A noteworthy event in the new media world took place this week with the launch of a daily webcast by The Star-Ledger in New Jersey. Noteworthy, not because it was another webcast, but because Jeff Jarvis and Michael Rosenblum have been involved. It naturally has gotten press in both the blogosphere and elsewhere, and this has not gone over well with the people in broadcasting. We get all defensive when a newspaper tries to do television, and this tends to bring out some of the worst kinds of condescension.

The basics are these: The paper hired Rosenblum at the behest of Jarvis, who took various members of the news department through his VJ boot camp. Rosenblum is a lightning rod in the local television business — mostly among photographers — because they feel he’s trying to take their jobs away. This is all couched in deep concern for the “quality” of television news, but it’s really just fear in the guise of anger.

So when Lost Remote writer Don Day went after the webcast as being just another boring newspaper webcast, it brought out comments both helpful and hurtful. Despite the negative tone of some of the commenters, people from the paper got in on the conversation and took the criticism as constructive. Good for them.

As webcasts go, this one isn’t bad, and it’ll only get better. The evidence suggests these things don’t “work” in terms of gathering an enough audience to justify the expense, but let’s wait and see. I was pretty pumped with the efforts of the Roanoke Times, but that didn’t last. The problem, I think, isn’t the quality; it’s that the web audience for news isn’t best served by this method. I can consume the news (at work) a lot quicker myself than by having somebody read it to me. Besides, there’s that “audio in the cubicle” thing.

But the issues of whether it’s good or not and whether it will work for the Star Ledger or not are overshadowed, in my opinion, by this continuing mindset that only broadcasters can do television or do television right. This is called contempt prior to investigation. Let’s see what happens in Jersey before passing judgment.

The first comment in the Lost Remote story was from someone impersonating Michael Rosenblum. It was taken down by the site’s manager, Cory Bergman, something he rarely does. Michael is a friend of mine, so consider the source here, but I’m pretty sick of the embarrassing levels to which some of these illiterate and ignorant people will stoop to vilify a guy who’s changing the way television is being created. And those changes are making the big time, too.

Mark Glaser wrote today about a simple kicker story that made NBC Nightly News last Saturday. It was a story about a little penguin that was created for the Web by an experienced NBC producer and an associate producer. That’s right, a producer. Not a cast of union thousands. Just a producer. Romenesko hit the angle of a web story moving to Nightly News, but Glaser’s article points out something even more significant.

The penguin story began as a web package created and reported by “Nightly News” producer Clare Duffy. She and an associate producer on the show shot, wrote and edited the piece a few weeks before. As she had done in several other web stories, Duffy narrated and even appeared in a short standup.

Even more remarkable: Though Duffy has been producing for “Nightly” for years (and even appeared in on-air crosstalks when she worked in Moscow 18 years ago), she began shooting and editing only this spring, after a few weeks of on-the-job training, and in addition to her usual day job as a traditional “Nightly News” producer.

So here we have a producer (of all people) shooting, writing, editing and appearing on camera, and it made it to NBC Nightly News! Oh, the immorality of it all!

Folks, get over yourselves. In a few more years, we’ll all be doing video the same way. Those who refuse will cling to their Betacams all the way to the bottom of the tar pits.

In one of the smartest traditional media moves I’ve seen in recent years, Gannett has apparently bought into the live-streaming company Mogulus with a $10 million investment. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch is reporting the deal, and I think it’s pretty huge. Mogulus is a marvelous piece of technology that allows anyone with an air card or wireless connection to stream a live video signal to the Web. Rather than try and invent its own solution, Gannett has wisely gone after the market leader, and this portends good things for both Mogulus and Gannett.

Mogulus allows upstart video bloggers like Sarah Austin to host live video shows on a shoestring budget. But it also facilitates serious journalism. In May, for example, controversial statements made by Hillary Clinton on a Mogulus stream led to nationwide media coverage.

Gannett gets this. And i assume they’ll find ways to enable their reporters around the world to start using Mogulus to get video footage to the web as fast as possible when news breaks.

The Web has become increasingly video-centric as bandwidth has permitted it, and live is the next real challenge. YouTube is said to be working on a live solution. But Mogulus already does it well, so look for the their technology to be built into Gannett’s many traditional sites. And, perhaps more importantly, Gannett will be involved in the streaming of videos that go beyond its own traditional wants and needs, so it’s really a very smart investment for the company.

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.

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.

I’m coming up for air from a few days of writer’s block, and I think it’s because there’s just so much to write about these days. The moment I start concentrating in one area, something even more compelling pops up. The bane of bloggers isn’t a lack of things to say; it’s having too much to say.

So I’m just going to go through some things quickly, beginning with the networks getting together to offer a video-on-demand service that encourages people to not use TiVo. The point? They want those same people to watch the ads! Call me a nut, but this is too little, too late.

The business of The New York Times offering an API for its content is intriguing and smart. I hope it sends a message to other companies, and while I fully endorse the concept, it’s still about keeping users inside the walls of The Times. We’ll see.

One of the brightest minds in media, Jack Myers, took a shot at media company ownership this week in his Media Business Report. I’ve been saying this kind of thing for a long time, but Myers is above my pay grade, so his commentary carries significant weight.

…most executives remain committed to outdated and dangerous mass-media-dependent economic models. Media companies today - even the largest digital media companies - are in danger of following the railroad industry model and becoming Industrial Age mass distribution vehicles rather than Relationship Age™ interactive brand and human connectors.

Nice, and absolutely spot-on.

The L.A. Times painted a chilling picture of the future of television in an article called Broadcast Networks Under Siege that examines the shocking ratings’ declines in May.

Broadcasting, simply put, isn’t casting broadly anymore. As the sweep suggests, the TV networks are losing not just their viewers but also their sense of specialness. They’re becoming just the lowest numbers on the multichannel dial, rather than the last outposts of mass culture. It’s true that this evolution has been happening for years, but this year a tipping point was reached, a Rubicon crossed. Broadcast exceptionalism — its supposed immunity from the market forces afflicting all other media — is finally dead.

Right, and the problem is that tipping point is, while acknowledged, problematic in terms of reacting, because we’re deep into a cycle of expense reduction. Broadcasting still makes a lot of money ($70 billion last year?), and more eyes are focused on salvaging that than actually responding to technology and changing consumer behavior. It’s a tough place to be.

Finally, there’s this gem from Robert Lichter in the American Journalism Review:

“I think there’s a feeling that journalists have overstepped their boundaries,” he says. “People don’t look on [journalists] the way journalists like to view themselves – as the public’s tribune, speaking truth to power, standing up for the little guy. They don’t look like the little guy anymore. They’re part of the celebrity culture.” Increasingly, he says, “people like the news but hate the news media.”

Go read the whole article by Paul Fahri. It’s filled with lots of good stuff that I’d love to comment about. However, I’ve got this writer’s block, see?

An excellent article by the BBC nails the problem many media companies are having trying to move the “frequency” needle in their efforts to build a sustainable mass for marketing.

Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.

Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.

The information comes from usability guru Jakob Nielsen, who says most people are “hot potato” driven and just want to get a specific task completed. That’s not good news for sites who want people to explore and discover.

“The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment,” Dr Nielsen told BBC News.

Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said.

This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.

“Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so,” said Dr Nielsen.

“People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience,” he said.

Media companies would do well to pay attention here, for this is yet another indication that the portal website concept is sinking deeper into the tar pits.

I spend a great deal of time challenging my assumptions, as most of you know. It’s a part of the pomo in me, I guess, but I find the practice useful in times like these, especially in the world of media. And I do a lot of this at 30,000 feet. Perhaps it’s the view. Perhaps it’s the altitude. Perhaps it’s how insignificant I feel up there among the clouds, for insignificance is a fine form of humility that helps keep me balanced.

To be a television broadcaster, one requires a special license. Those suckers are scarce, so it stands to reason that everything about TV would be determined by those in TV. It is, after all, their little corner of the world.

To be a newspaper, one needs a printing press or a ton of cash. That makes newspapers scarce, so it also stands to reason that everything about the newspaper business would be determined by those in it. You wouldn’t go to Kroger to ask how to run a newspaper, right?

But that’s all different on the Web. The Web and all its intricate applications were created by the tech community. Every piece of software solves a problem that the nerds of the world have discovered, and since the only license you need to create things for the Web is one’s own creativity, the growth and development of the Web and its applications has been at light speed.

It’s into this world that traditional media companies have come to do business, but here’s the fundamental problem: we want everything done our way, and that’s not necessarily the way of the Web.

In the early days, the Web consisted of static sites built by static HTML pages. This was the era of the browser, when people “traveled” from point A to point B to “discover” the world that was out there. AOL made it easy by putting a form of “everything” inside its walled garden, but eventually, most people grew tired of the training wheels.

Search basically supplanted browsing, but traditional media companies never adapted. We stayed put, and so began a serious disconnect with reality. Since we liked static sites (they served our needs well, thank you very much), we saw no reason to move on, and when the Live Web came along with its unbundled content and interactive applications, we were trapped in the past. The extent to which this continues today is remarkable, especially since the Web has now moved past search and into the world of subscribe.

So here are a couple of fundamental mistakes that most media companies make in their assumptions:

One, we don’t actually “browse” websites, and we never have. The browser sits on your desktop and brings documents or portions of documents TO YOU. These documents may reside in code form on distant servers, but your browser doesn’t “go” anywhere; it brings everything to you.

This is such an important web fundamental to understand, because it will help you recognize what’s taking place in the unbundled world of the Live Web. Our browser can now bring a little from here and a little from there, all depending on what we want, and this understanding will be critical as the Web moves to its next iteration, the Semantic Web.

Two, the Web is no respecter of sites — all are just points in the maze. Just because you’re a big, bad media company doesn’t mean that you have any special place online. There’s nothing special about your URL that makes you different than any other URL, in the eyes of the Web.

The algorithms that Google uses to rank sites respect the amount of content that is “under” that URL, but they also deeply respect inbound links, because that is viewed as more important than just size. Yahoo may be an enormous “site,” residing on multiple servers, but its URL is just a URL, and the structure of the Web treats it no differently than any other. This is the central factor in Google’s use of the entire Web as its platform. More URLs are better than just one, so Google encourages the growth and development of sites, and monetizes them for builders and owners through its brilliant Adsense program.

The above is part of why I keep encouraging the NAB and other organizations to bring the tech community into its conferences about the future. We’re blinded by our online business models, but the nerds of the world — those people who actually built the Web — aren’t so encumbered, and it’s about time we started listening to them.

The unveiling of Google’s new “Friend Connect” program this week is very big news that must not be overlooked by local media companies as we work to become more web-centric. Friend Connect is the latest from Google’s “Open Social” project, which is designed to allow users to aggregate and take with them various important aspects of social networking sites. The logic is simple (and typical Google): the walled-garden approach to the Web is archaic. What’s needed is portability.

So as MySpace and Facebook duke it out to see who can gather the most users, Google says “let’s make it possible for people to take social elements with them wherever they go (if they wish).” To Google, the Web is the platform. To Facebook, for example, Facebook is the platform. This, Google argues, is limiting, so the Open Social project is a natural extension of the Google model.

Open Social treats elements of social networking like widgets (Google’s term is “gadgets”) that can be moved anywhere. Software developers can use the “open” aspects of the project to create gadgets that can be used by anyone on any site anywhere. Friend Connect makes this possible, and local media sites need to jump in as soon as we can. Google is moving slowly with the project, they say, so they can study potential privacy ramifications, among other things.

Google provides the code, which can be embedded anywhere on your pages via iFrames (code that displays, essentially, a site within a site). When completed, users are able to interact with your content socially by inviting others within their established social networks into your site, ranking stories, sharing comments, and meeting new friends. Publishers who use Friend Connect don’t have access to the data involved, but that shouldn’t stop people from using it. In its introductory materials, Google concludes by saying “Everyone wins in a friend connected web:

• You, the site owner - Google Friend Connect gives you a snippet of code that, when put into your site, will equip the site with social features, including the ability to run third-party social applications. Moreover, it enables your visitors to log in with existing credentials, see who among their friends is already registered at that site. It also gives them one-click access to invite friends from their existing friends lists on other sites, such as Facebook or orkut.
• Your site’s visitors - Visitors no longer need to create a new account or develop yet another friends list just to use the social applications on your site. We create the infrastructure that allows one login to be used across multiple sites and the ability to reuse existing friend relationships that the visitor has already established elsewhere.
• OpenSocial developers - With Google Friend Connect, any website on the web can become an OpenSocial container. Their social applications can now run on social networking sites and anywhere else on the web that uses Google Friend Connect. By placing these applications on sites where users already visit, these application will be seen and used by more users more often.
• Social networks - With Google Friend Connect, social networks thrive as hubs of activity while giving their users more opportunities to bring their friend relationships to other websites while simultaneously bringing their friends and activities from outside the social network back in — with people having the ability to publish their activities across the web into the activity streams of their social networks.

However, not all observers are impressed. Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web thinks the Google initiative simply buries social connections in a “dark little box” and dismisses privacy concerns along the way.

Google could have worked with other large companies and with the creators of these standards (some are in the Data Portability Working Group that Google joined, for example) to tackle the hard questions around data exposure, integration and privacy. Instead they are pushing their Open Social standard around in an iframe. Easy is very good, but co-operation could have come up with something better than this.

Kirkpatrick and others are also noting that the service isn’t widely available yet and that Google is limiting access in order to let others help them build it.

Still, it’s hard to argue with the essence of what’s taking place here, and Google’s involvement will accelerate the work of others in developing social portability. MySpace (Data Availability) and Facebook (Connect) are both trying to accomplish similar goals, but both want to be THE platform leading the charge. Google (again) takes a bigger view and says the Web itself is the platform, describing Friend Connect as a form of “social plumbing” for the Web.

And the message to media companies is clear: we need to be in this space in ways beyond providing simple content widgets that can be swapped and shared. We need to be developing gadgets under the Open Social standards, so that we can participate even beyond just bringing “social” to our sites.

After all, “social” is still largely “local,” and that means opportunities beyond that which the big platforms currently provide.

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.

Click To Play

A web application for realtors that’s been around awhile challenges the traditional media company role (and anybody else’s, for that matter) in the creation of hyperlocal information sites. Those media companies trying to execute a hyperlocal strategy will likely find Connecting Neighbors websites already in place in at least some of the communities they’re trying to reach. Connecting Neighbors targets neighborhoods and operates 14,000 websites across the country.

In a remarkable example of how anybody can be a media company today, the sites are managed and sponsored by realtors, who use them to mine for potential clients. While declining to provide site statistics, Connecting Neighbors Marketing Manager Lisa Knight told me that the sites do very well, especially with a sponsor who dedicates time and resources to marketing it within the neighborhood. Simple yard signs (like the one pictured on the right in Huntsville, Alabama), postcards and word-of-mouth are all it takes.

Connecting Neighbors offers you the opportunity to become the exclusive Neighborhood Expert in your targeted market, while locking out your competitors. Begin building relationships in your market today!

The sites are simple and spartan, but packed with useful information and opportunities for user-generated content. There are publisher disclaimers throughout the site where users interact, just like you’d find with any other media company. Classifieds are free, local news comes via Topix.net (note: your local news is likely being presented on these sites via Topix), a directory, recipes, lots of referrals and links, and the general “feel” of a community site. The difference is that it’s run by a realtor who’s using it to mine for clients. How terribly smart!

A few sites serve communities beyond just a neighborhood, and the company has experimented with aggregating neighborhoods. Some of the content is provided by feeds, but the quality of the sponsor’s marketing is what makes the difference in generating content from residents of the neighborhood.

The price to the sponsor varies and is based on the number (and in some cases, the prices) of homes in the neighborhood being served and the services the sponsor chooses to offer. “On average, our one time setup fee is $1.65 per home,” added Ms. Knight, “and on average our monthly hosting fee is $0.09 per home.” The Connecting Neighbors website lists the following options:

• A Neighborhood Website that allows residents to connect with one another, read community news, post free classified ads, share pictures, and more.
• A Neighborhood Newsletter that features information specific to the neighborhood and is emailed to residents each month.
• A personal Neighborhood Marketing Coach assigned to help announce and promote the program to neighborhood residents.
• Quickshow multimedia presentations to engage and welcome residents to their Neighborhood Website.
• MLS data integration (where available) to constantly provide up-to-date real estate information.
• Relationship Manager feature (where available) for Members to manage all of their communications with their new prospects!

This provides two important lessons for media companies. One, anybody can be a media company today. Any. Body. I have been harping on this for years, but those of us in “professional” media feel we can take our time in exploring niches, when we really can’t. The discovery of a company such as Connecting Neighbors, to me, is like getting to the end of a voyage to plant a flag on some distant land only to discover there’s at least one other flag already there. Two, the people formerly known as the advertisers are spending money that used to go to us in order to bypass (expensive) filters and speak directly to potential customers, something about which I have also written in the past.

We may look at these sites and feel a sense of well being, because they’re not “up to our standards” or they don’t carry “a trusted brand,” but in the end it’s all about meeting information needs. Connecting Neighbors does that well, and the users (a.k.a. the people formerly known as the audience) could give a hoot if it’s sponsored by a realtor or not. Moreover, if a media company did this, they’d likely look to realtors, among others, to sponsor them the moment they were launched.

The message here is loud and clear: certain well-funded advertisers don’t need us anymore.

(NOTE: Originally published in AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel client newsletter)

A noteworthy piece in the New York Times by Brian Stelter outlines beautifully a postmodern perspective on “the news” and brings a little clarity to the matter of how young people stay informed. It will give modernist, top-down professional news people heartburn.

According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one.

“There are lots of times where I’ll read an interesting story online and send the U.R.L. to 10 friends,” said Lauren Wolfe, 25, the president of College Democrats of America. “I’d rather read an e-mail from a friend with an attached story than search through a newspaper to find the story.”

While Stelter’s article deals with political information, I would argue that this is taking place across all information niches, because in a postmodern, postcolonial culture, trust is with one’s tribe, not institutional expertise. So why shouldn’t we expect Bill to email his friends when he finds something of interest? It’s word-of-mouth gone-to-seed.

Young people also identify online discussions with friends and videos as important sources of election information. The habits suggest that younger readers find themselves going straight to the source, bypassing the context and analysis that seasoned journalists provide.

Stelter quotes Jane Buckingham of the market research company Intelligence Group recalling a student in a focus group who said, “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

This is a great mantra for the traditional news industry to adopt, because it flips the news mission from putting the word out via “distribution” channels to the active pursuit of “finding” people like the student referenced above. You can’t “find” anybody by insisting them come to you. Old meet new.

(Thanks, Jeff)

I’ve had a few days to calm down after reading Newsweek’s “Web Exclusive” this week — Revenge of the Experts — so I think it’s safe to comment now. Newsweek has done what many of us feared, they’ve picked up Andrew Keen’s meme about the “cult of the amateur” and manufactured a new lede without taking into consideration the fallacy of the meme in the first place. This is how falsehood gets spread throughout the culture, which is exactly what Keen — and apparently now Newsweek — believe is the problem with “amateurs.” For all of Keen’s rantings about truth, there is little to be found in the Newsweek argument.

Let’s begin with the assumption in the title, that there is a battle underway in our culture between experts and amateurs. Says who? The so-called experts, that’s who, because they feel their protected turf is being threatened. It is, but not by any amateur movement or cult. Institutional arrogance is their biggest threat. They need to look in the mirror.

Let me repeat; there is no movement by amateurs to take anything away from professionals, and this is especially true in media. The extent to which everyday people look to non-traditional sources of information today is not an indication that they are being lured away from “truth” by roaming mobs of ignorant automatons. That defection is more illustrative of the failure of traditional, institutional media than anything else, along with the arrogance-gone-to-seed of anyone claiming exclusive access to “truth.” In the words of the immortal Frank Barone, “Holy crap!”

“The individual user has been king on the Internet,” the article says, “but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals.” What? Wait, there’s more:

In short, the expert is back. The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web. “People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information,” says Charlotte Beal, a consumer strategist for the Minneapolis-based research firm Iconoculture. Beal adds that choice fatigue and fear of bad advice are creating a “perfect storm of demand for expert information.”

Again, this assumes facts not in evidence, such as we’re coming out of a season when people were quite happy with crap. This is hogwash. Only to the modernist, pragmatist mind is there any sudden lust for truth. Hell, it’s been there all along.

The story points to start-up Mahalo with it’s “people-powered search” as evidence of the “shift” and then goes on to quote its founder, Jason Calacanis as an expert. To add weight to Mahalo, the writer lumps it in with other efforts supported by its major investor, Sequoia Capital — names like YouTube, Yahoo and Google — as if that qualifies the expertise of Calacanis. This is textbook modernism at work, expertise by association. It’s also crap because, while fielding an impressive list of winners, Sequoia has also had its share losers. Remember eToys?

Calacanis’s comments are combined with those of Keen, who joyfully breathes his poison into the story.

It’s also easier to woo advertisers with the promise of controlled content than with hit-and-miss blog blather. “Nobody wants to advertise next to crap,” says Andrew Keen, author of “The Cult of the Amateur,” a jeremiad against the ills of the unregulated Web.

A jeremiad? Ills of the unregulated Web? What ills? Boy, there’s nothing the pragmatist mind enjoys more than rules and regulations, because they’re always made by the haves to sustain what they, well, have.

The article at least gives the final word to Glenn Reynolds, whose book An Army of Davids contains the phrase, “the triumph of personal technology over mass technology.” I’ve read that book, too, and I can tell you it doesn’t even remotely suggest the cult-like attack on truth that Keen is taking to the bank.

The Newsweek article actually has the gall to make the statement that we’re in a new period of “podium worship,” a validation of expertise that somehow had been stripped away by the chaos of personal media. But hidden in the story is its real purpose — to send a message to Madison Avenue that things will be okay and that vetted content will be there for them and their money. For all the popularity of the pejorative “user-generated content,” nobody’s been able to make a lot of money with it, and Calacanis, et al, want to assure us all that their content will be equally attractive to users but also safe for ads.

That, of course, remains to be seen. Advertisers don’t just want a sterile environment; they also want eyeballs, and that’s the real conundrum for the pragmatist’s view of new media. In this way of thinking, there is only one reason to make “content” and that is to make money. Why else do it? Indeed.

The Telcos want the government to think of the Web as just another medium, so that they can police the thing for everybody and sell access to the highest bidders. Keen and Newsweek likewise want everything to just return to the way it was. Sorry, but that horse left the barn years ago. And while Newsweek uses the term “revival” to describe what they hope to see happening, I think “nostalgia” is a more accurate term.

And the saddest thing of all about articles like these is that they are added to record. People hoping for relief from the disruption of personal technology will point to them as evidence of hope, when in reality, they’re pure folly, bathed in assumptions that aren’t real.

And again, isn’t that exactly what “experts” are supposed to prevent?

UPDATE: Howard Owens brilliantly deconstructs the entire Newsweek piece.

Here’s a great illustration of different thoughts at the executive level from a Techcrunch post by Michael Arrington of a panel at Davos. The references are NBCU CEO Jeff Zucker and Sony CEO Howard Stringer, and the subject is mobile. It’s priceless:

Zucker lamented the currently fragmented U.S. market, but seems optimistic that they’ll be able to move their merchandise effectively in the future (particularly short form video). He also said revenue splits need to change dramatically - today content creators are offered only 10% of revenue from sales, with the vast majority going to the carrier. Competition and openness will change this, he said.

Stringer was less optimistic, noting, for example, that Chinese customers don’t buy content, just blank CDs. “It won’t be easy to hang onto the price of content” he said, adding a quip: “When you defend the status quo when the quo has lost its status, you’re in trouble.”

Like intransigent mainstream media moguls who are trying desperately to make a Media 1.0 model exist in a Media 2.0 world, Zucker continues to harp about the value of his precious “content.” Stringer seems unnecessarily cynical, but at least he’s got a realistic view of things.

It reminds me of some great wisdom I recently read from the genius that is Ian C. Rogers of Yahoo:

Losers wish for scarcity
Winners leverage scale

The status quo wants to continue playing the scarcity game, and the strategy will lead to its ruin.

Here’s the latest essay from my ongoing series of essays Local Media in a Postmodern World.

It’s Not the Same Game

This piece examines changing fundamentals of media in the new world, primarily how mass marketing is increasing problematic when access to the mass is what’s restricted. We’ve all grown up in an industry where value was created by restricting access to content, so what we’re dealing with today is, in many ways, the opposite of what we know.

One important factor to consider when reading my essays is that I don’t approach this stuff as a zero-sum game. New media won’t “replace” the old — at least not for a very long time. Mass marketing will continue, but it would be foolish to assume that it alone — or any variation thereof — can rescue the sagging revenues of local media companies. This is why we must follow a dual path approach, which is the foundational strategic principle of AR&D’s Media 2.0 unit.

A new study by UK web testing firm SciVisum predicts the end of Web 2.0 in 2008, but the logic misses the mark.

According to Deri Jones, CEO of SciVisum, “Consumers and companies will continue to adopt a nomadic attitude towards web 2.0 websites, flocking to the ‘next big thing’ until the market becomes so saturated that consumers will actually be turned off.”

Or not.

From the SciVisum press release:

SciVisum cites the main drivers for Web 2.0’s decline as the exponential growth in the number of User Generated Content (UGC) websites facing a backlash from cautious advertisers not wanting their brand to appear in front of unsuitable content.

And this is why I completely disagree with the prediction. The view is from a purely Media 1.0 perspective and discounts the reality that advertising is content in the sweeping world of Media 2.0.

Social media (the definition of “Web 2.0″) is what the Web is really all about, so to suggest that it will die because advertisers won’t support it is, well, naive. On the contrary, I think it’s going to reach a new level with the ability to aggregate profiles and interaction from any number of social sites. I’m on MySpace, Facebook, Linked In and others, and you can count on somebody to put those together for me.

Social networking doesn’t require money. Hell, you can build a social site for free with Ning. It requires passion and people of a like mind on any subject.

So to suggest that its demise will come from advertisers not wanting their brands associated with user-generated content is ridiculous. That suggestion speaks more about the state of advertising than what will or won’t happen with Web 2.0.

(hat tip to Duncan at TechCrunch)

As you already know, I’m a big proponent of local media companies creating niche verticals rather than adding “sections” to their sites. There are many reasons why this is smart strategy, but perhaps the most important is that it fits the architecture of the Web. Functionally, a URL is just a URL, but that’s not the case when examining the structure of the Web and, therefore, how everything works. And I think this understanding is crucial to building business models that will endure.

And perhaps more importantly for media companies is that the creation of massive portals gives the false sense that one site is different than the next. Bigger is better, we think, but this is simply not true.

Before I go any further, let me be clear that I’m not talking about ad metrics or the ability to monetize page views. I’m talking about understanding the Web as a platform. That the advertising industry continues to function in a reach/frequency paradigm doesn’t mean we should tie our futures to it exclusively. Besides, it’s simply a matter of technology to string together a series of sites and “get credit” for the mass it creates.

I’m after the language we use, because it’s robbing us of vision. For example, when we refer to a niche vertical as a “micro-site” or a network program site as a “mini-site,” what’s the implication? That our branded portals are “macro-sites?” “Maxi-sites?” “Major BFD sites?”

You see, the more we think (and talk) that way, the more we reveal our ignorance about the nature of the Web and inhibit our ability to creatively attack the problems we face.

So here’s the deal. Websites are all the same in the structure of the Web. Every one is a single pixel on the page that makes up the whole. As I’ve written before, consider a high resolution picture of Uncle Harry. You’d have to do a heck of a lot of zooming to isolate a single pixel, and that’s the predicament we’re in structurally. If the picture examined traffic, it would certainly look different, but I’m not talking about traffic.

Google, for example, looks at the picture of Uncle Harry and says, “we can help and make money from every pixel.” So Google doesn’t need to spit shine its own pixel in order to be successful; they just help everybody else spit shine theirs.

This opportunity to enable, make better, and make money from a growing numbers of sites is not only the opportunity but also the mandate for local media companies. But it begins with the fundamental understanding that nobody is special in the architecture of the Web (at least not yet, lawmakers). A site is a site is a site.

Advertising is content in Media 2.0. Traffic to Elf Yourself matches The New York Times in one month’s time, according to Alexa:

This cost Office Max virtually nothing compared to the ad budget necessary to reach those millions of people via the Times.

Jeremy Allaire, founder/CEO of Brightcove and one of the brightest minds in technology, wrote in his predictions for 2008 that nothing about the Internet changes the fundamentals of media, adding that “value is created by controlling the content or controlling access to the audience.”

“Media companies with established brands and new start-ups,” he continued, “will continue to build successful branded destinations so they can control the access to audiences.”

This is quite a statement and one that bears close examination in light of disruptions to mass media, disintermediation, unbundling and the escalating fragmentation of media. I believe that the Internet does change the fundamentals of media, so I can’t support Jeremy’s positive view in this concept.

Brightcove, it should be noted, is ending its video upload service and abandoning the potential for any “market” in the world of user-generated content. In a blog post on the topic, Allaire said it was a decision based largely on the growth of its professional video business, which is substantial. This move — and Jeremy’s thinking above — clearly indicate that Brightcove is linking its star to the world of traditional media. And why not? There’s considerable money involved.

However, what’s good for Brightcove doesn’t validate the statement that the Internet doesn’t change the fundamentals of media. Let’s talk about that, for all business beliefs are built on assumptions, and there’s a big one here:

“Content” is so valuable that people will follow whatever path is required in order to satisfy their eyeballs, including participating in whatever is required to pay for that privilege.

This is a very dangerous assumption for any media business attempting to “control access to audiences.” It’s a purely mass-marketing concept, and it ignores a few things about the Web.

First of all, the “branded destinations” spoken of aren’t unique in the architecture of the Web, and this is a problem. It doesn’t matter how many people “visit,” how long they stay, or what’s available through any particular URL, the Web considers them all the same, what I call pixels on a page. Therefore, any system of control is fragmented to the nth degree. Cable changed the value proposition of broadcasting, and the Web does the same to cable. We can spin things with HDTV and other things like specialized content, etc., but the dynamic is the same as what drug companies do when patents expire on their products. “Time-released” becomes the selling point, not the product itself. But people — who are driven by price — go for the new generic. Same with content creators. No matter how we spin it, it’s just another pixel on the page in the architecture of the Web.

So from a structural perspective, the media value proposition is lessened, because the eyeballs necessary to earn from that “value” have thousands, if not millions, of other choices. Moreover, as content becomes more and more commodified, it gets harder to identify any of it as “special.”

Secondly, the assumption requires a belief that this “content” has sufficient qualities to compel the eyeballs in the first place. This, too, is a problem, because the creators of professional content have known for about a decade that it’s getting harder and costing more to create the ultimate mass marketing goal — the blockbuster. There are many factors at play here, but the one that the creators least wish to discuss is that content built on previous success — that is to say content based on research and history — does not necessarily lead to audience growth. And without growth, the fundamentals are meaningless. Hollywood, the record companies and the rest of the copyright industry are largely victims of the crap they’ve been producing for years. But crap is easy and it’s profitable.

It is into this paradigm that the personal media revolution has blossomed, people educating and entertaining themselves with technology’s help. The value of YouTube has never been in the distributing of the kinds of content described in media accounts of pirating, etc.; it has always been about growing communities entertaining themselves. Professional video creators can scoff at and discount this all they wish, but eyeballs viewing this are eyeballs that once needed the restraints of those creating value through restricted access and so forth.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, this assumption dismisses the contemporary reality that advertisers — the people who funded the assumption in its earlier times — don’t need the content anymore in order to do business. Advertising IS content in Media 2.0, and where money is spent by advertisers in creating their own content, it is not being spent on supporting the content of Jeremy’s “branded destinations.” Some advertisers are actually becoming their own media companies, and while this may help Brightcove’s business, it challenges the assumptions of traditional media.

The problem may not be that the value proposition of media is changing as much as the definition of media itself, which is why I believe media companies must proceed down simultaneous strategic paths — monetizing their “content” as best they can but also moving to portfolio companies by innovating in the world of advertising and Media 2.0.

Advertising is content in Media 2.0. Here we have OfficeMax creating one of those creative holiday virals that people will use for the next month. It’s called “Elf Yourself,” a cute Flash application that allows you to put your face, the face of your dog, the face of your boss, or anybody’s face into the body of a dancing elf. Up to four are allowed, and they dance a stupid dance and wish holiday greetings.

Dumb, yes. Smart, hell yes. It’s a branding play that doesn’t require buying ad space next to somebody’s content, and that’s a small part of the problem for contemporary media. It’s participatory, interactive and fun, and it uses the energy of the users to pass the message.

It’s not the first, just one of the latest.

So Classmates.com is planning an IPO to raise $144 million. I’m enjoying some of the spin, such as references to the site as “pioneering.”

I refuse to go near classmates, because they pursue a business model that turns me off — the relentless pursuit of my wallet. The information about my class and, yes, classmates is useless, because it’s all behind the pay wall. So while I’m one of its “50 million members,” I’m probably not alone in my disdain for the site. When I first entered my profile information, the site wasn’t nearly so obnoxious. If this is “pioneering,” then hand me a bow and arrow.

The company is trying to take advantage of all the buzz about social networking, and perhaps a successful IPO will help them remove the walls. Until that happens, though, don’t count on me to buy any of its stock.