How to Blog

As my company is going through a redesign of our website, I've been checking out the sites of other Maine publications to see how they handle online content -- mainly blogs. One I read frequently is Media Mutt on the Down East Magazine website. I like that Al Diamon keeps an eye out on Maine media and the ethical dilemmas, shoddy reporting, and hirings and firings. And he posts frequently -- because that's what you do when you have a blog.

Frequency is key. Other blogs on Down East's site are hardly frequent. Take Paul Doiron's Biblioblog. There are only two posts -- one in June of 2007 and the other in January of 2008. A book blog is a great idea...but this one is not working. They either need someone to pick it up and run with it or delete it from the site. It's sort of embarrassing.

Down East has a running list of their blogs on the left hand side of their site. It looks impressive...until you click on them and you realize they are not maintained. I took a look at the first few blogs in the list and this is what I found:

Ask a Local: hasn't been updated since 2/2009
Berth of Cool: hasn't been updated since 10/2008
Chocolatists Travel Log: hasn't been updated since 5/2009
Daicey Days: page doesn't exist
From Tap to Table: hasn't been updated since 3/2009

Why have all these blogs with no current content? Not only is it a disservice to their readers but it makes them look lazy. If you aren't going to maintain your blog, take it offline.

Down East Downsizes

Down East magazine is "reorganizing" which is a nice way of saying they are laying people off. Six people will lose their job while others will have reduced responsibilities, reduced hours, or changed to independent contractor status.

"Even though our magazine readership is at an all-time high, advertising pages are down, mostly due to real estate sales… and when sales are down to this degree, there’s really only so far you can go before you have to come face to face with that reality," said Bob Fernald, president of Down East Enterprises, Inc. -- From Village Soup

If you've leafed through an issue of Down East you probably noticed how much of their advertising comes from real estate -- homes only the wealthy can afford anyway.

When even luxury food magazines like Bon Apetite and Gourmet are trying to change their content to be more frugal, magazines that rely on advertising from cars, real estate, and retail have to come up with new ways to bring in ad dollars. My own parents, who used to subscribe to Down East, stopped reading it because they said there were too many ads. They got sick of looking at them.

So what is a magazine to do? A high ratio of ads to content in a magazine is a turn off for readers, but without ad revenue a magazine can't survive. And luxury magazines are in a tug of war between creating content that is tackling the current economic crisis and potentially losing readers and continuing to create the same kind of content they've been doing all along and losing advertisors.

What's the winning solution? If we knew that I guess the newspaper and magazine industries wouldn't be in such a pickle.

Top Dog

I read this article in Down East magazine at Borders yesterday. I had heard about this little dog through word of mouth, but what grabbed me was the cover.

I, too, have a long haired chihuahua. His name is Miles. He's the same size as this dog (aptly named Napoleon) and has the same fluffy fur. Miles, however, has different markings. He's caramel brown with a white chest and belly. I think Miles would give Napoleon a run for his money in the good looks department. Then again, I may be biased.

I got Miles from a wonderful breeder in Western Massachusetts five years ago. When I would take Miles for walks around New York City when I was in grad school there, people would constantly ask me what kind of dog he was. Some people asked me straight out if he had his "manhood" because they wanted to breed their chihuahuas with him. (He doesn't if you're wondering). But most people would just comment that he looks like a little fox. And he does.

Cynthia Anderson, who wrote the article for Down East, does a great job capturing the attitude of Napolean. It must be a chi thing because Miles poses for pictures, too. But unlike the show dog, Miles would cower in the ring and lash out at the other dogs. What could have been a life of dog shows for Miles is, instead, a life of a mere pet. Which, I think, suits him just fine.