Work/Life

The Daily Coyote

bethperry — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:51:00 +0000

Shreve Stockton was a disillusioned, 20-something photographer living in New York City when she drove through Wyoming on her first cross-country trip a few years ago. She would say later that as soon as she saw the red mountains, expansive valleys and open air, she felt a visceral need to come back. Ever the free-spirit, she packed all of her things a few months later and moved 2,000 miles to the Wyoming countryside, where she began living in a cabin and dating a cowboy.

A few months later, her boyfriend brought home a baby coyote, covered in giant, translucent fleas. He’d been orphaned after his parents were shot for killing sheep. After a few days of deliberation, Stockton decided to let the coyote stay in her home, name it Charlie, and help “raise” him.

The Daily Coyote is Stockton’s photo blog of pictures she’s taken of Charlie growing up: playing gently with her tomcat, tussling with her pet hound, chewing on his own plush toys. (Yes, apparently, “domesticated” coyotes like plush toys.) Last year, she got a book deal with Simon & Schuster mainly because the site pulls in 1 million hits per month. But somewhere after that (the book came out last year), Stockton began charging people to “subscribe” to her once-free ”Daily Coyote” email newsletter, which includes a daily photo of Charlie doing something adorable.

This caused her original site to turn into something of a wasteland. She no longer updates it regularly; right now there are just a few photos up, and the most recent ones are from May. Of course, they’re striking — in one, Charlie lies on his belly as Stockton’s hound, then a puppy, chews playfully on his leg; another shows Charlie staring over his shoulder into the dry Wyoming wilderness — but there just aren’t enough of them.

And aside from Stockton’s occassional attempts to engage her non-subscribers with caption contests for the free photos (a recent competition resulted in a whopping 356 comments), there just isn’t much there for the non-paying reader. I wasn’t familiar with Stockton until I read her book, and when I went to the site afterwards, it was a huge let-down. Unless, of course, that is the point: Perhaps Stockton has stripped her site bare on purpose to make people pay for the good stuff. (Subscriptions start at $5/month.) Even then, I don’t think a couple more photos would break the bank.

Lynn Sweet

bethperry — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:03:12 +0000

I sometimes feel sorry for the Chicago Sun-Times, and it’s not because the publisher of the venerable newspaper filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. No, my pity stems from the fact that their Washington bureau chief, Lynn Sweet, writes a highly engaging/borderline addictive blog — but it isn’t for them. Sure, she does blog for the Times, but it reads like a succession of newsbriefs. Despite her attempts to jazz things up with an occasional embedded video, the posts are spare, borderline antiseptic, and sass-free. And the busy layout and scrolling format make the page difficult to navigate.

The real magic happens a jump away in the land of political horseracing, at Sweet’s Politics Daily blog. The posts are more lengthy, more conversational, and much more enjoyable. As she does for the Sun-Times, she reports the comings and goings of the Obamas, but here, she adds the occasional sartorial bite: A recent headline for a story in her “Daily FLOTUS” blog about the First Lady’s visit to a brand new Capitol Hill farmer’s market read ”Michelle Obama at Farmers Market Launch: ‘Yay for Vegetables!’

Even her picture is more inviting: In her headshot on the Sun-Times column, she is buried behind glasses and flat hair, looking stern, hard, even annoyed. Yet in her fresh-faced Politics Daily glamour shot, her head is flirtatiously tilted, her layered bangs frame her face, and she looks confident yet approachable.

Of course, five years ago, people couldn’t have cared less about the way a serious newspaper journalist held her head in a photograph. But that is what new media does; it allows readers to relate not only to the words, but to the person who wrote them as well. This shows in the reader response on her two blogs: A quick survey of her Sun-Times blog showed most stories had between zero and one comments. Her Politics Daily blog, however, is burning up the charts in comparison, with posts garnering at least a dozen comments and up to as many as 25. She’s built a loyal, engaged audience at Politics Daily that the other blog just doesn’t appear to have. And that’s unfortunate, since the bankrupt newspaper needs to ramp up its web traffic to stay around.

Then again, Sweet is smart. She hurds her readers back and forth between the two, with embedded links and nonchalant plugs like “As I reported in the Chicago Sun-Times. . .” And I’d be willing to bet that the Politics Daily crowd goes wherever she sends them.

The Huffington Post and Jason Linkins

bethperry — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:30:40 +0000

There has been lots of chatter lately about derivative sites that aggregate newspaper headlines and sell ads based on other writers’ content. One of my favorite websites — the Huffington Post – is part newspaper aggregator and part blog site. The site is often criticized for finding stories that might interest its audience from other outlets and posting the headline and part (or, more rarely, all) of the story on their site. They use splash headlines on the front page and a pretty spare, newspaper-like design that can sometimes feel as though they are passing the stories off as their own.

But at the same time, a link to the original story is always embedded at the end of each post, and many publishers praise HuffPo for driving traffic to their sites. And the mind-blowing engagement of their readers is undeniable: A recent post about Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s health care speech last week boasted almost 13,000 comments. Their huge, talkative readership makes for lively discussion and instant feedback. One of the most rewarding aspects of new media is its ability to make news feel like a two-way street, and it amazes me that reader reaction can be so immediate and large-scale. I also like how the site encourages bloggers to respond to reader comments in order to create a dialogue.

All of that said, here lies the rub: I do wish that Huffington Post invested more resources into their original, reported content. One of my favorite of their staff bloggers is Jason Linkins. Officially, he covers politics and media; in practice, he pretty much makes fun of political reporting, much of it from cable news. I love his posts because 1) he eliminates the need to slog through hours of cable news coverage by providing highlights and 2) he embeds video into his posts, so I can watch it “live” and get the full effect of what happened. He normally follows up with a bit of sarcastic analysis that makes you think and laugh at the same time. His posts are short, witty, and enlightening – they’re normally less than 500 words, and even if you don’t agree with him, you’re entertained by his point of view. And he’s great for calling out the mainstream media in a way that wasn’t so readily available before the internet.