As most of you know–if any of you are still reading this–I’ve been on a sort of unannounced hiatus since the end of March, largely due to school responsibilities and, well, lack of time. This isn’t to say that I’ve gotten less busy, necessarily, but I have resolved to make writing a bigger part of my life (again) and get back writing some regular material for my own personal blog, right here. I’ll be blogging elsewhere, as well, but I’ll post more on that soon.

You’ll notice that along with the new writing, as usual with me, comes a new design. I have no doubt I’ll be tweaking, modifying and possibly outright changing this template over the coming weeks, but for now I’m happy enough with it to kick this off and present it to the interwebs. By all means, please (please) give me feedback! I’d love to hear what complaints, issues, etc. you might have with it, particularly regarding design and usability. My goal was to place a lot of focus on the content (tada!) while still making archives, links, search, etc. very accessible. You’ll also notice all my links there in the sidebar, with their fancy social-network-color-appropriate hover and everything.

And another thing. You’ll notice I’ve built in Facebook’s new open graph API and Twitter’s @anywhere service into my blog now. This was partly an experiment just so I could learn the basics of the two new APIs, but partly because I’m excited to have them on here. So now, for example, you can hover over my Twitter handle, @alexpriest, and see a hovercard. In addition, you can “like” this post by clicking the button below (so please do!).

Anyway, that’s enough about bloggy-stuff, on to some real opinion/news/ranting soon enough. Mostly on social media and technology–with a little politics and personal life thrown in. Thanks for reading.

Anyway, this is a quickie. Just wanted to point out that from now on I will be writing for not only this blog, but also two other blogs! First, I’ll be contributing to the brand spanking new Shamable.com, written as a guide for public relations and communications professionals, with a more serious, realistic take to the industry than some other blogs that may or may not have been spoofed for the title. The people contributing to this blog are top-notch, triple-A professionals with fantastic ideas and brilliant track-records.

I’m honored to be a part of their site and I hope I can provide some valuable input from my student perspective! Be sure to check out my first entry on the blog (more to come this week), about teaching social media (professors, pay attention to that one).

Secondly, I will now be writing for the AU Intern Blog for the American University Career Center. There I’ll be reflecting on my internship experience this semester at MS&L Worldwide as well as some other random internship-related thoughts that might be bumping around in my head. I’ve actually written two posts for it just tonight, you can see my introduction here and my comments on the TechCrunch intern “scandal” here.

I’ll do my best to note on here when I’ve made some significant contributions to the other two blogs, but please add them to your RSS reader (and me, for that matter!) and keep your eyes peeled for new updates from me and my fellow contributors. Thanks, as always, for reading. Tomorrow evening I’ll have a recap of the fantastic panel event I attended this morning as well as some thoughts on what may be in store, in the near term, for my future (might be a bit vague!).

[Shamable]
[AU Intern Blog]

Evidently–and I wish I’d known this before I spent several hours work into the article–columnists aren’t allowed to report for The Eagle too. It’s one or the other. Either/or. Pick one, not two, “you can’t have it both ways.” I had wondered, at first, because I knew that major publications often had similar restrictions. However, this being a little university newspaper–and the editor and staff not questioning my authority to write an article–I figured it must be alright, in this circumstance.

Not so. After researching, interviewing, writing and finally submitting my piece, I was called the next day to hear that my piece would not be run, since I’m a columnist, too. Honestly, I think it’s a stupid rule–the article was written perfectly objectively, in my humble opinion, and I’ve separated the views of my column clearly from the information conveyed in my article. But nonetheless, it’s not going to happen. Because it’s not going to happen, I’m going to publish my article here. It sure won’t get as many eyeballs here as it would have in a print edition of The Eagle, but it’s better than nothing. Read it, if you like, and let me know what you think in the comments. I always appreciate feedback. Check it out below the cut.

Confidence abounds for AU’s financial future, despite other colleges’ worries

American University officials are confident 2010 will be another successful year, despite pessimism by many other colleges. Successful progress toward the AnewAU development campaign, an upgraded bond rating, and official university financial documents all point toward a similarly positive outlook.

At a meeting of the Council of Independent Colleges in early January more than 60 college presidents gathered for discussion on the rough economy’s impact on their schools.

“There is a theory that fall 2010 is going to be the hard one,” said Paul Hennigan, president of Point Park University, in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the event. AU President Cornelius Kerwin was not in attendance for the meeting but his comments in his Dec. 4 “End of Semester Update” contradict the sentiment.

“The condition of our university remains strong,” he said. “The enrollment trends… have not changed, and we remain on track to operate within our revenue and expenditure targets for the current fiscal year.”

Kerwin is not the only one confident about AU’s future. Thomas Minar, AU’s Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations, considers the university to be “very fortunate to be in the position we’re in.” As the man in charge of the AnewAU fundraising campaign, he said he’s been pleased to see development performing even better than in 2008.

The AnewAU campaign launched in October of 2003 with the goal of $200 million. Now the campaign has reached $196.2 million and is in its final stages. Minar said cash proceeds in December were “considerably higher than other years” and emphasized that “AU is in as good or better shape as any of our peers.”

AnewAU is “very focused on raising money for the SIS building,” he said, referring to the 70,000 square foot new building for AU’s School of International Service. The school has only raised approximately half of its $25 million goal, according to the SIS Web site. Minar said that as the building nears completion there will be more focus on fundraising for new School of Communications facilities. Students will hear “significant news” about SOC facilities in the first half of 2010.

Standard & Poor’s Rating Services expressed confidence in AU and upgraded AU’s bond rating from A to A+ in December. AU was one of only 12 institutions–one of only two private–to receive an upgrade from S&P in 2009.

“We have been operating with a financial management strategy for some time that has taken a very conservative approach that I believe is helping us,” said Don Myers, AU’s Vice President of Finance and Treasurer, in an “Inside Higher Ed” article on the bond upgrade.

AU’s 2008-2009 Annual Report and 2010-2011 Budget echo the confidence of the university administration.

“Never has our future been brighter than it is at this moment,” said Gary Abramson, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, in his introduction to the Annual Report. Other language in the report states confidently, “we [AU] are on the cusp of greatness.”

The Budget had good news too, especially for faculty and staff. In an economy where many schools are laying off staff and freezing salaries, AU is doing the opposite. The school has set aside money for a 3.0% performance-based salary and benefits increase for both fiscal years 2010 and 2011. In addition, $2.6 million has been set aside to hire 23 new tenure and tenure-track faculty over the next two years.

My column is titled “Unsolicited Advice”, meaning that it’s advice for people who haven’t really asked for it (and might not even want it) but I’m giving it to them anyway. Check the link above to read my first column, advice for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, or click the “read more” to read it here on my blog. Comments are always appreciated!

Thanks for taking the time to read my first column. Every other week on this page you’ll read my unsolicited advice to those who – I believe – need it the most. They may not think they need it. They may not want it. And they might even be a little pissed that a college student would think himself precocious enough to write something like this. But here I am, and I’m going to tell it like I see it.

Dear Sen. Harry Reid:

Students, you might think you know where this is going already. If you’ve followed politics at all lately you know that Mr. Reid has gotten himself in some boiling water over a few choice words he used in reference to President Obama during the 2008 campaign (namely, “light-skinned” and “negro dialect”). Amidst calls for him to retire, a never-ending battle for health care reform and abysmal polling in Nevada, it’s beginning to look like Reid is being shown the door.

I beg to differ.

Sen. Reid, this isn’t over yet. You can still bring this campaign back from the grave. But you need to make some changes.

First, fire your campaign manager, Brandon Hall. Apprentice-style, if you will. A quick look at his campaign experience, and I think it’s easy to see he’s not the best person for the job. After running an unsuccessful campaign for a special election House seat in 2006, he ran the campaign for Mark Begich in Alaska against former Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

“But Begich won the race!” you might protest. Of course. But he won by only the slimmest of margins — less than 4,000 votes — and let’s not forget he was running against a convicted felon.

Experienced? Accomplished? Not even. And the way he’s run your campaign so far proves it. Find someone new.

Second on your to-do list should be to get aggressive with your public relations tactics.

You’re being bombarded with bad press. As if the scandals, tear-jerking polling statistics and problems on the hill weren’t enough, now The Washington Post is even saying you and your son Rory — running for Governor of Nevada — are a burden to each other. Don’t believe it, work together with Rory to fight back hard.

This is a Nevada election. Get local. Get aggressive and don’t let the press dictate your strategy.

Last but by no means least, get online. With it being 2010 and all, your social media presence is laughable. On Facebook you have only 3,374 fans. And your staff doesn’t even try to pretend it’s you updating. They even refer to you in the third person.

Twitter is almost as bad. Only 5,508 followers, updates that look like headlines ripped out of a press release and zero interaction with your constituency.

Don’t forget, it’s not just fundraising that will win you this election. You have to reach out and connect with your voters. Services like Twitter and Facebook provide an awesome opportunity to do just that.

Good luck, Sen. Reid. You’ll need it.

It’s a psychological thing. Anyone versed in business writing knows that it’s easier, quicker and simply more efficient to read lists and bullets than big long paragraphs. And nowadays, we’re all about reading short things, quickly (i.e. Twitter–140 characters, doesn’t get much shorter and quicker than that).

But I’ve just about reached my limit of end-of-the-year/decade/whatever top 10 lists. I just can’t handle it anymore! It seems like every where I’ve looked–starting December 1st and still ongoing–there’s another top 10 list for something. There’s lists of the top celebrities, top people on twitter, top books, top gadgets, top political scandals, top news stories, top movies, top albums… everybody and their brother has their top 10 list of [insert subject here] they want to share.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty too. Even today, I’ve tweeted at least one link to a top 10 list (Engadget’s wonderful Top 10 Gadgets of the Decade). But there just needs to be some kind of restraint here, it’s overwhelming!

I like how Time Magazine does it. They put ALL of their top 10 lists in one place, a neat little index for you to flip through, nice and organized and not too much to handle. But for things like Twitter, I feel like the service is just swamped with everyone’s lists for this and lists for that. It’s drowning out the content. The breaking news. The #FollowFridays (it seems I’m not the only one who almost forgot about that today–it seems totally absent from my feed, at least).

Thankfully, this only comes around once a year. And in a way, it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure, reading all these lists. But when it gets to the point where all media is just saturated with it–like now–and the real content seems to disappear, I feel like it’s time to step back and ask: do we really need all these lists? What do you think?