A note on Newsweek – I want to be James Fallows when I grow up. I read his stuff and I can hear his voice saying the words in my head. They’re good words. Words that reveal a complex yet elegant thought process. This week, Fallows used his words to ponder the reasons the newest makeover of Newsweek didn’t stop the Washington Post Co. from putting it up for sale. Maybe, Fallows says, it’s because certain magazine genres appeal to a finite number of readers and the new, more essay-heavy Newsweek is drawing from a smaller pool while continuing to spend like it’s drawing from a much bigger one.

The 4 parts of an optimized online news site – Don’t let the unglamorous title fool you – this is juicy stuff. It could be titled “SEO for reporters,” or “How to get more eyeballs to your blog.” Online journalist Robert Niles explains how badly established news organizations – OK, newspapers – have done when it comes to optimizing their websites, then offers 4 big fixes. Why should you care? Because if you have a blog, you are a publisher. If you want eyeballs coming to your site, you can use Niles’ formula just as easily as a newspaper can. What he recommends:

1. Compile information on topics you write about all the time – a newspaper would call this a beat – into wiki-style pages that you SEO enable. Let those be the pages that bring the search engines to you, Niles says. I’ve never heard this suggested before but it’s brilliant. Here’s why: I did this without knowing it when I created a WordCount Blogathon page last year as a repository for all things related to the month-long blogging marathon that happens here every May. Since then, that page has brought more people to this site than almost anything else. I’m already thinking of other topics I can create pages for….right after this year’s Blogathon is over.

2. Run real voices and frequent updates. Niles writes (emphasis is mine):

An optimized news website would provide a collection of expert voices, presented in blog format, with daily (or more frequent) updates to complement the basic information presented in the site’s Knowledge Base.

Hey, that’s writers are doing in the Blogathon, providing expert insights on a daily or more frequent basis. If you’re blogging but all you write about is you, this should be motivation to pick a subject outside yourself and become an expert on it, all the better to pick up traffic and eventually revenue.

3. Create a community – where people can express opinions but you retain the right to moderate and play favorites.

4. Link to your archives – a lot easier for the average blogger or freelance writer than a newspaper with decades worth of clips to contend with. I know some freelancers who only include a sampling of their work on their website or blog. But if it’d help establish you as an expert or bring more readers to your site, why not include everything?

WAN’s Mobile Media Day Conference – If any WordCount reader is going to the World Association of Newspaper’s Mobile Media Day conference May 18-19 in Amsterdam, can you let me know? The conference will include online media execs talking about the apps they’re developing for smartphones and the iPad and I’d love a guest post if you’re up to it. Leave a comment here or find me on Twitter, @MichelleRafter.

Keep it simple stupid – I’d never heard of the Center for Plain Language until yesterday when I heard American Public Media’s Marketplace reporter Kai Ryssdal interviewing its director, Annetta Cheek. In the interview, a transcript of which you can read here, Cheek explains how she and a group of federal government employees formed the nonprofit after becoming frustrated with how poorly government agencies and businesses communicated with their constituents. As a follow up, Marketplace put up this list of common business jargon and what it really means. Here are a few examples, with the center’s suggestions for clearer alternatives:

• Instead of “economically marginalized” use “poor.”
• Instead of “negative economic growth” use “recession.”
• Instead of “in the event of” use “if.”
• Instead of  “We obtain information that causes us to believe that” use “We find that…”

Sadly, the problem with obtuse writing isn’t limited to government officials and corporate executives. I see it on a regular basis in magazines and newspapers as well as in stories I edit. For business and technology reporters particularly, it’s an easy trap to fall into because industries have their own jargon-filled vocabularies and sources use it in interviews. But our job as writers is to translate the jargon into plain English. Keeping it simple and readers will thank you for it.

AP style or SEO? – Speaking of language, the Associated Press’ announcement that it’s switching from “Web site” to “website” in its AP Stylebook sparked an interesting online debate (at least interesting to word nerds like me) about what’s more important for journalists to know today, AP style or SEO. Anybody who ever graduated from j-school got AP style drilled into them. But is it still relevant today when content lives and dies by whether it’s searchable by Google? Online Journalism Review’s Robert Niles takes the position that SEO trumps AP style. Be sure to click over to his post because he’s included links to a number of excellent resources to help journalists understand SEO.

But don’t tell that to the University of Southern California. Earlier this week, the university’s Annenberg School of Journalism pulled the plug on the Online Journalism Review, an e-zine that spent 12 years chronically the growth and development of the online news business.

According to Niles, USC will continue to help mid-career journalists learn new media skills through its affiliation with the Knight Digital Media Center.

In a June 16 post on the site, OJR’s Robert Niles told readers: “The decision to suspend OJR for now means that I have left the University of Southern California. But I am not going offline. I will continue to write, daily, about new media and journalism at my new website, SensibleTalk.com.”

SensibleTalk will pick up where OJR left off, according to Niles, who’s running the site with his wife and fellow journalist Laurie. He envisions it as “a community for journalists who want to speak truth to power, and for readers who want to do the same. That’s why I call the site ‘analysis from the reality-based world.’”

According to Niles, the site will include interviews with journalism entrepreneurs, educators and reporters, Q&As with politicians and activists, and resources for journalists, such as a math tutorial he developed several years ago