I point to TechCrunch all the time — both in this blog and in my public presentations — as an example of a journalistic blog.

It is a blog that breaks news, real news, important news. It is also a blog that is full of opinion. It is also a blog that is winning in the marketplace of readers and revenue.

TechCrunch represents both the present and the future of online journalism, of a reinvented journalism.

Today, Erick Schonfeld, a respected and serious journalist who joined TechCrunch six months ago after his previous employer, the magazine Business 2.0, went out of business, blogs about blogging for TechCrunch.

Working at TechCrunch is a completely different experience. For one thing, I no longer write long-form, narrative journalism. There is not much time for story-telling (except for weekend posts like this one). It is mostly breaking news, reporting facts and providing analysis. At TechCrunch, I am completely focused on blogging, 24/7. With a few exceptions, no single post is very difficult to write (unlike an in-depth magazine article that can require 50 interviews and weeks of travel, for instance). But taken as a whole, blogging is actually harder. That is because the blogging never stops. Just ask my wife and kids, who now mock me by repeating back my new mantra: “I’m almost done, just one more post.”

TechCrunch succeeds because its bloggers do very good journalism — gathering lots of stories, getting them online quickly (if not first), and because its bloggers know what the hell they’re talking about, their commentary is respected.

There is always something else to write about, and not enough time to cover it. But we live or die by how fast we can post after a story breaks, if we can’t break it ourselves. We hardly have time to proofread our posts, as anyone who’s come across one of the frequent typos in TechCrunch knows. Luckily, our readers love to point out our mistakes in comments. They are our copy editors and fact checkers. (We love you guys). Our philosophy is that it is better to get 70 percent of a story up fast and get the basic facts right than to wait another hour (or a day) to get the remaining 30 percent. We can always update the post or do another one as new information comes in. More often than not, putting up partial information is what leads us to the truth—a source contacts us with more details or adds them directly into comments.

Every traditional journalist who reads this post just cringed. I expect angry comments. But this is why traditional journalism is failing — declining readership, declining revenue, declining trust — and blogs are succeeding.

Here’s something from Mindy McAdams:

What some newsrooms (e.g., The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) have done is turn the workflow around — in a way that makes sense when the number of subscribers to the print product is decreasing and the number of online visitors is increasing: Make “Web first” the rule, in all cases. Produce for online, write for online, shoot for online, design for online.

If you’re going to produce for online first, start by thinking and acting like a blogger. If you don’t know how to do that, start following TechCrunch. You’ll learn.

There’s an old saying in computers — I first heard when I was in the Air Force 26 years ago — “crap in, crap out.”

In other words, if you feed a computer gibberish, that’s all you’re going to get back.

Until artificial intelligence really becomes something, CICO will be true.

The same could be said of blogging.

Blogging is only as good as you make it.

There’s a lot of bad bloggers out there. There are bloggers who don’t really have anything to say, but say it anyway. There are bloggers who are more noise than substance, and some how manage to get more attention than they deserve. And there are bloggers who are just plain dumb.

Most of the bad bloggers tend to gravitate toward current affairs blogging.

Unfortunately, political blogs are also the kind of blogs most journalists tend to read. So a lot of journalists have a very low opinion of blogging.

Those of us more immersed in blogging, or who have grown beyond merely the current affairs bloggers, know that there is more to blogging than rants and raves.

Crap in, crap out. You only get out of blogging what you put into Word Press, Blogger or Moveable Type.

Naive as it might be, I haven’t given up hope. I believe journalists can become good bloggers.
Learning to blog really takes turning one simple switch in your head: This isn’t print journalism.

It isn’t the journalism of your cranky old city editor or your sainted j-school prof. Neither of those old farts would approve of blogging in any form, even though blogging is now part of the legitimate media mix.

A lot of people like to say, “a blog is just a tool.” By that, they mean blogging software is just technology for a web-centric content management system.

While there’s some truth to that, the statement also sells blogging short. Blogging is much more than that.

Blogging is a mindset. It’s a way of approaching media communications that is different from traditional media.

Traditional media is really mass media. In mass media, the voice of the reporter is authoritative. It’s one voice speaking to many people, so there isn’t much room for nuance or alternative view points. In fact, you better make sure both the left and the right, the creationist and the evolutionists, the global warmers and the SUV drivers, get heard. You better make sure you get the story right and balanced and present it in a way that says, “this is definitive,” even if it’s not.

That’s why objectivity has been such a strong touch point for journalists over the past hundred years or so. Generally, especially in print, you get one chance to get it right, and your communicating with a blob of an audience, so you better check out whether your mother loves you.

On the web, audiences are more fragmented. People are using personal devices to communicate.

That means, what works best is the conversational voice, a personal point of view, and a mindset that says, “I’m sharing,” rather than, “I’m reporting.”

So-called objectivity is great for print, not so much online. Some snarkiness and observational prose is appropriate online in a way that is not necessarily so in print. In part, because online, our audience can talk back. We want to encourage that.

That’s not to say in print, or even online, there isn’t a place for shoe-leather reporting and traditional modes of storytelling. There is still a place for all the things the blustering managing editors value, because it is still important. It’s important for society and for civic engagement. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do journalism these days.

Too many publishers, or more to the point, the editors and reporters they employ, still see online as just another place to shovel the same journalism they’re doing in print or in broadcast.

Online is different, and blogging is the key that unlocks the kingdom of how online is different. If you can get blogging, you can get online.

It would help newspapers.com tremendously if more reporters and editors would not only start blogging, but learn to do it well.

It’s a fact, blogs help grow audience. Blogs, however, can also help us produce online products that are different from our print product, giving consumers more choices and maybe, just maybe, a reason to make a habit of both print and online.

I say, it’s worth a try, cause the way we’re doing things right now ain’t working out so well.

In case it’s not obvious: There are lots of different kinds of blogging. This post might be an example essay blogging (if I were to be that pompous about it). There’s also link blogging, and commentary blogging, and news blogging. The kind of blogging a journalist might do depends on the situation, the purpose and the goals. The purpose of this post is merely to say — get over your objections to blogging and start exploring how you can use it in your newsroom to grow readership.

For a related post, see Ryan Sholin’s list of example blogs. (And yes, it’s no coincidence the Ryan and I — we work together — are posting nearly simultaneously along such parallel lines. GateHouse Media readers, are you paying attention?)

Some related links from me and elsewhere:

• Journalists should pay attention to successful blogs to understand web journalism
• Journalism has evolved to fit society’s needs and demands
• Scott Karp: Local Link Journalism: Pulling Together The Threads Of Local Blogger Reporting
• Scott Karp: How Link Journalism Could Have Transformed The New York Times Reporting On McCain Ethics

I’m preparing a post on newspaper blogging … it was partly inspired by something Mark Cuban wrote recently, but addressing Cuban’s rant has really more of a sidebar to my main point (I hope to finish that shortly), so I’m spinning it out here:

Newspaper blogging is probably the worst marketing and branding move a newspaper can make. The barriers to entry for bloggers are non existent. There are no editorial standards. There are no accuracy standards. We bloggers can and do write whatever we damn well please. Historically newspapers have set some level of standards that they strived to adhere to. By taking on the branding, standard and posting habits of the blogosphere, newspapers have worked their way down to the least common demoninator of publishing in what appears to be an effort to troll for page views.

CICO (Crap in, Crap out — see my coming post for how this fits). Some newspaper bloggers (most, probably), aren’t very good. But that doesn’t mean newspapers should not hire and promote bloggers. Online isn’t news print. You would think a man of Cuban’s background and blogging prowess would get that. And there is no reason to assume that a newspaper-affiliated blogger would adhere to the low standards Cuban assigns to bloggers. CICO. Newspaper bloggers can and should do better.

Besides that, I can think of several bloggers who demonstrate higher ethical standards than some of the people employed at the New York Times or CNN.

So Cuban sells bloggers short, sadly. And with that said, his space limitation problems are his problem, not the media’s. He has an obligation to accommodate all legimate media, whether the output is to print, broadcast, a vlog or a blog. If he needs to build a bigger locker room to do it, then he should start calling contractors.

For more on this topic, check out Beth Lawton’s post.

Michael Arrington started TechCrunch in June, 2005. It’s now the second most popular blog in the world. According to Compete.com, it is read by at least 900,ooo people per month, but that wouldn’t include the reported 500,000 RSS feed subscribers.

As TechCrunch has risen, Business 2.0 has gone out of business, while CNet and Ziff-Davis have hit financial hard times.

Arrington, when asked about blogs taking page views away from traditional news media, had this to say on Charlie Rose the other night:

It’s a very raw, very quick form of journalism. It’s not editing, it’s not balanced, it’s opinionated. A lot of people really want that.

I read TechCrunch everyday. The blog, now a group blog, breaks a lot of tech news. But every news worthy item contains what some might call opinion. I call it informed insight. Arrington and his team know what the hell they’re talking about and I value and trust their point of view.

TechCrunch has become popular because it is credible. It’s credible to its readers because over time they’ve learned that TechCrunch gets right more than it gets wrong, and it’s never proven itself untruthful, and when they’ve made mistakes, they’ve corrected them quickly. TechCrunch readers don’t look for fair and balanced. They look for relevance and understanding.

Before TechCrunch became a go-to blog for tech news, it had no brand. Arrington, who was pretty much an unknown outside of small circle of Silicon Valley insiders before starting the blog, made it credible; he made it a brand.

The next time some journalist talks about how important their newspaper brand is, think about TechCrunch, which demonstrates that brand isn’t about what you’ve done over the past 100 years — it’s about what you’re doing today.

While talking about journalism and blogging, I need to quote this Romenesko post, because it’s lingered in my mind for several days:

Many bloggers see Josh Marshall’s Polk Award as vindication of their enterprise, writes Noam Cohen — “that anyone can assume the mantle of reporting on the pressing issues affecting the nation and the world, with the imprimatur of a mainstream media outlet or not.” Marshall says of bloggers: “I think of us as journalists; the medium we work in is blogging. We have kind of broken free of the model of discrete articles that have a beginning and end. Instead, there are an ongoing series of dispatches.”

Many times I’ve written about the need for journalists to blog because I think journalists need to get away from — at least online — from just repurposing what they do in print into the new kind of web journalism.

Web journalism is more raw, more conversational and makes immediacy and relevance more important than crafting the perfect, complete package.

Previously: Video can’t win on production quality alone (because of Chris Anderson’s quote about relevance vs. quality).

Is this where I get to say, “I told you so”?

Whenever I write about the need for journalists to start blogging in order to really get online journalism, some journosaur pops up with some snark about blogging and how journalism hasn’t changed because of the Web.

That so misses the point.

Colin Mulvany now gets it. He has discovered how blogging is really different from just slapping repurposed print content on the web and calling it journalism.

I will be honest with you, until I started this blog, I barely understood the concept myself. I was shocked by how many people Mastering Multimedia has reached in such a short amount of time. But what really opened my eyes was how people are finding this blog. RSS feeds, tags, Google Reader, blog rolls, and links from other social networks. It’s about sharing. It’s about a conversation. It’s about Web 2.0.

I now understand. I have been a producer of web content for years on a creaky CMS that only partially takes advantage of the Web 2.0 tools available on any WordPress blog. I just didn’t see the big picture of why this is important for all of us in the newspaper industry to grasp. If I didn’t get it, then how will my non-blogging co-workers, who are already apprehensive about change, ever understand?

If you haven’t already, my advice is to get an education in Web 2.0. Start a blog. Feed it. Share it. Our very survival as an industry will be predicated on how well we interface with this expanding social networking universe.

Sorry for the blogging triumphalism, but I’ve been saying this for like two years now.

If you want to understand where journalism is going, start blogging. There is simply no other way. And if you don’t believe me, start blogging. I won’t believe your alternative view until you do, because until you do, you have no credibility to snark at blogs. Sorry, you just don’t get it otherwise.

Now, if we can just work on Colin’s adherence to Big-J journalism “storytelling” instead of just connecting with video, making video that fits the conversation, then we’ll have a hell of a break through.

(via Mindy McAdams).

UPDATE:  Must-read post from Scott Karp, who articulates very well why journalists need to learn self-publishing tools.

Askimet thinks I’m a spammer.

Thankfully, Scott Karp, among others, knows I’m not a spammer. But he has had to hassle four or five times recently to fish my comments out of Askimet’s spam bucket. That led to this post.

On any blog that is using Askimet’s spam filter, if I leave a comment, my comment goes into the spam bucket.

Why? Apparently, it’s related to the fact that my site was hacked twice. One of those hacks involved putting a redirect page in one of my directories, and then the spammers sent traffic from hundreds of other hacked blogs to that page.

That was great for my technorati ranking, not so great for my reputation with Askimet.

I’ve written to Askimet and asked to be taken off the back list. So far, the request has been ignored.

I pretty much hated spammers before these incidents. My inclination to think they should all be shot on sight is hard to resist, even as much as I strongly believe in full and fair trails for all accused criminals. Here’s to hoping people like Alan Ralsky, assuming he’s convicted, get punished to the full extent of the law. We need thousand more prosecutions like this, but then I suspect most spammers reside in countries where the government could careless. Hopefully, someday, those governments will join the civilized world and come to hate spam as much as the rest of us do.

UDPATE: Afternoon of Jan. 9, 2008.  I just got an e-mail from Askimet saying I’ve been unblacklisted.

The other day, Dan Telvock of Fredericksburg.com sent me an e-mail and told me about his potential new job — he’s may become a MoJo, or Mobile Journalist.

Cool job, if you can get it.

While not asking for advice, per se, my sense was Dan would like to know what I think about the job.

My response to that, however, would be in the form of advice.

If I were going to have a MoJo at one of our papers, this is what I would expect.

First, the area you cover is your beat. But you can’t approach this like a beat reporter. For most beat reporters, the beat is something you do during the paid hours, and afterwards, you go home and kiss the wife, pet the cat and watch TV.

But if you’re going to be a serious online journalist, you need to be passionate about what you cover.

This is taking a pixel or two from blogging.

All of the best bloggers are passionate about the topics they cover. You need to be passionate about your beat in the same way. For the MoJo, the town is the beat. You need to LOVE the town. You need to love it’s people, it’s identity, it’s good things and its bad things (and be discerning enough to recognize the differences). You need to be the foremost expert on your town — know all the history, all the people, all the things that make it the marvelous place that it is.

Second, you need a blog. You need to blog your town. Most MoJos are assigned the task of finding news updates for the home page of the newspaper.com.

That’s all well and good and part of the job, but the main task should be blogging the town. If in the process of doing that, some news item worthy of the home page comes out of it, then let an editor make that decision. The editor can pull the blog post and promote it to the home page (re-writing the post, if necessary, to be more “news style,” though, frankly, I see no reason to do that).

Of course, you’ll always have a video camera with you, but your job isn’t to be a video storyteller. Your job is to document what’s going on as you see it. You should be after the small bits of video that are interesting, amusing and occasionally newsworthy.

Sometimes, you might produce the story video, but the more time you spend shooting and editing video, the less time you’re spending with the people in your town.

You should spend a lot of time with the people in your town. You should be better known around town than the mayor or the leading business owner. EVERYBODY should know you, know who you are and what you do. If you do that well, they will clamor to give you information and maybe even show up in your blog, or you home page story, or your front page story.

You should carry plenty of business cards, all with your blog URL front and center, bigger than the newspaper name, and they shoulbe handed to every person you meet.

You need to spend more time with people than you spend driving around.

The classic image of a MoJo is a reporter sitting in his car, filing a story. Certainly, you must spend time doing that, but the less time you spend actually driving that car, the better. You need to be out and about, on foot, with people.

Your job isn’t to find scandal or hard-hitting news. Your job is to unlock the life of your town in a way that print journalism hasn’t done consistently for generations.

It’s all about people.

So that’s my advice.

Dan sent along this example of his first MoJo piece, which is a fine piece of writing, reporting and producing related video.

And it’s a fine thing to do for a MoJo.  It’s perfectly suitable. Sometimes, that’s exactly what will come out of being a great MoJo, but mostly you will be the blogger of your town.

It seems like there are lots of new journalism/newspaper blogs popping up.  It’s great to see, but I can’t keep up.

If you own a blog focused on media, especially newspapers and newspaper-style journalism, I would be happy to add you to the blog roll.  And I’ll also subscribe to your feed.

A link back to howardowens.com is always appreciated.  You can subscribe to the howardowens.com RSS feed here.

I can be reached at howard owens (oneword) at gmail dot com.

Happy New Year!

Here are the most viewed posts from 2007.

1. Twelve things journalists can do to save journalism
2. 2008 objectives for today’s non-wired journalist
3. Let’s stop putting the entire newspaper online
4. Eight historical mistakes the newspaper industry made
5. A better list of Top 10 Newspaper Sites
6. Jim Romenesko, please link to this post
7. The culture of infallibility inhibits newspaper innovation
8. Covering naked and jogging college students is good community journalism
9. Eight reasons to be hopeful if you work for a newspaper company
10. Rob Curley answers questions about OnBeing

Most commented on posts:

1. Twelve things journalists can do to save journalism
2. 2008 objectives for today’s non-wired journalist
3. We can’t let the newsroom turtles impede progress
4. Let’s stop putting the entire newspaper online
5. Jim Romenesko, please link to this post
6. New standards needed for judging online video
7. Bannish boring slideshows
8. 2007 HowardOwens.com best newspaper web site awards
9. Eight historical mistakes the newspaper industry made
10. The practical side of point-and-shoot for reporters

Top ten referring blogs

1. poynter.org (This would be mostly Romenesko, but also E-Media Tidbits)
2. journerdism.com
3. newsvideographer.com
4. Howard Weaver
5. Lenslinger
6. Andy Dickinson
7. Innovation in College Media
8. Shooting By the Numbers
9. Brian Cubbison
10. Cyndy Green

Top ten search keywords that did not include my name:

1. isaac cubillos
2. “washington post” “on being” video rob curley
3. ghs
4. Johnny Cash
5. gatehouse media blogs
6. bree walker
7. ortopilot
8. anthony plascencia
9. media blog
10. personal journalism

Many news organizations have bonus plans for newsroom personnel called MBOs (MBA speak for Manage by Objective). The idea is to reward people for doing work that helps advance the company’s strategic goals.

Is there any higher strategic need for news organizations today than becoming more digital savvy?

I suspect there are still too many non-wired journalists in most US newsrooms. Either out of fear, indifference or hubris, too many reporters and editors resist using the Internet for anything beyond the occasional Google search (and heaven forbid they ever click a search result link to Wikipedia) and a daily dose of Romenesko (and heaven forbid if you call him what he is, a blogger).

That just isn’t acceptable.

So to help newsroom managers advance the digital literacy of their organizations, I offer the following MBO plan. I recommend readers pass this along to the top editors at their newspapers. And for non-wired journalists ambitious enough to pursue their own MBO paths, I’ll offer a reward myself (strict rules and details at the bottom of this post).

1. Become a blogger. Start with a favorite topic. For example, if you’re a baseball fan, start with baseball. Find all of the baseball-related blogs you can and become a regular reader of five or six of the best of these blogs. Participate — leave comments; follow links. After three months of blog reading, start your own blog on that topic. Try to post daily for at least six months. For blog topics, avoid anything related to your beat or politics. First, you need to blog about something you are passionate about; second, there are too many political bloggers already (accept maybe for local politics, if you see that need in your community and it won’t conflict with your day job).
2. Buy a small digital camera that can take both stills and video. Open an account with a photo sharing site such as Flickr or Buzznet. Take photos and post them. If necessary, use some online tutorials for digital photography. (NOTE: If company will buy you this camera, great, but if not, remember you have a responsibility to invest in your own career.)
3. With the same camera, make at least three videos. Use the free video editing software that comes with your computer and edit those videos. Post them to YouTube and at least one other video sharing site. There are plenty of online tutorials for shooting and editing video. Your goal here isn’t to make great video, just to learn what is involved in making video so you have the capability in your online journalism tool bag.
4. Related to video, spend at least two hours a week for six weeks on YouTube. Search for topics that interest you and then follow the trails where they lead. Pay attention to the daily most popular and see what other people are watching. Be sure to watch both amateur and professional video.
5. Join a social networking site. Every professional should have a profile on LinkedIn, so make sure you do, also. Facebook has been hot in 2007, but I think you’ll get more out of MySpace, which still remains popular with your future readers. You will get more DIY (the backbone of modern media) experience with MySpace, if you take full advantage of the site features (which, admittedly, I have not). Do Facebook, too, but don’t neglect MySpace.
6. Use social bookmarking. Set up del.icio.us for yourself and use it every day. Learn about tags. Check out Digg and Mixx and similar sites. If you can, get into Scott Karp’s Publish2 beta.
7. Start using RSS. Use RSS to keep up with the news of the day and the blogs you are now reading every day. Make sure your blog has an RSS feed. Here’s Marc Glaser’s guide to RSS.
8. If your current mobile phone doesn’t handle SMS (text messaging), get one that does. SMS works best when you have friends who text, so figure out who those friends are (by now, you have them). For neophytes and gray hairs, a phone with a QWERTY keyboard (Treo, or iPhone) works best. Blackberrys aren’t great SMS handhelds because they mix SMS and e-mail together.
9. Learn to twitter. I’m not a big Twitter user myself, but Ryan Sholin and Jack Lail swear by it. I think there is something to be said for learning how this technology may change information dissemination.
10. Create a Google Map mashup. If you don’t know what those are, google it. If you don’t know what to do or where to start, google it (hint: or you can search this site). There are plenty of tutorials available. It’s easy. All you need is a spreadsheet with appropriate data and enough smarts to follow step-by-step directions.
11. After you’ve done these ten things, document what you’ve learned — write something, such as an essay to your editor or a blog post. Discuss how technology has changed media, and follow the string of where that change might lead. What will your job be like in 10 years? What will media be like in five? How will news reach young readers in a generation? Tomorrow?

For those of you who work for a newsroom that doesn’t offer an MBO, or you’re not being included in the MBO program this year (maybe because your editor perceives you as too stuck in the past), I’m here to help.

I will give a $100 Amazon gift certificate to one journalist who completes all of the objectives. Here’s the rules:

• You must today be a non-wired journalist (which probably means a well meaning friend passed the link to this post along to you, because you, yourself, don’t normally read blogs). As a non-wired journalist, you only use the Internet for e-mail and a little web surfing, but not much else. You have yet to do anything along the lines outlined above.
• To be eligible, you must first send me an e-mail (howardowens at gmail dot com) and tell me about your current level of non-wiredness. To help confirm your position, you will need to CC your immediate supervisor at his or her work address (for this exercise to be meaningful, it probably helps if you have your boss’s support, anyway).
• You must be the first among the eligible participants to complete all of the objectives, and they must be completed in 2008.
• Part of being online is to be public and transparent about who you are and what you’re doing, so when you nominate yourself to participate, expect me to post your name and news affiliation in a blog post. Our readers should be able to follow your progress. Of course, there’s some advantages for you — it’s a great career move to be known as a learner; and the people who read this blog are the kind of people who would be happy to help you as needed; and when you have your own blog, you’ll be grateful for the links. And there’s no shame in admitting it’s time for you to go digital — you’re not alone.

For supervisors who use this post to fashion an in-house MBO program, it would be great to hear from you, especially as the program progresses, so we can all learn from the experience.

It’s about friggin’ time that the L.A. Times hired my friend Tony Pierce to do blog stuff.

It should have happened years ago.

Congrats, Tony.

Meredith Artley, whom I met at ONA this year, is doing a great job of moving the Times in a healthier direction.

This blog was hacked again … the same sort of injection hack as before. I found the primary offending file and removed it, but that isn’t a long-term fix. I’ll have to check this evening on whether there is yet another WordPress security fix and go through another upgrade process.

At least this time, I seem to have found the offending hidden text spam before Google did. I think.

If you want an example of how to cover a major breaking story in a blog, Jason La Canfora did a great job of covering the apparent murder of Sean Taylor.

This isn’t straight news reporting. This is both personal and professional. This is reporting what you know when you know. Some times items need updated. Some times there are new developments worthy of new posts. Some times you need to answer reader comments and e-mails with points of clarification. This is serving first and foremost the public responsibility to provide important and relevant information.

Full archive here.

I’ve never heard of Aaron Barnhart, but he sure is smart.

It is tired. Why do you think blogs vs. print issue has such legs? Navel gazing on the part of reporters/bloggers?

That’s partly to blame, I’m sure—but I think there are deeper reasons. With bloggers, I think it’s simple. They like to see themselves as part of something big, grand and revolutionary. Many, I think, genuinely believe they are transforming the media by challenging the mainstream media (MSM), although I’m not sure there is much hard proof of that. Beyond that, that anti-MSM stance is the fire that keeps their blogs going. It informs a lot of what they write.

Many print journos, on the other hand, don’t understand blogging and see bloggers as irritants, people who criticize their work but also wouldn’t have material for their blogs if not for the MSM. Meanwhile, every newsroom in America now has top management beating the drum for their staff to “do blogs,” even though it’s clear that many journalists in print and TV haven’t the foggiest idea how or why they should “do” one. (Witness the trail of busted blogs across news organizations.)

I just spoke on blogs to a features editors’ convention so I know that interest remains high. Editors are not dumb, they know their staff should be doing them, but that many don’t want to and many staff blogs go untended.

But journalists are torn on this. They know money is flowing out the door. They know a lot of it is going to online (though not necessarily enriching the people who criticize their work so passionately). They know they need to get with the program. But many aren’t sure how to proceed, or if ultimately their expenditure of effort online will be worth the effort.

Via Romenesko

So, for the first time I know of, a site I control has been hacked.

I got a message from Google today saying howardowens.com was being removed from the index for use of hidden text (in this case, links and text for viagra).

I’m like, WTF?

Sure enough, I checked the source code and there it was.

As near as I can tell, somebody managed to get FTP access to my server and modified the following files: classes.php, default-filters.php, functions.php, gettext.php, wp-db.php. The hacker also created a file called class-mail.php, and that file was encrypted.

I’ve restored backup files and changed the FTP passwords.

I’m posting this to warn other WP bloggers about the exploit. Check those files. Make sure you’re FTP password is strong, disable anonymous FTP, and make sure there’s no hidden text in your source code.

Hopefully, it won’t be too much of a hassle to get re-indexed by Google.

UPDATE II: You don’t see update I, because it wasn’t part of my database back up, but it noted that after talking with my host, I learned that it wasn’t likely an FTP hack, but a WordPress hack, because I hadn’t upgraded WP. The upgrade is now complete … fair less painless than I anticipated (which is why I hadn’t done it before), and things seem back to normal.

Meet Anne-Marie Nichols, professional blogger.

To read the comments of many journalists on blogging, you would think the only kind of bloggers out there are arm-chair pundits trafficking in rumor and speculation, political bloggers who rant and rave and usually get it wrong.

Never mind that the characterization of even political blogging is wildly innaccurate, it also sells short what is really going on in blogging.

It’s a huge blogging world out there, and blogs present far bigger competitive challenge to traditional content channels than most professional journalists have the courage to acknowledge.

Every once in a while, I stumble across some corner of the blogosphere that reminds me the blogging ecosystem is truly diverse and complex. Hearing from Anne-Marie last night is just one more of those moments.

Anne-Marie blogs for a couple of different blogging networks, such as 451 Press, which she reports is now the largest blogging network. I had never heard of it before. You can find a list of Anne-Marie’s blogs here. She’s primarily a mommy blogger (kind of a big blogging field these days) and a food blogger. Here’s an interesting post about an educational course on blogging, which I can imagine being quite useful for new bloggers.

How did I find about Nichols? Last night I got a LinkedIn invitation from Anne-Marie. I didn’t recognize her name at first, because I last knew her as Anne-Marie Barrett.

Anne-Marie was part of my primary circle of friends in high school. The last time we talked, I was a reporter at The Daily Californian and she worked for her father’s business upstairs from our newsroom.

It’s pretty cool to hear from an old friend who has adapted entirely to digital media.

I’ve never thought of this blog as having a name. It’s just my blog.

When I added “media blog” to the tagline, that was meant as a description and a little SEO experience (to see if I could get any kind of audience from people looking for “media blogs” — that hasn’t really worked out). But lots of people refer to this blog as the “media blog,” as if that’s its title.

That’s not the title.

If there is any title, it’s howardowens.com.

So I’ve changed to the the tagline.

The tagline also reflects the evolution of this blog. When I started in 2002, my blog was intended just to be a personal journal. I’ve written a lot about things that interest me.

In 2005 or so, I decided I needed to focus on something, so I chose “media,” with the idea that I would write about newspapers, TV, radio, music — all things media that interested me.

But because what I know best is online newspapers, and because those seem to be the posts regular readers seem to care the most about, I’ve pretty much become narrowly focused on that topic.

My old “about” page, which was about all my eclectic interests, to reflect a time when this blog was mostly about me and my interests, has been seeming really stale as this blog as evolved into more of a professional blog, and less about what songs I’m listening to or which books I’m reading (unless they’re work related). So I’ve updated the about page to reflect my professional biography.

This is also smart usability, I think — I find lots of people click on the about link rather than the LinkedIn link to find out who I am. I imagine them scratching their head — who is this idiot with all of these divergent interests who is telling us how to run online newspapers when he seems to have no professional qualifications at all> Maybe now, the bio will explain a little better that I’m not just “some blogger” ranting about the clueless MSM.

Shane Richards has performed a valuable public service for all of us who care about modern media and what some deep thinkers think about the current state of things: He’s compiled a list of recommended blog posts related to the topic.

I’m proud to have one of my posts considered worthy, but now I have a couple of posts to go read, cause there a some on the list I haven’t read yet.

Nick Belardes, a long-time Bakersfield blogger, gets the nature of networked media. He has long used MySpace to promote his blog and his various media projects (books, films, music). He was an early adopter of Bakotopia.com. He has been a champion of local bloggers for as long as I’ve known him.

Not long ago, he took an online job with one of the local TV stations.

Bakersfield.com has a content-driven social network on its site.

Nick is using Bakersfield.com to promote ABC23.

Kudos to Logan Molen and his team for not taking it down. After all, it’s all about the conversation, and in a civil discussion, all media is welcome.

I hope Nick is reciprocating and linking back to Bakersfield.com where appropriate.

He also started a MySpace page for ABC23. He’s also made his own blog a regular linkfest to Turnto23.com.

Not too long ago, Shane Richmond did a post asking media bloggers to call out their favorite media-related articles and blog posts.

I’m quite proud that Shane included one of my posts in his list.

Several other people have responded to the request and I’m going to throw my links into the stew myself.

I’m trying to avoid including links I’ve seen show up elsewhere, so if your favorite post isn’t here, maybe that’s why. Or I just forgot. Feel free to add your favorite links in comments either here or on Shane’s blog.

• Vin Crosbie on TimesSelect
• Vin Crosbie: A Date with the butcher
• Steve Yelvington on dead deer
• John Hagel on the unbundling of media
• Tim Porter, the mood of the newsroom
• Steve Outing: What journalists can learn from bloggers
• Jay Rosen (just the title alone is great): The people formerly known as the audience
• Rich Gordon on building a network, not a destination
• Guy Kawasaki on the effort effect

Outing’s post above deserves an extra hat tip. It inspired this post, which has been the basis of my primary content strategy ever since.

Good idea from Shane. I hope he compiles the results.

Shane didn’t ask for this, but there have been some good old fashioned dead-tree books that are ongoing mental references for me:

• The Search, by John Battelle
• We the Media, by Dan Gillmor
• Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug
• Net Gain, by John Hagel
• The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson
• First, Break All the Rules, by Marcus Buckingham
• The Vanishing Newspaper, by Philip Meyer
• Innovator’s Solution, by Clayton Christensen
• Competitive Advantage, by Michael E. Porter