Monthly Archives: April 2010

How to pitch Op-Eds to USA Today

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I’ve spent this week in Washington, DC at the PRSA Counselors to Higher Education Senior Summit, talking with current readMedia clients and learning about the issues higher ed communicators face. The sessions yesterday were held at the headquarters of USA Today in McLean, Va., and included a panel discussion with three USA Today editors.

I snagged this quick video during the Q&A session, after a participant asked about how to pitch Op-Ed pieces:

There are some great reminders for PR folks: know the outlet you’re pitching and how they operate, be relevant and provocative, and remember that a story idea that doesn’t get picked up the first time around can often be repurposed or repackaged later on.

Making government open, social and interesting: SMBTV 6

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Last Friday was the sixth installment of Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley, an event that continues to grow and attract smart and interesting people from the area to gather, talk and tweet about social media. I invited Noel Hidalgo and Ken Zalewski from the New York State Senate CIO’s office to share how they’re pulling state government out of the DOS-ages and into the world of participative, open government.

I’m not remotely wonky (at least when it comes to politics), so I wasn’t even sure if I was going to find the breakfast interesting. But, seeing as how Albany is a government town and many of the attendees work in state government, talking about how technology and social media are transforming what’s often thought of (and is) as a slow, stodgy bureaucracy seemed like it might generate some good discussion.

Noel and Ken didn’t disappoint.

I was fascinated during the entire presentation, which was much more technical and talked a lot more about software code and technology policy and a lot less about Facebook and Twitter than previous SMBTV events (which I think is a good thing). Noel shared the three components of open government:

    • Transparent: Promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what government is doing.
    • Participatory: Should use innovative tools, methods and systems to cooperate among themselves. Should also solicit public input for how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation.
    • Collaborative: Actively engages New Yorkers in the work of their government.

    In the New York State Senate, Noel and his team are working to make sure that all legislators have access to the same tools and can use technology to engage in two-way dialogue with constituents about important issues. They are using open-source software like Drupal to rebuild constituent management systems and open up data so that citizens can create applications to access information about their government.

    The New York State Senate is the first state house to adopt Creative Commons license for all content it produces. Through the Open Legislation platform, all bills since 2009 are now online and searchable, and anyone can create applications that access information in this database – one resident developed an SMS short code app where anyone can text message a bill number and receive information back about the bill.

    The presentation, held in the very cool EMPAC at Rensselaer building in Troy, was recorded and livestreamed by Annemarie Lanesey of MZA Multimedia:

    If you’re even remotely interested in how governments can and are using technology to more effectively reach citizens, I’d encourage you to watch the presentation. If you’re not, watch it anyway – I didn’t think I would be interested either!

    Thanks again to Noel and Ken for speaking, and to EMPAC and their fantastic staff for hosting SMBTV 6.

    Why I’ll never use Delicious again

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    I want to like Delicious, I really do. I’ve been using it to trap links of interest for a while now, and as someone who’s probably used 10 different computers regularly in the last few years, it seemed a handy way to store content I want to access again later, from anywhere. I installed the Delicious extension in Chrome recently and that made it easier and more likely that I’d share and tag links.

    But my days with Delicious are over.

    The social networks that have stood the test of time so far (“time” in Internet world meaning more than a year or two) have constantly added functionality, features and new design. Facebook does it every few months, it seems. Delicious, for whatever reason, never seemed to graduate into a really robust, useful platform for people to share and save content. It was hard (nearly impossible) to import and find friends, the interface was ugly and clumsy, and search was frustrating. It earned the moniker “Where links go to die” and that’s not too far from the truth, in my case.

    It’s too late for Delicious. Google Reader has completely lapped it.

    Google Reader started as a way to keep track of blog feeds, and I didn’t use it much beyond that. But then they began rolling out more useful features. You can tag and star items and organize feeds into folders. Then Google rolled out the “Share” function, which, with one click, allows you to post to your own public feed any item from your reader you wished. Google added the ability to find and follow friends via Google Reader and see, right from within your reader, what they are sharing. You can add notes and comments on items or send an item to someone via eMail. And let’s not forget the nifty ‘Trends’ stats feature (this is Google, after all) that shows you which feeds you’re most engaged with. (The official Google Reader blog is a great resource on all these features.)

    For a long time, the only thing that kept me saving items to Delicious was the concept of “discovery.” Anything I wanted to save, share or tag in Google Reader was limited to feeds I was already subscribed to. If I happened across something on the Web or clicked to a link from Twitter, I didn’t have a good way to get it into my reader. Plus, I often found a single post interesting and bookmark-worthy, but had no desire to subscribe to the entire blog.

    So, it was a two-party system for me: Google Reader to share and save the most interesting posts from among the feeds I already subscribed to, and Delicious for tagging and saving sites I randomly “found” out on the Web.

    But it doesn’t have to be this way!

    Google Reader has a “Note in Reader” bookmarklet! It does! And it has for two years! Drag the bookmarklet onto your browser’s toolbar, and wave goodbye to Delicious. The bookmarklet lets you save and/or share anything you find on the Web into your Google Reader. You can add notes and comments, just like you would on a blog post. I don’t know how I missed this feature, but to me, it pretty much means the end of Delicious.

    The “Note in Reader” feature completes the content consumption round trip for me. Using Google Reader I can:

    • Subscribe to a blog or Web site’s feed to receive all its content
    • Arrange and sort feeds into folders and bundles
    • Star, tag, like, annotate and share specific items from those feeds to my own public “shared items” feed
    • Find and follow friends via my GMail contacts or other social networks, or even search for people via keyword or location, and then see and subscribe to items they are sharing
    • View recommendations for new feeds that Google generates by comparing my interests with feeds of users similar to me
    • Share and save content into my Google Reader from anywhere on the Web I happen to find it

    I haven’t tinkered with Google Buzz much, but obviously Reader and Buzz are easily integrated so you can share items across that platform, too.

    (I’m not even going to get started on Google Reader Play, which is possibly the biggest time suck I’ve ever seen – it curates and presents fun and interesting information from the Web it thinks I may like into a visual slideshow type of format and lets you share, like and save right from the screen. I’m talking hours lost here discovering fun stuff.)

    So I’m sorry Delicious. I can’t even say that it was fun while it lasted, because it was always a bit cumbersome. It’s too bad we have to part ways, but with “Note in Reader” and all the other amazing options Google Reader offers, can you blame me?

    Check out what I’m reading, saving and sharing via Google Reader here.

    The latest miracle of news gathering is here!

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    Want to really appreciate how amazing it is that you can take and send photos from your mobile phone? Check out this educational film from 1937, which explains how photographs were sent across the wire:

    It’s actually wildly fascinating (and gets pretty “technical” in the middle).

    If you didn’t know the film was from 1937, it wouldn’t sound entirely out of place today when talking about snapping and sending photos on iPhones, Flip Cams, or Blackberrys to frame a news event as it unfolds:

    “Every available development of science and engineering has been utilized to get the story to the reader in the shortest possible time.

    It is only a matter of minutes after a news event has occurred before newspapers all over the country are carrying pictures that tell the story more graphically and completely than the printed word. Pictures sent from any location, by simply picking up a telephone.”

    What once was old is new again…