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Booted for blogging, ex-Washington Post staffer reactsBy Jim Wayne, May 15, 2008  Financial support for OJR is provided in part by Yahoo!:  Social life: Not suitable for WaPo.
Last month Tunsion—aka Christmas Ape—came out of Internet anonymity with a KSK entry documenting his inebriation one ancient evening at (gasp) a sports bar. Turns out that was the Washington Post's cue to fire him, within 48 hours of the post, for "discrediting the publication." The Web backlash to WaPo's knee-jerk reaction was immediate and expected. For HR malpractice. For stodgy new-media ignorance. For axing a potential traffic cow. But don't quit your day job, Mike. KSK is of course booming on the heels of the incident, and Tunison is content, sort of, to be uncaged in that space. We caught up with him over e-mail for a closer look at the whole mess. OJR: Is there anything defensible about this? Or does a part of you think WaPo did what it had to do? MT: I think The Post has a right to uphold and enforce whatever stodgy standards of conduct that it deems appropriate. I don't they would have acted as extremely or as quickly as they did if it wasn't first picked up by a journalism blog. In that case, the editors probably felt pressure from within the journalism community to cleanse whatever damage they thought I was doing to the Post brand. ...Continue reading "Booted for blogging, ex-Washington Post staffer reacts"  No comments |  Archive LinkFive steps to encourage readers to blog on your websiteBy Robert Niles, May 13, 2008  Financial support for OJR's coverage of social media is provided in part by Topix: Anyone can start a blog, for free and in minutes, using established and popular services such as Blogger and Wordpress.com. What would entice a reader to avoid those options in favor of maintaining their blog on your website? The answer is one word: community. Most readers, like professional writers, want an audience for their work. Putting a blog online isn't like putting a magazine on the rack at Borders. Starting a blog on Blogger, while technically simple, does little to put a writer's word in front of a potential audience. Promoting the new blog remains the writer's responsibility, and many fall short of the challenge. Launching a new blog within an established website community, however, gives a new blogger a head start on promoting his or her work. Within the community, bloggers become the audience for their fellow bloggers' work. And if the blogging community is part of a larger content-driven website, such as an online newspaper, non-writing readers can more easily find and become fans of a new blog. Newspapers are embracing reader blogging as a way to both attract user-generated content (and increased page views) for a website, as well as to build loyalty among readers. USA Today has built ambitious social media initiative within its website, and other Gannett papers now are inviting their readers to blog with them. Chicken, meet egg. Here are five steps that your news website can take to avoid that classic dilemma, and to build an active and engaging online blogging community among your readers. ...Continue reading "Five steps to encourage readers to blog on your website" 7 Comments | Archive LinkDo you still read newspapers?By Robert Niles, May 12, 2008 The circulation data is clear: Fewer people are taking the daily newspaper in the United States. Readers and, increasingly, advertisers are moving online.As online journalists, many of us straddle both worlds. Many of us work for newspaper-dot-coms; others at least started their careers in print. Are any of us still reading the "dead tree edition?" If so, how many newspapers a day are you reading? And how many did you read a decade ago? Journalists, one might presume, ought to be the biggest fans and consumers of journalism. Can online journalists, folks at leading edge of industry change, still be counted on to take the print edition? Or have we bailed on print, too? Tell us in the comments which papers you still read in print, and which you would recommend. Or, if you are not reading papers in print, tell us what might help you change your mind and subscribe to a print newspaper in the future.
7 Comments | Archive Link'What is Robots.txt?'By Robert Niles, May 9, 2008 Every Web publisher ought to be thinking about how to improve the traffic that they get from search engines. Even the most strident "I'm trying to appeal only to people in my local community" publishers should recognize that some people within their community, as is the case in any community, are using search engines to find local content.Which brings us to this week's reader question. Actually, it isn't from a reader, but from a fellow participant in last week's NewsTools 2008 conference. He asked the question during the session with Google News' Daniel Meredith, and I thought it worth discussing on OJR, because I saw a lot of heads nodding in the room as he asked it. Meredith had mentioned robots.txt as a solution to help publishers control what content on their websites that Google's indexing spiders would see. A hand shot up. "What is robots-dot-text?" Meredith gave a quick and accurate answer, but I'm going to go a little more in depth, for the benefit of not-so-tech-savvy online journalists who want the hard work on their websites to get the best possible position in search engine results. Note that I wrote "the best possible position," and not "the top position." There's a difference, and I will get to that in a moment. First, robots.txt is simply a plain-text file that a Web publisher should put in the root directory of their website. (E.g. http://www.ojr.org/robots.txt. It's there; feel free to take a look.) The text files includes instructions that tell indexing spiders, or "robots," what content and directories on that website they may, or may not, look at. Here's an example of a robots.txt file: ...Continue reading "'What is Robots.txt?'" No comments | Archive LinkConfessions of an online journalism toolBy Noah Barron, May 8, 2008 Financial support for OJR is provided in part by Yahoo!:  Have tiger, will travel.
W00tBloggyBlogg: u graduated wtf are you gonna do now? Noah Barron: Boy, I sure wish I knew. I'm looking for a job but it's turning out to be really difficult, given the journalism market right now. WBB: lol srs? u prolly suck at jourlsm amirite? or maybe they saw ur uggfase on fasebook hehehehe ;) Noah: I hope not. I think I bring a variety of skills to the table--writing, editing, Web design, video production, photography and graphics, but mostly I'm finding it's well-nigh impossible to get any kind of response from employers I send applications to. WBB: wtf is well-nigh? also dont end ur sentences w/ a preposition. so like u send apps in & the doods are like "rofl this fool sucks" or wut? Noah: Honestly, I have no idea. I send out resumes to nearly every position on MediaBistro and other similar media job sites--dozens of applications total--and have never gotten a single return e-mail or call. Not one. My only job leads are from internships I've done and personal contacts I've made. I guess I'm just surprised that in the age of digital journalism, a digital journalist's digital job searches are so seemingly useless. WBB: whatvr dood dont cry QQ y not start ur own blog and make bux on ads etc? Noah: I mean, that's definitely an option. I already have a site, but haven't developed it properly. I just feel like I need health insurance and a steady income coming out of graduate school...is that too much to ask? WBB: obvi!!!! u should post more lohan upskirts imo :P Noah: See, that's what I'm trying to avoid. If I'm going to be a DIY-blogger/journalist, I want to create meaningful, interesting content that is relevant enough to belong in a newspaper, but is tailored to an online audience. WBB: o so like blah blah darfur blah blah global warming zzzzz yeah thatll get lots of hits. gg dood. Noah: Come on Bloggy, don't you think we can find a way to package socially-conscious, important news for the casual Web reader while also turning a profit? WBB: .... Noah: Well, what do you suggest? WBB: durr y not offer something useful to ur readers instd of whining on the interwebz? that's y most blogs r real boringzzzzz urs included :/ Noah: You're right, Blogg. It's not too late to turn this column around and offer helpful content. How about a toolbox filled with essential survival equipment for freshly-minted online journalists, resources I've gathered over the last two years? ...Continue reading "Confessions of an online journalism tool" 4 Comments | Archive Link |
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