Every day, I comb through over 300 blogs in search of media and journalism-related news. Below are my recommended links for today. For more, subscribe to the eMediaVitals Daily Buzz or follow me on Google Reader.
Every day, I comb through over 300 blogs in search of media and journalism-related news. Below are my recommended links for today. For more, subscribe to the eMediaVitals Daily Buzz or follow me on Google Reader.
It’s been a little over five months since BarCamp NewsInnovation, and that has given us plenty of time to mull over the event’s successes and failures. BCNI Godfather Jason Kristufek has already weighted in, and I have a similar question to ask the BCNI community: what should change from last year’s event?
Last year’s BarCamp in Philly was wonderful from a networking and the “Hey, I know you on Twitter!” angle. It was also fascinating to give attention to members of our community who don’t normally get to occupy center stage. CoPress presented to university chairs. Punks like me got to ask the Web Ninjas at the Washington Post questions about their new projects.
Industry giants like The Philadelphia Inquirer opened up their workflow to the world while startups like Publish2 gave us a peak at what they were up to.
BarCamp also fell short on several fronts. The conference was perhaps too open, and I did a poor job of explaining to people how the event worked. But BCNI’s biggest failure was the lack of a product. Some thing to point to and say “Hey, that came out of BCNI!”
So as next April creeps up and wheels are set in motion for next round of BCNI events, we are mulling over some changes and I’d like the feedback of attendees and the community. First, the proposed big changes:
Minor changes:
This is just a small subset of my ideas, but really I’d like to hear what you guys think. Did you attend last year? Did you want to? Are you interested in another event?
Please, comment below or weigh in on Twitter using #bcni.
Its high time I explain what I have been up to. I, along with Rob O’Regan and the rest of Vital Business Media, have been busy launching the first editorial product of the company: eMedia Vitals.
In short, eMedia Vitals is a site dedicated to helping online publishers and I think most of readers of this blog will find something of value there. The idea is not to cover layoffs or daily media gossip. Instead we aim to aggregate and report on the topics that can make your media product better and more profitable.
Less chatter about what to do in this ever changing media landscape, and more about who is doing it and how.
A brief tour:
Feature Stories:
At least twice a week we post multi-source feature stories. Thus far I have written stories on the Las Vegas Sun’s 702.tv, how to design a better article page, audience development tools for Twitter and so on.
Blog Posts:
I’ve begun a project tentatively titled “The Revenue Department” where I find all of the non-tradition (read: not advertising) ways publishers can make money from content. I then write up a case study of sorts if I can find a subject.
Daily Buzz:
Every morning the Vital team filters 100 + feeds to give you the “must read” news of the day. Nothing about layoffs or furloughs, but news you can actually use to make your media product better.
Best of the Web:
My personal favorite, these are links that the team comes across every day that have timeless appeal to help you in your media business. If were writing a textbook on the new media landscape, I would cite these articles as sources. You can print these out, hang them up, and they would be useful for years.
So please, head on over to eMedia Vitals and let me know your thoughts.
I swear there is a reason why I have been so quiet. Well, actually make that “reasons.”
One, TechnicallyPhilly is doing as well as any of us could hope when it comes to traffic and community response, so we are making our first moves towards monetization with the slow rollout of our advertising infrastructure. This has been both an exciting and frightening prospect as it is now time to see if we are all as smart as we hope we are. Of course, as we surmised at BCNI, ads are just the first and easiest baby step, and there are many more ideas in the pipeline that I will be certain to share here once we release them.
Thus far, the only equity we have put into the business is sweat and dinners for our bi-weekly meetings. But as we said in our post announcing the effort to our community, we don’t want this to be a hobby or some also-ran of entrepreneurial journalism endeavors. We want this to be our part time job. Or, if we are lucky, a full time gig one day.
Speaking of full time gigs, I’m very happy to announce that I was hired early last month as an Editor at Vital Business Media, a startup headed by Prescott Shibles, former Penton VP of New Media. The job has me traveling to work in their New York City (aka the 67th Ward) offices twice a week, while working from Philadelphia during the rest of the work week.
I really wish I could talk more about what I have been up to, but you’ll have to wait until we launch our first editorial product.
What I can say, for everyone that just recently graduated, is how I got the job. I was put in touch with Vital and their management with someone who was a regular reader of this site. After the hiring, I was told that I was given a serious look because of the side projects I was building while freelancing to pay the rent.
The lesson? Chances are there will be not be a job waiting for most journalism grads. While we can sit around and lament the loss of the “traditional” path, it won’t do anybody any good. Take a side job and then hustle to create your own path. Gather some peers and start your own publication. Organize an event. Start a podcast. Try something. Anything.
Use your newly discovered free time as an incubator for all of the ideas you have about saving journalism and media.
At worst, you fail and you learned that idea X wasn’t valid and you don’t waste any more time. If you succeed, you can find yourself new opportunities.