Category: Personal Updates

My life

Turning down the self-promotion

We are stuck in an echo chamber, a friend said to me recently.

While the digital divide is slowly lessening and more people are online all the time, there is a very small community that is always repeating itself  on whatever the social media of the moment is – lately that has been Twitter, of course.

I’m part of it, no doubt. Because our society today demands self-promotion, or so it seems. The echo chamber is so small and there are so many people talking – mostly about the same things – that it’s tough to be heard over it all.

Your post or your story or your A1 article is getting buried, surely a big part of why newspapers are faltering. The democratization of the Web has given megaphones to anyone with an Internet connection, so no longer does your daily newspaper have the same pedastal.

So, if you want to be heard, you flee to MySpace, or Facebook or Twitter or on your blog or wherever else.  I believe that you have to put yourself everywhere online if you want to compete in a media field of your choice. But it’s easy to cross over from active self-promotion to incessant self-indulgence.

I’ve done it myself, so here’s my pledge to do better.

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PSPA: Eleven Ways to Improve Your Student Publication Today

Speaking to a few dozen high school newspaper staffers at the PSPA conference on Friday.
Speaking to a few dozen high school newspaper staffers at the PSPA conference on Friday.

On Friday, I was a highlighted speaker at the at the 76th annual Pennsylvania School Press Association conference.

Below I’ve shared the notes I handed out during my first presentation. I also shared ChristopherWink.com/Improve-Student-Newspapers.

I chose to speak on, “Eleven Ways to Improve Your Student Publication Today,” for the following reason:

I always think the best value of a conference like this, particularly for high school kids (I remember being bored out of my mind at these), is immediate take-away. I’ve collected some awfully simple, but delightfully practical items a student newspaper or magazine might implement right away and improve the product. I’m focusing on online promotion and dissemination, multimedia organization and Web presence.

Below see what I listed during my presentation.

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PSPA Conference speaker: Maybe I'm in over my head

other-speaker-highlights
A portion of the PSPA conference guide.

Today I’m in State College, Pa. perhaps making a fool of myself at the 76th annual Pennsylvania School Press Association conference.

I was thrilled when someone asked me in December if I’d like to speak to high school kids about multimedia storytelling and online publications. (Apparently people do read this thing!) I thought it even neater when I was e-mailed a draft of the conference guide.

Then I saw just below the first-page biography of keynote speaker Tim Harrower, an author and newspaper designer, two speaker highlights. The first is of Steve Manuel, a Penn State professor, former Department of Defense spokesman and, um, apparently a buddy of comedian Dane Cook.

The second name? Well, it was this young freelancer. I’m humbled and excited. See what I’ll be covering after the jump. If you’re there, well, gosh, let’s do lunch.

Continue reading PSPA Conference speaker: Maybe I'm in over my head

The Franklin: what I learned from leading a high school student newspaper

The stairway of the Franklin Learning Center that I took to Mr. Sedwin's classroom each week.

You’re supposed to learn from teaching, or something like that.

I suppose with that knowledge in hand, I knew I’d learn something when, two years ago, I first walked into the Franklin Learning Center, a magnet high school in the Spring Garden neighborhood of Philadelphia.

I was there to help launch a student newspaper. I, too, was a student, writing for The Temple News, the college newspaper of Temple University.

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Blogging at Uwishunu.com: See me

If you peeked at my Blogging clips on this Web site recently, you may have noticed that I have begun contributing to uwishunu.com, a very cool arts and entertainment blog in Philadelphia.

If you have managed some RSS feed for my Disclosures on this site, you may also have seen that uwishunu is a product of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corp., which means I am currently receiving small funds from a public relations organization.

I’m over it and hope you are, too. If it causes a conflict, we’ll cross that bridge when we have to. Because, right now, I enjoy the work and love the product – I was subscribing to uwishunu long before I became involved.

Below check some of my work and extras from those assignments.

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Introducing Technically Philly: covering the Philadelphia technology community

Philadelphia’s technology scene is, well, growing, expanding, maturing, developing, whatever.

There are a host of worlds and working parts to it, different scenes, from Center City, to Old City, to South Philly, to the northwest and West Philly, up to the ‘burbs and, well, in some way, everywhere in between.

The problem is that there is no one home, no one portal, vessel for all of those cultures and news and events and updates.

I think I’ve found it.

With Web designer Sean Blanda and graphic designer Brian James Kirk, I am proud to introduce Technically Philly: covering the community of people using technology in Philadelphia.

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Six month old trend, then I'm ready to join: is your newspaper like that too?

I am now the proud owner of an mp3 player – my first.

It’s a trend of my coming to any popular phase months too late. Sometimes by choice, sometimes not.

In anything, from electronics to music to business innovation in media, there are trend-setters, followers and late-comers. Which are you, and which is your organization?

Continue reading Six month old trend, then I'm ready to join: is your newspaper like that too?

Give a Eulogy

The maternal side of my family, including my grandmother, in the middle, whose house we were emptying in this photograph from summer 2006. My grandmother died last week, and I was privileged, though saddened, to eulogize her at her wake.
The maternal side of my family, including my grandmother, in the middle, whose house we were emptying in this photograph from summer 2006. My grandmother died last week, and I was privileged, though saddened, to eulogize her at her wake.

I don’t think I was ever naive enough to believe all the experiences I wanted to have were pleasant ones.

Today I eulogized my maternal grandmother, who died last Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009 at the young age of 74.

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