Here is the latest in my ongoing series of essay, “Local Media in a Postmodern World.”

Equilibrium’s Undoing

In the business world, the ability to profit hinges on many things, but all come back to the exploitation of one’s strengths against the balance of systems in the market. This is called “equilibrium,” and it’s been around for a long time. The whole concept is in disruption today, for nothing influences equilibrium like change. For media companies, the big change is hyperconnectivity – actually, the horizontal connections between the people formerly known as the audience. So strong is this change that it alone will alter the business hegemony of all media companies. There are things we can and should be doing about it, but it means leaving our comfort zone.

Marketing guru Seth Godin announced last week that he has published his last book through conventional means. He’s going electronic, and that has ramifications for anybody in any form of media. I admire this decision, for it took a lot of courage. It’s being criticized in some circles, because of what it means to publishing as a whole. If Seth Godin can walk away, who will he take with him?

We talk a lot about leadership at AR&D, and so does Godin. His last two books, Tribes and Linchpin are all about the subject, and we quoted him frequently in our book, Live. Local. BROKEN News.

In unstable times, growth comes from leaders who create change and engage their organizations, instead of from managers who push their employees to do more for less.
Seth Godin, Tribes, We Need You To Lead Us

If Godin is to practice what he preaches, he had no choice but to walk away from conventional publishing. He’s done his homework and knows where it’s heading, and rather than try to milk it while he can, he has chosen to go the other way. It is events like these that accelerate disruptions. “I think the ideas in Linchpin are my life’s work,” he wrote on his blog, “and I’m going to figure out the best way to spread those ideas, in whatever form they take.”

Most would rather simply ride the money horse until it gave out completely, but Godin knows that there are advantages to being in the lead on something like this. He gets to help create the rules, for example, but he also gets first-mover status. Will history recognize him for that? Does anybody really care? Will it lead to bigger profits for him? Absolutely, and it’s here where the publishing industry (and the record industry) has the biggest problem. If artists of all stripes can make more money by dealing directly with the public, then why do they need the middleman industries at all?

In “Tribes,” Godin proposes that it’s not about reaching everybody; it’s about leading your tribe. That’s what he’s doing here.

Godin wrote that it took him a year to finally figure out that his customer as an author was the publisher, not the reader. He described himself as fortunate, but added that traditional book publishers “use techniques perfected a hundred years ago to help authors reach unknown readers, using a stable technology (books) and an antique and expensive distribution system.”

The thing is–now I know who my readers are. Adding layers or faux scarcity doesn’t help me or you. As the medium changes, publishers are on the defensive…. I honestly can’t think of a single traditional book publisher who has led the development of a successful marketplace/marketing innovation in the last decade. The question asked by the corporate suits always seems to be, “how is this change in the marketplace going to hurt our core business?” To be succinct: I’m not sure that I serve my audience (you) by worrying about how a new approach is going to help or hurt Barnes & Noble.

My audience does things like buy five or ten copies at a time and distribute them to friends and co-workers. They (you) forward blog posts and PDFs. They join online discussion forums. None of these things are supported by the core of the current corporate publishing model.

And so he’s moving on, and as you can imagine, it has not gone over well with those who like the existing system. Their arguments, however, sound like those of the newspaper industry trying to save its sacred cow, too. We need the filters that publishers provide, because we’re incapable of sifting through all the crap that’s “out there.” So-called “professionally produced authors” have instant credibility, which we need in order not to be fooled by charlatans calling themselves “experts.” And also that authors have poor marketing skills and need the help of big publishers in order to get the word out.

These are fine arguments, but they don’t alter the reality of disruptive innovations attacking each premise. Technology can provide filtering, but you can’t get “filtered” unless you’re in the database, and new technology makes that easier for existing and budding authors everywhere. Credibility? Says who? Marketing? Anybody with a Facebook page can do that. Anybody can lead their own tribe. If being an author is all about making bundles of money, that’s still going to be limited to the cream, but if it’s about advancing ideas and the discussions thereof, there are much more efficient methods than traditional publishing to do that. This is Godin’s whole point:

…as the methods for spreading ideas and engaging with people keep changing, I can’t think of a good reason to be on the defensive. It’s been years since I woke up in the morning saying, “I need to write a book, I wonder what it should be about.” Instead, my mission is to figure out who the audience is, and take them where they want and need to go, in whatever format works, even if it’s not a traditionally published book.

This is exactly the same issue facing the content side of the news industry, and those of us with a stake in it need to find the courage to one day go in a different direction. It’s already happening in some areas with neighborhood news sites, aggregators, blogs and the like. What each has in common is that they begin and end on the Web, so there’s no legacy core to protect. They’re rewriting the rules for media, and they’re doing it without us.

So, too, are pureplay Web companies attempting to enable commerce in our backyards. Groupon, Reach Local, Yodel and a host of others are disrupting the money-making mechanism that supports us, while we continue to press doing things the old way — just like the publishers.

Seth Godin is on a different journey now, and I wish him well.

(Originally published in this week’s AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel newsletter)

Australian futurist Ross Dawson predicts that newspapers will be irrelevant in Australia by 2022 but that journalism is undergoing a form of rebirth. He goes on to make some specific predictions, but one caught my attention:

The reputation of individual journalists will drive audiences. Many journalists, most leading experts in their fields, will still be employed in Australia, with public reputation measures guiding audiences on how much to trust their work.

This thinking is showing up increasingly in writings by observers about the future of the news business, and it’s something I’ve been saying for years. A New York Magazine article comparing the troubles of newspapers to the troubles of the adult entertainment industry concludes with a similar thought for the New York Times: focus on their talent.

They should work harder at establishing their talent as brands — not the editorialists, like they did with Times Select; you can get opinion anywhere — but the people whose work has actual value: the reporters. Like a good talent manager, the Times could nurture and advise these reporters, guide their careers, and manage all of their creative output. They wouldn’t just publish their stories, they’d also publish their books, book them on speaking engagements, broker their movie deals — and offer them lucrative contracts in exchange. The Times already has the best talent, and it’s possible people will pay for it.

In today’s hyperconnected, social media-driven world, people follow people, not institutional brands. Moreover, the net reach via Facebook, for example, of the staff of any news organization can and should exceed that of the organization itself, because people follow certain individuals but not others. In Spartanburg, SC, WSPA-TV anchor Amy Wood garners more Facebook fans than the station’s Facebook page altogether. She works at it, but so should everybody, because people follow people!

In my 2008 essay, Your Personal Brand, I offered ten things that people can do to strengthen their personal brands. Now that the concept is becoming more mainstream, I thought it would be appropriate to republish them here:

1. Blossom where you’re planted, because it leaves a good taste in the mouths of your co-workers and impacts your reputation. For young people especially, this includes your network, because one’s network at that age often includes people you work with.
2. Build a database of customers and people of influence. Let technology do the heavy-lifting here, but these are the people who spread your reputation beyond your own reach. Get to know them. Remember them. Help them. Stay in contact with them. This strengthens your brand.
3. Spread the brands of others in your network, for it’s the best way to motivate people to spread yours. Go to them as a customer, and let the shop owner know what you think. Help that person be the best they can be at their gift or chosen field.
4. Make personal business cards with your brand and spread them everywhere. Advertise yourself with people in person and online. Talk about what you do. Share your experiences and maybe even provide tips as part of your social networking. Everything you do, especially if it’s negative, reflects on your brand.
5. Be a good person, not an ass. People are watching, and the last thing you ever want to do is prove yourself a jerk through your behavior while your intentions tell you you’re really a good guy.
6. Get comfortable with yourself, even if it takes professional help. People intuitively recognize self-destructive or self-centered behavior, and it’s a huge turn-off. If you use, for example, your Facebook page to constantly gripe about this or that, your brand will be that of a complainer and someone who enjoys life atop the old pity pot. You can’t control what people think of you, but you can choose not to give them ammunition with which to interpret your brand as negative.
7. When someone asks for your help, offer it freely, for Life loves a cheerful giver, and your brand will continue to grow. This is also a hedge against those bad days (that everyone has) that contain bad behavior. People will know that’s out of character and cut you some slack.
8. Devote some time each day to the study of your craft, and this is especially true for young people. You don’t have to pretend to be an expert when you really are one.
9. Don’t be afraid to be human. Nobody’s perfect, although we all seem to think that we should be. Get off your own back, and soon you’ll find it easy to get off the backs of others. You will make mistakes, sometimes pretty big ones. When they happen, admit them, turn the page, and move on. Tolerate your own imperfections and you’ll discover how easy it is to tolerate the imperfections of others, and that is a good brand characteristic.
10. Be teachable and stay teachable, no matter how much (you think) you know. Run, don’t walk, to those who can teach you and help grow your brand. Seek out such people and invest your time, for it will pay dividends beyond what you can imagine today.

Personal brands ARE the future of journalism, and that includes those outside the mainstream who are practicing the craft as bloggers. Individuals will become experts in some niche and sell that expertise to those who need or want it, either as independent contractors or employees. My guess it will be more the former than the latter, for once people taste the freedom of being on their own, it’s hard to go back.

This, of course, will set in motion a whole series of issues relating to the craft of journalism, but that will be fine. Meanwhile, advancing your personal brand should be high on the list of any professional journalist’s daily chores.

(Originally published in this week’s AR&D Media 2.0 Intel newsletter)

Facebook’s announcement yesterday of its entry into the “check-in” space is yet another blow to local media. Local businesses — many of whom already are deep into Facebook — are now being encouraged to create their “places” pages, which is what users will see when they check in via Facebook. Why is FB doing this? The gold in the hills of local advertising.

By creating a brand new directory of local businesses, FB can monetize it a hundred different ways. Already projected to make $1.3 billion in advertising next year, I fully expect that number will be much bigger, as it begins to suck advertising dollars from the local marketplace. What will local media companies do to respond? Sell more banners on their brand extension websites?

Technology has allowed anybody to do anything online for years now, but local media companies have refused to use any of it to create new value for themselves. Why is a mystery and a failure at the top of company leadership.

Facebook is already “local” in the way it is used, and local advertisers are well aware of this. By entering the check-in space — and creating landing pages for local advertisers — the company is exploiting its “localness” to not only create a rich experience for fans but also make money. The company is also opening its doors to the two top players in the space, Foursquare and Gowalla, in so doing. Brilliant.

Local media companies who insist that content is their business are going to have great difficulties sustaining that downstream. In this week’s Media 2.0 Intel newsletter, I offered five things companies can do today to begin creating new value. It seems appropriate to repeat that here.

• Data is a big part of the future, so start building databases. Begin with identifying and defining the Local Web. If we must attached an immediate purpose to it, then build a simply application that searches the database. The point isn’t to create an immediate revenue generator; it’s to build new value, and trust me, there’s value in databases of knowledge.
• Build networks of people, beginning with a loyal amateur journalist following. Equip them with knowledge. Invite their participation in what you do. Build blogs for them, if that seems smart, and aggregate their content. Show them how to shoot and edit good video. Always be recruiting new members into your group, for they will become your eyes and ears in many ways downstream.
• Build networks of websites for advertising. We recommend a horizontal ad network that serves the whole market, but vertical ad networks are there for the taking, too. Is your market home to big regional medical facilities? Create a vertical ad network to serve that community.
• Teach advertisers what you know and how to do what you do. The reality is that anybody can function as a media company today, and who better to teach the amateurs than the professionals? If advertising is content in the new world, then there’s a market for teaching advertisers how to make content. Who should have a YouTube account rich with videos related to its business? Everybody.
• Create an online video archive business that offers uncut video to those wishing to make their own shows, films or whatever. There is a market for this, because the shift to personal media is only going to get stronger, and you can create new value for your company by repurposing some of your old, raw footage. Assign somebody as keeper of this and pay them a cut. It’ll pay off downstream.

At the highest level, companies need to reward new value creation as much as they do meeting revenue goals. Otherwise, the emphasis will continue to be on making money with what we have, and that’s just not going to work in the long run.

“We’re TBD, a site whose development is always uncertain, forever under construction.” With those words from Editor Erik Wemple, TBD.com — a long-awaited experiment in online Washington D.C. local news from Allbritton Communications — launched in the wee hours of this morning.

Wemple wrote that rather than fix every bug, they decided to launch the site anyway. “Sculpting this product in plain view of users, we figured, would present a refreshing break from the tradition of launch perfectionism.” Nice. I like it already.

Much has been written about this site (e.g. here), because its owners have had enormous success with Politico.com, a breakthrough attempt at investigative political reporting online. If Allbritton could do it with politics, the thinking goes, they might be able to do it with local news.

The site has a spartan look that I like, but the thing that stands out most so far is its full-feed RSS. This is how distributed content gets distributed and how media companies will make money in the future. I applaud this decision and look forward to seeing what they do with it.

My advice to Allbritton is to let the flow of that feed become its home page, for while each story on the home page is presented with a time stamp, real time presentation is the thing.

I’m not convinced it will be “the future of local news,” as some have suggested, but since they’re beginning with a clean slate, it’ll certainly be interesting to watch.

As Leslie Nielsen’s character in the movie Airplane said while sticking his head in the cockpit door, “I just want to say good luck. We’re all counting on you.”

Under new management, Forbes Media is making a very smart move that I think more media companies should emulate. Under the edict “one reporter, one blog,” every reporter on staff gets a blog, most starting from scratch. This is a far cry from the old regime, headed by former Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller. According to Business Insider, Spanfeller, who retired last year, was very anti-blog.

But Forbes’ new editorial director is Lewis D’Vorkin — known to some staffers as “Darth” D’Vorkin. D’Vorkin came to the company in its acquisition of his freelance blogging startup, True/Slant, so the idea of shifting to a more blog-dominant environment should come as no surprise.

In an article in the New York Observer after D’Vorkin’s appointment as Forbes’ chief product officer, Zeke Turner wrote that the magazine was also adopting D’Vorkin’s controversial views of the business of journalism.

Mr. D’Vorkin…thinks of stories as product. And the most efficient way to churn out and make money from this product is to create a more efficient editing process with fewer layers. “Moving forward, when I look at an operation like Forbes, I look at a mixture of a full-time staff base and hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of freelance contributors. It’s that blend,” Mr. D’Vorkin said.

…”There is a fit and finish that you must have in print. Online, it’s not about fit and finish; it’s about the flow of information, the updates of information. It’s about relevance and timeliness. It’s not about craftsmanship. Quality online does not equal craftsmanship. In print, quality does equal craftsmanship.”

D’Vorkin hinted to Daily Finance last month that Forbes needed to become a “content creation force.”

Dvorkin, a former AOL executive, believes his model, which he calls “entrepreneurial journalism,” is a big part of what Forbes needs to start growing again. Entrepreneurial journalism — in which writers function as freelance contractors with a financial interest in building their own readership — is the golden middle road, he says, between the old paradigm represented by print magazines and newspapers, and the new one represented by blogs and websites.

I think D’Vorkin’s model is spot-on for local media companies, too, and I’ll be eagerly watching him develop and execute the strategy. There are three reasons I think he’s right.

1. The flow of information does not require complex packaging, so the need for layers of management is diminished. When speed is of value, this is especially true, and independently-functioning journalists can operate more freely in such an environment as D’Vorkin proposes. News and information is a real-time service today, and that demands nimble systems able to move on a dime.
2. Independent journalists are less expensive, more efficient, more motivated and easier to manage than employees. It is inevitable, given the economics involved in the business of content, that resources slide to that which is most efficient. Journalists, too, will discover the freedoms of working independently, the ability to set their own schedules and the cost savings of being an independent contractor are sufficiently compelling to give up the questionable “benefits” of being employees.
3. Personal brands are able to compete in the social context of modern media where institutional brands cannot. Personal brands, not media brands, will carry the journalism torch well into the future, and the sooner we all get started, the better. This is why the concept of “one reporter, one blog” resonates so well with me. These reporters, whether they realize it or not, are being given the opportunity to start promoting their own brands. They should jump at the chance.

So the Forbes empire will be a place to watch over the months and years ahead, as it attempts to develop, under its own brand, what AOL and content farms like Demand Media are attempting to do on a larger scale. In a world where people are all networked together, this seems incredible smart to me, and I believe the model is workable on any niche level, including those defined by geography.

Let’s hope the employees and staff of Forbes are able to see that the benefits of “Darth” D’Vorkin’s plan vastly outweigh the perceived downsides.

(Originally posted in AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel Newsletter)

One of the things that keeps media companies from realizing the potential of the Web is an instinct that says, “I must control my distribution.” In the world of scarcity from which traditional media comes, this is an understandable and necessary thought, but online, it’s ultimately suicidal, because the world of the Web is one of abundance. The issue then becomes one of “how do I get my content to stand out in a world of abundance,” not how do I limit its distribution to create scarcity.

This was played out last week in Knoxville, when veteran radio newsman Dave Foulk was forced to remove a news and traffic report service he had created on his Facebook page, because his employer wanted those people to come to its website only for such information. The 42-hundred plus “fans” he was serving are upset, because they’d come to know Dave as a trusted source. They will not go to the station’s website, no matter what the station does, so the end result is just 42-hundred pissed off fans.

In a world of scarcity, restricting access creates value, but in a world of abundance, it does the opposite. People didn’t need to chase Dave Foulk; they read him, because he made it convenient for them. Can they live without that information service? Of course, and they will. We’ve got this idea in our heads that we can “force” behavior, to which empowered consumers now respond, “Screw you!”

(This decision by Foulk’s employer also conflicts with our beliefs about the value of personal branding, but that’s another entry altogether.)

Scarcity and abundance are diametrically opposed concepts. The dos for one are the don’ts for the other, It’s the central explanation for the bruising on my head from bashing it against the wall when well-intentioned news people argue with me about things like, for example, website design. We think design is the top priority, because we think the home page is where people interact with us. It’s our doorway, we think, the place where interested people judge our skill in keeping them informed. The truth, however, is it’s just another URL in a literal sea of others. Do we honestly think ours is “special?”

“Well, Terry, if it’s the only choice they have about getting our content, then they’ll HAVE to come.”

No they won’t. And those who do will, at best, be your most loyal viewers, so what have you gained?

In a world of abundance — where aggregation is king — website design matters nil, because for all media today, it’s what you send into the real-time stream that counts and that can be “received” lots of different ways. We keep wanting to create a nice user experience that assumes people come to our websites for a visit, when the Web itself — and especially those who are designing and building its applications — cares ONLY about what’s in the wild that it can use. In this context, “the Web” refers to the multiplied thousands of people who are constantly working to evolve the tubes and pipes into the real time experience it was built to become. If the Web was just the infrastructure, media companies might have a case for strategies that smack of scarcity, but it’s not.

Facebook isn’t so much a destination as it is a precursor of the Web itself.

I don’t want this to be a rant or to sound critical, but our obsession with developing revenue instead of making money prevents us from working with the Web itself. Rather than try and go WITH the flow, we foolishly try to force the Web into our own wants and needs, and in the end, this will hasten our demise.

So let me repeat something I’ve said often in the past: your RSS feeds are vastly more important than your website.

What you release into the wild for others to use — as they see fit — will determine your health as a business in the years to come. We should be designing for our feeds, not using them to drive people back to our websites. This is contrary to what the industry believes is best practices, but it is the truth.

I first began exploring the concepts of unbundled media in late 2004 and published The Remarkable Opportunities of Unbundled Media one year later. People were already using the Web to unbundled things that others wanted kept bundled, such as, oh, music cuts. There was an extremely powerful consumer message in this action, and one that, frankly, most media company people ignored entirely. Then came YouTube, and again, people unbundled — made into clips — that which traditional media wanted kept bundled.

Never underestimate empowered consumers.

Also never underestimate the smart people trying to meet empowered consumers’ demand. Whole new business concepts have been developed — funded primarily by venture capital — that help people unbundle and rebundle to fit their needs (and their busy schedules). Can you say “TiVo?” If there is one truth that you can take to the bank in looking towards tomorrow, it is that content will be separated from its source. Fight it at your own risk. Explore it, and you’ll find opportunity.

For example, GoogleTV is almost upon us. By this time next year, many people will have TV sets or set-top boxes that allow them to find programming through Google’s TV search engine. What will you put into the stream that will “help” Google find it? How will you monetize that? These are incredibly important questions, because Google’s intention is to, again, assist in separating content from its sources.

Another example is the hot, new iPad application, Flipboard. Flipboard is controversial, because rather than take RSS feeds, it scrapes content and images from media websites (with appropriate links back to the original source). It does so, because a) it can, and b) the RSS feeds of most media companies are crap. Flipboard rightly wants to create a great user experience, and I expect there will be some sort of legal fight downstream over this. If media companies “win,” they’ll actually lose, because, once again, we live in a world of content abundance, not scarcity. The right response would be to pay attention to what we’re distributing in the wild.

We’ve developed the concept of Continuous News and are currently helping media companies reengineer their news departments to better serve the genre. It is quite an undertaking, but the results are magnificent, and these companies are much better positioned to meet the demands of tomorrow than those who cling to old ways of operating.

In the Continuous News environment, the output of the stream — and that includes the Web, Twitter, Facebook and any other application that will come along — is the reason these news departments come to work. We’re continuing to define and redefine that output, but at least we’re working on it, because we recognize that developers working on Web applications outnumber us and outgun us, so our only choice is to “give” them better content to work with. That begins with designing it for unbundled distribution and trusting that we will benefit in the end.

As I wrote in The Economy of Unbundled Advertising, ad snippets that are released into the stream can be reassembled to produce the sale paper of tomorrow:

If unbundled media is where we’re headed, then unbundled advertising must necessarily follow. This is a scary concept, however, for there is no command and control mechanism or manipulable infrastructure in the unbundled world. The upside, though, is that it costs very little to participate. All that’s necessary is the release what I call “ad pieces” into the seeming chaos of the Internet, where other businesses will take those pieces and reassemble them when summoned by customers who are trading their scarcity for information they actually want.

This is already taking place on a small scale with Twitter, but I suspect it will be the source of whole new business models downstream. We simply live in an unbundled world, although most of us don’t realize it yet.

Here are five things you can do today to get you moving down this path:

1. Establish in your thinking that the Web is about abundance, and that your mission is to stand out, not control. Attraction always works better online than promotion, because consumers are in charge.
2. Bring your RSS feeds to the top of your priority list and keep them there. Make them full feed. Refine them. Hone them. Put ads in them. This will be the content that you make available to “the Web” to distribute as it sees best, including GoogleTV.
3. Build any unbundled content “apps” around your RSS feeds. Got an iPhone app? Is your RSS output its main content source? Work with apps like Flipboard to let them know YOUR content is available to them for distribution beyond your ability.
4. Experiment with measurable ways to monetize unbundled content. Don’t know how? Read my 5-year old essay and then talk to me.
5. Establish in your revenue thinking that the creation of new value — i.e. “making money” — is at least as important as growing revenue.

Above all, get it in your head that unbundled output is where you HAVE to be, no matter how that conflicts with your traditional instincts and training. We are just beginning to realize the reality of content separated from source, and it will dominate the media landscape in the years to come.

It was too hot here in Dallas to do much of anything this weekend, at least that’s my excuse for not writing. But then I came across this from the Wall St. Journal: Cities Rent Police, Janitors to Save Cash. It’s the story of cash-poor municipalities turning over public service duties to independent contractors, because they just can’t pay for them the old fashioned way. This is a stunning reality in today’s economy, which, by the way, isn’t getting any better no matter how the suits spin it in Washington.

I think it’s an inevitable path for journalism and journalists as well, and I’ve thought that way for a long, long time. In September of 2003, I wrote “The Rise of the Independent Video Journalist,” the prophecies of which are coming true even as we speak:

1. Playerless video streaming technology and bandwidth provide steady, high quality Internet pictures that users of all ilk and hue will accept. Video doesn’t drive the Internet yet, but by 2010 it will share the stage with the other efficiencies of a wired world. It’s unlikely consumers will fully embrace the idea of combining their TV set with their computer until the same box runs both and the video quality of both is interchangeable.
2. Video-on-demand (VOD) takes the place of broadcast schedules as the principal method by which people watch television.
3. Point-of-view journalism becomes an accepted part of information programming.
4. Internet video news portals take the place of or supplement news organizations in offering Video News On Demand (VNOD) to users.

Read the Wall St. Journal story, take a hard look around you, and get busy advancing your personal brand. It will carry your ability to take care of your family sooner than later.

Here is the latest in my ongoing essay series, Local Media in a Postmodern World.

Pureplays and the 50% Threshold

The business of the online world locally is found in a host of new advertising solutions for businesses of all sizes. The business community is discovering that they can recruit customers directly rather than using the brand marketing tools of traditional media, and this is fostering a huge shift of dollars in the marketplace. Unfortunately for local media companies, these new applications have little to do with us and instead belong to a growing number of venture capital funded Web pureplays who are sucking money from the local marketplace at an alarming rate. That rate crossed the 50% threshold last year, and unless we do something beyond just partnering with them, there will be little money left for us.

This gives me the opportunity to state, once again, that the problem with media today isn’t content; it’s value creation in the revolution that is advertising.

The Journal Register Company today launched its Ben Franklin Project, in which all of its output as a media company is being created with “free tools found on the Internet.” From from assigning to editing, the whole creating, publishing and distribution of news content on both the web and in print is, as of today, free of any proprietary technology. The launch on July 4th is symbolic — it’s the company’s “independence day.”

Jeff Jarvis (naturally) played a role in this, and his view covers just about everything. It’s noteworthy to me on many levels, but mostly it’s about the quality of “free” tools and how those tools in the hands of professionals can do amazing things.

In my early writings about the “personal media revolution,” I frequently noted that open source software was surprisingly robust and easy-to-use. Back then, most media execs — and especially the technical folks, the engineers — scoffed at their crude form. TV people, for example, were so used to spending $250,000 on just about anything that the idea of “free” was laughable.

I remember building a group weather blog for WKRN in 2004 using Movable Type. GM Mike Sechrist was stunned, and it turned out to be a defining moment as we moved forward in using these tools. We created many blogs, including Nashville is Talking, and the more station employees were exposed to these and other tools, the quicker was their ability to grasp anything about the Web.

There are, of course, many advantages to proprietary software, but we fool ourselves if we think that having such somehow shields us from the disruption created and sustained by those who use open source tools.

My hat’s off to Paxon and the entire crew at the Journal Register Company. It’ll be fun to watch them in the weeks and months ahead.