Look to the East

I live in Chicago, where I’ve worked for about five years now. Posting’s been slow this week because I’m in Philadelphia, giving my hometown job market a shot while staying with my parents.

My sister is interviewing this week, too, so I find myself handing out interview advice to her about things like how to politely indicate you will not answer an inappropriate question, how to find out what’s wrong with the company or office and what kinds of questions to ask to show you’re really interested.

Turns out the Philadelphia Inquirer just eliminated some Sunday sections, I learned this weekend, but I’ll go take a look and introduce myself anyway. Ditto for the People’s Paper, whose tabloidy style might better suit my writing anyway.

The media market’s weird here, too, though the news is a blast here with a new mayor, ridiculous homicide stats, chronic malaise at the child welfare department and all kinds of TV reporter drama. Inky has relatively new ownership but also a couple of writers I particularly enjoy. When I think about the sources I’d have in this city thanks to an extensive network of relatives who do all sorts of things in life, I begin to believe I’d be stupid to report anywhere else.

Fingers crossed.

Guerrilla warfare takes to the Trees

Fighting back in this market – where America needs watchdogging reporters but hasn’t figured out how to pay for them – is something I’ve been thinking a lot about. Based on my own experience with corporate-owned media, I’m not too excited about hopping back onto any company that has more HR structure than reporters. Period. You’ve read about my plans and efforts to learn new skills; turns out some smarty guy with more experience than me is also trying to figure out how journalism survives corporate ownership and a transition from print to something else. It’s called the Treehouse Media Project, started by a guy with enough Philadelphia connex to inspire me, Rich Heidorn Jr.

Phase One of the TreeHouse Media Project will provide multimedia and entrepreneurial training. Together we will learn new ways to tell our stories and share best practices on revenue models that will support our work. We may collaborate on joint ventures. We will support our colleagues by telling our readers about the good work they are doing.

Current plans call for instruction in:

Multimedia & Technology

• Blogs & RSS feeds
• Video (reporting for the camera, shooting, editing, uploading to the web)
• Podcasting
• Web design
• Database design and deployment

Business and Marketing

• E-Commerce (shopping carts; marketing/advertising etc.)
• Marketing and advertising (e.g. Search engine optimization)
• Writing a business plan
• Legal issues: copyrights, fair use, choosing the right business structure, etc.)
• Creating revenue streams: a platform for book sales and speaking engagements; advertising; subscriptions; merchandise sales, etc.
• Finances / Accounting
• Sales (e.g. advertising)

Weekend seminars this fall in Philadelphia (where I have parents); You know I already signed up.