• Explanation of why ‘You’ were selected the person of the year last year | TIME
  Quote - TIME’s Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest.
  (tags: Time magazines)
• New York State to Publish Outdoor Kids Mag | FolioMag.com
  The New York state Department of Environmental Conservation has announced its plan to launch a nature magazine for kids called Conservationist for Kids.
  (tags: custom-publishing magazines)

One of my favorite magazine writers who blog, BusinessWeek’s Steven Baker, who wrote the Google cloud-computing cover, is asking an interesting question:

“So, which is better: Writing what we learn as we learn it, or holding it secret and publishing it later? Given this (blog’s) readership, I’ll bet 9 of 10 of you would say to publish as we learn. But as I write this, I’m coming to appreciate the traditional approach.”

I, for one, don’t believe, in the type of story Steven is referring to, a writer should “scoop” him- or herself on a blog. Obviously, there are breaking stories that should be blogged. (Heck, I’m witnessing more and more breaking stories being ‘Twittered’ - like this morning’s fire at the Old Executive Office Building.) But in-depth, comprehensive stories like Steven’s cover story don’t need to be blogged first. That said, I often seen book authors test certain hypotheses on their blogs during the writing of a book. In those cases, I’m sure it’s a lot like sharing manuscripts with friends. If the writer and publisher agree with that approach, there’s nothing wrong with it, but I don’t think it’s a “requirement.”

I’m all for transparency and I’m a, hmmm, rather prolific blogger, but I engage in business and “research” and developing ideas all day long. I’m in meetings with clients and employees and talking with all sorts of people on a wide variety of topics — including story ideas for magazines. However, I rarely — if ever — blog about something until it’s at least half-baked. (Note: And I can’t recall EVER blogging about private meetings w/ clients, employees, friends, etc., unless I have received permission from the others to do so.)

Marshall Kirkpatrick explains a new service called Tweeterboard that analyzes data about users of Twitter.

Quote:

“While you can look at the number of followers and friends a person has on Twitter to get some idea of how much weight they carry, that’s only good for so much. So is a black-box algorithm, but there’s a variety of data available on Tweeterboard beyond simple ranking and points.”

Currently, there are about 2,000 Twitter users being tracked on Tweeterboard (here’s mine),

Speaking of Twitter, good luck to my Twitter-friend @susanreynolds (#9 on the Twitterboard Top 100) who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is under-going surgery on Friday (she’s blogging her treatment journey here). Several of Susan’s Twitter friends have added “peas” to their avatars (the little photos or illustrations representing the user) in moral support of Susan. Why peas? Well, it’s a long story. Let’s just say, it’s one of those “you had to be there” things. Being Southern, I’ve added blackeyed peas to mine. Peas on earth, Susan.