Nostalgia and unbundled music
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006Today’s MediaPost Daily Spin is worth passing along. Written by Tom Hespos of Underscore Marketing, it speaks to the unbundling of music in a way that few people have. Here’s a sample:
I have younger cousins who have never owned a CD and have all of their music stored on their computers and in their portables. The concept of becoming emotionally attached to an album cover is completely foreign to them.That was the thing that, for me, took some time to get used to. It’s not so easy to throw out that Van Halen album you played at your first beach party, or that Journey tape that accompanied your first kiss. It makes me wonder if kids growing up today will get attached to the players themselves.
Crack the digital code and avoid death
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006Diane Mermigas offers yet another intelligent and thoughtful column today loaded with good advice for broadcasters:
Broadcasters’ best hope is using digital broadband technology to capitalize on their unique ties with local consumers, advertisers and communities that can be the targets of digital broadband personalization that make for grass-roots media. But even the biggest markets can absorb only so much leveraging of local news, sports, weather and other content across all media platforms.…If highly localized and customized content that is more relevant, spontaneous and valuable to consumers and advertisers is where new media is headed, why aren’t more broadcasters following?
…In order to protect their turf by cracking the digital code and avoid death by ad-skipping, television broadcasters must seize the only factor over which they still have some control. They must have the courage to alter their fundamental business understanding that they are smaller, but critical players in a larger, more diverse media pool because of their long-standing close ties with individual consumers and advertisers.
Revisiting the anchor issue
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006Now that Bob Woodruff is back in the U.S., media critics are jumping all over ABC for sending him to Iraq in the first place. The view looking down their noses is that it’s purely a marketing ploy and, therefore, disingenuous to dispatch an anchor to foreign lands, especially those where the anchor is put in harm’s way. There are two huge problems with this thinking.
In the first place, these people don’t know Bob Woodruff. He IS a reporter, and reporters report. He would not be comfortable sitting in front of a desk in the traditional anchor role.
Secondly — and more importantly — the traditional anchor role in a TV newsroom has less of a future than the printed newspaper. As media continues down the unbundled path, it is inevitable that the need for an “anchor” dissolves. The traditional anchor is the glue that holds the bundled content of a newscast together. You cannot make a case for glue in an unbundled paradigm. In this sense, ABC may have actually backed into a position with legs by turning the traditional anchor role into that of chief correspondents.
In one of my earlier essays, I noted that the news anchor was an endangered species:
The industry’s obsession with celebrity and the easy marketing thereof is meaningless in a Postmodern world that has demystified the industry and its hype, rejects elitism and doesn’t need its information spoon fed by good-looking faces anyway. As the world of video news shifts to a broadband environment, where users can pick and choose what they want to watch and when they want to watch it, there are powerful forces at work that will make news anchors unnecessary.Firstly, time is precious to the Postmodern (Pomo). It “belongs” to me, and I can read a story faster than anybody can read it to me. I’ll read my own stories and make my own decisions about those I choose to explore further. I don’t need you to do that for me.
Secondly, in selecting the video stories that I want to watch, I’d rather have the reporter who was there give me his or her take on it than somebody sitting in a studio. This is essential Postmodernism — that if I can’t experience something for myself, I want only someone who’s been up close and personal with the thing to share their experience.
Thirdly, the only “personalities” I care about are those who share my beliefs and provide the arguments that I need to communicate those beliefs with other members of my “tribe.” I don’t care what these people look like or sound like. What they say is paramount.
Finally, I’m out here slugging it out with everybody else, and I have little time or respect for people on pedestals, especially those who don’t have a clue as to what I’m going through. The pejorative term “media elite” is generally used by conservatives to slam those with a liberal bias, but, for Postmoderns, it goes way beyond that.
Rocketboom launches eBay ad auction
Monday, January 30th, 2006Andrew and Amanda over at Rocketboom have stepped out on a new venture related to their wonderful daily vlog that has the potential to start something REALLY big in terms of online advertising. They’re auctioning off advertising on eBay, but that’s not the disruptive innovation. They are insisting that they produce the ads as a part of Rocketboom content, which means they’ll be archived for retrieval via unbundled media applications.
This auction is a bid for advertisement space on Rocketboom, in addition to payment for our creative services. The actual advertisements (the content) will be created and owned solely by Rocketboom and exist as a part of our regular Rocketboom show under a creative commons, non-commercial, share-alike, license.…We will work closely with the winner to make sure that their message will resonate with our viewers in a beneficial way for the winner. The bidder understands, however, that Rocketboom will have complete control over the commercials that we create.
I think this has the potential to create a significant disruption in the world of video advertising, assuming they can find takers for the concept. It’s a tough sell for the ad world to give up control, but in a very real sense, this is what advertisers (not agencies) have been wanting for a long time — placing their products and services in front of potential customers in the seamless context of the medium in which it’s delivered.
We’ll be watching the bidding.
Our obsession with blame
Monday, January 30th, 2006I wasn’t going to write about Bob anymore, but it’s been pretty hard to concentrate the last 24 hours. Then came this crap from the New York Times, as noted by Jeff Jarvis:
I wondered whether I was the only one who was amazed and even offended by the subhed under today’s lead story in the New York Times reporting the bomb attack on ABC’s Bob Woodruff and a cameraman. It read:LATEST BLOW TO NETWORK
Now I get the point that the next headline makes: “Field Reports Were a Ratings Strategy.” There is a business angle. Woodruff, they’re saying, was put in harm’s way by Nielsen. Though one could also say they were put in harm’s way by journalism, by the need to report. And the subhed might have just as easily read, “BIG BLOW TO FAMILIES.”
Secondly, it takes a special kind of asshole lowlife to blame a victim — or the victim’s company — for getting injured in a terrorist bombing. Latest blow to network? Ratings strategy? Come on. Where’s the empathy for another injured human being in this God-awful quagmire?
The Associated Press reports that the body armor Bob and his shooter were wearing saved their lives, because by standing in an open vehicle, their bodies took the brunt of the explosion. The article also reports that Tom Brokaw spoke with Bob’s wife, Lee.
“The doctors had told them once they arrived that the brain swelling had gone down. In Bob’s case, that had been a big concern. Yesterday they had to operate and remove part of the skull cap to relieve some of the swelling,” Brokaw said on NBC’S “Today” show.The doctors didn’t know for sure whether shrapnel penetrated Woodruff’s brain, but they were removing additional shrapnel from his neck area, Brokaw said. He said Woodruff’s family had also learned more details about the explosion from witnesses.
“Immediately after the explosion he turned to his producer and said ‘Am I alive?’ and ‘Don’t tell Lee,’ and then he began to cry out in excruciating pain,” Brokaw said.
Mike James of NewsBlues (subscription required) reports some really bad news via network sources:
ABC insiders say Woodruff’s facial injuries have effectively ended his television career.
The ultimate obsession of a modernist culture is the assessment of blame, because that’s the way logic works. If order is the goal, then everything is cause and effect. Hence, the need to assess blame. This is the lifeblood of our legal system, which has taken the place of God in our culture.
The problem, of course, is that the law isn’t God (something everyday people seem to understand), and no laws can account for time and chance. If you’re going to blame anybody in this, blame the misguided insurgents who actually believe that slaughtering innocent people is the path to righteousness.
Bob Woodruff injured
Sunday, January 29th, 2006Bob’s a friend and former colleague of mine, and I’m praying for him, his wife Lee, and their four children right now. You can find details all over the place, so I’ll limit this to a question. Why the heck do we call a bomb an IED? Is it supposed to communicate that “improvised explosive devices” are different than manufactured explosive devices, that terrorists are more likely to “make up” bombs instead of buying them? Who knew?
Bob Woodruff was hurt by a bomb, people.
IBM’s view of the future of television
Friday, January 27th, 2006The IBM study — better pay attention
IBM Business Consulting Service interviewed 65 media executives for an hour each and has come to a conclusion that won’t surprise anyone who reads this blog: “This is the beginning of “the end of television as we know it” and the future will only favor those who prepare today.”
Our analysis indicates that market evolution hinges on two key market drivers: openness of access channels and levels of consumer involvement with media. For the next 5-7 years, there will be change on both fronts — but not uniformly. The industry instead will be stamped by consumer bimodality, a coexistence of two types of users with disparate channel requirements. While one consumer segment remains passive in the living room, the other will force radical change in business models in a search for anytime, anywhere content through multiple channels.The tech- and fashion-forward consumer segment will lead us to a world of platform-agnostic content, fluid mobility of media experiences, individualized pricing schemes and an end to the traditional concept of release windows. Figure 1 illustrates the behavioral differences that will lead to the “Generational Chasm” between the passive mass audience (”Massive Passives”) and leading-edge users (divided into two sub-groups: “Gadgetiers” and “Kool Kids”).
Broadcasting & Cable’s spin on the report is that, well, cough cough, IBM is a computer company, so what do you expect? Not wise, B&C. John Eggerton also writes that it could have as easily have been called The Beginning of Television As We Will Come To know It. He’s right, and I think we’d all do well to look at it this way.
Meanwhile, the reaction of Canadian broadcasters has been interesting, because the report says our neighbors to the north will be hardest hit. According to the Globe and Mail, the Canadian television industry is bracing for the worst.
Federal regulations that allow Canadian networks to earn the bulk of their advertising dollars by running domestic commercials on U.S. signals will be useless if audiences start drawing TV shows from the Internet, the report said.The revenue from such advertising is the lifeblood of Canadian networks, often offsetting the cost of domestic productions and local news.
“That advantage will evaporate if alternate sources of content exist,” the IBM research asserts.
“Canadian-based content distributors will need to find compelling ways to bring the customer to them — and thereby, to their advertisers.”
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters has asked the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to regulate video programming on cellphones, ensuring there is still room for domestic content and local advertisers.“It’s about the fundamental business model that has supported Canadian television over the years,” said Glenn O’Farrell, president of the association, which represents CTV, Global, CHUM and other networks.
“The advertising model is very much being put to the test by these new technologies … The question is how effective will it be if Canadian consumers can also access the same programming from non-regulated sources.”
The need to be right
Friday, January 27th, 2006Everybody seems to be writing about Oprah today. And why not? Her apology to viewers for foisting James Frey and his blatantly false “autobiography” on the public through her book club — and then defending the guy when the truth came out — was a remarkable piece of television. This is from today’s Media Notes by Howard Kurtz:
Two weeks after standing by James Frey’s falsified tale of crime and drugs, the talk-show queen reversed herself following a spate of newspaper editorials and columns assailing her credibility.“I made a mistake and I left the impression that the truth does not matter and I am deeply sorry about that,” Winfrey told viewers of her Chicago-based show. “That is not what I believe.” She said she was “really embarrassed,” adding, “To everyone who has challenged me on this issue of truth, you are absolutely right.”
Frey, after an early series of maddeningly vague comments about “embellishments” and the subjectivity of memoirs, acknowledged yesterday for the first time that, in writing “A Million Little Pieces,” he systematically lied.
In fact, being right is more than just some promotional hype; in our litigious society, being wrong carries a very real price tag. Just wait. Somebody will sue Oprah for suffering caused by reading this silly book. She’ll settle, because it’ll be cheaper that going to court. And another attorney will suck some blood money from the deep pockets of somebody else, simply because they can. (Rant: when will we learn that these so-called deep pockets inevitably turn out to be our own?)
But the need to be right is one of the most prevalent in our culture, whether it’s a politician or the barber down the street. Being right reaches obsession levels in some people. Who hasn’t tried to argue with somebody who is always right? And if they’re right, you’re wrong — hell, everybody else is wrong.
This is a fruit of the worship of reason and the human mind, an offspring of the modernist culture that postmodernism is rejecting. At core, people know they’re not always right, and that means they know that nobody else is always right either. Institutional America, however, lives off the illusion of being right, and therein lies a significant conflict.
Acceptance that we’re often wrong is one of the core principles of transparency in media that so many of us covet as the standard of tomorrow. That’s because humility is the opposite of the “Voice of God” pedestal that the marketing of the contemporary press needs in order to continue the status quo.
To the postmodernist, however, the hypocrisy of such a position is an obvious reason to pursue other windows (or at least more windows) through which to view the world.
The voices of Nashville’s cyber community
Thursday, January 26th, 2006Two important events here in Nashville for your consideration.
One, WKRN-TV’s General Manager, Mike Sechrist, has started to blog. It’s really good stuff from a man who runs a TV station and understands what’s taking place in the media world. Put him on your RSS reader; you’ll not be disappointed. Here’s an example from an entry today:
Getting back to Virgil (manager of the local Comcast franchise), I received a letter from him recently saying Comcast was going to “realign” its digital line-up in March. If you don’t have a Comcast digital box yet it won’t matter to you but if you do WKRN’s HD feed will move from channel 180 to channel 231 and our 24 hour weather feed, Nashville WX Channel, will move from channel 185 to channel 245.This is the start of a lot of changes to come with not only cable but satellite as well. Congress has set 2009 as the year we all lose our traditional analog channels. No more 2,4,5,17 and so on. Add this to the loss of traditional revenue streams for local stations, throw in declining audience shares and the internet, and you get some grumpy station managers around town.
The other event is a milestone. Nashville Is Talking, the dual aggregator site maintained by WKRN-TV, recorded its 5,000th post today, just nine months after launching. The local blogging community in Nashville is vibrant and growing (up 800% since May 1st of 2005), and NiT, as it’s lovingly referred to, is one of the big reasons why.
Nashville is talking. Are you listening?
The BBC will be platform-neutral
Thursday, January 26th, 2006Staci Kramer of PaidContent.org is doing her usual stellar job of covering the NATPE conference in Los Angeles and scored a great interview (MP3) with keynoter, BBC Chairman Michael Grade. “On demand is the future,” he told the crowd, and he warned them about working together to create technological standards for an on-demand world. He later told Staci that the only thing people such as himself can do is to remain platform-neutral in their approach to on-demand.
I think that is in the consumers’ interest, in our licensee-fee payers’ interest and it’s in the BBC’s interest. I also happen to believe, in the end, if we’ve learned nothing out of the last 20 years it’s that the public don’t want to be trapped by one piece of proprietary this or proprietary that. They’re going to invest a lot of money in new kit as it comes along … and they want to be sure that what buy, they can get whatever they want from whoever… In the end, consumers will tell the industry that’s the way they want it to go.”
Journalism history in the making
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006A Washington Post discussion panel on the subject of Ethics and Interactivity in the wake of the paper closing blog comments has just concluded. Read the transcript here. Good stuff, but Jay Rosen had the quote of the day.
Try to realize this, everyone. The mentality of one-way, one-to-many media has been accumulating, layer-on-layer for more than 250 years of press history. The dramatic and surprising shift away from those conditions, which we are living though now, is going to be one long, tough, brutal, noisy, wrenching thing; but in the end it is bringing greater democracy to the means of information, and to the people who have always informed us.
UPN/WB merger means, well, more change
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006The merger of the UPN and WB networks to create a single entity known as CW is another sign of the times for broadcasting. While most people are assessing the surface ramifications such as programming, advertising, and the sudden loss of content for a station in many markets, I want to focus on the bigger picture. This is all about the bottom line for two big media players, Viacom and Time Warner. By combining programming resources, they reduce expenses and (hopefully) create a network with stronger programming and better ratings.
In the process, they screw local broadcast companies. Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns former UPN and WB stations in many markets, saw their stock price drop 16% yesterday. “Some of our markets may benefit from the merger, while others may be negatively impacted,” Sinclair CEO David Smith told TV Week.
But here’s the thing. We’re deep into an enormous business disruption for the television industry, and nobody should be surprised by this or anything that happens next. The ship is sinking, people. In some cases, it’s oh so slow, but it’s going down just the same, and these big companies have no choice but to be “creative” in working their spreadsheets. It’s their ballgame. Disruptions in distribution alone are bad news for network affiliates of every stripe. A broadcast tower is a long way now from being the only game in town in terms of distributing television.
And what happens next may be very much “out there.” Given the logic of this deal, why not merge other networks? With a whole slew of new independent stations on the horizon, will Fox News or CNN move in to create broadcast affiliates? How about ESPN broadcast affiliates? Their radio network is doing rather well. What about HGTV, Lifetime or USA? Or how about Current TV moving in to offer affiliation for broadcast stations?
Some are already predicting layoffs, and while that wouldn’t surprise me, neither would it surprise me if some of these new independent stations actually beefed up staff to produce more local news.
The only thing we can count on is change, and while we’re on the subject, let me once again admonish people working in the industry to acquire or hone multimedia skills. Those skills will soon determine your value in the new world.
The resurrection of “God’s” voice
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006TV Week has published an editorial in support of the apparent CBS decision to permanently replace Dan Rather with a single anchor instead of something else. The commentary is actually titled, The Wisdom of the ‘Voice of God’. Oh my.
Les Moonves said a year ago that the single anchor might be an approach whose time had come and gone, but when Sean McManus took over the reins of CBS News, he apparently felt otherwise. He told critics last week that he didn’t see any reason to break the mold. “I think that having one person as your primary anchor is the way to go,” he said.
TV Week says, “We applaud the decision,” but they do not tell us why. Historically, dual anchors don’t work, the magazine claims, but Moonves’ statements of a year ago — and Andrew Heywood’s amplifying comments (here and here) — didn’t suggest a dual anchor combo was the way to go. It was the “Voice of God” concept that both felt was one of the reasons people were turning away from the nightly network newscast. TV Week apparently disagrees with that:
…there is much to be said for a single person as the face of a network news operation, a person viewers turn to-for authoritative reporting and for comfort-when crises arise.
Will it help CBS News in the shrinking pond? Perhaps, but that depends on who they end up recruiting. Will it bring people back to network news? Absolutely not. This is what Heywood (and Moonves, by proxy) was saying, not the silly notion that a dual anchor team is the way to go.
TV Week, we expect better from you than this.
Letting readers choose
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison is experimenting with an interesting concept to bring more people to its traditional newspaper. Between 11am and 4pm each day, users of its Website are given the opportunity to vote on which stories they’d most like to see on the front page of the next day’s paper. Managing Editor Tim Kelley wrote to readers that the paper recognizes the coming transformation in the way people get their news.
Under the “Reader’s Choice” heading, we’ll offer four or five story choices varying day to day from local to national, entertainment to sports. You’ll be able to see immediately how your choice stacks up against others, and check back later for final results.In the paper, we’ll identify the day’s top vote-getter with a “reader’s choice” label. Unless later- breaking, major news displaces it, the reader’s choice typically will appear on the front page.
Critics may resist what they see as a popularity contest undermining traditional news judgment. But we aren’t too worried that you’ll be scribbling up our first draft of history with Paris Hilton’s daily exploits. Our unscientific poll is just another way for you to tell us what you find to be the most important, interesting or vital information of the day.
After all, this IS the Age of Participation.
So what happens to broadcasters?
Tuesday, January 24th, 2006TV Networks and program producers can make more money off downloads of their programming than they can through advertising. That is the remarkable conclusion of a couple of noted researchers and reported today by Diane Mermigas in The Hollywood Reporter. The math is pretty amazing, and it validates what a few of us have been saying for years about the role of the local broadcaster — that the Internet destroys middlemen in the existing value chain of media.
The mass-market acceptance of broadband in the U.S. has tipped the scales back to content producers and packagers, with the proliferation of distributors diluting the de facto gatekeeper strength of television stations, cable and satellite systems, cellular and video telephones, personal digital assistants, personal media players and Internet service providers. That should theoretically boost the economic fortunes of content players, though much will depend on the details of new business models and prevailing of old business models.
Learning to interact in a 2.0 world
Tuesday, January 24th, 2006This is Jeff Jarvis at his best: The ethic of interactivity:
Q: Should there be an expectation of civility in interactivity?A: As much as there is in life.
We see two mistakes in the discussion surrounding the Post blog:
First, too many people judge interactivity by the worst of it, which is rather like refusing to visit New York because you hear there are a few assholes there. This, I think, comes mostly from people who wish they could dismiss interactivity, and the internet and blogs with it. Sorry, but interactivity — and New York — are here to stay.
The second mistake some people make is assuming that the rest of us can’t figure out who the assholes are. With that comes the presumption that we need to be protected from the bozos, that that is media’s (and, in other contexts, government’s) job. People sometimes ask me why I don’t kill stupid comments from various bozos. I reply that I figure most people know they’re bozos and judge them accordingly.
Dayparting scrapped. Lesson learned.
Monday, January 23rd, 2006The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has cancelled its two-year experiment with daypart presentations of its Web content. The idea was spawned by a study that showed how people use the Internet for different things at different times of the day. So every weekday, the look, feel, content and functionality of the home page changed dramatically.
…two years of hard-won experience made it clear that we can’t be all things to all people all the time. People might want to play games or shop or read celebrity gossip, but they weren’t coming to our site for that (well, maybe for the gossip)……In the next few weeks, we’ll switch to using a single home page layout around the clock that, we hope, incorporates the best features from the variant designs we’ve used the past two years.
However, it — like so many other tried and true top/down media concepts — doesn’t work online, because we’ve moved far beyond the “browse” phase of the www. Nobody goes through the home page to get to content anymore. Search engines either take us to pages inside Websites, or RSS delivers them directly to our desktop. As Caroline Little of washingtonpost.com, said, “Coming in through the home page is an old model and coming in sideways is the new method of arrival for most users.”
So the concept was doomed to failure from the start, a victim of the belief that mass media rules apply to all forms of communication. The paper now will focus on its core competency of covering the news and its blogs. With that mission defined, they’ll do well, methinks.
Lesson learned.
(Thanks to PaidContent for the tip.)
Making scents of a dream
Sunday, January 22nd, 2006
One of the great things about living in Tennessee is the abundant wildlife with which we share our space. We live near Percy Priest Lake east of Nashville, and the general area includes lots of wooded patches that are home to deer and other critters, including those that God colored black and white.
Now, Pep� Le Pew is a nocturnal fellow, and last night was a very still night. He must have encountered Eartha Kitt (the neighborhood cat) in the wee hours of the morning, because the stench was overwhelming — so much so that it invaded my sleep.
I was on a cruise ship, and people were overcome with a foul odor. I was apparently the only one who knew it was a skunk, so I set out to find the beast. I saw a portion of his black and white tail sticking out from behind a deck chair, so I tossed a shoe at it. Nothing. I tossed another shoe, and this time I roused the little bastard. Only it wasn’t one; it was two. And they weren’t skunks; they were dogs colored like skunks. They began chasing me, occasionally running backwards to squirt another stink bomb.
Then I woke up. It was 2 a.m. I went to the bathroom to clear away the dream, but I could still smell the stink, which made me wonder if I wasn’t about to pee in the dream. I resolved that I was, indeed, awake and commented to myself how vivid the dream had been, because the smell was still there. I sprayed some air freshener and walked my nose through the mist.
Ahhhh.
I got back in bed convinced that it had, in fact, been a dream, when Allie bolted from under the covers and said, “Holy shit, that damned Pep� Le Pew’s been at it again.”
I laughed. It was a dream augmented by special effects.
Whew, Pep�!
Podcasting turns an important corner
Friday, January 20th, 2006When iTunes announced last year that it had enabled podcast downloads, I called it a major turning point in the development of the podcasting concept. That you can now do the same thing with “video” podcasts is another milestone. But now comes what I believe is the most significant of all, technologies to marry advertising to podcasts during the download process. This significantly raises the price of poker for podcasting and provides a new incentive for mainstream media companies to get into the business.
Here’s Staci Kramer of Paid Content:
Podcast Ad Networks Launch: Kiptronic and Podtrac are now open for business. Podtrac highlights its third-party audience measurement service and its ability to sell individually as well by category; CEO Mark McCrery told ClickZ the company has signed “hundreds of top-ranked podcasts.” Meanwhile, the Kiptronic Podcast Marketplace has an auction-based model; advertisers can target by geography or keyword. Ads are inserted Kiptronic’s dynamically at the point of download.
Bolting from the conversation
Friday, January 20th, 2006The Washington Post’s decision to stop accepting blog comments indefinitely offers a lesson for all of us in how Media 1.0 thinking (top-down, one-way) has no place in a Media 2.0 (interactive, collaborative) world. The Post would have us believe this is all about profanity and personal attacks, which they’ve said they won’t allow, but the deeper issue here is command and control from the mountain top.
Media 2.0 is largely about the conversation. To paraphrase Umair Haque, the media scarcity is attention, and in an economy of attention scarcity, media companies must not be afraid to participate in the conversation, because that’s where the attention is increasingly found. But participating in a conversation is far different than publishing a hopefully perfect journal of the day’s events. It’s raw, unedited and very, very real. And, as Dan Gillmor wrote, you can’t participate in a conversation unless you’re willing to listen.
So the Post’s ombudsman wrote a column that many people felt was blatantly false. Comments on another Post blog pointed this out. The paper removed those comments, which brought about comments about the removal, so the deleted comments were restored. The ombudsman responded in another blog, and commenters went after her there. The paper cried “foul” and made a decision to stop accepting comments altogether.
In a spot-on analysis of this, Haque makes a comparison that’ll make you think:
Let me put this in context. Imagine a DJ who plays a really, really crap track. Everyone stops dancing. What does the DJ do?The point is that the old information asymmetry that dominated media is gone. The connection between the internal and external is live, real-time, and direct. You can’t run away from it, or “manage” it. The DJ can’t say (insert beancounter voice here) “folks, let’s have a meeting, and figure out how to manage your dancing”.
You have to join the conversation - not kill it. You have to not be (how can I put this nicely) so beancounterly. You have to be willing to overturn the orthodox assumption that firms talk, and consumers…well, simply consume.
Human nature being what it is will always produce a number of people who’ll take advantage of an open microphone to shock or insult. When this happens in a group of people — for example, at a party — the people will either shut the guy up or relocate to another room. The party host has the choice to remove the guy and never invite him back, which is much better than shutting down the party and announcing you’ll not have another one. Technology can assist with the former, but the Post chose the latter.
The lesson for any media company that chooses to get involved in the blogosphere is to make up your mind about how you wish to respond to these types of things BEFORE you launch blogs. (Here’s a hint: Don’t be so bloody defensive!) If you fear news as a conversation in any way, then stay with purely one-way strategies and tactics. That’s pretty stupid, I think, because you risk irrelevancy in the new world.