College Media Association Conference (New York), March 2013

How To Make Your Newspaper’s Website “Sticky”

The goal of any newspaper Website is to be sticky: to grab readers attention, which we do with photos and video, and hold it, which we do with words and insight. If you simply move copy from your print product to your online product (or vice versa), you’re losing readers. A growing body of research shows people read differently online and off. Award-winning ReadWriteWeb reporter Dave Copeland shows journalists what they need to know about online reading habits and how to implement a series of simple changes to the way they write and edit stories to make their sites more useful for readers. This is a hands-on session and participants are encouraged to bring samples of their work for a critique on how to make it sticky.

Social Discovery Conference (San Francisco), Aug. 6, 2012: Best Practices and Trends In Social Discover. Dave Copeland leads a panel discussion featuring top executives from Gigya, StumbleUpon, Hooked Media Group, Identified.com and Family iBoard, as well as Inside Facebook’s Brittany Darwell on the future of social discovery, as well as best practices for brands, companies and users. The conference is being held Aug. 6 and 7 at the Fairmont San Francisco. More information.

Fall 2011 Students: Be sure to visit my class and teaching Web site for course materials and other information about Intro to Journalism and Writing Rhetorically.

I recently started writing as a contributor for two publications that are worthy of inclusion on your RSS reader:

• I’m posting several times a week on Daily Dot, which aims to cover online communities the way your local newspaper once covered your hometown. Their official launch on August 22, 2011 drew widespread coverage, including mentions on Mashable, AdWeek, VentureBeat and Forrbes.
• I’m getting back to my roots and writing about cities, thanks to regular contributions to MyCityWay’s just launched blog. I’ve been covering everything from landline use to food truck towns, and I am always looking for good story ideas (especially ones that make use of open data sources).