You can find the podcast here.

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The presidential campaign of 2008 broke new ground in the candidates’ use of the Internet and social media for message delivery, organizing, and fundraising, and this book explores not only how it was done then, but how it will be done in the future. As Michael Bassik of Air America says on the cover, it’s the “…de facto bible for candidates, consultants and just about anyone interested in the Internet-driven, citizen-powered politics…”

The book is available online at Powell’s Books.

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So maybe this is one of my pet peeves, but unless you’re Frank Perdue, your CEO starring spot is awful. What these ads do is remind people how soft and flabby, and country club looking, corporate CEOs are. And how if they’re not wearing suits, they’re wearing suits with no ties (a truly ridiculous look if there ever was one). They’re usually horrible actors giving you the feeling you’re driving by a wreck on the side of the road that you just can’t look away from. When I see these ads, I can’t help but act out the marketing meeting in which it was decided that the CEO should star: “Yeah boss, that’s a great idea! You’d be great in that ad!”

One of the CEO ads Stevenson analyzes is the GM spot starring CEO Ed Whitacre. While admitting that Whitacre is “plainspoken, unapologetically uncharismatic,” he decides that “The ad is akin to a calm retail manager emerging from the back of the store to soothe a frustrated customer.” I guess, if the retail store is the Lansing Country Club gift shop. I have no idea what he’s saying because I can’t take my eyes off every little tick and eccentricity that Whitacre exhibits. The way his lips move when he talks, the way he carries his arms when he walks, and those odd glasses. Why does he snap his fingers once during his walk through the set? He can’t possibly be so strange in real life, can he?

Here in San Diego, my old employer, the Union-Tribune, is using the new publisher in radio ads. Yup, I’m holding my breath for the TV version!

(In case you missed it, here’s the GM spot.)

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If news organizations have any chance at charging for content it’s with a freemium model, and they now have the means to launch it on the leading mobile platform. While I’m skeptical of the viability of the paid model and the magnitude of the impact even if it’s successful, mobile must be a key component of any attempt.

(So I say again, isn’t it time to stop threatening and just go paid? We’ve been hearing all year about how News Corp is poised to begin charging for content – just do it already! If the industry really believes it’s the future, launching paid content is the only way to prove it.)

Also, doesn’t this make e-readers less attractive to news organizations? Why would a content consumer want to buy a separate device to consume that content on the go? E-readers may be the better choice for long-form content such as text books, but for news, I don’t see it. I can hear the “small screen” complaints now, but get over it, this isn’t newspaper delivery, it’s news delivery.

Just another reason for Hearst to rethink that e-reader launch.

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Dylan F. Tweney just published an article on Wired.com suggesting that Net Neutrality may not be all it’s cracked up to be and will likely result in the end of all-you-can-eat Internet access. I’ll leave it to you to read his arguments (and they are persuasive), and will instead point out the comments following the article. Some quotes:

• “What world are you living in?”
• “I’m starting to wonder if Wired has a telecom shill here..”
• “THE WAR IS ON FOR THE WEB!!!!!! HERE COMES ANOTHER REVOLUTION.”
• “So which ISP paid you to write it?”
• “So was it Comcast or Verizon who paid you to post this article? Maybe both?”
• “Nice snow job.”
• “This is such a great example of a paid article! I love it!”
• “THIS ARTICLE IS BUNK!”
• “ROTFL!! this article is biased…. right winger…”
• “Thou hast beshamed thy family name and homeland; begone from us henceforth and dwindle in the land of Cowardly Poopybutts whence thou dost belong-ed! Sink me!”

You get the idea. While not true of every hostile commenter, many start with the assumption that Tweney couldn’t possibly actually believe what he wrote, or that he did some research and came to his conclusions, but that he must be in the pay of some nefarious non-believing forces.

My aim here isn’t to argue against government imposed “net neutrality,” but rather to point out that we are verging on religion. Once we have a religion, discussion, analysis, and inquiry stop, and are replaced with blind obedience. For people who are advocating a “free and open Internet,” their minds are closing rapidly.

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6. We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or party to a dispute is lying, we would say so, with the accompanying evidence. If we learned that a significant number of people in our community believed a lie about an important person or issue, we would make it part of an ongoing mission to help them understand the truth.

Truth has been part of journalism’s code of ethics since the beginnings of “scientific journalism” in 1923, when the American Society of Newspaper Editors issued its Canons of Journalism which included the statement, “News reports should be free from opinion or bias of any kind.” The ethics code of the Society of Professional Journalists begins with, “Seek Truth and Report It.”

The reality, however, is stated in a post on 10,000 Words called “10 Ugly Truths About Journalism“:

5. Journalists are biased
There is no such thing as unbiased…it is humanly impossible. While journalists often strive to make sure their stories are as unbiased as possible, many cover particular subjects or issues because they feel particularly strong about them.

Yes, it is humanly impossible to be unbiased. Journalists, by what they cover, how they report what they do cover, and what they include and ignore, bring bias into their reporting. That’s just the way it is. Most of those who today clamor for “truth in reporting,” really mean “my truth in reporting.” Perhaps the most obvious example of this is a post by Mark Adams on American Street which includes the statement:

From my view the FOXization of the media is destroying it’s credibility and function as a true check on government power — the role that earns the press the moniker Fourth Estate.

Fox’s claim to be “Fair and Balanced” may be over the top, but Adams destroys his own credibility when he blames Fox for destroying the media’s ability to act as a check on government power. If Fox doesn’t challenge this administration, who does?

All of which should make one wonder if a media that tries, or claims, to be unbiased is even desirable? When an editor wishes his reporter hadn’t donated to a political candidate because it affects his credibility, isn’t that just a tad disingenuous? Whether or not he donates, his beliefs are unchanged. The transparency of the donation actually improves his credibility because now his readers know from what philosophical base he writes.

Journalists will never regain their lost credibility until they stop trying to convince the public that reporting can be unbiased. The public knows better. Honest reporting, though, is possible and journalists need to stop pretending they’re unbiased and start convincing us of their honesty.

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As long as people are paying cable operators for entertainment on their TVs, they’re not going to “double-pay” for it online. Although I don’t have the research, my guess is that a large segment of the online audience goes online to time-shift. If that’s the case, if those people were charged to view online they would pay twice for the content – once to their cable operator and once to the online site. That’s not going to happen. Movies may be a different story since viewing them online is less about time-shifting and more about access, but payment there will require the ability to view the content on a larger screen, a process already in motion.

Networks should be partnering with companies working to bring a high quality video experience from the Internet to TV screens. These companies should be the large cable MSOs but, like newspapers before them, they no doubt fear the cannibalization of their legacy business from the Internet.  When consumers can see the shows they want online, output to their TV screens, with a variety that rivals cable, they will be ready to drop cable and pay for online content. That means the networks new best friends should be the phone companies or, better yet, the power companies – anyone who can provide Internet access as a cheap utility.

Of course, even when viewers are paying for online entertainment, the problem isn’t solved. This subscription revenue (if it even is subscription) will be less than what networks currently earn since the audience will no longer be forced to pay for set network lineups. The market will be brutal on marginal shows and networks as viewers only pay for what they want to see. Advertising will continue to be a critical component, but it’s hard to imagine it looking like it does today.

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The sun sets over Pacific Beach, CA

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Moving beyond the upfront payment issue, let’s think about the wisdom of the rest of the deal. In the minds of consumers at least, Yahoo! had long since stopped being a player in search. Yahoo! search is used by people who are on one of the company’s content sites and happen to have the need to search. They’re already there, so why not use the easy to reach search box? But the point is, users are on Yahoo!’s site for the content, not the search. We may want to look back to Yahoo!’s start as a search engine and lament the loss of one of the industry’s former leaders, but that was then, this is now. And now Yahoo! is a content company that aggregates audiences for advertisers.

As a content company, Yahoo! had no business trying to match technology with Google and Microsoft, and knew that it would lose at that game, so this deal allows it to simply buy off-the-shelf technology for a non-core piece of it’s business. Selling advertising into that piece, however, is core and Yahoo! has retained that ability. The resources that Yahoo! had to devote to search can now be redeployed to areas where it can really ad value – content and advertising innovations.

Most of the reporting on this deal has viewed it as Yahoo! selling its search business to Microsoft. As someone who has run content web sites, I view it as Yahoo! hiring Microsoft to take over the burden of managing and developing a technology important, but not core, to its sites. In that respect, I think Yahoo! got a pretty good deal. And all of this worry about whether Yahoo! can succeed without search? If it kept using its own search technology that was never going to make it a success, so the question was always there. If Yahoo! fails, it won’t be because of this deal, but if it succeeds, this deal will have helped.

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