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The Honolulu Advertiser, like other Gannett newspapers, has spent a considerable amount of time and effort to set up a hyperlocal blog network at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com. The Advertiser’s web site is littered with small graphical ads that promote individual blogs with the same cookie-cutter approach: the blog’s name, along with the author’s name and picture, with an uninspired tagline such as “A blog by…” or “Blog with…”

Advertiser Editor Mark Platte wrote a progress report in this Honolulu Advertiser op-ed article called Blogs a hit, and we’d love more. One section of this article is interesting:

I’m always on the lookout for new blogs, specifically in areas that aren’t already covered, and I am always asking staffers and those outside the staff if they are interested in blogging. Some have started blogs and decided the time commitment is more than they bargained for, so they drop out. But blogging is about experimenting, and if a blog doesn’t work, there’s no problem replacing it with another authored by someone with a fresh perspective.

This Poinography article from the same day, 15 June 2008, called Editor wants more hits and ad revenue, er, bloggers examined the same section with a cynical view.It’s true that print and broacast advertising revenues have been on the decline for years, as advertisers make more online media buys. The title of this TechCrunch article is a good starting point: Top 100 Advertisers Shifted $1 Billion To the Web Last Year At The Expense Of TV And Newspapers.

As Advertising Age notes, the economy has something to do with this trend: Top 100’s Ad-Spend Growth Grinds to Halt.

The Advertiser has been involved in a long-running labor dispute with its writing staff. The blog network is one way to recruit new, non-union writers who could provide online content during a strike or walkout.

Many of the Advertiser’s bloggers are already union journalists for the newspaper, but the majority of the neighborhood bloggers are new recruits to the Advertiser.

Authority and timeliness

A newspaper’s blogs should be as authoritative and reliable as the print and online editions. I enjoy reading the New York Times’ blogs, especially Bits and The Lede. The blogs provide Some of the Times’ blog articles are a draft or preview of a longer article that appears a few hours later in the print and online editions of the newspaper itself.

A few of the Advertiser’s 36 bloggers need assistance in learning how to blog. Kim Fassler, in an article called Friday Tidbits in her Quarterlife Cafe blog, mentioned that she has problems finding topics for her blog posts:

I suppose Quarterlife Cafe would probably fall into the category of “meaningless fluff” designed to entice the twenty-something crowd into reading the newspaper. But, hey, if I can get just one more apathetic twenty-something to read just one more article and learn just one more important aspect of some Hawaii issue, then I’ll write all the meaningless fluff I can muster.

That post had five subheadings in it, with Kim’s comments on Iran, teenage pregnancy, and cloning. I would have split that single post into 4 articles posted throughout the day.

Some of the comments on Kim’s story were excellent. One person noted that the Advertiser’s blog software seems slow, for example. Their pages do resolve at a lazy pace, but that’s some a good server-side cache could fix.

Tomorrow I’ll post an announcement about a new direction for my blog.

I enjoy using LinkedIn, especially the Answers section of the web site. Users can post questions there, and get answers from other LinkedIn users who have an informed opinion on the topic.

How hard can it be to ask a simple question?

Some LinkedIn users post statements instead of questions. How does anyone answer items like these?

• European Business Improvement Network
• Local governments in NYC, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Boston, Washington, Tampa / St. Petersburg, Baltimore and St. Louis
• I am forming a concept fast food restaurant, based on Asian Street foods. I appreciate any comments, critique and inputs
• Any Excel Experts Out There
• If you are out there and cant get your book published, just send me a email. james
• Where can i get cheep laptops.

I’ve seen questions that look more like headlines:

• Contract or Nothing?
• Silverlight video player error
• Best job for travelling the world?
• Resumes & Online Gaming
• For you mortgage professionals out there
• Motivating People
• MBA in Finance Management
• Christine Johnson - Seeking Employment

Of course, there are users who post their support questions, instead of reading the FAQ or help pages:

• importing contacts
• invitations
• How do I manually add email addresses
• who has viewed my profile
• How do I find groups to join?
• How can I best use Linkedin to promote me service

My favorite question:

• How to edit a question if it is posted wrong?

In the current version of the site, users cannot edit their LinkedIn question once it has been posted. This is probably a safety feature, to keep users from completely changing their question after a few answers have been posted. The user can either close their question, or add a clarification to the questions.

Related posts on billso.com

• 12 April 2008: Finding business contacts and passwords on the Internet
• 4 April 2008: Get LinkedIn with billso.com
• 14 March 2008: Social media in action
• 3 January 2008: Impression management and Facebook
• 10 August 2007: Forty-somethings flock to Facebook
• 2 July 2007: CXOs face malware email attacks
• 20 June 2007: Facebook vs MySpace

As business blogging becomes a key success factor in some industries, business bloggers sometimes face pressure to produce excellent metrics right from the start. Their managers sometimes try shortcuts to success, only to find that the online community can see through these tricks.

SEO 2.0 has posted an excellent list of 10 things a business blog should not do. These include:

Number 1) Writing under an assumed name. I use an old email address (billso) for my domain name (billso.com). My real name is listed on my about page.

Number 9) Requiring employees to read, rank and promote the blog. I do not require my employees or students to comment or rank my blog articles. I do assign blog articles for my students to read with their assignments. My blog articles provide up-to-date examples that my course textbooks cannot provide.

Building reputation and authority

SEO is an acronym that means search engine optimization. There are thousands of blogs and online businesses that offer advice on getting more advertising revenue, more readers and a higher Google rank.

Many bloggers get caught up in revenue generation, as I mentioned in my billso.com article of 27 March 2008. It’s much more difficult to build a blog’s reputation and authority. These attributes can be measured by counting the number and kinds of inbound links to a blog, a blog’s search engine ranking, and quotes in the mainstream media.

For readers, reputation and authority are difficult concepts. It takes little effort to lose these attributes. SEO Chicks has some more good examples of what not to do with a business blog. It’s a bad idea to set up a flog, especially in the United Kingdom:

A ‘flog’ is a fake blog usually created by a PR or online marketing firm for the purpose of falsely representing themselves as a consumer, usually for the purposes of creating a buzz around a specific product or brand. Sometimes this is done as a brand or online reputation management activity.

There’s usually hell to pay when the mainstream media or the blogosphere discovers a flog or a fake.

Related posts on billso.com

• 8 April 2008: Blogging and teaching
• 5 April 2008: Blogging can kill you
• 27 March 2008: Blogging as a business model
• 14 March 2008: Social media in action
• 25 February 2008: Social Media 101
• 11 June 2007: Blogging for a living

This morning, both major daily newspapers in Honolulu published editorials that were highly critical of the City Council. As I discussed last Thursday on billso.com, Mayor Mufi Hannemann has prevailed in his quest for a steel-on-steel rail mass transit system, despite the laughable efforts of several council members to amend, postpone, revisit, second-guess, and micromanage the proposal.

Today’s editorials are significant. Any member of the City Council who wants a newspaper endorsement in upcoming elections should be concerned. In Honolulu, the mainstream media still wields considerable influence over voters.

Enough is enough

I’ve written several articles on this issue because the fixed guideway mass transit project is the largest ever proposed in the state of Hawaii. The decisions that have been made over the last 3 years have led to a US$3.8 billion proposal that will determine how Honolulu’s residents will commute, park and live for the next 50 years.

Oahu has far too many automobiles already. Adding and expanding the roads and highways would only bring more cars and traffic problems.

“A bewildering bill”

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s lead editorial today asks the City Council to let steel-on-steel rail go forward. Their opportunity to make this decision has passed.

The editorial’s description of Wednesday night’s meeting is apt:

Only two members voted for a bewildering bill naming three technologies — rail, rubber-tire and magnetic levitation.

This editorial ended with James Oberstar’s assessment that Honolulu’s train system might become the country’s most efficient light-rail project. Oberstar runs the US House committee on transportation. Hawaii’s senior senator, Daniel Inouye, is his counterpart on the Senate committee. Oberstar’s promise of US$900M in funding seems linked to steel-on-steel rail.

Today’s Honolulu Advertiser has a front page article about the height and placement of the transit stations and guideway. Much of this information was available last year, when the city presented its proposals along with computer-generated images of the project.

An editorial in the same edition implored the council to “stop the games” and recommend one technology in their final vote this Wednesday. The front page article acknowledged that the Mayor Hannemann can veto the Council’s final recommendation, and that the Council probably does not have enough votes to override his veto.

Calling out the opposition

The editorial also asked Barbara Marshall and Charles Djou to abstain from the vote, citing their long-standing opposition to the fixed guideway transit project. Romy Cachola is called a flip-flopper who put his district ahead of the island’s greater interest.

Finally, Ann Kobayashi got a reminder that the Council had three years to do their homework and make a decision. Kobayashi and Donovan Dela Cruz both fought hard and long for a bus-based system that resembled previous Mayor Jeremy Harris’s recommendations. Fellow council members were not swayed then or now.

There will be more hearings and decisions about the exact route of the trail, and the placement of the rail stations. Bills have already been proposed to regulate building activity and growth around the project. The Council’s inability to recommend a transit technology may become the enduring legacy of the current council members.

It’s time to end the discussion and move forward on light rail.

Related posts on billso.com

• 17 April 2008: Back on track
• 15 April 2008: Council members discuss mass transit research
• 2 April 2008: Still on track?
• 20 March 2008: Like a fifth wheel
• 21 February 2008: Delhi catches monorail fever: Is Honolulu next?
• 6 February 2008: Hawaii has highest car ownership costs in the USA
• 21 June 2007: Mayor: state could pay for airport mass transit line
• 19 June 2007: City council, planners still arguing over mass transit routes, modes

From BoingBoing, Memex, SaveTheInternet, TenPercent and TorrentFreak comes this story: Virgin Media’s new CEO, Neil Berkett, believes that net neutrality is “bollocks”. He wants to sell faster access on Virgin’s broadband network to the highest bidders - most likely large portals and advertisers.

Of course, Virgin Media could also use QoS (Quality of Service) protocols that are built into modern TCP/IP implementations to market a premium high speed service that would let subscribers get faster access to the entire Internet - for a price.

I discussed net neutrality in a billso.com post on 4 March 2008. It’s an important topic, especially as telecom firms and government look for new ways to squeeze more revenue out of subscribers.

There’s a long discussion thread at BoingBoing, with comments from several UK readers who want to break their Virgin Media contracts over this issue. Virgin Media is one of the largest providers of Internet broadband connectivity in the UK. It’s possible that the UK government will stop Virgin’s plans to shift almost all traffic to a lower priority.

Charlie Stross believes that Virgin Media, which used to be NTL/Telewest before a rebranding effort in 2007, is dropping packets for residential connections that use routers.

After the media attention regarding Phorm’s advertising cookies, which I discussed in a billso.com post on 9 April 2008, one would think that British telecoms would be a bit smarter than this.

UPDATED 20 May 2008: Kimberley Edwards has some additional comments in her 24 April 2008 article.