You can now via e-mail, receive updates to this outlet for my professional work, experience as a young freelance writer and thoughts on what my future in news, writing and journalism might look like.

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In case this RSS thing is still crazy and confusing, dig its explanation In Plain English below.

The older, WordPress.com version of this site.

Well this is overdue.

Exactly 575 days after my first post on this incarnation of ChristopherWink.com, I’ve done a massive redesign. If you’re in a feed reader, come on over and browse.

There is so much left for me to do, though. A lot of usability, design and organization elements remain janky. We’ll get to that. For now, I wanted to get over the big introduction hurdle of the redesign.

Of course, when I say redesign, I mean I switched from a free WordPress.com theme to using a free, self-hosted WordPress theme, but, hey, I’m tweaking this baby up.

It’s a slightly bold step forward.

Thanks to Sean Blanda, my friend, colleague and fellow co-founder of Technically Philly, who offered a good deal on hosting. There’s a lot of work left to be done for the transition, but for now it sure looks a bit more professional, no? I’ll be going through an overhaul of my portfolio, some of my site’s organization and certainly delving into greater, more detailed metrics. I also look forward to all the normal fun you can have on a normal, self-hosted site. All that said, I don’t intend on straying from my usual focus here, writing on being a young freelance journalist and (very) small time Web entrepreneur.

More to follow on the transition. But, for now, let me know what you think about the theme, called OneRoom. But yeah, please, don’t go and take it.

It’s Memorial Day, so no one’s reading this anyway, right?

In February I announced that I was blogging for uwishunu.com, a popular, award-winning arts and entertainment blog for Philadelphia. Some months I write more for them than others, not all run as expected and some are of only middling interest to casual readers, so I’ve decided I’d like to do a monthly digest of my work there — if only just for record-keeping.

I’ll post them as I file them, not as they run. See all of my posts here, and my profile here.

Below — later than I’ll do this in the future — see my April posts.

1. Story Slam @ Bubble House in University City
2. New Faces by Philadanco @ the Perelman Theater
3. Philly-native author Charles D. Ellison signs @ Liberty Place
4. Introduction to color theory @ the Mew Gallery
5. FREE national BarCamp for NewsInnovation @ Temple University — I also wrote about this event here.
6. Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dali meet in Hysteria @ the Wilma Theater — I recently attended the show.
7. Annual alumni reunion @ Eastern State Penitentiary — I went inside for the first time last week.
8. Rebecca Rothfus @ Pentimenti Gallery in Old City

Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and me on Saturday, April 25, 2009 in the atrium of Annenberg Hall at Temple University after discussing at the BarCamp for NewsInnovation at TechnicallyPhilly.com, which we co-founded.

Two Saturdays ago, friends Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and I presented at the BarCamp NewsInnovation — which Blanda organized and Brian and I helped run — on TechnicallyPhilly.com, which we co-founded in February.

Read my thoughts on the event here. Read Twitter coverage of our presentation by looking through #BCNI304, which relates to the room in which we presented.

Below see the notes from and video of the presentation we gave.

I presented twice at BarCamp, first on TP, then later for NEastPhilly.com, which I’ll share on later this week. Harrisburg-based Roxbury News taped portions of a series of the presentations, including ours: part one, part two, part three and, Hell, part four. Or peep a bit grainier, rougher and shorter clip of me speaking on TP’s use of social media to develop our brand.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBWYTUBMWpk&feature=channel_page]

Community News Startups: Technically Philly
National BarCamp NewsInnovation Philadelphia
April 25, 2009

1. INTRODUCTION
   • Technically Philly: a blog covering the community of people who use technology in Philadelphia
   • February 2009, WordPress based template
   • three young, media and tech-interested freelancers reporters who also are a Web designer, graphic designer and business managing
   • Two niches: industry (tech) and geography (Philadelphia)
   • Today we’ll discuss: How we started, how we’re building, and how we plan to pay for it all
2. HOW TO START
   • Freelancing with time
     • Expect to see more freelancers as news orgs shed staff
     • Subsidizing through freelance
     • Normal workday and then TP
     • pick up beat freelancing
     • Get off ass off and do it
   • Use free technology
     • Use social media, but really use it: interact on Twitter, brand on Facebook.
     • Don’t just show up for the game, but actually play it.
     • Develop brand – the best thing newspapers have are their brand, if you don’t, develop it online by being consistently right, interesting and involved.
     • New media is interaction (not fancy buzz words)
   • Know your place
     • We aren’t providing breaking corporate news, but we’re adding value
     • Right now there are largely Content Creators (news orgs) and content aggregators (blogs, Google, Digg, etc.)
     • We’re trying to marry the two: creating content, but synthesizing it in a way particular to our audience.
     • Aggregation in our voice to our readers
   • Be honest in who you are
     • Disclosures, honest and genuine.
     • If you really want to be part of a community, it will support you.
3. HOW WE’RE BUILDING A BRAND, AUDIENCE AND COVERAGE
   • If you’re small, cover small.
     • How quickly you can affect that small community
     • Gives you agility, lessons from the dotcom burst, smaller is often better, and now that is coming to news
     • Dinosaur larger media, not seen as authentic in covering a community
   • Social media attack
     • 15 percent hits from Twitter, nearly a third from social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, many more from other blogs
     • Interacting with audience, that is the good of social media
   • Introducing an audience
     • We still say we’re just introducing everyone and haven’t even begun to really report
     • We’re helping to create, cobbling together Philadelphia’s broad innovation and tech communities
     • Often seen as far smaller than you might expect of one of the largest cities in the country, but we’re uncovering new fields
   • Niche, niche, niche
     • neighborhood-centric to be seen as authentic
     • Why shouldn’t we? Our audience is male, affluent, educated readers not being covered as enthusastically or consistently by mainstream media.
     • Find an audience and cover the Hell out of it
   • Involved community
     • Don’t be afriad to be part of your community; be impartial, but the heart of a journalist is someone a part of a community, you know it better, you affect it better
     • If one part of newspapers is still respected and done well, it’s the sports beat. They are often people who admit they love the home team.
     • We are covering the Philadelphia tech community and we love the home team.
   • Branding
     • Want to be seen as the only resource for Philadelphia tech news
     • Want to be respected, as journalists and as a source
     • That’s local, but Comcast, RedLasso and others are national in scope, so that can build brand in wider communities (even the smallest of communities have reasons to be appreciated elsewhere, or at least they should be)
     • Being consistent
4. MONETIZATION
   • Free model – a big conversation we don’t want to get into, but points to make
     • You’re giving away the connection to the community, who will then support you in return
     • A new model in the future could be the community network: all the news and all the purchases from that community
     • Become a store of everything related to your market, become a hub and sell around the hub
     • Phillies blog: selling tickets, merchandise, creating merchandise, write an e-book
     • Support a community and it will support your trusted, respected brand
   • Rethink traditional monetizations
     • How to wrangle “Classifieds” back – general interest newspapers lost, but specified niche organizations don’t have to
     • Advertisements can no longer exclusively sustain a model, but far more specific, interactive campaigns will come closer
     • Collecting data on users to better know them (also helps to be involved in community)
   • Find new models particular to your product
     • Whenever we try a new product, we ask ourselves what beyond advertising can we sell because it can’t be it
   • Local works best when it’s authentically local
     • TechFlash, a product purhcased by Puget Sound Business Journal but remains on separate site with separate sales
     • Don’t brand them as single entity or risk losing the appeal
     • Philadelphia flea market versus Fairmount flea market,
   • Being cognizant of news as business
     • We write, report, edit, design, plan, sell, buy, create and disseminate: reporters need to know this now
     • The reporters know what would sell to the people they cover, but those reporters aren’t making business decisions
5. TAKE AWAYS
   • Be a member of the community, but be impartial
   • Brand is everything, hub to sell around hub
   • Don’t be afraid to go small, independently branded and sold
     • The collection of niches: Washington Post as national, the NY Times as international, the Inquirer as regional
   • Buzz words are more than buzz
     • social media is friendly; new media is interaction; old media is a lecture
   • Smaller isn’t worse
     • Scale of what we cover might not change, the scale of how we cover maybe so

The Courier Post summarized our presentation, the notes of which can be seen here. Roxbury News kindly caught video of most our session:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Party Three
• Part Four

Register to attend!

I’m heading to the national BarCamp for NewsInnovation at Temple University in Philadelphia. If you’re in the region, why don’t you stop on by, it runs all day to 5 p.m. and should prove interesting.

I also wrote an impassioned plea about this for uwishunu.

In the late 1990s, a host of Web sites democratized the Internet, giving the average Internet-user the chance to have his own online home.

In 2003, MySpace used the model and brought in a new age of social networking.

Last week I posted that MySpace is on the way out, and briefly mentioned that WordPress and Blogger are taking over the role of providing free, easy-to-manipulate Web presences.

Does that make them the next Angelfire or Geocities? Are they just another trend ready to be overcome?

Last week I wrote about my writing a letter on behalf of a mentor of mine. He is leaving my alma mater Temple University after being pressured out. This is a subject about which I have a personal investment.

All journalists should use their personal Web sites as a place to be as transparent as possible about just such an example of potential bias.

In their youth, newspapers were overtly biased, swayed by the political leanings of their owners. In the 20th century, the position of journalist became increasingly professional.

The 1970s and Watergate, like the digital revolution of today, changed the rules. There was no greater insult to a journalist than calling him “biased.”

So, we hid our biases. TV personalities brought back bias, but in a more open way. Still there are always new examples of journalists toeing that line.

Today we journalists have the opportunity to be as transparent as we can be. That is for the best. I think all journalists should post their potential conflicts of interest on their site. Newspapers should do the same for their reporters. Transparency is one way to gain popular trust.

My Disclosure page was in no small way influenced by Jeff Jarvis doing the same.

Do you have one? What do you think about it?

Image courtesy of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Today, on Martin Luther King Day, the last before this country will have its first President of color, below watch the famed civil rights activist’s last speech, the night before he was assasinated 40 years ago.

Tomorrow Barack Obama will be made the 44th president of the United States. I’ll be there for it.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0FiCxZKuv8]

Photo courtesy of TheHive.

I am going to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C. tonight, to get settled and look around town, where I will be covering the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday.

More on that to come.

Obama left yesterday from Philadelphia to head to D.C., also making a stop in Delaware. Leaving from Philadelphia is a historic nod to past presidents, like Abraham Lincoln, and fittingly landed on the 303rd anniversary of the birth of Philly’s favorite founding father: Ben Franklin.

Celebrate that below.

Ever wanted to hear about Franklin discovering electricity hilariously and drunkenly recounted, with Jack Black subtly playing the role of Franklin? Wish granted.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjZR1Rjj_p0]

If you want a more traditional taste of Franklin, check this video.

Tomorrow I’ll be in D.C. to cover the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday.

It seems it’s all anyone is talking about in a way no inaguration in my short life – even the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, another young Washington outsider popular with young people.

Folks in D.C. are already complaining of the growing crowds. There might not be enough public toilets.  I filed a story for CampusProgress.org suggesting this inauguration may not only be the largest, but also might have more college students than ever before (perhaps disinegnous because there are more American college students today than ever).

But will the cold and these calls of crowd drop that total? Check here for details and for updates, check my Twitter account, where I hope to link to photos via Twitpic.

Photo courtesy of RPG.