(This blog post contains an allusion to a four-letter word near the end. If this offends you, please take evasive action.)

I’ve been experimenting with a new kind of news story in the pages of Blogger & Podcaster. I debuted the concept with my own South by Southwest wrap-up observations in our April issue, and carried it forward with a piece about Balticon 41’s podcasting track. I reported it by talking to the organizers and a participant in the podcasting events. But I learned there was a story to report by spending time “in the community”. You can read about it in the July issue, due next week.

The idea is to report on the community aspects of blogging and podcasting, and, by extension, the culture and social networking that’s endemic in these forms of media. We do this either by talking to people who attended a given event and reading all we can in the blogosphere, or by asking attendees to write their own versions of events, which then become news stories.

The great thing about this kind of news is that it gets below the numbers and names associated with an industry gathering, and aims for the vibe. It also gives us a way to share such gatherings with the majority of our readers who can not attend, in a way that’s meaningful–maybe you’ll find a way to go next year, or perhaps you will decide it’s not your thing at all.

The promise of community-based event coverage is starting to make itself evident to me in a very exciting way. As a podcaster, and friend of many Canadian podcasters, I wished very much to have been at last weekend’s Podcasters Across Borders event in Kingston, Ontario. Maybe next year guys. I hear there was one Texan in attendance. Perhaps next year I can fill the Lone Star quota.

To makes sure I would have the PAB scoop for you, our readers, I asked Bruce Murray of The Zedcast to write a story for the magazine. But I also spent a portion of my weekend listening to podcasts, reading blogs and hanging out on Twitter, taking in “on the spot” reports from PAB. When I emailed Bruce to see how his article was going, I had one question: Where did the phrase “Your podcast is not an effing toaster” come from and who said it? Inquiring minds (mine) wanted to know.

In response, I got a link to the web sites of both Neil Gorman whose presentation enshrined the phrase as PAB 2007’s unofficial motto, and Julian Smith, who actually uttered the phrase that inspired the hook for Neil’s session. Oh yeah, and the session video is here. And it’s very funny.

That, my friends, is interactive news coverage of the kind you couldn’t get before the social media revolution began. And it sure save on my travel budget.

Today, June 26 has been declared Tthe Day of Silence to protest increases in royalty rates that will affect Internet radio broadcasters, large and small, within the next three weeks, and likely drive many of the smaller ones out of business.

The unusual thing about his protest is that it brings together Internet broadcasters of all sizes; from Pandora to NPR, Live365 to Joe’s Internet Jazz Show (I made that last one up for dramatic effect, but you take my point, I hope.) At stake is the ability to deliver audio via the Net, not in MP3 or other formats that can be copied by nefarious music lovers, but simply streamed.

In our jaded, post-modern world, it’s fashionable to smirk at online “protests”. The standard line is that the protest does more to buck up the embattled forces of good than it does to cause the desired change to happen. I tend not to take that line in general, but in this particular case, it seems to me that a protest, or perhaps more accurately, a demonstration project, makes a lot of sense. For one thing, the Day of Silence itself is not designed to change the minds of the copyright board or lawmakers in Washington. Nor is it designed to move a commercial entity to change its ways. No, the Day of Silence is about showing people who consume and enjoy Internet radio what would be lost if royalty rates increased to the point that broadcasters decided to hang up their mics. Unfortunately, it’s not quite working out that way. NPR and many stations are still broadcasting today, as is AOL Radio.. Live365 and Pandora have gone silent. Perhaps today’s “protest” will go down as another futile attempt to move government toward a positive outcome: you can’t get people involved if they don’t perceive a threat to the status quo.

Despite the fact that it’s business as usual for NPR today, the network does offer resources for those who want to take action.

For those of you who may have wondered (I got no comments, but I know what you were thinking) how my Facebook post from yesterday was relevant to blogging and podcasting, I offer this pointer, via allfacebook, to a new app called Flog. You can already pull RSS into Facebook, but this little app allows you to add extended versions of your blog posts to your FB feed.

Social networks are hot right now; not just in that venture capital, big names are talking, new conferences are springing up kind of way, but in a way that users can see and enjoy. We are enjoying that blissful time in the tech cycle when great ideas are turning into things we can play with, and perhaps use to enhance our work as bloggers and podcasters. and they’re coming faster than most of us can track em.

The most visible social network explosion is happening over at Facebook. And by the way, you’ll find a Blogger & Podcaster group there, so please join us.

First, Facebook opened its doors to people without an .edu email address. Some “older” users jumped at the opportunity to connect with friends and colleagues, without all the spam and other baggage of MySpace.

Next, Facebook shared its API with developers who are now adding new applications daily. Facebook isn’t just a place to collect friends: it’s a hub of activity and tools that brings people back, even when they don’t have a new photo to share. The dizzying array of apps may not all stick, but the presence of apps itself is great for users who can customize their experience and bring the things they already do online into the Facebook universe.

For bloggers and podcasters–podcasters epecially have stuggled with, and in some cases, embraced the collaboration possibilities of MySpace–Facebook seems to be quickly gaining traction. Producers can offer listeners membership in a group devoted to the show, message listeners as a group to promote activities and events and even use the new applications to create a collaborative experience with their audienec. How about an iLike channel for your music podcast, that people can join from your Facebook group?

If you want to follow the explosive growth of Facebook apps, try allfacebook, the unofficial Facebook blog.

Yep, I admit it, in some ways, I’m a luddite. I don’t own a cell phone. I don’t want one. No TV, either. Gasp.

Before you write me off as a lost subscriber to the Stone Age Times, let me assure you that yes, I own a computer and I’m as addicted to email as the best, or perhaps worst, of them. I’m an inveterate scribbler, sometimes in random (paper) journals I carry with me at almost all times, more often in lengthy e-missives describing my absolutely fascinating life in gritty and hilarious detail.

As a musician, and a mostly folk musician at that, I tend to go for the earthy crunchy acoustic stuff, played on instruments made of wood, whose only required wires are tightly wound strings. (I do have a very nice pickup in my octave mandolin, and in the absence of a lovely old upright piano, I have been known to settle for an electronic keyboard.)

Fear not, I’m not a total dinosaur. In between music-magazine gigs, I’ve put in my time editing and writing for several tech publications. I’ve attended the trade shows, schmoozed with the geeks, waded knee-deep in products that would revolutionize the industry.

I’ve written only one, or perhaps two blog posts before, in a not particularly intuitive civic-sponsored system to which I do not feel compelled to return.

But really, I’ve been blogging all my life, I just didn’t know it.

So here I am, your newly appointed managing editor, poised to polish podcasters’ prose and buff bloggers’ briefs, reaching ever further for outrageous alliteration, ready to serve up tasty text for your eager consumption.

In the coming weeks I will no doubt be acquiring an iPod, and perhaps I will relent and buy a cell phone, too. But a TV? Last century’s technology as far as I’m concerned.

Meanwhile I will be learning all I can about the blog beat. Please be nice to me.

I first “met” Mignon Fogarty in the forums over at Podcast Pickle. Later, we ended up as members of the same—sadly defunct—podcast network. We have mutual friends in the podosphere, too. I guess what I’m sayin’ here is that when I got to know Mignon, she was “one of us”, a fairly new podcaster trying to improve her show and grow her audience like we all were, and who dealt with the same basic stuff: how do you make phone interviews not sound like crap, how do you get the word out about your show, what’s the best Web site platform?

And now she’s done what the people who saw podcasting as a business right from the start have dreamed of doing. She’s quit her day job, expanded her listenership to thousands of people, and even appeared on national TV. For those of us whose podcasting goals were in the modest range, but who love to see a nice person succeed, she is a hero. To those who started out with a plan and perhaps a bigger budget, she’s a case study.

I talked with Mignon in April, just after she appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and just before she was featured in Business Week. I asked her all the burning questions about how Grammar Girl had become so successful, what you have to do to get in the door at Oprah, etc. But the answers I found most interesting had to do with how she has handled sudden success. It’s one thing to work toward a large audience and great publicity, but what do you do when you get them? Will your Internet infrasturcture be ready? How about the content of your show? Are you prepared to take that leap and quit your job, hire people to help you or add more podcasts to your network? Mignon seems to have understood that this “background stuff” is just as important as being available for a photo shoot. In fact, she always sounds perfectly calm. I should have asked her how she does that.

Read “10 Questions with Mignon Fogarty” in the June issue of Blogger & Podcaster, and listen to the full interview on the B&P podcast.

-shelly

Well friends, it’s the time of the month around here when we work on the news section. I’m doing what I always do: reading lots and lots of blogs, talking to people I know who keep their fingers on the pulse of the new media world, and fielding inquiries from PR folks with new (and not so new) things to promote.

It’s fun. I like that a part of my job is opening an RSS reader several times a day, and another part is jumping on skype or the phone to ask people questions about what they do. But I also know that I don’t hear or read everything that’s going on out there. On one or two occasions, I’ve found out about juicy stories just as we’ve closed the news section. I hate when that happens.

In the interest of making our news section better, I’m looking for a little help; a few eyes and ears in the blogging and podcasting world who are willing to drop me a line when they hear or read something that Blogger & Podcaster readers need to know. Don’t worry: you don’t need to buy a fedora or start drinking Scotch in the daytime to be a good news gatherer. (At least I hope not.)

I’m looking for news about trends, cool technology, new media events, and stories about what interesting people are doing to build their blogs or podcasts. I’m not so much interested in “hey, I just started my first blog or podcast” but rather “hey, there’s something going on with music podcasts, or political blogs.” Or maybe there’s a blogging conference in Maui. Hey, can I go to that one?

If you have news for us, send it to feedback at bloggerandpodcaster dot com. No guarantees your tip will make the magazine, but we will take a look at what you send and get in touch if it’s something cool.

Thanks to everyone who’s said such nice things about the magazine. I hope you’re enjoying reading the JUne issue as much as we did making it.