I like this alphabet game from STLToday.com. Not everything has to be "news" to be meaningful on a local website.
My score? It was 18 out of 26, which STLToday rates as "OK, you can be deputy mayor." Not so good, but it's been a long time since I was news editor at the Globe-Democrat. And the truth is that I lived on the East Side and didn't hang around in Missouri all that much.
In the nearly 15 years that I've been advocating on behalf of online media at newspaper companies, it's often seemed that the heroes of online journalism were Sisyphus and Cassandra.
Sisyphus was a crafty and devious king of Corinth. We've all been crafty and devious from time to time. Breaking the rules may be the only way to get anything done.
Philadelphia Inquirer managing editor Mike Leary says the paper is "adopting an Inquirer first policy for our signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews of all sorts. What that means is that we won't post those stories online until they're in print."
Instant reaction by the online crowd was predictable; Jarvis went ballistic.
Are you connected with the community you cover? That may be hard to answer honestly. Sort of like asking, "Are you nuts?" You may not be the best authority on that. But it's likely that you could use some improvement. On the connection thing, I mean.
Justin Williams has a detailed 12-step program for copy editors -- "subeditors" in British English -- who want to remain employed as the newspaper industry is restructured and their old jobs disappear.
One key recommendation: Learn SEO techniques. That's an obvious place where careful selection of words and attention to detail pays off.
The larger message is that you don't wait for someone else to train you. Take responsibility for your own career.
Seattle P-I blogger Monica Guzman: "I'm convinced that newspapers need to rise up and take responsibility not just for the quality of the news, but for the quality of the conversation." Read on, and listen to the whole interview at Beatblogging.org.
