This is me talking about "Reporting for Bloggers" at BlogWorld East 2012 last week.

After a successful stint speaking at Blogworld & New Media Expo in New York last week (see this flattering write up of my “Reporting for Bloggers” presentation on their site), I’m hoping to speak at their next conference in Las Vegas in January. So much so I’ve already submitted a proposal for my presentation, which will once again be in the content creation tract:

Ten Blog Posts That Got Shared, Informed Readers, Generated Clicks and Kicked Ass In 2012: Writing instructor and pro blogger Dave Copeland will take a look at 10 of the best blog posts from 2012 and discuss why they worked: both in informing readers and in generating clicks and shares. The goal of the session is to show bloggers what works when they write for online audiences and what pitfalls they need to avoid. The truly brave participants will be invited to share their favorite post from their own blog for an in-session critique by Copeland.

Session Takeaways:

1) Simple techniques to develop habits for great online writing.
2) Writing a compelling headline then making good on the promise delivered in that headline.
3) Making your words “visual” so readers can quickly navigate your copy and easily find the information they need.

So here’s where I need your help: if you write or read a blog post worth consideration for this session (as well as sessions I’ll be doing in my Writing For Online Readers class at Bridgewater State University this fall), email me a link. I’ll leave it to you to decide what qualifies as best: most readable, most fun to write, most traffic, etc. Also send a sentence or two explaining why you think it’s the best. The more examples I can get, the better.

In return, I’ll share any common themes and patterns I see in them to see if we can start putting together a best practices list.

I’m beginning to rethink the glowing review I gave the Boston Globe’s iPad app in April.

“At first glance it looked archaic, like PDFs crammed into a too-small screen. But within seconds, intuition took over, and I quickly saw there was tons of functionality. I could zoom into articles and, once I clicked onto one I wanted to read, the reading interface was more like the eye-friendly Web page The Times delivers,” I gushed at the time. “The Globe iPad app, which lets me sweep through the pages like a traditional newspaper, does a better job of giving me a balanced news diet – without the hassle of getting ink stains on my finger tips.”

But within the past few weeks there’s been about 60-40 odds that I will get a complete, readable and usable version of the iPad paper each morning. Today the entire sports section was missing. On Sunday, there were not section breaks, meaning I had to scroll through each page of the paper (I ended up using the print version, which I still ge on Sundays: the Globe charges less for Sunday delivery, which includes access to the paid Website and iPad edition than it does for an online-only edition). Last week there was an entire issue where I could not access the articles by clicking on them, meaning I had to zoom in to read them and lost access to all the digital functionality, like sharing and rating articles, that I raved about in April.

I have no inside info on what’s going on or why the paper has consistently been so inconsistent over the past month or so. But the message that the Globe is sending o readers (readers it wants to embrace its rather bold push to move content behind a paywall) is that digital remains an afterthought. That quality standards are not enforced when it comes to its iPad products the same way they are with its print (and hopefully its Web) editions.

The reason I’m posting this here? Because I’m not sure where to direct my complaint: the Globe’s Website only gives me a customer service number to call if I missed delivery of today’s paper, not if today’s delivery of the iPad edition was messed up. That needs to change: this is a product I’m paying for and if newspapers want people to continue to pay for digital content, they need to be responsive to problems (or, better yet, put in some sort of quality control to prevent the problems in the first place).

During most of 2009 and the first half of 2010 when life was getting more and more complicated and (seemingly) less and less worth living, I got to fantasizing about winning the lottery. That, I was convinced, would be the solution to all my problems,which were monumental. Lots of money, no need to work and what I thought would be a chance to start over.

Keep in mind that I had always been one of those “the lottery is a tax on people who aren’t good at math” kind of people. Yet there I was, in line buying a case of Magner’s and a couple of PowerBall tickets.
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I’ll be following this up later with a detailed how-to post, but for now here is the Prezi for the talk I’m giving today at 2:30 at BlogWorld East in New York City. The session topic is Reporting For Bloggers and will cover some of the basics in sourcing original information for your blog posts.

Remember, you can get 10% off BlogWorld East Registration heading over to the registration page and enter this code at checkout: BDavidC10. The conference runs through Thursday at the Jacob Javitz Center in New York and coveres admission to the Book Expo America as well.

I’m once again presenting at BlogWorld East in New York. This year I’ll be leading a session on “Reporting For Bloggers.” The conference runs Tuesday through Thursday at the Jacob Javitz Center and my session is at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Find out how you can get 10 off BlogWorld East Registration.

What follows is a recap of the “Writing For Online Readers” session I led at BlogWorld East 2011. I’ve published this in various forms before but the basics are always worth a review:

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We’re quickly getting to the point where the news we read and view is curated by friends and “friends” on Facebook (I’m spending the summer planning a course and researching a book on this very topic). The idea is the more time we spend on social network, the more we’re going to be exposed to news that our friends are reading and sharing and think is important. This radical change has its pros and cons.

But we’re not there yet (I hope). Because if I did rely on my 72 Facebook friends to fill me in on what was happening in the world, these are the five most recent stories I would have read (not including articles shared directly by news sites like ReadWriteWeb, the New York Times and the Boston Globe):

1. University of Texas apologizes for ‘pubic affairs’ commencement typo: The University of Texas at Austin’s public affairs assistant dean has issued an apology after a commencement listing for the program’s forthcoming graduates contained a typo citing the Lyndon B. Johnson School of ‘Pubic’ Affairs.
2. Chinese company to buy U.S. movie theater chain AMC: A Chinese conglomerate announced Monday it will buy a major U.S. cinema chain, AMC Entertainment Holdings, for $2.6 billion in China’s biggest corporate takeover in the United States to date.
3. One Small Keyboard for Logitech, One Giant Leap for iPad Productivity: With my column this week, I did something I’ve never done before: I typed the entire thing on my iPad.
4. Eight Girls Pull Best Yearbook Prank Ever: Instead of exerting their individuality with the standard Grateful Dead quote and a prom-worthy up-do, they decided to join forces for the ultimate prank. Alexandra, Angela, Angelica, Elizabeth, Emily, Isabella, Madeline and Vi Nguyen all wore the same black off-shoulder dresses and the same hairstyles.
5. 4AD Music and Art Auctioned for Charity: A collection of 4AD music and artwork is being auctioned on eBay to raise money for Natasha Laflin, a British artist and illustrator who suffered a near fatal bain aneurysm in 2008. Funds will go towards helping Laflin move from a care-home back in with her family. Read more about her life here.

Remember that meme from last fall/winter where bullied kids posted their plights using notecards and Internet video? It’s a dog’s life too:

Did I mention that classes are out and I may have a little too much time on my hands this summer?