Attendee Interview #1: Ryan Sholin

Who are you and what do you do?

Hi, I’m Ryan Sholin and I do a lot of things. By day, I’m the Director of Community Site Publishing at GateHouse Media, which means I train journalists at small town and rural newspapers across the country how to get ahead of the curve online.

I’m also one of the founders of Wired Journalists, a social network for journalists looking for answers (and questions) about online news skills, tools, and ideas. And I’ve been blogging for about four years now at ryansholin.com, and my side project for the last eight months or so has been ReportingOn.com, a Knight News Challenge project.

Why are you coming to BCNI Philly?

Well I’ve been excited about the BCNI meetups happening all over the country. I think it’s a great chance to get some small groups together and spend a day or two sharing what we’ve been learning about online news for the past few years. I’d love to see demos of what’s working at news sites, and I’m psyched to talk a little bit about some of the projects I’ve been working on.

Which, I suppose, leads me to the next question … are you going to present?

Everybody has to present, right? Yes, I’d love to talk about ReportingOn — by the time the Philly meetup happens, I should have something new pretty ready to show off. And if not that, then I’ll definitely try to share some of what I’ve learned about community management from Wired Journalists.

Well everyone does have to present, but we will have roughly 54 slots so if more than 54 come, that might not be the case.

Sounds good – I hope everyone gets a chance to share something.

Where can we find you online?

The easiest way to find me is on Twitter, @ryansholin, but you can find links to most everywhere I publish and share at ryansholin.com.

Final question, and its an impossible task. With one word, finish this sentence: What the news industry really needs is ___.

Only one word?

Haha, I’ll give you 5.

How about: hard work. Which is to say, you can come up with all the brilliant ideas for news and revenue that might work all day long, but nothing works until you put your head down and build something new.