My industry
Blogs will help kill newspapers.
Careful, that’s only if newspaperdotcoms continue to see blogs as competition.
Of course, anyone with interest in learning better knows blogging can be a tool to spread content further and wider than ever before.
Let me tell you how I believe newspaper blogs can help save newspapers.
There are blogs and there are bloggers. There are mainstream blogs and there are those that aren’t.
Blogging, in my mind, isn’t necessarily, but a new transition that is one part of a test of big media. Can they develop and innovate quickly enough?
Below find my 10 favorite journalist bloggers: reporters associated with a mainstream medium who actively blog.
Ever think about the best stories you’ve ever read?
What’s special about newsprint is how we clip those stories. We save them. I wanted to collect my favorite journalism pieces of my short life and share them with you. I have wanted to do this for sometime.
Below, find my five favorite and a slew of my favorites from 2008, more generally than my favorite Philadelphia pieces of the year that I shared earlier this month.
Continue reading My five favorite pieces of journalism ever (and of 2008)
Where should your videos be uploaded and hosted online?
I was having a bear of a time with this decision for a new venture that I will announce in coming months.
What it comes down to is that it really matters what you want to do with it.
Don’t think there is only one solution to the question.
Philadelphia was long a breeding ground for some of the most meaningful metro columnists in the country.
Some say the newspaper columnist is dying, but it isn’t dead.
So who’s the next columnist of record in one of the oldest newspaper cities in the world?
Continue reading Who is Tom Ferrick's heir: the best Philadelphia newspaper columnists
The history of the Philadelphia Inquirer mirrors the path of all the big gray ladies in the United States.
While putting together suggestions for the Inquirer months ago, I came across some interesting reading on the third oldest newspaper in the country, which is nearing its 180th birthday. Follow it and the path of your own hometown paper.
But why isn’t the Inquirer already cashing in on its historical brand? It seems it may be moving that way, but I want to see more and as a means to develop, sustain its brand and monetize it.
What is writing, reporting and editing worth to you?
Everyone says he didn’t get into journalism to be rich – particularly not the print field – but rather it’s what he wants to do.
But when you really face the numbers it may seem even more daunting.
Continue reading Your new journalism job: what do reporters, editors get paid?
We had a good conversation on the merit of full-text or partial feeds on a post recently that I never got to address.
I got a few e-mails on the matter, too, actually. (No surprise they were as conflicted as the comments)
What we all seemed to agree on is that newspapers (or any RSS feed for that matter) are fools to offer no excerpt in an RSS post.
The debate came on how much content should be provided in a feed, though.
Continue reading Full-text feeds, Partial feeds: What's a blogger to do?
Why does a Google search of “Commonwealth Confidential,” the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Harrisburg state capital bureau blog, yield no direct results, but rather links to some of their posts?
Because they haven’t reached out to the blogosphere and received in return the currency of the Internet – incoming links.
This isn’t something I put on the Inquirer Harrisburg bureau staffers, nor am I trying to criticize the Inquirer. Rather it is the newspaper I read, so my criticisms and suggestions often fall their way, though I think they’re widely applicable to newspapers across the country.
Continue reading Inquirer blogs that don't own their Google searches: all newspapers need to learn
I owe Philly.com an apology.
I got heavy traffic on a recent post of mine in which I complimented the video product (particularly Philadelphia Business Today) but regarded it as incomplete in many ways. I haven’t shifted much on my analysis, but I have learned I put the wrong address on the post. Find out where it should have gone below, and what every newspaper – or company, or organization, or individual – can learn from it about branding.