Category: Uncategorized Page 58 of 76

There’s been a debate going on for years now on just what the future is for newspapers in an online world.

There are those who think the prospects are limited for newspapers and that their days as one of the prime delivery networks for news are limited. Recently, PR blogger Steve Rubel, complained about newspaper sites only delivering partial RSS feeds. Then he went further:

Flash forward 10 years from today. We will look back and laugh how quaint it was that we received our news on dead trees. Yes, I am saying the word “newspaper” will be a misnomer. News will be delivered automatically each day, not by the paper boy, but via wirelessly enabled e-paper devices that are easy to read. All of it will be powered by RSS.

Perhaps. A lot will depend on just how good those E-reader devices really become. Still, I’m not convinced. There are a lot of significant factors that are still pointing to newsprint enjoying a long life yet. And there are others that share my opinion.

In his Loose Wire blog, Jeremy Wegstaff, a columnist with the Wall St. Journal, takes a contrary view (perhaps not surprisingly, given his vocation.)

But Wegstaff’s response is not knee-jerk, in any way. He presents a lot of thoughtful reasons on why we’re not likely to give up the luxury of print anytime soon.

I tend to agree. While I do a lot of reading online, there are still plenty of situations where I want to hold something in my hands and read. A cup of hot coffee and a lot of sunshine coming in through the window — to me, that’s a recipe for curling up with a book or leafing through a newspaper, not cuddling up to my computer.

Similarly, when I commute in the morning, newspapers and books outnumber portable devices by quite a bit. Part of the debate has to do with whether we need to see news in “real time.” Personally, I think that requirement is overblown in importance. We just don’t have to know everything right now. If something is significant, we’ll hear about it soon enough. Still, it is human nature to want to know stuff right away, especially if they can find out about it before someone else. Knowledge is power, as they say.

As I reporter, I used to see this a lot at news conferences. While sitting around waiting for a politician to arrive and tell us what the news was, we’d all debate our own theories, trying to convince each other that we knew more than the others about what was happening. And we’d do this right up until the announcement was made. It was fun, but it didn’t really contribute anything to the larger picture.

What do you think? Are you likely to accept getting all your news delivered to your favourite media player via RSS? Or do you think that newspapers are going to stay relevant in a fully electronic world?

If you’ve ever been the victim of a badly organized business meeting (and I’m sure we all have been at one time or another) you’ll appreciate these 9 suggestions for how to make your business meetings more productive.

The list was compiled by Merlin Mann over at 43 Folders, which is a great place to visit for all kinds of ideas about how to organize your on-life life.

There’s a new blog out on Employee Communications, a subject near and dear to my heart. It’s called For Your Approval, and it’s written by Ron Shewchuk, who’s the author of a new book from the IABC called Writing and Editing the Internal Publication: Delivering Employee Communications with Impact, Integrity and Style.

His post today is a thought-provoking piece called The Myth of the Strategic Communicator. He raises some good points in this first of what will be several posts on this topic.

He takes aim at the notion that if communicators are going to be relevant in business, they have to gain a seat at the executive table. But in his experience, that’s not a path to success, especially for communicators.

Well, I’m here today to tell you that I’ve been a temporary dinner guest at that strategic table more than a few times in my long and sordid career. And I’m ready to share a little secret: most of the time the guests are insane and the food is undercooked, overcooked, rotten or poisoned. Very few decisions actually ever get made. Long-term direction is often nothing more than the path of least resistance, or whatever your cranky investors are insisting you do next. And battle tactics are devised in a very deep, cushy bunker in which the primary goal is not victory, but self-preservation.

He’s got lots of other good stuff, like why a psychopath would fit into an executive suite and how communicators share a lot with social workers. It’s provacative and worth reading.

Another new blog
Another interesting update for business communications blogs is the launch of the IABC Communications Commons. The blog is actually a series of blogs (3 at the moment) which will feature well-known communicators talking about what matters to them.

Shel Holtz, who has a long history of championing new media for communicators and is the co-host (with Neville Hobson) of the For Immediate Release podcast, was one of the driving forces behind this new venture, which is sponsored by the IABC. Surprisingly, though, I couldn’t find any mention of it on the IABC website yet. Perhaps it’s too new to point to.

The Communications Commons features three sub-areas right now — Branding, Employee Communications and Measurement. You can sign up for RSS feeds for each of them, as well as the general feed.

It’s an indication that communicators are getting serious about using the blogosphere as a way to spread knowledge. If you’re in communications and you want to stay in touch with how our world is changing, I encourage you to check out these new resources.

I’m sitting here tonight catching up on all my RSS feeds. I subscribe to a lot of blogs (as you can see down in the right-hand column) and sometimes I fall way behind in reading the latest posts. When I was away in Victoria, I didn’t have regular access to the web, so I didn’t read much at all for over a week. So tonight, since I’ve nothing else going on right now, I’ve been spending some “quality time” with my computer.

Often while I do that, I listen to podcasts. But this is Saturday night, so I’ve got the radio turned to CBC Radio One and I’m listening to “Randy’s Vinyl Tap,” which is arguably the best music show in the land. While I’ve pretty much given up on regular radio, there are still some great shows on CBC and since they’re not yet releasing them as podcasts (although they’re thinking about it) Randy’s Vinyl Tap is one I always try to listen to.

Host Randy Bachman, of course, was one of the founders of The Guess Who, one of the most famous Canadian bands of all time, and certainly the most famous to ever come out of Winnipeg. His show features his incredible stories about the popular music scene over the last 40 years, which he fills the show with. And he plays his personal favourites throughout, all with his unique personal touch.

Tonight, he’s featuring instrumentals only. “No voices at all,” he says, except his own to introduce the songs. It’s been a great show so far, and there’s still another hour to come.

If you haven’t checked out the show on CBC Radio One (alas, it’s not available as a podcast yet) try to carve some time out of your Saturday nights and listen. I guarantee you’ll have a good time.

So I arrived back from Victoria on Wednesday, with a relatively effortless flight back. The plane was a wide-body and there weren’t many people, so we all had lots of room.

I left Victoria at 11 am and arrived back in Toronto at 7:20 pm. I was home by 8, for a “real-time” commute of about 6 hours.

Then this morning, I left the house about 6 am (morning came really early) but didn’t get into the office until about 9. Add in another 3 hours of travel time to get home again tonight (at least, since the commute home is always longer) and I’ll end up spending as much or more time travelling back and forth from work today as I did yesterday to go from one end of the country to the other. What a screwy way to spend my time.

Anyway, the weather in Victoria was beautiful — sunny and warm. As opposed to the freezing rain I’m looking at right now here in beautiful downtown Scarborough. But the lasting impression I’m left with after touring around Victoria is — We’ll never be able to afford a house!

The housing market in Victoria is red-hot right now. Which is nice, if you already have one, but not so good if you’re looking to buy. Heather is staying in a nice place right now that reminds us a lot of the house we used to own in Regina. Unfortunately, it’s probably worth about $1 million or more in Victoria. We could never move into that neighbourhood.

We spent some time looking in the part of town we hope to live, near where Heather’s practice will be. While the houses are more “affordable” there, we’re still looking at paying twice what we’ll be able to get for our Hamilton home, just to get something with a roof. If we want a basement, or a back-yard, or anything else, we’ll be looking at a lot more than that.

It was certainly a reality check. It underscored for me that I need to ramp up my consulting business considerably in order to pull my weight in the mortgage department. And if we decide to rent instead of buy (which is looking likely at this stage) it will be tough to find a place that will welcome our two dogs. Most of the rentals we saw listed were decidedly pet-unfriendly.

Oh well — we knew we were starting a new, grand adventure. This trip merely clarified just how grand it’s going to be. I can’t wait to get started.

I’ve been in Victoria for most of last week and the first part of this one. So I haven’t been blogging (as you would have noticed if you’ve been visiting.)

I had hoped to show you some pictures from around here, but I’ve been unable to get decent connections to the Internet, so I’ve been passing on worrying about it and concentrating on enjoying myself.

My wife, Heather, has been out here since just after Christmas and we’ve been having fun looking at potential sites for her new practice office. It looks like she and her partner are close to signing a lease for an ideal location. It’s all very exciting.

As for where we are going to live when we’re out here, that’s a different story. We know the area we’d like to be in, but we’re not sure that we’ll be wanting to buy another house when we arrive in the summer. So we’re looking at renting, but having two large dogs limits the market considerably!

Oh well, these are the things that make moving so much fun, right?

I’ll be back in Hamilton later this week and I’ll resume regular programming then. In the meantime, Go Canada!