Because we have such a specific niche, we are often the first interaction a local company has with the press. Many times we are dealing with first-time entrepreneurs who are responsible for their own marketing and media outreach. Typically, these entrepreneurs are programmers or business majors who don’t know anyone in the media and, as a result, are unfamiliar with how most media outlets operate.

Recently, at the end of one of my interviews, an entrepreneur I was speaking with turned the tables on me and asked me for advice for building a good relationship with the press.

Below is a synopsis of our conversation that I thought may be useful to other startups. Hopefully it leads to better business profiles and an amicable relationship between press and startups.

The very first thing you should know: journalists are an ethical bunch, sometimes annoyingly so. There are strict rules that journalists often follow. As a rule, journalists won’t let sources dictate when stories will run. They will often double check your claims, especially when given numbers. To get a feel for the world that journalists inhabit, I suggest paying a visit to Wikipedia.

Remember that your startup is like your child. Most tech journalists speak to three entrepreneurs a day who all think their startup will change the world. Most startups also are unnecessarily protective about seemingly trivial bits of news like hires and new feature launches. Your startup is like your child. Tremendously important to you, but for other people its just another kid. Have pride and be excited, but don’t let your ego and possessiveness affect your conversations with the press.

Keep the description of your business simple.  Explain it to me like I’m a five year old…  who speaks another language … and has been living under a rock. Your best bet is to give me a sentence (i.e. “We help students organize notes”) and provide a use case (“Let’s say Mary is in Math class and she wants to record her lecture…”) For an example of simplicity, I suggest reading the famous “No, shut up” thread about Dropbox on Quora. Also, read this before coming up with your pitch.

Have a demo or the press won’t write about you. I want my readers to read my profile of your business and immediately run off to go use your product.

Good design has an unfair effect on how I judge your company. When you launch, I can’t tell if you have the most streamlined code in the world or the smartest sales guys in the country. The easiest way for journalists to see if you’re serious about your company is design. Make it pretty and the press will give you an unfair pass.

Know what the publication is looking for. Like applying for a job, five minutes of research on the publication will go a long way. Decide what fits into the publication’s coverage area and what’s important to the publication. For example TechCrunch covers consumer Internet startups and places a high value on breaking news. GigaOm covers enterprise and Internet technology and places a high value on analysis. Technically Philly covers tech companies based in Philly and places a lot of value in promoting Philadelphia technology community.

It’s unfair, but there are several “red flags” that make me doubt your seriousness. These include businesses that are seeking press but are stilling looking for a technical co-founder or lead developer. If you’re unable to convince a programmer to help you, what chance do you have of convincing your customers? If your big “feature” is integration with Facebook or Twitter, I get skeptical. If you rely exclusively on advertising revenue, I get skeptical. If your business has the chicken and egg problem (or a “marketplace” business model) where the more users you have the more useful your product becomes, I get skeptical.

Don’t play the press against each other. I don’t think it’s worth it to promise media outlets “exclusives.” Journalists disproportionately value “scoops” and will get irritated if they discover you promised something to a competitor. TechCrunch is infamous for holding companies hostage in exchange for coverage. If you choose to get in bed with TechCrunch, know that you will be angering every other outlet.

Give me discounted product codes for my readers. I can provide my community value for reading me and you can measure the success of your pitch and the popularity of the media outlet. Everybody wins.

Practice your “personal elevator pitch.” You know how to pitch your business, but know how to pitch the founding team. Have a few anecdotes about the founding of the company or the circumstances that led to the creation of the business. Business journalism is often writing the same “entrepreneur saw problem and created company” story over and over. Have a few anecdotes ready and journalists will write a better story and you’ll make a better connection with that journalist.

A journalist is on your side. You’ll be asked questions like “How many users do you have?” or “How much revenue are you making?” Many entrepreneurs get defensive when asked these questions by the press. The press wants to help you. I want every company I interview to become the next Facebook. If I cultivate you as a source and you become successful we both win. Give the truth or know that the user/revenue questions are typically just ways of asking “How legit are you?” If you can’t speak to revenue or users talk about your team or your advisors. Tell me why you will succeed.

No, I will not let you read the story before publishing. And any publication that does is not a real news outlet. Remember item number two? Check your ego before talking to the media.

Follow up with headshots, hi-res logos and screenshots. If an entrepreneur doesn’t send me a headshot, I often snag a picture from Facebook or Twitter.

Questions you should be prepared to answer:

1. Tell me what [your product] does.
2. How did you meet your co-founders? Who are they and what do they do? How old are you all?
3. Where are you located? Why?
4. What problem are you trying to solve? How did this come up?
5. How many users do you have?
6. Who is your target customer? What has their feedback been so far?
7. What’s your plan for next six months? How do you plan on growing?
8. How are you different from [obvious competitor]?
9. Why did you raise money? What will you spend it on? Why did you choose [VC firm, angel investor]?
10. What’s the coolest thing [your product] does?
11. What do you think of [trend in your industry]?
12. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me that I didn’t ask you?

From left: Christopher Wink, Brian Blanda, Sean Blanda at the Eiffel Tower

So, that was fun.

If you have noticed the lack of posting around here, it is because my friend Chris Wink and I have been traveling Europe while podcasting our advice along the way over at We Dont Speak the Language.  Im back now, and if you are looking for some sort of summary of the trip, head on over the WDSTL (the last episode will be released on Sunday).  However, I’d guess if you are reading this blog you are more concerned about media and behind the scenes aspects of the podcast.

This was my first experience with any sort of video podcast, as well as the greatest test of my ability to produce content under a wide range of circumstances.  I’ve written posts in London train stations, filmed an episode in a Eurail train, and co-interviewed a former prostitute in Amsterdam.  While I would be lying if I said I mastered the art of the video podcast, here are a few lessons I can pass on to anyone considering something similar:

Promote, promote, promote. Initially we sent out a mass email to those in our contact lists that we thought were interested.  We also created pages on multiple social networks.  This wasn’t anywhere near enough promotion.  In reality, for every three posts we wrote we should have sent an email to a travel blog.  We should have left comments on other blogs.  We should have hung a billboard on Philadelphia City Hall if we had to.  This is not to say we were unhappy with our numbers.  I cannot speak for Chris, but our hits and subscribers were right around where I thought they’d be.  I was happy with the comments left as well.  However, after about two weeks on the road, the numbers stayed relatively flat.  Had we been more active in promotion our numbers may have been better.

I severely underestimated the work needed to grow an audience in the short term.  Most projects I have had were long term in scope and, foolishly, I was never in a rush to attract hoards of viewers.  I was big believer in getting the ball rolling and then letting traffic grow organically.  But WDSTL taught me that your promoting to content creation ratio should be somewhere around 25/75.

You need tons of hard drive space. According to the “WDSTL” folder on my external hard drive we created just under 30 gigs of content.  Additionally, when editing video you need a large portion of your hard drive available as a scratch disk.  Luckily, Wink had a laptop with a decent amount of space and I lugged along an external hard drive.  As a rule, I’d say each minute of video you wish to produce in your episode you need at least a gig.  Sounds obvious, but the first time I received the “out of disc memory” warning it blindsided me.

Carpe Wifi. The odd thing about trying to maintain an Internet property on the road is that you, um, need the Internet.  The hostels we were staying in often had shoddy connections, if they had one at at all. And when you are uploading video that can be as big as several hundred megabytes, a bogus connection can slow you down for hours.  An alternative was to pay as much as $3 every half hour for Internet access at a cafe. I once was so desperate that I walked the streets in Hungary at 11 p.m. with a laptop in hand trying to mooch off of a open wifi connection.

So whenever we found a reliable and fast connection we stopped and uploaded all of the video we could.  Sometimes this caused us to delay our plans, but mostly it was a matter of seizing the great wifi while we could, because we never knew when we would get another chance.

You can produce a decent looking podcast with a digital camera.  We produced all of our video using a Nikon Coolpix s210 camera.  It produced 640 x 480 video that was more than good enough to be played on a computer screen.

Seriously, our tripod saved our lives. We didn’t have a camera man after my brother Brian went home, but our trusty bendy tripod usually fit the role just fine.  To learn about all of our equipment used, check out the WDSTL post.

Being on camera is tough. Aside from once presenting a business plan and speaking at CMA, I have very little public speaking experience.  Although, I was once conned into doing our high school play (I was Kili the dwarf in “The Hobbit” thank you very much).   Being on camera and constantly rewatching myself as I was editing forced me to pick up on my verbal and physical ticks.  Ticks such as talking too fast, using certain phrases repetitively, and not speaking clearly. I also began to dissect my posture so I could appear comfortable on camera.

I still have a lot of work to do, but the only way to get better is to do it.

Be familiar with compression.  I spent more time than I would like to admit recompressing video in Final Cut and Windows Movie Maker.  Before you begin your podcast shoot some test video and try to get the right mix of quality and size.

Be familiar with distribution options. Know that iTunes needs Quicktime video. Know how to utilize BitTorrent.  A true podcast will make the content available in whatever format their views demand.  If I were to start over, I would have done a better job and offered more options than just an iTunes and a XML feed.

Above are just a handful of suggestions.  I do recommend you check out Kelly Sutton‘s work if you want someone who knows way more about video podcasting than I.

Time to put food on the table

Sean's future is in this box.

Since graduating, I’ve been lucky enough to travel cross country, work for one of my favorite newspapers, and podcast my trip across Europe. But I’m done vacationing and exploring for the time being, and it is time to get to work.  I’ve struggled with what my ideal job would be.  Throughout my college career I’ve wavered between what industry I wanted to get into.  Did I like writing?  Video?  The Web?

But I’ve come to realize that I just love information and will do any job that allows me to create content in multiple forms.  This may be through personal projects such as Consumer Whore (which will get a kick in the pants in a few days) or by getting on the staff of a forward thinking newspaper.  But as of now, basic parts of my life such as of where I will work and live in the coming months are a big question mark.

If you excuse me, I have some cover letters to write.

SimplyRSS has solved that problem by adding page functionality, and I am currently using SimplyRSS for The Temple News. I suggest adding your paper’s blog and site feeds to get some more pageviews as well as spreading awareness of your content.

Thanks to Scott Stewart of the Gateway for giving me the heads up.

Mark Dueze , media theorist and writer of Deuzeblog, stopped by Temple Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab (where I work) to speak to the students and to promote his new book MediaWork. The book, as well as much of his presentation, is about Mark’s many interviews with creative professionals such as journalists, video game programmers, and advertisers. And I have to say it was one of the best lectures I have heard in my four years here.

First, he didn’t give us the usually doom and gloom, something that, as a student, pisses me off to no end. He also admitted as a journalism educator that colleges aren’t doing the best job of preparing students.

The video

Below are two videos that encompass the first half of the speech. I warn you, I recorded the presentation with a $100 camera, which was then compressed and put on YouTube. Therefore, the quality isn’t that high. Let me know if you are interested in the raw files.

Part One
Part Two Edit: (problem with number 2, will be fixed tomorrow)

Click through if you’d like to see a summary of his speech.

During his speech he covered the following three main points:

1. Zombification – Journalism as it stands is just like a zombie. Reporters are all doing the things they normally do just waiting for someone (or something to put them out of their misery). Unlike most other new media gurus, he said the content was a bigger problem that the technology behind. He found that journalism is turning inwards. As a example, he pointed to cable news that features journalists talking “as if they were at a bar”. Think of when Wolf Blitzer talks with a foreign corespondent. Thus, as news shows get longer, the actual news being presented is actually shrinking.As part of the “zombification” section of his speech he also noted the coniditions in which journlaists work. Often in buildings with no windows that literally has the reporters cut off from the rest of the world and focused on themselves. For example check out the lack of windows in the new New York Times building (an example he used).
2. Globalization – like many industries, media production is now a global affair. 56% of TV and Movies are shot outside of the U.S. 60% of video game work takes place outside the United States. As a result, there is a huge localization effort. Mark gave the example of Ghost Recon 2 that sold terribly in France because it depected American soldiers. Soon as Ubisoft changed the soliders to French, the games sales picked up.
3. Participation- readers are often looked at a screaming maniacs. Often journalists just care that there work garners a response while not really caring what that response says.

Above all, Mark said, we are all just fans. Journalists love what they cover and would do it for free. In fact, many bloggers, podcasters, and other proponents of new media do it simply for the love. There is nothing seperating the soccer blogger and the soccer columnist for Sports Illustrated. Human beings just want to be heard no matter what.

In closing his speech he offered the room full of undergrads this advice (and I paraphrase from memory): Whatever you are into now will probably gone tomorrow. But thats not necessarily a bad thing because there are a lot of new and beautiful things waiting for you, so go experience them.

Afterwards, I was lucky enought to have a quick chat with Mark and get a copy of the book, which I can hopefully read and review here after the murderous onslaught of finals are over.

While the knowledge of code makes online journalism much easier, I have to say that to be considered a “computer savvy journalist” the only things you really need to know are the following:

1. You are the one who should enable cool things to happen. Being an online editor or good online reporter is taking the question “is there a way to …” and figuring out a way to say “yes”. In most other media jobs there are entrenched traditions and habits that people can fall into. For those dealing with online products those traditions are always changing and rearranging. Take advantage.
2. Services are your friend. What do I mean by “services”? All those Web 2.0 sites like Flickr, Google Maps, and Twitter are what I would consider services. Most of them are free or under $50 to utilize, and all can make your journalism more dynamic. But it goes beyond those mentioned above and if you want to be the “web guy” learn as much as you can about those fringe sites just gaining ground.
3. Keep up on stuff. If you are interested in journalism there is no doubt you already love to read and know how to “keep up” on a given topic. Keep up on new technologies, sites, and services that are coming out. With every one make a note about how it can help you and your peers.
4. Try new things just for the hell of it. I think my ideal Web editor would be someone whose first instinct is to carry out any new ideas put on their plate.  I think too often we can lulled into slapping up an mp3 file and calling it a day when there may be better ways to cover a given story.  Take LA Times and their Twittering (is that a word?) of the California forest fire as an example.

• The best Firefox extensions for online news producers – Joe Murphy, who I interviewed way back when, introduced me to a few extensions I didn’t know existed.
• How to edit audio – From Multimedia reporter, Ron shows a quick fix to bad audio, and all with the free program Audacity.
• How to recover a lost Word document – I do all my writing in Word, and have lost 3 years of my life as a result of the deleted articles I had finished.  via Lifehacker.
• Basic Equipment needed – From the always wonderful Mindy McAdams.  I am honestly just choosing the post that is personally the most useful, but Mindy’s entire blog is a gold mine.  By the way, I can’t second the DS2 enough.
• How to freelance – Because sometimes you need to pay the bills when you write something…

I see a potential conflict in blogging to share your views with the world, but placing a barrier between you and a reader who is looking to contact you.  Even if its just a disposable account a free email provider that is checked only once a week.

So I beg you: if you blog be easily accessible for private communication!

Its also discouraging that many of the people trumpeting new media values like transparency are not transparent on their own blog.

After every sentence, some place two spaces after a period some place one. This can lead to ugly looking paragraphs. To quickly fix this in MS Word:

Hit Control+F and you will be greated with a screen like this:

Click on the Replace tab, on the “Find What” field enter two spaces. On “Replace with” enter one space. Click”Replace All”.

While I’m not too familiar with other text editors they should have a similar function if they are worth using.