ve moved on to a different full-time job in a different field. I’m now the community and social media manager for RarePlanet.org, a social network for Rare, a conservation organization. And I’m happy.

I’m not sure if anything made me more aware of my own mortality than working in journalism while newspapers are dying. I’m a third of the way through my life, it’s time for me to start moving forward.

I don’t regret anything. But it is time for something new.

It was time for a change.

The Journalism Iconoclast is no more. That’s not who I am anymore. More on that later.

My new blog is Endemic. It’s a blog on being. On being a member of this world. On being of a generation that grew up with the Internet.

That’s the lens that frames my world view. And my world view is no longer just on journalism. This is a blog about being a human being.

It’s going to break all the rules of blogging that I have exposed. Whereas The Journalism Iconoclast was laser focused on journalism and new media, this blog will be about anything that strikes or moves me.

I won’t care about SEO or catering to a narrow niche. I don’t have to. So I won’t.

I still have BeatBlogging.Org. That has tons of SEO and a tight niche. That’s where you’ll find my journalism thoughts and work.

But I’ve always been more than just a journalist. I’ve always cared about more than just journalism. I want a personal Web site that reflects that reality.

Here, you’ll find me and only me. One day it might be my thoughts on education, while another is about media. And another day you might find some pictures that I took while walking in nature.

I am who I am. And I don’t care about SEO or page views. I just want to write what I want to write when I want to write it. So I will.

The Journalism Iconoclast was a moment in time. That time has passed.

Online everyone is a competitor and no one is a competitor. As in, what you view as your competition has radically shifted. A kid on your block can now be your competition. In the same token, however, that kid can collaborate with you.

The Web is about being social and forming webs of connections. In that sense, just as anyone can be your competitor, anyone can also help you. If you embrace that collaborative spirit, you’ll find that the Web offers many more opportunities for collaboration than it does for competition.

The only thing I’d hold for print are longer, more enterprise stories. Longer-form content doesn’t do that well online anyway. Otherwise, I’d let everything go first online. It is the new first draft of history.

But in addition to the info, registrants have to accept the site’s e-mailed FYI Newsletter and FYI Offers. The offers can be customized, it looks like, but choosing from various categories. [By this point I would be pulling back.] Then they can pick from nearly two dozen e-mails; thoughtfully, three have been pre-checked—AM and PM Updates, Deals+Steals/Thrifty advice—meaning registrants have to uncheck them if they don’t the daily updates. Others range from zoned news to the Pet Central Newsletter. When I dug a little deeper, I found that I could delete the FYI Newsletter and FYI Offers but only from my member profile after registering.

That’s a requirement even if you sign up for a free account just to comment on content. Who comes up with these ideas? Staci Kramer at PaidContent puts it well:

Why does any of this matter? Day in, day out, we’re writing here about the ways news outlets are trying to get users to pay for content and registration is key in nearly every one. If it isn’t global, easy or transparent, the content had better be really good and the price better be right because the pool of people willing to complete the process—let along enter payment info—will get smaller and smaller along the way.

One of my biggest concerns with news paywalls is that I don’t trust news organizations — particularly newspapers — to make the process seamless and easy enough for consumers. It’s not enough to try to charge for something. We have to make the experience enjoyable.

Look at how bad most news Web sites are. Heck, look at how little thought most have put into their former cash cow classified advertising when it comes to the Web. What exactly have most news organizations done on the Web to inspire confidence that they could pull off a paywal?

I have grave, grave concerns that news organizations will spend too much time thinking about charging for news and content and not enough time thinking about how to make the user experience good.

Let’s change the world.

Micropayments will not work for news. Why not?

• I don’t believe there is a market — News is one of those things that I think macropayments make a lot more sense for. There are certain news outlets that I value a lot more than others. I suspect I’m not alone. The issue isn’t that people aren’t willing to pay for news-related products, but rather the issue is that it will be tough to get people to pay for a product that has been free for years. How about we try creating new products that have never been free? My guess is that we’ll have much better luck selling people on these. Instead of trying to sell micropayments of throw-away stories, why don’t we try to create macropayment products that add value to our ad-supported content?
• Transaction costs — Yes, Apple makes money off of micro transactions on the iTunes store and does sell songs for $0.69-1.29. First, there is a huge difference between selling a song for 99 cents and selling an article for 3 cents. And that’s assuming that an individual article is worth 3 cents (many articles I’d say have zero value, while others are worth a bit more than 3 cents). But beyond that there is something journalists have to realize; Apple wasn’t making money off of 99 cent transactions. Credit card fees can easily be 25 cents a transaction. Add in giving labels more than half, bandwidth, etc and that doesn’t leave profit. That’s why Apple begun bundling transactions and billing people less often. If I bill you weekly, I’m much more likely to make a profit than if I bill you daily. Also, Apple’s iTunes store sells more lucrative content than individual songs: movies, applications and even complete albums (in fact, Apple and music labels would much rather you buy full albums). Beyond that, Apple makes monster margins off of the iPod and iPhone. Apple doesn’t need to make money off of the iTunes Store, but if it does, well that’s just gravy. Without a physical device like an iPod to carry profits, how exactly are micropayments going to work for news organizations?
• It can’t be piecemeal — Let’s assume that micropayements are A) going to happen and that B) people would be receptive to them. Even if I were down with micropayments, I wouldn’t be down with a different micropayment system for each news site. If I can’t have one account that follows me around the Web, it’s no dice. There is no way in hell that I am going to register and put my credit card info in at every single news site that I visit. I’d only agree to this if a trusted third party (perhaps Google) created a system that kept me logged in while I was surfing the Web. When I came to a piece of content that I wanted to purchase, I could easily do so. No fuss, one bill.
• It would have to be effortless — The beauty of the iPhone is how effortless it makes it to buy applications and songs. If the buying process were a big ordeal that required me to type in my address, credit card info, etc, I’d almost never use my iPhone to purchase content. But I do. Why? Because it’s effortless. The same thing with Amazon.com’s 1-click buying. It’s just a great shopping experience. Which begs the question: When have news organizations ever had great consumer experiences? Have you seen there online classifieds lately? It’s embarrassing.
• In sum — I think micropayments are a bad idea because A) consumers don’t want them, B) they present serious technological hurdles and C) I don’t trust news organizations to roll out effortless systems.

Down and dirty says you should never make something that your users don’t care about. Down and dirty means focusing on return on investment. It means admitting that we don’t have unlimited time, money or staff resources.

Once we realize that we have limited resources, we’ll focus on maximizing our resources to produce the best overall product. The core of down and dirty is incredibly simple: How can we maximize time, money and staff resources? Instead of saying, “If we only had more of X,” you’ll be saying, “this is how we can make the most with Y.”

And, perhaps most importantly, down and dirty abhors the idea of, “that’s how we’ve always done things.” Listen, if you don’t know why you’re doing something, you’re probably doing it wrong.

I ran BeatBlogging.Org on the down and dirty principles. We never made subjective changes to posts for the sake of making changes. Every edit we made had a clear purpose.

We also weren’t afraid of making changes or corrections to posts. Especially on the Web, the idea of finality doesn’t exist. We can publish content as the story unfolds. That’s really liberating.

We didn’t put monster production values into our podcasts (they are still better than most journalism podcasts, however). Rather, we focused on providing great content and we realized we couldn’t do it all. We knew that we weren’t going to be able to match broadcast level production values, but we also realized our users didn’t care.

Down and dirty means less overhead, less meetings and more of listening to users. If there was ever an industry that needed down and dirty, it is journalism today. Resources are being drastically cut, and the old bloated way of doing things doesn’t work anymore.

Here are some of the core principles of down and dirty:

• Focus on ROI — With limited resources it’s all about getting the most out of what we have.
• Balance quality with quantity — After you admit to yourself how much resources you have, you need to realistically figure out how much of something you can produce. From there, the quality will follow. You can’t put quality before quantity in a world of limited resources. If you don’t produce enough content on the Web, for instance, you’ll drastically hurt your ability to get page views, find users and build an audience. The next principle will help guide you further.
• Good enough is usually good enough — With limited time and resources, our goal should be to produce a product that the vast majority of people consider to be quality. You can’t please everyone. It will never happen. If you try to, you’ll please no one.
• Perfection is an enemy, not a friend — The problem with perfection is it’s an inherently nebulous concept that leads to subjective changes and wasted time. Journalism is inherently an imperfect business. We can make changes down the road. Perfection suggests finality. There isn’t a lot of finality in the world, so why should we strive to create it? The pursuit of perfection is more of a mental disorder than a sound management principle.
• More content creators than managers — Journalism is all about content and products, not about managers, editors and meetings. A certain amount of managers and editors are needed, but most news organizations are very top heavy. You want to be bottom heavy. That’s called being down and dirty.
• Beta is the new gold master — There is nothing wrong with creating a beta product. Even so-called shipping products have mistakes. Gold master software always has bugs. Cars always have defects. If mistakes happen anyway, why not embrace them? Why not say, we’ll put out what we can now, solicit feedback from users and then create a better product? In fact, there is rarely a greater sin than trying to create the perfect product without user input. You’ll usually find better results with creating a limited product, and then getting users involved to help improve the product. Same thing with reporting a story. Don’t wait for the perfect story. Get out there and report. Connect with users. Collaborate.
• Don’t duplicate work — If someone else is already doing something, do not also do it. Link, embed or excerpt their content. If parents are taking pictures at a high school football game, for instance, it’s makes much more sense to work out a deal with them than to spend staff resources on taking pictures at said game. If another news organization already covered a story, link to it. If you have something new to add, add it to a post excerpting the other news organization, but under no circumstances should you ever re-report. Re-reporting is something newspapers did in the 1980s. Don’t be a fool.
• Embrace open source — If someone else has already created a great piece of software, use that instead. Proprietary software is usually a money pit that quickly becomes outdated. Unless a proprietary CMS, for instance, is substantially better than Drupal, WordPress or Joomla, don’t invest in it. You’re wasting time and money for an inferior product (open source CMSs like Drupal are rapidly improving too). Open source also applies to processes and ways of conducting newsroom business. Learn from the best. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
• Creative commons and social networks are your friends — There is a lot of good content available under Creative Commons licenses. There is also a lot of good content available on social networks like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, etc. Utilize it.
• Understand your audience – Every news organization has a slightly different audience. Different audiences prefer different content and different ways of covering content. Some audiences like long-form content, while others like serial blog posts and bullet point lists. You better understand which audience you have, because if you don’t, you’re wasting your time and your users time. Maybe your users would like podcasts. If they would, give them podcasts. If, on the other hand, your podcasts are flops, move on to something else.
• Don’t follow the herd — News organizations constantly do this. Editors and publishers hear some buzzword (podcasts and Twitter) and they jump on it. Listen, everything you do should have a purpose. Maybe creating podcasts makes a lot of sense (this was a huge buzzword in journalism five years ago). For a lot of news organizations, podcasts were a huge mistake. Why? Most news organizations created radio-like crap, instead of trying to create a Web-friendly product like Buzz Out Loud. It ended up being a massive waste of time and money. If you’re going to create something, understand why you’re going to create it.
• Let your users help — I’m a big gan of big photo galleries, but many journalists seem to think they’ll take forever to make. I mean, imagine writing 100 captions! Yeah, about that. Most people aren’t interested in reading 100 captions for one event. So don’t do it. Write one overview, and then allow users to tag and create their own captions for each photo. It will provide a better user experience and will save a lot of time. Note: I’m talking about big photo galleries, not short photo essays that rely on detailed captions. But the principle still stands.
• Never turn down free labor — If users want to help, let them help. Maybe they’ll tag photos for you (this is how Facebook works). If people are taking photos and videos of events and uploading them to Flickr and YouTube, use them.
• You can’t do it all — The day you realize this and go about your work realizing this, is the day you finally get what down and dirty is all about.
• Light IT – Heavy IT usually equals big headaches and inferior productivity. IT should always help you do your job better, but Heavy IT leads to the IT department fighting people over changes. Instead, use Light IT and Web apps. I’d much rather go with Light IT and Google Apps, Zoho, wikis, Web-based e-mail, BaseCamp, WordPress, etc than rely on Heavy IT. How do you tell if you have Heavy or Light IT? Simple. Is your IT department about helping you figure out what’s possible or about telling you what’s not possible? Oh, and, Heavy IT is really expensive. If IT isn’t making you money, what is it doing exactly?
• Throw crap at the wall — While everything should have a purpose, experimentation is needed. But there is a difference between good and bad experimentation. First, any experiment should be based on some research and logical thought process. “We should do X because it’s a better way to convey Y to readers.” But the other key to experimentation is to not be afraid to pull the plug. Experiment fast. Experiment cheap. Always experiment to make a better product.

In future posts we’ll look at examples of down and dirty work in journalism, as well of examples of the opposite.

I want to share with you a project I’ve been working on, and why I think it illustrates how engagement and interaction are coming to all old medium platforms.

Since earlier this year I have been helping best-selling thriller author Joseph Finder with his social media strategy for his new book Vanished and the book’s main character, Nick Heller. Heller is on Twitter and Facebook (Facebook is an experiment that we just launched this week, while we have been using Twitter for months). But he’s not just tweeting lines from the book or providing a Twitter novelization, but rather Heller’s Twitter account is a complimentary experience to the book that is centered around engagement.

I believe that within a generation it will be expected that characters like Heller will interact with users. The days of one-way experiences are coming to an end. Think of the generation after mine that has grown up with both the Internet and social networks. Do you really think they content with the same products that my grand parents loved? Doubtful.

We really wanted to create an experience for people:

• We interact on social media — If you tweet something worthwhile at Heller, he’ll tweet back at you, in character. Want to know some back story about him? Just ask. Want to ask questions about the case he is working on right now? Just ask. Heller responds to DMs and @replies. He also retweets interesting tweets. There was no point in putting Heller on Twitter if we were going to treat Twitter like it was a book.
• Blurring the lines between reality and fiction — We wanted to create a social media experience that made people believe that Heller was a real person, even if they already knew he was a character (and that the stories of corruption that he discusses could be real). First, Heller is always in character, but he acts like a character in the real world, not a character in a distant novel. Heller might be tweeting about a current investigation that he is working on about an AIG-style firm that involves some misplaced funds and possible corruption. Heller will then tweet links to real news stories about companies that did the same thing. Or if Heller is talking about looking over CCTV footage to find out what happened to someone, he’ll then tweet about how many CCTVs there are in DC, American, the world, etc.
• Additional content – Heller has additional fictional narratives that aren’t in the book that he tweets and talks about. We decided early on that we had to offer additional fictional content on Twitter. We always try to tie these side narratives to either current events or events in the past. This way we can link to news stories and provide facts and figures that help us blur the lines between reality and fiction.
• Creating a great experience even if you’re not a fan — You don’t have to be a fan of Joseph Finder, Nick Heller or Vanished to get value out of Heller’s Twitter feed (or know of any of those). We link to and discuss interesting stories involving politics, political corruption, espionage, corporate espionage, information technology and general stupidity. If you just want awesome links and witty takes on the news and world, Heller is an account worth following.
• Photos, why not? – We have a treasure trove of research photos for this book that we’ll be incorporating into the Twitter feed. Vanished takes place mostly in DC and the surrounding suburbs. All the events in the book either take place at real DC locations or are modeled after real locations. In addition, we’ve used smartphone pics and TwitPic for side narratives too. It’s all about creating an immersive experience.
• It’s an experiment – We would be the first to admit that sticking a fictional character on Twitter is an experiment, and it may not be a success (although it is low risk). The book isn’t out yet, so it’s hard to determine the success (Nick Heller will be appearing in a four book series over the next four years). Our goal is to provide a complimentary product that serves fans of the book, while also keeping interest up in between books.
• Social media is here to stay — I don’t know if Twitter and Facebook or any of the other current social networks will be around in 10 years, but I do know that the idea that media should be social is here to stay. People like interactivity and smart journalists, musicians, movie stars, book authors, characters in books and movies, etc will grok that.
• If Heller can do it, so can journalists — Journalism and social media go together so well. If people on Twitter are enjoying Heller on Twitter, I certainly think people will enjoy journalists on Twitter. Our research at BeatBlogging.Org indicates that journalists can get a lot of value out of social media. The best advice is to go where your audience is, and people are flocking to social media.

Here are some sample tweets of Nick’s that show the range of what he tweets about:

A response to a question about Heller’s life:

I’m a private spy, @Battleborne. No kids or wife. Not sure if I’ll ever settle down. Too busy with work, investigating firms, politicians…

Book based

Got a phone call from my Nephew Gabe. My brother is missing. His wife is in the hospital with a concussion.

Political corruption

Non-shocker of the day: Louisiana ex-congressman William Jefferson convicted of bribery in freezer cash case:http://bit.ly/creOQ

Helping out servicemembers (Heller is ex-military, so he’ll tweet military-related tweets and links for people)

Crafty? @OpGratitude needs #handmade scarves for holiday care packages–sent with LOVE to deployed #military! #knit#crochet #fleece #SOT

ATM news (Heller requently tweets about the lack of safety at ATMs)

Apparenty arming an ATM with pepper spray is a really bad idea: http://bit.ly/bhB58

The WTF?

High Fructose Corn Syrup, just like sugar, with an extra bit of Mercury thrown in for extra goodness: http://bit.ly/J1Sah

I encourage you to follow Nick Heller on Twitter (@NickHeller) and give me feedback. I’d love to hear what you think.