What if advertising wasn't in a recession, but dying?

downward-trendIt would create a permanent fissure in the media world.

The question of whether plummeting advertising numbers are representative more of a broader trend than just the economy was the focus of an interesting post from James Fallows of the Atlantic, as I found from Philadelphia Inquirer online editor Chris Krewson.

The real problem is, advertising is dying. It’s just pulling down newspapers along the way. Next up: TV, radio, and Google.

This is why I was warning anyone who would listen that traditional media’s schadenfreude when the internet bubble popped in 2001 was probably misplaced. Because the reason it popped was one finally had the metrics to show Advertising Doesn’t Work. Google has forestalled the inevitable by doing the Net equivalent of the “tiny little ads” schtick of a decade or two back, but I think they see the writing on the wall, which is why they keep trying so desperately to find something, anything, other than search that’ll make money…. [Source]

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What is a blog and why do so many people hate them?

blog_logo

If you check out Technically Philly and you follow every minute change, you may have noticed that the tagline that we boast at the site’s top has changed slightly.

Last week it still read: “Technically Philly is a blog covering the community of people who use technology in Philadelphia.” Now it says, “Technically Philly is a site that covers the community of people who use technology in Philadelphia.”

It may be a small change, but we realized we were lying.

Twelve years ago December in Ohio, they say, Jorn Barger took to calling his Robot Wisdom site a “web log,”  as his collection of links were, he said, literally logging the Web.

The type of Web site quickly took to house a variety of online diaries, often collecting news and commentary, too, but always flowing in some form of sequential order.

In 2004, with five million worldwide, the blog format was said to have hit the critical mass of being mainstream, bringing with it a new crew of news analysis and commentary, then largely from an outsider’s perspective.

Something happened then. While some even well-known blogs — like Deadspin, as Buzz Bissinger, Bob Costas and then-Editor Will Leitch made famous — maintained that the outsider’s perspective was crucial to the blog form, the world went silly with blogs.

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Five sales lessons that I don't think Seth Godin meant to give last month

I am surprised to say I’ve become something of a fan of marketing author Seth Godin.

I find his blog purposefully insightful, thought-provoking and strangely general. A person from just about any industry could take lessons away from his posts, which, of course, is likely his purpose.

It’s in that way that if, say, a fellow young journalist asked for a few blogs to follow, I’d suggest at least two that really don’t have any direct relationship to newspapers or even media. I’d certainly say Godin’s, and I’d also say Mark Cuban‘s — but that’s for another post.

I have to fight an urge to share very nearly everything they post.

Last month, though, I found a bit of a theme in Godin’s posts. It may have been because of my focus of my own announcement of intentions to monetize Technically Philly, but no matter the reason, I think Godin offered a series of interesting thoughts on making sales, all of which correlated, I thought, to Web startups.

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Advertising with @TechnicallyPHL and what other Web startups can learn

hkg_hong_kong_advertising

Earlier this week, I launched the first profit-end of a business in my entire life — assuming the tax-status gray area of cutting hair and writing term papers for friends doesn’t count.

Technically Philly, a news site covering technology and innovation in Philadelphia that I launched with two friends, began soliciting advertising, the first in a series of monetization strategies — because advertising can’t be king anymore.

In the first four months, we’ve been introducing members of this region’s Web 2.0  and co-working communities, but we have so much ground yet to cover. We’re only now making friends with the bubbling venture capital scene in Philadelphia, and the innovation and technology that is being employed in this region’s rich life sciences and biotech sectors would blow you away. We want to report appropriately and effectively with wisdom and justice, chronicling the heights and depths and direction of this scene and its creative economies.

And that’s just it, for a Web startup, you have to be patient. By most accounts, four months is likely early to launch monetization, but, simply put, the fiscal standing of my two co-founders and I makes it necessary to get the profit structure squared away.

See our media kit for Technically Philly — designed by Brian James Kirk.

There are a host of issues we’re eager to take on, if only just to learn about the real practicalities of entrepreneurial journalism.

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Technically Philly: Interview with adult film star Stoya on technology and Philadelphia

I profiled the feisty and strong-willed adult film star Stoya  for Technically Philly.

It could be her, standing in the low light of a trendy South Philadelphia coffee shop.

There are maybe 10 people — drinking tea and working on laptops — most of whom are cute, pale-faced women with dark hair and a look. One arrived promptly at 4 p.m. and happened to be the biggest young thing in the entirety of mainstream adult film.

She was introduced as South Philly’s Stoya by CityPaper last November, but with more than six years of this city behind her and the heart of a profitable and exhausting porn career ahead of her, Stoya is leaving Philadelphia. Read the rest here.

A friend kindly submitted it to Digg, where it has more than any other story I’ve been a part of has gotten. Someone else pushed it on ReddIT. Combining porn and tech, I suppose, were bound to get interest online, though I maintain that the story has real merit for TP.

Below see what got left on the cutting room floor.

Many thanks to photographer Neal Santos who took some shots of Stoya where we interviewed, including the photo we used. I also want to thank Stoya for her time and patience.

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TP: Editorial on Philadelphia CIO call for tech support

Allan Frank, Philly CIO
Allan Frank, Philly CIO

After announcing the birth Technically Philly, I haven’t more than briefly mentioned the news site for Philadelphia’s technology community, even though I’ve been writing there sometimes more than seven times weekly.

Today, we ran an editorial that I particularly liked, so I thought I’d share. My two co-founders and I share the stance and both helped a great deal, but I took the lead on writing this one. I’m eager to see how our readers react — if they will at all.

Here’s a test.

Just how innovative and influential, forward-thinking yet practical is the technology community in Philadelphia? Because you’re being challenged.

We’re still reeling from a presentation that Allan Frank, the city’s chief information officer, gave at a meeting of Refresh Philly Monday night. Read the rest here.

Check below for a couple grafs that didn’t make it in.

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Attribution is not dead if we don’t let it die

I got a tweet from my buddy and Reading Eagle designer Chris Reber a few weeks ago.

is attribution dead?

That came not long after, Vince Fumo, the embattled Pennsylvania state senator and legendary South Philly politician, was convicted on all 137 counts in his federal corruption trial.

In what was another great stand for an old friend, the Inquirer was all over the Fumo case (not long after another evergreen package on the city’s Please Touch Museum, which won it a national headliner award.

Beyond collecting all the Fumo history and details and using social media, reporter Bob Moran live blogged the March 16 pronouncement of guilt. Fox29 hack Steve Keeley thought the Inqy was doing such a good job that Keeley began reading Moran’s reports live on air, without attributing him or the Inqy.


A minor outrage followed, not the least led by Inqy freelancer Amy Quinn, who tweeted again and again and again on the subject. But what else is there to learn, in an age where some say attribution is falling to the wayside?

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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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Disclosures

This is where I will post any potential biases or conflicts of interest. I do not feel the below work or relationships cloud my ethics as a journalist, but transparency is of the utmost importance.

If you have any questions or comments, contact me here. To see a more complete list of my work and professional experiences here.

  • I have contributed to uwishunu.com, an arts and entertainment blog for Philadelphia, that is a product of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corp.
  • I worked with Eugene Martin, a filmmaker and Temple University professor, and he became a mentor of mine from January 2007 onward.
  • I volunteered at the Village of Arts and Humanities in the Fairhill neighborhood of central North Philadelphia from January 2007 to May 2008.
  • I have worked and volunteered in a variety of schools and programs administered by the Philadelphia School District, including, but not limited to, Freire Charter School and the Franklin Learning Center, between January 2005 and My 2008.
  • I reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer from December 2005 to May 2006 and again during summer 2008.
  • I attended Temple University and was involved in a variety of organizations, most notably The Temple News, from August 2004 to May 2008.
  • I have been politically registered as an Independent, affiliated with no political party, since spring 2004, when I first registered to vote.

I have listed the above facts because some may think they could affect my ability to fill my roll as a freelance journalist and blogger here.

On this professional site, I blog about being a young freelance journalist in Philadelphia – with central themes on pitching, writing, researching, networking and happenings in cities everywhere.

Creative Commons License

ChristopherWink.com by Christopher Wink is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

My Life To-do List: A Web site to chronicle my obsession

ChristopherWink.com was always meant to be my professional Web site, where I blogged about the interests and experiences that involve being a young journalist today. I decided I needed a place to display my more personal experiences, particularly pursuing My Life To Do List. I am announcing the soft launch of that site today.

When I was 13, I sat down in my bedroom of my parents’ home in rural northwest New Jersey and I composed a list of 26 things I had to do before I died.

From time to time, I have updated it, so that the list, now in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, is a more than 300-item syllabus for my life. It still governs the choices I make and experiences I want to have. It’s where my money goes and dreams lead.

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