Here’s a quick rundown of my own changes, and contributing reasons for them. I’d be curious to hear about other people’s personal media evolutions, too. Please share your own experiences in the comments below…

1. More conversation and annotation, less exposition.

I’m an avid user of two social media channels: Twitter and Delicious. Through these, I’ve gotten used to quickly stating what really needs to be shared or communicated. Most of the points I want or need to make don’t require exposition. Generally just a brief statement, or a link with context, will suffice. This is why the vast majority of my posts to this blog have been syndicated from links I’m saving and annotating in Delicious.

Personally, I think this is a gain, not a loss. For most things, I prefer more efficient communication. It allows me to cover more ground — and to learn more.

What’s lost? Not eloquence, since I was never very eloquent. However, continuity and context can suffer. Often it can be difficult for others (or for me) to follow my trail of breadcrumbs, to connect all the dots in order to see a larger picture. Yes, I still want a “me collector“.

2. More text, less voice.

I’ve never been much for talking on the telephone. I even squirm at face-to-face conversations that go on for more than about 20-30 minutes at a stretch.

Instant messaging suits me much better. It’s a key way that I keep in touch with the people who matter most in my life. Every day I text-chat with my current and former intimate partners, close friends, colleagues, and more casual friends. I’ve been able to connect with these people more substantially and meaningfully through instant messaging than by relying primarily on phone or voice.

I like the pace of IM conversations. They’re either very fast and functional (“Got a quick question for ya…”) or they ebb and flow over an hour or more. Depending on the conversation or person involved, I don’t like to feel the constant pressure to respond immediately that exists in phone or face-to-face conversations. In IM chats, pauses generally aren’t awkward, so conversation feels less forced. Even better, my attention is free to wander, as it is prone to do, without me seeming rude or uncaring.

What’s lost? I still see local friends face-to-face quite often, so I don’t feel I’m lacking conversation there. But I do make less effort than I probably should to reach out by phone to people who are important to me but who don’t use IM. So there is some relationship impact there. I do tend to prioritize people who are available via my preferred communication channels.

3. News: Listening up, reading down

It’s been many years since I read much news in print. But in the last couple of years I’ve found myself relying almost entirely on audio news podcasts for my daily fix of what’s happening. I prefer to listen to news while doing things: making breakfast, cleaning up, working out, running errands, strolling the neighborhood, etc. I don’t just sit there and listen to news, and I almost never watch video news podcasts. When I have to sit there for news, whether for reading or watching, I get antsy.

It’s not that I don’t read online news at all. Every day, I read a lot of online news — but rarely any more than headlines and the first few paragraphs of most online news stories. I’m one of those people who’s more likely to glance at the headlines and summaries on Google News (especially on my phone) a few times a day, and to maybe click through to a couple of stories.

There are exceptions: When an article is highly recommended by a friend or colleague, or when it’s extremely relevant to my specific circumstances or interests, I’m likely to read it through to the end. Quite often, for online news I really want to read, I’ll use Instapaper to transfer the content of that web page to my Kindle. I’m not crazy about reading long-format content in my web browser. I prefer an e-book reader. Both the Kindle device and the Kindle iPhone app offer me a great e-reader experience.

What’s especially interesting to me is that through audio news podcasts I feel a very strong loyalty to several mainstream and niche news brands (NPR, Slashdot Review, etc.). However, when reading online news via a web browser, I feel almost no brand loyalty. I have a strong preference for news aggregators over news sites. It’s very rare that I visit the home page of a news site.

What’s lost? For me, nothing. Do habits like mine hurt the news biz? I don’t think so — especially since it’s the only way I feel any loyalty for specific news brands these days.

4. Journaling: Sharp increase

2009 was an emotionally wrenching year for me. I sold my house, ended my marriage, transitioned to a very positive post-marriage relationship with my former spouse, moved from Boulder to Oakland, left my cats behind for now, downsized my possessions to fit into a single room, got knee surgery, dealt with knee surgery rehab, traveled a lot, had a very short and unhappy relationship with an unsuitable partner, began a much more rewarding and happy relationship with a very suitable partner, watched my cousin die from afar, and some other stuff…

Most of this I would never blog about. Some of it I wouldn’t tweet about, either. But I do write about it all, in my paper journal.

Yes, when it comes to working through difficult emotional stuff, journaling tends to work best for me. And this year I filled up three of them. That’s a lot for me. There have been times in my life when I didn’t journal much at all. For the past couple of years I’ve been journaling a lot, and it keeps me sane.

I like doing some writing that is only for me. And I like doing it by hand. I like the feel of a fine-point felt-tip pen on the creamy paper of a Moleskine journal. It feels deeply personal and intimate. I think better about how I feel when I journal. I understand myself and my life better. I forgive myself more, I allow myself more. I don’t worry about covering all bases or responding to critics. And right now, I need all of that.

5. Twitter as antidepressant

I’ve noticed that when I’m feeling low energy or in a down mood, spending a few minutes scanning Twitter tends to engage and energize me. I follow a lot of very interesting people and organizations on Twitter. Any time I dip my toes into that Twitter stream I always find something interesting, amusing, heartfelt, friendly, or useful.

…Yes, there’s some drivel and occasional nastiness. But I tend to unfollow people who get boring or mean there. So I’ve got a pretty high-quality Twitter stream.

I like that Twitter takes so little effort to read. (Similarly, I dislike Facebook because its interface is so chaotic.) I feel no pressure or desire to “catch up,” for me Twitter is all about right now. If I’m feeling lonely or bored or isolated, it’s an easy way to reach out to people I know. I respond often to other’s tweets, both publicly and by private direct message.

In a year of so much personal upheaval, having an instantly available ambient sense of my friends around me, and what they’re into, has helped keep me functional, balanced, and happier than I would have been otherwise.

The downside? Yes, sometimes Twitter can be too distracting. When I was having some especially hard times in my life earlier this year, I definitely used Twitter to procrastinate and distract myself. But that seems, for me, to be more a function of how I’m doing, rather than anything inherent to Twitter.

…Anyway, those are the changes I’ve notices in my own reading/writing patterns. What about you? Please comment below.

I’ve made a discovery about Amazon’s Kindle e-reader: It’s a pretty good “news radio.” That is, its text-to-speech function does a surprisingly decent job of reading news content aloud.

I currently subscribe to the Wall St. Journal on my Kindle, and I’ve gotten in the habit of letting it read me some interesting articles as I go through my morning routine. I like it. The automated text-to-speech reader is a bit flat for fiction, narrative, and essays that require significant emotional or rhetorical inflection — but it’s great for news. I’ve starting considering it my “robotic NPR.”

(Ducking the reflexive outcry from all my friends at NPR…)

Of course, my point isn’t only about the Kindle. It’s about how any text-to-speech service or tool can interact with text-based news and information content — and why creators of text-based news content should start to take that into consideration. Because you never know exactly how people will experience your content…

Like e-reader display technology, text-to-speech technology has improved significantly in the last few years. It’s still far from perfect, but of all the versions I’ve heard the Kindle’s is one of the clearest, and others are catching up. This is good for people who have a preference for audio news, because now we can experience news produced for text in a format that works with our preferences.

Don’t get me wrong — I love news specifically produced for audio (either radio broadcast or audio/video news podcast). I listen to a lot of it. (Oh, if you haven’t tried the Public Radio Tuner iPhone application, get it, it’s killer.)

Still… It’s pretty cool to be able to have stories from WSJ.com read aloud to me while I cook my veggie pesto omelet. Or articles from the newly online-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which I can quickly “Kindlfy” via the free Instapaper service, which I wrote about earlier.

As text-to-speech technology continues to improve and proliferate, I’d suggest that text news publishers consider how well their online and Kindle content “reads,” in the audible sense. One thing I don’t like about listening to WSJ stories via Kindle is that it reads aloud all the navigational context at the top of the story: word count, etc. This is just a minor and fast irritation, but it bugs me. There’s got to be a way to get around that.

So, as I recommended when I first wrote about the Kindle 2, when your newsroom gets its Kindle (or when you get to fondle someone else’s for a bit), try listening to some news stories (preferably your own, but anyone’s news is a good start). You can subscribe to many newspapers and magazines via the Kindle store for a free two-week trial, or buy an individual article or two. Play with the settings for speed, gender of voice, etc. Realize that you’re listening to a stepping stone technology that presages a potentially important channel for your news in the future. And just keep it in mind.

(Note: This is a slightly re-edited version of an article I originally published in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)

Uncle Jay Explains the News: Sept. 22, 2008

I think he really nailed it with this week’s “news word.”

For a change of pace, here’s an audio podcast. My good friend and environmental journalism colleague Dale Willman just got back from a three-week trip to Indonesia where he was training radio journalists there how to do an environmental radio show — and just how to do radio production, period.

Yesterday Dale and I had a fun conversation about his trip, the state of media in Indonesia, and why text messaging is so popular there.

Listen now! (Or right-click to download)

Dale Willman

In the studio: One of the Indonesian radio journalists Dale helped to train.

Yesterday I offered some tips about making news podcasts smart. Today, Contentious reader Carson commented, “You should create a public profile on Mediafly.com to allow people easy access to those feeds. Or, take their public RSS aggregated feed and put it on your blog, then people just need to sign up for one feed instead of all of them.”

Great idea, Carson! Thanks!

I hadn’t known about MediaFly, so I just checked it out. It is indeed a really useful tool for sharing podcasts. (Yet another example of my community collectively being much smarter and better connected than I am — perhaps my main motivation for blogging.)

So I just created a public profile on MediaFly and moved all my news headline podcast subscriptions over there. It seems to work well with my iTunes.

Anyway, here’s the feed for my collection of favorite news headline podcasts, if you want to check them out: feed://mediafly.com/RSS/Users/agahran/MyQueue/news

That’s probably the easiest way to get them all at once. Keep in mind that I try out new podcasts periodically, so the shows in that feed will vary somewhat over time.

Whadya think? Does this work for you?

(NOTE: I just published this on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits, which is mainly read by mainstream journalists and journalism educators, but I thought Contentious readers might find it interesting, too.)

Like many net users, I get a lot of my news via podcasts. I’ve sampled several news podcasts and have settled on a few favorites as my current primary daily heads-up on the top stories: AP Newsbeat (1 min.), Denver Post All News (8-10 min.), NYT Front Page (5 min.), NPR News (5 min.), WSJ What’s News (3-4 min.) — and, of course, The Onion Radio News (1 min., a complete story, not a summary). Occasionally I also listen to BBC Newspod but that’s rare, since it typically runs 35-40 min.

(UPDATE Jan 24: If you want to subscribe to my favorite news headline podcasts all at once, I created a Mediafly public feed for them.)

That may sound like a lot, but since I listen to them while I’m doing other things (cleaning, cooking, e-mail, exercising, etc.). It’s actually pretty efficient, especially since I like to see how different news orgs are choosing stories on any given day. And I’m not alone in that — most news junkies follow multiple news venues daily.

There is a problem, though: None of my favorite news podcasts exercise their full potential for engagement. But used wisely, a good headlines podcast can support any news org’s bottom line.

If you want to get more direct benefit and mileage from your news podcasts, here’s my advice…

1. Keep it short. Most of my favorites get this right: Top stories, delivered in an snappy, lively style, ideally five minutes or less. You can offer longer feature-style shows too — but make sure you have an overall headlines show for news junkies and news grazers.

2. Intrigue as well as inform. Get right to the point: What are the top stories today, why does each one matter, and why might I want to read or listen to the full version on your site?

3. Link to your stories! This is the most important part of engaging your podcast audience. It’s also something that every single headlines podcast I’ve listened to so far has neglected to do. It’s simple:

• Post daily show notes. I’ve complained about this before, but it’s worth restating: Create a blog for your headlines podcast and use it to post daily “show notes” — live links to the full online versions of stories mentioned in that day’s podcast, in the order they were mentioned, plus a direct link to the downloadable MP3 file. It’s not a transcript, just a list of links. Simple, obvious, and direct. If you produce multiple podcasts, each should have its own show notes blog. Also, some content management systems can be configured to automate the production and posting of podcast show notes.
• Make it easy to find. Give your show notes blog a short, simple, easily-to-spell URL or subdomain redirect (like headlines.xyznews.com).
• Tell them exactly where to go. At the beginning and end of your headlines podcast, mention the show notes URL and tell people to check there for links to the complete versions of the day’s stories. Don’t just give your site’s home page and expect them to search — busy news grazers hate that. Also, include the link to the show notes blog in the ID3 tags for your podcast.
• Post mobile-friendly show notes, too. More and more people are starting to listen to podcasts on cell phones. Make sure your show notes blog is easy to find and use in both formats — and that the links in the mobile version of your blog link to mobile-friendly versions of complete stories.

When you follow those steps, you’ll create a convenient gateway for news junkies and daily news grazers. When a teaser story in your show piques their interest, they’ll know exactly where to go online to find a link to read or listen to the full version. If they see that you reward their interest and don’t waste their time, they’ll be even more likely to click through to your site more often.

Measurable benefits: You’ll get more traffic, and be able to attribute it to the podcast. You’ll also know which stories are most engaging to your podcast audience, which will help you refine your show to suit them. Plus, you’ll be more likely to attract news grazers and turn them into regular readers or listeners of your core products.

Have you seen any headlines news podcasts that meet all of these criteria? I haven’t found one yet — at least, not in a non-tech show from a mainstream news org. If you have seen this done right by a mainstream news org, please link to that show in the comments below.

Also, if your news org is podcasting but is not following one or more of these steps (especially the show notes), why not?

Here, Buzzlogic‘s Valerie Combs talks with Bill Tancer of Hitwise about several intriguing online-media topics — over a fine glass of tempranillo. (Oh, I’m sooooo missing Barcelona again…)

Toward the end, Tancer makes an interesting observation:

“We’ve been tracking social networks as a category — and at the same time I’ve been trying to explain why the adult category has been on a steady decline. Two years ago, business to adult sites comprised about 16% of all internet visits here in the US. As of last week, that’s dropped to about 10% — so quite a steep decline.

“One day, one of my analysts decided to juxtapose those two charts, and put them together on one chart. …We did an analysis and found there’s a perfect negative correlation.

“So we then decided to dive into the demographics of visitors to these porn sites. What we found is that the 18-24-year-olds are disappearing from the adult traffic. And yet 18-24-year olds have been increasing in social networks. So we don’t have a lot of evidence, but we think there is a tradeoff happening.”

I’m not kidding, watch it for yourself. Enjoy!

(Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang for recommending this vidcast, via Twitter.)