Chris Snider

Mashable asked that question on Sunday. The answer?

No.

BUT… Let’s look at this from a more positive standpoint. If the NYT can get that “Yes” number up to 10 percent, then perhaps they’re onto something. The question: Is one paying subscriber more valuable than 10 non-paying?

Perhaps.

I’ll be teaching entrepreneurial journalism at Drake again this semester. Last semester, we relied on readings from the web for class. This semester, I think I found four books that will really help the students think about how journalism (and the web) is changing.

Here’s the list:

• ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
• Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust
• Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
• The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

Are there any other books you’d recommend for entrepreneurial journalists right now? I’d love to expand or improve my reading list in future semesters.

Last night I read the 2007 book The Dip by Seth Godin. It’s a quick read and an inspiring book, but one passage certainly stood out to me:

Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can’t see it. At the same time, the smartest people are realistic about not imagining light when there isn’t any.

If you work at a big city newspaper, you can see that there’s no light at the end of that career-choice tunnel. Circulation is dropping, and it’s going to drop even faster. Most papers have little chance of replacing their traditional business with an online alternative. As a result, every day at most papers is going to be just a little bit worse than the day before. Every day you stay is a bad strategic decision for your career because every day you get better at something that isn’t that useful – and you fall another day behind others who are learning something more useful. The only reason to stay is the short-term pain associated with quitting. Winners understand that taking the pain now prevents a lot more pain later.

It’s nor fair to judge two paragraphs without context of the whole book, but I felt I should share anyway. To me, the point of the book was that it’s not worth doing something unless you’re willing to push yourself to be the best. It’s much better to be the best at one thing that to be pretty good at several things.

My digital focus in 2010 for the Des Moines Register is simple – stop trying to add more and more features to the web site, and start focusing on doing a small number of things better than anyone else.

As for Godin’s advice on getting out of newspapers, I can’t disagree. We’ve heard about the end of printed newspapers for a long time. If you’re a journalist whose skills are exclusive to the print product, it’s time to start learning some digital skills. Or get out.

Last week, Mother Nature dumped 16 inches of snow on Des Moines. And while most of the town simply shut down for a day or two, the Des Moines Register didn’t have that option. We went into breaking news mode and tried to compete with the local TV stations for readers’ attention.

And as usual, we learned a few things. Here are some tips for covering breaking weather news online:

Promote your mobile site

We saw a nice bump in traffic to our mobile site while readers were stuck at home (or elsewhere). We used Twitter, Facebook and our own web site to remind people that the mobile site was available for latest weather news and closings.

In severe weather, there’s also the possibility of people losing power – so your mobile site may be their only way to access important information.

Take the news to the people

If people aren’t at work, they’ve not on their computer. So they’re probably not spending as much time on your site. We used Twitter, Facebook, text alerts, e-mail alerts and RSS feeds to draw them in as important news broke throughout the day.

Ask readers to submit specific photos

We’ve had modest success getting people to submit weather photos, but one small tweak seemed to really help this time. We asked readers to specifically send us photos of their big snow drifts – and we promised we’d run the best in print the next day. And it worked – we got more than 80 photos (and not all were snow drifts).

Create a Twitter hashtag

Create a Twitter hashtag and use it for all your tweets – or better yet figure out what hashtag your local Twitter users are already using and join in. Our local community was using #winterdeathstorm. Considering that people actually die in such storms, we decided to go with the safer #dmweather. We saw quite a few others joining in, so we’ll certainly use that again in the future.

Check Google Trends to see what people are searching

When it comes to severe weather, people turn first to their local TV station – even online. Google Trends shows this:

What was hot on Google Trends during the height of our storm on Dec. 8? The call letters from local television stations (KCCI, KCRG, KWWL). All three showed up for hours as hot trends. These terms also made appearances: KCCI school cancellations, Iowa DOT road conditions, Des Moines public schools, KCCI weather, Iowa road conditions and winter storm.

Local newspapers – Des Moines Register, Waterloo Courier and Cedar Rapids Gazette – never showed up.

But that doesn’t mean we should give up on winning the search war. We clearly could rate high for terms like Iowa DOT road conditions, Iowa road conditions and winter storm with a little SEO finesse. Or simply buy keywords for those words.

Create a live chat for readers

We set up a CoverItLive chat and asked readers to share info about their commute, what their business was doing because of the storm, etc. We got a little bit of that, but also found that the chat was a great way for members of our staff to instantly post the little updates they were getting throughout the day.

Create a severe weather page

We’re still working on this, but it became clear there are certain things we always need links to during a storm: road conditions, traffic cams, airport delays, snow routes and energy outages.

So, we’re creating a severe weather page that combines those links with a twitter feed, stories, radar, blog posts, video, photos and traffic cameras. It will be a one-stop shop during severe weather.

Dig into your archives

We have hundreds of great photos from past snow storms. With more time, it also would have been great to bring back stories from previous huge storms and historic front pages.

1. This tweet from @TracyGardner pretty much sums up what I’ve been trying to teach my Online Entrepreneurial Journalism class this semester as they try to find their niche in the digital media world.

2. Chris Brogan shares his advice for businesses getting started on social media. Read more about what he’s saying here.

Chris Brogan Shares Social Media Tips from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

3. If your blog needs a redesign (I’m starting to think that mine does), here are some great Wordpress themes via Smashing Magazine.

4. Like new tools but hate spending money? Check out these free alternatives to some common multimedia tools.

The Yankees won the 2009 World Series last night. So let’s take a quick look at pages from a couple national sports sites and the New York newspapers.

ESPN

Sports Illustrated

New York Times

New York Post

New York Daily News

I like what the Post did with the background image on the page. I like the overall look of ESPN the best. And I appreciate how SI.com was able to go big and keep an ad above the scroll.

Your thoughts?

We don’t have pro sports teams in Iowa. We don’t host Superbowls or NCAA Final Fours. But every year we do get one game that captures our local sports audience like no other.

Iowa vs. Iowa State in football. We call it the “Big Game.” (Clever, huh?) And here’s a look at all of the coverage we do leading up to the game.

Big Game Fan Map: Our attempt to determine what areas of the state prefer Hawkeyes and what areas prefer Cyclones.

Big Game Challenge: Readers get to pick various prop bets on the game – with a $500 prize for the person who gets the most correct.

Jokes: Readers share their favorite Iowa and Iowa State jokes.

Field goal game: It’s hard to actually work the week of the game, so this helps readers slack off.

Past photos: Hugely popular. People love to look at old photos (even ones that are only one year old).

Posters: Readers can print out these posters to decorate their cubicle at work – or their neighbor’s cubicle.

Bars: Sometimes people watch games in bars, we hear. We help them figure out where to go.

Of course, we also cover all of the “news” of the week with stories and videos. But those are the main components that make up a successful “Big Game” week around here. You can see all of our coverage right here.

And GO HAWKEYES!

I stumbled upon a great resource from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the other day. Their Packers bar map helps readers find a place to drink with other Packers fans (almost) anywhere in the world (apparently not South Dakota).

Naturally I wanted to do the same for the sports teams we cover at the Des Moines Register. Digital projects editor Mike Corey was able to one-up the Packers map by making our map completely user-generated. Readers can upload bars directly to the map. The Green Bay example sends bars to a staff member who then adds them to the map.

Here’s our map of Iowa Hawkeyes, Iowa State Cyclones, Northern Iowa Panthers and Drake Bulldogs sports bars.

The great thing about our map is that we simply have to watch it to make sure nobody is abusing it. The great thing about the Packers map is that is uses ZeeMaps, which means that it doesn’t require knowledge of the Google Maps API (full disclosure: I now nothing about any APIs).

I have to admit that I’m pretty impressed with the work the Journal Sentinel has done using ZeeMaps, including this map of dining reviews.

I am teaching a weeklong class on visual communication at the University of Iowa this summer, and in doing a little research for the class I discovered that the UI journalism school has a new director – David D. Perlmutter.

What’s perhaps most impressive about him is that he has appeared on The Daily Show.

Sure, it’s an old clip. But as a UI J-school grad, this makes me proud.

You can find out more about David on his blog.

OK, maybe we don’t have it all figured out quite yet.