Lots of readers of The Wall Street Journal e-mailed Monday’s interesting and timely piece about the “new class of worker,” the Nearly Autonomous, Not in the Office, doing Business in their Own Time Staff—nanobots, for short. It’s an especially hot topic among publications managers. Increasingly, staff members want to telecommute to save gas and time, [...]
Author Archives: Suzanne Harris Magnificent Publications Inc.
Towards More Mature Content
December 13, 2008An analyst with the marketing research firm Forrester recently talked to the Custom Publishing Council about online content management strategies that publishers are using to achieve growth. While the strategies look intelligent, closer examination of the analyst’s examples reveal that they still need a little work. Did the Sun run out of gas? Here’s one [...]
Wait! Don’t Touch That Website
December 8, 2008My colleagues and I are fans of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit outgrowth of the St. Petersburg (FL) Times that is devoted to improving the craft of journalism. So it’s in the spirit of collegiality that I’m responding to Joe Grimm, who writes “Ask the Recruiter” for Poynter Online. A reader asked: “I am a [...]
Before You Roll the Dice …
December 2, 2008Dan Kohan, you sly devil. The proprietor of Sensical Design, a frequent collaborator, took issue with our recent post about Amazon’s wireless reading device, Kindle, and its pro’s and con’s versus traditional print publication. His comment chided us for neglecting the self-publishing option and its many advantages for certain writers. As an example, he cited [...]
At Last: Your Own Free Press
November 27, 2008“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” – A.J. Liebling What can one person accomplish using the Web? It’s astounding. The American Society of Business Publication Editors proved it in a recent Webinar packed with tips from two pioneers of the do-it-yourself Web world. These two each started successful Web-based [...]
News, Marketing: Sorting It All Out
November 20, 2008As a former newspaper journalist, I’m delighted whenever I see new media spring up where the now-depleted daily press once held a monopoly. We assist clients in putting out state newsletters, so we’ve been enjoying the healthy crop of websites devoted to state legislative news. For example, no fewer than three websites put out state [...]
Free Online Business Journalism Classes
November 12, 2008I found out about this from an ad in my monthly newsletter from the American Society of Business Publication Editors: the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism offers free online courses “specifically geared to editors who wish to learn more about business journalism and how to cover public and private companies.” Writing about [...]
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‘Unveiling the Beauty of Statistics’
October 19, 2008One of our recent posts quoted a WIRED magazine executive who wants publishers to hurry up and introduce sensemaking machines that present continually updated information in readily comprehensible ways. If you haven’t had a chance to see one of the best such machines, check out the pioneering Gapminder, a website whose software was originally developed [...]
Rev Up the Sensemaking Machines
October 13, 2008WIRED NextFest wrapped up in Chicago yesterday. If you missed it, you can still enjoy a catalog of innovations (PDF) that will make life more efficient, environmentally benign, and fun in the years to come. With all the turmoil in the publishing industry, newspapers in particular, don’t be surprised at the absence of sleek, exciting [...]
Your Website – Your Future
September 29, 2008If any of your colleagues are less than 100 percent enthusiastic about your Web projects, here is how to light a fire under them: Share the latest findings of the Digital Future Project (PDF), conducted for the past seven years by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Start with this: [...]