The Mosher Pit

Because I come from a journalism background, I approach content management as a journalist. Not like a journalist, mind, but as one. And that’s a good thing, because part of my job is helping old-school journalists learn social media frames. But they have habits deeply ingrained, and trying to coach them into new media techniques is like herding cats. Now, I’m sure I’m not the first person to talk about these items, but it’s hard to find stuff on generating content in the socialmediasphere, and what sets it apart from traditional news writing–both online and print–for the organization that’s got both feet stuck firmly in Pulitzer world when all they want nowadays is a Webby.

So, without further ado, here are Helen’s handy tips for generating social media content.

1. Share, share, share. I’ve found that there are two categories of share:
   • The “Hey, I found this, and it’s really cool” share (:found). This is when you’ve found a link that is absolutely so cool/useful/interesting/funny that you have to give it to all your friends. Viral marketing totally depends on the “I found this, and it’s really cool” share. Social bookmarking and tagging are aggregators of this kind of content.
   • The “Hey, I wrote this, and it’s interesting enough to me that I want to share it with you” share (:writ). Being a compulsive writer, I do a fair amount of this. Most corporate blogging (of the nonPR-fed variety) is made of this type of content, and quite a bit of “citizen journalism” gets created this way. Transmission of this type of content is facilitated by :found.

   Most social media outlets aren’t all one or the other but on a spectrum, depending on how the user engages the platform. For instance, del.icio.us allows you to add comments to a link to give the link context. Blogs provide both ends of the spectrum, allowing armchair pundits to write essays about each other’s essays and content editors to pick and choose :found stuff for quick links. Twitter wants your content but limits you to short bursts of text, as does Facebook’s “status” update.

2. Comment boxes do not a blog make. The read/write functionality is there, but if you post a 700 word article from your publication and bury a comment box at the bottom of it, you’re less likely to get comments. Rather, keep that content elsewhere on your site–a webzine, perhaps? Use the blog to tease readers over to that content in one of these or similar ways:
   • An interactive table of contents, with links to the stories and 30-word teaser decks to help readers choose what to click to. This can be a mirror of your email newsletter, but worked this way it becomes a “pull” rather than a “push.”
   • An introductory paragraph from the author of the article, providing context for the story before linking to it. After all, authors always have a story about the story. “This article was hard to write because the subject had gone deep underground. But we finally were able to reach Puxatawney Phil, and you can see the results here.”
   • The three most important paragraphs from the top of the article, usually the first three paragraphs, with a “click for more” link underneath it. Great way to digest news articles.
   • Your own introduction, explaining why you like the article. Compare this to the editor-in-chief’s page in a regular magazine, where they give shout-outs to articles in the month. “Don’t miss Pepe Le Pew’s heartbreaking tale of love and loss on Page 94!”
3. Use first and second person. You want to engage the reader, so go ahead and speak to him or her directly and encourage the reader to answer. For instance, this is a new blog of mine with an initial readership of zero. How am I attracting readers? By going out and introducing myself. That’s first person. How am I engaging readers? By talking to you. Hi, there, you. That’s second person. Hey, you in the third row, I’m talking to you! Are you listening to me? I suppose that’s encouraging you to answer, but… no.
   More encouraging would be for me to ask you a question that leads to you writing your own top 5 points for creating social media content. It’s not just blog posts, either. Today I was tasked with rewriting our mission statement to fit in that little block of text on Second Life for “Group Charter.” I did this by recasting it into second person.
4. Determine what content you’re already generating that can be leveraged in social media. As an organization, you probably have plenty of content channels that you didn’t even know you could leverage. (Leverage is an obnoxious word, but using it causes CEO faces to light up.) Are you doing training functions that could be podcasted or webinar-ated? Are you passing around links to colleagues that you could blog to your members? Is there syndicated material on, say, a sister organization’s website that you can capture through a webfeed?
5. Learn to let go. Part of generating content is getting more content from your users. And that means you’ll probably get some oddball typoese on your site. That might mean that u needs 2 bkum flooent n lolcat & sms just to make sure nothing inappropriate crosses your site (er, need to become fluent in “LOLcat” and text message shorthand). Today, I sat through an amazing webinar about all the potential in social media for publications. The pressing concern? “What will we do when the comments don’t meet our style specifications?” Oh, the horror!
   Well, here’s one thing I do know. Two, actually. 1. As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. This is known as Godwin’s Law. There’s a corollary that I’m not sure has been made quite as explicit, but another truth is that 2. As an online discussion grows longer, the probability that someone will invoke one’s lack of spelling or grammatical talent approaches one. (It usually results in Godwin’s Law being invoked, anyway, because the person so invoked will usually respond with “Grammer Nazi.” Sic.) It’s rather like the debate over serial commas. Don’t sweat it. Create clear terms of service and reserve the right to edit that really egregious misspelling of “public,” but your readers are smart enough to know that user content is… just that. User content. And they really didn’t come to get graded on their participation.

Well, anyways, off I go contributing content. I have no idea whether it’s useful or not, but I suppose at some point someone will find it and tell me that I’m completely borked for writing this when it’s been done ten times over better elsewhere and link link link for examples. I left things out, too, like write short bits and if it gets longer than 600 words or so, you better have bullets and subheads breaking up the text. But honestly, I’m keeping these notes down for the benefit of the presentations I know I’m going to have to give. And in the spirit of social media, I’m all about the share, share share.

Posted in Content, Features, New Media, Writing by: Helen
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An ongoing theme in my work lately—my vocational work, that is—is that of listening. It came up last night while I filled Fr. Jim in on all the directions I feel pulled, including toward ministry. There was so much to talk about, largely because I had never had a chance to talk to him about, well, me, and the more self-absorbed side of me enjoys nothing more.

As a result, I have to be conscious of listening, even to listen. I’m one of those people whose ability to empathize rests solely in my ability to connect your experience to something I’ve experienced, and if you’re not savvy in the ways of dealing with people like me you’d mistake us for being utterly self-absorbed because we always have to make everything about us. But no, that just our way of connecting, and while it might be a bit graceless, it doesn’t lack grace.

I struggle to listen. Sometimes it’s struggling to listen to, and sometimes it’s struggling to listen for. It doesn’t help that I’m going deaf. (Children, wear your earplugs at loud rock shows. Every time. Like brushing and flossing.)

I stopped by the library on the way home and picked up a book by Phyllis Tickle. She is one of those folks who, as I suspect and Jim confirmed, lives out her vocation in much the same way that I think I am called to do. He also recommended Nora Gallagher, whose work I have not read, and Anne Lamott, whose “Plan B” was probably not what I should have started with. But I don’t know that he was recommending that I read them; he was just identifying how I might live out my call.

Here are the things I have to remember from last night’s meeting:
1. Pray.
1a. Listen.
2. Meditate.
2a. Listen.
3. Keep writing.
3a. Listen.
4. Develop circles of trust.
4a. Listen.
5. Listen.
5a. Discern.

I have a whole lotta listening to go on. I have never been terribly good at it, but getting good takes practice, right?

Posted in Features, Life, Reflections by: Helen
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It’s fascinating to me that one of the best explanations I’ve seen of scripture as metaphor comes from a book with a metaphor in its title. And it also occurs to me that perhaps the reason extreme conservatives see scripture completely differently than I do is that they cannot understand metaphor. In the secular world, these are the people who do not grok fantasy and often eschew fiction, considering them at best unbelievable, and at worst lies.

But the title of the book, “The Heart of Christianity,” gives me something to point to when someone doesn’t understand metaphor. Does Christianity have a heart, with atria and ventricles, cardiac tissue and valves (never mind that there are mitral valves in your heart)? Of course not.

It seems to me oddly fitting that a literal heart should wither and die. But a metaphorical heart, whether Poe’s telltale one or the ones we put as central to our dearest notions, beats strong and true throughout time.

I’d like to quote a few things from this book. Its author, Marcus J. Borg, is the Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University.

When people ask, “Is that story true?” they often mean, “Did it happen?” (50)

I was recently asked this by a third grader in bible school class. “Is that story true?” And I, having been back to church after a yearlong hiatus only one week, stuttered, “It’s true in the Bible.” An inadequate answer, really, for what I wanted to convey. At the time, I parsed it as “It’s true if you believe it to be true,” that faith is what sustains us to believe the unbelievable. And then I read this passage, and came to understand that what I was struggling to convey is:

It is truth.

Not the truth, not true, but truth. But I also understood something else as a result of another thing Borg has to say: True does not always mean factual. That’s a stretch for me even in my literal mode and antagonizes everything I “know” as a journalist. But Scripture seen metaphorically becomes true (emphasis mine):

The Genesis stories of creation are seen as Israel’s stories of creation, not as God’s stories of creation. they therefore have no more of a divine guarantee to be true in a literal-factual sense than do the creation stories of other cultures. When they are seen as metaphorical narratives, not factual accounts, they are ‘myths’ in Thomas Mann’s sense of the word; Stories about the way things never were, but always are. They are thus really true, even though not literally true. (52)

Think of the difference between literature and fiction, or instance. What makes a piece of fiction become literature? Its truth.

One of the first things that my friends point to as evidence that religion is a bunch of crock is the utter unbelievability of the creation, fall from Eden, the Flood and so on in the old testament, and the christmas and easter stories in the new testament. On the other end of the spectrum are those whose fanaticism rivals the secular skepticism: people who take the bible so literally that their world really is only 6-10,000 years old and God must have a right hand because Jesus is really sitting at it.

Somewhere between those two extremes is something that I will call truth. Not The Truth. Not True. But Truth.

Posted in Faith, Features, Religion, Writing by: Helen
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Cause, well, we're all a bunch of drama queens.

I last lived in the metro region between 1988 and 1992. And I was heavily influenced by WHFS.

When I came down here to live again in 2004, I realized that it wasn't the same station that it was many years before. And I'd like to point out why, because some people are complaining about the station itself, some are complaining about the station's demise, and some are complaining about the complaining, and so on.

I fall into the category of one who mourned its passing quite some time ago.

HFS used to be a genuinely alternative station, and perhaps no one remembers why it became the model alternative station for a host of copycats that emerged in the early 90s. It was the same phenomenon that hurtled Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and many other grunge acts into the mainstream spotlight in 1991.

Soundscan.

Prior to 1991, billboard charts were compiled using reports from the RIAA, who called around to stores to find out how much of everything was being sold. At that time, alternative was truly alternative. And it was often selling quite briskly, but not being reported. I was working in a record store during this transition. Before the transition, Extreme and GunsnRoses were in the overhead player. Hair metal was dying, however, and the change in reporting from the RIAA phone method to the Nielsen Soundscan method–which tracks every barcode that gets scanned in participating retail chains and stores–caused the grunge stuff to way spike in the numbers.

However, in the case of HFS, as I see it, it never evolved out of the 1991 model. This is why they still seem to think that Nirvana and Pearl Jam and all their little clones are the end all be all of alternative music. This is why RHCP and Jane's Addiction went mainstream, why Pearl Jam became the epitome of narcissistic hubris, why Kurt Cobain became a genre's Elvis, Kennedy, and Challenger Space Shuttle all in one. And why I, for one, fell in love with Trent Reznor, but that's another story.

See, stations like HFS, with mainstream reach and alternative savvy, could propel album sales, and was doing so, but at the time these bands weren't getting the RIAA stamp of approval (or the stores weren't reporting those sales), and as such, their sales and significance were misreported. Who is to say that had Soundscan been implemented in the heyday of New Romanticism that Duran Duran and Depeche Mode wouldn't have carried the dominant programming tenor of WHFS for the ensuing decade? But it didn't. HFS never got out of its love affair with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. And most of the rest of us did.

Another genre was competing with grunge for “alt” dominance: Manchester pop. A lot of us spun out of that particular breed of alternative, and I think it provides a lot of the undercurrents that indie pop is coalesced out of. And HFS still gave some lip service to that kind of stuff once it rose out of DIY land, even after it became corporate behemothfs. But it didn't dominate, and I largely think it had to do with the fact that hair metal marketing sorts could better market grunge to the hair-metal grownups. They didn't rightly know what to do with the Manchester pop stuff, for the same reason that they've never known what to do with British invasions aside from label them as such and make that a wave to ride.

HFS got stuck in a lousy loop of 1991-ness, which as it progressed did two things: homogenized its playlists (because people request what's already been played to death, as all of us who have DJed in the scene can attest) and created a crapload of copycat stations (HFS is making money with that format; let's ship it to point_x!)

In the process of doing this, it gradually alienated its original base. We stopped tuning in. Ok, I moved out of its range, but it sounds like a lot of people stopped tuning in. But to be quite honest, that format was still the only commercial radio format that I could even stomach AT ALL. So I was happy that it existed, even if no other NIN songs than Closer and Head Like A Hole made it onto the lifetime playlist. (Yes, I'm a rabid NIN fan. Shoot me.)I was happy that K. would listen to it and learn about music that I used to enjoy, even if I don't anymore. (I used to love Live, and I can still sing along to “I'm Still Alive” even if I never wanna hear “Jeremy” again.) But no, I'd for the most part avoid the station in its current incarnation. So did a lot of other people.

But upon hearing that it will never be what I remember it being again, I was saddened. I mean, I didn't love Ronald Reagan as a president, and his final years must have been awful, but he was a good man and I was saddened by his death. HFS, at one point in my life, was a good station, and was such during a significant part of my transition into adulthood.

But all this talk of migration to satellite radio makes me realize: we can use this as an opportunity to critique commercial radio and do so loudly. Not critique the life and death of one radio station, but the ongoing lack of choice in commercial radio. We can salute and commemorate what one station tried to do before it got absorbed into the machine. We can say “we stopped listening to HFS when HFS stopped listening to us.” It's obvious that they don't care, but someone might.

I don't listen to commercial radio. I don't watch TV. I don't care that the format of one radio station that died ten years ago has been changed to something completely alien to me. It's better used for people who will appreciate it. Public radio has been wanting to rope in a younger demographic. Listen to Marketplace lately? I've heard several tracks on there that I've also heard at Alchemy. Now if we can just persuade NPR to start something for US a la… um, Postpunk Home Companion….

Addendum (19:49, when i finally got done with a troublesome web page): Someone also noted that the downward spiral was exacerbated by Infinity's purchase of the station sometime in the 90s. The interesting thing about the point he makes (see comments) is that the end result was not unlike what happens when you make a scan of a photocopy of microfilm of a fax of an original: by the time it's gone round eight times, it looks very little like the original. you can still get the jist of it, but never the clean, crisp edges and never the original content. That was a big chunk of the homogenization, both across the nation and within the station. and damn that sounds like a song lyric. Thanks to input.

And now, to Kinkos to solve another looming crisis. Sheesh, this has been the day that never ended. I'll get home after nine, and me without my cell..

Posted in Features, Music, Writing by: Helen
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