Facebook pushes traffic and helps build an online community. We’re over that. Joining Facebook and learning lessons from it is in the distant past. It’s time to have that next conversation. I’m interested in moving to the next step, creating more compelling Facebook pages that keep people coming back, attract more eyeballs, develop brands, help [...]

About a year ago, in December 2009, I was sitting in my living room with two friends. I had no heat, two plastic chairs and a coffee table. I was chasing down the last of that year’s freelancing invoices to make about $16,000. I was certainly still privileged for an endless list of reasons, but, [...]

Yes, I’m doing a resolutions post. If for no other reason than to hold myself accountable. Looking at last year’s professional goals, which were much more about staying afloat financially, I think this year, the theme is laying the foundation of sustainability to grow a business and opportunities at journalism and the like. I broke [...]

About a year ago, I hadn’t come across a good list of someone trying to track all of the community news sites worth covering. So I did so myself. I only recently come across someone doing a much better job of it, so I’ll leave it to her. For the Reynolds Journalism Institute, Michele McLellan [...]

I’m proud to say that I’ll have a small part in three of the fourteen inaugural reporting projects funded by the Philadelphia Enterprise Reporting Fund, as announced Tuesday. Funded by the William Penn Foundation and administered by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, a center of American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C, the [...]

Earlier this month, I went on a ride-along with the West Frankford Town Watch in lower Northeast Philadelphia. For the love of hyperlocal journalism and community coverage, I put together a 2,500 word profile of the organization, with a handful of photos of mine. It was good to remember that I got into this whole [...]

Two pieces I wrote for NEast Philly made their way into yesterday’s Metro Northeast Philadelphia edition. First, as depicted above, a piece on Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams’s presentation at the Northwood Civic Association meeting during which he again outlined the four main objectives of his nascent administration. Second, as depicted below, my coverage of [...]

That niche vertical or hyperlocal news site that covers your community can be just as valuable as the big newspaper or local TV spot, I told an audience of nearly 20 as a panelist during an Entrepreneurship Week session hosted by the Empowerment Group last month. The Kensington-based nonprofit who mission is “building a better [...]

The cover of a regional edition of the highest circulated daily newspaper in Philadelphia featured a news story of my own yesterday. Rumors on the possible sale of an alleged drug-infested nuisance property veiled as a recovery home in a Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood that came out of last week’s Frankford Civic Association meeting was enough [...]

The second annual BarCamp NewsInnovation was held last month at Temple University — see my notes here. In addition to sharing all the failures we’ve had at Technically Philly, I spoke with founder and editor Shannon McDonald about the progress we’ve had with Northeast Philadelphia hyperlocal NEast Philly, including most prominently the breakdown of where [...]