No News is Google News

The Mondragon Cooperative

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 17:02:00 PDT

Father José María Arizmendiarrieta

The Mondragon story is a little bit too sweet for my taste. I guess I'm getting old. In any case, I'm impressed, the experience seems to defy gravity.

If the co-op model is so efficient, it may well be the model that companies may have to adopt in the future, or risk the fate of the dodo.

In light of the current turmoil in the publishing industry, the co-op model seems to be an excellent alternative for bloggers, journalists and photographers, or content providers, to offer their services.

To peak your curiosity, I have an interesting proposition to make to you down below.

This amazing story begins in 1941 with the arrival of a young Catholic priest to the Spanish civil war devastated Basque region.

It doesn't take long for father José María Arizmendiarrieta to realize that if he is going to be of any help, he must find a solution to the desperate unemployment situation of the region. In 1943, he starts a technical school funded by the people of the small village of Mondragon.

ULGOR founders

Father Arizmendiarrieta plants the seeds of cooperativism into a few of his pupils, whom he would later help to raise funds to start an undetermined venture to provide work for the locals. In 1956, they buy the patents and build a factory to produce a simple paraffin heater.

From ULGOR's modest initial 26 workers, Mondragon's cooperatives have surprisingly grown to employ nowadays over 85,000 worldwide within more than 250 companies (approximately half are co-ops), with annual revenues that exceed $15 billion Euros.

Remarkably, only three of these companies have failed so far. Or an insignificant 1.2%, despite the fact that the failure average for start-ups is 80 to 90%.

Let's take a look at their structure and see how they're organized.

One man, one vote.
One worker, one member.
Each new worker must buy his share into the co-op.
10% of the profits are given back to the community.
20% of the profits are held as reserves or for reinvestment into the co-op.
70% of the profits are added to the members' shares.
The ratio of the highest to lowest income is 15:1.
The members' representatives are elected for a period of 4 years.
The Social Council deals with human resources issues.

I could go on. I'm sure there are many details that I left out, but, the important thing is that you get the basic idea.

(You'll find the entire BBC documentary, circa 1980, here).

I propose that we form a co-op to provide content services. If you're a writer, blogger or pro-journalist, produce photos or videos, you're invited to join this co-op, which I will call the "What to do scoop".

As its name implies, it would cover forward looking themes. Like, "what to do" with your decoration, health, travel, weekends, clothes, food, technology and social life.

For this purpose, I'm setting up a site where you can register and post your stories, with a price tag.

(It'll be ready in a couple of days.)

Do I need to remind you that this is a unique opportunity?
You will be an owner, with a share in the profits, proportional to the revenue that your content generates.

Any questions, comments? You know what to do.

TGI's Online Marketing Fiasco

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:16:00 PDT

TGI was faced with some unexpected consequences to its September '09 promotion. I wholeheartedly recommend reading Bob Garfield's article Why getting a Woody and bribing people won’t get you any real friends.

TGI's Woody
Courtesy of Gizmotastic

Through TGI's example of a promotion turned into a marketing nightmare, we get an excellent opportunity to see clearly how companies nowadays cannot stray away from an honest ethical behavior, —advertising half truths or fake posturing do not fly well with customers empowered with blogs, facebook or others.

Gone are the days of the subliminal propaganda lies. Nowadays, people demand real companies with real people and real products. If not, they will not only find others that do, but along the way, a mob may try to destroy the reputation of a company, target of their temper.

Or as Bob puts it, relationships are formed with real people, not brand personas, —and, money can't buy you love.

I would add, that if these "real people" want to stay in business, or in a "good relationship" with their clients, as in any marriage, then they not only have to be smart, creative, and all those other attractive business attributes; but, they also need to struggle to be good natured people: honest, hard working and service oriented.

In conclusion, technology is pushing us all to be better.
Or, (can't avoid putting this in), as Heidegger would say: Technology is god.

Twitter, your warm tap lobbyist

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:33:00 PDT

Twitt, twitt.

It amazes me to see how Twitter can be so successful by focusing on providing the tiniest service possible. There's no doubt we're hardwired to communicate with each other, which makes a lot of sense, the more people we know, the better.

It's a two way street, the more people we know, the more we get to be known by other people.

The advantages of our Darwinian tribal behavior are easily explained. Once we belong to a tribe, we (give and) receive the unconditional support of its members.

We find very good examples of this evolutionary behavior in the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and most religious and political group antagonisms. We are emotional, whatever our tribe members do is good, and what others are doing is wrong.

Visualize the following "closer to home" scenario. You're hiring, and you've narrowed down your selection process to two candidates, one that you've met online, commenting on a blog or twitting, the other, you've never met before. Wouldn't you be inclined to have a soft spot for the former candidate —the member of your tribe?

Twitting is a fabulous way to enlarge your tribe by making tiny (non annoying) taps on the back of potentially new tribe members.

Wouldn't you agree that there is an enormous potential value of using twitter to lobby for you with warm tiny taps on potential investors?

Content providers

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:04:00 PDT

If traditional media is going the way of the Dodo, then who is going to supply content? In (a Google) search for an answer, I found several well established sites that have been providing this service.

Myths of Prostate Cancer. Associated Content video sample.

Associated Content was founded by Luke Beatty in Denver, Colorado, in 2005. Today, with its vast library of unique multimedia content, diverse community of Contributors and scalable platform, Associated Content provides consumers, brands, and publishers with a wide range of quality content.

According to Patrick Keane, AC's CEO, "Associated Content was created so anyone could share his or her voice, passion and expertise with the world and take part in the new content economy. More than five years later — with a library of 2 million pieces of content and a community of 350,000 individual contributors — we are still the publishing platform built for you, and powered by you. Together, we are The People’s Media Company."

While Demand Studios states in their site, "We enable talented freelancers to create valuable content, reach an audience of millions and earn money. Qualified content specialists can take part in the process, from making high-quality titles to editing finished content. We currently employ writers, filmmakers, copy editors, transcribers and title proofers, and we offer unique promotional opportunities for experts in all disciplines."

And how well do they pay?

At backstage.com actor Robin Raven comments, "The stories are 200 to 500 words, and if they [DS] buy the piece, they pay $15 an article," she says. "I've made as much as $2,000 in a week or as little as $100. I've also done editing and made a series of how-to videos for the company. I've worked from a couple of hours a week to 30 to 40 hours a week. There is tremendous flexibility, and I'm now able to support myself doing this. In fact, I was able to take a cross-country trip from Los Angeles to New York for my career as an actor while writing and editing stories on my laptop." Equally important, she says, the job has put creativity back into her life and allowed her to focus on acting—something she couldn't do as a waitress, due to the hours and the exhausting nature of the work.

From gigaom.com we learn that Seed.com, a recent AOL startup, tried an interesting experiment assigning interviews to all 2,000 bands attending the SXSW music conference in Austin. The assignment involved “real reporting,” said Saul Hansell from seed.com in an interview, in which writers had to pick up the phone and call the band or artist and write up a 1,000-word interview in question-and-answer format, as well as a 300- to 500-word biography. The price for this assignment? The princely sum of $50.

Time magazine has an interesting article on Demand Media, parent company of Demand Studios, which also runs a few highly visited sites like eHow.com, Cracked.com and Livestrong.com that receive 100 million hits a month — more traffic than any of the digital properties of Disney, NBC, ESPN, or Time Inc.

Demand Media has been criticized for sourcing and publishing content based on algorithms that look for high traffic keywords, paying journalists cents per word for this kind of work.

It's not surprising to find low waged content when online media is giving it away. Unfortunately, like a dog chasing its tail, the media is feeding itself from these same low waged content sources.

No wonder the dog is shedding its fleas.

Twitter: a news alert system

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:52:00 PDT

Fred Wilson, one of Twitter's owners, among other things, explains why Twitter is so relevant to news.

Fred Wilson explains how he became interested and eventually bought Twitter.

This would be an interesting interview in itself with only the description of Fred Wilson's buyout process, but, it also shows how unique and relevant is Twitter's core service: a news alert system.

Girl Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:54:00 PDT

There was a time when reporters could get away with murder...

Enjoy.

The Ted Rall project

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:46:00 PST

Ted Rall has his project too.

Why not?

Calvin & Hobbes

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:31:00 PST

I love these kickstarter projects. Calvin & Hobbes too.

Sweet and simple!

Google's FTC presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:03:00 PST

Ad growth in the last 20 years?
Best performer Cable TV, worst, newspapers.

FTC Presentation

View more presentations from NiemanLab.

Hal Varian, Google's chief economist had some interesting facts in his FTC presentation.

Total online revenue has grown to 25-33% of newspaper ad revenue, while newspaper online ad revenue is only 3-5% of the total newspaper ad revenue. Which agrees with the proportion of pages they visit, 3% online and 97% on print.

Approximately 50% of the total costs could be saved if newspapers dropped the paper from "news~~papers~~".

Cable TV, billboards and... direct mail?? are the winners in ad growth. While we could almost draw a straight line for the downward slope for newspaper revenue shrinkage since 1990, and for circulation per household since 1950.

Interestingly, newspaper ad revenue predicts recessions. There's a steep drop since the year 2000...

Local news has fared better than national, worse off: classifieds.

43% get their news from their phones, mostly for the weather, and 46% jump to at least 6 different sites to get their news.

Flatworld: A textbook model

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:44:00 PST

Have textbook publishers found their model?

A business model for free content - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

It's an interesting presentation. Instructors have the capability to edit the author's book — and pricing sounds great for everybody...

I'll let you guys check it out, while I think of how newspapers can take advantage of this model.

Are marginal costs free for digital content ?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:43:00 PST

Are marginal costs for Internet content really free? If not, what's wrong with Chris Anderson's arguments?

Remarkable content has to jump the subscription fence to viralize itself
In discussing Chris Anderson's views of a new digital free market, it occurred to me that we have to look at marginal costs from a totally different perspective.

Briefly, we accept newspaper copies in our doorways, —nobody expects them in our bedrooms. By the same token, a delivery to the web is similar in nature, it is a place where the reader may pick up his news.

Then, who cares what goes on within the reader's bedroom?

Though we do care about him paying for his copy, —like he used to, less distribution costs—, and to respect newspapers' copyrights.

Now, in regards to marginal costs, they should be viewed as the cost of producing an additional "article", —not of an additional "edition"—, which is a much better reflection of the true nature of the online publishing business, raising and distancing the price from free.

But, with all the free media, readers are confused.

We must continue to educate them out of their confusion and into a better ethic's ethos. Free content harms an author of a song, book, scientific research or the journalist behind a news article. If you don't believe me, ask any songwriter.

Then we must take care of our content.

The enforcement of copyright protections and subscriptions is needed to counter the ease in which digital content can be acquired and reproduced. One "lonely" free publication is enough to allow the whole wide world to read it, and I need not mention how easy it is to copy digital content.

With these thoughts in mind, I feel we should set the subscription fence to separate trusted content from the rest. Some of the remarkable content should jump out of the fence to viralize itself, in order to grow site traffic.

Even with AP and the other news agencies continuing to publish their articles free to readers, all trusted and quality journalism has no alternative but to find home within the subscription fence.

Highly engaging blogs, as well as, breaking news, exclusives and all news with a high marketing value should be brought out into the open, or free, to viralize as many readers as possible.

What do you think?

Free: why not?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:34:00 PST

After reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Priced to Sell", I felt compelled to combine some of the gems from his article with some other thoughts.

If we are to believe in what Dan Pink —so adamantly— presents as the latest findings of Social Science, then, we should be doing whatever we want at work as long as we deliver the goods...

And also, that managers are an invention that is obsolete—so we can do away with them too.
(So far, I like it.)

In essence, studies show that people perform worse with financial incentives, except on mechanical tasks. It seems that focus hinders the harvest of the more precious creativity crop, which requires an open "walking on the edge" frame of mind.
(Too bad, that hurts. Let's keep this between you and me.)

We are motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose. The urge to do things on our own, to feel that we are conquering our skills and that we are doing something for a higher purpose.

Now, this doesn't mean that we should work for free. We should get a fair reward for our labor, but, from there on, it's these other motivations that drive us to do our best —fascinating stuff!

Here's where I see that trained journalists should act as community ring leaders, to harness blogger stories that evoke that sense of higher purpose in doing some good for their community.
(I'm sorry, I smell cheap, but gratifying work.)

Bloggers with a natural high interest in their communities who get published in their local newspaper, may be a great way to help the bottom line. Which would fit nicely within the hybrid "Microsoft - open source model" I've been promoting, where high quality journalism sits behind paid subscriptions and highly engaging community blogging is free.

Malcolm makes a great argument to debunk the "information wants to be free" statement, citing as an example the $500 million spent in research by a biotechnological company on one project.

He also points out that there are always two sides to this issue. One, like Amazon, that would love to get books for free, but a second, the authors and publishers, who need to charge a fair price to survive.

If content is free, ask yourselves, why are authors going to write music, books, report news, do scientific research..?

Are we all going to go out on concerts and sell T-shirts?

Finally, there is an underlying major ethic issue at stake.

If Google News or anyone else gets content for free, isn't this piracy, isn't this the equivalent of robbing someone's labor..?

Are we all going to be treated like idiots in this new technological paradigm? Are these the moral standards that we will teach our children?

Google News degrades newspaper brands

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:15:00 PST

Could Google News be affecting the brand value of newspapers?

The aggregator effect on news sources

It's outright impossible for a newspaper to compete with a news aggregator.

First, the content they get is free. Then, they publish a selection of the best articles published from any news source. If they're missing a topic, they use AP paid articles to fill in the gap.

If one stops to think for a moment, AP's policies make no sense. First, they publish themselves their own articles giving away their news online, then, they allow aggregators to use them too, and finally they syndicate their service to newspapers?

Doesn't publishing an article online "once" make it available to all readers worldwide due to the Internet's ubiquity? Or, doesn't that first free AP publication make the value of their content laughable from there on?

Shouldn't they limit their content usage to print publications only, to be in accordance with the geographical limitations of print publishing? Or at least, to online paid subscription sites?

It's not only a sure suicide for AP, but it's also helping to kill newspapers. In the long run, the only AP clients standing are going to be Google News and maybe a few other aggregators, which is not enough for AP's survival. Unless, of course, Google decides to buy AP and get into the news content provider business.

But, enough with AP. The intention of this post was to bring attention to another significant angle in which Google News is deteriorating newspapers.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, there's only two kinds of online destinations, search and bookmark. The former is laser focused on a specific subject matter, but the latter, takes us to a trusted place to see what else the author has to offer.

If newspapers allow their bookmarks to fade away with Google News, so will their brand value and... their existence.

One more reason to take aggregators to court —their practices are damaging to the copyright holders of news content.

Free: why?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:16:00 PST

Free, why not?

Digital marginal costs are practically nil. Economy 101 tells us that a producer should sell down to a price close to his marginal costs in order to maximize his profits.

Chris Anderson explains Free
Let's review this "free" issue with a loupe —it may be the undoing of the media and advertising industry.

Rephrasing, economic theory states that a producer should stop his production when the price of a good is equal to its marginal cost. It makes no sense to produce more when there is no profit.

We can derive some important consequences from this statement.

First, if the price of a digital good is not higher than the marginal cost of producing one more unit, production should stop —or, we should not sell any more units.

Second, marginal costs, although insignificant, never touch "0", they're always greater than "0", with the implication that the price should never be free, because it should always be higher than the marginal cost.

So, why is the media giving away its content for free?

If the media is basing its strategy on Gillette's model, they're giving away the razor... with the blades.

It can't be Microsoft's "give piracy leeway, to get a future lock-in" strategy, because the media has a shallower and hence no hook to a news learning curve.

Could it be a "free for all" to the last man battle, in a twisted "transistor versus tube" strategy, where the media is anticipating their foes with these nil prices..?

Unfortunately, the answer is none of the above. I won't go into further details, it doesn't help. Let's just say that the media erred in expecting advertising to cover those costs.

The first thing that comes to my mind, is that we need to to be tech savvier, —it's why its taken us so long to figure this out—, in order to gain control of the distribution of our online content.

We should also get our own advertising networks in place. If not, Google and others will continue to earn the lion's share of the online market —with commonplace accepted 70-75% commissions. Having our own ad networks would allow us to turn the tables, to potentially increase revenue three times on (text and display) contextual ads.

I don't like walls. They hinder creativity, and they don't work most of the time, e.g. the Nigerian terrorist's bomb plot aboard Flight 253. But, in order for journalism to survive, we need to apply a subscription model.

We sometimes miss that a "digital good" or content is the final product. It's not what takes place at a hardware store site, where content is given for free, but the purpose of the site is to get the visitor to pay for the hammers and nails.

There's also the issue of reporting, interviewing, taking pictures, recording, and on and on... which are not replaced by software, as in the case of a travel agent or stock broker. In the end, producing content is costly for the news source.

Unless, of course, you're Google News (or any other news aggregator) and you feel that you have the right to piggyback for free on the best news sources to publish an edition with select content... Don't we all wish we could do that?

Intent, and damage to the commercial value of the work are important considerations, in the copyright protection law. So, my next recommendation is to continue to escalate the enforcement of our copyright protections, which have been much neglected, but is a movement that is starting to gain momentum within the media.

Next, and although I hear this little voice in the back warning me that we must stop all leaks, to avoid the ship from sinking, I find that the Microsoft versus open software model fits nicely with our situation.

Microsoft charges a premium on its software, and users are willing to pay the premium, because of the risks they avoid by not using an unsupported free open version.

I still feel there is a strong case for branded journalism institutions capable of charging a premium for reader perceived quality journalism.

Branded news institutions have a place, readers not only need to find more about something they know little about, as with searches, but they also need to know what they know nothing about... They need to go to a place where they trust they will be informed of what is going on.

Getting back to the content metering issue, I'd like to bring you back to how magazine subscriptions worked a few years ago. Their promotions were endless and their enticing offers never ceased. In other words, I feel that a similar continued enticement, with free and discount offers should candy the reader's path into his subscription —like it used to.

Finally, since the Internet is ubiquitous, either content is remarkable —a la purple cows— or it's focused locally, in order to be able to get paid subscribers.

There's much more, I'm sure —love to hear your thoughts.

The Google detour

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:01:00 PST

Is Google hijacking our traffic?

An Orwellian Big Brother is a lot closer than I thought.

Let's see, you want to visit the Miami Seaquarium...

Is Google Stealing your Content and Hijacking your Traffic?

Courtesy of Michael Grey

You're Google search will give the above result, which shows you their hours of operation and a link to More information... which takes you to a Google maps page with more Google ads.

Google is adding detours to allow for more billboards in this extended new road —while hijacking and denying the traffic and potential up sell at the website motivating the search.

As shown, the parasite behavior of Google, Yahoo, Gawker, Newser and other aggregators is quite more pervasive than expected.

This kind of ruse should be contested in court. Intent, and damage to the commercial value of the work voids any "fair use" exemption to (U.S.) copyright law.

According to Brad Templeton's essay:

The "fair use" exemption to (U.S.) copyright law was created to allow things such as commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works without the permission of the author. That's vital so that copyright law doesn't block your freedom to express your own works -- only the ability to appropriate other people's. Intent, and damage to the commercial value of the work are important considerations. Are you reproducing an article from the New York Times because you needed to in order to criticise the quality of the New York Times, or because you couldn't find time to write your own story, or didn't want your readers to have to register at the New York Times web site? The first is probably fair use, the others probably aren't.

Fair use is generally a short excerpt and almost always attributed. (One should not use much more of the work than is needed to make the commentary.) It should not harm the commercial value of the work -- in the sense of people no longer needing to buy it (which is another reason why reproduction of the entire work is a problem.) Famously, copying just 300 words from Gerald Ford's 200,000 word memoir for a magazine article was ruled as not fair use, in spite of it being very newsworthy, because it was the most important 300 words -- why he pardoned Nixon.

But it's not all negative news for content providers, Google has joined the Apple and Amazon group vying for the distribution of books. In the ensuing competition, publishers have been able to lock-in better deals, distributors are now getting a 30% agency commission and Google cannot break apart nor search these books.

The New Normal: high unemployment

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:49:00 PST

In taking another stab at our world view, to suggest what the media may need to survive, we cannot dismiss the toxic recession we're in, and its aftermath effects on our society.

The Job Impact of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

by Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein

(Obama's view, pessimists see 2020 as the year we reach 5% unemployment)

According to Don Peck's "How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America", the current recession is expected to extend itself into a prolonged slow recovery, snail pacing the creation of jobs, a daunting task if we consider the millions that will have to be (re)employed to achieve normalcy, at 5% unemployment.

The jobless and their disintegrating families will be left with deep scars. The young from the poor neighborhoods, whom after losing all hope, lose their opportunities by caving into drug dealing or addiction. Those suffering from the trauma of an extended spell of job loss, even if employed later on, will feel that they have no hope, nor their children, of ever recovering their past opportunities.

What does this all mean for us?

First of all, we have to recognize that the future will look dimmer for most of us mortals, but it also means, that the recession is undoubtedly accelerating the Darwinian process of eradicating the ill adapted (media) institutions out of this rapidly changing environment.

"Welcome to the New Normal", as John Mauldin so fittingly coins this new high unemployment era.

Interview with Mish Shedlock
Second, we have to recognize and persist in reporting the big story of our time: China.

The story is simple. China has cheap labor, by now probably around 15% of the cost of US wages. This imbalance, which is fostered by the Chinese government through currency manipulation, will continue to wreck havoc in the west until wage equilibrium is achieved.

That's why the recovery will be slow. Ask yourself, where is investment likely to find a home? Not in the west, but in China, where their own government attempts at stopping the incoming flow of investment, to avoid overheating their economy, have failed.

Next, the highly corrosive environment leaves little time to mend our ways and find solutions.

Finally and most importantly, journalists will have to find in their (hearts and) voices a way to raise the west's broken spirits.

A digital new world

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:45:00 PST

As an introduction to how media content is evolving, I will begin by looking at the effects of technology on our own lives. Are there any dangers in this brave new world?

Jack made me do it.

In our lively Linkedin discussion, each time I would point out a certain feature which I feel needs to be addressed to get "newspapers out of the mess they're in", Jack would quickly respond that if we delivered good content, the rest would fall into place...

I think the best way to introduce ourselves into the vast subject of content, is to take a peek at how technology is affecting us all today. Douglas Rushkoff's Frontline digital nation (90 minute) presentation is an excellent starting point.

It feels like we're taking-off on our first flight to a Ray Kurzweil world, where changes accelerate at a breathtaking pace, forcing us all to desperately adapt to survive the turmoil of information overload.

On the positive side, technology's attractiveness is helping to raise students' levels at under-performing schools. On the negative, it's distracting, it's addictive, and multitasking dumb the contemplative, and highly focused endeavors.

We, the immigrants to this digital new world, also learn that our young natives will not read more than 200 pages, nor concentrate for more than a snippet at a time, a paragraph, then they're off to their facebook, e-mail... And, that the not for long natives, in the ever evolving turmoil, have no need to memorize since they can find anything at fingertip reach.

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

This evokes Ray Bradbury's science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury stated that his novel was not about censorship, but a story of how television destroys interest in reading literature, leading to a replacement of knowledge with "factoids", partial information devoid of context.

As in Bradbury's book burning dystopia, we are not only dumbing ourselves down, but we have also allowed search companies —the Orwellian big brother— to watch over (and record) all we do. We have let them stand between our work and our clients, through the aggregation of all sorts of information, as in the case of newspapers and news aggregators.

Let me repeat. We're dumbing our kids down... We've allowed the search companies to have our precious personal information, and... they're becoming the intermediaries distancing ourselves from our clients, or readers.

Am I getting too paranoid?

Do the exercise yourselves with the Google phone number giveaway. Ask yourselves: who will control the telephone business, if Google is successful with their feature-laden numbers?

Will a doctor or plumber suffer too, if he is not listed in the directory which everyone will be carrying in their pockets?

I'll be back soon with more... free content.

Design shaping communications and media

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:46:00 PST

Will Apple's irresistible design give it a chance at controlling —through the Ipad— the book, newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, and movie industries?

Behind the scenes with Terry Richardson and model Angela Lindvall as they shoot the Spring 2009 ad campaign for Jimmy Choo in NYC.
Courtesy of Vogue TV.
I realized not long ago that designers have this marvelous power to make products irresistible. Many of us fans suffer long lines to buy a product at its launching. Don't we all have our own favorite stuff?

Design is an innate ability, I guess it can be honed, but not too many of us are going to be the Andy Warhols of design...

And, it's incredibly powerful.

Tamara Mellon exemplifies this ability. While working as accessories editor for Vogue at their London office, she would sketch and order shoes from a Malaysian artisan to dress Vogue's model shootings. After a couple of years, the requests for these shoes grew to such an extent, that she started with Jimmy Choo a company to supply the demand. In 2001, Tamara bought Jimmy's 50% stake in the company. Since then, she has been manufacturing and opening stores to sell her beautiful shoes all over the world, with $2,000 plus sticker prices.

Jonathan Ive, is an English designer and the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple. He's been the gifted hand behind the eye catching Imac up until the recent Ipad.

Apple's Iphone is one of those products that has millions of followers, who wouldn't bat an eyelash to move away from ATT, if Apple made a better deal and decided to offer the Iphone through another carrier. In other words, the minutes don't count, nor the cheaper plans, nor the reliability of the carriers' networks. It's the —beauty of a gadget— that could allow Apple to take control of the carrier industry. Isn't it amazing?

Sports Illustrated on an Apple Ipad.

And, it's this same beauty attribute that could allow Apple to have a chance at controlling —through the Ipad— the book, newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, and movie industries... through subscriptions, with an Itunes morphed offering.

It hasn't been all peaches and cream for Apple, though. The WSJ reports that the latest 2009 fourth quarter shows that the Iphone has lost market share, as Motorola introduced its first devices on Google's Android platform.

My bets are on beauty over the beast, or beauty before aggregation.

What do you think... 2:1, even, 1:2?

News agencies content leaks

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:58:00 PST

It's the craziest thing. Why would any reader pay for a magazine or newspaper when he can get his news for free?

Currently, news agencies, like AP, AFP and Reuters, still charge for the rights to republish —while... they give away their news content to readers for free!

Associated Press Chairman of the Board
William Dean Singleton

It's easy to see how this is directly related and hurts the dwingling circulation of magazines and newspapers.

Of course, some of you might argue that broadcasts from television and radio have always aired for free. But, there's a huge and priceless difference: the web allows us to get what we want instantly, with the razor sharp granularity of a search or a link.

With the advent of the web, news agencies saw an opportunity to add a new advertising revenue stream by publishing directly to readers. In doing so, they foolishly sabotaged their wholesale business model, by undermining their traditional newspaper and magazine customers.

To simplify, I will only continue reviewing AP.

Few visit AP to browse for their daily news, mostly, their visits are search and link originated. News aggregators, —like Google News, Yahoo News, Newser, Digg, Stumblr and others—, provide AP with a publisher shell, feeding visits to AP and other news agencies.

Has AP arrived at the final decision to go retail, with publishing shells from Google, Yahoo and others?

The recent layoffs at AP show that it's not doing too well. Apparently, their publishing venture is not working for them. Or, they're destroying more revenue from their wholesale business, than what they've been able to realize by building their retail publishing ad supported venture.

Dean Singleton, MediaNews Group vice-chairman and Associated Press' chairman, made the following remarks four years ago:

The big challenge, he says, is figuring out how to make money from the Web, where most news is free and ads are cheap. "If we don't start getting paid for news, we can't continue to afford to produce it," he said.

Mr. Singleton wants to help steer the industry collectively toward a solution; no one paper, he says, can do it alone.

Apparently, –either getting a consensus hasn't been easy, or AP hasn't been trying that hard.

AP made public in 2009 its efforts (April, July, September) to police and enforce their content copyrights, meeting much ridicule from the IT community, whom stated that there was no technical teeth in the enforcement method.

But incredibly, no word from AP on keeping their content behind a pay-wall.

I'm surprised. Why aren't Mr. Singleton and the newspaper members of AP, watching over their interests?

Is "Fair Use" law testing in court holding them back? No, a healthy fair use of content in other publications should send readers back to content originators for more.

Is it the search engines' almighty control of the ad networks, making originators yield their content to them? Yes, –if it quacks like a duck... it must be a duck. The evidence is in the contracts between Google and publishers, –the search engine's commission is nowhere to be found. Google determines on its own, the 70 to 75% commission it charges, and mails an arbitrary check to the publisher at the end of each month.

It's also noticeable in a few other publishers' mistakes, –not worth mentioning.

Publishers are leaving at least an alarming 65% of their advertising revenue on the table. If we take something from this discussion, it should be that if publishers can agree to something, it must be to have their own ad placement platform, by building or buying an existing system, their take could increase to 95% of the price of an ad (5% would cover the expense of running a client order entry system).

Under these improved conditions, I'd still consider necessary to charge an agreeable monthly subscription to further improve online and print advertising revenue: under $3 for newspapers, more for magazines. It would compensate the inevitable thinning of advertising revenue throughout the ever growing number of publishing venues.

Will publishers ever agree to these two improvements?

The Ipad launch

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:50:00 PST

A quick peek at the much awaited Ipad launching.

Kara Swisher from the WSJ, checks out the action at the launch of Apple's latest device, the iPad, at an event in San Francisco —I loved it, made me feel like I was there. Thank you Kara.

Some were disappointed at the lack of Flash and multitasking... others thought it lacked a camera. Was this a compromise to get a lower $499 price?

I do know that a reporter can write his article and mail it, though. I guess we'll have to wait to see what the public's final reaction is.

BTW, I just read that Bernanke was confirmed for a second term on a 70-30 vote —phew!

Search Engine Optimization and the news

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:47:00 PST

Google Trends, an excellent source of news?

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Brent Payne interview
Brent Payne, director of search engine optimization for Tribune Interactive, explains Google Trends, a great source of news, on this You decide, we report npr interview.

Google trends shows the most popular searches at any given point in time, alerting news sites on potential leads, and also giving a general feel of the topics people are interested in.

Barely a tweet.

Tweaking subscription prices

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:07:00 PST

Tweaking for the right price for an online subscription is a lot harder than I thought.

Rupert Murdoch with his wife, Wendi Deng.

Courtesy of China Digital Times

After visiting a few sites that carry a plethora of ideas, I recommend you listen to this fantastic onpoint radio discussion with Jeff Jarvis, Michael Wolff and Steve Brill —with comments from Rupert Murdoch and Eric Schmidt. Undoubtedly, radio adds a fabulous human dimension to the issues in focus.

The other sites worth visiting are NiemanJournalismLab, Reuters, Journalism Online and News Innovation.

To add insult to injury, Seth Godin states that it's time we let go, get over the idea, relinquish the opportunity to make money...

In his own words:

So, if the radio is already there, and music is free-er than ever, it's not clear that music is valueless. There's more music being listened to (not just played, but being listened to) than ever before in history, and that listening is proof that people value it. At least they value it enough to spend their time.

Get over the idea that your success is equated with selling the right to listen, or selling control over when people listen. Relinquish the opportunity to make money by controlling who can listen and when. That's gone. It's over. It would be like a bakery selling the right to sniff the fresh bread or a wine maker selling the right to look at the cool label. It's now a public good, something you see as you walk by.

What you can sell, what you better be able to sell, is intimacy. It's interactions in public. Souvenirs. Limited things of value. Experiences. Memories. People will pay for those things, IF: your art is actually great and if you make it possible for them to buy them.

If it's great, let it go. You'll do fine. If it's not great, figure out what great is and do that.

I think I have a feeling of what Seth wants to achieve, but, on the other hand, I know he feels it's not for everyone...

—Any way you look at it, somebody has to pay for content.

A recent survey from The Boston Consulting Group shows that 48% of US consumers are willing to pay an average of $3 —current subscribers, a couple of dollars more— for a monthly newspaper online subscription. Which follows my hunch that a few readers are willing to chip in a tiny amount to alleviate their guilty feelings —they're getting a free ri-eade.

In my last post, I mentioned that "full" articles need to be protected. If not, they will be viralized to eternity, spreading and thinning advertising through all sites —copycats or not.

Giving away front pages and widgets with titles and a couple of lines would be a good way of viralizing these teasers, for a successful marketing ploy.

Copyrighting content and its enforcement is paramount. In association, Murdoch's leadership is needed to make all news providers pull together to offer these abridged editions. It makes perfect sense to follow this lead —they're all suffering, including CNN and FOX news.

Which should dramatically reduce the size or number of online news providers, diminishing the offer of ad space, —and, increasing CPM, CPC and... print ad revenue.

Compared to the The NY Times proposition, I'd stay away from offering free articles to avoid opening the copyright Pandora box. Instead, I'd shoot for a larger audience, tweaking the $3 or less average pricing that readers are willing to pay, —definitely a lot less than the NY Times $15 monthly subscription, which would likely reduce its readership to a measly 2%.

The math goes something like this: 144 = 48 x $3 is a lot better than 30 = 2 x $15.

And, of course, with more readers, 48% versus 2%, advertising revenue is significantly better, too.

Bottom line: Newspapers must lead readers to recognize that quality journalism depends on this contribution.

Do you see any alternatives?

Where is my paid content?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:21:00 PST

Newspapers are crying, "WHO HAS BEEN TASTING MY SOUP?". Have they been too willing to give away their content?

Whilst she lay there, dreaming of all sorts of pleasant things, the three Bears came home from their walk very hungry and quite ready for their dinners.

But, oh! dear me! how cross the Great Big Bear looked when he saw his spoon had been used and thrown under the table.

"WHO HAS BEEN TASTING MY SOUP?" he cried, in a Great Big Voice.

Grimm brothers: "Goldilocks and the Three Bears."

Newspapers are feeling papa bear's bewilderment on returning home. Monetizing news content is their business —what brings food to the table.

But, they're finding that monetizing content by intertwining ads with news is a dwindling proposition on print... and surprisingly tenuous on the web. The cracks in the old model may be best explained by understanding that nowadays online readers "search" for most of their content, or get it in laser-search-self-publications. In a close second place, readers are further distracted from the traditional media by —or attracted to— the overwhelming variety of glittering toys, —Iphones and the like.

Notwithstanding, readers will always be attracted to well established news providers, whom they "trust" to suitably inform them on what's going on in the world —with a particular interest in the community that surrounds them.

We must recognize that news organizations are part of the problem. They have been too willing to give away their content. It's quite different to give away titles and leads, a few articles... even, non categorized articles... than the whole shebang.

Radio and TV are broadcast freely, but their audience has always suffered from not being able to pick a specific category, —which is Cable TV's edge over TV. Although, movies have helped by being a powerful attraction to audiences by themselves, i.e. Avatar.

Studies show that online readers prefer short stories —readers are in a hurry to find what they're looking for. Then, shorten them a bit... providing free news "teasers", headlines with a couple of lines, a la Google, which would also take advantage of the web's marketing viralization in a non-destructive way.

It's been a huge mistake to give away complete articles, viralization is killing news "originators" by thinning advertising on the multiplying content copy sites. Viralization should help bring readers into publication sites that originate and carry exclusive-original-good-articles, not disperse advertising into copy sites.

Monetizing content is achieved through subscriptions and selling ads. But, as we've seen, tweaking subscriptions is basic and has a profound effect on the second variable. A process which needs to be repeated for each of the new media outlets.

Tweaking to be followed.

Online distractions

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 09:04:00 PST

How much are computers affecting our kids?

Profiles of Generation M(2)
Kaiser Foundation

It used to be that our parents would limit our TV viewing, shepherding us into a natural and healthy balance of work and play.

According to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, with an excellent followup article in the NYT, kids, ages 8 to 18, are more wired to their phones and computers than ever before:

"And because they spend so much of that time 'media multitasking' (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours."

This can't be healthy.

Parents are still needed to make a difference. Kids are better off when their parents limit their amount of media exposure and exercise a no-gadget-in-room policy, —kids with less distractions, have more time to work on their education.

News organizations can also help parents and schools make a difference, by also quickly recognizing that they have to play, parcel, phone, or video their presence for this new audience.

The Apple Tollgate

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Rotger) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:14:00 PST

What can we expect from the Apple Islate?

Steve Jobs

As I read the WSJ piece and paidcontent.org take on next week's Apple ISlate launching, I can't avoid wondering if it's really going to be an earth-shattering event.

Let's not forget that Steve Jobs is a genius in his ability to deliver products in the consumer falls in love category. It's the same ability that allowed the girl that would order shoes for the Vogue cover, to build a worldwide franchise of stores that sell them for thousands of dollars each, under the Choo brand.

There's plenty of cell phones and mp3 players, nothing as attractive as the Iphone and Ipod, though.

There's quite a few e-readers, cell phones and mp3 players. Will the Islate draw the attention of the Iphone and Ipod?

Apple has been in contact with the major media players, not only from newspapers, but also, from TV and movie studios.

Will the Islate become the toll-gate equivalent of the Ipod for the music industry for news, TV and movies?

It might. Stay tuned.