thoughtsignals

Mediapost writer Karl Greenberg has put a stake in the heart of a buzz campaign for a riding lawnmower. Maybe.

“I torpedoed a buzz campaign. I feel really awful about it. Especially since it’s a good campaign.

…

You see, my story — the one I wrote about the fictional grass and the fictional blogs about the grass — shows up on the very top of the list of results you get when you type in … the name of that fictional grass. “

Well, actually his story isn’t appearing at the top of the search results for Google any more. This morning it’s No. 4; No. 3 is another blog post about the incident, and the top two are links to sites that are actually part of the campaign.

You can see the search results here.

Just kidding. I’d love to have your ads (maybe, we can talk).

But for advertisers wary of placing ads in places where the content may be unpredictable and perhaps inappropriate, Feedburner has introduced AdClimate. The tool enables advertisers to identify key words that are problematic and keep their ads off posts that contain those key words.

By way of example, let’s say you have an aversion to the word, “wingnut” and the thought of your ad for pinenuts showing up in a publisher’s blog post about the history of wingnuts would be totally unacceptable (hey - who are we to judge?) AdClimate to the rescue. In addition to screening a multi-language default list of inappropriate language, advertisers can submit their own list of keywords next to which they don’t want their ad to appear - wingnuts and all.

Do other online ad providers, like Google, do this? I don’t know. I bet this will be popular, though.

Link.

N&O Editor Melanie Sill outlines the difference between what her paper is reporting on the Duke lacrosse case compared to at least some of what has appeared on blogs before the N&O reported it.

We heard all kinds of rumors and tips, but we don’t publish unattributed rumor and we almost never quote unidentified sources. Much of this gossip went right up on blog posts, but we used such leads and rumors as initial information that had to be fleshed out on the record or through independent verification.

She does a nice job calmly laying out the difference between what the N&O is doing in the name of traditional journalism compared to what some bloggers have done. And I think she manages to avoid re-opening the whole “blogging vs. journalism” hobgoblin.

Also, she notes that Roy Cooper has (apparently) refused interview requests from N.C. media but jumped at a chance to go on 60 Minutes.

Cooper is North Carolina’s attorney general and has a responsibility to speak to the local community, including reporters who work to inform people here. It’s ironic that after condemning Mike Nifong’s play-to-the-cameras actions, Cooper gave exclusive access to a national television program.

Link.

Online Journalism Review has a Q&A with Baristanet co-founder Debbie Galant, a former New York Times Columnist.

On the site’s approach to journalism: “We are much more … shooting from the hip and smart-alecky. We’re more like the front of the book in Newsweek or like those sly Entertainment Weekly-type magazines.”

On earning a living: “We’re now after two years really starting to make some decent money. It took at least that long to build up the readership so we could become a viable competitor in the local advertising market. It certainly helped that during that time Liz and I both have husbands who were bringing in the health insurance and the steady income.”

On the competition: “Our shining hours have been during fires and this microburst last summer that was just like a tornado and that’s when we utilized the medium really well. … And the local newspaper surprisingly enough, even though they were out reporting it and even though they have a website, they didn’t use that material and saved everything for their newspaper on Thursday–which was two-and-a-half days after everything happened. And so we just really felt like we completely kicked their butts.”

This is fascinating stuff, well worth a read if you’re interested in the future of local journalism and in the idea of hyperlocal journalism especially.

Link.

Fast Company has a short piece on “how to launch a career with a blog.”

Blogging can be transformative –- placing you on a new career path, earning you a book deal, or catapulting you into the field of your dreams. Just ask some of the folks we spoke with.

Actually, it’s more like a few examples of people who have gotten new gigs — book deals, consulting work, etc. — with their blogs. The “how-to” component isn’t there so much. There is, however, a slideshow about how to grow readership on your blog.

The News & Observer has a big Sunday package that asks “Should bloggers have a code of ethics to follow?”

It includes essays by Anton Zuiker and Ruby Sinreich as well as brief profiles of some Triangle bloggers.

Anton writes:

… we haven’t agreed on a blogger code of ethics, and we never will. That’s because anyone can be a blogger, and a blogger can be anyone. In America, we don’t require artists or novelists or songwriters or talk show hosts or cell phone conversationalists to swear on a code of ethics for their chosen medium of expression. Don’t think that bloggers will be the first.

I think Anton’s got it right: Blogging by itself is a form of expression. Use it for journalism and maybe you should follow something like a journalist’s code of ethics. Or maybe you could adopt some basic principles, as Jeff Jarvis has.

Jeff Jarvis has a great post on credibility, integrity and blogging:

It is fine for a blogger or newspaper or vlogger or TV show to take advertising, clearly labeled. It is wonderful for a blogger to get paid to write, editorially. But when you write what a commercial interest tells you and pays you to write, then you are no longer speaking as yourself but in the service of that marketer. That’s fine, too, but it isn’t content. It is advertising (or advertorial, same difference). See Rules 2 and 3.

This all seems simple and obvious to me. But it’s not obvious to others, who think they can buy bloggers’ opinions and with it that buzz. They don’t understand that buzz, too, is earned. And they don’t understand that once a blogger — or journalist or publication or friend, for that matter — is bought and paid for, the credibility and value of their voice is reduced or ruined.

Credibility is the cake you can’t have and eat, too.

Jarvis’ post includes his four-point pledge of credibility and transparency, which any blogger could adopt as a kind of “blogger code of ethics.” It’s important to remember that this is not simply about doing the right thing or behaving ethically, this is about retaining your audience. If people are confused about what’s paid for on your blog and what represents your true opinions, they get less value from your blog. Less value means less reason to read, less reason to subscribe. That means lower traffic. And if you’re trying to earn money from advertising, that means less revenue.

Link.

Online Journalism Review has a great Q&A with John Battelle (the guy behind Federated Media and Searchblog) about online journalism, blogging, and (most interesting to me) the business model for online journalism.

There’s no doubt that traditional media can and will continue, but it has a hard hump to get over. Traditional media is in the business of sort of corralling talent. [As a newspaper reporter], you don’t talk to readers. Your job is to talk to your sources. Institutionally, these organizations have grown up managing reporters, not talent. When I was editing at Wired, my job was to produce writers and manage 50-150 talented, half-crazy freelance writers, and I think it really got me ready to do what I’m doing now. People with influential blogs are talent and they don’t want to be told what to write about.

There’s an interesting dynamic going on in new media right now.

The big old media companies (newspapers, TV stations, etc.) are losing their audiences and their share of advertising money; they’re trying to figure out how to integrate new media (Internet, mobile, etc.) into a new business model to make up for the business they’re losing. If they’re not successful at this, then we’ll have a lot of big companies that will eventually go out of business — with all the attendent economic and social chaos that causes.

At the same time, we have scads of small new online media companies, like Federated Media and Gawker Media, trying to figure out an online-only (or online-mostly) business model. (For example, consider the issues PodTech is facing trying to balance production and bandwidth costs with advertising revenue.) The small new media companies don’t have much to lose, in a way — it’s not an industry with hundreds of thousands, or millions, of employees, investors counting on their success for their retirement investment, etc. But they have a lot to gain, obviously. (The individuals working in those small media companies are risking a lot, but it’s mostly their individual risk.)

Will the big media and little media meet in the middle? Maybe.

Will all the little new media startups get bought out by Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. and essentially become small pieces of giant media/tech companies? Maybe. (And if that happens, do we risk losing the valuable diversity that lots of small companies bring to the ‘Net?)

Will the big media companies eventually wake up and figure it out and win the battle for the fast-growing online advertising pie? Maybe.

Will the little companies outmaneuver the big companies and make lots of individual bloggers and techies, if not rich, at least as well off as they would have been if they’d worked for a big traditional company? Maybe.

Will several of the above choices happen simultaneously? Are there other possibilities?

I don’t know the answer, but I think that making a living in the media right now is, existentially speaking, both scary and exciting because of the transition we’re seeing. And I think John Battelle and Robert Scoble, among others, are both likely to be among the first people to figure all this stuff out.

Since my earlier post (written at 11:27 a.m. but not posted ’til 11:41 a.m.; guess I don’t need to say when I actually write these things), I’ve also met these folks, who I hadn’t met before: Fec Stench, Diane Davis, David Allen, Billy Ingram, Mathew Gross and others whose names I’ve forgotten (I’m very sorry; if you know who you are, please feel free to leave comments).
What struck me most about this whole event (this is the second conference of this type) is how smart the conversations can be when you get folks together in a room. Everybody gets smarter when they’re talking together.

That said, I left the afternoon session on “NORGS” (please find another term; this is an abominable abuse of the English language :-)) feeling that the surface had barely been scratched. I also felt there wasn’t really enough time for the journalists and nonjournalists in the room to meet together on some kind of common intellectual ground. It just seemed like the group never got far enough into the issues so that the newspaper people could see where some folks, particular the blogger/activists in the room, were coming from, and those folks never quite understood what the newspaper folks face. If everybody left the conference wanting more, though, that’s a good thing.

I could be wrong; I’m open to alternative interpretations. Anyone care to comment?

It’s 11:27 a.m., I’m sitting in the Robert and Maryam Scoble session on “10 ways to a killer blog.” Nice thing about these sorts of meetings is I get to catch up with people I don’t see (especially in the real world) very often.

So far, I’ve had a chance to catch up, at least briefly, with Ed Cone, Anton Zuiker, Herb and Susan Everett, Mark Binker, Jon Ham (my boss from the late ’90s when I was at The Herald-Sun), Lex Alexander (am I forgetting anyone?). I also got a chance to meet Sue Polinsky, who I’ve talked to on the phone several times but had never met in person.

I’m also following Robert and Maryam’s tip No. 4: “Link to other blogs.”