Real New Media

Craigslist Worship

I loved this article in Dig (a free Boston weekly).  Do we see chinks in the Craigslist armor?  One truly does get what one pays for. 

The Search

I'm reading John Battelle's book called "The Search". Just about finished.  Although it's not going to win a Pulitzer Prize, it's a pretty good essay on the search economy and the rise of Google.  It further establishes how we in the newspaper Internet business have pretty much been asleep at the wheel with our platform-shift web businesses.  Time for us all to get out and get moving.

Here are a couple of links.

- Presentation I made at SNA Classifieds.  This is an overview of an Integrated Marketplace Strategy.  It works better with me talking it through but you all should get the idea.  The blueprint slide (second last) is probably the most instructive.  NOTE:  I just realized this is an early rev of the presentation.  Anybody who wants the real deal, email me and I will send it to you.
- www.scroogle.org  After reading Battelle, I'm beginning to lean away from "Google worship".  This engine actually scrapes Google search results but presents them without the ads.  The site is part of GoogleWatch.  www.google-watch.org  They look to be the last bastion of Internet cowboys but it's nice to see a bit of balance come back to our world. 
Another engine recommended:  www.clusty.com  Pretty good organic results.
Maybe we won't all end up working for Google after all.

Bringing the Message to Circ Directors

I'm headed to the New England Newspaper Association meeting this week, particpating on a panel discussing growing audience.  My particular part of the discussion is growing the online audience through "engagement", read citizen journalism.  A big topic for us certainly but what I would like to do is to "tie it back", so to speak, to print somehow.  There are a couple of examples of this out there - YourHub.com, NorthwestVoice.com, but not many.  Any ideas you folks have are more than appreciated.
I will post my presentation here later in the week.  One thing my research has revealed, newspapers remain more or less clueless about the extent of Cit-J in their own backyards.  What a surprise.

Welcome

Ah, my first blog post.  After only a little trepidation, I decided to give this a shot.  Partially because I feel a need to understand blogosphere, partially because I know you all have something worthwhile to say, and partially to add my own two cents to the conversation.

What conversation?  At this point, with this blog, it's the conversation about what we do and where we're going.  And, in the spirit of a living-learning-laboratory, the blog itself becomes part of the learning process.

So, expect me to stumble, try new things, make assumptions that I know what I'm talking about when maybe I don't, posit ideas just see how you will react and generally attempt to discover. 

Post away, kids.  And keep on rockin in the free world.

RPK