Not too long ago, millions of Americans would gather around the television to watch a presidential debate, then discuss it at the water cooler the next morning. Now, millions of people all over the world gather in front of their computers to blog, tweet, chat, upload and download information about the debates as they are happening.


Even those who simply sit in front of the television to watch the proceedings still have the option of pausing, rewinding, and fast forwarding to watch a political event at their own pace.

In today's techno savvy world, users have more information than ever at their fingertips. A candidate's complete political history has more often than not been scrutinized and made available on numerous websites, even before their candidacy is announced. Any juicy tidbit or eyebrow-raising misstep is quickly blogged, analyzed and passed around social networking sites within minutes.

The American people are no longer slaves to traditional media and, through the net, are empowered to speak their mind on any number of topics and share their beliefs with anyone who will listen (or read). The anonymity of the internet means anyone can say anything they want from the comfort of their home — even those things that just a few decades ago would have been called treason or warranted social ostracization.

The water cooler, and even the AOL chat rooms of our not so distant past, has been replaced with sites like Twitter's Election 2008 and television coverage has been rendered obsolete by YouTube clips and online, interactive political analysis. People are even free to make their own buttons and bumper stickers should they choose to.

But is too much information a good thing? With so many voices crowding the web, it is easy to get inundated and ultimately frustrated by the many points of view. Yet it is this freedom of speech — and the internet's inherent ability to support it — that makes this country so great.


Want more politics? Check out these previous posts:

• 15 Ways to follow the 2008 election online
• Elections 2.0: Tracking the Presidential candidates
• Citizen journalists driving online politics
• Politics as (un)usual

Below are some of the best photography blogs on the web. Have a favorite? Share it in the comments.

1. Positive Negative



2. Flak Photo



3. Lanpher Photoblog



4. Verve Photo



5. The Occasional Odd Crop



6. Cazurro dot com


7. Puja Parakh



8. These Fleeting Moments



9. Static



10. Daily Dose of Imagery

More photoblogs after the jump

11. Brook Pifer



12. Deceptive Media



13. The Narrative



14. Mute



15. Joe's NYC



16. Chromogenic.net



17. Orbit1



18. Thinsite



19. Stuck in Customs



20. Alakija.com



21. Bluejake



22. Wink



23. Mexican Pictures



24. Smallest Photo



25. Delineated.com



26. Aan de dijk



27. Caitriona.net



28. Noushin Blog



29. Shahin Edalati



30. fiftymillimeter

Want to create a great photoblog? Check out Pro Blog Design's ten tips for designing photoblogs, including advice on color choice and captions, and stay up to date with the latest happenings around the photo blogosphere at I Love Photoblogs

You've written an outstanding story or blog post with insightful commentary, pointed analogies, and flowery prose that would make Shakespeare cry. But if your writing is full of spelling and grammar errors, you might as well have just passed gas in public.


Inside every good writer should be a good editor. Luckily, the web is full of tips for keeping your writing in check. The first stop for any writer should be the the American Copy Editors Society's collection of links that includes writing headlines, avoiding clichés and of course, copy editing tips.

Daily Writing Tips is another must-read for any writer looking to improve his or her craft. After reading posts like 8 Proofreading Tips And Techniques, How to Revise, Edit and Proofread Your Writing, and English Grammar 101: All You Need to Know, you will have immediately improved your writing know-how.

Patricia T. O'Conner, a former editor at The New York Times Book Review, author and blogger at Grammarphobia.com, also has a few quick tips for correct punctuation, including proper comma placement and when to use the overused apostrophe.

Smashing Magazine has a great list of the top ten web typography sins, including using hyphens instead of em dashes and including extra spaces in copy. Even better is Copyblogger's list of five grammatical errors that make you look dumb, including the dreaded its vs. it's (hint: if you mean "it is" or "it has," use an apostrophe).

If copy editing is a consistent problem and you are a glutton for punishment, GooseGrade, upon its release, will let users correct the mistakes in your writing. Readers are readying their red pens as we speak.

A perfectly written story doesn't mean jack if the headline sucks. Especially now that SEO and keywords and all that has come into play, creating an attention-grabbing headline has become even more difficult. Never fear, though. Condomunity has a stellar and detailed post about how a well-written headline makes all the difference and how to create a good one.

Even more headline writing advice can be found at Copyblogger and in this previous post on writing better headlines.

Once you've got your own wordplay under wraps, it's time to laugh at the mistakes of others. Start by checking out the posts at Regret the Error, especially the gaffe committed by the New Hampshire-based Valley News, which misspelled its own name in its masthead. Logophiles will also enjoy the English Fail Blog, a series of photos of bad grammar captioned in the style of I Can Has Cheezburger?

And, of course, feel free to laugh and point should there be any glaring errors in this post. See? You're a better writer already!

Labels: blogging

Because having a blog is not enough.

For a while, I felt like I was living a double life by having a non-work related blog, but turns out a lot of my fellow journalists also have side projects outside of the newsroom that range from books to blogs (and some very interesting gigs in between).

For those writers who don't want to wait to land that big book deal, there are several sites that make publishing your own print publication a breeze.

Sites like CreateSpace let budding authors publish their own books that are printed as they are ordered, rather than buying a large number of copies that must be sold to see a profit. If you are interested in buying large numbers of your own book, check out Lulu.com or Wordclay.

The magazine market is a crowded one and some great publications come and go. But by using MagCloud, which prints your custom-designed magazine for you much in the way CreateSpace does, you can reach your target audience without forking over any money up front. MagCloud will take your PDF and print and ship glossy magazines to your readers, while you set your own price and revenue.

If you're thinking print but on a smaller scale, consider uploading your documents to Scribd, a self-publishing site and searchable index. Once you've uploaded your Word/Excel/PDF/text doc, you can embed it in any site, including your blog.

Audiophiles should also consider setting up their own online radio show and broadcasters who want more than what YouTube can offer should check out Ustream.tv, where anyone can stream live video with as little as a webcam and an internet connection.

And if you're already blogging, consider that blogs like Stuff White People Like and sites like Urban Dictionary have already transformed their online content into successful publications.

The recent list of 15 Journalists' outstanding personal sites featured a group of journos whose portfolios were innovative, yet most were spread over several pages. For the broadcast and visual journalists, sometimes something briefer and more compact is required.

The still-growing popularity of online video means journalists can upload video clips of their work that encapsulate who they are professionally in just a few moments. This cuts down on the time a potential employer has to spend sifting through pages to get an idea of who they are.

An online reel can be as simple as a well-edited YouTube video like that of NYC-based reporter Tony Anderson (embedded below) or incorporated into an existing site like that of on-air personality Alex Miranda.





If you're going to have an online reel to show, it helps to already be a visual designer. Mark Coleran shows off some of his work in a minutes-long online reel. More important than the stunning graphics is the video's editing which makes the composite work feel like a non-verbal narrative.



Alternatively, web/multimedia designers and photographers would be wise to have mobile-enhanced portfolio sites that are accessible anywhere. Imagine it: You're at a social function and a possible employer wants to see some of your work. Instead of just handing him or her a business card with a link to your site, you can pull out your iPhone, Blackberry or other smartphone and give them a quick visual glimpse of your talent.

This can be accomplished by simply uploading photos/screenshots/graphics to a dedicated folder on your phone or by creating portfolio site optimized for the mobile web.

Whether your résumé exists in an alternative form or not, it is absolutely necessary that every journalist has an online personal site for displaying his or her work or else you're letting opportunities pass you by.

Let's face it. No one — save for shut-ins and the Pulitzer Prize committee — wants to read a story that spreads over several pages of a newspaper. Pictures and graphics are not gonna help and putting on the net only exacerbates the problem. So what is a long-winded journalist to do? Here are some ways to make the long story more palatable:

Break it up

Newspapers ought to take a cue from DailyLit, a forward-thinking site that makes classic literature like Dickens and Dumas, as well as newly released books, available for online reading through installments. Users can select a book they want to read and receive daily chunks of it either through email or RSS.

RSS itself is a great way to encourage readers to follow a long with a particular story. Instead of making an excessively long story available online in one piece, deliver different sections of the story through RSS over the course of a few days to ensure the reader digests more of the story.

The same idea could be applied to Twitter: instead of sending a portion of the story through RSS, simply send a link to Twitter followers/readers.

Let the story stand alone

GOOD Magazine, which, along with the Las Vegas Sun, is at the forefront of new media innovation, makes a free 6x6 inch, mini-newspaper available in select Starbucks locations that concentrates on a single story. This week's story is on carbon emissions and is made up of a large and detailed graph of how greenhouse gases affect the world. The first fold-out page is a full-sized ad that the reader sees before reading the story (ad revenue!). Not only is this a genius way of putting a story in front of readers who will likely have a few minutes to spare, it is also a great way to promote brand identity.

More pics: Front cover, Inside ad, Full-page story

Go mobile

Now that more Kindles are finding their way into consumers' hands and the iPhone and BlackBerry have made reading on a cell phone less of a chore, it's time to adapt long investigative pieces or feature stories for reading on mobile devices. If people are willing to read books on a Kindle, they are likely willing to read the newspaper. And now that news sites are being optimized for the web, it's time to optimize the stories themselves.


Whichever way the story is presented, it must reflect the growing segment of the population who don't have time to read long pages of text. After all, what good is a story if no one reads it?

Labels: mobile, news on the news, rss, site management