Learning About Online Journalism

My first foray into first-person journalism is officially published at Associated Content. I don’t expect squat for page views, but am experiencing an inordinate amount of glee from seeing it.

With the idea in mind of continuing this exploration, I discovered the Online Journalism Review and a “wiki” entitled How to Report a News Story Online. The article includes a little section on finding story ideas, but is concluded by a somewhat garbled, first-draft section at the end.

The upshot seems to be one with which I agree: pay attention to the world around you and write about what you find interesting. The odds are good that others will, too.

The piece also makes an excellent point about not looking only for information that supports your point of view on a topic. If you’re going to be a journalist, you have to be even-handed. Writing about why you’re right is an opinion piece, not an article.

Writing about the points on both sides makes you look fair and open-minded (whether you are or not!) That’s a good way to start establishing trust with your readers. It’s can be difficult to do on a subject about which you feel deeply but it’s a good way to learn whether you’ve been mistaken about a particular topic. Doing impartial research educates you so that you can educate your readers.

legbamel: Live and on the Scene

I made my first foray into the “exciting” world of journalism yesterday. There was a minor event nearby. I found out about it, attended with a camera, took a picture, wrote a brief article, and submitted the package to Associated Content. For all that it was a 10-minute, nigh-unpublicized event, I was thrilled to be there as a reporter. Unofficially, of course. I was undercover as a mere interested bystander.

The problem came when I went to write the article. I had a little hook, a good quote from one of the participants, and nothing else. It took me more time researching on the web to get some background than the entire process of discovering and attending the event. I assume that this is a standard issue for journalists – that the events themselves are brief and not particularly interesting unless you are willing to explain why they happened and what they mean (if anything).

What particularly entertained me about the thing was that there was only one “real” reporter there. She was from a local television station and had her trusty camera operator with her. I see her around the area a lot and figure she must have the downtown, human interest beat. I could pretend that, as the only “print” journalist there, I was scooping the local paper. Heh, sometimes a little self-delusion is just what you need.

I'll have to see if AC will print the thing, though. It is strictly of local interest and obviously not much of that. If only sending it in to the local paper would not completely blow my secret identity on-line. Because of my job, I don't publish under my real name. I seriously doubt the paper is going to publish me under my pseudonym!

Of course, if it does get published, I'll link to it here.

Does the World Need a Megaglobe?

I’ve been told about another new search engine/pay-per-click program - Megaglobe. It’s set to launch July 2nd. Using their search engine results in credits to your advertising accounts, which are used to pay for ads on their results.

I was favorably surprised by their search results. I did a search for “human c02 production” (without the quotes) and ended up with RealClimate’s argument that people are bad for the earth as the first result and this counter-argument from znet a few results down the page. These are both quality links with a ton of (incidentally fascinating) information each. There is no way, however, to tell if these sites are advertisers with Megaglobe. If they are, I’d say it speaks well to the caliber of their advertisements.

As a bonus, you can submit your site to their search engine. Of course, the first thing I when I got there was submit this site. I also submitted Associated Content in its entirety. You can never have too many results, right?

I didn’t see anything indicated on the Megaglobe site about whether the average joe (like you and me) can trade in credits for cash instead of advertising through them at some point. I sent them an e-mail and will edit this entry when I get a response.

UPDATE: I got the response that same night, which was pretty quick for folks who are busy gearing up for a launch in three weeks. In essence, they told me that the search rewards are credits with the site, period. If you're looking for a new place to advertise, then this would be of a lot more interest to you than if you're looking to make some money, although I suppose you could advertise your blog or affiliate sites.

A Day Without A Computer

For those who doubt the saying "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone", try having complete hardware failure and being without a computer for a full day. This is my apology for not being anywhere to be found yesterday and my explanation for why I don't have much in the way of links today.

I wanted to check on Blog Flux (on which I've cooled, as apparently I missed the part where you only get the cool stats if you pay them and there is no networking set-up over there) and I knew I had a new article published at Associated Content. That one is about fighting urban sprawl with mixed-use development. I was excited to see it up as it's part of a series I'm doing.

I also ran across guru.com and I really wanted to get some feedback on whether anyone I "know" has used it and how it works. The link points to the page for searching projects, and I found a fair number of freelance writing jobs both under the Article/News category and the web content categories. It also appears that they pay by escrow, which tends to mean that you can feel more confident that you'll actually get paid for your work! I'll look into this and post more later.

Follow the Yellow Crumb Road...

I thought it might be useful to give an example of what I mean when I say that I “followed a breadcrumb trail” to find a post. This is the one I followed this morning.

I was in the forum at Associated Content and saw the listing for Scott’s Web Writers Café. Naturally, I was curious, so I clicked for a visit. There I ran across a post referring me to Dr. Tony Hung’s blog marketing post on problogger, which led me to his article at newassignment.net about using mybloglog to create a social network of blogs.

I thought that I had joined mybloglog, but it turns out that I hadn’t. Of course, that’s what I’ve spent half of the morning doing – adding widgets and setting up screen shots and filling out profile information. Hey, sometimes you’ve got to play!

Once I got tired of that, I explored the communities tagged for writing, where I found Writers Edge, which led me to linking information from Jack Humphrey, which led me to Brian Clark on copyblogger (where there is a ton and a half of great information) which in turn led to Kevin O’Keefe.

So I visited or found eight great sites, starting from an innocent post in a forum. While I’m not going to go and notify every one of these people that I’ve linked to them here, they may find out anyway through pings and other tracking widgets. Then they could come and read at least this entry, if not be fascinated by my scintillating wit and sparkling personality. And I got a free post out of it, too!