Cart before the horse or horse before the cart?

My team at bakersfield.com launched a new site this week called BakoDeals that features coupons from local businesses. As a website, it's not breaking any new ground in the world of local coupons. But what's different is the site is an offshoot of an @BakoDeals Twitter feed I launched months ago as an experiment in local advertising.

The @BakoDeals Twitter feedI launched the feed initially to experiment with a potential new form of ad delivery and soon began promoting local deals of all kinds, whether they were paid ads in The Californian or Bakersfield.com, or from competitors or elsewhere in the community.

Feeble attempts at advertising -- embedded "house ad" sponsorships, a bungled effort to sell a paid Twitter ad -- went nowhere. What did gain traction was our promotion of local deals, regardless of source. Our only guidelines were that the deals be genuinely valuable and of interest to more than a few people.

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In age of drive-bys, sage advice worth reading

Amid the sea of non-stop, quick-hit media criticism, I’ve always enjoyed Bob Wyman’s insights. Bob is a “member of the technical staff at Google” who is always thoughtful in his observations, most of which I’ve read over the years on the Online-News listserv.

Most recently, Bob’s insights are in a loooooooong two-part post titled “Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers are Failing … and Why They Don’t Get Talked About Much.” It’s loooooong and I don’t agree with everything in it, but it’s well worth the read.

I can’t do it justice with a summary, nor would that benefit anyone. But if you’re in the print-journalism business, I strongly encourage you to read it. Unless you’re a genius who has it all figured out, by the time you’re finished you should have a to-do list full of worthy challenges.