— Roy Greenslade writing for The Guardian, Andrew Rashbass: ‘The biggest reason we’re successful is that we are lucky’
Absolute must read if you think people like Clay Shirky and Jeff Jarvis are overhyped idiots who are doing more damage than good. Also a nice read if you’ve been feeling for quality content and wondering where the hell it is exactly.
— “At 154, a Digital Milestone” by Jeremy W. Peters for The New York Times. This is fantastic news that hopefully other print publications can take note of and strive to replicate. Personally, I’d love nothing more than to just throw my laptop out the window and rely on magazines and newspapers for my information fix. I hope that by the time I’m lucky enough to actually do that and retire in a cabin somewhere in the countryside, print media and the postal service will still exist.
Time that a journalist at an internationally known and well respected news organization uses to tweet is time that could have better been used to polish the latest piece that they’re working on.
Time a journalist uses to engage with their audience on Facebook or in the comments section of their articles, just to prove that they’re hip and know how to use today’s modern tools, is time that could have been better used to interview someone that’ll make their latest piece more intimate.
Time a journalist spends reading what every blogger thought of their work is time that could have gone into their next big project.
Time is something we all complain we don’t have anymore, so why are we asking our storytellers to waste their time on anything other than telling a story?
— Story by Sarah Marshall on Journalism.co.uk. All I have to say is fuckers, fuckers, fuckers.
— “The Internet Community is Always in a Complete Lather” by Katy Bachman for Adweek. This is a short interview with Robert Levine, author of Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back, that everyone who thinks Google gives a shit about anything other than profits should read. Now yes, Google is a company and a company’s main goal is to make money, but besides the search engine giant making money from their advertising unit, what else pays their bills? Nothing.
— “Business Insider Grows the Way of the Huffington Post” by Lucas Shaw for The Warp. There’s no worse site on the internet I can currently think of and yet they’re getting money thrown at them to grow. It’s disturbing on so many levels. If the venture capitalists who funded Business Insider really gave a shit about the media, they’d donate to nonprofit entities who actually do real reporting. That’s asking way too much though.
The biggest challenge I faced as a tech blogger was a simple one: motivation. By that, I don’t mean that it was hard to write — it never was. But towards the end, it was getting hard to get excited to write on a daily basis. I needed to be driven. That’s when I’m at my best.
Tech blogging is a game. Most of those still doing it probably won’t admit it, but it is. That’s the only way you can think about it if you aim to be the best. Competition pushes everyone. With blogging, as with all things, you have to be in it to win it.
Now, there are several ways to play this game. And there are different standards of winning. At first, when I was a no-name blogger writing on my own, my goal was simply to get recognized. When I achieved that, my goal had to switch. So it became writing the best headlines. Then it became being more prolific than anyone else. Then it was getting to the top of Google News. Then it was owning certain areas of coverage (location, etc). Then it was writing long “thought” pieces while retaining readership.
There you have it folks, technology blogging is nothing more than a bullshit game that only bloggers play. Readers? They’re like the chips that everyone throws into the pot before showing their cards.
What’s my game? Make it to the end of the month. Every month that’s my goal, just reach the fucking end of that month. The money comes, the game resets, time goes on.
As Loren Feldman says: “It doesn’t matter!”
