Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley, CA

I don’t claim to be much good at photography, but it’s one of my more diverting hobbies. Last month whilst in Death Valley on holiday, I crawled out of bed well before dawn in order to catch sunrise at the Mesquite Dunes.

I was not alone.

In fact, there were so many other photographers there, that it was a challenge to frame any shot without one in it. (And we were all cursing the tall young man who was determined to watch the sunrise from the peak of the tallest and most picturesque dune.)

I wasn’t thrilled with any of the photos I took, despite the best efforts of my trusty, if graying, Nikon D70. But this week, as I played around in Aperture, I realized that this one shot, while not particularly distinguished, makes a nice desktop background. So I offer it here for your use as such.

No related posts.

It’s not just that we no longer feel outraged by repeated incursions on our virtual personal space. We now welcome the scrutiny of strangers by freely sharing the most intimate details of our lives on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.

Why is this new attitude to privacy so bad? Because, he says, it can get you in trouble. His example is a Georgia school teacher fired after posting “photos of herself on Facebook enjoying beer and wind while on vacation in Europe.”

What happened to her is bad, yes. But is the root of the evil here an issue of privacy, or of bureaucratic intolerance and social hypocrisy? If we focus on the privacy problem in this case, aren’t we ignoring a much bigger problem?

For Lazarus, there are “serious consequences” to the fact that if you Google someone’s name, “you can see things they’ve posted online.” As he concludes with a sardonic flourish,

No worries. Privacy is so 20th century. Get over it. Better yet, post something online. What could be the harm?

It’s a little odd to hear a columnist for a major newspaper advise readers “don’t tell the world anything about yourself.” That, after all, is what columnists do for a living. Lazarus, for instance, writes frequently about his experience with Type I diabetes—surely an “intimate detail” about his life.

This seeming contradiction makes me wonder about why he objects so passionately to all those people doing what he does: writing about their own lives. Is he worried about their privacy, or about the competition?

That’s a cheap shot, no doubt, as it is to suggest that arguments about preserving privacy are really just canards, sleights of hand aimed at keeping us from seeing bigger problems.

But here’s my question: If it’s OK for him to tell the world about himself, why is it such an unwise choice for everyone else?

Related posts:

1. Facebook Subscriptions: Overdrive for Journalists?
2. Fear and Social Media Don’t Mix
3. The Decline of the Single Editorial Voice

Last November, I challenged myself to write a blog post a day. I am happy to say I met my goal. Although I subsequently fell off the wagon in December (8 posts) and January (5 posts), it still feels like a significant achievement.

This month, I’m setting my sights on Twitter.  I think of myself as an active and enthusiastic user of the platform, but when I actually calculate my daily tweets, the number is unimpressive. A visit to How Often Do You Tweet? tells me that I’m averaging 0.7 tweets a day. That ties me with the estimable Paul Conley, but leaves me well behind even the moderate output of new-media mavens Rex Hammock (7.0) and Adam Tinworth (7.6). And if I can trust the MediaPost claim that average Twitter users tweet 0.5 times a day, that makes me only slightly better than average.

Now, to be fair to myself, I rarely used Twitter for the first year or so after joining in April 2008. How Often Do You Tweet? calculates your daily average by dividing your total number of tweets by the total number of days since joining Twitter.

But even calculating my output for the last six months yields just 1.4 tweets per day. Clearly, that’s not enough if I want to consider myself a genuine participant in the conversation.  But how many daily tweets is enough?

According to Dan Zarrella, “Users who tweet between 10 and 50 times per day have more followers on average than those that tweet more or less frequently.” Now Zarella notes that the optimum number of daily tweets appears to be 22 (and can it be sheer coincidence that the the wily and ultra-productive Mark Schaefer tweets exactly—you guessed it—22 times per day?)

Realistically, I will never hit that level. It’s just not in me. But 10 tweets a day should be doable.

I’m not sure one’s number of followers is a good proxy for effective use of Twitter, but let’s assume that it is. If I tweet at least 10 times per day, how many more followers will I have, I wonder? My count as of February 1 is 255. Let’s see where I end up on leap day.

No challenge is complete, of course without a few rules. Here are mine:

• Every day I must post at least 10 times on Twitter. Ideally I will spread my tweets throughout the day, but I won’t rule out the occasional barrage at 11:30 p.m. (Just hope you aren’t awake and on Twitter then.)
• Retweets and @replies count toward my daily goal; direct messages do not. Twitter’s not strictly about originality or broadcasting, but about sharing. If the world can see it, it counts; if not, it doesn’t.
• Exactly three of my tweets must be self-promotional. I want to follow my formula of one-third of my daily tweets being conversational, one-third curatorial, and one-third promotional. For me, the last of these quotas is the biggest challenge; not, as for many others, because I need to cut down on promotion, but rather because I need to increase it. Marketing does not come naturally to me.
• Escape clause: One day a week, I can make up any deficit for the previous six days (but by no more than 10 tweets total). I hope I won’t have to exercise this one, but realistically, I probably will.

Will my challenge make me a more prolific Twitter poster in the months ahead? Perhaps not. But that may be OK. We also serve who only sit in the back of the classroom and take copious notes. As one Douglas Ferguson of the College of Charleston commented in reply to the MediaPost article cited above,

Defining “activity” by messages “sent” is misleading. Twitter is also for receiving messages. In fact, much of what counts in the media world is concerned with receiving messages, not sending them. No one holds YouTube to the same standard as Twitter, so it seems unfair to focus on messages being sent.

Still, one wants to encourage those students in the back to share their thoughts more often. So here goes my humble effort. (And if you want to check on my progress, follow me. And on the other hand, if you don’t relish the thought of 1000% more tweets from me every day, feel free to unfollow!)

Related posts:

1. Want to Twitter Better? Diversify Your Pronouns
2. Managing Your Career in the Social Media Era: Sources
3. Reports of Twitter’s Death Exaggerated

Now that I’ve mostly finished my first self-published book, the New-Media Survival Guide (only the print edition remains to be done), I’ve had time to identify a few initial lessons from the experience. Some of what I learned I knew already, some surprised me. I’ll have more to share later, but here are my first 5 lessons.

1. Don’t count on making money. As Seth Godin says of non-fiction book publishing, it’s an organized hobby, not a business: “The return on equity and return on time for authors and for publishers is horrendous. If you’re doing it for the money, you’re going to be disappointed.”

I knew this already, in the most casual way, and money was the least of my motives in making the effort. But I can see now that if you want a direct monetary return, your chances of making anything substantial are slim.

Although that conclusion might at first glance seem discouraging, it’s in fact quite liberating. Once you accept that you won’t make much money, you’re free to enjoy all the other rewards of self-publishing—the satisfaction of building something substantial of your own, the technical knowledge you gain, the benefit to your brand, the value you share with your readers, and much more. For me the process was great fun, and well worth the time and effort.

So, you might ask, if I’m not in it for the money, why, instead of giving it away, am I selling it (for the bargain price, I might add, of $2.99)?

Well, first, for the experience. I can’t really explore all the dimensions of self-publishing without selling the book. Second, it somehow feels more genuine to charge for it. If you pay a small but measurable amount for my book, it makes for a more meaningful exchange. Giving it away just wouldn’t feel the same.

2. Self-publishing is both easier and harder than it looks. I’d be the first person to suggest that if you have the slightest interest in self-publishing, you should do it. It’s really not that hard. Armed with, say, Carla King’s excellent three articles on the topic in MediaShift, a helpful primer like Mark Coker’s Smashwords Style Guide, and just a dash of patience, even a motivated technophobe can overcome the modest hurdles involved.

On the other hand, once you get ambitious and want to go beyond the barest, simplest text, self-publishing gets tricky. Unless you’re an experienced designer, you’ll quickly realize you need help to achieve the look and reading experience you’re after.

As a tech geek and small-scale hacker, I’ve enjoyed the challenges, but it didn’t take me long to hit the limits of what I could readily do. You will most likely get acceptable results on your own, but if you want to surpass that level of quality, you’ll need a professional.

3. Multiple sales and distribution channels might be overkill. I’ve aimed to make my book available via as many outlets and in as many formats as possible, within reason. You can buy it on Smashwords in a variety of formats, on Amazon in Kindle format and, soon, print, and on Apple’s bookstore. Again, using all three venues was good experience, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it for most people.

To supply all these channels and formats, I ended up using three different word processors (I’ll explain why in another post), making sure I kept my three versions all in sync as I continued to make changes to the text. After submitting the book, I had to make changes or corrections via three different web sites. And, of course, my potential readers have to decide which of three venues to purchase it from.

If you were to ask me right now, I’d probably advise you to choose between Smashwords and Amazon for your own self-publishing venture. What you lose in potential sales and exposure—probably not much—you’ll gain back many times over in simplicity.

4. Print still has its allure. Now to contradict myself. Though it will complicate rather than simplify your experience, print may be worth the inevitable frustrations. As I wrote last week, I wouldn’t be surprised if self-publishing leads to a modest revival in print. I’m not going to do a Jonathan Franzen here, mind you, but bear with me: print is and forever will be very, very cool. You’d be cheating yourself and perhaps even a few of your readers if you don’t offer your book on paper.

As Carla King and others have suggested, you can avoid some of the complication by starting with print rather than, like me, ending with it. Through CreateSpace, you can simply pay $69 to have a Kindle version produced from your finished print file.

5. Focus on shipping. If you decide to try self-publishing, don’t dawdle the way I did. I spent five or six months coming up with a variety of drafts and approaches, all of them worthy and all of them fatally incomplete. It wasn’t until I made a fairly detailed writing and publishing schedule and committed myself to it that I was able to produce the book. Even then, I ran about a month late.

Your schedule should be realistic but also fairly tight. If you don’t pursue a project like this with some sense of urgency, you’re not likely to finish it. And if it doesn’t ship, it doesn’t count.

Intrigued? Then why not try it? And if you’re not sure, or you have a different take on this than I do, share your thoughts and questions in the comments. I have, I admit, become a self-publishing enthusiast. Perhaps someone should talk me out of it….

Related posts:

1. Will Self-Publishing Save Print?
2. The Coming Content Marketing-Publishing Continuum
3. Apple’s iPad May Help Save Publishing, But Not This Way

Case in point: this interactive graphic from OnlinePhD.org, which steps you through Google’s growth year by year (thanks to Google Tutor for the lead.) The drawing is not outstanding, but the interactivity and engagement are.

Created by Online PhD

Where I think this infographic is on the right track is in suiting itself to the computer. Most other infographics I see are like huge wall posters that you must enlarge and scan up and down to read easily. This one instead lets you click through to a new panel of information. Much friendlier.

I’ve attempted a bit of research on the genesis of this infographic and how it was built, but have come up empty-handed. If you know something more about it, why not share it in the comments?

Related posts:

1. Infographic skills: No longer optional for journalists
2. Three Tips for Simple but Effective Infographics
3. Writing, Photography, and the Art of Thinking Visually

Since then, I’ve had cause to rethink my position. Print, it seems, isn’t dead, but just retired. Though diminished, it still has vital roles to play—especially for writers.

This realization came to me last week as I attempted to lean back and survey my achievement, such as it was, in publishing my first e-book, the New-Media Survival Guide. The leaning back was satisfactory; the surveying less so.

As a vehicle for conveying information, the e-book is superb. But as a device for signifying to yourself or others that you’ve written a book, it is dismally disappointing. The physical heft of a book that is an outmoded and inefficient drawback for traditional publishers and booksellers is, for authors, one of its most precious traits. Just try weighing an e-book appreciatively in your outstretched hand. It can’t be done.

That’s one reason why I spent many hours this weekend formatting my e-book for print-on-demand via CreateSpace (more on that experience later). Until I have a volume, however slim, that I can put on a bookshelf, I won’t feel that I’ve truly published it.

That’s why I suspect self-publishing may end up sparking a modest renaissance in printed books. In terms of units the quantity of printed books will grow ever smaller. But the number of printed titles may well explode as self-publishing grows. No matter what their motives for publishing, most book authors will want at least one printed, bound copy.

Though I plan to put the print version of the Survival Guide up for sale, I don’t expect to sell many copies. For most readers, the electronic version is ideal (ahem: why not buy a copy and find out for yourself?).

But for most authors, I now see, e-books lack one thing that only a paper book can provide: tangibility. A small thing, to be sure. But like print, it still matters.

Related posts:

1. Apple’s iPad May Help Save Publishing, But Not This Way
2. Doubling Down on Print, for Better or Worse
3. Expanding Choice with Print-On-Demand

I have nothing particularly insightful or original to add in the case against Internet censorship represented by the bills up before congress, SOPA and PIPA, but not to say something today would be too miserable an omission to live with. So when I found in my e-mail this morning an invitation from this site’s host, Siteground (an excellent provider, by the way, if you’re in search of one), to speak out on the subject, how could I refuse?

Now, if you have no clue what SOPA and PIPA are or why you should care, I suggest you take a close look at Mike Masnick’s recently updated analysis, “Why SOPA & PIPA Are A Bad Idea, Dangerous & Unnecessary.” For many more links, you can visit the one unblacked-out page on Wikipedia today (found through Rex Hammock’s likewise blacked-out site.)

No related posts.

Today I’m both pleased and relieved to announce the publication of my first e-book, the New-Media Survival Guide. (If you just can’t wait to buy a copy at the bargain price of $2.99, click here now. Not that impulsive? Then you might want to read more about it here.)

My goal in writing this e-book was to give people trained in traditional media—journalists in particular, but also people from public relations, marketing, and other areas—an easy-to-read, practical, and concise introduction to the new-media revolution. If it’s successful, readers will understand that the ways of new media are not be be feared, but to be welcomed.

If you’re skeptical or concerned about new media but want to understand it better, this is a great starting point for you. And if you’re a social-media maven, you may not need this book, but you probably know someone who does. Here are a few reasons why you may want to read or recommend it.

• It can be read in one sitting.
• Though it’s short, it provides numerous sources for further reading.
• To my knowledge, there’s nothing else quite like it (or if there is, please note it in the comments—this is an equal-opportunity blog!).
• For the moment, at least, it’s very up to date.

In coming days, I’ll be reflecting on the process of writing and self-publishing an e-book and why I recommend it. In the meantime, I hope you’ll learn more about the New-Media Survival Guide and let me know what you think of it.

Related posts:

1. Managing Your Career in the Social Media Era: Sources
2. Dialogue vs. Monologue: Six New-Media Principles, No. 1
3. Collaboration vs. Control: Six New-Media Principles, No. 2

Jesse Noyes

For the past week or so, in the wake of Paul Conley’s skeptical assessment, I’ve been mulling over the future of brand journalism, aka content marketing. His doubts were not, as some readers thought, about the benefits to non-publishing companies of treating content more journalistically. Rather, he was questioning whether most companies were really prepared to be more journalistic, to accept journalistic values.

A few days after Conley’s interview, my friend and ASBPE colleague Robin Sherman had this to say on LinkedIn about the concept of brand journalism: “Whatever it is, it is not journalism. It might use some techniques that journalists use, but the goals of brand journalists and real journalists are different. If a journalist becomes a brand journalist, that person is no longer a journalist.”

For journalists, who face ever-diminishing opportunities with traditional publishers, does working for a brand mean they must give up their identities as journalists? Is there really no place for journalistic values in most companies?

These questions came to mind yesterday when I read about the one-year anniversary of the hiring of journalist Jesse Noyes by Eloqua, a marketing automation company. Eloqua is clearly not a traditional outlet for journalism.  But with a background at the Boston Herald and the Boston Business Journal, Noyes clearly is—or was—a journalist. After a year on the job, what, I wondered, would he make of Sherman’s and Conley’s concerns?

In an e-mail, he told me that he actually agrees with many of their points:

Let me tackle this from my personal point of view. “Brand journalism” is a kind of catch-all neologism; it’s used to describe a fairly new, relatively unexplored and broadly defined practice. Typically, when speaking to people in person, I refer to myself as a “brand reporter” rather than a brand journalist.

I think there’s a valid point in saying the goal of journalists and brand journalists are not precisely aligned. When I was hired it was clear I wasn’t recruited with the purpose of exposing the next Enron. For me, the goal of the journalist (traditionally defined) is to provide the public with the facts and context they need to make informed decisions—political, business, consumer and personal decisions—without regard for what “sells”.

But as he then points out, even most journalists in publishing companies don’t meet this definition:

Now, that being said, I would say this makes up the minority of what passes for journalism today. Many traditional journalistic enterprises are very concerned with doing content that sells copies and catches eyeballs for advertisers than truly informing the public, which is part of the pain I think Paul describes so well. (Jay Rosen, who I do not always agree with, makes some particularly salient points on this very issue.)

But I’m not here to defend or argue the points of journalism. The reason I call myself a reporter is because what I bring to my employer are the skills I picked up from my years working for traditional journalistic enterprises. These would include investigative skills, knowing where and how to look for data, how to discover trends, how to pursue and interview various people, how to frame all of the above into a cohesive narrative that informs or entertains or does both. Marketers are trying to learn how to speak to people in a human way. Reporters (or journalists) know how to do this, and that’s why Eloqua came to me.

In the end, he suggested, the important question is not whether you lose your identity as a journalist by working for a brand. Rather, the question is whether you can bring your skills and values as a journalist to helping a company become a better, more credible, and more open communicator.

The goal of a company that hires a journalist is not to win a Pulitzer. It’s to draw people in, to provide some form of value that will establish a level of credibility and intelligence that will create a stronger relationship with the brand’s customers and potential customers. Ideally, reporters should become the employees who do more than research and write articles. They should take their natural curiosity and investigative skills to uncover the needs, desires and pain points of the market the brand serves and report that back to the company. They should also be hell-bent on providing stories and articles that help their readers or viewers do their job better, rather than sell them some product or service at every turn. And, finally, they should teach their colleagues how to do this as well. If this is what happens, I see it as both beneficial for the brand and the brand’s customers.

To the points Paul made, I can see how this frustration arises. I’ve always said that if the brand wants to hire a reporter to essentially write copy for them, it’s not going to work. Journalists are curious people who want to meet people, explore new ideas and tell stories—not sell widgets. If the brand isn’t ready to give a long leash, the experiment will fail. Honestly, I’m not surprised to hear it has.

In the years I was a reporter in the newsroom, I encountered fuzzy areas almost every month where I felt a conflict could arise. In my time at Eloqua, I have never felt conflicted or uncomfortable. My company respects boundaries and doesn’t want to ruin the trust we’ve established with our readers. Any brand thinking about hiring a reporter should understand they’re not hiring a traditional marketer. And journalists considering working for a brand should know they aren’t going to work for a traditional newsroom.

It’s clear that Noyes has given this issue a lot of thought. In fact, he will be participating in a panel on “Brand Journalism in the Real World” at South by Southwest next March 12, along with Twitter editorial director Karen Wickre, Mashable contributor and content marketer Erica Swallow, and Ann Handley of MarketingProfs.

Related posts:

1. Brand Journalism Trend Heats Up in UK
2. Worried That Journalist Robots Will Replace You? Say “I”

The Lytro camera

Until this weekend, when I came across Rob Walker’s brief article about it in the December Atlantic, I had figured the new Lytro camera was more cool gimmick than serious game changer. You’ve probably heard about the technology already. Rather than focusing when you take the picture, you let others focus it later, when they view the image, by clicking on the area they want to see clearly. (Confused? See Lytro’s examples.)

This effect is made possible by capturing far more data than a typical camera. One way to achieve it, Walker writes, is to use “hundreds of cameras to capture all the visual information in a scene,” then use a computer to process the results “into a many-layered digital object.” Another is what the Lytro does: squeeze “hundreds of micro lenses into a single device.”

As technological advances go it’s impressive. But to a photographer, it’s not a big deal. Autofocus usually works just fine.

But Walker’s article made me realize who really benefits from the Lytro: not the photographer, but the viewer. The technology takes part of the artistic decision away from the artist and gives it to the audience. Likewise in journalism, the technology may help shift control of content from the producer to the consumer, as UC Berkeley new-media professor Richard Koci Hernandez told Walker:

Imagine, he suggests, a photojournalist covering a presidential speech whose audience includes a clutch of protesters. Using a traditional camera, he says, “I could easily set my controls so that what’s in focus is just the president, with the background blurred. Or I could do the opposite, and focus on the protesters.” A Lytro capture, by contrast, will include both focal points, and many others. Distribute that image, he continues, and “the viewer can choose—I don’t want to sound professorial—but can choose the truth.”

I’m still not convinced that the Lytro technology by itself is, as Walker says, revolutionary. But it is yet another development that hands more power to the consumers of journalism by giving them more data.

Journalism, of course, has always involved data. Even when you tell a story about an event, as in narrative journalism or photojournalism, you’re presenting the viewer with data. But those data are limited and selective, in the service of a particular point of view about the reality you’re describing. If you choose to focus on the president, that’s what your audience sees. With the Lytro, however, you give them access to far more data; now they, not you, choose what to focus on.

If you don’t think data journalism is going to be a big deal, consider the Lytro and the trend it represents. Technology will not stop here. As it evolves, it will enable everyone to capture and distribute increasingly large amounts of data. And in response, journalism’s role will correspondingly shift from telling stories to giving its audience the data they need to tell their own.

Related posts:

1. Rethinking the Article as the Basic Unit of Journalism
2. Adam Tinworth: Journalism in a Period of Continuous Change
3. Should Journalism Schools Rethink Magazines? (Or Even Journalism Itself?)