We got a taste of the show’s power three years ago when The BBC hosted us in their studios for We Media London. Next year, the show is following us to Miami. We’re delighted to announce that The BBC will bring World Have Your Say on the road to We Media Miami ‘10. Conference participants will get a unique behind-the-scenes view of the show as it’s produced, and meet the show’s incredible production team, including host Ros Atkins and editor Mark Sandell.

We hope you’ll be there too. Read on for more details about the conference AND for a special offer for registrations confirmed by Dec. 15.

Or, to skip all that and register now, click here.

Here’s what the show looks like:

Here’s more on what’s new:

1. BBC @ We Media Miami ‘10: As noted, our We Media Miami ‘10 conference will feature a live production of BBC’s ground-breaking program, World Have Your Say. You’ll also meet the production team – and hear from Richard Sambrook, the global head of BBC’s World Service. The show is a live conversation that’s equal parts public affairs journalism, digital wizardry and multimedia performance art. The program, broadcast live worldwide, as well as online in assorted formats, connects callers, online commenters and guests patched in from all corners of the globe. Borders dissolve. Ideas flow. The show has an audience of millions.

2. People: Here are some of the people who will be joining us as participants at We Media Miami:

- Francois Ragnet, Global Director of Innovation, Xerox
- Richard Sambrook, Director, BBC World Service
- Oren Michels, CEO, Mashery
- Jeff Belk, Founder, ICT168 Capital; former SVP, Qualcomm
- Ben Ilfeld, Co-Founder, Sacramento Press
- C. Renzi Stone, CEO, SaxumPR
- John McKinley, Founder, LaunchBox Digital and CEO, OurParents
- Ben Berkowitz, Founder, SeeClickFix
- Jacob Colker, Founder, The Extraordinaries
- Alberto Ibarguen, CEO, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
- Bob Ross, President, Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation

3. Game Changers Awards nominations: Submit your nominations now! We plan to close nominations at the end of this week, then move on to selection of finalists for online voting to name the Community Choice winner. Go here to learn more about the awards and to submit your nominations: www.wemedia.com/awards/.

4. PitchIt!: Entrepreneurs and dreamers, stay tuned and keep tuning your ideas. Entries for the We Media PitchIt! Challenge will open in December. Finalists will pitch their ideas for new ventures before a panel of judges (and conference participants). Two winners will each earn $25,000 in seed capital to help turn their ideas into reality. To plan your entry, learn more about the challenge at: www.wemedia.com/pitchit

5. Special offer ends Dec. 15: We know budgets are tight, some more than others. Here’s some help. If you register for We Media Miami ‘10 by Dec. 15 you’ll pay as little as $400. That’s about a third of the fee for non-members who wait longer. So: Register now to get in as a first mover. To register now, go to: www.wemedia.com/miami/register/

6. Hotel savings: Here’s added incentive to book now. We’ve arranged very good rates at two hotels that are convenient to the conference – the Sonesta Bayfront and the Mutiny – where we’ll host some informal late-night poolside activities. But availability at the discounted rates is limited. You can find the hotel and other travel details here: www.wemedia.com/miami/travel/

There’s more to come, of course, including new research, models and ideas we’ve been collecting to help define meaningful goals for business and social innovation in the connected culture.

Thanks for your continued interest, feedback and ideas.

We’ve just taken the plunge and opened a new “home away from home” on Facebook. Please join us there, become a fan and recommend us to your friends.

It’s here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/WeMedia/248421350296)

Of course … you can also follow on Twitter (@wemedia) or through email updates or feeds found at: www.wemedia.com/fans. Or go old school and read/share your thoughts on the We Media web site. It’s been spiffed up – we’d love to see and chat with you there/here/anywhere you find us.

Registration is now open for the We Media Miami ‘10 Conference, March 9-11, 2010. Click here for more details and to register.

Seating at our annual conference is limited to just 300 people. This makes for an intimate and productive couple of days, but it also means we can’t fit everyone who wants to be there. We’ll post updates on the program in the coming weeks.

The schedule features conversations with Game Changers, hands-on workshops and discussion on current issues and opportunities, and presentations by a dozen entrepreneurs competing as finalists in the We Media PitchIt! challenge. We’ll invest $50,000 to help launch two winning ventures. (Entries open in December – more here). Mojitos and poolside chats are also on the agenda.

We hope you’ll join us, enjoy the tropical setting and facilities at the lovely University of Miami – and contribute to the can-do spirit that has come to define We Media conferences around the world.

Meanwhile, we hope you’ll also help us with the conference planning. We’ve also just opened online nominations for the We Media Awards. The awards honor Game Changers:
People, projects, ideas and organizations leading change and inspiring a
better world through media. The winners are featured in conversations and case studies at the conference – including a Community Choice winner selected through online voting later this fall.

Thanks for submitting your online nominations, and for spreading the word.

Who should be honored for their achievements? Please tell us. Learn more about the awards and submit your nominations now.

You can also follow our updates by joining We Media on Facebook
(http://www.facebook.com/pages/WeMedia/248421350296), following on Twitter
(@wemedia) or through email updates or feeds found at: www.wemedia.com/fans. Of course, you can always go old school and read/share your thoughts on the We Media web site. It’s been spiffed up – we’d love to see you there/here/anywhere you find us.

The first event is this Monday, Nov. 2, 2009 (details below). It focuses on development in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas. Participants include Dr. Paul Farmer, UN Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti, Dr. Barth Green, Chairman of The Global Institute at the University of Miami, and Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s Ambassador to the United States. More about the series here.

When: Monday, Nov. 2, 2009 3 pm to 4 pm
Where: CSIS B1 Conference Center, 1800 K Street, NW
RSVP: Required, via email to: miamiseries@csis.org

Both movements are being brought on by the great disruptor that is the Interwebs and both movements are faced with similar questions: What does it mean to have more participants? What value do those participants have and is the value of the original participant (journalist and public official) compromised by greater participation?

At the intersection of Gov and Media is Media’s responsibility to hold government accountable.  The way that responsibility is enacted shifts as Media is forced to be more resourceful and Gov is forced to be more transparent.  As the organism of traditional media is weekend financially by the growth of on-line news one of Journalism’s key functions, being a check on government,  faces a disruption as well. When more and more reporters are losing their jobs how can media properties maintain their function as a 4th branch of government?  Less Journalists means less people doing the investigation and collecting the news. This means that if media wants to continue to hold gov accountable they have to stay resourceful.

Below is a case study of how SeeClickFix is being used by Hyper Local Journalists to maintain their role in a Gov20 world.

Our Partner Doug Hardy, at the Journal Inquirer, has been using a SeeClickFix Pro account to acknowledge and track issues like speeding, downed power lines and unsafe pedestrian areas in the Hartford, CT region. Not only does the Journal Inquirer embed the SeeClickFix map, but Doug also follows up on issues himself and makes sure that they are being listened to by officials.

The Journal Inquirer introduced SeeClickFix to much of the Hartford region adding a layer of accountability to local gov that previously did not exist. Doug now uses the citizen reports to scoop stories on issues like traffic safety and other community concerns.

This kind of accountability has more back-up than a pen and a delivery route though. Doug’s new posse is a crowd of users that can speak and vote publicly on the issues he is reporting. Doug can not only report on the issue but he can display the raw data of citizen voices on SeeClickFix.

In East Hartford, CT it appears that this new form of accountability is quite effective at creating fixes. Doug was kind enough to let me post his article(The Journal Inquirer is participating in another experiment: a Paywall) on East Hartford and SeeClickFix below.

SEECLICKFIX: Problems getting solved in East Hartford
By Doug Hardy
Journal Inquirer
Published: Monday, October 26, 2009 11:52 AM EDT
Some good things have been happening as a result of your reports on the SeeClickFix portion of the Journal Inquirer’s Web site. Three issues have been solved recently in East Hartford, where Mayor Melody A. Currey and public works personnel have taken an active approach and decided to monitor SeeClickFix for your reports. This is a good thing for everyone, as you’ll see below.

“EH Citizen” reported that there has been a deer crossing sign covered in graffiti for more than five years on Oak Street near Farnham Drive.

“It’s an eyesore and you can’t even see the photo on the sign in an area where deer often cross to access Porter Brook. Is this fixable?” EH Citizen wrote, adding that the town had been notified years ago but the sign had yet to be scrubbed clean or replaced.

Fortunately, the East Hartford Public Works Department has built its own watch area on SeeClickFix — which you also can do for free if you want to get involved in solving problems in your community. Within 15 days of reporting the graffiti online, EH Citizen returned and posted this message: “Thanks so much this issue has been fixed. The sign was replaced and looks great now! Thank you!”

You can thank East Hartford for being on the ball. We didn’t need to ask on your behalf. Meanwhile, across town at Main Street and Silver Lane, the pedestrian crossing signal was reported to be too fast, leaving slow-moving folks at risk.

“For pedestrians and bicyclists crossing Main Street at Silver Lane, the time from when the icon turns white and the audible beep starts is barely 10 seconds,” ROC wrote. “This is a wide street, and even on a bike you barely make it. This traffic light should be lengthened so people can cross without fearing for their lives. It’s called a crosswalk for a reason, should favor the crosser.”

After suggesting that the state Department of Transportation be contacted directly, within about a month ROC reported that the signal time had been lengthened appropriately. Kudos for your effort, ROC.

A third issue that was closed in East Hartford was reported by Bob Hobbs — a dead tree was menacing the power lines on Bodwell Road near Burnside Avenue. He provided a photo. Hobbs posted the issue directly on East Hartford’s Web site — which is always advisable if you want anything to get done — and got a response from Public Works Director Billy G. Taylor:

“The tree is privately owned,” Taylor wrote. “Consequently, the town cannot simply lawfully remove it. Under authority given to me by town ordinances, I sent a letter to the owner of record ordering the tree’s removal. The letter has just been returned by the USPS marked ‘undeliverable.’ Having never removed a tree on private property without delivering the owner the notice required by ordinance, I do not know what authority I have to remove it. In any case, the Public Works budget is insufficient to allow removal of trees on private property and I do not have the authority under the town charter to overexpend the budget.”

So no progress there. Town records list three names on the property card, but I was told all three were renters.

Then we got some help from Jon Searles, an East Hartford resident whose brainflation.wordpress.com blog describes him as both a concerned citizen and chairman of the 6th District Committee of the East Hartford Republican Town Committee. He also is a Town Council candidate in the municipal election.

Searles either reported the tree directly to Connecticut Light & Power himself or he found an existing report. He provided a report number for CL&P’s Web site, and we then found that the utility company visited in September and noted that the tree was “overhanging the lines,” But the report then said, “RESOLUTION — No Trouble Found.”

Based on that, it didn’t look like CL&P was going to take action.

But about two weeks ago — and after more than 20 comments and e-mails between residents, town officials, and myself — Hobbs reported that the tree had been cut back and the lines were no longer threatened.

Somone had taken it upon themselves to chop off the top of the dead tree. Whoever you are, thanks for helping to improve the community.

Doug Hardy is an associate editor of the Journal Inquirer. He can be reached at dhardy (at)journalinquirer.com or 860-646-0500, ext. 305.
This is a true testimony to the magic of a system that allows for open communication and collaborative problem solving around public concerns. You can really see how media, industry, government and private citizens can work together to improve their communities:

Or check later for the archive.

Panelists in the discussion include Thomas Hesse from Sony Music, Mark Hollinger from Discovery Communications, Robin Johnson from FT Search and craigslist founder Craig Newmark.

Nominations for the 2010 We Media Game Changer Awards are open. Click here for more details and to submit your nominations.

The We Media Awards recognize Game Changers: People, projects, ideas and organizations leading change and inspiring a better world through media. Winners will be featured in conversations and case studies at the We Media Miami Conference, March 9 – 11, 2010 (Click here for conference and registration details).

We invite entries from all fields. Big companies, little startups, social entrepreneurs, independent thinkers, brands, marketers, causes, tools, ideas, commercial, nonprofit – all are welcome.

You can read more about the criteria here. Think of it this way: Game Changers are extraordinary. They’re people, projects and ideas that take our breath away – they use media and technology in novel ways to change how we live or work, how we see the world, how we think about the art of the possible and the potential for inspired individuals and organizations to lead the world to a better future.

Nominations help us scan achievements across fields, disciplines and geography – and then narrow the field to a group of finalists. In December we’ll ask the public to come back and vote for a Community Choice winner.

Of course, we also hope you’ll join us at next year’s We Media Miami conference to meet and learn from the Game Changers. First – help us find them.

Click here to submit your nominations.

Back at the turn, Andrew Nachison and I formulated the concept of We Media and coined the phrase to describe imminent social, technological and economic changes that would impact the news industry. Though seemingly apparent, business implications would be addressed by responsive publishers, media managers and strategic planners. They would recognize a catastrophic threat to the future of their companies, then steer them to safe haven. Or so we thought.

As analysts and futurists funded by the news industry, our mission then was prospective rather than prescriptive. The Internet had not yet yielded meaningful, quantitative data that revealed the Net’s full force. Our forecast was qualitative, based on analysis, social anthropology and a behavioral-contextual approach to understanding change.

With a bias toward what could be measured and barometers based on benchmarks and comparisons with peer companies, publishers regarded our forecast as interesting but theoretical. Besides, they relied upon internal finance practices, as well as external specialists, to conduct the calculus and strategic planning that determined present and future value of the newspaper enterprise.

Amid the warnings, we conducted research and held seminars on the question of “who will pay for news?” in the age of the Internet. However, we could neither write a prescription for then-healthy businesses nor create a reliable case for alternative business strategies for the shifting shape of the Internet.

Until now.

After years of study, we’ve reached a moment when we can describe economic impact and prescribe a response to it. WeMedianomics can help us understand how social media is transforming the way we live, how we conduct business, how we inform each other, share and apply knowledge, and what we can do about it. It introduces an economic metaphor to a social transformation we foresaw more than a decade ago.

WeMedianomics come at a pivotal moment for publishers, marketers, communities, networks and individuals. The transition to digital media has spawned a dizzying explosion of creative expression, technical innovation and data sharing. It has also put news-and-information providers across all sectors at risk. There are profound consequences for an informed society and the knowledge economy.

At the same time, discovering vital news and information is disjointed because consumers have a confusing and frequently unreliable array of experiences in their online lives. Many have separate identities in each network they visit. Digital Utopia is slouching toward Digital Dystopia.

WeMedianomics start with a business proposition: The essential information of Life Inc. will soon be organized around personal sites and platforms. People will conduct content and commerce transactions with peers, networks, communities and merchants on personal platforms that are always-on, continuously updated and mobile.

Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and traditional news outlets. The result is empowered individuals who define the next generation of products.

It is a system that turns traditional media economics upside down: a marketplace where almost anyone can communicate, share, recommend and trade in a digital village with the intimacy and ease of applied communications. In this system, the Internet is the great equalizer.

For better or worse, the structural impact for brands, marketers and knowledge itself is decentralization. Or looking at it another way, centralization at the personal level. Life is complicated and mostly unfamiliar in the emerging technocracy. But social business models are beginning to bloom on the Net.

In the coming weeks, we’ll describe key components, issues, and questions about WeMedianomics in a series of posts – a book-in-progress. We’ll describe the challenges of transition and prescribe a plan for changing your mindset. We’ll articulate the business problem, follow the money and address the alternative.

We invite feedback, contributions, conversation and suggestions as we go along.

I’ve been thinking about the net, and its vastness, in anticipation of OneWebDay on Sept. 22. That’s an informal, loosely organized global celebration of the World Wide Web. This year the organizers are trying to focus attention on policies that can make the web available to more people. You can find a variety of events, meetings and parties in cities around the world, or organize your own, on the OneWebDay web site.

This year I’m supporting the effort as a OneWebDay Ambassador. I hope you’ll find a local event, chime in, or simply think about whether OneWebDay makes any sense. I’d like to know what you think of it.

Me?

OneWebDay, if it matters, can raise awareness of important policy issues – like Net Neutrality and the Digital Divide – that aren’t on most people’s minds every day. If the only people who care about OneWebDay are the ones who already care about those issues, then the day is pointless.

The name of the day itself has me thinking about the paradox of the networked culture. The web is hardly unified, the people who use it certainly aren’t, and as much as our assorted digital networks may connect us, they also divide us. I’m not sure I’d want it any other way.

I love the web and the idea that we may use it to carve a path toward a better future for more people. I also love the competitive market that has encouraged entrepreneurs to imagine new uses for the web, some of which may be part of the formula for a better future.

But I don’t know that the web will get us there – or, really, that the web, one for all and all for one, is as worthy a cause as earth, or Earth Day. Some days I need to turn off the web, tune out, drop out. I never feel that way about the planet – and don’t need a special day to think about it.

OneWebDay is a paradox. The web seems boundless, endless, limitless, but really it’s just vast, overwhelming and confusing. It doesn’t know everything, or everyone. It doesn’t go everywhere. Some people don’t use it, billions can’t, and while that’s a tasty social and business challenge for policy- and market-makers, it pales against life-or-death challenges like lack of clean water, hunger and infectious diseases – all of which are symptoms of what economist Jeffrey Sachs calls extreme poverty – the deepest, most desperate kind of poverty. I’d like to see amazing wireless broadband networks everywhere – but not before there’s a decent water supply, shelter, food, vaccines, education and peace on the ground. I don’t want the web to be used for better war reporting. I want it to be used to stop wars.

Maybe a better, faster, cheaper, vaster web will help us achieve these things – I’m encouraged by projects like Charity:Water and Twestival; by code-saavy activists like those from the Sunlight Foundation, which uses technology to shed more light on how government works; and by daring, on-the-ground digital media makers like those from Witness, who use video and photography on the web to document and oppose human rights abuses.

Yet the web, so vast already, deep in insight, full of promise, also churns in a great race for dominance and control. So, today, Google dominates online search and advertising built around it; Paypal dominates online commerce and transactions; Facebook dominates social networking and photo sharing; Twitter dominates microblogging; and governments vie for control of the Internet itself – and access to whatever anyone may say or do with it. Key telecom companies and governments dominate the unseen wires and fibres that pump all our data from one place to another, and devices that can monitor and filter what we say, what we see.

The net is at once open and vast as well as closed and constrained by physical limits, economic inequities and unseen forces.

This paradox of the net is at the heart of a movement of policy and tech activists who have been talking about the Digital Divide since the early days of the web. The divide, rarely mentioned in business settings, is about haves and have-nots, and in the digital culture access to the network is a bright line of political and economic division, much like access to clean water, education or a safe, secure home. In the U.S. and other developed countries, access of some sort is now widespread – at least 63% of adult Americans had some sort of broadband at home in 2009 – and that’s far less than the 95 percent who have access in South Korea.

Where ever you live, the quality of your web access – in terms of speed, convenience, freedom and the sophistication of users – remains unequal. China has the world’s biggest online audience, but the Chinese Internet, like other forms of media, is monitored and controlled by government censors. Twitter may have helped us keep up with riots in Tehran this summer – but we’re hearing less now about the trials and punishments of arrested protesters. I’m thinking about them as OneWebDay approaches.

The genius of the web has always been the hyperlink – the way we point from one idea to the next. That simple notion, coded 20 years ago into a language that both computers and people can understand, spawned a torrent of technical and social innovation – truly a creative explosion that not only redefined business and culture but gave rise to a new canvas for creativity itself. The slogan of the blogging platform Wordpress captures that spirit: Code is Poetry.

I’m thinking of OneWebDay in those terms, as a vast experiment in collaborative art. Artists help us understand the world, challenge perceptions and shine light on our inner lives, on the most personal and subjective perspectives of the human experience. A few are celebrated. Most toil in obscurity. In some ways it feels like the web has turned us all into performance artists. Some of us know it, some don’t.

Seen in that light, OneWebDay seems well worth a toast. Its promise remains limitless. I can’t wait to see what’s next. The Digital Renaissance has only just begun.

The day is said by some to be the most heavily documented ever by amateurs – and whether it was or not is beside the point. It was in any case symbolic of the transition from a world of The Media to a world of ubiquitous, omnipresent We Media – the world as we know it now. Production and distribution of stories, knowledge and information is in anyone’s hands.

That doesn’t negate how most of us learned and watched the events that day, on television. For me, 9/11 was a day with CNN, and anchor Aaron Brown reporting from Brooklyn while the towers burned, then collapsed, behind him. In a way, we were all eye witnesses.

At the very first We Media conference, in 2005, held at the headquarters of The Associated Press in New York, AP CEO Tom Curley reminded us that many iconic news images over the years have been captured not by professionals assigned to the task but by amateur eye witnesses who just happened to be there, with a camera. We now expect this and there’s less surprise when it happens – this year we saw the amateur video of a young woman’s death during election protests in Tehran.

For me, the triumph of We Media is not its scale, which you might measure equally well by the ubiquity of cameras and mobile phones as by access to mobile or broadband networks. All of this has grown exponentially since the Twin Towers fell in New York.

Nor is it the wonder of businesses that have tried to turn the story-telling impulse into an enterprise. We had no YouTube when American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the World Trade Center. Google, Inc., was just three years old.

No, for me the power of us is revealed in delicate details, in stories that come from anyone. They come from professionals, some of whom are masters; and they come from us. Some of us are masters too.

The sheer volume of story-telling is remarkable in its own right. But the numbers don’t move me. There is too much information today. Whether it’s signal or noise doesn’t really matter. It’s overwhelming now, more so tomorrow.

Yet singular stories still move me, still rip my heart out, no matter where they come from, no matter who tells them. We Media reminds me that I may be dazed and confused, but I’m still human.

Here are two stories I came across today that stopped me in my tracks – the first, literally, as I arrived at work this morning. A voice on my car radio forced me to pause before I shut it off. National Public Radio markets these as driveway moments.

The second came a few minutes later, at my desk, on my laptop’s screen, when serendipity, caffeine, curiosity, distraction or I don’t know what inspired me to read an email that on most mornings I would have skipped. Maybe the email’s subject, glanced at precisely the right moment, got me on this particular morning, Sept. 11, 2009: “When World Trade Towered.”

I think it was spam, actually. I don’t recall signing up for Madison Avenue Journal, an email that started appearing in my in-box a few months ago. I know I read it at least once – I found it spunky, entertaining and warm – strange, since it’s about advertising, or not strange at all if I’m as good a sucker as any for a good yarn. Or yes, strange in either case because, think about it, how often does any email or RSS feed, or newspaper or magazine or Twit or status update or anything inspire any emotion, or show any real spark of life, or joy?

I had to read down to hit the jackpot, the bits that glued me to my seat: a vignette from a meeting at an ad agency office, near New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a month after the towers fell.

Now I’m hearing church bells and bagpipes.

Here they are for you. Listen, read, reflect:

• NPR: Firefighter Father Recalls Losing Sons On 9/11
• Madison Avenue Journal: Hanley, alive and well in our hearts

Acquisition is part of the solution for “big media” companies to catch up in the era of new media. But they need to go further, including more investments in early-stage ventures.

Some recent deals illustrate how innovation through acquisition works:

• Examiner.com purchased the citizen-media site NowPublic in a deal valued at $25 million.
• MSNBC.com acquired hyperlocal news aggregator EveryBlock.
• Patch and Going are now rooted at AOL.

Traditional media companies should take their cues from these deals and go further. They should become early-stage investors, too – particularly as new media outlets show an ability to exit and provide some return on investment.

Private investment firms have been doing this for some time. Maveron invested in The Wrap, a Hollywood news site run by former New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman. NowPublic had raised $12 million from firms including Brightspark Ventures, Rho Capital Ventures and GrowthWorks Capital. Sites like VentureBeat, SEC Watch and Xconomy have received early-stage investments.

The old media empires have their own investment strategies too, though largely in ad networks, shopping services and social media.

• Gannett has a stake in companies like MetroMix, Topix and Imaginova, and it acquired Captivate Network and Ripple6.
• Comcast Interactive Capital is an investor in the online sports community SBNation.
• Hearst in 2007 purchased the social shopping site Kaboodle for $30 million.
• Belo, McClatchy, Gannett, Tribune and The Washington Post all invest in Cars.com.

But there needs to be more media-to-media investment, particularly in the early stage with cutting-edge content providers and mobile solutions. It’s amazing to me that while Google employees see the value in an outlet like VentureBeat there aren’t announcements from wire services and other traditional chains that they, too, are putting seed-level investments into these kinds of businesses.

Pharmaceutical companies use investment and acquisition as a method of research and development. Why shouldn’t big media? Even in today’s economy, semi-annual seed-level investments — between $100,000 and $500,000 — in four or five promising businesses is possible for major media outlets.

Then, instead of having to attempt radical innovation within their own traditional shops — efforts that largely fail because they are traditional shops — big media companies would, through their investment and equity, own a piece of new ventures, technologies, approaches and revenue streams. They would put themselves first in line when their investments were worth acquiring. Plus, they would likely get first crack at the management talent that lead these ventures (and that’s as important for traditional outlets, too).

Think there aren’t enough new media ideas to go around? This year’s We Media conference in Miami showcased nearly two-dozen investment-worthy businesses in its early-stage venture competition and in the aisles of the conference. One of last year’s We Media winners, SeeClickFix, has raised $265,000 and seems to be looking for more. Also, literally thousands of new media ideas (mine included) are preparing to fight for a few million dollars in Knight News Challenge grants. A handful will win, but there will be scores more out there.

There have to be rules of engagement as the media bigs invest in new media companies. But they are not hard to create. Consider:

• Businesses with third-party validation, meaning companies that have won money through grants or seed investors who have done some due diligence on these outlets.
• “Successful” businesses that have validated at least a portion of their business assumptions and have customers.
• Businesses with a clear business plan (not a marketing plan).
• Journalists who have made the transition to business leaders and are backed by strong boards or advisers, depending on the stage.
• Outlets ready to give up a board seat and the fiscal and management transparency that goes along with it.

If you’ve done the math on the NowPublic exit, you’ll know there’s plenty of work to go to satisfy investors. It’s unlikely — because of the $12 million in equity investment and a $25 million acquisition — that the return was enough to excite many investors out there. And anyone who invests in early-stage companies must accept that many investments will flop or even turn out selling a product that didn’t exist when they first invested. But recent media exits are a signal that better days are coming and that the things done in the new media space are working.

Plus — and unfortunately for folks like me — the down economy makes now a time to invest. Valuations today are more favorable for investors than they would have been a year or two ago (or will be a year or two from now).

Private Equity Hub (registration required for archive) recently argued that investment firms should start rethinking investments in newspapers. That funding should start going to new media outlets. Traditional media shouldn’t be left behind. They have a chance to do some R & D and hit fast-forward on their own attempts at winning a stronger foothold in the media’s future.

But even the most dedicated admirer can see that craigslist is a fine mess of informational spaghetti that can cause design indigestion. Wired magazine has prescribed an Extreme Makeover for craigslist and asked top designers as well as readers to give it a user-interface facelift.

Earlier this year, our friends at the Society for News Design created craigslist alternatives, formerly known as classifieds, for newspapers.

You can make the argument that ugly is aesthetic if it is successful and that the craigslist look-and-feel is part of its charm.

But I’d rather not look at plumbing. Here’s my attempt to make craigslist better to use and easier on the eyes. Design is a business model.

Others are busy getting things done.

Between those two extremes you can ask yourself whether you’re stuck in an endless conversation, or if you and your business are focused on creation, innovation and achievement.

Here’s some of the latter. The winners of this year’s We Media investment challenge, SeeClickFix and The Extraordinaries, have been on the move and attracting lots of attention with their new businesses. Both have won further awards, sponsors and partners – and both have launched iPhone apps to crowdsource civic knowledge and action.

That’s not bad for six months of hard work. They were our most recent picks from an endless stream of new companies seeking to fill voids in what we know – and how we know it. They’re inventing entirely new pathways to knowledge and insight, and they’re part of a global story – ideas, inventions, investments, applications and aspirations for a better future are coming from every corner of the planet.

Arianna Huffington, the founder and chief face of U.S. news and opinion hub The Huffington Post, has also been busy. Her digital business is smart – run with a small staff, fueled by free content contributed by a legion of people who want to be seen and heard, filled with headlines plucked from the web and reader comments delivered by the truckload. The site aggregates news and people, and this week rolled out a scheme to bring many more people into the HuffPo universe – through the social network Facebook. Now, the HuffPo community will be entwined with the Facebook universe (200 million users and growing). If you read and use Huffpo your Facebook friends can follow along – and maybe follow you back to HuffPo. For a media brand seeking ever larger audiences, that’s a huge viral marketing play – aimed at what’s known as “audience acquisition” – all masked as social networking. HuffPo, perhaps owing to the instincts of its well-connected founder, is innately social.

Insight: News is social. Bloggers figured this out long ago. So did a variety of big media companies – like The BBC, which has long championed conversation on the airwaves and online, and The Guardian, which launched its blog/conversation space Comment is Free in 2006. Many others are struggling – unsure if there’s value in reader comments, confused about how to manage it. In other words – stuck in an endless conversation. If you’re stuck in that conversation – get out. Get something done.

Forecast: Look for more media companies – new and old – to use the Facebook Connect API, Google’e OpenID and other social connectors to mash up people and content. At the same time, media companies will roll out their own APIs – like those offered by NPR and The New York Times in the U.S., or the newly announced Open Platform from The Guardian in the UK. These are, in essence, keys that allow independent developers to build new products around news databases.

Aside: Hey Arianna, where’s the love? Or even a simple tweet @wemedia? We learned last week that HuffPo is compiling a list of media game changers. Hmm, that sounds familiar. Here’s Dale’s shout-out to the would-be blogul. We hope we’ll see her at next year’s We Media Miami conference. It’s March 9-11. Registration opens this fall, along with nominations and voting for the 2010 We Media Game Changers Awards and the 2010 We Media PitchIt! investment challenge.

About 2000 years ago the philosopher Seneca said that “the best ideas are common property,” which is an old thought rediscovered as the fresh ethos of the Internet.

To be fair, the current state of being on the Web allows me to bring to the same sentence a Roman stoic with the Greek word addressing moral character. Fun, but too easy. Much like The Huffington Post’s recent offense of idea hacking.

Earlier this year my organization launched a new idea at the We Media conference in Miami to recognize the people, projects, ideas and organizations leading change and inspiring a better world through media. It is called We Media Game Changers.

Last week you announced the HuffPo Game Changers: 100 people who are using new media to change the world. That sounded more than a little familiar.

Both of us are trying to make the world better through media. Our We Media conference showcases the work of the leaders and visionaries who are shaping the future. This year’s Game Changers included Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, Twitter, Social Vibe, Ushahidi, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Humana’s Freehweelin’ site, and Innocentive. Ze Frank, also one of this year’s winners, best describes the We Media Game Changers awards in this You Tube video.

Before poaching the idea, you and your editors could have conducted simple research to avoid stepping on the ideas of others. Internet searches would have revealed Ze’s video, A.G. Laffley’s best-selling book on driving profit through innovation, Shell’s early stage investment fund for efficient energy systems, and a suite of productivity products to stir business innovation.

If you applied the word “media” to their searches, you would have received 7.8 million returns for We Media Game Changers, including the entire first page of Google returns.

We didn’t invent the term “game changers.” Nor are we the first to apply the phrase to awards or programs. But at least we’re respectful in our application of the idea. And we think it is only fair to avoid confusion among the leaders, visionaries and agents of change. So all of us would like to invite you to make things right:

Please join us at the next We Media Game Changers conference. It’s March 9-11 in Miami. We’ll have a good, open conversation about game changing. Bring the HuffPo 100, too. We’d be pleased to share their stories about using new media to change the world. I hope The Huffington Post will do its part, too, in promoting the idea you anticipated with such clarity.

I’m sure you’ll want to make plans quickly. Email or call soon.

Best,

Dale
dale@wemedia.com
703-474-5563