Photo courtesy sexyninjamonkey

[Editor's note: It's another theme day for the WordCount Blogathon, when everyone is writing on the same topic: If I started a blog today, what would I do differently? Here's my answer. -- MVR]

When I started blogging, I didn’t have a clue. I’d been doing the stay at home mom thing when blogging first got popular, and jumped into it as part of my re-entry into the workforce.

I put zero thought into why I was blogging or what I was going to write about. I created a blog on Blogger on a lark and wrote my first post the same day.

That was mistake No. 1. The initial result was all over the place – like a kid finger painting.

Instead of diving in, I should have considered how blogging fit into my freelance business, researched good blog practices and compiled a backlog of posts before going live.

That’s just the start of the newbie mistakes I made as a beginning blogger.

Here are 5 other blogging missteps I made, and what I’d do differently if I started over again today:

Mistake #1. Hosting a blog on a free service.

I started out on Blogger but quickly switched to WordPress.com. I keep WordCount on WordPress.com for close to two years, until it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to do all the things with my blog that I wanted using the templates available on the free site. I also was starting to think about using the blog to generate revenue, which isn’t allowed on blogs hosted by WordPress.com.

In fall 2009, I hired a website designer to port the site to a self-hosted blog using WordPress.org software and give it a new look and feel – and never looked back.

Mistake #2. Writing about whatever I wanted.

Picking a subject and sticking to it is good for everyone: readers like to know what to expect. Sticking to a topic can make you an expert at it, which is a good way to interest companies or organizations in becoming advertisers or sponsors.

After casting around for a couple months, I settled on writing about the freelance business, a great topic for the time because of the changes taking place in the business. It gave me the chance to write about writing basics, books, and other subjects related to being a freelance journalist that I enjoyed dissecting. And it helped introduce me to an online community of other writers, a nice substitute for the real-life workplace camaraderie I always enjoyed when I worked as a staff writer.

Mistake #3. Running posts without pictures.

When it came to including images with my posts I was extremely inconsistent until this year. That’s bad, because SEO like blog posts with pictures, and readers do too.

Then I discovered Pinterest, the social network that lets people share images they find online. Pinterest has become a popular way for writers and bloggers to promote their work - but you can only do that if your story or blog post has an image that you can share.

Since I started using Pinterest a few months ago, I now include an image with every post I write. It’s not that hard to find sources of free images: sometimes I run logos or other corporate materials that are free for the taking (as long as you give due credit to the source). Other times I create screen captures to run as images. Occasionally I run my own photos.

Most of the time I use images I’ve found doing a Creative Commons search on Flickr or Google that the authors have granted permission to re-use (again, with the proper permissions). For more information, read a post I wrote on where to find images for blog posts.

Mistake #4. Blogging for free.

It took me years to wake up to the fact that I could be making money from my blogging efforts. It’s true that within months of teaching myself to blog I was pitching and getting assignments to write about blogging software companies – but I’d been a tech reporter for years so that wasn’t all that surprising. It took me a lot longer to start looking for ways to earn an income directly from my blog – and I’m still not doing a very good job of it.

I discovered BlogHer, applied to join BlogHer’s advertising network and got accepted within a month or two. But it took me about three or four months to actually fill out all the paperwork to start running ads on my site. I also joined Amazon’s affiliate program, but so far it’s been a bust: I don’t run enough posts about books, and when I do, I sometimes forget to use the special Amazon affiliate code when I include links and images of books.

I’ve talked about using the blog to sell ebooks on writing basics and other subjects, but whenever I’ve been ready to start on that in earnest I’ve landed a great assignment and put it on the back burner. Will this be the year I actually pull the trigger? Stay tuned.

Mistake #5. Being disorganized.

The first couple years I ran this blog, I jotted down ideas for posts whenever and wherever they came to me, including on the yellow legal pad I use as a daily to-do list, and in a journal that I kept in my bedside nightstand – very low tech. Then I started creating posts in Draft mode and writing ideas down there – which explains why I have more than 100 unfinished posts in Draft mode.

Around the time of last year’s blogathon, some other bloggers turned me onto an editorial calendar plugin for WordPress blogs. It’s an application that creates a calendar inside the main WordPress dashboard that you can use to schedule and start writing posts. You can configure it to show three or more weeks at a time. It’s got a drag and drop feature so if you’ve got a post scheduled for a Tuesday and you decide you need to run it on Thursday, you can drag and drop the post from one date to the other. Brilliant. Maybe because I’m a visual person and love calendars, but using it has made it easier to schedule posts days or weeks in advance, to program standing features (like the “Dear WordCount” advice column that runs here on Thursdays) and figure out how to cover myself by re-running older posts when I know I’ll be especially busy with other work.

Here’s another post I wrote about common mistakes that beginning bloggers make: Bad beginnings: 10 newbie blogging mistakes and how to fix them 

If you were starting a blog today, what would you do differently? Share your experience by leaving a comment.

Dear WordCount:

I am learning a lot about structuring my blog in the blogathon. But I need to subscribe to an RSS feed. I also need to learn how to do individual tags on posts. I have wasted THREE HOURS this morning trying to do either, and am very fed up. I’ve checked Blogger help, I’ve Googled for how to do this, I’ve started to enroll in some feed services and given up in despair. Does anyone know of a really simple instruction page for any of this?

– KL

Dear KL:

Don’t despair. Both of the things you’re asking for help with are easier to tackle than you think.

Setting up an RSS feed

Let’s start by answering your question about setting up an RSS feed. By “I need to subscribe to an RSS feed” I take it that you mean you need to add something to your blog that gives readers the ability to subscribe to your posts, so they can read them in a blog reader (like Google Reader) or via email. If so, Feedburner is good for that, and very easy to set up. You’ll end up putting this familiar orange square called a chicklet (see right) in a prominent spot on your blog’s front page that people can use to sign up.

• If you use Blogger  – If you use Blogger to host your blog, here’s a good explanation from a blog called Blogger Hints and Tips for how to use Feedburner to add an RSS feed to a Blogger blog.
• If you use WordPress – If you have a WordPress blog, either on the free WordPress.com platform, or a self-hosted WordPress.org blog, here’s a 9-minute video from tech expert Julie Salgado with step-by-step instructions.

Tagging Blog Posts

Now let’s move on to how to tag blog posts.

Tagging posts makes them easier to find in searches, both on your blog and on the web, so don’t not tag them. When it comes to labeling blog posts, there’s a difference between categories and tags or keywords. Categories are the over-arching subjects or themes that you write about. My web designer recommends picking no more than 5 to 7. For my blog, which is about freelancing and the business of being a writer, my categories are: blogging, writing, freelance, media industry, technology, Oregon (because I often write about the media business in the state), and my stories. Most of the time, my posts fall into four main categories: blogging, writing, freelance and technology. Also on the advice of my website guy, I use one category per blog post, which is better for search purposes.

Think of tags as sub-categories. I use up to 6 or 7 tags per post. If I write a post about the blogathon, for example, I’d tag it with: 2012 WordCount Blogathon, blogging challenges, blogging tips and whatever the specific post happens to be about.

• If you use Blogger – Blogger uses the term “labels” instead of tags. Here’s a tutorial from Google (which owns Blogger) on how to add tags to your blog posts.
• If you use WordPress – For WordPress, the category and keyword structure is the same whether you use the free WordPress.com platform or a self-hosted WordPress.org blog. Here’s a post from Pro Blogger – it’s been around for a while but the material is still relevant – that explains the ins and outs of using categories and tags on WordPress blogs.

 Got a question about freelancing, writing basics or blogging? Send it to me at wordcountfreelance@gmail.com and I’ll consider it for a future “Dear WordCount” advice column.

Photo courtesy Sarah Moon

[Editor's Note: May 14 is the Guest Post Exchange, when bloggers in the 2012 WordCount Blogathon are swapping posts with someone else in the challenge. Today, you can read my post on 10 lessons about writing from authors in the 2012 Portland Literary Arts lecture series on Sarah Moon's  book blog, Clear Eyes, Full Shelves. -- MVR]

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Sarah Moon is a Portland, Ore., writer and communications consultant. She teaches classes on blogging, social media and web writing and design at Pacific Northwest College of Art and works with creative types on web and writing projects. She blogs about books and reading at Clear Eyes, Full Shelves, and co-hosts The Postscript sports and culture podcast. Follow her on Twitter at @SarahSMoon.

I teach classes on blogging and web design at a local college, and when we get to the unit on mobile devices, I have students pull out their internet capable devices to see who uses what. I’ve seen it all: iPhones running various versions of iOS; Android smartphones ranging from old clunkers (like mine) to the latest and greatest; Blackberries, iPads, Nook Colors, Kindle Fires, iPods, you name it. Rarely does someone use a single device — in a class of 10, we’ll often as many as 25 gadgets on the table.

Sarah Moon

It’s important because today, mobile devices are the fastest growing way people are accessing web content, including reading blogs. As bloggers, you need to think about how your posts appear on these devices — otherwise, you could end up driving readers away.

Here’s what you can to do optimize your blog content for mobile devices:

1. Practice smart design. Before you leap into all the options available for mobilizing your blog, you can follow a few basic design steps to make it easier for mobile readers. These basic tips have the added bonus of making your blog more readable overall:

• Increase the body font for your blog to 14 points, or “14px” in web speak. Not only is this friendly to those of us with less than perfect vision, it reads better on a variety of devices than 12px, which was the old norm.
• Increase the line spacing of your content to 1.5 em (tech speak for a line and a half of white space between lines of text), which makes text much easier on cramped screens than single-spacing.
• Minimize drop-down menus. Sometimes they’re unavoidable, but drop-downs can be a nightmare to navigate on small touchscreens.
• Make sure navigation elements in sidebars, post meta area and top-level navigation are well-spaced so it’s easy for touchscreen users to click on the proper links.
• Remove Flash elements. Flash simply does not play nicely with mobile. Beware: many slideshow embeds still utilize Flash.

2. Consider using responsive themes and templates. “Responsive” is the new buzz word in mobile design, with good reason. These blog design themes scale to whatever screen a blog is viewed on. There are a number of them for self-hosted WordPress blogs, many are premium but there are a few freebies as well. These themes are kind of magical, as you can see content reflow as you adjust a browser’s window size; check out the Dear Author blog for nice example. A huge advantage of these themes over traditional “mobile” or “touch” plugins is that they maintain the integrity of sidebar content such as ads or category navigation. Additionally, mobile plugins can make commenting buggy but they play far nicer with responsive themes.

3. Look at mobile plugin options. If you’re happy with your current theme, you still have  options for making your self-hosted WordPress blog mobile-friendly. Many plugins detect the device your visitors are using to access your blog and display a mobile theme. The most popular is WP Touch, which has a number of options and an app-like look (the Pro version supports iPad). You can also install OnSwipe on your WordPress blog, which turns your blog into a slick, tablet-friendly site when accessed from one of those devices.

Keep in mind that it is absolutely critical to test these plugins on a variety of mobile devices to make sure all of your standard features — particularly comments and other forms — work properly when plugins are running.

4. Make use of what’s already available. Many free blogging platforms have mobile options built into their architecture. Unfortunately, those options aren’t also intuitive or obvious. Here’s what to know about mobile options on some of the most popular platforms:

Blogger. Two times out of three when I visit a blog powered by Blogger from my smartphone or tablet, the mobile template has not been activated. To do that, log onto your blog and then click on the “Design” link. Once this option is turned on, Blogger does the rest.

WordPress.com. If you use WordPress.com, you shouldn’t have to do anything — the mobile option is turned on by default. Should you accidentally unselect this option, WordPress.com provides these great instructions for reactivating your mobile theme. You do, however, have to do a bit of work to make your WordPress.com blog iPad-friendly. When logged into your dashboard, simply click Appearance > iPad and then check the box that turns on an iPad theme when someone visits using that device.

Squarespace. Many of my students love the lesser-known Squarespace for both blogging and websites. I’ve completed several projects on this platform recently, including my own blog for book lovers, and all the new Squarespace template options now reflow the journal — Squarespace speak for “blog” — to fit mobile screens. I’m a beta tester for the next version of Squarespace and the platform will be fully responsive in that release.

TypePad. If you blog on TypePad, you’re in a tough spot, because while it’s possible to customize a mobile template, the platform has no ability to auto-detect when readers are using mobile devices to read content. So, even though there are mobile options on that platform, without code-heavy jerry-rigging, there isn’t a method to ensure that mobile visitors will see the mobile version of your Typepad blog. I suggest that Typepad bloggers pay particular attention to my first tip regarding smart blog design.

Ultimately, you’ve got many decisions to make when it comes to making your blog mobile-friendly. Unfortunately, there is no single best solution for ensuring your blog’s compatibility with mobile browsers, especially considering all the platform-dependent variables.

My best advice is to practice smart design, stay up to date with what’s available on your chosen blogging platform and keep a eye on your visitor statistics so you can implement mobile strategies that best match the devices from which readers access your blog.

How have you redesigned your blog to accommodate smartphones or tablet computers? Let us know by leaving a comment.

The annual American Society of Journalists and Authors writers conference is taking place right now in New York. I went last year to give a presentation and meet fellow writers and editors. I was invited back this year but had to drop out when work got so busy I couldn’t afford the time away. But I’m still planning to follow along via Twitter. I suggest you do too.

Here’s how to use Twitter and TweetChat to learn what’s happening at ASJA:

1. Log onto your Twitter account.
2. Open a new tab in your browser and log onto TweetChat, an app that lets you track Twitter conversations by hashtag, and if you want to join in, automatically adds the appropriatehashtag to your tweets. To log on to TweetChat, you have to give the application permission to access your Twitter account – do this or you won’t be able to see the ASJA tweets.
3. Once you’re logged on, enter “ASJA2012″ in the search box at the top of TweetChat’s front page – that’s the official hashtag that ASJA is using for tweets related to the writers conference – and click on “Go.” TweetChat will automatically switch to a screen that shows you all of the #ASJA2012 tweets as they’re happening.
4. To ask someone a question or tweet something that everyone else monitoring the #ASJA2012 hashtag will see, type into the “Message to #asja2012″ box at the top of the screen. Because  TweetChat automatically adds the appropriate hashtag to your tweet, you’re message will need to be slightly less than 140 characters.
5. Wait a few seconds and your message will pop up in the #ASJA2012 tweet stream.
6. You can also use TweetChat to reply to or retweet someone else following the hashtag. You can also use it to favorite a tweet or look up the Twitter profile of someone who’s participating in the conversation.
7. Keep TweetChat open in your browser for as long as you’re interested in tracking the action.

Other interesting links for writers:

15 newsroom tools from CIR’s TechRacking conference (10,000 Words) - Google recently sponsored a day-long conference for 200 news types where, according to the 10,000 Words blog, one of the common themes was, “ If we have to do more with less, then technology has to make up the difference.” Some of those tools are mentioned in this post, including Wavii, an instant news feed that lets you follow topics you might be writing about, and SpeakerText,  a tool that works with the SoundCloud API and transcribes audio (goodbye transcription service).

Data Journalism Handbook – Speaking of hacks and hackers, this handbook was created during a 48-hour workshop in London in 2011 and was subsequently added to by major U.K. and U.S. news organizations. Use the website to add yourself to a list to be notified when the free web version of the book is out; an O’Reilly version is also coming soon.

75 ‘Write for Us’ pages (Freelance Writing Jobs) – Jackpot. The popular freelance blog made the hard work of looking for work a little easier by assembling this list of  print and online markets for freelancers. Some listings include rates – and truth be told, many of them them are pretty low. [[UPDATED @ 2:30 p.m. Friday, 4/27 - It's now been brought to my attention that this post is from 2010, a major fact I overlooked when I read through the information after seeing a link to it on Twitter earlier this week. I'm leaving it up, but be warned, the info is now pretty old.]]

 How tech’s giants want to reinvent journalism (PaidContent) – Current thinking on how news is and could be, from representatives of Google and Facebook.

Economics 101 (BizJournalism.com) – Online course on economics for freelancers and other journalists interested in reporting on business or brushing up on their skills. June 26-28 for an hour a day.

Are you using Pinterest?

If not, you could be giving up a new outlet for showcasing your writing, whether you’re a freelancer or author, or do other type of writing.

In case you’re not familiar with it, Pinterest is an image-heavy, information sharing website that lets you save, organize and share pictures and links you find elsewhere online in folders called “boards.” You can follow other people – called “pinners” in Pinterest-speak – and “like” or comment on their pins. You can also link your Pinterest account to your Facebook or Twitter accounts. The service is still in closed beta, which means that you need an invitation to join – but invitations are easy to get, anyone who’s already a member can invite you.

Although Pinterest has been around for two years, it’s grown like gangbusters in the last couple quarters, and according to a recent Experian report, recently surpassed Google+ and LinkedIn to become the third largest social network, behind only Facebook and Twitter.

That’s a lot of pins.

More of those pins are being added by writers, who are using Pinterest as a bulletin board to collect ideas, share links to their work and more.

How I Use Pinterest

I’ve been using Pinterest for about a month; here’s what my account looks like. At first I gave myself permission to just play around. I pinned pictures of cute clothes, gorgeous home interiors and yummy looking recipes.

But the more I explored, the more value I saw in using it for work. In recent weeks, I’ve created boards for subjects I write about, including job hunting and careers and technology. I also created a writing board so I could collect ideas for posts for this blog, and a reading list of books I want to read for pleasure or work.

Most recently I created a board for the 2012 WordCount Blogathon. I’m using it to share links to posts about blogging, so I can point bloggers who sign up for this year’s to it if they need inspiration for what to write about, or how to get started. After the event starts on May 1, I’ll be pinning my daily blog posts there too.

How Other Writers Use Pinterest

But enough about me. For the past couple weeks, I’ve also been collecting examples of how other writers are using Pinterest.

Writers are using Pinterest to:

1. Support blogging. Innisfil, Ontario, parenting blogger Allison Rouble uses Pinterest to suport her blog, GenDMom. “I am setting my boards up to reflect my blog, any writing/webpages I am a part of and topics that pertain to my blog,” she writes on Twitter.

2. Drive traffic to a blog. Fellow Portland writer and writing teacher Sarah Moon uses Pinterest to drive traffic to her book blog, Clear Eyes, Full Shelves. “Pinterest is the #2 driver of traffic to my book blog,” Moon writes on Twitter. Moon’s a smart lady: she’s added Pinterest’s Follow button for Websites to her blog posts making it super easy for her readers to pin the posts to their own Pinterest accounts.

3. Help with story development. “For my writing I use it to map out characters and scenes. It’s been really helpful,” Perth, Australia, author Krissy Bradfield shared with me on Twitter.

4. Get inspired. If you’re writing a novel, “Find the house that your main character lives in and put it on a  board,” writes Caitlin Muir in 3 Ways Authors Can Use Pinterest Guilt Free on the Author Media blog. “That’s what I do on my Book|Placesboard. There are something about the pictures on the board that speak to me.  I know that a scene from one of my stories will fit into those pictures,” she says.

5. Keep tabs on the media business. Davenport, Iowa, journalist Joanne Phillips curates a board called Newspapers on Pinterest, an alphabetically listing of more than 123 papers using the service. You can also follow her Newspapers on Pinterest blog.

Just Getting Started?

If you’re just getting started, consider these Pinterest trends identified in an analysis of 11,000 pinned images that social media scientist Dan Zarrella shared today (April 11). Right now, the most repinnable word on Pinterest is “recipe.” If you’re a food writer, you should be sharing links to your published work and make sure that the word “recipe” is prominently mentioned.

Other takeaways from Zarrella’s analysis: descriptions of about 200 words long are the most repinnable; pins about food are very repinnable, and images about design are the most repinned.

This Mashable post, 7 Useful Pinterest Tools to Supercharge Your Influence, shares links to apps you can use to measure which of your boards and pins are most popular, take a screenshot of an entire web page, convert a block of text into a pinnable images, and more.

You’ll find lots of other Pinterest tips on the weekly #pinchat, which takes place Wednesdays at 9 p.m. Eastern/6 p.m. Pacific. Today’s chat features Sony Electronics. You can also join the #Pinchat Facebook page to carry on the conversation with fellow pinners throughout the week.

Copyright

One note about Pinterest and copyright: Pinterest isn’t a copyright-free zone. If you’re pinning other people’s stuff, you need to be aware of copyright law. If you’re using a copyrighted image, make sure you’re linking back to the source. It also helps to include the name of the source in whatever description you’re adding to an image that you’re repinning. According to Pinterest’s copyright notice, If copyright holders complain, Pinterest will delete a pin and send the pinner a copyright complaint notice. Get too many notices and you could get kicked off the site.

If you have copyrighted images on your own website, you can install a piece of code that will block people’s ability to pin them. Read these instructions from Pinterest for putting the code on your site.

Using Pinterest?

If you’re using Pinterest in some way, I’d love to know about it. Please share your experience in a comment.

You may be the oldest one in the newsroom, but you can’t act like an old fart, at least not if you want to stay employed, and employable.

Steve Buttry’s open letter to long-time news workers who resist moving into the digital storytelling age boils down to that one piece of advice.

Buttry, a long-time journalist and news business blogger, encapsulated the wisdom he’s gleaned working as community engagement and social media director for Digital First Media in a blog post this week called Dear Newsroom Curmudgeon.

Journalists who’ve worked on papers for a long time might be reticent to change because they fear the quality of their work will suffer, they’re afraid of change, or they don’t have the time or patience to learn new tools. But they need to get over it – and just do it, Buttry says. And when was working as a reporter ever easy? He says:

Did you ever sit through a boring meeting or cover a blowout ballgame? Did you ever feel like a vulture after talking to grieving relatives who lost a loved one in the breaking news story you were covering? Do you like filling out expense accounts? Journalism remains a fun profession, but that doesn’t mean every task is fun or every day is fun. We do a good job (sometimes a great job) covering boring events and talking to grieving relatives and we fill out accurate expense accounts. We do this because we love the job most of the time and every great job includes some tasks we don’t relish. And professional pride drives us to do those unpleasant tasks well. So tweet. Blog. Shoot video. Or whatever. It’s part of the job. And it’s still a damn good job.

I added my two cents in a comment that I’ll repeat here: There’s one way to force yourself to learn digital reporting skills: work as a freelance journalist. It’s not just a question of relevance, but of livelihood.

Today if freelancers don’t have a web presence, and can’t use the tools you mention to report and publish their work, they either aren’t going to get noticed, or get the jobs. In the past four years, I’ve gotten freelance jobs blogging, live tweeting a conference, managing a blog series and helping launch a news microsite because of the digital journalism skills I essentially taught myself. Experiment – it’s a fun way to learn.

In other news on writing and the writing business from this week:

Should Writers Give up on Getting Paid for Their Writing? (CBC) – Seth Godin is up to his old tricks. An Internet promotions guru who practically invented viral marketing plays the role of provocateur, declaring in an interview on Canadian radio  - one of many he’s given recently to promote a new book – that authors can no longer expect to be compensated for their work.

“The future is going to be filled with amateurs, and the truly talented and persistent will make a great living. But the days of journeyman writers who make a good living by the word – over,” Godin says in a separate interviewwith Digital Book World.

But don’t despair. The Grateful Dead made it despite not basing its business on CD sales, and smart writers will figure out other ways to make money, Godin says. “Are you a chef? A public speaker? If you’re a mystery writer, can you find 1000 true fans to pay $100 dollars a year each to get an ongoing serial from you? It’s not the market’s job to tell authors how to monetize their work. The market doesn’t care. If there’s no scarcity of what they want, it’s hard to get them to pay for it.”

The 100 Outstanding Journalists in the United States in the Past 100 Years (NYU) – Uncle Walter is there, along with Woodward and Berstein, Bartlett and Steele, Gloria Steinem, Jimmy Breslin and Herb Caen. But were are the journalists of color on the list? Too few and far between, according to Unity. The professional organization for journalists of color responded to what it felt was a lack of diversity on the NYU list by creating its own compilation of 100 journalists of the past century. The list includes Oakland Tribune  executive editor Leroy Aarons, New York Times managing editor and Pulitzer Prize winner Dean Banquet; Oregonian editor Peter Bhatia, who was also the first Asian American to be president of the American Society of  Newspaper Editors (and a friend),  60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley, and PBS NewsHour anchor Gwen Ifill.

2011 IRE Award Winners (Investigative Reporters & Editors) – Prizes for the year’s best investigative work go to ABC’s KTRK affiliate in Houston for an expose on corruption among local law enforcement officers, and California Watch and KQED San Francisco for their stories examining lack of uniform seismic safeguards at California’s public schools. Here’s a complete list of 2011 IRE Award winners.

Businessweek ‘tag team’ talks about how their subjects are boring (visually) and how they try to make them not be (Capital) – This is sweet reading for business reporters – like me – who constantly struggle with how to bring creativity to hard to illustrate stories, such as the monthly unemployment report I did earlier today. During a recent visit to Columbia’s journalism school, two Bloomberg Businessweek graphic designers shared how they redesigned the magazine’s stodgy image after Bloomberg took it over in 2009, according to a report in Capital, a news site covering New York. “We’re not afraid to play and to experiment. We kind of know that we have, visually anyway, boring subject matter. … We just try to make it as interesting as we can,” BB creative director Richard Turley tells Capital.

Out With the Long (The Economist) – The British magazine celebrates brevity with an essay written entirely in one-syllable words.

Math for Journalists: Help with Numbers (News University) – Poynter’s online media training center is offering a three-hour, self-directed course designed to help reporters with such math essentials as calculating costs of living and estimating crowd sizes. Instructor Debbie Wolfe is an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, and former technology training editor at the St. Petersburg Times.

It’s been too long since I shared a Friday reading list. Blame it on an over-abundance of work, laziness or being out of town. Regardless, I’m back. And here’s my recommendations for good reads from this week:

The Official Kickstarter Page for Greece! (McSweeney’s) – Humor writing is tough. All the more reason to be in awe of McSweeney’s, which publishes some of the funniest stuff online. I especially liked this story because I just finished this SecondAct.com post on Kickstarter, which encourages creators to give premiums to backers in exchange for their support. That’s good to know if you read the M. piece. Another McSweeney’s humor essay I highly recommend: In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero, written in the style of an Old English heroic epic poem.

The New York Times’ About.com: From All-Star to Albatross (PaidContent) – About.com used to be a reliable, fairly lucrative gig for freelancers who specialized and could make it through the site’s rigorous vetting process. With the site taking a huge hit after Google downgraded About pages in its search results, looks like that could change. “Going forward, it’s hard to see About reacquiring its former cachet anytime soon,” Jeff Roberts writes.

Also:

• David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”: Is it Relevant to Freelancers? (FreelanceFolder) – The simple answer – yes.
• Live tweeting is the new ‘Honey, get me rewrite’ (Digital Ninja School)
• How journalists are using Facebook, Twitter for mini serial narratives (Poynter)

Industry news worth reading:

Why Journalists Need to Link (Wired) – Reuters columnist Felix Salmon weighs in on when reporters should link, and when they need to (such as when they’re following another reporter’s big scoop). Salmon’s essay follows a Nieman Journalism Lab post on the same issue by Jonathan Stray.

Technology Journalism: The Jobs are There; The Journalists Are Not (PBS MediaShift) – Reporter, get thee to computer class. The vacancies for tech-savvy journalists far exceeds the number of hackers who could fill them, writes Clyde Bentley, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and a 2010 fellow to the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. “The world is in desperate need of journalists who can translate what technologists say into a language we lesser beings can understand,” he says.

Yahoo’s Jai Singh: Creating a Voice at the World’s Biggest News Site (Beet.TV) – The former HuffPost managing editor and founding editor of CNET explains what’s in the works at Yahoo Media Networks.

If all goes well, this will be the last blog post I write – on my current office computer.

I’ve used this eMachines PC for more years than I care to remember; it’s been at least five, maybe closer to six. A new hard drive and a few other essential upgrades have kept her alive and kicking through hundreds of deadlines, dozens of Twitter chats and four blogathons.

Early in 2011 I started feeling like I was driving a horse and buggy after everyone else had moved on to a Model T. The old PC was slowing down (and yes, I know, that’s a sure sign of imminent hard drive failure). Some mornings I waited minutes – minutes! – for Outlook and Chrome to open. I resolved that before the year was over, I’d upgrade. Besides, I reasoned, how could I sample the software and apps I write about if my computer couldn’t handle them?

Then I got busy with deadlines or vacation or something I had to do for my kids and put it off.

Finally – finally – on Dec. 31, I made good on my promise. After some research, consulting with my in-house tech team (husband and son) and visiting several area computer stores, I bought a new computer and monitor. It’s shiny, super-fast set up I’ll say more about in another post.

Switching computers isn’t as easy as unplugging one machine and plugging in another, at least not for someone like me who hasn’t leaped entirely to using web-based software. Before I can use the new machine, I’ve got to upload Word and other programs I use regularly and transfer hundreds of megabytes worth of data files. But by this time tomorrow or Thursday, I should be all set.

Say what you want about New Year’s resolutions – it’s great to know that even though it took 365 days, I made my goal, and as a result, I’m starting off 2012 at a blistering pace.

Oh, and my resolution for 2012? Not to put things off to the last minute.

What are your resolutions for 2012?

There’s no one answer. Some journalists have cashed in indirectly by using Twitter to find sources for stories, or to find and follow publications or editors who they’ve subsequently pitched story ideas.

There are more direct ways to make money from Twitter too, including getting paid to live tweeting news events, meetings, conferences and other happenings.

I recently got my first assignment to live tweet a meeting, and shared my experience with April Choi, a freelancer for Ebyline, and a fellow Portland, Oregon, writer. In a Q&A that was originally posted earlier this week, Choi and I talk about how it went and how freelancers can get similar gigs. We also discussed Twitter chats and other ways writers can make money from social media.

Here’s the beginning of the Q&A:

You recently got paid to live tweet AARP’s annual conference for SecondAct. How did you get the gig? And how did it go?

I’ve been a regular contributor at SecondAct, Entrepreneur Media’s website for people over 40, since April 2010. I blog twice a week and write features and slideshows. I originally pitched attending the AARP convention, called Life@50+, for material for future blog posts, and my editor liked the idea. A few days before the conference, she offered to pay me to live tweet the conference. The original plan was to write a dozen or so tweets a day. I ended up doing a lot more – and she increased the compensation.

Do you have any advice for other freelancers who are looking to get similar gigs?

Know your way around Twitter. Live tweeting is reporting in real time, you have to have the mechanics of hashtags, RTs, etc., down cold because you’ll be working fast. If you’re tweeting news, follow generally accepted journalism practices. Approach publications you already work with first because they’ll be more familiar with what you’re capable of doing than someone who doesn’t know your work.

Read the entire post here: Freelance journalist Michelle Rafter on Finding “Tweet” Success

Last year was my first ASJA conference, as a member and as a speaker. I moderated a hands-on blogging workshop that was lightly attended – they scheduled us for a Sunday morning on the last day of a three-day event. But the people who showed up loved it so much they stayed three hours, and a dozen absolute beginners left with brand new blogs registered and live online.

At ASJA 2012, I’ll be talking about tech once again. This time, the subject is web-based apps for writing or running a freelance business. The session will take the form of a panel discussion, with experts talking about the latest and greatest for research, writing and getting organized.

Here’s where you come in. To make the panel  as useful as possible, I’d like to find out what web-based software freelancers use now, and what they’d like to use – if they knew enough about it.

Please help me by taking this short poll. If you’ve got suggestions for other apps we should cover in the ASJA panel discussion, please leave them in a comment. Likewise, if you know a tech-savvy journalist or app developer who’d be a welcome addition to the panel, please let me know by leaving a comment.

I’ll share a summary of what people picked in a future post. And I’ll share names of the panelists as we get closer to the conference.