Tag Archives: Blogging
Techdirt to offer premium content
by Chris Roush
The technology news site Techdirt is offering a new subscription service that allows readers to read, among other things, stories before they are posted and stories that may never get posted.
Mike Masnick of Techdirt writes, “It has many of the same offerings that the original had, but a bunch of new and expanded offerings as well. It’s designed more as a store than a “tiered” setup, so shop around a bit. We’ll have a few more posts highlighting some key features and merchandise, but for those of you already familiar with the Techdirt Crystal Ball — which allows you to get early access to some stories and preview the headlines of others — that’s still around, but it’s now been expanded, so you get to see some stories up to two hours early, rather than just one. And, if you sign up for a premium package, you can even get the brand new Crystal Ball Plus, which gives you pretty detailed access to all sorts of posts we’re working on, including false-start stories that never make it onto the site, and some works that are very much in progress. If you’re already a Techdirt Crystal Ball subscriber, your account has been upgraded to the new version, meaning you get to see more stories earlier, and you get some other features.
“We also have some brand new features on the site for Insiders, including the new First Word/Last Word offering, which I’ll have another post discussing in more detail a little later today. There’s also the brand new Insider Chat which all of you should be able to see to your right. Certain Insider membership packages allow you to join in the chat. Without one of those… you can still view the chat, but you can’t participate. Also, for those who sign up for longer term packages, we have a number of offerings, including special Insider Hangouts (using Google+’s Hangouts feature), which should be a lot of fun. Check out the store for a detailed explanation of all the new blog features that are available.”
Read more here. Techdirt is also offering that it will shut its site down for one day for $1 million.
Social media is part of this real estate reporter’s routine
by Chris Roush
Regan Pecjak and Paola Soto of U-T San Diego write about how the paper’s real estate reporter, Lily Leung, uses social media to cover her beat.
Pecjak and Soto write, “Leung blogs, tweets and uses storify, a web application that allows for the creation of stories from social media resources, just to name a few. She is constantly active on social media, including on Twitter where she has more than 10,000 tweets and 4,000 followers.
“Leung uses social media for more than just work. She said it is important to combine tweets for work with tweets about her life, for example. Leung said it shows the reporter is a real person rather than just a story producing robot.
“She added that people often reach out to her through social media with tips for stories.
“‘My daily routine involves blogging,’ Leung said.
“She tries to post every day and sometimes even more frequently.
“Leung admitted to not always having ideas for her blog posts, but said in these situations she oftentimes posts questions for readers to answer.”
Read more here.
Dallas biz magazine launches health care biz news site
by Chris Roush
D CEO business magazine in Dallas has launched a new site called D Healthcare Daily that covers the area’s health care industry.
Christine Perez, the managing editor of D CEO, explains the rationale behind the new site in an email to Talking Biz News:
After the success of RealPoints, a commercial real estate news site we launched last year, we began looking at other industries to cover. Health care was an obvious choice. The sector adds $52 billion to the regional economy annually and supports more than 600,000 local jobs. What’s more, the industry is experiencing unprecedented change. We also felt it wasn’t getting the local media attention it deserved, with the two local dailies both laying off their health care reporters in the last year or so.
We found an ideal editor in Steve Jacob, a freelance writer who spent 13 years as a publisher for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram,where his health care columns were distributed nationally by McClatchy Tribune News Service. Steve serves as an adjunct faculty member at the University of North Texas School of Public Health and has three master’s degrees: in journalism, business administration, and health policy and management. He also is the author of “Healthcare in 2020: Where Uncertain Reform, Bad Habits, Too Few Doctors, and Skyrocketing Costs are Taking Us.”
Steve is being supported by the editorial team at D CEO magazine.
D Healthcare Daily also features a growing number of contributing editors — industry thought leaders who provide on-the-ground perspectives and insights. (We have about 35 contributing editors on board now. I expect that we’ll ultimately have 60 to 80, as the industry is so deep and broad, and because many of these busy experts will write only once every 12 or 16 weeks.)
The contributing editor modelis one that has been used with much success at RealPoints, and it fits with our mission of supporting and strengthening relationships within specific business clusters. These bloggers were selected and invited to participate by D CEO editors. As with RealPoints, we looked for people who are informed, respected, and opinionated, and who represent a variety of fields within the industry.
How Bloomberg helped the SCOTUS blog
by Chris Roush
Keach Hagey of The Wall Street Journal writes Friday about how Bloomberg Law’s sponsorship of the SCOTUS blog helped it handle the overwhelming increase in traffic Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled on the administration’s health care laws.
Hagey writes, “That changed last fall, when Bloomberg Law became the SCOTUSblog’s exclusive sponsor. The multiyear sponsorship, whose terms haven’t been disclosed, has enabled the site to build out its platform while remaining free — and ending Mr. Goldstein’s heavy cash outlay, he said.
“Larry Thompson, the CEO of Bloomberg Law, said Thursday that ‘the incredible public service that we see demonstrated by SCOTUSblog today’ was the primary reason that the company wanted to do the sponsorship. But the sponsorship also includes a swapping of links between Bloomberg Law and SCOTUSblog and a way of exposing law students, who are eager readers of the blog, to the Bloomberg Law brand.
“Accommodating the huge traffic surge was expensive. SCOTUSblog beefed up its server capacity from one to six and had five reporters and two technical staffers on hand to cover the news. ‘We spent $25,000 just to get through this morning,’ Mr. Goldstein said.
“But Mr. Goldstein isn’t worried about having to sustain the costs for too long. While the site had received more than three million hits by mid-afternoon the day of the historic ruling, he said, ‘next Thursday we could be back down to 40,000.’”
Read more here.
Reuters, WSJ, Milwaukee and Detroit papers among Loeb winners
by Chris Roush
Felix Salmon of Reuters and The Wall Street Journal are winners of Gerald Loeb Awards, considered the Pulitzer Prizes of business journalism.
Salmon won in the blogging category. Reuters also won in the news service category for “Shell Games” by Brian Grow, Kelly Carr, Laurence Fletcher, Nanette Byrnes, Matthew Bigg, Joshua Schneyer, Cynthia Johnston and Sara Ledwith.
Mark Maremont, Tom McGinty, Jon Keegan, Palani Kumanan, Sarah Slobin and Neil King Jr. were the team at the Journal who won for “Jet Tracker” in the online enterprise category.
Walter Isaacson won in the book category for his Steve Jobs biography. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo received an honorable mention in the book category for “Poor Economics.”
Brent Snavely, Greg Gardner and Chrissie Thompson for “GM-UAW Contract Negotiations” in Detroit Free Press won in the breaking news category.
In medium and small newspapers, there were two winners: Raquel Rutledge, Rick Barrett, John Diedrich, Ben Poston and Mike de Sisti for “Shattered Trust” in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Spencer Soper and Scott Kraus for “Inside Amazon’s Warehouse” in The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa.
The Journal Sentinel’s John Fauber won in the beat reporting category for “‘Side Effects’ Beat Reporting.“
Peter Elkind, Jennifer Reingold and Doris Burke won the Loeb in the magazine category for “Inside Pfizer’s Palace Coup” in Fortune.
Penelope Wang, Kim Clark and Lisa Gibbs won the Loeb in the personal finance category for “‘Protecting Your Parents’ Series“ in Money.
Zanny Minton Beddoes, Edward Carr, John Peet, Patrick Foulis and John O’Sullivan won the Loeb in the commentary category for “Euro Zone” in The Economist.
In the broadcast enterprise category, the winner is Laura Sydell and Alex Blumberg for “When Patents Attack,” a collaboration between NPR and This American Life.
“60 Minutes” won in the explanatory category, while Ken Bensinger for “Wheels of Fortune” in the Los Angeles Times won in the large newspaper category.
The awards are being handed out at a dinner in New York, and this prestigious award program recognizes and honors journalists who have made significant contributions to the understanding of business, finance and the economy.
Puget Sound Business Journal folds Tech Flash back into site
by Chris Roush
In October 2008, the Puget Sound Business Journal hired two tech reporters from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and let them start a standalone tech site called TechFlash.
But in March 2011, the two journalists left the American City Business Journals newspaper and started a tech news site of their own called GeekWire. Since then the Business Journal has been keeping TechFlash going with its own staff.
Now, TechFlash is being folded into the Business Journals’ site and will no longer be standalone, writes George Erb, the editor of the paper.
Erb writes, “We decided to change TechFlash from a freestanding website to a Business Journal blog because we wanted to return tech news to the Business Journal’s bread-and-butter business coverage, instead of presenting it as an isolated subject. Technology is an integral part of the Puget Sound economy, and we want to approach and deliver our coverage in ways that reflect that reality.
“Rather than split our TechFlash and Business Journal audiences, we decided to integrate the two for a better reader experience. Readers will benefit from an integrated search that includes both tech and general-business stories.
“We kept the TechFlash name because of its strong brand identity. Readers clearly value TechFlash content. Many features on the new TechFlash blog will be familiar to readers. The blog will continue to post breaking tech news from the central Puget Sound region and beyond, written by Business Journal staffers and journalists at affiliated newspapers nationwide. The blog also will continue to include more in-depth stories and analysis, profiles, and Q&As with tech leaders. Increasingly, readers should see stories that originate with other Business Journal beats — aerospace or commercial real estate, for example — but have a tech component.”
Read more here.
The teenager scooping biz journalists with his Apple coverage
by Chris Roush
Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune writes about Mark Gurman, the 18-year-old high school student who has been beating the other business media with his scoops on Apple that he writes for Seth Weintraub’s 9to5Mac.
Elmer-DeWitt writes, “I ran into Gurman in San Francisco, where he is attending Apple’s developer sessions. He clammed up when I asked him where he gets his stories. But Weintraub — who hired Gurman two years ago when he realized the teenager had his finger on Apple’s pulse — was more forthcoming. Some of his stories come from sources inside Apple, but most are based on what used to be called old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting — poring over Apple’s published documents and building a network of Apple developers and parts suppliers that he hammers relentlessly.
“Gurman is a little worried that the attention he’s been getting — we wrote about him last week and Bloomberg News mentioned his work on Tuesday — could bring down Apple’s wrath.
“But he also craves Apple’s recognition. He lights up when he hears that Apple public relations has asked about him, and he mentions proudly that senior VP Phil Schiller knows who he is. A few months ago, someone prank-called Schiller claiming to be Gurman. Mark got a call the next day from Apple PR saying that if he wanted any information about the company, he should go through their department.”
Read more here.
Forbes expansion on web comes with pain
by Chris Roush
Lauren Indvik of Mashable writes about the growing pains at Forbes being experienced by allowing online contributors without first vetting their content.
Indvik writes, “The system allows Forbes.com to produce more content more quickly. It also saves the publication the cost of hiring and maintaining editors.
“But it comes with other costs. Take a post Ironfire Capital’s Eric Jackson posted to Forbes.com late last month titled, ‘Sheryl Sandberg is the Valley’s ‘It’ Girl – Just like Kim Polese once was.’ The post provoked angry reactions from many in the tech and media industries, who found it ‘sexist’ and ‘ridiculous.’
“In our interview, D’Vorkin said that Forbes vets its contributors ‘very carefully,’ but that contributors are ultimately accountable for the content they publish. ‘If they do a good job, they build a following. If they don’t do a good job being accountable for their content, people aren’t going to trust them,’ he said.
“But, I would argue, posts like Jackson’s don’t just reflect badly on Jackson. They reflect badly on the whole Forbes brand. When some complained about the article, they didn’t mention Jackson — they mentioned Forbes.”
Read more here.
The most influential tech bloggers
by Chris Roush
Sam Narisi of ITManager Daily has a list of the 100 most influential tech bloggers.
Here are some of his picks:
Chris Ziegler of The Verge: Chris is a senior editor for The Verge covering the latest news and developments in mobile technology, well respected for his writing and reporting.
Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat: Dean is a lead writer for VentureBeat, covering video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. He is known as an expert on the gaming industry, with a focus on Xbox.
Eric Savitz (right) of Forbes: Known for his popular Tech Trader Daily blog, Savitz covers the latest tech and investing news. Eric brings a unique business perspective to his tech writing and is frequently read by software/hardware traders. He is now San Francisco Bureau Chief for Forbes.
Jay Yarow of Business Insider: Jay is a senior editor in the tech section of Business Insider. Prior to that, he had stints at Silicon Alley Insider (before it evolved into Business Insider) and BusinessWeek.
Rip Empson of TechCrunch: Rip Empson is a writer at TechCrunch, where he is known to like to stir up some controversy and say things that others simply wouldn’t. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health and education. Empson is also Co-founder and Chairman of the Board of the website The Comment Section, as well as an active blogger for SFCritic and WallStreetOasis.com.
See the entire list here.
