Few people tell it like Stowe Boyd.

This weekend, Boyd added his considerable insight to a fascinating discussion that has grown out of Nick Carr’s provocative Atlantic Monthly article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Later, Scott Karp added his wealth of insight, and now Boyd. It’s a complex topic but boils down to Carr’s question about what’s happening with our his mind these days. He feels his mind shifting and doesn’t like it. Do yourself a favor and read all of the link references, beginning with Carr’s.

Karp elaborates on Carr’s premise by discussing the differences between absorbing knowledge in big chucks versus little chucks, and Boyd agrees with Karp that the answer to Carr’s question is a resounding “no.”

As I have been saying for years, the inherent conservatism of the mass media and other mass organizations (those that are based on one:many modes of communication, like government, religions, business, and so on) will lead them to say that this new sort of thinking is illegitimate: they war against it, saying that our new ways of talking and thinking and the social structures that they engender are bad, inferior, immoral, and stupid; and that those in favor of this web revolution are dumb, misguided, or evil fringe lunatics.

This is exactly the nut of the thing for me, too, but my take has always been the shift from the modernist, colonialist, hierarchical culture to the participatory, postmodernist, post-colonial culture. Traditionalists will love the concept of Google making people stupid, because it beautifully validates their illusions about knowledge and life and gives them a platform from which to point and say, “See? See?” It’s demagoguery, plain and simple, and I don’t believe for a minute that the cultural changes are “bad” for us. Does it make me feel uncomfortable? Perhaps, but that’s just fear of the unknown.

I’ve oft quoted my daughter Jenny, who at age seven got her first calculator (in the mid 70s). She asked me then, “If I have one of these, why do I need to study math?” Is she stupid, because her mind wants to explore other uses? If she uses her calculator, does that make her more stupid than one who doesn’t?

We’re always hearing how we humans only use 10 percent of our brains, but dammit, we sure seem to be comfortable with that. Why?

The ability to instantly deconstruct vastly complex arguments with a mouse click is certainly the enemy of a culture run by protected knowledge and absolute authorities, but it doesn’t follow that this means doom for humanity. Besides, cultural changes tend not to be “all or nothing,” so hierarchy of some form will always have its place.

The statements by James Poniewozik of TIME in the entry below have been tugging at me ever since I read them, for Poniewozik has raised difficult questions for journalism.

I’ve written about this subject many times before, so regular readers here will know that I believe journalism is in good hands, can take care of itself, and that those who use the phrase “real journalism” to argue against any apparently “unreal” journalists are probably the least real of all. The institution of professional journalism, which is what’s being disrupted, is the fruit of Walter Lippmann’s elitist, social engineering dreams, so I’m not convinced it’s in need of saving. That belief, however, doesn’t merrily dismiss all that is professional. Like most things, this is not “all or nothing,” which is why I find Poniewozik’s statements so remarkable.

When people ask me to define a journalist, I always start with the first paragraph from the book of Luke:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write {it} out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.

In this sense, Luke is acting as a journalist. He didn’t have a degree from Medill, nor did he have a code of ethics by which to abide, only his investigation of eyewitness accounts and the events themselves. Now, you don’t have to believe the account to appreciate Luke’s role as a journalist, and this, I think, is the nut of the whole mess involving trust with contemporary journalism.

By and large, journalists of every stripe will tell you that they are in the pursuit of truth, and they resent ANY suggestion to the contrary. This supposes, however, that there is such a thing as objective truth in any matter, and therein lies the rub. In the above, Luke’s message to Theophilus is one of “exact truth,” and we all know where such absolutism has gotten us. So the best we can say is that Luke’s account was his best effort at that “truth,” and so it is with every journalist.

The problem, of course, in a postmodern world is that there are many variations of truth, and this is the very heart of the matter between professional journalism’s version of truth and that of the multi-perspective blogosphere. The more the Big-Js cling to their view of objective truth, the harder it’s going to be to sustain it, and the wider will grow the gap between a questioning public and the press.

And it is the public, after all, that controls journalism’s future.

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.

Here is the latest in my series of essays Local Media in a Postmodern World, and it’s a topic I’ve kind of “written around” over the years.

The Cost of Interaction is a simple concept with complex aspects pertaining to web design and content management, but for local media companies to be relevant downstream, we’re going to have to take a serious look at this.

Just as there are costs in doing business, there are costs in being a consumer. Over the years, we’ve witnessed businesses shifting some of their costs to their customers — think self-service gas, fast food, self check-out at the grocery store or telephone answering systems — but online is a different matter, for consumers have choices here than they don’t have in the “real” world. Therefore, pushing customers in this manner online is a dangerous proposition. A high cost of interaction means less value to users and fewer reasons to return. Conversely, the lower the cost of interaction, the easier and more usable the application, and that means a reason to come back.

The Justice Department has announced a major settlement in its anti-trust case involving the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the use of its Multiple Listing Services (MLS) by internet-based residential real estate brokers. In a nutshell, it means Realtors won’t have exclusive access to MLS listings; they will be shared with those who are competing with Realtors by offering much lower commissions.

A New York Times article on the matter notes that MLS listings are the “lifeblood” of the real estate industry:

The settlement “is a win for consumers, certainly, who will now have the benefit of unrestricted competition,” Deborah A. Garza, deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust, said in an interview. “There inevitably will be more efficiency and more competition in the market.”

…The National Association of Realtors, with more than 1.2 million members, said that the settlement was “a win-win” for both the real estate industry and consumers. It noted that the association admitted no wrongdoing and paid no fines or damages as part of the deal.

The NAR notes that consumers won’t notice much difference, but I disagree. This opens the door for a high level of innovation in a $93 billion industry, and it will certainly benefit home buyers and sellers. Realtors? Not so much.

In a Buzzmachine.com post on the settlement, Jeff Jarvis says, “Kiss your 6 percent commission goodbye, Ms. Agent!”

This new economy can now come to real estate sales as information becomes freer. Oh, it’s not fully freed yet. But I do believe that the combination of this settlement and what it does to empower discount players and the depressed real estate market will combine to finally shove dynamite up Realtors’ rears.

I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that this is further evidence of the cultural shift from modernism to postmodernism, one that threatens every modernist institution of the West.

Protected knowledge (or access) is what empowers such institutions, and as we’re already witnessing with media, when you remove the protection, the institution collapses. Craig Newmark did it to classifieds with Craigslist, so what’s next?

How about medicine and the law, to name a couple. Back in the early days of the Web, the American Medical Association formed a special lobbying group to make sure they maintained control of medical information (to protect the people), because those within the group with vision could see what would come down-the-pike. Will we have a “doc-in-a-box” someday? The insurance industry might be interested in that. How about a “lawyer-in-a-box” to represent your needs in court?

I know those ideas are way out there, but the horse of postmodernism — that participatory, interactive culture — has already left the barn, and its destination is unknown.

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.

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

Michael Arrington offers an insightful look at what’s happening to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia is, of course, the Britannica’s summer heat, so the company has chosen to make its content available for free to what it defines as web publishers. Interesting move, but it won’t stop the company’s business model from melting under the blazing sun.

According to Comscore, for every page viewed on Brittanica.com, 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia (3.8 billion v. 21 million pave views per month). In short, they are a classic example of the Innovator’s Dilemma (see also the Music Industry).

…Instead of going free and opening up to all, they’re using the new program to simply price discriminate. Give people who may link to the site free access. Everyone else has to pay. So in effect they’re aiming to be half pregnant - they want the benefits of web linking but don’t want to give up the subscription fees from the fools who continue to pay them.

What Michael doesn’t mention is that the Britannica was advertiser-supported and free before the internet bubble burst, which I wrote about extensively in the Feburary 2005 essay, The Devaluation of Information:

One of the most visible warriors in this free/paid debate has been the Encyclopaedia Britannica. During the Internet bubble days of 1999, the Britannica got a ton of recognition for the bold move of making its pages free to consumers online and adopting an advertising model. Tom Panelas, Director of Corporate Communications for Britannica, says they bought into the free information argument.

“The theory behind the model was traffic,” he remembers. “If you could get enough traffic, you could make it work. We did that. We had 8-10 million unique visitors a month. We were doing all the things right, and it seemed to be working.”

Then in 2000, the bottom dropped out of the market. Ad rates plummeted, and the Britannica’s experiment stopped working. “Of the different aspects of our revenue model,” Panelas says, “advertising was the most important ingredient, so when rates fell, it broke the model.”

The company did extensive research and concluded that the advertising model wasn’t sustainable, and that belief remains today. Panelas adds, “We believe that good quality, reliable information that is well-edited is somewhat rare and therefore valuable. People should be willing to pay for that.”

The Britannica online boasts a couple of hundred thousand subscribers, according to Panelas, many of them coming through third-party bundling of products and services, something he believes we’ll see a lot more of in the future.

The Britannica has weathered many storms in the last 15 years, as technology has rewritten their business. Even now, the online “Wikipedia” — which is written and edited by the public — poses a new threat, but the company has faith in its model. “This stuff is constantly changing,” Panelas admits, “and the way customers understand this is changing all the time.”

He’s quick to add, however, that “we live in a society that’s too sophisticated to completely abandon empirical and rational thinking.”

In a Postmodern world, such assumptions can be dangerous, and this is what’s at the heart of the free-versus-paid argument. The rational Modernist world is the one with the institutional doorways and permission gates, but that world is fading, and our culture is rapidly moving in a different direction. It’s a “new wine” thing, and it requires new wineskins.

In the three plus years since I wrote that, we’ve moved down the postmodern stream quite a distance, and the Britannica now finds itself in need of a different business model. Why they don’t just go back to the innovative status they enjoyed in 1999 is beyond me.

I just did an interview with the AP about the CBS O&O stations firing high-paid anchors (Chicago, LA, Boston) in a dramatic cost-cutting move. The reporter asked, “So what does a station do after it has fired its own face?”

Good question.

I saw this one coming in 2003 in my essay “News Anchors: An Endangered Species.”

The industry’s obsession with celebrity and the easy marketing thereof is meaningless in a Postmodern world that has demystified the industry and its hype, rejects elitism and doesn’t need its information spoon fed by good-looking faces anyway. As the world of video news shifts to a broadband environment, where users can pick and choose what they want to watch and when they want to watch it, there are powerful forces at work that will make news anchors unnecessary.

What will the CBS stations do? I don’t really know, but I do know that the move must have every anchor in the business sweating bullets. If I were an anchor, I’d fully embrace New Media and use my leadership position to make a difference.

(Note to all my broadcasting critics who told me I was crazy five years ago: It’s going to get worse.)

As we drift farther downstream into the postmodern era, the battle between the elite institutions of modernism and the culture will intensify. The culture is on the offensive, forcing the establishment to defend itself, and that is already underway. On the modernist side, the war will be fought by the keepers of the status quo — the lawyers of the land. On the culture’s side will be technology and the participatory nature that it brings with it.

The defenders know this and will do everything they can to prevent it, trying to use the courts and the legal system in attempts to rope the wild stallion and return it to their barn.

In the last few days, a plan that can only be described as sinister from our friends in the recording industry is being exposed. The idea is right out of the Sopranos — use the threat of lawsuits to force ISPs into “taxing” every user $5 to download music via the Internet. TechCrunch is on top of the story.

The tax will not, in fact, be mandatory. But that is misleading - it won’t be mandatory for ISPs who provide Internet access to actual users. But if ISPs join the scheme, it will apply to all of their customers and be added to their bill as a surcharge.

Why will ISP’s agree to this? Mainly to avoid liability. The core of the plan is a covenant not to sue anyone who pays the fee. (industry insider Jim) Griffin touched on this in the article, saying ISPs will want to “discharge their risk” around file sharing that occurs over their networks.

The rollout plan will hit colleges and universities first, who will simply add the fee to tuition bills so they won’t have to worry about getting dragged into lawsuits. Then Griffin will approach consumer ISPs. If an ISP joins, their users will not have the option of not paying, even if they don’t download music from the Internet. So, basically, the tax is only voluntary if you define avoiding it as not going to college, or using the Internet.

TechCrunch calls it “government endorsed extortion, nothing more and nothing less,” and I couldn’t agree more. While the record companies would find relief from such a plan, imagine what it would do to stifle innovation and creativity.

Meanwhile, the RIAA is lobbying Congress hard to explore the idea of universities “filtering” their networks to stop allegedly illegal downloading. What would you do, if you ran a big school, install filtering applications or simply pass along the $5 “tax” to students. No brainer.

But other battles waging — in the form of lawsuits — in the fight by institutional modernism to reclaim territory it feels belongs to them. To see these suits for what they are, we must examine one of the core philosophies of the modern culture — that everything is cause and effect and, therefore, there’s always somebody to blame (usually the one with the deepest pockets) when something goes wrong. We will never have tort reform in this country as long as the people creating the laws (read: Congress) is made up of trial lawyers, who exploit this blame game to serve themselves, but I digress. As long as “the law” is god in the culture (as it is with the modernist belief), there will always be lawyers ready to take on any cause in the name of blame.

The reason this is on my mind is the strange case in Jacksonville, Oregon, involving Robert Salisbury and Craigslist. Somebody — either maliciously or on a lark — posted ads on Craigslist saying that Salisbury had to leave town suddenly and that everything at his home was free for the taking, even his horse.

As Salisbury was driving home, he noticed truck after truck going the other direction carrying his stuff. All his possessions were gone, and while authorities were able to get some things back, the question remains as to who did this to him.

The case is identical to one earlier from Tacoma, and it’s got people asking questions about, you guessed it, liability. After all, these people were wronged, and victims in our culture are entitled to compensation for their losses, right? So speculation is aimed at Craigslist. They ran the ad. This wouldn’t have happened without them. Hence, it’s their fault.

Along comes Michael Arrington from TechCrunch to make a remarkable statement: Craigslist Is Our Mirror, Nothing Better (Or Worse).

Could a litigiously minded individual find a winning argument to get Craigslist to pay for the damages? Perhaps…And there are certainly plenty to lawyers who’d consider taking the case on contingency, hoping for a quick settlement/shake down to keep PR exposure over this to a minimum.

But what I really think is that Craigslist is just a mirror, and we have to take the good with the bad. Countless connections and transactions are made on the site, and the vast majority are of benefit to everyone involved.

Sure, mainstream press feasts on the occasional accident scene, making it seem like the site is a den of predators waiting to strike at anyone who drops by. Craigslist has it all - Sex, drugs, humiliation and more.

But for the most part Craigslist is just a really good place to find a job, or a boyfriend, or buy cheap furniture for your dorm room. The situation today is simply an exception that proves what an important place Craigslist has taken in our culture. I feel bad for Mr. Salisbury and I hope he gets all his stuff back (especially his horse). But pointing the finger of accusation at Craigslist for what happened is not what should happen next.

Arrington is making a postmodern argument that is foreign to the concept of blame assessment, and I fully support it. Others have come to Craigslist’s defense in this matter, saying that if the company was a profit-hungry corporation, they might deserve a lawsuit, but that Craigslist is more public service than profit-motivated, and thus, shouldn’t be touched.

I don’t like this argument, because I think we’ve gone way overboard in the culture and that any company functioning as a conduit for the actions of people — profit-driven or not — ought to be protected from the shenanigans of the few. We’re a society that supposedly believes in personal responsibility, but every day, I see evidence that this is not so. This is why we have section 230 of the CDA, which classifies such web applications as “common carriers,” similar to telephone companies. You can’t sue the phone company if somebody plans a terrorist attack over the phone, and you shouldn’t be able to sue Craigslist — or anybody else — if bad people do bad things online either.

But somebody will sue Craigslist; I’m convinced of that, and then we’ll see how strongly we feel about such protection.

And there’s one other matter here that must not be overlooked. Media companies who cover this issue must tread very, very carefully, especially the newspaper business, for Craigslist gets the blame (there’s that word again) for the financial woes of the industry.

I’m just sayin’…

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)

They said it couldn’t be done, but I’ve gone and done it, LOL — written the ultimate New Media book: Reinventing Local Media, Ideas for Thriving in a Postmodern World, thus joining the world of published non-fiction authors. AR&D is publishing the first go-round of the book, although we’ll be seeking a contract with a major publisher in the weeks ahead.

This book is a compilation of the essays I’ve written over the past five years, a time of epochal change in the world of communications. It’s over 500 pages long and fully indexed, and it’s my hope that it will be used as course material in colleges and universities everywhere.

The book will be available via Amazon and other online distributors within a month, and we’re going to try and make copies available at NAB next month in Vegas. The price is $24.95.

I’ll have copies next week that I’d be happy to autograph and sell to readers of my blog. It’ll take a couple of weeks to process everything, but feel free to drop me a note with a check to AR&D for $30 (to cover shipping and handling), and I’ll personally take care of the rest. Send it to:

Terry Heaton
Audience Research & Development
1913 Redwood Trail
Grapevine, TX 76051

Of course, anybody’s work in this field is really an aggregation of the thinking of many. I’ve written before about The Unbroken Web, and I certainly feel I’ve been touching it throughout the process of writing this ongoing series of essays. The Unbroken Web is a place where many thoughts mingle, and it would be arrogant to assume that the ideas expressed there belong to any one individual, self included.

So I am honored to be a part of something so big, and to make this book available to you.

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.

Minds much better than mine have examined this whole business with the New York Times and their allegations of hanky-panky involving Senator McCain and a female lobbyist. Jay Rosen brilliantly dissected the whole thing, and Jeff Jarvis expressed astonishment over Times Executive Editor Bill Keller being surprised at the negative reaction to the story.

I only wish to add a comment about the public reaction to the story that Keller finds so surprising.

The Modern Era is giving way to the Postmodern Era in Western culture. A foundational element of postmodernism is a practice called deconstruction, the systematic (or not) taking apart of an argument to examine its roots, many of which are assumptions based on the life and times of the author of the argument. This practice is facilitated — in fact, actually forced — by the structure of the World Wide Web, with its associated links to source documentation. If John Smith writes that the water in Lake Whatever is polluted, we ought to be able to determine why he thinks that by examining not only the lake but also John Smith and his background. We don’t have to take John’s word for it.

This concept of relentless deconstruction is a disaster for modern institutions built on “facts” of history and maintained by hierarchical systems of rule, order and especially tradition, for each — deconstructionists teach — is subject to examinations that reveal the subjective nature of humankind and its decisions, big and small.

It is in this light that I wish to state the argument that Bill Keller — and many, if not most people in such positions within the institution of modernist journalism — continue to function as if their access to knowledge is unique and justifies conclusions that can be used to manipulate culture, whether deliberately or otherwise. So deep is this belief, that Keller expresses shock when the Times’ conclusions are challenged.

The problem is that the public now has access to enough information — in most cases — to make up its own mind about issues and events, their causes and results. Moreover, the public now has enough knowledge to rightly question the assumptions and history that shape even the day-to-day decisions of the press, and with that knowledge, they also increasingly have the ability to make up their own minds. This will never return to the way it was, and in fact, will increasingly impact the culture as a whole.

So to me, Keller’s “surprise” is legitimate, but it’s based in the confusion of the era, especially for modernist, institutional thinkers. The public is a lot smarter and better informed than anybody in media gives them credit for being, and they are armed with simple tools to do their own investigating. And every time the curtain is pulled back on the editorial decision-making process within the institutional press, it gets easier and easier to find the natural biases and influences that drive the information gatekeepers of the culture.

So deconstructionism isn’t limited to a handful of far-out academic intellectuals in ivory towers; it’s being practiced every day at the ground level, and that has profound ramifications for the culture as a whole.

Long ago, a mentor of mine taught me about “the currency of ego,” and I want to share some of that with you to make a point about a Nieman Reports essay by Will Bunch — Forgetting Why Reporters Choose the Work They Do. The subtitle summarizes the article: “Will journalists ‘cover local news for life, with no chance of parole?’”

This is an outstanding essay and one that really strikes at the key local media matter of our time — coverage of “local” is really all that local media companies have left. Bunch writes that this is problematic with journalists who see local as a means to an end. He speaks of print journalists, but this also speaks dramatically to local television.

On an emotional level, I’m going on 49 years old, and I have a lot of friends around my age who have survived the surge in newsroom layoffs and are still working in an ink-stained newsroom somewhere. Not one of us wanted to be covering local news at our age (or, for that matter, at any age.) But we’ve been there, done that. To be brutally honest: For an ambitious journalist, the only way to get through a four-hour suburban school board meeting—even at age 22—is to keep repeating the mantra “this, too, shall pass.” In other words, treat this day’s assignment as just a boring but necessary pit stop on the road to Moscow or Beirut…

…I’d say that for the local journalism movement to succeed within the existing newsroom, there’s going to need to be a very different system of rewards to replace the dreams of Beltway punditry or a glamorous foreign beat. In fact, the rewards of the more pointed kind of journalism that blogging allows—the ability to develop a voice and a personality and to connect daily with readers—are considerable.

I tried to address this very thing in 2004 in a post that examined the assertion (by traditional media) that bloggers are in it for the money. I encourage you to read that post, because it speaks directly to what Bunch envisions. His vision has pretty profound ramifications for journalism altogether, all of which I view as good. I’m personally sickened by the farm system we’ve created, one in which budding reporters enter small market shops with one foot out the door. I’m heartened by the rise of personal media that is turning LOCAL citizens into reporters every day.

One of the ways bloggers get paid is through the currency of ego. It’s a form of status that’s recognized within, a feeling of being needed, of having a recognized place in the things of life — a voice, as Bunch calls it. Ego is an interesting part of the human condition, and it drives certain people forward more than even a paycheck.

I was taught about this from a very successful guy who was gifted at getting people to talk with him — to trust him and reveal things that they perhaps ought not to be revealing. He did this by always making the people he was interviewing feel like the most important people around. People left feeling great, although they never really learned much about my friend. He would turn every question about him around, so that the interviewee was talking about themselves. He taught me that there are many different currencies in life, and that ego was even stronger than money.

I had an employee once who was big on pay raises, because his father had taught him that this is how a company shows its appreciation for work done. That may indeed be true, but it limits life’s currencies to only one, but as my friend taught me, there are many more. At some point, they may cross, but the original currencies of journalism, I believe, have more to do with the chase for the story, recognition among peers and the public, the curiosity of how things work, the ability to influence others and make a difference, creative expression and a sense of worth that’s tied to one’s occupation. In a sense, the blogosphere is all this and more, and that’s why I agree so strongly with Bunch that the model for tomorrow is likely within that which is being evolved by bloggers.

As I’ve written many times, media is my life and has always been so. When I first got into the business in 1969, the newsroom was a place for people who found the trade one where a single person could make a different. My first news director was an old newspaper guy named Don Loose at WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee. When I became assignment editor and a member of his management team, he called me into his office and taught me the following:

“Terry, people are motivated in this business by three things: ego, working conditions and money. If somebody asks you for a raise, first ask yourself these questions: Does this person know their value in the newsroom? Am I making him feel valuable and appreciated? If the answers to those is true, then ask yourself this: Does this person’s equipment all work — his recorder, his typewriter? How does he get along with the photographers? Is there enough light at his work station? If the answers to these questions are all positive, then think about giving him the raise.”

When I retired from news management in 1998, 95% percent of the newbies I interviewed had gone to “communications” school, because they “wanted to be on TV.” These are the people who write on the discussion boards, “I just got my first job and want to know what I need to do to get my second?”

I have no problem if that kind of crap goes away permanently, because that’s the kind of ego that’s destroying the industry and something we can all do without.

I’ve said before that tomorrow’s reporters are being trained today in the school of personal media, including the guy or gal who sees drama of the school board personalities, issues and, yes, even the meetings. Life is like that. It sees a void and fills it.

In this case, we created the void ourselves, and I’m excited to be alive as the correction is underway.

(Hat tip Romenesko)

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.

Jason Schlosberg’s remarkable video (embedded below) of a herd of water buffalo rescuing a calf from a pride of hungry lions has been viewed on YouTube 23,498,437 times, as of this writing. The “Battle at Kruger” is more than just a wonderful example of the personal media revolution; it’s also a metaphor for the disruption itself.

The lions represent traditional media and marketing (or pick your favorite institution). They’re just doing their thing as kings of the media jungle — setting the information agenda, attacking the public (marketing IS war, right?), and living the life, regardless of the consequences to anybody else. They are, after all, lions!

The visual statement of being backed into a corner by the masses — themselves now equipped to fight back — is a stunning illustration of the uselessness of the mainstream continuing to operate as normal. Like the buffalo, people are now informed, empowered, enabled, connected and involved, and they’re fighting back against the institutions of modernism, which they view as self-serving.

Every time I’m asked to calculate online revenue potential, I run into the reality that the Web is a moving target and that “measurement metrics” is really a Media 1.0 concept. If only things would just sit still for awhile, so that we could all figure out how we’re going to make this thing serve our revenue needs!

This is why I suggest to clients and others that we must stay focused on the goal, not the process, for it is process-thinking that bogs us down in attempts to move the new media rock.

In my 2006 essay, Right Brain Renaissance, I argued that the essential problem media companies are having is in adapting to the creative juice that’s empowering true innovation:

New art forms are exploding. Whoever heard of photoshopping or other forms of digital art just a few years ago? We’re inventing whole new virtual worlds such as Second Life, and video games have taken on a life of their own. Nobody knows where it’s going. Nobody.

Who would argue that Chris Anderson’s brilliant discovery of The Long Tail and his exploration of new media economics isn’t inspired? The web empowers the long tail, so not only are we innovating new worlds but also new economies.

Institutional modernist leaders look at all of this and scratch their heads, because it’s taking place without their permission. Traditional rules and systems are being by-passed and with alarming speed, and the loss of (their) order is frightening and dangerous. It’s foolish, however, to think there is no order as the rules of the right brain world are being written.

This isn’t just true in media, either. Right brain thinkers are turning other industries around. Take the time to read this Canadian Press article about Bob Lutz of General Motors, the man who brought right brain creativity to the domestic auto industry.

“It was an overly rational approach to the business,” Lutz said of the old GM. “The feeling was, if we give them a nice car with lots of features, and we make it very roomy and very reliable and very functional, people will realize what a good, rational purchase this is and we will get great sales. And then it didn’t happen.”

I’ve provided all this background in order to get to the point of this post: that using rational measurements to judge the future value of products and services in the Media 2.0 world will halt more projects than green light them.

Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang falls into this trap in a new report calculating that the Wall St. Journal will have to increase traffic by a factor of 12 in order to make up for revenue lost by going free. Wang concludes that the best the WSJ can do is 6x. According to PaidContent.org,

WSJ.com revenue is currently pegged at $78 million annually, based on an estimated 989,000 subscribers paying $79/year. Including non-subscriber traffic, the company claims 122.4 million monthly page views. Based on an estimated CPM of $6 and a few other assumptions about sell-through rate and ad impressions per page, Wang arrives at the 12x conclusion.

There are a few problems with this projection, not the least of which is the attempt to calculate the future based on the past. The rational thinkers need metrics to do their magic, and the metrics Wang chooses are page views and CPM rates. These metrics continue to be used despite the fact that both Nielsen and ComScore have dropped them as a preferred metric for web advertising.

But the bigger concern in these types of calculations is that they disregard (or can’t see) the intangibles associated with moving the WSJ to a free online pub. As Chris Anderson points out this morning, the report misses the indirect benefits of going free.

For instance:

• What about the new newspaper subscriptions that a 6x increase in web traffic will generate? (Print subscribers are typically worth five times what online viewers are worth, due to the higher effective CPMs of print media.)
• What about the increased buzz and respect that the ability for bloggers everywhere to link to wsj.com stories will engender, bringing the paper back to the front of mind of media buyers and thus bringing in more ads?
• What about the fact that, in a fierce competitive battles with its cross-town rival, the the New York Times, once nytimes.com went free, wsj.com had no choice but to do the same to maintain mindshare with an audience who are increasingly shifting online?

I don’t know how to quantify any of those factors, but I know they’re all non-zero, and in the case of second, at least, could be large.

The era of bean counter dominance in our culture is being disrupted, because we can’t solve all problems with rational thinking. That statement is heresy to modernists, but that doesn’t change the reality. The more I read, the more clearly I see the dividing line, and the more I’m convinced of the necessity of creativity in the development of solutions to the disruptive attacks on the very foundation of all media.

This doesn’t mean we discard rationality; we just don’t need it to be running things at this time.

I was at a local Starbucks this morning on my Christmas Eve shopping spree. One of the girls was wearing a Santa hat, so I asked the guy who was waiting on me where his was.

“I’m not a Christian,” he replied, and that was that.

And so I wonder how he made that association — how so many people make the connection that anything associated with the holiday is automatically Christian. Is this the way it is to be? Forever?

So let’s do a brief review of history.

The early “church” in Europe (the Catholic church) ran into the celebrations of those with roots in the earth and the heavens, people they called pagans. These people celebrated the Winter Solstice (as I do), when the sun begins its return to the north to signify a new beginning. These same people celebrated the Vernal Equinox, when the sun crossed the equator, bringing new life to the earth and its creatures. Feeling these celebrations served as a threat, the response of the church was to co-opt them by tying them to the life of Christ, and so was born the “Christ Mass” for the birth of Jesus and “Easter” to celebrate the resurrection.

In reality, however, the two are separate. Just because a dominant religion says they aren’t doesn’t make it so. Christmas is, therefore, only a religious holiday in the minds of those who observe the faith, but that doesn’t make the mixture real.

Follow the centuries now to modern times, where we have “the reason for the season” crowd. Decking the halls with boughs of holly and jingling our bells along fields of snow bring thoughts of warmth and family not reserved only for Christians. Santa Claus doesn’t discriminate by coming down only the chimneys of those who bear the sign of the cross. Chestnuts roast in fireplaces of all kinds and Jack Frost? Well, he’s not a discriminator of toes upon which to nip.

I am lifted by Handel’s “Messiah” as I am by “O Holy Night” and “Joy to the World.” But those are more about nostalgia, the power of music and how my soul is satisfied with the connection to my roots. But Christmas? That is so very much more.

The giving of gifts and sharing the spirit of joy aren’t reserved for those who go to church on Sunday, and the Christmas Tree is simply NOT a symbol of Christianity, regardless of what you put on its highest branch.

So if we all celebrate Christmas, are we all really de facto celebrating Christ? I don’t think so, and this is the fault I find with the young man who cannot bring himself to wear a Santa hat. This is sad to me, and I don’t think our culture — or the human race — is better with such divisiveness.

My human journey has taken me down many spiritual paths, only to discover that, yes, there is only one God, but all human beings live and breathe in Him and He in them. God is life, and this is what we celebrate at this time of year. This business of who has THE path to God is an archaic notion that has served Western Civilization well but is fading fast in a world that doesn’t need a special priesthood to guide it.

And here’s the real nut of it for me. Am I a Christian? Absolutely. Am I a member of any faith? Absolutely not. Am I a threat to any religion? Only Christianity.

Go figure.

Media companies live and breathe — in large part — through the benevolence of the agencies that control vast resources of ad dollars for their clients. This relationship is a part of what’s being disrupted by Media 2.0, and it’s one of the most interesting elements of the overall disruption.

A little review first. This blog examines media disruption as the fruit of the cultural shift from modernism (I think and reason, therefore I understand) to postmodernism (I participate, therefore I understand). Changes in culture aren’t zero sum games, unless there’s a bayonet forcing the issue. In the West, it’s more like evolution; that which was remains, albeit with new adoptive characteristics.

So it comes as no surprise to read the following headline from a Research Brief from the Center for Media Research:

Measurement Seen As Hurdle to Ad Spend On Emerging Media

Well, duh! The hegemony that controls mass marketing is dependent upon complex measurement systems. Once established and agreed upon by all parties, success is defined in terms of who can outsmart, outspend, manipulate or otherwise manage the systems to their advantage. Take away the system, and the hegemony demands another.

But this is the modernist way. We establish laws and rules, which are then manipulated for us to get what we want. And by “we,” I’m talking about those who are in a position to do something about it. The rest of the culture can only sit by and be used. This is the essential flaw in a cultural system based solely on the rule of law. It may produce order, but that order can be manipulated by those in a position to do so.

This is the same dynamic at work in our courts, where “the system” has created its own laws through the process of judicial activism found in “case law.” Case law is the process by which one court’s ruling is used in other court rulings to modify laws created by the law makers of the culture, our legislators. The problem, of course, is that case law is viewed as THE law, so judges don’t judge at all; they merely interpret. When justice is the only permitted outcome, mercy goes out the door. This whole justice/mercy thing is why we need judges in the first place, but that’s not what we have today.

And so it is with media and advertising. We all sit back and say, “Show me the rules,” parenthetically adding, “so I can plan how to manipulate them to get what I want.” Here’s the key part of the above-referenced article:

The gap in the knowledge base of most advertisers with regard to new/emerging media, says the report, exists not only because of the wide variety of options, but also because of the constantly changing dynamic nature of the space. Given the amount of change, metrics do not generate the same level of confidence as in traditional media.

70% of the larger advertisers, those spending $50MM and up on media, were more comfortable with current vehicles. These respondents reported satisfaction with the measurement of traditional media, while their level of satisfaction was 60% for measuring new/emerging media.

So Madison Avenue won’t be comfortable playing with the Web until there is a locked-down mechanism in place for continuing the same old system they’ve always had. While I can understand and sympathize with them, there’s a big problem with that thinking.

Its name is Google, that clever group of folks who don’t pay a lick of attention to Madison Avenue and have chosen, instead, to push forward along other lines. That’s not to say that Google wouldn’t take their money, but the truth is they don’t need it. This is because the company shakes hands with the Web in a way that works in the best interests of everybody, not just the ad agencies in New York who controlled all the cash in the old world. As the Web grows, so does Google. The company has their measurement metrics, but they’re based on the Web as the platform, and this doesn’t mesh with the way Madison Avenue does business, for the hegemony requires platforms who play by its rules.

So the old value proposition is in decay, and the best it can do is fold its arms, stomp its foot and demand that this thing called the Web give it what it wants. It won’t. It doesn’t have to. And Madison Avenue is, well, screwed.