Hi everyone,

I'm doing a bit of shameless promotion here, but I've been emailing Shawn and he says I can do it (but only this once )

I work for the citizen journalism website Orato.com, which recently featured a story about the Old Trout Puppet Workshop (http://orato.com/arts-entertainment/2008/03/18/famous-puppet-death-scenes-old-trout-puppet-workshop). I wanted to let you know about the story as well as the opportunity to use Orato to promote your own work by uploading text, video or audio files.

Basically, it's a user-driven site where anyone can post anything, as long as it's true to your personal experience. We were created to give everyone a voice and remove the filters used by mainstream media.

We get some good traffic (about 10,000 visits a day) and you can link back to your website/blog if you have one.

Sorry if this post rubs anyone the wrong way... no offense intended 

Thanks,
Robyn

Thanks for posting, Robyn.  I enjoyed the feature you guys did on Old Trout Puppet Workshop.  As far as I'm concerned you can tell us anything that's related to puppets.  Even if it is a "shameless promotion."

Robyn and I have indeed been emailing back and forth.  She was kind enough to ask if she could post on our site and although orato.com is not specifically about puppets I thought perhaps it may be worth everyone knowing about.

As she mentioned anyone is welcome to post on their site.  The article about Old Trout Puppet Workshop was actually authored by a representative of that puppet company. My thought was for those who have puppet companies they could do something similar. The initial "article" you created could be an overview of your company, then when ever you send out a news release to your local papers (you do that right?!) then stop by orato.com and post an article there based on the news release you just sent out.

I don't believe this is just limited to folks who have a puppet company. If you are involved with a local puppetry guild you could write articles about upcoming guild events. People who attended puppet events could report on them.  There are actually many categories other then just Arts and Entertainment and it could be that you have some useful information to share to the world wide web community concerning those other areas of interest.

Robyn, welcome to Puppets and Stuff!  I do hope you well stop in from time to time and join in on some of our discussions or let use know about new articles that may be of interest to our community. Who knows we may make a puppet fanatic out of you.

As she mentioned anyone is welcome to post on their site.  The article about Old Trout Puppet Workshop was actually authored by a representative of that puppet company. My thought was for those who have puppet companies they could do something similar. The initial "article" you created could be an overview of your company, then when ever you send out a news release to your local papers (you do that right?!) then stop by orato.com and post an article there based on the news release you just sent out.

Something worth baring in mind though is if anyone does this they should be very transparent about it and make it clear in the byline or elsewhere that they are writing about themselves.

It's considered very dodgy in terms of journalism ethics to not fully disclose a conflict of interest (this is why bloggers often disclose any formal association they have with a subject they are writing about). For the same reason the Wikipedia community is often very harsh towards people who edit Wiki articles about themselves or their company.

It's a great article and orato.com looks like a great site, I just wanted to point out one of the potential pitfalls of writing articles about yourself.

I fully agree with you Andrew and glad that you clarified that.  I think they expect folks to write about themselves but full discloser well go a long way in the public trusting what you have to say.  Perhaps I should get Robyn to stop back by and give her thoughts on this.

Okay... I'm back! I've been battling the flu all week so I decided to turn off my computer for the weekend and CHILL!

First of all, I'm really glad you guys have so receptive to the story and the site - it's always a risk promoting this way but I'm stuck on how else to let people know about Orato as a platform to promote your work, yourself and your experiences of news.

Puppetry may not be "hard news" but we welcome any and all user-driven posts, so yes, by all means write about yourself and your company! I only suggest that there to be some story to it - maybe tell us how and when you first fell in love with puppets, or your most embarrassing/weird/funny puppet-related moment?? Perhaps you can be more creative than I. The only thing that we really don't like is when people talk about themselves in the third person - think "first person, I speak" and you'll always be okay by us! I think puppetry really lends itself to video as well...

Please email me if you have any questions - I'd love to help 
robyn@orato.com

I'll check back on this thread as well.

Thanks guys 
Robyn