Ernie Smith

Journalism’s Future: Serve Your Audience, Not Just Your Advertisers

Recently, I ran into a story that stopped me dead in my tracks. It wasn’t the words that threw me off — it is a serviceable wire story that about a million other news outlets were running — really, it was the advertising that irked me. Just take a look at this thing — what can be […]

Run with Your Crazy Idea (or a Sure-Fire Fix for Procrastination)

How I built out a random idea in two hours just to see what would happen, and why you should do the same. True story: When I started writing on the internet seriously, I set deadlines for myself. In late 2008, I had just lost my job with a newspaper I loved and was waiting […]

Minimum Viable Awesome: 6 Ways To Simplify Your Web Writing Workflow

You’re awesome. I can’t see you through this screen, reading this document, but my analytics tell me that you’re more awesome because you clicked on this article. Let’s say you’re a blogger. You read things on the internet. You post about them. And you have a voice all your own. Pretty awesome, right? The problem […]