CORRECTION: EDN and feedback

Matthew Miller, executive editor of EDN Online, wrote in to offer a "clarification" to a recent post of mine. But Matthew is being kind. I need to post a correction, not a clarification.
In a recent post in which I complained about B2B media companies that don't take advantage of the Web's advantages, I said that EDN's new Web site didn't have a feedback/comment function.
I was wrong. EDN does have a feedback function on its new site.
Take a look at his comments here, and follow the links therein to get a look at what the folks at Reed have done.
Editors should make particular note of what Matthew sees as an advantage of allowing readers to send feedback on stories. "The feature provides the editors with "grist for the mill"--ideas for followup stories, a litmus test on the importance of issues, and so on."

Asking customers to be bloggers

I love this idea!
Pennsylvania is asking people to travel around the state and blog about it. The hope is that by arming "regular" folks with blogging software, the state can boost tourism.
There's potential here for a similar offering from a B2B publisher with the courage to let readers be reporters.
Why not ask a few readers to blog about a trade show?
How about a blog that follows a reader through the search for a new job in the industry you cover? Or even better -- a blog by a reader about his first year in the industry. Find a young, verbal, ambitious person among your readers and let him share what life is like "out there" where your readers live. (There's a fair number of intern-written blogs already. I'd like to see one by a more established professional.)
How about a group blog by readers on an overseas trade mission?
I'm pleased whenever a B2B media company embraces the tools of citizen journalism. I look forward to the day when some publisher decides to embrace the citizens themselves.

More on missing links in B2B media

Crain has relaunched Business Insurance magazine and its Web site. I haven't seen the hard copy. I have seen the Web site, and I'd call it a partial success.
Take a look. You'll see the Business Insurance site DOES have a comment function. I'm thrilled to see it.
On the other hand, Business Insurance is NOT using hyperlinks in the copy. I remain completely perplexed by journalists who don't use links online. Journalism is a service industry. Our job is to provide information and access to information. Failing to use links isn't just bad business, it's bad journalism.
I've complained a lot about B2B's seeming inability to comprehend online journalism's advantages. The Poynter Institute's Steve Outing weighs in today. Take a look.
Also worth noting today is a story in Wired magazine about a new film that looks at that early form of online conversation -- the BBS. The guys in the film were apparently playing online before I was. My earliest memory of conversations through computers involved a friend trying to explain Kermit to me.

Why not take advantage of online's advantages?

Lately I've grown more frustrated by one of my pet peeves -- when B2B journalists working on the Web fail to take advantage of the medium.
Today I posted something to the ABM blog, noting my disappointment with a recent article about how traditional publishers can take back the Web. The article, published in Folio, failed to use any Web-journalism techniques (linking, "bite-size" copy, feedback functions, etc.)
Yesterday I complained about a bunch of B2B publications that publish on the Web, but fail to use hyperlinks in their copy.
Now comes word that Reed Business is revamping EDN magazine and the EDN.com Website.
Reed has some good ideas, including providing "greater coverage of global trends" and adding a "Research Update' section to the magazine.
Reed also has a nice new tagline -- "Voice of the Engineer." And Reed promises "more quotations and perspectives directly from designers, as well as a greater platform for engineers to share ideas and opinions with peers."
That's fantastic. But a look at EDN.com shows that Reed has NOT added a feedback/comments section that would allow users to post comments directly on the site. (NOTE: EDN also publishes two blogs, which DO have comment functions.)
I know there is the potential for trouble in letting users post to a site. I've struggled with the issue myself. I've gone from allowing comments, to banning them, to allowing them again and removing the rare post that offends me.
Reed is one of my favorite B2B media companies. I'm often pleased and impressed by the work of Reed's journalists and publishers. So let me be frank with my friends there:
The days in which a B2B publisher can claim to be the voice of an industry are rapidly disappearing. The industries we cover have found their own voices. They no longer need a magazine in order to converse. That's what citizen journalism is all about -- journalism's consumers speaking to journalism's producers. The best that we can do now is to facilitate conversation.
For an interesting look at the power of feedback functions, read this.
CORRECTION: 6/8/05 This post contains incorrect information about EDN.com. Please read the full correction here.

The potential of the lone, new-media journalist

There's a nice piece today in American Journalism Review about the growth of the standalone journalism movement -- in which talented reporters use new-media technology such as blogging, RSS feeds, podcasts, etc. to market their work directly to users.
I've written about the subject before and said the potential for the lone journalist in B2B is enormous. I've urged journalists to consider heading out on their own; I've urged publishers to be aware of the competitive threat now posed by their staff and their readers.
The piece in AJR focuses on the growth of the standalone movement in community journalism. But if you're at all interested in editorial or competitive issues (and who wouldn't be?), you should take a look.
If you still have doubts about the power of a lone journalist armed with new media tools, take a look at this. The About.com network had 22.6 million unique users in April, making About the 10th largest Web site in the United States, according to Nielsen. I've argued before that the citizen journalism movement began at About. There's a nice essay on About's history at Howard Sherman's blog. Take a look. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I was an executive producer at About, where I worked with Howard. After Primedia bought About, Howard moved up the ranks, while I moved to Primedia Business. Today Howard runs the editorial operations at SmartBrief, where I do some work on e-mail newsletters.)

Jay Rosen on journalism education

A few days ago I expressed disappointment in a new effort to revamp journalism education. In brief, a handful of elitist institutions said they were going to spend a lot of money to look at how reporters are trained.
I made a suggestion that some truly innovative schools be included rather than just the tradition-bound Ivy League universities. In particular, I mentioned NYU and Jay Rosen.
Now Jay has weighed in on the journalism education issue.
I'd urge all my friends at College Media Advisers to read what he said.
It's brilliant.

Disposable video cameras at CVS

If you've been thinking about video blogging, but didn't want to spend a few hundred dollars on a camera, you have run out of excuses.
Drugstore chain CVS says it will sell a disposable digital-video camera for less than $30.
Go get one. Then take a look at vlog.com.

If it's online, link to it

If you worked at a radio station, wouldn't you use audio recordings? Wouldn't you use interviews and sound bites and sound effects?
If you worked at a television station, wouldn't you use video? Wouldn't you use clips and blue screens and Chyron graphics?
If you worked at a newspaper, wouldn't you use print? Wouldn't you use photographs and illustrations and words?
So why would you work online and not use links?
Take a look at this article on BtoB online. It's a fairly interesting piece about a new search tool at Forbes.com. But god help you if you want to actually take a look at what the article is discussing -- because the writer hasn't included links in the copy.
That's not unusual at BtoB online, which seems not to understand its medium. It's not unusual anywhere at Crain. Take a look at TVweek.com, which also seems not to have noticed that it's published on the Web.
Failing to understand the advantages of Web publishing is fairly common among B2B companies. For example, Lebhar-Friedman's Drug Store News (free registration required) is generally a fairly Web-savvy site. The design is crisp, there's a feedback function on stories to send a letter to the editor, and you can email stories easily to friends. But there are no hyperlinks in the stories themselves.
Compare those dump-the-text-on-the-Webpage abominations with this very simple use of the Web by Farm Progress. Take a look a look at this article about a court document. You'll see that the writer had the good sense to link to the document in question.
Or take a look at CFO, which I've said before is one of the best publications in our industry. CFO seems to understand Web journalism...sometimes. It links externally in its blog, but tends not to use links in its online articles.
I've heard the arguments against linking. They range from the cowardly (we don't want our readers to leave our site because they may not come back) to the stupid (our content management system doesn't allow for links) to the lazy (I don't have time to add links).
Let me say this as clearly as I can -- none of those arguments are valid.
And let me ask you this -- how would you react to an editor who said he didn't use photos in his magazine because photography was too complicated to learn, distracted from the text and was time-consuming?
Wouldn't you fire him?

Blog helps search for missing B2B publisher

David Koch, associate publisher of Sourcemedia's DM Review, disappeared during a hike near Vancouver on May 25.
His family has published a blog to publicize the search.
Say a prayer for David and his family.

B2B media in the global economy

"Do you speak any other languages?"
That's one of the first questions I ask journalism students and newcomers to our industry. Just as our industry is being changed by new media, our customers' businesses are being changed by a global economy. The B2B publisher who understands that will prosper. The journalist who is prepared to report from Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, etc. is worth three English-only staffers.
It's always fun to track developments in international B2B. And in recent days I've come across some new sources of information.
Check out Colin Crawford's blog. Colin works for IDG, a big player in overseas markets, which just increased its investments in Vietnam.
Then take a look at Paul Woodward's site. Paul tracks B2B media in Asia. Among the things I learned from his blog is that CMP is closing some Singapore-based print publications (while keeping a tech-centered Web site.)
And don't forget Hugo Martin, who follows B2B developments across the globe from Berlin.
And make sure you bookmark the website of Trade, Association and Business Publications International, the group that works "to bring together editors working for English-language publications worldwide, and encourage a common dedication to editorial ethics and excellence."

Standalone journalists and salaries

There's a piece in Folio magazine about the multi-skilled, multi-talented, multimedia types that do the work of many at small magazines. The writer of the Folio article concentrates on the role of such people in production. I tend to think of the true value of the standalone journalist as his ability to produce news for different media -- video, print, audio and electronic.
Either way...both of us agree that this is the future.
I've said before that the traditional journalist -- tied to one set of skills in one medium -- is becoming obsolete. I wouldn't hire someone who can only write or only operate a camera or only design for the Web.
And there are indications that the marketplace agrees. Take a look at this salary survey from Mediabistro. Click on the section about the Northeast. You'll see that jobs in online/new media, where the software-based skills of multimedia are the norm, are paying considerably more than one-medium gigs in trade newsletters, local newspapers, local TV news, professional journals or the wire services.

You can't control a revolution

An attempt by a Colorado newspaper to organize local bloggers isn't working, according to Poynter's Steve Outing.
Terry Heaton isn't surprised.
Heaton is a blogger and a former television executive. Among his insights: "...giving people access to tools under a canopy isn't the blogosphere, and I'm not surprised people aren't breaking down the doors to get at it" and "Citizens media isn't something you can manufacture. It's already there, and the wise mainstream players will find ways to support — rather than try to own — what's going on."
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know my mantra by now. Bloggers aren't the enemy. They are your readers. And they want to talk.
Perhaps it's time for an addendum: They want to talk when and where they please about whatever interests them. That may be a particularly tough lesson for B2B companies, which often present themselves to readers as the "voice of the industry" they cover. But in the new media world, there are many voices. No one publication or group has a monopoly on discourse.
Don't seek to censor the conversation, decide the topics or select the voices.

Write less, spend less in editorial

There's an interesting piece in Folio magazine about how to save money in editorial.
In brief, the idea is to be brief.
"Readers, however passionate, rarely have time to wade through long features and lengthy special reports—the stuff that magazines used to be made of. Today they want less, not more, from magazines," according to John Brady, a magazine consultant.
I agree with Brady's concept, but wish he'd said a little more (no pun intended.)
Look -- if there's one thing I know it's that B2B writers tend to write too much. I can't remember -- or perhaps prefer not to remember -- how many times I've suffered through wordy lead graphs that don't pertain to the story. I'd be hard-pressed to name 10 B2B publications that aren't littered with strained metaphors, unneeded transitional sentences and multiple, ill-chosen adjectives. Yet I'd also be hard-pressed to name a single publisher who wouldn't prefer larger numbers of short stories to fewer numbers of long ones.
So why are things such a mess?
B2B writers are often stuck in a trade-magazine style of insipid, wordy prose. The reasons for this are multiple: lack of training, a perceived need to fill a news hole, self-identifying as a writer instead of as a reporter, ego and pretension, etc.
The way to get an editorial staff to write fewer words is to teach them to write better words.
For more about concise writing, click here.

Thomas Register drops print

You can argue all day about whether or not print is dead. Lots of folks like to do that.
But at Thomas Register, the argument is over.
Thomas says the 2006 edition of the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers will be last print version of the industrial directory.

Another B2B sale to Wall Street types

I'm a little disappointed to find that VSS has sold the Hanley Wood publications to JPMorgan Partners. I'd held out hope -- perhaps naively -- that the B2B properties would be sold to a B2B publisher.
Certainly there is some positive news in the deal. JPMorgan paid good money for Hanley Wood -- some $650 million. That tends to boost the asking price of Primedia Business and other B2B companies that are now on sale (see my fellow B2B media blogger David Shaw for a look at the numbers behind the deal.)
But when I look past the money, I see trouble.
I've worked for Wall Street publishers before. Henry Kravis controls Primedia through KKR. Michael Bloomberg, mayor of my fair city, is the owner of Bloomberg News. The two men hold the two top slots on my list of the Five Most Repugnant People I Have Ever Known.
I've written before about the clash between the distasteful management style that brings success on Wall Street and the supportive environment that fosters the subject-area expertise that B2B publications need to prosper.
Here's hoping that JPMorgan sees something of value in the values of our industry.

Chicago, South Korea and the blogsphere

I had a wonderful time this weekend in Chicago. The weather was perfect. The city, as always, was nearly so. I was there to speak at a convention about something other than B2B media. But as luck would have it, I wound up talking at length about blogging.
Much to my surprise, only two people in a crowd of 30 or so had ever heard about blogging or citizen journalism. Much to my pleasure, almost everyone seemed thrilled by the possibility of participating in the discussion about subjects they care about, rather than being passive consumers of lecture-style journalism.
While I was in the Windy City, Dan Gillmor was on the other side of the planet in South Korea, speaking about citizen journalism in the land of ohmynews.
I wish I had brought a copy of his speech to give to my group in Chicago.

No blogging for awhile, I'm traveling to Chicago

When I'm not thinking about B2B media, I'm thinking about yoga. And if I'm not thinking about yoga, I'm thinking about sayoc. And when I'm not doing any of those things, I'm thinking about applied behavior analysis.
This weekend I'll be giving a presentation at the Association for Behavior Analysis convention. Wish me luck.
I don't expect to do much, if any, blogging while I'm gone.
Talk to you on Tuesday.

Changing journalism education

I applaud any move to improve journalism. As I've said more times than I can remember, this is an exciting and challenging time in our business. There are new ways to distribute content. New styles of writing have emerged for the post-objectivity world.
Change is here. Journalism must adapt.
But I tend to doubt that much good will come from the announcement that a group of journalism schools is going to spend $6 million "to elevate the standing of journalism in academia and find ways to prepare journalists better."
By my way of thinking, the core problem in journalism is an arrogant attachment to the elitist ways of the past. So bringing together a bunch of elitist schools -- Harvard, Columbia, etc. -- is probably not the best way to foster change.
I'm far more interested in what's happening at my alma mater at the University of Missouri than I am in what the media elite in New York and Cambridge think. Why isn't the University of Kansas, which has the advantage of being based in Lawrence, part of this project? How about the University of South Carolina? Or smaller schools such as Northwest Missouri State (where I serve on an advisory board.) Heck, if you have to include a school from New York, why not go with NYU, which has at least one leading thinker on staff?

Those guys who bought the Advanstar properties

There's some coverage in the Boston business press of the private equity group known as the Audax Group, which bought a good portion of the B2B properties of Advanstar. Audax has formed a new company called Questex (what is with these silly, we're-so-modern names?) to run 23 trade publications, 20 exhibitions, 25 conferences and 50 websites covering technology, industrial and specialty products, beauty, travel and entertainment.
Audax is one of those massive investment groups with tons of cash and a penchant for the leveraged buyouts. Similar groups such as KKR, which owns Primedia, and VSS, which owns a bunch of things, are already major players in B2B publishing.
Audax owns a slew of companies, including Readymix Concrete and the Boston Herald newspaper.
After complaining earlier today about a B2B publisher that did such a lousy job of covering itself, I have to point out the Boston Herald failed to mention it is owned by Audax.

New direction and misdirection at GIE Media

There's a lot of change at GIE Media, publisher of such B2B titles as "Golf Course News" and "Secure Destruction Business." Earlier this month, Chris Foster was named president and chief operating officer of the Cleveland-based publisher. Now comes word that Mike DiFranco has joined the company as Group Publisher, Manufacturing. All this is good news. Foster worked at GIE previously and developed the company's Internet systems, where GIE is often well ahead of competitors. (For example, just yesterday I was talking about how few discussion boards there are at B2B publishers. But there is one at "Pest Control Technology" and a number of other GIE sites.) DiFranco is a 30-year veteran of our industry who most recently served as a vice president of Penton Media. But I'm not using this post to praise GIE. I'm using this post to condemn it. I don't know how many times I have to tell people in B2B that we are in the information and communications business. That means we communicate information. We don't hide it. Check out this annoying article about Foster that appeared on the "Lawn and Landscape" site. The writer, and I don't know if it's someone in public relations or in editorial, managed to tell us all about Foster without telling us what, if any, is Foster's relationship to company chairman and chief executive officer Richard Foster. The same piece also appears here and here. Is it possible that the writer didn't think that was a question worth answering? Or did he or she think that no one would wonder if GIE is a family-run company? And it's not as if this don't-tell-anyone-anything-of-interest style is a one-time problem. Check out the article about DiFranco in PCT Online, which contains this cryptic line: "DiFranco brings with him the popular Today’s Medical Developments magazine as GIE Media expands its leading portfolio of B2B publications to include manufacturing publications." Huh? Does that mean that GIE bought the magazine? Or did DiFranco buy it from Penton and then resell it? Is this a joint venture of some kind? You can read the article all day and never find an answer. How can anyone in our industry think this is acceptable? Does anyone at GIE think that their readers don't notice these gaping holes in their stories? Do people at GIE think this helps their credibility as journalists and publishers? Doesn't anyone at GIE realize that their readers aren't idiots and they are insulted by such foolishness? And lastly, is this sort of half-assed reporting the norm at GIE?