Looking beyond ugly sites and silly leads
I was leafing through a copy of the Journal of Accountancy and came across one of those how-to-blog pieces that every B2B magazine in the world seems to be running.
The article is worth noting for three reasons:
1) The print version of this piece looked pretty good. Graphics, fonts, etc. all worked nicely. It wasn't breathtaking, but nor was it awful. So why oh why does the article look so bloody ridiculous on the JofA Web site? How is it possible that at this late stage in new media a B2B publisher like JofA doesn't seem to care about how its brand is presented online?
2) Granted, the author of this piece isn't a journalist. But she is an author, and I assume that someone at JofA edited the piece before it appeared. So what's with the silly lead paragraph? Why do so many pieces about citizen journalism sound so goofy? Why do so many articles in trade magazines, regardless of subject, have such a gee-whiz-watch-me-write-something- funny feel to them? If I could get one message across to every trade journalist in the world, it would be this: "Don't be cute."
3) Even when I dislike an article, I often find something of value in it. And in the JofA piece there's a link to a site dedicated to CEO bloggers. Click on it. Take a look around. There are some interesting folks on the list, including a guy who runs a sheet metal company, a woman who runs a technology consulting firm and public-relations guy with an interest in Voice over Internet Protocol telephony.
Is anyone from the industry you cover on the list?