New Hot Profession: Blogging 04/21/2009

Found a Wall Street Journal article  on blogging very intriguing. Who knew that “more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers, firefighters or even bartenders.”

I didn’t realize that it was possible for people to make their primary income this way particularly since there are few venues where elite bloggers are promoted and showcased due to their perspective/opinions (of if they were connected to a political candidate or campaign or a corporation). Also, I suspect making money off a blog entails different factors beyond ad revenue and traffic.

The average bloggers do it for about 35 months and make a few hundred dollars, according to the WSJ.  “But a subgroup of these bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants or write for sites with substantial traffic.”

Publisher To Reprint Blogs On Regular Paper 01/22/2009

Volunteers who already cover myriad topics will use their personal laptops for The Printed Blog  to post entries. The paper will publish their blogs with local advertising, according to a New York Times article. The first issues will be available for free distribution Tuesday in Chicago and San Francisco.

“The free newspaper business model is still very workable,” David Cohen, a founder of Silicon Valley Community Newspapers,  told the Times. “There’s a huge readership that wants the local news, and local businesses tend to increase their advertising in bad times because they have to capture people’s attention.”

The Printed Blog is designed to bridge print and Web models, according to former business productivity software entrepreneur Joshua Karp, who established and funded the startup. Bloggers will replace reporters and grant permission to the posts in exchange for a share of ad revenue.

“We are trying to be the first daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and other user-generated content,” he told the Times. “There were so many techniques that I’ve seen working online that maybe I could apply to the print industry.”

It will feature blog posts including from nationally known blogs such as Daily Kos  as well as photographs and readers’ comments.

Quotations about journalism, writing 12/31/2008

Benet Wilson, online managing editor at Business Aviation, shared a list of quotes with members of the NABJ Digital Journalism Task Force. The following list contains some gems I wanted to share with others and save:

• Be careful. Journalism is more addictive than crack cocaine. Your life can get out of balance.
     — Dan Rather
• The truth is more important than the facts.
     — Frank Lloyd Wright
• [Journalism] largely consists of saying ‘Lord James is dead’ to people who
  never knew that Lord James was alive.
     — G.K. Chesterton
• A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
     — Napoleon Bonaparte
• Journalism is organized gossip.
     — Edward Egglestone
• In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.
     — Ellen Goodman
• A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
     — Winston Churchill
• Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.
     — Anna Quindlen
• I’m sorry, I don’t talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately.
     — Chelsea Clinton to nine-year-old reporter for Scholastic News
• Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
     — A.J. Liebling
• In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.
     — Oscar Wilde
• A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has color and life– what people are interested in. That’s journalism.
     — Burton Rascoe
• Journalists do not live by words alone, although sometimes they have to eat them.
     — Adlai E. Stevenson
• Make everything as simple as possible – but not simpler.
     — Albert Einstein
• Ultimately, I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrotechnics associated with us, but, is it good news quality information that defines who somebody is?
     — Bob Woodward
• Preach not because you have to say something, but because you have something to say.
     — Richard Whately (1787-1863)

Protecting Core Values Essential, Newspaper Editor Says At National Press Club Forum 11/10/2008

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel  Editor In Chief Marty Kaiser said his paper can concentrate on what he thinks will work such as more investigative reporting due to local ownership.

 “It gives us great freedom in our newsroom to do the kinds of things that we want to do and also to experiment,” he told a National Press Club forum.

Local ownership also allows the Pulitzer Prize-winning paper to make changes quickly such as adding a news hub manned by an online producer, editors and reporters, Kaiser said.

Established in 1908, the National Press Club is the world’s leading professional organization for journalists and coonsists of 3,500 members representing major news outlets.  The next National Press Club Centennial Forum will be today via Webcast to the University of Alaska (Anchorage and Fairbanks) University of Nebraska, University of Idaho, University of South Dakota, and University of Montana. Details and forum highlights can be found at the National Press Club’s Web site: http://www.press.org.