Tam Harbert

Platform. That is the buzzword at writing conferences lately.

These days, authors and journalists must build more than a story using words. We have to build a platform by virtually networking: linking up with professional connections, rounding up friends and getting people to follow our every little tweet. In several sessions at the recent annual conference of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), speakers said that a writer’s chances of getting a book deal or a story assignment instantly increased if she could show she had a big network. A network of readers who breathlessly await her next brilliant blog post, online article or tweet. Who are clamoring for a video or podcast from her. Or better yet, an e-book.

My LinkedIn Network

In short, editors want us to bring our own audience.

I’ve made a modest start. I own my domain name – www.tamharbert.com. I have a blog. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Facebook, although apparently I am making a mistake by mixing up my family, friends and business associates. To further my professional platform, I should have a Facebook Profile (which used to be called a fan page.) I’m meekly beginning to tweet.

How many social media channels does it take to build a platform? At the podcasting session, someone recommended posting podcasts on the Public Radio Exchange to attract an audience. “Think of it as your very own radio show,” she said. I was so traumatized by all the platform talk that as soon as I got home I spent a couple hundred bucks buying up a bunch of domain names – .coms, .nets, .orgs – even a .tv – just to stake out my claims to potential spots where I might, someday, build out my platform. That last one – a domain name on YouTube – was because one of the ASJA panelists thought that would be the next big thing. I don’t even like having my picture taken. What am I going to do with my own TV channel?

In fact, I so don’t like photos of myself that I use my logo instead of my picture on social networks. That logo is part of my effort to “build my brand.” But I’m starting to wonder whether that’s a mistake. At the conference, ASJA arranged for a photographer to offer a special deal on professional headshots for attendees. An edgy photo has become part of a writer’s brand, at least for some. A few of the business cards I collected had headshots on them, the same headshot the writer had on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. My business card, like my social media sites, has my logo. I either have to change to a photo or start wearing my logo, writ large, at conferences.

Is it all worth it? I don’t know. I’ve added a few planks to my platform. I’ve gained a few more followers on Twitter, added a couple friends and linked into several potentially valuable professional contacts. But I now find myself pre-occupied with my shabby numbers. Only 150 friends. About 60 followers. And I’ve succumbed to platform envy. I’m spending way too much time checking out other writers, astounded at the number of people they’ve connected to. As if that’s not enough, today I find out (via Compukol’s blog post) about Klout, a company that measures your overall influence online. My score: a measly 27 out of 100. Klout tells me I have “a small but tightly formed network that is highly engaged.”

Maybe that’s good for a journalist that specializes in a few niches, as I do. Maybe Klout was just trying to make me feel better. But even as I complain about all this social networking, I must admit that I’m better suited to networking online than the old-fashioned way (in person). As a writer, I prefer cocooning in my office to the grin-and-grab circuit. After a couple of days schmoozing at a conference I need to hibernate for a week. But online I can use my writing skills to be witty and smart. I can socialize on my timetable. I can pick the people I want to talk to. I may not win any online popularity contests, but I will gradually build a strong platform, one plank at a time.

I started the ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors) annual conference in New York City last week by attending an 8:30 a.m. session titled “Side-Stepping the Post-File Hangover,” which focused on how to deal with the lull and let-down after the storm of meeting a big deadline. Fourteen sessions, two luncheons, two cocktail parties and two networking dinners later, I need some kind of cure for the post-conference hangover.

Conferences are usually great, and the ASJA conference was everything I expected and more. But then comes the Monday morning after the conference. I return from these things with a mile-long to-do list and a head full of possibilities. I’ve learned all about “how to use social media to build your platform.” I now have “everything you need to know about e-books.” I’ve collected lots of “tips for producing a podcast.” I’m sidestepping the “ten ways to blog your way into a lawsuit.” And I’ve experienced how “Sree explains it all,” in which Columbia J-school professor Sree Sreenivasan crams as many social media tips as possible into three hours.

Exhausted from non-stop learning and networking over three days, I have to face a week of deadlines and demands while the stacks of notes and business cards from the conference sit accusingly on my desk. Come on, they nag, you need to connect with all these folks on Twitter. Remember those three editors who expressed interest in getting a pitch from you? Better follow up soon or you’ll lose them. But I have three editors to whom I owe actual stories or outlines this week. And those great tips on podcasting? In one corner of my office sits a box with a fancy $300 digital recorder I bought last year, after a conference in June got me all excited about producing podcasts for my blog. I haven’t used it once.

The ASJA conference was great. But the chasm between all the potential opportunities gathered there and the day-to-day grind of reality here at my desk seems impossibly wide. Maybe things will look better tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’m going to get some aspirin for my aching head.

I’ve often wondered whether it would be more equitable, and more profitable, to be paid based on the number of people who read, “like” or “recommend” my stories. Among those clients who share these numbers with me, my articles rank consistently high.

Meanwhile, after having watched the explosion of digital publishing over the last year, I’ve increasingly wondered whether I might be able to publish and sell my articles to readers directly.

After attending the Maryland Writers Association (MWA) annual meeting in early April, I’m convinced that at least some journalists could do this and make more money than the typical freelance fee for any given article. The MWA is primarily for fiction writers, and the panel discussions focused on book publishing, but what I heard there only reinforced my belief that an exciting new publishing and distribution model is opening up for writers of all kinds, including journalists.

More and more authors are publishing e-books through companies like Amazon and Smashwords, and making good money doing it. The poster girl for this is the young writer Amanda Hocking, who has made more than a million dollars publishing her short novels on the Kindle. After slowly creeping up on them for years, disintermediation has finally hit the “legacy publishers” (as the participants of one panel at the MWA meeting insisted on calling them) hard.

This entertaining (but very long) discussion of e-book publishing between authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath lays out the reasons behind the self-publishing stampede. You don’t have to read the entire 13,000 words on the business reasons, including an explanation of the revenue math, to be convinced that self-publishing is at least worth a try. These quotes reverberate in my head:

On distribution of stories: “Print is just a delivery system. It gets a story from the writer to the reader. For centuries, publishers controlled this system, because they did the printing, and they were plugged into distribution. But with retailers like Amazon, B&N [Barnes & Noble], and Smashwords, the story can get to the reader in a faster, cheaper way.”

On the worth of writers, aka content producers: “We provide the content that is printed and distributed. For hundreds of years, writers couldn’t reach readers without publishers. We needed them. Now, suddenly, we don’t. But publishers don’t seem to be taking this Very Important Fact into account.”

I heard variations of these themes all over the MWA conference. One panelist predicted that within five years, more than 50 percent of all books will be e-books. How much journalism is already consumed digitally today? Probably well over half. And with the iPad and other tablets starting to breathe visual life into digital newspaper and magazine stories, it should increase astronomically.

Why not package and sell single articles? I’m aware of at least one experiment in selling digital long-form journalism singles: the Atavist. The articles are by well-known journalists, of course, to appeal to the general public and attract as many buyers as possible.

Would this work in trade journalism? One of the literary agents at the MWA meeting, Jessica Sinsheimer of the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency, encouraged authors to aim for niches rather than the mass market. The more narrowly defined the market, she said, the easier it is to sell the story. That’s the whole idea behind trade publishing: niche audiences – CEOs of technology companies, for example – want articles that deal with the issues and events that are most important to them.

Would they pay for that? What if a journalist wrote an article of 5,000 words that brought them new, useful information that could make a real difference in their life, career or company? Going the traditional route, that journalist might expect to make $5,000 to $7,500 for that story. What if she published her own e-story and charged $10 a pop? Based on Konrath’s figures that an author can keep 70 percent of the revenue when publishing on Kindle, she’d have to sell at least 1,000 copies to reach that $7,500. Just as important, however, is the fact that she would retain the rights to that article. Maybe she could later sell it to a couple of “legacy publishers,” or publish it as part of a longer book.

Effective social networking could be the key. If a writer is to have any hope of selling her own stories, she has to have developed a personal readership – people who know her and want to read her stuff. Another publishing agent on the panel, Jason Allen Ashlock of Movable Type Literary Group, stressed how important it is for writers to build and grow their reputation and relationship with readers. Not only does it help promote the writer, but it also feeds the writer good ideas for future stories. By communicating with readers, a writer can learn what her audience wants. And if her stories deliver what her audience wants, she should be able to sell more of them. It becomes a virtuous cycle. When readers are being overwhelmed by the vast universe of digital information, hitting a reader’s sweet spot becomes very valuable. “Where there’s an abundance of content, then quality content becomes your marketing strategy,” said Ashlock. “Business models can be built around good content.”

The next few years will tell whether and to what extent individual journalists will be able to profit more directly from their work. Regardless of what happens, the “freelance” in freelance journalism is starting to take on a whole new meaning.

As a high-tech journalist, I often write about patent trolls in the electronics industry. A patent troll is a company that buys up patents and then goes looking for large, deep-pocketed corporations that might be infringing on those patents. The troll’s business model is to make money by squeezing settlement fees out of these corporations. Even if the corporation does not believe it’s infringing, it often settles because doing so is less expensive than going to court.

Now website owners and bloggers are encountering trolls of our own – copyright trolls. These companies either have or acquire copyright licenses on articles and images, then go scouring the Web for infringers. And they don’t have to look far; there seems to be a lot of infringing going on and very little policing. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. But rather than focus on large companies for which a settlement might be pocket change, the copyright trolls target small companies and individuals. Their business model is to pick on the relatively defenseless, threatening and intimidating people into paying settlements of a few thousand dollars.

Las Vegas-based Righthaven LLC has been filing copyright infringement lawsuits against website owners, alleging infringement of newspaper articles and images published in the Las Vegas Review Journal and Denver Post. Righthaven is owned 50-50 by a Las Vegas attorney and by the family of the owner of the Las Vegas Review Journal, according to Righthaven Lawsuits. This website, which is not affiliated with Righthaven and is critical of the firm’s strategy, claims that as of mid-March, 251 cases had been filed and estimates that settlements had amounted to $420,000. Most of these suits have been against small entities, although there has been at least one case against a high-profile blog – the Drudge Report . Righthaven Lawsuits estimates that the average settlement is $3,500. The Drudge Report settled in February, but the amount was not reported.

PBS Media Shift recently ran a great analysis of Righthaven’s activities and possible defenses. What’s particularly disturbing is that website owners can be held liable even if the infringing material was posted in a comment by a third party.

Meanwhile stock photo company Getty Images has been going after individuals who, often unwittingly, post photos or other artwork without a license. For the last several years, Getty has been sending out letters informing website owners that they have violated a copyright and threatening to sue unless the owner pays a fee, usually around $1,000. Matthew Chan, an author and independent publisher who received such a letter in 2008, has started a website that explains, criticizes and follows the Getty litigation.

Traditionally, a company would first issue a “cease and desist” letter and then allow the alleged infringer the opportunity to take the material down before filing a suit. But these trolls are after the money. They send more than a cease and desist letter. They send an “insist” letter – insisting on a settlement fee or else they will take you to court.

We journalists often cite the fair use doctrine of the copyright law, which should in many circumstances cover our butts. But attorneys tell me that fair use is a very gray area and subject to interpretation. Besides, are you prepared to pay the tens of thousands of dollars it would cost to go to court and make the “fair use” argument? This is scary stuff. I hope that the courts ultimately repudiate this business model. In the meantime, I’m going to be very careful.

Last week I bought my first smart phone – an iPhone 4. I had been holding out for years, using a prehistoric LG Electronics flip phone circa 2005, on a pre-paid Verizon plan of $15 a month, because I don’t make many mobile phone calls. Most of my work is done at my desk in my home office. And even if I am on the road, I prefer to use a landline for phone interviews because the sound quality on most cell phones is crummy.

What I finally realized, however, is that I didn’t need the smart phone for the phone part. I needed it for the “smart” part, the computer capabilities that it provides. When I’m on the road, or even across the street shopping for groceries, I need to be available to my clients. If someone sends me an urgent e-mail, I need to respond right away.

The single most important reason I finally took the plunge is that a smart phone is a good backup system when my power goes out. As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I live on a weak part of the electricity grid and am the victim of frequent power outages of fairly long duration. Short of getting a generator, the next best solution was to upgrade my phone so that I could continue to access my e-mail and the Web even if my lights went out. Since this access was the primary force driving me to upgrade, I wanted the most reliable wireless carrier. When the iPhone finally came out on Verizon Wireless, I decided the time was right.

What I didn’t expect was how useful the iPhone would be in so many different ways. For example, it not only serves as my most reliable connection to e-mail and the Internet (assuming I keep it charged), but it also may become a key component of my computer backup system. By using the cloud and the phone, I can have access to just about any file I need even if my power goes out. By storing my files and notes online at Dropbox, which provides a basic amount of storage for free, I still have access to them even when the power goes out. Granted, I can’t exactly edit and write stories with my thumbs on the iPhone keyboard, but I can at least send a story to an editor if need be.

The phone also gives me a great way to save not only files but also story ideas. I get these ideas all the time, but if I don’t write them down (and I almost never do) I forget them quickly and usually permanently. Now I can use the iPhone’s voice recorder to take note of that great idea and what sparked it.

I also didn’t realize how useful this pocket computer would be in my daily life. Using the Notes app, I keep a running list of things I need to pick up, such as office supplies and groceries. Now as long as I have the phone with me I also have those lists available, so when I happen to stop at Staples or the local grocery store I’m not wracking my brain to try to remember that I needed an HP 901 printer cartridge or a package of Shiitake mushrooms.

My iPhone also serves as my brag book about my son. Rather than pulling a three-year-old school photo out of my wallet, I can show people the latest pictures of him on Facebook, as well as some of his latest performances (he’s an actor and singer) on YouTube.

And he, an iPhone user for years, has turned me on to Pandora, an app that lets you build personalized music channels and also recommends new music that its algorithm says might suit your taste. So now I’m broadening my musical horizons while on the treadmill at the gym.

After resisting mobile phone technology for years, I’m now hooked. And I haven’t even made a phone call.

Ever since I started covering technology, in the mid-1980s, there’s been a perennial career story in the engineering and IT industry about age bias. Techies who reach a certain age, the story goes, often get laid off and replaced by one of the following, cheaper, alternatives: a) a recent college graduate, b) an immigrant with an H1B visa (often from India) or c) an engineer located offshore (often in India).

Middle-aged U.S. engineers have been howling, and suing, about this for decades. Employers argue that some older engineers just don’t keep up their technology skills. Workers argue that the employer just wants younger employees, who cost less. Just last year, a 54-year-old engineer brought an age-discrimination lawsuit against Google. At the trial, the engineer alleged that, despite good performance reviews, he was told that his opinions were obsolete and out of date. He was called slow, fuzzy, sluggish and an “old fuddy-duddy” by younger colleagues, he alleged. He was replaced with managers 15 to 20 years younger, transferred to a position of less responsibility and ultimately fired.

This is a tough problem, for both the employee and the employer. It’s not fair to be pushed aside when you reach 50, even though you’ve been a loyal employee and done a consistently good job. On the other hand, technology moves fast and the skills needed for particular jobs are changing. In today’s competitive environment, an employer needs to have the sharpest employees with the latest hot skills. And getting them for the least amount of money . . . well – that’s capitalism.

I’ve been on both sides of this problem. In the mid-1990s, when I was in my 30s, I supervised a writer who was in his 50s. We were revamping a magazine, taking it in a new editorial direction, and this employee just couldn’t get it. He seemed unable to produce the kind of work we needed. We worked with him for about a year, but to no avail. So, we fired him.

Today, I’m 51. I’m not as savvy as younger journalists in terms of the latest technology. My skills in using social media, producing multimedia stories or even texting are not as sharp as a 30-year-old’s. Sometimes, I just don’t “get it.”

So, my experience in tech journalism isn’t so different from those engineers. In fact, as technology pervades various types of jobs throughout our economy, the same age-related employment problems about which engineers have long complained will pop up in all sorts of careers. It’s been happening in journalism for a while. Reuters has been outsourcing at least some low-level journalism jobs to India for years. I don’t see many H1B visa-holders replacing U.S. journalists, but I do see plenty of senior editorial staff losing their jobs, although it’s more often because their publication has died than because they are being replaced. And the staff and management of new media companies and online publications? I bet most are in their 20s and early 30s.

In our Internet-flattened world, this will happen to a lot of us boomers. Even lawyers. We have to figure out how to deal with it. My plan is to keep moving up the value chain, doing more sophisticated reporting and writing that requires experience, perspective and in-depth knowledge. At the same time, I try to keep up with the latest developments in the media business and try to incorporate new skills that will keep me relevant in this changing market. I’m lucky to be a freelancer who works primarily by phone and Internet. It means that my employers judge me by my work, not by my age, not by my appearance nor even by my ability to text (at least not yet). To rephrase that iconic New Yorker cartoon, on the Internet nobody knows you’re over 50. I hope I can keep it that way.

When the D.C. area got about six inches of snow in January, I lost power. That’s nothing new. My neighborhood is on a weak part of the already-notoriously-dilapidated grid of the regional utility, PEPCO. I lose power when the wind blows. Sometimes, I lose power for no apparent reason at all. This time it was out for 30 hours.

I launched into my disaster recovery plan. I called my sister. She was out of power, too. Time for Plan B. I spent the morning shoveling out my driveway, then hit the road.

We already live in an electricity-addicted society. But for us home workers, the loss of power directly impacts our livelihood. Not only does the house go cold and the food in the fridge go bad, we can’t work without computer, phone and Internet access. And when we don’t work, we don’t get paid. So as soon as houses go dark, we swarm businesses and public places like bees to blossoms, searching for sweet juice.

My first stop was the neighborhood Starbucks. A hand-scrawled sign on the door told me they had lost their power, too. The next stop was the nearby Panera’s. As I suspected, I had been too slow in shoveling out. Every table was occupied. Every electrical outlet, taken. I stood in line to buy a coffee, hoping that someone might leave in the interim. They did, but I wasn’t quick enough. Juggling my coffee, laptop and bulging paper files, I was like a lumbering elephant amidst a pack of Twitter-deprived teenage cheetahs. No contest.

Stop number three was the public library. Not only does it have lots of chairs and outlets, but the public square around the library has free WiFi. At least I could access the Internet. I pulled into the garage, then slogged over to the building to find a small group of similarly frustrated refugees huddled before the doors. Not only was the library dark, but the entire public square was powerless. I sloshed back to my car, demoralized.

But I forged on. Next stop: Barnes & Noble. It has a Starbucks inside, WiFi and two spacious floors full of chairs, tables and outlets. When I pulled into a full parking lot, I knew I had finally reached a watering hole. Inside, the store was packed. Every chair and table was taken, and around the perimeter on both levels, folks camped greedily on the floor around the outlets. I wandered around, searching for an open plug, when this woman caught my eye and pointed down at the floor next to her. I could hardly believe it. It was an eight-outlet power strip, and she was beckoning me over to use the last available one. Instead of eyeing me warily, this woman was smiling. I plopped down next to her, and plugged in. I felt like hugging this lady. She explained that I needed to thank the teenage girl sitting next to her. It was she who had agreed to unplug her single device (a cellphone, I believe) and allow this woman to plug in the power strip, thus multiplying the electricity for all. She was like Jesus with the loaves and the fishes.

I sat there for a couple of hours, answering e-mail and finishing a story that was due that day. I offered to buy the woman coffee, but she declined. She just seemed to enjoy being helpful.

As I drove home I thanked God for those good Samaritans. And I revised my disaster recovery plan: next time I go foraging for electricity, I will be armed with a power strip.

I pulled into my driveway and noticed a low droning sound coming from the house across the street. I got out of the car. I smelled propane. A generator. Addendum to disaster recovery plan: next time it snows, help others. Offer to shovel your neighbor’s driveway. And bring a very long extension cord.

If you’re a freelancer and you’re not familiar with Demand Media, then you haven’t checked the listings on JournalismJobs.com and MediaBistro for years. If you’re not a freelancer, you’ve seen lots of Demand Media’s products, although you probably haven’t realized it. Do a Google search on just about anything, and you’ll find them. Go ahead and search on “best way to wash a dog,” right now. See the results that come up from eHow.com (two of the first four listings)? That’s just one of the sites owned by Demand Media.

Demand Media, along with other companies like Suite 101, Associated Content and About.com, is a content farm, a new type of media company that bases its business model on search engine optimization (SEO). Most freelancers don’t like these companies and their business models. First of all, they pay a pittance, usually $15 to $20 per article. Many of the people who write for these sites are novice writers, not journalists, willing to take such low wages just to get published. Second, these companies don’t value good writing nor do they offer good service to the reader. The content farm’s chief aim is to mass-produce chunks of text designed to rank highly on Google. The higher an article ranks on Google, the more readers it drives to Demand Media sites, thus generating large numbers of page views, which means more advertising dollars. It doesn’t matter whether the information is accurate or useful, whether the article is written well, or even if it makes any sense whatsoever. What matters is that the article is stuffed with key words and that the writer uses other tricks that will get the article ranked highly in Google search results.

This is known as search engine optimization (SEO). It’s a trend that prickles the skin of good journalists everywhere who are under pressure from the bean counters to “optimize” their articles. “Building Web traffic through ‘search engine optimization’ has become a major part of a journalist’s job,” writes The Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro in a recent column. It’s a symptom of the fact that most publications haven’t yet figured out how to make money by publishing quality editorial on the Web. It’s a desperate attempt to prop up their advertising revenues.

Many of my colleagues – both staff and freelance – are experiencing this to some degree. The good news, however, is that older, established publications – ones that existed before the Internet – are more discerning about it. They want high-quality editorial first, then they tweak it with SEO.

“My editors are very sensitive to anything that looks or feels like whoring out a story,” says one client. “Yet at the same time you want your work to be seen, so it’s yet another one of those fine lines. We aren’t putting EgyptKatyPerrySarahPalinViagra in the first line of every story (or in the keywords, which some even respectable publications do) but we did have a two-hour edit seminar from an outside firm on SEO tactics.”

On the other hand, a freelance colleague who experimented with Demand Media gave up after she tried to both write a good story AND adhere to the company’s editorial guidelines. “You’ve only got, like, 250 words, and here they are telling you what words to use,” and where, she says.

Demand Media’s recent initial public offering seemed to be a vote of confidence in the SEO-based business model. As of Feb. 7, the share price was $19, giving the company a market capitalization of around $1.6 billion. However, Demand Media has yet to turn a profit. For the first nine months of 2010, it lost $6.3 million, according to Folio.

Meanwhile, Google is taking aim at these companies. As content farms have emerged, they’ve flooded the Internet with crappy articles, which makes Google’s search service less useful. Consumers are not finding the information they want and need, and they are complaining. “We hear the feedback from the Web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content,” blogged Matt Cutts, Google search engineer, in January. The company plans to adjust its algorithm to try to strip out some of this drivel.

Think about this for a minute. The content farms use a business model that generates articles that people don’t like, even though these companies are targeting topics that people are interested in. It’s an SEO shell game of keywords that leaves readers dissatisfied and frustrated. It’s not making money. And it’s in Google’s crosshairs. Does this sound like a recipe for success?

I hope the next couple of years brings the failure of these farms and proves that to grow good content, you need to start with good ingredients.

It’s that time of year again. The holidays are over. The guests are gone. The kid’s back at college.

And I’m back at my desk. It’s gray and cold outside (21 degrees Fahrenheit today). My basement office is cozy, almost too cozy, since I renovated it last year and put in electric baseboard heating. It’s dark and warm, the kind of place where I can really hibernate through the remainder of the long dark winter.

But bills must be paid, and there is work to do. So, rather than curl up for a long winter’s nap, I dive into several projects.

And that can be a recipe for depression.

One of the challenges of the freelance life is balance. When you work where you live, it’s easy to work all the time. When you can do your job quite well by phone, e-mail and Internet, you can end up staying home all the time. In spring, summer and fall, I’m able to keep my balance. I’m a summer person. I love the heat and the humidity (which means I thoroughly enjoy the sticky, sweltering D.C. summers). It’s easy to get outside and walk, go to the gym, go swimming, break up the day with errands and lunch dates, and then go out in the evening as well.

But when the whistling of the wind through the trees reminds me of how unpleasant and cold it is out there, it’s hard to summon the energy to bundle up and leave the house. When the air outside is so dry that it makes my skin itch, I’d rather turn on the humidifier and sit at my desk.

We freelancers tend to be loners by nature, and we can do some of our best work alone. But too much isolation is dangerous. Trapped in our own heads, we can battle demons that aren’t there. It’s in the dead of winter when my evil inner editor emerges, whispering confidence-crushing comments in my ear. She tells me my thinking is clouded and my writing is crap. And this story I’m working on? What a mess. That stack of bills from the holidays sits accusingly on my shelf, reminding me that I don’t get paid until I work. And the more I work, the more money I make (theoretically, at least), so I should just work all the time until I get everything paid off.

Holed up in my basement office by day, and huddled near my living room fireplace by night, I’m a perfect candidate for a mild case of seasonal affective disorder. My social life slows down. My critical alter ego tells me that it’s because no one likes me, when really it’s only because I’d rather sit home and stay warm.

This year, I’ve prepared an antidote for the winter blues. The ingredients aren’t too taxing, because I know myself all too well. I’m hoping, however, that by publicly committing to it here, I will actually stick to it:

1. One 20-minute walk in the cold, cruel world every single day
2. At least two hours of additional time outside the house every day or evening – visiting friends, volunteering, shopping, working out at the gym, whatever
3. Meals that feature more greens, less sugar and fewer carbs

Will this help me make it through the long winter? I’ll report my results in March, just in time to start battling spring fever.

Something’s rotten in the technology industry, and the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission is trying to root it out.

In December, the SEC brought fraud charges against mid-level executives at Flextronics International Ltd., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Dell. These men had been “consulting” part-time over the last two to three years for expert network firm Primary Global Research LLC. The four were allegedly paid more than $400,000 to participate in calls with Wall Street hedge firms and traders — calls that it turns out the Federal Bureau of Investigation had wire-tapped.

The SEC complaint charges that these managers shared material non-public information about their companies, and it includes quotes from transcripts of the taped calls to illustrate. In an October 2009 call, for example, a Flextronics senior director of business development tells a trader that Apple is coming out in the spring with a new iPhone (presumably the iPhone 4) that will include two cameras, a five megapixel auto-focus camera, and a VGA forward-facing video conferencing camera. He also reveals that Flextronics expects to start building the new phone in March. (The iPhone 4 started shipping in June.)

A Dec. 20 Wall Street Journal article says that this is just “the first major shoe to drop” in a three-year investigation. The investigators seem to be following a trail that began with the insider trading charges filed against the Galleon Group and its founder Raj Rajaratnam in late 2009. Former AMD Chairman Hector Ruiz has been tied to the Galleon investigation, although he has not been charged with any wrongdoing. Former high-level IBM executive Robert W. Moffat Jr., however, pleaded guilty to leaking inside information about IBM, Lenovo and Advanced Micro Devices in the Galleon case. Last fall he was sentenced to six months in jail. In the charges filed last month against the tech executives, the SEC describes a secret witness, “an individual who had substantial experience evaluating public companies in the semiconductor and technology industries.” The WSJ story identified that witness as Karl Motey, a technology analyst who had a business connection with a hedge-fund manager charged in the Galleon case.

One of the WSJ’s sources said that Motey made calls, presumably as a client of Primary Global, to corporate managers at more than 60 companies, gathering evidence for the government. It won’t surprise me if all 60 of those tech companies are eventually implicated. The growing scandal reflects the continuing cozy relationship between the tech industry and Wall Street. Over the course of my 25-year career reporting on this business, I’ve often been amazed by how chummy the two groups are. In tech, where so much of salary and compensation rides on initial public offerings and stock options, and where much of a company’s financial success depends on the technology the company is bringing to the market, these relationships may be a natural outgrowth. But, perhaps because so many tech companies grew out of the Silicon Valley’s venture capital culture – in which inside information is not criminal, but rather, the stock in trade (pun intended) of the business – there seems to be widespread nonchalance, even disregard, of SEC regulations designed to protect the interests of ordinary investors.

Every few years, it seems the SEC makes a run at reining in the abuses at tech companies. Five years ago, for example, it investigated a bunch of tech companies – including Analog Devices, Broadcom and Apple – for allegedly backdating stock options. Apparently, many companies routinely changed the date on which their boards approved stock options, moving it from the real date to an earlier date so that the options would benefit from a recent rise in the stock price. Companies are still dealing with the legal fallout from that scandal.

It will be interesting to see who else the SEC catches in this latest net. Indeed, just a few days ago, Reuters reported that court documents recently filed in the Galleon case named a former senior marketing director at Akamai Technologies Inc. as a source who allegedly provided inside information to a trader. Will all this lead to changes in tech industry practices? Unless dozens of high-profile execs get charged, convicted, and sent to jail, history indicates that the odds are against it.

(For more details on the individuals involved and the information they shared, read my blog post on EBN Online.)