smays.com

Post number 4,000

In February smays.com will be seven years old. I have not posted every day since that first one in 2002, but I've been reasonably consistent. This is post number 4,000. A nice, round number of absolutely zero significance. But we bloggers must make note of such things.

If I had to guess, I'd say fewer than 10 percent of those 4,000 posts were in any way original. The rest were comments on, and links to, other posts, stories and articles.

The tools have gotten better since I began. There was no YouTube or flickr when I started. Social networking was still more of a concept than a web reality. And you pretty much had to be in front of a computer since phones weren't smart enough or fast enough for surfing and blogging.

Can't wait to see where we are at post number 5,000... or 10,000.

Henry's blog as book

Some months ago I mentioned to Henry that he could have his blog printed as a book. He checked out a few services, pulled out some of his favorite posts and had them crank out a hard-cover book. I think they even have a name for this, "vanity press."

I was impressed by the quality of the paper, binding, etc. The only thing that prevents me from doing one of these is having to select the posts. I'm all about digital and online and all that but I do love the smell and feel of books and it would be fun to have one on the shelf that I wrote.

Putting Ana Marie back on the plane

Ana Marie Cox was covering the McCain campaign for Radar Magazine until it shut it's doors on Friday. AMC tweeted us to her blog for the story:

"It will cost about $1500 to cover just the last day of the campaign, and over $1000 a day for each day leading up to it. While I still blog for TIME's "Swampland" * -- and I will for as long as they let me! -- I am without a source for travel funds. So, you know, anyone interested in sponsoring a foul-mouthed blogger, slightly used?"

Like a public radio fund drive, she offered premiums for different levels of giving.

"Over $100: My instant message screen name, regular personal updates via email and/or instant messages on election night."

I kicked in$150 because I'm a fan and liked the idea of helping a blogger. Seems like I wasn't alone.

"At the moment, donations come to about $2500 -- a thousand past my goal of simply seeing the McCain campaign off into the gentle night come Nov. 4 (literally! sort of!), and just about enough to cover spending election eve out on the trail as well."

Ana Marie is hardly the first blogger to ask her readers to support her work. But I think I would have been willing to pay $5 or $10 a month for a year to fund her efforts. Is this some kind of model for the future? 

Update: 10/28/08

Too busy to post

Spent most of Saturday morning at the Coffee Zone with George, Tom and assorted pals, while George migrated files from the old Mac Book to the new one. There are Windows utils that will copy a lot of your stuff from one PC to another, but then you have to go back and reinstall all the apps, one at at time. Yes, I know there are ways to avoid this but not for Joe the Dumbass (me).

My my first hands-on impressions of the new Mac Book Pro are extremely positive. Too soon for me to try to share much here but once I stop stroking the case, I noticed the new multi-touch pad is amazing. WAY better than even the most tricked out mouse. I'll show you when I know enough to do so.

And the new NVIDIA graphic cards make everything damned fast and beautiful.

From the Coffee Zone it was out to the Prairie Garden Trust to work with Henry on a little video project. We'll post it here when it's done (assuming it doesn't suck, in which case you'll never hear another word about it). We had a beautiful fall day for.

So no post on Saturday. A rarity. Sometimes life just gets in the way of blogging.

Should your company blog?

Matt Dickman (Techno//Marketer) is Vice President, Digital Marketing at Fleishman-Hillard in Cleveland, Ohio, and he says the answer to the question above depends on how you answer the following questions (Hint: the answer has to be 'yes'):

1. Are you listening to your online community? - Are you spending a minimum of two hours a day searching, reading Google alerts or using a monitoring tool like Radian6?
2. Do you have something unique to say? - How will you differentiate yourself from other blogs and other companies? This could be your people, the information you publish or other forms of thought leadership.
3. Are you willing and able to say it? - Can you talk about your industry and are you willing to put it out there?
4. Are you willing to be challenged and criticized? - This goes with the turf. You have to be able to facilitate conversation in a respectful manner to grow a community.
5. Are you willing and able to dedicate the resources to succeed? - People always underestimate this one. A good rule for this to succeed is to have one person dedicated to the success of your strategy for a minimum of 4 hours per day (2 hours of which is listening and commenting). That is one half of a full time person's week. Have staffing plans in place as you grow and start realizing your success.

Matt has even provided a decision tree to help his more visual clients with these questions.

The two hour committment referenced in #1 sounds like a lot but I really don't know how a company could get the most out their blog without the primary blogger investing that much time. You can't be a naturalist if you don't go in the forrest. Thanks to David for finding and sharing.

Death by manure spreader

I came across a story submitted to one of our networks yesterday, about an 81-year-old man was killed when he became in the manure spreader he was operating. This just struck me as a bad way to go.

Which started me thinking about "good" ways and "bad" ways. When was the last time you heard or read a story about someone dying in their sleep? Okay, that probably isn't much of story.

Or about some old guy dying in flagrante delicto, which I think means "in the saddle." I assume those stories are hard to report. And the deceased is usually found alone in a hotel room with his shoes on the wrong feet.

While there are few "good" ways to go, some are just a damn site worse than others. So I've set up a little blog where we can post these stores and be glad they weren't about us.

If you spot one of these, please send them my way (Steve Mays at Gmail.com) with "Bad Way" in the subject line. Let me know if I can use your name.

I've registered BadWaytoGo.com but it isn't hot yet.

Blogging: "A basic right of being in the media business"

The always-plugged-in Amy Gahran insists your blog is "Media Career Insurance" for journalists.

"Because in a professional environment where staying findable equals sustained opportunity and flexibility, search engines are a key arbiter of your career. The more findable and linkable you are, the more search engines will reward you. ... And search engines really, really love blogs."

"Having your own blog is media career insurance. It will serve as your "home base" where you establish your personal reputation, track record, abilities, interests, and aspirations."

Ms. Gahran offer some tips for starting a blog. Read her post where she explains each:

1. Get a good domain name.
2. Map your domain to your site, so every page on your site bears your domain.
3. Stick with your domain.
4. Don't work for anyone who won't let you keep blogging.
5. Join the conversation, and link back to yourself
6. Keep your blog going even if you also blog elsewhere

I particularly liked: "Consider blogging a basic right of being in the media business."

Most of the journalists I know and work with do not have a personal blog. I think most of them would insist they don't have time to blog. A few don't think it's "appropriate" for a journalist to blog.

Tie me up and blog me

I think I could count on one hand the number of times I heard or read the word "snarky" before email (and blogging) came along. I subscribe tot he notion snarkiness requires a certain level of wit and charm. Otherwise, it's just bitchy or whiny.

My first snark crush (I'm still not over her) was the Wonkette. The nome de blog of Ana Marie Cox. Ms. Cox was an early blogger who now snarks (last time, I promise) on Time's Swampland. I trot along after her on Twitter and found a link to a delightful exchange with Megan at Jezebel.com.

"Since the world is ending around us, it's important to take note of what parts of our civilization fell and in what order. And, really, there's no one better at documenting mayhem than the original Wonkette (the rest of us are just pale imitations), Ana Marie Cox."

And then there's this exchange regarding McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds:

ANA MARIE: "They really need to stop sending the twelve-year-old intern out to the morning shows. Or cable shows, I mean. I think I was thinking "morning show" because he's getting his ass kicked, in all cases, by heavily rougued faux-next-girls! GIRLS!

MEGAN: Actually, the man just needs to, like, fucking prepare before he goes. Your candidate is out lying like he's Dick Cheney or something, you gotta put your big boy panties on just like Ari Fleischer did and take it. I think the real problem is that Tucker Bounds likes getting spanked by hot women.

I've heard the "big boy panties" reference before but it was "big girl panties." Someone in the Bush administration?

Missouri Reality Stars

One of the (perhaps THE) most important elements of a successful blog is focus. The narrower the better, and it really should be something you are passionate about. Missouri Reality Stars is a good example. From the About page:

"So I’ve been paying attention to pop culture for a long long time. I happened to notice that a lot of people on reality TV are from my home state…the Show Me State of Missouri. Apparently it really is. Being from the same state makes me feel like I should root for them, home team spirit ya know. So that’s what this site is about, finding and promoting Missourians who’ve made it on reality TV."

M.R.S is the love child of co-worker Amy. Droll is the way she roll.

Speaking of co-workers who blog... it's been a long time since I compiled a list. How about hitting the comment link and posting name and url of your blog (Learfielder's only, please). If you can provide links to other Learfield bloggers, go ahead. I'll remove duplicates and post.

Is this the advertising of the future?

Customers blogging their satisfaction. But there's a catch. You have to have a really good product or service. You have to exceed the customers expectations. You can't just shout it from TV spots. You have to make it true. And then others will shout it for you.

Live deep and blog out all the marrow of life

I approach blogging from the perspective that everyone has something to say... if they want to say it. And say it publicly. I take undeserved satisfaction from helping (or just encouraging) someone get started. Perhaps it's a bit like midwifery (which sounds like a Harry Potter word). You didn't create the baby, and you don't get to raise the baby, but it is satisfying to play even a tiny role in the process.

Trish Wareing is friend from long ago and far away. A year or so ago (?) she found her way here and a tiny blogging spark began to glow. After twittering away for a bit she has waded into the blog pond. She would have us believe she is the Ted Kaczynski of blogging (reclusive). We hope her ideas will be less explosive.

Please approach this new blogger as you would a a small woodland creature. No loud noises, no sudden moves.

Keep your Blackberry under your pillow

Former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach -- a Republican -- endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday morning. I think my friend and co-worker Kay Henderson broke the story. It got a lot of national play and her blog post generated 3,000+ page views. I'm sure we got a bunch more at RadioIowa.com. I asked Kay how she got on the story so early:

"I sleep with my blackberry. I woke up at 6 o’clock, checked the ‘berry, and went back to sleep.  As I sort of floated out of dreamland I must have heard or sensed the vibration the ‘berry makes when there’s an incoming email. I pulled the ‘berry from underneath the pillow and read the email sent at 7:14 a.m. from a source in the Obama campaign, alerting me to the fact that former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach would be endorsing Obama in a few hours, during a telephone conference call being organized by the Obama campaign.

I called the newsroom and gave Matt – our morning anchor – the details for him to include in our next newscast, then roused myself from bed and walked into my home office.  I started blogging by feel, as I hadn’t found my glasses yet.  By 7:45 a.m. I had a fairly complete blog post up about the news.  It included text from a speech Vice President Dick Cheney gave at a Leach campaign fundraiser in 2003, explaining the Leach-Cheney-Rumsfeld connection.

I kept updating the post through the day.  An addition at the top – the opening Leach quote -- came from a noontime interview.  The McCain folks emailed responses, which got to my email box by 1:50 p.m."

A couple of things in Kay's account stand out for me. If she had waited until she got to the office to check her email, she might not have had the jump on the story. Should all reporters sleep with their Blackberry under their pillow? Well, yeah, if you expect to beat Kay on a story.

And that she blogged the story before having her Cheerios. A whole bunch of political reporters follow Kay's blog.

And while the technology is cool, there's no substitute for having the contact in the Obama campaign.

How I put images with my blog posts (video)

I don't do a lot of how-to's here but I've had a few people ask for advice on how to insert images into their blog posts. I don't think there is necessarily a "right" way to do this but I'm happy to share how I do it.

This screencast (video) runs about 8 minutes and might take a few to download and play. It's Quicktime so you'll need that player if you don't have it.

I didn't get into how you can pull images from your flicker account and include them with blog posts. I might address that in a future screencast.

CEO Bloggers

NBC News did a good piece on CEO bloggers as the kicker to this evenings newscast. Bill Marriott writes his blog posts in long-hand (he doesn't type) and someone posts them for him.

Phil Mooney has been the historian/archivist for Coca-Cola for 30 years and is Faithfully posting away since March of 2006.

So Learfield CEO (and Chief Blogger in Residence) Clyde Lear is good company. Faithfully blogging away since March of 2006.

For some reason the flash code for this player messes with embedded links, so here are the blog mentioned above:

http://www.blogs.marriott.com/
http://www.coca-colaconversations.com/
http://www.growlearfield.com

High Street Beat

Bloggers love few things as much as help a new blogger get started. George and I spent the morning with Jefferson City Mayor John Landwehr (and his wife Peggy) helping him get a blog set up. By the time you read this, HighStreetBeat.com should get you there. If not, this link will.

Hizhonor envisions the blog as a place to share news about Jefferson City...with the world. People, places, events, etc. And he's armed with a Flip Video camera and a YouTube account so look for lots of video. The site just went up today so it's "under construction" as we used to say.

He has a page on the official Jeff City website, called "Mayor's Monthly Memo." But a month is a lifetime in Internet years and memos are waaay too last century. He's looking for ideas and feedback so hit the comment links or the Gmail link on the left side of his page.

Big Time Blogger Hangs Up (spikes/clubs/gloves)

Every now and then a super-star blogger "retires" from blogging. Or threatens to. One of the more recent is Jason Calacanis. From his farewell post:

"Starting today all of my thoughts will be reserved for a new medium. Something smaller, something more intimate, and something very personal: an email list. Today the email list has about 600 members, I'm going to cut it off when it reaches 750. Frankly, that's enough more than enough people to have a conversation with. I'm going to try and build a deeper relationship with fewer people--try to get back to my roots."

Huh. I think this is where I came in on the Internet movie. Yeah, I'd say 750 people might be enough to keep the old conversation ball in the air.

Chris Pirillo wonders if we're getting "too big for our niches?"

"Perhaps it is time to step back and figure out what’s possible in this new landscape. Can we maintain conversation and community at a large scale without things devolving into chaos? Is beating the CNNs and CNETs at their own mass-market game what we really want, or do we need to go back to the idea of finding our niche?"

I don't know anything about A-List bloggers but my buddy Chuck blogs (among other things) for a living and he and his wife work their asses off. I can see why someone might run out of steam if it all got too big.

I find blogging fun and relaxing. I know --or know of-- many of the 250-300 people that visit here. Blogging for bucks? Not for me.

"Freedom is a shitty business model"

Some nuggets from interview at gothamist.com with Internet Technologist Clay Shirky:

"(Blogging is) headed everywhere, because the underlying pattern of cheap amateur publishing is what's important, not the current manifestations. The word blog itself is going to fade into the middle distance, in the same way words like home page and portal did. Those words used to mean something relatively crisp and specific, but became so overloaded as to be meaningless.

So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this -- the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.

The thing that will change the future in the future is the same thing that changed the future in the past --- freedom, in both its grand and narrow senses.

A lot of the fights in the next 5 years are going to be between people who want this kind of freedom in their technologies vs. business people who think freedom is a shitty business model compared with control.

The internet means you don't have to convince anyone that something is a good idea before trying it, and that in turn means that you don't need to be a huge company to change the world."

That last part... about not having to convince anyone before trying something? Probably my favorite thing about the internet.

If you haven't ready Shirky's book,  Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, I highly recommend it.

Let's hold the first meet-up in Montfoort

Last week I started using SiteMeter to get a better sense of who's visiting smays.com. There's a wealth of data that I haven't taken time to explore but I did come across a section that lists where people are "coming from."

Most of these are the result of some bizarre Google search and never come back but it illustrates how connected --if only in this small way-- the world has become.

And for any international visitor who might be reading this... I am very sorry about George W. Bush. I hope we can make it up to the world.

"Anonymity encourages irresponsibility"

"The blogs... the good news and bad news about blogs. First the bad news. The bad news is anybody can say anything about someone and they don't even have to put their name on it. In fact, the anonymity
encourages irresponsibility. And it is pretty frustrating, I'll be honest with you, that's why I just stopped reading this stuff a long time ago.

"The good is, when there are allegations made, in any variety of formats, there are people who know the facts, and step forward, and correct the facts. People who put their name on it and correct."

[Sen. James Webb on bloggers]

Immortal Blog

I'm on track reach 4,000 posts by the end of the year. An average of 666 posts a year (yeah, I know). Let's round it down to 600 and assume I can maintain that pace for the next 20 years. 12,000 additional entries for a grand total of 16,000.

Blogging really isn't a numbers game for most of us. The point I want to make is the investment in time and energy.

I've mentioned a few times my interest in finding a way to keep smays.com "alive" after smays is not. I can leave some money to a friend and ask her to pay the hosting bills. But the blog would be dead for all practical purposes.

But maybe not.

In twenty years, we'll have AI's (artificial intelligence). For a fee, mine will read those 16, 000 posts to get a feel for what I wrote about and linked to, picking up a sense of my interests and writing styles in the process.

It will have access to all the books in My Library Thing, my iTunes and iPhoto, flickr, YouTube, etc.

The AI will continuously scour the web of the future, snatching bits and pieces and posting them here. Surviving friends will be able to correspond with smays.com who/which will reply. You might find him/her/it more interesting. Certainly better informed.

There's plenty of video and audio of smays.com and I fully expect my AI will be capable of reproducing an acceptable version. So you can talk or iChat with me as well.

Will this be the next evolutionary leap. I don't see why not. Reminds me of my favorite line from Blade Runner.

Dear Diary, nothing happened today

Most bloggers struggle from time to time to come up with something worth sharing. Trying to post daily can be a challenge. But I'm not sure why that should be so. Who doesn't have at least one interesting thought every day? Or see something that would be a photo worth sharing? Or come across a news story or blog post?

I mean, if nothing happens in the course of my day that's worth noting... perhaps I should take another look at how I'm living my life.

Blogging is not for everyone. But it has made me more conscious. More aware of my surroundings. I don't expect a life-changing event every day, but a day without a blog post would be an empty day indeed.

Too busy for bingo

While checking in at Keith Povall's Sturdy Soapbox, I spotted a mention and link to Millie Garfield, one of the Internet's oldest bloggers (82), according to something called The Ageless Project. Millie was featured in a piece on ABC, pecking away on her Mac, blogging, making videos and doing the online thing. She came across very sharp.

Millie has a second blog called "I Can't Open It" (dot com) which has a bunch of videos of products that are damn near impossible to open. Now, before you start any of that "you're just getting old" shit, just stop.

I bought a couple of ethernet cables this week and they came sealed in those clear, hard plastic shells. I went at these bastards with a carpet knife (the kind they use to topple sky scrapers) and it still took me 15 minutes to slice my way in. You might get in with a pair of tin snips or a cutting torch, but scissors? Fuhgetaboutit!

I plan to be right here, tapping away, when I'm eighty-two. Blog on, Millie!

Blogosphere as "giant wire service"

Clyde Bentley, a Missouri School of Journalism professor who researches user-generated news, speaking at the Future of Journalism conference at Harvard, June 20-21:

The debate over bloggers' influence "is over," he said. "Blogging is a numbers game. It's there and we'll just have to deal with it." Noting that 120,000 new blogs a day dwarf the country's 1,427 dailies, he said editors should treat the blogosphere like a giant wire service. Bentley said that while consumer demand for content decreases, their demand for content navigation increases. "There will always be a place for the journalist who can craft a story better than anyone else, but there will be a bigger place for the journalist who can help media consumers find the information they want."

Poynter: Centerpieces

Sports fan blogs (NPR Audio)

Interesting story on NPR this morning about a sports blog called The LoHud Yankees Blog. The blog seems to be a collaborative effort by Journal News beat writer Peter Abraham and a shit-load of fans. According to the NPR piece, a post can get as many as a thousand comments and readers will post to the blog form the stands, in the middle of a game.

I have a theory about blogs like this one. If the Yankees organization tried to create  such a successful blog, they couldn't. Wouldn't matter how much money they threw at it. There is some organic quality to really successful blogs like this one that is damned hard for big institutions to foster.

Smart companies will find and encourage and support efforts like this one. Is there a risk that someone will post something unflattering about the Yankees? Of course. But get a clue... they'll do that anyway.

Most of the pro leagues have some sort of dumb-ass policy regarding live-blogging of games by reporters so I'm a little curious how the Journal News is pulling this off. If Mr. Abraham or someone from the paper stumbles across this post, I'd love to know the answer. Could it be the Yankees are smart enough to know a really good thing when they see it?

300

Anybody who tells you they don't check their blog stats is lying. I look for the same reason you look in a wastebasket when you hear a noise coming from it.

I moved from Blogger to Typepad about 5 years ago and it has a little stats page. The metric I find most interesting is Average Page Views per Day. One hundred page views could be ten people looking at ten pages or one hundred people looking at one page. But I sort of figure most folks look at the home page for anything new and move on. Page Views = Unique Visitors.

For the last few years I've hovered around 299 PV per day. Always close to 300, but never quite there. Until today. No idea if this number will hold but it's something of a relief to --even for a few hours-- reach that number.

And now that I have, I'm going to try to think of you as those extremely gay, semi-animated Spartans in the movie "300."

"Scared to let our people blog"

Kevin O'Keefe points to an excellent post by Liz Strauss, an expert in corporate online communications.

Whether they say the words or not, many companies are afraid to let their employees blog. Liz wonders "is the blog the problem?"

"Look to the people. Isn’t the issue one of trust and control? The employer is concerned about what employees might write on the blog.

We let employees talk to customers daily — answering email, answering phone call, answering questions at exhibits, and answering letters at the office. We trust what they write on behalf of our company. We once worried in the same way about the telephone and email.

It comes down to hiring and training employees who make good decisions.

If we trust our ability to choose the right employees and to let them know the values that we hold for our company and our customers, the question of whether we should let them blog falls away as an issue.

A blog is a powerful, customer-facing tool. Like a computer, it’s as strong as the people we choose to use it."

Kevin was told recently of one senior lawyer who was told by the firm that they would not be permitted to blog. 'The firm does not allow its lawyers to blog.'

The lawyer responded with a question. 'Why am I working at a place that does not trust me to talk about what I do - about a niche in the law I am passionate about?'

"The Beltway-Blog Battle"

Writing in Time Magazine, James Poniewozek has an interesting take (The Beltway-Blog Battle) on the passing of Tim Russert.

"...the press lost its most authoritative mass-market journalist, just as it is losing its authority and its mass market."

The New Meida vs. Old Media argument got tiresome a long time ago, but Mr. Poniewozek offers a fresh take. A few paragraphs to wet your whistle:

"In their original division of labor, the old media broke news while the blogs dispensed opinion. But look at two of the biggest stories of the Democratic primary: Barack Obama's comments that working-class voters are "bitter" and Bill Clinton's rope-line rant that a reporter who profiled him was a "scumbag." Both were broken by a volunteer for the Huffington Post website, Mayhill Fowler.

Traditional reporters were aghast at Fowler's methods--the Obama meeting was closed to press (she got in as a donor), and Fowler did not identify herself when speaking to Clinton. But mainstream media had no problem treating the scoops as big news; if she had overheard both quotes in the same way but told them to a newspaper instead of publishing them, that would have been considered a coup.

The case against Fowler, in other words, was about process and credentials, not content. If sources stop trusting us, reporters asked, how will we do our jobs? But however sneaky her methods, Fowler's stories prove that one reason sites like Huffington have an audience is the perception that Establishment journalism has gotten better at serving its powerful sources than its public. Fiascoes like the Iraq-WMD reporting gave many the impression that the old rules mainly protect consultant-cosseted public officials who need protection least."

[For more on the Mayhill Fowler story, here's a bit of audio with Arianna Huffington, speaking at Guardian News & Media's internal Future of Journalism event on 18th June 2008.]

Mr. Poniewozik poses this rather rude question regarding MSM: "...if 3 million people read Drudge and 65,000 read the New Republic, which is mainstream?"

Obama-McCain Twitter Debate

Personal Democracy Forum/techPresident: "Starting tonight, a designated representative of both of the major presidential campaigns are going to participate in a free-wheeling debate on technology and government, moderated by Time magazine blogger Ana Marie Cox and channeled via Twitter."

This is probably one of those ideas that sounds more interesting than they turn out to be. But I'll be following along, just because I have the hots for AMC.

This blog's reading level: Elementary School

I checked this a couple of years ago with the same results. The reading level of smays.com is elementary school, according to this website. The high end of the scale goes up college (maybe grad school?) and I think elementary school is the low end (do pre-schoolers read?).

I know it doesn't sound like it, but I think it might be a good thing to write at a level that third graders can follow. I assure you, I'm not trying to write down to anyone. The words you read are the ones in hear in my head. Hmm. See smays blog. Blog smays, blog.

"Downloads, podcasts and embed video"

That was part of a promo I heard on MSNBC tonight. First time I noticed the phrase, "embed video." Even the networks are figuring out it's a good thing to have your video embedded in millions of blogs and websites.

I'm sure there is still a lot of "...no, no! We want them to come to OUR website!" But the web IS the network now and your affiliates are are all those blogs.

Writing for how people read online

Interesting little post at Slate on how people read online (and how to write for them). Readers tend to be "selfish, lazy and ruthless."  When you arrive on a page, you don't actually deign to read it. You scan. If you don't see what you need, you're gone.

"This blogging stuff"

Springfield Mayor Tom Carlson got all Rottweiler'y on the local press recently and among his complaints, anonymous bloggers:

"On top of that, we have this Internet thing that's going on now, this blogging stuff. Used to be, if you wanted to say something, you had to put your name it ... now, there's this anonymous character assassination that's encouraged, in order to sell newspapers or other media outlets."

It's been a while since I heard/saw "this Internet thing." One of my favorite expressions. But His Honor and I do agree on the anonymous blogging issue. He has no way of knowing if the blogger who is ripping him a new one is his opponent. And we have know way of knowing if the blogger who supports his every action is his press secretary.

If bloggers aren't journalists...where's YOUR video?

Lightning started a fire at the Magellan Petroleum factory in Kansas City, MO and uber-blogger Chuck Zimmerman share this video shot form the downtown Marriott hotel.

Coppyblogger Twitter Writing Contest

Congratulations to Ron Gould, first place winner the Coppyblogger Twitter Writing Contest. His winning entry:

“Time travel works!” the note read. “However you can only travel to the past and one-way.” I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill.

Second place honors went to Anthony Juliano:

"Tony was a snitch, so I wasn’t surprised when his torso turned up in the river. What did surprise me, though, was where they found his head."

Thelonius Monk took third place for:

"When Gibson hit that homerun in the fall of eighty-eight, my old man had never been so happy. He hugged me for the first time. I was eleven."

The challenge was to write a story in exactly 140 characters. I fear my humble submission was too... belittling? Too pissy? We'll never know.

"To my immediate left, a hipster dwarf leaned into his urinal, cleverly achieving a haunting reverb for his "big" finish to Unchained Melody."

New media can't get here soon enough

Proto-blogger Dave Winer thinks the real problem revealed by Scott McClellan's new tell-all book is that the press was complicit in beating the Iraq war drum:

"But corporate-owned media isn't interested in helping us make decisions as a country, they're only interested in ad revenue. That's why it's so important that we're creating new media that isn't so conflicted, and why the question of whether bloggers run ads or not is far from a trivial issue."

When it comes to national media, there really are not that many outlets that need to be manipulated. Four TV networks; maybe that many cable news channels; a handful of newspapers with national reach. If you can juke them, you've got a lot of the country juked.

The sooner their influence is diminished, the better. There will no longer be even the illusion of "national media" and people will have to work (a little) at being informed. Sure, the willfully clueless will still head for blogs and news sites that confirm their view. But the rest of us will stop trusting (if we haven't already) news organizations that are child's play for political spin-miesters.

Blogger's High

E-Media Tidbits points us to an article in the May 2008 Scientific American, by Jennifer Wapner (Blogging: It's Good for You): 

"Blogging may make us feel better because it acts as a substitute or placebo for real satisfaction. Or, according to one neuroscientist cited by Wapner, our limbic (primitive) brain may have an innate need to communicate -- akin to our drives for food or sex. Thus, as we blog, our bodies may release the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine."

Damn. I feel better already.

The Digital Cottage Industry

I've posted frequently about my friend Chuck, who --with his wife Cindy and a SWAT team of free-lance bloggers-- have built a thriving business providing blogging, podcasting and related services to a growing list of clients.

"Cindy and I have been going over calendars and we just realized that we have 23 events scheduled to blog in the next 3 months. Yeeow. Just the hotel reservations, credentialing, registering, airline reservations, etc. are a task. We’ve also got 5 website projects underway just to add to the fun."

Can you make money blogging? For most, the answer is "not likely." For the few, the proud, the Marines... yes. Booyah!

"We make money because we blog, not from our blog."

"We make money because we blog not from our blog. We earn because we learn from sharing our experiences with others, not because we let advertisers hitch a ride on our writing for a fee. No one pays attention to the ads, so it doesn't matter if you include them or not." Dave Winer quoting Doc Searls

The very essence of blogging.

New report calls podcasting growth "massive"

The guys at Podcasting News share highlights from a new report by Universal McCann that suggests new media is becoming mainstream media. Among the research highlights:

"Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and a collective rival to traditional media (184m bloggers world-wide, China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42m bloggers) – 73% have read a blog, 45% have started a blog."

Key social platforms mentioned in the report: Blogging; Micro Blogging; RSS; Widgets; Chat Rooms; Message Boards; Podcasts; Video Sharing; Photo Sharing.

If you're in media now and these terms are foreign to you, or seem silly and pointless, the Cluetrain doesn't stop here anymore.

The Heartwarming Story of a Boy and his Digital Camera

My blogging buddy Chuck spent a couple of days this week covering an ag event in D.C. I followed him on Twitter and his blog. Chuck and his wife Cindy make a nice living doing event blogging and podcasting. But they work their asses off. Here's some of Chuck's output this week:

• 370 digital photos, 215 of them loaded into 2 Flickr sets
• 15 audio interviews/press conference recordings
• 2 live video/audio streamed press conferences
• 1 YouTube video
• posting/udpating on 5 different blogs
• 1 recorded/edited podcast
• 2 client site media production training sessions
• 12 mobile service story updates

Like most bloggers, Chuck is happy to help newbies and will tell anyone how he makes his magic. But only the few, the brave, are willing to work this hard.

A blogging case study, close to home

I'm always on the lookout for good (or bad) blogging stories. I found one in our own back yard during the last few days. The story isn't complicated but I think our corporate blog tells it better than I can. Just read the original post and the comments. It's all there.

I'm really proud of how our company and our CEO has used the blog to explain a difficult decision, and allow interested parties to tell us how they feel about it. I've been thinking about how this would have been handled pre-blog.

We might or might not have put out a news release. This had to do with an unpleasant decision. If the public wanted to tell us how they felt about it, they could write a letter or send an email, to which we might or might not have responded.

Whatever communication took place, it would have been slow and not very public. With a well-established corporate blog, our CEO just put it out there. The reasons for the action we took... comments... and his response to some of those comments.

Not everybody is happy with the outcome but nobody can say we haven't been open about it. As an employee --and blogger-- I'm proud of how this was handled.

Full disclosure: My wife works for a law firm that represents one of the companies mentioned in the post and comments.

"If it's relevant, I'll read about it on Twitter"

Chris Pirillo was --and remains-- an early thought-leader for me. Blogging, RSS, video... Chris was always out there on the front edge. So, when he says Twitter has become one of his primary sources of information, I'm inclined to listen.

"Back in ‘the day’, we used to have to visit web pages to get our information. Those pages didn’t tell us when they updated, so we had to find out manually. Then, along came RSS. The idea was you could subscribe to something, and it would tell you when there was a new update. Now comes Twitter, with its flood of information that allows me to spot trends in general. Twitter has supplanted the information I used to receive in my news aggregator. I don’t follow many websites anymore, and don’t really ’subscribe’ to anything. For me, if something is going to be relevant, I’m going to read about it on Twitter. With Twitter, I’m able to follow people much easier. As disorganized as it is, it’s easier for me to learn about personalities. You can understand thoughts and feelings much easier than you could with a simple RSS feed."

I'm not quite there yet, in part because I don't "follow" as many people as Chris does. But I'm starting to see what he's talking about.  A few of the folks I follow on Twitter are very plugged in and I can count on a line or two with a link when something in their area of interest breaks.

Blogger sweatshop

Follow-up to the NYT story on bloggers.

When is it time to unplug?

From a Reuters story about a new grass-roots movement in which tech geeks, Internet addicts, BlackBerry thumbers and compulsive IMers are unplugging (if only for a day)

"I realized it was a problem when I would sit down to check my email and it was almost like I would wake up six hours later and find I was watching videos of puppies on YouTube.

"I'd try and think what I had been doing for the past two hours and I had no idea. I associate that kind of time loss with blackouts when you're drunk."

"I have dream blogged. I have surfed the Internet in my dreams sometimes. If I start hearing imaginary incoming message chimes on my computer when I am out in the back yard, it tells me I have spent too much time online."

I've posted before that I can't quite remember what I did before I started blogging. And it's even harder to recall what I did before the Internet captured my attention (and time). That's probably not a good sign. But what was I doing with my time before I got my first computer, sometime around '85 or '86?

Perhaps I'm just rationalizing, but I think the time I've spent online, blogging or reading blogs (and news), has been positive for me.

I'm less argumentative. Perhaps because I dump my views and opinions here and, somehow, feel less need to yak about them. I'm better informed about many more topics. I watch less television.

Some of my best friends are people I've met online.

But the greatest personal benefit has been the creative outlet. Bearing mind that "creative" is relative.

[Thanks, Chuck]

Popular Christian TV host comes out

From Out & About: "Local Nashvillian and host of The Remix, a popular Christian youth show, Azariah Southworth, announced today that he has come out.

“This has been a long time coming. I’m in a place where I’m at peace with my faith, friends, family and more importantly myself. I know this will end my career in Christian television, but I must now live my life openly and honestly with everyone. This is my reason for doing this,” Southworth says.

Southworth has been hosting and producing the popular Christian TV show, The Remix for a year and a half. It is in syndication and can be seen in more than 128 million homes worldwide. It averages more than 200,000 viewers weekly on one of three networks."

As I read this I recalled my recent exchanges with anonymous (ok, pseudonymous) political bloggers who justified blogging from behind the curtain with concerns for their jobs.

Props to Mr. Southworth. That takes courage.

Seth Godin: "Write like a blogger"

I quote Seth Godin so often I gave him his own tag. And sometimes he writes/thinks something so dead-on that I have to quote the entire post. Every word is gold:

"You can improve your writing (your business writing, your ad writing, your thank you notes and your essays) if you start thinking like a blogger:

1. Use headlines. I use them all the time now. Not just boring ones that announce your purpose (like the one on this post) but interesting or puzzling or engaging headlines. Headlines are perfect for engaging busy readers.
2. Realize that people have choices. With 80 million other blogs to choose from, I know you could leave at any moment (see, there goes someone now). So that makes blog writing shorter and faster and more exciting.
3. Drip, drip, drip. Bloggers don't have to say everything at once. We can add a new idea every day, piling on a thesis over time.
4. It's okay if you leave. Bloggers aren't afraid to include links or distractions in their writing, because we know you'll come back if what we had to say was interesting.
5. Interactivity is a great shortcut. Your readers care about someone's opinion even more than yours... their own. So reading your email or your comments or your trackbacks (your choice) makes it easy to stay relevant.
6. Gimmicks aren't as useful as insight. If you're going to blog successfully for months or years, sooner or later you need to actually say something. Same goes for your writing.
7. Don't be afraid of lists. People like lists.
8. Show up. Not writing is not a useful way of expressing your ideas. Waiting for perfect is a lousy strategy.
9. Say it. Don't hide, don't embellish.

What would happen if every single high school student had to have a blog? Or every employee in your company? Or every one of your customers?"

Pseudonymous (triple word score)

I've been corresponding with a few political bloggers who I chided for being anonymous. Because, they explained, their ideas are so controversial, so inflammatory, so powerful... they risk their jobs or worse if they sign their names. But --they insist- they aren't anonymous. They are "pseudonymous." I had to look it up in the dictionary:

pseudonymous - writing or written under a false name
anonymous - not identified by name, of unknown name

So, if I write something and don't sign any name to it, that's anonymous. And if I sign a false name, that's pseudonymous. Yes?

Is this a distinction without a difference? Or, if I sign my letters "The Shadow," readers won't know who I am but they'll know the letter was written by someone who calls himself "The Shadow." And if I don't sign the letter at all, the reader will have no way of knowing subsequent letters were written by the same person. Is that it?

I went to two of the smartest people I know for clarification. First, Bob Priddy, a long-time broadcast journalist and author:

"One hides behind a fake name. The other hides behind no name. Steve is a name. Anonymous is a word.
 
It's the difference between hiding behind a red curtain or hiding behind a blue curtain. I suppose those who use pen names do so because they don't want to be anonymous. It's much more rewarding to hear people discussing who Howard Beale is than it is to hear people discussing who anonymous is because anonymous can be anybody and Howard Beale is somebody. Nobody discusses anonymous. Everybody discusses Howard Beale and therefore the sniper feels some kind of importance. Both are gutless but one is gutless with an ego.

My friend Kay Henderson (also a journalist) wrote this:

"I have never heard or seen the word "pseudonymous" before. Interesting. My first thought was of George Eliot who wrote under the male pseudonym because writing, at the time, was a "male profession." My second thought was "Primary Colors" was written by "Anonymous" as you'll recall.

I may be behind the times here, though. Is "Alice Cooper" or "Marilyn Manson" a pseudonym? How about "Madonna" or "Cher" or "Diddy" or "Snoop Dog" or any number of professional athletes who adopt a stage name? Our culture has grown so used to people who adopt another name/character/stage name in public that perhaps it's not that much of a stretch to expect it to happen on-line.

Is political "speech" subject to different standards than are considered the norm for the rest of the culture?  I will agree with my colleague that the cloak of a pseudonym is too often used by bloggers. But who will be the blogger police? Perhaps it will take something akin to pulling back the curtain and having Dorothy expose The Wizard to change the on-line culture. Perhaps more sites will forbid "anonymous" posting  in the comments sections. I find the requirement of a name, however, laughable in most instances if you read the "names" which are used."   

I suspect we got such passionate response to this because the phantom bloggers would like to be out. No doubt all of their friends know of their secret identities ("That 'Howard Beale' guy? That's me. Seriously."). Questioning their ethics or courage stings. I'll try to stop.

Can blogging kill you?

Jeez, I hope not. But according to this article at NYTimes.com, some bloggers are working in what amounts to a "digital-era sweatshop" and it's affecting their health. A few well-known bloggers have recently died of heart attacks.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to blog for my supper. That would take a lot of the fun out of it.

Prophetic words from the original Howard Beale

Speaking of Howard Beale. I love the movie Network. I went back to a post in September of 2006 to review the prophetic words of Paddy Chayefsky:

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's no one anywhere that seems to know what to do with us. Now into it. We know the air is unfit to breathe, our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don't go out anymore. We sit in a house as slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster, and TV, and my steel belted radials and I won't say anything."

Well I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crying in the streets. All I know is first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm a human being. God Dammit, my life has value."

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I want you to get up right now. Get up. Go to your windows, open your windows, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Things have got to change my friends. You've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open your window, stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Howard Beale would have been a hell of a blogger. And he would have signed his name.

I am (not) "Howard Beale"

There. It's out in the open. I feel better already. I am the political blogger who posts under the pseudonym "Howard Beale." Because I so passionately believe all the things I write, I can no longer hide behind a curtain of secrecy. I'm out, baby!

I'm still trying to figure out how to work my blogging software so I can start using my real name on my blog posts, so you'll still see "Howard Beale" for a while. But it's me, smays.com.

And I call on my fellow phantom bloggers to pull off their masks and take ownership of their words. Trust me,  you'll feel better.

UPDATE: Okay, joke's over. Even my closest friends didn't spot this as a hoax. That's scary. This ridiculous post (and photo) should be obvious as a spoof. Looks like the real "Howard Beale" is safe for now.