We are not simply complaining about that article. There is a pattern heavily in the New York Times, but also in other major newspapers, of condescending to and insulting mom bloggers. I am here to say that it is time we take a stand against it.

Here are but a few snippets from the latest New York Times article about the Bloggy Bootcamp conference in Baltimore:

ON a brisk Saturday morning this month, a dedicated crew of about 90 women, most in their 30s or thereabouts, arrived at a waterfront hotel here, prepared for a daylong conference that offered to school them in the latest must-have skill set for the minivan crowd.

Teaching your baby to read? Please. How to hide vegetables in your children’s food? Oh, that’s so 2008.

And this is in reference to my friend Tara’s session on SEO (something, incidentally, many companies have budgets for in the thousands annually):

Heed the speaker’s advice, and you, too, might get 28,549 views of your tutu-making tutorial! Whereas so-called mommy blogs were once little more than glorified electronic scrapbooks, a place to share the latest pictures of little Aidan and Ava with Great-Aunt Sylvia in Omaha, they have more recently evolved into a cultural force to be reckoned with.

Why is it so shocking that moms would discuss something besides parenting? How ridiculous. Why was this even in the Style section? If it were a tech conference for men the tone would be entirely different. It would go in business. It would not mention minivans. And I won’t even get into “glorified electronic scrapbooks.” I know many moms who have blogged about topics such as business and social media and politics for years that go well beyond that little dig.

Yes, mom blogging is an industry. It isn’t something cute we adorable widdle mommies do to share diaper stories. Whether we’re making money or not (mostly not), it is an industry. There are plenty of industries in which many workers in it make little or no money, such as writing, fine art and acting.

We get marginalized for a few reasons, including:

• We are women who are, perhaps for one of the first times, far better at something than men in many cases and far better in an industry that is making a major impact. I should explain that I know many, many men who are talented, brilliant bloggers, but that isn’t surprising. For women to stand out in an industry that major corporations are clamoring to get involved with just sits wrong with some people.
• We are excelling in the media landscape, which doesn’t sit well with traditional media.
• We are turning our backs on the mold that has been created for us.
• We are threatening to traditional publishers, mostly old white men who couldn’t write a blog or use Twitter if you put a gun to their heads.
• Newspaper circulation keeps declining, while blog readership and authorship keeps growing.
• Writing snarky articles about mom bloggers encourages mom bloggers to share links and drive readers to the newspaper’s web site. (Here’s a hint, New York Times… we would share positive coverage just as much, if not more).

We are trying to make a living by creating content, and for that we get demeaned, criticized, talked down to, made fun of, and stereotyped as unethical money and swag grabbing whores.

I know of a few other organizations that make their money creating content. Namely, mainstream media.

Mom blogging is a new media revolution.

Many moms blog because we have found the current establishment unacceptable in many cases. How many mom bloggers were once career women? How many have a day job but hope to one day make enough from their blog to leave it? How many found it difficult to balance career and family? How many found it even more difficult to convince their employer to give an inch to make it easier: allow working from home, allow flex time, allow job sharing?

In the midst of this down economy, how many blogging moms kept food on their children’s tables or a roof over their heads?

Mom bias begins in the newsroom.

I left newspapers after 15 years, despite loving my work and being a third-generation journalist raised by two journalists because the field was so family-unfriendly. In fact, another layer of this bias against mom bloggers in media is that the same bias exists in many newsrooms against moms who work there.

Newspapers want employees who place their job above all else in their lives. Moms just won’t do that, and that is a problem. There is this sense that moms, who can’t be on call 24-7 because they have children they need to care for, have it easier than childless reporters. Anyone who thinks being a reporter and a parent is an easily life is a fool.

Women blogging is a revolution, a rejection of the status quo. We have been forced into a box for centuries, and we refuse to accept it. We refuse to be told we have to choose between success and motherhood. We refuse to follow the unbending rules of corporate jobs that in many cases make you prioritize job over family. Most of all, we refuse to accept that mainstream media, with its quality decline and clear bias, should be the only source of information.

It is getting to the point that I am frankly embarrassed for the traditional media. They are making fools of themselves. They are abandoning all of their allegedly dear principles, such as bias, fair reporting and serving readers, in their need to belittle moms and women, in their desperation to remain viable and profitable. They could devote that energy instead to pursuing real journalism, investigative journalism, interacting and hearing their readers, and learning the social media landscape so they could cease the deterioration of their industry.

It amazes me how many commented at Liz’s post that mom bloggers should just be happy to be getting coverage. We don’t need coverage. We are far better masters at building buzz and engaging with readers than newspapers are. Thanks, but no thanks.

When I was a reporter, even covering controversial beats (which is really all I did cover), I always balanced reporting even of cops, courts, politics and business with a mix of positive and negative articles. That, my friends, is lacking bias. You should cover the whole picture, and represent the beat comprehensively.

Liz did a fabulous job of listing the many amazing stories from the mom blogosphere that are being missed, so I won’t try to replicate that. Major newspapers missed the entire story of Jaeli, where mom bloggers joined forces to save the life of a baby. Apparently, that isn’t newsworthy. Most missed the amazing and inspirational story of Anissa Mayhew, a fellow mom blogger whose stroke motivated an entire community of hundreds of bloggers to rally in her support.

If you think this post is about one snarky article, or even just one snarky article by the New York Times, I would like to offer a collective of their so-called fair and balanced reporting of the mom blogosphere. (I use so-called because I find it amusing, considering how many times news articles have referred to us as “so-called mom bloggers,” like it’s some sort of scam).

Here is just a small sampling of mainstream media coverage of mom bloggers. I’ll start with New York Times:

There was Drinking in the Land of Mommy Blogdom (and yes, it’s about what you think it is).

Then there was Approval by a Blogger May Please a Sponsor, which goes so far as to insinuate that moms get kickbacks:

The proliferation of paid sponsorships online has not been without controversy. Some in the online world deride the actions as kickbacks. Others also question the legitimacy of bloggers’ opinions, even when the commercial relationships are clearly outlined to readers.

And the Federal Trade Commission is taking a hard look at such practices and may soon require online media to comply with disclosure rules under its truth-in-advertising guidelines.

A short two months later, the New York Times writes about dad bloggers getting in on this action. You can read the two articles for yourself to compare tones, but this one has but a brief mention of FTC guidelines. Instead, this is mentioned:

Sony emphasizes that the products it is sending daddy bloggers are on loan, not gifts, and bloggers are not being pressured to write positive reviews. “We expect the reviews to be very honest,” said Marcy Cohen, a Sony spokeswoman.

I believe the title of this one speaks for itself: Beauty Blogs Come of Age: Swag Please!

Ah, and he is an oldie but a goodie. Mom’s Mad. And She’s Organized. Noteworthy quote:

A BABY was passed around like the hors d’oeuvres.

Nice. Clearly, this was an article about something cute and trite, right? Not so much. It was about MomsRising, an organization to empower and give political might to moms.

The only nugget of wisdom about moms I found on New York Times has such irony, especially when you consider their coverage of an industry of women bloggers. The Anti-Mommy Bias isn’t specific to mom bloggers (that must be how it slipped past editors), but it sure is enlightening on this topic. Just replace employers with journalists for a snicker.

Employers sometimes assume that women with care responsibilities will be, and should be, less committed to their jobs. Such assumptions and beliefs can influence employment outcomes even when caregivers work just as long and hard as everybody else…

In one experiment, about 200 undergraduates were asked to rate paired applications for an imaginary midlevel managerial job. Both female and male students rated mothers lower on competence and commitment, recommended lower salaries for them, and judged them less worthy of promotion than childless women.

In an even more convincing audit study, fictional résumés and cover letters were sent to employers advertising midlevel marketing and business job openings at a large Northeastern city newspaper. Childless women received 2.1 times as many callbacks as mothers. Fathers, however, were not penalized.

What did I say about bias against moms in the newsroom? Yeah.

To be fair, New York Times is not the only newspaper to show bias against moms who blog. Here is a sampling of some of the oh-so flattering coverage in other major newspapers:

• Paid to Pitch by Wall Street Journal
• Is a Crackdown Looking for Parent Blogs? by Wall Street Journal. Just FYI, WSJ, but the FTC regulations were for bloggers. I’m not sure where parent came from there.
• To Create Buzz, TV Networks Try a Little ‘Blogola’ by Wall Street Journal
• Blogging Moms Wooed by Firms: Food Giants Provide Lavish Goodies, Parents Provide the Buzz. Is it Ethical? by LA Times.

I know this is a long post and I know these are a lot of links. But I have a reason for that. This is not an isolated incident. This isn’t even just one major newspaper. This is a pattern.

I would say that we should boycott newspapers, but are we even reading them? I mean, except when they write this drivel? And we are forced to either ignore it or drive readers their way by criticizing it.

We need to take a stand. So what are we going to do about it?

Edited to add: I think we are all at a loss as to what to do about this. I wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times, and I highly recommend you also write one. There are instructions here. I would also recommend emailing the Times’ ombudsman at public@nytimes.com. His name is Clark Hoyt, and this is the paper’s description of his role: “The public editor works outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper and receives and answers questions or comments from readers and the public, principally about articles published in the paper.” We may not be a big corporation, but our voices are our might.

Photo of man with newspaper and woman with laptop, © FaceMePLS on Flickr.

Now I will be the first to say that I know many traditional journalist don’t follow all of these 100 percent of the time. I also think in many ways traditional media has forgotten what’s most important, and has strayed from their path. These, however, are ideals that were instilled in me as important while a reporter, and they are just as important to me as a blogger.

Check Your Facts

Blogging is instant gratification. You can get on your computer and publish whatever is in your mind in a matter of seconds. We as bloggers have no editors, no copy editors, no night desk. We just have ourselves. That makes it all the more important to fact check. If you are about to publish something and you aren’t sure without a doubt it is true, check first. Often that only takes a few minutes with Google. Sometimes it means contacting someone to ask.

If something is a rumor or unverified and you still want to run with it, be sure to state that.

Get Both Sides

Blogging by nature is biased and one sided. If you saw my post, “Guess What News Business? Bias Was OK After All,” then you will see I feel that is fine. Many blogs function more like a traditonal newspaper column than a front page article.

Still, that doesn’t stop you from telling both sides of the story to present something balanced to your readers. It will be a better post for it! Are you ranting about a company? Take five minutes to shoot the company an email asking for a response. Send them a list of questions. And their replying doesn’t mean you can’t run the post. Run it with their replies.

Create Original Content

I see many instances of huge blocks of a post or story being republished, or pictures being used that are clearly not the property of the poster. You cannot use copyrighted material on your blog without permission. There are many great places to find photos that can be used (stock.xchng, Flickr Creative Commons or a company’s online press room), and even then I recommend attributing the source at the bottom of the post with a link to the original picture.

For content, anything beyond a quick 1-2 sentence blurb with a link to read the full post on its original site is probably a bad idea. Besides copyright laws, if you are pulling half of someone’s post are you really offering much of value? Better to come up with your own words to discuss a topic than to pull from the work of someone else.

Keep Editorial and Advertising Separate

This one is tough for bloggers, but still important to strive for. In old media, there are whole departments who handle editorial and advertising. They rarely cross paths. For many blogs, there is one person. You can still do what you can to handle the two worlds with integrity.

If a post is paid for (I don’t especially care for that, but that’s another topic), then it should be clearly labeled as advertising. If you notice, in newspapers and magazines when this happens, the disclosure content is paid is the first thing you see. It should be that way in blogs as well.

If you receive an item to review, that is not working for a company, as was discussed at length in comments on my post about mom bloggers deserving pay. A review is done for your readers. It requires not feeling beholden to the company or agency who sent it to you. Reviews should have both good and bad. I would even consider telling companies right from the start that you only do fair reviews.

Be Discriminating About Pitches

In any newsroom, station and magazine office on any given day, they easily receive hundreds of pitches. Of those, maybe one or two (or maybe even none) get any attention. A pitch is just that, a pitch. Saying no to it is not only acceptable, but it is standard for many who are pitched to not even reply much less write about the topic or product.

You certainly can reply to be polite, but saying no to a pitch that makes no sense for your readers or that you don’t have time to cover is perfectly OK.

Just like in traditional media, the best PR people will build a relationship with you and not simply pitch you when they want coverage for a client. So next time you say no, maybe initiate some conversation with the PR person and see where that goes.

Be a Skeptic

Many journalists are cynics, and that is a trait that serves them well. It means not taking anything on face value. It means wondering someone’s motives if they want coverage. It means always asking why.

Bloggers could stand a dose of this as well. Don’t assume what you hear or read is true. When you hear a statistic or survey results, look to see who funded that survey or what the source of the statistics are. Always be looking for the wizard behind the curtain.

Edit Your Copy

I see many blogs that have many typos and grammatical errors. It really isn’t hard to edit your posts to clean them up. If you don’t already, get a copy of the AP Style Book and read it through. If you can’t do that, at least have a mental style policy (like you always call it blog and not weblog). A simple spell check can be very helpful, but it doesn’t catch everything (for example, words that are words but the wrong word… or misuse of its vs. it’s).

If bloggers want to command respect as an important part of the media, having copy that is error-free goes a long way towards looking professional.

Even though most bloggers don’t have editors, consider pairing up with a blog friend to read over each other’s posts and look for typos and errors.

Be Ethical

There is no official blogger code of ethics. But Mommy Niri nailed it when she spoke out during the Type-A Mom Conference’s Town Hall Meeting. “If you live ethically, you’ll blog ethically.”

What I read into that is this: we should each have our own barometer to tell us right from wrong. Use it. There was a general rule that we used in newspapers that applies just as well to blogs. If you wouldn’t mind it being published on the front page (translate: home page), then it’s probably OK to do. So that means if you are doing something, ask yourself how you would feel (or your readers would feel) if you posted what you did on your home page. At the top. With H1 tags. Flashing.

Be Transparent

To the last point, always be transparent. I honestly don’t think traditional journalists do enough of it, but we can certainly set the bar for them. Yes, it’s all fine and dandy to have a disclosure page somewhere on your blog. And you always read the fine print, right? Yeah, thought so. Disclosures should happen on any post where they apply, and prominently. That will comply with FTC guidelines, but also ensure your readers really know what is going on.

You can put something at the end of your post to say, for example, a company sent you the product you just reviewed. But there are also natural ways to work that into the copy. Something like, “When Company X sent me the Widget…” This doesn’t have to be rocket science.

Think of Readers First

This is last, but most important. This is one where I think traditional media has dropped the ball, and it is part of the reason I got out of the business. They started caring more about profits and advertisers and statistics about demographic who weren’t reading newspapers anymore and they stopped thinking about the most important priority: readers. The important investigative stories readers need have been neglected so reporters could churn more 5-inch no-brain-cell-required stories into the newspaper machine.

The Watergate story would never happen today.

Your readers should always come first. Without them, you have no blog. Whenever you struggle with a decision, ask yourself what your readers would want. If you’re really torn, ask them on your blog.

Just never forget that the readers are what it’s all about. They are your community, so much more so than with traditional one-directional media. Your readers don’t just read you, they talk to you. They are important.

_{Photo of journalist, © Erik Stabile}

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_{Photo of TV, &copy http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mzacha}

Beyond that, I think everyone needs to remember that there are no clear answers on all of this. That’s the bottom line.

It’s easy to say bloggers can’t take money for any reason, but don’t moms who put time and effort into their blogs deserve to earn some money for them? Blogging is not traditional journalism. I’ve said it many, many times, but the key here is disclosure. And when I say disclosure, I mean obvious and clear disclosure. And a little soul searching before you accept a check from a company is in order because there is no secret code about when that is appropriate or not.

On the one extreme, we have far too many mommy bloggers who don’t see their value at all. On the other extreme, we have bloggers who do nothing but use their blogs to pimp out products and make money. I say to all mommy bloggers: you need to find a place between those two extremes. Where exactly we all belong is the tricky part.

I also would argue that if you call it a review, it can’t be paid to do it. That is highly misleading. On Type-A Mom, for example, the guidelines call for all reviews to have both pros and cons. I want to be sure that we are all fairly testing and writing about the products there. I would recommend any blogger who labels a post a review do the same thing. It’s one thing to get the product to review, which simply makes sense if a company wants items reviewed. It’s another to accept cold cash to do the review.

When it boils down to it, blogging ethics shouldn’t be all that complicated. Like in any medium, the reader should come first. That sounds nice on paper, but even traditional outlets stopped putting the reader or viewer first years ago. So let me break down a few of the angles and considerations here.

Because this discussion about blogging ethics is one that needs to happen, and now. In fact, several months ago I bought the domain BloggerCodeofEthics.com. I think it’s well past time to launch it. This will be a site to develop a basic code of ethics with a strong emphasis on disclosure vs. the traditional media emphasis on avoiding bias (which was never truly realistic anyway). It will not make anyone any money. I would love to have some contributors there on the various topics related to blogging ethics, so if you are interested please comment below and I’ll be in touch.

Bloggers and Ethics

Let’s start with bloggers. Queen of Spain Blog featured a great post, I’m Calling Out the Carpetbagging Mommybloggers. Bloggers, you need to do some soul searching. Why ARE you blogging? If it is just to make a buck, I would suggest blogging isn’t the way to go about it at all.

I would say, however, the idea that advertising and editorial can be separate in blogging like they are in traditional media is just not realistic. First of all, it isn’t entirely separate in traditional media. It is in theory, but not in reality.

I’m here to say that traditional media is NOT the epitome of ethics and standards we’d all like to believe. I always found it rather hilarious that the Journalist’s Code of Ethics stated journalists cannot receive any compensation, gifts, free travel, or items of value on the sources they cover, yet travel writers for years have gotten a pass on that rule by many newspapers and magazines. Why? Because media outlets cannot afford to pay the expenses of the high cost of travel. So basically, it works like this: we will be ethical until it is just too expensive or inconvenient.

I had to laugh to read what Jessica Smith posted. She was quoted in the Wall Street Journal and is taking a ton of heat about it. But she nailed it. The idea that traditional media would slam bloggers about ethics? Laughable!

Here is a snippet from her post, Blogging, Double Standards and Recommendations:

Bloggers are being scrutinized for transparency and disclosure issues but the same “traditional” media that’s reporting on it?  Pot.  Meet.  Kettle.

The other point to note there is that mommy bloggers cannot separate it. A newspaper or TV station has one whole part of the building filled with humans who sell ads, and a whole other part of the building filled with humans who report the news. They rarely cross paths.

A mom blogger is usually writer, editor, administrator, general manager, producer and ad sales rep all rolled into one. There is no true separation. So that makes it all the more important for we bloggers to establish ethics standards and guidelines.

Obvious, Clear Disclosure is the Answer

So I get back to my main point of disclosure. As I said a while back in my post about bias in newspapers, readers don’t seem terribly concerned that bloggers are biased. What is crucial is that readers get informed about those biases. It is a breach of reader trust if you do something for pay and don’t say that is why you are doing it. It’s as simple as that, and that part is not complicated.

I don’t mean with a sidebar or bottom of page button that links to a computer-generated page that generally states you might be paid to write certain posts. That’s not good enough. Any post that was touched by a payment or a personal bias in some way should say so. It doesn’t need to be detailed, but you should share. And if you would feel awkward or embarrassed stating it in the post, you probably are doing something wrong.

The main guide I always used as a newspaper reporter was this: would I be embarrassed if this was reporter in the newspaper? Could I defend myself? I say the same thing applies to bloggers. Whenever you are blogging for pay or any sort of benefit, ask yourself those questions.

I love the ideas that Amy Lupold Bair, a.k.a. Resourcefulmommy, put out there after reading the Wall Street Journal article and the Queen of Spain post. In her post, Resourcefulmommy Changes, she indicates that she will include a button that says “product provided” in reviews where that is the case.

Reality is this: if mommy bloggers have to buy everything they review, there will be very few reviews. A professional blogger can still do a fair review.

Anyone whose opinion can be bought with a free product probably should reconsider blogging or sharing opinions, for that matter. Because blogging is about being personal, interacting with your readers, and being real. If you stop being real, you should stop blogging.

Blogging Ethics and Companies

I also think companies, ad agencies, PR firms all need to be brought into this discussion. Believe it or not, they are not evil people. I have some friends and clients in these realms, and I am here to tell you that many of them are struggling just like the bloggers. I would even say more so, since they don’t have the insider sense of the blogging community.

Just a few months ago, many bloggers would lament that companies don’t take bloggers seriously. Well, hey, we won! They are slowly but surely getting it. Sure, they might have some etiquette blunders, but let’s all cut them some slack.

And there is a reason why issues like paid posts are coming up. We all know that advertising is not terribly effective. Companies are doing what we have been TELLING them to do for years. They are trying to join the conversation. But for them, there aren’t as many natural ways to do that. So they are getting creative.

They are not out to offend bloggers. They want to engage with bloggers. They want to help their clients enter the social sphere. They have staff meetings, they attend webinars, and they go to conferences just to get the slightest hint of how to do that properly. There are not clear answers on how best to do that.

This is really the Wild West, and we should all keep in mind that things were much simpler for these people a year ago. I always feel like no matter what is said or done, I want to encourage marketers who are making an attempt. That is monumental.

But to those marketers, I also want to say this: some bloggers do not have a media background and are not that savvy. You should not take advantage. Blogging ethics are your responsibility, too. You should insist that bloggers disclose. You should be sure the bloggers are comfortable with the arrangement. You should NEVER attempt to buy a blogger’s opinion.

Buy an ad on their blog, and you might see the blogger naturally talks about your company. Even the blogs that don’t mention direct advertising would probably consider it if you make a polite offer. Personally, I think giveaways are a great way to get involved in the conversation since the blogger gets added traffic, the company gets exposure, and the readers love them.

You can insist that they also disclose that the company provided the prizes. Providing prizes for contests is not something remotely new to the blogosphere. But seriously. Contests decades before blogging even existed have had prizes provided by companies, so I doubt many readers think the bloggers themselves are buying all those prizes out of their own pockets.

Navigating the Blogging Ethics Gray Area

This is no simple thing for bloggers. There are no clear cut rules about what’s acceptable or not. I would say go with your gut.

If you don’t want your readers to know your arrangement, and in simple, non euphemistic terms that can confuse, then you should say no. If a company paid you to post, say it very clearly in the text. Tell exactly what was involved. You don’t have to say exact dollars, but if you received a gift card to write about something, say so. If you were paid to post on a certain subject by a company, say that. If you are writing about a company you do consultant work for, say so.

There are some very clever ways you can disclose besides the obvious. You can say so in the post in just a sentence or two near the top of the post. Plus, you can add a button that is high profile and not buried at the bottom that says the post is sponsored. Newspapers, magazines and TV all have had advertorials and paid programming for years (and I would argue some are not so clearly labeled as such). Bloggers are not the first to invent this.

You can have regular posts on your site that feature an icon like Featured Client. There are some fun ways to be clear to readers. If you find this all results in less traffic and interaction on your blog, then you need to think about what’s more important.

Personally, I don’t see how a review can be paid and still be a review, so I would consider using different terms.

But it all boils down to this. As bloggers, we will encounter many occasions to consider doing something for money. Every time, think about what that means.

When you represent a company as a blogger in some fashion, that is not the same as doing other work. You are selling a piece of your personal brand. If the company is a good fit for you, fine. If it’s something you would blog about or spread the word about for free because it is something you like or love or believe in, then great. If it’s something that interests your readers anyway, cool.

If not, walk away. We all need to feed our families, but let’s not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs here.

Each and every time, you have to decide whether the money is really worth it and whether it benefits your readers. Each and every time, you need to examine whether what you are about to do is ethical. Because like it or not, you are part of a community and you will be judged by that community for your actions. Be sure you can defend yourself, both to the community and to yourself.

And never forget: without your readers, none of these opportunities would happen. You owe them.

_{Photo of mommy blogger, © Channah at Sxc.hu}

Tomorrow, newspapers will sell out because they will be a collector’s item. The newspapers featuring big front page spreads of Obama’s inauguration will catch the eye of people walking past newstands and newspaper boxes. They will grab them to save for their children and grandchildren. They will be momentos for pocket change.

Which brings me to a point I have made over and over again (OK, maybe not hear, but I do say this). The newspaper’s future is as the specialty publication. The demographic of readers will be dying. The ones who still read papers were alienated by most newspapers doing repeated redesigns to appeal more to young readers (who aren’t reading newspapers, and don’t plan to) and appeal less and elss to its core customers, the 40-somethings, 50-something, 60-something and 70-somethings.

In the end, the newspaper never appealed to the young readers and it rejected its loyal readers. Newspapers still are reluctant to accept that print is dying and online is the real business model they should have developed. But there is still hope:

Newspaper as specialty publication.

Here are just a few examples where it could work:

• Major events such as the inauguration. Newspapers should consider not just having one print run, but having a few runs (how do you like the idea of getting people to buy not just one, but four, newspapers from a set?). All a newspaper would have to do is create content and reset the front page, maybe a jump page, and redo the print runs.
• Specialty newspapers in large print. Obviously, it would be cost prohibitive to do this daily, but a condensed version of the week’s news in large print is one way to woo back those alienated older readers. It’s also a whole new advertising product to sell to local companies who have that customer base.
• Specialty newspapers by interest or neighborhood. Now, this is one area where I think many newspapers have done well. I think they need to revamp the approach a little, however. Many times, specialty publications by interest become big ads with a dash of copy from unenthusiastic, overworked journalists who consider that type of reporting a joke. Neighborhood specialty publications tend to be treated like rags. Take pride in these specialty publications! Up the level of integrity and journalism. Farm the work out to freelancers or bloggers who are enthusiastic about the topics or neighborhoods.
• Create the future of newspapet boxes, where a reader can select five topics that interest them (maybe travel, sports, stock quotes, their local small town, and editorials), swipe their card or drop in a couple quarters, and a pdf custom newspaper prints. collated and stapled.

One day, the online news will be the primary product. I hate to say this because I know it will upset many journalists, but there really is no reason to be upset if your employers would just get it. But since they don’t, I will say it again.

Your product is the news. It is not the newspaper.

Journalism will always be needed, important, and valuable.

_{Photo of newspaper © Sanja Gjenero}

I was working on a couple of articles mentioning or focused on Disney theme parks. I wrote this article about Halloween events and included mention of some very cool sounding festivities over at Disneyland and Disney World. I was hoping to get a picture, so I went onto the Disneyland media site. I completed the registration to get access to media images and even just press releases (since when are those a secret?).

I was annoyed to have to wait 24 hours for approval to access the media site, but Disney certainly isn’t the only organization to make someone wait to access materials, although that, too, is stupid in my opinion. Many members of the media, both online and *gasp* print journalists, need this information immediately. But I digress.

I sit on the articles and wait. This evening I was pleased to see an email saying my login was approved. I skimmed it just enough to see I was approved and logged in. Then I clicked photos. Then I got this message:

This area is reserved for members of the news media. If you qualify, please update your user profile. Please include any notes in the “Supporting information for media credentials” box. We will notify you of your status via e-mail of your account status.

I checked, and I had filled out that portion of my profile. Confused, I went back to the “approval” email. That’s when I noticed this part:

Your current credentials do not provide access to editorial photography and videography section of this website. This is reserved for members of approved media outlets only, and subject to review on a case-by-case basis.

One of the sites I write for is owned by the New York Times, but whatev. Regardless, there is obviously some list of approved news agencies and I didn’t name one that triggered it. This is what I can only refer to as PR web bigotry. It isn’t the first time I’ve encountered it. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to justify my existence as a web writer or blogger ten times over. The funny thing is I never got that kind of grilling when I wrote for print.

The good news is I emailed a nasty reply, and I cc’ed the person with Disney World’s PR department who assisted me when we visited. Then I got an autoreply and it included the information for logging in to the Disney World media page, which is far better. They also have a cool social media site, the Disney World Moms Panel.

Shoot, they even have a Twitter profile (although they might consider, like, following a couple people back). Still, impressive considering their west coast cohorts don’t even allow web writers to access images for, essentially, free advertising for Disneyland without jumping through hoops and getting reviewed on a “case by case basis.” Shudder. Methinks it’s time to write about Universal Studios instead.

It’s not like Disney is the only organization that doesn’t get it.

Just recently, we went to Carowinds outside Charlotte to do some coverage of Charlotte for Kids. I went through all the normal channels to arrange media passes to Carowinds beforehand. Then I arrived where I was told to pick up the passes only to get grilled by the front line person there. She was very confused about my media outlet. Her exact words were, “I’ve never handled one of these for web before.”

Really? The web? You’ve heard of it before, right lady? Extremely popular with, well, almost everyone? Yeah.

So I will give the PR people a freebie here, a no-fee consultation. I will save you an awful lot of time, money and hassle. Next time you think about blowing off a web writer, blogger or someone who does their writing through the internet, consult this list. In fact, why don’t you just print it and paste it next to your computer (you do have internet access, right? Thought so.) Take it to your next board meeting. Because it’s important.

Here are just some of the reasons why web coverage is the best PR coverage.

• You can often track the results of PR coverage. If the writer links to your site, you can see a direct impact in hard numbers being looking at your own stats to see how many people that coverage sent your way. You will know that those people read that specific article, not the circulation for a specific print edition. And, of course that doesn’t even include the many people who will read the coverage and you will never know it (or, you know, something like the stats you get for coverage in print media).
• Print coverage has a shelf life, literally. Getting in even a major magazine will only get something read for maybe a month or so. Web coverage has staying power, and it will be found potentially for years to come. Yes, you can argue that it means that bad coverage also stays for years to come. Rest assured. Bad coverage on the web is not to be avoided by annoying web writers and bloggers. Engaging and respecting them is the only way to have some influence on that.
• The reach is almost limitless with web coverage. Now yes, it is true, there are blogs that only have a few readers. But there are also blogs and web sites that literally reach millions monthly. Many popular web sites have monthly traffic that dramatically surpasses even A-list magazines and newspapers. But the reach goes far beyond that. Bloggers link to other bloggers and web sites. People socially bookmark articles. People tweet about cool articles. Then web writers read that and write about it. And here. Pay close attention now, because you will love this one: PRINT WRITERS read blogs and web sites. That’s where they get lots of story ideas.
• You get real feedback that you never will from print or broadcast coverage. If someone writes about how great an attraction is, and 20 people comment that they had the same type of bad experience, you can address it. If 20 people comment that the place is amazing, you have people saying great things about you for free. Shoot, contact them!
• Readers respect what bloggers write, and they take it seriously. Blog readers have a much more intimate and trusting relationship with their favorite bloggers than they do with typical inaccessible print writers.
• Coverage is instant, or can be. You don’t have to anticipate what to pitch several months out like you do for mags, or even several days or sometimes weeks out for newspapers.
• A blogger or web writer reaches, typically, a very targeted audience. Print publications are, by nature, typically broad and general in reach. Even special interest publications can never be as niche as a web site or a blog can. So say one day you look at your numbers and realize you’d really love to covet a certain demographic. You can by pitching blogs and web sites who also target that very specific group. And I mean specific… on my Type-A Mom site, for example, you can target a mom editor to write about subjects as specific as bed rest, green parenting, 40-something moms or moms of college-aged kids.
• Here’s my personal favorite as an SEO maniac. Every time someone writes about your site online and links to it, be it a blogger or a web news site or whatever, that is a gift of Google juice. What that means is, essentially, Google looks at which web sites like YOUR web site. If it’s a lot, then that is a major factor in how often you show up in searches. If it’s not too many, you might even get beat out by an SEO-savvy blogger who writes about your company instead. I’m thinking you don’t want that. Print coverage does nothing to boost your Google PageRank, or how cool Google thinks your site is.

If you don’t believe me, read this amazing post that asks Are Bloggers Media? Here’s an excerpt:

“…the question of whether bloggers are media is moot. Bloggers are DIFFERENT from the mainstream media.  They are smart, expert, passionate, independent, talented, and cantankerous.  They have their own agenda, whereas journalists (while they share many of the traits listed above) are beholden to a publisher’s agenda. More to the point: whatever else ya call them, bloggers are influential.”

And believe me, the last thing you want is the wrath of an influential blogger. So when you blow off or snub a web writer, you are rolling the dice that you could be  the subject of a major PR disaster.

_{Photo of web writing, © Ginny Austin}

Beyond that, however, I liked the idea of a magazine style blog to serve as the epicenter of the blogosphere. For one thing, I think there are certain old school fools who think blogging isn’t real writing. Well, Blog Nosh is about to truly prove you wrong. Off the top of my head, I can list several amazing writers who are bloggers.

Flash forward to today, and the site launched with quite a buzz. I am one of the esteemed Blog Nosh editors for the geeky-sweet Tech and Metablogging channel. And I’m in some amazing company… I can’t list everyone, but you can see the list of editors. It includes some of my fave bloggers at cool must-read blogs like Crash Test Mommy, This Mommy Gig, Mamma Loves, doobleh-vay, To Think is to Create, so many more I’ve got to just stop.

If you’re still wondering what exactly Blog Noshin’s about, this is the succinct description on the site:

What is Blog Nosh Magazine? We are an online magazine featuring the best archived content from primarily personal blogs, spotlighting a cross-section of topics and perspectives. New posts daily.

For bloggers, if it has fallen off of your front page and you know it deserves more time and exposure, we are your ideal resource. We are in the business of building your audience. As such, we republish your posts in full. Teasers and headlines alone aren’t always enough to tempt new readers, so we give them the opportunity to nosh on your writing in its original form, not just through crumbs that don’t entice much click-through.

For readers, we are a veritable blog buffet. A little bit of this, a little more of that, and lots of treats you never thought you would even want to try, let alone enjoy. We hope you will take the time to read posts in categories and channels that you might never seek out on your own. Most importantly, we ask you to take a moment to click through to the blogs of the authors we spotlight. This site only works if the authors feel they are gaining a real reader, not a random one-time hit. Give them a chance– we’ve already taste-tested them for you!

So hey you bloggers and blogaholics, get Noshing.

(Psst: If you’re a blogger, you can get some sweet free exposure by submitting one of your kick-butt posts for consideration on the Nosh.)

You are doing it all wrong. All of it. Wrong. Just stop.

Newspapers are running the wrong way.

Hey, it happens. We all can panic when we’re confronted with change. It’s called the fight or flight response. And newspapers have taken the flight route. Sad.

Step back five years, maybe 10. Newspapers see their penetration levels dipping, just a little, so they all do a redesign. They all switch to an a.m. cycle. (Is there an afternoon daily left? I’d love to hear about it.) They realize young people are not reading newspapers, so they decide to revamp to be alluring to said young people.

And don’t think they were, like, losing money. In fact, they were still making money. A lot of it. A fellow newsroom reporter characterized it perfectly. They used to make money hand over fist. Then, they were just making a shitload of money.

“Why, oh why, won’t 20-35 year old males read us?” they lamented! (Psst: it’s because they don’t like you, and they don’t have time for you, and they have wives and families who keep them far too busy to spend time with you.)

Flash forward to today and you can see how this strategy worked out for newspapers. Umm, yeah.

So here I am going to break down each thing you newspapers are doing, and why you should be doing the exact opposite to survive and even thrive.

So I’ve decided to start a series, one just for my own amusement because I know there isn’t a newspaper executive who is actually listening (or even knows what a blog really is). But hey, if you’re still working in newspapers you could, like, print this on paper and fax it to your editor. Maybe then they will listen to it. Let me know if you need a masthead.

I would worry this is burning bridges, but I pretty much set a torch to that bridge a while back anyway. So expect me to be quite blunt, open and frank in this series.

In this issue, one of the biggest, baddest, panicky things newspapers are doing: newspapers are going shorter when they should be going longer.

If people want short news, if they just want to know what happens when it happens, they are not turning to newspapers. Why would they? They can get it online or on TV faster. In this day and age, they can find almost anything one can possibly think of written sooner from a source other than the print newspaper.

There is only one thing the newspaper has to offer that a newspaper can do better than anyone. The long story. The investigative, special project story. The story that (now don’t sprain yourself) takes time to report. It takes time to craft it into an amazing piece of compelling writing that someone will read from lead to inch number 50.

Yes, I said time. So you need to quit doing what you call “beat shuffling” but all the reporters know is really downsizing. I was working at a Gannett newspaper, a reporter who was skilled at advanced computer-assisted reporting (as in building databases from scratch, followed by analyzing them, and then reporting, and then writing). I was told I would be the assistant business editor with loads of time for projects.

By the time I left (and left the news business entirely), I was expected to do the following in a typical week:

• Edit the business section when the business editor wasn’t in (as in, daily)
• Edit the real estate section
• Cover a small town
• Cover the transportation beat
• Be a business reporter
• Do business briefs
• Do some dorky weekly construction report thingie (mindless BS)
• Attend numerous staff meetings
• Attend editor meetings when the business editor wasn’t in (again, quite frequent)
• Post breaking news update to the web site (and they would get on you if they discovered you were slacking to less than 2-3 daily)
• Write 2-3 special project stories per month

Yes, you saw the last one correctly. How hilarious is that? At my previous job, my entire job description was that last bullet although, of course, in reality I did much more… such as getting yanked off reporting and running a local news desk for a couple months. That kind of ate into my investigative reporting time.

Needless to say, with newspapers operating this constant “feed the beast” mentality in some vain attempt to keep up with the myriad faster news sources, that doesn’t leave much time for, well, journalism.

But newspapers should be embracing what they are. They are the perfect spot to do the opposite. There are few things in life better than kicking back with a Sunday newspaper, sipping on coffee, and reading an in-depth investigative piece and news feature. Nothing.

And that is the one thing newspapers have on all their competition. And it’s the one thing they flat-out refuse to do because it takes commitment to real journalism against all odds, commitment to real journalism because readers should be more important than profit margins and studies and demographics and penetration rates.

Part of the reason I got on this tear was something I read by the Queen of Spain blogger Erin Kotechi Vest, who is a fellow journalist turned blogger. If you haven’t yet, go read the full post, Damn You Harry Shearer.

Rarely was I able to dig any further, as the news cycle was short, the attention span of listeners shorter, and I had an average of 30 seconds to tell you everything you needed to know.

That is not journalism, that is marketing packaged as fast-food news and information.

On the few occasions I approached news directors and asked them for the time or leeway to dig a bit further, I found myself in that real journalism world where you are looking and striving to hold someone or something accountable. To find out what really happened, and make it public.

Damn brilliant.

So what is the solution in an industry that is laying off and consolidating left and right, even outsourcing local news to India? How can you do more with fewer reporters?

Well, I have a confession to make. When I was temporary editor for a Lee Enterprises newspaper, reporters would often tell me about a bigger, better story they could write if they had just a few days. You can ask any of those reporters, and they will tell you. If it sounded like a cool story, I told them to go for it. I told them I would much rather have a kick-ass Sunday story than a lame Tuesday story. I just made sure I didn’t have the whole newsroom doing real journalism at the same time.

Nothing bad happened. The beast didn’t attack. The newspaper was printed, and all the news holes got filled. Shoot, I rarely even used AP copy. But you newspapers can. If you really think 90 percent of your readers distinguish between AP stories (or an AP story with a local lead) and your own reporters’ stories, you are seriously deluding yourself.

If I’d told the powers that be about my strategy, they would have flipped. After all, this is a newspaper where we were told in-depth stories should be no longer than 10 inches. This is where I was working as a special projects/CAR reporter. Not good. I totally swear I am not making this up. This is not a joke. You can read the full internal memo sent to Romanesko if you don’t believe what you are about to read. Or if you don’t want to believe. This was a directive:

Routine stories need be no longer than 6-8 inches. In-depth stories should be within the 10-12 range.

Our technique must be – tell ‘em what the story is about, tell the story and get out quickly.

Wow. Yeah. Take a moment and just soak that in. This is what has happened to a business that once brought down a President.

What newspapers should do instead is feed the beast crap instead of tying up your reporters’ valuable time regurgitating press releases or compiling information for cutesy graphics or writing briefs. Use the wire for filler, not real reporters with real brains. Shoot, let the beginners do that.

But those reporters who want to do more, who have the skill and passion to do more, let them loose! Let them be newspaper reporters. Again.

And for those of you who just like newspapers, and miss them, go read real journalism where you can still find it from time to time. And when you do, write the publishers of those newspapers and tell them you want more of it.

“We’ve got nothing against TechCrunch, but it seems crazy-crazy to us that the Washington Post, a paper known for the sort of reporting that can take down U.S. presidents, is publishing content written by a dude who invests in the companies he writes about. But what do we know.”

First of all, I want to make a point. This is an important one, so do pay close attention. This is tied so closely to why I’m embarassed for journalism that it just isn’t even funny. This is tied to why I left the business after 15 years. This is why, despite loving and adoring the kind of investigative journalism that moves mountains, I gave up on that passion. This is why people don’t even bother reading newspapers anymore.

When was the last time the Post, or any paper for that matter, did anything remotely as significant as take down a U.S. President? Oh, yes. In the 1970s. Thank you.

This is just a case of old school vs. new media in my opinion. For years, journalists have obsessed about being unbiased. It’s been banned, disallowed, the worst thing humanly possible for a journalist to do.

Here’s the problem with that plan. First of all, everyone is biased. Yeah, I said it. You can report and write fairly, but you can’t be a robot. Sorry, guys.

Second of all, and this is the really amusing and interesting part, no one cares! Little did they realize, and blogger popularity now proves, readers don’t care IF you are biased. They just want to know how, full disclosure.

In fact, the popularity of bloggers simply proves people like bias, they want bias. They want to find people with the same bias, because they believe them more. They want to find people with the opposite bias so they can get really mad and leave nasty comments.

They want humans, not journalists. So even though this is an insignificant spat between two sources of news, it speaks volumes of a larger issue that old school journalism just isn’t facing. We don’t care if you’re biased. So what? We’re biased, you’re biased.

Just use full disclosure, don’t be sneaky, and write fairly. Be upfront. And for crying out loud, don’t be afraid to write boldly, without censure and without falling to the whims of advertisers, government officials.

We don’t really care if your journalist is a liberal or conservative (well, I don’t), as long as they say so. I care a lot more whether you’re axing stories because the newspaper’s publisher is buddies with the mayor, or an advertiser squawks about an unflattering biz story. I care when bias stops real stories from being told, no matter who’s telling it.