Seems simple enough. Except, it’s a huge topic.

So below is where I am so far in breaking this topic, but I’d love your input.

What do you think young/aspiring journalists need to know about writing for the web? Should I focus on SEO, twitter, liveblogging?

WRITING FOR THE WEB

1) Search engine optimization: just the basics. Keywords, where they need to be & why. Importance of link text being relevant.

2) Style. Why it matters online.

TWITTER

1) What words to use/not use. Research on what words do/don’t get retweeted (marketers are all over this topic). How to use hashtags.

2) Breaking news: Famous examples and writerly examples. Rules of the road, ethics to consider.

LIVE BLOGGING

1) Examples  (breaking news, sports events, watching tweets).

2) Doug Smith’s top live blogging tips.

It was a good game, good company, beers, fun. Afterwards we all jumped in a cab and went to Bravi on Wellington Street — a fav hang-out of my boss. Next stop reservoir lounge. Final stop, home — around 2:30 a.m. (and that was very unusual). Way too late for a weeknight. That’s FOR SURE.

So morning comes around. I drag myself upright,  get ready for work, grab my purse to go to the office. Huh. Purse feels unusually light.

Right… that’s because there’s no wallet.

Great. Memories of teenaged years. No wallet.

Great. GREAT. Great. Everything is in there. Social insurance card — driver’s license, health card.

On the way to work I’m actually wondering how I’d replace them all, since it included all my ID. Suddenly I have no way of getting money, or proving to the bank I’m actually who I say I am.

When I get to work, I call and cancel things. It seems the only identifying thing I actually HAVE is my mother’s maiden name. Sheesh. Thank goodness for that!

So I called Bravi — they hadn’t found it.

Panic panic panic.

Then I get an e-mail from home.

Subject line: horseshoes.

Horseshoes INDEED.

Dear Melissa, the note began. My brother (Richard) found your wallet last night. He tried to return it to you then. However, no answer when he knocked on door. I tried this morning on his behalf before dropping off at 55 division police.

The note goes on to tell me where the station is, and is signed Marion.

It almost seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? When I get to 55 division later that day I actually feel like there will be some joke — the wallet will be back, but there will be nothing in it or something.

But no — everything is there. Tokens, money — everything.

So thank you to Richard and Marion — Leslievillers extraordinaire.

I wasn’t really sure what it was — a stenciled door with a purple light shining on it… at 946 and 1/2 Queen Street East. Was it really a wine bar? Was I brave enough to go in? But  I started to read the odd review wafting around the internet and realized it really was as advertised.

So after much expectation, I went to Swirl last night for dinner.

You walk up the long set of stairs and when you get to the top it feels like you’re in someone’s apartment. Because … well you kind of are. It’s a one-bedroom apartment that’s reportedly 600 square feet and it has been converted into a wine bar. The kitchen — what was once the kitchen — is now the bar where the staff prep things. There are  six tables at the front — most are old sewing machine stands. There’s a large room at the back that could comfortably sit a large party around a large harvest table.

The vibe in the place is  nice. Cool art, great decorating, lots of people chatting. It feels comfortable and cool. It’s  amazing how much they’ve got into such a small space.

First off, I’d say their wine list is really good. They have an interesting selection, many by the glass. And the prices range from $7/glass up to about $12 if my memory serves me. I had a Cave Springs Reisling Dolomite, a Viongier (can’t remember which one!) and a Gewurztraminer, all really nice.

My friend Megan and I went after work — so we were hungry and we came for dinner. Yes, dinner. (Insert eyebrow lift)

I admit I was a little worried because I knew they didn’t have a kitchen. The apartment’s “kitchen” is now the servers area/bar to prepare things.

So you can order “jars” which are small mason jars filled with varying things ($9 each) that come with crackers and fresh baguette. We ordered a stilton jar, a duck confit jar and a chicken liver pate jar. The stilton was the fav by a long shot, the pate was nice — nice flavour and texture. I enjoyed the duck confit less — super rich and not as interesting as the other two. We also ordered a chaceuterie plate. The plate was good — had a really great ham, an italian spicy pork (my fav), a duck (which friend Megan loved) and a summer sausage which was good, but probably would have been better with less olive oil (they marinade it). But that is likely an individual taste thing.

The presentation is adorable — the jars come with little labels and you open them yourself.

I really enjoyed Swirl, and since it’s right around the corner, there’s no doubt I’ll be back. I don’t think I’d go after work on Friday when I’m really hungry, but I’d go with girlfriends for a drink and munchies. Serving that function, it’s a fantastic place. Great ambience, yummy munchies, good wine list. As a place for dinner — not so much, but really Swirl isn’t trying to be that …

My old alma mater — the Queen’s Journal — asked me write a piece for their last issue of the student newspaper. I loosely knew I wanted to write about the future of campus media, and then started to read up on what’d been happening on campus. Gabe King, the long-suffering den mother of the Journal said — as I suspected — that both readership and advertising were down.

But I was also struck by how little innovation was actually happening. Shouldn’t universities and campus media be the hub of innovation? Weren’t university students the ones who protest, have sit-ins?

My Queen’s Journal article here.

I’ve got to say, while the piece calls for people to start innovating in their media before it’s too late, in the build up to writing the piece I came across one prof at Queen’s doing lots of innovating. If you haven’t already, you should really check out the work of Sydney Eve Matrix at cyberpop.

Even if you’re not a big podcast person, you need to listen to this one. I’ve been a fan for a long time. This weekend I was catching up on my podcasts, and I listened to the one from last week — Episode 403, NUMMI.

The podcast was about GM and Toyota and a plant in California where the two companies, long ago, joined forces. That experiment could have taught GM a thing or two and helped keep it alive, the podcast argues.

Before its current problems, Toyota’s leadership style was based on a collaborative approach — one that rewarded employees for innovation, one that valued employee input and even allowed workers on the line to stop the line so a problem with a car could be fixed. The result was a better car — a more reliable one. And the result of that? More market share.

By contrast, GM had a command and control leadership style. The production line was kept going at all cost so cars were produced with flaws and problems and that eroded market share. Company executives didn’t seem to notice the erosion was happening.

Remind you of another industry?

While on the surface the podcast was about dueling car companies, it had a lot to say about change-ready industries and leadership.

I don’t think newspapers are the next GM but they’re not exactly (the old) Toyota either. It was interesting to hear how the Toyota leaders gave bonuses to employees who found efficiencies. Toyota respected its employees and realized the path to a better company was in their hands.

I’m not sure how many leaders in the newspaper industry live that ideal. I was talking to Torstar Digital president Tomer Strolight recently at a leadership session and he talked a lot about the importance of employees, of thinking of their careers and of including them in the company’s important decisions. It not only makes sure the best choices are made, it tells an employee that he or she matter.

The best resource I can provide on this issue is the Learning Newsroom, a three-year project that gave executive-style training to everyone in the 10 newsrooms selected to take part. I was lucky enough to be at the Hamilton Spectator when the program was running in that newsroom.

I don’t think media leaders talk enough about leadership styles or how leadership will or won’t lead us into the future.

If you’re a newsroom leader looking for a little inspiration on the collaborative approach, listen to the podcast.

After the session two of the students came to chat to me.

The question? How do I get hired.

I get that question a lot. They weren’t asking how they’d get hired at the Star, but in general. One had significant experience in Germany (no Canadian experience), another was trying to make a career transition INTO journalism (ie full-time job, hard to leave!)

So here’s my top 5 things people wanting to be a professional online journalist need to do.

1) You need to understand what’s under the hood of a website — not how to change the transmission, but how to put in windshield wiper fluid. To be in online media, you need to be a solid journalist. But that’s not all. You have to understand the online medium, be excited about and know the basics of what makes a site work. Make sure you have the right skills.

2) You need journalism schooling. I cringe when I say that because when I showed up at Ryerson University I already had two internships at daily newspapers under my belt (Barrie Examiner and Kingston Whig-Standard) and thought I should be able to jump directly into a career. But going to Ryerson (beyond teaching me stuff) opened a lot of doors. It got me job interviews. I don’t think it has to be at a university — there are quite a few good journalism programs at colleges — but you need it. Very, very few people don’t go to J school these days. And maybe you’re Oscar Wilde, but if you’re not — you need some help with getting your foot in the door.

3) Get experience. It is way WAY more important than your marks. No one has ever asked to see my degree. Honestly, I don’t even know what my grades at Ryerson were anymore. What I do remember is the great front-page story I got on the Toronto Star working as a student in its radio room. I remember the summer internships (I got because of Ryerson). And it was the internships and portfolio that got me a full-time job. So you should try and get your foot in the door anywhere — part-time, contract, internships, where-ever and when ever you can. Times like during Olympics and elections are great to get that chance because news organizations often hire people on short-term contracts.

4) Twitter. It’s a great place to hear about seminars, Toronto-based camps (CampVJ is coming up!). It’s the perfect networking tool … not in the slightly irritating Linkedin way, but in an engaging, interesting way. If you’re well-read and post interesting links, you’ll find others like you.

5) Blog. Go and do it. I’ve found many impressive blogs by students and wannabe journalists. Here’s an example of a UWO student going out there and doing it. People who are involved in the online community get the online space. That’s why they make good hires.

I’ve been really, really (ok – just one more time… REALLY) excited about a new restaurant opening in the old Citizen

Lynn Crawford (left), Lora Kirk and me.

building on Queen East, just east of Broadview. The windows have been covered over for weeks. Word had it, it was opening Tuesday night.

The excitement? Well, the Queen East strip is really up and coming. It has lots of restaurants, but I would argue still looking for an top-tier restaurant (don’t get me wrong there are three to four I’d go to every week if I could). I was hoping (am hoping) Ruby Watchco will take Queen East to the next level in food sophistication.

And, by my judging last night, it does that.

I snagged a reservation on opening night. Everyone knows you shouldn’t judge a restaurant on its first night. But there’s a rush about an opening night — staff are excited and none of the reviewers are there so us normal people can be left in peace and quiet.

While the food and decor are sophisticated, none of it is austere or snooty. Really interesting light fixtures, very cool Ruby Watch Co sign. The guy next to me grew up in this space — his father named a clothing store after him in the same spot.

That type of comfort actually imbibes the space. The food is sophisticated but it’s still distinctly a neighbourhood place.

The interior doesn’t look anything like its predecessor. The best part is actually at the back, it’s an open galley kitchen with a massive butcher’s block, of sorts, in front. That’s where Lynn Crawford was all night, plating everything as it came out of the kitchen. All of the sides come out in Le Crueset mini red pots.

When you call to make a reservation they’ll ask you if you have any dietary restrictions — be honest. This is NOT a restaurant with a menu. It’s a prix fix ($49). You don’t pick what you’re eating. You eat what they’re making. And, frankly, I love it. The menu changes every night. At first I just said oh yes — everything is fine, but I called back to whimper out, when I realized it’d be prix fix, that I didn’t eat red meat. They totally took it in stride and accommodated, but be honest at the outset.

The servers were courteous, knew what they were serving, and were very knowledgeable about the wines, which I definitely appreciated. The wine list is impressive with quite a few options by the glass.

Dinner started with Ruby’s chicken caesar with red romaine, pulled chicken, egg, avocado, and a garlic comfit.

The main course for my friend Catharine was grilled flanked steak. I had grilled pickerel — which was good (crispy skin, not over-cooked) if slightly bland. But really, the meal was all about the sides (which came in their own small red pots).

The smoked mushrooms with caramelized onion were divine. The parsnip fries were actually hit and miss — some were undercooked (ok, they were raw) while others were nice and crunchy. But it’s opening night. I’d definitely forgive that.

The cream spinach and leeks could be my breakfast every day if I wanted to weigh 300 pounds.

The main course was followed by a really great cheese course, with 10-year-old Ottawa Valley cheddar, a home-made balsamic and onion pickle with honey and walnut bread. (The combo of pickle and honey was amazing).

The desert was a lemon tart with a lemon thyme sweet cream. The tart involved probably the best lemon curd I’ve ever tasted — and I make lemon curd myself.

I’ve got to say the two most refreshing things about this meal was nothing was overcooked (hurray!) and the seasoning was immaculate.

Lynn Crawford was chatting to everyone and as I said to her last night, I don’t think Leslieville would have been ready for this restaurant five years ago. But it is the right restaurant, at the right time, in the right place.

I’ll definitely be back.

Hello new shoes. You are so sweet. So comfortable. I love you.

There’s something so great about shoes, about Italian-made, leather-lined shoes. They look awesome, feel awesome . . . and are, quite frankly, awesome.

This pair didn’t look like much on the shelf. You had to try them on to realize how fantastic they are. As soon as they were on my feet I knew I’d be buying them.

So the question becomes what do you buy online?

I’ve bought:

Wedding presents (BEST place to get wedding presents. Way easier then printing off registry, trying to read the numerical codes etc etc).

Books (Obviously)

Music (who buys it anywhere else now?)

Movies (both buying/renting)

Groceries — I bought from Grocery Gateway in 2001 while at Ryerson University.

Tickets. Concerts, mainly, but also cultural events.

All things travel-related (rental car, flights, package holidays).

Bulbs — the kind you plant in your garden. In fact, I’ve ordered, bulbs, seeds and living little plant-lets that arrive in a protective wee box.

Toilet flapper replacement. True — bought it online. Have odd “Toto” toilet and it’s hard to find the flappers. I should note the stupid flapper still leaks.

I don’t order home renos online, but I do investigate things and people online when it comes to renos — look up homestars and Better Business Bureau.

What do I not buy online?

Shoes and clothes. I’ve thought about buying from J Crew online, because they don’t have stores in Canada. Also thought about buying from Anthropologie until they came to Canada, but never actually have. I think the hold back is that you really really never know if something is going to fit, look good, be the right size and it’s such a hassle to send it back that the hassle of perhaps having to mail it back means I just don’t buy.

This weekend I was on a quest to get flat, brown-ish shoes for work. I walked away with not flat tan-ish shoes. They’ll still go with the brown pants, but they’re not what I had in mind. And that thrill of the find, the unexpected whimsy of a pair of shoes, is what makes shoe shopping — and clothes shopping — fun.

Me learning to surf in Tamarindo, Costa Rica

Last week I went on vacation to Tamarindo, Costa Rica, home of the original type of surfers.

When I got on the airplane here in Toronto, I turned ye olde iphone to airplane mode. I cut the umbilical cord. Good bye. No incoming anything.

I’ll confess (this explains the * in the headline) before  people call me on it — that I did check personal email twice buying a card from reception and using the dial-up connections in the resort internet room. (Afterall, I did have to talk to my mother who was holding the fort back home). But other than that, I was unplugged.

Strangely,  many people didn’t think I could or would cut the cord. When I got home, I had quite a few emails from people at work either assuming I’d left it on or sending test emails to see if I’d actually unplugged.

And let me tell you — it was like a time warp… back to 1995. I mean, I talked to people face to face . . . and they talked back!

Huh. Interesting.

The whole trip started with crowd-sourcing. I picked the trip based on online reviews. First I narrowed to a handful of resorts, and then I picked the Barcelo Langosta based on the mostly positive reviews on tripadvisor.com.

Tripadvisor.com isn’t fool-proof. Some people have bad experiences, some are just party poopers, and sometimes I’m convinced people are writing about myths that have developed at their local hotel.

I had no idea about the earthquake in Chile (or concerns about a tsunami), had no idea what happened with our budget. I was in a news blackout.

I took the time away from my iphone  to read something I should have long ago (am actually a bit embarrassed I hadn’t already) Clay Shirkey’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

Most people unplug when they go away — the only people I saw at the resort with a smart phone were Costa Ricans, there for the weekend.

While I used crowd-sourcing to pick the place, the most difficult part of turning my iphone to airplane mode was that I was suddenly cut off from that same crowd-sourcing. How was I expected to navigate the hotel waters? How would I know which day trip to pick? Whether they’d put up a fuss if we wanted to change our room? Had anyone crossed the river to the beach on the other side?

The day after we got there, it was the Canada vs. U.S. gold medal Olympic hockey game. I overheard some other Canadians talk about it, and chimed in with questions — when was the game and could we actually watch it?

Canadians (and one American) convene on the hotel lobby bar to watch the game.

I found out where and when, and figured I’d be one of a handful of die-hards. Um, ya. Not so much.

Exhibit A for old-school crowd-sourcing (aka talking to people) working. (see picture at right).

As soon as we met people at the resort we were asking questions — had you been to the volcano? Was it worth the long day? What about the trip to Nicaragua? Was that one fun? Did you see many animals in Paolo Verde? We’d ask people at dinner, at the lobby bar, on other trips we were on. We were looking for suggestions. It meant, sadly, that that was all you could really talk to strangers about — if we were only going to have a conversation for two minutes, I had to be sure to pump them for all the information I could in that two minutes.

At the airport on the way home, everyone was trading stories — one group talked about a man in a wheelchair who was left out in the sun and got third degree burns. Others talked about an ATV accident that forced some Canadians to go home early.

This is all I thought: Right and Gordon Lightfoot is dead, right? Um, well no. But everyone thought so for a while there.

I’m told this is generational. Maybe … but I just hadn’t needed to rely on talking to people to get feedback on something in well … a few years. So in some ways talking to people worked: lots of people showed up to the hockey game. But I gotta say word of mouth isn’t great for reliability — when you’ve only asked two or three people, one party pooper and the results are swayed significantly.

After seven days unplugged, I missed the interaction.

I wanted to set up a message board at the hotel. I didn’t want my iphone, but I wanted a way to talk to everyone at the resort. Under the heading: Volcano — people could post sticky notes about whether it was good or not. Under taxi names/numbers of good ones. We needed a way to go beyond the one-to-one interactions. A way of people coming in late, or getting up early, to hear what the others had said … we needed a hyper-local message board. And it could have been ~ gasp ~ just a cork board.

So under “Costa Rica Roots tour” I’d put “Best trip ever.”  Under snorkelling: Great puffer fish, watch for the nasty floating things that sting you. Under surfing I’d say: Best lesson from Marina at the Bikini Shop.

Under theme for the week? Retro, dude.

But the other day, I would have paid someone to deliver a black forest cake recipe on to my laptop screen.

Not just any old recipe, obviously. One that worked, had the right amount of yum and beauty so everyone would ooh and ahh over it, since it was (and is) quite a lot of work.

I’ll give you a very short Nelsonian food history: My mother’s a chef, trained at Le Cordon Bleu school in Paris, no less.

My mother -- the chef

Yes — bona fide, big time chef. I can remember her spinning sugar when I was a kid. She’s also British, so Delia Smith to her was a bit like Julia Child to Americans. I have my Grandmother’s copy of Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course (it doesn’t have black forest cake), I have the more recent version of her cooking course — all three volumes (one has a black forest log — not the same, I decided). I scoured my recipe books — Julia, Delia, Nigella Lawson, Joy of Cooking… and on and on. No black forest cake. I suppose it’s old fashioned.

This is when indexes in cook books are so crucial. There’s a great scene in the movie Julie and Julia, when Julia Child is talking about working on their book’s index — and I thought, yes of course. Indexes. So important.

Probably, given my history and love for butter and cheese, it should be no surprise that … after much work … I have just lost 17 pounds (and counting). And while organizations like Weightwatchers (what I’m using) do great things, they just don’t understand the importance of indexes. Skinny people, I suppose. Not cookbook writers. Not indexers.

Which is good, right? They leave it to the real indexers.

Uh … well … wrong. Google is terrible for recipes. They don’t differentiate between Martha Stewart and Julia Child. Need I say more?

You get more than 800,000 hits for black forest cake. But would you make any of them? No. Would you use just anyone’s recipe? Well, of course not.

So … I went to where I always go: Deliaonline.com. No luck. Tried Chowhound. No luck there either — just places to eat it in Toronto. Tried epicurious, obviously. But I wanted a recipe from someone I knew and trusted. My usual go-to women weren’t delivering and I didn’t know where else to look. Anyway, long story short — I chose this recipe. It’s on the Nigella Lawson site — but not by Nigella — by a reader. Forums on food sites are probably a whole other post — they’re popular and sort of middling to average in utility, I find.

With this recipe from Nigella Lawson’s site, I trusted the source, strangely, even though it wasn’t a Nigella recipe per se.

It clearly had some flaws at the outset — self raising flour (British), sour cherries (lots of work), no explanation for what TYPE of chocolate (I chose 70 per cent chocolate) and not particularly good instructions. The results were OK. The cake was good, the cherries great, the Ganache was terrible.

There’s this strange disconnect for me about food online. I often cook with my laptop in the kitchen, podcast playing, flipping between two or three recipes on different tabs. But there’s no one great aggregator for me. (I’d be interested to know if anyone else has found their perfect aggregator).

I still go to individuals — personalities — I know and trust. I have, in the past (when I wasn’t losing weight) paid for premium content on Delia Smith’s site. It’s up there with movies and music for me — things I’m actually willing to pay for online. I haven’t found the premium services on Delia’s recently revamped site, so obviously I wasn’t enough to keep her going on that front!

I think the problem when it comes to food is that there’s simply too much of it out there.

I need a food concierge service that will go and find me stuff, so I don’t have to wade through all the recipes, message board posts, and schlock to come up with what I’m looking for. I need to know who has the best free-range, organic turkeys that aren’t the weight of a middle school child. I need to know where to get odd ingredients and how to make black forest cake in a way that is yummy and awe inspiring.

If that existed out there, I’d probably pay.

Back to chicken roasting in the oven… (weightwatchers recipe, sigh, though I’d rather be doing this one).