Transform your business. Build your audience.

While Mark Briggs stopped into class to talk about the new generation of journalism, I thought back on my first job as a paperboy. The shift to web journalism was already beginning at that time and I was losing costumers left and right. The change of business models was inevitable with a different demand for information. Tastes in information and what was posted began becoming more diverse and the idea of personalized news streams (blogs) began to take over. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection can get information custom tailored to their needs.

Building Webpages

Having dabbled in HTML a bit before, I found this "My First Page" instructional assignment to be quite simple but refreshing in the basics. One of the most basic but important pieces to this I had glanced over in other pages was the HTML version. In previous pages, I was only required to formulate only the most basic of pages without an overview version in the past and just thought that the overview was unnecessary.

This explanation is perfect for beginners that have never touched HTML before. The language of the paper is simple and if I had to have my computer illiterate sister do this assignment, she would understand without question.

What I've been recently looking at: Google Wave Development Introduction

Dying Breed

My first real job was delivering the Tacoma News Tribune, I was nine. It wasn't the best pay, but what the heck did I care? I got to buy the Star Wars Pod Racer Special Edition Nintendo 64, with my own money. I bought a camcorder next. I made skateboard films with my friends in the Proctor District, by our standards they were awesome. I had money in my pocket at all times, and still had started to save for college. Who starts to save for college at nine? I did.

I'd like to think that the newspaper will last many more decades but I don't believe that will occur. The newspaper industry that I worked in was dying even when I was getting started in the late nineties and early two-thousands. Every month my subscription base would shrink by one or two, rarely growing growing. The only time it didn't, was when the News Tribune offered a cash reward for gaining more subscriptions via knocking on doors and getting home owners to accept a 3 month free trial and paying for a year of subscription if I remember correctly.

People today don't need a subscription to anything, not even one to an internet service to get the news, weather, sports, or anything else a newspaper has to offer except a physical form. Walking into a coffee shop with a laptop or an iPod Touch is all you need to read the News Tribune, New York Times, or any other "newspaper" around the world. Digital connection is for our time, the next best thing. Just as everyone thought that video would replace the radio medium, newspapers won't be immediately replaced by digital news but will be phased out or be used in a new form.

Bonus:
Video Killed the Radio Star - The Buggles
(The first music video to be played on MTV)

E-Mail and Part of What is Keeping Me in School

E-Mail is not going away anytime soon. We may look at it for hours on end or even just a second (Just looked down to see if my red mail light on my "Crackberry" was blinking...) to keep in touch with friends, family, and co-workers. The amount we stare at screens to make sure that we stay connected to one another is astounding. My friends/coworkers and I will text each other from across the room to find out if our audio levels are not destroying ear drums (I am a professional audio technician and DJ) and to pass the time. As long as I have legs to walk with and a mouth to talk with, I will find this ironic.

I like to think I am a self-motivated individual and I want to succeed, but E-Mail is killing part of what is keeping me in school, the United States Postal Service, or USPS. My mother has worked for the USPS for over 25 years and a large portion of money saved for me to go to college and further my education was made through delivering mail and working as a clerk. I would like to think that my mother will be able to continue to help send me to school until I am able to provide for myself but if E-Mail, electronic invoicing, and other forms of non-verbal communication continue to grow as they are, I hope she still has a job. I hear stories from my mother and read stories such as the one below, and I get anxious over what my future will look like without the USPS.


Hundreds of Post Offices Could Soon Close - Washington Post