24 visitors today at Eat Sleep Publish
If you think any of this gibberish looks interesting, you should poke around and subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with new content.
So says Google Analytics:
If those were stats for Jason-Preston.com, I’d be upset. But since this is for a 2-day old blog, I’m quite happy.
Two numbers that really jump out at me as awesome are the bounce rate and the time on site.
What those two numbers mean is that most of the people who are showing up on the site are sticking around for a while (12 minutes is huge) to read through the content. That’s awesome.
I’m so glad I’m writing posts that people want to stick around for. Now I just need to get some inbound links ;)
Introducing Eat Sleep Publish, my new personal obsession
Many of you are probably already aware that I’ve been working on Eat Sleep Publish for about a month. I wrote the first post for it at the end of March, and it’s taken since then for me to polish the theme, put the pieces together, and get everything lined up to go.
I’m very happy with the way it looks and works, but I doubt I’ve gotten everything perfect. If you spot anything wonky, please let me know.
I’ve launched the site with some good content already up there. Here’s what I’d suggest checking out:
- If you’re wondering what Eat Sleep Publish is all about, try: How can newspapers, books, and magazines thrive in the internet age?
- Or for my take on why we need to bring new definitions to blogging, try: What is blogging?
- Or you can check out what the editor of the Online Journalism Review has to say about personal branding and unmoderated comment cesspools: Robert Niles to Newspapers: Don’t bring a plastic fork to a gunfight
There’s plenty more already, but those are some pretty good starting places. I hope it’s as fun to read as it is to write.
Magazines
This is a post that I wrote in November of 2006 but left in the drafts folder. Given my current plans to launch Eat Sleep Publish on Monday I found it an interesting read.
I love magazines. I love the paper. I love the sound. I love flipping through the colorful plastic pages to the cover story. I love the surprising witticisms. I love the editorial columns.
Magazines are amazing.
My dad has subscribed to Wired for as long as I can remember. It makes me sad that they’re no longer printing on square paper, but I still think it’s a great magazine, and I’m sure I’ll probably get my own subscription before the end of the year [ I did not - jp ]. I’ve subscribed to PC Gamer since 1995, which is almost the entire time it’s existed, and it just keeps getting better (except their internet division - for some reason they’re a bit slow in that department).
For years I was sure that when I came down to school in L.A. I’d do my damndest to get an internship with PC Gamer - after all, I play more video games than I have time to, and I love to write, and I’m a geek at heart. What better place for me in the world?
But I’ve e-mailed PC Gamer several times over the past ten years (sometimes for contests, sometimes for letters to the editor, sometimes to yell at them for idiocy) and never gotten a response. So I haven’t ended up fetching coffee for Greg Vederman (or even Steve Klett).
So instead I blog maniacally about whatever I choose, write occasionally for my school newspaper about things that nobody in college should actually care about, and continue to subscribe to the magazine.
Someday I’ll do something for a magazine. I like writing too much to spend my entire life without making that kind of opportunity for myself. Maybe I’ll start my own magazine with a few friends. Maybe I’ll help a few friends start theirs.
Yoga Fail
Inspired in part by Teresa. It cracks me up.
Speaking of hard journalism
This is the type of article that I think, if newspaper organizations die, we will be losing. And as a society (and as consumers) we ought to consider that very carefully before we decide to throw news companies to the dogs.
Behind Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
This, in particular, is the phrase that says to me “no blogger could write this.”
But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.
There will be more on this at Eat Sleep Publish when the blog launches, probably later this week.
A poll about “hard journalism”
Because it amuses me, I want to ask you about “hard journalism.” By this I mean the kinds of things you read on the front page of a newspaper, but not the kinds of things you read in the sports section.
Now I’m going to wait for all five of you to answer ;)
Loading … Loading … Loading … Loading …Thinking and reading in the wrong order
I often do my thinking and my reading in the wrong order.
I’ll spend a lot of time rolling ideas around in my head until I come up with a point of view I like, and then I’ll come up with a great way to say it, and in the process of fleshing out my theory, I’ll go pick up a book or magazine or article to support it.
And discover that someone else expressed my theory three and a half years ago.
Now I’m frustrated because I’ve just spent a bunch of time coming up with something that I can’t really claim credit for.
The smart thing to do would be to do my reading first, and spend that mental energy building on top of theories that have already been voiced. I should remember that.
In case you’re wondering what brought this on, I just did this with a post I’ve been working on for Eat Sleep Publish.
How much business is conducted in coffee shops?
I’m sure the answer varies from city to city.
One of benefits (or curses, depending on how you look at it) of the job that I have is that I get to spend a lot of time working from random locations. Provided I have internet access, I can do 80% of my job from anywhere.
So a lot of my work gets done in coffee shops or bagel shops or bistros or cafes that provide free wi-fi. And almost wherever I am, I am not alone.
Right now I can hear two people discussing something in legalese that, if I paid enough attention to it, would make my head spin.
Why do businesses have offices?
So you can work elsewhere.
Oh, snap.
Whoops - Hillary Clinton headlines?
My new favorite Facebook application. What great headline selection:
The 20 years experience problem
When you’re doing a NYT crossword puzzle, you have a significant advantage if you’ve been filling them in for years. That’s because the same words with similar clues keep cropping up time and again, so your experience is an important factor in completing the puzzle.
But what happens if they suddenly stop using all the old conventions?
Your habits will defeat you.
As I get ramped up to launch by new blog, Eat Sleep Publish, I see this problem all over the newspaper industry.
To illustrate my point (and maybe back it up with some experience), here’s a comment from a USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review blog post asking whether or not “the folks running your shop can get it done” over the next ten years:
no, they’re just too old. most of them don’t even know what RSS stands for and they’re unwilling to listen to the younger folks in the newsroom who actually do get it. part of what holds them back is the old newsroom idea that you have to have been in journalism for 20 years before someone in a glass office listens and respects your opinion. this new ‘challenge’ that faces our industry isn’t about journalism, it’s about surviving in a new medium, the web, and current management, better surround themselves with folks who ‘get it’ before they drive our industry into the ground. hopefully it’s not too late.
I could not have said it better.
Now running on WordPress 2.5
As far as the front end is concerned, everything should look and work exactly the same.
The back end is completely different, but I figure that there’s no use in arguing with the future. Time to settle in and get used to it.
So far I like it. It’s pretty, pastel, and I’m allowed to edit my permalinks on the fly. Kewl.
Happy Birthday Conrad
It’s my brother’s birthday today, which is without a doubt the best of all possible times to put a ridiculous picture of him on the internet:
Happy birthday Conrad, you’re an awesome brother. Much love.
- Jason
The iPhone placed in the continuum of email user interfaces
Seriously, it’s so abnormal for Apple.
I think we should force everyone who coded the interface to use it for all of their e-mail until they fix it.
New Yorker cartoon contest submission - get it?
When I get the New Yorker in the mail, the first thing I do is flip to the back and come up with a caption for the cartoon. I like to think it keeps my comedy muscle tuned up, since New Yorker cartoons are so rarely make any sense, and are a pain in the ass to make them funny.
Here’s what I did this week:
Get it?
Working on new site at Eat Sleep Publish
Ever since Teresa introduced me to MAMP I’ve become addicted to fiddling with and building WordPress themes on my hard drive.
It’s probably only a matter of time before I start building and releasing my own themes.
For now, I’m working on perfecting a theme I’ve put together for Eat Sleep Publish. I recently bought eatsleeppublish.com (don’t bother, it’s password protected right now) and I plan to spend some time talking to people in the publishing industry about the future of newspapers, books, and magazines.
I’m curious about how blogging and new media intersects with classical publishing. And of course I’m having a lot of fun working on the site design.
Here’s a sneak peek:
If you work in the publishing world and you’re interesting in talking to me or doing an interview for Eat Sleep Publish, please let me know.
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