Say it in Pictures

Is Slideshare the new content marketing king? And if a picture on Pinterest is worth more than a thousand words, what's Panasonic trying to say?

 Social media expert?

Yeh, well, I don't know either. I've about reached the point that I automatically discredit anyone who claims to be a social media expert. (Really, how long can a person claim a title like that? Twenty minutes?)

Repeat after me: don't confuse the tools with the trade. Marketing, advertising, and brand identity still have more to do with words and customer service than they do with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Foursquare or even MySpace. And you can +1 this, or pin that to your wall.

~Diane Stresing

Photojournalism Still Does the Job

First, look at this.


Freelance photojournalist Jodi Bieber won top prize in the 2011 World Press Photo awards for the striking pose of Afghan woman Bibi Aisha. 


Aisha, 18, suffered Taliban justice when she left her abusive husband. Her punishment for wanting out of the violent marriage? Her husband cut off her nose and her ears. The photo is arresting because it is sickening in a way that cannot be ignored. 


I am completely unable to put the whole story into context; I will never be able to comprehend the deeper meaning, to understand how a society exists that respects the "justice" of the act of violence that made this photo possible. 


This is why photojournalism exists. 


Some messages cannot be conveyed in words.


As I contemplated the winning photo, my head started spinning. Back in the dark ages when I went to J-school (and film was developed in darkrooms) I learned that a good photo could be worth a thousand words; a great photo worth a thousand inches. Of newsprint. 


What is such a photo worth now?


The world has changed; journalism has changed; the world has changed journalism and journalism has   changed the world. (Still spinning.) I believe, and I want to believe, that journalists will continue to work and some of their work will change the world. For the better, I hope. 


Back to the story, the one about the photo. Buried deep, because it can't be the lead - not with a photo like that - is this quote from David Burnett, jury chairman for the awards:

"A lot of the best work is done by photographers who went out and did it on their own. They didn't wait to be sent."

In other words, they were freelancers. In some cases, freelancers commissioned by (the remaining few) powerful corporate news organizations. But they went out and did it on their own.
  
Burnett's statement leaves me both encouraged and even more worried about Journalism's present and future. 


Unfortunately, as with the photo, I'm left with a only tiny bit of insight, and absolutely no answers. Anyone?


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Jodi Beiber's photo
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//110211/481/urn_publicid_ap_org4165ff90a563409d9fc4dfe4e3a2118a/


World Press Photo 
http://www.worldpressphoto.org/
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Google Understands Word Play, China Doesn't Get It (Again)

Thrilled to find out Google now takes into account semantics - how we use words and how they work together - when searching on your terms, just a little bit surprised it took so long.

And will Google let us "turn off" the semantic interpretation when we don't like how it's "reading" us? We'll find out....

Unfortunately, China pulled the plug on YouTube again last week. It's censorship, folks. Old-fashioned but alive and well. Please fight for your right to read, and write.

China's citizens did, circumventing the government's block of the terrific site (which is owned by Google). By Friday, the site was streaming in China again...but for how long?

Editor as Floral Arranger

If you've read one entry you know my bias: I think journalism is here to stay, it's a worthy, beautiful profession, and it's absolutely necessary to a civilized society.

Biased as I am, I think (good) editors are artists; I see an Op-Ed spread, or just about any section of the paper, as a carefully constructed work of art. Balanced, and if not lovely, at least interesting to a variety of viewers. It's not always a floral arrangement; sometimes it's just a collage. But it's art, baby. Art. (A good page designer sure helps, but the editors and writers collect the material.)

Consider a recent two-page book section in The Plain Dealer. Of course, you won't see it online, so try to imagine...

Two equal but very different three-column reviews sit front and center: one on the weighty Cheever, a biography by Blake Bailey, is balanced by a look inside the lighter Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee. The "grownups" hover over reports on two tales for teens - it's as if the arranger knows that the kids are growing up fast. Fiction and nonfiction reviews hold up the edges of the spread.

It's big-headed hydrangeas and graceful young buds, a bright spray here and bit of greenery there. A fresh look at a new-in-paperback book and a glance at the NYT Best Sellers list poke up from the bottom of the page like baby's breath.

There's something for everyone.

Keep reading.

- - - This post also appears on my reading blog - - -

What Are Words For?

Missing Persons asked the question, What Are Words For? in the early 80s, and it seems we're still asking. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The answer is, words are for human communication.

I hope you'll forgive me when the question "is content still king??" makes me roll my eyes and spew sarcastic sound bites. Such as, well, you only need content...if you want to communicate.

Full disclosure: I'm a writer who just laid off from a company (Viacom) that recently hired a half-dozen (more) SEO/Social Media Marketing gurus.

Sour grapes? No!

We need SEO that works. We don't live to search, we live to find. And what we're looking for - in a gazillion different forms - is content. Ergo, good SEO is pointless without good content.

Content, of course, can be a picture, a game, a form, a joke, King Lear or step-by-step instructions on hotwiring a car.

I think we've heard the "reading is dead" argument enough over the centuries (Plato?) to realize it's not. I think content is still king as long as SEO marketing firm Best Rank (and others) say it is. True, content has taken a hit in accounting. But even as stately old newspapers are disappearing others are starting to ask the right questions, like: what about distribution? and how can the print product add value to the web product? Aha! Now we're getting somewhere!

(But where? It's hard to say. Just keep reading.)

Picture Writing

When most writers think "picture writing" they think of a lot of things - techniques, mostly, of penning descriptive language; some think of the oodles of "tricks" they've learned (and probably forgotten) in some class or workshop or seminar somewhere.

But when I stumbled upon (not using that cool but time-sucking website, by the way) i heart photograph by fellow blogger Laurel Ptak I thought, now that's really picture writing! Each of the images really do convey a thousand words.

Cool.

Have a look!