Friday Fast Five + Bonus Five!

By Benét J. Wilson, DJTF co-chair,

Online Managing Editor-Business Aviation, Aviation Week Group

Ok,  I had a lot of stuff pile up over Thanksgiving, so this week you get 10 tips.  Enjoy!

1. 5 Ways to find, mix and mash your data: I’m continuing my streak to include something every week from Mark Luckie’s 10000Words blog.  This post offers up great mash-up tools that you can use to enhance any story.
2. The Complete Guide to Video Blogging: Let’s say one resolution for 2010 is to start a video blog.  This post from Mashable’s Leah Betancourt offers step-by-step instructions on how to do it.
3. New Tricks: Set up a YouTube account and customize your channel: And you’ll need somewhere to store those videos.  So this  Old Media, New Tricks blog lets you have a customized home for your videos that can easily be linked to web sites or emailed to subscribers, potential employers or customers.
4. Online tools for more productive blogging: CNET News’ Webware blog offers up some really cool tools, most of them free, to help maximize your blog.
5. 10 WordPress Plugins to Help Build Community: I just started using WordPress when I started this blog, and I know I haven’t begun to tap the true power of this blogging platform.  But Mashable contributor Jessica Faye Carter offers some tools that really let you tap your inner WordPress geek.
6. 50 Surprisingly Amazing Themes for Blogger: For those of you who use Blogger but their selection of blog templates doesn’t float your boat, the Specky Boy Web site has some great templates, most of them free.
7. 10 Useful Tools for Finding the Perfect Domain Name:   This blog post from Web Design Ledger offers up some great tips on picking the right domain name for your web site.
8. Four More Twitter Account Cleaners: For those of you on Twitter, you know you need to go through your account and clean up the dead wood by dropping people who are lurkers, spammers and bots.  The Blogging Tips blog offers 4 great tools to do just that.
9. 8 Reasons You Need to Stop Ignoring Twitter:  These tips come from the Web Pro News blog, which is more marketing focused.  But the tips — including Building Valuable Relationships — are applicable to journalists and public relations specialists too.
10. 10 Web trends to watch in 2010: Mashable founder Chris Cashmore uses his CNN tech column to offer his thoughts, including: real-time ramps up; augmented reality; and cloud computing.

“Desperate” Is Theme of HuffPost Founder’s FTC Journalism Speech

By Benét J. Wilson, DJTF co-chair,

Online Managing Editor-Business Aviation, Aviation Week Group

The second day of the Federal Trade Commission’s 2-day workshop to explore how the Internet has affected journalism featured  keynote speaker  was Arianna Huffington, founder and editor of the Huffington Post blog.   Many old-school journalists blame people like Huffington as one of the reasons for what they see as the demise of the old advertising-based model for the industry.

Huffington was kind enough to offer up her thoughts about the future of journalism.   “Ever since we decided to launch the Huffington Post, I’ve talked about how the future of journalism will be a hybrid future where traditional media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and immediacy) and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy, and high-impact investigative journalism),” she wrote.

In summary, she’s saying don’t hate the player — hate the game.  What Huffington Post and other services, such as the Daily Beast, are fully embracing the hybrid future, while old school media, like News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, try desperately to cling to the old ways.  I think there’s room for both, and we’re seeing great examples of what can be done, as cited by Huffington and blogged about by me at Musings of a New Media Maven: TechDirt, ProPublica, Baltimore Brew, Maryland Reporter, Texas Tribune, and Voice of San Diego.

You can read National Association of Black Journalists President Kathy Times’ testimony here.  Check out this running Wiki of the workshop coverage here.  And last, but not least, you can get a summary of the top Tweets from the 2-day event from the Media Shift blog, here.