Thanks to the Post-Dispatch; now, Patch.com
Today, I head to New York for three days of orientation at my new job with Patch.com. I’ll be a regional editor in St. Louis for the fast-growing company. How fast growing? When I started interviewing for the position in early June, there were about 60 Patch sites up and running; now there are more than 80. And the feeling I get is that the pace is only going to increase.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Tuesday was my last day at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where I spent eight years as online news director and, in the past couple of years, as an assistant city editor. I had eight good years there and I am am greatly appreciative of the time I spent at the P-D. The people I worked with were all professionals, who cared about journalism and their public service mission. They made me a better journalist. I have always been impressed with the standard my colleagues set for their work, and for the kinds of stories that deserved front-page play. They never settled for the best of the that day’s news; they expected front-page stories to live up to a certain standard before they were considered. It was a wonderful environment in which to work. Read more
Bloggers and mainstream media can cooperate
One of Toby's dino pictures, from the Sinclair station in St. Louis at South Broadway and California, near Interstate 55.
I weary of the drama that exists sometimes between the pure “blogging community” and the so-called “mainstream media.” If we can just communicate, we can work together nicely. I think we’ve missed some opportunities to do that at the Post-Dispatch, but I think we did it right this week with a story that ran on Wednesday.
The story was a brite about the disappearance of the Sinclair Oil dinosaur mascots in St. Louis in the wake of a takeover of the company-owned gas stations. My colleague Matt Hathaway found the tip on a blog called BELTSTL.com, which writes about local preservation and architecture.
It wasn’t hard news, but it was a worthy feature, given how ubiquitous the dinosaurs are on the Sinclair logo and the toys that the stations sell.
While Matt wrote his story, I reached out to the blogger, Toby Weiss, to ask for permission to run some of her pictures of one of the dinosaurs in the paper. She granted it, asking that we credit her by name and by the name of her blog. When the story ran, Matt included this paragraph in the story.
After rebranding of the stations started early this month, a local preservation blog — beltstl.com — broke news of the dinos’ disappearance. And since then, Sinclair enthusiasts have been ramping up their searches.
Toby was also happy to have us work on the story, apparently, because she was “ultra-curious to know” what came of the statues. Toby sent us a nice follow-up after the story ran: “Great reporting makes a good story. So glad you guys did that!”
Catholic blogger honored today with doctorate
Rocco Palmo (by Eric Lunsford, Post-Dispatch)
Today is the day Rocco Palmo receives his honorary doctorate from the Aquinas Institute of Theology, a Dominican seminary near Saint Louis University. Palmo, 27, runs an incredibly popular blog called Whispers in the Loggia, the go-to source for inside information from the Vatican and beyond.
His story is an interesting contract between “new” media bloggers and conventional journalists in a couple of ways.
In a story in Thursday’s Post-Dispatch, my colleague Tim Townsend profiled Palmo, who, in spite of being among the most well-sourced and thorough journalists covering the Catholic church, can’t make a living at it. He lives and works out of his parents’ Philadelphia home.
Tim quoted the Aquinas president in his story:
Rocco has shown that someone with his background — a Christian commitment, but also his abilities and background in journalism — can use the blogosphere in a very powerful way in terms of communicating the message of the church.
I thought Tim’s story turned out well. The challenge was to make sure it was broadened into a piece looking at how Catholics get their news, as well as contrast the amazing work Palmo does against his inability to make a living at it. We didn’t want the story to be naive on that point, nor did we want it to be condescending to the great work that is done throughout the blogosphere. I’d like to think we were able to hit the mark. Read more
In Demand Media’s machine, one cog’s view
As a freelance copy editor for Demand Studios, I know when I’m editing an article by Jason Artman before I ever see his name. His copy is always clean. His voice is authoritative. His steps are clear and easy to follow. It rarely takes more than five minutes to edit one of his 300-to-500-word articles. If every article I edited was that easy, I’d make $42 an hour as a Demand Studios copy editor.
I don’t make $42 an hour.
Demand Studios — an arm of Demand Media — has been in the news a lot lately. Most notably, its business model and its ambitions to score some clients among traditional media outlets have been written up in The New York Times (Feb. 7), Vanity Fair (Feb. 3) and Folio Magazine (Feb. 4). The tenor of the recent articles about Demand ranges from bemused to hostile. Criticism of the company and its business model typically falls into three categories: Read more
A Twain approach to social media separation
They say any anecdote attributed to Mark Twain is probably apocryphal. So here’s one that probably fits that category. Twain, famously a critic of the telephone, supposedly once dismissed a ringing telephone by saying he installed it for his own convenience, not that of his callers.
That anecdote, whether or not it’s apocryphal, came to mind when I read USA Today’s story, “Some ditch social networks to reclaim time, privacy.” The headline pretty much captures the point of the story.
Their reasons run the gamut from being besieged by online “friends” who aren’t really friends to lingering concerns over where their messages and photos might materialize. If there’s a common theme to their exodus, it’s the nagging sense that a time-sucking habit was taking the “real” out of life.
Now people are joking (online, of course, via Twitter, Facebook and other tools) about Google Buzz. “Just got Google Buzz access. Thank God, I needed yet another place to post status updates,” buzzed Jim Brady, with tongue firmly in cheek.
The USA Today spends a lot of time on the trend of some people deleting online profiles or using software to handle the task for them. I favor clicking the “sign out” button when the connections get too much or they get in the way of real life. Accounts on social networking sites are for my convenience.
Kurt's Tweets- Why is this not a national story? Maybe I missed it. Appalling. Disabled woman was tortured and held as a sex slave http://ow.ly/2CiAq
- Bravo. RT @pwthornton: "Banning unsigned online comments undermines the media’s role as a forum for debate.” http://bit.ly/bmZsOn
- I would like to just take the two steps forward and skip the one step back. How about that? Would that be OK?
- Still seeking talented journalists to run #Patch sites in two south St. Louis County communities. Know anyone? http://ow.ly/2Axnv
- Waiting for a listings collector to give her more #Patch marketing cards. The work never stops.