Most Likely To Die Alone

[Announcement] 200 posts and The Road Ahead

2009-08-16T17:39:00.006+01:00

On Friday afternoon's post, I noticed something. Not only was I creeping close to another milestone of writing on this blog, it happened to be exactly six months to the day since my first significant milestone. 100 posts in six months. But, except for a random cop-out here and there, a few filler posts every now and then, I've also noticed something pretty interesting in the last hundred posts.

I picked up a focus. And it has little to do with dying alone (well, directly, but we'll leave that up to the jury to decide). This blog started back about 18 months ago as a pet project, practice-what-you-preach affair to give me an outlet to keep creative. It worked, and I've had some pretty cool successes because of it:

For all of that fun and foot-longs, though, I've decided to pack things up around these parts. This blog will exist in perpetuity, along with the content, but I have a new home where I will take a specific focus on what's happening in the media world called State of the Fourth Estate.

The title is a play on words from the famous quote attributed to Edmund Burke by Thomas Carlyle in an 1840 lecture on the Men of Letters and Heroes:

"Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important far than they all."

Why this new header? Because, regardless of what I think about the costs and levels of access to media, I think it is an unbelievably important part of democracy and government. The future of the marketplace of ideas should never be questioned as a necessity. However, it is fun to watch the constant change of the role of media and journalists, and it has been an interest of mine dating back to my days as an undergraduate research assistant.

Thanks to everyone who has encouraged the origin of this blog, written about any of my opinions, and kept me going to produce content. I'll be updating the feeds, but, please subscribe to the new posts if you'd like to keep in the loop on what I'm ranting about next.

DL

"State of the Fourth Estate" Reading 8 14 09

2009-08-14T17:49:00.003+01:00

Only one piece today, but it's an important one. As discussed for much of the last 48 hours over on Nieman Journalism Lab, here's the document it found regarding the AP and their future plans for content. Note well, it actually uses "Jacko" within it:

Protect, Point, Pay -- An Associated Press Plan for Reclaiming News Content Online

Is News "Too Cheap to Meter"?

2009-08-14T02:30:00.005+01:00

(cc) Flickr user sashafatcat

I'm not an economist. I'm going to start right now with that point. I took AP Econ like, nine years ago. I did fine, but, I'm in communications for a reason. I did get one basic principle: supply and demand. Lots of one product, and the demand for it is low.

So, with that waiver, I'm going to try my best. Before moving forward too quickly, let's assume this: not all content - media that can be defined as 1) intellectually developed 2) created and original, not excluding fair-use modifications and 3) potentially portable - is created equal. There is a wide range of production from John Woo to your cell phone's camera. Most "content" is somewhere between there.

Some content is scarce: the hundred million dollar budget movie, for example. I'm not talking about that stuff from here on out. I am talking about a magical place where the barrier to entry is so low that it creates a flood of potential players: the Internet.

I just finished Chris Anderson's Free and I thought it was an incredible overview of what drives and creates a "Free-conomy." I'm dwelling on one thing the most a day later. Anderson talked about the rate at which certain things get cheap - transistors, metals, etc. - as we find more efficient ways to create them. The decline is steep and exponential. At some point, you realize you can keep shrinking the price, but the nanocents just aren't worth collecting and it rounds down to zero. It's just "too cheap to meter."

Based on that idea: is news - observational information summarized into a story to increase awareness - too cheap to meter?

In the last decades, we found a more efficient way to get information out than newsprint and printing presses. We found a cheaper way than satellites. We found a bottomless pit of a news room staff. It's damn near free to create. All of these forces equalize the value of the words in each article, Tweet, blog post, and the like. Therefore, it is up to the reader to determine the content's validity - a frighteningly scary thought for those who love fact checkers - and *gasp* it's authority based on how much they trust the source. The creator of the content, actually, in effect the producer, does not determine the value.

It is so abundant that it can't be controlled from above, and its value is already being measured by the user. There is no opportunity cost for content other than time.

So, yes, general news and information is too cheap to meter.

Perceived, user-generated authority is more powerful than any ounce of user-generated content. Once the audience sets how much they are willing to pay for something - time, money, or any other resource (which, in the age of the link economy, includes the respect of URL) - there's no turning back. The massive online portals did not have an institution to rest on to build a reputation, they had to earn it the hard way in an unbelievably competitive world. And some - not all of them - did.

Newspapers want to be branded from their top mastheads, yet they want to label the bloggers from the bottom denominator. That's (a) unfair and (b) not their fault. It's the product of ancient, hierarchy thinking that doesn't fit in when the economy isn't set by revenue but by other forms of recompense.

When the barrier of entry is low, nearly everyone who wants a seat at the table gets one; but the smart host only pays attention to the smart people. That doesn't mean that it isn't impossible to get invited, though. The information flows regardless of who's being paid attention to, and that means that if someone decides they want to be exclusive, someone else can jump in quite easily.

So - the news isn't what you monetize. That horse is well beyond the stable. Content is intellectual, portable and original. Stick to that last one and you'll see just what to serve.

"State of the Fourth Estate" Morning Reading 8 13 09

2009-08-13T13:34:00.003+01:00

Trying to clear the cache a little from a few days away. Likely missed something over the past few days, so please add any links that you feel are worth it in the comments:

The News Americans Need [Washington Post; authored by Dan Rather]
AOL, Yahoo find value in original online news; eyeing laid-off journalists [ZDnet via Simon Owens]
How long should dead paper linger on web? [Newsosaur]
Guardian joins NYT in mulling over members’ club [Online Journalism Blog]
Why The Associated Press plans to hold some web content off the wire [Nieman Journalism Lab]
Newspaper war raises a question: Who keeps the tweeps? [Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages]

Digging Out

2009-08-13T03:04:00.003+01:00

Back from a few days off the grid, so I'm digging out of the e-mail and reader stash. Luckily, every now and then, I get something good in the e-mail that works to fill in some content.

For a short clip that does a great job gathering all of the surrounding peripherals of Rupert Murdoch's announcement to go behind the wall, take some time and watch the clip below. Thanks to Rosa over at Newsy for sending it along:

I'll have some more on my opinion and thoughts throughout the rest of the week...especially now that I've gotten through Chris Anderson's gamechanging new book, Free. Stay tuned...

Newsprint is Saved! [Today in Infographics]

2009-08-07T18:35:00.003+01:00

The worst is over for the newspaper industry? I love the headline on the piece, "Newspapers ‘Back from Brink’ of Doom" Here's why, according to Borrell Associates:

According to Colby Atwood, president of Borrell Associates, the outlook for the industry will improve even more after next year. By 2014, newspaper income will be up a total of 8.7% over the 2009 figures, to slightly more than $39 billion (not including online revenues), he said.

Though this rebound will be mild and still short of its 2008 level, it will be enough to increase newspapers’ overall share of total ad revenue 1.5 points, from 14.4% to 15.9%.

Atwood believes that newspapers will bounce back because they already are heeding the call to redefine their products and target a significantly distilled audience of higher-educated, higher-income readers.

It is worth noting that these predictions do not take into account online revenues, either. But all the growth is in local news, not national.

The thesis of the rebound is specialization and the stabilization/growth of local, niche markets. That kind of undermines the whole "make national information the premium," right? Low supply of information, even if the overall number is lower, is better to build demand than in really crowded markets (say, national news) where, even if you have a good product, supply can increase to break that down.

And I'm not even an economist.

"State of the Fourth Estate" Morning Reading for 8 7 09

2009-08-07T11:31:00.005+01:00

New York Times Co. confirms Globe is for sale [Boston Globe via Romanensko]
Let's Get On With It [A VC]

And a paraphrased quote of the day, from a Personal Democracy Forum conference call on the growing changes between bloggers and journalists. Much more on this topic later (and once the full audio is available):

Journalists used to look at their jobs like tenured professors...not caring exactly where their paycheck was coming from but assured it was coming. That's changed. They're expected to know the business. Now, there's hand-wringing in the news rooms, questions about the ethics of the new business model, but the future of journalism will learn to keep it separated to be successful and true to the profession.

~Scott Rosenberg, Salon.com co-founder and author of Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters

State of the Fourth Estate Morning Reading 8 6 09

2009-08-06T11:50:00.005+01:00

I'm nearly proud of the diversity this morning - Economists, baseball, wire services and the Guardian. But, I'm going to be vain and remind people to check out parts one and two of my two-part argument against building a subscription wall.

The Dumbest Words I’ve Read Today, AP Edition… [Economists Do It With Models]
The Battle Over Content Fair Use Places "Aggregators" in the Crosshairs [Biz of Baseball]
Why I believe in the link economy [Reuters MediaFile] This post is extra fascinating because it was written by Chris Ahearn, President, Media of Thomson Reuters.
Rupert Murdoch's move to charge for content opens doors for competitors [The Guardian]

Don't Build the Wall [Part 2 of 2]

2009-08-05T23:55:00.002+01:00

This is part two of a two part post in which I spend some time questioning David Simon's Columbia Journalism Review feature about the way to save the newspaper industry through online subscriptions, "Build the Wall." The Cliff Notes of both posts: I disagree with him. The first part of the long version is here.

We pick up where we left off in part one by jumping toward the end of David Simon's CJR feature. I'm going to have my RunPee moment and skip over the middle part with a quick summary: the author wrote that the newspaper industry has mirrors in the auto industry, including its cheapening attitude in the 80s. (This is a really fantastic and uplifting comparison, and I quote from Simon: "Detroit lost to a better, new product; newspapers, to the vague suggestion of one."). He finalizes the state of the world with the point that the disheartened attitudes started low among small newspapers and were not noticed by major pubs until it is too late.

Still, his solution remains unchanged: the Post and the Times must launch subscription models simultaneously to save it and no bad can come from it. Like the author, I am also suspending my belief regarding Department of Justice Anti-Trust actions. We get three scenarios from the author, and I will have my fun pointing out potential issues with each. Just as in part 1, my commentary is bolded; Simon's original work is indented and italicized. Let's play, shall we?

Simon's Scenario #1

"...reassured that they can risk going behind the paywall without local readers getting free national, international, and cultural reporting from the national papers, and having seen that the paid-content formula can work, most metro dailies will follow suit. As they do, they re-emphasize that which makes them unique: local coverage, local culture, local voices—coupled with wire-service offerings from the national papers otherwise available only through paid sites."

This is the "fall-in-line" model that is the dream world of Simon and the newspaper networks. If the wall works, it's their golden proof that closed content survives and supports the print model. So, in this scenario, print survives because of the pay model. Conflict: you aren't closing off the wall for people who get their news the old-fashioned way, and it is more than fair to assume that a newsprint subscription will come with online access. Your enemy is the person who doesn't want your paper, your entire catalog of news stories on the myriad interests and topics. This isn't going to make them start, because they will still have access to news. There will still be ways for your information to get out and the revenues will be modest in growth, not industry-saving. For every metro daily pushing out "local coverage, local culture, local voices" there will be a collection of citizen journalists already doing that who will not shut up and not stop quoting the events.

Big cities are bad examples, but there are some mid-markets like Seattle and Philly that boast connections to Gothamist who are a grander resource - and that network will grow, not shrink, if you make metro content premium. Local culture will still be revealed through your Yelps and Where the Locals Eat. Yes, a metro daily may be the only newspaper in town, but it is far from the only voice like it used to be.

Finally, from where are you planning to restock the news rooms? Those journalists you've already laid off from the metro daily? They are already out there, building new Web properties to keep their livelihood - and they have learned business modeling since then. They aren't coming back just because you built a wall. Recruitment of writers will then change, and, the bigger problem becomes the fact that you have a green staff and lower quality content than before this all started.

Simon's Scenario #2

"...the vacuum creates an opportunity for new, online subscription-based news organizations that cover state and local issues, sports, and finance, generating enough revenue to maintain a slim—but paid—metro desk. Again, given the absence of circulation costs, such an outcome becomes, by conservative estimates, entirely possible."

I just made a point in scenario #1 about the traditional subscriptions comprising the bulk of "total subscription" users behind the wall. Take away those users and now where are you? If anything, and I'm going to compromise myself before even debunking scenario #3, this needs to start with the local newspaper that carries an important voice and unfiltered, really specific local content to move first while their print version still exists. Hyperlocal is the new local - and making that information premium should be the first priority.

Simon's Scenario #3

"Except for one in which professional journalism doesn’t endure in any form, this is the worst of all worlds. The Times and The Post survive because their coverage is unique and essential. But the regional dailies, too eviscerated to offer a credible local product, cannot entice enough online subscriptions to make do. They wither and die. And further, new online news ventures are stillborn because both national papers become exactly that—national.

Imagine major American cities without daily newspapers, and further imagine the Times or The Post employing just enough local journalists in regional markets to produce zoned editions—The New York Times with, say, a ten-person St. Louis bureau, giving readers two or three pages of metro, sports, and local business coverage."

The only reason I'm even acknowledging this as a possibility is the position that a world in which professional journalism doesn't exist is apparently unspeakable. That to me is just a look-down-your-nose attitude at the way things are. We have seen that breaking news can come from so many more sources than it used to, that information in a free market can be free. The Times and the Post do not represent these "unique flowers" of journalism so special that their existence is the ultimate requirement for their to be a professional standard and hierarchy.

Journalists stand to be a profitable and professional industry if they are willing to rethink business beyond ads and subscription. I promise. Retreating behind walls to do it just to stick by what has made you last for centuries isn't the solution. You have not brought the Trojan Horse into your city; it is already inside, and you know that it is not an empty prize. You have just simply chosen to build the fortress around it anyway.

State of the Fourth Estate Morning Reading for 8 5 09

2009-08-05T14:25:00.000+01:00

Just a few quick links to get you through the morniing:

Nonprofit Globe no easy fix [Boston Herald]
Journalism Needs Data in the 21st Century [ReadWriteWeb]
The Newspaper-Web War [Slate Magazine]

Don't Build the Wall [Part 1 of 2]

2009-08-05T00:33:00.007+01:00

This is part one of a two part post in which I spend some time questioning David Simon's Columbia Journalism Review feature about the way to save the newspaper industry through online subscriptions, "Build the Wall." The Cliff Notes of both posts: I disagree with him. The first part of the long version is below.

Amongst the links I've been passing around these past few days, there was a tip in Ezra Klein's post last night back to a feature in this month's Columbia Journalism Review. I had missed the piece when it first came out last week due to travel, but I had some time last night to settle into the 4,000+ word thought piece/"open letter" on why the biggest players in the American newspaper industry - the New York Times and the Washington Post - should simultaneously erect paid, subscription walls to their online portals.

After going through David Simon's article with a highlighter, here's what my copy looked like:

Needless to say by the bleeding yellow paper, I had a few questions and counterpoints. This is going to be fun, I promise. So, from here on out, just to clarify well in advance, anything indented and italicized is what was originally written by Simon in his post; the bolded text is mine.

The rest of the print journalism world is in slash-and-burn mode, cutting product and then wondering why the product won’t sell, rushing to give away what remains online and wondering further why that content is held by advertisers to be valueless.

We'll start with the context. Simon argued that it will require the simultaneous (read: questionably bartered slash colluded slash anti-trust) movement of the two remaining juggernauts of print media to build a successful, pay-per-read online news model. He's right in one way: there's no doubt that the content within these sites is at the top of the most linked to on blogs and Twitter; therefore, it's among the gateways of online news. If anyone can lead, it's probably them.

But he overlooks one critical point: he just groups "product" into one lump. When it comes to a pay model, "the news" - facts, straight information - is the unimportant part, but it's the bulk of that product. Commentary and unique journalism, the smaller part of the paper, that's what can carry a price tag. The news, from major world events to insignificant pop culture milestones, will come by way of so many different channels that cannot be ignored. Accept that "breaking news" is pretty useless as a metric of success, please, in terms of audience reach. The elite editorial is what makes your sources valuable to bring people back.

I know that content wants to be free on the Internet. I know that the horse was long ago shown the barn door and that, belatedly, the idea of creating a new revenue stream from online subscriptions seems daunting and dangerous. I know that commentary—the froth and foam of print journalism—sells itself cheaply and well on thousands of blogs. I know that the relationships between newspapers and online aggregators—not to mention The Associated Press and Reuters—will have to be revisited and revised. True, all true.

It's not that the horse has seen the barn door that makes the paid online media about as appealing as a stick in the eye; it's that the there's a pencil-thin difference between a news reporter online and a non-professional journalism. Basically, we're talking masthead, business cards and access (yes, I over simplified that to leave out heady, journalistic tradition). We're decently level on the playing field regarding content development and what Simon proposes is rebuilding a hierarchy between the journalist and stereotypical-non-professional-blogger by establishing a premium "because that's how news should operate."

It's not just the content is online, though, it's how easily it can be created and shared through the technology that's widely available in free information markets. We don't need thoroughbreds who have an institutional advantage (a printing press, an FCC license, a satellite, a studio) to get our news. The influencers will find other ways to learn and pass information out there because the barrier of entry is miniscule.

And yes, I know that if one of you should try to go behind the paywall while the other’s content remains free, then, yes, you would be destroyed.

Ultimatums are dangerous, just saying. These are decent sized markets with ideological chasms between the other newspaper options in the city. Oh yeah, paid subscriptions are also likely to come with online subscriptions, and you will not see an utter destruction of one paper just because the other pub has a free online service.

Where the Times and The Post lead, Murdoch and, ultimately, every desperate and starving newspaper chain will simply follow. Why? Because the need to create a new revenue stream from the twenty-first century’s information-delivery model is, belatedly, apparent to many in the industry. But no one can act if the Times and The Post do not; the unique content of even a functional regional newspaper—state and municipal news, local sports and culture—is insufficient to demand that readers pay online. But add to that the national and international coverage from the national papers that would no longer be available on the Internet for free but could be provided through participation in the news services of the Times and The Post and, finally, there is a mix of journalism that justifies a subscription fee.

Wait, let's wait for the rest of the point:

Neither the Times nor the Post can do this alone.

The last three points are all within about 700 words of each other. The lumbering giant of newspaper is apparently so large that the entire network relies on these two and these two rely on each other for their business model. How is this any less collusion than what he proposes throughout the piece? "Everyone else is doing it" is a terrible way to run a business. I'm coming back to the local media stuff, too, in a bit.

...the misapprehension of men and women who spent their lives believing in the primacy of newsprint is as tragic as the strategists who built battleships even after Billy Mitchell used air power to bomb one to the ocean floor in 1921.

Wow, dramatic much? Were there that many career-minded newspaper folk who refused to acknowledge changes? Or just those who ended up in charge after the smart ones got hired away? (Was that too many Socratic questions in a row?)

In tomorrow's response, I'll take down the three scenarios that Simon proposes will happen. SPOILER ALERT: in his model, the Times and Post come out winners in all three.

State of the Fourth Estate Morning Reading for 8 4 09

2009-08-04T13:39:00.003+01:00

Quick round-up of links in the last twelve hours on the state of the media world, three specifically on WaPo v. Gawker (2009) and one bonus link. Enjoy your morning reading:

Gawker’s Link Etiquette (or Lack Thereof) [Columbia Journalism Review]
Who's to Blame for Newspaper Revenues? [Ezra Klein]
Gawker and The Washington Post: A case study in fair use [Nieman Journalism Lab]
Google Quietly Quadruples Its Newspaper Archives [TechCrunch]

Taking Sides: Me vs. A Journalist

2009-08-03T22:00:00.000+01:00

My cousin happens to be a really brilliant and talented writer working out in the Western U.S. Amanda Keim is a journalist, working for the East Valley Tribune in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, and we both grew up together in the Valley throughout high school and scarring family road trips. Well, given that I'm the digital PR guy and the one always mocking traditional media, it's always nice to have a foil around like a reporter for a cousin.

This afternoon, we got into it via IM about the recent brouhaha between a Washington Post reporter and the media/celebrity/culture blog, Gawker.

The short version of the flap: Ian Shapira pens an article for WaPo about a woman who reaches out to old school business-folks to teach them about relating to younger generations. Gawker grabs the article, mocks it fittingly through a couple excerpts, and lets it hit the blogosphere running. Shapria, ecstatic about getting a hit of this magnitude, starts e-mailing it around. And then his editor questioned why he was so happy that he was giving away revenue to a blog that "stole" his work.

There have been commentaries on this, and I've had it linked from my profile all day. Not surprisingly, Amanda and I had differing opinions. With her permission, I've reprinted some key statements from each of us in a new series I'm calling, "Taking Sides." Today's edition: Me vs. a Journalist. Note, this is original in argument, but I have edited these for punctuation and grammar to be a little cleaner than IM talk.

AK: I thought he brought up some good points, even if he didn't offer good solutions. I don't think most people understand how much time goes into writing a news story.

DL: My issue is how he got upset about it. He was definitely bragging to his editor about the Gawker pickup, and then his editor was like, "Hey there slugger."

AK:You mean how he was happy until the editor said something?

DL:Yep. He changed his tune quickly. And this line is ridiculous: "And if bloggers want to excerpt at length, a fee would be the nice, ethical gesture."

AK:Well, the problem is, that's the trouble newsrooms are facing. You've got a bunch of people whose only job has been going after news stories, who have been taught that it's unethical to have any contact with the business side. The writers have appreciated exposure for their stories, but in the past, the only place you could get that full story would be in your own publication (unless the AP or another wire service picked it up, then it might end up on the radio or in another publication tomorrow).

Now, the business side hasn't innovated and a bunch of journalists are losing their jobs, so these people who haven't had anything to do with the business side are suddenly trying to figure out business in addition to this web thing they've ignored for 10 years. People are angry, some interesting experiments are being tried, but mostly it's older editors and publishers who are intrigued by new ideas but too afraid to try something someone else hasn't done. The writers are getting frustrated and scared because our friends are getting laid off, our salaries are getting cut, there aren't other jobs out there to get and most news organizations haven't figured out how to make money. Then you see someone paraphrase your work on another Web site without doing their own news gathering and know that the hits (and therefore money) that could be coming to your employer are going to this other site that isn't paying to gather news, but has figured out online branding. You know the only reason they can do it is someone else is paying you to do the work.

DL: Why did the journalist write the story? That's my question. Did he write it to generate ad revenue for his organization? Or did he write it to add a new idea and supplement further reporting with the hopes that people talk about it? Is he a newspaper ad salesman? No, he's a reporter. And he knew that until he got yelled at for being happy about a hit somewhere. Being afraid of links and building walls is what will continue to sink the newspaper industry.

AK:But see, you just hit on the problem: The reporter wrote the story to add to the conversation and had the appropriate response. But then he got hit with the financial reality that the people in charge of making sure he'll continue being paid to do that haven't figured out how to make money, which is a question journalists have been starting to ask more and more as the business side hasn't innovated. [Allow me to hedge upon rereading this exchange: Ultimatums are dangerous and rarely true. There have been some people trying new things with the business model and news sites, especially in the past year or two, but by and large traditional newspapers haven't kept up with new business models or online trends for delivering news. -AK]

So he's paid to do one thing, but reality is then making him worry about something else he isn't supposed to worry about in an ideal world. I'm all for links. But yes, the guy at Gawker did copy him. So what if the link's at the bottom of the page? He took the story, rewrote it without going out to get his own information and, if someone gets all the way through the lazy piece, they might click on the link to the original material.

DL: See, it's not about the credit and journalism, then. it's just the business model, like you were saying. It is completely clear that the Gawker guy didn't write it.

AK: Exactly. But since no one who's supposed to worry about the business model has done anything about the business model, a bunch of writers who are fearing for their jobs are suddenly trying to learn business 101 and come up with something.

And so ends this round of going back and forth. Please feel free to add in any more thoughts - trust me, I'm still really interested in this issue.

Quote of the Day - 8 3 09

2009-08-03T20:49:00.003+01:00

Craig Stoltz, of Web2.0h…Really? talking about the battle I'm now calling WaPo v. Gawker (2009).

Rebuild the walls around your content by charging people to visit or link to it and you risk becoming the North Korea of Media–isolated and backward, depriving your citizens of nourishment and the benefits of global connection. You become a digital Kim Jong Il, but without the crazy hair and nuclear weapons.

Dear Wall Street Journal: Your Pay Wall Didn't Work

2009-08-03T14:40:00.007+01:00

Early this morning, a breaking news link was pasted across the front of www.wsj.com with a clear headline: Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, was stepping off the Apple Board of Directors. I'm not here to comment on that, although it'd be fun to mock the iPhone/Google Voice flap (that's not my job, there're others who are much better than me at it).

I found out about that link through my Twitter feed this morning. Naturally, I'm curious. I want more. So I click to the following:

Hmm. Subscription required to read the whole story. So, what did I do? Pull out my credit card?

Nope. I waited fifteen minutes for it to appear not once, but twice in my reader:

Note that the second link actually takes you to All Things D, the tech blog of, wait for it, the Wall Street Journal. No pay wall there. Just a little bit more information about the history of the flap and Schmidt's interactions with Apple, with quotes.

So, when you don't want to pay the Wall Street Journal for a wire story, just go to their blog for the full thing. Lesson learned.

Google, Meet Facebook

2009-08-02T14:01:00.004+01:00

Thanks to Steve Rubel for the tip this morning about Google developing a new presence on the social web. Steve linked to Friday's All Facebook post, too:

At this point Google having a Facebook Page isn’t really that big of a step. Had this been done when Facebook Pages first launched we probably would have argued that Google was preparing to acquire Facebook and creating a Facebook Page was a first step of this acquisition process. At this point though, Facebook is aiming to become larger than Google and while it’s still many months away, many signs suggest Facebook is on track to conquer the internet giant in terms of total traffic at some point next year.

The tangled Web just got more tangled with all of these players jumping into each other's sandboxes. Twitter, Facebook, Google, MicroHoo (or whatever we're calling it) are moving fast to identify targets, opportunities for growth, and the right tools/start-ups to buy.

Part of me feels like the Google Facebook page is a case of keep your friends close, enemies closer. With already a quarter of a million fans, the growth has been fairly extreme in the first few days. Stay tuned for how Google leverages this new audience...

Weekend Treat: Friday Song (No. 2)

2009-07-31T22:51:00.002+01:00

Some time ago, I talked about a personal habit of mine, "The Friday Song." Well, with the power of YouTube, I'm ending this week on an old favorite that I guarantee will be stuck in your head until Monday.

Remember, if it doesn't make you want to turn up the volume and help enjoy the end of another week, it's not a Friday song. I'm scheming something over the weekend, so posting is likely to be light for the first week of August.

A Cheap Shot at the Pittsburgh Market?

2009-07-30T17:14:00.008+01:00

Our tour of the AP and newspaper industry is taking a quick detour to the Sports page, today, because the MLB Trade Deadline is coming fast and furious in the next 30 hours or so (I even admitted in a tweet last night that my Desert Island news source until July 31st is MLBtraderumors.com).

Friends and any other people out there know that my favorite convenience is when all my worlds collide into one fantastic display. So, special thanks to my friend and resident Blogadilla contributor Brian Roundy for pointing me to this gem buried in a Yahoo! Sports notes section on the fantasy (yes, remember, geek here) recommendation for a pitcher recently acquired by the Seattle Mariners Ian Snell. Make sure to read the highlighted part closely.

I got a chuckle out of this inclusion for one reason: Seattle has been the center of a lot of my watching because one of its papers went online only this year. However, the presence of the additional media from overseas in Japan as a distraction? A little stretch, and certainly not "recommendation worthy."

There's a common divide in sports between major market teams - LA, NY, Boston being the standard bearers, but also Philly, DC, Miami and Dallas - your mid-markets and minor ones. The idea of "playing under the lights of a big city" as a distraction to some players is a common complaint. This new development is a first to me, at least in terms of two cities that actually have a lot in common as the mid-major markets.

If I'm Pittsburgh, I've just been told that we're a smaller market than a city that lost one of its newspapers. Ouch. Then again, you have a Lombardi and Stanley Cup to keep you company, so, I'm not going to leap to very much more defense than this.

Kindergarten, Cut and Paste and the AP

2009-07-29T13:00:00.005+01:00

Now, the below diagram isn't a sarcastic Boomtown/Kara Swisher creation. It's not from TechCrunch. It's not even from Ezra Klein, the Post's king of whimsical and informative charts.

It's from the AP itself, explaining it's new rights management system (the AP News Registry) for its content (via BoingBoing):

As Cory Doctorow goes into in his post at the BB, "A lot of copyfighters were mystified by the Associated Press's recent announcement (complete with a bonkers diagram straight off a bottle of Dr. Bronner's) that they had spent millions of dollars on a DRM system for news that would limit how you could paste the text you copied from your browser window...This is a seeming impossibility...it just seemed too weird to think that no one at the AP had said, 'Wait, what? This is dumb.'"

Jumping back to that wonderful diagram, here's my sticking point: it is undeniable, from a usability standpoint, that the more steps that you add to spreading information, it will get to less people. Sure, there's a chance this model actually may protect some of the AP's specific original content. But there may be one additional step to getting to the consumer: full buy-in from the editorial universe.

The way I see it, this actually hurts publishers more than the AP (of course, that chart is so confusing, there may be nine extra steps to protect them, however, I'm getting off track). There are still a ridiculous number of derivative placements that stem from each posting. Is the AP planning on holding them hostage to this system? More steps, more checks and, of course, more dollar signs are the last thing the newspaper industry needs - especially those publications that rely on AP to fill out their content on a daily basis.

Information is to be shared, not hoarded and certainly not passed through a series of tubes until it's potentially rendered useless to that very fact. We've been cutting and pasting since we've been toddlers. We figured out to make photocopies of news stories, the power of e-mailing and tweeting links; it's taken millions of dollars to create this system and it will take less than a week for someone to beat it and go back to our blasphemous, pirating, copy-and-pasting ways.

Accept it and change, or keep trying to live in your old paranoid, business model. Your choice.

Dead Tree Media: just $99 a year!

2009-07-27T19:01:00.005+01:00

For just $99 each year, you can get an exact, digital replica of USAToday online. That's not all, act now and it comes with pretty interactive features, including such luxuries as "it's part of the Internet."

No, seriously, that's a selling point:

Connect to Internet – All links throughout content and advertisements will be clickable, allowing readers to access Web sites outside the digital reader environment.

I feel a little insulted. Just go to a hotel and steal it from the lobby like everyone else. Except for the sports section and pretty (albeit, occasionally trivial) infographics, does anyone truly read USA Today anymore anyway?

In some ways, I'm not surprised that USAToday/Gannett was first. I actually wonder if this will trickle through each Gannett operation across the country. Needless to say, but I will anyway, this isn't the solution to falling revenues.

H/T to Fishbowl DC

Social Web and E-mail

2009-07-27T14:24:00.002+01:00

From GigaOm this morning, "The Social Web Prays at Email’s Altar."

Every so often a new technology comes along, promising to revolutionize the world of communications. And in the end, it prays at the altar of email. Despite being messy and unstructured, email, which will turn 50 in a couple of years, remains the hub of our Internet experience.

Take this morning — I opened my inbox to find a dozen Twitter direct messages and a few replies to my posts on FriendFeed which, in turn, I replied to via email, Google Reader alerts (with links shared by my network), and a barrage of Facebook messages (pokes, new friends, etc.) This morning, Facebook was on my bad side because for some odd reason, I received an email saying the settings for what I want (only events-related information) had changed. I wasn’t sure how or why, but that happens. I grumbled a little, shook my fist at the Facebook gods, and then went back to change my settings.

Why do I love this so much? Because I went into a really similar rant just two months ago:

This is about my hub of social networks and how I manage my digital presences.

It isn't Facebook or LinkedIn; it's not Twitter (gasp!), it's even ahead of text messaging, I say this with complete certainty: Gmail is my most social network.

It's the center point of all my other social networks (hence the title of this article). I don't sit on Facebook or TweetDeck all day waiting for a direct message, new follower or a tagged photo, It's all siphoned into this one place, ultimately making it my storehouse for each part of my online networks. Considering that there are times when I'm not in front of a computer (again - gasp!), getting notifications in my e-mail also pushes them to my phone as effectively as a text but without the cost. Amazing, this technology thing.

E-mail very well may be the most important technological innovation since the ~~Walkman~~ telephone. Om Malik quotes a stat in his post from today that there are likely to be 1.9 billion worldwide e-mailers by 2013. A little less than a third of the world, connected by no more than a mainframe. I'm not a anthropologist, so I won't try to dampen that stat with a marginalization of the cultures surrounding the other 4-plus billion people in the world.

Om says a lot of other points that I agree with (especially his mention of Wave, supported by a reader's comment that really cements the ability of the new Google tool to change everything). Take a gander through the whole piece if you have three to seven minutes.

I'll even e-mail it to you, if you'd like.

Fun with music sharing tools and Matt Nathanson

2009-07-25T13:53:00.005+01:00

I've been experimenting with Grooveshark over the last couple of weeks, and I have to say, it's a pretty powerful little tool. A truly deep library of music without the challenge of "I really hope Pandora plays this song" or "It's 10:30 a.m. and my playlist is already repeating."

One disadvantage is music discovery - Pandora blows this service away in that regard because of the recommendations and other tracks. However, it's always worth looking for an artist in the 'Shark and seeing if another user's playlist crosses many bounds.

My first experiment, though, is building out the playlist from a concert I went to last night, complete with the original versions of covers that were played. Grooveshark not only let me build the list, it also has that embeddable tool that is my favorite part of Web 2.0.

Click through from your reader and take a moment to listen and enjoy this reimagination of Matt Nathanson's July 24th concert in the Lincoln Park Zoo:

Stealing Time and Filling Up

2009-07-22T20:35:00.005+01:00

(cc) Flickr user jtravism

Really fantastic post from an old classmate and research colleague of mine (and all around great guy, without whom I never would have completed research for my own thesis) on coming to face the reality of wasted time. He puts it into the context of a really solid frame, "The Threshold of Care."

There will always be a unit of time, a unit of anything really, that is indivudally beneath counting or caring. That could be 3 minutes, eight-nine cents, one more bite, one more wedding guest. Individually there is always room for this unit, just beneath the “Threshold of Care” and it’s usually a single noun. Psychologically it’s just simpler that way, “always room for one more”: person, dollar, line, guest. Beneath the Threshold of Care anything goes, that’s why ninety-nine cents was pioneered as a marketing device (and later as folks got wise to the ninety-nine cent phenomenon, the ninety-five-cent and eighty-nine cent innovations).

One thing that will move that imaginary line in the sand, to me, is the barrier of entry. Cost is obvious, but what about access? Is the $1 worth it if I have to get in my car to drive past three places that are $1.29? Higg makes a great connection with a different kind of threshold - communication - and it hinges on this notion:

While a phone conversation runs the risk of going over the Threshold of Care, a text stays comfortably beneath it. Even an exchange of texts over the course of an hour can remain, at least in our minds, beneath the threshold, like those six eighty-nine cent burritos from Taco Bell.

Try to stay with me because I want to take this a step further to overprove my favorite point. Newspapers aren't "dying," (a) completely and (b) because of our shrinking attention span. Having information "first" is just a terrible business model that MSM refuses to let go over high-value content.

You remember how we always used to be told, "Don't fill up on bread" before a meal? That's what's happening - it's truly the bite-sized messages or blog posts that we don't let creep above into the realm of information overload. MSM may start writing shorter articles, but it really isn't out of a need to fit into what we want. It's not a shrinking tolerance for hard forms of media; it's the power of a crowded, specialized marketplace that is filling us up before a big meal.

Just save room for dessert.

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Everything But a Phone

2009-07-20T15:21:00.003+01:00

One of my favorite jokes about the iPhone is that it does a lot of things incredibly well, but it seems to be lacking in the "making phone calls" department (at least in the U.S.). I like my phone to be a phone first, hence why I'm sticking with other technology...

...but it looks like I'm in the minority. A new report from Lightspeed Research has some fascinating stats: including the fact that 13 percent of U.S. mobile phone owners claim they never make phone calls. Check it:

That's not it, as it seems that even more usages are desired for phones. We're so far beyond a dialing system these days, aren't we?

Ironic fun with the Google Reader Like feature

2009-07-17T21:47:00.004+01:00

Irony is not 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife - that's just bad luck. See above for real examples.

(From the original post over at Lifehacker where you can get a script that disables Google Reader's "Like" feature).