3 Sure Fire Ways to ID Blog-able Topics

It was a Father's Day treat.  Yesterday afternoon before my official grill master duties was set to commence, I saddled up to my laptop with an hour of uninterrupted time to blog.

Log on to the network.  Fire up a browser.  Access Blogger.  And then…absolutely nothing came to mind.  I spent 15 minutes staring at a blinking cursor before deciding to catch a few minutes of the US Open on television.

This was a first for me as I pride myself on a willingness to wade into nearly any topic of relevance in public relations, social media marketing and entrepreneurship.  Yet, I have come to appreciate the often uncomfortable silence that sweeps across a client or prospect meeting when I declare that “thought leaders have thoughts.”

What happens if you have nothing particular insightful or relevant to say?

Committed to filling the editorial pipeline of this blog, I signed back on after the kids went to bed last night and took three meaningful actions:

1.  Hit Up My Google Reader:  I subscribe to more than 50 industry and executive blogs, and spent a few minutes analyzing common themes and topics being dished about during the past few weeks.  

2.  Troll the Trades:  There are a handful of informative PR and marketing-oriented publishers that report on the industry and its trends.  In particular, I found this article about PR shop Golin Harris’ restructuring to be of interest.

3.  Monitor the Chatter in Social Networks:  My colleague and partner Chris Parente does an exceptional job of this.  He’ll note a discussion that has garnered intense interest and debate, and then weigh in via a post on his “Work, Wine and Wheels” blog.

A mere thirty minutes later I had a collection of five new ideas for the blog, all of which address timely issues that have generated discussion in the industry.  

Now I just need to find time to write.

Journalism Slides Closer to Its New Reality

The pounding, headache inducing drumbeat of Tiger’s tales of infidelity pushed a number of potentially market changing stories to the back page.

Here is one headline from the December 3rd issue of the New York Times that escaped my attention: Some Dallas Editors will Report to Ad Sales.

Whoa…I suspect a fair number of journalists view the idea of taking direction from and being accountable to sales reps as a harbinger of the apocalypse.

It’s understandable. Many newsrooms have historically been shielded from the economic realities of publishing, with the editor and writer occupants rallied around a shared commitment to a higher calling.

The downsizing of journalism during the past two years has landed like a sledgehammer -- producing anger, denials and despair. It’s something I wrote about in November in my well read and critically received “Open Letter to the Unemployed Journalist."

So, I have to ask: Is a closer integration between the newsroom and the advertising sales department a good thing?

At the Dallas Morning News, it is only the sports and entertainment writers who will be affected by this new structure. Plus, editor Bob Mong told the New York Times that they have been instructed to “fight back” if they are told to do anything unethical.

My take is that this is the reality of future news gathering and reporting. Let’s get over the anger and accept that the publishing business model will continue to evolve for newspapers, magazines, broadcasters and online news operations to survive.

The question I pose above is irrelevant. There is simply no room left for a pristine and uncomplicated separation of editorial and advertising operations.