ReadWriteWeb‘s lead writer of four years, Marshall Kirpatrick, annnounced today that he is stepping back from the day-to-day job of covering of startups, to begin the journey of starting his own.

Kirkpatrick had this to say on his blog about the new venture, called Plexus Engine:

It’s with both excitement and sadness that today I announce I am stepping back from my full-time position at ReadWriteWeb to build a product and a company. I’ll be continuing to post at RWW regularly, but I’ve got some big new things up my sleeve as well.

After years of writing about startup companies, I’m now building one myself. Specifically, I’m building a company that’s developing a technology based on some of my favorite consulting projects I’ve done for clients over the years: an app and data platform that discovers emerging topical information. It’s a learning-curve busting, “first mover’s advantage” as a service, technology for information workers who want to win. It’s about helping users “skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it’s been.”

Plexus Engine is currently in private beta, and we hope to take a look at what he has in store for us very soon.

Kirkpatrick explained the name he chose for the new company:

A Plexus is a place where nerves branch and rejoin in the body and the Plexus Engine analyzes points of intersection online to detect emerging signals.

Kirkpatrick has a long history as a respected technology journalist, dating back to his days of writing for TechCrunch.

His thirst for knowledge pulled from aggregated data can be seen in his work, and it sounds like Plexus Engine will further that thirst, and be the basis for his new company.

While Kirkpatrick isn’t talking about what Plexus Engine is exactly, he teased it with this background story:

I’ve built my career as one of the web’s leading technology journalists by making strategic use of lightweight tools for processing data to gain first mover’s advantage.

I’ve also consulted for companies large and small on how to build and use new media technologies, launch products and identify potential hires and industry experts, using tools as well. That’s where Plexus Engine was born.

Now I’m building a technology for everyone to use in order to save time and derive value from the huge sea of data being published online.

I spoke to Marshall today about his experiences in tech journalism, and what’s coming next:

TNW: What was the single most important thing you’ve learned being a tech journalist?

Marshall Kirkpatrick: That’s a really hard question Drew! Lemme think about it some more. That there’s a lot of good news in the world, that despite the state of the offline world, the online world is filled with opportunity, innovation, hopefulness and excitement. It may not be evenly distributed yet, it’s disproportionately available still to the most privileged people in society and to early adopters, but hopefully that’s changing.

TNW: Are there things tech companies can do better to get their products seen that they’re simply not doing?

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Be awesome, add value, read and listen, help me be more awesome is what I’d suggest. Kathy Sierra says great software helps people kick ass – that’s a good way to get press too.

TNW: What excites you the most about being hands on with your own project?

Marshall Kirkpatrick: I’m excited to be learning what it takes to build a company and a technology and the Plexus deliverables are awesome!

We wish Marshall the best of luck in his new venture, and look forward to reviewing the company here on The Next Web.

➤ Plexus Engine

At an event in London late last year, three young journalists discussed how blogging helped to kickstart their careers. As reported at the time by Journalism.co.uk, Guardian technology and media reporter Josh Halliday stated that “The most important thing I did at university, including my degree, was to blog and get online. That’s what got me the job.”

The growing list of student bloggers who have found their way into good ‘pro’ jobs also includes Hannah Waldram, who founded the Bournville Village blog, ended up taking to professional local blogging as the Cardiff ‘beatblogger‘ for The Guardian’s now mothballed Local project before becoming a community coordinator for the same newspaper, and Dave Lee, who founded The Linc newspaper and website in his university town of Lincoln before moving on to a varied career that currently sees him covering technology news for the BBC.

So, is blogging the perfect way for student journalists to get a foot on the ladder? Paul Bradshaw, leader of the MA Journalism course at Birmingham City University and Visiting Professor at City University London in the UK, believes so. “It’s definitely something I’ve been encouraging my students to do for a few years now,” he says.

“I think students entering the marketplace who have never run their own news website are at an increasing disadvantage,” explains Bradshaw. “Pretty much every employer I talk to says that they would ask serious questions about why an applicant was not already doing their journalism on some sort of online platform. There’s also a new opportunity for students to build assets – a URL, a network, a reputation – that employers will be looking for.”

The ability for anyone to set up a blog in minutes, at no cost, makes it a no-brainer that someone wanting to find paid work as a journalist would want to cut their teeth with some form of news blogging.

Taking on local media

Local newspaper sales have fallen, due in part to a decline in classified ads heralded by Web-based platforms such as Gumtree, so students now seem particularly attracted to covering local news. Kellie Maddox studies journalism at Birmingham City University and started Hednesford News in February this year as part of her final year project, with the aim of continuing and developing the site after graduation.

“With the decline in local print news coverage and the increasing boom of online news, it seemed a natural transition to start up a blog to provide focused content on a specific town or area, particularly when Hednesford (the town where I live) is currently undergoing huge regeneration which local residents are clearly interested/concerned about,” she explains.

“During my second year at university, I began to hear more about hyperlocal blogging and started to network with some of the key hyperlocal figures in the Midlands through social media and networking events,” Maddox says. “Having seen the success of blogs close to my home, such as The Lichfield Blog (now Lichfield Live) and seen how responsive people are to it and how vital a service it provides the community, I was keen to find out more and wanted to start a blog of my own. Hyperlocal blogging allows me, as a journalism student, to write and produce content, and publish to an audience quite freely, whenever I want and to provide a service which has currently been absent in my local area.”

Joseph Stashko is a journalism student at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, UK. As a blogger at Blog Preston, he covers local news in the city on a daily basis. He admits that getting into blogging “was just something to do,” but he was spurred into it by the 2010 UK General Election.

“Blog Preston was already up and running without my involvement, but had leant towards more feature-based and local history pieces rather than information or journalism. With the elections coming up I got in touch with the original founder, Ed Walker, and asked him whether I could run a live blog along with a few others to have some dynamic election coverage. It culminated in a live blog that took in audio, video clips, text updates and photos. That was my introduction to local blogging and after that I was asked by Ed to take over running of the blog.”

Self-made work experience

Stashko sees his reporting for Blog Preston as being more than just work experience – he sees it as being potentially better than the opportunities a traditional short stint in a local paper newsroom might offer. “In journalism, work experience is touted as a key part of the process that you need to follow in order to land a job. Local coverage allows you to do arguably more than you’d ever do in a newspaper office because you can be more experimental and have a free choice about what you cover. It also gives you a sense about what people care about on a local level – something that may not be important to you might be a burning community issue, so it teaches you basic news values.”

To date, Stashko is most proud of the coverage Blog Preston gave to a march by the controversial English Defence League. “It was an opportunity to go to town on both live coverage and follow-up content. So on the day I was live tweeting and sending out photos, which helped to build a live picture for people following the coverage. Afterwards there was enough content to make a short video package, an audio slideshow, a local business angle and a general report of the event. Our live coverage ended up being so good that it ended up being followed and used by big local media outlets who weren’t even covering it live.”

Stashko has even had the opportunity to experiment with new ways of reporting in a way that many fast-moving professional newsrooms may not have time for. In particular, geolocation-based reporting has been trialled of late on Blog Preston. Reviews and articles containing background information relevant to locations around Preston are posted to Foursquare, while Stashko recently mapped out the city’s most unhygienic restaurants and takeaways, including it on the site in an embedded Google map.

“There was little journalism involved – all it meant was me digging around in the Food Standards Agency for lots of results – what made it special was rather than just publishing the information I made it easy for the end user by visualising it on a map. Stuff like that also had a strong social element where people were curious to see how their favourite place to go stacked up, or share it with friends,” Stashko explains. “I think a lot of people underestimate the popularity of just being a useful source of information, rather than necessarily having to pursue hardcore journalism all the time.”

Work-life-work balance

One of the problems of maintaining a blog in your spare time is that, no matter how much you enjoy it, the rest of your life can get in the way. Stashkko admits that balancing his studies, a student social life and voluntary blogging is sometimes a challenge.

“It’s always a struggle, sometimes I get in at 11 or 12 and realise I have to write something up otherwise there’ll be nothing on the site the next day, and that’s a pain – but ultimately I enjoy doing it, so for the most part that means it’s never too much of a bother.

“For me my studies will take priority in that I want to end university with a good degree, but the value that I’ve got from Blog Preston is very tangible – it’s led to some paid work, got me known as someone who’s doing things within the hyperlocal space as well as giving me the opportunity to use online tools that’d probably either be frowned upon or looked at as time-consuming in a traditional newsroom.”

Kellie Maddox, blogging single-handedly at Hednesford News, has decided to take a short break from the site while she completes her degree, although she plans to return to it, monetising the project via the Addiply advertising platform, which is aimed at local and niche Web publishers.

Leaving it all behind

Of course, at some point, if all goes well, that experience of running a successful, self-started blog will pay off in the form of good job, but what happens to the blog the students spent so long toiling over? More importantly, what of the audience the blog built up? Are they left stranded?

Luckily, at least in some cases, it seems that local blogs can become something of a legacy for the students who started them once they leave town. Hannah Waldram’s Bournville Village blog is still operating under a new editor, while Dave Lee’s The Linc has gone from humble beginnings in 2007 to become a thriving publication which was shortlisted in the Guardian Student Media Awards in 2009 and recognised by the BBC in 2010 for its General Election coverage.

No longer a novelty?

While blogging certainly helps student journalists hone the skills they learn in lectures, the novelty of ‘a student who blogs’ must have worn off a little for employers now. Is that a problem?

“I think several years ago employers would’ve been bowled over by the fact that you even had a blog (as long as the content was half decent) – now it’s a lot more difficult to separate yourself in a world when lots of journalism students are on twitter, have a blog and use other social media,” Joseph Stashko says.

Paul Bradshaw believes that students can still stand out through using new and innovative reporting techniques. “It’s still easy to stand out from the crowd if you can get great stories or engage a community in powerful ways. Too few students do the latter. The students who are doing data journalism and visualisation are standing out, and also multimedia work.”

“Producing a regular blog allows me to develop my own journalism skills, be creative in terms of the content I produce, such as mapping, audio and video, and to demonstrate my commitment to the cause, my enjoyment and interest and my determination,” says Kellie Maddox.

Maybe that’s it – in the end, it’s all down to showing that you love what you do so much that you’ll fill your spare time with it, and that’s always going to score bonus points from any employer.

Just over a year ago we discussed on how “Robot journalists” (actually automated software designed to turn facts into readable copy) stood to threaten the jobs of writers in fields like sports reporting. It looks like the results are actually starting to become alarmingly good.

NPR’s All Things Considered reports how writers at Gawker’s sports site Deadspin assumed that a story written on GW Sports about a baseball game had been written by a robot due to its failure to mention that in the game, a player had pitched a perfect game in the NCAA for the first time in almost a decade – pretty big thing to miss.

It turned out that a human had in fact written that report, but the creators of news-writing software Narrative Science decided to take this as a challenge – could its software write a better account of the game? It turns out that yes, it could. This is what Deadspin was sent from the robo-journo:

“Tuesday was a great day for W. Roberts, as the junior pitcher threw a perfect game to carry Virginia to a 2-0 victory over George Washington at Davenport Field.

Twenty-seven Colonials came to the plate and the Virginia pitcher vanquished them all, pitching a perfect game. He struck out 10 batters while recording his momentous feat. Roberts got Ryan Thomas to ground out for the final out of the game.

Tom Gately came up short on the rubber for the Colonials, recording a loss. He went three innings, walked two, struck out one, and allowed two runs.

The Cavaliers went up for good in the fourth, scoring two runs on a fielder’s choice and a balk.”

Impressive, eh? It may not have much flair or personality, but it’s readable and accurate. Sports reporters should have real cause for concern, it seems. It’s easy to see how other data-heavy fields, such as financial reporting, may also see an influx of robot writers in the future.

I just hope it takes them a little longer to perfect the technology reporting algorithm – that might just be cutting a little too close to home for me…

UPDATE: It’s worth noting that Matters of Varying Significance notes that the original report from GW Sports was written by a human but not a trained sports journalist. That’s an important distinction that would explain the omission of an important piece of news from the report. Still, as a factual piece of writing the ‘robot’ still did an impressive job.

It’s two years since The Rocky Mountain News closed in Denver, Colorado, and the newspaper’s former editor, president and publisher John Temple has surveyed his former journalists to find out what they’re up to now. Rather depressingly, most of them are earning less than they did then.

146 of the paper’s 194 journalists responded to Temple’s survey which found that 67% of them now earn less than in their old job at the Rocky Mountain News, with 57% saying that they now earn “Much less” than in their old job.

92 respondents, or 63%, are still working as journalists and 64 of these are earning less now than in their old job. While the majority of those who have now left journalism also report receiving lower pay now, it’s still a depressing statistic that indicates that journalists appear willing to stay in their line of work despite the poor economic outlook for the profession.

Temple interviewed some of these former journalists, turning up quotes like “There have been very few days and nights and middle of the nights during the past two years when I have not worried about money” and “When I sometimes hear the normal everyday grumbling of my new colleagues, I wonder if they realize how fortunate they are to be working for a great organization making good money in the profession that we all love and how quickly that can be taken away if we are not mindful.”

However, it’s not all bad news – it appears that many of these journalists are actually a lot happier now, with more respondents saying that their lives were better than those who said it was worse.

Choice quotes:

• “Even though I’m making less money than I did at the Rocky, I’m a happier person.”
• “While the closure of the Rocky has not made my life easier, nor more comfortable, it has allowed me to put all my accumulated skills to use FOR MYSELF (as a sole proprietor) and for A GREATER GOOD (a community’s survival). In short, I am doing what I am supposed to be doing, where I am supposed to be doing it at a time that is critical for our community.”
• “I like being my own boss, working from home, learning about the field of blogging, and generally being more entrepreneurial… although I do not make as much money as I did at the Rocky, hopefully that will change in 2011.”

So, there appears to be optimism and a positive outlook among many of those who took a financial hit but stuck to their journalistic guns. While this is reassuring to hear, I’m sure publishers looking to slash their staffing costs are feeling quite reassured by it too.

Who doesn’t love infographics? Today, The Guardian, a British national daily newspaper and website launches its “Data journalism” site as a new way to visualize content and understand the news.

[Journalism is] going to be about poring over data and equipping yourself with the tools to analyse it and picking out what’s interesting. And keeping it in perspective, helping people out by really seeing where it all fits together, and what’s going on in the country. Tim Berners-Lee

Visualizing data is so much easier and more pleasurable than poring over paragraphs of description or even worse- spreadsheets. But they take a lot of work, both in data gathering and in design. It’s fantastic that the Guardian is dedicated an entire site to this effort. Its site will include ”key data of the day,” their “pick of the data blogosphere,” world government data and featured apps.

It seems that every time a blog under the Gawker Media banner breaks a major, internet-consuming story — whether it’s an iPhone prototype, nude pictures of Brett Favre, or a first-person account of a 25-year-old’s sleepover with Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell — there’s a certain subset of media critics who focus on Gawker-owner Nick Denton’s payment for the scoop. This despite the fact that paying for stories is a rather common business decision made by dozens of news outlets, including tabloid magazines and even major TV news networks (who pay exorbitant “licensing fees” to gain access to exclusive photos, which almost always result in an exclusive interview as well).

Perhaps the reason is, in part, because Gawker is a relatively new web start-up and online news isn’t particularly well known for paying its writers very well, much less dropping thousands of dollars for a single post. It was just a few years ago when Denton was paying $10 per post to some of his writers. So I wondered how Gawker calculates whether it will pay for a scoop, and how much? Why was the iPhone story (13 million views) worth $5,000, the Christine O’Donnell story (1.2 million views) worth a “low four figures,” and the Brett Favre pics (4.6 million views) worth “less than $20,000“?

Gawker’s editor-in-chief Remy Stern told me in a phone interview that while he can’t speak for the sister blogs, Gawker is approached at least once a week with some kind of pay-for-play scoop and at least 95 percent of them are deemed not worth paying for. “If it’s someone who has a photo, they’ll say something like, ‘I have these photos,’ and they’ll describe them but won’t actually send the photos. They’ll sort of want to talk about it, or want to discuss an arrangement, and this is something that indicates they’re looking to be paid. It tends to be when someone approaches us; we’re not going out with our hand out to pay for things. Sometimes there’s an intermediary — someone else will approach us — someone we know or someone we don’t know who says they know a company who’s looking to sell something … In most cases it’s something that we wouldn’t be interested in and we can eliminate it right off the bat. In other cases, I’ll have a discussion with our person and see what they have and what they’re looking to do. We don’t have massive amounts of money to pay people for stories.”

The editors will first consult with Denton, but Stern said that it’s not uncommon for the media mogul to leave the decision up to an individual site’s editor. “We’re taking a bit of a chance in all these cases that whatever we pay for is going to be worth it,” he explained. “You have tabloids that are paying astronomical amounts of money for things, and that’s not how we operate. So we’re not fairly competitive with these glossy tabloids who have lots of money to throw around.”

The editor said that the decision to pay for a story is based on a “gut feeling,” adding that there are some rough calculations as to how many unique visitors a story would attract, something that’s “hard to turn into an exact science.” A political story before a large election, for instance, may be worth more because it has the opportunity for a bigger “draw.” Surprisingly, Gawker will sometimes pay for a story that wouldn’t be considered a huge traffic driver because it “is important to our audience,” meaning that it’s also focused on the long-time retention of current readers. As for the O’Donnell story, Stern said that it had far exceeded his expectations.

Shortly after the iPhone 4 story broke, Denton claimed that he was not able to directly monetize all the page views because the ad sales are made in advance. In fact, he said he actually lost money in the short term. The benefit, he explained, was the long term branding opportunity for Gizmodo, which has enjoyed a significant increase in daily traffic since the story broke. “It certainly is a long term traffic benefit because you hopefully have new readers come to the site and stick around,” said Stern. “If it attracts 100,000 new visitors, and 200 or 500 of those people decide to check out the site every day and become regular readers, then you’re sort of building audience over time with these big scoops. It’s not an immediate ad benefit. In fact, in the case of some of these controversial high profile stories, there aren’t ads running on those posts anyway.”

One reason Gawker may decide not to pay for an item is if there’s no story attached to it. “We’re not just buying nude photos of some celebrity,” he said. “We’re kind of looking for a different kind of story usually. We usually like to find something where it’s part of a package; there’s a little bit of a tale to tell. For instance with the O’Donnell story, there was this hypocrisy that we found interesting and it was a lot more than simply ‘Here, look at these photos.’”

Of course the best scoops not only allow Gawker to publish the story itself, but to actually become part of the story. If you didn’t hear about the iPhone 4 prototype when it first hit Gizmodo, you likely heard of it when editor Jason Chen’s home was raided by police, who then seized his computers. That’s the kind of scoop that not even Nick Denton can buy.