Wow. Just saw a story that says Fox News Channel actually aired video footage captured with a Treo, during the NYC plane crash aftermath this week.
From the piece:
“We’ve been waiting for the opportunity to get live pictures on the air from inside a cellular network, and we wanted to take it to the next level, make it easy for people and make it portable,” said Ben Ramos, director of field operations for Fox News.
Yes, it’s true (as if you doubted it). I’m joining FM Publishing as author services manager, to work with John Battelle and his team on developing this next-generation publishing company.
Why? One of my earliest experiences in the Internet ad world was as intern/writer/ad sales person at @NY. I got the ad sales part of the job (and all the rest) courtesy of Tom Watson, who I’d met while finishing up my masters in journalism at Columbia. One of the more important things I learned (besides that I was not cut out for selling) was how difficult it was for agencies to buy ads across niche Web sites. No matter how engaged and influential their audiences, it was just plain logistically difficult to buy across all those sites. And that was 1998, before the explosion in blogs, and their accompanying engaged, influential (but niche) audiences. That’s one of the issues FM is looking to address.
Why else? I’ve spent the years since that experience thinking and writing about interactive advertising, watching the boom, the flameout and the subsequent rise. Joining FM is an opportunity for me to apply everything I’ve learned over the years about advertising and about managing writers. It’s also a great chance to work with brilliant, dedicated people who have a strong vision of the future of publishing. Needless to say I’m especially looking forward to getting to know the authors, many of whom I feel I know already through reading their compelling writing. I’m really eager to start helping them realize their dreams for their sites.
One of the things I had to really look at when considering this opportunity was whether I’d miss writing. I’ve helped with writing news and authored a bi-weekly column since 2001. I looked back recently over the archives of what I’ve written for ClickZ, and the sheer volume is amazing. Thankfully, FM, as you might expect, is supportive of my blogging, so I’ll have The River as an outlet for my musings. Not sure exactly how often I’ll be posting or what shape it’ll take, but give me time to get my feet wet and together we’ll see what emerges. (Feedback is always welcome, of course.)
I’m still at ClickZ for the next week. Then I’ll take a whole day (!) off to do yoga and nap (or something equally relaxing), and I start at FM on August 1. To all you FM authors out there, I look forward to working with you!
It’s times like this I love living in California. I’ve just moved to a new office building this week, finally separating myself from the Jupitermedia SF offices after Incisive Media’s acquisition of ClickZ and SEW in August. The new building’s called the Strawberry Creek Design Center, and it houses a variety of design-oriented businesses, along with a yoga studio and a sports-medicine chiropractic office. (Very Berkeley). Yes, I’m now in Berkeley. My shared office area has a lot of natural light, easy exposure to open space (the green in the picture is Strawberry Creek Park), and a nice conference room. Come visit.
UPDATE: Just checked JUPM’s page on the new Google Finance and this blog entry is included in “blog posts,” I guess because of my mention of the company. Wild. Henry Blodget says the “blog posts” feature is a “traffic firehose” so it’s interesting to see what turns up there. (Will we soon see Google Finance-specific spam?)
No, I’m not completely out of the loop. For example, I got the news that Jupitermedia Corp. has sold ClickZ and Search Engine Strategies to a British outfit called Incisive Media. SES’s Danny Sullivan says: “while the owners are changing, the quality content we aim to deliver to you is not.” The ink still isn’t yet dry on the acquisition agreement (involving $43 million cash, btw), so obviously there are many details left to be worked out. Can’t say much more than that at the moment.
Coverage:
My buddy Tom Watson posts on anonymous sources, Deep Throat, and the daily grind of journalism. I had the pleasure of working with Tom on journalistic endeavors at @NY back in the day, and I’d have to say my thoughts on the subject are completely in sync with his. So in the interest of saving time while I continue to trudge through house buying, baby gestating, and the ClickZ biz, I’m just linking to him. Thanks, Tom, for putting it so well.
The Rocky Mountain News is taking its YourHub.com community journalism project to the streets (aka print distribution).
“What is significant about this launch is the fact that the online, community-based product is driving the printed version of the newspaper,” said John Temple, Editor, President and Publisher of the Rocky Mountain News. “YourHub.com represents a significant shift in the way we think about modern newsgathering.”
I’m not sure that I entirely agree with Peter Caputa when he posts that content is no longer king. Then again, maybe it’s just because my paycheck is derived from producing and editing content — human work, not technology work. Anyway, this idea hearkens back to my earlier East Coast/West Coast post, and to my column about the ad inventory issue.
On the subject of citizen journalism… The Augusta Chronicle is
inviting spectators of The Masters golf tournament to submit their own photographs of the event. They are displayed on the publication’s official Web site for The Masters. Today, they’d mostly just be pictures of umbrellas, but it’s still nice to see.
Now that I look more closely, it appears the newspaper chain has a central site — Spotted — for photo sharing. Great community concept.
Spent the wet long weekend in Yosemite, so just heard late last night about the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson. He was one of my journalistic heroes — because he told it like it was and because he told it so well. An amazingly adept writer, his stylistic flourishes and lengthy sentences often had me in awe. I loved especially Proud Highway, Volume 1 — an epistolary work covering the writer’s youthful exploits, from growing up in Louisville, KY to serving in the U.S. Air Force to writing Hell’s Angels. It’s fascinating to see how much raw personality was evident so early, and to see him develop the writing style to express those intense energies. Farewell, Hunter S. Thompson.
Danny Sullivan has a great post about blogging, news embargoes and how SEW handles them. My thoughts on the subject are very similar.
