From Rework:

“I don’t have enough time/money/people/experience.” Stop whining. Less is a good thing. Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.

This a common complaint in the media world—I’m even guilty of it myself—but not having enough [fill in the blank here] should never be an excuse. It doesn’t take a lot of time/money/people/experience to:

Produce a well-designed, user-friendly site – Wordpress, Drupal, and other open source products have eliminated the need for outside vendors. So why are so many publishers still using them? The open source stuff is easier to use. Big publishers are often distracted by a vendor’s glamorous sales pitch. But what usually happens when the deal is done? You’re left with a cookie cutter site that none of your editors know how to use. It doesn’t take much to make a site functional. Users care less about the bells and whistle and more about functionality and content.

Produce quality content – Journalists are used to getting paid little to nothing. It may not be right, but it’s the truth. So don’t act like hiring someone to write a 300 word article at 30¢ a word is going to break the bank. Try taking it from your salary. If you believed in your product, you would. There are a lot of well-trained writers out there who are happy just to get a byline.

Market your brand – If you produce quality content, that’s marketing enough. If readers like what you have to say and you produce enough of it on a regular basis, they’ll come back and they’ll tell their friends. It’s that simple. Despite the distractions of the Internet, humans are still creatures of habit. Make yourself part of your reader’s habits by giving them what they want and need: good content.

Connect with your readers – Social media tools like Twitter and Facebook are great ways to get feedback from your audience. Implemented a new product on your Web site? Ask your fans. Want to know if a story was well received? Ask yours followers. Believe me, they’ll tell you. And if they don’t? You have your answer.

Clay Shirky at Pop! Tech 2008 (Creative Commons License via Pop!Tech)

I’m currently rereading Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky, a must-read for any journalist who wants to remain employable/understand what the hell is happening to our profession. The book chronicles how Web 2.0 technologies are revolutionizing our world and the way we socialize with one another via these technologies. Flipping through the pages, pen in hand, it’s hard not to have an “ah-ha” moment with every sentence. Shirky gets it; why can’t the rest of us?

With this last read-through, Shirky struck me the most by comparing today’s journalists to the scribes of the early 1400s. Back in the day scribes did something that was rare; they wrote. They were the keepers of our society’s memories. “The scribe was the only bulwark against great intellectual loss.” Yet the invention of moveable type in the late 1400s made scribes nearly obsolete over time. The ability to write was no longer rare.

This comparison isn’t shocking. In fact, many other professionals have alluded to similar analogies in the past. What I find interesting and somewhat comical about Shirky’s comparison though, was his reference to Johannes Trithemius, the Abbott of Sponheim and defender of the scribe. In 1492, the Abbott published a book entitled De Laude Scriptorum, which outlined the benefits of the scribal tradition.

The Abbot’s position would have been mere reactionary cant (“We must preserve the old order at any cost”) but for one detail. If, in the year 1492, you’d written a treatise you wanted widely disseminated, what would you do? You’d have it printed, of course, which was exactly what the Abbot did…. The content of the Abbot’s book praised the scribes, while its printed form damned them; the medium undermined the message.

This example is both funny and sad because the mentality/fear behind it still holds true today. Although the example I’m about to describe doesn’t fit Shirky’s example exactly, it does call to mind a certain mentality among some journalists. On April 21, 2009, New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd poked a little fun at Twitter. The article was centered around her quest to find out “if the inventors of Twitter were as annoying as their invention.” Dowd asked the company’s founders to limit their answers to 140 characters, and questions ranged from “Did you know you were designing a toy for bored celebrities and high-school girls?” to “Why did you call the company Twitter instead of Clutter?”

Dowd’s opinion and the Abbot’s are similar in the fact that they both used technology to express their hatred for technology to end users. Ok, so Dowd didn’t use Twitter, but the story was posted online, which is the technological platform that allows Twitter to exist at all. She also poked fun of bloggers who bash the micro-blogging site by stating, “Isn’t that a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?” This comment proves that not only is Dowd afraid of Twitter, she’s afraid of all technological change that disrupts the status quo.

But this story isn’t about Dowd. Her comments have long passed. But it’s just a matter of time before another journalist replaces them with their own fearful words. I can think of more than a handful of  journalists who have damned technology while at the same time used it to promote their work. Print snobs claim that the Internet is destroying good journalism. This point is somewhat valid, however, just because something is in print doesn’t make it good journalism (Us Weekly). Good journalism can be done across multiple platforms. And great journalists should be able to recognize this. What print snobs refuse to see is how these new technologies could truly benefit our profession in the end, and dare I say, mankind. We need amateurs to keep us on our toes, because let’s face it, many journalists think their shit is amazing. But listen up shit lovers; no one’s shit’s amazing. We are the new scribes. But we should be acting more like the new printing presses.

I thought about this idea as I watched this very strange video on Vimeo. I’m not necessarily in love with this video, but it once again made me wish that I was better at transforming my thoughts into a visually tangible product.

BT’n'J – Na Posedu from McSanchez on Vimeo.

Who knows why, but I think about Dustin Hoffman every time I indulge in a cup of yogurt. Perhaps you’ve seen the movie Stranger Than Fiction, a delightful flick featuring Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, and of course, Dustin Hoffman. When I eat yogurt my mind immediately wanders to the scene where Hoffman eats a runny cup of  yogurt during a therapy session with Ferrell’s character Harold. I’m not sure if it’s the way Hoffman eats while he’s talking to Ferrell, or the fact that runny yogurt just grosses me out, but I can’t stop thinking about that specific moment anytime a drop of yogurt hits my mouth.

It’s weird. I know. But what fascinates me the most isn’t really the yogurt, it’s the way our minds work. Why do we remember these seemingly insignificant parts of our lives, yet inadvertently forget far more important moments? What daily acts trigger strange memories in you? I’d love to know.

Yogurt Scene starts at 6:16 of this clip:

I still had the opportunity to go to an excellent school because of my grandparents, but my life was obviously different than my schoolmates’. When asked, I told friends that I lived in my grandparents’ neighborhood, and I rarely invited anyone over for sleepovers. It seems silly now, but I was terrified of what people were going to think. So I pretended to be someone else.

It was an embarrassment then because I was a selfish child, unaware of the world and how bad things could be. Sure, I lived in a dangerous part of town and never once played outside, but I had advantages. I beat all the odds that said I would never amount to anything because I grew up in a poor single-parent home. To this day my mother still says, “You should be a statistic, but you’re not.”

I attribute most of my success to my family’s faith in God, but I understand if this means nothing to you. I also had a loving mother and grandparents who did everything they could to make sure I got a good education. And I did. I had the privilege of going to an excellent school, the other kids in my neighborhood did not.

As an adult, my childhood experiences have shaped my life in a number of ways. I’m not as selfish as a used to be, I have a soft heart for the downtrodden, but most importantly, my outlook on life is extremely different. Not a day goes by that I’m not thankful for my life. Pardon the cliche, but no matter how difficult things get, I’m quickly reminded that they could always be worse.

I’ve been thinking about my past a lot over the past few weeks and I think it has a lot to do with Chicago Now’s One Story Up, a blog about Chicago housing. This blog not only reminds me of my childhood, only a lot worse, it reminds me of the beat reporting I did in graduate school last year. I, too, reported on Chicago housing and development. Every day my heart broke listening to stories about gentrification, public housing and education. Every day I went home with a heart full of thanks that my hardships had only lasted 10 years and were not nearly as bad. Some people’s hardships last an entire lifetime.

If you’ve gotten this far down into my blog, thank you, but I’m sure you’re wondering where this story is going. So am I. I guess my point is this: we all come from somewhere. And sometimes that somewhere is a bad and awful place, but that doesn’t mean the rest of your life has to be that way. Look around you. Chances are, if you’re able to access the Internet and read this blog you’re better off than most. Start living that way.

Cabrini Green by TheeErin, Creative Commons License

First off, a Kentucky Mountain Man must have a beard. The longer the better. Secondly, he’s gotta wear plaid, although rustic pearl snap shirts work, too . Both add to his mountain man-ness. The plaid shirt and beard combo screams lumberjack, which is where the term originated. Does he look like he spends time in the Appalachian Mountains chopping wood and singing tunes on his guitar? If so, he’s a KMM. He doesn’t necessarily have to hail from Kentucky or play an instrument, but he’s gotta look rugged and he has to love good music. Perhaps the most endearing part of a KMM are his soulful eyes. Because his entire face is covered with hair all you have to look at are his eyes, but those can tell you a lot about someone.

Below is an example of the ultimate KMM, Tyler Ramsey. Ramsey is singer-songwriter who most recently joined one of my favorite bands Band of Horses. I will probably never meet him but I’m confident there are plenty of Kentucky Mountain Men living right here in Chicago.

**Update: Google ads I saw next to this post were for Mountain Man Clothing and Kentucky Dating.

Tyler Ramsey of Band of Horses (Via rorris, Flickr Creative Commons Lincense)

Lois Lane

I always knew I wanted to be a journalist from the time I was nine years old. Wearing a pair of my of my mom’s heels as I pretended to be Lois Lane was a regular occurrence for me. And with help from my older brother (and his computer), I frequently produced my own versions of the Daily Planet.

Times have changed since then, and so has journalism. If Lois Lane were around today, she’d be expected to tweet about Lex Luther’s latest antics and Facebook her encounters with Superman. These days technology has progressed farther than most journalists and communicators. Good reporting and PR still exist, but that isn’t enough to break through the Internet clutter.

That’s why I’m here. If reporting or blogging is what you need, I’m a multi-platform journo with a Master’s from Northwestern University. If you’re looking for a crash course in digital media, social media, or  anything-else media, I’m also your girl. I’ll set you up and train you on the latest social media tools or pinpoint areas on your site that are less than optimal for our digital world via a comprehensive strategy. I might not be Lois Lane, but I’ll certainly try my best to be your digital Superwoman.

Other Girls: “Hey Fella, Ya Fell” from Theodore Mallison on Vimeo.