Tag: USA Today

In Monday’s epic post I mentioned the UM Dartmouth study on the death of blogging. Here’s the response I should have written if I were as smart as Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks…

When I speak to CEO organizations, I typically run through a series of quick slides that show where technology is right at this moment.

For instance: There were 107 trillion emails sent last year, Facebook is at more than 900 million users, Pinterest is closing in on 15 million users, and there are three billion videos streamed on YouTube every day.

I do this to show how many people are using the web, to preempt the “My customer doesn’t use the Internet” conversation (yes, I still hear that).

But the stat I want to talk about today is the number of blogs on the Internet. According to Technorati, there are 158 million blogs floating around, which is partly why I’m so surprised to keep reading that blogging is dead.

I get it. It’s not an easy think to keep up. My guess is many people or companies say, “Let’s start a blog!” and then do nothing with it after a month or two because it’s so labor intense.

So, let’s say for argument’s sake, half of those blogs never see the light of day, either because they’re abandoned or no one reads them because they’re too self-promotional. That leaves us with 79 million blogs, which isn’t a small number.

USA Today reported this morning that more companies are abandoning their blogs in favor of Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

Add to that, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth released a  study earlier this year that says the percentage of companies that maintain blogs fell to 37% in 2011 from 50% in 2010, based on its survey of 500 fast-growing companies listed by Inc. magazine. Only 23% of Fortune 500 companies maintained a blog in 2011, flat from a year ago after rising for several years.

So, I see. Based on Wall Street and fast-growth companies, blogging is down, and now it’s time to claim the whole blogosphere is dead.

Here’s the thing, though. Those companies aren’t blogging because it’s hard. It’s hard to generate good content even once a week. It’s hard to cultivate a community. It’s hard to grow traffic. It’s a thankless job most days. So people throw something up there that talks about how great the company is, if only to check off “blog today” from their check list.

And the blog fails.” Full story at:  Is Blogging Dead or Are Companies Not Trying Hard Enough? | Spin Sucks

Go to the source if you want the rest of Gini’s perspective…

Thanks, Gini, for connecting the dots in a way that makes sense. Me? I always tell my clients that blogging is one of those things that takes more time than money and the organic Search Engine Optimization [SEO] is better than paying for Search Engine Marketing [SEM]. Gini, however, did a much better job deconstructing the UM Dartmouth study…

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Electronic media usage by children reaches record high

USA Today
Image via Wikipedia

Apparently electronic media is equal to a full time job for most kids…

“The findings, out today in a Kaiser Family Foundation survey of 2,002 people ages 8 to 18, show that young people spend seven hours and 38 minutes using media in a typical day — up from six hours and 19 minutes a decade earlier.

About the only thing that seems to be fading: ink. Though daily book readership has held steady at about 47% since 1999, the percentage of young people who say they read a magazine every day has plummeted from 55% to 35%. It’s worse for newspapers, down from 42% to 23%.

Electronic media are now “a part of the air that kids breathe,” says Vicky Rideout, director of Kaiser’s Program for the Study of Media and Health.

African-American and Hispanic kids spend nearly one-third more time each day with electronics than white kids. Among other findings:

  • Cellphone ownership has increased sharply since 2004, from 39% to 66%.
  • Ownership of iPods has jumped even more since 2004, from 18% to 76%.
  • 20% of kids’ media comes via mobile devices.

The near-ubiquity of mobile devices has had a profound effect on kids’ free time, filling up “the insterstitial spaces” in their daily lives, says Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. She jokes that iPods and cellphones may be this generation’s “magazines and chewing gum,” harmless ways to fill time.” Source: Kids’ electronic media use jumps to 53 hours a week – USATODAY.com

What does this say about our culture? Our future? The future of newspapers? I have a thousand questions. What about you?

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An interesting perspective…

USA Today
Image via Wikipedia

…from a former USA TODAY reporter…

“Today is the last day that I’ll walk through USA TODAY’s glass and marble lobby, itself a monument to flusher times.

I’ve been laid off from my dream job, and I’m not going to lie. It sucks. I enjoyed almost everything about my immediate world there, from my globe-trotting reporters to my creative production team to my hard-working and open-minded boss. My group was tight, and we laughed and learned from each other every day.

But what bothers me the most is what my firing represented. See, I’ve been learning all the tricks that a modern multi-platform journalist is supposed to know. In the past 22 months, I’ve blogged, tweeted, shot photos and videos, and handled speaking engagements. I edited my section, managed my high-personality staff and then in my spare time, I wrote cover stories – something that very few other editors at USA TODAY do. I hustled and I cajoled and I ended up out on my ass anyway.

I’m a true believer in the power of journalism. I walked into my first newspaper office when I was 16, fell in love with deadlines and chaos, and never looked back. During my 20 years in the mainstream media, I’ve written stories that have changed lives, and I’ve written stories purely for entertainment. I felt it was a calling, more so than a job.

But increasingly, things have become more interesting outside the newsroom bubble. I’d go to conferences and meet people who were making it just fine on their own. Some were creating niche businesses, busting up the paradigm. Others were parlaying old school media talents into fresh ventures, with a moxie that made me wish I had the freedom to emulate them. The air inside USAT’s towers on Jones Branch Drive always seemed a little stale after that.

These freelancers-slash-entrerpreneurs are smart. They are nimble. And now they are my role models, as I join their ranks.

So to the managers who made this decision, in less than 140 characters I tell you: Good luck steering the Titanic. And thanks for the head start. Now I’m really going to run.” Source: Goodbye to all of that… | Chris Around The World

The world as we know it is changing in very interesting ways…

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