In my last post, Head in Sand, there was this exchange with a rep from the Times-Dispatch:
As evidence that bloggers are liars, one Richmond rep mentioned bloggers and Tweeters had gotten the Ukrop's sale story all wrong. That we fanned a rumor furiously that turned out to be false. Did it?
I think they dug it out, speculated on it, and when the sale fell through, they moved on, and all that before the T-D went to press for the next cycle. And essentially the core of the story is true. The supermarket chain is faltering and might very well take a good offer.
And besides, if Jim Ukrops picked up the phone -- big T-D advertiser that he is -- and said to the editors at the newspaper that there was no story here, don't go with it, would they go with it?
Well, look what happened today. Ukrop's sold itself to Royal Ahold. They can't compete in today's market (I'm assuming they mean open six days a week and without wine or beer). So, the Twitter did have it right and first from the beginning and broke this story while the newspaper was still tiptoeing around. WWBT-12 was on it from the beginning, too.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Head in Sand
I've been to literally half a dozen seminars in the past few months about social media. Everybody is excited about it. Government and business communicators are excited about it because it's an inexpensive, often free, way to get information to their clients and citizens.
Since the elections there's been a seminar every week on how the candidates used social media.
People who are entrenched in social media are very excited about it because it's creating new ways to do their jobs, and in some cases, actually creating jobs. Bloggers, Facebook users, Tweeters are all feeling a part of a social information revolution.
Only the established press is not excited. I recently attended several lectures at the Virginia Press Association headquarters in Glen Allen. I got in through the backdoor. I maintain a membership in the Virginia Press Women and that group was invited to this VPA event to fill chairs. In the two social media tracks I attended, the presenters were excited about how newspapers can embrace this technology and make it their own.
Like: find your cities' most influential, popular bloggers and link to them on your newspaper's website.
Amazingly, some of the editors and reporters from small towns across the state said they had no idea how to find such bloggers, or even if they existed. The rest were downright hostile. Bloggers traffic in rumors and untruths, according to the press. We are the Billy Carters to their Jimmys. Why do they want to link to bloggers?
One presenter showed how reporters who also blog are doing amazing jobs covering sports. Sports is a weekend game. No one wants to wait until the Monday morning paper to read about the game or comment back. The sports reporters who are online are instantly reporting. This often means staying up late after the game is over to converse with readers, or writing and posting on Sunday.
On Sunday.
You can feel the room ice up with Virginia-resistance.
Some of these sports bloggers have become their own self-employed news hubs, divorcing their papers and setting up advertiser-supported websites to report on their beats.
As evidence that bloggers are liars, one Richmond rep mentioned bloggers and Tweeters had gotten the Ukrop's sale story all wrong. That we fanned a rumor furiously that turned out to be false. Did it?
I think they dug it out, speculated on it, and when the sale fell through, they moved on, and all that before the T-D went to press for the next cycle. And essentially the core of the story is true. The supermarket chain is faltering and might very well take a good offer.
And besides, if Jim Ukrops picked up the phone -- big T-D advertiser that he is -- and said to the editors at the newspaper that there was no story here, don't go with it, would they go with it?
The moderator brought up several types of stories -- like how to buy and finance your own home without a realtor -- and asked how many papers were doing those kind of stories? In these perilous financial times when no newspaper wants to lose more advertising, do advertisers have some control about the type of stories written?
There was no shouting of nay, nay or blasphemy! blasphemy! Everybody there had probably had an idea for a feature spiked because it would upset an advertiser.
Another lecture was about how to make money from social media. It's hard to get ad salesmen excited about selling little button ads at $100 or less. Some innovators have found ways to automate it. But here was the future of ad selling: Twitter!
The Austin Statesman will run certain types of ads -- those that offer discounts or coupons or say the magic word time incentives -- on its Twitter feed for two Tweets a day for $150.
But what's going to keep a person with a healthy following from undercutting you? Tweeting your ad twice a day for $50? Or just doing it for free. You'll be craiglisted in weeks. In fact, I pointed out, in Richmond we already have @rvabargains doing that and @styleoffers is trying to get off the ground.
Ice.
Amusingly, a fleet of VCU students were sent to the conference to live-Tweet the whole thing and tapped away at their laptops throughout. You can read the stream at #onavpa.
Since the elections there's been a seminar every week on how the candidates used social media.
People who are entrenched in social media are very excited about it because it's creating new ways to do their jobs, and in some cases, actually creating jobs. Bloggers, Facebook users, Tweeters are all feeling a part of a social information revolution.
Only the established press is not excited. I recently attended several lectures at the Virginia Press Association headquarters in Glen Allen. I got in through the backdoor. I maintain a membership in the Virginia Press Women and that group was invited to this VPA event to fill chairs. In the two social media tracks I attended, the presenters were excited about how newspapers can embrace this technology and make it their own.
Like: find your cities' most influential, popular bloggers and link to them on your newspaper's website.
Amazingly, some of the editors and reporters from small towns across the state said they had no idea how to find such bloggers, or even if they existed. The rest were downright hostile. Bloggers traffic in rumors and untruths, according to the press. We are the Billy Carters to their Jimmys. Why do they want to link to bloggers?
One presenter showed how reporters who also blog are doing amazing jobs covering sports. Sports is a weekend game. No one wants to wait until the Monday morning paper to read about the game or comment back. The sports reporters who are online are instantly reporting. This often means staying up late after the game is over to converse with readers, or writing and posting on Sunday.
On Sunday.
You can feel the room ice up with Virginia-resistance.
Some of these sports bloggers have become their own self-employed news hubs, divorcing their papers and setting up advertiser-supported websites to report on their beats.
As evidence that bloggers are liars, one Richmond rep mentioned bloggers and Tweeters had gotten the Ukrop's sale story all wrong. That we fanned a rumor furiously that turned out to be false. Did it?
I think they dug it out, speculated on it, and when the sale fell through, they moved on, and all that before the T-D went to press for the next cycle. And essentially the core of the story is true. The supermarket chain is faltering and might very well take a good offer.
And besides, if Jim Ukrops picked up the phone -- big T-D advertiser that he is -- and said to the editors at the newspaper that there was no story here, don't go with it, would they go with it?
The moderator brought up several types of stories -- like how to buy and finance your own home without a realtor -- and asked how many papers were doing those kind of stories? In these perilous financial times when no newspaper wants to lose more advertising, do advertisers have some control about the type of stories written?
There was no shouting of nay, nay or blasphemy! blasphemy! Everybody there had probably had an idea for a feature spiked because it would upset an advertiser.
Another lecture was about how to make money from social media. It's hard to get ad salesmen excited about selling little button ads at $100 or less. Some innovators have found ways to automate it. But here was the future of ad selling: Twitter!
The Austin Statesman will run certain types of ads -- those that offer discounts or coupons or say the magic word time incentives -- on its Twitter feed for two Tweets a day for $150.
But what's going to keep a person with a healthy following from undercutting you? Tweeting your ad twice a day for $50? Or just doing it for free. You'll be craiglisted in weeks. In fact, I pointed out, in Richmond we already have @rvabargains doing that and @styleoffers is trying to get off the ground.
Ice.
Amusingly, a fleet of VCU students were sent to the conference to live-Tweet the whole thing and tapped away at their laptops throughout. You can read the stream at #onavpa.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Superman's Alter Ego
From, of course, The New Yorker, the greatest magazine ever, and which hasn't changed its layout design, font or look since never. Because when you're perfect to begin with, you don't need to change.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Writing Less is More
I used to write essays/editorials. For a long spell, I sold dozens of these to three or four regular newspaper clients. I had a 1,000-word limit. This was good training. My average first draft was around 1,500 words, and telling the same story in two-thirds of the words is a great discipline. People don't want to read all your digressions. They want you to stay on topic.
As my clients went out of business, or new editors came in with different tastes, I started self-publishing myself on my various blogs. This is bad because there's no money at all in it, and fewer readers. But it's also good because there's no rejection. Everything you write gets published. But there's also no discipline. You don't have that 1,000-word limit. Out of habit I still tend to edit down, but I am seeing many, many bloggers who have never experienced writing for print publication -- or even writing under a copy editor -- who have no discipline or polish at all. A few of them even have avid followings. I just wish they were better self-editors. I had to give up reading most of the posts on rvablogs.com because it's like a Wild, Wild West of undisciplined, unedited verbal diarrhea for the most part.
So there I was, rattling along on my various blogs, writing in a silent vacuum for mostly myself when I discovered Twitter. Twitter doesn't just limit your words. It limits your characters to 140. Big words can drastically reduce how much you can say. This was a challenge, to write that small, that concisely, that to the point.
It's also a lot less work when you get the hang of it, meaning I neglect most of my blogs now for the quick, dirty, in-and-out of Twitter. I neglect reading blogs because a Twitter stream is so much more efficient. I can tell immediately, in seconds, whether you have anything worthwhile to say or not. Writing less is the future.
It's hard to pick up a newspaper after you've been in the Twitter stream, or even watch the evening news, because both news reporting disciplines still depend on time-honored but archaic ways of padding out a story. For instance, getting a man-on-the-street comment or observation, which is just ridiculous. Who is this random person? Why do I care what they think? They're actually just a stand-in for the reporter who, because of that objectivity thing, cannot react emotionally to whatever he/she is reporting.
Or the horrible, terrible how-do-you-feel question. Something terrible has happened to you or to someone you know, or someone you've heard about. How do you feel?
I feel bad. I feel sad.
No one ever says, I feel nothing. Or I don't care. Or I am precariously enjoying the suffering of this other person. No one!
We need to get past this style of reporting because people want the news fast, short, and unadorned with the unnecessary or obvious observation. Get to the point. Write like you were tweeting.
As my clients went out of business, or new editors came in with different tastes, I started self-publishing myself on my various blogs. This is bad because there's no money at all in it, and fewer readers. But it's also good because there's no rejection. Everything you write gets published. But there's also no discipline. You don't have that 1,000-word limit. Out of habit I still tend to edit down, but I am seeing many, many bloggers who have never experienced writing for print publication -- or even writing under a copy editor -- who have no discipline or polish at all. A few of them even have avid followings. I just wish they were better self-editors. I had to give up reading most of the posts on rvablogs.com because it's like a Wild, Wild West of undisciplined, unedited verbal diarrhea for the most part.
So there I was, rattling along on my various blogs, writing in a silent vacuum for mostly myself when I discovered Twitter. Twitter doesn't just limit your words. It limits your characters to 140. Big words can drastically reduce how much you can say. This was a challenge, to write that small, that concisely, that to the point.
It's also a lot less work when you get the hang of it, meaning I neglect most of my blogs now for the quick, dirty, in-and-out of Twitter. I neglect reading blogs because a Twitter stream is so much more efficient. I can tell immediately, in seconds, whether you have anything worthwhile to say or not. Writing less is the future.
It's hard to pick up a newspaper after you've been in the Twitter stream, or even watch the evening news, because both news reporting disciplines still depend on time-honored but archaic ways of padding out a story. For instance, getting a man-on-the-street comment or observation, which is just ridiculous. Who is this random person? Why do I care what they think? They're actually just a stand-in for the reporter who, because of that objectivity thing, cannot react emotionally to whatever he/she is reporting.
Or the horrible, terrible how-do-you-feel question. Something terrible has happened to you or to someone you know, or someone you've heard about. How do you feel?
I feel bad. I feel sad.
No one ever says, I feel nothing. Or I don't care. Or I am precariously enjoying the suffering of this other person. No one!
We need to get past this style of reporting because people want the news fast, short, and unadorned with the unnecessary or obvious observation. Get to the point. Write like you were tweeting.
Friday, October 2, 2009
My Lunch Tabloid
Polish newspaper designer Jacek Utko says the future of newspapers is
FREE
TABLOID
LOCAL
NICHE
OPINION
and people want to read it over breakfast. Well, maybe in Europe. I think we are too busy getting out the door to sit down with a paper in the morning unless we grab one on the way to the office and read it there. So I am going to change his BREAKFAST to
LUNCH
Yes, T-D, I would subscribe if I got a daily tabloid from you that was mostly local news with a smattering of the sexiest, grisliest if-it-bleeds-it-leads national and entertainment stories, the latest tech news, and a lot of columnists opining about more than just op-ed politics, and some comics and puzzles. (Did I just describe the New York Daily News?)
FREE
TABLOID
LOCAL
NICHE
OPINION
and people want to read it over breakfast. Well, maybe in Europe. I think we are too busy getting out the door to sit down with a paper in the morning unless we grab one on the way to the office and read it there. So I am going to change his BREAKFAST to
LUNCH
Yes, T-D, I would subscribe if I got a daily tabloid from you that was mostly local news with a smattering of the sexiest, grisliest if-it-bleeds-it-leads national and entertainment stories, the latest tech news, and a lot of columnists opining about more than just op-ed politics, and some comics and puzzles. (Did I just describe the New York Daily News?)
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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