AR&D Reinventing Local Media

When upstate New York blogger Johnny Virgil discovered a 1977 JC Penney catalog in the attic of his wife’s grandfather’s home, he found a treasure trove of blog fodder. His entry, Strap in, shut up and hold on. We’re going back., was an instant hit with readers far and wide. As a guy who was an adult in 1977, I can tell you that the piece is a hilarious trip down memory lane. Go and enjoy it.

It was such a hit, however, that people copied the whole blog entry and began emailing it to friends, rather than just sending the link. And of course, it soon became “viral,” and it now looks like Virgil will live forever in that part of cyberspace known as the forwarded email. The problem, of course, is that nobody will know who really wrote it, so he doesn’t even get to enjoy his own 15 minutes of fame.

Ding dang it.

Still, Virgil is good natured about it (the guy’s an online comedian), and agreed to answer some questions via email:

Is Johnny Virgil your real name?

No, it’s a name I took from a CD by one of my favorite artists, Kevin Gilbert. The CD is called “The Shaming of the True” and it’s a rock opera of all things. Unfortunately Kevin is no longer with us. Most people don’t know his name, but he wrote most of Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club.

Let’s start with what’s happened since you first made that blog post. How does it feel to be famous, of sorts?

I don’t feel famous. Who said I’m famous? Sometimes I think, “If only I had a dollar from every person who read that post.” I still wouldn’t be famous, but at least I’d have a new roof on my house.

How many comments did you get and how have you edited them?

I think it has over 650 comments now. I didn’t edit them. I deleted one or two from people who were humor impaired and quite possibly had to wear an orange jumpsuit against their will at some point in their lives. But I usually leave them alone.

Are people still leaving comments?

Yeah, I still get one or two every once in a while.

When did it first start getting passed around via email?

I wrote it in the middle of October, and I think it started going around some time in November. Someone had apparently lifted it wholesale from my blog and neglected to actually mention where it came from.

On one hand, I was pissed off about it because people were stealing it left and right. On the other hand, I wanted to buy the person who started it all a beer, because all of a sudden I was getting 45,000 hits in one day on some post that I cooked off in about 30 minutes.

What kinds of lengths have you gone to in order to maintain your rights?

At first I was doing Google searches to find out where it was posted. Some people even had the balls to change it a little and claim it as their own. I had a few people argue with me about it. It was pretty eye opening. Other people posted it uncredited only because they had no idea where it had actually come from, and they didn’t know how to find out. So I traveled around the internet posting comments, posted links to the original and asked them to stop by for a visit. A few people actually went through the trouble of searching for the original author before posting it, and I appreciated that. Others changed the e-mail forward to either include a link to my site or simply forwarded the URL. That’s when the hits really started coming in.

Why do you think this is so popular?

I’ve done some thinking about that. First off, I think it’s popular because the formula is easy to digest. Funny picture, funny commentary, rinse, repeat. I also think it’s popular because there’s a huge number of people who can relate to it. I was in high school in the late 70’s and I remember the clothes. I wore a bell-bottomed brown velour leisure suit that faded from light tan to dark brown. I had platform loafers and a big white comb in my back pocket. And it was totally normal and fine. I thought I looked great. Time is a funny thing. It’s always fun to laugh at the fads of the past.

What have you learned about the Web from this that you didn’t know before (if anything)?

I learned that some people are scum. No wait, I actually knew that before. I just never had so many of them piss me off at the same time! Seriously, I learned quite a bit about human nature. some people went out of their way to stick up for me and dress down the people who claimed it as their own work. Others were happy to credit the original source, and apologized for posting it. In retrospect, it’s kind of funny. It’s a stupid post on humor blog — it’s not War & Peace. I can’t imagine how a famous author feels when someone does the same thing to him. Or maybe I’m wrong and they just expect it to happen. I didn’t expect people to steal it, but then I didn’t expect the post to become so popular, either.

Do you think you’ll live on forever, because of this?

God, I hope not. I make Windsor chairs. I write fiction. In 200 years, I hope someone will be paying a fortune for one of my hand-made chairs at an auction somewhere because they appreciate the craftsmanship.

On the writing front, at some point I’d like to collect some of the blog posts I’ve written over the years and weave them together into some kind of book. I’ve never been published, and I hope to be.

If excerpts from a JC Penney’s catalog is the best I can do, then tell me now. I’ll save myself some time and just quit writing!

The Web has a way of “discovering” real talent, even though it can be disguised through the forwarded email channel. That it is now being passed around by friends is a testament to Johnny Virgil’s humor, and who knows where it will all lead.

I hope he keeps writing, because he’s a funny fellow.

Two of the top tech observers are drumming a death march for Yahoo in the wake of yesterday’s big announcement that the company had struck a search advertising deal with arch-enemy Google. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Om Malik of GigaOm both think the company has shot itself in the foot (or worse). Arrington:

The deal terms announced with Google appear to be fairly innocent - a non-exclusive arrangement that let’s Yahoo take Google’s ads if and when they choose to, and put them alongside their own ads, and/or other third party ads. But the truth is that this will cause even more advertisers to flee Yahoo’s platform. Which will drive auction-determined ad rates down. Which will drive Yahoo to take more Google ads. Which will…

It’s a vicious cycle and they will have no choice, as a public company, but to rely more and more on Google as time goes on.

Malik echoes Arrington’s feelings in his typically colorful way:

I think this is yet another critical blunder by a company that lost its way back three years ago when then CEO Terry Semel lost interest in the company, putting it on a path of mediocrity. Of course, as one of my gurus once said, in hindsight, everyone is an idiot (or a genius).

And while that might assuage the short term concerns Wall Streeters have, the company is shooting itself in the face with deal. It is a almost like knowing your spouse is going to divorce while standing in the aisle, waiting for the priest.

Arrington went on to argue that this deal hurts more than just Yahoo; it hurts everybody in Silicon Valley, because competition in the search space means better value for publishers. It’s hard to argue with that, but his blind spot — and frankly that of all Valleyites — is their failure to understand the potential for competing with Google at the local level. And to that, I’ll say, “We’ll see.”

For members of the Yahoo newspaper (and TV) consortium, this deal is likely creating some serious stomach churn. The long-term value prop for local media is Yahoo’s reach, which is a tricky beast that has a lot to do with brand and the fickle happiness of users. It’s hard to believe the company can keep up with the relentless pace of web development when it’s struggling with revenue problems downstream. As I have said all along, Yahoo needs the local media companies a whole lot more than the local companies need Yahoo, and this deal makes that even clearer.

So what the deal with Google means is uncertainty but probably not enough to disrupt the relationship at this point.

But the one certainty that the Web brings is change, and I’d be a fool to predict where this is all headed. I will repeat, however, that online revenue growth is guaranteed at the local level, and that the real competitor of all local media companies is Google, the company that Yahoo just snuggled up against.

According to a report in ClickZ, Gawker Media sequentially grew its revenue from feed-driven traffic by 300 percent in Q1 2008. Gawker Sales Chief Chris Batty told ClickZ that the company is now pulling an average CPM of $4 or $5 for its RSS inventory, “a little less than we get on the sites.”

RSS, which stands for “Really Simple Syndication” is a method whereby users can draw content from publishers without being on the publisher’s website. To view content via RSS, you need an RSS reader, such as Google Reader or any of hundreds of other applications. It’s the heart and soul of widgets and other place-based distribution models, but it’s just not a big deal in the U.S.

Thirty-four percent of global respondents to a March social media survey from Universal McCann said they had “ever” subscribed to an RSS feed. That represents a large jump from the previous year’s findings, when the agency found just 15 percent said they had subscribed to a feed. The data were gathered from 17,000 Internet users in 29 countries, aged 16 to 54.

However the U.S. ranks far down on the adoption list, with penetration of only 18.6 percent. That’s tiny compared to RSS-addicted nations like Russia (57 percent adoption), Brazil (55 percent) and China (54 percent). Additionally, of those who access feeds, only 25 percent of U.S. respondents said they do so daily. Another 35 percent said they access them weekly, while 16 percent said feed reading is a monthly endeavor.

The U.S. is down the list — and therefore is missing revenue opportunities — because media companies here don’t care for RSS and don’t promote it. Why? Because we want people to come to OUR sites, not consume our products elsewhere (see: “Disconnect” below). Moreover, most RSS feeds from U.S. media companies are simply “teases” designed to bring people back to the site of origin, so that we can expose them to our display advertising. While this is entirely understandable from a mass marketing perspective, it is self-destructive in the long run, because people will consume media where they want to consume it. The smart media company will acknowledge this, and create ways to make money in that paradigm.

Top dog in the RSS advertising world used to be FeedBurner, until it was purchased by Google. Adsense is now the format, which leaves the experimentation up to companies like Pheedo. I like Pheedo and have always thought they’re a good partner for media companies.

But there are two other ways to make money with RSS that most don’t see. One, you can insert ads as items in a feed. As long as they are marked as advertisements, I see no ethical problem in doing this. Ads delivered this way, show a much higher click-through rate than other forms of web advertising, so it’s a no-brainer for advertisers. We don’t do this, because we’re afraid of RSS and sending people away from our (artificial) grasp.

Two, you can create and sell ad feeds. One day, this will become the new sales insert that the newspaper industry has known for so long. Everybody needs to shop, so access to information about deals and the like is important, even for people who hate commercial interruptions in their lives. Ad feeds are user-friendly, and allow people to peruse them at their own convenience. Again, we don’t do this, because that would mean wholesale adaption of RSS as a delivery mechanism.

Pheedo CEO Bill Fritter told ClickZ that he’s definitely noticed an uptick in consumer use of RSS, and that has created a glut of RSS ad inventory.

Pheedo sells about 50 percent of the inventory it represents directly, and for the rest it pulls a feed from ad partners including MIVA, Ask.com, and Business.com.

“Some of our publishers are seeing their page views from RSS are nearing page views of Web sites,” he said. “The market’s finally there. The growth is finally there.”

I’m not so convinced that it’s “finally there,” but I think that when it is “there,” and local media companies are selling it and serving the ads along with a remnant partner such a Pheedo, we’ll be amazed at what kind of money we can make by letting people have what they want — the ability to view our content wherever they choose.

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

Viacom is now distributing its hit shows “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” via Hulu, the NewsCorp, NBCU portal for television shows online. These two shows are but a crack-in-the-door to all that is Viacom, and one day CBS will get on board, too. Hulu has also announced that it’s adding some PBS shows later this month.

I’ve said all along that the only way this really works is if everybody’s along for the ride, because in this way, Hulu becomes “spectrum with spectrum” — a special corner of the Web that’s used for TV shows. It lets the shows compete with each other as if they were competing on cable or over-the-air. It’s the proper use of the Web for this kind of content, and Hulu is establishing itself as the leader in creating an internet conduit that’ll one day (hell, it already is) be served to your TV set, too.

I’m a regular Hulu user, and I think the experience is great. The emotional season-ender of House tugged at my heartstrings as I watched on my laptop just as it would’ve done in my living room.

I also think that local stations should consider doing something similar for news programming, and with the success of Hulu, we may actually see that kind of cooperation some day. I’m not, however, holding my breath.

It’s almost entertaining to watch, this disconnect between media companies and the Web. In fact, it would be entirely entertaining if so much wasn’t at stake.

Diane Mermigas writes of the problem media moguls are having with the inability to make money with online videos. Former Disney chairman Michael Eisner is frustrated, both as an investor and a participant, and Diane does her best to get her arms around it.

The online ad frontier is fraught with problems–from enraging members of a social network to easy misplacement of ads. (Eisner complained that a male enhancement drug ad was automatically targeted for and appeared with an episode of “Foreign Body.”) Other revenue sources must be created: from sponsorships and transaction-related fees to various forms of sharing revenue and costs.

The answers are found in shifting the online focus from the value of the content and the advertising to the value of connecting to and continuously transacting with the right consumer.

Um, huh? You see, folks, the problem is that the Web collapses every hierarchical attempt to control it, so while traditional media types search for the “formula” that will turn it into a money tree, the Web just sticks its tongue out at them. As a result, the whole media world — including the advertising industry — is unwilling or unable to participate in the very disruption that could save them.

It’s a disconnect, and there’s no other way to explain it.

For example, Zachary Rodgers at ClickZ penned a nice piece last week about signs of growth with RSS advertising. On balance, it’s an encouraging article, but RSS advertising is an uphill, almost vertical climb due to low adoption rates in the U.S. and its inability to serve the flashier types of ads.

…the U.S. ranks far down on the adoption list, with penetration of only 18.6 percent. That’s tiny compared to RSS-addicted nations like Russia (57 percent adoption), Brazil (55 percent) and China (54 percent). Additionally, of those who access feeds, only 25 percent of U.S. respondents said they do so daily. Another 35 percent said they access them weekly, while 16 percent said feed reading is a monthly endeavor.

The reason the U.S. lags in this arena — as it does with mobile technology — is that the quo wants to protect its status, so it is reluctant to move through even obvious doors. RSS isn’t huge in this country, because the media companies that could benefit most from it refuse to promote it or use it as anything other than a way to draw people back to the walled gardens they know so well. RSS 2.0 is a real communications marvel, but it will never reach its potential until media companies begin to use it and explore its possibilities.

Dave Winer is one of those web geniuses who mainstream people don’t like (or refuse) to hear, but he speaks the truth regarding the Web. One of his core teachings is this: “People come back to places that send them away.” That makes no sense whatsoever to traditional media people, but it is, in fact, what “works” on the Web. Google practices it every day, and so do Yahoo and other forms of quality aggregators. And yet media companies are reluctant to offer outbound links to help users with stories for fear of driving them away.

Like I said. It’s a disconnect.

The Supreme Court decision earlier this week that gave for-profit fantasy baseball league sites the right to use the names of real players without paying a licensing fee is much bigger than it appears on the surface. It’s a pro-consumer vote by the court, and one that puts a big monkey wrench in the efforts of professional leagues — regardless of the sport — to frame EVERYTHING associated with their business as under their control.

You could almost sense a collective smile from media companies, who’ve seen their access to professional sports diminish to the point where the leagues are basically saying, “We don’t want or need you anymore.” This decision opens the door to create applications that serve the same purpose as cozying up to the leagues in the first place — the ability to serve advertising targeting a young and male audience.

Oops!

“Billions of dollars in licensing fees” are at stake, if you believe Major League Baseball’s argument, which was supported by the National Football League, the National Basketball Assn. and the National Hockey League. I don’t think it’s as much about licensing fees as it is about advertising. These leagues not only want to control everything about their sports (it’s their business), but they also want to control any ancillary access to potential profits. Sports isn’t about sports anymore; it’s all about the money.

My heart bleeds for professional sports. Really.

I’m a little late to the game on this one, but…

In 2004, Chicago Sun-Times religion writer Cathleen Falsani interviewed freshman state legislator Barack Obama about his spiritual beliefs. Earlier this year, she republished the entire interview on her blog, and I just read it this morning. Fascinating stuff, and it explains his connection with both Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger. Of course, he’s had to distance himself from these folks now, and one can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened in those early primaries had his relationship with these two — and their inflammatory rhetoric — been made public sooner. Most pundits credited Hillary’s success in later primaries to the votes of women seeking representation, but I think — rightly or wrongly — Obama’s connection with these two men played a role.

Still, this interview provides an intimate look inside the spiritual beliefs of a man who may be President, and it’s a worthwhile read. I found myself nodding in agreement with much of what he said, and I think he was remarkably (and refreshingly) candid.

I hope that from time-to-time you are able to step back from the chaos that seems to be enveloping the media world of late to think about the remarkable opportunities that are before us. We’re living in a new Gutenberg moment, and I hope we don’t miss the forest for the trees.

From a memo to Tribune employees by Sam Zell and Randy Michaels:

What has become clear as we have gotten intimately familiar with the business is that the model for newspapers no longer works. Supply and demand are not in balance, and that manifests itself in two ways:

1. We are not giving readers what they want, and
2. We are printing bigger papers than we can afford to print

First, our publishing business — and to reiterate, it IS a business — needs to retool itself to a customer-centric model. We have now reviewed dozens of reader studies done by Tribune over the years, and they present clear and consistent findings. Readers want:

* Unbiased, honest journalism
* LOCAL consumer and community news
* Maps, graphics, lists, ranking and stats

Some of our papers do some of these things well, and some of our papers do them better than others. But, ALL of our papers need to improve in this area. We’re in the business of satisfying customers, and we WILL respond to what they say they want.

From an interview that Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer did with the Washington Post:

What is your outlook for the future of media?

In the next 10 years, the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down — my opinion.

Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.

10 years?

Yeah. If it’s 14 or if it’s 8, it’s immaterial to my fundamental point. . . . If we want TV to be more interactive, you’ll deliver it over an IP network. I mean, it’s sort of funny today. My son will stay up all night basically playing Xbox Live with friends that are in various parts of the world, and yet I can’t sit there in front of the TV and have the same kind of a social interaction around my favorite basketball game or golf match. It’s just because one of these things is delivered over an IP network and the other is not. . . .

Also in the world of 10 years from now, there are going to be far more producers of content than exist today. We’ve already started to see that certainly in the online world, but we’ve just scratched the surface. . . . I always take my favorite case: I grew up in Detroit. I went to a place called Detroit Country Day School. They’ve got a great basketball team. Why can’t I sit in front of my television and watch the Country Day basketball game when I know darn well it’s being video-recorded at all times? It’s there. It’s just not easy to navigate to.

While these thoughts are terrifying, they are at the same time, exciting. Many print people are dismissing Balmer’s predictions, and I agree that those who make absolute prophecies tend to be wrong far more often than they’re right (2018? I’m not so sure). They point to the fact that free dailies are going like gangbusters in Europe, and that global newspaper circulation is trending upwards. We’ll see.

Regardless, these are incredible times in which we live.

Borrell’s latest data (see below) shows that nearly six in ten local media revenue dollars are going to outside web pureplay companies. Add to that the reality that nearly all of the national online revenue goes to the top ten sites in terms of audience, and you can see that there’s something inherently wrong with traditional media’s approach to online advertising. At this week’s RTNDA backgrounder in Chicago, I heard over and over again that web revenue accounts for less that 5% of a station’s overall revenue, so it’s hard to motivate people to do the job of selling online.

I am increasingly convinced that this is due to the blending of two ad metaphors that don’t belong together, and until this is addressed and remedied, we’re going to continue to flounder online.

The Page Metaphor — the paradigm upon which the print industry is based. It’s understandable that this would form our foundational understanding of the Web and its sites. After all, early iterations of the Web were only text-friendly, so a metaphor was needed, some fundamental way of understanding what was seen in a browser. The reality, however, is that web documents aren’t necessarily pages, so entrepreneurs not bound by this metaphor have been able to do remarkable things.

Most of the sales terms used to sell online display advertising come from the newspaper business: the idea of a fold, valuing ads based on location on the page, banners, skyscrapers, etc. In such a metaphor, tactics used to grow revenue demand the creation of more pages and that “driving” people to interior pages is the logical thing to do from a business perspective. Unfortunately, many media companies find themselves hitting a wall, because content for all those pages doesn’t grow on trees, and there’s increasing evidence that digging through “pages” isn’t the way consumers want to engage online media.

The Static Audience Metaphor — the paradigm upon which the broadcast industry is based. As broadcasting matured — and audiences were abundant — the ad industry decided (and broadcasters went along) that a stable mechanism (metric) could be created using Arbitron or Nielsen audience estimates. Since audiences were very large, it made no sense to use a cost-per-person measurement, and so was born the CPM or “cost per thousand (persons)” method of pricing ads. The foundational necessity for this method is an audience that is passive, static and stable.

This model has been with us for a long time, and it’s something everybody in traditional media understands. When the Web came along, it was natural to view it through this metaphor. Hell, we’re all lazy, and if we could simply transfer the CPM model from one to the other, it would make life so much easier. Unfortunately, web audiences are not only smaller, the measurements aren’t based in estimates; they’re precise to a fault. And the bigger the site, the more reliable the numbers, which helps explain the ad world’s inclination to the top ten sites in terms of reach.

Moreover, web “audiences” are fluid, like a river flowing through the media landscape, picking up bits and pieces of the flora and fauna along its path. Like the audience, our news products need to be river-like, but that’s another story. The point is that the metaphor of a static audience is simply wishful thinking when it comes to the Web.

And the problem, of course, is that the Web is neither print nor broadcasting, and it certainly isn’t enough of a combination of the two to justify what we have today. The existing ad world — with its vast agencies and creative types — wants needs a stable mechanism within which to play, but from both structural and practical perspectives, the Web resists such bonds. Those media companies who are making serious money online have been able to cut themselves free from these metaphors and through hard work, outperform everybody else.

We’re all talking about culture changes within our newsrooms, whether it’s print or broadcast, but until there is a similar culture change within the business side, we’ll likely just spin our wheels. The local media company of the future will be web-centric, but not until making money online fits the medium. What we need is a Web Metaphor.

The Radio and Television News Directors Association quietly demonstrated much-needed leadership this week by bringing together broadcast news executives and journalists for a “background only” session to discuss the serious challenges facing the news business. It wasn’t a meeting of CEOs or business types; it was news people talking about what they can do to help themselves and each other in the wake of relentless expense reductions and layoffs.

With the war museum of the McCormick Foundation in Wheaton Illinois as a backdrop and the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Edward R. Murrow’s famous “wires and lights in a box” RTNDA speech as inspiration, attendees spoke of challenges and brainstormed ideas to overcome them.

The off-the-record nature of the event prohibits me from identifying conference participants or attributing quotes to anyone at this time. The RTNDA hasn’t fully decided how the information will be disseminated, but watch for something from them perhaps this fall. The idea is to create a plan exploring general principles that need to be preserved. That plan will go to the RTNDA board and then to general membership.

Everyone, I’m sure, came away with their own thoughts, for we tend to “hear” only what we’re capable of hearing, based on our own background and experience. For me, the gathering was a fascinating demonstration of the deep longing to hang onto the past, while reluctantly acknowledging that such clinging may not be possible. The clash of the old and the new was visibly present in the room, although the new was represented more by pain of the old than a physical presence. This clearing of the air I view as significant and healthy.

This “summit” was in many ways a visible demonstration of a modern, colonialist (I’m smart…you need me) institution trying to stay relevant in an increasingly participatory, postmodern culture. That was evident in attempts to maintain the status quo, while admitting that the quo may have lost its status.

After several scripted sessions, we broke into groups to tackle specific issues and make recommendations.

We admitted we have an audience problem and that we may have actually fed that problem. There is nothing new about our news programs, and many employees don’t even watch. Yet, we continue to do the same thing, and this we agreed makes no sense. We agreed that we need to go where people are today and not try and make them come to us. There was a sense that we’ve gotten away from “real” journalism and are morphing into a utility that may not be relevant to the people in our communities. At the same time, there was an acknowledgement that there is a great deal of really good work being done in the industry, especially during times of crisis or breaking news. We need to research the people formerly known as the audience (TPFKATA), because we’re just not smart about how people are consuming media these days.

While conceding that our product has strengths, we agreed that it needs experimentation on-the-air and that the repurposing of that for other media forms is self-destructive. We talked about presenting news in a raw form during working hours (Continuous News) and how well that serves the audience at work. As such, we felt that formats other than the “finished product” concept of a newscast might better serve the information needs of the community. We asked if personalities will drive the news presentation of tomorrow and discussed the role of “citizen contributors” to the professional news organization.

We agreed that news departments must get involved in the business side of television stations, and I found this to be the most refreshing discussion of the entire summit. We’re smart people and while it’s necessary that sales not dictate what happens on-air, there was a strong sense that we may be able to make valuable contributions on the sales side as well as the content side of our business. At several points, there was discussion about lowering the wall of separation between news and sales while maintaining the integrity of newscasts, although no one knew exactly how this could be done. We’re comfortable with news-as-a-profit-center, but we feel helpless that station sales people seem to be having difficulty selling it.

One of the recommendations that bears repeating is that we need to prepare for the day when we don’t have a network affiliation any more.

In discussing our future approach to journalism, there was much talk about definitions and that perhaps we need a new definition of “news” itself. The terms “objective,” “fairness” and “balance” all need clear definitions. The team assigned to this area felt that anything not “objective” should be clearly labeled as such, but that “analysis” and “opinion” have their place. We need to get out of the pack mentality that seems to be driven by a “punditocracy” and begin to think for ourselves.

There was a great deal of discussion about the need for training and an acknowledgement that our industry has historically been very bad at this. I heard the term “culture change” many times and that everyone — from employees to executives — needs an immediate education in how other forms of media work. This is something the RTNDA will take an active role in implementing, I’m sure.

Like everybody else in media, the associations that represent them are struggling. The RTNDA is dealing with a shrinking membership and declines in convention attendance and magazine advertising, so they are as eager to figure this stuff out as the next guy. Look for a name change for them in the near future, as they come to grips with the reality that an organization named “Radio and Television News Directors Association” might be too narrow to represent the paradigm changes before us.

My hat’s off to the RTNDA and the McCormick Foundation for arranging this event. That we are in the midst of a new “Gutenberg moment” is becoming more evident every day, and it was truly encouraging to hear those directly involved in the broadcast news business honestly talk about it and what to do about it.

Murrow would’ve been proud.

(First published in AR&D’s Media 2.0 newsletter)

(UPDATE: Deborah Potter has posted her thoughts)

I want to take a moment to mark the passing of Lorenzo Odone, the namesake of the movie “Lorenzo’s Oil.” He passed away this week, one day following his 30th birthday, which is at least 20 more years than he was given by doctors at the time of his diagnosis at age 6 with adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD.

The story of Lorenzo’s oil (which is now the essential treatment for ALD) is a remarkable example of what can happen if lay people get involved in science, and it’s one of the illustrations I use to express hope in a world where knowledge is free. Odone’s parents proved that the needs of parents are different than the needs of scientists, and this paved the way for their remarkable discovery. They “became” scientists, experts in the human processing of enzymes. They were driven by the need to save their son’s life instead of accepting the death sentence that science gave them. That Lorenzo lived to be 30 years old is a testament to their efforts, to say nothing about what their work gave to other children with this awful disease.

Within the lofty towers of medicine and medical research, Lorenzo Odone’s suffering was sad but nothing more. With the right amount of money — and a compelling reason to study the disease — medicine would’ve eventually discovered the same thing. The Odones proved that the reason to study is more important that the money required for the research, and it is in this area that science continues to fail humankind. Popular ailments get the attention and the money, and that’s the flaw in the system.

However, if enough humans with a pressing need can probe deeply enough — regardless of what the institution of medicine says can or “should” be done — I think we’d be amazed at what could happen.

R.I.P., Lorenzo. Gone but not forgotten.

Don’t miss Jack Shafer’s follow-up to previous pieces about Michael Crichton’s 1993 predictions of the demise of mass media. It’s a worthwhile read:

As we pass his prediction’s 15-year anniversary, I’ve got to declare advantage Crichton. Rot afflicts the newspaper industry, which is shedding staff, circulation, and revenues. It’s gotten so bad in newspaperville that some people want Google to buy the Times and run it as a charity! Evening news viewership continues to evaporate, and while the mass media aren’t going extinct tomorrow, Crichton’s original observations about the media future now ring more true than false. Ask any journalist.

Crichton’s 1993 prophecies shocked the media world at the time, and he was certainly off by several years. Nevertheless, I agree with Shafter that it’s “advantage Crichton” at this point.

The “mass” is the problem, because the ability to communicate on a large scale has been separated from the “special” application formerly required, as former FCC Chairman Michael Powell so brilliantly observed in a 2004 Silicon Valley discussion.

Now to be a phone company, you don’t have to weave tightly the voice service into the infrastructure. You can ride it on top of the infrastructure. So if you’re a Vonage, you own no infrastructure. You own no trucks. You roll to no one’s house. They turn voice into a application and shoot it across one of these platforms. And, suddenly, you’re in your business.

And that’s why if you’re the music industry, you’re scared. And if you’re the television studio, movie industry, you’re scared. And if you’re an incumbent infrastructure carrier, you’d better be scared. Because this application separation is the most important paradigm shift in the history of communications, and will change things forever. . . . I have no problem if a big and venerable company no longer exists tomorrow, as long as that value is transferred somewhere else in the economy.

Powell was referring to the telephone business, but the paradigm shift about which he spoke applies to every form of communications today. Couple that with the rise of personal media and you have Crichton’s disappearing mass.

This is why it’s so important for all local media companies to understand what business we’re in. We’re not newspapers, television stations and radio stations; we’re all in the information and entertainment business. If we approach tomorrow “only” as a TV station, for example, we’re living in the problem of disappearing mass and, therefore, completely missing the possibilities.