Five Reasons Why your Business Conference Sucks: When I finally met Mack Collier at the recent MarketingProfs B2B Forum Tweetup, I joked that now that we had met in person I no longer need to link to is blog.
I lied.
Mack actually used the conference as a positive example in a post with advice on what a conference should be. My favorite point: speakers should be part of the conference beyond just getting on stage. Why not bring- and get- value for your time and money beyond your canned presentation?
Are Newspaper Editors Still Reluctant to Link to Outside Sources?
Ridiculous, and insulting to readers. To be selfish, it is also immensely frustrating to PR people who place stories that, even in the online version of the story, do not link out to story sources (USA Today, I’m glaring at you).
(Now this is “Old Media!”)
Michael Arrington Makes Sense:
Just when you think TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has let his arrogance get the better of him once again and you are ready to write him off as something les than a journalist, he says something smart about the industry. In this post by Marc Hausman’s “Strategic Guy” blog, Arrington says something that really encapsulates what all journalists need to contend with in the age of blogging:
“We don’t believe that readers need to be presented with the sausage all the time…Sometimes it’s both entertaining and informative to see that Sausage being made, too. The key is to be transparent at all times.”
The too-quick deadlines of new online journalism- and blogging– means that corrections will be more prevalent, as errors of haste will be as well. This also plays into the responsibility of the audience to consider sources, the urgency of stories, and judge the likelihood of errors. Being the audience has gotten harder, hasn’t it? Too bad.
Stop talking about information overload. That term is for weaklings:
That is the money quote from a recent Brazen Careerist post, “How to Feel Like You Have time to Read Everything.” Another point form the post is that the emerging “Generation Y” (God I hate labels like that) grew up being able to process lots of information. This is the way the world is going, more information to digest and more expectation that you should digest more. Does this mean we will get more shallow? Or more broad?
Some Mainstream Media Writers Can’t Help But Knock Social Media:
As someone who has stood with a combination of amusement and horror as newspaper columnist dismiss bloggers as anonymous vipers who all live in their parents’ basements and have no lives, I still can’t help but think many news people are simply biting the hand that reads them when they dismiss the growing communication tools. Take (please!) The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza’s dismissal of Twitter due to three politicians posting dumb or ill-advised Tweets. By that standard, most politicians probably shouldn’t make speeches, go on TV or radio, publish books, or, well, speak at all. Stop blaming the tools. Stop knocking new stuff because it makes you look cool in front of the calcified portion of your audience.
What does it take to get a link on your blog anyway, a trip to Boston? ;) Good to meet you, hope we can do it again soon, and for longer next time!
Hi Doug-
Mainstream writers knock social media because it makes them irrelevant. They lose control to the early adopters who have an opinion- and are going to voice it. Social media amplifies opinions because of its viral nature, but that doesn’t mean people of authority shouldn’t use it or that “negative tweets” is a trend as Cizilla suggests. It’s simply the nature of the tools.
Great Social Media Top 5 this week, Doug. I found that quote from Arrington–and his entire rebuttal–interesting as well. The truth is, the “making of the sausage” can be informative and entertaining, too. And as Mike notes, sometimes it takes partially complete post (“Here’s what we have so far; we’re still working on this.”) to get sources talking and to progress the story. I think that’s one of the beauty of blogs.
Arrington and Jeff Jarvis hit on the idea of “process journalism” vs. “product journalism.” My take is that it needn’t be an either-or question. We can have both.
And as for MSM sites not linking out …. argh, that one kills me. As I often say in presentations, “The web is built on links. So use them.”
Bryan | @BryanPerson