MCOM 407 Final

Why Blog?

What a good question! Why would someone dedicate hours of their free time to writing for (usually) no profit? Blogging can be extremely time-consuming, as I've recently found out, and kind of a hassle. You probably won't get very many views, and maybe it's just been my experience, but you will get made fun of constantly for blogging.

Constantly.

So why do almost 200 million people around the world do it? There are actually quite a few reasons someone might blog. The most obvious answer is "to have a voice." People are becoming more and more me-oriented these days, and I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. People want to be heard, they want their thoughts and opinions to be out there, and they want the opportunity to build an audience. Blogging offers a way to escape the anonymity of market research and offer an opinion, any opinion, about any product or topic, in any way, and put a face behind it. People want to be able to communicate with the people they WANT to communicate with, people they agree with or people they disagree with, and they want to be able to do it from behind the safety of a computer screen and a gravitar (for better or worse). People want to be heard.

Some bloggers are professional bloggers; Perez Hilton, for example, has turned a fascination with celebrities and seminal fluid into not just a career as a blogger, but now as a television personality himself. Arianna Huffington and her crew have created a media empire blogging, using the blog platform to infuse some small journalistic credibility into the blogosphere.

Some bloggers are professional something-elsers, using blogs to either complement their work outside of the internet, as in the case of photographer Patrick Smith, or to merely document/discuss it, as with every asshole celebrity with a laptop.

Some bloggers are even using blogs to become professional something-elsers. A blog is a good way to build up a portfolio quickly and easily, post it for employers to see, and hope for the best. Music blogger Dillon Nestadt, for example, hopes to turn his mediocre blog into a career at a music magazine, and leave behind the cutthroat world of blogging. Brian Stelter of TVNewser has successfully parlayed hours of blogging into a job with the New York Times, proving that it can be done if you're willing to sacrifice the time.

Some bloggers are taking classes in new media, and are blogging as homework assignments, as with all of these people. Some may continue blogging afterwards, some may not.


The Secrets of Great Blogs

There is not a science to blogging, no specific way to make your blog great. In fact, even if your blog WAS great, there is absolutely no guarantee that people would read it; conversely, most blogs out there, even the popular blogs out there, are utter shit. However, having a good blog is probably the first step to building an audience, or at least in the first six or seven steps.

Maybe top ten.

However, great blogs do have a few things in common, a few requisites to making them truly great. Great blogs can not only build an audience, but maintain the audience. They foster a sense of community, and a sense of communication; in fact, some blogs are more notable for their discussion boards than the original posts, such as 4chan, which is almost entirely community-driven. While not all blogs embrace community, the most successful ones certainly do, and now it is standard for most non-blog websites to have a community aspect, even if it's only an afterthought.

Great blogs are noteworthy because they approach topics that the author(s) are passionate about, and the passion shows through. Even if they aren't necessarily experts in their field, the blogger has an obvious love for their topic, which is good because not only does it attract readership, but frankly, it is HARD to write about something you don't care about, especially if you're not getting a specific benefit from the writing (blogging don't pay no bills!).

A great blog is well-written, but that's not always the case: sometimes the content speaks for itself, as with Patrick Smith's photoblog, where his poor writing is ultimately meant as just a bonus insight into the photo of the day. However, having a unique voice is a huge draw, and may be why Perez Hilton is so successful. A good writing style is gravy, a chocolate-covered strawberry on top, but there are countless blogs where the author has no real writing chops, and it shows in the lazy writing style. However, both voice and skill are important.

Another fairly important aspect of a good blog, but not necessarily necessary, is a good blog layout. As with anything else, a professional looking site will increase the value of the blog. Just as with restaurants, presentation is key. A good banner, well designed sidebars, the occasional page background, and a clear and attractive format will make a reader give you a chance when otherwise they might not. If you're using blogspot's default template, everyone's going to know you don't care.

I know you want me to mention 'tribes,' but y'know what? I'm done with this topic.


Grabbing Readers

How does one grab readers? If I knew, I'd be Perez Hilton, and I wouldn't be churning this crap out (I'd be churning out even crappier crap).

But I do have a few ideas.

Much reader-grabbing comes from the previous section, "Great Blogs," so I'll only mention these briefly: attractive format, interesting writing style, engaging community. Other than those, there are still some useful hints.

People like pictures. Preferably pictures of boobs (there's a reason Rob Curley listed Porn as one of his top 5 blogging secrets!), but any cool pictures or videos will help. This goes with attractive format, but it's important enough to mention specifically. Almost all great blogs have a fair text-to-picture ratio, be they entertainment blogs, news blogs, tech blogs, music blogs...even photo blogs throw in the occasional photograph. This isn't to pad the page, but to draw the reader's eye and attention to pages or articles they otherwise might not be interested in.

Links are a nice way to get people's attention, as well as a good way of building relationships with other blogs. If a blog consistently has links that interest me, they'll become a regular bookmark for me. In fact, some of the most succesful blogs offer no content of their own, and are merely aggregators of cool shit. FARK is one of my favorite sites, and all it ever posts is a funny headline, a link, and user comments (that I rarely read). But author Drew Curtis spends hours trolling the web for interesting articles, and I have to admit that I paused writing this for about 15 minutes to read a few links.

As police interviewed Belviso and Skupien, a passenger still in the rear seat of the car, Steven Carney, 17, opened another beer. When Palermo asked Carney what he was doing, he told him, "If I'm going to jail, I might as well be (expletive) juiced."

Gold.

Finally, something that will bring a reader back time and time again is quality content. While this may not be the number one priority for many blogs, it should be! A blog that offers good information or useful news will get repeat readers. Gizmodo and LifeHacker are good examples of this. Both offer practical information in their given fields, quality information that is hard to find elsewhere in such an easy-to-read and interesting format. Further, they utilize pictures, links, involved communities, and charming writing styles to maintain readership. These sites are poster children for what a blog can, and should, be.


Harnessing the POWER of Social Media

It is scary how powerful social media can be.

With Facebook growing at an exponential rate, and Twitter growing at a rate of some sort also, social media is taking over the world. Almost every brand worth a damn, including bands and even politicians, is now utilizing social media to build their community and their name. Barack Obama made headlines during his 2008 campaign by utilizing Facebook, and look where it got him! Using social media networks to build your brand is almost a necessity these days; you'd be hard pressed to find a company still resisting the new wave.

There are many ways to ride this wave.

Many brands will start a Facebook or Twitter page and leave it at that, and that is a pretty decent way to go...but hopefully it's just a first step. Many brands have started their own blogs, which is of course pretty much a given considering this whole thing is about blogging...but it's still important to note. When talking about your blog as brand in question, how can you use social media to build your audience, past making a fan page?

As mentioned above, linking is a good start. It can create conversations with other bloggers, who will link to the conversations...or at the very least, there's always the tit-for-tat theory: you link my back, I'll link yours. It's a good way to expand your fan base, by milking someone else's.

One method I had great success with was starting a conversation on another website, and linking back to my own site. In this case, I went to a band's forum and said something along the lines of "I wrote about this band, what do you think?" I immediately got about 60 hits. Free hits. I've also gotten hits by commenting on another blog entry, without even specifically linking to my blog, instead relying on people clicking my name.

Twittering and Facebooking are nice and simple ways to get some attention, but for the most part, it doesn't get you any attention you didn't already have; it just reminds people about you. When I post on Facebook, the only people seeing it are people following me; at least with Twitter, you'll get the occassional tweet-searcher. Of course, seeing your name on another person's page will serve as free advertising, and that's something we could all use.

There are blog aggregation sites, too. Technorati, Wordpress, BlogCarnival, even Blogtimore will all post your blogs up, easy peasy pie. There are probably specific aggregators for your particular topic. Find them. Exploit them. In music blogs, for example, Hype Machine is the king.


Building Traffic/Search Engine Optimization

I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself a little bit...I'm starting to see alot of overlap amongst these headlines. Since these two topics go hand-in-hand, I'll address them simultaneously.

There are a million ways of building traffic, and the best ones haven't been thought up yet. As soon as a good idea comes along, it gets done to death, and no one pays attention anymore. But marketing moping aside, there are still many good, reliable ways to get hits.

As mentioned above, harnessing social media is a good way to get reliable hits: linking, commenting, conversing, tweeting, blog aggregators, etc. Moving on.

Try get on digg or del.icio.us. I don't know how, but if you can figure it out, you're a champion.

Write the right tags! Besides being a useful tool for categorizing and searching in-site, these are often how a search engine finds your page. Make sure to cover every angle when tagging, include alternate, thesaurical words, and if you really want to nail it, consider commonly misspelled words (there's a reason Google bought gogle.com). If I'm writing about a concert, for example, I'll tag the name of the band, the venue, the genre, maybe a hit song, maybe an album, maybe the singer's name...anything that someone might look for when thinking about the band. "What's that band that does the song xxxxx?" "What's xxxxxx's new band called?" I'll also include the tags 'concert' and 'music,' you never know. I personally try to under- rather than over-tag, but that's only because I'm a coward, and I'm hesitant to look like a tag-spammer. But that's silly. I'll stop. I get it now.

Cover topics that haven't been covered yet, or have been undercovered. One of my most popular pages is about an obscure band at an obscure venue, and the lack of information about them online means that when you google them, I'm one of the top hits. There may only be 1000 people in the world looking for information about that concert, but all 1000 will come to me. Of course, the opposite is also true: if you cover a topic a million people are looking for, even if less than 1% find you, that's still a huge number of hits! Try both approaches, see what happens. Write about Metallica, and write about your neighbor's kid's shitty metal band. You never know.

As for search engine optimization (SEO), one reading that I found infinitely helpful was Google's own starter guide to SEO. It contained a ton of useful tidbits that even an experienced SEO-er might find interesting. SEO is one of those tools that cannot be stressed enough, or over-utilized. There are so many facets and tricks for SEO, and people are always finding ways to trick out their optimizations.

A few tidbits that might help:

As above, tags are awesome. Next.

Use relevant post titles. If someone's on your page and they see a post, they might understand what it's about better than someone who stumbled across it on Google, where it might come off as weird. I don't know if most of your viewership is coming from links or from direct traffic (typing in your URL), but remember that it will be coming from both sides. You'll need to write for both audiences. That goes for content as well as titles, but titles are more important in this case.

Don't be afraid to look at your site through Google's eyes, to see how a searcher will see it. Google yourself. This is what someone else sees when they're looking for a page. If it looks bad, change it! That is one of the most important things you can do!

There are ways to find the best keywords for your particular topic; in fact, Google has provided some extremely good ideas in their Keyword Tool, Google Trends, and their News Categories page. Mess around with those for a little while, and besides figuring out the best keywords to use, you'll also get a really good sense for what works and what doesn't. Google is algorithmic, and people are predictable: patterns emerge. Find them. Use them.

Once you know the keywords to use, figure out the best way to use them! Throw 'em in your headline, drop 'em into the text of your post, don't forget tags, make the keywords your core. I don't condone writing posts based around the keywords, however! Write a headline that's good. Write a post that's good. But if you can slip one in, awesome. If you can use the word "fashion" instead of "style" at a certain time, do so. If your headline makes sense, let it, but keep keywords in mind, because they are your best street team.

Of course, all these tricks are designed to bring traffic to your site...not to keep it there. You're on your own there, fella. I hope your site warrants repeat views, I hope someone reads the previous article you wrote, or even better, the next article you write, but that's all talent. Do you have talent?

Journalism: Too Much Pressure!

Needless to say, there are dozens of things a journalist needs to be wary of when writing an article. Bloggers are less beholden to many of these issues, both legal and ethical, but the closer they adhere to the same rules as a Sun reporter, the more seriously they'll be taken, and the less often they'll get sued.

Unless their name is Perez, in which case there is no reason to be taken seriously, and every lawsuit is another 20,000 hits.

I think the most important rule for any journalist, print or internet, is accuracy. If a journalist is inaccurate, people won't be interested in reading what they have to say, and sources will be less willing to talk to them for fear of being misquoted or misconstrued. A journalist who doesn't verify information is no better than a rumor-monger: they may get much of the story right, but God is in the details.

Further, if a journalist is thoroughly accurate, many other problems will fade into the background; even if he's biased or unfair, as long as his facts are facts, people will listen to him. And, he'll be harder to sue.

That being said, fairness and objectivity (which go somewhat hand in hand) are also hugely important for a writer. It's impossible to take an author seriously who takes a clear side on a not-so-clear issue. If you don't look at both sides of an issue, even if it's just a glance at the opposition's logic, then you're not writing a good article. No good assessment of a complicated matter is totally one-sided; if there was no merit to one side of an argument, it wouldn't be an argument at all. It belittles everyone involved.

The final issue I'll discuss if that of transparency. While many of the legal and ethical issues discussed in the book are important, maybe even more important than transparency, the idea has always been important to me.

Transparency brings with it a kind of automatic trust and respect. It shows a journalist respects the audience enough to tell them of any possible biases he might have, trusting the audience to use its discretion in taking that information as it is, without attributing any unfair subjectivity to it. No one can be totally unbiased, and for a journalist to tell the readers that he is would be ridiculous, and intelligent audiences would dismiss him out of hand. However, telling the audience, for example, "Yes, I vote Republican, but that doesn't mean that this report on Obama is untrue," shows that you respect their ability to distinguish between objectivity and subjectivity.

Even in everyday conversation, transparency brings trust. Phrases like, "I could be wrong, but...," make a speaker seem more trustworthy somehow. There's always the risk that people will think, "Oh, see, he's not 100% about it, he's making it up," and not believe you...but I'm not 100% about anything. And I don't trust people that are.

Oblivious student mauled by bronze tiger

When I was in high school, I took a photo class. The teacher, Mr. Lehr, was an overly ambitious MICA grad, and perhaps he tried to pack in too much for the one-semester class.

Since it was 1998, digital cameras were still priced out of reach, despite being unable to break the megapixel barrier. For this reason, we spent the majority of class-time in the darkroom, developing film and printing test strips, and had little time to discuss or practice photo theory.

The only things he really taught us of practical photography, or at least the only things I remember, were the Rule of Thirds, and to never split a subject's head with a line.

Hooray! It turns out, though I remember little, what I do remember is still good advice. Lighting was also always important to Mr. Lehr, but I never really got it down...and I guess that's something I'll need to work on still. I've always been a big fan of taking shots from odd angles, particularly from below the subject, so I like that Dr. Spaulding (and Patrick Smith) are into that too.

Another thing I have trouble with is not taking enough pictures of a particular shot; I'm always hesitant to take five shots of the same thing, and I'm not sure why. Flashbacks from the days of film? Too lazy to click 'delete' on my Canon? I'm working on it.


Dylan Rothman, a junior at Towson University majoring in business, pushes himself up on a makeshift see-saw for the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity's testicular cancer fundraiser. The 48-hour see-saw-athon was to benefit the Lance Armstrong Foundation, but it was unknown as of press-time how much money was raised, nor whether the fraternity was aware of the irony in see-sawing to benefit testicles.

(Photo by Dillon Nestadt/ Oct. 29, 2008)

Man Accused of Plotting Wife's Murder Commits Suicide

CNN.com reports, a Japanese man accused of arranging his wife's 1981 murder in Los Angeles was found dead in a jail cell Friday night, having apparently committed suicide. The 61-year-old Kazuyoshi Miura had just returned to the United States to face the charge of conspiracy to commit murder.

Miura had been held in Saipan since February on a U.S. warrant for murder and conspiracy, but a judge had ruled that trying him for murder in California would constitute double jeopardy, as he had been cleared of the murder charges in Japan in 1994. He was brought to Los Angeles Friday morning, and was to be arraigned Tuesday, but instead hung himself with a piece of his shirt, police said.

"I'm shocked," his attorney, Mark Geragos said. "One of my lawyers was with him for 12 hours yesterday and he seemed in good spirits. He was looking forward to fighting this." Geragos was informed of the death Saturday morning by prosecutors.

The couple was vacationing in Los Angeles when they were fired upon, allegedly at Miura's signal. Miura was struck in the leg, while his wife, Kazumi Miura, 28, was shot in the head. She was not killed immediately, but in fact survived for a year before dying in Japan. Prosecutors allege that he hired an assassin in order to collect on an approximately $750,000 life insurance policy. A shooter has not been found.

Super-Crazy Japanese Music Event Ever

This Thursday, the 25th, the Ottobar will be be playing host to Baltimore's leg of The JapaNoodle Fever, an eight-date tour with four Japanese pop-punk bands. I plan on attending this event and interviewing as many of the bands as possible: Nippophonia may be an issue.

The headliner, Peelander-Z, is the only act to be currently based in the States, and is therefore the only band I'm confident that I'll be able to communicate with. Unfortunately, as they promote themselves as comic-book characters (not unlike GWAR or the Aquabats), they may be unwilling to speak with me in a serious manner.

Assuming I can find and interview a musician or two, I have several questions prepared:

• What is the difference in reception between American and Japanese audiences? Is there a comparable turnout and demographic?
• What's it like to write/sing songs in your second language?
• What are some of your favorite on-stage antics to perform, and are there any you don't do anymore for safety or other reasons? [Peelander-Z is known for their creative and high-energy show, performing such stunts as 'human bowling' and onstage pro-wrestling.]
• What are some other bands you like for their stage presence, be they Japanese or American?

In terms of advance information, there's a fair amount. All the bands have myspace pages and websites with varying amounts of information, as does the tour itself. Two of the bands have Wikipedia articles (inadmissible, I know), and there is a bit of other information online.

Other relevant details I'll be looking at may include venue information, tour information, and where they get those Playmobil wigs.

The other bands performing are TsuShaMaMiRae, Bakubeni, quaff

I almost didn't notice this assignment...

But I did!

Our book and classroom discussions tell us that the best way to write a lead or short report is to follow these four points:

* Be Specific
* Be Concise
* Avoid Backing In
*Use Active Voice

It is also important to note that the short report should elaborate on the lead without repeating any information. That's the tricky part.

Of course, you also have to be accurate, but I suppose that goes without saying.

Having looked over our classroom Twitter-stash, I've selected three notable Tweets that follow these four points well.

Matt Lund
-System haults hiring as budget cuts draw near
-USM's freeze on hiring could have an impact on Towson's growth as early as 2010 if budget problems persist.

This lead/short report pair was beautifully done, fitting a tremendous amount of specific information into a mere 163 characters. The lead says it well in SVO format, and the short report manages to tell much more than I would have thought possible. Concise and specific. My only real concern is that the lead doesn't specify which system is being discussed, but depending on the context of the headline, it might not need to.

Ed D'Adamo
-TU and the Green campaign makes it easy to recycle.
-The RecycAll program is placing 2,800 single-stream containers around campus. This means less confusion and more convenience for students.

This pair not only uses the active voice to its full potential, but does so while noting the three major names in the game (TU, Go Green, and RecycAll). It also has the specific detail of "2,800 single-stream containers," which is extremely relevant. That Ed discusses the ease of convenience is particularly worthwhile because that is what the article places much of its focus on.

Cara Flynn
-Towson football loses to Richmond.
-The Tiger's 45-14 defeat, in Richmond Saturday afternoon, was due in part to four interceptions thrown by quarterback Sean Schaefer.

The lead says Who and What simply and in active voice. The short report gives the Where, When, How (45-14), and Why (Sean Schaefer sucks) in rapid succession. Of all the Tweets about this article, I think Cara's was the best. It gave all the information possible, and in a manner that makes it look like the 150-character limit was incidental, like hers just happened to be within the limit. I think it's important to mention that it was football; many Tweets assumed you knew, but it could just as easily be a high-scoring baseball game, or a low-scoring basketball game. A reader who isn't particularly familiar with sports schedules or scoring wouldn't know. Also, I found a surprising number of people didn't even give us the score, which is the third most important part of the story, falling only behind Who Played and Who Won!

So, is 'lede' an alternate spelling, or what?

Oftentimes, a news outlet has to consolidate a story into a mere sentence or two, crunching down dozens of facts about an important event into just a few words. The reasons are many, but the effect is always the same: a brilliantly concise declaration of as much information as possible, in as few words as possible.

One common use for this story compression is to create a Summary Lead, which is basically the opening of a news article. A lead is used to grab the readers attention, while simultaneously giving them the most important details of the story.

A good example of a lead is found in the Sun article "Pratt St. plan gets mixed reviews." The lead follows:

"A prominent Baltimore developer says the city's planned $100 million makeover of a 16-block section of Pratt Street is not feasible and would exacerbate existing traffic problems and oversaturate an already ailing downtown with retail space."

This sentence gives some (but not all) of the salient details of the story: Who said What, but not Where, How, or When. The Why of the statement may be implicit: "Because that's how he feels."

A Short Report, meanwhile, is similar to a lead in many ways. It gets as many details as possible into an even smaller space than a lead. It differs mainly in that a short report is usually in present tense, rather than past.

A short report comes in a variety of forms, including screen crawlers, newspaper briefs, and even broadcast news bulletins. The following short report was taken from the Baltimore Sun webpage: "Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy; Merrill Lynch to be acquired by Bank of America."

This sentence gives the most important details of these nationally significant financial events: The Who and the What. Again, the When, How, and Why are missing, while the Where is implied to be merely wherever Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch are headquartered. If that's even worth pointing out.