NOTE: This list represents only the pieces I authored. My colleagues Adam Glenn and Michele McLellan wrote several other posts. You can find everything on the News for Digital Journalists blog.

Most important post: March 14: Pew research points to mobile opportunities for local news, info. There’s a lot to learn from in this Pew report. I spotted these strategic implications:

• Attract more young people to your news brand. Tomorrow’s audience has to come from somewhere. The research indicates that news orgs could promote long-term growth of their local news market via mobile offerings.
• Native apps not really such a great revenue strategy. In fact, Pews numbers paint a pretty dismal picture for trying to generate much revenue from getting people to pay for content. Now, if news apps became more service-oriented, that could change the picture…
• Embrace the spectrum of mobile technology, not just smartphones. OK, Pew, didn’t look at this directly, but when you look at their numbers you can see that feature phones are a big part of the picture. And the news business mostly thrives based on audience size. Ignoring feature phones means leaving money on the table and alienating potential allies.

Other posts…

Feb. 22: Disaster news prep: Google Person Finder. I wrote this after the Christchurch, NZ earthquake but before the big Japan earthquake/tsunami. Goal here is to tell news orgs how they can leverage this tool by embedding it in their own pages. Also, if your region gets hits by a disaster, I tell how to ask Google to spin off a new instance of Person Finder. You can spin off your own instance, but it’s better to see if Google will do it first to avoid confusion.

Feb 28: Engaging tomorrow’s news audience today: Report. Research from the Newspaper Association of America takes a closer look at sub-groups within the youth demographic for news audiences. I’d like to see more research like this. More importantly, I’d like to see some evidence that news organizations are actually using this research in their strategies.

March 8: Knight Community Info Toolkit: Help make your community stronger with better info. Summary of a new planning tool for community activists. This is the kind of effort I’d love to see news organizations get involved in, but it’s interesting that the toolkit is not really intended for news organizations.

March 9: Knight names new VP of Journalism and Media Innovation: Michael Maness. Pretty significant shift of leadership at the Knight Foundation. It’ll be interesting to see what direction Maness wants to take Knight’s programs. Especially now that the Knight News Challenge is in its fifth and possibly final year. (It was originally intended as a five-year contest program.)

March 11: Texas Tribune, Bay Citizen win Knight grant to build open-source news platform. I’m curious about this project — especially whether it will build upon existing open-source platforms (hopefully WordPress rather than Drupal, if so), and what kind of mobile functionality, if any, it will include.

March 17: New York Times launches paywall — and why most news orgs shouldn’t. Most people who watch the media business are pretty down on this strategy. Frankly, I’m also pessimistic — although I suspect the Times may be able to pull it off, for a while, without really hurting its audience size or search visibility. But there are so many loopholes, and so few real benefits to paying subscribers, that I’ve got to wonder why they’re even bothering with this. It seems almost like a philosophical exercise. They should be putting these resources into offering services that they can sell, if you ask me. As for the vast majority of news orgs: Don’t try this at home. The Times is a very special case.

March 22: Why “data journalism” is good for the news business. My UK colleague Paul Bradshaw wrote an excellent analysis of the many ways that data-focused content (such as interactive databases) and services (such as APIs of metadata from a news org’s content) can help build a news business.

I wrote two posts for the Knight Digital Media Center at USC explaining how news organizations can use this information to create more effective ways to engage and grow the audiences for their political coverage — and why they shouldn’t wait for the next election season to do this:

• Jan. 26, 2011: Social media should be part of your political news strategy, Pew research indicates
• Dec. 28, 2010: Political/election news should go mobile, Pew research indicates

At the end, I noted:

Given that groups often have considerable reach and influence, it makes sense for news organizations to actively engage local or relevant groups, especially via social media.

The online activities of groups are now a key channel for news, information, communication, and engagement for most Americans. It makes sense to build bridges with these channels in order to reach wider audiences and listen more effectively to community issues and concerns.

Which is yet another reason for the news business to get over its traditional stance of aloofness/separation from the community under the fig leaf of objectivity.

Forrester’s rationale for this, according to VP Josh Bernoff, is that “Forrester is an intellectual property company, and the opinions of our analysts are our product.”

Which IMHO is the equivalent of saying “If you work for us, we reserve the right to own your brain and your social/professional network and reputation.”

Here’s why that’s a bad idea all the way around — not just for research, consulting, and IP companies, but for news organizations and journalists, too…

Recently, PR maven Shel Holz rightly called bullshit on Forrester’s IP argument:

The notion seems to suggest that analysts who write about their work on their own blogs are somehow sapping Forrester of its IP. Maybe I’m just dense, but I don’t see how, particularly if those blogs link back to Forrester, bringing the company to the attention of new prospects.

Other companies with bloggers don’t compare because, Bernoff argues, their products aren’t about IP. I would argue that Microsoft and IBM are entirely about IP. Both companies encourage their employees to blog wherever they like. The companies link to those blogs on a page that links to all of the company’s bloggers. (Here are links to Microsoft’s and IBM’s employee blog directories.)

…I’m not inside the heads of Forrester’s leaders, so I can’t say how much of a factor the fear of losing analysts who build strong personal brands played in the decision. I’d be disappointed if it was a major consideration, since it seems petty and mean-spirited.

…If a cost-benefit analysis had been done, I can’t believe it would have led Forrester to adopt this policy. So why, then? It’s either a provincial and wrong-minded understanding of IP or a knee-jerk reaction to the Altimeter Group situation. Either way, it’s a mistake.

Here’s the comment I left on Shel’s post:

This reminds me of struggles that many journalists currently face with the news organizations that employ them (albeit in fast-shrinking numbers). Many news orgs prohibit or limiting not only employees having their own blogs, but also whether and how they use social media on their own time and accounts.

In the journalism world they claim this is to “preserve objectivity” (as if objectivity ever existed, or as if transparency doesn’t promote credibility more effectively). But it’s pretty obvious when you talk to news managers that they often view their own employees as competition when it comes to online media. And they prefer to keep their employees in a one-down position when it comes to personal branding.

Which is not only sad and shortsighted, but dreadfully counterproductive. Especially since companies that adopt this unfortunate mindset certainly aren’t offering financial compensation (say, a couple of years’ salary, or a guarantee of employment for the next 3 years) in exchange for employees giving up crucial avenues for making their own professional opportunities.

It’s bad business all the way around — but it’s especially unfair to the employees.

…Back in 2008 I explained why building a personal online brand and presence that’s under your control (not your employer’s) is the key to having almost any kind of professional career these days — but especially careers that involve media or communications in any significant way. See: Media Career Insurance: Your Blog

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.

In a recent post to the Wordtracker blog, The Bad, Good And Ugly Advice Given To Journalists On SEO (search engine optimization), U.K. journalist Rachelle Money made some excellent points about how journalists can craft stories in ways that will attract more search engine traffic.

I agree with much of what she said. However, I do disagree with her about the role of a journalist in the editorial process.

Money wrote that some SEO advice offered to journalists seems:

…overwhelmingly concerned with headlines and how to write better ones for the web. I hate to throw a couple of spanners in the works, but I have never, not once, had to write a headline for a newspaper. That’s the job of a sub-editor; they write headlines, they write the sub-headings and the picture captions and the stand-firsts. I have never had to write a title tag either; that’s the job of the online editor, and they are likely to write the links too. So in many ways the advice given to journalists isn’t really for us, it’s for the production department or the online team.

…That may have been generally true a decade or more ago.

But not today…

Today news is being published by all sorts of individuals and organizations — not just from established, well-staffed mainstream media newsrooms. Small news operations — or even individual journalists and bloggers — are publishing a considerable amount of news without a multilayered, multidepartmental structure and process.

Today, many journalist already are writing their own headlines, tags, links, and other microcontent elements. And that makes sense — because when you’re trying to establish relevance in the context of search engines, it really helps to have the person who knows the story best (the reporter) choosing and using appropriate keywords.

I agree with Money that it’s important for journalists to know more about how SEO works — because if people can’t easily find news, it might as well not exist. I just don’t think it’s reasonable to advise journos to avoid learning key SEO skills because other parts of the staff will handle those details. Even if you currently work for a news org that delegates some SEO functions to other staff, you can’t depend that those other staff will remain on the job long term — or that you will, either.

Better to learn how to write search-friendly headlines, links, and leads now than play catch-up on your own later.

(NOTE: I originally published this article in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)

pmc-meeting

Scott Rosenberg, Susan Mernit, and lots of other smart people chatting at the Mar. 11 Public Media Collaborative meeting, Berkeley.

Last night I attended a meeting of the Bay Area Public Media Collaborative. I’m impressed by how this group is pulling together significant and diverse energy and talent.

The point? To “bring together bloggers, journalists, technologists, media and environmental justice folks, community organizers and activists from around the Bay area to explore and discuss social justice and emerging technology issues in a way that links theory and practice.”

One nonprofit group represented there last night, Independent Arts and Media, is planning a Journalism Innovations Expo II. Collaborative members discussed tacking a social/online media train-the-trainers Barcamp-style event onto the beginning or end of the expo.

I live-tweeted last night’s meeting. Here’s what I posted…

• #PMC meeting is now starting, track the action on Twitter Search
• Pretty powerful group of media people & community organizers at #PMC meeting tonight.
• @susanmernit: #PMC is starting to get interest from people outside journ/media world: geeks, community organizers, etc. Cool!
• The building where the #PMC meeting is tonight also houses Causes.com and an association of photojournalists.
• #PMC meeting: Time for attendees to talk about projects they want to do, so we can organize ourselves so we help can do them.
• @JoyceKim suggests Literacy Bridge talking book project that could use some help from #PMC community.
• @joycekim says Literacy Bridge needs investors/donors, grantwriters, fundraising, product specification developers for its device.
• @marcsmolowitz says Full Circle Fund wants to map Bay Area nonprofit closures. Needs tech help #PMC
• Independent Arts and Media is organizing Journalism Innovations 2 event, May 1, USF. Needs help with organizing, exhibitors, donors #PMC
• @jdlasica “Screw the big cos/foundations, local public media needs to be done by grassroots” #PMC
• @beandy: Redefining Progress techpopulism project: how-to wiki for noprofits using social media, and mapping out new net tools needed
• Barry Brilliant at #PMC meeting looking for help with designing net-enabled devices for seniors.
• #PMC nonprofit looking for help with independent Sacramento news coverage (statehouse)
• #PMC Friends Committee on Legislation of CA is doing advocacy/citizen journalism on CA prison system. Hiring development/outreach person.
• #PMC city of oakland marketing dept is looking to learn more about how to use social media to market the city, needs people.
• @boothism’s org is working with organization that helps Oakland youth. (Need org name, URL)
• @maiki’s new company is developing a toolkit for microblogging, wiki, soc. media #PMC
• Oakland Clean and Safe Ports needs help to draw attention to Oakland port issues prior to big vote coming up #PMC
• @susanmernit #PMC community is gelling due to compatible interests/needs.
• Public Media Collaborative wiki is where #PMC community will coordinate on resources, needs.
• @susanmernit likes Barcamp training model. Would like #PMC event to train the trainers for nonprofit/community orgs to learn soc. media
• @susanmernit would like #PMC train-the-trainers event to have followup mentoring to make the info stick
• #PMC Attendee would like training workshops to be cumulative, so past workshop participants can help out future ones.
• @marcsmolowitz would like #PMC train-the-trainers event to be smaller and more about discussion than lecture.
• @joycekim suggest that #PMC train-the-trainer workshop attendees should commit to being a trainer in later workshops
• #PMC attendee suggests train-the-trainers events involve decisionmakers from org, not just training implementers
• I’m witnessing a culture creating itself at #PMC meeting: ideas for how to use events to both train and solve social/online media problems.
• @boothism “I know some grassroots people, no budgets, not nonprofit org yet, who have really basic needs for blogging/soc. media skills” #PMC
• @joycekim suggests doing training at house parties where #PMC goes to people who need media help, not expecting them to come to us.
• @beandy: “Are nonprofit orgs merely clients of #PMC or can we offer something to this process? I do clever policy design. Will that help?”
• #PMC Wiki should include not just what our community needs, but what members can give.
• @maiki “I see social media as connection not broadcast. Anyone #PMC touches, we should connect them with everyone else we’re talking to.”
• @susanmernit is concerned w/ #PMC: balancing democratic process with making stuff actually happen, acting on ideas.
• #PMC meeting is breaking up now. I’m liking this group, looking forward to participating more after I relocate to Bay Area in May.