You can't do better than this!
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Hey Mom! I'm a Journalist. I guess!
My 4freeCLE Newsletter has several hundred subscribers now (not counting hundreds more on the Twitterfeed) so, in some sense, I'm a journalist now, covering the admittedly specialized area of free continuing legal education. It's a small beat, but a proud one!
I first published a newsletter back in high school, using a mimeograph with every word and drawing cut into a waxed-paper stencil, and every bit of ink squirted onto rollers that I cranked by hand, with my friend Martin Murphy and who-ever else was helping. How I wish I had those newsletters now! They were probably aweful, but they were awefully fun!
Now-a-days, I publish on the internet, via Constant Contact, blogspot and twitter. I'm ad-supported, just like many paper journals, and very very concerned that the content I provide my readers meets their needs, so they'll read more, pass it on to their friends, and click on the ads! I imagine it couldn't hurt to look at a few real journalists to see how they do it and pick up a few tips.
One thing about this style of journalism is that the ethics are intrinsic to the business model. I might get a tiny bump in readership if I posted a totally bullshit headline, but then the Golden Goose would be dead dead dead; everyone would unsubscribe, no-one would forward, and revenue would be zero. There's nothing at all wrong with a business model that requires ethical conduct, but it's worth pondering what it is about this market's structure that requires it - perhaps it's that customers find it infinitely easy to evaluate bullshit and to find alternative!
Here's last week's newsletter - I thought the Provider profiled is especially interesting:
I first published a newsletter back in high school, using a mimeograph with every word and drawing cut into a waxed-paper stencil, and every bit of ink squirted onto rollers that I cranked by hand, with my friend Martin Murphy and who-ever else was helping. How I wish I had those newsletters now! They were probably aweful, but they were awefully fun!
Now-a-days, I publish on the internet, via Constant Contact, blogspot and twitter. I'm ad-supported, just like many paper journals, and very very concerned that the content I provide my readers meets their needs, so they'll read more, pass it on to their friends, and click on the ads! I imagine it couldn't hurt to look at a few real journalists to see how they do it and pick up a few tips.
One thing about this style of journalism is that the ethics are intrinsic to the business model. I might get a tiny bump in readership if I posted a totally bullshit headline, but then the Golden Goose would be dead dead dead; everyone would unsubscribe, no-one would forward, and revenue would be zero. There's nothing at all wrong with a business model that requires ethical conduct, but it's worth pondering what it is about this market's structure that requires it - perhaps it's that customers find it infinitely easy to evaluate bullshit and to find alternative!
Here's last week's newsletter - I thought the Provider profiled is especially interesting:
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