Great advise to all of us long-time printer reporters. I’m more of a hybrid since half my freelance clients are Web-only and half are print publications with a Web presence. I liked this post so much I blogged about it today in a post on the changing newspaper business. When it comes to blogging I’m a rank beginner, but I know I gotta learn. I’ve also posted it to FreelanceSuccess.com, a subscribers-only newsletter and forum for freelance magazine writers and other professional non-fiction writers.

Michelle Rafter
http://michellerafter.wordpress.com

* Picked up at train station: more readers
* Left on bus: more readers
* Man draws moustache on president’s face

Etc.

The point of the above parody is that there is not much non-linearity in the distribution model you describe.

The non-linearity would come from quoting and commenting. [How many blog posts are rewritten based on feedback? Not that many, although follow-up posts are more common.] This definitely enriches the end product that the reader consumes, but how does it affect the writer’s job?

When you sit down to write your blog posts, what do you think of to increase the potential for a non-linear snowball of distribution

1) Obvious comment and link-baiting
2) Write a well-written, interspersing, relevant post

Writers already think about number 2, or should. Is number 1 the lesson? Well, they already kind of do that only it’s writing stories to attract advertisers rather than readers.

The big lesson that could be learned is that the story is never finished… you are creating a dynamic article rather than a finished end product. But that’s a lesson that many bloggers need to learn too.

The only way to understand your web reader’s user experience (and desires and expectations) is to use the web.

In other words, the flip-side of starting a blog is being an avid reader of blogs, being someone who has at least a passing familiarity with the mechanics and UI of other sites, being someone who at least has a Digg / Reddit / Clipmarks / Twitter / Stumbleupon account.

Too many media sites violate basic tenets of good user interface design while leaving out basic features. Many organizations lack the IA folks to really bring these to fruition, and at our newsroom, at Scientific American (sciam.com) a lot of this innovation is driven by the journalists themselves.

I’d suggest one more incentive/traffic source for web publishing: ‘Link gets picked up by headline aggregator’, such as the mighty Google News, which considers some blogs to be honest-to-goodness news operations.

Not one for every blogger perhaps, but writers blogging regularly for their print publications might be in with a chance.

BF

We can’t teach people to understand something unless they go out there and use it. If more journalists used Web 2.0 products and understood the Web, news organizations would be doing a lot better.

A crumb of comfort. Darwin didn’t say it was the strongest or even the first who survived – it was the most adaptable. One thing is for sure, you cannot adapt to survive in an environment unless you are living in it.

Here’s one further thought. Journalists are the last people to blog because they are trained to answer all the questions they raise. That is not a conversation.

A blog is.

That link in full: http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2007/09/dont-just-witness-network-be-part-of-it.html

Great post which I am going to share with the newsroom. I have adopted this metaphor when explaining the problem:

Our ‘readers’ have learned a new language – ‘digital.’ In order to stay relevant as journalist – you need to learn to speak it as well.

You can try and learn it from a book but as with any language, immersion and constant practice is the only path to success.

That could mean starting a blog, using Twitter, having Flickr or YouTube accounts, whatever. Just do something. You get a lot of credit for at least trying and learning – and NO credit at all for forcing your audience to speak analog when dealing with you.

Damon

“So it’s not about understanding one format, it’s about understanding the WEB. It’s about understanding that putting content on the web isn’t just putting content on a page, same as a printed page — it’s putting content on the NETWORK. It’s understanding that, unlike print publishing where subscriptions control distribution, on the web PEOPLE and LINKS control distribution.”

Amen!

For most, publishing is still seen as something some other department/company does for them – ie even if it’s on the web it is still largely a linear activity. (I’m talking about useful content here, not facebooking or twittering.)

You explained it far better than me. It is complicated, but once you understand how web publishing really works, you realize the potential of connecting your content to a much wider audience. As newspapers look for ways to monitize their websites, they need to really understand how the social media universe is evolving. Then they need to be apart of it.

Colin Mulvany

I think you’ve articulated well what I’ve been trying to say.