AR&D Reinventing Local Media

In a Vanity Fair article, Buzz Bissinger explains his tirade (tirade here) last week on HBO’s Costas Now against Deadspin blogger Will Leitch. Bissinger later apologized, not for his feelings but for the manner in which he expressed them. It was a classy move.

But the Costas segment was a stunning illustration of the real angst between mainstream sports writers and the sports blogosphere, which is increasingly setting the agenda for all sports reporting these days. As a guy who’s been following this for a long time, I found it painful to watch Bissinger make a fool of himself, and I felt equally uncomfortable watching Costas try and defend the status quo. Both are incredibly smart guys, but they’re blinded by their own perspective.

Costas referred to sports writers with “real credentials and real access.” The comment was obviously meant to separate “real” sports writers from (unreal) bloggers, and this doesn’t get anybody anywhere.

He also referred to the “legitimate complaint” about the sports blogosphere, namely the tone of gratuitous potshots and criticisms. Both Bissinger and Costas used quotes from commenters to make their case, which caused Leitch to note that, “surely we can differentiate between the blogger and the commenters.”

As I’ve written in the past, sports journalism has changed dramatically since Watergate brought to the surface the form of journalism known as “gotcha.” It has gone from entirely cheerleading to some excellent and insightful work by serious writers, be they mainstream or other. There’s still the sense, though, that access to athletes is a gift granted by their owners (yes, they are “owned”), and that this can be a significant conflict of interest, especially when such access crosses from professional to personal. Professional sports leagues are going out of their way to restrict access, because they want to control their message, and the extent to which the mainstream press is forced to go along with this is sad.

One of the very definitions of “news” goes like this: dog bites man, not news; man bites dog, news. So the norm is not news, and therefore when athletes perform according to their gifts and expectations, it doesn’t fit the definition of news. The exceptional athlete — Tiger Woods, for example — is certainly newsworthy, but the PGA’s slogan is “These Guys Are Good.” In that light, a “good” performance isn’t news, but a bad performance is. Yet we rarely see stories when “these guys are bad.”

Hell, show me, shot-by-shot, the 15 that John Daly scored on number 9, because that’s news.

So there is a symbiotic relationship between sports and sports writers, and that’s okay. But that isn’t the only form of sports journalism, for the output of this symbiotic relationship is fair game for observers (and fans), because both (the sport and the pro writer) are on the same pedestal. News about the news is one of the hallmarks of the blogosphere, and it may make the mainstream press uncomfortable, but it is every bit as much “journalism” as that which is published by the pros.

Moreover, I most disagree with the assertion by blogosphere critics (such as Bissinger and Costas) that bloggers are a part of any real or perceived “dumbing down” of the information stream. Any time I hear that, I’m immediately drawn to the Lippmannesque reasonings of colonial thinking, that culture must have an elite class to lead the ignorant and emotionally-driven masses. That is insulting and just plain wrong. The voices from the mass may seem crude to the pedestal dwellers of the culture, but those voices count as much as anyone’s.

In the beginning was the newspaper, and the newspaper was with the people, and the newspaper was the people. And the people, being people, needed a place to put announcements of a legal nature in order to self-govern, so they chose the newspaper. This made sense at one time, but the model continues today, despite two important facts: One, the newspaper is no longer with the people, and, two, there are much more efficient ways to handle such things. Today, the “legals” section remains one of the last, highly profitable (and exclusive) branches of what’s left of the money tree that used to be the American newspaper.

Over the last few years, attempts have been made to remove the exclusive nature of these announcements from the newspaper industry, and the voices are getting louder. In Pennsylvania, a bill is moving through the state senate that would allow such announcements to be distributed through free, community papers, and the slight opening of the door to non-exclusivity is not going over well with Pennsylvania newspapers.

An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer says the opposition is framing their argument as one of public access. Deborah Musselman, director of government affairs for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, told the paper, “The idea was that people have a right to know what their government is up to,” adding that the bill would “make it a lot harder to know what your government is up to because you wouldn’t know where to look to find the information.”

Um, okay.

There’s been some name-calling in the matter, with newspapers being referenced as a “cartel,” and the free dailies being called “junk mail.” There’s a whole lot of money at stake:

Local governments now must place legal notices in a “newspaper of general circulation” in a county. The bill would expand that to include “community papers of mass dissemination” that are distributed free through the mail or delivered by carrier to all households in a political subdivision.

“Right now, the legal-advertising law grants an exclusive monopoly that doesn’t recognize that there are other bona fide options out there,” said Jim Haigh, a consultant to the Mid-Atlantic Community Papers Association, which represents 300 free papers in seven states, about half of them in Pennsylvania. “We are just looking for fair competition.”

Haigh argues that community papers would do a better job of getting the word out. They are sent free to every household in a community, while newspapers require a paid subscription that not everyone has.

The bill has the support of associations representing municipalities and schools, which long for cheaper ad rates.

“We are always looking for ways to get the message out to more individuals, but at the same time to save money,” said Holly M. Fishel, research director at the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors.

Whether this bill passes or not is just a blip in the overall disruption of the mass media model. I’ve yet to hear of any broadcasters getting into the fray, and that’s interesting, because eventually there will be a digital version of all of this. The technology exists today for law firms, school districts and municipalities to publish these themselves, to be aggregated by a smart third-party, and there’s no reason that couldn’t be any local media company.

That’s oversimplified, to be sure. These types of announcements are a part of our various branches of government, so they cannot be considered lightly. There are issues of accessibility to digital media by ALL members of the community, tampering with the announcements, and questions of governmental control of the Web — all things to be seriously weighed and discussed.

But this is another attack on the classifieds armor that used to be a primary revenue support for local newspapers, and it’s hard to believe this one will end pretty either.

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

A stunning development in the game of chicken that Yahoo was playing with Microsoft. After high-level acquisition discussions broke down today, Microsoft closed its collective briefcase, withdrew its offer to acquire Yahoo, and went home. Deal or no deal? No deal.

While most observers are citing price as the issue (Microsoft upped their bid to $33 a share; Yahoo wanted $37), a bigger issue appears to be Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s tactic of cozying up to Google as a way to fight a potential hostile takeover. This drew half of all the text in Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer’s withdrawal letter to Yang:

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:

· First, it would…(encourage)…advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them…

· Given this, it would impair Yahoo’s ability to retain the talented engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our interest in a combination of our companies.

· In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit…

· This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and your search platforms…

· It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search provider that is not already relying on Google’s search services.

Accordingly, your apparent plan to pursue such an arrangement in the event of a proxy contest or exchange offer leads me to the firm decision not to pursue such a path. Instead, I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft’s proposal to acquire Yahoo!.

This is going to be THE big story over the next few days, as people in the know delve into the facts, but the real thing to watch will be the stock prices of both companies come this time Monday. Yahoo’s is likely to tank, which will mean lawsuits from every direction. Hell, in a few days, $33 a share may begin to look like a lot of money.

(Kudos to Michael Arrington, who appears to have broken the story AllthingsD, who broke the story. Thanks, Dale.)

…your daughter says, “but Dad, some guys NEED to have their eyebrows waxed.”

Just shoot me.

When I first began writing and publishing my essays, it followed a period of cultural study that led me to the conclusion that we were at the dawning of the Age of Participation. It’s one of the key concepts of my view of postmodernism/postcolonialism, and I always develop a warm smile when thoughts that I believed were original at the time begin to show up elsewhere. As I’ve posted before, this is a part of touching the unbroken web, and I wouldn’t trade it for all the money in the world.

In watching a documentary on the Doors the other night, John Densmore made a statement about playing some nights at the Whiskey A-Go Go in Los Angeles during the late 60s, where the band really got their break. Densmore said there were some nights when it was magical, “and nobody owns that.” He was describing touching the unbroken web, something all artists have felt at one time or the other.

So when I read or hear about others speaking of an “age” or “period” of participation, I can’t run out and scream, “Hey, you’ve stolen that from me!” All I can do is rejoice that I was privileged enough to “see” the concept as others have and do.

Below is a must-view video from Blip.tv of a speech by Clay Shirky at this year’s Web 2.0 conference. I’m not suggesting that I’m in his league in terms of intelligence or extemporaneous speech, but listen to the absolute brilliance of his experiences with the unbroken web, especially the epiphany with his four-year old daughter.

The Industrial Age is another way of describing the era of cultural modernism, and I agree with Shirky that what we’re witnessing today — participating in today — is something brand new and that the future is very bright as a result of it.

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