Section fronting

"Sweet" John Muehlbauer, from my tablets story. Photo by me.

I feel a bit like I lost my Eye of the Tiger (I blame the stupid, eyeless tiger) for a while after South by Southwest Interactive, as I wrote before, but things seem to finally be ramping up again. After months of feeling too tired and overwhelmed to pitch outside of work, I’ve had a few things start to materialize (more on that later) and at work, I’ve had two section-front stories appear this week that I think turned out really well.

The first is a story is an advice/how-to piece on transitioning to a tablet like the iPad 2 from a laptop or desktop computer. This is probably not a full-blown trend yet, but I’m starting to hear of people ditching their heavy laptop on business trips in favor of a tablet or just finding they have less use for a full-blown computer the majority of the time. We were hoping we were a little ahead of the curve on this. I think by the holidays, we’ll see a lot more of this going on as that market grows. This piece ran in Sunday’s Life & Arts section.

Austin writer Gabrielle Faust. Photo by Zach Ornitz, Austin American-Statesman

On Tuesday, another piece I wrote about how Austin celebrities like horror writer Gabrielle Faust, HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff and Jojo Garza of the music group Los Lonely Boys manage their connections and correspondence with fans online appeared in the paper.

The common thread I heard in my interviews was that it scales up really fast and becomes unmanageable in a short amount of time unless a famous person devotes staff or a significant amount of time to it. (Even then, it can get beyond their control.) Something to think about for those who are gaining popularity online with their art or business.