Tag Archives: journalism

New-Media Survival at SIPA 2012

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As regular readers of this blog will know, one of my frequent topics here is surviving the new-media revolution. Next Monday I’ll be sharing my ideas on this topic at the annual meeting of the Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) in Washington, DC.

SIPA 2012 Annual Meeting WebsiteIf you happen to be attending the event, I hope you’ll drop in to my presentation. I’ll be talking about how the transformation from industrial media to social media is changing career paths for editor, reporters, and other content creators, and outlining nine keys to a successful new-media career. I’ll also be giving away a few copies of the paperback edition of the New-Media Survival Guide to audience members hardy enough to stay with me through the entire talk.

If you can’t make it to SIPA, fear not. I expect there will be more than a few attendees reporting on the event. Look for the #SIPADC hashtag. My hectic schedule and a deplorable lack of ambition will probably limit my own efforts at live coverage, but I hope to manage at least an occasional tweet.

Selling and Journalism

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I’m sure there were at least a few journalists who took offense at  Gap marketing chief Seth Farbman telling an audience earlier this week that marketers are more honest than journalists. In his former life as a journalist, Farbman said, “I always had the sense that I was creating information, but the real purpose of that information was to sell something—to sell newspapers and ad space.”

There’s nothing particularly new or revolutionary about this sentiment, and I might have let it pass if not for something I came across last night. I’ve been reading the autobiography of the late novelist Mark Harris, Best Father Ever Invented. In it, he writes about the elation he felt in 1948 when he left journalism to enter college:

How impossible that I was now to spend a day at labor which never asked for the quick hook to catch the reader, never asked, “Is it news? Is it what the public wants?” but in the actual reading of books, in the actual discussion of text, in the actual pursuit of thoughts and conclusions not predetermined by newspaper policy or the interests of the advertising department.

Journalism has always been about selling things. That doesn’t invalidate it as an activity, any more than it invalidates marketing. But it does mean that journalists must acknowledge that limitation if they wish to overcome it.

Is Social Media Better at Getting You Fired, or Hired?

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Khristopher J Brooks on Tumblr In what may be a record for journalists getting fired for their social media activities,Khristopher Brooks was sacked yesterday before he even started his job with the Wilmington (Del.) News Journal. What was his offense? Writing on his blog about getting the job, and using the newspaper’s logo and quoting from the offer letter without permission.

Brooks played a small role in a post I wrote earlier today on the New-Media Survival Guide website suggesting that journalists should write a Firing Manifesto. The idea, basically, is to know when you should choose between saving your job and saving your career.

Though he didn’t have any say in it, getting fired may turn out to have been a positive development for Brooks’s career. In a piece in the Huffington Post, which I read after posting my article, he reports that in the aftermath, he’s received a number of job offers and other opportunities. We won’t know for a while, but it seems social media has done his career more good than harm.

A Leap-Day Special

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To mark the auspicious occasion of leap day, I’ve marked down the price of the e-book edition of the New-Media Survival Guide to just 99 cents (or, if you’re outside the United States, the equivalent in some other currency). This is just a one day sale, more or less, so if you’re tempted, don’t wait. I don’t anticipate another discount for some time.

Managing one-day sales, it appears, can be a bit tricky. You can already buy the discounted e-book on Smashwords; but Amazon requires a review of all changes, so it may not take effect for the Kindle version until leap day proper. Likewise, the price might not return to the regular $2.99 until a few hours after leap day.

Atoms being what they are, I haven’t discounted the new paperback edition of the book. However, that handsome version has its own charms, well worth the $6.99 cover price.

Though there really is not much risk in spending 99 cents, you can find out more about the New-Media Survival Guide before you buy it at NewMediaSurvivalGuide.com.

The Privacy Canard: David Lazarus and the Evils of Facebook

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In the Los Angeles Times today, columnist David Lazarus, a writer I admire, wrote an oddly bitter piece inspired by the Facebook IPO, wondering why so many people under 30 just don’t care about privacy:

It’s not just that we no longer feel outraged by repeated incursions on our virtual personal space. We now welcome the scrutiny of strangers by freely sharing the most intimate details of our lives on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.

Why is this new attitude to privacy so bad? Because, he says, it can get you in trouble. His example is a Georgia school teacher fired after posting “photos of herself on Facebook enjoying beer and wind while on vacation in Europe.”

What happened to her is bad, yes. But is the root of the evil here an issue of privacy, or of bureaucratic intolerance and social hypocrisy? If we focus on the privacy problem in this case, aren’t we ignoring a much bigger problem?

For Lazarus, there are “serious consequences” to the fact that if you Google someone’s name, “you can see things they’ve posted online.” As he concludes with a sardonic flourish,

No worries. Privacy is so 20th century. Get over it. Better yet, post something online. What could be the harm?

It’s a little odd to hear a columnist for a major newspaper advise readers “don’t tell the world anything about yourself.” That, after all, is what columnists do for a living. Lazarus, for instance, writes frequently about his experience with Type I diabetes—surely an “intimate detail” about his life.

This seeming contradiction makes me wonder about why he objects so passionately to all those people doing what he does: writing about their own lives. Is he worried about their privacy, or about the competition?

That’s a cheap shot, no doubt, as it is to suggest that arguments about preserving privacy are really just canards, sleights of hand aimed at keeping us from seeing bigger problems.

But here’s my question: If it’s OK for him to tell the world about himself, why is it such an unwise choice for everyone else?