Blog

Chris Willis outlines the lessons from his launch at footnote.com – a good list for technology intensive site launches that dovetails nicely with my experience.

The list (go to his site to dive deeper):

1. Make sure it’ll play in Paducah
2. Be a Beta hater
3. Identify the core functionality that defines your story
4. Make sure it works
5. Don’t launch a new site within minutes of a major press release

To paraphrase – understand the market, always improve, know your strengths, test and don’t make changes when you’re launching.  All sound advice that I’m doomed to learn again the hard way.

BrandAutopsy has a great video up dissecting the design of the slimmed down Wall Street Journal which debuted on Jan. 2.

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David Churbuck has another epic post today entitled “Dark days for the press – my advice to a middle-aged reporter” For those of you that hold newspaper journalism as close to your hearts as I, it’s a sad truth.

When I started in college with The Cynic – the student newspaper of the University of Vermont, then moved through The Boulder County Business Journal, and The Worcester Telegram, I would never have considered a world in which the value of print journalism could become so devalued. But the truth was, that even in that day, I could see that financial success would be hard to achieve working as a paid employee of a newspaper.  Hunter S. Thompson told me in 1982 that the newspapers were doomed (but honestly, to Hunter, *everyone* was doomed…) and that the great writers won’t be found on staff anywhere.  They’re the hired guns, the freelancers, and I’d guess now he’d add, the bloggers.

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Bray Studios London 1992

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Another landmark online media move today by the New York Times – they’ve posted their first online video Obituary, for former columnist Art Buchwald, that includes an interview with the deceased about his life (and death).

This is one of the areas where newspapers have the upper hand – they’ve got the talent to produce and the access to the players to do something more with an obit, or any story.  Bloggers may beat them to the punch but they can afford to wait if they *do it right*. 

You can read more about the project, which is called “The Last Word” in Editor and Publisher here.

The NY Times, WSJ, Washington Post, and most of the big boys are now committing to blogging.  The NY Times has just implemented WordPress MU, which is interesting, as it’s an open source product. 

Now word comes from MediaPost (and tons of other sources) that major metro papers websites have increased views on blog pages three fold.

Now, however, there’s some objective support showing that online newspaper readers have taken to the publications’ blogs. Data released this morning by media measurement company Nielsen//NetRatings shows that blog pages within the top 10 online newspapers drew around 3.8 million unique visitors last month–more than triple December 2005’s 1.2 million.

That’s a lot of eyeballs, and the interesting thing is that many of the bloggers aren’t the papers front line journalists, they’re freelancers, or even just fans.

The discussion in the industry on the subject of blogs often distills down to the difference between the wild west of Blogistan, and the rigid, fact checked, journalistic ethics straight jacket of the newspapers.  I still hear it argued that blogs have no place, but honestly, a three fold increase in traffic since *last month* will put that argument to bed forever.  In an industry that’s losing readers, we’re going to take our readers whereever we can find them. So what if the new readers are tuning into the “Boston Mommy Blog” (Meredith O’Brien on being a mother in the city) or the “The Pour” (the NY Times wine critic, Eric Asimov on all things wine).

David Churbuck’s got another source on the story here…

Okay, it seemed like a good idea the first time I saw it.  Snap preview is that bubble pop up when you hover over a link here.  But it’s starting to seem like those “intellitext” ads now.  I throw the question out to you: is Snap preview increasing the value of your Vario reading experience, or is it just another disruption?  Comment or email me to let me know what you think.

I’ve also added avatars so that it’s easy to tell Jill Cole’s posts from mine.  We’ve got a couple special blog projects underway right now, so you can expect some interesting posts over the next couple weeks.  I’m finally resurfacing after a very long, very involved project (more on that soon) and will be doing some housekeeping around the site over the coming week or two. 

Mary Schmidt does it again – another must read, this time on the subject of “Building and Managing Your Online Office.”  Read her “When Bad Creativity Happens to Good People: post here, then read her full article here. 

In my consulting work, I often have to review really bad web sites, from all sizes and types of companies and organizations. Some of the largest and most expensive sites are often the most broken (lots of style, very little substance with no consideration given to customer service). And, small businesses often make the “penny wise, pound foolish” mistake of going with a web hobbyist. But, how do you know whether you’re working with a hobbyist or a pro?

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I was reading an interesting bit in MediaPost today – entitled “Best Practices are Not a Crutch” and was struck by the truth of David Baker’s closing line:

While many folks make a living off copying other programs and tactics and re-applying them in a different context, the best marketing programs don’t rely on best practices alone. They rely on a mix of discipline, business rules, creativity, and timely intervention to reinvigorate the programs and teams.

I remember a friend who was a jazz musician telling me once that you had to learn the rules in order that you might break them properly.  While best practices are good to know, I think we’re better served by our instincts; that Seth Godin was right when he stated “Compromise in marketing is almost always a bad idea.”

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Playing “Volunteer Slavery” – I don’t know when, I don’t know where, but figure mid-70’s.

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