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Adding to Holly’s post about Twitter, new media blog, Read Write Web, has a piece up on how they use Twitter for journalism. I’ve got my Twitter account set up.

Here is an interesting list of tips about journalistic skills that bloggers should employ and blogging skills that journalists might adopt. I find it somewhat ironic that the journalistic tips for bloggers are actually things that journalists-turned-bloggers should keep in mind for their own blogging efforts. When journalists are forced to blog, it often seems that they think their blog is just a print column posted on the Web.

But our class knows better, right?

FYI: I found this article through Journerdism, a fantastic site (run by Will Sullivan, a fellow Medill MSJ new media alum!) that links to news and resources about online journalism. Subscribe to his feed and you’ll receive his del.icio.us links in your reader. I guarantee these links will introduce you to even more sites that you’ll want to subscribe to. He always links to quality stuff that you should be aware of as an online journalist.

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times. It looks into the lives of some really successful bloggers and how incredibly overworked they are. It also gives a good look into how blogs that make money operate, and how they compensate their writers.

Since we were talking about the Huffington Post the other day, I thought I would share this New York Times article about it.

Citizen Huff

Re: our discussion of the reopening of Boing Boing’s comment system…

One of my favoritest blogs, O’Reilly Radar, just posted several links on online community moderation, including Boing Boing’s moderation guidelines.

Link

There’s an interesting article in the New York Times today about anonymous comments on blog posts and online forums.

Building Traffic to Your Blog
In addition to the links below, check the Blackboard site for Liza’s presentation and various handouts about customizing the design of your blog.
Google Analytics
We set up this account in class by pasting the necessary code into the “footer.php” file for your site. You should be receiving data now and be able to see that someone in Davenport, Iowa spent 4 minutes and 3 seconds perusing your blog on Tuesday night because she did a Google search for “crazy analytics stalker” and your blog came up. If you’re not seeing data, let me know.

Google Webmaster Tools
We also set up this account to ensure that Google is aware of your site’s existence. Google will send out its “spiders” to “crawl” your site soon (creepy metaphor, huh?) and index your pages. You can speed up this process by using the optimization tools found on this site. Unlike analytics, you probably won’t see data for a few weeks or a month because Google doesn’t know you exist yet. But check back regularly to see if you have data. And be sure that you have already followed the next link to…

Add Your URL To Google
Google is a great search engine, but it’s not psychic. Add your URL to its list of sites to be indexed by following the instructions. This will hopefully get the ball rolling so that you can get some data on your Google Webmaster Tools site.

Google Blog Search
Find bloggers who write about topics similar to you (a.k.a. the competition), but don’t look at them as competition. Add them to your Blogroll and engage with their sites by reading and leaving comments. Blog linking and commenting are a two-way street and you will probably boost traffic to your site if you do this.

Google Keywords Tool
Use this tool to find out which keywords appear frequently in your blog or related blogs. This will give you an idea of potential tags you can use for your posts to increase search engine optimization and make them easier to find by Web surfers.

Linkvendor.com
This site has a lot of useful Web site data just waiting to be harvested. Choose from the options in the left menu, type in your URL and watch the hours slip away as you find out everything from how many outbound links you have on your site (Outbound Links) and which words appear most frequently in your posts (Keyword Density) to how high your blog appears in search engine results for a given keyword (SERPs Position).

Websitegrader.com
Get a free “marketing report” for your site. Even if you leave all of the fields blank (competitors, keywords, etc.), you can get a nifty marketability effectiveness score. The report will also tell you if there are things you can improve about the content on your site to make it more easily “spidered” and recognized by search engines, such as adding Alt tags to photos (the little descriptive tags that appear when your mouse hovers over an image). My blog (See how I just plugged it there? That’s what you should do to build traffic! Plug away!) received a score of 91 out of 100, so that’s the score to beat.

Audio Assignment Stuff
You need two-party (you and the person you’re interviewing) consent to record a phone call in Illinois. Don’t be sneaky.
Freeconferencecall.net offers free recording when you create an account.

Grand Central is an awesome service that also offers free recording, but Google just bought it and you have to sign up to be issued an account now. Even if you don’t get to use it for this assignment, it’s worth signing up for.

Audacity
This is the audio-editing software you will be using to edit your audio assignment. You should already have fond memories of Audacity from your glory days in Methods, but if you skipped Methods or have a short memory, here’s the handout on audio editing.

Patrick Temple-West posted twice last week about a "60 Minutes" piece on the Millennial generation in the work force. The first post, 60 Minutes discovers young professionals, did a nice job of adding context. I particularly liked his link to a Wall Street Journal article mentioned on the show (blaming TV’s Mr. Rogers for today’s attitudes) and to a CBS News/Associated Press article about how baby boomers aren’t planning to leave the work force soon. Three days later, Patrick followed up with a post about articles quoting two workplace experts (one from the Moose Jaw Daily Times, believe it or not) about Millennials. In the second post, he notes that neither of the experts cites much real evidence. I wonder if Patrick could do some more research and find some more authoritative work on the subject? I Googled "millennials workplace" and found some interesting stuff. Or, how about a roundup of blog reaction to the "60 Minutes" piece?

Kelsey Blackwell, Ava Tabb and Caroline Kim all presented their interview transcripts well (see Kelsey’s, Ava’s and Caroline’s). Note that all of them changed typography for the questions and answers. Kelsey’s and Caroline’s might have been made even more readable if, like Ava, they had included a blank line between questions and answers. I also like Caroline’s roundup of blog and other reaction to this week’s news about inflation. I especially like the link to the Paper Economy blog’s very useful analysis of the inflation news.

Laura Kaliebe has a nice touch with headlines; for instance, "Taking the football field…sans pompoms" and "Honk if you drive a big rig: Trucking industry, facing shortage, turns to women." What I like about them is that they are cleverly worded, while also being clearly descriptive of the content. That’s especially true of the second one — it shows you can be clever *and* have a headline that will be understood by search engines. The first one meets the clever standard, but would not work so well for search engines. Suppose she’d written: "Taking the football field…sans pompoms: Texas’ only female high school gridiron coach"?

Eric Kroh did something cool — link from his blog to a story he covered in the Chicago newsroom. If the timing were to work out right, it would be great to link the other way around as well.

Whitney McFerron had a good "get" for her audio interview: the communications director for the Illinois ACLU. It was a really timely interview because of recent issues involving the First Amendment at Morton West High School. My one complaint: the transcript should have linked to Whitney’s earlier post about Morton West. Remember that your job as a blogger is to help people understand what’s happening in the news. Linking to your own posts is one of the best ways to do that.

I’m going to reiterate: Proofread your posts! I found quite a few spelling or grammar mistakes. In class on Monday, I’m going to recommend that you consider using DreamWeaver as your text editor. Among other reasons, DreamWeaver has built-in spellcheck capabilities.

Semi-regularly over the next few weeks, I am going to link to blog posts from our class members that I liked — and an explanation of why.  I’m hoping these will serve as inspiration and help you understand what I’m looking for in a blog post.  I’ll try to pick out examples relevant to others in the class.

Anyway, here are a few posts I liked:

• Joyce Chang’s post, “Study examines the link between sex education and teen pregnancy” is strong because of the depth in which Joyce describes the study, the fact that she links to other opinions about it.
• “Does a female front-runner make the race different?” by Jenny Hunsperger uses scannable-writing techniques extremely well.
• I like Whitney McFerron’s post “Jesuit school officials confiscate sex-themed magazine issue” because she links to previous coverage of a related event previously covered by her blog.   And her post, “Students suspended, face expulsion for cafeteria anti-war protest” includes links to coverage of the story in mainstream media as well as commentary in the blogosphere. (Good headlines, too, with a lot of detail.  BUT, for search engines, adding a city or state name in the headline would increase the chances these posts will be discovered.)
• Satta Sarmah’s post “Minority Contracts” is good because in addition to reporting just on minority contracts in Chicago, Satta dug up examples of other cities where minority contracts have been relatively rare.   (One criticism: The headline would be more likely to attract readers if it were longer and more specific.)
• Ki Mae Heussner’s post  ”Frustrated with public transit? Take it to the ‘net“  is good because it expands beyond the story of one upset Bay Area commuter/blogger to encompass commuter blogs in other communities, including Chicago.  I also like her elegant and clean WordPress theme.  (It looks like Ki Mae has not configured her blog for search engine-friendly URLs, though.  See handout entitled “Configuring your WordPress site – Step by step.”)

In general, I’d like to see more posts that contain additional context beyond the main focus of the post.  Context can be provided in a number of ways:

• Interpretation.  What does this latest event mean?  How does it connect to previous events?
• Links to other stories, current or previously, about this topic
• Links to blogs or online communities where people are commenting on or reacting to these events

Also, one general warning: Watch your spelling and grammar!  I’ve found a number of misspelled words, including :

• “recieve” (for “receive”)
• “rescission” (for “recession”)
• “gren” (for “green”)
• “chagne” (for “change”)

Tadeusz Szewczyk has a nice list of strategies for getting more traffic to your blog.

You  might also be interested to know that I discovered this post via my Google Alert for “online publishing.”