Bret Bernhoft » The Face of Media

SearchFest 2010 – Pre Game

Bret Bernhoft — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:13:23 +0000

This Tuesday, March 9th 2010, SearchFest is going to be happening at the Governor Hotel in Portland Oregon. I am especially excited about this year’s event as the main speaker is going to be Stefan Weitz from Bing. His presentation is expected to blow the socks off of anyone who is in the audience as well as those who will be hearing the aftermath of the whole thing. But beyond the actual presentations themselves I am anticipating interviewing several of the presenters themselves for the podcast.

I will be giving each presenter their opportunity to tell you, the listener and reader, about their varying perspectives on the future of both journalism and media. I think that this is going to be one of the better episodes as I am expecting to interview each presenter while they are still “in the zone.” I think that conferences have a unique way of allowing people to truly put on their thinking caps, especially presenters, and to give their newest and brightest ideas wings. So stay tuned and be ready for some awesome insights from our fellow SEO thought leaders.

Oregon Media Central

Bret Bernhoft — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:02:42 +0000

Oregon Media Central is a website geared towards the coverage of the Oregon media world and is maintained by Mitch Nolan. The website has been active since the demise of Oregon Media Insiders, a blog formerly covering the different worlds within Oregon media and journalism. Oregon Media Central (OMC) seems to cover a variety of topics but stays primarily on the subject of the “news about the news.”

According to their website, “Founded in June 2009 by Mitch Nolan, Oregon Media Central is dedicated to fair coverage of the media in Oregon and Southwest Washington.” Essentially, OMC wants to act as the link between the happenings of the Oregon media scene and the public. With a mission such as that it is important for OMC to have insider relations with varying new agencies. As was posted by Mitch Nolan himself on the Portland Mercury’s website, “Gmail wanted to automatically show everybody who my anonymous sources are. Fortunately, I caught it.”

It is therefore not much of a stretch to assume that Mitch Nolan has worked very hard at either building valuable relationships with people inside of the media world here in Portland or he is being passed a lot of information via anonymous tipsters. Either way, it seems to me, that OMC could be used in a number of ways that could be financially or personally damaging to people who need to be seen as seamless, the media. I would personally hope that the operators of OMC understand this.

Being that the subject of the blog is in fact the actual media and their product, information, it is important to address the significance of this relationship. From an information consumption perspective, having a resource such as OMC is valuable, yes. I imagine that the real value in having OMC will be in their allowing for commentary and providing an opportunity for backroom media operations to be exposed. Other than that it will be a game of whether or not OMC can provide original content consistently over time.

So similar to the issues of most media, we must wait until we are told.

Starting Over

Bret Bernhoft — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:48:22 +0000

It finally happened, my entire blog was deleted. While I was initially upset about this I have come to terms with the fact that I made a grave mistake in the back-end of my website and we will just leave it there. However, with a new start comes the opportunity to refocus the intention of this website and really try to make it something more than just a mess of ideas and half-ass articles. From this point forward, Bret Evan will be geared towards the development of ideas surrounding the future of Media and Journalism.

This author and this website along with The Face of Media podcast, original videos and photography will act as a voice for the observation and predictions about the world of content making and consuming. The objective is simple, education and application for the coming revolution in Media and Journalism. From the shrinking of local newspapers to the growth of international journalist networks, this website and related content will seek to feature much of it.

With no intention of earning an income and no disillusion of fame, this author and website will act as another unique spoke in the wheel of online news. So here we go.