Test Post for WordPress

This is a sample post created to test the basic formatting features of the WordPress CMS.

Subheading Level 2

You can use bold text, italic text, and combine both styles.

  1. Step one
  2. Step two
  3. Step three

This content is only for demonstration purposes. Feel free to edit or delete it.

Test Post for WordPress

This is a sample post created to test the basic formatting features of the WordPress CMS.

Subheading Level 2

You can use bold text, italic text, and combine both styles.

  1. Step one
  2. Step two
  3. Step three

This content is only for demonstration purposes. Feel free to edit or delete it.

Test Post for WordPress

This is a sample post created to test the basic formatting features of the WordPress CMS.

Subheading Level 2

You can use bold text, italic text, and combine both styles.

  1. Step one
  2. Step two
  3. Step three

This content is only for demonstration purposes. Feel free to edit or delete it.

Test Post for WordPress

This is a sample post created to test the basic formatting features of the WordPress CMS.

Subheading Level 2

You can use bold text, italic text, and combine both styles.

  1. Step one
  2. Step two
  3. Step three

This content is only for demonstration purposes. Feel free to edit or delete it.

Test Post for WordPress

This is a sample post created to test the basic formatting features of the WordPress CMS.

Subheading Level 2

You can use bold text, italic text, and combine both styles.

  1. Step one
  2. Step two
  3. Step three

This content is only for demonstration purposes. Feel free to edit or delete it.

Test Post for WordPress

This is a sample post created to test the basic formatting features of the WordPress CMS.

Subheading Level 2

You can use bold text, italic text, and combine both styles.

  1. Step one
  2. Step two
  3. Step three

This content is only for demonstration purposes. Feel free to edit or delete it.

Why WordPress?

Here at The Seattle Times, we’re preparing to replace our decade-old digital CMS with WordPress. Can a free blogging tool power a complex, high-traffic newspaper website? We think so, and we’re not alone.

Newspapers have long used WordPress to power blogs (as if blog posts were somehow wholly different from articles), but a growing number of “old media” sites have moved their primary digital publishing activity over to WordPress, so we’re in increasingly good company. A few such sites with WordPress at their core:

And of course, a much larger number of digital-only news sites — including many that get way more traffic than we do — use WordPress. So it’s not a question of scale, I think, but more a question of culture.

In our quest for culture change here, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the inspiration we took from Journal Register Company’s 2010 Ben Franklin Project — a bid to publish in print and online using only free tools — and Bangor’s pioneering and welldocumented switch to WordPress.

Want to help us realize our own open-source digital news future? Check out our job openings in technology, design and product management.

Back to the newsroom, off to Seattle

When I left the Los Angeles Times in the depths of the 2008 financial crisis — a time when the newspaper industry’s future looked particularly bleak — I wondered wistfully if I was walking away from my last newspaper job. I’d worked for newspaper companies my entire career, and despite their sometimes frustratingly slow advance into the digital age, I’ve always loved newspapers and the work they do.

Turns out, I’m not finished with newspapers. Or they are not finished with me.

I am starting a new job next month at The Seattle Times as assistant managing editor, digital. I’ll be guiding editorial efforts on the paper’s online products, including SeattleTimes.com. The Times has earned a reputation for innovation in local digital journalism, and I am looking forward to being a part of the talented team that makes it happen.

I’ve missed the newsroom, and I can’t wait to get back there.

Photo: Clock at Pike Place Market, Seattle, by Flickr user mikeensor (Creative Commons)

Checking in from Canada

In the four months since my last post — yes, I’m a terrible blogger — I’ve moved to Vancouver and started teaching at the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Among other things, I’m coordinating the school’s Integrated Journalism course, required of all first-year students, and advising some second-year students on their theses.

It’s been a terrific experience so far, and I highly recommend the school’s Canwest Global visiting professor program to other professionals looking to take some time away from the field and work with some seriously smart and engaged student journalists.

And did I mention Vancouver is awesome?

Photo: Cherry tree in bloom in Stanley Park.

Posted here and there

The problem with writing for several outlets is that your stuff lacks a home on the Internet. But it’s nothing that a little aggregation can’t fix. In case you missed it, here’s some of what I’ve been writing in the last few months:

  • Today at De Nieuwe Reporter, the Dutch online journalism blog I write for, I posted a piece on InfoCamp, a terrific unconference I attended last month in Seattle. It’s about what online journalists can learn from information scientists. (And yes, it’s in English.)
  • I’ve been enjoying using TwitterTim.es, an aggregator that lets you build a personalized “newspaper” featuring the posts tweeted most frequently by people you follow. (Here’s mine.) Intrigued, I interviewed Maxim Grinev, the site’s tech lead, for Online Journalism Review.
  • I weighed in on the question of whether SEO practices make for dumb, boring headlines, also at OJR. (By the way, I’m working on an online course on writing headlines for the web for the Poynter Institute’s NewsU. If you have some instructive experiences to share, please let me know.)
  • Finally, I wrote about recently launched redesigns at Germany’s Spiegel Online, where I worked this summer, and my alma mater, the Los Angeles Times, also for De Nieuwe Reporter.

Also, as I’m doing more writing and consulting in various places, I’ve updated my about page with the customary disclosures.