By now we've all heard that the journalism game has changed and we need to take our careers into our own hands: Get a domain, embrace social media and start managing your brand.
But to start, it all begins with one of the most common questions I routinely get. What the heck do I call myself? What's the name of my brand?
For some lucky folks, their name is unique enough that they are able to secure it as their domain, Twitter handle and more. But for the rest of us, we have to be a bit more creative and invent a new digital identity.
Many times these personal brands are inspired from the most odd places. I know someone whose handle was from Spaceball's "gone plaid" scene.
Here is a small, somewhat random, collection of personal brands and their backstories.
Digidave // David Cohn It was (from) my college freshman dorm roommate.
This was in 2000 and he was much more technically savvy than me. Granted - at the time this just meant he was on AIM all the time and used his computer as an alarm clock.
I, on the other hand, was going through my hippie phase and believed that we needed to break away from computers, man, and just, ya know, free, man.
He kept telling me to embrace the digital-dave. That became Digidave.
The joke name then lay dormant until I became a tech-writer (the irony) and fully had embraced the digital-dave. After I chose it as my handle on Digg in 2004 - it stuck.
writepudding // Liana Aghajanian "writepudding" is meant to be a play on the delicious treat, "ricepudding." It's rather silly really. When I first started blogging around five years ago, I wanted a name that stood out. I thought to myself, "I really love rice pudding and I obviously love to write," so I just combined the two and came up with writepudding. It sounds more like an inside joke than I'd like it to, but it feels comfortable and it's just stuck with me through the years.
This week's post is for all the independent publishers and bloggers out there who don't have an in-house grammarian to advise them, but would like some inspiration to think more carefully about the words they use in their posts.
So I'm kicking off this feature in honor of the character from William Goldman's The Princess Bride who utters this famous line in the Rob Reiner film version:
For those of you not clicking the video link, here's the quote: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Too often writers type superlatives without care for the subleties that the individual words they select offer. This week's Inigo Montoya word of the week is "incredible."
Folks typically use this adjective to suggest a positive quality, but it actually means "not credible," that is, something not worthy of belief, confidence or trust. As a journalist, pretty much the last word you want someone to use in describing your work is "incredible." :^)
And yet... here are a couple of examples from the past week's news where someone missed the definition:
Recently, my wife spoke in person with a reader of her website.
He shared with her his frustration that other readers on the site were writing about what he considered inferior products, but that no one was bringing up what he knew to be a superior alternative.
"How are people going to know the truth?" he asked.
Let's leave aside the question whether this reader's opinion about a product did, indeed, reflect the "truth." He had information that he wanted the site's readers to see, and he wanted the site's editor to write about that.
My wife, however, suggested that the reader de-lurk and write up his point of view, himself. The reader was flummoxed.
And here we have yet another culture clash within the transformation of journalism online.
This reader, who was older than the average reader on the site, was operating under the old model of journalism, where gatekeeper reporters did the work of reporting information. As a reader, he tried to make his views known by appealing to the editor of the publication and asking her to devote more time toward reporting the issue that concerned him. That's the way it's been done for generations, so that was the approach he took.
My wife, however, tried to get this reader to see a new model, where readers directly engage in reporting and discussing information. If readers see holes in coverage, they should fill them by contributing their information to the site.
The second model, of course, is not exclusive of the first. My wife, like many independent online news publishers, does plenty of original reporting for the website. But her website would have only a small fraction of the pages it now offers if her reporting were the only work published on the site. The new model of interactive journalism, empowering readers to become reporters, is allowing the public access to far more information than it had available to it under the old way of reporting.
Of course, that raises questions about the accuracy of all this new reporting, which is why it becomes important for journalists to engage and recruit knowledgeable readers to participate in this new information marketplace.
Burt, you have an incredible journalistic background and really, in my opinion, you truly represent the new type of tech/entrepreneur journalist we've all heard about. Tell me a little bit about your background at the Associated Press and how you evolved from reporter to entrepreneur.
Thanks, you're too kind :)
Yes, I started off in a fairly typical journalism role -- I went to work for the AP because I wanted to work overseas as a foreign correspondent, and they had the most opportunities to do that. So after graduating, my first journalism job was as a temp hire at AP and things went from there -- a couple years in Detroit and then a post as an editor on the International Desk in New York before I was sent overseas to Berlin. From there, I went to Moscow and then to Uzbekistan to start a new bureau for AP covering the former Soviet republics in Central Asia. My last AP job was a bureau chief in Korea. In between, I covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Asian tsunami, Pakistan and many other stories.
I returned to the US in late 2008 for a Knight fellowship at Stanford, where I had gone as an undergrad. With all the changes in journalism, I wanted to explore the secret sauce of innovation in Silicon Valley and see how that could be applied to journalism. I took classes at the Graduate School of Business, Design School, computer science department and explored how this could be applied to journalism. In the end, I wound up deciding to extend my sabbatical from the AP to have a go at doing a startup on my own, building a company around the future of storytelling and digital publishing from a clean slate.
Have you been thinking about starting a news website? Are you considering "being your own boss" as the next step in your journalism career?
You can stumble your way into entrepreneurship, but you'll likely find a greater chance of success if you start with a plan.
Starting a news website requires its own step-by-step process, sharing some steps with the launch of any new business, but including several steps unique to either journalism or online publishing.
Based on my experience launching and running news websites, here's a checklist that I would recommend to anyone thinking about starting an online news business. I hope that you will use this list to help you along with the process of launching your site - or at least to give you a fuller sense of the work that would be involved, should you be considering this step.
This isn't meant to be a complete guide to starting a news publishing business - that would fill a book - but simply a checklist for you to use as you proceed.
The name
☐ Select a name for your publication You'll want a name for which you can obtain the ".com" domain of the publication name, without spaces or special characters such as hyphens. It should be easy to spell when pronounced phonetically, and while including a keyword that potential readers will be searching for is helpful that's not as important as the other criteria.
☐ Register your domain name Once you've selected a name, don't hesitate to register it with a domain registrar, such as GoDaddy or Network Solutions. Don't bother adding any of the hosting or e-mail options they'll try to sell you. You'll figure out that later. Just get the domain.
☐ Open a business checking account No, you don't have any income yet, but you'll want a bank account as soon as you have a business name. Separating your business account from your personal from Day One will help you with accounting, taxes and projecting a professional image to your customers.
☐ Register a fictitious business name. Banks often can help you do this when you set up your business checking account, which is another reason to take that step immediately.
☐ Trademark your name I didn't need a lawyer to trademark my website's name. I simply followed the steps on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website. All of the paperwork can be filed online. Once you've applied, the process takes months, but the earlier you start, the earlier you will have your trademark in hand.
Getting operational
☐ Select a calendar app or system to record deadlines, meetings and assigned tasks Once the work of establishing your name is complete, it's time to get operational. You do not want to be relying on memory, or little random slips of paper to keep track of key dates and tasks as you move forward.
October 17, 2010
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It was (from) my college freshman dorm roommate.
"writepudding" is meant to be a play on the delicious treat, "ricepudding." It's rather silly really. When I first started blogging around five years ago, I wanted a name that stood out. I thought to myself, "I really love rice pudding and I obviously love to write," so I just combined the two and came up with writepudding. It sounds more like an inside joke than I'd like it to, but it feels comfortable and it's just stuck with me through the years.
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