Blogging – Page 3 – Christopher Wink

Why I won't contribute to the Huffington Post and you shouldn't either

I recently finished a story on spec and had my editor balk at the story.

The general rule is freelancers shouldn’t write without a promise of pay, but it was a story I didn’t find particularly challenging, did find interesting and was for a new publication, some reasons that motivate me to take a chance. So, I was more – although perhaps wrongly – accepting of the demand that I write first before I elicited an agreement.

In telling my sources that I was shopping new homes for the story, I got a suggestion from one source, E. Jean Carrol, the venerable Elle magazine advice columnist.

“Send it to Huffington,” she offered, but, “They don’t pay. It is ALL glory!”

For now, I’m choosing to sit on the story — one in a frustratingly growing class of stories I’ve written and then eaten. Huffington Post, the uproariously popular liberal news and opinion blog, is not getting my work, and it shouldn’t get yours.

Continue reading Why I won't contribute to the Huffington Post and you shouldn't either

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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Twitter, blog, new media, Twitter, blog, blog

Gosh, I do hate the buzz words that new media terms have become.

A friend shared a post with an interesting graf:

Journalists are obsessed with Twitter. Obsessed. They use it, talk about it, analyze it, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, love it, hate it, capitalize on it, become experts on it, monetize it, argue about it, and become micro-famous on it. They are mesmerized with what it is and they are as giddy as Tom Cruise on Oprah just thinking about what it could be. [Source]

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'Commonwealth Confidential' owns its Google Search, does your newspaper blog?

Last month I mentioned the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Harrisburg bureau Commonwealth Confidential blog didn’t own its own name in a Web search.

Well, a Google search today shows that they got it right now. Why’d it take so long and what else can we learn?

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How, why and what should a young journalist start blogging

If you are a budding journalist, or trying to break back into the game, if you’re a writer, a poet, an editor or aspiring movie star, if you want to be on TV or on radio, why aren’t you blogging?

If only just a bit.

Newspapers are trying to establish themselves by these online rules, and some are finding much better success blogging than others. All media are finding ways to make money and find stars online.

Assuming you want to be part of both of those, you need to do something about it.

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The Newspaper blog: salvation or suicide

Blogs will help kill newspapers.

Careful, that’s only if newspaperdotcoms continue to see blogs as competition.

Of course, anyone with interest in learning better knows blogging can be a tool to spread content further and wider than ever before.

Let me tell you how I believe newspaper blogs can help save newspapers.

Continue reading The Newspaper blog: salvation or suicide

My 10 favorite journalist bloggers

There are blogs and there are bloggers. There are mainstream blogs and there are those that aren’t.

Blogging, in my mind, isn’t necessarily, but a new transition that is one part of a test of big media. Can they develop and innovate quickly enough?

Below find my 10 favorite journalist bloggers: reporters associated with a mainstream medium who actively blog.

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Full-text feeds, Partial feeds: What's a blogger to do?

We had a good conversation on the merit of full-text or partial feeds on a post recently that I never got to address.

I got a few e-mails on the matter, too, actually. (No surprise they were as conflicted as the comments)

What we all seemed to agree on is that newspapers (or any RSS feed for that matter) are fools to offer no excerpt in an RSS post.

The debate came on how much content should be provided in a feed, though.

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Inquirer blogs that don't own their Google searches: all newspapers need to learn

commonwealth-confidential-google

Why does a Google search of “Commonwealth Confidential,” the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Harrisburg state capital bureau blog, yield no direct results, but rather links to some of their posts?

Because they haven’t reached out to the blogosphere and received in return the currency of the Internet – incoming links.

This isn’t something I put on the Inquirer Harrisburg bureau staffers, nor am I trying to criticize the Inquirer. Rather it is the newspaper I read, so my criticisms and suggestions often fall their way, though I think they’re widely applicable to newspapers across the country.

Continue reading Inquirer blogs that don't own their Google searches: all newspapers need to learn

Twelve months of top journalism blog posts in 2008

bestjournalismposts

Tomorrow 2009 begins. Instead of doing a top ten list of posts like most, I want to review the year in important journalism-related blog posts.

There are a lot of bloggers who focus on journalism. From grizzled veterans, tech geeks and corporate stiffs who are looking for the future, to those who blog the news, and younger cats like me, who have some of the experience, all the enthusiasm and a fresh perspective to offer. Yes, while some have written newspaper obituaries, some are looking toward the future.

So, with all of us running around blabbing on about new media and the future of newspapers, it turns out that every once in a while something I think is pretty meaningful comes to light. This year has been a big one, so below, in my humble opinion, see a guide to 12 months of the best journalism-related blog posts of 2008.

Tag: Blogging