CopyBlogger: A great website for multimedia editors in training

Trying to wrap your head around Search Engine Optimization? Not sure what keywords have to do with your writing? Then click over to CopyBlogger and set yourself a RSS feed.

I forget how I came across the site, but it's become one of my favorites lately. From posts like how to create a blog that people will want to Digg to how not to commit grammar errors that make you look dumb, the site has a lot of easy-to-digest information.

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Freelance contracts

The Kansas City chapter held a workshop in August that I thought also might be of interest to our chapter, as I know we have several freelancer members. It was about the proper way to write freelance contracts, and the chapter blog has some great information for both those writing the contracts and those signing them.

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Follow up to Sour Grapes

I'm feeling that maybe I wasn't just being a complainer when I said I wasn't that sympathetic to the WGA's plight. Here's Albert Kim's take on HuffingtonPost.com. His answer as to why journalists don't get paid residuals: We get paid a salary. I'm not so sure that having job stability should translate into our content being constantly repurposed for free so that others may boost revenue. How does anyone else feel about this?

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ASBPE Chicago Fall Networking Roundup

Thank you to everyone who attended last night's Fall Networking Event at Rivers downtown.

Each of the nearly 30 people in attendance looked like they were having a good time.

The Board is beginning to plan another networking event but we could use your help. If you would like suggest a venue, a site, a networking icebreaker, we would love to hear it.

Write your suggestion in the comments section or e-mail them erin.hallstrom@reedbusiness.com.

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The Economists' audio version

I've read elsewhere about this, but John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of The Economist, had an interesting Q&A on MediaBistro today. The Economist is available as an audio version, in which BBC readers actually read the entire magazine to you. As someone who hates being read to, I find it odd that others would download an entire issue of a magazine in order to listen to it. Would this type of content distribution be lucrative in the B2B space?

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Just sour grapes?

I’m trying to muster up sympathy for the television writers who might or might not go on strike because of a dispute over the myriad ways in which their work is being distributed (Internet, DVDs, etc.), for which their current contract doesn’t include any compensation.

Where I’m stuck, though, as someone who has worked in the B2B side of things for more than eight years, is the fact that I’ve watched as editors' workloads have increased beyond writing for print to include writing original content for the Web, writing for podcasts, Webcasts, speaking at seminars, planning two-day conferences and more, and yet, I don’t see the compensation levels for those additional responsibilities growing, and in fact, I see the staffs of most publications shrinking since I’ve entered the biz.

James Poniewozik wrote an interesting piece for Time’s Web site a few days ago that was the impetus for me thinking about this. The WGA wants its members to be compensated for the extra distribution channels in which the same content is being used. But what I say is this: How do we in the B2B space get fairly compensated or better balanced workloads for the extra work we do in order to take advantage of the ever-changing content distribution models?

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Love him or hate him?

Anyone who has worked in publishing—especially B2B, where there is such a close relationship between the PR people and editors—has felt as Kurt Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired, does, that enough is enough already, and there are certain PR people whose e-mails will no longer be accepted. I know once my last company got Caller ID, there were several phone numbers I ignored because of phone abuse—calling repeatedly, one call right after the other without leaving a message until I was afraid that something had happened to a loved one; turned out, a PR person needed an editorial calendar—that number never got picked up again.

But did Kurt go too far by publishing e-mail addresses of the PR people he felt abused the e-mail system? There’s an interesting debate on his blog in the comments that followed, and I think some have at least one valid point: If we as editors are going to be upset fielding calls from PR people about subjects someone else on our staff covers, we had better make it darn easy to figure out the correct person by having it clearly denoted on our Web sites. But it’s also a two-way street. If PR people really want to get their clients’ companies into our pages, they had better do their homework first and pick up a magazine to ensure that you put in personnel changes before contacting you about it.

Any thoughts?

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