5 August 2010
It would be the following: when you’re blogging, always keep in mind your biggest hero. That is your perfect reader. Imagine he’s watching over your shoulder. Would your writings make his day? Would your perfect reader send the article to friends? Or would this utopian follower think your article is just a lazy attempt in getting some words published on that boring blog of yours?
How would your blogging piece look in The New Yorker?
Keep that in mind and you’ll write as sharp and focused as possible. Don’t get cramped up though, just give the best you’ve got. Continue reading →
2 June 2010
Some of my friends will never read a newspaper. Not because they hate the institution. Or because they gather all the news they need on the weather report. Not at all. My friends trust quality newspapers. Plus they want to know what’s going on in the world, and why.
Foto AP / Noah Berger
The thing is, they just don’t like the medium. My pals have a hectic live. They hardly take any time for breakfast, let alone to sit down and spend 30 minutes on reading ‘that paper thing’. Continue reading →
30 May 2010
Last Thursday, I opened the NPOX X-Medialab 2010 with a talk about how experienced journalists and bloggers can work together. My goal was to show journalists from the Netherlands Public Broadcasting how every nrc.next journalist started blogging in less than a few months. They work from a Dutch town called Hilversum, hence the title.
State of Play
Who has seen the film State of Play? In this film an old-school journalist – the kind that, on a bleak winter’s day, buys the right police officer a cup of coffee in exchange for inside information – is forced to work together with a blogger. A young lady that the experienced journalist thinks uses something like a space ship to write her little articles, while he is still working on a ten-year-old PC. The blogger never has a pen at hand and does nothing but feeding hypes. Continue reading →
4 May 2010
Warning. What follows are the ramblings of a typical news blogger.
The new Swagger Wagon of Toyota, a vintage photo collection of Times Square, an autonomous neighbourhood from the Second World War, sleeping in a Hollywood sign from 1923 and infographic about oil. All these subjects have one thing in common: I blogged about it earlier today on a newsblog that covers current affairs with offbeat links. It’s a way of guiding readers through some of the web current highlights. And I love it. So when I heard about the following quote a couple of weeks ago, I was caught off guard. Here’s what productivity expert Merlin Mann said during an interview:
I really feel like that combination of little, easy motor skills and clicking combined with feeling a little less bored for a minute is completely addictive to people. When the main way we communicate with each other is through all these things — and I’m not saying, “Don’t use Facebook, don’t use Twitter.” What I am saying is, if you’re not mindful about the amount of your attention that goes to thinking about and consuming those things, you’re not going to be making good stuff, either for that medium or elsewhere. That’s what I got kind of hung up on, when I finally realized that all I was doing was eating and producing potato chips all day long.
BOOM! Scanning Twitter and Facebook, coming up with connections to the content of quality news outlets like BBC, that’s all I do as a news blogger. But hey, I don't wanna be the potato chip guy!
27 April 2010
Here’s the transcript of a presentation I gave at The Next Web 2010.
Hi there, my name is Ernst-Jan Pfauth. I used to be a geek blogger at The Next Web, yet in 2009 I sold my soul to the dead trees. At least, that’s how the Next Web guys have put it. Although I’m from Amsterdam, I’m not using the following metaphor to promote drugs.
Yes, I believe Internet is the new LSD. Sure, I owe you an explanation there, which I’ll happily give. Both the web and the mind-altering drug took important barriers away. Yet they can also cause major problems. I came up with this idea when I lived in New York.
11 April 2010
When asked for an opinion about a blog lay-out, I almost always say: enlarge those photos. Most of the times, these folks use thumbnail-like pictures on their article pages, ‘because they have to have some visuals in their posts’. Please don’t. If you think of photos as a necessary evil, than just limit yourself to text. That’s better than lettings those poor thumbs drown in your sea of words.
Photo by Tiagø Ribeiro
If you
do like pictures, my advice would be: only use photos to blow your reader away.
Make those pics big, and make them beautiful.
9 April 2010
Ok, I’ve started using Tumblr. I used to ignore the microblogging service.
Partly since WordPress worked pretty damn good. Partly because I thought that too many people just used the platform for a check-out-this-stuff-made-by-other-people-blog. Didn’t really feel the need to hop on that bandwagon. Preferred to use my personal blog for adding value by sharing new ideas.Took this idea so far that I even convinced one of Hollands most promising internet talents – Robert Gaal from Wakoopa – to ditch his personal tumblrlog.
For linkblogging, Robert could better use Twitter. Not his personal blog. Not the place where people landed if they wanted more information about Robert. He could better supply them with some of his grand ideas. Continue reading →
How Tim Ferriss taught me to love haters
Haters, almost every blogger has them. They’re spoiling your good mood with aggressive comments and e-mails. Before you know it, you’re keeping your strong opinions for yourself, only to make sure you won’t get twenty angry replies. And that’s a real problem, since trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.
When Tim Ferriss published his book The Four Hour Work Week in 2007, his mail box, voicemail, blog and Amazon review pages were flooded by comments from haters. Ferriss promoted a whole new lifestyle in his book, hence the emotional reactions. He now knows how to handle this angry bunch, and shared some of the right mindsets on The Next Web, one of Europe’s largest tech conferences. I happened to be in the audience, and here’s what I loved most about his talk.
Tim Ferris at The Next Web, photo by Anne Helmond
To battle the angry blog commenters, Ferriss used the Airforce Blog Assesment by Jeremiah Owyang. It gives you an idea when and how to react to critics or plain trolls. Continue reading →