Megan Taylor

Over the past few months, I've been picking up quite a bit of freelance work. Most of it has been on the technical side of building Web sites. For the most part, I've been working with WordPress, so I can send a client a list of appropriate themes and let them decide.

In the scenario that I'm not using an easily theme-able framework, I'm stuck.

So, I've been spending some more time looking at design elements on various blogs, how colors and typography and borders are used to make even a simple layout look amazing. I've also been collecting resources to keep in mind when working on Web sites.

Six Blogs

1. Authentic Boredom: Cameron Moll's design blog.
2. 24 Ways: 24 ways is the advent calendar for web geeks. Each day throughout December we publish a daily dose of web design and development goodness to bring you all a little Christmas cheer.
3. Designm.ag: DesignM.ag is a new site that is aimed at providing a wide variety of resources for web designers and developers. The purpose of the site is to keep many useful elements, such as a blog, community news, design gallery, and job board all at one place.
4. i love typography: iLT is designed to inspire its readers, to make people more aware of the typography that’s around them. We really cannot escape type; it's everywhere: on road signs, shampoo bottles, toothpaste, and even on billboard posters, in books and magazines, online ... the list is endless, and the possibilities equally so.
5. Jason Santa Maria: This site represents an experiment in art direction online. Rather than allowing the content to flow from a content management system into the same page layout every time, I’ve created a system for fast design direction based on the needs of the content.
6. Mark Boulton: This is primarily designed to be a portfolio presence for Mark but it also acts as a notebook, journal, experimental space and general dumping ground for designs, commentary and ideas.

Three Cheat Sheets

1. How a Simple Layout Can Be Mixed ‘n’ Matched with Patterns, Photos and Backgrounds:It's pretty amazing how much color and background can change the look and feel of a website. In this tutorial we're going to put together a quick, simple but effective layout and then create variations using backgrounds, photos and patterns. We'll also look at how to make seamless tiled backgrounds out of a photo, methods for ending a single photo and simple ways to create pixel patterns. In short it's a jam packed tutorial!
2. 8 Simple Ways to Improve Typography In Your Designs:Many people, designers included, think that typography consists of only selecting a typeface, choosing a font size and whether it should be regular or bold. For most people it ends there. But there is much more to achieving good typography and it’s in the details that designers often neglect.
3. 10 Simple and Impressive Design Techniques: Simple effects and techniques are the building blocks of today’s designs. With a “less is more” mentality, we’ve selected 10 very simple and impressive design techniques that can drastically improve the performance and appearance of your designs.

One Web Design Degree

1. The Personal Web Design Degree: The personal web design degree is the response of one designer to the question “What do I need to study to become a web designer?” The truth is that all the information needed to obtain a functional knowledge of web design is out there just waiting to be read. The only thing stopping most designers from doing so is sifting through all the information and knowing what is worth reading.

What are your favorite design resources? Where do you get inspiration?

Over the weekend I discovered The New York Times "First Look" blog.

I'd never seen this before, although the blog has been around since 2006, when the Times was experimenting with "My Times."

How did I find it now?

Because the Times is testing a browsing prototype, "the article skimmer."

Article Skimmer by The New York Times

While "First Look" wants to compare the article skimmer to "Reading the Sunday Times, spreading out the paper on a table while eating brunch," I simply find it an interesting -- Ad-free -- interface.

In fact, if Dave Winer hadn't put together this alternative for free, I might have found myself willing to pay up to $25 a year for that slick interface. Here's Winer's podcast on what he would pay for from the Times.

Of course, now I can just take Winer's river of news and spice it up with some CSS.

Don't worry, Rex Hammock will pay for it.

Happy, Pat?

A few weeks ago I started following a NY listserve for Flash. I've gathered a good number of snippets and learned a lot so far, although I'm still just a lurker. I'm hoping to make it to a meet-up soon.

In any case, an item came in about the relationship between Actionscript and Javascript, which really inspired me to finish up my formal education in Javascript so that I can jump head-first into heavier Actionscript.

The e-mail was about a series of lectures hosted on the Yahoo Developer Network by Douglas Crockford. Crockford is Yahoo's Javascript Architect and author of "Javascript: The Good Parts."

Because Actionscript 1 was based heavily on Javascript, and AS3 hasn't changed that much, these lectures are applicable to both languages.

Mentioned specifically were "The Javascript Programming Language" and "Advanced Javascript."

I haven't worked my way through all the lectures yet (they are segmented into three and four parts) but what I've seen so far is really helping me wrap my head around some of the language theory.

I haven't decided yet whether I like learning programming from a video. In some cases, it's the best option for a clean, class-style experience. Otherwise I'd be reading a bunch of articles all over the place with no real connection, and missing out on important information in the process. But I've been watching Lynda.com videos on Javascript and it's kind of tedious. I can read a lot faster, and I feel like I assimilate information better by reading.

I deliberately left something out of my resolutions post last week.

I left out my recent efforts to defeat my greatest weakness: Design.

Forget about when I started building Web sites (age 11), my relationship with design didn't start until I got into online journalism.

And I learned that I couldn't design my way out of a keg. ::shudder::

For a while I thought I could get away without being able to design visual elements. I could shoot photos and video, I could program in Flash and code a site from a .pdf. After all, there's a reason for having designers, right?

I was wrong. I learned that sometimes, there just isn't enough designer to go around, and you have to be able to make your own decisions. Things move faster and more smoothly if I don't have to go ask the designer about an element.

Also, there are design elements to everything else I do online, from customizing a Twitter page to visualizing data. I was going to have to learn.

But how do you learn design?

I didn't take a class, or sign up for a workshop. I just started reading design blogs. Following designers on Twitter. Paying attention to what I liked about certain Web sites and what made them ugly.

And I've made progress. I'm not good at details, but I can spec an overall design that doesn't make people wish for blindness. I'd say I've reached paper bag status (as in can design my way out of), but anything more is beyond me.

I want to get better, because I hate not being able to do things. And because Web deisgn is important. I know I'll never be a designer, but it would be nice to have a touch of the craft.

So if you've got resources, blogs, Web sites, or people that I should be paying attention to, please let me know in the comments.

Edit: I decided to add in a list of what I'm reading.

• 24 Ways
• A Brief Message
• An Event Apart
• Authentic Boredom
• DesignM.ag
• Fuel Your Creativity
• Garrett Dimon
• i love typography
• Jason Santa Maria
• Mark Boulton
• The Grid System
• Web Designer Wall

(Note: I wrote this a few months ago and forgot about it. I found it while cleaning off my hard drive today. Oops!)

I got a Blackberry Pearl about a year ago, and while I have access to Google Reader and Twitter, (my main sources of news) I just haven't gotten out of the habit of reading off the larger screen of my laptop.

Many media outlets are pursuing the possibilities of mobile news, having learned from their mistake with the Internet. As mobile phones get more advanced and more people use them, there is an opportunity to capture an audience.

Problems

One issue to address when setting out to get news on mobile phones is the variation in technologies used by different phones. Many phones can play video or view websites. All phones can receive text messages, but that can be costly to the user.

Viewing websites on a non-iPhone is a ghastly business. Tiny screens, poor rendering of CSS, graphic-heavy or Flash-based websites, they all make information harder to get at. One solution here is to create a mobile stylesheet that the phone browser will detect.

Another problem is content. Just as people don't read off a computer screen the way they read a print product, no one wants to read a lengthy feature article on a 2-inch screen.

What kind of content might one want to see on a phone?

Weather and traffic alerts, events, and big, huge, breaking news. Seriously, the feature article can wait till I get home. But if a criminal is running around my neighborhood with a gun, I'd like to know, ASAP.

What about multimedia? I don't see myself using my phone to go through a complex multimedia package. A video or slideshow, maybe, if I'm really interested. But phones are about "right now" communication. That should be reflected in how news companies approach them.

It may be that the only real solution for phones is better phone software. It doesn't have to be iPhone quality, but the ability to add "news" to your basic menu would change everything. You could do any kind of feed you want then, while not having to go three steps in just to open a browser.

Examples

The Associated Press launched the Mobile News Network. The view on a phone is pretty nice, with a top news home screen, categorized story feeds (you can pick the general topics, and a "saved" category for custom searches). You can set preferences for location and the types of news you want to see. They also do video pretty well, providing various formats. They have applications for Blackberry/iPhone/iPod Touch users.

CNN's mobile offerings include a Java application, SMS alerts, live TV (for certain providers), and downloadable videos.

The BBC actually explains how they set up several different versions of their mobile site and let your browser choose the best one.

The New York Times offers a mobile site where you can read the NYT blogs, see most e-mailed articles, get alerts for topics or keywords, and browse real estate listings, stocks and weather forecasts. You can also choose to have news sent to your phone via text message. Customers of certain providers can also get access to crossword puzzles.

Fox News provides live video, streaming video clips, the requisite mobile site, and text alerts. Something a little different: they also offer an audio version of FNC, for a monthly fee.

Real World Use

The people most likely to have a compulsion to check the news every few hours, no matter where they are, are journalists. So I rounded up a few and asked about their mobile news habits.

Greg Linch sent me an e-mail after I asked for responses on Twitter.

I check Gmail on my smart phone (an AT&T Tilt), where I might have a New York Times, Washington Post or Miami Herald breaking news e-mail. After checking Gmail, I look at Twitter for other news and any interesting conversations. I also get Miami Herald breaking news text alerts, which include big national and local news.

If I'm away from the computer for an extended period of time -- or if I'm bored somewhere -- I'll check Google Reader on my phone. If I just want a quick peek at the latest headlines, I'll go to the mobile version of a site such as CNN, NYT or the Herald.

Kyle Mitchell is a music writer. He carries an iPod Touch. In an IM conversation, Kyle told me about his news habits.

NYT is one that keeps going down all the time. AP Mobile News is absolutely fantastic: runs fast as hell and top news never contains any bullshit like celebrity news. I check that a few times a day. Google News has a similar setup, but it's much more clunky.

Brett Roegiers associate producer at CNN.com said

On my phone, I consume the news via Google Reader and Twitter.

Brett volunteered some advice to media outlets:

I'll tell you what news organizations should pay attention to: location-based web apps. I click 'restaurants' or 'bars' and it shows me what's in my area without me having to input where I am. I guess I'd say try to take advantage of the platform in some way and not just show the latest headlines.

Lyndsey Lewis has an older Nokia, but checks the news on her iPod Touch.

I don't use my phone, because I have a shitty Nokia phone and it's hard to read stuff on it. But, I also own an iPod Touch, which I bring with me everywhere and use for news. I have the New York Times app on it and use that almost every day.

So what applications are you using to get the news on your phone? What do you think media outlets should be doing to get people's attention? What can manufacturers do to make phones easier to use in this context?

In May announced its intention to build an Application Programming Interface for its data. MediaBistro quoted Aron Pilhofer:

The goal, according to Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news, is to "make the NYT programmable. Everything we produce should be organized data."

More details, if they can be called that:

Once the API is complete, the Times' internal developers will use it to build platforms to organize all the structured data such as events listings, restaurants reviews, recipes, etc. They will offer a key to programmers, developers and others who are interested in mashing-up various data sets on the site. "The plan is definitely to open [the code] up," Frons said. "How far we don't know."

I haven't heard anything since then, although the article mentioned that something would be ready "in a matter of weeks."

Today I spent some time reading the API documentation for National Public Radio.

That's right, NPR has an API. (mmm, I love my alphabet soup.)

NPR's API provides a flexible, powerful way to access your favorite NPR content, including audio from most NPR programs dating back to 1995 as well as text, images and other web-only content from NPR and NPR member stations. This archive consists of over 250,000 stories that are grouped into more than 5,000 different aggregations.

You can get results from Topics, Music Genres, Programs, Bios, Music Artists, Columns and Series in XML, RSS, MediaRSS, JSON, and Atom or through HTML and JavaScript widgets.

Now, I'm a bit of an NPR junkie, so I'm thinking of ways to access all this information for my personal use. And I can see how it could be useful as an internal product for NPR.

But how would another news organization use this? Oh wait, they can't:

The API is for personal, non-commercial use, or for noncommercial online use by a nonprofit corporation which is exempt from federal income taxes under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

This one doesn't make sense either:

Content from the API must be used for non-promotional, internet-based purposes only. Uses can include desktop gadgets, blog posts and widgets, but must not include e-newsletters.

And way down at the bottom of the page is a huge block of text describing excluded content. Boooo.

Check out these blog posts from Inside NPR.org, where they explain some of their decisions.

I think this was a great first step, but if you're gonna jump on the bandwagon, make sure you don't miss and land on the hitch.

Further, really understand what purpose this bandwagon has. If you're going to free your data, free it! Let people and news organizations use it (always with a link back) for all kinds of crazy things. Remember kids, sharing is caring!

Zac Echola reminded me yesterday what this blog is about and why I started it.

• 1. A networking blog should be a living document of your professional self. You should stay focused on topics that matter to people who may hire you. You should start reading blogs from people in your field.
• 2. When someone makes you think, you should think out loud on your site. Have a conversation with others. Email people questions. Chat with them on twitter. Get to know people. Working a blog isn’t much different than working a room at a conference. Stay focused.
• 3. Show off your work. When you do something good, show it off. Don’t be bashful.
• 4. SEO the crap out of yourself.
• 5. Seize every opportunity you can.
• 6. Always remember that there’s a real human being on the other side of the machine.

I've been really bad at updating lately, and I'm going to work hard to fix that, starting with a bunch of updates on what I've been doing lately. I think short posts are preferred, so I'll split things up. Keep an eye out for stuff on Twitter, Google Maps, Django and more.

I know I haven't been posting much lately, but I've been completely swamped.

Thanks to Matt Waite's brilliance and patience, I got Django installed on my MacBook. I haven't actually done much more than order the book and start reading through the tutorial and documentation, but I'm really excited to start learning. Right now I'm stuck trying to get MySQL onto the laptop. I'm Terminal-retarded, so this is getting frustrating. Once I get that up and running, I'll be diving into a Django-driven class project.

My independent study project has advanced to the data cleaning stage. I'm still gathering the last bits in, but I started cleaning and organizing and staring blankly at numbers.

Life at The Alligator isn't particularly impressive lately. We're still mostly fixing. I slapped this little map of upcoming Gainesville shows together last week. Then I had to spend 3 hours trying to get it to work with the publishing system. It's still kind of broken. But on the bright side, Ken Schwencke, a journalism student who is several levels beyond my programming abilities, has joined my staff.

I'm reading "Time Enough for Love," and these quotes struck me as being more journalism-related than not.

What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single cue. Get the facts!

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

That is all.

I've written about editing before, in terms of design, importance, and my advanced editing class. But I'd like to dig back down through some of my notes on diversity, ageism, sexism, bias, ethics, taste etc.

One of the first things that we discussed was verifying stories.

An editor hears about a great story for the next days' paper. There is only one source for the story and no names, no way to double-check the facts. But oh, god, it's a good story. And there's no real reason for your source to lie to you, is there?

But man, does your paper look dumb when readers start calling in. My view on the issue:

There is a risk to be taken if the story is important enough. Otherwise, sit on it.
One way to handle this might be to take advantage of the casual atmosphere of the Internet. Maybe you paper has a blog or a forum. Post your unverified story there, and let the community help you verify or deny it. Or make a space especially for rumors.

Next up: hyper local journalism. This is especially topical with the recent breakdown of Backfence.

One of the things that seems to be left out of journalism classes is basic business sense. While it is important to learn as many different ways to tell stories as possible, the trend of this transition to the Internet suggests that journalists also need to know how to monetize their stories, perhaps how to survive as a freelancer.

Hyper local news sites are breaking down the barrier between "journalist" and "reader", but dealing with the same problems as every other news site: monetization, advertising, ethics and quality.

The best advice to take from the hyper local trend is "Think like a user, not a publisher." This is something that must be considered at every stage: from building the site to writing articles, to allowing users to post comments, articles and pictures.

Tomorrow: Stories that don't get told, journalism and math.

Classes in Review Series
Preview

Last semester, I took Editing as part of my course load. It was less demanding than some of my other classes, and time limitations meant that I didn't give the subject the attention it deserves. I tried to make up for that by taking Advanced Editing during this first half of the summer.

In the Editing class, the emphasis is on grammar, punctuation and word choice. The professor gave us articles to "fix." Many of the errors were inconsistencies, fact errors, awkward wording and the like. We also did a little bit of page layout on dummy sheets, and cutting down AP wire stories. Less integral to the class, but more interesting, were topics of diversity, ageism, sexism, bias, ethics and taste.

These are the issues that we have discussed in the Advanced Editing class.

The advantage of this class is that it is very small, (at least in the summer, we had only 11 students) which allows for greater freedom of class discussion. The professor would hand out an article or case study and we would discuss the issues as a group. We talked about verifying sources, making up information, copying press releases, critical thinking and journalists and math.

Recognizing these issues and grasping the "big picture" behind a story is what being an editor is all about. But it's also what being a reporter should be about.

Being an "online" kinda gal, I'd rather be out shooting video, making Flash presentations or putting together a database than managing people and editing articles. But the chance to discuss the issues that editors face everyday has been invaluable, and I think that my future work will be better because of it. These problems are not unique to print journalism. They need to be addressed in other forms of media as well.

Advanced Editing wasn't a required course, it was a choice I made because every puzzle piece counts. If I could stay in school long enough to take courses in layout, photography and business, I would. Sadly, I've only got one year left. But until they kick me outta here, I'm going to scrape together as many puzzle pieces as I can. They will make me a better journalist, but even more importantly, I think they will make me a better person.

Last week in class we talked about the way Web site popularity and growth is measured. Advertising agencies want to know how many people visit your site before they pay you for advertising space. Thus, pageviews, a way to measure how many people click over to a page on your site.

With technologies such as ajax becoming very popular among Web sites, pageviews become an obsolete measurement. Instead of loading a new page, new content is loaded dynamically.

So how do we measure growth and popularity?

In class, we said: time.

And so does Nielsen.

The two major firms that track Internet traffic are playing down the significance of ranking Web sites by "page views," the number of pages viewed on a given Web property each month. Instead, they are offering other metrics, such as time spent or visits.

But there are problems with that, too. I can open up a tab in Firefox (or, now, IE7) and totally forget about it. It's still counting how much time I'm spending on that site. I get most of my news and daily reading via RSS. No time measuring there.

So, in the movement from "static web" to "dynamic web" what metric system can we rely on?

P.S. These metrics aren't just used by advertisers. I check my site and RSS stats regularly to see how you all respond to me and to test changes to the site.

I took a look at Google Trends today, a feature of Google Reader that tracks how many feeds you read, what time of day you read them, active and inactive subscriptions, and what you read most, star most, and share most.

Unfortunately, my reading technique skews the results so that only the inactive/active trend is of any use to me.

You see, with 101 subscriptions (down from 115 due to inactive) I usually read my feeds in list view. I scroll through this list by hitting the spacebar, which opens and then marks as read the item in question. This means that EVERYTHING is technically "read."

Now, there are a few ways I could alter my reading behavior so that it wouldn't skew my trends. (uncheck mark as read and mark each item I actually read as read individually, for one) But they also slow me down.

The problem becomes speed vs accuracy. And my lack of time management skills trumps my curiosity, in this case.

So long, Google Trends, and thanks for all the...

My co-workers at the Help Desk like to get their news online. We were talking about an article on the New York Times Web site, when someone highlighted a paragraph and inadvertently double-clicked.

Apparently, when you double-click on a word in an article, it opens a pop-up window with the definition of the word.

A neat feature, no doubt, but it isn't made obvious that this will happen. A lot of people highlight as they read to keep track of where they are, and clicking inadvertently could be confusing and irritating.

So, please NYT, give me the option of turning that nonsense off.

The Setup:

Much of what I've read since I started blogging (and thereby reading more online journalism blogs) says that journalists and students of journalism should blog. But according to a survey conducted by my editing teacher, out of 60 or so students (three sections) only about 5 blog.

The Problem:

My cash costs for this blog are almost nil, but the time cost is heavy. I try to post at least once a day, and that means coming up with a post idea (usually through my RSS feeds or classes), how to approach it, searching for references and relevant information, writing the post, coming up with a title (headlines are my weakness), and editing. I'm also constantly looking for ways to improve the site as a whole, via design or information.

The Solution?

Tumblr

A "Tumblelog" is The Flash compared to traditional blogging. Each post will have a different format based on what information you're posting: a longer blog post, a photograph or graphic, a quotation, a link, a conversation, or a video. You don't have to write commentary, there are no comments to check. Just post and go.

Even better, the Tumblr bookmarklet automatically detects what kind of site you're on and will format the post accordingly. I'm assuming this auto-detect isn't perfect, so you can change the type easily as well.

You can also set Tumblr up to directly publish posts from an RSS feed or your cellphone.

Maybe not:

Here's the drawback: no comments = no community. If you follow the theory that journalism needs to get ueber-local, and journalists need to learn how to participate in their communities, maybe Tumblr isn't the solution for the time-bound. Maybe you should just take a few extra seconds to post to a blog that does allow comments. Maybe the time investment is worth the possibility of mind-opening and engaging conversation; building your own community.

Something Different:

Perhaps the challenge lies in the format. How long is a story, anyway?

P.S. This post took me about two hours. I had help on the details on Tumblr from Lifehacker.

TheBivingsReport has a great list of how newspapers can (SHOULD) integrate blogs. They also include links to examples.

The short version:

(1) Ask you audience what they think you should be covering.

(2) Ask your audience for input on something new.

(3) Host public blogs

(4) Continue coverage of an ongoing story that has left the limelight.

(5) Help journalists jump off the high horse and join their audiences in discussions.

(6) Write (and host) niche blogs.

(7) Ask your audience for help with a story. Get opinions (check facts!)

(8) Ask experts in your community to host a debate.

(9) Ask people from your audience to write about their areas of expertise.

(10) Provide sneak peaks of upcoming stories.

(11) Allow journalists to share their interests and passions.

(12) Share internal memos and briefings with the public.

(13) Let your audience into the newsroom: write about editorial decisions, story coverage and internal debate.

(14) How can a news organization provide a case study about an issue that it covers? By using a blog.

(15) What are newsroom staffers reading? Perhaps the public would like to read these items as well.

(16) If your organization gathered and prepared content that wasn't released, why not post it to a blog if it is otherwise fine?

I realize that in paraphrasing some of these ideas, I used the word audience a lot. Journalists need to get closer to (take your pick: the masses, the audience, the readers, the consumers, the people, the community) but there is a pervasive "us vs. them" philosophy. I'm not sure what the correct (politically or otherwise) term might be. Any wordsmiths out there?

I jumped out of my niche for a few minutes the other day to participate in a roundup of blogging tips. Here are the results:

1. Daniel: A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.
2. Brian Auer: According to my Google Analytics, about 35% of my traffic comes from other people’s blogs and 25% comes from the forums I’m active with, while search engines provide about 15%. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums.
3. Kat: I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.
4. Tillerman : Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.
5. Eric Atkins: Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.
6. Sridhar Katakam: Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. How do you know which blogs to keep track of in the first place? Add the MyBlogLog widget/code to your blog. When you notice a MyBlogLog user visiting your blog, visit that person’s in turn.
7. Dennis Coughlin: Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.
8. Guido: Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.
9. Grant Gerver: Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.
10. Megan Taylor: Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience.
11. Ramen Junkie: Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.
12. Ian Delaney: Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Making a post along the lines of ‘Evaluated resources for XYZ’ is useful. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.
13. KWiz: Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.
14. Splork: I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.
15. Alan Thomas: Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.
16. Brandon Wood: A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.
17. Engtech: Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.
18. Goerge Manty: Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or setting up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.
19. Mark Alves: Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.
20. Andrew Timberlake: A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.
21. Inspirationbit: Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.
22. Scott Townsend: Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources.
23. Jen Gordon: I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.
24. Chris: Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense, you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.
25. Kyle: Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.
26. Nick: Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.
27. Jester: Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.
28. Cory OBrien: Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).
29. Shankar Ganesh: Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog.

Online Journalism Blog links to 13 posts by students of online journalism, about why their skills are important.

Short and sweet, from Jessica James

Well one reason is, your reading this right now, and if your reading this now you are part of a heavily expanding online readership.

Last week's New York Times "Week in Review" feed was unimpressive, but not disappointing. It included some select articles from throughout the week, plus corrections to previous articles.

901am lists some great advice to Google on how to improve their reader. From the 5 recommended features, my favorite is same story consolidation. I can absorb so much more if related items are grouped together. Go check out the list and let me know what your favorite feature would be.

In contrast to RSS faves, here is my pet peeve: summary/excerpt feeds. Whether you forgot to check the "full feed" box or are stuck on page views, I really, really hate having to click through to the Web site to finish reading. Argh.

Recent conversation among journalism students:

• "I don't want to do the online thing."

• "I don't need to learn to edit, I just want to write."

• "As an online journalist, I can just write, right?"

Wrong. Sorry kids, but you can't relive the days of portable typewriters, smoky newsrooms, digging through piles of paper records, midnight deadlines.

To avoid journalistic "siberia," you'd better be able to think and work online, in various media, and edit your own work. You also have to be able to do it all fast.

In short, you're more likely to end up like Adam Penenberg than Hunter Thompson.

It never fails to frustrate me to see students stuck on a life that can no longer exist. YOU spend more time on Facebook than reading the newspaper, what makes you think your audience is much different?

Teachers: Yes, it is important that students learn how to write, edit and present stories. That is the basis of all this, after all. But students also need to learn to think of their stories in 3-D. Their work will no longer be "just" a print article, but a multi-faceted package. And we need to learn to think that way.

Check out similar conversations at Innovation in College Media and Teaching Online Journalism.