» Editing & Publishing

Journalism warning labels. Full of win!

biodagar — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:03:21 +0000

As many people do in this day and age of being overwhelmed by information, much of what I read online is via RSS feeds. I use Google Reader, simply because it’s central – and it syncs to my portable time-stealing device (otherwise known as a smart phone).

But one of the things about Google Reader is that it ‘suggests’ things you might like. Mostly it’s full of crap, but today I saw something awesome: Journalism Warning Stickers.

Here is a sample:

To read the blog post about the hows, whys, and wherefores, click here. Highly recommended.

Now wouldn’t it be nice if there was an online version?

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New business in the offing

biodagar — Fri, 14 May 2010 04:37:00 +0000

Yeah it’s been a while since I did any really solid, income-generating work for myself. Since “the divorce” I’ve been busy working on a business restructure and thinking of new things… and I’m almost ready to launch it. With a new website and a new design – not to mention a new focus – I’m hoping that Self Employment Take Two will be more successful.

Whereas before I was the prime mover in a business that tried to be all things to all people (How To Fail in Business Rule #1), with projects that cost more than they earned (How To Fail in Business Rule #2), this new incarnation will take just one part of that business and focus on that aspect pretty much entirely. What is it? Doesn’t sound glamorous, but I must admit I love it: copywriting (with some editing thrown in).

I got really down on myself for not being able to make a success of Self Employment Take One. As with anything like that, it seems only logical to take it personally. With everything else going on in my life, it seemed that running a business as well was just too much, at the wrong time. I nearly ditched everything: all the clients, all the publications. I nearly sold the business, come to that – not that I would’ve got much for it. Thanks to solid advice from my dad, my accountant, my best friend and other mates besides, I didn’t do that.

Instead, I restructured it so I can function as a sole trader, and just let the Brascoe business “fade away”. In fact, that business doesn’t exist anymore, except for its web presence, and even that is going to die very soon as well.

This week I had the (good?) fortune to be working in a job with absolutely nothing to do, so I was able to set up a new website, fill it with text, start the blog rolling on it, and have moves to get the design cranking. It’s nearly finished. It’s killing me (as new projects are wont to do) that I can’t give you the link yet! But I will. Soon.

So – with all of this in front of me, clients on the books and meetings set next week with potential new clients, I’m starting to become excited again about working for myself.

Fingers crossed I can get Self Employment Take Two to work. If it does work, then I won’t have to go through all of the struggle of feeling like a failure – work-wise – ever again, and it might be the last time I have to face this enormous leap. Wish me luck!

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A brief note about misused and misspelled words

biodagar — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:43:07 +0000

Right, the time has come for a very small blog post about misused words. It’s fine to misuse words, except that by misusing them, you’re not using them correctly (!). I’m an editor, yes, but I’m not a Words Nazi, even though in previous occupations that was what my in-house “affectionate” label was. I’m merely posting this because some people might find it useful.

The list is far from complete; since sitting down to write this, I can’t think of everything I wanted to add. If I recall them, I shall add them.

If you regularly find other misused words, please add them to the comments at the bottom. I’m always interested in people’s pet annoyances where words are concerned.

Misused word: Lay
How this is commonly misused: “Still laying in bed”
Many old-school editors will reply to the above sentiment with, ‘laying what? An egg?’
Lay, in its past tense form (as in, ‘I lay in bed all afternoon’) is correct; otherwise the correct usage is ‘still lying in bed’. When you lay, you (most often) put or place [a thing] in a place of rest: to lay a book on a table. It is not an active form. You lie about, you don’t lay about.

Misused word: foul
How this is commonly misused: “One foul swoop”
The phrase, one foul swoop, is a moden misuse of the old phrase one fell swoop; the latter form, however, is the correct one.
The word fell properly means fierce, cruel, dreadful.
Foul, on the other hand, means grossly offensive, disgustingly loathsome, noisome.

Misspelled word: definitely
Most common misspelling: definately
While one might pronounce definitely as though it were definately, it is not spelled that way. You might pronounce knight as though it were night, but you would not write Nights of the Round Table. This word, definitely, is a pet-hate of mine where misspellings are concerned, because it occurs extremely commonly. If you’re a native English speaker, please get this one right. For me?

Misused word: stylings
How this is commonly misused: this is not actually a word
While the word styling is itself a word, the plural form does not exist. The word style is declined as follows: to style, have styled, be styling. I find this word most commonly conjured up in music journalism, but heads-up guys: it is not a word. If you are going to be discussing the form of something, please find another way of doing it! The vocal styles is correct; the vocal stylings is not.

Misused word: plummetting
How this is commonly misused: ‘The country’s plummetting health’
This word is often used in the sense of the phrase rapidly declining; however, it is incorrect to do so. A plummet is something that weighs down or depresses. It also means to plunge; but I suggest that if you are thinking of its use in terms of rapidly declining, use the phrase rapidly declining. It’s a lot clearer to everybody what you mean.

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The problem with monetising internet publications

biodagar — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:43 +0000

News and publishing commentators are always apt to tell us – frequently – that the death of magazines and newspapers, in print, is imminent. Similarly, they like to bang on about how these same web-based publications are struggling with revenue. But, really, it’s not hard to work out why.

In this recent post at The Independent, last week’s announcement by Rupert Murdoch that all content in his online newspapers will move to a pay-per-read model by this time in 2010 was discussed in detail. The move follows the reality that advertising revenue isn’t bringing enough cash to the coffers to continue offering content for free. While there seems to have been quite a bit of negative rumbling about the decision, it really does make sense if companies are going to continue to exist.

The reason for the negativity, however, is that the rise of the internet has been so fast that many people started to use it like a big megaphone pointing towards printed product – and hence were simply giving their content away for free. Such a model exists on the premise that those who read the online version are going to constantly seek out the printed version, that the online version is a ‘teaser’, in a sense. Well, this would be true if teasers alone were online – and if it had always been just this – but they’ve always been full content.

Murdoch, whatever you think of the man, is one of those people you can’t ignore, simply because of his clout. A move like this, by such a powerful entity, is going to have repercussions worldwide. Let’s see if anybody else takes it up.

And yet, it took Apple’s iTunes model to do it first; so let’s not think that Murdoch’s an innovator. He’s not: he’s simply copying a model from another industry that has proved to work very well.

As the article points out:

Mr Grimshaw said publishers had misunderstood the internet: “The demand for information is larger than it has ever been but for some reason the publishing industry as a whole decided it might be a good idea if they all gave away their primary product. It does not strike me as being a smart decision. There seems to be this belief abroad that the whole mechanics of human nature and economics have changed utterly on the internet and I simply don’t believe that’s the case. If you need a piece of information or an article and the only way you can get to it is to pay for it, then people will pay.

“Although mass-market newspaper publishers are struggling with this, others, such as scientific journals and specialist vertical titles have been charging for their content online since day one and as a consequence have robust businesses.”

Anybody who stands still and just looks at things the way they are could have come to this conclusion themselves. The problem is not monetising content, but in moving from a free model to a monetised model. In order to do this, you have to work very hard to convince your client base that they are going to get a lot of value out of it, when previously they’ve gotten what they wanted for nothing more than a connection to the internet. If you now need to pay for exactly the same thing, will you continue to use it? Probably not – you may well go elsewhere. If you rely on the service, however, if these publications offer more for their money than anybody else, then revenue will rise and, maybe, subscribership will too.

It will be interesting to see how Murdoch’s model develops, and if it does find the success that he hopes it will. As you would expect, the line his companies are pushing is, firstly, that ‘quality journalism isn’t cheap’, and, secondly, that ‘it allows for reader choice and greater flexibility’. Many of the comments at the bottom of the article argue that paying for news articles, on a pay-per-article basis is ridiculous, especially if you can get essentially the same news elsewhere, for free. Music tracks are one thing: plain old news is quite another.

If these newspapers moved away from simple reportage, and into news interpretation and essay-style examinations of news, then in my opinion that would be worth paying for. News used to be interpreted for readers, instead of simply presented to them. To my mind, if Murdoch’s model is to be successful, then not only does the presentation have to change, but so does the model of journalism on which his newspapers function. A return to interpreted news, and quality analysis, would be a highly welcome move, and a much more readable instance of journalism as well.

Of course, in past years the internet was seen as an amazing technology. People bandied about threats to printed publications for a long time – just like they did when television first became widespread, with the “death of the book” and all that – but they never took it seriously as a revenue-making style of publication with its own issues, its own mode of use, and a completely different style of readership. What needs to happen now is not simply a move to monetise content, but in making the style of the content attractive enough to warrant a change in model. If that doesn’t happen, then real change hasn’t occurred – and you could argue that the newspaper industry, if it’s not willing to make that change, might be better off dying an honourable death.

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Online publications: the issue of ‘respect’

biodagar — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:13 +0000

There has always been quite a lot of palaver about the differences between online publications and printed publications. For the most part, these debates have tended to focus on specific areas: cost, environmental impact, delivery, readerships, marketing, and so on. In all of the debates there has been one key thing missing: the issue of audience perception and the impact of respect.

As a publisher, I have the joy of producing material in print and online. As a music journalist I’ve also worked in both media, though the majority of the work that I produce has been for the online medium. I’m a self-confessed workaholic, too, so I’ve always approached anything that I do with a sense of professionalism and dedication. So, imagine my surprise and disappointment in publishing an online zine, to be met with general apathy amongst a tiny proportion of the people that I work with. Some people consider this apathy to be endemic amongst Australians, that it’s the national condition, and that I should just deal with it. Well, maybe that’s the case.

But, in a sense, the fact that apathy exists is unsurprising. To give you some background, writers for music zines – except large ones like Terrorizer – typically work for no pay, and the releases that they receive to review are considered recompense for the job done: because they get to keep them. Similarly, gaining entry to shows is “payment” for the job of turning up on time, writing a review, and submitting that review on time. Granted, it’s quite low “pay” – given many international shows’ tickets range from $40 to $120 – but it’s the experience of going out, being social, and have a good time while doing it that makes the job so attractive. Then occasionally you get to interview people who are so far out of the normal realm that it’s quite amazing. It’s an incredible opportunity, and if you add it to a “regular” job it can make your life bloody good.

And yet, despite the so-called perks, anything approaching a specific guideline is met – by some – with total disgruntlement. What one tends to discover is that they’re fanboys or groupies who want the music and begrudge having to work for it. Why these people even offer, then, is a good question.

To get back to the topic at hand. In publishing an online zine, what one tends to find is a general disregard for its seriousness: from some readers right through to the publishing industry itself. As a publisher, I take the job very seriously: it’s a commercial venture and our house has literally spent multiple thousands on the project: this is dead-set, absolute serious work. You should see the administrative side of the work on a day-to-day basis. It’s enormous.

So, when the publishing industry doesn’t take what you do seriously (all the professional organisations will only have you as a member if you produce material “in print”, for example), that bites. Add to that the few people, scattered amongst your golden stars of a team, that don’t take it seriously, and it could easily be perceived as a big problem.

Lack of respect for an online publication manifests itself in a variety of ways: people talking about “that website that you do”, as though it were a cute little thing you do on the side, is one of them. Among those very few with whom I deal that display a lack of respect, one tends to find it displayed in all sorts of ways. It comes as guidelines that aren’t followed, style sheets that aren’t followed, sometimes not taking the ‘accepted form’ or the publication’s set rules of work seriously, not meeting deadlines, not communicating an inability to meet deadlines (sometimes not communicating at all), requesting albums or events that haven’t been publicised yet (and may never be), being pushy, being demanding, and so on. Looked at in terms of employment, if you were officially paid for what you did, would you turn around to your boss and treat him or her with a total lack of respect? Of course not. People who work for online publications, however, do seem to feel a greater license because it’s impersonal and, in a sense, ‘informal’.

One could also argue that payment in kind, for what is relatively intense work, is akin to slavery, and so therefore people have a right to treat the publishing team and the publication how they like. If our zine, which is very young at the moment, was raking in the cash and I didn’t pay anybody, then I’d agree with you: thankfully I have a much more collaborative sense of work and couldn’t stand to see team champions go unrewarded – either financially or through gifts – if I was making that much on it. In fact, by April 2010 we may well be working on a different team model.

In a sense, it could easily be my fault for being “too nice”, but I think that it’s far bigger than that. I think that work done “for free” is often taken as not being “real” work. I also honestly believe that if I published this project as a printed magazine, many of the issues outlined above just wouldn’t exist. If it’s on paper, after all, it’s “real” (think of the huge joy people experience when they see their work published on paper versus on a website). And, if you have a print deadline, people see that as a real deadline because it involves printing houses, proofs, and all that jazz; an online deadline appears to be far more flexible because “you can update it whenever you like”. Well, I hate to break it to ya: deadlines still matter.

Let’s also not forget that the electronic sphere, for all that people bang on about it being necessary to gain readerships, a good spread and “distribution”, is still the people’s land. It’s an environment in which anybody can publish anything. From MySpace to WordPress, to more advanced CMSs like Drupal, you can get the site for close to nothing if you a) know what you’re doing and b) are happy to go with basic design. You can do amazing things with it. The interface between this element of the web and the commercial element of the web is uneasy and always has been. The two sides rub against each other dramatically, and they don’t cohabit easily. It’s partly, in my estimation, why online publications aren’t taken seriously: it’s because space on the interwebs can literally be anybody’s – for free. I love that about the internet: but it also gives me pause when I consider that shifting interface between the two sides of it.

It’s a strong measure of this problem that the professional organisations dedicated to publishers don’t acknowledge online publications as being valid, even if they work on a very similar structure to any printed publication. While such organisations are at the top of the tree, the decisions made by them are simply a general reflection of the attitudes of the people who make up the organisation, and the people they deal with on a daily basis.

So, what’s the answer to this? I’m not going to pretend to have the answer, because I don’t. Realistically, our publication has been online for less than five months: it’s early days yet and I’m a reasonably patient person who knows that things will change. The question is whether they’ll change quickly enough.

What do you think? Drop a comment here and let me know your opinion on this sticky issue.

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Did you know? Publishing runs on a broken business model

biodagar — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:35 +0000

Over at the Brascoe Publishing Blog there is a great article at the moment about the broken business model that the publishing industry insists on working with. I highly recommend that everybody go read it and drop a comment. Here’s a snippet:

The business model that publishers and booksellers exist within is something that we here at Brascoe Publishing have had problems with ever since our start-up. That business model is one of sale-or-return, known variously as consignment or returnability models. There is an increasing groundswell against this sales model around the world, as publishers and small booksellers begin to realise that it might not actually be to anybody’s benefit. Imagine my joy, then, to see an analysis of this model, focusing on Canada, focusing on financial analysis.

….

Batchelor discusses how, even though the returnability model is seen as being ‘the way things have always been done’, it has only really been in effect since the 1930s. During this time, just prior to the Great Depression, sales were viewed as being risky; hence, publishers began to provide books on a sale-or-return basis. However, the model stayed in place. As Batchelor argues, in good times people don’t tend to notice the cracks in such a model; in any other time – bad or just not as good – the cracks start to appear.

Incredibly, Batchelor argues that changing the business model could save the Canadian book industry a staggering $330 million per year.

Read this entire article over at the Brascoe Blog.

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SPUNC: A national organisation with a local focus

biodagar — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:00:12 +0000

I’m putting this here because it’s an important issue… it’s a blog that I wrote over on our business’s website. Here’s a snippet:

We love the Small Press Underground Networking Community, otherwise known as SPUNC. Well, we did – until two things happened that caused us to get a little bit angsty and more than a little bit disappointed. The first is the process for the upcoming Annual General Meeting; the second is SPUNC’s lack of response to the parallel imports issue.

I won’t write about the parallel imports issue because Vignette Press’s Lisa Dempster has covered the issue admirably so far on her own blog – over at Unwakeable. We’ve left comments there, so you can see our perspective.

But the AGM issue is one that is really causing us, and other member organisations, some concern. In fact, it is so concerning to us, as interstate members, that we’ve felt that there is a need for complete transparency. In the interests of complete transparency, the whole chain of communications is presented here for other SPUNC members to read, and for others who may be interested…. READ MORE –>

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Metal as Fuck gets off screen and hits the streets

biodagar — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:16:10 +0000

Thanks to Goatlady, who sussed a good deal on the printing for us, we now have business/shooter cards for Metal as Fuck. These cards will soon hit the streets in Australia, the UK, and Europe. Bam!

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An explanation for why MaF doesn’t syndicate news

biodagar — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:00:58 +0000

As readers of this blog would be aware, I an the editor of the music ezine and community Metal as Fuck, and also partner in the house that publishes it. We want to see MaF become the biggest, most active, and most well recognised music zine on the interwebs; but in so doing want to keep its standards of journalism absolutely top quality. Running it raises questions though: specifically about where one sources one’s news.

There are many sites out there that run millions of news items every month – I’m thinking Blabbermouth and Bravewords as just two of them. We, on the other hand, run maybe three different items per day; sometimes up to ten if it’s really busy in the metal world. We get all of our news from reputable sources: major labels, promoters, distributors.

It occasionally becomes easy to feel inadequate, especially when places like Blabbermouth break really big stories fairly often. Yet even when they do, I am not able to make myself just become a news syndicator.

In one sense, syndicating news from major sites makes a lot of sense, especially in terms of traffic. In order to build and maintain your rates of traffic, you need a high content turn-over, you need quality content, and you need material that people want to see.

No doubt the major stories posted by Blabbermouth and Bravewords constitute material that readers want. They are controversial and therefore get high traffic. In Blabbermouth’s case, particularly, they are seen as the Reuters of metal news. But the question I grapple with every day of the week, is whether syndicating news, from sites that posted it ahead of MaF, waters down a site’s credibility.

Every time I ask myself that question, the answer is “yes”, mainly because I see syndicated news as synonymous with ‘second-hand’ news. Far better, in my opinion, to get official releases from labels, distros and promoters, and post it as soon as it comes in.

The other reason why I choose not to syndicate news from other sites is that it keeps MaF in a position where it has a slightly more unique perspective. If we syndicated news all the time, we would very quickly find ourselves mushed in with every site across the web. It also would make us look just like one of the other millions of ‘indexing’ sites that crawl the web for information and snippets.

This is why our news is fairly unique. We have news items from the major labels, granted. But we also get news from smaller distros, publicists, and labels around the world, who work really hard to get the word out there. You rarely see their releases hitting the web within two days; but we can rest easy in the knowledge that we support the little guys.

While the metal music industry is an enormous beast, there is little point in adding to the white noise of boring news that everybody else runs. While some may consider this a fairly tenuous line of reasoning on which to run a publication, at least we have a line of reasoning. And, perhaps more to the point, it’s a line of reasoning that stands us in good stead for defending (if it ever becomes necessary) the methodology on which the publication is run.

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