Everything Best Buy CMO Barry Judge talks about Best Buy doing this or that, think about how a news organization can do or think similarly.

What did you think?

©2009 New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion. All Rights Reserved.

Today is my last day serving as senior producer for MLive.com.

My video explainer (turn your volume all the way up – sorry about that)

WHERE I’M GOING

Since 2007 I’ve been working on my own internet marketing group with three others. We started by building websites for small and medium-sized businesses, and that grew into other things, like search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click marketing (PPC) and social media marketing.

This year, we’ve far exceeded our goals, and we have the confidence to start making this a real gig.

My full-time “job” will be internet marketing for my own crew – Optimal Webworks!

AM I BAILING ON JOURNALISM?

No. I’m not.

I’m going after a dream of mine that I think I have a real shot at achieving.

In the meantime, I’ll still be talking at universities about the new landscape for journalism and I’ll hopefully have more time to share ideas here for using new media to improve journalism.

AM I OPEN FOR BUSINESS?

YES … if the project is right. Contact me through this blog or @shawnsmith or through OptimalWebworks.com.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

It’s been awesome to get to know many of you through this blog and conferences and working relationships. You really helped push me forward and think in new directions.

To my friends at MLive: You all are awesome. It’s incredible to look at what we accomplished in the four years I spent with you despite numerous limitations. Thank you Eric Braun for hiring me and encouraging me. Thank you Mark Hauptschein for keeping me on a upward track and your advice. Thank You Bill Emkow for listening to me, believing in me, and pushing me to do what was necessary – for MLive and myself. Thank you Justin Rogers for filling all the holes I ignored and balancing my madness. Thank you Mike Schiller for being a good friend. Thank you Christine Lasek and Tim Agne for putting up with me and helping me learn how to lead. Thank you Mike Itchue and Jonathan Oosting for hearing me, challenging me and finally taking the reigns. Thank you Kevin Nichols for making me feel welcome. Thank you James Schmehl and Phil Zaroo for some of the best shares in the office. Thanks to everyone who helped me succeed.

To my friends at Advance Internet: I can’t thank you enough for all the opportunities you’ve given me. From sending me to New Orleans during the Katrina aftermath to shooting the shit at ONA conferences to encouraging me to push the envelop at MLive – you guys really gave me a chance to explore and grow. As my time winded down at MLive I realized what an incredible family Advance is. For all the cursing I did in the beginning :), I don’t think there would have been a better place for me to be employed. Getting hired and embraced into the Advance Internet family was one of the best things I could have ever asked for. Thank you Scott Brodeur for engaging with me and encouraging me from the start – even before you were at Advance. Thank you John Hassell for inspiring my Twitter effort and your support. Thank you Joe Territo for giving me an ear. Thank you Steven Ibanez for shooting the shit with me and asking my input.

And thank you newspaper friends I made. You all helped me become a better teacher and a better listener. There’s big success on the horizon. And I know it may not seem like it sometimes, but your efforts really are moving things in a positive direction for journalism and the company.

PARTING ADVICE

To people looking for jobs: If you want a job in the internet world, you have to be passionate about the web and show examples of your passion. In the new new journalism, it goes 1) online 2) mobile 3-tie) dead-tree print & tv. If this isn’t how you think, then don’t apply to work for a website.

If you want some real opportunities to try things online, look no further than Advance Internet.

And another thing, if you don’t have a blog, facebook, twitter, youtube, delicious, digg, stumbleupon and reddit account, get it now or you don’t even meet the status quo. No one is going to teach you. You have to learn it yourself …. that is until I publish an e-book this summer :)

SEE YOU ON THE INTERNETS

©2009 New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion. All Rights Reserved.

Who knew?

Says Forbes about J-School applications:

Columbia, Stanford and NYU applications increased 38%, 20% and 6%, respectively, from the previous year. Same thing at state schools. The University of Colorado (up 11%), University of North Carolina (up 14%) and University of Maryland (up 25%) all saw gains.

Hot diggity dee.

MY QUESTIONS

So this begs a few questions from me to students:

1) Do you believe successful careers in journalism are still possible?

2) Do you have plans for supporting yourself on the salary of a journalist?

3) Are you ignoring the lack of money in the journalism industry? Do you care?

4) Why are you going into journalism?

NOW MY ADVICE

As if you asked for it.

If you’re a j-schooler, that’s excellent. The world needs more journalists who can do good work.

That said, while you’re in school I’m going to give you some words of wisdom I wish somebody pounded into my head: take a few business classes. Take an HTML class. Take a photo and video class. Write a blog and try to monetize it. Don’t let yourself graduate with just a standard j-school degree. Soak up everything you can while you’re in school.

——-

I’m definitely interested in your thoughts though – why choose journalism over other more lucrative majors?

©2009 New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion. All Rights Reserved.

Ever notice how the most interesting articles online seem to command too much of your time? Have you ever stopped reading a long article online because you saw that it was paginated into 8 clicks? ‘Ugh, 8? That’s just too much,’ you might have thought.

If you’re anything like me, this  happens to you all the time.

THE PROBLEM WITH LONG FORM ARTICLES ONLINE

Most of us read longer articles when we don’t have time to do so. For example, a friend might send you an email with a link to a really excellent piece, and you visit the link.

‘Huh, that IS interesting,” you might think. Then you may bookmark it to your delicious.com account or your browser or just file your email into a “To Read” folder.

Let me ask you this, how often do you go back and read those articles in their entirety? My guess is not often – again, that is if you are like me.

Despite my level of interest in a piece, I rarely, if ever, re-visit a long article online. I just don’t have the time. Long, in-depth articles are too overwhelming for me to read. Really.

THE REAL PROBLEM WITH LONG ARTICLES ONLINE

Long articles are usually the most researched and most interesting pieces you’ll find. The New York Times and magazines like Vanity Fair do a great job producing them. If you can make it through the whole read, you’re likely to come away satisfied. But most of us don’t.

And that’s not the biggest problem. The big problem is people like me will visit the long article, skim a little bit, look for pictures, captions, subheads and an easy summary to get the jist of the article, then we’ll leave. We likely won’t click any of the 8 paginaged pages of the article.

And that means you won’t get all the page views you could get if you approached long form articles differently.

This excellent long form article may pull in a lot of unique visitors, but it’s page views that pay the bills (that get advertisers happy).

The answer is more simple than you expect, and it’s not “add more social bookmarking buttons.”

CAN PRINT LEARN FROM TV?

Before I give you the answer, think for a moment what are the most popular types of TV shows right now. If you guessed series, you’d be right.

Think of how many people huddle around their TV each week to see the next installment of ‘24′ or ‘American Idol’. What about all the money producers have recouped by selling DVD box sets of TV show seasons?

Why does this work? Because longer content is broken up into episodes.

Sure, some people will sit on their couch for a full weekend and watch all of season 1 of ‘Heroes’. But more are likely to catch the show each week.

Now, let’s translate this to print, physical or online.

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR LONG IN-DEPTH ARTICLES ONLINE

Long articles usually aren’t time-sensitive. In fact, they’re often stories that could be released at just about any time, especially when it comes to some magazines.

Ever noticed that? A truly interesting article can come about at any time. And what print often doesn’t have that TV does is the ability to promo good content for days, weeks or even months in advance. If you’re printing a big story, and you haven’t told anyone about it, how do you expect people to notice it? Are you relying on social networks to share your stories and give you viral traffic?

Forget it. You want to keep readers interests?

Don’t cut down the stories, break them up.

Print a little bit each day. Give readers one page to read and a cliff hanger, then tell them to come back tomorrow for the rest of the story. And if you have an 8-click in-depth article, let readers know you will have an installment coming each day for the next 8 days.

It’s more likely that over the course of those 8 days, you will get more page views, and even page views of previous days’ articles, than you would if you just tossed the whole darn mess up in a single swoop. And that’s what you want. More page views = more selling power = more ads = more money = staying open.

Want to know what spurred this post? Check out this excellent piece from Vanity Fair about the slipping of the NY Times from the top down. If you can read through more than a couple of the paginated pages, you are a more dedicated reader than me – and most others.

I REALIZE MY FOLLY

This post is already bordering on too long. So I’ll cut it here. What do you think?

btw, excellent bunny image by tm_lv

©2009 New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion. All Rights Reserved.

If you’re still teetering on the edge, start first by watching Jon Stewart’s skewering of CNBC analysts:

You can read the play-by-play of the segment as relayed by Columbia Journalism Review, which post-show said Stewart “(with the help of his writers, of course) is the most incisive cultural critic in the land. Period.”

Time to Get Journalisty

You’re going to read a lot about this segment, and will probably see this video passed around Facebook and Twitter accounts for next few days. What you shouldn’t overlook is the analysis of why what Steward did was so fantastic.

For that, turn to the Huffington Post – YES, THE HUFFINGTON POST, which provides some analysis on how John Stewart’s story calling out CNBC’s reporting resonates so strongly.

Here’s some of their quick points:

•  
  • Great research trumps good access to the powerful
  • The American public is mad as hell right now, so why isn’t the mainstream media?
  • Tear down this wall…of pretending that the media itself isn’t a major player in American society, and isn’t a factor in most big stories
  • The American public is mad as hell right now, so why isn’t the mainstream media?

What To Do Next

Stop hating. For realz. Not that all of you are, but some of us have to remember that anyone can commit acts of journalism. And sometimes the people without the big degrees and background can make a bigger impact on society.

The Huffington Post highlighted a comment on the Romensko blog: “it’s simply pathetic that one has to watch a comedy show to see things like this.”

Really? Why is that?

©2009 New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion. All Rights Reserved.

So do a lot of other people, including public figures … like Congressional members.

Michigan Rep. @PeteHoekstra recently caused a stir for Twittering his visit to Iraq, which some called a breach of security.

But that’s not what’s interesting. What’s interesting is that Hoekstra is essentially making the news himself and communicating it directly with his followers/constituents. And he doesn’t need journalists to do it.

Why Journalists Should Care

I’ll make this short and sweet, don’t ignore public figures on Twitter.

Why?

Take a look at this quote from Texas Rep. John Culberson in The Washington Times:

“Every time I send out a tweet, I’m throwing another shovel of dirt to help bury the old media.”

Send up any flags for you? It should.

Twitter is what Congressional members have been drooling for since the dawn of politics … a clear channel to an audience without media interference.

So What Can Journalist Do

Not everyone is on Twitter. And even people who follow elected leaders on Twitter catch every tweet and connect the dots.

But guess what journalists can do? If you guessed “connect the dots” and digest the analyze the tweets alongside events, politics and legislation, you’d guess right!!!!

Write stories that integrate Twittered comments from public figures and make them accessible to your greater audience. People will think you’ve really got your finger on things, and you’ll look pretty cool.

No prize for this one, except relevancy.

Just something to think about, or ignore. Btw, look out for that flying dirt pile!

©2009 New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion. All Rights Reserved.

But many people still wonder how they can use it for their job.

If you’re interested in Twitter tools, check out my Twitter resources list.

But if you want to learn more about what’s in it for you as a journalist, check out Beatblogging’s recent Twitter series, which includes a decent archive of journalists using Twitter and also some other resources.

Patrick Thorton (@jiconoclast) put together a great screencast on how he uses Twitter for reporting, check it out:

HAVE OTHER IDEAS? HOW DO YOU USE TWITTER FOR REPORTING?

©2009 New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion. All Rights Reserved.

The problem …. who wants to pay for it?

From Aspen Institute President Walter Isaacson in Time:

Newspapers have more readers than ever … The problem is that fewer of these consumers are paying.

“You gotta get away from this notion that good reporting has got to be given away for free on the internet,” Isaacson recently told The Daily Show.

Sounds similar to what the music industry has been saying for years.

WHAT’S ISAACSON’S PLAN?

He wants to charge people “micro-charges” for stories they read stories online, as stated by Daily Show host Jon Stewart. (sounds similar to iTunes, no?)

From Isaacson’s Time article “How to Save Your Newspaper“:

The key to attracting online revenue, I think, is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment. We need something like digital coins or an E-ZPass digital wallet — a one-click system with a really simple interface that will permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog or video for a penny, nickel, dime or whatever the creator chooses to charge.

WHO OWNS THE NEWS?

The current online model makes news orgs too dependent on advertisers, and shouldn’t media org’s loyalties lie with readers and not advertisers? Isaacson asks.

Meanwhile, the biggest ad dollars are going to aggregators like the Huffington Post, he adds.

Stewart proposes setting up licensing deals where content providers can make agreements with aggregators to bundle content get some money back to the original content creators. Would that work? Would any aggregator go for a deal like that?

SHOULD YOU PAY FOR IT?

What do you think? Should you pay for the news through micro-payments online? Would you use an iTunes-like system for reading news?

What other revenue models should news pursue?

Check out Isaacson on The Daily Show and let me know what you think.

©2009 New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion. All Rights Reserved.

They had crazy ideas like “we’re not in it to make money,” and “we probably won’t lose much.”

Would people in the news industry have made the same choices they made through the development of internet news had they known how it would impact the traditional models?

Should today’s news industry seriously start rethinking itself in light of a haunting reminder such as this this video Techcrunch unearthed about the birth of Internet news?

Just some questions to think when reminiscing about where we’ve been and dreaming about where we will go. Here’s the video:

©2009 New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion. All Rights Reserved.

As journalism evolves, so do the tools journalists come to depend on. While the Internet can’t provide all the resources a good reporter needs, it does offer a number of them that can make a journalist’s job easier and more productive.

The following web services have become an integral part of the evolving toolkit for the modern journalist:

SEARCH

The gateway to the Internet is Google’s front door. The world’s largest search engine indexes everything from web pages to forums to blog comments to social media profiles.

I know, I know, ‘No Duh!’ But seriously, search isn’t used to its full potential.

For a reporter seeking background on a source or topic, there’s not a more helpful friend around than the Big G.

What most don’t realize is there’s a whole lot more one can do with searching than typing a few search phrases into Google’s input box.

Did you know that you could search just one site for a specific term? For example, if you want to find that New York Times a rticle on Simon Cowell, try this search – “simon cowell” site:nytimes.com. Here’s a list of more Google search functions.

Try Google Advanced Search as well.

Search doesn’t end with Google, however. Check out the search features on social sharing like Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon for finding resources.

RSS

RSS allows people to subscribe to updates on certain topics, issues, stories and just about anything that can be updated, including photos and video. Stop spending so much time visiting news web sites to read the latest updates. Have the the headlines delivered to you so you can quickly decide what’s worth reading and discover stories that might have been buried in the sites’ designs.

If you’re new to RSS, here’s an explainer on how to use RSS.

The best tools integrating RSS into your workflow include Google Reader and Google Homepage.

ALERTS

Instead of performing a search or visiting a number of web sites each day to find new information on a topic you’re researching, why not have Google, Yahoo! or Twitter tell you when there’s something new you should know about?

Track phrases, people and topics without doing much more than telling alert services what you want and when you want it. For example, if you’re writing a series on Herman Miller chairs, keep tabs on issues surrounding the furniture maker by creating alerts with the term “herman miller.” Depending on your settings, you could get an email each day with a listing of news stories and blog posts that contained content about Herman Miller.

Here’s the Alerts services you should try out:

• Google Alerts
• Yahoo! Alerts
• TweetScan Alerts – Get alerted when your keywords are tweeted

TREND MONITORING

Need an idea for a story? Check out trend monitoring sights to see what people are talking about and what they’re searching for.

Google Trends – Google Trends’ Hot 100 show the top search terms on their network for the past few hours.

Yahoo! Buzz – Part social news voting site, part search monitor. Check out the Buzzlog for a roundup of some of the more popular related search topics.

TwitScoop – Want to know what people are talking about RIGHT NOW??? Check out this Twitter scanner for the most tweeted terms in real time.

Twitturly – Check out the most shared/talked about links on the Twitter network.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

The phrase “It’s all about who you know,” is more true than you’d expect. Part of the key of being a great journalist is having an awesome source list, and it’s all about networking. Get to know people already!

Social networks have made it easier to get to know people than ever before. While some will prefer to keep their social profiles more private, leveraging your presence on social networks can help you find new sources and also get found.

Many people refer to LinkedIn as the professional social network. That’s great for journalists since many of its members list their employers and former employers. If you need to find a former employee for a certain business in your town, this resource can’t be overlooked. Just search for the company and you’ll find SOMEONE who worked there (probably) Here’s some more tips for how journalists can use Linkedin.

And don’t forget Facebook. This social network offers some of the richest demographic searching available. If you’re writing a story about snowboarders in your town, try searching your Facebook network for “snowboarding” and you’ll get a number of results for people who have listed it in their profile. If the people in your search results are in your network, you can check out their profiles (barring they didn’t set up any profile privacy). Just another way to network and find highly targeted sources.

One last thing about social networking, get yourself some profiles! The larger you grow your web presence, the easier it will be to expand your personal brand as a reporter.

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

It’s too easy to overrun your Firefox browser with bookmarked sites, even if you use bookmark folders. What’s worse is once you shovel your bookmarked site into one of your many folders, it gets hard to find.

Enter Delicious (formerly del.icio.us).  

Delicious allows you to bookmark sites you may want to visit again on a web-based service that can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. By using a site like Delicious, you can also review the site, make notes and tag the bookmarks with different terms that you can remember it by.

Let’s say you were bookmarking an article about how to save streaming music from your web browser. Bookmark the article in delicious and you may want to use tags such as “music”, “mp3″ and “streaming+music”. Next time you want to find that bookmark, searching by tags could make it easier to find.

BLOGS

If you aren’t reading and writing blogs by now, stop what you are doing and head over to wordpress.com. Register for a free account and start your first blog.

Top blog sites rival top news sites in all sorts of niche topics, and part of the reason is blogs are often closer to the action than the established journalist.

It can be tougher to distinguish the authority and trustworthiness of a blog, but many perform just as good journalism as some news sites and they shouldn’t be scoffed at.

In addition, it’s a great idea to read blogs because they can point reporters to additional resources, such as linked related articles or government reports.

Many journalists also write blogs to help disseminate news that wouldn’t otherwise fit into a traditional news story.

Lastly, a huge component of blogs that can prove useful is the comments. Mine comments on your news blogs for useful additional information that may lead to a follow-up story or a new source.

MICRO-BLOGS

2009 will be the year of many people saying “I was on Twitter in 2008 and I didn’t get it. Now I still don’t get it.” Don’t let yourself be that person.

Twitter is the ultimate micro-blog, instant mass communication system that makes news delivery exciting, unfiltered and decentralized.

If you’re not sure how you can use Twitter for journalism, check out this ReadWriteWeb post that lists four uses of Twitter:

• Discovery of Breaking News
• Performing Interviews
• Quality Assurance
• Promotion of work

Twitter can also allow you to cover breaking news situations with your cell phone, get stories from regular people, share ideas, get ideas, find new sources and promote your brand.

Get an account and start following people with like interests. You can search search.twitter.com for people in your area and even search other twitter users’ profiles for keyword phrases.

You can also search the Twitter Shorty Awards to find users nominated by the Twitterati as top people to follow.

There’s a ton of news organizations on Twitter and reporters on Twitter that would be great resources for getting started using the service.

After you’ve started following a few dozen people, download the desktop application TweetDeck. Use this to interact with Twitter and you’ll be on your way. Feel free to send me a shout too @shawnsmith. You can also check out my Twitter resources for journalists.

**HONORABLE MENTION**

Google Docs – I know there’s privacy issues with Google Docs, but if you’re a reporter constantly on the go and you use many computers, this is a great way to keep working on your story wherever you are and not have to keep a local copy on one machine.

**BONUS** For students reading this, here’s a link to building the ultimate social media resume, might coincide with some of this stuff, maybe :)

ANYTHING ELSE?

There you have it, 8 web services the modern journalist should know and know well. Is there anything I’m missing?

(awesome image above by Batega on Flickr)

©2009 New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion. All Rights Reserved.