Saturday, July 11th, 2009

How to blog without killing yourself

As a kind of coda to this week’s series on blog longevity, here’s a nice (and long) video from Tim Ferriss about how to make blogging easy. Lots of good stuff here. https://videopress.com/v/wp-content/plugins/video/flvplayer.swf?ver=1.12 Key points: You don’t have to post every day (he posts two or three times a week) Write your passion – not […]

Friday, July 10th, 2009

The five pillars of blog longevity, part 5

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5 The last part of this series on keeping a blog going beyond the point at which most people give up is all about interaction. 5) Have a conversation Blogging is a lonely business – which is why most people prefer hanging out on Facebook with […]

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

The future of digital publishing – a conversation

Today I’ve invited another blogger to join me in a discussion about the future of web journalism and the economics of publishing in a rapidly digitising world. Blogging about the world of amateur horticulture under the name Soilman (well, it’s nice to have a hobby), he also has wide experience in journalism and editorial training. […]

Friday, June 26th, 2009

Blogs are dying. Great news for bloggers… and journalism graduates

It seems that “the long tail of blogging is dying”. For those who prefer English to techie jargon, the long tail refers to the millions of blogs with few incoming links, compared to a relatively small number of dominant blogs with many thousands of readers and lots of presence in the wider web.  But this […]

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Web identity and old media thinking

I posted earlier about my run-in with the Centre for Journalism at the University of Kent.  I had commented on a blog post by professor Tim Luckhurst on the need for journalists (particularly students) always to use the phone and nothing but the phone when sourcing stories. In the comments to his blog, I argued his underlying […]

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

I soar up the Technorati rankings

Out of curiosity, I just went back to Technorati for the first time, probably, since I registered there.  Kind of gratifyingly, I find I am now ranked at 2,476,024 in the universe of blogs. Well, in the universe of Technorati-registered or otherwise noted blogs. I don’t actually know the difference, strictly speaking.  Eagle-eyed readers with a […]

Monday, April 27th, 2009

How to build your online community

No, it’s not advice from me. It’s advice from hyperactive blogmeister John Scalzi, who has posted a handy video of a forum from the Tools of Change online media publishing conference thing in New York in February. I was aware of the event, and it looked very interesting. I would have liked to have gone […]

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

I enjoy blathering about journalism to Kingston students

Today I spent an hour in a vast lecture theatre giving a talk about freelance journalism to first-year students at Kingston University.  It was great fun, actually, and I got to use their super high-tech AV equipment (which luckily didn’t break down on me). That’s me on the right looking suitably dorky in front of […]

Friday, April 10th, 2009

The blogger's brick wall

A quick look at this blog’s stats shows a bit of a nosedive of views over the past few days. Yes – we’re coming into Easter, and I’ve noticed that people tend to look at blogs during the working week rather than at weekends or holidays. But it’s clear that traffic has some kind of […]

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

My first-year student blog masterclass

A last-minute booking to sit in on first-year undergrads at UCA Farnham’s journalism course means I get to wade through a pile of blogs in a professional capacity – as opposed to my usual practice of wading through a pile of blogs for geeky fun. The students are doing the online module, which means they […]