The city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has an idea that seems to verge quite close to being an act of suppressing freedom of speech with a new $300 “business privilege license” that all bloggers in Philadelphia will be charged if they want to keep writing online. 

All local Philadelphia bloggers will have to pay for the privilege license regardless of whether or not they make any money from their blogs.  Even if a person writes a blog as a hobby, just for fun, or for a personal creative outlet — they’ll have to cough up the $300 to keep blogging.

The online buzz about Philadelphia’s new “business privilege license” is calling it a violation of free speech citing the fact that only people who can afford to pay the $300 license fee will have the ability to express their thoughts on the heretofore free-flow of online information and conversation on the social web that was born of user-generated content and citizen journalism.

MSNBC.com republished an article by Teresa Masterson of NBCPhiladelphia.com, where Masterson makes the following keen observations:

“Blogger Marilyn Bess, whose Ms. Philly Organic Blog has made her a whopping $50 over the past few years, went to the city’s tax amnesty program to explain that she makes pennies on her hobby. They told her to hire an accountant, she told the City Paper. In an economy where jobs are sparse and people try to make ends meet with part-time jobs, taxing the independent, scrappy freelancers and bloggers seems counterproductive. But the emptying of bloggers’ wallets may not be the worst result of these taxes. With the city’s charge being more than what most bloggers make, their voices could be silenced, as the extra expense is enough to discourage many from even having a blog.”

The story even made the news as you can see in the video below:

What do you think?  How can bloggers fight similar tactics from spreading to other cities?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Congratulations to Dan Schawbel (whose Personal Branding Blog, Student Branding Blog, and Twitter updates are syndicated through Newstex) for his well-deserved inclusion in Inc.com’s 2010 List of the Top Entrepreneurs under 30.

Seeing Dan on this list doesn’t come as a surprise to me.  I’ve been one of his fans for a while now (he was even kind enough to write the forward for my book that’s coming out in November, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing), for a simple reason — he gets two of my favorite subjects, social media marketing and branding.  To see someone who is under 30 with such a clear grasp of somewhat intangible topics and a desire to help his peers gain a better understanding of those subjects in such a positive manner is inspirational.

Dan is a sought after public speaker and offers social media and branding services through his company, Millenial Branding.  You can hear Dan describe his company and his vision in the video below.

Yahoo! News was quick to jump on the hot story that John Aravosis of AMERICAblog (syndicated by Newstex and previously discussed in this article about John’s conversation with President Obama) broke on Monday that showed an oil spill-related photo that had been doctored by BP.

BP responded by taking the photo down from its website, but the story wasn’t over yet.  John followed up on Tuesday with another photo that BP had altered.

Kudos to John for catching BP’s error in judgment and showing that bloggers offer Authoritative Content that plays an important role in the world of publishing!

Be sure to follow the links above to see the altered photos in John’s posts along side of the originals.

Toby Bloomberg, of the Diva Marketing Blog, launched a new free ebook this month called Social Media Marketing GPS. It’s the first business book written on – not about – Twitter. Tweet interviews were conducted with 40 social media marketers including people from Dell, Comcast, Marketing Profs, and BlogHer and put together into this free ebook in a narrative that takes the reader from the importance of social media to ethics to the social enterprise, tactics, sponsored conversations, and blogger relations.

As Toby explains, “the goal was to create a comprehensive body of knowledge that could serve as a roadmap (GPS) for developing a strategic social media plan. My thoughts were if this could be accomplished in a series of 140 character tweets it might help ease the apprehension for people new to social media, while at the same time, providing a review and offering some interesting ideas for those more experienced.”

A number of the people interviewed for the ebook are bloggers and online publishers whose content is syndicated through Newstex, including:

• Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing and @tobydiva
• Ann Handley of Marketing Profs Daily Fix and @marketingprofs
• BL Ochman of What’s Next Blog and @whatsnext
• C.B. Whittemore of Flooring the Consumer and Simple Marketing Blog and @CBWhittemore
• David Meerman Scott from WebInkNow and @dmscott
• Nancy White of Full Circle Associates and @nancywhite
• Neville Hobson of NevilleHobson.com and @jangles
• Susan Getgood of Marketing Roadmaps and @sgetgood

You can download Social Media Marketing GPS for free here.

The big publisher news out this week  is about True/Slant, a Newstex publisher, which will be acquired by Forbes.   True/Slant is a unique Web site offering original content news tailored to both the “Entrepreneurial Journalist” and marketers who want a more effective way to engage with digital audiences.  The acquisition of True/Slant by Forbes clearly communicates that True/Slant is a respected publisher of Authoritative Content.

True/Slant Founder and CEO Lewis Dvorkin, who spent several years working for Forbes earlier in his career, will join Forbes as chief Product Officer on June 1, 2010.  In his new role at Forbes, Dvorkin will lead all Forbes editorial areas.  According to the press release:

“Forbes mission and message will not change.  There will be new opportunities for people inside Forbes; new opportunities for audiences to have a deeper relationship with Forbes; and new opportunities for marketers to engage with our important audiences.”

And in the words of Dvorkin as published on the True/Slant blog, The Copy Box:

“The news business remains in tremendous turmoil, searching for both credible journalistic experiences and profitable models: High cost, high quality journalism is staring into the face of low cost “content farming.”

The True/Slant team is quite proud that it helped lead the way in producing high quality content in an efficient manner. Now, we are incredibly excited about moving our ideas and passion on to the bigger stage of Forbes.com and all of Forbes Media’s other properties.”

You can read Dvorkin’s full blog post here.

Newstex Authoriative Blogger David Donoghue of the Chicago IP Litigation Blog and partner in Chicago’s Holland & Knight law firm won the Kogan Award in the online category from the Chicago Bar Association’s (CBA) annual Herman Kogan Media Awards Competition.

The Kogan Award is the highest honor of the competition which honors local journalists and legal affairs reporting, and as the winner, David received a trophy and a $1,000 scholarship, which he can donate to a journalism school of his choice.

David’s win came from the entry of his “Northern District of Illinois’ New Local Patent Rules”, which he published on his blog offering analysis of the new laws related to local patents and the potential impact those laws will have on future litigation filings in Chicago.

Congratulations, David!

Congratulations to ProPublica (whose content is syndicated through Newstex) for reporter Sheri Fink’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize win for Investigative Reporting.

ProPublica is a non-profit investigative news organization that began publishing in 2008.  The content produced by ProPublica is shared free-of-charge with news organizations that need help supplementing their own content following deep reductions in their reporting staffs.  Sheri Fink’s series for ProPublica was published on both the ProPublica Web site and in New York Times Magazine and told the story of how one New Orleans hospital’s staff struggled and the difficult choices they were forced to make in the days after Hurricane Katrina.

ProPublica has more news on the Pulitzer Prize front, too.  ProPublica reporters Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein were named finalists for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for an article they wrote that was published on the ProPublica Web site and in the Los Angeles Times about the oversight of nursing in California.

ProPublica has been getting noticed and recognized through numerous awards aside from the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.  For example, ProPublica reporter T. Christian Miller (along with Los Angeles Times reporter Doug Smith and photographer Francine Orr) won the online reporting award from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting for a project they did that told the stories of civilian contract workers in Iraq and Afghanistan.  You can read more about the awards ProPublica has won here.

Newstex is proud to be able to syndicate the authoritative content from ProPublica.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury Department acknowledged that blogs provide authoritative content when they invited approximately 20 financial bloggers to a two-hour round table discussion.  Eight of the invited financial bloggers attended the round table on November 2, 2009 with the Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, and other senior Treasury Department officials.

Among the financial bloggers in attendance were several whose authoritative content is distributed through Newstex, including:

• Michael Panzner of Financial Armageddon (read my interview with Michael from earlier this year here)
• Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism
• David Merkel of The Aleph Blog
• Accrued Interest

You can read their blog post recaps of the round table discussion with the Treasury Department officials in the following posts:

• Curious Meeting at the Treasury from Naked Capitalism
• My Visit to the Treasury from The Aleph Blog Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
• A Few Observations of My Own from Financial Armageddon
• Financial Regulation: How Would You Have It Work? from Accrued Interest

According to an article in The New York Times, the financial blogger audience surprised the Treasury officials who found them to be better informed than the groups the Treasury officials are used to talking to.

That’s just one more verification of what we already knew — bloggers can produce highly Authoritative Content!

Image: Flickr

If you’ve ever wondered whether or not blogs are a source of authoritative and influential content, then that question was answered this week when President Barack Obama held a special conference call with a group of bloggers to discuss health care reform.

Some of the bloggers on the conference call with President Obama syndicate their content through Newstex Blogs On Demand, and we’d like to give them special recognition today on the Newstex blog.  You can also follow the links below to read more about their experiences on the historic call.

John Aravosis of AMERICAblog

David Dayen of D-Day

Jane from Above Average Jane

(you can read more about Jane from Above Average Jane in this Newstex Blogger in the Spotlight post)

We truly live in an amazing time where authoritative content from sources outside of traditional news media are getting the recognition they deserve.  Newstex is proud to make the content from these blogs available to a wider audience through Newstex Blogs On Demand licensed syndication.

Image: Flickr

The days of newspapers and magazines trying to be everything to everyone are over thanks to the overwhelming amount of information freely available online.  However, the problem in the 21st century is finding relevant and useful information hidden in the cluttered online world.  Let’s face it — Google searches don’t always deliver the exact information you’re looking for.

It’s no secret that newspapers and traditional media like print magazines have been struggling over the past decade with many completely repositioning their brands and content (e.g., Newsweek, Time), adjusting their delivery frequency (e.g., U.S. News and World Report, Playboy) or moving to web distribution only (e.g., PC Magazine, Blender).  However, as the majority of traditional media organizations struggle to find ways to remain relevant and profitable, one brand has remained strong despite the shift in consumer media consumption habits.  That brand is The Economist whose advertising revenue was up in 2008 and print circulation numbers have remained fairly steady over the past several years (via The Atlantic Online).

How has The Economist remained relevant as other media organizations have lost their way?  Simple — niche and focus.

First, The Economist is written in a manner that appeals to a niche audience rather than for the masses.  In the digital world, people can find very specific content through Web searches (albeit, the search process could take a significant amount of time).  These days, people have less patience to accept and consume content that is written with broad appeal in mind.  They want content that is meaningful to them,  and they spend less time on the “extras” that non-niche publications provide.  For example, why should a person read through an entire entertainment magazine when they really only care about one singer or actor?  It’s faster and more satisfying to go to the sources where that person can find a wealth of highly relevant information than to leaf through the many irrelevant pages of a broad appeal periodical.  Most often, that source these days is online, but a few traditional newspapers and magazines continue to survive using niche audience strategies.

The Economist also syndicates its blog content through Newstex, which gets its content directly in front of niche audiences who are looking for the authoritative content that The Economist delivers.  Unlike other publications that push their content across a myriad of sites on the Internet, The Economist has chosen a more focused distribution approach that caters directly to the niche audience they know finds it useful. 

Which leads us to the second part of The Economist’s strategy…

Second, The Economist has a narrow focus — far more so than many of its competitor magazines.  In marketing theory, the law of contraction tells us that a brand will be stronger if it contracts rather than expands because doing so gives it a narrower focus.  A wide, everything to everyone focus actually weakens a brand.  By focusing on what you do best and delivering the best with every customer interaction, your brand will grow stronger organically, and organic growth is much stronger than artificial growth.

There has been so much buzz both online and offline about the fate of newpapers and printed periodicals of late.  Let’s hope there will be room for both in the 21st century.  However, there are lessons to learn from The Economist for both offline and digital content publishers: find your niche and focus on it through a variety of digital touchpoints such as blogs, video, and more.

Image: Flickr