Introducing Eat Sleep Publish, my new personal obsession

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.

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:

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.

April 28, 2008 | Filed Under Technology, publishing |  

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.

April 20, 2008 | Filed Under publishing |  

The newspaper question: do you keep the paper?

Everyone knows that across the country newspaper circulation numbers are declining (although a cursory google search fails to turn up any hard data) as more people turn to the internet, or TV, or nothing for their daily news.

Newspapers, therefore, have to make a fundamental choice about which problem to tackle, which course to pursue:

  1. Fight to bring classic newspaper circulation numbers back up
  2. Find ways to effectively distribute and monetize their digital offerings

The sooner newspapers let go of option number one the better they will fare. The classic daily newspaper is, I think, unlikely to make a resurgence long-term, no matter how you spice it up. Beyond that, newspapers need to innovate to survive, and the internet is a far, far cheaper place to innovate.

I was thinking about this while I read Amy Webb’s post about QR codes in newspapers yesterday. Amy is absolutely dead-on: newspapers need to start using their print product to drive online interaction.

For the long version, you should go read her post. The short version is this: QR codes are mini bar-codes that can be scanned by cell phones. Insert coupons and rewards, or institute a point system based on scanning them, and people have a way to tie together web and mobile technology with reading a classic newspaper.

Sounds like a good idea to me. And you can bet the QR code people are ready to go.

March 20, 2008 | Filed Under publishing |