MisEntropy

Plannersphere Top 20 - July 2009

2009-07-04T21:41:19+05:30

The top 20 blogs in the plannersphere as of 4th July 2009 are:

01. advertising lab
02. russell davies
03. Noah Brier dot Com
04. Nick Burcher
05. Only Dead Fish
06. Influxinsights
07. Talent imitates, genius steals
08. Adspace Pioneers
09. Servant of Chaos
10. Mike Arauz
11. News from the Herd
12. paul isakson
13. brand new
14. Interactive Marketing Trends
15. Herd - the hidden truth about who we are
16. From The Head Of Zeus Jones
17. Get Shouty
18. adliterate
19. CrapHammer
20. Life Moves Pretty Fast

a. The above list winnows out the planning/strategy blogs from the AdAge Power 150 list - and represents a snapshot of their relative positions during the course of their constant Brownian flux on the AdAge list.
b. The plannersphere universe considered in compiling the above chart is this master list (curated by me) which itself was (and continues to be) derived from the Plannersphere wiki list.
c. To figure in the above chart, a blog should feature both in the AdAge Power 150 (information on submitting it is available on the same page) AND in this master plannersphere list. Do ping me to ensure the latter if you have only been recently enlisted on the AdAge Power 150.
d. In addition, to feature in the above chart a blog also needs to have been active - with at least one entry - over the last 1 month.
e. If there are any omissions, do let me know; I shall include them henceforth.
f. You can view rankings from previous months at Plannersphere Top 20.

The news industry, disaggregation of audiences and 'failed truths'

2009-07-02T17:33:36+05:30

Recently, much discussion online (and offline) has centred around the impending doom of journalism and the news industry. As an enthusiastic cheerleader of all the disruptive effects of the Internet, my opinion until of late has been that the changes couldn't have come about sooner.

But I am slowly beginning to wonder if in this particular case the results may be catastrophic in addition to being liberating.

The seeds of doubt were sown in my mind not while reading the many raging debates about the issue itself - but through an unconnected sentence in a Scientific American piece that explored the possibility of food shortages (caused by global warming, water shortages and over cultivation) increasing the risk of failed states and probably leading to the end of civilisation.

Contrasting the predominant geopolitical threat in the 20th century (superpower conflict) with what we are facing today (failing states like Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq), the author of the piece states "It's not the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk."

That line in particular seemed to echo for me the travails - and the challenges - currently faced by the news industry. For much of the last century the criticism of mainstream media and the news industry has been that the huge audiences it aggregated by default created the risk of manipulation of the truth and news by special interest groups, advertisers, the government and the very leanings of the news outlet in question.

For those who feared that, the disruption wreaked by the Internet is welcome news - individuals were free to seek the news and the truth on their own and there were myriad places to find them. And most of it was free - a development that was simultaneously, and fortuitously, driving the established news industry out of business.

But there is a downside. In this context, the above line can be reframed as: "It is not the aggregation of audiences but its absence that puts us at risk."

If the predominant threat in the last century was that ever-larger audiences could be misinformed deliberately, then the threat we are facing now is the possibility of 'failed truths' - news and facts that don't have enough of an audience to become known or be championed.

That doesn't imply that all truth and news will suffer - in the very same way that not all countries face the risk of becoming failed states. As a recent Economist report states, "Yet the plight of the news business does not presage the end of news. As large branches of the industry wither, new shoots are rising. The result is a business that is smaller and less profitable, but also more efficient and innovative."

Much of this revolution is being driven by readers "seeking the kind of information they want, when they want" using search engines, aggregators and social sharing tools.

Some online newspapers are experimenting with a combination of free and premium (freemium) content - in the belief that the free fun (or commodity) stuff will bring in people who will be served targeted advertising and the audience looking for the dry, obscure specialist stuff will want it enough to pay for it.

But what of the the remaining stuff that we don't actively seek or are willing to pay for - which traditional news outlets served to us sandwiched between the above two layers. Information about local politics or local crime trends for example - news that we don't particularly seek but we should ideally know.

By including it in the mix, newspapers and news bulletins ensured that there was a bare minimum awareness we had of news and information that we didn't value ourselves - but added a great deal of value to our individual and collective lives.

It's these spheres that face the risk of being dominated by 'failed truths' if the current changes continue unabated - as empowered audiences seek and are found by news and views that cater to their own short-sighted, limited and momentary interest.

As I discovered, it's not a trifling worry. Tim Harford (the author of The Undercover Economist) writes of a research study that uncovers just that.

It seems, following the closure of The Cincinnati Post in the end of 2007, "local politics suffered. In the suburbs of Cincinnati where the Post had the strongest presence, fewer candidates ran for municipal office in the election after the paper folded, voter turnout fell, and incumbents grew more likely to win re-election."

As Tim Harford notes, the special circumstances of the Cincinnati Post - a closure date determined 5 years earlier and not by other factors like a local recession - points to the kind of void that the news industry will inevitably leave behind. And one that no amount of blogging and citizen journalism may make up for.

The larger arc of the Scientific American article about food shortages was that 'failed states' export disease, terrorism, illicit drugs, weapons and refugees; and without intervention, these could lead to a series of government collapses and the undermining of the world order.

I can't help but wonder what unseen repercussions our 'failed truths' may unleash upon us.

[Original pic by marcelgermain]

'How We Advertise Now' - a Punch cartoon from 1887

2009-06-24T12:56:31+05:30

There were no good old days, evidently.

[Cartoon from Punch 1887 by Harry Furniss; from the book 'The Best of Punch Cartoons']

ten things i didn't know until last week

2009-06-21T23:29:00+05:30

1. CS Lewis's middle name is Staples. (His first name is Clive.)

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2. Oxygen in Greek literally means 'acid giver or begetter' - because its discoverer, Lavoisier, mistakenly thought Oxygen is present in all acids.
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3. Billy Durant founded GM in 1908.
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4. In research, "Hawthorne Effect" is the idea that the very act of being experimented upon changes subjects’ behaviour.
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5. The Fedora is named for the title of an 1882 play by Victorien Sardou, Fédora, written for Sarah Bernhardt.
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6. Britain is still paying off debts that predate the Napoleonic wars because it's cheaper to do so than buy back the bonds on which they are based.
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7. The price of every DVD disc includes a small royalty to Philips, which developed the format.
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8. George Bernard Shaw named his shed after the UK capital so that when visitors called they could be told he was away in London.
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9. Paul McCartney's Beatles' classic 'Blackbird' is a homage to the black civil rights movement - "bird", in this case, being a colloquial term for "woman".
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10. Che Guevera's family was half-Irish and his real name was Ernesto Lynch.
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[Original pic by SeenyaRita]

Plannersphere Top 20 - June 2009

2009-06-06T22:48:17+05:30

The top 20 blogs in the plannersphere as of 6th June 2009:

01. russell davies
02. Advertising Lab
03. Noah Brier dot Com
04. Servant of Chaos
05. Nick Burcher
06. Mike Arauz
07. Talent imitates, genius steals
08. Only Dead Fish
09. paul isakson
10. Influxinsights
11. From The Head Of Zeus Jones
12. adliterate
13. Adspace Pioneers
14. Interactive Marketing Trends
15. Herd - the hidden truth about who we are
16. brand new
17. The Hidden Persuader
18. Trendsspotting
19. Get Shouty
20. CrapHammer