Charles Apple

Designer Ernie Smith — late of Norfolk’s Link, which shut down two weeks ago — is certain he’s on to the next big thing.

Ernie Smith. Photo by Nikki DiDomenico.
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He loved the short-form journalism he’s been doing the past couple of years at Link and before that at Bluffton Today. He realizes, though, that the future of journalism may be online.

So the newly-unemployed 28-year-old visual journalist is combining the two in a new web site, which he launched today — essentially, a blog containing all short-form material. Ernie calls it ShortFormBlog.

Ernie’s ShortFormBlog as it appeared at launch Thursday afernoon.
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Ernie took the time to answer a few questions about his new venture:

Q. So what is ShortFormBlog all about?

A. The nut graf: It’s an attempt to see how short-form journalism translates to the Web. Rather than creating a blog where everything was really long, I wanted to make one where every post was really short.

I took some of the key visual styles of newsprint – pull quotes, fact boxes, photos with cutlines, and a couple of others – and built them into a versatile, easy-to-update template. I have to use very little HTML code to make posts.

The focus will be general national news – I figured that it needed to be newsy. So, there will be some entertainment, some sports, some opinion, but at its heart, it’s gonna be the news of the day, told with an editor’s eye and a scalpel. I wanted it to feel like something a human being put together, as opposed to a database or engine.

Q. Are you writing and designing it all yourself? Or do you have a staff working with you?

A. For now, it’s all me. But I designed it in such a way that I could scale it up if the opportunity presents itself. I want it to start with me and just see how far I can take it.

The layout is a custom-built Wordpress template, all cobbled together by me. Figured I might as well do it right. The design is very modular, so it feels like something different every time you look at it, even if it’s all the same thing. And that was important to me. If you have a good toolbox, you have the coolest shed on the block. Right?

Scrolling through Thursday’s inaugural posts allow you to sample the techniques Ernie will use on ShortFormBlog: Quote boxes, chunky type, big numbers and so on. Note the very simple, no-frills typography and color scheme.
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Q. How often will you update the site?

A. It’ll be easier to put up a lot of posts in this format than one or two big ones, since by its nature it’s aggregation-by-human-input. I’m giving myself a fairly reasonable goal: 15-20 posts a day, minimum, Monday-Friday. It seems like a reasonable goal starting out, especially since, you know, I don’t have a job at the moment. (One of the things that will help here is posting in advance, so, based on the kind of news at my disposal, I could really work on it at any time and have the blog set to update when I choose.)

Q. How did you develop this idea?

A. To me, one of the things that really broke my heart about the loss of Link – almost as much as the fact that all my friends were getting laid off – was the loss of a truly innovative short-form editing format. It harkens back to a lot of magazines, obviously, but Link pushed it further than a lot of newspapers did. I didn’t want to see that die.

We had a lot of lead time before the paper closed, so that last month, I spent a lot of time talking to friends about big ideas and the evolution of journalism, what I would miss from the death of Link. I’ve always thought that it’s been as interesting to see how people read a newspaper as what they read. I wondered if it could evolve further.

I just kept saying to my friends, “Man, if only we had money!”

I thought about it some more and wondered how far I could get on my own. How could I translate this stuff to a blog? I started writing up a concept, then that night threw together a template in Illustrator, not even knowing how I would lay it out in HTML, especially since I hadn’t done any serious coding in four years. I showed it to a couple friends and got some pretty positive responses.

The name may have changed but the basic design concept
is the same from this early Adobe Illustrator prototype
Ernie tossed together in December.
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I did some research, and found that there were underutilized features of the Wordpress content management system that could be molded to do exactly what I wanted. I also noticed that some of the sites that inspired me and I wanted to take cues from (Fark, Digg) started on basically no money. (In the case of Digg, $3,000 bucks, most of which was spent on the domain name.)

Then, knowing that I would have some in-flux time around the holidays, I just went for it. I learned how to create a Wordpress template from scratch and recreated features in CSS that I laid out in that initial Illustrator template. The most difficult part, of course, was the whole making it work in IE6 thing, but I pulled it off.

I treated the project like a job, learning as I went along. I worked on it 40 hours a week. Why not, you know? I need to be productive or I go crazy. I have time to figure out the next step. So, I’ll create my own next step for a little while and see if it works out. And who knows, someone might like what they see. :)

Q. Do you have a way to “monetize” this yet? Are you selling ads? Or do you see this as a hobby + learning experience for now?

A. I think, for now, it’s going to start as a learning experience, except with (eventually) some ads interspersed in-between from Google Adwords. I want them to be unobtrusive, much like the way Craigslist handles itself. As for the site itself, I want to think of it as a sandbox and I’m not adverse to falling on my face a little, and if it’s successful, great!

Ernie opens for Skye Zentz at Elliot’s Fair
Grounds in Norfolk last March. Photo by
Ashley Grove.
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Q. A while back, you were kind enough to give me a CD of your song demos. You don’t suck, dude. Have you thought about trying to turn songwriting or performing into a career — even if just a part-time one?

A. I love playing guitar and writing songs, and it’s something I’ve thought about a little, but really, I write in ebbs and flows – I’ll have an intensely creative period, then write nothing of note for six months. I would rather have a creative hobby right now and if the mood strikes, do something more with it. And I mean, I just got laid off from my favorite job ever. Just think what I’ll write once that sinks in! (Sigh.)

Oh yeah, thanks for the compliment. :)

Always calm on deadline. Photo by Emily Hartman.
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Q. Link ended when? Dec. 19? Do you have any leads on a new full-time gig?

A. Link’s last issue was December 19. The final issue PDF is downloadable, for the curious. We put together some great issues all the way until the end. The final week, we created a 2009 almanac issue with an amazingly well-done cover by Ashley Grove. It’s seriously my favorite cover she’s done the entire time she worked here.

Ashley Grove’s Link cover from Dec. 16.
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And the last issue, I got to put together a parody “Bacon” section, which was fun, if bittersweet. We kept running into bacon-related stories on the wire and this weird bacon-infused vodka was getting a lot of buzz online, so I figured we might as well just have an Aqua Teen Hunger Force-esque section in the final issue, complete with a “strip tease.” All this is particularly ironic, of course, because I’m vegetarian.

Ernie’s bacon page from the final issue of Link on Dec. 19.
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Regarding employment, some things have cropped up, but for now, I’ll give you a vague answer: We’ll see what happens. You never know. I will say this much, though: There are some amazingly talented people I worked with – especially those who have nothing to do with design whose work may not scream out as loudly as some of the NPD portfolios from our design staff – who would be great journalists wherever they end up. They know how to take a story and rework the way its heart beats, and I have to imagine papers across the country would really want that.

Ernie critiques a portfolio at SND/Boston in 2007.
Photo by Robb Montgomery.
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Q. What are the three top things you’ve taken away from your ride at Link?

A: 1.) Newspapers can evolve, and they can get it right. And people will love you for it. You just have to know when not to say no and put your heart into it.

2.) Want to be an amazing journalist? Make sure your social life is just as vibrant and unpredictable as your at-work life, and let one influence the other.

3.) If you hang out in coffee shops all day, you’ll trip into your community more than you’d ever imagine. And be sure to give high-fives!

A few examples of Ernie’s work:

See more in Ernie’s NewsPageDesigner gallery.

Find Ernie’s new ShortFormBlog here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Free publications, Getting a life, Industry woes, Innovative ideas, Job changes, News design, Small papers, Web news design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.