Posted in Digital First Media on February 12, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
I blogged for Inside Thunderdome about the elaborate and outstanding teamwork of Digital First journalists in covering the Sandy Hook massacre.
This is the kind of post I used to write here, but now I’m contributing those posts instead to Inside Thunderdome. I also blogged there last week about our December DFMie winners for the best journalism in the company (beyond the Sandy Hook coverage).
Posted in Digital First Media on January 8, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Digital First Media on December 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
I blogged on the Inside Thunderdome blog about Digital First Media’s best work in October.
Posted in Digital First Media on October 18, 2012 | 3 Comments »
Posted in Digital First Media on October 4, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Digital First Media will recognize the best work in each of our eight geographic clusters, starting with awards for the best work in September. We want a nickname for the awards and invite employees to vote for one of the following choices.
Thanks to all employees who suggested names. We had 19 suggestions, most of them serious, and we thank you all, even — perhaps especially — for the humorous ones. Jim Brady and I narrowed the list to the four on the ballot. Please choose the name you like best. Please vote only once and only if you’re a DFM staff member.
Posted in Digital First Media on October 3, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
I led a workshop Tuesday at the New Haven Register on some tips for bloggers to improve their work.
I discussed tips I have blogged about previously in various other posts:
Links and slides for workshops on blogging, social media, digital storytelling
Workshops on community engagement, beat blogging, Digital First workflow and metrics
A workshop for local bloggers in West Chester, PA
Here are my slides from the workshop:
Posted in Career advice, Digital First Media, tagged bitterness, Journal Register Co. on September 8, 2012 | 20 Comments »
Bitterness is an understandable emotion. But it always hurts you more than your targets.
I think I have had a lot in common with the journalists, some of them clearly former Journal Register employees, who lashed out at our company or our CEO in comments recently about the company’s Chapter 11 filing. You can read a sampling at the end of my blog post on the bankruptcy or on Jim Romenesko’s or Josh Benton’s or Matt DeRienzo’s.
I’m not going to debate here the merits of the financial move or the criticisms we received. I already had my say about the bankruptcy filing and I’m happy to give critics their say (I haven’t withheld approval of any comments on my blog post and just checked 14 pages of spam messages to make sure no critical comments got diverted by the spam filter). And I’ll grant that critics, even bitter ones, raise some valid points and questions.
What I do want to say here is that I’ve battled bitter feelings on many occasions in my career. The details aren’t important here, but I’ve been fired and have endured the deaths of two afternoon newspapers. I’ve been caught in the middle of a legal dispute. A publisher’s wife tried to get me fired. An editor forgot I had applied for a columnist’s position I dearly wanted. I learned from the bulletin board about someone being promoted into a position I was in line for. I’ve been passed over for other jobs when I was sure I was better than the people who got them. Twice in a row I changed jobs and moved my family for exciting new opportunities only to have the top executives change directions. I consulted a lawyer about an instance of age discrimination. I’ve been demoted and had my pay cut (five days before Christmas; thank you, Mr. Scrooge). I’ve seen more colleagues lose their jobs than I can count. And I had to deliver that unpleasant news to some colleagues after losing a fight to save their jobs (I was gone myself within a year).
Every one of those incidents felt like a profound injustice at the time and I’m sure each of the offending bosses felt they were sound business decisions. But you know (and deep down I know) that life isn’t that simple. Some of them were injustices. But some of them were sound business decisions. And dammit, some were both. And an honest appraisal would note that responsibility for those unhappy moves ranged from 100 percent the employer’s to heavy responsibility for me (since I didn’t make the decisions, I can’t say it was ever 100 percent on me). (more…)
Posted in Digital First Media, tagged John Paton on September 5, 2012 | 15 Comments »
I don’t pretend to understand corporate finance. So I won’t have a lot to say about today’s announcement that Journal Register Company filed for Chapter 11 and is for sale.
Here’s what I know: JRC is making great strides in developing a healthy new business model for the digital marketplace. (So are Digital First Media and MediaNews Group, which are all intertwined but not identical; it’s just JRC that is involved in today’s filing). I don’t expect the financial measures announced today to change that beyond giving us the ability to renegotiate some debts, pensions and leases.
Posted in Digital First Media on August 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Jim Romenesko had some fun today with Google’s autocomplete feature, asking “Why is …” questions about various media organizations and figures.
The frequent searches for such as the New York Times, Washington Post (this one gave me a laugh), Rupert Murdoch and Rachel Maddow give you some insight into how people perceive them. Sorry, I won’t complete any of them here. You’ll have to read Jim’s post to see them.
But he didn’t search Digital First Media, so I did:
I tried some other searches related to our company (John Paton, Steve Buttry, Thunderdome) and none of them produced anything very interesting. Well, except this one:
Those appear to be searches relating to the former Reagan press secretary.
Posted in Digital First Media, tagged Angi Carter, Chris March, Jim Brady, Jim McClure, Julie Westfall, Karen Workman, Mandy Jenkins, Mark Lewis, Project Thunderdome, Robyn Tomlin, Ryan Teague Beckwith, Thunderdome on August 10, 2012 | 6 Comments »
Filling one of Thunderdome’s conference rooms for a Thursday meeting (clockwise): Robyn Tomlin, back to camera, Mark Lewis, Julie Westfall, Karen Workman, Chris March, Jim Brady, Mandy Jenkins, Angi Carter, Ryan Teague Beckwith and my empty cupcake wrapper.
Thunderdome is happening, Baby!
I was in our Thunderdome newsroom this week, and we filled a conference room with journalists and creative energy. Our new curation team was working on a long-term project and some daily work. New politics channel manager Ryan Teague Beckwith was brainstorming convention and campaign coverage with the curation team. Thunderdome Editor Robyn Tomlin was interviewing job candidates. We ate too much cheesecake, cupcakes and gourmet chocolates. Digital First Editor-in-Chief Jim Brady and I told funny stories about embarrassing things we’d done. This is feeling like a newsroom. (more…)
Posted in Digital First Media, tagged Daniel Victor, Digital First Media, ideaLab, Jeff Sonderman, Jon Cooper, Lisa Rowan, Mandy Jenkins, Nathasha Lim, New Haven Register, Social Media Wire, TBD on August 2, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Creativity is contagious. One of the best ways to make a good idea better is to share it with other creative people.
Digital First’s new Social Media Wire is the child of two groups of creative people: the original Journal Register Co. ideaLab and the community engagement staff at TBD. The Social Media Wire is testing now on the site of the New Haven Register and eventually will roll out across Digital First Media’s news sites across the country.
Mandy Jenkins, our Digital Projects Editor, writes about the Social Media Wire on her Zombie Journalism blog. Mandy is leading the way on the project and played a key role in development of the idea at TBD.
As we were planning the TBD launch, scheduled for Aug. 9, 2010, I suggested that we tell the story of the day in Washington through the content people were creating about the day: Gather all the local tweets, Facebook updates, news stories, YouTube videos, photos and so forth that we could find and show them in chronological order, as quickly after they happened as we could. I thought if we promoted it well, it would be something people would come back to again and again throughout the day and would establish us as something different from traditional news sources.
I saw it as a one-day project of intensive work by the community engagement team. Fortunately, my team had better ideas. The team was Mandy, Jeff Sonderman, Daniel Victor, Lisa Rowan and Nathasha Lim. I don’t remember who had what ideas, but it’s fair to credit the whole group with the idea. Because once I outlined the idea, the discussion took off, with everyone contributing, and they just left my original idea in the dust. (more…)
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I am Digital Transformation Editor for Digital First Media. I also led community engagement for TBD.com. I have been an editor, reporter, writing coach, blogger and innovation coach for seven community and metro newspapers, most recently Editor of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I spent three years doing research, teaching and writing for the American Press Institute. I have pursued my journalism career in 44 states, 8 Canadian provinces, Ireland, Venezuela, Mexico, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador and Siberia. I write about journalism and innovation (and sometimes other stuff) on my blog, The Buttry Diary. My wife, Mimi Johnson, and I live in Herndon, Va. We have three grown sons, two daughters-in-law and two granddaughters.
