One reason mobile technology fascinates me is its ubiquity across all levels of society. That makes it potentially a very powerful tool to engage and empower people who don't necessarily sit at the top of the U.S. privilege food chain.
This presentation is meant to be just a quick overview, to let nonprofits know what's possible today, and where they should focus their attention.
Given that groups often have considerable reach and influence, it makes sense for news organizations to actively engage local or relevant groups, especially via social media.
The online activities of groups are now a key channel for news, information, communication, and engagement for most Americans. It makes sense to build bridges with these channels in order to reach wider audiences and listen more effectively to community issues and concerns.
Which is yet another reason for the news business to get over its traditional stance of aloofness/separation from the community under the fig leaf of objectivity.
Recently Forrester Research decided on an unfortunate, shortsighted policy. Forrester analysts can no longer can their own personally branded research blogs. They're allowed to run their own blogs about their personal life or topics unrelated to their work at Forrester. But all their blogging on work-related topics must be done in blogs that are owned by Forrester.
Today, AP debuted its AP Stylebook iPhone app.
…Which indicates the strategy here: The AP Stylebook iphone app is basically an app as e-book. Which almost explains its exhorbitant price: $28.99.
Yep, that's right: $28.99 for an iPhone app. Seriously.
…In other words, similar with what you could do with this book on a Kindle. Only AP doesn't offer a Kindle edition of the Stylebook.
AP does offer online Stylebook subscriptions: $25/year for an individual, with cheaper bulk pricing available for organizations. Which means that the iPhone app is more costly than an online subscription. So why wouldn't iPhone users buy an online subscription instead and access it through the mobile Safari browser?
Here's another thing baffles me: Why sell an app that's basically a standalone e-book? Why not offer a free app with some free content/service that also can allow paying subscribers to log in from their phone and have a mobile-optimized experience? It seems to me that AP is reinventing the wheel with this app, missing obvious opportunities to grow its Stylebook market, and positioning this product poorly through ludicrous pricing.
SEO: How Much Should Journos Know?
In a recent post to the Wordtracker blog, The Bad, Good And Ugly Advice Given To Journalists On SEO (search engine optimization), U.K. journalist Rachelle Money made some excellent points about how journalists can craft stories in ways that will attract more search engine traffic.
I agree with much of what she said. However, I do disagree with her about the role of a journalist in the editorial process.
…overwhelmingly concerned with headlines and how to write better ones for the web. I hate to throw a couple of spanners in the works, but I have never, not once, had to write a headline for a newspaper. That's the job of a sub-editor; they write headlines, they write the sub-headings and the picture captions and the stand-firsts. I have never had to write a title tag either; that's the job of the online editor, and they are likely to write the links too. So in many ways the advice given to journalists isn't really for us, it's for the production department or the online team.
…That may have been generally true a decade or more ago.