Meanwhile, I'm boycotting pomegranate juice until we get this matter resolved.

Last week, just as the National Law Journal was ready to go to press, we received word that the subject of one of our stories was headed to court to secure a temporary restraining order against us.  Here's how editor-in-chief David Brown explained the situation in his editor's note:

What appears here is not the full story. Minutes before our deadline Friday, D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff signed a temporary restraining order against The National Law Journal enjoining it from publishing certain details that we legally obtained from court documents. Specifically, we are not allowed to name a government agency conducting a regulatory inquiry into one of the subjects of the article, POM Wonderful. We fought this order vigorously in court; we thought and continue to think that it is a violation of the First Amendment, and we are working on an appeal. Bartnoff, as she considered the order, said, "If I am throwing 80 years of First Amendment jurisprudence on its head, so be it." She said the court's interest in maintaining the "integrity" of its docket trumped the First Amendment concern. We strongly believe Bartnoff's action harms the integrity of the court by placing process concerns over fundamental constitutional rights. Sadly, however, because of Bartnoff's order, we were forced to scrub this article of any reference to the agency. We apologize to our readers for being unable to provide the fullest report possible.

You can read the full story as published in this week's NLJ here: http://tinyurl.com/2c7oqoj

Prior restraint -- that is, a court telling a newspaper that it cannot publish a piece of information that it legally obtained -- is a serious matter.  It gets to the heart of what a free press is all about.  We intend to fight Judge Bartnoff's ruling not just because we want to publish the full story as originally written, but because her ruling raises fundamental first amendment questions that, as a newspaper publisher, we simply cannot allow to stand without argument.

Let's be clear -- our reporter, Jeff Jeffries, did a terrific job reporting on this story.  He obtained information by digging through open records, and he gave the subjects ample opportunity to confirm or correct the information he had obtained.  Both Jeff and the National Law Journal demonstrated their commitment to our Core Values, and now we need to support their efforts to publish the full story. 

To that end, this morning we filed an Emergency Appeal of the Temporary Restraining Order in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.  Our attorney, Bruce Brown of Baker & Hostetler in Washington, is awaiting word from the court on when we will receive a response.  I'll update this posting as soon as we hear any news.

Update (12:10):  The Blog of Legal Times just posted a good summary about the Emergency Appeal that we filed this morning.   http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2010/07/the-national-law-journal-files-appeal-in-first-amendment-fight.html

We truly appreciate all of the hard work you do during the year and Employee Appreciation Week is intended to recognize everyone's efforts. The foundation of our company is the great people that we employ -- that's what sets us apart from others. It's all too easy for us to get bogged down in our day to day tasks without taking the time out to say thank you and express sincere appreciation to our coworkers.

So please be sure to enjoy some of the activities that are planned for you. Full details on specific activities will be provided by HR in NY and by your local management teams.

Thank you.

People who talk about the future of media often refer to the role that editors will play as "curators" of content. The idea is that there is so much information available now that we need people we trust to help us sort the wheat from the chaff, to point the way toward the news that's important or most interesting to us.  Social networks now play that role as well -- we count on the people we follow or friend to tell us what they are reading and point us toward information that will interest us.  Flipboard helps organize that social media curation and present it in a more visually satisfying way.

For more information, go to http://www.flipboard.com/ and watch the video.   

http://www.alm.com/pressroom/2010/07/21/alm-acquires-verdict-research-group-inc/

We've been working with VRG for many years, licensing verdict and settlement information for use in our VerdictSearch database.  When the opportunity arose to buy the business, we jumped on it.  Doing so adds an additional 10 states to our coverage area, and allows us to add new products and services.  And it solidifies our position as one of the nation's leading providers of this valuable information, of particular use to trial lawyers and insurance companies.

Beyond that, I think this acquisition sends an important message about ALM.  We're serious about extending our reach in the substantive legal information arena, and we're willing to make investments that move us in that direction more quickly.  While I don't believe that we will be acquirers of large businesses anytime soon, we are certainly interested in smaller, more targeted acquisitions that help us create new products while adding value to existing ones, including our newspapers, websites and research products.  VRG certainly fits that description.

Ron Spinner, VerdictSearch's Publisher and Fabio Bertoni, our VP, Deputy General Counsel, worked together to bring this acquisition to a successful conclusion.  Ron will be heading up our integration efforts over the coming weeks as we bring VRG's databases, customer files and, of course, staff members, into the ALM family.

1.  As you know, ALM has been without a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) since we separated from Incisive Media last September 30th.  With our financial perrformance stabilizing during the first half of 2010 and the need to move faster to develop new products and integrate new technologies, our senior team has now concluded that the time has come to fill that spot.  I have now met with and retained a Recruiter to help us draft a job description and to find us the right person for this critical position.  Honestly, I don't know how long the process will take -- likely a few months -- but I hope to have a new CTO in place by the fall and having an impact on our business shortly thereafter.

2.  A number of us have been talking about Social Media and the ways in which it might be used to build connections to our audience and grow our business.  And we have quite a few individual and business experiments now going on with LinkedIn and Facebook Groups, Twitter feeds and both individual and group blogs.  All of that is terrific.  The time has now come to see if we can use social media in more organized and disciplined ways that lead to measurable results.  To get from here to there we have retained an agency -- Marketechnique -- which specializes in how companies use social media to build stronger relationships with their customers.  We'll likely start small, choosing a couple of market segments or brands so we can get comfortable with the process and learn how to apply it in our environment.  Anne Jackley in our Digital Media Group is managing the project for us, and I know that she will be working with many others around the company as we move this forward.  If you are interested, you can learn more about the work Marketechnique has done for others on their website http://www.marketechnique.com/. 

3.  Had several good discussions this week about developing a mobile strategy for the company, with Jill Windwer (Digital Media Group) and Esfand Pourmand (IT) helping us to navigate.  Just as a few years ago we talked about our web strategy and how to present information on the desktop, the time has now come to figure out what information we should be making available to the on-the-go professionals (lawyers, realtors, etc.) who rely on us for the information they need to succeed in their work.  Jill, Esfand and some of our editors and publishers will be working over the next few weeks to figure out how best to move forward, and to identify outside developers who can do the necessary programming once we decide what we want to offer to our audience.  

On that same subject, I was struck this week by two articles that crossed my desk.  In one, the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, noted in an interview that we need to start working toward "mobile first" strategies in the way that we currently think of "web first".  The interview with Schmidt can be found here: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-googles-schmidt-still-crazy-about-mobile/

The second article was published by our friends at ClickZ and is called "10 Tips for Creating a Winning Mobile Strategy". http://www.clickz.com/3640798.  I think we particularly need to take to heart the suggestion that "the mobile web isn't the mini-internet".  We need to think about what specific needs our audience would have while they are untethered and on-the-go, and then design mobile sites or apps which meet those needs.  There may be good reason to make an existing newspaper or magazine mobile accessible, but simply rescaling our existing websites for the smaller screen isn't going to be enough.

That's enough to think about on a summer Friday right before a long weekend.  I'm off on two weeks vacation, as far away from all things digital and electronic as I can get.  Wishing you all a wonderful 4th of July holiday.

Bill 

This morning I realized that not a single one of us in our little cluster was holding a newspaper or any other form of print media.  Some were holding Smart Phones.  A few had Kindles.  Two had iPads.  I was surprised and so were the others when I pointed it out, particularly since none of us would ever be mistaken for Silicon Valley leading edge technology types.

Maybe it means nothing.  Maybe my little commuter cluster is completely atypical of the rest of the world, where people still hold newspapers and magazines and books.  Or maybe I've just seen the proverbial "canary in the coal mine", telling me that something has really changed.  I don't know...

A few years ago I got into a Twitter debate with a group of people about when the last bit of physical media would be distributed.  That is, when all newspapers, magazines, books, music, video, movies etc. would cease to be distributed in physical form, and would only be downloadable as digital media.  Quite a few believed that the end of physical distribution would be by January 1, 2014.  I argued that that was preposterous -- that newspapers, for one, would certainly to be printed and delivered for at least another generation.  Print offers many advantages to digital, and I assumed that those advantages would remain in place for a long time to come.

This morning, standing on the train station platform looking at my cluster of commuting comrades, I began to think that maybe I had been on the wrong side of that debate. 

So today I think we should celebrate Leigh Jones, our Digital Content Editor at The Daily Report in Atlanta, and co-author of the just published book "Infinite Monster". 

Leigh came to us by way of the Galveston County Daily News in Galveston, TX where, among other things, she covered Hurricane Ike in 2008.  That hurricane is considered to be the third most damaging in modern times, following only Andrew in South Florida and Katrina in New Orleans.  Ike buried the city and island of Galveston and decimated the lives of those living there.  But it turns out that was only the beginning of the story.  As Leigh and her co-author Rhiannon Myers discovered, returning residents not only had to dig their way through layers of debris, but also had to wrestle with a bureaucracy and officials who at times caused as much havoc as the hurricane itself.  Their reporting for the newspaper became the basis for the book.

Leigh and Rhiannon set up a webpage for those wanting more information about Ike and "Infinite Monster":

http://www.infinitemonster.com/ .  

And there's a Facebook fan page here if interested:

http://www.facebook.com/infinitemonster#!/infinitemonster .

Please join me in congratulating published author Leigh Jones on her terrific accomplishment.

While in Los Angeles, I also visited the legal search recruiters who were having their annual NALSC conference at the same time as LegalTech.  They were a pretty upbeat group considering how badly the economy has treated that industry during the past 18 months.  Quite a few spoke optimistically about the future, with some claiming to have a number of searches underway now.  Here's hoping that optimism translates into new business for ALM, where the recuiter advertising category has been, shall we say, a little anemic since 2007.

 I used the flight back to catch up on my reading, including this blog post from Social Media B2B which asked, "What is your B2B company all about?". 

http://socialmediab2b.com/2010/06/b2b-company-description-keywords/ 

It got me thinking about how we describe ourselves and the work we do -- and whether we need to evolve those descriptions as the company and its business focus changes.

So here's my question.  When you are at a party or are introduced to a stranger, and the time comes for you to describe your work and where you do it, what do you say?  How do you describe ALM to those unfamiliar with us -- do you say we are a newspaper and magazine company (which makes us sound print-focused)?  Do you say we are publishers (which makes us sound old-fashioned)?  Do you talk about our digital media offerings and our events?  Or do you focus on the markets we serve -- legal and real estate -- and our position as a leading provider of research and information about those markets?

Or have you found a much cleverer way to describe who we are when asked by someone you have just met?

I'd love to know what you say when asked -- without the PR jargon.  Put your answers into the comment area below.  "I work at ALM.  We are..."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Headlines/2010-eppy-winners-announced-at-interactive-conference-61720-.aspx

Kudos to Chris Braun and the whole LawJobs team!

If you listen to the media business pundits, the world is moving rapidly toward anytime, anywhere access to content.  Those who watch the consumer markets feel most strongly about that, but I have also heard business media analysts say similar things about professionals -- that they will want to access business information while on-the-go, via whatever device they may be have with them.

I particularly wonder to what extent lawyers will want to access legal research information--as opposed to news content--while on a mobile device.  Will they want access to substantive law content while they are in court or on their way to visit a client?  How about all of the competitive intelligence survey information we gather--how important will mobile access be to an Amlaw 100 list or a "Who Represents Who" file?   

Lee Buckley, our Research Director, has pulled together some information we have gathered in past readers surveys about the kinds of devices that our readers currently utilize or plan to buy.  Plus the ways in which they currently access information.  The information we have doesn't entirely answer the questions above, but it's a beginning.  If you are interested, drop me a note and I will gladly forward Lee's summary along to you.

The process of watching The Recorder's transformation, reviewing new website designs for a number of our other print and digital properties, and keeping up with trends in the digital media world, make it clearer to me what role our websites need to play in the future.  I think this is a subject we should all be discussing.

It's becoming clearer to me that the internet and media websites in particular are increasingly about Search and Social Media, and not primarily where one will go to read the news.  The days when a newspaper or magazine could simply repurpose its content on a website, with home pages dominated by news headlines, in the expectation that users would come and read the news online as they would in print, are over.  Instead, we can expect that readers will be referred to our stories via RSS readers, email alerts, blogs and their friends on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  Those readers will come straight to an article page, will read some or all of our article, and then will move on. 

Those who want the "publication reading experience" will do so via other devices and other kinds of platforms -- increasingly mobile with displays often smaller than the size and shape of a desktop computer screen.  Smartphones, iPads and similar devices will come to predominate for those who are looking to consume information -- and not always through a traditional internet browser.  That's the world we need to get ready to serve.

Meanwhile, I see much of our digital news going out to subscribers and non-subscribers via our email alerts, blogs and other digital distribution means.  In the future, I think relevant news will need to be pushed to those who are interested; publishers will not want to wait for those readers to come find us.  Those emails and blogs, in particular, will serve to not only deliver our news reporting but also provide reasons for readers to click and read more.  And much of the advertising we sell to support our digital efforts will run in those emails and next to our blogs.

But we're not going to abandon our websites.  Instead, we're going to need to rethink them.  If much of our traffic is coming to us via search and social media straight to an article page, than our focus will need to be on providing more reasons for those visitors to stick around.  Links to related stories, tag clouds of the most commonly accessed information, and other devices will need to be deployed and managed more directly in order to boost the time spent on our sites by each of our visitors, and the number of pages they visit.  Hence our investment in content tagging tools to make it easier to find those related stories and automatically generate links, tag clouds and the like.

And while delivering news is important, the real value in our websites will increasingly be to provide readers with the tools and information they need to succeed.  On some sites, that may be substantive legal information and analysis.  On others it will be access to databases and surveys that help answer users' questions.  And in many cases it will need to be a greater focus on tools that can be downloaded or otherwise accessed to deliver the data our users require to practice law, run their firm, hire and pay an attorney, or whatever else our audience will value.

As we review future website designs I would encourage all involved to be asking more questions about the entire approach to delivering news, information and tools to our audience.  I think we'll want to look at website designs in the context of all of the other ways in which our content can and should be distributed, including push vehicles (e.g. email) and mobile. Each of these plays a different role for both readers and advertisers, and we'll want to make sure we fully comprehend what each will provide and how they will complement one another.

As noted above, I think this is an important discussion.  The Recorder today is charting a path that virtually all of our publications will be following in the future.  But it also raises many questions.  What information is best presented in print and how often?  What role should our email alerts and blogs play?  What should be our expectations for our websites?  And how will mobile applications be relevant for our audience in the future?

If you don't know the answers to the questions above -- well, join the club.  Let's all figure it out together.  I look forward to your comments below.

And while not exactly a shout-out, I did want to welcome the launch of our newest e-newsletter: the NLJ's Supreme Court Insider.  Headlined by our two respected and incredibly talented Supreme Court correspondents, Marcia Coyle and Tony Mauro, we hope to make this must-reading for appellate lawyers and Supreme Court junkies.  We'll start out weekly for the summer and then switch-over to daily publication when the Supreme Court term starts up again in October.  Check it out at:

 http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/alert_supreme_court.jsp

Now, I know I'm the first to complain about the cost of healthcare and the upward direction of our health insurance premiums.  As a result I don't always have nice things to say about our insurers.  But I also recognize that we bear some personal responsibility for the direction of those insurance costs -- the better we take care of ourselves, the more likely it is that we'll stay healthy.  And if improved health means lower costs and, hence, lower premiums, well I'm all for that.  Put another way, we owe it to ourselves but also to one another to stay as healthy as possible and to keep our health care costs as low as we can (without scrimping on necessary doctor visits or medications). 

Taking Cigna's health assessment survey represents one small and easy step toward greater health awareness and, hopefully, healthier living.  As I said above, it takes only about 15 minutes to complete and the result could be worth a bundle to all of us (not to mention your chance to be the winner in the prize drawings!).  

The survey can be found on MyCigna (www.my.cigna.com).