tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50326640517299447132011-11-27T15:53:13.331-08:00A blog to help the traditional print journalist learn the skills they need to survive and thrive onlineMichellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.comBlogger361100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-55781457940607539602009-03-22T18:16:00.001-07:002009-03-22T18:24:42.705-07:00

I followed the instructions in the previous post on getting permission to use audio on your site, and finally got permission from Jon Brion's people to use his beautiful song "Little People" as background music to a family video I made over Thanksgiving. Thanks, Jon Brion's people! You can see the result here. And with that, I'm going to put this blog on hiatus. Making the print to online

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-16606286983930200882009-02-26T23:03:00.000-08:002009-02-27T11:01:40.406-08:00

Freelancer Michelle Goodman is coming to the Seattle PI tomorrow to teach a session on freelancing to the PI staff. Here's her resource/link guide: Michelle's excellent Blog: www.anti9to5guide.comMichelle's excellent book on freelancing book: My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire Mark Matassa's review: ""My So-Called Freelance Life" offers as

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-88535210880941723172009-02-22T13:27:00.000-08:002009-02-22T13:54:45.333-08:00

So, I wasted my weekend editing together some video we took last Thanksgiving, and used the Jon Brion song from SYNECDOCHE as the background music. Copyright law says (DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, see a lawyer if you want legal advice) that you can sample a snippet of a song, so long as it's not a significant portion of the work. Usually at Seattlepi.com this has meant

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-75338887967946607492009-02-20T21:59:00.000-08:002009-02-20T22:22:46.327-08:00

Monica Guzman of Big Blog fame gave an informative lecture at the Seattle PI on using Twitter and RSS feeds to inform and distribute your reporting. In addition to many of the ideas already posted in my previous post Why Bother with Twitter, Monica had a lot of great advice for new Twitterers: 1. If you can't imagine how you'd use Twitter professionally, jump in and just start doing it for fun.

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-5190289907073181802009-02-13T21:12:00.000-08:002009-02-13T21:12:00.488-08:00

If you're planning on getting into blogging so you can make wads of money, you'll probably be less than happy to see what Fake Steve Jobs has to say about blogging. "For two years I was obsessed with trying to turn a blog into a business. I posted 10 or 20 items a day to my site, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, rarely taking a break. I blogged from cabs, using my BlackBerry. I blogged in the

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-85161101559647641342009-02-12T20:57:00.000-08:002009-02-12T21:09:17.732-08:00

If you are a blogger you should definitely know about and read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's legal guide for bloggers. If you don't know about the EFF's Legal Guide, now's a great time to check it out -- the guide has just been updated with new FAQs and info. If you're wondering what exactly libel is and how it works, how copyright works, what do if you get sued for something you blogged,

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-72517878114253821142009-02-12T20:41:00.000-08:002009-02-12T20:56:36.075-08:00

Mindy McAdams at the University of Florida has another great post in her series on web skills: How to get started uploading and editing audio. Like me, Mindy recommends using Audacity editing software, because it's free and -- while not completely intuitive -- it's somewhat easy to use. Give it a try -- all reporters should know their way around at least one digital audio recording device and one

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-7745473010741097312009-02-06T23:11:00.000-08:002009-02-08T20:21:06.674-08:00

Roland Legrand's recent post at Media Shift offers some good tips on keeping a newspaper website constantly updated without a huge staff. Legrand recommends a lot of things I think news orgs and bloggers alike should consider doing: --Look for raw material you can post -- raw audio and video from meetings, for example. --Live blog meetings -- just type up what's happening. You can "craft" a

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-79067783566957328842009-02-06T11:37:00.000-08:002009-02-06T11:57:56.814-08:00

Seattlepi.com producer and long time designer Curt Milton gave a class on video editing to our staff on Feb. 3. I wasn't able to attend, but asked if he'd share his cheat sheet from the class with PrintToOnline readers. Happily, he said yes, and here it is. If you have any questions for Curt, you can Twitter him at http://twitter.com/curt_m. And now, here's Curt: A few on the basics to help you

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-62538385540982388642009-02-05T19:27:00.000-08:002009-02-05T22:27:18.392-08:00

Okay. I've been publishing PrintToOnline for 16 days now. I've written 26 posts, I've done *some* marketing, let Technorati and Google know I'm here, I've paid attention to SEO. So how'm I doing? According to Sitemeter, I've had 336 visits so far and I've served up 673 page views. I'm averaging 21 visitors a day -- not bad really, for a 16 day old blog. I'm getting unsolicited links from other

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-66981084874676733162009-02-05T08:41:00.000-08:002009-02-05T08:41:03.099-08:00

Great post from the archives (April 2008) by NYU student and all around social media genius Alana Taylor on why people love Twitter: "The root at what has made Twitter an internet craze is not just micro-blogging. It's not JUST "that it keeps us connected" or "that I can market my business."Twitter is big because it is instant. Twitter is hot because it allows us to be voyeurs. Twitter is

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-83831377744186590802009-02-04T22:13:00.000-08:002009-02-04T22:47:46.051-08:00

Seattle PI reporter Cecilia Goodnow writes in with great news. She asked earlier how to create a link in Blogger, and reports tonight that by jove, she's done it!Yay! I created my first link on Cover to Cover Kids. However, it's a long, cumbersome url for one of my Post-Intelligencer stories, and since I'm writing from home, I can't access the P-I's nifty url shortener. I tried converting the url

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-11983301210699696542009-02-04T19:16:00.000-08:002009-02-04T20:05:25.556-08:00

My in-house critic tells me that my last attempt to explain how to publish a few paragraphs of a post on your front page, then put the rest of the post behind a "Read More" link was a "cop out," or something along those lines.Instead of writing the explanation myself, I found what I *thought* was a good explanation and linked to it. Mark, the in-house critic, says not good enough. The explanation

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-31508685780952534022009-02-02T19:38:00.000-08:002009-02-02T19:55:38.871-08:00

Seattle PI reporter Cecilia Goodnow posted this question on yesterday's marketing your blog post: I've got two questions:-- How do you create a link to another site?-- If you have a long blog post, how do you format it so the page displays only a brief introduction, with a link to "Read full post?" I found instructions on blogger.com but they were confusing. You have to insert a bunch of html

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-30199951991790229632009-02-02T16:33:00.000-08:002009-02-02T16:33:00.348-08:00

Here's a quick one page overview of the things I think you should consider learning if you'd like to "play well" online. Let me know what you think I should add. And as always, if you have any questions, please post them in the comments and I'll answer you shortly. Michelle

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-26828792824847036562009-02-02T12:09:00.000-08:002009-02-02T12:14:06.809-08:00

And if so, why? Online Journalism Professor extraordinaire Mindy McAdams tackles the questions in her latest blog post. Check it out here.

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-17144032343055949542009-02-01T12:18:00.001-08:002009-02-02T23:33:45.837-08:00

Happy Superbowl Sunday everyone! Since I don't care about football one bit, I'm going to use the big day to tackle a big subject: How to market your blog. If you're a new reader, welcome to Print To Online, my blog for absolute beginners just learning their way around the Web. If you're looking to get online savvy, this will all probably make more sense if you go back to the beginning and read

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-76617852217161023162009-01-31T17:58:00.000-08:002009-01-31T18:00:22.446-08:00

How cool -- I just discovered while cruising through my GoogleReader today another blog that's posting regular tips for journalists looking to pickup online skills. Check out Save The Media -- great stuff. http://savethemedia.com/

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-75389134443544368122009-01-30T16:45:00.000-08:002009-01-30T16:45:01.013-08:00

A few days back a couple of readers asked a couple of questions on the post about which Flickr photos you can use on your blog. Here's question #1: PI reporter Cecelia Goodnow said... "I'm launching a blog about children's books, an area I've covered for about 20 years at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. How "finished" should the design and format be -- and how many posts should I have -- before

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-74748253703390270082009-01-28T22:49:00.000-08:002009-01-29T20:38:29.708-08:00

Awesome -- Google is finally sending searchers to Print To Online. I got my first two visitors from Google search yesterday: One came in on the search "permission to use a photo on a blog" and the other came in on "print to online." Why do I care? Google referrals can account for 30 percent or more of your traffic. Getting Google and other search engines (but mostly Google) to recognize you as a

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-25125714868144597442009-01-25T17:08:00.000-08:002009-01-25T17:20:16.778-08:00

Chrys Wu, Editorial and social media strategist for washingtonpost.com, tried to comment on the Flickr photo post I made a few days ago, but couldn't, because I'd forgotten to change Blogger's comment settings. Blogger's default comment settings only allow registered users to comment. So unless you have some reason for preferring comments by registered Blogger users, you should change your

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-48593682893434421062009-01-25T10:54:00.001-08:002009-01-25T17:36:30.378-08:00

This morning I noticed a rash of posts on Twitter saying "@wsbbizdev: Found you through Twitter Grader (http://twitter.grader.com)"For the Twitter newbie, @wsbbizdev in the line above is the handle of a person on Twitter. Naturally, this was just one example -- a bunch of the people I follow had this note on their feed naming the various people they found this morning on TwitterGrader.

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-1458090274150123082009-01-25T01:21:00.000-08:002009-01-25T01:46:07.255-08:00

Former LaTimeser Eric Ulken's got a nice post on Twitter over at his blog. Here's a couple of his tips for journalists on getting the most out of Twitter: # Twitter advanced search: Sure, everybody knows about Twitter search, but the advanced search options can be a pretty effective way to cut through the noise. For a simple example, try this: earthquake near:”Los Angeles” within:15mi (The

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-18086146554007010442009-01-25T00:19:00.000-08:002009-01-25T00:23:53.420-08:00

This is an exciting moment for any new blog owner: I think Google just cruised me. That is, I think the Google "spiders" checked out my site, looking over each post to see what it's about, evaluating whether to link to me or not, and how prominently to rank me in search results. This is exciting, because on my own, without any search engines linking to me, I've been able to drive 100 visits to

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-63017536440695107432009-01-24T23:40:00.000-08:002009-01-24T23:46:20.340-08:00

Yep -- anytime you publish or do something new you'd like people to see, Twitter is a great way to get the word out. I recently posted to my Twitter (120 followers) that I'd launched this new blog. At the time that I posted it, I'd had eight visitors so far that day (hey, the blog's only like four days old. Give it time!)My Tweet about my blog brought 20 more readers within hours. Pretty small

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-23887750953300524622009-01-24T17:25:00.000-08:002009-01-24T23:42:53.837-08:00

Seattle P-I Food Writer Rebekah Denn writes in with this question about Twitter: "My problem with Twitter is that I feel like I'm just adding (and getting) another layer of noise. I get a lot of information from my Google Reader - I probably have 50 blogs on it. What's the advantage to following the same people on Twitter? Won't I just be finding out, say, that they've posted something that I'm

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-45913515902090795262009-01-23T00:07:00.000-08:002009-01-24T17:36:05.237-08:00

Hooray, our first interactivity for my new blog. Reader and Seattle P-I managing editor Rita Hibbard asked me offline today to answer this question: Which pictures from Flickr can I republish on my blog?Excellent question. First, a little background: Contrary to many bloggers' beliefs, you can't just take content that you find out on the Internet and post it on your blog. All the content in the

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-71678084051596260732009-01-22T11:16:00.000-08:002009-01-22T11:21:10.294-08:00

Seattle PI interactivity editor Don Smith has a great post today on how to use Picnik to edit photos for your blog. Check it out here. Don has been teaching the training classes with me at the PI these past few weeks, and is offering great advice & tips at his blog, Seattle New Media.

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-75278596419650044112009-01-22T01:00:00.000-08:002009-01-22T09:30:38.617-08:00

In our class on blogging at the PI today, we went a bit into how using Twitter can make you a better blogger. A couple of staffers couldn't see why we were talking about Twitter when we'd promised a session on BLOGGING, for goodness sake. It's a bit tough to explain to the total newbie that blogging isn't just pushing what you have to say out into the world. It's also about getting to know the

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-59868499278401229892009-01-22T00:02:00.000-08:002009-01-22T00:19:44.014-08:00

For most people, the answer is not so much. JustinC of Neighborlogs recently wrote a blog post about how much he earns as a blogger writing about Capitol Hill. The breakdown -- about $14,000 a year. And that's posting quite a bit. Another post at Problogger.net reports that while many people make no money at blogging, plenty of people make lots of money at it. Check out the details here. PS: Did

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-82954717877442108632009-01-21T23:38:00.000-08:002009-01-24T23:45:26.743-08:00

Yes, you've already added Feedjit, which is cool, but doesn't track much information. SITEMETER gives you more information, and it's free. To add Sitemeter traffic tracking to your site: 1. Go to Sitemeter.com2. Sign up. 3. Click on MANAGER at the top of the page4. In the left nav on the page that comes up, CLICK HTML5. On the new page that comes up you'll see some HTML code. Copy this code. 6.

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-84232423421963668502009-01-21T23:14:00.000-08:002009-01-21T23:29:47.480-08:00

Your next move is more setup: Go to Technorati and claim your blog. To do this, go to Technorati. Hover your mouse over Blogger Central. Scroll down and CLICK Claim Your Blog. Follow the directions there to claim your blog. Why do this? Long story long: If you want traffic on your blog, there's a number of things you need to do to be picked up by Google, which can send you lots of traffic. 1. Get

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-83232348970752706442009-01-21T23:03:00.000-08:002009-01-21T23:13:26.523-08:00

Problogger.net has a recent post entitled How Bloggers Make Money From Blogs. Mostly it's a list of a bunch of companies that have advertising widgets you can add to your site. Then there's a bunch of esoteric ideas like "become a consultant" and "write a book," but mostly it comes down to adding widgets to your site. Here's how to do that: Go to Amazon and create a widgit that lists products the

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-32910131020753941122009-01-21T22:52:00.000-08:002009-01-21T23:01:49.466-08:00

You'll be blogging for about 5 minutes before you start wondering who is reading your blog. Good Question! To find out who is checking out your content, you need to add a traffic tracker to your blog. I like to use Feedjit, because you can watch live as people drop by. Here's how you add Feedjit to your blog. These and all directions here will be about how to do stuff in blogger. If you're

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-18159576575624170162009-01-21T22:01:00.000-08:002009-01-21T23:59:59.173-08:00

Today our training session covered blogging tools and tips. I suggested, of course, that people getting started blogging use blogger.com, a super simple tool that just about anyone can figure out. We demonstrated simple stuff, like starting a new blog, uploading a photo, embedding a link, adding a blogroll and other widgets. Here's the basics:To start a blog just go to blogger.com, sign up,

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032664051729944713.post-54173547000145038672009-01-21T21:59:00.001-08:002009-01-21T23:57:46.343-08:00

This blog is written for the staff of the Seattle PI, one of two major metro dailies in Seattle. The PI was put up for sale on January 9, and if a buyer isn't found, it will likely close. Since it was announced that the PI will likely stop printing, we've been running an in-house training program to give our staff more of the skills they need to be competitive in today's job market. Our first

Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09694344918265272452noreply@blogger.com0