Warren Buffett buys the Omaha World-Herald: thoughts from a 10-year employee

I spent 10 years at the Omaha World-Herald, so I was interested and surprised at today’s news that Warren Buffett is buying the newspaper company. Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, is going to pay $150 million in cash and take on $50 million of World-Herald debt, taking ownership of my former newspaper and several other Midwestern [...]

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Reach out through Facebook to gather information on tragic stories

A longtime fact of journalism is that when tragic news breaks, we need to get information and reaction from people under great stress. Sometimes they don’t want to talk to us. Sometimes, though, they reach out publicly to friends and supporters on Facebook. Lisa Yanick-Jonaitis of the Morning Sun in Mount Pleasant, Mich., a Journal [...]

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Watch live Freedom of Information workshop from New Haven Register

New Haven Register reporter Alexandra Sanders will be leading a workshop at 2 p.m. EST today about Freedom of Information laws. Register Engagement Editor Ed Stannard provides the following description: While she will be talking specifically about the Connecticut FOIA, there should be information that will be informative to any reporter seeking documents from government [...]

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Kansas Gov. Brownback sucks at apologies; media coverage was lame, too

I’m disappointed with Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s response to a high school student’s tweet and with media coverage of the resulting fuss. From his initial bullying response to his grudging, whining apology that didn’t really accept responsibility, Brownback has behaved as the child in this whole incident. And the media should have called him on [...]

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‘How do I monetize my blog?’ Tips for making money as a blogger

A friend asked how he could make money from his blog. With the caveat that I don’t make money directly from my blog, or try to (more about that later), I have some advice to share. Bloggers can pursue multiple options to generate revenue: Sell ads One way is to sell ads yourself. This requires [...]

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Another great sunset on Cox Beach in Tofino

I blogged a year or so ago about chasing the perfect sunset. Mimi and I caught another great one Saturday evening over Cox Bay in Tofino, so I wanted to share it, and made it the new header for my blog, replacing the Bryce Canyon photo I’ve used for the past couple years.

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7 keys to SEO: How to help people find your blog

Even a novice blogger needs to understand how people use search engines to find the content they are looking for. You want to help people find your posts. This practice is known as search-engine optimization, abbreviated SEO. I am not expert enough in SEO to cover the matter in depth (for more on the topic, [...]

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A digital storytelling workshop

Update: I’m going to be doing this workshop a third time today (Dec. 2) for CBCnews.ca. I’ve added some new examples (EPPY winners and finalists) and some other links. We will be using many of my tips and examples for digital storytelling (I will be updating them soon). In a morning workshop, teams of participants will [...]

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A workshop on writing for the Web

I’ll be leading a daylong workshop today for the CBC music staff on writing for the Web. Some topics we’ll cover: The 5 W’s of writing for the Web Finding and developing story ideas. In addition to my handout on this topic, I will steer them to some other posts with 20, 50 and 52 [...]

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Make every word count: Tips for polishing and tightening copy

Reporters and editors everywhere battle and complain over length of stories. Even online, where newspaper space or tight broadcast schedules aren’t an issue, you need to write tightly to hold the reader’s attention and keep the story moving. You need to hone your ability to organize information and write tight stories that make every word [...]

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8 basic points for beginning bloggers

If you’re starting a blog, keep these eight points in mind: Understand your community. No blog appeals to everyone. Identify the community for your blog and keep those people in mind when you gather content and develop new posts. (I deliberately used the word community rather than audience because the best blogs invite participation, rather [...]

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Using Twitter for research

I will be leading a webinar on using Twitter for research for Newspapers Canada. The tips I will present in the workshop are covered in my earlier blog posts, Updated and expanded Twitter tips for journalists and Advanced Twitter techniques for journalists. Here are my slides for the workshop:  

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