Learning by blog

So far, creating this blog is a real learning experience for me. It’s my first foray into blogs, and it’s been learn as I go exercise.

I’m learning some new skills, and honing some old ones. I’m learning to become more succinct in my writing, and produce short pieces to tight deadlines. The blog has helped me develop my approach to writing and made me focus on completing pieces to a publishable standard. The more I explore blogging the more I want to do. There are already ideas forming for new blogs that I can create, and I’ll use them develop my skills as well.

Before blogs only a privileged few were able to have their ideas, opinions or work published. Now anyone with access to a computer can produce a blog. Only a minority of the millions of blog creators will produce something that captures an audience, but the sheer number of blogs means that there will always be quality blogs buried in the blogosphere - they just have to be found.

Researching for the posts I have written has forced me to examine my own opinion on the issues I have been blogging about. I found I’m in favour of free information and news; I don’t like, but accept the need for, advertising; I like the anonymity that blogs and the internet can provide; I think the traditional media need to embrace the new environment – the Long Tail is here. Any future blogs I create will reflect these opinions.

If you've found any of the above posts interesting, why not leave a comment. This blog will be hiatus while I consider what to do next in the blogging world, but I'll be checking back from time to time. Thanks for reading.

Publishing newspapers online

The Huffington Post has turned five, and is enjoying huge successes. The Huffington Post began in 2005 as an online news site, a twenty first century newspaper. It has news and comment, hosts blogs and publishes a wide variety of opinion pieces from a swathe of commentators. Since then it has gained a large audience community, expanded in scope and employees, and has branched out into local versions which challenge the traditional media.

The success of the HuffPo is a direct challenge to the traditional newspaper industry. It keeps its production costs low, minimises the costs of content and offers broad appeal. It is a new way of presenting the news to a different generation – available only online - with no hard copy version. There are lessons to be learnt here by the traditional newspaper industry, which is still fumbling with the best way to embrace the digital age.

With hard copy circulation and readership falling, classified ad revenue plummeting and general trend away from traditional news sources newspapers have been slow to embrace the online environment. Often the focus is on transferring the contents of the hard copy paper online, without considering the intricacies of the new technology. Newspapers need to accept the reality that the internet is here to stay and to start working out how to use it well. To do this they need to design specifically for an online environment.

References:
Greenslade, R 2010, Six good lessons from HuffPo's success, Greenslade Blog, guardian.co.uk
Wikipedia - The Huffington Post

Publishing anonymous comments

In the UK both the Times and the Independent online newspapers are banning anonymous comments. To comment you will have to log in. Though still be able to use a pseudonym, comments will be linked to an account and traceable back to the originator, effectively erasing anonymity.

On one hand anonymous commenting can lead to situations where rude, uncivil, derogatory or just plain nasty things can be posted. There’s even a term for it - ‘trolling’. On the other hand, anonymous commenting gives people a freedom to say whatever they want without self censoring themselves. Anonymity gives many people the confidence to tell their truth – be it mundane or controversial - without fear of reprisals.

Anonymous commenting would therefore seem to be a case of protecting civility and sensibility vs protecting freedom of speech.

If websites are concerned about civility in their comments section they should apply more effective moderation, filtering out those comments that they deem too offensive for publication. This is more labour intensive, but encourages people to speak truthfully, without self censoring themselves.

In today’s world what you say and post online can come back to haunt you. Potential employers check social networking pages before making a final decision on hiring. The practice of data mining can be used to build a profile of a person. Innocent or controversial comments have the real chance of damaging careers or reputations. Anonymous posting has always been a way to protect yourself from these practices.

References:
Dowling, T 2010, Will other sites follow the Independent in banning anonymous postings? Guardian.co.uk

Advertising to be Published on Twitter

Twitter has announced a plan to begin using ‘promoted tweets’ – advertising delivered via Twitter.

Twitter, a personal mini-blog application has become vastly popular since its inception four years ago. But despite its popularity and the millions of dollars that have been invested in its development and marketing, it is still yet to provide a return for investors. Just like the paywalling of newspapers, promoted tweets are an attempt to make a profit from a new form of publishing.

Twitters plan of promoted tweets will work by having users seeing sponsored tweets on twitter search pages, having advertising on the twitter homepage that will be tailored to the user, and also through tweets directly to users.

The challenge will be for Twitter to incorporate advertising without driving away their user base. Their plan to pull promoted tweets that aren’t attracting attention will be one motivating factor that will influence the advertisers who use the service. The onus will be on the advertiser to be attention grabbing and interesting, worthy of re-twittering. This will force the advertisers to work hard to embrace the particular idiosyncrasies of the microblog.

While we would all like to keep things free, the costs of running services such as Twitter need to be paid, and a business model that can sustain the service must be found. Perhaps this is the one. Whether the users of twitter are willing to have the advertising becoming part of their tweeting experience remains to be seen.

References:

Liedtke, M & Ortutay B 2010, Twitter takes ads, The Australian viewed 22 May 2010

To publish behind a paywall

News Ltd has moved to erect paywalls around its news content in an attempt to make publishing online news profitable. The exact details of the paywalling are yet to be finalised, but a subscription or freemium model is the most likely scenario (Clark, 2009), whereby general users can access some of the stories on the news site, while payment will be needed in order to access more specialised areas.

Although the immediate effect of paywalls will be to reduce readership, as those members of the audience who are unwilling to pay are lost, the smaller, paying audience will provide a new income stream. Whether this is enough to make a profit is doubtful. The advantage, however, will be a more dedicated audience, one that can be leveraged for further profit.

With paywall income being insufficient to make a profit, leverage is what it’s all about.

While sites like Google leverage their massive user base in order to turn a profit from advertising, their audience is loose and untargeted, their profits depend on the massive numbers of audience they reach. The paywall model, rather than seeking relevance for a wide cross section of the community is about grasping and holding a smaller, but more committed, audience. It’s about leveraging a targeted market, whether for advertising, for classifieds or for associated product promotion.

In the era of The Long Tail niche markets are king. Paywalls are designed to capture a dedicated niche market, which can then be leveraged to make a profit.

References:
The Guardian Rupert Murdoch plans charge for all news websites by next summer
The Long Tail – Chris Anderson’s Blog

Publish on Ipad – The way of the future?

• The newest ‘next big thing’ for publishing is the Ipad and other similar technology. With the iPad, as with the Kindle and various other devices, there is a glimpse of the future where everyone can access vast libraries of information and entertainment via a hand-held, tactile, computerised reader.
  
  Many publishing media hoe to benefit from these new technologies. Newspapers are the prime example. If the use of such devices become ubiquitous newspapers can be delivered direct to the readership, updated continuously, and provide written, visual and multimedia content to the reader. The vision is of a new type of newspaper, specifically designed for, and published on, e-reader technology. It is a new form of media whose intricacies are waiting to be explored.
  
  But will this save failing media industries - such as newspapers, books or magazines? Although publishers will save on printing and transport costs there are other costs that will be associated with publishing in the new media
  
• Commissions will still need to be paid to vendors, though the vendor will be Apple (or Amazon, etc) rather than bookstores or newsagents
• The content providers will still expect to be paid
• People are reluctant to pay for online content, resulting in a smaller buying public meaning sales income will fall
• The lack of a physical product, such as a book or magazine, will mean that people expect to pay less for the same content
• Without a physical product, readership - as opposed to the buying public – will be dramatically reduced
• With a smaller buying public and reduced readership less advertising - and advertising income - can be expected
• With a smaller buying public and reduced readership less classified advertising can be expected, with a resultant loss of income
  
  Will the savings new technologies can deliver in terms of decreased production or transport costs outweigh the costs of participating in the new media? Not yet, the technology is too new, and not enough people have access to it. But, think of that future where everyone has a computerised reader - and it’s very possible that we will see a revitalisation of these failing publishing media as they embrace new forms.
  
  
  References:
  Beecher, E 2010 The Ipad won’t save newspapers Crikey.com viewed on 15 April 2010
  Image thanks to Francesco Marino at freedigitalphotos.net

Publishing Spin

Recently Crikey.com, began a series of stories about an investigation by the University of Technology Sydney, in conjunction with the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), that examines the role that public relations (PR) plays in getting media stories published. The study examined the links between newspaper stories and PR, finding that over half the stories examined were triggered by PR activities, showing that “journalism in Australia today is heavily influenced by commercial interests selling a product”.

Is this the way the professional publication of news is heading – where news is not investigated, but simply rewritten using the press release as a template.

According to the study, a majority stories in newspapers across the country are based almost entirely on press releases and information supplied by PR representatives. When Investigators sought comments from journalists and editors the more candid responded unapologetically, citing the pressure to produce a high volume of stories within tight timeframes. There are now less journalists to produce ever greater amounts of content to fill a 24 hour news cycle, while the number of PR practitioners is rising – each generating more and more ready to print news press releases. These days it is nearly impossible for the average reader to trust that they are reading a researched and accurate journalistic article, rather than an advertisement or public relations piece.

An ironic twist to this story is that the article itself is mainly based on a press release from the parties that conducted the study, and as such, is a further example of a news story being driven by PR activity.

Defining Blogs

What is a blog? This is a blog. You knew that. It’s probably not the first you have seen. There are many ways to define blogs, wikipedia has a really good outline of what blogs can be. Basically, it’s a type of website with regular entries, which allows an individual to get their ideas, opinions or work out into the world using technology that allows cheap access to audiences. It is, in short, self publishing, and with more than 112,000,000 blogs around its self publishing gone mad.

Modern technology has drastically reduced the production and distribution costs for a self published piece. It doesn’t have to be printed, you don’t have to ship it anywhere to have people read it, it can all be created and posted to the internet from your lounge room. With a blog its so cheap to share your opinions, your art, the sordid or not so sordid details of your personal life or your passions with the world.

Because you can do just about anything on your blog there are blogs that cover just about every topic, but there are two main ways to define different types of blogs, by their subject or by the media that they focus on.

Defining blogs by their main subject theme shows as many blogs as there are genres, political blogs, personal blogs, blogs about hobbies or projects, blogs discussing art or movies, or even blogs about some just plain bizarre subjects.

Defining blogs by the media that they use or focus on shows the breadth of art and media that can be published on blogs: there can be photoblogs, video blogs, link blogs - even typecasting blogs for people who still feel comfortable with a typewriter. There are sketchblogs, oil painting blogs and music blogs - the list is nearly endless.

Blogs use technology to make self publishing easy. They are the platform of choice for the amateur with something to say. Blogs are individual expressions and are as varied and unique as their authors.

The Printed Page vs the Online Experience

A printed page is a marvellous piece of technology. It makes use of written language, can store huge amounts of information, can include images and diagrams and allows the transference of ideas across space and time. The first printing press caused a paradigm shift in the way information was presented, distributed and absorbed by the audience. Now the online environment is doing the same. The ubiquitousness of computers in our society mean that reading of a computer screen is becoming more common, while reading from a printed page is becoming less common.

There are three major ways in which the printed page varies from the online document.

First is affordance – what the technology you are using will allow you to do (Walsh, 2006, p34). The printed page will allow words and pictures, and in many cases varied colours, but for the online document the choices become almost infinite - text, image, audio, video, millions of colours. The increased affordance of the online document means communication – and understanding - will take place on many different levels.

Second is the way a page is read, and the way information is absorbed by the recipient. Reading from a printed page is a linear process, from the top left to the bottom right of the page (in western cultures). With an online document, the reader is free to choose their own path, and may not follow any pattern that the author had considered (Nielsen, Writing for the Web). Rather than follow a logical progression that is set out by the author, the reader will make their own meaning and progress along their own path.

Third and finally, is the idea of distribution. A printed page is a mass media device, however, the costs of production and distribution mean that the audience is limited by the capacity of the producer. With an online document distribution can be instantaneous - a published blog is immediately available for anyone in the world with access to read. Online distribution is limited, not by the producers capacity to distribute, but by the consumers capacity to access.

These three ideas - affordance, reading and distribution – create a vast difference in the way printed and online documents are produced, and the considerations in mind when they are being designed.

References:
Walsh, M 2006, “The ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts”, The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol 29, no 1, pp 21-37
Jakob Nielsen’s website, 2010, useit.com, viewed 2 June 2010, <http://www.useit.com/>

Me, Blogs and Us

Once upon a time being published was associated with leather-bound books and authority. But the digital age has changed all that. These days, with the internet, almost anyone can publish almost anything, a truth or a lie, a masterpiece or a flop, they‘re all out there for the world to see. There are hundreds of ways to publish, but one the most popular is the blog in its many variations and forms.

When I was growing up there was no such thing as a blog. Self publishing was a complicated and costly process. Production costs and distribution costs were phenomenal, and the opportunity to self publish rested on your ability to pay. These days, individuals can publish their ideas, opinions, rants and research with the click of a button. Gone are the prohibitive production costs, and distribution is now instantaneous. Suddenly the game has changed; everyone’s opinion can be heard. All that remains to be seen is if there is anyone listening, or are we all to busy writing our own blog to read anyone else’s?

This blog is an attempt to look at publishing in a digital age, to look at the how, the who, the what, the when and most importantly the why of publishing in a digital age. It looks at the issues of publishing, the choices, dilemmas, modes and reasons that are behind the pieces that are published, both in a modern online and a traditional context.