How do you rate? You can find out with a Ratings service WordPress.com recently rolled out for users of its free blogging platform. Why bloggers will like this: it’s a quick and easy way for readers to provide feedback on your posts – and what other people are saying about them – even if they […]
WordCount Q&A: Helium.com CEO Mark Ranalli
Mark Ranalli makes no excuses for Helium.com. The website he helped start in 2006 isn’t the New York Times and never will be, and that’s OK with Ranalli, who describes the venture as a pro-am writing platform, where like cream, the best writing rises to the top and is compensated accordingly. One of a new […]
WordCount Q&A: Steven Walling, wiki boy wonder
At 21, Steven Walling has accomplished what some writers twice his age are still trying to figure out: how to make a living as a digital freelancer. Despite his youth, Walling took a very old fashioned path to get where he is today. Fresh out of high school, he took whatever paid writing work he […]
Can the techies save the news?
If you think reporters, editors, newspaper pundits, Sam Zell and the Sulzberger family are the only ones worried about the fate of the media business, you haven’t spent a Saturday morning with a room full of geeks. At last weekend’s BarCampPortland III meetup, the assembled developers, programmers and Web 2.0 entrepreneurs were just as concerned […]
The well-dressed blog post
The well-dressed blog post begins with good writing. The best posts are heavy on context. But that’s just the beginning. To make sure they’ve got that pulled together look before you send them out the door, they should also have: A catchy title – A clever headline will capture more attention than a dull one. […]
WordCount weekly online news recap for April 10
The week’s highlights from the freelance and digital news biz: It was a week for debating whether Google and the Internet have hurt or helped newspapers. Search engine guru and ex-newspaper reporter Danny Sullivan doesn’t understand newspapers’ anti-Google stance. But a poll of 43 mainstream media insiders conducted by The Atlantic and National Journal reveals […]