Source: cindy47452's Flickr stream

I’ve taken to calling poorly linked sites “rope sites.” The gist is pretty simple: A rope, unfurled and dangling, can be pretty useful—repelling down a wall, for instance—but once you get to the end off it, all that’s left to do is hang on or fall off. If the ground’s right there, you’re going to let go immediately, and everyone’s going to let go eventually.

Much like dangling ropes, sites and pages that don’t link to themselves or to others are destined to be useful only for a short time.

The news industry is probably the worst at producing rope sites. Despite the fact that they’ve got multiple people producing multiple pages 24 hours a day, something (probably the Old Print culture) has kept them from embracing the ethic of the link for far too long. Just a couple weeks ago, I came across a page on The Seattle Times site; it was a story that referenced a huge investigative piece the Times had produced several years ago—but there was no link to the piece. I Tweeted the missed opportunity to the Times and, socially savvy people they’ve become (more on that in the coming weeks), they responded and added the link (third paragraph).

Good on the Times for seeing the value in a self-link (it’s also good for SEO), but I think we can all agree that it’s not exactly the industry wide standard that it needs to be.

The reason we’ve coined the terms Internet and Web (or in lolspeak: interwebz) is because this big mess of digital information is interconnected with links and those links create a web or net. Nets and webs are nothing more than ropes that have been tied together, but they’re arguably much more valuable. Unlike a rope that has a definite end to it, webs spread out; they catch things.

Source: Anatoly Kraynikov's Flickr stream

If you’re a news site, a web catches readers and there are essentially two types of webs you can build: a self-contained web (i.e. links to other pages on your site) and an all-encompassing web (i.e. links to other sites). A good site will build both kinds of webs: it will self-reference when appropriate (re: the aforementioned Times story) and it will link out when it references another site or page. Two sites to pay attention to when considering either of these approaches:

Wikipedia (self-contained)

Since I always reference the Wikipedia page on time-travel, I’ll use it again here: visit it and try not to click through to a few other pages. Wikipedia has mastered the art of self-reference. Now think of your news site as Wikipedia. How many times a week do you post a story that references something you already reported? How many times do you think to link back to that story? Fix that. And link to everything you’ve written before. (Note: Wikipedia also links out, for purposes of citation.)

Google (all-encompassing)

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: What does Google do all day? Link to sites that aren’t Google. What do people do all day? Keep coming back to Google. It’s real simple: People don’t just want to consume information, they want to be connected to it. If you’re writing about a concert, link to where tickets can be bought (and add value by linking directly—I can log on to Ticketmaster’s home page and do a search on my own); if you visited three Web sites while researching your story, link to those; etc. People aren’t going to leave your site and never come back; they’re going to remember you as a good, savvy source of information and look to you for another need, or for the same need in the future.

One last thing: Great content is always important and bad content will almost always kill a site. But as important as content is, it’s not enough to build traffic. Learn the ethics of how the Internet operates—learn to link and know how and when to link. Paired with great content, it’s a combination that will give you the best return for your efforts.

From GigaOM (via @lostremote):

[Mark] Cuban reportedly dared newspapers to pull their papers out of Google’s search index. “Show some balls,” he said. “If you turn your neck to a vampire, they are [going to] bite. But at some point the vampires run out of people’s blood to suck.”

Cuban’s pitch …of course, ignore[s] the fact that search-driven traffic is growing at most newspapers (in contrast to direct traffic and print circulation), and that if they don’t find a way to appeal to and monetize those readers then they will be catering to an ever-shrinking number.

Cuban’s “vampires” comment is misinformed, as GigaOM points out. But the “balls” comment is something I can actually get on board with. We’ve been listening to newspaper employees whine about Google for years now and yet, the process for removing one’s site from Google search is insanely simple. Every news site could disappear from Google in the next five minutes, if they wanted to.

The fact is, newspaper executives know that the bulk of their traffic comes from Google. So they’re not actually telling Google stop stealing our content! they’re asking that Google keep giving them free traffic, but also share some of the profit (that rightfully belongs to Google). Essentially, newspapers are admitting that they weren’t clever enough to come up with Google and then arguing that because of that, Google owes them money.

This is ri-goddamn-diculous.

Newspapers are playing the part of the crazy girlfriend who gets jealous every time you strike up a conversation with another woman and then complains that you’re socially withdrawn around her friends. I wonder if somewhere down the line, Google will just get tired of dealing with the newspaper industry and do the breaking up for them.

If you’re a journalist using the Internet, do yourself a favor and head over to Old Media, New Tricks right now to check out Robert Quigley’s latest post, “Journalists and SEO – searching for the right balance.” Robert absolutely nails the discussion of what SEO is and why it’s important—much better than I did a few weeks ago when I implored you to Make your headlines SEO friendly.

I get why print journalists don’t want to embrace SEO—it’s differs stylistically from print, it discourages puns and other such “cleverness,” etc.—but if they care at all about having their content consumed, they’ll have to learn it. Robert’s right: SEO is no different from traditional headline writing in that it’s simply a tactic to pull people in to your work. SEO takes it a step further, though, because it’s not just about drawing people in, it’s about drawing people to your work even when they don’t know they’re looking for it.

Source: HamburgerJung's Flickr page

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you’ve probably got a folder in your RSS reader packed full of subscriptions to blogs that follow your same niche. That’s good—it’s smart to keep up with your area of interest. But it’s a good idea to wander outside of your usual haunts on a regular basis. Two reasons:

1. You avoid the echo chamber

2. You’ll have more original ideas

If you’ve been finding yourself in a sort-of rut where all your posts are quotes-and-comments, you may want to reevaluate your approach (unless your blog called Quote and Comment). I thought I might list a few of my favorite non-journalism blogs to give an idea of what inspires my writing:

Kitsune Noir

“…an art and design blog that dabbles in music, movies, food & fashion, all filtered through the brain of Bobby Solomon.”

This may be one of my favorite blogs period. I found it via the handy Explore option in Google Reader and I’ve been loving it ever since. It is what the tagline says and the most important part is the “filtered through the brain of Bobby Soloman” part. This guy’s just got an eye for cool stuff. A lot of the visuals he picks out have inspired me to incorporate my own visuals into this blog lately (scroll through my recent archives—every post has had at least one photo with it) and to not really care if what I’m saying doesn’t sound easy-to-read or whatever. Bottom line when you’re running a blog is that it’s yours, so make it something you like first, then worry about traffic and all that other crap.

Conversation Marketing and Copyblogger

“Common sense internet strategies” and “Copywriting tips for online marketing success” (respectively).

Speaking of “all that other crap,” these two blogs have been invaluable. Once I’ve been inspired and have produced some content, I like to take some time to hone it and make it as nimble and effective as possible—that’s where advice from these guys comes in. I think of them as the editors-I-no-longer-have. They’ve helped out tremendously with advice on how to craft text for the Web and also with SEO headline writing—great for me, since those are things I use on this blog and in my day-to-day at the office.

Lookout Landing, USS Mariner and Geoff Baker’s Mariners Blog*

(A bunch of Seattle Mariners blogs.)

These are just straight-up for fun. Your RSS Reader can’t be all work, all the time—you have to have something to unwind with. Sure, you’ve got books and all, too, but what’s nice about just-for-fun blogs is that you’ll probably accidentally soak up some advice that’ll help you improve your own blog. What makes your for-fun blogs so enjoyable? And what about that can you copy over to your own blog? (For the record, I could do better at this. The only thing I’ve really ‘ported from my Mariners bloggers is, in fact, the Mariners.)

*For more on Geoff Baker’s blog as it relates to blogging and journalism, see this fanboy post I did a while back.

Quick announcement: I’ll be at SMC Seattle’s one-year anniversary celebration tonight, representing myself and @pnwlocalnews. I hit up my first SMC Seattle last month and it was awesome. You don’t need a Twitter account or any social networking account, really. If you’re in the neighborhood, it’s a great place to hang out, have some drinks/eats and meet some of your fellow geeks/journalists/bloggers/etc.

If you still aren’t convinced, show up tonight, find me and I’ll explain why you, as a journalist/blogger/person should at least experiment with social media.

Source: B.K. Dewey's Flickr stream

I don’t think paywalls represent inevitable failure. I don’t think it’s impossible to make money by erecting a paywall around your site’s content and I don’t think it’s impossible to maintain that flow of cash over time. I do think paywalls are great risks, especially if the only content on your site is freely available news and information.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I thought it might be helpful to clarify just what you’ll be paying for if you decide to start paying for NYTimes.com in 2011 (hint: it’s not journalism or news).

For starters, I thought it’d be helpful to explain why a couple of news sites that already charge for content are able to get away with it, so let’s look at The Wall Street Journal and ESPN.com. If you pay for content on WSJ.com, I’m guessing that at least one of the following applies to you: (1) You make a disgusting amount of money; (2) You want to make a disgusting amount of money. Since the Wall Street Journal is trying to sell expert stock and business tips, a paid subscription makes sense for these types of people. They either make so much money that their subscription rates don’t even register, and/or they write off their subscriptions as the cost of eventually making more money (gotta spend money to make money). Similarly, if you pay for an ESPN Insider subscription, at least one of the following probably apply: (1) You love sports; (2) You’re a gambler. In both cases—ESPN and WSJ—the return on investment is more money back (or there is no return and you have enough money to not care about costs). It’s not even the money that matters; what matters is that you’re putting your money into something and you’re getting something tangible back out of it.

The return on investment for an online subscription to The New York Times won’t even be the benefit of being well informed—that can be obtained on thousands of other sites, many of which are just as reliable and informative as the NYT—rather, people will be paying for the privilege to say that they read The New York Times. These people belong to a third group that I neglected to mention in my last paragraph: zealots. Besides people who stand to gain something from dumping money into a product or service, there are people who will pay simply to pay because they love The New York Times (etc.) that much. Or they’ll pay on principle. Or whatever. The point is, these are the same kinds of people who vote for third-party candidates—they don’t care what the outcome of their action is because the action is all that matters. Being a zealot is fine, it’s great and kudos to zealots for sticking to their principles. But if you’re a party relying on zealots to further your cause, you’re taking a risk, because generally speaking, zealots only represent a fraction of any given population.

Argument: Paywalls ensure that you’re serving your readers and not advertisers

I got into a Twitter debate on paywalls with Jason Pontin yesterday, during which he said that paywalls were not only part of a multi-pronged approach to revenue, but that they ensured he wasn’t serving one master, either:

I’ll agree with the revenue part. If you can have more than one source of income, there’s no reason not to. I can also at least see into the reasoning that you never want to put one source “in charge of your product.”

However, I have to reject the idea that newspapers ever considered their subscribers to be revenue-producing masters whom they served. Newspapers never made their real money off subscriptions—it’s always just been a nice “thank you” cherry on top of an ad-funded sundae. Maybe it made news editors feel better, or maybe, lacking any real understanding of the business end of their operation, they actually thought reader subscriptions were what paid their salaries. Whatever the case, the argument that a newsbrand is just as accountable to the guy who gives him 10 cents as the advertiser that gives him $10,000 is pretty thin.

Again: I’m not saying “don’t set up paywalls”

…all I’m saying is: consider what you’re putting inside it before you set the paywall up. Don’t require subscriptions with the rationale that people ought to pay! or we’re losing money to Google! Your product isn’t worth money just because you say it is. Know how you’re going to produce revenue and know whether there’s a reasonable expectation that you can achieve your goals.

Additional reading:

• Doing the math on online newspaper subscriptions
• Thinking about a paywall? Read this first
• Will paid content work? Two cautionary tales from 2004
• (Again) Repeat after me: Newspaper consumers have never “paid” for content

Source: wallyg's Flickr stream.

Will people pay for the New York Times online? | Old Media, New Tricks.

My answer: I won’t. And not only won’t I pay, but I’ll also go out of my way to not link to the New York Times. This isn’t me taking a stand against paywalls. If The New York Times believes their content is worth X amount and is willing to charge for it, I say bravo and way to have the guts to do something other than talk.

My problem with NYT’s metered plan (any paywall, really) is that it diminishes the value of a link that I may post.

Here’s why: I’m cruising around and I find an article on NYT’s site and I decide I’m going to blog about that article. I haven’t hit my monthly limit yet on how many NYT articles I can read, so I post it to my blog and it’s all good. Now let’s say 100 people view that blog post (optimistic, I know)—any number of those 100 may have already hit their NYT limit for the month. In other words, my blog post is mostly useless to anywhere between zero and 100 percent of my readers, that number can fluctuate daily and I have no way of knowing what that number actually is.

I said this on my company blog once: When you start to wall yourself off from the rest of the Internet, you become less of a Web site and more of a “rope site.” A Web is sticky—it makes connections so it can hang onto whatever comes into it (re: readers). A rope is something someone can just slip off of when they reach the end of it. No one’s coming back to a blog that regularly links to nowhere (for all intents and purposes). I’d do just as well to not link at all.

Update: Jay Rosen chimed in with these thoughts (among others) on NPR:

If the real part of The New York Times is its influcenc, then this is a very risky move with the very heart and soul of the newspaper, which is its ability to affect and influence public conversation.

Twitter is so fast, it's blurry. (Source: Robert S. Donovan's Flickr page)

Besides the fact that Twitter is fast and newspapers are—let’s face it—less fast, Twitter is built for much more specialized and flexible purposes. I’m comparing them (and I’ll keep doing so) because I think Twitter is worthy of mention as a journalism standard.

So: Twitter:taxi::newspaper:bus. There are good things and bad things about all those and it all depends on what your purpose is.

Twitter is a taxi

…it’s fast, nimble, takes you wherever you want to go and all you have to do is point. There are downsides, too: Taxis can be loud, messy, annoying and occasionally untrustworthy. But if you take some time to learn from your early mistakes, you’ll soon know what you’re doing and you’ll know how to spot an untrustworhy cab when you see one.

Like taxis, Twitter is extremely customizable. There’s nowhere you can’t go and your experience is entirely predicated on what you put into it. (Ever been in one of those cabs where you don’t talk to the guy except to pay him? Ever been in one of those “party cabs” where it’s like 3 a.m. and you get the cab driver to sing Biz Markie with you and your friends? That’s what I’m talking about.)

Newsprint is more like a bus

…been around forever, rarely late and offers a diverse mix of people that you’d probably otherwise miss. Downsides: Sometimes you know roughly where you want to go, but the best the bus can do is drop you off five blocks away and the bus driver can only give vague directions as to where this place is once you disembark. Some bus drivers don’t even know anything other than their routes.

Old Bus 2 from Hysterical Bertha's Flickr page

Translation: Newspapers are highly generalized. You can read a newspaper and get a great one-off report of an instance taking place within a topic (i.e. a roadside bomb that went off in war-torn Iraq), but if you want to know anything else, you’re on your own. Where do you go for that type of thing? Wikipedia? The library? Hope you know, because the newspaper usually isn’t telling you.

On the other hand, newspapers and busses are great for people who don’t want to have to go looking for their information in the first place. Sure, the first time you jump on a bus, it may seem a little weird and confusing, but it’ll be back at the same time every day and after you’ve been riding it for a couple weeks, you’ll feel like a regular.

It all depends on who you are or who you’re writing for

Don’t try to give up-to-the-minute reports in a newspaper. Don’t try to go in-depth on Twitter. It’s not insanely difficult. Just realize what it is you’re using and what your chosen method is used best for. Know your audience, too. Your Twitter audience isn’t the same as your newspaper audience … (etc.).

Every communication platform has a journalistic use to it; if it all goes down in flames, it’s on the user.

Note: This spun out of a comment on Kevin Sablan’s blog and you really should check out the post that preceded it.

Jack Zduriencik: Not exactly the most-photographed GM out there.

Mariners GM Jack Zduriencik talks a lot about “improving the ballclub”—in other words, making forward progress, no matter how small or insignificant that may seem. Every move* he’s made since his arrival in late 2008 has been with an eye toward making the Mariners fundamentally better than they are today. This philosophy may not seem like anything new, but it’s rare to see someone adhere to it so well.

*I know people were scratching their heads over the Casey Kotchman deal, but it’s one question mark in an otherwise brilliant run of transactions. Anyway, I digress….

The most frustrating thing about the Bill Bavasi (Z’s predecessor) era was that it seemed like there was always some guy who we needed to get or some guy on our team who we were just stuck with. Z has all but ejected that whole attitude and done something that every blogger/social media manager/newsroom editor/etc. should learn to do: make the most of what you’ve got right now.

The knee-jerk reaction fans always have to a losing season is to dump a bunch of money into marquee free agents—well look at how well that served the Yankees between 2002 and 2008. Sound anything like your office? It’s easy to throw a wad of cash at a high-end CMS or break the bank on top-of-the-line video equipment. It’s all crap, though, if you don’t know how to use it. And if you aren’t making the most of what you have right now, you can’t expect to change just by blowing your budget.

Z knows this. The Mariners were a disaster when he came in. Moves were made, but most of them were budget neutral or better. The biggest free agent signing to date has been Chone Figgins’ $36 million-for-four-years contract—modest by modern MLB standards. Even then, Figgins was a significant upgrade** over our last third baseman, Adrian Beltre, for not a whole lot more than what the latter would have cost us.

**More context: Stats aside, Figgins was playing for Anaheim, one of our division rivals (some might say our biggest) so we basically upgraded our team and silmultaneously downgraded theirs.

Given all this, it’d be easy to just write Jack Z off as some kind of baseball genius, but in watching his moves over the last several months (closely), I think he’s working off of a pretty handy checklist that I think could benefit pretty much anyone else in any other field:

• Take stock: Know what/who you have that’s good and what’s/who’s essential;
• Know how you know who’s/what’s valuable (e.g. If you don’t know anything about social media, how do you know if your social media manager is doing a good job?);
• Jettison your liabilities/time eaters/excesses;
• If you can’t afford something, see if you can collaborate with someone to drive down costs (in this analogy, the Cliff Lee trade);
• Don’t waste time worrying about that which can’t be changed;
• When a good deal comes along that makes sense for you, don’t hesitate.

Source: Cayusa's Flickr page

The hardest part about blogging for me is posting every day. Even on days when I have a good idea, I can end up in shambles because I don’t have time to flesh it out and I don’t want to kill a good idea with a crappy post.

Fortunately, I’ve got two good fallback options and one half option that may come in handy if you’ve got the same problem:

1. Give props to your blogger friends

Promoting other people’s work never gets old.* Flip through your RSS reader (or whatever you use to browse blog posts) and if you aren’t particularly inspired by anything you read, think about the bloggers who usually do inspire you and write about them instead. People will appreciate the nod(s) and you may even get some extra traffic to your site.

*Promoting other people’s work does get old: when you do it all the time. If you want to make a week out of “tip of the hat” posts, I’d advise planning it out and wrapping some theme around it (“awesome blogger week!”) so people don’t assume you’ll keep going on like a broken record.

2. Give your readers something to do

If you don’t have any deep thoughts to share, give your readers something cool to use/look at/etc. Yesterday, when I was a little short on ideas, I posted this New York Times heat map of Netflix trends. My only rule for posting is: offer value. This way, you’re giving readers something you value (make sure you actually do) and that may benefit them in some way.

Bonus tip: If you’re one of those people who can’t stand to see a “tiny post” on your blog that’s short enough to reveal yesterday’s post on your home page (like me), adding a big huge photo will give you the illusion that you did more work. Keep in mind that this isn’t so much for the benefit of your readers (though maybe it is—I’ve heard photos tend to help drive consistent traffic) so don’t feel like you’re artificially inflating your content.

2.5. Keep your ideas on file

In essence, don’t let yourself run out of ideas to begin with (see? non-advice advice: a half idea). Whenever you have an idea, jot it down wherever you keep notes. I use a lot of stuff: Evernote, Tumblr, paper notes, the drafts folder in my WordPress blog, etc. I like to save my non-time sensitive posts and work on them a little longer because, well, why not? It’s like saving your triple red shells in Mario Kart—it’s better to hang onto them just in case you get into trouble.

Got tips of your own? I would love to hear them for myself and I’d happily Tweet them for others to hear, too.