How The Seattle Times Covered a snow storm
How The Seattle Times covered a snow storm – My recap at 10,000 Words about our snow coverage. The most interesting part was the live chat that we kept live all day for three days to give status updates and answer reader questions. We had an overwhelming after-the-fact response from our readers who were absolutely pleased by this community service.
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Why can’t newspapers make money online? (Mashable) - So, they’ve got it all figured out? “The bottom line is this: the reason that newspapers can’t make money is because they’re pricing themselves out of the market.” It’s a lot more complicated than that. I like what Paul K. Ward says in the comments of the article: “Newspapers and other information outlets shouldn’t be setting sights on paying their costs, they should be focused instead on creating demand for what they offer at a profit. ” There are so many problems with the way many newspapers present and distribute news online that makes it less desirable than other outlets. And the fact that we’re still calling ourselves “newspapers” is problematic too. If that’s what we identify as, that’s what we prioritize, and the web will always be an afterthought. We are media companies. We have websites and newspapers. And we need to think creatively about the future of both. Create unique demand for our content online, then you can charge for it.
Just initiated the first of many changes to my “personal branding”
I hate going to conferences or speaking to classes and getting the question, “So, is ‘Michell’ your maiden name?” No, actually. It’s my middle name (pronounced ‘Michelle’) and I was stupid to start using that for my global username from the start. So I just changed my Twitter handle to @laurenrabaino. Yes, it’s a few characters longer, but it’s something I’ve needed to do.
The quick back story: I started using “laurenmichell” as a username for various accounts in high school, back when it wasn’t quite cool to use your first + last name. It was a middle ground between anonymity and true identity, and the spelling of my middle name is unique enough that I was able to grab that handle (mostly) everywhere. After using it for a few years, I’ve been scared to change it. Continue reading →
Posted in two cents | Tagged personal branding, SEO, twitter handles, usernames | Leave a comment
AAJA Seattle gets a facelift
As the newly-elected VP of Programs for the Seattle chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association, my first order of business was, naturally, a website redesign – freshly launched this morning. It was a quickie makeover that I will probably improve over time. With the redesign, we’ll also be posting more items to the blog. We already have two fresh items from our Seattle members, including a defense of student-journos at WWU and a callout to “backpack journalists.”
Being involved with AAJA is a reality check for me because I’ve always been involved in circles like ONA and Hacks/Hackers — very distinct tech circles of the journalism community. This is the first time I’m involved with an organization more representative of the actual tech skills that everyday journalists have. It’s been fun teaching them about blogging and sharing my philosophies on social media, web journalism, etc. In my role as VP of Programs, I plan to host workshops and training for basic tech skills, even though that’s slightly out of the scope of the role. My main responsibilities lie in organization and promotion around student scholarships.
AAJA Before
AAJA After
Posted in Projects | Tagged AAJA Seattle, redesigns | Leave a comment
WooThemes launches theme based on Rutledge’s redux - I wrote in July about Andy Rutledge’s design redux getting slammed by journo-tweeters after he wrote a scathing post (which has since been deleted from the web) about news design. While many of his points were spot-on, it was frustrating for those of us at newspapers who know there are a lot more politics and technical integration issues that go into website design than meet the eye. This week, though, premium WordPress theme developers at WooThemes launched Currents, a WordPress news theme based almost exactly of Rutledge’s initial design. Worth checking out.
Behind the scenes of Seattle Times’ new WordPress blog, The Today File
This week marks my fifth month at The Seattle Times, a perfect time for an update about what I’ve been up to. Almost since the minute I walked in the door, Eric Ulken has had me working on an unprecedented project for our newsroom — a WordPress blog.
So here I bring you, The Today File. We soft launched the blog two weeks ago and are now regularly linking to it from the homepage. The slideshow below is the presentation I gave to editors and reporters.
Continue reading →
Posted in journalism, life, wordpress | Tagged personal reflections, projects, seattle times | 12 Comments
Making Your News Budget Public: How And Why – I feel like I’ve been talking about open news for years and years. Back then, I referred to it as “making your editorial calendar public,” but now that I’m an old fart in a newsroom, I say “open your news budget.” Same diff. My latest post at 10,000 Words outlines examples of a few news orgs who are actually doing it – finally. Some use Facebook, others use Twitter, some are writing straight-up blog posts and others are using Google Spreadsheets. More later today on how The Seattle Times is approaching this concept.
On deciding to dedicate time to a new storytelling tool
Tools come and go. We blog about them all the time as they crop up. We poke around, make accounts that quickly expire. We wait for platforms to fall out of beta, but forget about them by the time they go public. We claim that some tools are the “future of [fill in the blank]” or the next “[social media tool A] meets [social media tool B].” So how do you decide which ones are worth your newsroom’s time? These are a few of my thought processes. Continue reading →
Posted in Carnival of Journalism | Tagged bryan murley | 4 Comments
The future of video in online journalism
Predicting the future of anything is tough, especially in online journalism and certainly when it comes to video. I remember a time when “multimedia” was everything at conferences and in j-school classrooms. Those days faded and were replaced with “social media.” Now it’s all about data and applications.
My point is that discussion about the “future” of online video has really faded into the background in forward-thinking journalism circles. I certainly don’t know what that future looks like, but as both a consumer and producer, I can make a few guesses based on my personal expectations. Continue reading →
Posted in Carnival of Journalism | Tagged carnival of journalism, future of online video, jcarn | 2 Comments