Ever since I marked “journalism” on my college application I have been a frequent reader of the journalism media – the blogs and columns that cover the issues that surround journalism and the media. In fact, my first “real” job out of college made me one of those people who primarily cover the media.

My morning routine often had me firing up Google Reader and reading through 96 RSS subscriptions to be up on the latest juicy news. Most often it was some “huge” mistake that some legacy news organization made that proved they didn’t “get it.” Sometimes it was a Clay Shirky or David Carr column that had everyone fawning. But almost always it was like watching the same movie over and over again but with different characters.

Sound like you? I have one word of advice: Stop.

Stop caring about what the New York Times is doing. Stop taking part in arguments that have no end and stop wondering about nebulous concepts like “Will [insert company X] save [your industry]?”

Instead, worry about you.

Have your own site, your own application, your own initiative or your own event. Whatever it is, make it yours. Once you have something that’s yours you’ll find that it opens all kinds of doors.

I’ll be the first one to roll my eyes at a Steve Jobs quote, but a few months ago Valleywag’s Ryan Tate got into an email fight with Jobs. In the back and forth, Jobs wrote one line that haunts me to this day:

“By the way, what have you done that’s so great? Do you create anything, or do you just criticizes others work and belittle their motivations?”

Don’t just talk about what other people are doing. Make something. Experiment. Collaborate. But whatever you do, don’t just talk about it.

New Threads

First order of business, this site has a new design! For all of you in feed readers, please stop on by.

My old layout got to the point that I cringed every time I loaded the page.  As you may be able to tell, I drew a lot of inspiration from Muxtape and Subtraction.  My goal was to create a site that used very few images, loaded quickly, was valid, and was easy on the eyes.  The design is a modified sandbox theme, and was completed in about four days.

I am considering making this theme available for public release, so please drop a comment it you encounter any bugs, misspellings, or ugliness.  Please be harsh.

Traveling

And now for the slightly bigger news. Come October 1st I will start a typical post-college backpacking trip of Europe (and maybe somewhere else).  I have one brother who is finishing up what would be considered tech school in England, and another that is entering an exchange student program in Hungary.  The plan is to visit them both, see the sites, and possibly take over the world.

This also means that I will be moving out of Philadelphia, and I have absolutely no idea where I will be living when I return.

On top of that, during the last week in August I will be driving from Philadelphia to Seattle with a group of friends to attend the Penny Arcade Expo.

Whew.

photo by TonytheMisfit

For some odd reason my post Blog is the new magazine was consistently my highest trafficked post.   If you look under “Greatest Hits” in my sidebar, it’s on top.  I couldn’t figure out why until I saw that I was getting hits from Google for the term “magazine”.

I Googled the term only to not find a link to my site in the first 10 pages.   Then I clicked image search, and I saw the image I used in that post (now removed) as the second result.  The hits we’re not “legitimate” but were just people scraping the image from Google search.  Usually not a big deal, but then the hotlinks started to come.

Seriously, I warned them.