I'm known as an 'information yearns to be free' guy across the net, but as I talk to more people who have had success selling access to content, I'm becoming more open to the idea. Especially when I visit with guys like Broc Romanek, a lawyer, who's one of editors at TheCorporateCounsel.net. Understand Broc's working with a company, with multiple people, and in a full time gig.

In the case of some of the lawyers, there's some meat on the bone. They've been practicing law for years. They're widely respected in their state or nationally in niche areas of the law. They have an appreciation of the type of content that should be freely available on a blog and that for which the premium value may warrant charging for. They have a broad following. And they've thought through the delivery mechanism for the premium content.

Other lawyers haven't got to the second minute thinking through the idea. They have not a clue about web content, or for that matter how the Internet and blogs even work. They're looking for a quick way to make money because they saw someone else do it. Lot's of luck to you guys.

Pat Thornton, a new media journalist, Web developer, and publisher of The Journalism Iconoclast, sheds some light on the issue in his post 'News organizations need to upsell users.'

The idea that news organizations should charge for basic content on the Web is repugnant.

It’s a losing proposition. It’s a terrible, terrible idea. And journalism is filled with terrible ideas right now.

But that doesn’t mean news organizations can’t charge for content. Far from it. Rather, news organizations need to create upsell features.

Pat shares a number of ideas, that though not directly applicable to lawyers, provide excellent food for thought as to what you need to be thinking of if you're going to start charging.

• Content is one upsell area. ESPN Insider, for a paid subscription, offers scouting reports on every player, in-depth trend data for games, and AccuScore predictions on various aspects of upcoming games.
• Another could be business listings. For instance, a local site should offer every business and restaurant a free listing but also offer premium features for a price.
• Want to be able to upload coupons each week to our Web site? Premium feature. Want an in-depth, easily changeable menu for your restaurant? Premium feature. Want a blog to interact with your customers? Premium feature.
• Basic classifieds for individuals should be free, but we can still sell people on premium features. Want your listing to stand out with custom features, we’ll sell them to you.

I agree wholeheartedly with Pat, 'If we’re going to ask people for money, we have to create value. Basic content isn’t that.'

Three years ago a nationally publicized manhunt followed the discovery of three bodies in a North Idaho home. The search ended when a 8 year old girl was found at a Coeur D’Alene restaurant in the company of a convicted sex offender named Joseph Edward Duncan III. Shasta’s brother, Dylan, was found dead soon after at a remote campsite in Montana.

As Shel points out, while news of Duncan’s trial, which is just underway, isn’t grabbing national attention, the proceedings are of intense interest to those who live in Idaho and Eastern Washington, including Spokane. And riding the wave of new media tools, reporters from the Spokesman Review in Spokane and the Idaho Statesman are covering the trial via Twitter.

Sure, there will be full length stories in the next morning's papers written by the same reporters. But there's nothing like real time coverage.

Shel draws a big distinction between the manner in which the newspapers are using Twitter.

The Idaho daily is tweeting whenever there is new content on the newspaper's website, with a typical tweet looking like this:

These are jumbled up with all the other Statesman coverage, nearly all of which feature links to the full newspaper reports.

The Spokesman Review, on the other hand, is tweeting directly from the courtroom with no other coverage to interrupt the flow. Refreshing the view on the Review's Twitter page almost always reveals new information. Today's coverage so far (it's still mid-morning in Idaho) looks like this:

Access to the Spokesman Review's Twitter feed is highlighted on a page on the newspaper's website that provides an overview of the case, including a timeline, background, and an archive of coverage, multimedia, information on how to help the surviving victim, and PDFs of official legal documents. In addition to Twitter, the paper has also launched a blog, "featuring longer updates," according to the paper.

Also interesting to note that the Spokesman Review's Twitter feeds are acting as an AP feed to other newspapers and TV stations covering the trial. Twitter's page showing who is following the Spokesman Review's Twitter feeds includes The Oregonian, the Nashua Telegraph, NBC affiliate KHQ, Spokane's KREM TV, and Iowa's Quad Cities Times.

Unfortunately, for new media companies like LexBlog and traditional main stream media companies, graduating journalism students are woefully unprepared for the real world. A world where online investigative reporting via blogging and the effective use of RSS, citizen journalism, and social media are as, if not more, important than print.

The irony is that newspapers and traditional media are laying off high paid senior people and would love to have students with a hungry work ethic skilled in the ways of new media. Instead of these kids getting journalism and media jobs where they're needed, they're underemployed serving tables and lattes while begging to get their foot in the door for an opportunity to learn the skills they need.

Believe me, I've got a stack of emails and resumes from kids like this. And I feel guilty that I should be paying them more than the value they're equipped to offer.

The people who should feel guilty are the deans and directors of journalism schools at Universities who took hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition moneys without telling students and their parents the school will be graduating your sons and daughters without the skills they need to get a job.

LexBlog hired Rob La Gatta, then a junior at Seattle University, as an intern 18 months ago. We were fortunate to get him to join the team as a full time employee this summer.

When I called the chair of Seattle University's Communication/Journalism department as a reference and told him about what Rob would be doing, he bragged that the school doesn't teach students about things like blogs which are just things used by people ranting on the Internet. When I referenced some of the things LexBlog offered students, he seemed to dismiss them as some sort of 'tech school skill.'

When I asked the same department chair about what student interns are paid, I was told I would never be able to compete with what newspapers like the Seattle Post Intelligencer paid the school's journalism interns. Turns out the Seattle PI paid Rob nothing when he interned there before LexBlog and we paid Rob $10 per hour with an increase when he went full time for a quarter.

And as far as I know, Rob was the only graduate of Seattle University's Communication/Journalism program who had a job on graduation this summer. A job directly related to the journalism and communication profession.

Mindy McAdams joined the faculty of the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida in August 1999 as the Knight Chair for journalism technologies and the democratic process. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in online journalism.

McAdams' perspective on teaching online journalism.

We online evangelists in journalism education are often accused of advocating a lot of technology training — ‘vocational skills,’ some would say. I recommend that a lot of journalism — both real-world examples and practical assignments — accompany the skills instruction. If the lessons come out to about 75 percent journalism and 25 percent technology, I would suggest that you can’t get that from the computer skills class at the community college.

McAdams, who also blogs at 'teaching online journalism,' shares a presentation at slideshare she gave yesterday at the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Related resources are linked on this page, which she prepared for journalist training in Vietnam this summer.

My aim in this presentation (to visual communication educators) was to lay out a framework for introducing basic multimedia skills for journalists. There are four to six modules, depending how you choose to slice them up. The total instruction time could be as little as 15 hours. Certainly your students won’t be experts after only 15 hours, but they can begin producing the type of work that news organizations are looking for. Whether the students produce work of sufficient quality depends on what kind of assignments you require them to do — and how much effort they invest in the work, of course.

It's understandable that Universities employing professors, deans, and department chairs who did not cut their teeth in the world of online journalism, are lagging in this area. But it's inexcusable for such schools not to immediately explore ways to educate current students on the skills they need to succeed in today's world.

And Dave cites Clay Shirky, a consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies, as to what blogging as meant to cost of publishing.

Forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this -- the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.

Whether you're Thomson West publishing legal treatises, ALM publishing legal periodicals, a law firm publishing newsletters, or a law professor publishing law review articles, you ought to be looking at blogging as a very cost effective means of publishing. In addition to reduced costs, blogs offer a means of distributing content. Content that is also more timely than that published in traditional fashion.

Maybe it's just me being from a small town in the Midwest, but I get pretty jazzed seeing people come to my blog from the Journal.

Reach the Law Section of the WSJ by clicking on 'Law' in the news section in the left hand navigation bar. You'll then see a box entitled 'Law Stories from Around the Web.' Click on any of the law stories, most of them law blog posts, to reach a page like that depicted below.

This screenshot was reached by clicking on the WSJ's reference to a story at law.com on 'Social Media Sites and Law Firm Marketing.' I referenced the story in my blog post, 'Lawyers use of LinkedIn,' so the WSJ linked to my post as well.

Note all the law blog posts highlighted and linked to by the Journal. Pretty cool.

But with the growing use of Twitter by those active in social networking and social media, monitoring the blogosphere alone is not enough. You need to monitor what people are 'micro-blogging' at Twitter. A lot can be said about you - good and bad - in 140 characters of text broadcast to hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of a person's followers on Twitter.

I subscribe to an RSS feed of keywords and key phrases mentioned on Twitter via Summize.

Summize is a search engine for Twitter that, like Google Blog Search for blogs, allows you to subscribe to searches. You don't browse searches ala a standard Google Search, you subscribe to an RSS feed of your search so as to read updates in your RSS newsreader.

Take a look at how I followed feedback on Twitter to LexBlog's launch of LexMonitor last Friday. This represents the most recent 'tweets' from today (Sunday). I noted how recent those 'tweets' were with arrows on the left.

As you'll see, it's a 3 step process. 1) Key in the word or phrase you want to follow; 2) Click search; and 3) Click the RSS feed button to add the ongoing search results to your RSS newsreader.

Two other tools people use to monitor Twitter conversation are Quotably (powered by Summize displaying threads of 'tweets') and Tweetscan.

You will report directly to me as the company founder and work with the executive team to direct feature definition as well as the implementation of LexBlog's products and services.

A competitive salary, participation in ownership of start up company, and full health benefits await you.

A successful candidate will have:

• Experience prototyping, building, and maintaining high availability Web applications.
• Strong Linux System Administration knowledge.
• Experience with server load balancing.
• Strong Perl knowledge and mod_perl web development experience.
• Ruby On Rails experience.
• Knowledge of XHTML, CSS, RSS, Search Engine Optimization.
• Strong communication and organization skills.
• Ability to work with and communicate with both technical and non-technical team members.

The following skills are a plus:

• Experience deploying/managing web applications using Capistrano.
• Knowledge of Movable Type, including:
• Movable Type Template Development.
• Movable Type Plugin Development.
• Multi-blog Movable Type deployments.
• Object Oriented Javascript development with Prototype.

LexBlog is a profitable Internet marketing company in its 5th year with the potential makings of a strong publisher in the new media space. Adding 20 new blogs a month, we’re running over 350 blogs across the country, as well as internationally, with over 850 authors. With a subscription based business model, LexBlog has a 95% client retention rate.

LexBlog will also soon be launching LexMonitor, a daily review of law blogs and journals pulling in content from almost 2,000 sources and 5,000 authors. LexMonitor will highlight prominent legal commentary as well as the contributing professionals for the delivery and display of such content to the legal profession's target audience (clients - current & prospective, the judiciary, law school professors & students, bloggers, traditional media - trade & mass).

If you or someone you know may be interested, please drop me an email or give me a call, 206 340 - 8204.

As always, thanks for the help.

This bodes well for the legal industry, not necessarily with each lawyer picking up a enough in ad revenue for an extra pint a week, but in other respects.

First the key points from Rodgers' article.

• 34% of global respondents to a March social media survey from Universal McCann said they use RSS feeds, a huge increase from just 15% a year ago.
• 19% of Americans use RSS feeds. Admittedly less than the RSS-addicted nations, Russia (57%), Brazil (55%) and China (54%).
• Gawker Media, one of the more successful blog networks, grew its revenue from feed-driven traffic by 300 percent in Q1 2008.
• Gawker now pulls an average CPM of $4 or $5 for its RSS inventory, only little less than they they get on the blog sites themselves.
• Some publishers are seeing their page views from RSS nearing the page views of blog and Web sites themselves.
• Google's FeedBurner will soon deliver AdSense ads contextual to the subject of the feed in addition to premium CPM ads directly sold onto RSS fee content.

I don't see lawyers needing to run ads on RSS feeds to keep a roof over their head. Some bloggers need to make money in advertising from their blogs. Such bloggers are akin to magazine publishers - ads keep the lights on.

Lawyers do not have to sell ads on their blogs and RSS feeds. Lawyers make money by blogging in an effective manner. Doing so lawyers enhance their reputation as thought leaders, landing business the lawyers want as a result.

But I see three areas where ads on lawyers RSS feeds hold value.

• Tasteful, brief ad mentioning that the blog and resulting feed are sponsored by a particular lawyer, law firm, or practice group. Much like an ad you would hear on local NPR radio. Low key for branding purposes.
• As revenue for a third party syndicating law blog content to to a lawyer's target audience (clients - current & prospective, bloggers, traditional media - trade & mass). Blogging lawyers will come to understand the tremendous value of such third party publishers aggregating (with editorial review) relevant and timely blog content for delivery of such content to this target audience. Syndicators with significant overhead in people and publishing platforms will need a revenue model. The alternative to ads is charging lawyers.
• The cost of maintaining a professional turnkey blog solution required by leading lawyers, law professors, and law students could be supplemented by ad revenue.

As traditional publishers are being pressed by declining distribution and ad revenue, we need to look for new opportunities to generate revenue. With increased use of RSS feeds and more cost effective ways to deliver ads on RSS feeds, maybe there's some opportunities.

For explaining social media to to your law firm, try Social Media in Plain English from their Common Craft Show.

You may wish to check out the Common Craft Store, a resource for influencers and educators to purchase and download licensed, higher resolution and improved versions of Common Craft's videos for use in the workplace.

The theory being that so called 'experts' go to social media websites, create a persona, and then tell everyone they need to be on them so the expert gets a following. The person concluded that no one they knew was using social media to make any money.

May sound crass to say I make money from using social media, but I do. Social media is a means whereby my blog content and other things I may say are amplified to more people and I connect with my target audience of bloggers, reporters, conference coordinators, clients, and prospective clients.

I regularly see referral traffic to my blog from social media/social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon. And the traffic is not coming from a profile of mine at those places with a link to my blog. The traffic is coming to my blog from posts displayed by syndication, a mention of a post of mine on Twitter, or someone sharing one of my posts on a social networking site.

A significant number of people in this country no longer get their news and information from mainstream media. They get their news and info from trusted 'friends' who blog about something they see or share a link and description to something they've read. Major publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal get huge amounts of traffic because links to their news stories are shared this way.

If major publications can draw traffic, why not well done niche publications written by authorities in their field? Like a lawyer following the niche in which they practice and sharing what they see with accompanying insight and commentary. The key is then leveraging social media to amplify your content's distribution.

You don't make money from social media anymore than you would make money from a cell phone. You make money as a result of effectively using a cell phone.

With regard to social media you make money as a lawyer by further enhancing your reputation as a thought leader and spreading word of your stature. That comes in part from effective blogging and leveraging social media.

The report finds Social media, and blogs in particular, are becoming a more important part of global media consumption for Internet users than some traditional media channels.

Key findings include:

• 78% of Internet users read blogs, up from 66% in the last study
• 57% of Internet users are now members of a social network
• RSS consumption is growing rapidly up from 15% to 39%
• Podcasts are now mainstream digital content, listened to by 48%

It's like I told law firm PR professionals last week in Chicago. Ask your attorneys under age 35 if they they subscribe to the major local newspaper. Ask them if they're considering do so. You're likely to get a question in response. 'Why would I?'

For a growing portion of our population news from social media whether it be from blogs or links to news stories shared by 'friends' on social networking sites is their preferable source of news.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Bill Pollak, legal published pro and CEO of ALM [4.25.08]
• Mario Sundar, community evangelist and blog editor for LinkedIn [4.24.08]
• Kevin Livingston & Dennis Pfaff, the editorial team behind Thelen's Climate Law Update [4.17.08]
• Anita Campbell, editor-in-chief of Small Business Trends [4.15.08]
• Steve Matthews of Stem Legal, discussing the state of the Canadian legal blogosphere [4.11.08]

Or, see our full list of legal blog interviews.

How? The Wall Street Journal is now running in its law section syndicated law blog posts from influential law blogs. You'll see the law blog posts under the headline 'Breaking Law Stories From Around the Web' on the right side of the page as you scroll down.

Click on one of the blog post titles and you'll receive the entry text of the post, a link to the post, and a link to the law blog. You'll also receive links to each of the blog posts which referenced the blog post.

Here's a screen shot from the WSJ highlighting a blog post from LexBlog client Todd Smith that the WSJ pulled in by syndication. You'll then see a couple posts from this blog along with other law blog posts which referenced Todd's original post.

How cool is this? The only thing better than publishing content to your own law blog is having major publications like the WSJ publish your content to their readers.

Robert Scoble, who presumably picked up word of the Earthquake via Twitter, shared the news with those of us following him on Twitter.

When I couldn't find any news of the earthquake at CNN or Google News, I went to Tweetscan, which allows you to monitor Twitter discussion by keyword. Sure enough, plenty of news on the earthquake. Including from people in China.

And look who's 'Tweeting' news of the earthquake in addition to 'citizen tweeters,' the New York Times and Reuters. Amazing.

Discussion on Twitter now is that the mainstream media may have first picked up word of the earthquake from Twitter before their traditional sources.

What we're seeing in action is a breaking news world wide backbone that can disseminate news faster than anything main stream media can match. All with a crazy tool that asks 'What are you doing now?'

Update on how news breaks:

In order to follow more Twitter feeds, people are also monitoring the word 'earthquake' at summize and quotably.

People at Twitter are now telling people who felt the quake to report it here.

The necessity and effectiveness of law firm newsletters have been long overrated. Partly this is because the content is written by lawyers, and is therefore a reliably tortuous read. Partly it's because a general legal update is of limited interest and use to clients, who don't really have time for FYI documents that don't deal directly with an immediately relevant matter.

But mostly, I think, it's because law firms have never given newsletters the attention, support and priority to be anything other than pretty mediocre and indistinguishable from one another (if I took the banner off two random law firm newsletters and switched them around, could you tell the difference?)

Jordan makes some compelling points. Here's a bulleted list, but do read his whole post.

• Law firms think their newsletters are competing only against other law firm newsletters for clients' attention. They're not. They're competing against every business and industry publication their clients read, usually produced by large publishing companies with decades of experience. Unlike law firms, these companies don't regard their periodicals as a sideline, a nice marketing tool - they treat them the same way law firms treat their work product, as the lifeline of their businesses.
• If you're not producing truly great client publications that command clients' attention and generate respect in the field, drop them. Take the time and energy you've been sinking into these increasingly irrelevant publications and invest them in business development activities that have a chance of actually producing a worthwhile return.
• If you are going to publish content, create a Publishing Division within the firm, and mandate it to create publications that can legitimately be mentioned in the same breath as the leading client industry periodical and become a must-read information source for your clients, one that your competitors are pitting their mediocre content against.
• Top-notch editorial, graphic and web talent is out there by the truckload, often underpaid and underemployed - recruit it and retain it with the same intensity of effort you pour into finding associates who'll be gone in less than three years. Create an editorial board, drawn equally from your sharpest lawyers and your most valued clients in the industry you want to dominate.
• With blogging, get 20 lawyers who are passionate about practice areas important to your strategy, who can and will write frequently and engagingly, and let them charge their blogging hours as billable-equivalent time. Establish your firm as the authoritative blogging source for your clients, and reap the rewards that come from being the trailblazer and front-runner in an emerging area.

Bottom line Jordan says if you're not producing your best, stop doing it. 'You wouldn't send out mediocre, 'good enough' legal work to your clients. Don't pollute your brand by settling for mediocre, 'good enough' client publications.'

Want an example of what Jordan's describing? Look at the Climate Law Update published by Thelen. Breaking news, insight and commentary on climate change and sustainable energy. This blog publication rocks.

Kevin Livingston, Thelen's National Manager of Public Relations, tells me Climate Law Update is already beating the AP on some stories and receiving kudos from clients as well as the media.

Sure, tell me you can't do it. 'We're law firm. Our lawyers are too busy. Our lawyers will never do it. I'm too busy. I have a CMO who doesn't get any of this stuff. We don't have any budget for it.'

Fine. Keep producing the mindless self serving newsletter copy that more than one in-house counsel has told me is a joke. One in-house counsel asked me if the marketing people in law firms knew that in-house counsel were lawyers too. The point being they can follow basic legal issues on their own.

For those of you unwilling to accept mediocrity, take advantage of the forces working to your advantage.

• More people are getting news and information online than off.
• Niche publications can be be published and distributed online in a cost effective fashion, something impossible before the advent of blogs and RSS. See the Long Tail theory.
• Bloggers, lawyers included, are being treated as journalists and reporters. Interviews of people your target audience wants to hear from are easily attainable. Blog posts can be repurposed via RSS syndication to display at major publications (NY Times, Forbes, WSJ) and industry periodicals.
• Niche information for you to comment on and further distribute can be streamed to your desktop via RSS for free.
• Journalism grads, who were paid poorly before and who are are now starved for jobs with in a declining newspaper industry, are equipped to manage a firms news production and distribution.
• The cost of Internet publishing tools (not content management systems) are minimal. They're called blogs.
• A beautiful design for your publication or blog can be designed and developed at reasonable one time charge.
• Effective publishing on a niche topic costs less and offers greater returns than traditional law firm PR and communications.

Sure, you don't understand all this stuff. That's okay. Get someone to help who does.

Effective publishing can be done and those law firms who take advantage of the opportunity are going to do more effective marketing and PR than their competition. And at a lower cost.

Bissinger said Will was full of shit, and basically said that blogs were a pile of crap, and that it's a travesty that people today are getting information from blogs as opposed to seasoned journalists. Reminded me of an AmLaw 100 CMO jumping me on blogs. ;)

Seriously though, lawyers and law firm management needs to recognize reality. Younger people, age 40 and below, are not looking to print for news and info - they're looking to the net. And you better understand better than Bissinger that all these blogs are not crap. These blogs are published by some of the most knowledgeable people around - and like it or not, these blogs are read by your target audience.

The average age of newspaper readers is over 50. Ask new lawyers around your office how many subscribe to the local newspaper at home. Let me know if you find anyone who does.

Getting the paper at the bottom of the driveway before a juice and english muffin each morning is as routine as taking a shower for me. But I'm a dying breed.

And those non-subscribers are not missing out on news. They're seeing what to they want to see, and arguably need to see, throughout the day.

Their trusted influencers (friends, bloggers, reporters) turn them onto things they'll find of interest through blogs, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, IM, and all sorts of social media. Better yet for the non-subscribers is that they are seeing the news the day before the people who subscribe to hard copy publications.

Don't get me wrong traditional news is still valuable. Good reporters and columnists continue to be in demand.

But they need to make their content relevant to a growing population getting their news online. Get the content online with a RSS feed. Have an effective Internet presence through blogs, and what are becoming mainstream, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, so that people on these mediums get familiar with you and your content.

Gain the trust of people using social media and those folks will spread word of your content to the masses. There's a stream of comments with links flowing through the Internet each minute of the day in a fashion that most folks cannot fathom. You need to get your content in that flow.

Unfortunately for most law firms, they have no desire to learn social media. Some just flat out say it's all bullshit - like Bissinger. Others give it lip service but don't hire or empower people to harness the powers of social media.

Law firms are filled with some of the brightest people in the country. Law firms try to use their intellectual capital to showcase this talent. But articles in print and archived on websites or email newsletters and alerts aren't going to cut it.

Those mediums are irrelevant to a growing population who get content through social media. Not only are you not connecting with the people under 50 who are leading today's businesses, you're increasing the divide.

From Gawker:

Earlier this month, American Lawyer Media laid off 42 staffers across the board. The company is also "scaling back" plans to expand the scope of one magazine, and moving another to an all-digital format, according to an internal memo. One insider says all of the laid off people are gone, but a sense of nervousness still pervades the office.

And from Folio:

Ever since British acquisition firm Incisive Media purchased U.S.-based ALM last July for $630, it seemed that the Apax Partners subsidiary was on the fast track, quickly evolving from an entrepreneurial startup to b-to-b powerhouse.

Now, it seems there is some apprehension from inside-mostly about revenues. Is the legal market not as recession-proof as once thought?

Earlier this month, ALM slashed 47 jobs across the board. The company apparently is scaling back plans to grow Real Estate Media's Florida publication into a monthly magazine and is shifting Law Firm, Inc. from a print to online only.

Both Gawker and Folio reference CEO Bill Pollak's internal memo:

Folks,

Several weeks ago, I wrote to you about our business results for the first quarter of 2008 and shared some of the challenges we face as a result of the credit squeeze and other market factors. I also described our intention to tighten our belts and reduce costs. With no change in sight on the economic horizon, the senior management team and I have spent the past few weeks examining our business options. Our goal was to find solutions that would lower expenses without compromising quality, and which would allow us to continue to invest in and meet our long term business goals. In particular, we all strongly agree on the need to continue investing in our Web infrastructure, while expanding ALM's ability to generate and publish content online.

We looked at each business with these questions in mind: Are we getting the right return on our investment? Do we need to keep doing this work? Can we do this work another way? We believe that while we are primarily doing the right work in the right way, there are changes we need to make immediately to respond to economic conditions.

Some of these changes involve revising the timing or scope of planned initiatives. Others, however, are staff related and go beyond simply delaying the filling of open jobs. In total, we have decided to eliminate forty-two current positions across ALM and Incisive's US operations. These staff reductions are distributed across businesses, locations and job levels and all the employees involved have already been notified.

The business changes we will be making are also broad in scope. These include scaling back plans to grow Real Estate Media's Florida publication into a monthly magazine; closing down the Operations Department of Incisive's Norwalk, CT. office; and shifting Law Firm, Inc. from a print magazine to a digital product.

Another change in business strategy - and the one that will have the greatest impact on staff - is our decision to restructure ALM's Event Division and reassign management responsibility for many of our existing SRI conferences to Insight in Canada, Incisive's Events group in London and ALM's Legal Publishing Division. A number of SRI's financial events will be eliminated.

Accepting and working through change is never easy, and changes that affect our colleagues and friends can be particularly painful. We did not make these decisions lightly. But we know that our future success depends on our ability to align ourselves with our markets and clients, and to ensure we have the resources we need to develop and grow our brands. The changes announced today will not only help us during the current economic turbulence, but will make us stronger in the future.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a note at
[Redacted].

Bill

ALM has some talented and passionate reporters, editors, and management folks - one of whom is Pollak. But as with the journalism industry in general placing greater weight on online media, there are going to be changes.

Added to that is Incisive Media's footprint. Incisive is a fast growing digital information provider doing some innovative things. With innovation will come change.

Expect ALM to be a force in legal publishing at the end of the day. But with digital gaining on print, things will just be much different.

Key findings from the survey of 17,000 Internet users worldwide:

• 83% watch video clips, up from 62% in the last study in June 2007
• 78% read blogs, up from 66%
• 57% of internet users are now members of a social network
• RSS consumption is growing rapidly up from 15% to 39%
• Podcasts are now mainstream digital content, listened to by 48%

Sounds amazing that the more people could rely on blogs as a media source than newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV. But maybe not with the Internet being the top source of news for 50% of Americans.

With the daily drumbeat of cutbacks at newspaper companies, there is less room for investigative reporters who can take weeks or months to do one in-depth report. If their future isn’t secure at mainstream media outlets, then where will investigative reports come from? TV news? Non-profits like the Center for Public Integrity or ProPublica? Online-only outfits like TalkingPointsMemo or The Smoking Gun? Do you think investigative journalism will survive in the digital age or not? If you think it has a future, how do you see it being financially supported?

When it comes to investigative reporting in the law, I'm pretty optimistic. We're just getting started, but blogging lawyers are writing about subjects that would never be covered in such depth or with such skill. And if an investigative journalist's final report is meant to take the form of an exposé, lawyers are up to the task.

David Rossmiller's coverage of State Farm's Insurance coverage of Katrina victims and the resulting Dickie Scruggs affair drew national attention. Rossmiller's coverage, when it came to legal issues, was far more in depth than that of the main stream media. The Wall Street Journal labeled Rossmiller's blog the blog of record for the Scruggs' trial.

Bill Marler is unquestionably an agent of change when it comes to food safety in the this country. And it's happening, in large part, via his 13 blogs being run by he and his staff from their Seattle offices.

Marler is all over foodborne illness outbreaks around the country, often before the AP or local reporters. Employees of government agencies and the companies giving rise to an outbreak regularly 'leak' stories to Marler knowing he'll sink his teeth into the story.

Through blogging Marler has gained the notoriety needed to testify before state and national agencies as well as appear at length during a 2 hour CNN special on the safety of our nation's food supply. And blogging sure didn't hurt Marler draw experts from around the world to a food safety symposium a couple weeks ago.

Even here at Real Lawyers Have Blogs, I feel we're playing a small part in exposing the short comings in legal marketing services.

Would Martindale-Hubbell be working on indexing all their lawyer bio's if we didn't stay after it? Would FindLaw and lawyers.com be out hawking a lawyer blog service had we not pointed out that what they started to sell was not a blog? Would we have more companies charging $5,000 or $6,000 per month to personal injury lawyers for internet marketing in return for splitting fees with the lawyers? Would large legal tech shows being working as hard to have wifi had we not blogged about shortcomings on that front?

I don't know the impact we're all having. But I do think the power of publishing can influence companies' behavior.

What's the business model for lawyers doing investigative journalism? Two fold. Passion and and enhanced reputation.

There's a lot of lawyers who love what we do. We've got passion. We went to law school to learn to champion the rights of people. In law school and beyond we honed our investigative, analytical, and persuasive skills. Skills perfect for investigative journalism.

If we can leverage these skills to further enhance our reputation as a thought leader - as a reliable and trusted authority in our niche - we'll take it. What lawyer wouldn't like to get paid doing legal work in the area they love for the clients they'd love to represent.

Sure, there aren't a ton of lawyers viewing blogs this way. But there's a significant number. And the numbers are going to grow.