As a polyamorous person, I was rather tickled that this topic got such prominent play. I figured: Cool! There goes a chunk of the vocabulary gap!

If you haven’t heard the term, polyamory means being open to having more than one intimate relationship at a time, with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

Yes, I realize any new term sounds awkward until you get used to it. So: Get used to it. Because here’s what the vocabulary gap looks like to a poly person…

WHEN WORDS FAIL

Whenever the subject of relationships comes up, if I mention something that indicates I’m not monogamous, usually I see raised eyebrows. If I clarify that I’m poly, usually I get blank stares. Most people haven’t heard that word.

…Yes, moving to the Bay Area has helped ease that social awkwardness — but it’s still surprisingly common, even here.

Usually when people first hear the word polyamory, they immediately conflate it with infidelity, patriarchal polygamy, sex-focused swinging, or dysfunction. Occasionally they may already have some grasp of some aspects of polyamory — but rarely do they possess a vocabulary for it that’s not either exclusionary (“non-monogamous”), derisive (“promiscuous,” “cheating with permission,” or “can’t really commit”), or deliberately vague (“open”).

That’s not their fault. I don’t feel personally insulted by this vocabulary gap. But it is a problem.

Imagine if our language had no word for “female.” What if our only words for someone with a vagina were (at best) “not male” — or (at worst) “bitch,” “whore,” and “second-class citizen.”

That’s kinda what many poly people deal with. Prejudicial semi-invisibility gets old fast.

So whenever polyamory gets significant mainstream media coverage (such as this July 2009 Newsweek feature), I think it’s a good thing. Even if the coverage is poorly done, or flat-out negative.

Whenever the mainstream media mention polyamory, the vocabulary gap shrinks a little. That makes it just a bit easier for poly folk to participate in conversations that monogamous folk take for granted.

THE P-WORD AND THE EVIL EYE

There’s something else I’ve noticed when polyamory gets mentioned in conversations or publications: the immediate, reflexive, superstitious “evil-eye” reaction it commonly evokes.

Here’s what I mean. Often, when the P-word gets mentioned and explained — and even when people understand that it’s a valid and not inherently unstable or inferior option — it’s typical for them to immediately distance themselves verbally from polyamory.

It’s as if the very concept of polyamory has cooties. “It’s not something I would ever do!” and “Well, I guess that might work for some people, but not me!” are the most common evil-eye lines I hear.

And in writing, the P-word typically gets packaged in quotation marks, as if to insulate acceptable language from its contagion.

Then there are more blatant mock-shock evil eye reactions that blend panic and prurience, like this from today’s Toledo Blade’s Thin Slices blog:

“This week from the Boston Globe, a look at something called polyamory, which we find incredibly confusing and scary in the category of ‘That might be OK for other people, but not us.’ Interesting, though.”

This puzzles me. When you meet or hear about someone who’s gay, do you feel any pressing need to distance yourself from the concept? Must you reflexively blurt, “Well I’d certainly never be attracted to someone of the same sex, but…”

Or when Jews meet (or discuss) Christians, must they promptly declare, “Well, worshiping Jesus isn’t something I’d ever do, but…”

Seriously: Wouldn’t you consider that rude?

I’m just barely old enough to recall hearing some men say, “Well, having a career may be fine for some women, but my wife doesn’t need to work.” I’m also old enough to recall when such remarks became embarrassing, and stopped.

Generally I just chalk the evil eye reaction up to normal human instincts: fear of the unfamiliar, and fear of ostracism (via guilt-by-association). And I can understand that revealing and questioning any societal assumption is disorienting. You just want to get your feet back under you.

Adopting this mindset helps me to not snark back: “What, YOU can only have ONE intimate relationship at a time? Well, I guess that might work for SOME people… Sounds terribly limited and unrealistic to me, though. But to each their own, I guess…”

I hope the P-word evil eye is just a temporary linguistic quirk. Because it’s hard to talk with people who keep throwing up verbal fences.

…In the meantime, this old Jerry Seinfeld bit, “Not that there’s anything wrong with it,” helps me keep my sense of humor about the poly evil eye:

Just yesterday I learned that on Twitter (a social media service I use a lot), if I begin a tweet with an @ reply (such as: @lisawilliams said…), that tweet will only be seen by people who not only follow me but who ALSO follow the Twitter user named after the initial “@”.

You’d think I would have known this already, but every once in a while something major slips by me. Twitter changed how it handles “@ replies” a few months ago — something that caused considerable controversy on the service. It was a controversy I happened to miss. But thanks to the kindness of a stranger, I’m now caught up on the issue and can offer some useful tips.

I’m writing about this issues because it has significant implications for how I’ll be doing live coverage of events via Twitter.

Whenever I’m at an event (such as a conference, talk, or arts event) that I think might also interest some of my Twitter followers, I tend to “live tweet” it — posting frequent updates about what’s being said, what I’m seeing, reactions to what’s happening, etc.

I do this so much, and have gotten pretty good at it, that I have attracted many Twitter followers because of it. So I’ve decided to explore offering live event coverage as a professional service.

BUT: What if only a fraction of my nearly 5,000 Twitter followers have the opportunity to see my live coverage? And what if those people are already, in a sense, part of the “in crowd?”

That’s the situation when I start my live tweets with “@”.

Yeah, big problem. Especially if part of the value I bring to the table with live event coverage service is the size of my Twitter posse.

Fortunately, it’s fixable…

Here’s what I have been doing:

When I live tweet — especially when I’m covering what’s being said at an event — I’ve tended to use a format like this:

@scottros: “I envy journalism students now. You all have the opportunity to publish. Just start publishing now, whatever your passion is.”

…That is, the first thing I do is identify the speaker in a way that people can find and follow that person on Twitter. Then I deliver the quote. This makes sense for reading, but not for how Twitter works now.

Some Twitter users hack around this by inserting characters like “.” or “r [space]” before the @. This is apparently sufficient to trick Twitter into serving those tweets up to all your followers.

It works, but I don’t like it.

I believe in trying to make tweets read as naturally as possible, within that 140-character constraint. It’s challenging, but I’ve come to think of it as an art form. Well, at least a useful writing skill.

In my experience: Being as readable as possible on Twitter counts. It encourages more people to follow you, retweet you, and interact with you.

Too many people use Twitter’s character-count constraint as an excuse to get cryptic or vague in order to save space. The problem is, when people have to think too much (or at all) to decode or interpret what you wrote, you become less interesting. And you’ll only succeed on Twitter if you’re interesting.

My proposed solution:

Here’s what I’m going to try: From now on, when I’m live tweeting and quoting someone, I’ll begin with the quote, and end with the attribution in parentheses. That would only add one character to my current style.

For example, the tweet I shared above would look like this:

“I envy journalism students now. You all have the opportunity to publish. Just start publishing now, whatever your passion is.” (@scottros)

If I live tweet that way, then ALL of my Twitter followers would see the tweet — whether or not they also follow author Scott Rosenberg on Twitter.

What do you think of this approach? Please comment below.

I’ll try this out tonight. I’m attending a book signing, which I’ll be covering for Oakland Local. It’s fun stuff: Local illustrator Chris Lane will be discussing his new book, Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection. (Event details)

Once I try this live-tweeting strategy, I’ll get a sense for whether and how well it really works. But you let me know what you think.

…Yeah, this seems like a minor, picky point of style. However, given how Twitter now works, it would vastly increase the audience for my live event coverage.

I thought other Twitter users might find this info useful as well, especially journalists and others who do live coverage of events or breaking news via Twitter. After all, I can’t be the only avid Twitter user who missed this, right?

…Oh well, maybe I could be, I dunno.

In my own defense, when Twitter made this change back in May, I was at the apex of several major, stressful life changes — including selling my home of 12 years, downsizing my possessions to fit in a single room, and relocating to a new and very different city. I remember seeing the #fixreplies hashtag, but at the time I didn’t have the mental energy to figure out what people were talking about. My bad.

Anyway, I’m very grateful to Alex Howard (@digiphile on Twitter) who kindly pointed out to me this change in how Twitter works last night. I was live-tweeting a talk that Scott Rosenberg, author of Say Everything and founder of the intriguing new Mediabugs project. Alex liked my coverage, which he only saw because he also follows Scott on Twitter. He wanted more people to be able to see what I was doing, and kindly clued me in about the implications of starting with @.

RESOURCES:

Alex directed me to his discussion with Leslie Poston about implications of the @ reply change. This is quite thought-provoking and readable. If how people actually connect via social media matters to you, give it a read.

More recently, blogger Patrix covered this issue: Understanding Twitter @Replies Behavior. The comment thread here provides considerable clarification.

Finally, it’s important to understand how Twitter distinguishes between replies and mentions.

“Citizen journalism” is a clunky term that manages to be as open to interpretation as it is controversial. I tend to think of it this way:

Any effort by people who are not trained or employed as professional journalists to publish news or information based on original observation, research, inquiry, analysis or investigation.

Here’s what that can mean, more specifically…

CitJ can conceivably include anything from notes and quotes from a public meeting, to neighborhood happenings and trends, to an original analysis of a piece of proposed legislation, to a public discussion about conditions at local parks, to music and restaurant reviews, to podcast interviews with community leaders and characters, and much more.

…Yes, I know that’s very broad. But consider the diversity of journalistic (or tangentially journalistic) content typically offered by mainstream news outlets — this isn’t really that different.

Key concept: In journalism, the “ism” is more important than the “ist.” Journalism is a collection of practices that can be done by anyone — not just by a select few anointed by certain types of employers or degrees.

Anyone can commit an act of journalism. Remember: In the U.S. at least, journalists are not licensed by the state — for good reason. Journalists don’t merely serve or represent the public. They are part of the public.

IS IT ANY GOOD?

The work of citizen journalists often looks quite different from the kind of journalism you’d find in a daily paper. It tends to be more personal, often written in the first person. It generally doesn’t attempt to be comprehensive.

Quality is inconsistent. It may or may not attempt to be fair. Fact-checking and editorial oversight may be less than what you’d find in a newspaper — or it may be better, depending on the citizen journalist and the paper being compared. CitJ often mixes opinion with reporting.

Media pros often deride or dismiss citizen journalism as useless or even dangerous. Some — but not all — of those complaints have merit and are worth considering.

That said, in order to form your own opinion of citizen journalism it’s important to engage directly with it rather than simply ascribe to someone else’s opinion. The only way you’ll spot potential value is to keep an open mind, and keep your eyes open too.

WHO ARE CITIZEN JOURNALISTS?

Anyone can be a citizen journalist — seniors, students, PhD’s, homemakers, the homeless, immigrants, nuns, you name it.

The label “citizen journalist” is controversial, so many people who are doing citizen journalism as I described it don’t call themselves citizen journalists. Often they consider themselves simply bloggers, discussion leaders and participants, or vocal community members.

A lot of citizen journalism happens on sites and forums where citizen journalism is not the main focus. It just crops up as warranted. Therefore, any venue might occasionally offer some citizen journalism.

In 2007, J-Lab conducted a survey of sites that focus on hyperlocal citizen media/journalism. Their report indicates definite business potential: “Sites are set up as businesses, as non-profits or as ad hoc citizen ventures. In our survey, 139 respondents split evenly: Half described their sites as for-profit operations, and half non-profit. Among the profit-seekers are entrepreneurs inventing new kinds of media companies to tap user-generated news and information and to build revenue models based on local shopping, local search and online advertising.”

More commonly, however, people who commit acts of citizen journalism do so for free, simply because they want to. In my experience they’re generally passionate, curious people who enjoy conversation.

WHERE CAN YOU FIND CITJ?

Everywhere. I’m not kidding. Here’s a 2007 map Adam Glenn and I helped build for the Knight Citizen News Network that lists nearly 500 citizen journalism efforts in the US alone — and there are many more around the world.

In addition, citizen journalists can focus on issues, industries, or other non-geographic territory.

While many citizen journalists practice their craft on their own sites or podcasts, others opt to contribute content to community sites — including ones that are hosted and supported by news organizations. Also, news organizations are increasingly soliciting stories, photos, and other news-related content from their audiences.

DOES CITJ MATTER?

That depends. For hyperlocal community news, yes, citizen journalists are becoming a major force in many places — especially in places that the mainstream media tend to overlook.

For other types of news and analysis, how much a citizen journalist (or citJ venue) matters depends on the people involved — especially their personal level of dedication, expertise, and sense of ethics and responsibility. It’s a really mixed bag.

Happenstance also comes into play. A person on the spot of a major news event who’s got a cell phone camera and a Flickr account can make history.

…That’s a very basic introduction to the field, from one person’s perspective. Please tell me what you think and what you’d add or change, below.

Today Twitter has begin a broad rollout of a new feature, Twitter Lists. The feature had been available only to a select group of beta users, but product manager Nick Kallen tweeted yesterday, “Currently, 25% of all users have Lists.” I don’t have access to Lists yet, but I expect it’s coming soon.

The point of Twitter lists is relevant discovery: It’s an easy way to find and follow Twitter users you might not otherwise know about, but would be interested in. However, you might not be interested in everything (or even most things) a given Twitter user in a list has to say. This is more likely if you’re more interest in topics than people. In this case, Twitter lists might deliver more noise than signal.

But I think if you use a good tool like Tweetdeck for accessing Twitter (rather than just the Twitter site, which has always sucked for usability), you can combine Twitter Lists with filtering to end up with something very useful indeed, especially for staying abreast of news or topics…

As far as I understand it, Twitter Lists are defined groups of Twitter accounts. If you follow a list, you automatically follow all the accounts in that list. Kallen described it this way: “For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.”

…Well, that kind of list would be useful in some cases, but in many others I think it may not be what Twitter users or others are looking for. That’s because people don’t have one-track minds.

People who use Twitter most effectively tend to post about a lot of different topics that interest or affect them. Generally, Twitter accounts that only post about one topic tend to be more about publication than conversation, and that gets boring in social media.

For instance, many journalists follow me on Twitter because I have a lot to say about journalism. But I also tweet about my former abode Boulder, and my new town Oakland. And I occasionally mention other topics I love, like zombies, polyamory, my recent experience with knee surgery. Plus I cover live events via Twitter, too.

…Yeah, I tweet a lot. And not everyone who follows me is interested in everything I talk about. That’s fine for some folks, and not for others. And that’s pretty typical.

Someone who’s interested in zombies might decided to create a Twitter List of people who tweet about zombies. Right now, near Halloween, that would probably be a long list indeed. And I’d bet that most of those zombie tweeters would also be tweeting about a lot of other stuff.

So if you’re only interested in tweets about zombies, then the smart thing to do would be:

• Designate a group in Tweetdeck based on the zombie Twitter List (see the problem with this, below)
• Display tweets from that group in a column.
• Use Tweetdeck’s filter function on that column to display only tweets from that group that include “zombie” or “zombies.”

That way, you’d only see relevant tweets from the selected list of Twitter users.

LIST + FILTERING TO THWART TWEETSPAM & HASHTAG HIJACKING

Sticking with this example: If you use my strategy, you’d be viewing zombie tweets only from a selected group of users (and not from anyone who uses that keyword). Thus you’d avoid the growing problem of keyword tweetspam — when spammers post spam tweets that include keywords which anyone would see in a Twitter search. That gets really annoying, especially for trending topics and other popular search terms or hashtags.

In fact, the Twitter user convention of hashtags arose in part as a way to curate the quality of tweets about a topic. Twitter users who use hashtags when discussing topics or events generally tend to be especially dedicated to the topic or community — and often just better (or at least more experienced) at using Twitter.

The problem is, anyone can include a hashtag in a tweet. Which is why spammers start bombarding hashtags that get popular.

Also, hashtags can be “hijacked” by people who wish to disrupt ongoing discussion or coverage of a topic or event. For instance, often hashtags related to healthcare reform or climate change get heavily used by people who oppose action on both those topics. They’ll post rude or otherwise disruptive tweets that include the hashtag in order to make it difficult or unpleasant for people trying to have a civil ongoing discussion.

However, if you’re starting from a defined Twitter List and then filtering by keyword or hashtag, you’d never see spammy or disruptive tweets.

Keeping up with changing lists? I don’t know yet whether additions and deletions made to a Twitter List after you follow that list are automatically reflected in your own Twitter friends list (the people you follow). That kind of updating could be useful to keep up with a shifting array of recommendations or players. However, it could also be abused by spammers or other nefarious characters. I’ll experiment with that and report back later.

PROBLEM: MY BRILLIANT IDEA DOESN’T REALLY WORK YET (EASILY)

Combining Twitter Lists with keyword filtering would be great, IF: Tweetdeck or other sophisticated Twitter tools (Like Seesmic Desktop and Hootsuite) allowed you to automatically import a Twitter List as a group. As far as I can tell, they don’t do that yet.

So this brilliant idea of mine doesn’t really work well yet. Because you’d have to follow a Twitter List and then manually select those Twitter friends to create a Tweetdeck group. And then you’d have to apply your term-based filtering to the column for that group.

I just checked out help files for Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, and HootSuite. So far none of them allow you to import a Twitter List as a group. I’d expect, they’ll add that automatic feature soon (nudge nudge), because Twitter Lists are likely to be popular — and maybe even supported directly via the Twitter API.

In the meantime, keep my filtering strategy in mind. It’ll work — it’s just clunky.

ALSO: If you create Twitter lists: Suggest filtering terms (formatted as a boolean “OR” search query). This will make it easy and fast for your List subscribers to filter for exactly what you intend your list to focus on.

…What do you think of my strategy? Any corrections, suggestions, or updates? Please comment below.

Recently Kellie O’Sullivan, a third-year communication student studying at the University of Newcastle in Australia, asked me some questions about citizen journalism for a class assignment. I get questions like this a lot, so she said it was fine if I answered her in a blog post.

The way she framed her questions made me wonder: Why are folks from news organizations and journalism/communication schools still so hung up on building fences to divide amateur from professional journalism? Does this reflect insecurity about their own status/worth, or simply a lack of understanding of how much these endeavors mostly overlap and complement each other?

Seems to me that we’d all gain more by focusing on the practice of reporting and journalism (especially being transparent and open to discussion, correction, and expansion of news and information). In my opinion, doing journalism is more important than what kind of journalist you consider yourself to be, or how others label you.

With that caveat, here’s what she asked, and how I answered…

1. Do you think that citizen journalists such as Matt Drudge and Perez Hilton put pressure on professional journalists to be more accurate and credible in their reporting?

I don’t follow either Matt Drudge or Perez Hilton, so I can’t really speak to those two examples from experience. And I don’t know that I would call them “citizen journalists” — as far as I know, they’re both entrepreneurial news/information providers, not unpaid amateurs.

I also know they’re both very popular and have developed large, devoted communities online. From what I hear, they interact with their community members regularly and personally. That probably contributes to their popularity.

Reporters who are inclined toward viewing other media players who become popular in the communities that they would like to reach — and who are inclined toward a scarcity mindset of community (“If you get more attention, that means I’ll get less!”) — may indeed view Drudge and Hilton primarily as competition and feel pressure from that.

Personally, I think it’s more constructive to view nearly anyone else in media as a potential ally or collaborator, and look for ways to approach them and their communities that will benefit everyone.

Also, watch what they do and learn from them. If you want the results they get, then look for constructive ways to emulate or adapt how they work.

2. Daily blogger and citizen journalist Matthew Hatton thinks that citizen journalism and professional journalism could work together. Do you believe this is something which could happen?

I not only think this kind of cooperation could happen — it should and does happen, every day, in all kinds of venues.

Sometimes it happens through controlled, hierarchical programs like American Public Media’s Public Insight Network. Sometimes it’s formal or informal crowdsourcing. Sometimes it happens through blogs, or comments to news stories, or social media. It’s more about sharing information than sharing bylines.

3. In 2007 you wrote: “In journalism, the ‘ism’ is more important than the ‘ist.’ ” Therefore, do you believe the general public are simply more interested in news stories, and not necessarily the author of the stories?

Not quite. In my experience people are interested in news, information, perspectives, and context — and most of all, relevance. I also think many people (perhaps most) prefer to choose their own sources for these things, not just blindly turn to a mainstream news outlet as the last or best word on anything. And I also find that the kind of information people want is much broader than traditional packaged “news stories.”

This is why most people rely heavily on people they know and trust to find news and information — both original information and pointers to news and information published online and elsewhere. That’s a big reason why social media has become so popular.

People do care about where and who their information comes from. Who authored or published a news story can be part of that, but it’s definitely not the whole picture.

This is why the traditional practice of mainstream professional journalists hiding their personal views, opinions, or interests can actually undermine credibility, not promote it. Transparency has become more desirable and useful than a veneer of objectivity fostered by concealment.

4. Do you consider yourself a citizen journalist or a professional journalist? Why?

Neither. Both. It doesn’t matter to me. It may matter to other people, but that’s up to them and they’re free to label me and my work as they will.

I do journalism, among many other things. That’s how I think of it. That makes it much easier to get the job done.

Thanks for your questions, Kellie

I’m doing this as a pilot test for a new professional service I’d like to start offering: Great live event coverage.

In my experience, most online event coverage isn’t so great. A few folks will be tweeting or blogging in several places, some hashtags will be used, but it’s all rather confusing and inconsistent to follow. Also, a lot of people tend to tweet items like “Jane Doe is speaking at this session now.” Uh-huh… AND….?

Liveblogging/tweeting has turned out to be a real strength of mine — I’m good at it, and I enjoy it. I’ve also had the good fortune to collect a sizable Twitter following among folks whose interests in media, business, and other fields overlap with mine — and who enjoy my particular blend of reporting, analysis, and attitude. (Or at least I guess they do, because every time I do live event coverage my Twitter posse swells noticeably and those folks tend to stick around afterward.)

I do a lot of live event coverage via Twitter and CoverItLive. For instance, earlier this month for my client the Reynolds Journalism Institute I liveblogged/tweeted J-Lab’s Fund My Media Startup workshop at the 2009 Online News Association conference.

So, being a longtime entrepreneur always on the lookout for new opportunities, I’m looking for ways to offer live event coverage as a service for my clients. Today’s event is an experiment on this front.

I want to figure out how this service could work in a way that would appeal to my Twitter posse, maintain my integrity and independence, and provide value to clients who’d pay for it.

Here are some of the issues I’m wrestling with, that I’d welcome your thoughts on…

QUALITY AND RELEVANCE

I wouldn’t accept just any live-coverage gig. It has to be a good fit for my interests, and those of my Twitter followers. So I’d be concentrating on events in areas such as:

• Media and journalism
• Energy
• Environment
• Government transparency and civic engagement/action
• Key media technologies (mobile, mapping, databases, collaboration, etc.)
• Social trends/dynamics (including race, gender, sexuality)
• Offbeat entertainment (science fiction, indy arts & music, strange festivals, zombies, etc.)

INDEPENDENCE

I’m a lousy lapdog. I don’t generally go out of my way to be rude or snarky — especially when someone has invited me to their event and given me a platform. But I do have attitude, a sense of humor, and I say what I think. I must always feel free in my event coverage to disagree, question, criticize, or challenge.

The people who hire me to cover their events need to understand that at some point I will say something they won’t be 100% comfortable with. I am not their mouthpiece. I am providing a service of visibility and engagement. That’s always going to be a bit uncomfortable. In fact, that’s the point.

So, hiring me is not like hiring a PR agency to make you look good. It’s more like issuing a press pass — but knowing that there will be consistent coverage throughout the event. I’ll also work to make sure the online audience gets represented in the live event, by posing questions and comments on their behalf.

TRANSPARENCY

Here’s the background on today’s gig, so you know what the terms of this coverage are.

Doyle Albee, president of Metzger Associates (a PR/communications firm based in Boulder, CO) has hired me to cover this event. I chose to do this because:

1. Doyle is a cool guy and a friend of mine from Boulder. He appreciates my perspective, even though we regularly disagree. He likes how I cover events and wants me to just do what I do — which includes allowing me to question or critize what happens at the event, if I see fit to do so.
2. Dave Taylor, another longtime Boulder friend of mine, is co-leading the event. Doyle and Dave are both great presenters, and I learn much from observing them.
3. The lineup of speakers looks pretty good.
4. This isn’t a mob scene. While I like covering events, major mob scenes like South by Southwest tend to put me on sensory/info overload pretty quickly, and leave me quaking in a fetal position. I prefer covering events for small-to-medium groups where I can get a real sense of what participants think, how peoples’ thinking evolves, and which takeaways are most meaningful.
5. It’s not summertime. Vegas summers slay me. Today is a pleasant, cool early autumn day, more my style.

Full disclosure: Metzger has paid my expenses and waived my fee to participate in this event. I did not ask for a fee for this coverage since I’m fine-tuning this service offer. However, for future live event coverage with this or other clients I will get paid a professional rate for the service.

I decided to not ask for a fee for this event because I want to engage my Twitter posse in a discussion about how I can do event coverage as a professional (fee-based) service in a way that works well for my Twitter followers. That is, I didn’t want to start selling this service before talking to my tweeps about how I can make this work for them.

My liveblog is appearing on Metzger’s site, and I’ll be cross-tweeting to Metzger’s own Twitter account. So while I might occasionally have something to critize, since they’re opening up their platforms for me to use I’ll be civil. Unless something truly egregious happens — and in that case, I’ll still be civil, but I’ll say what I mean.

Anyway, that’s the general plan. What are your thoughts, opinions, questions, criticisms? Please comment below, or tweet me @agahran, or e-mail me.

Again, this is an experiment. I’m not expecting everyone to be happy, or everything to run smoothly. But I do expect to learn a lot. Let me know what you think.

White Elephant: A possession entailing great expense out of proportion to its usefulness or value to the owner. (Random House Dictionary)

Today, AP debuted its AP Stylebook iPhone app.

According to the press release. “AP Stylebook fans have been asking for a mobile application so they can have style guidance wherever they go. Journalists never know when they will need to run out the door to chase a story, so as long as they have an iPhone in their pockets when they go, the Stylebook can go with them.”

…Which indicates the strategy here: The AP Stylebook iphone app is basically an app as e-book. Which almost explains its exhorbitant price: $28.99.

Yep, that’s right: $28.99 for an iPhone app. Seriously.

Beyond displaying the text of the AP Stylebook 2009, this app adds a little extra functionality: “The 2009 AP Stylebook app features searchable listings for the main, sports, business and punctuation sections, along with the ability to add custom entries and personalized notes on AP listings. Stylebook app users are able to mark any entry as a favorite for easy access.”

…In other words, similar with what you could do with this book on a Kindle. Only AP doesn’t offer a Kindle edition of the Stylebook.

AP does offer online Stylebook subscriptions: $25/year for an individual, with cheaper bulk pricing available for organizations. Which means that the iPhone app is more costly than an online subscription. So why wouldn’t iPhone users buy an online subscription instead and access it through the mobile Safari browser?

Here’s another thing baffles me: Why sell an app that’s basically a standalone e-book? Why not offer a free app with some free content/service that also can allow paying subscribers to log in from their phone and have a mobile-optimized experience? It seems to me that AP is reinventing the wheel with this app, missing obvious opportunities to grow its Stylebook market, and positioning this product poorly through ludicrous pricing.

It gets worse… but it could get better too…

USABILITY HURDLES

I own an iPhone, and I use it a lot. Typing and editing on this device is a frustrating chore. Given the difficulties of typing on an iPhone keypad, who would want to do any copyediting on the iPhone? It seems to me that most news professionals would be writing or editing on a computer. They wouldn’t actually write or edit stories on the iphone.

However, some reporters may file brief updates or field reports via iPhone. And they may want these to be stylistically correct — if the updates are being published live, without further editing.

In this case, there’s a usability hurdle: you can’t run two apps at once on an iPhone. So in order to check something in the Stylebook app you’d have to:

1. Save your work
2. Close your writing app
3. Open the Stylebook app
4. Look up the answer to your question
5. Copy the relevant info (or just remember it)
6. Close the Stylebook app
7. Reopen your writing/editing app
8. Put the AP info to use.

That process is so clunky as to be deeply impractical. Especially if you’re covering fast-breaking news in the field.

HOW AP COULD DO BETTER

I’m not trashing the mobile app-as-ebook concept. It can be useful, especially for reference material. And it makes sense for how-to content that is periodically updated.

But in order to justify a price that drastically exceeds the print edition ($18.95 for journos, cheaper for member papers and college bookstores, even cheaper to buy it used online), a mobile app must offer more functionality than just taking notes, bookmarking items, and making custom entries.

AP completely missed the mark on this one. It’s yet another example of how badly this news behemoth really just doesn’t get online or mobile media. It’s like they’re not even trying. I’d be surprised if more than a handful of mainstream journos who just got their first iPhone and think this sounds like an appropriate professional tool would  buy this. And I suspect those that do will quickly regret it.

Fortunately, AP has room to redeem itself on this. It could:

1. Rework the app to make it an access tool for paying online subscribers.
2. Re-release it as a free app. (Maybe give a year’s subscription to the suckers who bought the pricey app.)
3. Offer a “try before you buy” demo — maybe five free searches, so people can get a feel for the user experience.
4. Include a “subscribe to Stylebook” option prominently in the free app. to make it easy for people to buy after they try.
5. Offer some free content with the free app. (500 most common stylebook queries, etc.), as well as a daily tip or other fresh content. In other words, PROVE that the Stylebook is, in fact, relevant and useful.
6. Make sure the free app works with bulk (corporate) accounts, not just individual subscriptions.
7. Gather data from the free searches about what kinds of terms they might want to include in future Stylebook editions.