Post 20: Will SEO homogenise English?

August 6, 2009 in Globalism, Search, The future of journalism, Traffic, Web 2.0, Work

I had a conversation yesterday with a colleague and, as often happens these days, the topic turned to getting more traffic for web sites.
One of my colleague’s foremost requests was for me to stop using British English in my writing, and to stop applying it to stories we source from our content partners.
The reason? “Virtualization” [...]

Post 19: Giving up on surveys

July 23, 2009 in The future of journalism, Work, Worst practise

I’m very glad that Media Watch had a go at coverage driven by vendor-created research this week, because I have reached the decision not to use them any more.
For ages I have been uncomfortable with the way surveys are used to generate coverage, largely because the methodologies used are far from transparent and the [...]

Post 17: When customer service meets PR

June 17, 2009 in Small business, Vendors I have met, Work

I’ve been thinking lately about the interface between PR and customer service, in the context of an event in which I was forced to play the “I’m a journalist” card.
Let me explain.
I try to run my micro-business like any other, despite the fact that journalists tend to be offered free support for the products they [...]

Post 13, 2009: Events need to get over the artefact, too

May 11, 2009 in Ranting, The future of journalism, Web 2.0, Work

I’ve written several times before that I try not to attend real-world press events. They are nearly always overly-long and contain too much marketing-speak, so are not often particularly good uses of my time.
I’ve been thinking about why, and I think there are some hints in the decline of newspapers.
The thing about newspapers is that [...]

Post 12, 2009: Twitter means journos always have react quotes

April 24, 2009 in Web 2.0, Work

Maybe I am dense, but while writing a story this morning it hit me – I can now get instant reactions on almost any topic or issue via. Twitter. A quick search, a few cut and pastes and …. bang! … the voice of the people, fresh from the Net can adorn any story.
I slipped [...]

Post 7, 2009. Twitter Do’s and Don’ts for PRs

March 2, 2009 in Work, social networking

I’m getting so many PR followers these days, and so few of them seem to do much more than open an account, that I figured it could be useful to offer some advice on how to get the most from Twitter.
So here goes!
Dont’s
Don’t lurk. Twitter has become very conversational. If you are listening, but not [...]

Post 5, 2009. A missed opportunity

February 19, 2009 in The future of journalism, Work

Miranda Devine today tries to build on the argument she advanced last week that environmentalists’ opposition to controlled fires made the Victorian bushfires worse than might otherwise have been the case.
If you really must, check out her piece here.
What I find most interesting is not her argument, but the SMH’s opacity in terms of helping [...]

Post 3, 2009. Mnemonics

February 12, 2009 in Freelance life, Search, Web 2.0, Work

I was writing a document yesterday and found myself thinking about which phrases it contained that I would one day use to find it using Google desktop search.
In the past, I imagine I would have thought about the name or been more careful with the folders I saved the file into.
Now my whole thought process [...]

Post 69:08 Globalism schmobalism

November 11, 2008 in Globalism, Web 2.0, Work, social networking

A few months ago, a large software company invited me to the USA for one of its events. I would have flown at the nice end of the plane and been entertained grandly for the duration at a cost of $15,000-$20,000.
A couple of weeks ago, I asked the local outpost of the vendor for a [...]

Post 68:08 Hateful?

October 30, 2008 in P-aaaaargh!, Work

A couple of days ago, it was suggested to me that this blog expresses a hatred of PR people and that some PR people are therefore fearful of approaching me.
Hate is a strong word. So let me put on the record how I feel and why I blog.
I certainly find that many PR people make [...]