WTF were they thinking?

Thanks to the Post’s “Shoptalk” employee newsletter [posted on an employee alumni website not affiliated with the Post] we now have some idea. In the June 16 edition, Charles Pelman, the staffer who organized the salons, was interviewed by Shoptalk staff about his new job.

This interview came long before the Post had to backtrack and aver they had no idea what was being said about the salons. If only we’d known. . ..

The “money” quote from the interview, as it were:

What goals have you set?

We’re thinking of doing eight to eleven salons, five to six day-long briefings and one major leadership summit per year. The salons are two-hour dinners with reporters, editors, policy makers, politicians, advocacy groups and other people who have a stake in a particular topic.

How will you measure success?

Profits. We want to drop some money to the bottom line. We want to be one of the engines of growth.

Well, there you have it. WTF?

Here’s TF.

I won’t belabor the issues many others have so thoroughly covered, including today’s  “apology” by publisher Katharine Weymouth, which feels a bit short of fulsome. 

Instead I want to point out something that’s gotten lost in the media frenzy: That the topic of the first “salon” [sorry, I find I have to use quotes when referring to that] was to have been health care reform.

As an independent journalist [among other things] and participant in the “health 2.0″ movement, I find this particularly distressing.

The fact that Weymouth and her team identified health care reform as the first ripe target for a scheme to bring together “the powerful few”: CEOs/lobbyists, “Congressional and Administration officials” and Washington Post health care reporting and editorial staff” demonstrates the peril faced by the group with the biggest stake in health care reform.

I refer, of course, to patients.

Significantly, Weymouth did not invite to her “salon” anybody living with a chronic disease, or someone who lost her health insurance when she lost her job, or anyone who has declared bankruptcy under the burden of paying for a loved one’s brain surgery.

Now I suppose the patient community could have raised $25,000 to sponsor the event and buy a seat at the table. [We could have all chipped in for some nice clothes and a haircut, so our rep could fit right in.]

Imagine how the conversation would have been different if that patient advocate had co-sponsored the meeting of members of Congress and Administration officials, to say nothing of the top leaders in the Washington Post newsroom!

A fatuous fantasy, I know, laughable on its face.

But it illustrates how once again that–despite what appear to be sincere efforts to introduce patient-centric healthcare reform by some members of Congress and the Administration–the very people who are the ultimate beneficiaries or victims of healthcare reform are offered no seat a the table.

Not even Katharine Weymouth’s dinner table.

Three weeks ago, a number of other “stakeholders” in healthcare reform created something called a Declaration of Health Data Rights, a statement that spells out what rights patients have to the electronic information about their care to be gathered as part of any healthcare reform plan. [Interest revealed: I signed onto it and agreed to blog on it as part of a publicity campaign.]

As I’ve argued before, things like the Declaration are necessary because patients don’t really have access to the process when the difficult, ethically complicated, legally messy and often sneaky and malicious work of making healthcare law takes place.

There are many reasons to be disgusted with the Washington Post’s salon misadventure.

The fact that it demonstrated a reflexive Washington habit of gathering an exclusive cabal of the most powerful and moneyed interests to discuss such an important issue may be the most disgusting of all.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Patients are going to have to force themselves into this debate against the resistance and indifference of the Washington establishment. Patients cannot afford the luxury of deference and e-mail.

And so I repeat the rallying cry: Patients: Aux barricades!

So I thought I’d check out the health reporters on Muckrack.com, a website that aggregates Tweets of our nation’s journalistic corps.

It can be fascinating to see what sort of brain-lint the media produce minute-by-minute on the world’s tiniest news platform.

As I began writing this entry, for instance, there were dozens of Tweets not so much reporting, but wondering aloud what was up with, the “fact” that Gov. Sarah Palin seemed to be resigning, or at least not running for re-election, or something.

It was an enlightening moment in journalistic pop anthropology. You could see the complex thoughts of inside-the-Beltway sophisticates taking shape right before your  eyes.

Tweeted Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post: “Something must be up, I guess. Kind of weird.“

Talk about your first rough draft of history.

The Health Journalist Twitterers

But anyway, I was there to check out the Health niche. The health reporting corps has not for the most part discovered Muckrack yet: Only 10 health reporters’ Tweetstreams were aggregated on the Muckrack’s Health page.

They comprised three Baltimore Sun reporters, two from the Chicago Tribune, and one from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. [All Tribune Co. properties]. Then there is one each from CNBC, CBS News, the Montreal Gazette, and the New York Times.

And how were they using social media? The mixed bag you might expect.

Journalists on Twitter: Seeking Sources, Thinking Out Loud, Promoting Self, Getting Personal

Julie Deardorff of the Chicago Tribune, for instance, used Twitter to conduct some of source-fishing, cogitate about topics in her notebook, promote her own articles and, like all public-spirited Tweeters, reveal some personal information.

For health reporter Julie Deardorff, the professional is personal

In Deardorff’s case, at least, the personal was professional.

• On Thursday June 25 she reported that she “injured my intercostal muscles by coughing for a week straight.”
• Two days later she reported she’d been diagnosed with pneumonia.
• And two days later she was back on the beat, trolling for sources to discuss the Nuval nutrition rating system.

Best-of-Class: Mike Huckman of CNBC

The most prolific health Twitterer on Muckrack–and, with over 3,000 followers, the most watched–is Mike Huckman, the pharma reporter for CNBC. Anybody interested in the bloodsport in the drug trade should follow Huckman’s sluice of reports, rulings, research and rumors about the companies that make America’s meds.

There is also insight into the life of a business journalist, such as this ripe observation about dealing with flacks. [Note the #prfail hashtag]:

mhuckman #prfail Just got call from PR person.I pick up phone,as always,”This is Mike.”They say,”Mike Huffman?”Pitching pvte co anyway,so 0 interest
a day ago by Mike Huckman, Pharmaceuticals Reporter, CNBC

Doctor!!!! Doctor!!!!!

CBS medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton Tweets about her comings and goings conducting interviews. Fairly routine stuff for journalistic Tweetle.

But for someone who is both a journalist and an M.D., she can be unusually enthusiastic. Within the stretch of 5 Tweets she managed to use 10 exclamation points. That may be a record of some sort.

New York Times and Twitter: Not a Healthy Situation

The smart set says that it’s poor form to use Twitter simply as a “push” device, as a tool to inflict yourself on the world. Everybody who participates in Twitter [it is said], even journalists, should expect to give more than they take, share tidbits with people who may appreciate them, develop relationships, etc. This is the spirit of the social web, it is said.

The biggest violator of this principle among the health reporting set on Muckrack is the estimable Tara Parker Pope, author of the New York Times’ Well health blog.

Her Tweetery consists almost entirely of two things: Links to her own blog entries and acolytic admirations of the fine work of her fellow Timesfolk. [i.e., "Interesting slide show on NyTimes Lens blog of homeless transgendered teens. http://bit.ly/14POwF"]

It’s true that Pope also gets personal; she Tweets about her preparation for the New York City Marathon.

taraparkerpope My 5.4 mi run tonight spent 630 calories according to http://www.gmap-pedometer.com . But now I’m 800 calories worth of hungry.
Tara Parker Pope, Well Columnist, New York Times

But that’s professional self-promotion too: Pope is the proprietor of RunWell, an online community for distance runners the Times launched recently.

Clearly Pope hasn’t gotten the Tweet about social media ethos. Another Twitter profile bears Pope’s name and likeness. nytimeswell is nothing but a botstream that’s triggered every time her blog updates.

All is not Well at the New York Times blog autofeed

Actually it’s triggered more often than that. Check out the series of simuTweets on celiac disease.

I found it peculiar that the New York Times was using Twitter is such a graceless manner compared to its peers.

The Times, after all, recently hired Jen Preston as its first Social Media Editor. Her task, presumably, would be to help staff make enlightened use of social web tools like Twitter.

So I clicked over to Preston’s feed in Muckrack to see how she is faring.

Not all that well, it turns out.

The Times’ social media doyenne hadn’t updated in about 3 weeks, and only three times since this one:

Working on response to 1,000 replies to last week’s question, how can @nytimes better use Twitter. MediaBistro conference later.
12:15 PM Jun 3rd from web

Michael Anderson's Resume: The Medium is the Message

Talk about the-medium-is-the-message. Marshal McLuhan should be thrumming happily in his grave like a turbine.

Note how this compares to the home page of reigning datavisualist demi-god Edward Tufte, whose bio appears about three screens down, stacked below several sedimentary layers of seminar promotion. Granted Tufte is a demi-god whose acolytes follow him around like Photoshop Deadheads, so doesn’t need to work that hard to sell himself. But still.

I often yammer about how infographics can convey more information–can tell a story–better than prose.

Compare Anderson’s self-presentation to a conventional resume’s gray blocks of letters that most of his peers depend on. It’s clear which document makes a better argument for hiring Michael Anderson.

Maybe before you hire Edward Tufte?

Update: I poked around Anderson’s site and found his old-school PDF resume. It sucks. Sucks wind. Hot, tornadic wind. Dude: What’s with the cursive font? Who the hell would hire you for an infographics job?

The search engine is designed not to much to “compete with Google,” Microsoft officials swear, but to build a business around a search experience that enables consumer decisions in travel, shopping, health and local stuff.

Yeah, whatever.

In any case, it turns out that some of that $100 million promotional spend by Microsoft is going directly to… Brother Google.

Do a Google Search on “search engine.” Now, take a look at the right-hand column!

Bing.com is willing to pay Google to get traffic.

See the third item down?

Search Engine

Get More Info With Less Digging. A
Decision Engine Makes Search Easy!
www.Bing.com

Yes, it’s true. Microsoft’s advertising department has determined that the way to build traffic to Bing.com is to advertise on Google. Hey, fish where the fish are, as they say.

Using Google’s handy AdWords Keyword tool, I was able to determine that Microsoft’s “cost per click” for the phrase “search engine” is $4.47.

Which is to say, any time someone does a Google search using the phrase “search engine” and clicks on the Bing ad, our friends in Redmond pay our friends in Mountain View enough to cover a Google mid-level project manager’s Venti Mocha Cappuccino.  

[I will leave it to your conscience to determine what you want to do with this piece of information. The part about how Microsoft has to pay Google $4.47 every time some web surfer clicks into Bing. com, I mean. That piece of information. Do what you want with it.]

Meantime, I did click on that Bing.com Google ad, purely in the name of research. It took me directly to a Bing search engine results page for the same search.

Here’s what I saw at the Bing results for the “search engine” search.

Bing's top result for "search engine": A video about Bing!

Well, the “organic” search result at the top is a video all about. . .Bing, a better way to search! Well, what are the chances?

Meantime, you’ll notice that in the right hand sidebar, there is no ad from our very good friends at Google.

They are probably at the Starbucks on 580 N Rengstorff Ave. in Mountain View, enjoying that Venti Mocha Cappuccino.

I do not see sweat on their brows.

The moment Twitter content became searchable, the seeds of its ruination were planted, watered and topped with Miracle Gro.

This is due to the unbending truth of the First Law of CyberDynamics: That which is searchable will be optimized for said search.

Regrettable corollary 1: Optimized content becomes visible without regard to its quality.

Regrettable corollary 2: Unworthy content becomes the lowest-hanging fruit in the InfoOrchard, unwittingly gobbled up by hundreds of millions of undiscriminating users daily.

[Note: Ungainly botanical metaphor ends here.]

Which is to say: Add to the current list of lifeforce-draining Twitter phenomena–childish follower-hoarding, strategic lurkery, tactical “messaging” and [this is now literal] prostitution–the Tweet designed to show up high on Google [and presumably other Twitter search tool] search results.

I learned this recently after I read an article on Twitter SEO on the website Mashable. I Tweeted thusly:

And so it has come to this: Writing Tweets for SEO. Mommy, make it stop. http://bit.ly/adRQO4:41 PM Jun 26th from TweetDeck

Within moments my e-mail box showed that two SEO profiles were now following me on Twitter.

Not because I had said anything insightful about the art of search engine optimization, mind you, but just because I’d used the word. The e-mails arrived too fast for them to reflect human cognition.

And so I Tweeted again:

Hoot! My last Tweet included the term “SEO” and I was immediately autofollowed by two SEO trolls. SEO SEO SEO Come on, guys, you wanna *go*?4:55 PM Jun 26th from TweetDeck

And of course my e-mail box was quickly beetling with several new messages telling me that other SEO trolls had emerged from their funkholes to follow me.

It should come as no surprise that SEOers are sniffing for keywords in Tweets. As Twitter becomes a firmly established marketing tool, more companies are monitoring what’s being said there about their products, people and clients. And participating so their wares and ideas will reach the public.

Disclosure: I know this because, among my many professional services is…helping people use Twitter to monitor what’s being said about their products, people and clients. And participating so their wares and ideas will reach the public. Ahem.

It is a common early adopter vanity to declare that what was once pure and authentic has been wrecked by the know-nothing vulgarian masses and their money-grubbing exploiters.

I’ve always tried resisted this facile snobbery. I remember the knuckleheads who whined that the Mosaic browser ruined everything because it made the Internet accessible to people who hadn’t paid their dues with ftp, Gopher and a soldering iron.

When I began writing this entry about 40 minutes ago, I sent out this Tweet:

I need cheap dietary supplements, online gambling and low-cost life insurance [Note: This Tweet is autofollow-bait to expose perpetrators]38 minutes ago from TweetDeck

As I am about to hit “Publish,” I have received no e-mails from autofollowers who’ve lapped up that chum.

A relief? For me, yes. Or a sense of temporary reprieve from the inevitable.

For others: An opportunity.

Have at it, folks.

============

update: 8:33 p.m., first dietary supplements autofollow reports for duty.

A group of thinkers, leaders and potentates in the patient-centric wing of the Health 2.0 movement, gathered under the banner HealthDataRights.org, has hammered out the following declaration:

Declaration of Health Data Rights

In an era when technology is allowing personal health information to be more easily stored, updated, accessed and exchanged, the following rights should be self-evident and inalienable. All people:

• Have the right to their own health data.
• Have the right to know the source of each health data element.
• Have the right to take possession of a complete copy of their individual health data, without delay, at minimal or no cost.  If data exist in computable form, they must be made available in that form, without delay, at minimal or no cost.
• Have the right to share their health data with others as they see fit.

These principles express basic human rights as well as essential elements of health care that is participatory, appropriate and in the interests of each patient. No law or policy should abridge these rights.

[Interest declared: I know a lot of these folks from the Health2.0 world, and was approached to endorse the statement and to blog about it at 9:00 p.m. on the 22nd day of June in the year of our lord 2009. I agreed because, well, I agree.]

This is important and timely stuff.

At a moment when vast amounts of federal cash are being spent on Health IT [HIT] in service of health care reform, it’s important to have the interests of patients plainly and publicly declared.

Why?

The most visible and active “stakeholders” in discussions about HIT so far have been–stop me if you’ve heard this one before–commercially self-interested players who may not [or, to be fair, may] have patient rights regarding what happens with the “I” part of HIT top-of-mind.

These HIT stakeholders include big IT vendors, insurance companies, hospital conglomerates, physician groups, trade associations, venture capitalists and, not least, drug and device makers.

They all have the usual “access” to the the HIT policy making process via lobbyists, contacts on the inside, campaign contributions and swank public affairs firms with expensive furniture in their reception areas and lots of friends in the media.

And so yes, it’s essential to ensure patients are represented in the midst of all this–and to declare patients have access to, knowledge about and [some] control over their personal health information.

And, if necessary, to call the People to arms to demand it.

Aux barricades, mes patients pareils!

Though I think they use Twitter for that these days.

Which is to say, that Big Media has recognized the role the image may be playing in driving political opinion, and is exploring it as a way to interpret the continuing protests and political activities. [I blogged on this topic yesterday.]

But no.

Where credit is due: Last night CNN repeatedly ran a version of the 37-second video, with proper warnings about its graphic content. The hosts and guests talked about the video’s potential–and apparent–role in galvanizing the protest movement both inside and outside Iran.

The fact that it has done so is beyond dispute.

But CNN stands nearly alone among U.S. mainstream media in its acknowledgment of the role the Neda video is playing in Tehran.

To check this out, I did on-site searches of three major print-heritage MSM news sites. Here’s what I found, as of 3:30 Monday, June 22 [links below are to stored searches]:

WashingtonPost.com

Stories from AP, Reuters and a single homegrown reference: An online discussion by a non-staffer

NYTimes.com

Three references in The Lede news blog, and reference deep in one print article, which says that the authenticity of the video cannot be verified [of which more in a moment]

USAToday.com

Two blog entries, plus wire stories

Let’s open up the search. Here’s what Google News tosses up on a search for “Neda”: 332 results!

But wait, there’s less.

Dig into those results and you’ll see:

• The New York Daily News appears to be alone among U.S. newspapers in offering original Neda reporting in print by its staff. The Kansas City Star and the L.A. Times have blogged on it.
• Among non-daily MSM, Time’s Robin Wright features a print article that uses Neda as a jumping off point to put the current events in historical context
• Otherwise the content comes mostly from ABC news, CNN and FoxNews, which for the most part used the Neda video as a compelling “actuality” to show over the latest news updates.
• Around the world, big media is paying more attention: the BBC and other UK outlets, some local TV stations’ websites, and wire stories from AP, Reuters and AFP.

The journalists most actively discussing the Neda phenomenon? Indie bloggers.

So why the mainstream media prudery?

It could be that, yes, the video is a fraud. I think this a very remote possibility, almost paranoid in its nature. One look at the video makes this quite clear. [One commenter on my blog entry yesterday makes this case--he suspects a "blood packet" has been applied to Neda's face--and many others are doing so around the web.]

The world is a strange and terrible place, and [as a former Washington Post newsroom employee] I am enough of a trained skeptic to see that it’s foolish to rule out the possibility entirely.

It can also be argued that the MSM should exercise its often-valuable caution and care in its reports–especially as new details about Neda’s life and images of her beautiful face emerge from obscure,  unfamiliar sources and are being used to serve the protesters’ political ends. In this view, the MSM is the prudent counterweight to the flighty speculations of the social web, refusing to fall into the hands of the revolutionaries’ spinning.

But as I argued yesterday, I suspect it’s less about that than it is about the MSM’s unwillingness to acknowledge [accept? understand?] its increasingly marginalized role in a fast-moving news environment where real-time global information sharing without MSM approval is the rule, not the exception.

I believe that a lot of the media’s “Well, we’re really not sure” chin-pulling is an affected, self-infatuated dodge–a way to avoid of the larger, paralyzing question:

What, exactly, should the mainstream media should do when a story develops so far beyond its control–or understanding?

n.b. Over at the journalism site Poynter.org, Bill Mitchell explains some of the challenges the Neda video creates for traditionally trained journalists.