Tag: online journalism

SPJ region 3 conference update

COLUMBIA, S.C. — It’s day two here at the SPJ region 3 convention at the University of South Carolina.

Yesterday was great. New people, new ideas. I attended the following sessions:

  • New Media Challenges: I learned a lot more about managing online communities.
  • Preparing for Tomorrow’s Newsroom: A very original and insightful presentation by Joe Grimm.
  • Freelancing for the New Media Age: There was basically no mention of new media, but the freelancing tips were good.
  • Reception: Chatted with students and others while eating chicken and brownie and sipping sweet, sweet iced tea.

I was unable to liveblog the events yesterday afternoon because there is no guest access to USC’s wireless network. I took notes and post summaries of the events when time allows.

What’s on deck today:

  • One-man Banding
  • Mark of Excellence luncheon
  • Reporting by the Numbers
  • The Changing Political Landscape

Then we fly back to Miami tonight and it’s deadline tomorrow!

The CMSes they are a-changin’

Using a blogging platform for a Web site?

Yes.

After first planning to use Drupal, we’ve decided that it is no longer the best option for TheMiamiHurricane.com‘s new content management system.

So, (drumroll), we’ve decided to go with WordPress.

Why? In short, it is the better overall, long-term option. More reasons/details to come in a future post.

I’d like to thank Sean Blanda from Temple University. Sean’s insights and advice — via his blog, a session at the CMA conference in NYC that our news editor and adviser attended and an e-mail response to visuals editor Will Wooten — helped us feel more confident in our final decision.

Some background: I started reading Sean’s blog during spring break, particularly intrigued with the posts about the Temple News‘ experience with WordPress. Ironically, a day or two after reading some old posts, Will e-mailed me and brought up the idea of using WP after doing his own separate research.

Besides Temple, the Sagebrush at University of Nevada Reno also uses WordPress.

Advice for bloggers, part one: Reader stats

I started blogging in November to discuss online journalism, journalism education and other related topics.

Since mid-January, I’ve also been using the blog to fulfill an online journalism class requirement because everyone in class is required to maintain a blog.

Professor Sam Terilli, who spoke to my class Thursday about law and the Internet (see related video), brought up a point that one of my classmates, Josh Newman, mentioned on his blog Friday:

“[Terilli asked] the question that, I think, made most of my classmates (including myself, excluding Greg Linch) squirm a little. ‘How many people read your blogs?’ …Silence.”

Josh goes on to mention Google Analytics. This is a great service, but it’s only one way to measure how many readers you have.

I subscribe to all of my classmates’ blogs via Google Reader and would recommend that they utilize FeedBurner, an earlier suggestion (How to…use FeedBurner) that the class has been using, to keep track of their subscribers.

FeedBurner is great for adding an e-mail subscription widget, something our professor required, but that should only be a preliminary step.

Explore the different tabs in FeedBurner, specifically “Publicize” and “Analyze” — the latter of which shows you how many RSS subscribers you have. The number of subscribers is also available on the “My Feeds” page.

There’s a lot that can be said about the question of increasing blog traffic and readers, so I decided to divide my thoughts into shorter posts.

Stay tuned…

UPDATE, March 23: I clarified above that not all journalism students are required to blog — only the ones in the CNJ 442 Online Journalism class.

Other School of Communication students have their on personal blogs and may blog through the SoC’s Web site.

Also, I should have mentioned SiteMeter as another option for blog/site analytics.

Journalism prof, former Herald counsel’s advice for new (or any) bloggers

Sam Terilli, a University of Miami journalism professor whose background is in law, spoke with my online journalism class Thursday about law and the Internet. He has practiced law for more than 24 years, including 12 as general counsel at The Miami Herald.

After his talk I asked him what advice he would give to a student wanting to start a blog. Check it out his answer, which is relevant to any blogger.

The discussion gets more interesting: Blogging about blogging, part deux

No, this is not a repeat post; this is “The Empire Strikes Back” version (sort of) to my last post, Blogging about blogging.

In that previous entry I linked to a March 12 post — and a great follow-up — by Howard Owens of GateHouse Media. With the first post, Owens responded to Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban‘s explanation (March 10) of why he banned bloggers in the Mavs locker room.

Here are some of Cuban’s comments from a March 13 post that came a day after Owens’ remarks, most likely aimed at the general response to his March 10 announcement:

  • “…newspapers having ‘bloggers’ is easily one of the many bad decisions that newspapers have made over the past 10 years.”
  • “Never, ever, ever consider something that any literate human being with Internet access can create in under 5 minutes to be a product or service that can in any way differentiate your business.” [My reaction: really?]
  • “A blog is a blog is a blog is a blog.”
  • “if I were marketing for them [The New York Times], I would be doing everything I could to send the message that ‘The NY Times does not have blogs, we have Real Time Reports from the most qualified reporters in the world.’ “

I comprehend his point regarding the Real Time Reports title, but this idea still seems contradictory to his “a blog is a blog is a blog” statement.

The Times’ Saul Hansell responded earlier this evening with What I’ve Learned as a Blogger for The New York Times. Here are some of his points:

  • “I’d say that blog is the name of a format for information and opinion that is roughly analogous to ‘column’ or ‘newsletter.’ The format itself doesn’t tell you whether the content is pedestrian or inflammatory, impressionistic or deeply researched.”
  • “…blogs are part of a conversation”
  • “…blogs can be a great extension to articles reported initially for the newspaper”
  • “One of the traditions of this place is an aversion to euphemisms. So call it whatever you want, but if it links like a blog, and is open like a blog, and interacts like a blog, then it is a blog.”

These are all right on the mark, as is one of Owens’ concluding remarks, which came before Cuba’s more recent post: “So Cuban sells bloggers short, sadly.”

Weigh in: What do you think of all these opinions? With whom do you agree?