The New Rust Belt Chronicles is Coming!

The Rust Belt Chronicles has gone dark. I decided to take the time to manually move my blogs from Google Blogger to my new site on WordPress. The project has become rather tedious, but all good things must be designed properly.

 There are applications to make the transition happen quickly, but I wasn’t sure how involved the work would be to categorize the old blogs and possibly have to reformat the text and links. Why not just do it myself? Moving and placement of all the photos adds to the time to transpose and the occasional “404 error” implies the post has to be deleted and start again. The first time that instance happened it took me 3 hours of scratching my head to figure out the problem (like too large of a photo) and simply trash the article.

I always learn the hard way!

I am not sure if I will try to move each comment from Blogger to WordPress since that becomes another nightmare. We’ve got so much else to do to organize the newspaper regarding business decisions the comments may get moved later.

Once I achieve the transposing of the blogs, my blogging should resume on a regular schedule.

I should be done by Friday.

Perhaps by mid-April, the new Rust Belt Chronicles will make its debut.

Until We Meet Again,
 Jim Carver

Author: The Legacy of David A. Wells- The Lexington High School “Band of Gold”
Something Meaningful that Matters!
www.successthroughmusic.com

http://jimcarver.blogspot.com/

Disclaimer- Books and links on this website contain affiliate marketing sources between Jim Carver and third party companies. I only recommend products, brands and businesses that I strongly support. Photos used on this site are used courtesy of the original authors and in no way endorse The Rust Belt Chronicles or my work. Thank you.

What's a Newspaper?

 

Welcome to my 100^th blog since joining Blogger in July of 2012. Prior to joining blogger.com (a free blog maker), I wrote blogs for a couple of years in a local paper online, The Mansfield News Journal, and Cleveland.com (online version of The Cleveland Plain Dealer).

The One Thing

One thing I would do different is create my own blog sooner in Blogger instead of focusing on my local newspaper as a primary source. Gannett News owns our local paper and ended blogging earlier this year by going to a pay-per-view version. For a little while, I wrote blogs in the last remaining Gannett owned newspaper in Montgomery Alabama. (Thanks to Hugmama).

One Less Blogger

At the end of the third business quarter this year, Gannett discovered it actually made money from going to pay subscription. Three days later, the Montgomery Alabama newspaper, The Montgomery Advertiser, hid their blog format and a couple of weeks later; ended public blogging altogether.

The Mansfield, Ohio paper gave us notification while the Alabama newspaper gave us no indication of the sudden change in policy. This method was poor public relations on their part, but it doesn’t surprise me.

Here We Go Again

Now the Plain Dealer is in financial trouble and may limit their paper printing and delivery to a few days per week. Will the Plain Dealer go to a pay-per-view subscription and how will that affect public bloggers? I still blog on Cleveland.com. They’ve voted me Blogger of the Week several times. It’s a first class newspaper and by recognizing bloggers weekly it shows the online newspaper values the folks adding value.

Why Start Now?

Part of the idea of creating my own online paper- The Rust Belt Chronicles came about from my adventures with blogging in newspapers and seeing what’s lacking in today’s digital news. The book I reviewed the other day- The Impact Equation by authors, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, played a large role in those thoughts as well.

Extra, Extra, Read All About It?

The problem with Gannett News is it doesn’t offer enough niche information to justify subscriptions. In fact, our local paper appears to feature less articles focusing on our immediate area. National or World news can be read for free, so why pay for news that is free from countless media sources? Newspapers are dying a slow death. When was the last time you saw a newspaper rack on a sidewalk?

That’s what I thought. News has been digitized, amplified, and ostracized. But is pay-per-view how we want it to reach us? Local news is now competing with the biggest news source ever- the Internet.

The Good News?

These days anyone can be an owner, news breaker or story teller. To be successful doesn’t require being a giant conglomerate like Gannet News. The pendulum has shifted. The problem is newspaper media is responding by using a dated philosophy-reducing quality and charging a fee.

Seeing is Believing

Our local paper in printed format is nothing like it was in its prime. It covered meetings of nearly every organization and gave you all the updates. Newspapers offered page after page of full paid advertisements and thick as a brick on Sunday’s. I use to pity the paperboy carrying all those heavy papers in his paper bag, strapped over his shoulder.

Visit the local library and compare the content from 1972 and 2012. It’s a shocking change in the quality and quantity of articles.

In our lifetime, a small child will one day ask: “What’s a newspaper, Daddy?

Until We Meet Again,
 Jim Carver

Author: The Legacy of David A. Wells- The Lexington High School “Band of Gold”
Something Meaningful that Matters!
www.successthroughmusic.com

http://jimcarver.blogspot.com/

Disclaimer- Books and links on this website contain affiliate marketing sources between Jim Carver and third party companies. I only recommend products, brands and businesses that I strongly support. Photos used on this site are used courtesy of the original authors and in no way endorse The Rust Belt Chronicles or my work. Thank you.

 

Blogspiracy?

Google or WordPress?

I have considered purchasing a Genesis Framework or Studio Press skin (theme) and converting my Google Blogger to WordPress. Having used WordPress (the free version- .com) a few times in the past, I noticed my blogs rate highly in all the major search engines. Google Blogger doesn’t seem to work well with Bing or Yahoo.

After seeing a few tutorials on the ease of creating the blog, my fear of the process has been reduced considerably. It’s the moving of my old blog history to WordPress that concerns me. A little more research into that part of the process is all I need.

Blogspiracy?

Tonight, I logged into my blog to find all of my Google statistics missing. Luckily, I signed up for Google Analytics and all of my blog stats are intact. Fearing I somehow was capable of creating a disaster, I checked the discussion board of Blogger to discover the reset of page views to zero happened this evening; so it has affected many users (or perhaps all users?).

Maybe it's time for a change in where my blog resides?

 

Michael Hyatt- Gets Noticed with his Platform

 

Michael Hyatt and his web designer are working on creating a premium theme for WordPress entitled: GetNoticed!. Michael is the former Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. He currently is a consultant, speaker and author of the bestseller - Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World (Thomas Nelson).

The premium theme Michael is creating is based on many of the suggestions from his Platform book. The project appears to be interesting given Michaels ability to maximize his audience. I don’t know the price yet, but I am sure it will be worth every penny.

Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World has given me a better understanding of blogging and I discovered many nice little secrets to improving my blogging platform.

I strongly recommend Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World.

Purchasing a web theme through Genesis or Studio Press can cost as little as $59.95 (one-time fee) and a hosting service like Bluehost for $3.00-$6.00 per month(depending who you purchase through).

I’ve got a birthday coming up this week; it might be time to treat myself with a new blog site look, greater uptime, support (24/7) and improved SEO.

Until We Meet Again,
 Jim Carver

Author: The Legacy of David A. Wells- The Lexington High School “Band of Gold”
Something Meaningful that Matters!
www.successthroughmusic.com

http://jimcarver.blogspot.com/

Disclaimer- Books and links on this website contain affiliate marketing sources between Jim Carver and third party companies. I only recommend products, brands and businesses that I strongly support. Photos used on this site are used courtesy of the original authors and in no way endorse The Rust Belt Chronicles or my work. Thank you.