Blogging: Explore the Publishing Frontier

Lesson Ten: Protecting Content and Yourself

2010-03-17T16:21:00.000-07:00

Please post final questions: Mike and I will wrap up answers by the 25th. Also, if you'd like a final holistic critique of your site, please make a note of this in the week ten assignment bin.

Why protect blog content?

2010-03-17T16:16:00.000-07:00

People steal. Especially online, where acquisition only requires a few mouse clicks. Many aren't even aware they're violating intellectual property (IP) rights, which vary from culture to culture (The south-Alaskan Tlingit have some of the world's most stringent concepts. To them, a tale is a present, bestowed from one person to another. Re-gifting is a serious offense, never mind mass-replicating a story in print...)

Is it that big a deal if someone swipes a few hundred words? For some, intellectual property theft violates their creativity and privacy. Others can shrug it off as the give-and-take of the online world. But how would you feel about thousands of words? Or hundreds of thousands even? While editing for a Michelin guidebook, I stumbled across the entire text translated from the Italian version into poor English, seemingly via Babelfish or a similar program (never mind that a proper English manuscript existed).

Precise numbers remain rare. But the U.S. Department of Commerce estimates stolen IP costs companies a collective $250 billion each year.

Amplified, even the smallest act of piracy has serious repercussions, especially in a flailing economy that's based more and more on intellectual property. In February 2010, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) estimated that 41 percent of all PC software is stolen. Its President and CEO Robert Holleyman noted this "theft totals nearly $53 billion a year, $31 billion directly from US companies. We would never tolerate having four out of every 10 cars on the road be stolen, yet that is the very problem the software industry faces."

Ironically, illegal downloads aren't the main culprit, but rather businesses and governments around the globe, who duplicate unauthorized software. Trimming that by 10% would create 600,000 new jobs and deliver $24 billion in tax revenues, a BSA study explained.

Sounds like something that just happens to the big guys, right? But consider this: the average book runs 60,000–90,000 words. Post 500-word entries three times a week and you hit that threshold in 10 months. Could you stand by while someone else profits over a year's – or years' – worth of your work?

The decision to share content can benefit us all – from software to art sources and user-generated sites. But it should be just that: a decision.

Yours. Not some grabby freeloader's.

Strike back at copyright thieves

2010-03-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

Unique pages boost your SEO, which effects your traffic, authority and advertising income. When robbers raid your material, they're stealing just as much as any pickpocket ... just a little more subtly.

Many authors –especially those who began as hobbyists, not professionals – shrug and chalk digital piracy up to the nature of the web. But as content increasingly becomes currency in the new freeconomics, creators need to fight their corner. You labored over that material, investing in education and quite possibly hardware to make it possible, not to mention the time and mental wattage. Don't let some lazy goober profit off your efforts.

When an MFA isn't a proud life landmark

2010-03-17T16:14:00.001-07:00

Some scraper sites steal other people's material and pair it with Adsense listings – a huge no-no. Google takes action swiftly against Made for AdSense (MFA) blogs, which essentially are link farms. Because not only do these miscreants steal from creators, they spam the search engines...

IP Piracy? Not in my backyard!

2010-03-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

We already touched upon the Creative Commons as a way to share content to varying degrees. Remember that the knife cuts both ways: you can borrow others' material but also, potentially, license your own. Learn more here about good practice, especially for podcasts and other multimedia.

Some copyright holders take steps to monitor distribution and use of their works. This could range from a digital watermark on an image or video file to a copy-protection scheme. Tampering with these is illegal, according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If someone violates your rights, you can issue a take-down notice. Patent Attorney Gene Quinn offers an accessible walk-through of the process on IPWatchdog.com, including the WHOIS lookup and a sample letter.

Thanks to a simple "vanity Google" – searching one's own name – I once caught a blatant text grab. A blogger had copied an investigative newspaper story off my website, from my byline to The Daily's copyright notice. A quick trawl through his site revealed little original content: he appeared to be a scraper, not a misguided fan. After the "author" ignored a takedown request, I wrote to his hoster, outlining the situation and asking for the post to be removed. Google wiped the whole blog.

To take action, you need to spot the violation. Teachers have long known about software for detecting plagiarism. Products like Turnitin, Eve2 and CopyCatch can also aid authors. Even an advanced Google search on a distinctive phrase can be productive.

A few other tactics:

Create a Google Alert for key terms.
Paste text from posts into Google's Blog Search.
Copyscape notices. These deter some scroungers, but you can also search for duplicates of your pages at this site.
MyFreeCopyright issues a badge with a unique code to embed on your blog. It stores a digital fingerprint of your original work, so you can prove ownership.
Services like Tynt can detail copy activity on your site – and even automatically add a link back to your blog with every paste.
Forbid right-click captures with this code inside body tags.
Email entries to yourself, establishing a "paper" trail that demonstrates authorship and date published. In Blogger, the drill is Settings>Email>Blogsend Address. Most folks prefer to use a free web-based account dedicated solely to this purpose.

This also is handy to back up your entries. Recently, in an epic cut-and-paste flail, I managed to overwrite a file on Blogger and my home computer. Luckily Google's cache contained a five-day-old snapshot of the site, so I managed to restore the post (whether it should be is another question: I wasn't happy with that text...).

Conduct a standard search, but rather than clicking the headline, click on the grey "cache" link beside the green URL. Then go to View>Page Source on your browser and grab the relevant text. The Wayback Machine is another digital time capsule handy in such moments.
Post a copyright notice, although one is no longer required for legal protection of original content. (Those of you who live in America may recall the ubiquitous loop of It's a Wonderful Life screening from 1974–1993, seemingly nonstop? That's thanks to old laws, which required re-application 28 years after a film's release. Republic Pictures finally seized control again, arguing the movie was a derivative work of a short story, for which it owned adaptation rights. Life's much easier now for creative types, especially since we don't have to watch Jimmy Stewart blubbing endlessly...)

A copyright notice can deter would-be plagiarists, by signalling that you care enough to take preventative measures and thus are more likely to pursue DCMA takedown options and legal action. Much like a bicycle lock, notices stop opportunistic thieves (anyone truly determined will take your Schwinn or your story regardless. But a little effort can ward off impulse-grabbers...).

Most bloggers feature copyright notices in a footer, the area at the bottom of a web page. Other common items there include links to privacy policies, contact information, and sometimes addition navigation links. To add a copyright notice to your blog's footer:

From the Dashboard, click Layout followed by the "Add a Gadget" link in the blog footer area. (screenshot)
Select the Text gadget. (screenshot)
Click "Edit HTML" to switch to HTML edit mode. (screenshot)
Leave the Title field blank. Enter the following text into the content field. (screenshot)

<p style="text-align: center;">All content &copy;2009 Mike Keran.  All rights reserved.</p>

(Don't forget to change Mike's to yours!)
Click Save in the Configure Text dialog. Click Preview to double check how the new footer looks, then click Save to finalize the changes to your blog's layout.
The Copyright Office's website details more exact wording.

But I like to share my toys!

2010-03-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

Guard your own site from hoster smack-downs by being accessible. Maybe you've done everything right, sourcing images from Flickr's CC-licensed pool and Wikimedia Commons, but someone uploaded art he or she didn't own. Make sure a copyright holder could contact you without having to take heavy-handed action.

Receive an alert whenever someone leaves a message, no matter how old the post: Settings>Comments>Comment Notification Email down the bottom.

Leave some email avenue open. Yes, some junky offers for fat-burning products and Nigerian net scams will probably wriggle through as a result. That's why I rely on Hotmail and gmail more than my vanity domain popmail accounts; I'd rather Microsoft and Google finesse the spam filters...

A few ways to remain contractible:
1. Amanda's approach: link through to a professional portfolio site complete with an email, unlisted phone number and PO Box. As a journalist, I want folks to reach me easily with assignments, story tips and press-trip offers.
2. Mike's tecchie approach: web form.
3. Contain the address in an image, which spambots can't crawl. This can be annoying for users, though, who have to retype the characters.
4. Write it out, omitting the "@" to foil the spiders. For example: frogwad (at) hotmail.com. This can pop easily into the "About Me" box, editable under Layout>Page Elements. To keep this text short, consider linking to a Google Profile: My Account>Create a Public Profile> Add Links towards the bottom of the page.

Don't grow up to be a pirate!

2010-03-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

Receive an alert whenever someone leaves a message, no matter how old the post: Settings>Comments>Comment Notification Email down the bottom.

Eeek! What can I publish safely?

2010-03-17T16:08:00.001-07:00

Well, first off, you can showcase your original works that don't contain anyone else's copyright or enrage the petty paper-pushers of Peleliu or Egypt, while you're still within their legal range. Then look for material in the public domain, which varies from country to country. The average remains 95 years in most western nations.

In the US, copyright on post-2002 works expires 70 years after the death of the author. For corporate works, the limit's 95 years after publication or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first. Disney has been instrumental in pushing those limits back, as it struggles to keep control of Mickey Mouse, born in 1928, as well as the slightly younger Goofy, Pluto and Donald Duck.

Chris Sprigman, Counsel to the Antitrust Group, points out that public domain works foster creativity. Shakespeare borrowed the plot line of Romeo and Juliet, for example, later re-envisioned by Leonard Bernstein's in West Side Story.

Ironically, many of Disney's animated films are based on Nineteenth Century public domain works, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Pinocchio, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Alice in Wonderland, and The Jungle Book (released exactly one year after Kipling's copyrights expired).

Borrowing is ubiquitous, inevitable, and, most importantly, good. Contrary to the romantic notion that true genius inheres in creating something completely new, genius is often better described as opening up new meanings on well-trodden themes.

Be mindful of your image and video sources, but also of deploying others' words. We've talked a lot about the power of quotes. They can illuminate your material, connecting it to the larger world. Just make sure you don't tread on any toes in the process.

The US, like many western nations, has a fair use exemption. This allows commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works without the permission of the author. It's a complex thing, which trips up even IP lawyers. So I'll shared the super-general rule-of-thumb hammered home in my media law class at university: Don't quote more than 25 consecutive words of an article, attribute the comment and you'll probably be OK.

Watch the ratios, however. Twenty-five words of a 50-word blog post could land you in big trouble. Twenty-five words of a 5,000-word New Yorker manifesto's safer ground. If you're in doubt, just ask. The web's has made seeking permission a lot easier than tracking down an author via a busy publisher in days past...

Always be extremely careful when borrowing material, even from an open content site. Read the fine print. For instance, both GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and Creative Commons ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) require a republisher to list the license conditions, and give credit to the original author.

Web pioneer Brad Templeton wrote a brilliant article, 10 Big Myths about Copyright Explained. Go read it. Need reassurance? Skip down to number 11 (yes, eleven, he couldn't resist the base-five headline, like so many suckers before him).

Wrap up this legal stuff, already!

2010-03-17T16:07:00.000-07:00

We're almost done. In the meantime, here's a transformative derivative work: It's A Wonderful Life in 30 seconds, reenacted by cartoon bunnies.

Bloggers need to treat lightly around libel also. I'll nutshell, since we're all weary here: don't talk unsustainable smack about identifiable people outside the realm of public interest. That means go easy on Uncle Wilfred, but be more frank about Britney, George W, Mick Jagger and so forth. Here's another area where epithets and nicknames prove useful: protecting the privacy of your family, friends and colleagues. Still, be careful that you haven't revealed so much about yourself that their identities are easy to infer, should they not want Internet infamy...

Now for the good news

2010-03-17T16:06:00.001-07:00

Legislators are protecting bloggers' right to freedom of speech – and anonymity too, at least in the States.

As this Wired article points out, "the ruling effectively differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists".

One implication is that DIY publishers like bloggers cannot be sued as easily.

"One-way news publications have editors and fact-checkers, and they're not just selling information – they're selling reliability," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "But on blogs or e-mail lists, people aren't necessarily selling anything, they're just engaging in speech. That freedom of speech wouldn't exist if you were held liable for every piece of information you cut, paste and forward."

And that's about where the good news stops. Because as media converges online, bloggers increasingly break stories. As they act like professional journalists, they're being treated accordingly. Take the recent case of Christopher Elliot.

After the would-be underwear bomber, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued a security directive. Among other short-lived measures, it required passengers hands to be empty – no books, no knitting and also no in-flight entertainment – for the last hour. Elliott published the full text on his travel blog. Shortly thereafter, a federal agent knocked on his door.

"I got a 'C' in media law class," the writer mused at a 2010 Seattle Consortium of Online Travel (SCOOT) meet-up. "But I still remembered to ask for a supoena."

Elliot – also a MSM reporter and National Geographic Traveler's reader advocate – stood firm, refusing to reveal his source.

"I learned a very tough lesson. The public has a right to know, but the people who publish the info are unprotected. I was really quaking during this event."

From Texas to China to Azerbaijan, more and more bloggers are winding up in jail – just like professional journalists, but with far fewer resources to fight back. The World Information Access Report claims that blogger arrests around the world tripled between 2006-2008.

Media Blogger Association president Robert Cox observed that lawsuits against bloggers more than double each year now. "Bloggers have a tendency to believe myths—like that they are judgment-proof," he told the The San Francisco Chronicle.

So be careful out there. Check your facts. State your sources. Don't steal. And play nicely with others.

Wait, that wasn't quite enough legal jargon...

2010-03-17T16:04:00.000-07:00

Read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers, then, you glutton for punishment!

So I gain credibility, then what? Web empire? Swimming in the mainstream?

2010-03-17T16:02:00.000-07:00

Focused, strongly branded blogs can grow up to be web portals, like Beth Whitman's Wanderlust and Lipstick, which now boasts a handful of columnists. Mixing features and practical information, her site's part magazine, part guidebook, part all-singing, all-dancing multimedia extravaganza.

Early adopter Tom Brosnahan offers authors advice on transforming into publishers. His Writers Website Planner, though old-school design-wise, remains a great resource. ProPublica's "crowdsorcerer" also offers valuable tips, especially about involving readers in your endeavor.

Increasingly the line blurs between journalists and online authors, including bloggers. Pay, prestige and infrastructure no longer clearly divide the two tribes. Frequency and informality often are the only distinctions, along with publishing self-sufficiency: that net DIY ethos.

That said, many bloggers still set their cap on breaking into the mainstream media, like our class poster-girl Mardi Michels. Not only has she been a featured chef at the Foodbuzz Blogger Festival 2009, she's now freelancing for the Food Network Canada's website.

Should you take that route, I highly recommend a portfolio website, independent of your blog. Professional touches include a custom domain name and a homepage with your bio and perhaps links to key writing samples. Both Blogger and Wordpress offer static pages, making it easy to whip up a site via a familiar interface.

Include that site in your pitch (aka query) letters. Editors want to know three things first and foremost: why this article now by you. They're looking for:

A strong story angle
Timeliness
Expertise or unusual access

Other components that help:

Past publication credits, especially in similar publications
Familiarity with their outlet ("show don't tell" that by suggesting a department or theme issue)
Photos or multimedia available

Whenever possible, address your letter to a specific person. Look up an editor’s name in the masthead or a writer’s handbook. Or pick up the phone and ring the office: even the most harried secretary will pass along a name (get the correct spelling too). He or she also might be able to suggest the best department head to contact. If in doubt, aim high, but not for the editor-in-chief of a large publication (who is presumably monster-busy). Deputy and associate editors are a good bet.

Establish your credentials. Why are you qualified to write this piece? Toot your own horn. Stress any elements that build your authority: your location, occupation, hobby or ethnicity, etc.

Never undermine yourself with comments like: "I’m just a blogger" or "I always wanted to be a writer". Be bold and plucky. And remember the old maxim: if you haven’t anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Really, it’s wiser to stay quiet if you have no publication credits or relevant experience: just let your phenomenal pitch speak for itself.

Editors often ask new authors to write "on speculation". It’s the writer’s equivalent of an audition: a chance to prove yourself. Just that. No promises. You’re only paid if the article is accepted and published.

Common spec candidates include anthology essays, short pieces (under 750 words) or funny ones (it’s hard to convey humor’s magic in a query). Some newspapers and magazines only examine finished product, like the Los Angeles Times travel section and the Christian Science Monitor's Home Front department. Always check writer’s guidelines to determine policy.

Speculation helps new talent. Here’s a chance to leapfrog over the old-boy’s or girl’s network, skip the name-dropping publication credits and dazzle them into a commission. Many experienced journalists refuse to play this game, potentially wasting precious time and effort. But hey, that helps emerging authors, who aren't pitching against veterans like Dave Barry, Bill Bryson and Susan Orlean. Less competition!

Research your market before pitching. This helps you strike the right tone, but also ensures a publication is worth your time. Legitimate outlets bloom online from Salon to Slate and MSNBC, certainly. But most offer lower rates than their comparable print cousins.

Beware sites that feed off authors' ambitions from micro-bid assignment sites to profit-sharing schemes like Examiner.com and Today.com, which feature a range of unedited bloggers under one banner. Once the companies have taken their cuts of Google Adsense and other advertising revenue, writers I've spoken to rarely see more than pennies. And clips from outlets like that can hinder more than help ... An emerging author is better off guest-blogging, posting on her own site or volunteering for a reputable webzine.

The point is to get into print, establish yourself as a professional writer and gain experience. Eventually the paid work will muscle out the freebies.

Such an apprenticeship isn't considered kosher universally. Some journalists believe it devalues the whole trade, undermining standard rates, which generally haven't risen in decades. I see the issues as separate: professional writers deserve professional wages. Beginners deserve the opportunity to experiment and expand. An editor willing to work with less polished prose deserves a discounted rate. Just don't underbid colleagues struggling to survive: give work away to worthy nonprofits or new, struggling outlets, not multinational corporations cheaping the editorial budget.

A book's my dream: bring it on!

2010-03-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

Book deals are a logical leap for many bloggers: after all, love of expression brought most of us here. And nothing says prestige like perfect-bound dead-trees on a shelf... though perhaps e-readers and e-paper will successfully shift the medium into pixels.

Week one, we discussed some bloggers who made the leap, like novelist Rebecca Agiewich, as well as some who cross-pollinate cheerfully like career-expert Michelle Goodman. As she noted:

Those of us who value eating have adapted, branching into online markets, magazine work, trade publications, corporate work, consulting, editing, et cetera. You know, diversify or starve.

Although I got my 9-to-5 start in newspapers, I’ve never been more than a sporadic contributor since going freelance in 1992. In the intervening years, I’ve hopped from freelancing for the book publishing biz to dotcoms and the corporate tech sector, back to magazines and newspapers and books, and lately, over to web news media — though to stay afloat, I still do some of each.

Yet still, she wants to work in publishing. "As an aside, it’s my firm believe that most people do. I mean, when was the last time you met a person who didn’t tell they wanted to write a book? When every last one of us is reading a Kindle or whatever the next space tablet is, wannabe writers and life coaches will still be saying they hope to see their name in print someday."

Two routes typically lead to book goodness: gather up all your samples, proven audience (reader stats and demographics) and draft a 30-to-50-page proposal. This could net you an agent, though some insist that's harder than actually selling a manuscript. And your agent, or potential publishers, may well have some strong views on how to revise that massive document you've slaved over. The process is big fun.

But it could land you a book deal. And then you'd be eligible for a Blooker award, the first prize for literature based upon online content.

Option two – self-publishing – also makes your volume eligible for a Blooker, provided perfect-bound hard copies exist (the contest doesn't accept e-books). This route's increasingly popular, as businesses like Amazon and Netflick shift smaller quantities of a wider range of products. The term "long tail" describes this phenomenon, coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article. "Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo! Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody," he wrote. "People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what's available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture)."

Thus DIY publishing – once dismissed as "vanity press" – is gaining fresh vitality.

I'll make my own book, thanks!

2010-03-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

First, understand the difference between self-publishing with companies like Lulu versus print-on-demand ones like Blog2Print and Blurb, which can "slurp" a blog into a design template.

Blogger Marie Javins scored a traditional book deal – Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik – but still experiments with DIY options to chronicle recent entries. She reports: "It slurped just fine but if you want to make any photos decent resolution (300 dpi for paper), then you have to replace the blog ones and that takes time and effort. So my slurp is still sitting on my computer, where it has for a few years. I take it out once in a while and work on it, but the software is buggy and slow and I lose interest quickly."

Javins – who has professional graphic-design expertise – concludes: "I think the better choice might be to sort out how you can use InDesign with the blog slurp."

Before you agree to $99–900 worth of fees, look into:
* Up-front costs?
* Royalties?
* Setup fees?
* Who holds the ISSN?
* Minimum orders?
* Storage expenses?
* Cost breakdowns per unit?
* Reprint rights?
* Quality of work?
* Ease/difficulty of production?
* Site security?
* Customer service?
* Shipping costs?
* Distribution networks?

Learn more via The Northwest Independent Editors Guild meeting notes on Self Publishing, Book Publishers NW and classes by Sheryn Hara.

Make every word a thing of joy forever

2010-03-17T15:57:00.000-07:00

Wherever your blog leads you, remember you are not a budgie preening in a mirror. You are part of a community, a conversation and the greatest information revolution since Gutenberg. Self-expression is admirable, absolutely, but your obligation is also to the reader: to inform, to entertain – or both.

We no longer have a bunch of suits answering to stockholders in control of our media diet. For every shakeup and mourned newspaper, we've been rewarded with fresh, strong voices in a more meritocratic realm.

As Joshua Benton pointed out at Neimanlab; The barriers to entry have tumbled; some of the most popular news sources online didn’t exist two years ago. Things that used to be an advantage — like huge investments sunk in things like printing presses and buildings and circulation departments — are now an albatross. Those three smart guys of FiveThirtyEight can draw a bigger and more engaged audience than a newsroom of hundreds.

An animated vision of the future from Casaleggio Associati:

Conferences and workshops for bloggers

2010-03-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

As your writing career progresses, consider attending conferences and seminars. Poynter is highly renowned for media training. The Florida-based institute offers a backpack journalism workshop, yet hasn't embraced bloggers fully. The institute also hosts regional National Writers Workshops around America. These $85, two-day seminars emphasize narrative and are hands-down the best bang for your buck.

As media converges, consider mingling with the mainstream reporters. The Society of Professional Journalists hosts a yearly meeting, as well as awards, open to members. Its informal pub mixers are an excellent place to network, as are Mediabistro cocktail parties in major cities.

The Blog World Expo remains the largest trade show, meeting each autumn in the States. Keep an eye on indie web trends at SXSW and social media at SobCon. Subgenre conferences are springing up now like Foodbuzz Blogger Festival and the Travel Blogger Exchange, even Wine Bloggers symposia. Blogher celebrates all things geek chic and chick each July in Chicago. Others to consider include Wordcamp for WordPressers and the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference.

Sorry these options are so US-centric, but, um, that's the way the cookie's crumbling at the moment. As Neal Stephenson jokes in his awesome novel Snow Crash, Americans still do four things better than anyone: music, movies, microcode and pizza delivery...

Final class business

2010-03-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

Please post final questions: Mike and I will wrap up answers by the 25th. Also, if you'd like a final holistic critique of your site, please make a note of this in the week ten assignment bin.

Writers.com guru Mark Dahlby will contact you about the course. We hope you’ll pass along any frustration and suggestions, so we can improve the class next time. We'd also appreciate feedback on the new teaching platform and why homework submissions tailed so dramatically this term. Did the assignments just get too geeky?

Thanks for being such a lovely group. I do hope you’ll keep us posted on your progress.

The course material will remain posted on Blogger for a few months, but please web archive any components you wish to keep.

Good luck to you all.

– Amanda and Mike

Lecture nine: Money Makes the World Go Round

2010-03-10T15:33:00.000-08:00

Assignment: Add one or more of the following: Google AdSense, a widget, blogroll, a "best of" panel or labels. Monitor statistics, especially referrals, from last week's community outreach, then report on your findings.

Feedback: (Mike) Q&A, tech troubleshooting

If a dead-tree medium falls in the forest... can it become a nurse log?

2010-03-10T15:30:00.001-08:00

The media's abuzz about the death of tangible media. Recently casualties include Gourmet, Modern Bride, National Geographic Adventure, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Rocky Mountain News. The Christian Science Monitor became America's first nationally circulated paper to move entirely online. Magazines like PC and Playgirl have done the same, digital migration.

In 2009, 428 titles closed, compared with 618 in 2008 and 643 in 2007. The good news? The rate of decay is slowing. But new efforts are down from 335 in '08, according to Mediafinder.

“Despite the difficult year for the magazine industry, more than 275 magazines launched in 2009 – showing there is still strength in the regional, health, and food categories, with Food Network Magazine reporting more than 1 million readers,” explained Trish Hagood, President of Oxbridge Communications, publishers of MediaFinder.

Some of this turbulence is good, as Steve Rubel, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, pointed out on Micropersuasion.com in November 08. "We're moving fast toward becoming a society that consumes media entirely in digital format. Part of it is environmental, but a lot of it is because of broadband and connected devices. Now of course it will take a long long time for this to become a global phenomenon. But in the US at least, the pace has picked up a lot just in the last few months."

The buzzword here is "media green" ... and the trend's advantages are obvious. But now the debate centers around how to keep content-creators fed, both long-term professionals and "citizen publishers" stepping up to the plate like us.

The answer may well lie in technology from smartphone apps to electronic ink, which prevents the eye strain often provoked by backlit displays. Even in bright sunlight, e-ink pages resemble those of a paperback.

Products like Sony's Reader, Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook allow folks to download books, blogs, magazines and newspapers onto a wireless device. Portable, the 1/3-inch-thick Kindle is often called the last digital great hope: even Oprah's a fan. The idea's pretty basic: make it easy for users to pay for quality content and, a la iPod, they just might. But Amazon employs a proprietary format: Digital Rights Management (DRM) issues diminish the Kindle's appeal for many. Here tech-writer Yardena Arar reviews the best e-book readers in a 2009 PC World article.

In another article, the author notes that emerging technologies will soon blend color and video into such devices, along with more swiftness and sturdiness.

In early April 2010, Apple launches its much-heralded tablet computer, the 1.5-lb iPad, weighing in from $499. Here two experts debate whether this medium will save publishing. Hopefully, as Tony Bradley, co-author of Unified Communications for Dummies, points out in another article: "Traditional media – whether books, magazines, newspapers, music, or movies – stillneed to grasp the digital landscape, and the changes that it brings for the economic models they have built their businesses on for decades. Somewhere out there is a revenue structure that creates a win-win-win for the publishers, the platforms (like the iPad and the Kindle), and the customers."

Electronic paper could take this a step further, introducing flexible, scrunchable displays. I have high hopes that bigger canvases will encourage some of print media's "eye candy" elements – like strong photography and design – to migrate into cyberspace.

The web's future is uncertain, but with that instability, brings much excitement. Check out this great article for an overview of where this all could lead.

Can blogging pay in the era of freeconomics?

2010-03-10T15:28:00.000-08:00

As we noted in earlier posts, blogging can pay, even in a freeconomics climate.

Yummy, Freeconomics. Will I get rich quick?
Probably not, unless you start working full-time on a niche blog and studying SEO in depth.

Slate magazine's Blogging for Dollars dug into Technorati's 2008 State of the Blogosphere report and revealed that sites "with 100,000 or more unique visitors a month earn an average of $75,000 annually—though that figure is skewed by the small percentage of blogs that make more than $200,000 a year. The estimates from a 2007 Business Week article are older but juicier: The LOLcat empire rakes in $5,600 per month; Overheard in New York gets $8,100 per month; and Perez Hilton, gossip king, scoops up $111,000 per month."

Before you dash off, Gold-Rush-style, heed Slate's warning: "Once a blog hobbyist goes pro, he or she faces a daily pressure to churn out new material. In the wrong mind, that can lead to top-10 lists, recycled ideas, half-baked notions, lots of viral videos, and a general increase in information pollution."

I'm with usability expert Jakob Nielsen on this. "Avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers."

Mike and I both find affiliate programs, like Amazon Associates, to pay off quickest for "dabbling" bloggers.

Amazon and other affiliates

2010-03-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

Recommend stuff, get paid: the idea's so simple, so very ... viral. Yet pound for pound, Amazon Associates may be the quickest way to see financial results for your blogging efforts.

The drill? You name-drop books, DVD's, garden implements and novelty mustard kits: whatever floats your boat and is available in the Ur-Warehouse. Amazon gives you a unique code, which attributes the referral to your account. Then it kicks back a thin slice, 4-10% of any profit, via gift certificates if you prefer.

Yes, it's all very "company store" ... but as someone who runs up a big media tab each year, I won't complain much about those frequent $25 gift certificates.

Amazon recently revamped its system, so associates have a top-page nav bar that can "link to this product," among other neato tricks. Users can chose between text and image, image only and text only, adjusting colors to suit a template. I'm still wary of its text links, which embed all types of lame-o spacing into the mix. Instead I look at the autogenerated HTML code, pick out the "http://blah" bit, then paste that into my WYSIWYG program. Like this.

The class blog features an Amazon widget, right-hand side. Graphic- and link-rich, these ads are customized – you handpick each element – and quite productive. A determined person could gain ground quickly here.

How pay-per-click works

2010-03-10T15:25:00.000-08:00

As Chris Anderson points out in Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business, "Thanks to Google, we now have a handy way to convert from reputation (PageRank) to attention (traffic) to money (ads). Anything you can consistently convert to cash is a form of currency itself, and Google plays the role of central banker for these new economies."

Google Adsense places commercial notices on your site – ideally ones tailored to your content, hence the label "targeted ads". You receive micropayments for readers (CPM – cost per thousand impressions: the "M" is the Roman numeral) and more if they take action (CPC – cost per click).

Sometimes Google gets it all wrong. Road Remedies', for example, veers off on alopecia cures every time I blog about beehives or hair, due to title ambiguity. When I've shifted the subject from Seattle to Palau, the front-page ads don't quite caught up and still advertise Seattle Singles, Condo/Lofts and Puppy Housebreaking for a few days. Recently I clocked a creepy ad for "Dr Oz Resveratrol". Should that turn out to be BS snake oil, I'll blacklist the site. AdSense allows publishers can block certain URLs, set content filters and chose default ads.

Note that I didn't follow-through my own Google Ad there ... I could be liable for click fraud, if I did. So I cut and paste possibly offensive addresses, then decide how grumpy I am about them.

Searching on"ResV" reveals it claims anti-aging, weight-loss and antioxidant abilities (yup: snake oil – nailed that in one). I'm dubious and reckon most of my readers would be too, if they gave a fig about such things. But unless something's actively aggravating – like adverts from the local cult church that suppresses women – I generally won't A. notice or B. take action. Life's too short to crack-down on every cellulite-burning scam...

Politics aside, Adsense let's you rock the fashion with custom color scheme and freedom to decide where adverts go (so liberating for "dead tree" media types!): banner, sidebar, even live-linked into your text. Google has an excellent tutorial on placement, which I won't attempt to nutshell: just read it.

The amount you earn varies, based on how much advertisers are bidding for certain keywords (check out Google AdWords, if you're curious about this process). Certain types of blogs see the best results, like those focused on products, hobbies or niches. Take another look at the best paid blogger list: most are tech, marketing and self-help gurus, except for Sharon Maguire's site. Cleanly integrated ads led dogbreedinfo.com to earn $650 per day. She talks technique here.

A journal-style blog, like RR, that meanders over many topics won't quickly rake in major cash (in fact, Google makes you wait until the $100 mark before cutting the first check, annoyingly). But with enough promotion and dedication, even a diarist can turn a profit.

Display adverts and providers

2010-03-10T15:24:00.000-08:00

Tired of the G-domination? Duck around the mighty Google machine by selling ads directly (let's fact it: a TON of work) or allowing another company do the heavy lifting.

A display advert is, well, a big, pretty graphic one, as opposed to the "listing" style familiar from classified. Adsense lets you select either style (or both).

A few middle-man options:

*AdBrite serves nearly one billion pages daily, placing top brands like GM, Verizon and AT&T. Multimedia formats can take advantage of photos and video clips.

*BlogAds, a pioneer in the field, matches advertisers and bloggers. Small companies or individuals can choose your site, then you can agree or pass, depending on your convictions. Here, you can see how that works with wonderful transparency. Of course, we're talking about a range from a $18,000 top-right space in Perezhilton.com, a sport high on the bell curve's end, to a $20 spot in CrochetDude.

*Commission Junction can pipe in ads from HP, Expedia, Yahoo, Dell , Staples, Home Deport and other heavyweights. Each publisher – blogger in this case – receives an EPC rating (earnings per 100 clicks). This shows how effectively they translate leads into sales.

Linkshare and Clickbank are two other options worth exploring.

You'll also see the term "conversion rate" bandied about: again, this measures the percentage of visitors who take a desire action, like a purchase, filling in a form or dancing like a funky hamster.

OK, I made the last one up. But you try writing about "freeconomics" all day without your brain leaking out your nose...

Can I use AdSense and another service?
Yes. You're the boss, remember? Next question.

What if someone approaches me about a bespoke ad?
You can insert code via Settings>Page Elements>Add a Gadget>hml/javascript. But remember to consider the whole process, when setting your fee. You need to act as a designer, fitting the advert to your layout; as an accountant, issuing the invoice and chasing it, if necessary; as a content manager, taking down/refreshing the ad, according to the contract, and finally as a webmaster, monitoring statistics upon it, should the company request this intel. Products like AdReady can centralize much of that process.

For the self-sufficient, sometimes an offer can simply be too small. A company recently approached the Greece, A Love Story site about an inch-square $30/year advert. That pays for about a half-hour of my time. As it would take longer to publish and collect the cash, I demurred. Especially as the book is co-authored and shared income, like award cash, typically donated to charities...

But I'd rather have ads *I designed* on the site than generic ones. I want to build sponsor links directly!
Hard-core DIY! Check out these links on designing good online display ads and banners, which advocate:

Newsletters role in the blogosphere. Poindexterish?

2010-03-10T15:23:00.001-08:00

Ever popular as a marketing tool, newsletters have migrated to blogging. Personally I'm lukewarm on all this – my inbox is clogged enough. The only time I enthusiastically welcome any sort of newsletter is a listserv digest, which compresses a day's worth of posts into one, quickly scannable block.

But some folks here have businesses and charities, which benefit from a monthly or seasonal communiqué. In that case, I recommend this subscription widget. And tips by my travel- and new-media colleague Karen Kefauver, who explores good newsletter craftsmanship, including the KISS rule (Keep it Short, Simple). She also has savvy advice about Facebook and Twitter protocol for companies. Kefauver mainly teaches in California's Bay Area and via teleseminar: I recommend her highly (see her social-media class offerings).

Finally, consider cross-posting your content, noting the newsletter's release and key topics on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In.

Micropatronage and blog sponsorship

2010-03-10T15:20:00.000-08:00

Online money conduits like Paypal allow readers to make small donations to authors. Blogger Jason Kottke coined the term "micropatronage," when he spent 2005 blogging full-time, living off the largesse of his audience.

As Blogging for Dollars reveals, he "quit his job to blog full-time and asked his readers to become 'micropatrons' at a suggested rate of $30. He received $39,900 from 1,450 people but abandoned the experiment after a year. Kottke is vague about the reasons why he swore off micropatronage, but he suggests that he was worried that people wouldn't donate year after year. In order to build a bigger audience and potential new donors, he would have had to do some of the cheesy things to drive traffic (i.e., "Top Five Best" posts) and/or become a cult of personality (overshare, start flame wars, social network relentlessly). These days, he accepts ads as part of the Deck network."

A handful of bloggers have found sponsorship deals with larger outlets. Sometimes that's an endorsed feature like Craig Romano cross-posting a hike a week on WeatherChannel.com. I worked on a Diet-Coke-branded MSN site in 2008 that mixed text with short film clips of presenters, whom the snarkosphere dubbed "video puppets". Our budget derived from the advertising end and, in fact, my editor worked at a marketing company: an odd mishmash of intentions we'll probably see more and more (MSN Daily Access ceased publication after nine months or so).

Other times sponsorship's an outright "this post was brought to you by Brand X" entry-label. As an old-school journo, I'm pretty uncomfortable with "advertorials" unless they're distinctly labeled. And the government – in the US, at least – may soon require better labeling. But in the meantime, you're da boss. Do what suits!

For charitable endeavors, turn to fundraising platforms like Kickstarter, which showcases "backer rewards" and easily processes donations via Amazon accounts. My friend, travel writer Charyn Pfeuffer, just raised $20, 518, so she could voluntour in 12 countries. Thank-you treats ranged from homemade Theo chocolate bread to 40% off three nights at the Royal Hawaiian. Pfeuffer now can trade her Blackberry for a backpack, volunteering and publicizing programs around the world. Not only will her adventures give something back to cultures she routinely covers, but she now has a powerful social-network to broadcast her findings. It's a fantastic experiment in voluntourism and grassroots media funding.

Merchandise me!

2010-03-10T15:18:00.001-08:00

Once a brand's established, bloggers can start with the spin-off merchandising, just like a blockbuster or Pixar hit. Companies like CafePress blaze your logo or slogans onto everything from mugs to hoodies to light-switch covers – all created on demand.

The cruel truth about exposure

2010-03-10T15:15:00.000-08:00

Hating all the business end of this? Opt out with a "conglomerate" like Gawker, a network that includes Wonkette and Gizmodo, or Weblogs Inc, specializing in tech, media and science. On a more relaxed end of the spectrum – not requiring 10 to 12 posts a day – are profit-sharing schemes like Examiner.com and Today.com, which feature a range of unedited bloggers under one banner.

Once the companies have taken their cuts of Google Adsense and other revenue streams, writers rarely see more than pennies. And clips from outlets like that can hinder a professional-hopeful more than help... An emerging author is better off posting on her own site or volunteering for a reputable webzine.

Still, any way you slice it, the deal's better than "reader blogs" currently offered by companies like p-i.com and the revered blog-giant Huffington Post, which hog all the income with honeyed promises of "exposure" in return.

As wags put it, "why would I want exposure? People die from exposure". You want to meet the bills each month. Find a network that's on the ball about tech support, promotion and search engine optimization. Otherwise you might as well remain a one-man band...

Screenwriter Harlan Ellis rants memorably about all this on a preview of the documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth. "You gotta pay me ... By what right would you call me and ask me to work for nothing? Do you get a paycheck? Does your boss get a paycheck? Do you pay the Telecity guy? Do you pay the cameraman? Do you pay the cutters? Do you pay the teamsters when they schlep your stuff on the trucks? Would you go to the gas station and ask for free gas? Would you go to the doctors and ask them to take out your spleen for nothing? How dare you call me and ask me to work for free?"

Publicity was the answer. And, as Ellis points out, that has little value. How many DVD viewers will enjoy his interview, then seek out and purchase one of his books? "I should do a freebie for Warner Brothers? What, is Warner Brothers out with an eye-patch and a tin cup on the street? Fuck no!

"I sell my soul, but at the highest rates."

More, I want to know MORE about monetization

2010-03-10T15:12:00.000-08:00

Time to hit the web, kiddies! We're here to give you a foundation and tools to grow with, not a bachelors degree in new media.

I recommend starting with Daryl Rouse's great ProBlogger article.

Your mission, week nine

2010-03-10T15:11:00.000-08:00

Week 8: Photo finesse and advanced geekery

2010-03-03T15:55:00.000-08:00

Tips and Tricks (to come)

Creating a three-column or custom template
Deconstructing a URL
Wrangling Google Analytics

Assignment: Comment on at least five newly discovered blogs and respond to all feedback left on your site. Make at least two posts, one with an image, the other with a video

Feedback: (Amanda) holistic critique

Beyond snapshots: let your art tell a story

2010-03-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

Proper photography demands a large amount of specialized knowledge, expensive and heavy equipment, and chutzpah (can you bribe an amputee beggar in Delhi? Approach fierce fur-swathed babushka in Moscow? A Buddhist monk?). “Hone your photographic skills until they become second nature,” wrote Susan McCartney, author of Travel Photography: A Complete Guide to Shoot and Sell. This permits concentration on “the important things, which are aesthetics and logistics.”

Yet she acknowledged that almost anyone “with luck” could take the odd brilliant picture or two. And fortune flows easier and easier, thanks to technology. Thus any intelligent and dedicated blogger can produce original images to accompany their text. Granted, the photographs may not be Ansel Adams or Walker Evans quality, but even a functional snap adds color, texture and context (a picture's worth 1,000 words...).

Photojournalism, called "reportage photography" in Europe, pushes beyond snapshots and illustrations. An image – or carefully-chosen series – tells a story about a place and its people. Interpret the scenes, don't just photocopy Uluru or Angkor Wat. Make the tale compelling; the viewer has no obligation to examine the photo (or proceed on to the headline, captions and … finally … to the blog text itself).

Here's the difference: a hiking tour company wins an award. The jaded hack photographer herds the employees together with their plaque, producing a hideous “grip and grin” shot. A dynamic photojournalist shoots them camping by a lake or cresting a mountain in full outdoor regalia. She's gone to more trouble, but the active image captures the essence of the company, rather than a tired lineup.

Try to think like a photojournalist. Vary your images – horizontal and vertical, interesting crops – so that six or seven could be used on a spread. Take overview shots that set the scene, workplaces, landmarks, food bazaars, houses and signs and flags. Capture groups of locals, faces close-up (or other details, like hands, feet or one aspect of ceremonial costume), piles of souvenirs and plates of food. Consider how the images work together. What do they convey?

Sunsets, small furry animals and postcard views aren't the goal, stressed David Hurn in On Being a Photographer. “Most great photographs displaying beauty reveal a sensation of strangeness, not predictability … They are the opposite of clichés; they have a quality beyond the visually obvious.”

Such storytelling often involves contrast. This stretches far beyond light and shadow, however. Look for contextual friction, which adds emotional depth. For example, shoot a solemn person's portrait with gregarious diners behind. The bubbly background adds information: the subject is withdrawn even in a boisterous environment. Similarly, some of the most poignant developing-world illustrations may not depict poverty per se, but of the persistence of human spirit despite it, like a child building a rope swing in a refuge camp. Link the familiar and unfamiliar to help viewers connect.

As in writing, seek the universal theme. Can you evoke an emotion – nostalgia, awe or tenderness – from a single image or series? A well-composed photograph captures a time and place, conveying a message. You don't illustrate a story, you tell it, Peter Turnley once urged his colleagues. This photojournalist – with 40 Newsweek covers to his credit – sees his mission as even larger: “an on-going photographic expression of the key moments of history and a humanistic view of the 'Family of Man'”.

Such craft requires talent and honed skills (in Outliers, science writer Malcolm Gladwell suggests it takes 10,000 hours to reach "genius" mastery...). Be patient with yourself. Even National Geographic photographers take 2,000 images for each image printed. Bloggers rarely have the time to amass such a stockpile. But permit yourself a margin of error, say a 1:10 ratio of published images to discards. The ironclad rule here is: Snap a lot. Don't hold back, don't skimp. You may never return to that place, retry that activity or recapture that moment.

Ten composition tips for blog photos

2010-03-03T15:40:00.000-08:00

Reams of books have been written on the subtle art of photography, which can't possibly be summarized in one lecture. However, here are ten simple steps for improving images.

1. Get close. Then get closer.
Strong, bold images catch the eye, so charge right in the middle of the action. The traditional advice is “go as close as you dare, then advance three more feet”. Portraits especially benefit from this intimate approach. What's more striking: a snapshot of granny on the couch with her dog, the molting Christmas tree and a tepid cup of tea – or a full frame of her noble, wrinkled face?

Shy shooters fret over the “invasion of space”, especially when the language barrier makes explanation impossible. Politely ask anyway, advised McCartney, who often talks and photographs for half an hour before reaching her favorite setup: three or four feet away with a 28mm lens. Approach cautiously and monitor the subject's expressions, gestures and posture.

“Approach slowly, as though they were small frightened animals (which most of us are, deep inside),” she joked. The camera can erode inhibitions on both sides. “It's rather like wearing a mask – and with the camera's protection you can approach, talk to and photograph most people quite easily.”

As war photographer Robert Capa famously put it: “If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.” He followed this advice to the end: the 40-year-old stepped on a land mine while covering the French Indochina War in 1954. So get close, but tread softly and safely.

“Open the other eye occasionally,” recommended Photographer and Visual Storytelling Instructor Marcus Donner. “Maybe you're missing some interesting element … or maybe you're about to be whacked with a croquet ball. Don't let the camera give you a false sense of invulnerability.”

2. Dominant element
Your photo should clearly be about something. Direct the observer's eye – and don't distract them with too much clutter (like the poodle and the gift wrap). A useful trick here is the “rule of thirds”. Imagine a tic tac toe grid over an image. Good pictures have a “center of interest” where the lines meet.

When photographing people with objects, place the person in the extreme foreground, the thing far in the background (this works well with large objects, like St. Peter's and the Washington Monument. Otherwise you wind up with a camel driver against a biscuit-colored wall, instead of a camel driver with the Sphinx). Add even more depth with a relevant or interesting element in the middle ground too. Make the viewer's eye move in the frame, transforming a two-dimensional object into a three dimensional-one.

Landscapes pose a particular problem, according to Michael Busselle, author of Travel and Vacation Photography and fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. “There is often a temptation to include too much in the frame,” he observed. The image “has no immediate focus of attention and too many conflicting details.”

3. Prime time
Early morning and early evening light are warmer (the syrupy gold hue before sunset is nicknamed the “magic hour”, much exploited by catalogue designers). Looking at a magnificent sunset? Without filters, the splendor is hard to capture. But spin around; all that gorgeous light may illuminate a more intriguing scene.

Avoid shooting at midday, when the sun throws harsh shadows. Eye sockets, in particular, recede into gothic gloom. The human brow really serves a purpose: it shades the eye. A fill flash softens the contrast. Slightly overcast days provide nice, soft tones for portraits (while landscape photographers gnash their teeth).

Take notice of the shadows in a composition. Is there a better time to return and try again? Ansel Adams was famous for stalking light, returning time and time again in different seasons, until the conditions optimized. Much of good photography is patience: composing a frame, then waiting for conditions to perfect (for the purple light of dusk, a flock of birds in a certain quadrant, for the hunter-gather to pry open the trap or the Indonesian washerwoman to collect the linens).

This time-consuming process can clash with a reporter's restless quest for information. National Geographic staffer Jodi Cobb recommends that teams touch base – say, be in the same country and region – but not dog each others' footsteps. Travel writers doing double duty should expect conflicted loyalties … and even compromised coverage at times, sad to say.

4. Work the angles
Search out unusual angles. Climb up a column and shoot down. Lie on the cobbles and shoot up. Tilt the camera. Vary your perspective to produce an unusual effect. Also, look for natural 'frames', which add depth and interest to an image. Try shooting through a doorway or an archway of branches. Place a palm-leaf umbrella in a corner, then photograph the sandy beach and surfline. Finally, compose with “leading lines”, elements that draw in the eye (like a woman standing on the center line of a road, along a fence line or atop a staircase).

5. Avoid posing
“Photo faces” make for poor images generally. The artificial stiffness doesn't convey the sense of scene (professionals call this unnatural look “camera-conscious”). Shoot real people doing real things. Put subjects at ease by chatting – or shoot them unaware with a telephoto lens. Another technique is to “blow film”: keep the shutter firing until they grow accustomed to the experience and relax. Digital technology makes this option more affordable now.

6. Pound the pavement
Remember those boots were made for walking. A common amateur mistake is monotony; dozens of shots where the people and backgrounds remain in the same ratio. Gathered together, the images are dull. Mix it up. Vary the distance between the subject and camera. Change lenses. Zoom in and out. No flashy technology? Wear down the shoe leather and simply walk closer to avoid visual redundancy.

7. Outside the box
Get one in the can, to borrow some Hollywood lingo. Take a middle-of-the-road, good-enough “safety shot”, then push for more risky, artistic compositions. The subject needn't be dead center in the frame – as long as it's still clearly the subject. A runner, for example, could race into the right side of a photograph, giving a sense of movement and speed. A portrait might emphasize someone's soulful eyes, by eliminating their hair and chin. Likewise, not all photographs need to be the classic rectangle shape. Crop images into squares, panoramic strips or thin columns.

8. Silhouettes
Play around with shapes, especially distinctive ones (a pregnant woman, a child in a cowboy hat, a man with an Afro). Place the shadowy figure against a bright background (a person standing in a doorway on a sunny day does the trick). Adjust the exposure for the light area.

9. Avoid distractions
Don't let unwanted elements destroy your images. Is a tree behind the shaman? That palm will sprout from his head in the photograph. Try to minimize signs, telephone wires, garbage cans and other clutter. Shooting from a higher or lower angle often hides the mess. Blurring the background helps too (on an SLR, limit the depth-of-field with a large aperture like f-2.8).

10. Bracket exposures
Fancier cameras allow the photographer to set the exposure. The light meter displays the optimum setting. Take a shot at the recommended f-stop, then one above and one below (some models have auto-bracketing now). And don't hesitate to take multiple pictures of the same scene. Professionals use a rapid-fire function – and easily blast through several rolls or hundreds of digital frames perfecting one image. If in doubt, underexposure is always preferable, as it richens the color slightly.

Images as derivative works

2010-03-03T15:39:00.000-08:00

Watch where you aim the camera – or rather, where you upload those memories of little Gertrude squeezing her Jabba the Hut doll. Even a photograph of a temporary art installation in Italy or Paraguay could land you in trouble. Yes, you pushed the shutter and thus own the copyright on the image. But make sure no one else holds rights on a creative work within it: then you need permission.

Before you panic, check out Wikimedia's great breakdown. Down the page, its casebook walks you through various scenarios, from sculptures to cave paintings and souvenir replicas of the Venus de Milo.

US law – and most first-world nations' – permits artists and photographers to sell representations of structures permanently in the public view. Egypt, however, recently tried to copyright the Sphinx and Giza's pyramids in a move that sparked much hilarity. Even the bill's author – Ashraf El Ashmawi, legal consultant to the antiquities council – finally admitted he wouldn't take the global witch-hunt to a micro level. "If you have a small shop and your trade is very limited, I will not take money from you," he told National Geographic.

"But if you are a big company, like some of these Chinese companies that make a lot of money from the replicas of antiquities ... according to the law, I can take the fees."

Thanks, fella. I'm glad to know blogger Marie Javins won't be extradited for posting her obligatory sightseeing snaps...

Some areas, like Peleliu (one of Palau's 16 states), may try to levy a commercial photography license on anyone associated with the media, however vaguely. On my last trip there, I was presented with a surprise $50 permit, instead of the usual $3 day-visitor one. I explained I wasn't shooting art for my Sport Diver article – or, indeed, any other at that rate. I offered to leave my cameras in the government office even. The bureaucrat insisted all journalists had to pay, but couldn't accept my credit card on site (the island's pretty rough and ready). Would I swing by the office in Koror?

Like hell.

(I did make a deal with Des, my local guide, that he would email me if his company might be fined for this, then I'd pay the tab. So far, so good.)

Anyway, as a blogger, you may wish to fly under the radar in some areas to avoid these hassles. An official on a five-square-mile state like Peleliu (pop 700) may not understand the nuances of "diary-style blog" versus, say, shooting stock for Getty.

The Mona Lisa with a Mustache

2010-03-03T15:37:00.000-08:00

Derivative works also stir up plenty of migraines among the geekerati. These are creations that include major, copyright-protected elements from another work.

Read here about a case lost by the artist Jeff Koons, who told artisans to transform a greeting card into four sculptures, which sold for $367,000. Unfortunately, he didn't gain permission from Photographer Art Rogers, who'd snapped the couple holding eight puppies.

So what does this mean for bloggers? Mainly be careful when compositing together illustrations – and vigilant when your material is thus remixed. Fair use allows you to write a Buffy the Vampire Slayer spoof and publish a collage of images ripped from newspapers, if you can find any these days ... The exemption also permits Google to run thumbnails of your images in its search engine, thanks to the Perfect 10 ruling. Judges deemed this "transformative because it provides an added benefit to the public, which was not previously available and might remain unavailable without the derivative or secondary use."

The most famous example of this is Marcel Duchamp's parody of the Mona Lisa. He added facial hair and the caption L.H.O.O.Q, also the work's title (it translates as "she has a hot tail"). He transformed a cult icon into an object of ridicule to critique the bourgeoisie.

For a something to be derivative and kosher, it must display originality of its own, containing sufficient new expression over and above the earlier work's. As Judge Pierre N. Leval noted in a landmark Harvard Law Review article: "Transformative uses may include criticizing the quoted work, exposing the character of the original author, proving a fact, or summarizing an idea argued in the original in order to defend or rebut it. They also may include parody, symbolism, aesthetic declarations, and innumerable other uses."

We'll talk more about piracy, copyright and protection week ten.

Permission to publish: the photo release

2010-03-03T15:35:00.000-08:00

The green-light to use a person's image is called a “model release” or "photo release". Advertising gigs – and some editorial ones – often demand this paperwork and now some uber-careful bloggers are following suit. Especially those who hope to sell images to stock or microstock agencies.

Here's a very barebones example:

Date

Photographer's name

I give to ______________ the irrevocable right to use my name and any photographic or illustrative depiction of me in all forms and for all purposes associated with the publication or transmission of works, including advertising and promotion. I waive the right to inspect or approve the finished version(s) and any requirement for payment.

Name:
Address:
Phone:
Signature:
Guardian Signature for minors:

Sample forms – and translations – are available online from Getty, among other agencies.

Cameras: from your cell phone to a pro SLR

2010-03-03T15:31:00.000-08:00

A point-and-shoot is a good place to start (most folks have one already). These standard snappers are small, light and simple to use with a built-in lens and flash. Though convenient, they have limited manual override. Even accomplished photographers carry point-and-shoots as back-up equipment. Highly portable, these “toys” can be easily thrown into a purse or satchel, for times when you don't want to risk theft or lug 30lbs of gear to a cocktail party. And under certain conditions, a discrete camera is key.

Professionals prefer 35mm rangefinders and SLRs, which let the user change lenses and adjust the exposure. These cameras are more complicated and generally bulkier. Most have full automatic settings though, so beginners shouldn't shy away from a serious purchase. Midway between disposable cameras and professional rigs lies the “prosumer” market (futurist Alvin Toffler coined this phrase in 1979, but lately it's grown popular among dedicated digi-dabblers who prefer high-quality, high-tech gear). A prosumer model can cost just a few hundred dollars more than a quality point-and-shoot, but takes far superior snaps. Select equipment to grow into, as your skills expand. Many writers shoot Canon's Digital Rebel and Nikon's D-90, which has some video capacity as well.

Quality optics matter most, so it's worth investing in reputable brands like Canon, Nikon or Leica, even for a point-and-shoot. Buy the best lenses possible; if you must skimp, opt for a cheap camera body. “Always go for good glass,” is the popular wisdom. Richard I'Anson stressed this heavily in Travel Photography: A Guide to Taking Better Pictures. “Lens quality determines image sharpness, color and the light-gathering capacity of the lens, which can determine how you shoot in various lighting conditions,” he wrote.

Examine the warranty carefully, especially if shopping abroad. Some companies won't honor repair contracts outside the country of purchase. Test-drive the technology before returning home and search for English-language manuals before any trouble arises.

A tripod is useful for longer exposures. Bloggers often prefer a lightweight, tabletop model with 15cm collapsible legs and Velcro straps (to cling to a tree, fence etc.). Another fine option is a Gorillapod, which stands upright or twines around supports. Many models also fit small HD video recorders, like the excellent, cigarette-pack-sized Flip Mino.

A cable-release lets you fire the shutter without touching – and possibly shaking – the camera. A self-timer propped on a stable object can work just as well, cutting down on luggage and paraphernalia.

Serious shooters should consider taking a class or working through a reputable book like Basic Photography by Michael Langford or the less comprehensive Teach Yourself Photography by Lee Frost. I'Anson's excellent and user-friendly Lonely Planet guide is also highly recommended.

On a more cheap-and-cheerful, field-reporting front, you can upload images and blog posts directly from a cell phone. Control this via Settings> Email & Mobile > Add mobile device. Google offers advice about mobile blogging here.

Twitter also supports photo uploads via its Twitpic, which also accepts images via its website. For instant-gratification photographers, iTookThisOnMyPhone offers good resources. It also has a Unified Uploader that merges photo accounts from various sites – Facebook, Twitpic, Picasa, Flickr, Shutterfly, YouTube, etc. – and can send a zip file to your desktop. Not only does this provide backup, but cross-platform accessibility, even when you're off-line.

Such immediacy is amazing. Snap it. Share it. But the downsides are myriad. Phone lenses often have focusing and color-balance issues (you can compensate somewhat with apps, but you're still dealing with a primitive device compared to a bespoke camera). And immediate uploads don't permit any cropping, retouching or manipulation.

As with any tool, deploy smartphone art under the right circumstances: when immediacy or ease take precedence over art.

In late 2009, the Consumer Electronics Association released a study of digital photographers, analyzing their six main patterns of behavior:

Frustrated Photogs (25 percent of the market)
Digital Curators (23 percent)
One-Click Wonders (15%)
Feature-Focused Photogs (16%)
Picture Happy Socialites (10%)
Digital Mavericks (10%).

Think about where you stand on that list and what you want to achieve. Then select your toys accordingly!

Tinkering with images: software and ethics

2010-03-03T15:29:00.000-08:00

Mike has already detailed some Tools for Writing Posts. Following are few more software recommendations...

Photoshop remains the best program for electronic manipulation. It's sold as part of the the Creative Suite 4 family, alongside Flash, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and other goodies. But the price – $999 to $2,499 – can induce sticker shock, so many bloggers turn to its little sister: Adobe Photoshop Elements (free trial, US$139, often bundled). Two other favorites are Google's Picasa download (this dovetails with Blogger's web albums) and the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP).

This freely distributed piece of software is nifty for retouching, composition and image authoring (see this handy post about gimping a header and also notes about modification for Blogger's Minima template. This is the best option for folks who want to create a stylish banner and then not bother with photo-manipulating).

These programs offer deity-like power. Zit begone! Turn grey skies blue! Erase your ex from the family portrait! But give some thought to ethics. A photographer already interprets the world, choosing what to shoot and how to present it (via filters, lighting, focal planes, even special effects in programs like Photoshop, etc.). When does that subjective slice of reality become fiction, though?

Most professionals draw the line at distortions of the truth. Hard-core news shooters even include staged photos in that category. If they can't capture a moment as it unfolds, given the light and elements at hand, the result is a lie.

Digital alterations are a step more verboten for pros. As in "due cause for firing". A landmark 1989 case involved removing a Coke can from, ironically, a snap of amateur photographer Ron Olshwanger celebrating in his Pulitzer for spot-news photography. Twenty years later, Microsoft replaced a black man's head with a white one, leaving the darker hand, for a Polish version of its website. Classy. Technologically and culturally.

And yes, both incidents caused as much flap as you might expect.

The tradition of dodgy photos goes back a long way, from "ghost" shots to a Lincoln portrait and even the seminal image of Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, as the New York Times points out. From an oil worker with four hands to National Geographic moving a pyramid, folks have used and abused darkroom processes and digital tools. Here ABC recaps the ten worst episodes of image-manipulation.

Attitudes are shifting. As John Long of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) told ABC: now people "don't look at pictures as though they were historical documents, but as things that they want them to be. It's so easy, it's so pervasive, that the nature of photography has become liquid." Still, professionals fight to maintain standards, especially as DIY publishing and user-generated content threatens the mainstream media's dominance – maybe even its existence... Long, once the ethics co-chair for the NPPA, exhorted his colleagues: "Journalists have only one thing to offer the public and that is CREDIBILITY. Without credibility we have nothing. We might as well go sell widgets door to door since without the trust of the public we cannot exist as a profession."

The blogosphere has yet to develop such cohesion and ethics codes. And perhaps it never will, as much of its charm and strength lies in its Wild West freedoms. So you need to decide where your comfort level lies – and how much of that you want to communicate.

Happily, a simple solution exists for pros and bloggers alike: if you alter an image, label it as an illustration.

Why mislead your readers, when an admission builds trust through transparency?

Web-friendly image formats and compression

2010-03-03T15:28:00.000-08:00

(Please note, this entry originally appeared in Tips & Tricks. But we're concerned folks aren't interacting with material there as much, so we've folded these components into the lecture.)

The Internet deals best with certain types of images. JPGs (pronounced "jay-pegs") are optimal for items that contain photography or large gradients. For text and line-art, like ink-sketches, use PNGs and GIFs (pronounced "ping" and "gif," as in "gift" but without the "t"). Read about the techniques' differences on Webopedia.

Digital cameras typically shoot in RAW, high-resolution JPG or a proprietary format. So you'll need to resave photos in a web-friendly fashion – JPG, GIF or PNG – and bite-size them to suit the net. Most bloggers also compress images, so they download quickly. A slow-loading page, after all, alienates readers and ups the bounce rate (how quickly folks depart the site)...

When image-editing programs squish artworks, they simplify them. Depending on the process, they either remove or compress detail (JPG) or reduce the color palette (PNG/GIF). Thus things get blurry or blocky when you go too low. And yes, that's the cyber equivalent of pancaking on your back during the limbo: Very Very Embarrassing...

No more rum punch for you!

You can tailor PNGs for better results via algorithms, but those controls are only available on more expensive image-editing tools such as Adobe Photoshop Elements. Also, the files produced are larger – and unreadable on Internet Explorer 6. That's a generation or two back, browser-wise, and thus not a huge problem, unless your target audience might not have the latest software (silver surfers, readers in developing nations or places with limited Internet access, etc.).

Answers to frequently asked questions:

How do I compress an image for the Web?

Most image editing programs offer some sort of "Save As," "Save For Web" or "Export" functionality. Each one has the controls in a different place, so check your software's help files for details.

Picasa is a photo cataloging and editing tool from Google available for both Windows and Mac. Use Picasa's "Export to Folder" function to resize and compress photos as JPGs all in one step. By selecting several photos, you can perform the same operation in a batch. Picasa's especially groovy because its web albums sync with Blogger uploads – handy if you want to reuse images.

How much to compress?
Two ways exist to streamline a file: reduce the physical size of the photo or increase the level of compression (or both). Making the image smaller is a good first step for the web, since most monitors can't display an image more than 1,200 pixels wide. These days, even cheap digital point-and-shoots take photos that are 3,000+ pixels.

Many programs allow you to preview compression levels, as you experiment with different intensities via a slider bar. When you start to see a loss of detail or blockiness, ease the slider back a notch or two and you'll be fine.

Otherwise, a compression level of 70 – 85 (out of 100) works well: files retain clarity but still download briskly on most connections.

Some bloggers, myself included (Amanda), size photographs to specific widths, then upload. That method offers more control and also helps when embedding the captions in Photoshop, old-school style... However, it doesn't allow readers to click on an image and examine a larger version. Nor does it allow reuse in different sizes: The shot you ran full-width in a January post could be a great thumbnail in a related July entry.

Programs like Picasa save an original image, then produce three clones: small (144 pixels), medium (288px) and large (400px). Like Goldilocks, you decide which is just right for the task at hand.

You can then grab the embed code off your Picasa web album: click "Link to this Photo" in the right-hand sidebar. We recommend checking "hide the album link" as that eliminates some formatting drama. Then select a size, and cut and paste the "embed image" code into the photo uploader's URL field.

What about images like line-art, screenshots, icons, etc.?
For art with heavy gradients – elaborately inked comics, for example – your best bet is the JPG format. Shorter gradients – as you might find in a site's header image or logo – compress best with GIF or PNG.

Transparency requires a GIF or PNG: helpful for a logo that repeats across various pages with different-colored backgrounds. PNGs rock when you need to fade into transparency and GIFs when you have sharp lines.

Having trouble?
Check out these trouble-shooting tips.

Blurry or blocky: Try decreasing the compression. A percentage of 70-85 usually works best for photos.

Color-smudged text: Boost up the text's font size and strength (bold). This will make the original pixel-chunks thicker, so they're less likely to bleed color when compressed. You may need to experiment with increasing the leading (space between lines) and kerning (space between letters) to make the bulkier text look good.

This problem can also be the result of resizing an image after letter additions. Keep original versions of all art, as well as a master file with the text and image layers unflattened (i.e.; both elements can still be edited and aren't yet fused into a unit). Employ "save as" and "save for web" functions to create new, uploadable files. Your digital closet will be more full, but your options will stay open...

Blurry text: some image editing programs, like Photoshop, allow you to choose text parameters: crisp, smooth, sharp, strong, etc. These options define how letters blend with the background. Use these as you see fit for the situation. In general, larger fonts look better with smooth aliasing, while smaller fonts need crispness to prevent blurring.

As we mentioned earlier, always copy your art before making any changes. Many compression formats use lossy algorithms: they ditch data. Each time you re-save, the file sheds more and more quality. Opt for TIFFs when possible: they're better at conservation. Some image editors, such as Picasa, only permit JPGs, however, so minimize the number of resaves there.

Web-prepping images, a review

2010-03-03T15:26:00.000-08:00

Do you hold copyright or have permission to use the image (including its components)?
Have you respected Creative Commons or other licenses? And acknowledged the content creator, ideally with a link?
Is the caption info ready to post, as part of the text or via an embed program like Flickr's?
Save a copy of your original. Never tinker with your backup.
Reduce the size of your image to a max of 1,200 pixels across.
Convert to a web-friendly format: JPG (photos), GIF or PNG (line art, graphics).
Compress 70–85% (if that didn't already occur in step 3).
The file size (not image size: file) should be 12-50k for graphics, less than 100k for photos, unless they are extremely large and detailed (full-post beauties on, say, a pro-photog's site). In that case, 500k is an acceptable cap.
Either upload directly or via a sharing site. All these services allow you to select small, medium or large options and align the image. Cut and paste the appropriate embed code to your blog.

Remember: you can caption photos with Blogger’s built-in tools or you can get fancy by importing images from Flickr. Keep in mind that Flickr defaults to creating a live entry, so post first to your test blog, then copy/paste the code into your real site. That’s also a good technique if you have more than one photo to import from Flickr.

Image placement for ace blog design

2010-03-03T15:25:00.001-08:00

Art brings a blog alive and rivets readers: humans are very visual creatures, after all. So give your audience a dose of eye candy, but strategically...

DO: Start posts with an image. Should you want it to run the full post-width, go for a horizontal photo. This lets readers see some text without scrolling, drawing them into your original content.

DO: Dot images into the text, drawing the eye down the page and breaking up large "grey" chunks of text.

DON'T: Roadblock readers with full-width images in the middle of a post. This interrupts the continuity and flow. Place these at the top or bottom. Save small and medium photos for the body. (An obvious exception is when the text comments upon the image, such as a screen grab for the class blog.)

DON'T: Drop in elaborate background images (or worse yet, elaborate tiling ones). These make text difficult to read.

DON'T: Try to shoehorn a vertical image into a horizontal design space (the header, for example). Grief will ensue. An html whiz could customize a template around this, but the average blogger probably doesn't have the time to acquire chops like that. Two options: hire a designer with a proven track record on your platform or create a horizontal collage incorporating the vertical image.

Art alignment and text wraps

2010-03-03T15:23:00.000-08:00

Wrapping text around an image adds a note of professionalism to a blog. However, text wrapping can go wrong in so many ways.

Some things to look out for:

Text doesn't line up with the top of the image. This is usually a case of extra white-space (spaces, line-breaks, etc.) between the image and the text in question. This is particularly the case when Dashboard –> Settings –> Formatting –> Convert line breaks is set to "Yes." (Unfortunately, this is Blogger's default setting and is needed to make Blogger's own text editing tool work properly. If you only make posts using a third-party editing tool, you should try setting this to "No" to see how your posts look when imported.) To fix: edit the entry and pop over to Edit HTML mode. Remove any extra spaces between the closing link tag (</a>) and the first characters of your text.
Text is crammed up against/too far away from the image. When Blogger inserts an image, it adds a bunch of embedded style commands to reflect the options you selected in the Upload Images dialog. While this causes me no end of headaches, it does have its advantage: you can customize the margin around images on a case-by-case basis. Again, edit the post in Edit HTML mode and find the image tag (<img âﬁı />). In that tag is a style attribute which, among other things, lists "margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px" – which deciphers to "set a margin of 0 points (pixels) on the top and left and a margin of 10 pixels on the bottom and right of the image." Adjust the numbers as needed to correct the spacing around your image. Note: the numbers represent the top, right, bottom and left margins in that order.
Text appear in a thin column down one side of the image. This happens when "left" or "right" alignment is selected in the Upload Image dialog and the image size is not wide enough to cover the entire content width. Again, we benefit from Blogger's bit no-no of embedded styles. In this case replace float: left (or float: right) with display: block.

Do I need a domain?

2010-03-03T15:22:00.000-08:00

Blogging can channel traffic to a website wonderfully. But for a company, a "business.blogspot.com" web address can look a little ... well, cheap. Registering a domain name is easy and inexpensive, but should you tackle that just yet?

For those on a tight budget or steep learning curve, we vote "no". Start with free services, then get fancier as your skills grow – and you know the blogging wasn't just a flash-in-the-pan enthusiasm like that Thighmaster or pet rock.

Think of the web as Madonna, an endless font of reinvention. As Mike stresses, "things don't have to be perfect to be published online, because it is easy to correct them as you move forward."

That said, following is some information for when it comes time to register a domain name.

Photo: Madonna at the premiere of "I Am Because We Are" at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, courtesy of David Shankbone and Wikimedia Commons.

Know Your Frenemy

2010-03-03T15:20:00.000-08:00

ICANN is a non-profit that oversees domain-names and charges $15/year for most. A higher price tag means that your registrar is padding the bill or that you're tapping a restricted top-level domain, like those ending in .jobs, .biz, .pro, .coop and a few others.

Many domain-name registrars lurk out there (accredited list here). We recommend GoDaddy.com with reservations: it baits in customers with the lowest rates, then tries to up-sell additional services they generally don't need. But it's a good option, if you have the gumption to wade through the sales pitches and find the "no, just let me pay you and get on with my life" button.

Google owns Blogger.com, so users can register a domain name from the administration interface. Select the "Settings" tab near the dashboard's top, then click on "Publishing" followed by "Custom Domain". Check the availability of a given domain name and register desired ones for $10/year each. Bargain! Google partners with both GoDaddy.com and eNom.com to provide this service.

Tread carefully, though. Companies that discount the $15/year ICANN rate hope to sell you lotsa stuff. Registration is their loss leader or "key value item": the peanut butter in the rat trap. So, be careful where you click.

Is ".com" DA bomb?

2010-03-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

The ".com" top-level domain has been available for registration since 1984. Unsurprisingly, many of the best names are sewed up. So how does one establish an online brand?

Much depends on whether your brand already exists or not. New enterprises have an advantage here, since they can select a name with good online prospects. Still, the pickings are slim: most one-word domains have been taken, including such outliers as zwitterions.com (a chemical compound that carries a total net charge of zero) and quaesitum.com (Latin, a declaration by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith forbidding Catholics from joining Masonic organizations).

What to do?

Follow in the footsteps of Flickr.com, Scribd.com and Blogr.com and rmove a lettr or two from a regulr word. Just make sure the resulting domain name still makes sense.
Copy Zazzle.com and Strobist.com and make up a new word or borrow from slang. (Strobist.com, by the way, is a good example of a custom domain name that does a simple redirect to a free blog).
Be like PlentyOfFish.com and BrazenCareerist.com: deploy a phrase, which can be just as easy to remember as a single word. For example, "ImOffToSeeTheWizard.com" is still available (as is "IAmOffToSeeTheWizard.com"). Remember, however, that the geeks of the world have long been hording domain names. So if the phrase was ever uttered in a Star Trek episode ("MakeItSo.com") or Highlander movie ("ThereCanBeOnlyOne.com"), it's probably long gone.
Make a land grab. Offer to buy that perfect domain name, especially if it looks like this. Such hollow facades are "parked," which means the owner's either lazy or hoping for a sale. Register.com has a Whois Lookup to trace registrars and administrative contacts (also helpful if you're battling libel or copyright issues, but more on that later in the course).
Stay flexible, because .com is not the only top-level domain available. Consider .net, as well as newer options like .info and industry-specific ones like .travel. They don't offer the cachet of .com, granted, but sometimes they're better for branding purposes.

While easy and superficially impressive, registering the perfect domain name does far less for your site than writing compelling copy. Google or Yahoo or Microsoft Live Search don't care if you post at "TheMostAmazingBlog.com" or "MyTabbyOutweighsPreschoolers.blogspot.com". Good material draws readers in and keeps them returning: pure and simple.

Note: that mix of capital and lower case letters – often called "CamelCase" – avoids ambiguity in multiword web address. The host name portion (see Tips and Tricks) of a web address is case-insensitive, so a mix of capital and lower case letters can make a long address more readable. This is especially useful when referring to your web site in print, such as on flyers or a business card.

A former student experimented with the address http://youhadmeatbonjour.blogspot.com. Mike and I – plus several friends and family – all read that as "You Had Meat, Bonjour" rather than "You Had Me At Bonjour". CamelCasing clears up ambiguities like that.

Image: The advertisement for the 1953 film "The Robe" debuted CinemaScope, one of the earliest product trademarks to use medial capital, aka "Camelcasing".

The ".com" top-level domain has been available for registration since 1984. Unsurprisingly, many of the best names are sewed up. So how does one establish an online brand?

What to do?

Follow in the footsteps of Flickr.com, Scribd.com and Blogr.com and rmove a lettr or two from a regulr word. Just make sure the resulting domain name still makes sense.
Copy Zazzle.com and Strobist.com and make up a new word or borrow from slang. (Strobist.com, by the way, is a good example of a custom domain name that does a simple redirect to a free blog).
Be like PlentyOfFish.com and BrazenCareerist.com: deploy a phrase, which can be just as easy to remember as a single word. For example, "ImOffToSeeTheWizard.com" is still available (as is "IAmOffToSeeTheWizard.com"). Remember, however, that the geeks of the world have long been hording domain names. So if the phrase was ever uttered in a Star Trek episode ("MakeItSo.com") or Highlander movie ("ThereCanBeOnlyOne.com"), it's probably long gone.
Make a land grab. Offer to buy that perfect domain name, especially if it looks like this. Such hollow facades are "parked," which means the owner's either lazy or hoping for a sale. Register.com has a Whois Lookup to trace registrars and administrative contacts (also helpful if you're battling libel or copyright issues, but more on that later in the course).
Stay flexible, because .com is not the only top-level domain available. Consider .net, as well as newer options like .info and industry-specific ones like .travel. They don't offer the cachet of .com, granted, but sometimes they're better for branding purposes.

Image: The advertisement for the 1953 film "The Robe" debuted CinemaScope, one of the earliest product trademarks to use medial capital, aka "Camelcasing".

Your mission, week eight

2010-03-03T15:17:00.000-08:00

Surf the web and find at least five blogs new to you. Leave a comment on each and also respond to all feedback on your site. Make at least two posts, one with an image, the other with a video
Feedback: (Amanda) holistic critique

Shaping Short Narratives & Strong Thematic Posts

2010-02-24T14:01:00.000-08:00

This week we're going to explore writing techniques for stronger entries. Because all the widgets and whizbangery in the world can't save a blog without strong content ... To do this, we'll look at a mix of "dead tree" tactics, as well as new media content ... and analyses of both.

Some of this advice, I hope, will seem very old and obvious to you. That's because experts have spent decades – centuries even – analyzing what readers enjoy. Hopefully books and dedicated teachers and empirical evidence have brought many of these patterns to your attention already.

Storytelling in the age of content curation

2010-02-24T13:58:00.000-08:00

How time-honored reporting and storytelling techniques play out best in the blogosphere is a debate that generates enough steam to light a small city. As the mainstream media (MSM) destabilizes, no one's certain what – if anything – might fill that "fourth estate" gap. Maybe, as Steve Rosenblum notes in The Huffington Post: "Big things will get smaller, or die. Little things will survive and start to grow. Consumers will become creators. Lurkers will become participants. The volume of voices will expand exponentially – and the need for clarity and trusted filters will go from being useful to being essential."

He argues that we're entering an age of curation, where the editors will skim the cream off the Milky Way of data. "This will drive an emerging class of content entrepreneurs – people who are able to turn their trusted personal brands into high-quality filtered content destinations," Rosenblum writes.

SF Gate Columnist Mark Morford weighs in with Die, Newspaper, Die? "In the howling absence of all the essential, unglamorous work newspapers now do – the fact-checking, interviewing, researching, all by experienced pros who know how to sift the human maelstrom better than anyone, and all hitched to 100+ years of hard-fought newsbrand credibility – what's the new yardstick for integrity? On what do you base your choices? Some fickle mix of personal mood, blood-alcohol level, and how many followers your given source has on Twitter? Right."

As I've pulpit-pounded before, I believe the new world order will always need professional and dedicated semipro storytellers: a tradition that stretches back to our first recorded stories, like the glib gossip of Homer and the war correspondence of Xenophon (I once made my ancient Greek professor hyperventilate by pointing out he was the first, known embedded journalist. Yet I stand by that assertion, however bratty. Who cares if the medium is a papyrus or a pixel?). Creatives – writers, photographers, broadcasters, videographers, designers etc. – will produce, even if their efforts must blend more media to gain attention. And editors will continue to objectively collate the most noteworthy of those projects, while the pundits, the critics, mouth off about 'em.

The industry's challenge is how to preserve a professional layer in this cake, so it doesn't deflate into a puddle of soggy ingredients (or, to use a more common metaphor, the unintelligible, unproductive screaming of a mob). But your challenge is to determine how literary devices, strong reporting and original content apply to the blogosphere – and your stake claim of it.

Art: A sign advertising the Homeless Grapevine, a street newspaper, at Lincoln Park, Tremont, Ohio, U.S.A. By Eddie~S via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons.

Making a strong first impression – on readers and search bots

2010-02-24T13:56:00.000-08:00

A post's headline and generally its first 25 words appear in search indexes, as well as on subscription feeds, aggregator sites and social-media links. Seed this canvas with the strongest material possible: news angles, dynamic prose, original reporting, etc. It's the bait on your hook.

Subscribers and regular readers aside, winning attention can be even more challenging online than in print. Someone perusing, say, a hard copy of Nutcracker Collector Monthly or Wise Widgeter Digest already has enough interest in a topic to seek out a publication on it (or pick one off the doctor's waiting room table). The audience self-selects to a great degree and often pays money for the privilege, upping its stake in consumption of that media. So magazine and newspaper writers often preach to the choir.

Fishers on the ocean of free Internet content need to be more crafty.

As we discussed last week, search engines send spider bots to crawl the web, analyzing domain names, keywords, inbound and outbound links, and 190-something other mysterious factors to determine a page's point ... and also its authority, called PageRank in the Googleverse. Various techniques exist to boost SEO (search engine optimization).

The higher your PageRank, the higher your site appears when people search. And if your first impression is compelling, they click through and read. The same goes for folks perusing feeds, Facebook links or fecklessly skimming spamtastic linkfarms.

Wow 'em. Hard and fast.

For the bots, touch upon keywords – the terms that really sum up the gist of a post. Don't stuff them in, but if you're reviewing the Big Book of Biscuits, don't lead with 250 words on your grandfather's favorite cookie-making apron. That's called "burying the lede" in media jargon.

People-wise, be precise and colorful, emphasizing the original (language and material). Avoid word repetition between the headline and first paragraph. Those 35-ish words together are the post's ambassador and advert alike. Make every one count.

Blog posts deserve snappy ledes (starts)

2010-02-24T13:55:00.000-08:00

Think elevator pitch. Think love at first sight. Because you have mere seconds to engage readers' attention with the "lede" of a story: the first sentence (or paragraph. And yes, the misspelling's intentional, differentiating from the hot metal printers employed in the last century. But you'll also see "lead" referring to a tale's kickoff.)

Good story starts are tough to write, but worth the struggle. As Poynter's Chip Scanlan points out: "[a lede] makes a promise to the reader or viewer: I have something important, something interesting, to tell you. A good lead beckons and invites. It informs, attracts, and entices. If there's any poetry in journalism, it's most often found in the lead, as in the classic opening of what could have been a mundane weather forecast: 'Snow, followed by small boys on sleds.'"

Blogs, in particular, need to charm quickly, making ledes all the more critical. As noted above, aggregators excerpt those first 25 words: they are a post's calling card to the world, scrutinized by potential readers and search spiders alike. And, of course, readers haven't even invested spare change for a newspaper, $10 for a movie ticket or $30 for a hardback with a bestseller seal of approval. They have clicked upon your site – possibly an unknown site – for free and can just as easily click away to someone else's.

But a good lede pulls them in and entices them to stay. And the best can even survive the erosion of time, as writer John Barth reminds us: “A first sentence’s job is to draw its reader into the sentence after it – while at the same time, maybe establishing the tale’s tone and narrative viewpoint . . . some do that job so well that they remain in our memory long after we’ve forgotten most of the words that followed.”

Art: Children on sleds in Central Park, New York City, Bain News Service, c.a.1915. This image is available on Wikimedia Commons from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division under the digital ID cph.3c11106.

Lively lede devices for bloggers (and other authors)

2010-02-24T13:53:00.000-08:00

Focus your thoughts before beginning. What tone is appropriate for the article: lively, dry and newsy, dreamy and erudite? What's the target audience? What are the key points? The gist of the article?

Now bait your hook. You need a scene – or language – arresting enough to capture readers attention. Some tried and true techniques:

Action: studies reveal that reader like to see characters and even things in motion. Focus on active, evocative verbs, not passive constructions.
Be challenging: shake up what folks think they know. Reveal something new, whether that's a better ad revenue model or tips for a silkier showdog coat...
Dilemma: Introduce a problem that the characters – or reader or society – need to solve.
Emotion: Stir up empathy or revulsion or anger, then unravel the narrative or intellectual arguments.
In media res: Latin for "in the middle the things". Drop the reader into a scene, then spool out the backstory before proceeding on the journey.
Quest: Humans are hardwired to learn from the experiences of others, as we discussed week two. Curious situations rivet us and excite the rubberneck impulse. A quest takes that a step further, tapping one of our great plot archetypes: hero overcomes obstacles, wins reward. (Aristotle boiled all tales down to seven categories: quest, voyage and return, rebirth, comedy, tragedy, overcoming the monster and rags to riches, as Peter Reeves points out here.)
Running joke: make with the funny. And keep the humor weaving through the post, evolving.
Senses: stretch beyond the obvious (sight) and engage readers on other levels. Be precise. Don't say "sweet smell," when you can specify the "musk of old orchids" or the "scent of sun-warmed cedar".
Suspense: Intrigue can involve a reader in a story. Bewilderment, however, is a harder sell. Give the audience enough framework to follow, but enough mystery to continue following...
Universal stories: Emphasize the elements readers are most likely to share.

Weak lede techniques to avoid

Burying the lede: Chief among journalistic sins, this denotes putting the good stuff low in the story, rather than up front as bait. Given search-bot behavior, it's even more critical to write important details into the top of a post. Those concerned about SEO should work in keywords also.
Clichés: They don't engage the reader with a familiar device. They bore them with it. So no dark and stormy nights, unless you follow up with some riveting and immediate twist.
Hypotheticals: Long convoluted "if, then" clauses slow the pace of the text and reverse into the point. Also, they encourage readers to skip ahead, should the scenario not speak immediately to them. Be especially wary of anticipating how people might feel or react: that can insult and alienate an audience. Captivate readers with strong plots and prose: don't try to artificially inject them into the action.
Second person: Like "if" clauses, the second-person pronoun "you" promises to involve the reader in the story. But many editors consider this such a cheap, blatant ploy that they ban it. Just sayin'...
Stalling: The material at the start of a sentence – or especially a paragraph – has greater prominence. Don't fill that key space with dates, subclauses or padded out verbs of being, like "there are" and "it may be".
Thinking out loud: Save your musing for later in the piece. Or rather, don't ask the readers to watch you ponder until you've already nabbed their attention with the topic in question.

Plenty of world-class writers break these guidelines routinely, sure. But until your writing's world-class and has a devoted audience, it's worth learning the tricks, then deciding which to discard in certain circumstances.

Nut graf – framework to hang the story upon

2010-02-24T13:52:00.001-08:00

In lecture three, we touched upon the nut graf (And yes, that's an accurate spelling, more slang left over from the printing-press days). This paragraph grounds an article – or blog post – briefly sketching out the who, what, when, where and why. It runs early, typically as the second paragraph, and gives the reader a framework for what's to come. Ken Wells, a writer and editor at The Wall Street Journal, described it as “a paragraph that says what this whole story is about and why you should read it. It's a flag to the reader, high up in the story: You can decide to proceed or not, but if you read no farther, you know what that story's about.”

Often called "the heart of a story," the nut graf sets the context. And that's especially important in blogging, where readers may be parachuting into any given entry via a search engine – or consuming more recent posts ahead of old ones, as they scroll down from the top. Remember the discussion about the man from Mars? The nut graf is his cue card.

Here's an example of how this can work, even in a very short post anchored around a punny travel episode. I've italicized the nut-graffy bits:

BIHAC SLAPPED
PLITVICKA JEZERA, Croatia – "Veliki Slap," the sign reads: Big Waterfall.

The jokes are inevitable, especially after lunch in Bihac, Bosnia...

The slap is nice, as slaps go. The 70-meter cascade lies inside the Plitvicka Jezera National Park, a chain of 16 peacock-colored lakes.

Though occupied by Serb forces from 1991-1995, the park's landscape remains fairly unspoilt. Boardwalks snake across the water, teeming with trout. Heron skim among the travertine cliffs. We hike a few miles, then catch the last pontoon boat down the dusky lake.

Pure magic. As it should be. I make some quick calculations: income lost by rejecting the guidebook gig + savings about to be spent.

We've just enjoyed a $4,000 day in the Balkans.

Here's a newsier excerpt from Craig Romano's World Hiker. Notice how he leads with a position statement, explains the politics, then continues with his rant. That formula may be familiar from your school days. It works in English classes – and works online too...

Omnibus Public Land Management Act Has Overwhelming Support in Congress but Goes Down in Defeat! Say What?

You have to love the way our system works sometimes (Insert sarcasm here).

The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, a bill that would have established two million acres of new wilderness and make the Pacific Northwest Trail and the New England Trail National Scenic Trails among other things - a bill that had wide bipartisan support (73-21) in the Senate was defeated in the house by 2 votes.

Final Vote 282 For
144 Against
6 Not Voting

If it had 282 votes for it-then how could it have possibly been defeated you are probably thinking. Well - you are going to love this - the bill failed in the House of Representatives this week by roll call vote. The vote was held under a suspension of the rules to cut debate short and pass the bill, needing a two-thirds majority. Something that usually occurs for non-controversial legislation.

Repeat after me:
Un - insert a common profane modifier here - believable!

... (read full post here)

Louche weighs in with a giddy diary-style example. He leads with some in media res excitement, then – very blatantly – flashes back to explain what's up.

I've gotta be a macho man

I am hungover. Actually that isn't entirely correct, I am still drunk. I am ruined man, who has had about 20 minutes of sleep of sleep and will have to go into quite a serious meeting this afternoon. I didn't mean for it to end up like this but it did. Let me start at the beginning.

If I'm being honest it probably started to get dangerous around lunch time. For some reason it seemed like an excellent idea to skip any real food and just have a coffee. This would come back to haunt me later when the idea of some sort of starchy ballast to absorb drink would be terribly welcome.

... (read full post here)

Art: Plitvicka Lakes, Croatia. Copyright Amanda Castleman, 2006.

More nut graf goodness

2010-02-24T13:51:00.001-08:00

Poynter's Chip Scanlan, a giant among writing coaches, offers this quick primer in his series on nut grafs:

The nut graf has several purposes:

It justifies the story by telling readers why they should care.

It provides a transition from the lead and explains the lead and its connection to the rest of the story.

It often tells readers why the story is timely.

It often includes supporting material that helps readers see why the story is important.

"Here's a quick way to produce a nut graf for your next story: Make up your mind what the story is about and why people should read it – and then type that conclusion in one or two sentences.

"Experienced reporters say they find it helpful to constantly write and rewrite the nut graf through the course of reporting the story. Doing so tends to reveal holes earlier in the process and helps you avoid too many intriguing but tangential side trips."

Give readers a framework, but not too much information. James B. Stewart advises this in his book Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction. "Don't let nut grafs tell so much about the story that they have no incentive to keep reading." He argues that a nut graf should "sell" the story by emphasizing its timeliness and importance, while "preserving every bit of the suspense and curiosity so carefully cultivated in the lead."

Stewart's guidelines include:

Never give away the ending of the story.
Anticipate the questions that readers might be asking early in a story, and address them.
Give readers a concrete reason or reasons to move on.

Speaking of suspense...

2010-02-24T13:49:00.000-08:00

You need it. Lashings and lashings. Small internal tensions and resolutions are what keep readers moving through a text. As Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools, points out: sprinkle gold coins along the path. "Reward the reader with high points, especially in the middle."

Yeah, I know it's kinda sinister in a Hansel and Gretel way. But, well, the witch lured those greedy little crumbsuckers out there, didn't she?

Beth Blair's rooster post on Travelling Mamas builds up a wonderful head of steam. She moves from a rant into a more contemplative moment, shifting gears smoothly and ending with art. Note that she also has a strong nut graf, explaining the context of these rogue poultry! She interweaves sensory details beyond visual ... and builds to an insight that recalls the opening theme. It's not the most jarring revelation ever, granted. But Beth ends things with finality – and a glance towards the future. This formula has endured because it works. More elaborate variations may win the kudos and awards, but, you know, in a pinch, circle back around and scan the portentous horizon. At least you're ending with a bang, not a whimper!

Surreal. Magical. A Kaua’i Sunrise.
By DesertMama | June 2, 2008

I sat up straight in bed, jarred from a deep sleep, and looked around the Kaha Lani Resort bedroom. What was that noise? There was enough light coming through the windows to tell dawn was approaching. I heard “it” again, now realizing the noise was Mother Nature’s colorful alarm clock. I slowly placed my head back on the pillow, but it crowed once more, this time with a friend.

I cringed and cover my ears.

The roosters, hens and baby chicks seen on Kaua’i are products of Hurricane Iniki’s September 11, 2002 destruction when the caged birds escaped, never to be held captive again. Instead, they were fruitful and multiplied and multiplied and multiplied and now run wild all across the Hawaiian “Garden Island.”

Some people find them annoying while others such as myself find them charming, that was until my early morning wake-up call.

There was no way I was going to be able to fall back to sleep. I wandered to the window overlooking the ocean to see a dull looking sky with a hint of brightness in the distance. The sun had yet to rise. I quickly changed into cropped pants and a navy blue tank top and grabbed my camera. Barefoot, I flew down the three flights of wooden stairs and across a short spread of grass. I climbed down a few boulders and jumped into the sand. A woman dressed in black was situated in the sand, involved in the yoga stance downward facing dog as the ocean’s waved crashed only yards from her feet and hands.

The wet sand felt soft between my toes while telling of the ocean’s recent presence. I realized my feet were the first to walk the beach that morning. Just like every new day, the slate had been wiped clean and new adventures were to begin. The sun slowly crept into the sky, dodging behind clouds, occasionally allowing its reflection to dance on the water. The waves rolling onto the shore were the only sound except for the occasional rooster’s crow. The waves kissed my ankles as a light breeze came off the water. My lips welcomed the light taste of saltwater. Suddenly, my heart was filled with gratitude for the little colorful creature who welcomed me that morning.

Once the sun was well in the sky I found myself looking forward to the day and the next morning’s sunrise.

Art: Sunrise in Palau.Copyright Amanda Castleman, 2009.

Creative nonfiction – Plot your posts

2010-02-24T13:48:00.000-08:00

In narrative writing, events unfold around a protagonist, which could be yourself or another. Jon Franklin, the guru behind the classic Writing for Story, declared that “a story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves.

Week three we discussed writing for narrative or thematic continuity, as well as features-style techniques. Today we'll explore the engine of the technique: plot.

A good story moves a character – and the reader's understanding and emotions – from one place to another. Blocking action adds spice to this mix. Give your protagonist hell. It forces him or her to evolve, ideally towards a defining moment, the climax, which produces some insight ... some raison d'être for the piece.

Jack R. Hart, author of A Writer's Coach, broke down plot arc thus at the 2005 National Writer's Workshop:

Exposition: introduce the protagonist, the person who makes things happen (if you're stuck, start with the protagonist's name and a transitive verb).
Inciting incident: something knocks the protagonist off the status quo. “Think of a movie ... a Hollywood movie, not a Danish one,” he joked.
Rising action: the protagonist struggles with confrontations.
Point of insight. The solution or outcome clarifies.
Climax: the confrontation resolves.
Denouement: Wrap it up.

Hart considers the “point of insight” most valuable. “Here's what people are looking for in stories. They want to learn from the experiences of others how to be a more successful human being. Find the universal theme.”

Narrative writing is an advanced technique. Experiment, but don't panic if this new medium takes time to learn. Mimicry really is the best tool. Read stories – and watch films – with these techniques in mind. Then perhaps try a brief post in the format. As the great writing coach Hart said, “narrative articles needn't be 100-inch goat-chokers”. The short length forces your concentration onto the plot – picking, choosing and crystallizing the essential elements – rather than a glut of expression.

Plot arc: get complicated!

2010-02-24T13:47:00.000-08:00

Once you’ve pinned down the message – the essential nature of the post– draft a one-sentence summary. This needn’t be flashy, as it’s for your eyes alone. Many writers pin this declaration to the wall or paste it into the top of their computer file. A few examples:

The ostrich jockeys: running the big birds in the Valley of the Sun
Is it fair to take children on a gambling holiday?
Tea time: faded colonial splendor in Candacraig, Burma

This "capsule sentence" introduces your theme, the thread that leads you through the post. Your first paragraph (the "lead" or "lede") and conclusion will most likely reflect this key information. And all the bits between should be in harmony. Cut the retired showgirl anecdote, if the entry’s about children in casinos. Don’t get sidetracked by hang-gliding, if the subject at hand is mountaineering. Be ruthless – but don’t despair. All that excised material can be spun into other stories, so nothing’s ever wasted.

Professor Jon Franklin takes this a step further in Writing for Story. He encourages students to plot pieces by crafting two sentences in a noun-active verb-noun format. The first is the problem, the second its resolution. Then note three steps that advance the tale. For example:

Complication: Company fires Joe

Development:

Depression paralyses Joe
Joe regains confidence
Joe sues company

Resolution: Joe regains job

The telegraphed style focuses the writer's thoughts on the relationships in the story, he claims. Plus, "if there's anything wrong with 'Company fires Joe,' we need to discover it now, before we've written several thousand unusable words."

Avoid statements that are weak or static (includes the verbs be, am, was, were, have, has, being, been, do, does, did, could, would, should). "Stories consist of actions! Stories consist of actions! Stories consist of actions!" Franklin writes (he gets a free pass on the exclamation marks for helping to invent narrative nonfiction).

Not all journalism is plot-fueled, obviously; this approach doesn't suit every wearable-blanket brief and hotel review. Yet even a service piece benefits from a theme and an outline. Not the hideous textbook sort with nested subsets in Roman numerals like "I.E.iii.a". Rather a simple list of topics that need coverage, roughly in order. The "five boxes" stratagem – a sort of slapdash structure – remains popular with many journalists and bloggers.

Transitions: write the sweet segue

2010-02-24T13:46:00.001-08:00

Think about the rhythm of your writing. Does one idea flow smoothly from the next? Are short sentences mixed with longer ones? Are facts interwoven with descriptions? Have you repeated the same words over and over – or carefully chosen fresh, evocative phrases each time?

Writing is like dancing. Lead your partner – the reader – through the piece. Direct them gracefully, gently but firmly. And don’t trip over your own shoe laces: if you’re muddled while writing, it shows. Work and rework the tricky bits. Read them out loud. Sleep on them. Digest the material, the reshape it, until it flows as smoothly as the waltz.

Suave transitions add polish to your style. One dance step leads to another – not a frozen moment on the floor and complete change of pace (tango aside). Pay special attention to the endings and beginnings of your paragraphs. Are they linked together, bridging seamlessly from one idea to another?

Phrases like however, despite and on the contrary are useful, as are and, furthermore and similarly. Cause-and-effect relationships work well too: as a result, because, consequently . Don’t forget time transitions like the following evening, by afternoon, 200 years later, and their more subtle cousins leaves were falling when my train departed and my lamb chop grew cold, forgotten in the confusion. The most graceful transitions simply tweak an idea – or contrast it – from the previous sentence.

Art: Classical dance exhibition on a ball in the Prague Congress Center. Photo by Petr Novák via Wikimedia Commons.

Satisfying blog-entry conclusions

2010-02-24T13:45:00.001-08:00

Posts should conclude with a flourish, a grand finale. Don’t save the best for last in a newsier piece, as the reader might never get there. Do hoard a pithy quote or clever observation, something punchy. The last sentence should sum up or nicely round off the discussion.

The theme often comes into play at the conclusion. I more often use a quote or allusion here than the beginning – for a satisfying, folksy note. In Yayoi Drops the H-Bomb, I riffed on Kipling's East is East quote, for example. Some others:

The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. And for the Via Giulia, the result couldn’t be more charming.
So wiggle into your worn woolens and head off to Never Never Land. Even if you don’t believe in fairies, it’ll leave you clapping.
A coin cast into the Trevi Fountain ensures a return to Rome, according to folklore. My motivation won’t be the art, the ruins, the fine wines and food, however precious. No, my euro is for another shot at Zen and the art of moped mayhem.

Are these deep insights? Hell no! But they at least signal a clear and satisfying end to the reader. If you can reward their tenacity with nothing else, end with a bang, not a whimper, as they say in England.

My friend, the travel writer Anna Melville-James, and I call this the "ta-dum" after the snare flourish following a comedian’s joke. Others dub it the "kicker". The impulse is the same: to clearly mark the conclusion and cue laughter (or reflection or whatever response you crave).

A strong ending shows the writer is in control, not merely blundering through a swamp of material, but shaping it. This is by no means a easy task. I still agonize most about the first and last sentences, as do most professionals.

Here's an amazing example by an unlikely source, world-class photographer David Lansing. In his post, The Son Also Falls about Hemingway's children, he uses something small and inconsequential to light up a bigger picture, and, in just a few hundred words, he elaborates a full story. The last line is a marvelous summation, bringing the whole tale together... and with a video clip, no less.

Read it. No, really. Do.

S.W.A.K. – the envelope ending

2010-02-24T13:43:00.000-08:00

A classic journalistic technique is to seal together the opening and closing with a kiss. The idea's simple: circle back around to your initial theme. And preferably, give it a final twist to reward readers for their perseverance. Take Road Remedies' Venturesome Minority, which opens and closes on very different bear-charge reflections.

Marie Javins provides an excellent example on No Hurry in J.C. Her post The Way To a Woman's Heart opens:

About 7 years ago, I was walking south on Manhattan's Orchard Street. An older man passed me, walking north. He eyeballed me.

"You still got it."

Aghast, I'd thought I wasn't aware I'd lost it. Talk about a backhanded compliment. At 35, I wasn't exactly sagging around the edges.

Today, seven years later, his comment might be appropriate. In the 9-person group I was in Bolivia with, I felt more an outsider than an active participant. I'd been on a half-dozen small group expeditions in the past, but on the other trips, I'd been of the median age. Now I was the only one in my age group.

The two younger women primped and vamped and made themselves up at night for dinner (our men were oblivious). I watched them with a little envy but mostly with relief. Let them put on the show. I wasn't here to flirt. I didn't feel any pressure to perform or even to shower. But I like to stay clean so I showered when I could, like on the last morning in Uyuni before we were to go into the salt flats for three days.

Hair still sopping wet, I got into one of the two Land Cruisers. After we left Uyuni and stopped by the train cemetery, we headed towards the Eduardo Avaroa National Reserve, home of salt flats, lagoons, and pink flamingos.

Notice how tight her segues are: between paragraphs three and four, she pivots on time, next on age, then on primping. Ideas flow one into another: very slick. She then veers into an anecdote about a Bolivia bathroom, ending with this wry ending, which wraps everything up with a bow (full text here).

I blanched... I didn't have the money to enter the ladies room.

The handsome Bolivian man then stepped in. He gallantly forked over one of his own coins, smiled, and waved me into the ladies room.

I reddened and walked in, as my group and a few Bolivians tittered behind me. Better than a drink, a man had bought me a pee.

I still got it.

Here's another great example – coincidentally on the chick grooming front. Sue Frause's text is so tightly integrated, I'll include the whole post, with her permission. She especially celebrates the girly element, since: "Crosscut is pretty much a white, male-centric, online publication all about politics, politics and politics."

The few, the proud, the blonde
By Sue Frause

I'm a Salonista. I started training for it from the first day my Aunt Esther experimented on my hair at her Carousel Beauty Salon up in Marysville. Being introduced to salons at an early age meant I escaped my mamma's haircuts, which was good. It also turned me into a high-end shampoo buyer at a tender age. (What teenager packed Breck or Prell once she'd held Redken in her hands?)

My salon missions began in earnest during my stint at Seattle University. Although the majority of the co-eds on my floor (in all-female Bellarmine Hall) sported the same color hair, thanks to Clairol's Frost & Tip, we were a bit more adventurous when it came to actual hair cuts. The first real salon I recall was Tomoe's, where the Asian haircutters created those cool, geometric cuts we saw in magazines, and lusted over. (Think Twiggy.)

Next came the kind of cutter with only one name. Roberto. Paul. And like a lot of young Seattle women, I did my tour of duty in many, many chairs within the Gene Juarez empire.

I've accepted that there are risks to what I do. That time I tried henna, ending up with dark-black hair so bizarre that my husband walked right past me in a downtown hotel lobby. ("Well, you sorta look like Linda Ronstadt," was his loving attempt to talk me down.)

I don't want to brag, but when you've risen through the ranks, you meet people. That time at Bocz Salon when I sat next to Tom Robbins; Salon Marco on a day that Gov. Chris Gregoire was holding court in the chair next to me. I mingled with the greats at Gary Manuel, Mode Organic Salon, Halo Salon and SEVEN. I am proud to say that Yuki Ohno (father of Gold Medal winner Apolo Ohno) cut my hair years ago at his salon, Yuki's Diffusion.

I've done my time in foreign postings too. San Francisco (Yosh for Hair); Vancouver, BC (Moods Hair Salon, Ian Daburn Salon); New York City (Bumble & Bumble) and Boston. I don't recall the name of that Beantown salon, but my designer had cut Kevin Spacey's hair prior to the actor hitting the big time. Like I said, in this line of work, you meet people.

Those distant salons toughened me up, taught me things. But sooner or later, every Salonista returns to her, uh, roots. Sassoon Salon opened in Seattle on Valentine's Day, and I was there in the first wave. The Sassoon name is new to many of the young things out there but to a veteran like myself, it harkens back to a time long ago. When blondes were fewer, and only the bravest tried henna. When a bold man named Vidal Sassoon made being a Salonista something to be proud of.

Blogs benefit from short, clear sentence structure

2010-02-24T13:42:00.000-08:00

Clarity and brevity are essential in journalism. Authors can no longer indulge in the three-page, purple-prose sunsets of Victorian literature. Readers have limited time in this bustling modern world – and your brainchild must compete against the radio, TV, Internet, cinema and a fun-tastic 24-hour, clamoring culture.

Make it easy for your audience. Take them firmly by the hand and lead them through the piece. At The Daily, we used to joke that our motto was "we spoon-feed you the world". A cynical thought, but there's an echo of truth there. As writers we are ambassadors to foreign lands, permitted behind-the-scenes glimpses. Upon our return, we become teachers.

Elementary school teachers, really, as most publications aim for a 13-year-old's reading level. Many colleagues complain bitterly about this "dumbing down", but I've always found it satisfying. Nut-shelling complex topics for Joe Public is tougher than preaching to the converted: It demands far more writing skill, comprehension and empathy.

And plenty of scope remains for literary expression (sans SAT words, of course). Puns and catchy phrases are just as prevalent in Newsweek as The New Yorker – the references are just a bit more populist. Too many writers confuse convoluted prose with good prose, a snobbery often encouraged in academic circles sadly.

Recently the BBC polled Britain to find the nation's best-loved book. The top 21 included far more "children's" books than heavy hitters: Harry Potter, Wind in the Willows, Lord of the Rings, Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials, the Narnia tales, Little Women and Winnie the Pooh. These simple, compelling tales command far more love than, say, Ulysses by James Joyce (no.78) or the philosophical pretensions of Paul Coelho's The Alchemist (no. 94).

Personally, I'd rather be useful and understood, than avant garde. However, the web is a broad church with room for all sorts. A dense, sophisticated style narrows your appeal, but readers remain out there for you.

To attract a larger audience, keep it short and sweet. The average newspaper reader begins to lose the plot after two dozen words. In fact, their comprehension dips 5% for every term beyond 25...

Paula LaRocque, author of The Book on Writing, confirms this: "Research consistently showed that long tracts of sentences exceeding 25 or so words in length are neither clear nor inviting. It also found that even the most highly educated readers prefer to read a school grade level of 10 or below.

"Einstein wrote his Theory of Relativity at an average grade level of 13.3," she notes in a September 2006 Quill column. "Do we really want writing that is less readable than the Theory of Relativity?"

Employ imagery and colorful language in posts

2010-02-24T13:41:00.000-08:00

English could almost be classed as a pigeon language, incorporating Latin, Ancient Greek, German and French, not to mention other strands like Yiddish and Spanish. Our ancestors glommed onto new words, but were reluctant to relinquish the old, which gradually acquired slightly differentiated, nuanced meanings, like canal and channel, poor and pauper, house and home, sensual and sensuous, childish and childlike. Or we held onto a native word – book – and filched the Latin adjective, literary.

Anglophones are the world's linguistic magpies: over half our words are from non-Anglo-Saxon stock. This hodgepodge provides an enormously rich palette for writers. As Bill Bryson points out in his excellent popular study, Mother Tongue: "No other language has so many words all saying the same thing. It has been said that English is unique in possessing a synonym for each level of our culture: popular, literary, and scholarly – so that we can, according to our background and cerebral attainments, rise, mount, or ascend a stairway, shrink in fear, terror or trepidation, and think, ponder or cogitate upon a problem."

In short, we're spoilt for choice. So be persnickety: strive for the right vocabulary. Don't settle for generic terms like good, beautiful and breathtaking, when whole flocks of colorful, precise words soar on the horizon. A good author should be able to justify every turn of phrase.

As George Orwell writes: "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print". He argues that using clichés is a substitute for thinking, a form of automatic writing: "Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house."

Consider this passage by D. H. Lawrence: "I sat and looked at the ruins on the old, olive-fuming shores, at all the peace of the ancient world still covered in sunshine" (Twilight in Italy, 1916). The inclusion of "olive-fuming" ignites the sentence.

As Poynter's Roy Peter Clark stresses: "Choose words the average writer avoids but the average reader understands ... All of us possess a reading vocabulary as big as a lake, but draw from a writing vocabulary as small as a pond. The good news is that the act of reporting always expands the number of useable words. The reporter sees and hears and records. The seeing leads to language."

Play with the sound and shape of words too. A "buxom belle" is more zingy than a "large-chested woman", both in tone and alliteration. "From loggerheads to lager-head louts" neatly connects turtles and tourists. Inspiration for such bon mots often occurs during the rewriting phase. And yes, good bloggers redraft, polish, groom and buff pieces until they're honed and shining. They slice out excess verbiage, weave in witticisms and smooth transitions. They not only write, but rewrite: often the key to strong texts...

Murder your darlings

2010-02-24T13:40:00.001-08:00

Week three, we explored ten tips for trimming. Some further tricks are detailed below.

A good pruning trick is to eliminate all the "ing" verbs ('I swam', rather than 'I was swimming'). Condense possessives as well ('the cat's bed', rather than 'the bed of the cat')."If" clauses are notorious padding. For example:

BEFORE: If you want a really relaxed holiday in the United Kingdom, you should rent a narrowboat. (16 words)
AFTER: English narrowboats inspire relaxed holidays. (5 words)

The content is the same, but the sentence is more than 66% smaller (perhaps even too small!).

BEFORE: When you get to Seattle, make sure you visit Pike Place Market, a great shopping center where the famous Levi's commercial with the men throwing fish was filmed. (28 words)
AFTER: Don't miss Seattle's Pike Place Market, home of the fish-flingers made famous by the Levi's commercial (16 words).

Switching from a wordy second-person viewpoint to the imperative made this example more crisp.

BEFORE: The florist gave me a huge, dazzling smile, resting her shears on the table under the window, covered with a checkered cloth and heaps of roses. (26 words)
AFTER: The florist's smile was bigger and brighter than the rose heap overflowing the checkered tablecloth. (15 words)

Condensing – or eliminating – prepositional clauses often gets a sentence down to fighting trim. Take a step back: what do you need to say (big smile, flowers)? What's color (checkered cloth)? What's just plain in the way (the shear, the table being specifically under the window)?

BEFORE: I was chased across the piazza by a grandmother, who was very angry. (13 words)
AFTER: The irate grandmother chased me across the piazza. (8 words)

Here, the active version (where the subject "does" the verb) is shorter than the passive sentence – and easier to understand, according to linguistic experts. An adjective replaced the 'who' clause, which shaves off a few more words.

Gradually, concise writing becomes a habit (news reporting is great practice). In the meantime, don't let journalistic conventions tie your tongue. You're a blogger. You're the boss. Do as you like. When you like.

Burble away, take a break (a few hours or, preferably, days), then return with fresh eyes. Try reading the piece aloud. Need to stop for breath mid-sentence? Time to cut! Notice a budding alliteration? Plump it up. Repeating the same word ad nauseam? Search the thesaurus. But don't confuse your "writer's hat" with your editor's visor. Someday the two may mesh together. Until that happens, don't dam your creative flow with grammatical tweaking and rule paranoia. Take your time – and do both well.

Avoiding word repetition

2010-02-24T13:38:00.000-08:00

Nothing smacks more of lazy, disinterested writing than the same, tired phrases being endlessly recycled. Remember the tedium of "see Dick, see Jane, see Spot. See Dick and Jane with Spot"? Children need this re-enforcement. Adults don't, so dig deep for synonyms.

The "find" function is a good indicator (under the "Edit" menu in most word processing programs). Writing about skiing? Type in "slope". If it surfaces 30 times, you might want to rethink, sprinkling the text with "incline, mountain, hill, run, cliff," etc.

Experimenting with language is also more rewarding for you, as a writer. Presumably, you've come to this profession – or hobby – because you savor words and expression. So don't trot out trite copy. Push yourself towards fresh phrases and clever twists. Your enjoyment will translate to the reader.

Your mission, week seven

2010-02-24T13:37:00.000-08:00

Assignment: either a longer post (500 words) or three thematically linked entries (no more than 600 words total). Mawkish praise for the following:

Three sources – the ole newspaper minimum
Quotes, which can be drawn from documents or, preferably, interviews.
Pro and con perspectives, which add balance
Links and expert opinions.
Dialogue, plot, imagery, nut grafs and envelope endings

This week, especially, I encourage you to offer your peers feedback. Different eyes spot different strengths and concerns ... and the critiquer has much to learn from the process. WIN for all!

Please post your links on the class forum, as usual.

Feedback: (Amanda) writing line-critique

Week 6: Step Into the Spotlight

2010-02-17T16:13:00.000-08:00

Burn your feed, add a subscription/email subscription widget to your blog, claim your blog on Technorati
Feedback: (Mike) Q&A, tech troubleshooting

The mechanics of search engines

2010-02-17T16:11:00.001-08:00

Before we plunge into the nebulous craft of search engine optimization, let's review how the Innertubes work. People dial in seeking two things: entertainment and information. Typically, they start hunting with a search engine, like Google, Yahoo or Microsoft Live. These deploy robotic "spiders" to look for content. They examine a given page and then move on to process pages linked to it, thus crawling the Internet.

How Amanda childishly likes to envision the spiders...

The bots have a hit-list of URLs, called "the seeds". That's why submitting your site to search engines is Very Good Thing: it lands you on the crawl frontier (which is possibly the most awesome jargon of this week's lecture). On Google's About Page, look under the yellow header "For Site Owners," top right. Click "submit your content to Google". Other engines, like Yahoo, have similar submission links.

Once spiders target your site, they romp all over the sucker. Their goal is to determine authenticity (that it's not a link farm) and suss the level of authority. These factors drive where your blog appears when people come sleuthing. In other words, they influence your ranking.

The science of this remains very hush hush, because search engines don't want spammers and scammers to stack the decks. Google's algorithm allegedly weighs 200 factors. Hackers waste a lot of brain cells trying to divine these trade secrets (but hey, like Mike, they have IQ to burn). Some general rules are universal, however.

Spiders give more weight to terms in:

The URL
Titles
Headers
The top of the page's content

They also measure frequency. So good web writers stress the terms important to readers – and ones they're likely to search upon. A search engine analyzes how often these keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. This principle – pushed too far – is why a lot of web text is cringeworthy. Marketers, in particular, grow obsessed with repetition and other strategies for search engine optimization (SEO). They're writing for robots, not people – and it shows.

Don't be that author. No one likes a keyword stuffer. In fact, some engines kick the worst offenders – spamdexers – right off their indices.

PageRank – the pixie dust of the pixelverse

2010-02-17T16:09:00.000-08:00

The big G accounts for nearly 75% of Internet search traffic. So how to best charm its bots? Especially when the company keeps its 200-point weighting system top secret?

While keywords are crucial, many pages share the same terms in their titles, headers and content. So Google casts its net wider, examining inbound links – and their source's authority, measured by PageRank. You can download a toolbar widget that reports on this status. I dislike clutter and thus prefer a free checker, despite the irritating sales pitches (ignore those).

Let's examine a few:

Blogging Frontier 0/10
Mikekeran.com 1/10
Roadremedies.blogspot.com 4/10
Writers.com 5/10
Roughguides.com 7/10
Boingboing.net 8/10
Gawker.com 8/10
Mac.com 8/10
MSNBC.com 8/10
BBC.co.uk 9/10
Facebook 9/10
Guardian.co.uk 9/10
Nytimes.com 9/10
Twitter.com
Wikipedia.com 9/10

Does this mean we're muppets, incapable of teaching a new media workshop? Nope. The class site's still wet behind the ears – just over a month old. It also has few inbound links, loads of outbound ones and hasn't been submitted to search engines: a perfect storm, really, of PageRank (PR) misery. So do as we say, not as we do...

Personal sites tend to score lower, especially homepages such as Mike's, as he monkeys around with his code too much... Also "no one pays me to update my personal page, so it languishes in the gutter most of the time."

Notice that traditional media outlets still rank very high. For all the "death of journalism" ballyhoo, our society relies on news sources just as much as ever ... maybe even more than ever. We still look to the pros to filter the data stream and convey the important bits accessibly. Does it really matter if they're called "reporters" or "content curators"?

Anyway, enough on that whole upheaval, which could be a class unto itself. Think of PR kinda like high school. Attention (inbound links) boosts your status. Attention from a popular kid, like The New York Times, has even more juju. And attention from the bad kids – link farms – doesn't help on the scramble for cool.

So, to review: inbound links drive traffic to your blog, increasing readership. This is Very Good. We like. And inbound links from authoritative sites also can improve your PageRank (or, as Mike says, "they give you Googlejuice!"). The better your PR, the higher your blog appears when people search, which brings – you got it – more readers!

Squeezing Googlejuice: nabbing higher rankings

2010-02-17T16:07:00.000-08:00

Time to inspire links and pump up your PR and inbound linkage.

DO: Generate original content, which encourages links.

DO: Add your blog's address to your email's signature file.

DO: Post links on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (more on these below).

DO: Participate in bulletin boards and list serves on your topic. Again, include your blog's URL in your signature.

DO: Comment thoughtfully on blogs relevant to your topics. Curious readers will click though – track this via Analytics or Sitemeter referrals – and stick around if they like your stuff. Eventually you may even befriend fellow bloggers, who might then promote your work via posts and BlogRolls.

DON'T: Expect sites to reciprocate links. Showcase work you find relevant to your readers. Any competent blogger will notice a traffic spike, if you introduce a significant amount of readers. He or she may return play... but it could take time or never happen at all. Be generous with your juju. Offer it without strings. The karma almost always flows back in...

DON'T: Get sucked into link-trading schemes. Google sees right through that game.

DON'T: Get frustrated if you're not adding hundreds of new readers a week immediately. So much of successful blogging is about building a community. That takes time. Keep adding original content and good outbound links. Participate on other sites and publicize your own.

As a recent New York Times article noted, "Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, said that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but 'it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views'."

On the one hand, that can seem a little discouraging. On the other, you have a chance – with little start-up cost – to compete with media giants. Take FiveThirtyEight: A site run by a baseball-stats nerd, a poker player, and a documentary filmmaker has a readership akin to the Houston Chronicle's, according to Joshua Benton at Harvard's Neiman Journalism Lab.

According to the Wall Street Journal, 1.7 million Americans make money blogging and 452,000 of them derive a majority of their income from it (read more about e-jobs here).

Blog's aren't a Golden Ticket. But they're darn close.

Basics of nabbing higher rankings

URL's, headers and page titles are important in Google's eyes. Make 'em descriptive and precise as possible, as we discussed earlier in class. If your blog requires major search engine marketing, consider registering a domain name that features important keywords. Just be aware this can create some extra hackwork for custom headers and other Blogger standards.

Don't hide your content behind images and Flash. Generally this is not a problem with Blogger, unless you video-post often. If so, entice Googlebots (and readers) with introductory text, which summarizes what's behind that play button. Again, specific details help. "A funny clip" is weaker than "Mystery: Sharks Missing at the Seattle Aquarium".

On that note, time out for a predator smackdown:

Now don't you feel better about the economy? At least you're not being drowned by an animal with the density of a wet Kleenex...

For posts primarily about images or video, teaser text brings context and gives the search bots more traction. Tech enthusiasts also use correct <title> elements and alt attributes. However, this is complicated in Blogger without editing an entry's HTML.

Make sure permalinks are enabled (Dashboard -> Settings -> Archiving -> Post Pages -> Yes). This gives search engines a permanent location to find a given entry (other bloggers too, so they can link to your entries). When a page moves, it generally loses its existing PR juju. (Ways exist to avoid this if, for example, you are migrating from one blog platform to another, but they're complicated).

Mike's sage advice

Don't optimize for search engines, optimize for your readers. Entries easily read by humans are easily read by Google.
If you can think of a way to game the system, I guarantee that Google has already counterpunched it. The company hires a lot of very smart people: the geek elite.
Keep Google returning to index your site with fresh content. If the bots decide you only blog once a month, then they will only crawl your site twelve times a year. Post regularly.

Wooing the Googlebots

Seomoz.org consulted 37 experts about playing nicely with the world's top search engine (full report here). Following are the ten most positive factors they cited. Note how most revolve around links and keywords.

Avoid the false prophets

2010-02-17T16:06:00.000-08:00

A lot of businesses promise improved search engine ranking. Not all of them are crooks, but precious few aren't. In general, avoid:

Slick-talkers that promise"#1 ranking in Google" or "priority submissions" or claim a "special relationship" with the search engines; those are complete fabrications.
Pyramid-style link farm or link-popularity schemes. These are so diluted, they rarely boost your page rank. Worse, some schemes are already on Google's blacklist and joining them can get you penalized.
Anyone that claims Google requires payment to get a higher ranking: Lies. All lies! The ONLY cash Google accepts in this realm is for the AdWords program, which clearly marks "Sponsored Links."
Keyword spammers. Repeating terms ad nauseum doesn't help – Google can spot a faker, even if he or she changes the text color to match the background, making it invisible to the reader's eye.

Learning a little about SEO is the best route, even for those developing a monetized, professional platform. A few weeks of DIY will teach you the right questions to ask, when hiring an expert.

Roll up your sleeves and start experimenting. That's what the Internet's all about (aside from porn and pictures of cats, of course).

Attracting even more eyes: aggregators

2010-02-17T16:05:00.000-08:00

Cyberspace is a boundless realm, teeming with content. But not every reader arrives at its shores with a precise goal or topic in mind. Some want to noodle around, following recommendations. Blogrolls help with this, obviously, but merry wanderers can also turn to aggregators. These are sites that stream syndicated web content into one location for easy viewing.

To use a house-hunting analogy, a URL is like driving to see a property for sale around the corner from your friend's office. You know exactly where you want to go. Searches are akin to asking a real estate agent. She'll present a lot of options, but will push certain ones based on a hidden agenda (her listings, white elephant properties that won't shift, the condo unit her brother-in-law built, etc.). Or you could search online at some site like Zillow: I want a 5BR Craftsman in Ballard, Seattle, under $500,000 (good luck! No, wait ... the recession's hitting even here. Buy now, while supplies last...).

Zillow's collecting data from many sources – different Realtors, house valuations, Google maps, mortgage-rate reports and calculators – and serving it up one-stop-shopping style. Which is unfortunate, because Amanda's real-estate-nut dad can't stay off the thing...

Anyway. Aggregators save a lot of time and hassle. Ones like Kayak.com can search 140 travel websites at the same time. GoogleNews trawls 25,000 outlets to create a personal newspaper – and even keeps tabs on topics of especial interest. And GoogleReader can check all your favorite blogs and assemble a digest of unread posts. So you could click once to catch up with 30 sites. Nifty? Oh yeah, baby!

The blogosphere has a host of aggregators, naturally. Some of the top dawgs – worth notifying about your blog – include Technorati, Digg and StumbleUpon. They show what's being searched, linked and commented upon most. Some track your tastes and suggest new sites. If any one of them highlighted your blog, traffic would spike through the roof. Seriously, bandwidths have tanked. So consider taking the time to submit your blog.

This can work for you – or not, entirely, as my friend Marie Javins points out. This wildlife observation post and another one earned her several hundred hits from a sex aggregator.

"Can you imagine?" she asks. "Who is out cruising for lion porn?"

Her site, No Hurry, has never been cited by the biggies like Technorati. But she explains that "when WarrenEllis.com mentions me, the traffic goes OFF THE CHARTS. He has a huge following. He says something like 'Marie Javins is back from Kuwait and blowing up Peeps in her microwave. Go and see.'

"And I get 800 hits in the next three hours."

Most search engines have "submit your site" links on the home page somewhere discrete. Look under "About Google" for details. Likewise Technorati and other aggregators have straight-forward sign-ups: some just ask for the URL, others require you to fill in some account details.

(Alerting these sites is much easier than adding Google WebMaster Tools, which we covered week four, by the way. It's a good, quick first step, if you have just a few minutes to devote to SEO.)

Six degrees of separation: social networking

2010-02-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

Too blitzed to throw your hat into the big pond of Technorati? Instead, build your audience through friends ... and friends of friends ... and friends of friends who once dated your coworker's cousin. That's the beauty of social networking sites like Facebook (the pet du jour), MySpace (kinda tweeny, but still au courant) and Linked In (a professional tool).

As of February 2010, Facebook has 400 million users; the average one spends 55 minutes a day on the site. A lot of online energy is massing there now. Grab that tiger by the tail to promote your blog.

But don't make it all about promotion. Would you go out for beers and only talk about your work all night? No? Then don't abuse Facebook as just a pulpit for your fabulousness. Mix things up with witty asides about your awesome new media class and that wacky Jamaican cabdriver with the Confederate flag on his shirt, who insists "someone has to play the Controversial Negro" (my friend, the writer Litsa Dremousis, reported on this recently – and the comments delved deep into race relations. FB may be ephemeral, but it also tightens the bonds between us, as these Newsweek and New York Times articles point out).

As we noted last week, take heed of the 80/20 rule. Experts agree that readers respond best when only one blog post in five is a plug. Some grey area exists, certainly, such as writing in your field of expertise without explicitly pushing your brand. But by and large people are online to be entertained or to solve a problem: don't clutter the scene with relentless hustling.

Once you're a Facebook member, you can post items, like links and status reports (synopses of what you're doing). These show on your wall, potentially alongside comments from folks on an approved list of friends. I note my new blog entries and traffic always spikes.

More people commented in the semiprivate (invitation only) forum of Facebook than on the original Road Remedies entry. While that's frustrating – I like a good comment-field furor – that "FB" link brought loads of readers: at least 10x the norm. As the song almost goes, "then I saw the faith and I'm a believer!"

I experimented with a lot of Facebook applications that promised to automatically feed new blog posts on to Facebook. To date, they all sucked or looked ugly. But posting a link takes mere seconds. On your profile page, click the box that asks "What's on your mind?" Icons appear underneath for photos, video, events and links (the thumbtack). Press the thumbtack, then paste in the permalink's URL. Your headline and initial text should load: you can edit these, if you like. You can also choose which image to display.

I won't pull punches: Facebook can be a massive time-suck (an average of 55 minutes a day!). People you'd long forgotten tap you for Farmville showdowns and send you digital bouquets. It's absurd. But this – and other social networking "Web 2.0" sites – are where a lot of the action's at: don't miss it all.

Twitter is a step more streamlined: basically it only broadcasts 140-character snippets, calls twits and tweets, along with pictures, mainly uploaded straight from cell/mobile phones. Readers can "follow" (subscribe) to specific feeds like amandacastleman or search for topics (indicated by hashtags like #iran09). Sounds insipid, of the "what I had for lunch" ilk, right? And it can be ... case in point, the lady who inadvertently landed her 15 minutes of fame for this instant classic: "I am totally serious. My Ob/Gyn was IN my vagina and an earthquake started rattling the room!" Less than two hours later, CNET was interviewing the hapless over-sharer.

On the flip side, good content – like Alaska Airlines' tweets about flight availability and airport access during a volcano-eruption alert – wins praise from users and the industry both. And often the medium's ahead of the press pack these days – or goes where reporters can't. A tweeter scooped every news outlet on the Hudson River plane crash. During the Iranian election protests, the government prevented foreign journalists from reporting, then locked down Internet access. Via proxy servers, word snuck out on Twitter and other 2.0 social media. The BBC explained the trend, while Boing Boing egged the cyberwar along.

Mashable calls Twitter the world's new water cooler. A look at its most popular 2009 topics shows the scope of the conversation, from Michael Jackson to swine flu, Google Wave and #drunkwords. Tools like Trend Tracker analyze the buzz and can help predict what topics will hot up. Sites like Alltop take it a step further and publish news digests based on intel like this. In turn that makes them great sources of ideas and authoritative links...

Convinced? Pick a user name, then start scouting for folks to follow (meaning that you subscribe to their broadcasts). Many will return the favor by following you. And thus the network starts to grow...

You can tweet via a website or mobile phone via the site itself, text message or software like Twitterific, Feedalizr or iPhone app Twinkle. Be creative with words, omit nonessential ones and rely on abbreviations to make your 140 characters convey as much original material as possible. Use URL shorteners like tinyurl or bit.ly to compress long links. Retweet – forward – dynamic posts by folks in your network. Hash-tag your topics (yes, it's tedious, but it attracts new audience members). Be wary of software like Tweetdeck, which can push your content to other social media platforms (note: many Facebook users dislike the compact, hash-tagged comments, especially as such tweets tend to be more promotional). Here social-media expert BL Ochman offers some tips on good Twitter practice.

As a narrative writer, I don't find microblogging true competition for blogging or more in-depth journalism. Two-line posts won't satisfy my yen for plot arc, even if we go all six-word Hemingway: "For sale, baby shoes, never worn". But I agree with writer Don George, keynote speaker at the Alaska Media Show:" A great Tweet is still a great piece of writing, it’s just a different medium."

A quick look at a few terrific posts, some by the "twitterati":

capricecrane: In South Florida, a priest got a stripper pregnant. No word on what the Rabbi, the bartender & horse were doing.
badbanana: An Xbox signed by Sarah Palin is being sold for $1.1 million. Laugh now, but imagine how much it'll be worth if the Xbox becomes president.
kolchak: National poetry day is not an excuse for you to take your time in making my Americano. Leaves rustle. My heart aches. There will be blood.
adamisacson: Gmail and Google Calendar let me keep my work-related stresses "in the cloud." But I keep a backup copy in my neck and shoulder muscles.
nickclayton: Turned on British telly. Apparently world is coming to an end. No. It’s snowing in London. Proof third runway needed to boost global warming.
trelvix: Fair Trade Monday: You don’t offer your seat to the old woman on the train; I don’t tell you about the bird shit on your overcoat. Deal?

Check out the creme de la creme at the Shorty Awards, given each spring to top tweeters:

Twitter is a great tool for pushing information – and harvesting it too. Reporters and bloggers solicit sources and find story ideas via the site, just like CNET's Dawn Kawamoto jumping on the `OB/GYN earthquake angle. Here you can read about the conversion of New York Times tech guru David Pogue, who especially praises the intelligence-gathering aspects. Let the stream of information flow both ways...

In a time when email fatigue is rife, many folks are resistant to Twitter and social media: "Not another computer obligation!" remains a frequent complaint, along with "why work more for free?" But these are great tools for bloggers and writers alike: for branding, sourcing material, reading to keep your expertise current, finding interviewees, attracting an audience, building community, honing your pithy writing chops. Self-promotion. Self-expression. Storytelling in dynamic new ways.

I hid from Twitter and Facebook for years, cranky and overwhelmed. In fact, colleagues had to shame me publicly to explore these sites ("You call yourself a new-media instructor?"). Now they've become essential to the daily flow of my business and personal life.

Why not give it a try? You can always close your accounts, if they prove to detract more than they add...

Followers – drink the Kool-Aid

2010-02-17T16:02:00.000-08:00

Blogger's pushing its social-networking widget Followers: possibly because the behemoth won't be happy until it controls every facet of our online lives. This device slots into the sidebar of every new blog, in fact. Graphics-heavy, it displays teeny profile shots of your publicly declared blogfans. Empty, it's but a pitiful thing: may I suggest that y'all follow each other to experiment with both sides of this equation (you can opt out later easily enough)?

Should followers have a Blogger account, it'll show them a Reading List on the dashboard, reminding 'em to check out your latest efforts. It'll also funnel a subscription into Google Reader, if they have an account. More details here on following and also "friending".

Google insists: "The Followers widget is a great tool to help you grow your blog's audience. Readers often visit a blog and enjoy it but fail to return. Additionally you should put your followers widget at the top of your sidebar so more readers will notice it."

I disagree, at least about its placement in the prime top-right real estate. Context seems far more crucial than a visual shout-out to readers. Plus, overemphasizing followers has a whiff of desperation: "I'm good enough, smart enough and, gosh darn it, people like me!" But, increasingly, Internet users want to see and be seen. So I'd advocate a Followers widget for any ambitious blogger – it's a community building device, after all. Then experiment with its position.

To add this widget, go to Layouts>Page Elements. Click "add a gadget," then scroll down to Followers. Hit save. To kick this popularity contest to the curb, go to Layouts>Page Elements. Click "edit" under "Followers" and delete. On Page Elements, you can also drag and drop the gadget into a spot that suits your style.

Another helpful device is a subscription widget, which allows readers to sign up for emails or a digest of your posts (this can also be a handy back-up for you ... or a way to print the class lectures easily, albeit, sans images). Again, go to Layout>Page Elements, hit "add a gadget". Search for "email subscription box" and install. Drag and drop to the desired placement in the sidebar. You may also want to add the subscription device found on the front "gadget" page: this allows readers to tap into posts or comments via various aggregators.

So you want repeat business? Feed 'em!

2010-02-17T15:44:00.000-08:00

When someone stumbles upon, or is directed to, your blog, you want them to read and then return later and devour more. Syndication – also known as a subscription; an RSS, Atom, or XML feed; or simply "a feed" – is an effective way to bring users back.

As the name implies, web syndication supplies content to multiple subscribers. Many readers want all their favorite sites' content in one place. They subscribe to aggregator services like Google Reader, FeedReader, Outlook and others). Others prefer to have information delivered to their email.

The streamed data can be just about anything these days: text, images, video, or podcasts: all are common. I've just added a Road Remedies widget that summarizes my Twitter updates, for example (Twitter supplies the code, just paste it into a java/html gadget on Layout>Page Elements. Items like this help share your original content between platforms, which keeps your pages fresh and thus more attractive to the search bots).

Subscriptions are called "feeds". By default, Blogger offers these for your posts and comments on your entries. It also publishes some lesser-known feeds based on entry labels, but don't worry about those now, perhaps. You can turn feeds on or off by setting the appropriate value Dashboard -> Settings -> Site Feed -> Allow Blog Feeds dropdown menu. Unless you write very long entries, you'll want to set this to "Full."

Expose these streams further by adding a “Subscription Links” widget to your blog. Because feeds are lightweight (just an entry's text without any of the blog's formatting) and published in a standard format, it is easy for services to digest and display your content in new and useful ways. FeedBurner is a classic option: since its purchase by Google, it has been offering many "premium" features for free. By publishing your blogs through a single service, such as FeedBurner, you gain the ability to track how many people read your blog and what aspect of your writing they are most interested in. It also offers services not found on the Blogger platform, such as allowing readers to sign up for email notification of new posts, attaching a Creative Commons license to your work or comments or "chiclets" for quickly subscribing to your blog. To burn your blog's feed using FeedBurner, look here.

Your mission, week six

2010-02-17T15:43:00.000-08:00

Burn your feed, add a subscription/email subscription widget to your blog, claim your blog on Technorati Feedback: (Mike) Q&A, tech troubleshooting

Lecture five – Other Voices, Other Rooms

2010-02-10T15:25:00.000-08:00

Over the last few weeks, we've talked more and more about the community that can anchor around a strong blog. Today we'll examine some strategies for evolving that, through (to borrow a line from Truman Capote) other voices and other rooms.

Original content reigns supreme in the search bots' beady electronic eyes (more on all this next week). But that doesn't always equate to the author slaving over a page or keyboard – or, indeed, behind a vid-cam, these days. Interviews, commentary, memes and sourced multimedia are all devices that help create fresh, pertinent posts without heavy compositional lifting.

Assignment: Incorporate at least three sources – quotes, memes or multimedia – to add texture to your blog. Bonus points for original audio or video uploads!

Feedback: (Amanda) writing line-critique

Citizen journalism

2010-02-10T15:20:00.000-08:00

A blogger is a one-woman band: author, photographer, videographer, cartographer, designer, publisher, advertising exec, marketing guru, legal department, etc. That's the pain of the genre – but the beauty too. You're the boss: free to flourish and flounder both without a lot of hoop-jumping.

The title "citizen journalist" increasingly applies to people paddling in the datastream like this. This elastic term stretches from reader-comment sidebars to pro-curated sites of user-generated content and blogs writ so large they rival the mainstream media. Take FiveThirtyEight: A site run by a baseball-stats nerd, a poker player, and a documentary filmmaker has a readership akin to the Houston Chronicle's, according to Joshua Benton at Harvard's Neiman Journalism Lab.

Media's converging online in a swirl. Text rubs shoulders with broadcast video now. Bloggers turn pro and pros crowd-source. Indie media is the future, insists pundit Mark Cooper. "It is the independent, citizen and community media that provide the seeds of an alternative journalism, he claims in The Huffington Post. "These alternatives tend to be structured viral communications, in which a light touch of hierarchy can go a long way. The examples are well known, beyond blogging, which tends to be the least organized form of expression. We find things like Wikis, online posts, collaborative production and distribution in peer-to-peer networks, opens source software, crowd sourcing, and new forms of copyright, like the Creative Commons, etc.

"The critical challenge for these outlets is to become trusted intermediaries. The critical challenge for society is to figure out how to tap into the immense energy of the public sphere in cyberspace while preserving key journalistic attributes someplace within a much-expanded public sphere. To build trust, the new journalism will have to produce a steady stream of output that readers find authoritative, correct and useful."

Sticky goodness – web content that inspires repeat readers

2010-02-10T15:17:00.000-08:00

Sites that lure eyeballs back – and inspire readers to action – are known as "sticky" (finally: a fun and comprehensible bit of web jargon!). Pure talent helps, sure. But the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house rejected Jack Kerouac, George Orwell and Sylvia Plath, among others. Sometimes the mainstream media overlooks genius at first pass. Ditto online readers.

But you can woo them ... first and foremost by writing with their needs in mind. As tough-love web guru Vincent Flanders points out: "Nobody cares about you or your site. Really. What visitors care about is solving their problems. Now. Most people visit a web site to solve one or more of these four problems:

They want/need information
They want/need to make a purchase/donation.
They want/need to be entertained.
They want/need to be part of a community.

"Too many organizations believe that a web site is about opening a new marketing channel or getting donations or to promote a brand or to increase company sales by 15%. No. It’s about solving your customers’ problems. Have I said that phrase enough?"

(Read more in his snarky article Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015.)

For those of you promoting a business, take heed of the 80/20 rule. Experts agree that readers respond best when only one blog post in five is a plug. Some grey area exists, certainly, such as writing in your field of expertise without explicitly pushing your brand. The same formula applies to Twitter and social network sites like Facebook and Linked In. No one likes a relentless hustler – in person or in cyberspace.

But it's not enough to interact with the community, you have to join it, as Web Consultant Mack Collier points out on The Viral Garden. So this week, we'll explore how to create original material that attracts and maintains an audience, while reaching out to other content-producers. And next week, we'll delve into the mechanics of search engines and how to deploy social media tools to build readership.

Digging down: creating distinctive, original content

2010-02-10T15:16:00.001-08:00

Chris Pirillo argues that bloggers should say something original at least once a day in this terrific advice post. "Create, don’t regurgitate," he urges. "Make yourself uncomfortable."

Developer Jeff Atwood makes some similar points on Coding Horror: “Switch things up. Seek out uncommon sites with unique information. Dig down to original sources and read the material everyone is commenting endlessly on.”

The key word there – the takeaway message – should be sources. You need 'em. Anchor your blog in the wider world of facts and reflections. Citing experts (or even Joe Public) lends scope and authority to your work: it's no longer the sound of one hand clapping, but part of a larger dialogue. And building a community is what the web's all about.

Musing about you're eyeglasses, for example? Dorothy Parker got there first. By alluding to her famous line, you're evoking information deep in the readers' memories, which helps them connect to your material and retain it better. WIN! Or dig even deeper and find a great spectacle quote that hasn't been hounded into the land of cliché. DOUBLE WIN! Or perhaps link to another blogger's exploration of the topic. BONUS OVERTIME GOODNESS!

Articles, blogs, books and quotation compilations are great tools. But you can take it further: talk to people.

Get your interview on

2010-02-10T15:16:00.000-08:00

As Metascene explained in Ten Tips for Building a Bionic Weblog: "Play reporter once in a while. Research under-reported stories and do some leg work for your readers. Find an angle that no one, including mainstream press, has reported on."

Don't be shy about interviewing. Most folks love to discuss their passions – and will treat a citizen journalist with the same respect as a professional (so expect anything from fawning to projectiles ... but mostly gracious help).

Great places to harvest interviewees include Twitter, Facebook and Help A Reporter Out, as well as listserves and electronic bulletin boards.

Research beforehand to formulate intelligent questions. Jot down key queries, so they don't slip away during a good conversation. Avoid questions with a simple yes or no answer; Try to get subjects to elaborate. Remember to listen, not talk, advises Christopher (Chip) Scanlan, author of Reporting and Writing: Basics for the 21st Century.

Start with easy, confidence-building queries, then weave in tougher material – if any – towards the end. Always conclude with: “Is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't covered?” and “What elements would you emphasize in an article?” Often the best comments arise then.

In most countries, you must ask permission to capture the conversation on audio or video tape (record the subject's assent for maximum protection, though clip that off any broadcasts). I take notes too, because technology can easily fail. For example, Oxford Times Features Writer Reg Little once interviewed a haughty Noble Prize laureate, only to discover the recorder was on the wrong setting. The two-hour conversation was captured on high speed – creating a super-soprano, chittering, Alvin and the Chipmunks effect. Poor Reg spent long, long hours interpreting the tinny squeal. Background noise, battery failure and tampering can also ruin recordings.

“Off the record” means the subject is imparting sensitive background information not for print. Strictly speaking, they must specify this before the statement, but use your discretion. “Not for attribution” means you cannot use that person's name, just a vague description like “a Johannesburg shopkeeper” or “a Syrian homemaker”. Avoid this whenever possible, as it weakens your credibility.

Reporting sounds like too much work...

2010-02-10T15:15:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it can be, pushed to a pro limit. But happily, you have a great shortcut at your fingertips: email. It takes mere minutes to find an expert, then politely dash off a question or three. Should an answer arrive – and in time – you can just cut and paste the sucker right into your text. Ideally, publish the person's full name, credentials (if applicable) and, where appropriate, a link to his or her site.

Q&A sessions go one step further, making another person the focus of the post. Hey, presto: original material with little elbow grease involved! Best of all, this format encourages the link love, because most of us are vain creatures at heart. Case in point, when Traveling Mamas featured my friend Sascha Stokes, she linked to the post ... and so did I, because of a mention. Nowadays, I'd probably tweet and Facebook it too – driving traffic via three avenues. As we'll explore in depth next week, inbound links – especially ones from popular sites with strong keywords – boost blogosphere mojo hugely.

The Interview with a Traveling Mama is a frequent feature on that co-authored, award-winning blog, so CajunMamma didn't even need to formulate fresh questions. But think about the wealth of content that's slowly accumulating ... perfect should the team ever expand to books or a web portal.

Consider how your blog might benefit from regular elements, especially those with reader-generated content or a guest blogger, which build community and cut down on your keyboard time.

Play like a pro: be your own editor

2010-02-10T15:14:00.000-08:00

Five elements tend to distinguish amateur writers from seasoned veterans, honed chops aside:

Research – read on your topic before you start writing. Even 15 minutes surfing sites, articles and Wikipedia will give you a huge edge – and perhaps even some strong angles and link-worthy material.
Source – ideally a post is a conversation, not a monologue, presenting pro and con viewpoints where appropriate (balance strengthens a piece, even one with a strong opinion, by bringing credibility. "I'm not just a whacko banging a drum", it telegraphs. "I've looked at both sides of the equation and back this one. Now you can do the same."). Connect to the larger world via links and quotes. Cite studies and statistics, tracked to their source of origin. Name interviewees and experts, and explain their relevance to the subject at hand.
Fact-check – question what you read, especially online. If a source seems questionable, double-check it against two others. Don't wing dates, facts, foreign phrases, famous quotes or recaps of news events: be accurate and perhaps even link to authoritative sources, so readers can explore the topic further. Whenever you draw from others' content – whether that's a Flickr photo or a quote from an AP story – honor the creator's hard work with a citation and a link. Not only is this gracious, but it builds accountability, authority and community.
Redraft – blogging can be a very immediate medium, but it doesn't have to be. Quick posts encourage sloppy reporting and careless writing, neither of which inspire readers. So, when possible, put aside your draft for a few hours or days. Return to it with fresh eyes. Be prepared to take a few swings at the thing. Remember that most professional authors – those not on breaking news deadlines – revise a piece anywhere from 5 to 50 times (or more, like the award-winning Edward Readicker-Henderson, who also teaches for Writers.com). As a blogger, you're paddling in their pool. Stay competitive with thoughtful, well-polished posts.
Self-edit – Google names. Run spellcheck (Word has a grammar function. Click "options" in the Spellcheck dialogue, then tick "check grammar with spelling" and "show readability statistics". This helps your police overlong sentences and passive verbs). Read the piece aloud. Print it and read it in a new medium away from your usual workspace. Ask friends to look over a draft – or fellow bloggers. You have the start of a support network right here in class ... grow that further by contacting like-minded writers. As Kevin O'Keefe points out on Real Lawyers Have Blogs, a quick message – especially after a link or citation – can lead to fruitful relationships.

Topnotch publications still employ fact-checkers to verify stories (Julian Barnes wittily details the New Yorker's laborious process in Letters from London, an excellent read). These meticulous folks demand every URL, interview transcript, page number and contact detail, so authors keep airtight records – a wise habit for bloggers too.

Should a dispute ever arise over a quote, threatening a libel suit, you'll have ammunition. A handful of my blogger-journalist colleagues have taken out liability insurance, but they cover controversial themes: such tactics aren't common yet. Still, it's worth covering your butt. Hang on to your notebooks, source materials and original versions of any digital recordings (Sherry detailed some great tips for audio-archiving in this recent post. Take advantage of today's cheap e-storage now, on-site and off.)

Even the most conscientious writer – blogger, journalist or book author – misses a few tricks: we're only human. But honor your own work and the reader by running as tight a ship as possible.

Classic blog entry formulas

2010-02-10T15:13:00.000-08:00

Self-editing applies to the "assignment desk" as well. Where a pro has a boss – or even a handful of 'em – suggesting and vetting story ideas, bloggers are in DIY territory.

And that can be a cold, cold, lonely place some days...

Since regular posting is so important, following are some tried-and-test ways to jump start your blog's entries.

The anecdote – a curious thing happened on the way to the Forum...
The flashback – revisit scenes from earlier times, perhaps triggered by a current event or news story
The sound-off – commentary on news, issues or some rant-worthy incident
The rave – saluting others and their achievements
The meme – a set of questions passed around by bloggers. Answer, then "tag" others to do the same (see below).
The pundit – drawing together several news stories or events to make an observation about modern culture.
The curator – cataloguing elements of your life, from purse contents to old ticket stubs. Ideally some conclusion or insight arises from this.
The cliffhanger – a series of post, generally short, which knit into a larger narrative arc. A kind of essay-on-installment, this breaks off on a suspenseful moment each chapter to bring readers back to the same bat-time, same bat-place...
The review – try something, from an experience to a product, and report back.
The debate – comment on another blogger's post, expanding the issue.
Q&A – conduct a short e-interview with a relevant party.
The newsflash – reaction to a breaking story, including links.
The competition – conduct a contest among readers. Offer a small prize, virtual or otherwise.
The photo break – Post nothing but visuals, perhaps with explanatory captions.
The video dodge – Embed a YouTube video, if you're too rushed for original content.

What to avoid: blogging about not blogging enough or the stress of posting routinely. Who wants to hear you whine? Not even your parents...

And especially not my parents. Who call and critique my blog unbidden.

O joy!

Fighting writer's block: Blog jump starts

2010-02-10T15:11:00.000-08:00

Many writing programs employ an in-class drill. The teacher delivers the beginning of a sentence, then the students press pencil to paper and write continuously, without erasing, for a fixed period of time (two minutes is typical). Designed to free up writer's block and the quiet critical "inner editor," this exercise can evoke some interesting material. Following are a few suggestions, if you want to try this at home (having a friend or family member write some on an accordion-folded sheet of paper will duplicate the surprise element).

I've always wanted to visit ...
My parents and friends would worry if I ...
Something I always wanted to try, but didn't, is...
I've long regretted ...
My most bittersweet moment was...
The one item I'd rescue from a housefire...
The childhood memory that makes me blush most is...
The last time I felt giddy with happiness was...
I wish I could buy the world a Coke and tell everyone...
A person I admire, but find frustrating, is ...

The end result of these scribblings won't always be a post, of course: that degree of navel-gazing may not suit your style. But return to your responses a few days later and scan for universal themes. What common emotions surfaced, elements your readers might connect with? How can you tap the power of those shared experiences via your blog?

Tapping pro-writer tools like media kits

2010-02-10T15:10:00.000-08:00

A tub of hummous or a trip to the zoo can spark an entry – anything, really... But sometimes ideas don't spin effortlessly out of the ether and bloggers need to go digging. Look to full-time journalists for cues on how to handle this. After all, most face down writer's block daily to earn their bread...

Companies and groups, like charities and tourism boards, often offer media or press kits. These might contain publicity material, recent articles, leaflets, fact sheets and sometimes royalty-free digital images. Many organizations happily provide information via email – or have extensive websites that include story ideas. Always identify yourself as blogger, then ask to receive updates. Citing your readership statistics will help, along with any other credentials.

Some press releases offer vital tips; others are just hyped-up junk mail. But these can be helpful, when casting a wide net for post ideas. Large companies keep lists of journalists and bloggers, who then receive press releases (and sometimes free samples, like herbal remedies for jet lag or moisturizer designed for convertible drivers). Many now host events for new-media authors from meet-and-greets to press trips (free or heavily subsidized junkets). For example, Bertolli Sauces flew our former student Mardi Michels to the Foodbuzz Blogger Festival 2009 in San Francisco, where she demonstrated her deconstructed-pesto pizza in the company's show-kitchen.

Getting onto press lists can be tedious and time-consuming. You need to track down the publicity office, then ring, write or email, supplying your contact information. Eventually experienced authors land on master lists sold or given to PRs, but the process can be slow at the start. Limit efforts to companies that especially intrigue you.

Harried bloggers and media staffers sometimes draft short items (“filler”) from press releases or media kits alone. That's dangerous, as only one side emerges: the shiny, happy face of officialdom. Louise Purwin Zobel, author of The Travel Writer's Handbook, advocates crossing out all the adjectives in brochure-like texts, then reading the last page for the facts . Don't let these superlatives infiltrate your text. Scan for generics like “beautiful” and “stunning”. Then explain why: stretch for more precise, evocative terminology. “Show, don't tell,” is the maxim to remember.

Apply the same skepticism to brochures, as well as information from company blogs, and in-flight and in-house hotel magazines. Glean the key information, then leave the jargon and hyperbole behind. And double-check all facts: a harried work-for-hire copywriter can easily make mistakes...

Strong reporters avoid unbalanced pieces that echo a corporate party line. At the very least, sleuth down comments (both pro and con, should the topic inspire any controversy). Wherever possible, seek concrete statistics or experts to verify claims of “increasing numbers” or “a hot new trend”. Search the Internet for more candid perspectives: reader-review sites and bulletin boards are especially helpful on this front. Even 15 minutes of research can save a post from becoming a slobbering, sell-out puff piece.

Memes: Oh those crazy kids with their fads...

2010-02-10T15:09:00.000-08:00

On a more playful note, let's turn our attention to the real purpose of the internet: to showcase kittens, nudity and dancing babies.

The term "Internet meme" is a neologism describing a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the web. Basically, they're inside jokes ... just writ large. Memes can range from a questionnaire to an art project to video clips riffing off the same theme.

The term "viral" describes ideas that spread rapidly and organically like this (not, say, through mainstream media or an advertising campaign). As Novelist Neal Stephenson explained in 1992's Snow Crash: "We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep on humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information."

Some popular Internet memes:

Bert Is Evil
Bonsai Kitten
The I Kiss You! guy from Turkey
The Star Wars Kid
The classic All Your Base Are Belong To Us
Black People Love Us
The infamous Dancing Baby
my favorite PostSecret

These phenomena spread via email, blogs, social networking sites, instant messaging, etc. And yes, they can be deeply, deeply annoying. But they're here to stay and even spawned a whole field, memetics, that explores "transmission in terms of an evolutionary model" and just had its first convention at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 2008's ROFLCon.

Memers are very fond of citing Richard Dawkins as the term's originator. Mainly, I suspect, because they want to justify spending hours and hours animating a banana...

I'm sold. Meme me!

2010-02-10T15:07:00.000-08:00

In the blogsphere, "meme" (rhymes with "theme") refers to a creative task, which then anchors a post. This could range from a set of personal questions to Photoshopping a raptor head on to a still or video. Here's a flashy twist on the "interview" format, using Flickr and mosaic maker, for example.

The best memes catch on and go viral. Authors tag each other, kind of like a chain letter. But there's no reason you can't borrow some classic formulas. In fact, sites like The Daily Meme suggest thousands of 'em, like listing your favorite bands from A-Z.

Following are a few more ideas from Margaret Mason's No One Cares What You Had for Lunch (an insubstantial book with a great title):

Ceremonies
Cheesy old memories
Confessions
Count your blessings
Critique consumer or pop culture
Curate the web
Dealbreakers
Examine your paperwork
Favorites
Food faves
Inventories
Nostalgia
Phrases
Place yourself (widget maps)
Play favorites
Podcast old voicemail
Scars
Scraps ripped from magazines
Share your expertise
Show some love
Timelines

Memes can be a terrific tool to get writing. They add original content – so key for the searchbots – and vary the texture of your blog, which helps maintain reader interest. But, as with all things, moderation is key. Too much "paint by numbers" material can alienate an audience.

An intro to audio and podcasting

2010-02-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

Multimedia posts are another great way to add texture to a blog. But for continuity's sake, never assume your readers pressed "play". Many just don't want to hear your three-year-old singing in the shower or your grandmother's recollections of the last Depression. That's where search-bot-friendly teaser text helps: you can relay context or key points, also helpful on the Man from Mars front.

OK, quickly, some key concepts and places to learn more (multimedia production is a whole nother class – or classes – so we won't plunge deep into the mechanics of all this.).

Podcasting
Readers can download a radio program, in effect, and play it on a computer or MP3 device. The real advantage is portability: they don't have to remain online to stream the broadcast. For a short little snippet – that witty answering machine message – I'd plump for audio. Podcasts are perfect for, say, your barbershop quarter's recital...

You'll need a microphone, of course: these plug into an audio jack or a USB port, depending on your machine. Then pick an editing program. Some favorites include GarageBand (free with Mac's iLife suite), Audacity (free and the most popular option) and Odeo Studio or "Producer Tools" as it's now known.

After you've recorded and mixed the material, compress it with editor tools, then export it as an MP3. If that's not an option, save it as a wave file, then convert using iTunes.

Finally, publish your podcast and create an RSS feed, so folks can find it. Feedburner plays nicely with Blogger, but watch your data transfer limits there. PodOmatic and Liberated Syndication are popular options.

Audio uploads
Ambitious bloggers can store MP3s on a server, then embed them using this code:

 <EMBED src="urlHere.mp3" autostart=false loop=false></embed>

More on exporting MP3s here. Just be warned: this is deep geekery.

Video fabulousness for beginners
Depending on your recording device, you may need to change the format to AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real and Windows Media. Most bloggers use QuickTime Pro ($30) for such conversions. Editing-wise, trawl through your applications folder. Recent PCs ship with Windows Movie Maker installed, while Macs have iMovie. Both are a good place to start creating slideshows or short digital videos. Just be mindful of setting your cinema masterpiece to music: a copyrighted soundtrack could land you in trouble, as we discussed earlier in the course.

Should you decide to upload original content to YouTube, kiss your copyright goodbye. Your material will be public property – and could even go viral, sharing your greatest karaoke moment with the entire planet. Also, heed the warning: "Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts or commercials without permission unless they consist entirely of content you created yourself." Stephanie Lenz posted a 29-second home movie of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince's Let's Go Crazy – and wound up with a lawsuit. However, a US court ruled this was fair use of the material in August 2008.

Still, how much headache is a Prince song – any Prince song, even Raspberry Beret – really worth?

You'll see plenty of violations of the policy from classic rock videos to clips from the latest blockbuster. That's because YouTube requires copyright holders to issue a takedown notice a la Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Blogger allows you to upload video directly or share it from YouTube. For the first option, hit the film-strip icon on the post's beige control bar. Browse to find the relevant video, title it and click "upload" (the process can take about five minutes). Your material will be hosted on Google Video. By and large, the service is a good one, offering some revenue-sharing even. But its upload-verification can take a few days, which annoys fast-moving bloggers.

For instant gratification, post via YouTube:

Click the "Share" button on the YouTube video's page
Scroll down and click "Setup your blog for video posting."
Click "Add a Blog/Site"
Choose "Blogger" as your Blog Service and fill in your Google Account login information.
Choose which blogs you'd like to add to your YouTube account. You can choose more than one.
From now on, when you click "Share", you'll be given the option to post YouTube videos directly to your blogs!

Other good options exist for sharing and sourcing film clips, including Vimeo, Videoegg and Revver (offers some monetezation). Check out Digital Video Guru for further tips.

Finally, Hulu allows you to embed trailers for films and TV shows (as well as watching many full-length features on demand for free).

Open Source Software

2010-02-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

As you start to deploy more multimedia, it's helpful to understand the movements that underpin the explosion of user-generated content – and how best to navigate some of their key issues as a blogger.

First off, take a look at your tools. Chances are good that many owe their existence to the Free Software movement: the computer world's Summer of Love, which stretched from the 70s into the mid-80s. Developers decided to share code around, instead of hoarding trade secrets. And this cooperation started a tsunami of programs and widgets.

A quirk of the English language caused a great deal of confusion around the word "free," referring here to a freedom to distribute the software as opposed to price. (Think "free speech," not "free beer".) To avoid seeming anti-commercial, geek-speak shifted to the term "open source". In fact, there are no restrictions on charging money for open source software – many companies prosper providing easy installation packages and support for often complex systems.

The key to the open source software is the license, the most common of which is the GNU General Public License (GPL), launched by Richard Stallman – an American hacker, developer and software freedom activist – in 1983. In short, it allows anyone to download the code for any open source project and modify at will. However, if they try to sell those changes as a new product, they have to make the source code available as well. Granted it's a little more complicated than that, but you get the gist...

Proprietary developers, like Microsoft, claim that sharing intel makes it easier for someone to find and exploit flaws. Thus, they argue, maintaining opaque source code provides security itself. Open-source advocates counter that when bugs are exposed, a waiting army of engineers springs into action happily. Those programmers are motivated by the fact that their businesses are running this software: they want the quickest, most elegant fix possible.

As more companies find open source products to their liking, they are willing to donate money and developers to those projects. Several years ago, IBM invested heavily in a tool called Eclipse. From a business standpoint, it was cheaper to devote some cash and brainpower to an existing project than to reinvent the wheel in-house. While its improvements are available to everyone else – including competitors – IBM has a large say in the direction of development, insuring Eclipse will meet the company's future needs.

Current power players in the open source arena include Apple, Google, Firefox and Linux – an incredibly stable, Unix-type operating system.

Redefining intellectual property rights

2010-02-10T15:03:00.000-08:00

A lot of what we all love about the web – the cheap, the easy, the breadth, the wildcat freedom from the mainstream media's "elite" stranglehold – stems from GNU's Stallman, Linux's Linus Torvalds and other visionaries. They lay the philosophical groundwork for the very platforms we're blogging on.

Their counterparts on the "content" frontier also are shaking things up. Foremost among them is Lawrence Lessig, a law prof turning copyright on its ear. As he notes in Free Culture: "the Internet has unleashed an extraordinary possibility for many to participate in the process of building and cultivating a culture that reaches far beyond local boundaries."

We're riding that wave, one of content's biggest since Gutenberg's movable type inspiration of 1439. Not shabby, eh?

"Digital technologies," Lessig continues, "tied to the Internet, could produce a vastly more competitive and vibrant market for building and cultivating culture; that market could include a much wider and more diverse range of creators; those creators could produce and distribute a much more vibrant range of creativity; and depending upon a few important factors, those creators could earn more on average from this system than creators do today."

Creative Commons License – an intro

2010-02-10T15:02:00.000-08:00

Lessig helped found the Creative Commons (CC), a system similar to the open-source GPL license. Whenever we author a creative work – write an essay, take a photo or paint a picture – we own its copyright, even without registering it. Basically this requires anyone who wishes to use our material to ask, and potentially pay, us. A CC license relaxes these restrictions by varying degrees, allowing people to recycle our content in certain situations.

The CC website details the licenses and their nuances here. Flickr breaks it all down in more human language, however:

Attribution
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work – and derivative works based upon it – but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

The noncommercial licenses cause no shortage of discussion online. For example, if you place a noncommercially licensed photo from Flickr, but have a few Google AdSense ads along the side, does that make your blog a commercial enterprise? What if the blog supporting a business? Unfortunately, no solid answers exist until a body of case law develops.

Until then, here's our non-lawyerly take on things: if the licensed work isn't selling a product, then it is a noncommercial use. Take the Flickr photo and blog example above: all those uses would be noncommercial. But, if you were selling your book on your blog and posted a Flickr photo in the ad, then you would violate the noncommercial clause.

Cautious bloggers can always buy commercially licensed photos from microstock photo agencies, which can charge as little as 14 cents. These image archives often contain lucky shots by amateurs and cutting-room-floor sweepings by professionals, all royalty-free. Some popular options include Dreamstime, Shutterstock, BigStockPhoto, Fotolia and the original agency iStockPhoto.

Yes, sharing can go horribly, horribly wrong

2010-02-10T15:00:00.002-08:00

Unsurprisingly, rogues have already abused these communistic practices. In the highest profile case, Virgin Mobile took 100 images off Flickr for an ad campaign. Young Alison Chang of Texas unwittingly – and without pay – starred in one of the promotions. Humiliatingly, she became known as the "dump your pen friend girl". Her family's suing Virgin Mobile, but also CC for a breach of duty, "by failing, among other things, to adequately educate and warn [the uploader]... of the meaning of commercial use and the ramifications and effects of entering into a license allowing such use."

CC nutshells its side of the story here. What's most fascinating is the lawyer's tactic, which revolves around the girl's right of privacy, not the licensing brouhaha.

Powerblog Boing Boing also stumbled, publishing a 500-word piece by sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin with an erroneous CC license. Ironically, the poster was Cory Doctorow, a former professor who once lectured on copyright at the University of Southern California. As this rant noted: "If even the most dedicated, foaming-at-the-mouth Commons evangelists can't use it properly – what hope do us mortals have?"

It's certainly tricky: basically we're building the airplane in mid-flight, as user-generated content booms. But don't despair. We'll explore more tips for being a good cyber-citizen and protecting your own work in the last week.

Assignment week five

2010-02-10T15:00:00.001-08:00

Incorporate at least three sources – quotes, memes or multimedia – to add texture to your blog. Bonus points for original audio or video uploads!

Feedback: (Amanda) writing line-critique

Lecture four – meet the reader

2010-02-03T16:39:00.000-08:00

Remember the water cycle from elementary-school science? How rain creates snow that melts into streams, feeding the oceans, which evaporate into clouds that rain and so forth? Bloggers, website publishers and the mainstream media are all bound together in a similar circuit. And readers too play a key role...

As Greg Ruggiero of the Immediast Underground says: "Media is a corporate possession... You cannot participate in the media. Bringing that into the foreground is the first step. The second step is to define the difference between public and audience. An audience is passive; a public is participatory. We need a definition of media that is public in its orientation."

This week we'll explore some bells and whistles to engage the reader, as well as tech and tactics to convert casual skimmers into a dedicated audience.

Unusually, we've broken key homework components into Tips & Tricks this week. That's because some of you are on WordPress and others don't get a geek buzz off advanced html wizardry. Given all that, it seemed more sensible to quarantine the codey bits. But you can read 'em here:

Some of you expressed frustration with links. Just a quick reminder: these serve like footnotes – opportunities to dig deeper, but not obligations. And you can open them in another tab by clicking and holding down the apple-splat key (Mac) or control-click on a PC.

Assignment: Add Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, and make two posts
Feedback: (Mike) Q&A, tech troubleshooting

Profile tactics – Look Who's Talking

2010-02-03T16:31:00.000-08:00

As we mentioned in the first lecture, the Internet has grown from read-only mode into Web 2.0, a veritable mosh pit of participation. From wikis to Twitter and user-generated-content sites like TripAdvisor, the line between storyteller and audience has flown right out the window. Those old roles are litter on the side of the information superhighway.

So too, the best blogs are more than soap boxes, they are conversations ... and sometimes even Fight-Club-style debates.

Some of you may prefer to fight masked like luchadores, Mexican wrestlers. That can work wonderfully, as proved by blogs like Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, repeatedly voted best UK blog. (The author maintained her anonymity from 2003 to 2009, when she unveiled her identity, fearing exposure by a big-mouthed ex-boyfriend. Research Scientist Brooke Magnanti finally claimed the site and two memoirs, which inspired a popular British TV show.) From Mark Twain to George Orwell and Isak Dinesen, the nom de plume is a time-honored literary tradition.

Should you take that route, don't turn your back on an authorial persona. You can still construct a character via tone, topic and – most immediately – a prominent "About this blog" section with a profile link.

Readers are naturally curious about the people behind compelling posts. Give them a chance to understand you and find points of commonality, then they're more likely to become repeat customers. The "About" section and profile are also fine places to emphasize your qualifications for pontificating on a given topic – the basis for your authority.

Some authors, like the esteemed Tim Footman, rely on detailed "favorite" lists to flesh out their online persona. Others, like LC and Iain, provide only the barest outline, while the writer behind Crying All the Way to the Chip Shop shares little. The "about" area simply declares: "The sentimental musings of an ageing British expat in words, music, and pictures. Files are only up for a limited time so drink them while they're hot."

My profile is minimalist for several reasons: laziness being prime among them. But I also feel plenty exposed and explained on my website ... and I'd rather funnel traffic to that professional space anyway. Finally, my profile has to do double-duty, representing me as a writer and an instructor. In the latter capacity, my cinematic tastes don't factor in much. So I keep things sparse.

I've also edited the blogs visible from this page, hiding scratch pads and students' sites where I have admin privileges. To control this, go to Dashboard –> Edit Profile (second link, top left) –> Show my blogs (the fourth line down under Privacy). On this panel, you can also adjust other details.

Profiles have no right and wrong, of course, so decide what suits your goals – and comfort level. But remember that people really are curious. Since December 2005, for example, 3,100 readers have viewed my profile. Blogger displays this info at the bottom left of each profile page. Have a look at your own stats: chances are they might surprise you already.

Single author versus group submissions

2010-02-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

You can share the risks, burdens and excitement by co-authoring. Many blogs, like the venerable BoingBoing, rely on a handful of posters, rather than a single voice. The advantages are obvious: more entries, more often and from more perspectives ... not to mention the camaraderie of a shared project. But that breadth can also dissolve the focus of a site, unless an "editor" figure runs herd over the bloggers. Posts can ramble off topic or vary wildly in tone, giving a ragged impression. As one blogger commented: "it can all go Lord of the Flies very quickly."

Make a strategic decision. Road Remedies, an author-promotion platform, is naturally a one-woman show. Mike co-chairs the class blog, so we can all plunder his tech mojo. Sites such as the Travelling Mammas have a select number of writers, each with a nuanced persona. Others like Gizmodo have a larger cast of characters, detailed in a hierarchy similar to a magazine or newspaper's masthead (black background sidebar on the left, listing the various editors, reporters, etc.). The Huffington Post has hundreds – including founder Arianna, singer Barbra Streisand and comedian Bill Maher – but hasn't yet found a way of paying them...

To add comrades in Blogger, go to Settings --> Permissions --> then Blog Authors (up to 100 potentially). Below this, you'll see the Blog Readers section. The radio dial buttons there control privacy.

Dynamic sidebars

2010-02-03T16:28:00.000-08:00

A powerful way to draw readers into your material is via the sidebar, i.e; the skinny column(s) beside the main post field (review Anatomy of a Blog, if need be). Elements that give context, build community, provide revenue and highlight original content include:

About – as noted earlier, readers respond more strongly to bloggers with authority or character. Give your audience a chance to connect with you ... or, in some cases, with your nom de plume's persona. Either way, traction = good.
Ads – we'll delve into this week nine.
Archive – give readers a portal to your past material.
Blogroll – reach out to similar writers ... and help your readers connect with them too. Such "link love" can have a powerful cumulative effect, boosting SEO and Google PageRank. But more on this week six...
Greatest hits – a list of your favorite or most popular entries provides another "point of entry" for readers into your sea of original content. Insert your posts' permalinks into a blogroll-style gadget.
Subscription box – more on this week six.
Syndicated content via RSS feeds (headlines, tweets, and so on) – ditto on the week six thang.
Widgets, aka "gadgets" (embedded programlets, often interactive, like clocks, calendars, Flickr slideshows, etc.) – read on...

Widgets away!

2010-02-03T16:25:00.000-08:00

A widget – or "gadget" as Blogger calls 'em – is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page. An end user can install these without requiring additional compilation.

In other words, they're free mini-programs, which plug n' play on blogs, as well as websites, wikis and social networking sites. Classic examples include world clocks and weather reports. But widgets can stretch to baby-birth countdowns, Super Mario games and Amazon Affiliate referral boxes, all embedded on your site with a little cutting and pasting. Ace!

Browser-based tools for creating and hosting widgets include Microsoft Popfly, Widgetbox, and zembly. Widget-distribution platforms such as Clearspring and Gigya are now used to seed and distribute widgets as rich media advertisement units.

WordPress hosts more widgets than Blogger, thanks to its open-sourcy goodness. But we prefer Blogger for its free template-tinkering, so, as usual, our advice will revolve around that platform.

Blogger hosts a certain number of widgets on its servers. To add an element, go to Layout --> then click the blue text link "Add a Gadget" at the top of your sidebar(s). A popup box then displays a host of options, including polls, slideshows and RSS feeds, handy for streaming select headlines, adding fresh news content effortlessly.

To freestyle a bit more, you can add third-party programlets, like the class blog's recent comments widget. First, find reliable source code online. Vet it carefully by searching on its name. Then back up your Blogger template before you tinker.

From the Layout wireframe, click "Add a Gadget," then choose the HTML/JavaScript option. Click the blue plus-sign button, which leads to another popup window, containing fields for a title and content. Paste the embed code in the larger data field. Once you've saved, the element will appear on the layout page. You can then drag and drop it into an appropriate spot.

As we discussed earlier in the course, think carefully about what appears "above the fold." This newspaper term denotes the content visible on a front page when a broadsheet is doubled up. For a blog, that translates to "stuff visible without scrolling". The header and "about me/contributors" sections are obvious candidates: context helps readers – new ones especially – evaluate the site.