Articles, plans and musings

Here I sit and it's already almost February and my "I'll blog more frequently" resolution is blown. Ah well, such is the challenges of squeezing in thoughtful commentary in the middle of the beginnings of a new semester!

Some interesting recent thoughts that have floated in my brain and floated out include...

1. I wrote an article for Business People Vermont on Blogging and Micro-Blogging. You can read it here: http://www.vermontguides.com/2009/01-jan/cc_blog.html
2. The White House has a new Website which you can see at http://www.whitehouse.gov. (make sure you put that .gov on the end...) BUT they do NOT have an official twitter account...yet. For that article check out: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9126660&intsrc=news_ts_head (Thanks to local Vermonter Morgan Brown for the heads up on this one!) Oh...and their blog...still sucks. No great changes there!
3. I'm working on a thoughtful blog piece for Danny Brown over at Social Media PR. We twittered about it around Christmas and now it's time for me to deliver. What's the topic? Small business and social media acceptance/use of course!
4. David Gibson over at Propeller Media Works has asked me to participate in a social media workshop sometime in February. I told him I would be there. It should be fun.
5. Finally, what the heck is happening to our MEDIA? (Note, this is a foreshadowing of a blog post that is formulating in my head.) There's so much chatter going on in the social media circles I follow about news media (especially journalists and print) and how they need to make a shift and then there's the changes at local presses all over the country. When the news is even more important than ever it is interesting to see it collapsing. I have some thoughts on this from a different perspective. But that folks...is another post entirely.

Well, it's off to the trenches -- getting students ready to lead the marketing decisions of the future!

Journalism Online and Blogging and Social Networking OH MY!

Quick reflections on the state of journalism online that I've picked up over the past few days.

First on a News Weekly that GETS IT. And by gets it I mean a local paper that is capitalizing on the opportunities the web has to offer -- not running away from it. Seven Days, our local alternative weekly has relaunched their site this week. They are incorporating some great social media tools -- but they have also created a user interface that makes sense for the WEB -- not a "let's make it look like a newspaper online". Check it out! While it is a little too "Myspacian" for me, I can see where they are taking it and I am sure it will evolve to be less busy over time. The Top 10 is nice as is the integrated RSS -- and if you click you'll see some tag clouds going on.

Second, on an interesting "experiment". Hmmm...check out BeatBlogging.org, a collaboration of 13 different news organizations...

Beatblogging.org is a collaboration between 13 news organizations from around the country and NewAssignment.Net, to figure out how journalists can use social networks to improve beat reporting.

Um...seems to me they should check out this other item that is posted at another blog I follow called Invisible Inkling on how a group of school students has created a news blog for a local community and are beating the pants off of the news folks.

And then there is this new gem "instant journalist" highlighted by the folks over at commoncraft.

Those media beat blogging journalists better "figure it out" fast. Perhaps they should look at Seven Days too!