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There'll be a graf that says "Representatives of (ORGANIZATION NAME) did not return a request for comment" or a phrase to that effect. The effort to make contact was made; for reasons out of my control, it was not successful. My editor gave me a set amount of time; the sand in the hourglass ran out. There's nothing I can do about that. And there's a lot less of that time in the 24/7 online news cycle than there was in the printed media news cycle when the presses rolled at midnight.

If you want me to have fuller information, please answer my phone call or e-mail. Or, as suggested elsewhere, if you don't have time then designate somebody as your press representative and tell him/her to return my phone call when it comes ... and also tell him/her to register with Peter Shankman's Help A Reporter Out initiative. Or, as suggested in Ms. Schindler's IT World article, create a /press page or section on your Web site like the big companies do. There you should have information about what your project is about, why you think it matters, its current status, who to contact for more information, screen shots (please remember that print media require high-resolution versions of screen shots or other images for the printing press), press releases and other mentions in the media. (That's not the same as an FAQ and I won't quote an FAQ. I want to hear from the people behind the project what they're doing and why they're doing it. People make news stories interesting. There's a human angle to everything.)

Use plain language, not jargon. If you translate that page into a foreign language, have someone fluent in the language (preferably it's his/her native language) double-check your work. If it's a bad translation, it reflects badly on you. I've lost count of how many foreign businesses have an English press kit that reads as though a fourth-grader wrote it up and I have no doubt that many businesses from English-speaking countries have non-English press material that is equally poorly translated.

Ms. Schindler's Care and Feeding of the Press is excellent. Everyone trying to get press coverage should read it -- hell, I've dealt with public/media relations professionals who could learn a lot about doing their jobs from reading that -- and a lot of people who don't currently think they need press coverage might want to take a look at that, too. In many cases, the information that reporters are looking for is precisely the same information developers and end users are looking for.

Ms. Schindler makes a solid point on the second page: "(Y)ou've gone deep with your project, and I haven't. I may not be familiar with the problem that it aims to solve. So tell me about it."

First, yes there is "a small, independent media company founded and run by journalists." The key though is that you need to run it like a businessman, not as a journalist.

I know hundreds of people who want to be freelance writers or journalists. Some of them quite well. But, for every one I know who makes a living at it, I know two dozen who don't.

The secret? Treat it like a business first.

What's your business plan? You describe several tried, true and _lame_ ways of making money from journalism. Online advertising and newsletter subscriptions are the only ones that have a proven track record of working.

How many online publications do you see making living money from the methods you describe? I can't think of any.

Google ads by themselves though, won't cut it. You need someone who spends all their time looking for advertisers.

If you go the newsletter route, you typically have to become the Expert in one area that people with money want insider information on.

Now, that can be pretty broad. Fred Langa does very well with his personal computing newsletter, the Langa List (http://www.langa.com/), but Fred, former editor of chief in Byte in the good old days of print tech. journalism, already had a lot of fans.

OK, so those models can work, but you also have to content people value and want to read.

200K unique readers a month is good, but it's not good enough.

Still, with 200K, and aggressive, non-intrustive advertising, you should be able to generate enough cash to survive on.

But, income is only part of the equation. In a real business, yoy must learn how to manage your money. This isn't a skill that for some reason many writers or journalist have, but learning how to keep costs as low as possible while maximizing revenue is a must.

That sounds simple. It's not. It's a skill your group must master though.

I've made more money in journalism years ago than I am now, but I'm doing much better overall. My secret? I finally learned finance 101.

Finally, you really aren't staffed up enough to "deeper understanding of the wide swath of research discoveries poised to affect the technologies driving day-to-day life and business."

Pick a narrow area of technology, stick with it, and you can probably provide the "deeper understanding," you're striving to cover. Once people learn that your site is The site for nano-engineering, which seems a reasonable goal based on your existing coverage, you can probably make a go of it.

Good luck.

Steven,
Senior Editor, Ziff Davis Internet (http://www.eweek.com/
Editor, Practical Technology (http://www.practical-tech.com/
Chairman, Internet Press Guild (http://www.netpress.org/

You never follow up an e-mail to a reporter with a phone call asking if she received the e-mail.

You know your reporter and what he has published -- before you make the first contact.

You get the facts fast to the right people, especially when asked directly for them.

You put full corporate contact and product summary info in all press releases and on the Web.

You never send unsolicited e-mail attachments, of any kind.

You'd never send out a group e-mail that includes your entire press list in the header.

You fix factual inaccuracies quickly and dispassionately.

You understand the power and limitations of freelance reviewers.

You'd never even contemplate sending out time-bombed review copies, demos, etc., knowing that writers want the real McCoy.

- Robin

I make no claim to having THE answer, but I put forward for your consideration this idea. First, some background:

On July 3, 1995, Time Magazine published its infamous cover story on Cyberporn. Written by Phillip Elmer-Dewitt, the story was based on a "study" done by CMU then-undergraduate Martin Rimm. (see this page for some details.)

A number of dead-tree journalists who haunted alt.internet.media-coverage got up in arms about the article. Rather than lamenting the follies of their brothers in reporting, they decided to do something about it. Thus was born the Internet Press Guild, a peer organization of journalists who work to provide assistance to any member of the working press who find themselves with an assignment to write about "The Internet." Membership in the IPG is open to any working press, regardless of publishing method. We have Slashdot/NewsForge/Andover people as members, for example. (Hi, Rob!)

The goal of the "organizaiton" is not to "judge", but rather to assist reporters and editors find sources that are useful and accurate, and to point them to information that can prevent them getting egg on their face.

(Disclosure: I'm one of the founding members, so salt to taste.)

I'm not pushing the IPG as a solution to improving Net journalism -- our focus has been on helping reporters and editors reporting ABOUT the Net in the dead-tree and glowing-phosper media. The point is that we are an Internet-based organization -- no conventions, no formal face-to-face meetings, and very low dues -- that is designed to provide peer help.

I suggest that a meeting-place for working Net journalists could provide the same benefit for the New Media that the IPG is currently providing to the Old Media.

First, I've been writing reviews since 1984, when I purchased my first Compaq computer -- the sewing-machine version that couldn't take a hard drive. Yes, the lure to do reviews was "free" software...but I quickly moved to hardware reviews where you don't get to keep the product at all.

Reviewing platforms, or reviewing software cross-platform, is some of the roughest reviewing possible. Think about reviewing two different operas on two different stages and you get the idea.

The problem with all the reviews I've read that attempt to compare the performance of Linux and NT is that the assumptions behind the test methodology are geared toward either the Linux or NT model. That means you are trying to compare apples and oranges. The two are completely different beasts. Complicating the problem is that much of the performance testing methodology developed for the computing industry is centered around Unix -- very centered around Unix.

The most unbiased performance test suites around are the SPECmark series. I learned the hard way just how Unix-centric the SPECmark series of tests are when I tried to port them to the Macintosh OS -- indeed, I never finished the job. Indeed, I can't even see how to port the SPECmarks to the Windows environment because of the large number of Unix-isms built into the benchmarks. The reason? The benchmarks are actual live real working applications, designed to do a job and not just fiddle bits to eat up resources.

While I agree that the most unbiased reviews come from users, all the vast majority of them can tell you is that "Hey, it worked [didn't work] for me for what I do!" The vast majority of users don't have a clue how to do a structured evaluation of software or hardware...even slash-dot readers. That's why I was able to make a comfortable living for about ten years, writing reviews.

The only review methodology that might make sense is to develop a task, and have two teams configure systems to perform that task. Even then, you will run into variances because the teams may have differing knowledge levels of the systems they are trying to tune for the task. This is the big problem in SpecWeb marks, judging from the reports I've read lately on their sites.

Will there be a fair review? Right now, I think the issue is in doubt.

To the subject of "pay for play" -- in the fifteen years I have been reviewing stuff, I have been offered a number of bribes. None of the companies trying to bribe me ever met my price; hell, they never came close! Other companies have threatened me with lawsuits for what I wrote. None have gone to court, and all but one was settled out of court in my favor. (That one, I admitted that I did the review wrong, and the magazine and I came up with a fix that satisfied everyone.)

Of course I'll eat their food, and of course I'll listen to the PR flacks. That doesn't mean that I'll write a review based on what flacks tell me.

As a founding member of the Internet Press Guild (www.netpress.org) I subscribe to a canon of ethics that require me to write what I experience with products, not what someone tells me to day. That includes editors -- there has been more than one article I've pulled because an editor disagreed with my findings. IT'S MY NAME. Stephen Satchell Satchell Evaluations