Another one bites the dust
Posted Tuesday, February 15th, 2005
Peggy Phillip has taken the leap and added comments to her site. Congratulations, Peggy!
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Archive for February, 2005
Dealing with free information
Posted Tuesday, February 15th, 2005
I Want Media gives us a look into the intriguing mind of Michael Wolff, a media columnist for Vanity Fair, in a Media People feature called, “Free Information is Now the Topic in the Media Industry.” Wolff was the featured speaker at the 2005 SIIA Information Industry Summit in New York City, and his speech and Q&A session produced some noteworthy thoughts, including the belief that media companies can’t seem to hold an audience anymore.
Why can’t anyone hold an audience? Well, people can’t hold an audience because there’s lots of competition and lots of other things to do. And media companies can’t hold an audience because what they produce is shit.
It’s hard to disagree with that.
Wolff’s most interesting idea involves the difference between paid and free information Websites. He looks at the Wall Street Journal and says they’re no longer a part of the discussions about important matters.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking what happened because I know a lot of people at the Journal, and it feels to me from a journalist standpoint something of a puzzle and a little bit of a tragedy. And I think that the answer is the online thing. I think the fact that the Journal felt that it was powerful enough to charge, and for a long time everyone regarded the Journal’s activities online as the ultimate. They had unlocked the puzzle. In fact, I don’t think they did. I think they locked themselves into a puzzle.While the New York Times on the other hand became this ubiquitous information brand. It became finally the national information brand. And it did this, I think, because it was free. So free is the word. And free is what I want to talk about — free information, which in the media industry is now the topic, the theme. This is the thing that is unavoidable, that everyone has to deal with.
I believe this observation is right on the money, and that the matter of free information is one that all media companies must address.
For all the thoughtful commentary in this speech, however, Wolff resorts to institutional thinking when it comes to the blogosphere. He doesn’t even like the word “blog” and calls to mind a scene from the film Doctor Zhivago “where the professionals and the intelligentsia are reduced to having to walk with the hoi polloi, and that’s what I feel when I’m forced into this blog stuff.” But his real trouble is with the lack of authority that he feels the blogosphere creates.
…what it sets up is this constant second guessing of information. Which is not necessarily bad but it does lower the value of all information. You undermine that authority of information. But having been around this business now for some time I’ve learned that nothing lasts too long. By all rights, 18 months from now we should be looking back at this and all kind of embarrassed to say the word blog — I hope.
Not hardly, Mr. Wolff.
This kind of thinking always flows from the Modernist view that hierarchy and order are necessary attributes for a workable culture. And that always includes a deep distrust of people — especially everyday people. It was from them (and their myths and emotion) that Walter Lippmann sought escape in his ideas about who should run things.
I choose to view things differently, and that’s one of the reasons I’m so supportive of the blogosphere, be it national, international or local. I trust us to always get it right, though the journey may be bumpy at times. I’d much rather have it that way than deal with Lippmann’s elites. After all, they’re the ones producing the shit, right?
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If you’re going to spam me, at least learn the language
Posted Tuesday, February 15th, 2005
This arrived in the overnight spam mail. Gotta love those foreigners, eh?
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Let’s not martyr Eason Jordan
Posted Monday, February 14th, 2005
There are many questions to be asked from the resignation of Eason Jordan, and they need a public airing.
First, there are complaints that the mainstream press ignored the story until they no longer could. Did the guy actually say that he thought the U.S. military was deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq? The pursuit of this question would certainly have been helped had the MSM chosen to get involved.
If he did, why didn’t he just admit it, apologize and move on? If he didn’t, why resign? As long as these questions remain open, the story will live.
Is the blogosphere now playing “gotcha” journalism (oxymoron) with the MSM, and in so doing, using the same methods they’ve long accused the MSM of using? I believe this is true, and that it is one of two reasons the blogosphere will experience a quaking in the months ahead. (The second is lawyers). The charm of the blogosphere — or “citizens media,” as its known in some circles — is that it’s comprised of everyday people — some learned, some not — that provide fuel for the ongoing discussion that is news. Pride goeth before the fall, and I think that a wake-up call is coming for those bloggers who think their mission is to replace the MSM.
My friends Cory Bergman and Steve Safran of Lost Remote think the blogosphere went too far and that the incident will damage already strained relations between the press and bloggers. That may be true, but I’m not sure it matters in the final analysis. If the quest for legitimacy is the wish of bloggers, I ask who grants such a claim? The MSM? No, that can only come from the people, and I’m not convinced they care whether the press and the bloggers get along. What I worry about is the people discovering that there’s no difference between the professional press and citizens media, and if Eason Jordan is successfully martyred, what else can people think? Besides, who’s to say that this wasn’t a “last straw” for CNN?
The lust for power is the Achilles’ Heel of the blogosphere.
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Reuters shifts its brand to consumers
Posted Monday, February 14th, 2005
The wire service company has taken a bold step in a new direction by launching an online news service aimed at consumers, according to an article in Revolution Magazine.
Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters Media, said: “This is the first in a series of consumer services we will be launching this year that invite audiences to directly experience our news and information.“Our philosophy is to offer viewers the ability to choose the news that matters most to them, wherever and whenever it is breaking, and to see for themselves what’s really happening on the ground. This is the future of the television news experience.”
While questions abound (doesn’t this negatively impact their wire service revenue?), I think this is a smart (and inevitable) move for Reuters, and I love Ahearn’s bold assertion that the future means the viewer is in charge. It also should make anybody in the video news business sit up and take notice.
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Branded RSS readers
Posted Monday, February 14th, 2005
The world is catching up to the idea of branded RSS readers, something I wrote about nearly a year ago in The Busine$$ of RSS. MediaPost’s Online Daily News has figured it out:
AS INTERNET USERS DISCOVER CONTENT aggregation’s merit, advertisers and publishers fear a loss of control over their content and how users experience it. Now, several newspapers have launched their own customized RSS readers, in an effort to solidify their relationships with online readers.
The beauty of having your own reader is that you can serve ads in it while the users are scanning their feeds. The caveat, I believe, is that there’s only room for one of these in a market. If you want one, contact Harry Hayes at Sausage Software in Seattle.
Bill French notes in the comments that he’s been at this a lot longer. He and Harry work together as Smartstream Alliance to do the branded RSS reader thing. First rate folks (and much smarter than yours truly).
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Nashville Bloggers Meetup
Posted Sunday, February 13th, 2005
For the first time, Nashville area bloggers gathered Saturday to meet each other and swap yarns in the studios of WKRN-TV. Nothing pretentious. No hidden agenda. Just free food, Channel 2 hats, and a chance to meet a really wonderful group of fellow bloggers.
I made the point that we are a community. We share a common bond, and we should get together once in awhile to strengthen that tie. I predict that the group will be three times its size a year from now.
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The father of the VJ movement
Posted Friday, February 11th, 2005
I’ve been very busy the past couple of days, and this fellow is one of the reasons why. Let me introduce you to Michael Rosenblum, father of the modern Video Journalist (VJ) movement. As those of you familiar with my work already know, Michael is transforming television news in Europe by equipping everybody in the newsroom with small digital cameras and laptop edit systems. He’s re-writing the whole architecture of a newsroom, and I’m a big fan.
I had the rare opportunity this morning to watch Michael in action as he told stories and had the room in stitches. He does a wonderful bit comparing a contemporary television news operation to a newspaper with 100 employees and only five pencils. I wish you could’ve been there.
Simply because he’s introducing something new, Michael has been vilified — usually by news photographers — in various news industry discussion boards, but I will tell you this. He has created the model that will be copied by everyone in the years ahead, and rather than reacting with disgust, you’d be well advised to pay attention. Contempt prior to investigation is a barrier to all progress, even in our business.
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These days it’s all about video
Posted Wednesday, February 9th, 2005
Video is the hot word for online publishers this year. Who knew?
The Online Publisher’s Association (OPA) has released new Magid research that broadcasters need to absorb. The most significant finding is that the preferred online videos for users — by a wide margin — are news and current events clips (66%). Sports highlights are watched most frequently, with 48% watching at least once a week. The preferred length for watching is 1-2 minutes.
This is, of course, good news for local broadcasters, because the demand for online video news clips carries with it revenue opportunities. Online video won’t completely save the local broadcasting industry, but the CPMs are nice and an aggressive strategy should produce some welcome relief.
Online Media Daily reports from the study that online publishers aren’t keeping up with demand.
MediaWeek says Web-based video viewing is growing more pervasive, and its audience, while Web savvy, is becoming more mainstream.
Here’s the PDF of the whole study.
One final note. You can bet the newspaper industry is paying attention to this.
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Growing trend: making money off somebody else’s content!
Posted Tuesday, February 8th, 2005
This is an issue that is going to demand attention sooner or later. In an article about Web services, Businessweek.com looks at GovTrack.us, a site that’s aggregating the latest news and blog entries related to federal legislation from hundreds of sites.
Think of the site (GovTrack founder Joshua) Tauberer has created as a virtual news fetcher, bringing all the relevant info right to your PC. No more need to surf around the Internet or plow through wordy government sites. It all comes to one spot, his Web site.Such Web-service sites are just starting to catch on, thanks to technologies such as the Extensible Markup Language (XML), which is sort of a lingua franca for Net programmers, and Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds, which make it possible for sites to easily share data. It’s not a stretch to say they could revolutionize the way content is delivered.
“In the past, Web sites were data roach motels,” says David Sifry, CEO of the search engine Technorati, which sends information to GovTrack.us via a Web service. “Your data comes in, but doesn’t come out. Now it does. And Web sites are able to create services that are better than the sum of their parts.”
These kinds of businesses make a lot of sense for consumers, but there’s a scary line to cross when it comes to them generating revenue, assuming that’s what makes the business viable. The owners of the content being aggregated deserve some form of compensation, don’t they?
More on this in a forthcoming essay.
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Is your station’s site making video ad money?
Posted Tuesday, February 8th, 2005
If not, it’s missing the boat. Here’s an important read for local TV execs struggling with the question of how to make money off the Internet.
Saying that the online video streaming ad business is similar to what cable was in 1980, the article points out that advertisers love the medium, because it requires action on the part of the user. Consequently, they only pay for people who actually see the ad; whereas TV advertising is based on the assumption of reach.
Broadband video advertising look like TV spots, except they are shorter—usually 10 or 15 seconds. The major players are the big portals: AOL, Yahoo! and MSN, as well as niche publishers like ESPN.com. Broadband video ads don’t target a specific audience per se, but the users tend to be younger, sought-after demos. For example, Yahoo! LAUNCH: Music on Yahoo! reaches the MTV crowd, while ESPN360 attracts younger men.“Broadband video is hard to ignore,” says Bob Flood, EVP/director, national electronic media, Optimedia, New York. “It’s a less cluttered environment and far more accountable than conventional TV advertising. You’re dealing with an engaged audience that is in lean-forward mode.”
More importantly for broadcasters is an understanding that the nice CPM’s these advertisers pay is driven by a lack of content. Who has content? Local broadcasters do, and it’s why they need to be in this business with a full-court press.
Bonus link: The New York Times gets into the video ad business.
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Lessons from the french fry (fake) blog
Posted Tuesday, February 8th, 2005
The blogosphere is reacting with predictable anger at the McDonald’s fake blog for its Lincoln-shaped french fry spoof. Kevin Dugan says, “I’m not lovin’ it.”
There’s a lot of constructive criticism as well. Jarvis offers some, but the best is from Poynter’s Steve Outing:
It’s 2005, more than a decade into the commercialized Internet, and it’s unfortunate that we see so many companies that still don’t understand the online world — and try to use it to just as a one-way sales pitch. Repeat after me: The Internet is interactive! The Internet is interactive! …
Good point. McDonald’s missed a great opportunity here, but Outing’s message applies beyond this particular case. And for local media to thrive in the new paradigm, they must first acknowledge this truth.
RELEVANT QUOTE OF THE DAY: From Lloyd Braun, former chairman of the ABC Entertainment Television Group and now head of Yahoo! Media Group:
“If I knew what I know now when I was at ABC, I would have taken half my media budget and put it here [in online].”
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Nashville bloggers to meet
Posted Monday, February 7th, 2005
Bloggers from my neck of the woods (host of the forthcoming Bloggercon BlogNashville in May) will be getting together informally Saturday morning at the studios of WKRN-TV. Call it Music City’s attempt to enter the citizens media space dominated by Greensboro, NC. If you’re a blogger and you live in the Nashville area, we’d love to have you. The TV station is providing coffee, juice and donuts and a behind-the-scenes look at the news broadcast. There’s no formal program planned — just a chance to get to know folks. The fun gets underway at 8:30am.
I’ll be there, along with Bill Hobbs, Rex Hammock, Neil Orne, the Saucy Librarian and many, many others.
WKRN is at 441 Murfreesboro Road, Nashville.
See you there.
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Local advertisers sending cash to Google and Yahoo!
Posted Monday, February 7th, 2005
The Friday New York Times featured a front-page article on the advertising enormity that is Google and tells the familiar (to us) story of search advertising and how much money Google and Yahoo! are making from it. As the article points out, however, this money comes from a wide variety of places.
As for local advertising on radio and television and in newspapers, those media can still be effective ways to blanket large portions of the hometown audience with a uniform message. But individually focused Internet ads are already siphoning business away from locally oriented classified advertising and yellow pages directories - whether in their offline or online forms.And as the Internet occupies an increasing part of the modern consumer’s discretionary time, all the other forms of media advertising will probably have to adjust.
“You’re seeing advertising move into advertising that people can seek out, and moving away from mass advertising,” said Peter Sealey, a former Coca-Cola marketing executive who now teaches at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. “In the context of that shift, this little niche of Internet search will be a huge beneficiary.”
As other forms of advertising “adjust,” it means opportunity for some and trouble for others. Broadcasters need to take note.
More: Jeff Jarvis asks, “Should Google be the citizens’ ad agency?”
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RIAA sues dead woman
Posted Saturday, February 5th, 2005
This one belongs in the annals of ultimate justice. In its zeal to track down and punish its best customers, the recording industry muscled its way to the door of 83-year old Gertrude Walton in Charleston, West Virginia. The only problem is the poor woman died a month earlier following a long illness. She didn’t own a computer and, according to her daughter, hated the things.
The daughter told the Associated Press that she faxed a copy of her mother’s death certificate to record company officials several days before the lawsuit was filed, in response to a letter from the company regarding the upcoming legal filing.
The RIAA now says it was a mistake and that they’ll dismiss the case.
Oh really.
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Texas legislator won’t push meteorologist bill
Posted Saturday, February 5th, 2005
Texas State Rep. Vicki Truitt isn’t going to try and legislate TV meteorologist credentials after all. “There are issues that are very, very important in the grand scheme of what the Texas Legislature has to deal with this session,” she told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “This is not a high-ranking priority.”
Who knew?
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Branded readers in the news
Posted Saturday, February 5th, 2005
Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion writes:
The LA Times has launched a branded RSS news aggregator in partnership with Consenda. You can find it here, however the service is invitation-only right now. The launch comes on the heels of the Guardian’s RSS newsreader, which like the LAT is also called Newspoint. PaidContent reports the Guardian has started offering Newspoint as a test download for about 250 users.
It’s nice to see these folks picking up on the idea of branded RSS readers. While the general public is still largely unaware of RSS, it makes sense for local media entities to offer branded readers. Why? It spreads the message of RSS while giving the media entity a place to run ads. I wrote about this in The Business of R$$.
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Pay attention, broadcasters!
Posted Friday, February 4th, 2005
Dan Gillmor has offered some outstanding recommendations for local newspapers, and I think broadcasters also need to think hard about what he’s saying.
Yes, newspapers have been losing circulation and power, but they retain a surprisingly deep reservoir of credibility and authority in their communities. The reservoir must be replenished, and it is the citizens who — given the opportunity — will be able, and perhaps glad, to help.The key is in having the conversation with the community and, even more, helping community members have a conversation among themselves. Newspapers, given their positions, can be at the center of this conversation — not the object of it in most cases, but the enabler and, to some extent, agenda-setter.
Dan’s right, and there’s a real danger for local TV stations, if newspapers pick up on this. If the information agenda is set and maintained by the community in this manner, TV News runs the risk of permanent second-class status — perhaps even commoditization — in the local information sphere.
I tell my clients that there’s only room in each market for one of these entities, unless, of course, they become based in some sort of political extreme. And nothing says that this entity has to be the local paper.
Time is the enemy, folks. There’s none of it to waste.
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Sports anchor launches blog
Posted Thursday, February 3rd, 2005
Local television personalities and staffers are beginning to get serious in the blogosphere, and I think that’s a good thing. Local TV needs to get involved in what people are talking about in their communities, and a great place to start is with bloggers. And what better way to get involved than to join the discussions by blogging?
News photographers seem to make excellent bloggers, and there are two worth noting here — Stewart (aka “Lenslinger”) Pittman’s thoughtful Viewfinder Blues and the edgy Little Lost Robot.
There are a few local anchor blogs, and now there’s a local sports anchor blog to report. John Dwyer, sports director for WKRN-TV here in Nashville, has started a blog, DwyerWire, where he breaks what he calls the “3-minute habit,” referring to the time limitations of the sports segment.
For nearly 20 years, my on-air philosophy is one of delivering the facts, avoiding commentary. What we call in the biz- “story count”- matters, with each cast timed literally to the second. What I think is NOT the story. The limited time during a NEWS-2 sportscast simply doesn’t allow for editorializing. I’m comfortable with that but also feel that my life experiences in doing my “dream job” have allowed me to accumulate a wealth of interesting antidotes that, until now, haven’t had a forum.
Take a look at John’s blog. I think it’s going to be a good one.
(disclosure: I helped John get his blog going)
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When is a journalist a journalist?
Posted Wednesday, February 2nd, 2005
This question should be getting old by now, but it’s like a pimple that keeps coming back. For the uninformed, the issue is “professional” versus “amateur,” old media versus new, press versus blogger.
USAToday examines the matter of Apple suing two bloggers over publishing “trade secrets” and comes to the conclusion that it’ll be a test case in the courts over whether bloggers qualify as journalists.
Ultimately, the issue comes down to whether bloggers act like traditional journalists, says University of Iowa law professor and First Amendment specialist Randall Bezanson. Simply expressing opinions to a tiny audience doesn’t count, he says. If so, “then I’m a journalist when I write a letter to my mother reporting on what I’m doing. I don’t think the [constitutional] free-press clause was intended to extend its protections to letters to mothers from sons.”
What a crock! “Act” like traditional journalists? “Qualify” as journalists? This whole article is based on the assumption that there is one job description that fits the word “journalist.” As I’ve written before, this slipperly slope leads to a place nobody wants to go. Do we really want the government licensing journalists?
Apparently so. Romenesko repeats a question being asked — how does Jeff Gannon of TalonNews.com get into White House press conferences? The site is run by the Texas Republican Party, so Gannon’s critics say he isn’t a journalist, but rather a White House tool to soften media coverage of President Bush. You don’t say! Wasn’t that the formula for pre-”professional” news organizations? Weren’t THEY journalists?
I think this is perhaps the most exciting time in history to be alive and a part of “the media.” Change is underway, and the status quo keeps circling the wagons to protect its fatted calf. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t know anybody who does, but I have faith in the people and their ability to get it right under the Constitution. And I’d rather have that than a journalist license any day of the week.
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