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.

Here is the latest in the ongoing series of essays, Local Media in a Postmodern World. This one is an intellectual exercise that may not be for everyone. Hang with it, though, because it’s all about challenging our assumptions, something I’ve benefited from greatly over the last decade or so. I’m also offering ten mass media assumptions that need to be challenged while we work in a time of tremendous change.

As we go about our lives, we do so with a tremendous number of assumptions in place, little things or big things that determine how we think and sometimes how we behave. We’ve all heard the old saw about assumptions making asses, but I’m talking about core assumptions, things we don’t consciously question, because we, well, assume them to be truth — perhaps even absolute.

Postmodernism forces the challenging of assumptions, and I view this as a great benefit to culture. The legalists and fundamentalists of every field will disagree, of course, and that’s a source of great — albeit not necessarily visible — drama today.

Postmodernism’s Most Important Gift

I’ve been saying for years that the institutions of modernism will not go quietly into the postmodern future, and this certainly includes the world of communications. I wrote long ago that we needed to watch the courts, because lawyers are the maintainers of the status quo. That is their reason for being, to keep the money in our culture where it “belongs.” Whether it’s lawyers in political office, lawyers in the private sector, or lawyers in the public sector, the mission is the same: create and uphold laws that validate the behaviors of the haves in the keeping what they’ve got.

This is, of course, problematic when the playing field is leveled by technology and when people formerly left out of the power paradigm are suddenly let in. It was this way with the California gold rush, and it’s this way today.

So we watch the courts, because that’s where the battle is really fought. Unelected governors of the culture dressed in black robes keep a lid on everything, because, well, that’s the way things are done. Where they can find no law to support mission, they often just make one up. Case law, I believe it’s called, but I digress once again.

We watch the courts, and there’s a lot to consider this week.

• Verizon doesn’t like the half-assed job that the FCC did with setting “arbitrary and capricious” rules for the 700 MHz auction, so they’ve gone to court. Verizon likes closed spectrum, because it gives them a competitive advantage. The FCC bought a part of the argument of that bad old disruptor Google, and decided to make a part of the spectrum open, meaning any device will have to be able to connect to it. Verizon may have legitimate business concerns, but going to court means they want a judge or judges to do for them what they can’t do for themselves.
• CNET news surveyed some lawyers and discovered that they’re all waiting for somebody to go to court to stop people from blocking ads online. That’s right. The “issue” is “just now ripening,” according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The article does point out that the courts have historically come down on the side of consumers with this issue, but the new twist here is somebody other than the consumer (Firefox) is blocking ads. Of course, Firefox is open source and built by “the people.”
• Prince, or the artist known as Prince, or whatever he calls himself these days is suing YouTube, eBay and others over what he views as copyright violations. In so doing, he joins Viacom and others in asking the guys in the black robes to help them against this great evil. Don’t misunderstand; I’m a writer, so copyright means a lot to me. But this copyright business has become the symbol for resistance against an enormous consumer backlash over price gouging and dictatorial control by an industry interested far more in profit than music. According to a Reuters article in the New York Times, Prince is thought to be the first individual artist to go this route. Lawsuits by the music industry have become common.

  Prince has apparently hired British company Web Sheriff to help him ferret out offenders.
  

  “In the last couple of weeks we have directly removed approximately 2,000 Prince videos from YouTube,” said Web Sheriff managing director John Giacobbi.

  “The problem is that one can reduce it to zero and then the next day there will be 100 or 500 or whatever. This carries on ad nauseam at Prince’s expense,” he told Reuters.

  The phrase “at Prince’s expense” is most interesting, because this is really more about a principle than real dollars lost. And what is the principle? That the courts “should” help the status quo get back to the position it used to enjoy.

These are far more complex matters than I’ve articulated here, and I suppose it would be easy for a smart lawyer to explain why I’m full of it. But if this “personal media revolution” has taught me anything, it’s that the people formerly known as the audience — the viewers, the listeners, the users, the fans — aren’t going back into the box from which they’ve escaped. I wouldn’t bet against them in any of this.

One day many years ago, in a roomful of mirrors all pointed at my navel, I began sending probes down various thought streams deep into the world of postmodernism. It’s a fun thing to do, although it often produces a bad headache, because this stuff rarely “makes sense.”

This particular day, I was toying with the idea of pomos trusting each other more than institutional expertise, which they would view as self-serving. If you run this out to the extreme, you can find some pretty idiotic concepts, but occasionally, you’ll run across one that has merit. This day, my mind was wrapping itself around an elaborate and searchable database of the medical experiences of everyday people. What worked? What didn’t work? What was it like? What would you do differently? This, I felt, would be a very valuable service, although two institutional groups wouldn’t like it: doctors and lawyers.

Imagine my surprise when my boss handed me the latest issue of Business 2.0 (how can they shut down this great magazine?) and I found a little blurb about a company called PatientsLikeMe. The company’s tag line is: “Patients helping patients live better every day.”

The site began in 2004 dedicated primarily to Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS, but has grown to include MS, HIV/AIDS and many other ailments. Could this be the database I envisioned years ago?

At first, institutional medicine will embrace it. It’s a great place for research, and who knows what like-suffering patients can come up with? Then, it will become a genuine disruptor, and the American Medical Association will attempt to co-opt the site or otherwise bring it under its control. If the site’s owners resist, it will bring about the inevitable “practicing medicine without a license” accusation. PatientsLikeMe carries a robust disclaimer about this, but that won’t stop those who view the site’s content as a threat to their authority.

This Site Does Not Provide Medical Advice
ALL OF THE MATERIAL PROVIDE ON THE SITE, SUCH AS TEXT, TREATMENTS, DOSAGES, OUTCOMES, CHARTS, PATIENT PROFILES, GRAPHICS, PHOTOGRAPHS, IMAGES, ADVICE, MESSAGES, FORUM POSTINGS, AND ANY OTHER MATERIAL PROVIDE(D) ON THE SITE ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE OR TREATMENT. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF YOUR PHYSICIAN OR OTHER QUALIFIED HEALTH PROVIDER WITH ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE REGARDING YOUR HEALTH. NEVER DISREGARD PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE OR DELAY IN SEEKING IT BECAUSE OF SOMETHING YOU HAVE READ ON THIS SITE.

We live in such a nice, neat modernist world, where everything is organized to serve those in authority, who also control the paths leading to them. From the postmodernist’s perspective (and there’s a little of it in each of us), however, the hierarchy exists first to serve itself, and we pay the price. I’ve written before about a dear friend of mine who runs a drug and alcohol abuse facility in the South and finds the rules of the hierarchy to be increasingly anti-patient. He had to fire a man who had worked for him for 15 years and was the best family counselor he’d ever known. The guy had a gift for putting families back together, but what he didn’t have was a Master’s Degree in counseling, which was what the insurance companies required. Rather than lose his business, my friend was forced to terminate the guy and hire somebody “qualified” in the eyes of the institution.

PatientsLikeMe is positioned to overcome issues like this and further change the nature of authority in our increasingly postmodern world. Doctors will still be doctors, but the nature of their authority will be a far cry from absolute.

Here is the latest in my ongoing series of essays, TV News in a Postmodern World. This piece examines the aspects of commoditization impacting all forms of media in the current marketplace. This is especially significant as it relates to news, for the economics of the market are quickly reducing its value to near zero. If you want to know why you’re having trouble growing your market share, it might be because news is being commodified.

The web is having this effect, and it’s a straight line from here-to-there on the road to news as a commodity.

This, of course, has pretty significant ramifications for those of us in the old media — that is to say the Media 1.0 — world. Media 1.0 isn’t going away any time soon, but it’s already gone as a vehicle for growth, and the sooner we accept that, the better. Mature businesses, especially those with shrinking profit margins, need to look elsewhere, and that’s why we’re so adamant about diversifying along a dual path strategy.

News as a Commodity.

Personal note: It’s been over a month since I last published one of these, and I’m sorry about that. I have so much to write these days that it’s getting harder and harder to keep this series going. We do plan to publish the series in a book soon.

It is a natural human tendency to discover cause when something occurs outside our plans for life. I went through an agonizing period after Allie’s death, for example, trying to find out if there was something I could’ve done or somebody I could sue to right the “wrong” of her sudden departure. Pain does this. I guess we figure that if we can find out what causes tragedy, we’ll be less likely to deal with such pain again.

Besides, “revenge is a dish best served cold,” as Khan said to Captain Kirk.

There’s a great verse in Ecclesiastes where the preacher says that “time and chance occurs to everyone.” This doesn’t sit well with us, because it says that life is bigger than we are and that, well, shit happens. And it happens to everybody, regardless of their position in life.

But in the modernist world view, this can’t be. The need to determine cause is more than wishful thinking; it’s absolutely essential, because in order to maintain the hierarchy and for things to run smoothly, “proper” paths must be identified. The rigid view of right and wrong is upheld throughout the culture, because it benefits those in the right, usually the haves. This is why a bendable legal system — as witnessed by so-called “case law” (not in the constitution, BTW) — is such a vital fixture of the modernist culture.

I say all this, because four people were killed yesterday when two TV station helicopters collided in Phoenix while covering a police pursuit. My heart goes out to the families, friends and co-workers of these men.

From every corner, blame is being assigned. It’s a sensational story with sensational video that can be used to make sensational stories about police chases and their value to the news community. Lawyers are knocking on doors, and analysts are on the sets of various cable news shows. Let’s string up the bastard who did this, and we’ll all feel better!

In the early days of my news career, I was taught that “reaction” was the second day lead. Today, it’s blame, the assigning of fault. It’s as automatic in journalism as “if it bleeds, it leads.” This is then followed by a punishment phase, during which we lambaste the culprit six ways to Sunday. At times when we feel powerless, this helps us feel powerful. And so it goes.

It was an accident, but you’ll not hear anybody say that, because of our view that all accidents can — and should — be prevented. There’s always an insurance company to be sued, and so forth.

Meanwhile, the deconstructionist, postmodern culture looks at this and asks, “Where does the blame stop?” Is God to blame for allowing it to happen (or making it happen, depending on your religious view)? Do we blame life? Human nature? The air? The sky? Nobody ever blames the weather, because we can always fall back on my favorite, “He should’ve known better.” You see, you can’t sue the weather, but you can sue somebody for not knowing about it or somebody else for not providing an accurate reading of it.

Postmodernism says that when you deconstruct any stated narrative, grand or otherwise, you’ll ultimately find that you’re chasing your own tail (that’s a terrible over-simplification, but it works for me). Postmodernism is the Age of Participation, and if we’re truly to be participative, then we must necessarily be a part of cause and blame as well.

Who killed those four skilled and professional news people over Phoenix yesterday? We did.

There’s movement in the world of web “audience” measuring that bears reporting only to make a point about trying to turn the web into something it really isn’t.

Firstly, Nielsen has formally dropped the page view as a top line measurement. This has been coming for a long time, so it’s no surprise. Staci Kramer over at PaidContent provides notes that this will shift some sites’ status considerably. AOL, for example, ranked sixth in total page views for May but first in total minutes: 25 billion.

I’ve always had a problem with page views as a top metric given the way various sites have been able to inflate page views, both by poor design and intentional effort. This shift could help provide a more realistic view although you can still game time spent by making it hard to find things. Now how are Nielsen, comScore-and IAB-going to solve the autoplay issue where sites jack up streaming numbers by delivering video whether or not a user wants it?

And while this is taking place, the Interactive Advertising Bureau is working to establish a single standard for measuring web video. David Kaplan, again at PaidContent, writes that sites are doing their own thing to better position themselves with advertisers.

Many TV nets divide their webisodes into four to five streams for a drama and two to three streams for a sitcom. The point is to make it simplify the delivery of the shows and also to insert ads in each break. But that also allows networks to count based on the stream, as opposed to the number of individuals watching what ought to be considered a single webisode. The IAB hopes to nail down a single standard within the next 12 months.

A single standard would seem doable, given the ability to precisely measure the web. However, the IAB will have to nail down many facets in order to arrive at a single standard. That’s evident in a recent report by TubeMogul.com on an experiment they conducted with eight websites.

The company found that the top online video websites differ greatly in how they record video views. Here’s an image from the report:

TubeMogul writes that “this lack of standardization presents complexity to content producers and advertisers in understanding the relative popularity of videos across video sites. To fully realize the potential of advertising models in the online video medium, increased standardization and transparency is required.”

If you can step back far enough and combine these elements, you can clearly see the media business community moving in unison to turn the web into a form of measurable cable TV. This effort benefits the status quo and includes the Telecom industry, headed by our old friend AT&T. The paradigm is an old one. “Content” travels through pipes to destinations, and everybody makes money along the way. I should add that this paradigm necessarily requires that the “packages” flow from their point of origin outward. In this model, the haves continue to have, and isn’t that nice?

“Standards” is a modernist term that’s essential for a modernist culture. The same is true with “measurements,” because the whole culture is based on the rule of logic and science, something I’ve written about many, many times in this space. The problem is that we’ve entered the postmodern era, one that views authority and hierarchy — and their tools — as self-serving.

In all of the above, who is least affected by these organizational efforts? Google, that’s who, because the bulk of its revenue doesn’t come via the measurement paradigm.

This is, again, why I continue to emphasize that the real disruption for media companies isn’t multi-platform distribution systems or new ways of delivering “content.” The problem is the personal media revolution, which is driven by the internet pureplay companies enabling it (led by Google, eBay, and a host of others).

In the weeks and months to come, we’ll hear a ton of publicity about how the telecoms need to “build out the pipes” and how Madison Avenue and media companies are coming to agreement on the money-making process.

What you won’t hear are the giggles coming from the secret chambers of Media 2.0.

Here is a link to the latest in my ongoing series of essays, TV News in a Postmodern World. This one is called “Niche Media is the Future,” and it examines the drift to specialization in news coverage that’s a big part of what J.D. Lasica calls the personal media revolution. I use coverage of Paris Hilton to make a point that I think is vital for us to understand in the midst of sea changes in media and in journalism.

The era of the all-things-to-everybody news organization is drawing to a close, because specialty coverage can do a better job of delivering depth. Aggregators bring this to us in every size and shape imaginable, and so the challenge to local media companies is which niches in your market do you want to own? Move now, because eventually, forces within your own community will seize those niches, if you don’t.

This is my review of Andrew Keen’s book, the cult of the amateur, how today’s internet is killing our culture. It is a whining, outrageous and defensive fantasy based on sweeping generalizations, falsehoods, paranoia and a form of condescension so pissy that it blinds the author to anything resembling reality.

Let’s get something straight up front: our culture is most certainly evolving. Hell, it’s been the subject of this blog and my writing for the past five years. I say this, because Keen represents the (wonderful) world of pragmatism, which is the epitome of the modern culture. Hence, it’s understandable that he would view the internet as killing HIS world. That said, I think the subject needs an airing, and Keen is trying to give us that. The problem is that his prose is so filled with condescension and venom that it’s nothing more than emotional weeping. And if you took all of that out of the book, it would be about ten pages long.

I’m serious when I say the book is a tough read. It’s tough, because the mind’s search for substance is always confronted by extremism, emotion and haughty disdain for anybody who doesn’t meet his professional “standards” or think as he thinks. I can’t count the number of “Holy Craps” I uttered while working my way through the pages. And I think this is a big problem for a man who’s trying to ask some legitimate questions.

Here are just a few of my objections to Keen’s form of argument:

In the very beginning of the book, he says what it is, “It’s ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.” He paints the problem as pragmatism versus the pejorative “digital utopians.” Whether he’s on YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia or another other place with a Web 2.0 tilt, he searches for the most outrageous examples to make his point.

Folks, if we’re going to have a discussion about this, we need to find some common ground on which to argue. I can show examples from each of those places that are the opposite of the riff-raff that Keen finds, so what’s the point of such extremism?

Ignorance. Egoism. Bad taste. Mob rule. In other words, these are things opposing voices wish to enable. How absurd. He’s fond of the old saw about monkeys and typewriters, often referring to those of the participatory age as such. Again, how do you argue with a man who’s calling you an ignorant, egotistic, boorish monkey? And more importantly, how does one with a reasonable mind listen to the arguments of one who uses such prose?

My biggest complaint with the book, however, is its black/white, win/lose, right/wrong, all-or-nothing perspective. In this he fails his argument and belies his own ignorance. His is the extreme view, not the views of those he labels utopians. I know many of the people he attacks in the book, and not one of them has ever expressed the cultural significance of the digital age from such an extremist stage.

Was Michael Powell being utopian when as FCC Chairman he stated that “application separation” was the single most important paradigm shift in the history of communications and that it would change things forever?

Jeff Jarvis has apparently agreed to debate Keen online, but it’s not a debate that’s winnable. Keen is so extreme, that his assumption of the middle is yanked far over to his end of the balance beam, so where is one to go to bring it back? He even throws in the sexual predator issue to support his fear mongering. What, I ask you, does that have to do with the personal media revolution? As if Keen’s love of rules and regulations has ever protected children from such.

“The cult of the amateur” is nothing more than a can of neatly stacked red herrings, and that doesn’t make for a debate at all.

A dear old friend of mine wrote this week expressing concerns similar to those stated in the book, so I want to try and discuss Keen’s central focus — that the personal media revolution will destroy Hollywood, the professional press and the advertising industry, thus collapsing our economy. To get my full take, you’d have to read everything that’s available in the archives of this website, especially the essays. I have no utopian views of the future, although I believe I have a little more faith in people than does Keen.

He believes the mainstream press and its methods for gathering and presenting the news is worth saving. This assumes that it’s dying, which it is not. It may seem like it from Keen’s perch, but just because something “could” happen doesn’t mean that it’s “going” to happen. Is the professional press worth saving? Of course, and who would argue otherwise? Its absolute grip on information, however, is not worth keeping, because today’s press is all about corporate greed and making money.

The public intuitively knows this, which is why Gallup’s annual measurement of trust in the institution of the press has been steadily sinking for decades. So the press is being reformed from without. What’s wrong with that?

Keen argues that his “cult of the amateur” is killing the copyright industry. Again, this assumes an all-or-nothing scenario, which I just don’t buy. What is under attack is Hollywood’s absolute grip on defining and nurturing the arts, because, again, it’s all about money. How is Hollywood, for example, about creativity, when the best it can do is produce sequel after sequel. Same with the publishing and music industries. The quickest path to profit is to repeat the blockbuster, but in so doing, it weakens all of the arts.

As to the economic argument, we all need to be momentarily concerned, because the copyright industry is America’s largest export. We entertain the world, which is why the industry maintains such favor on Capitol Hill. But again, this is purely a matter of big corporations who control all of entertainment in the name of profit. It has nothing to do with talent, creativity or Keen’s favorite, taste. Let me quote Powell again, “I have no problem if a venerable institution disappears tomorrow, as long as that value is distributed elsewhere in the economy.”

So it is about money, and it is about it being shifted away from institutional power to other places in the economy, namely the pockets of new power players. This may be a concern for professional institutions, but it is not a direct concern for our economy. Keen directly challenges Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” as economic mumbo-jumbo and cites examples of bloggers along the long tail that aren’t making any money. He then uses this to make the case that advertising will collapse absent a mass marketing paradigm and that the professional press will collapse, because nobody will pay the bills.

This is hogwash. Advertising, like media, is an institution undergoing change. The road may be rough, but it is not going to collapse. And there is tremendous money to be made in the information business, although perhaps not in the manner that Keen prefers.

He views the aggregation of content as theft and evil, and he routinely insults the integrity of young people, making sweeping statements about their eyeballs being drawn to what he views as nonsense instead of traditional forms of entertainment.

I have always been concerned that forms of entertainment are our biggest export, but this is a question that’s bigger than Keen’s use of it. We really have to decide as a nation if this is truly in our best interests.

Let’s go back to the last big cultural change, the time when modernism first came on the scene. Those of the ruling elite at the time shouted similar themes, essentially that the worship of rationalism and the human mind would replace the worship of God (through the Roman church). However, modernism didn’t destroy faith; it simply helped us evolve as human beings and move our faith from that which is blind to that which is understandable. In the same way, postmodernism questions the ruling elite of today and demands that we rethink assumptions. It will no more “kill” modernist views of the press than modernism killed premodernist views of religion.

So it’s not an all-or-nothing thing, and we shouldn’t approach it with a spirit of fear.

Keen is obsessed with the idea of truth, and that the road to truth is through science and study. Professional experts, in his view, come closer to truth than those who haven’t followed that which has come before, and this explains his indignation toward anyone who might claim gifts or inherent skill or talent. This is textbook modernism.

The postmodernist, however, looks around and sees institutional failure, which is the price of living in the culture that Keen wants to save. The postmodernist sees the American dream as reserved for the few or the fortunate, because the modernist culture protects its haves. Follow the numbers. With every year that goes by, the gap between the haves and the have-nots increases. Wealth is in the hands of the relative fewer, and pomos ask if this isn’t really a failure.

Technology that was created to serve the institutions now is in the hands of everyone, so yes, depending on your perspective, there is very much a cultural war underway. Media is only the most visible aspect, but every institution is threatened.

Since I first began writing about this, a quote by Leonard Sweet (hardly a digital utopian) has graced the top of my pages: “Postmodernism is a change-or-be-changed world. The word is out: reinvent yourself for the 21st century or die! Some would rather die than change.”

Andrew Keen would rather die than change.

As a person who studies and writes about applied postmodernism, I find absolutely fascinating a Wall St. Journal article today called “Growing Up in Public.” Writer Jason Fry offers concerns about regrets that young people today will have in years to come when people can learn anything they want about someone via the web. Saying they are “blithely unaware of the consequences,” Fry points to a story that says “a quarter of human-resources decision makers had rejected job candidates because of personal information found online.”

This is a textbook illustration of the conflict between modernism and postmodernism.

But Fry rightly concludes that “Before Netters” and “After Netters” (”netters” referring to the internet) are different people, and that today’s HR manager will one day be replaced by one a little more forgiving of the public personas that accompany young people growing up.

I think Before Netters like me are the ones who seem out of step, leading lives that seem hermetic in comparison with those who grew up in cyberpublic. For better or worse, decrying what kids reveal on some MySpace successor will soon seem as painfully out of it as grumbling that teenage boys and girls shouldn’t use the telephone to chat unsupervised.

Take whatever side you like in that debate, but it won’t matter — the world will change and render the argument moot. It’s done so before: Those who saw the telephone as a destructive force in communities might have had — and might still have — a point, but technological changes have left them on the fringe of society. And keep in mind that no commentor in the history of the world ever went broke worrying that today’s kids are immoral swine.

This is very insightful of the shifts in trust and connectivity in the age of participation. As I often remind people, be careful in looking at the new through old eyes, because we really are in the midst of a vast cultural change in the west.

That’s not to say that we won’t traverse some bumpy and rocky roads along the way, but it’s a path we all need to be on. We need to rethink just about everything.

NOTE TO THE WSJ: You’re shooting yourself in the foot with your video player. The pre-roll ad came up quickly, but the video I clicked to see never did. Nice.

One of the cornerstones of the postmodern culture is that trust in institutions is replaced by trust in one’s tribe, that circle of family and friends determined by the individual to be his or her influence group. As I’ve written in the past, this group doesn’t work together as groups of the past; in many cases, it doesn’t function as a group at all, except in the mind of the individual.

Many of the people in my various tribes, for example, have no idea of their position. The web, with its associated links, makes this possible. In a similar manner, I suspect I am a part of many tribes.

The point of this is to offer a little evidence of postmodernism in action via a World Association of Newspapers (WAN) report on how young people use media. Most, the study say, use traditional sources.

At the same time, however, “many participants in this phase listed ’discussion with friends’ as a top source for news and information, sometimes ranking higher than TV or newspapers. In particular, social networks appear to be key in spreading entertainment news for most young people.”

“Although information gathered from family and friends may not be accurate, young people appear to trust family and friends much more than media sources,” said Mr Barnard, who added that the reasons for this phenomenon will be the subject of the next phase of research.

The big reason they’ll find is that “media sources” have spent the last several decades pushing themselves away from the people they’re supposed to serve. It’s called greed, and the web cuts right through it by enabling informed people to share with each other. Trust is a personal decision, and people are voting with their eyeballs. This is exactly why Media 2.0 is the growth engine for all media downstream.

From a postmodern perspective, institutions have failed, unless you’re a member of the ruling elite. Institutions begin as mechanisms to serve the public, but every one eventually drifts to self-preservation. No where is this more evident than in the media, but mark my words, the energy behind this phenomenon — as the study calls it — won’t be satisfied until every institution bows its knee to the citizenry that gives it its power in the first place.

A big reason for this is the ability of the public to ask why, get answers and share those answers. Links take the knees out from under the artificial power of protected knowledge, and this is changing the nature of authority in our culture.

Another thing Mr Barnard ought to examine is the sheer arrogance of the line “although the information…may not be accurate.” Why do we find this in any mainstream attempt to “understand” the disruption?

I’ve just read a piece that raises whining to an art form, Neil Henry’s “The Decline of News” from the San Francisco Chronicle. This is one of those “save the institution” pieces that actually suggests that Google has some responsible-corporate-citizen-duty to support traditional journalism. Can you imagine? A subsidy from Mama Google?

Henry is a journalism professor from Berkeley, and here are a few things he “sees:”

I see a world where the craft of reporting the news fairly and independently is very much endangered; and with it a society increasingly fractured, less informed by fact and more susceptible to political and marketing propaganda, cant and bias.

I see a world in which the pursuit of truth in service of the public interest is declining as a cultural value in our society amid this technological tumult; a world where professional journalism, practiced according to widely accepted ethical values, is a rapidly diminishing feature in our expanding news and information systems, as we escape to the Web to experience the latest “new” thing.

I see a world where corporations such as Google and Yahoo continue to enrich themselves with little returning to journalistic enterprises, all this ultimately at the expense of legions of professional reporters across America, now out of work because their employers in “old” media could not afford to pay them.

I see a guy completely sold on the idea that journalism began with the era of Walter Lippmann’s elitist views. I see a man so completely convinced of the rightness of his calling that it’s impossible to argue the “truth” he believes he represents. I see a representation of the illusion that the press is a privileged and protected class in America, a group licensed not by the government, but by the people they claim to represent.

My heart goes out to people who lose their jobs (been there, done that), but the sky is NOT falling, folks. Darwin would describe this as the evolution of a species. The stock market would call it a “correction.” It’s really just the culture deciding that it’s time to move on.

The world that Henry “sees” collapsing is the professional journalists’ Nirvana, a place where heroism and sacrifice are pitted against the villains of power. But power is exactly what Henry’s worldview is all about, and the disruptions tearing apart this world are moving that power to everyday people. The institution of the press may be on today’s front lines, but the future will not be kind to ANY institution whose lifeblood flows from the wellspring of protected knowledge.

Henry “sees” a society increasingly fractured, but can’t acknowledge that the fracturing began on his watch (nor understand his role therein). He believes we’ll be less informed by “fact,” whatever that might be. He “sees” people more susceptible to propaganda, cant and bias, but can’t acknowledge that the father of professional journalism wrote the book on all three.

The “pursuit of truth in service of the public interest?” Sorry, but this is not the mission of big media (anymore). This pursuit left us for the bottom line decades ago, and it’s what people are trying to get back.

And no critique of this missive would be complete without acknowledging that Henry himself has a fairly significant dog in this fight. His job is ultimately at stake as well.

The ridiculous notion of Google contributing to the very thing it is helping people overcome is — by a long shot, so far — the most Chamberlain-esque of all responses to the disruption of the personal media revolution. It’s tantamount to giving up without firing a shot when the right response is to attack Google’s mission at the point it is most vulnerable — the local level. This may not seem in the job description of the traditionalists, but that is precisely what’s changed the most.

My message to Professor Henry and his kind is this: Grow. A. Spine!

It’s not the lofty and elitist vision that needs protecting; it’s the revenue that sustained it in the first place. We’ve just not been creative in dealing with the real threat here, and to roll over and beg for a nipple at this point is, well, just plain sad.

The Washington Post reports that the Republican Party is playing catch-up when it comes to online strategies. There really isn’t much argument about this from a factual perspective, so the only real question is why.

One reason for the disparity between the parties, political insiders say, is that the top Republican candidates are not exciting voters the way the Democratic front-runners are. Another is that it takes a certain level of technical skill and understanding to be an online strategist, and Republicans admit that “the pool of talent in the Democrats’ side is much bigger than ours.”

But an underlying cause may be the nature of the Republican Party and its traditional discipline — the antithesis of the often chaotic, bottom-up, user-generated atmosphere of the Internet.

Here is my overly simplified reason for this, and it follows another institution’s failure to grasp the value of the web. The GOP’s values follow the modern era’s rules of order. It is very much the party of top-down thinking. While republicans complain about big government, the truth is they are the law and order party, the command-and-control group, the clique that needs to be in charge, with a tightly controlled organization that flows from the top.

This is a similar position of the evangelical church (see my post below), and this group has been noticeably absent from the cutting edge of the web as well. This is odd, because evangelicals have always been at the forefront of communications. Two of the first transponders on the first Satcom satellite went to Christian broadcasters, for example.

The reason these groups don’t like the web is that it’s not a mass medium. It’s much more bottom-up and grassroots, and the GOP doesn’t play well in such a postmodern cultural marketplace. Neither does the evangelical church, because God, the Father, is the ruler of their world. Pomos, as I’ve written before, much prefer the concept of God, the Holy Spirit.

In a similar way, the GOP only recognizes that which flows from the top. Late to the game? I’m not sure they even knew there was one.

(Thanks, Cory)

In an article about the conundrum facing DIGG, the online news community, Staci Kramer over at PaidContent shines a light on the core conflict between media and the masses in today’s world. I left a comment, but I want to expand on it, because this issue is the sweet spot of everything about which I write — the conflict between a mature modernist culture and an upstart postmodern culture.

Just as the printing press heralded the birth of modernism, so is the internet bringing the postmodern culture to fruition. If we’re going to do business in this evolving culture, we’re going to have to view things a little differently.

In the DIGG case this week, stories about a Linux hack for HD-DVD encryption began showing up on the “front page” of the user-determined DIGG. The hack allows people to copy content from HD-DVDs, something the entertainment industry doesn’t want. So a cease and desist order arrived at DIGG, with which managers tried to comply by removing stories and banning certain members.

This created a fury with the masses at DIGG, which then found itself swamped with links to story after story revealing the hack. So DIGG gave up, and founder Kevin Rose wrote:

“…after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

Staci points out that some are calling this “mob rule,” and she waves a very real warning flag for businesses who MUST have user loyalty to survive.

In other words, community first–even when it breaks your own rules, business second. This time. No clue as to what Digg will do the next time it’s faced with a take-down request on another topic but it’s clear who actually holds the power in this equation. What that means for business–not so clear.

I tried to point out in the comments that this is much bigger than anybody realizes, because the very concept of mob rule is a modernist invention. It’s not that mobs haven’t had their way historically, but it’s the attachment of the word “rule” that modernists find intolerable.

What I find most fascinating here is the automatic assumption that chaos is evil. This is a purely modernist perspective, but life itself proves it to be false. Moreover…with any form of internal governor–especially if it is dedicated to self-preservation–people will generally obey cultural rules.

The essential problem with all modernist dogma is the insistence that without a strong external governor (usually belonging to the haves), we’ll sink to Lord of the Flies level. The revolution that’s underway in the communications world is arming the mob with the power of information, so I just don’t buy the argument that we’re all hell bound without external “control.”

And you also have to consider the significance of what was driving the mob at DIGG. Was it the HD-DVD hack or being told they couldn’t share the hack?

There is much that can be said about the copyright cartel and how it has stifled creativity in the name of the almighty dollar–and the slight-of-hand evident in publicly stating “it’s about the artist” when it’s really about stuffing the profit pockets of those who control what you and I watch and listen to.

But I’ll leave that to others.

So what’s happening with DIGG and the other examples that Staci uses is the front line in a cultural struggle that has profound ramifications for the future. With every day that goes by, the machine we know as the World Wide Web — a communications network without a central control — gets stronger and smarter. As we teach it, it informs us, and so it’s pretty hard to argue with the theme of Kevin Kelly’s seminal Wired essay, “We Are The Web.”

The real cultural question for tomorrow is will we find the culturally acceptable internal governor that will keep totalitarianism’s bayonets away? On this hangs much, including tomorrow’s business models.

We have faith in capitalism, and so it works; will we ever have enough faith in each other to make that work? Stay tuned, because that is the essential question of life circa 2007.

I’d never heard of this guy until Doc Searls wrote about his new book, The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture. I’ve ordered the thing, because it’s important for me to read this stuff, even though I can tell you it’s all bullshit.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Amanda Chapel, aka Strumpette, interviewed Keen (”interview” is perhaps too generous…”worship” would be better) and posted parts of it on her blog.

CHAPEL: Your book sounds like a total refutation of the premise and proposal that is the Cluetrain Manifesto. As Cluetrain is accepted as bible, that would make your book heresy! Your thoughts?

KEEN: Yes, my book is in the heretical tradition of modern dystopian writers like Huxley & Orwell as well as contemporary American cultural critics such as Christopher Lasch, Daniel Bell and Neil Postman. Cluetrain established a biblical orthodoxy around the four C’s: “community”, “citizenship”, “customer” and, most ludicrously of all, “conversation”. What it tries to do is displace the ethical and cultural truths that have traditionally defined our civic life — and replace them with the feel-good language of public relations. At the ideological heart of Cluetrain is the absurd cult of the amateur with its denial that real “truth” or “expertise” can ever exist.

…CULT OF THE AMATEUR is not a book written for Web 2.0 radicals. Instead, it was authored for mainstream Americans — parents, business people and educators — who are troubled by the more extreme cultural and economic consequences of the hyper democratic internet. I expose the dangers not only of “citizen media” like blogging and wikis, but also of online pornography, gambling and identity theft. These are issues that have a significant impact on real people’s lives and need to be publicly discussed and debated.

To which Doc, one of the authors of Cluetrain, responded.

Good God. Where to begin?
Well, not only did Cluetrain contain no “four C’s”, but neither the words “citizen” nor “citizenship” appear anywhere in the original website or the book.
While Cluetrain certainly has an ideological heart, it’s not “the cult of the amateur”, or the cult of anything.
And while I don’t yet know which “ethical and cultural truths” Andrew is talking about, I’m damn sure Cluetrain’s authors would never hope to replace them with “the feel-good language of public relations”. Which we crapped on rather forcefully…

I predict that Mr. Keen will sell a lot of books, because there’s a lot at stake here, and he’s “tickling the ears” of those who wish things to stay exactly as they are. The mainstream press will give him all the publicity he needs to sell books and make money, and that’s really what this is all about.

I agree that the Modern culture is under attack, but who’s to say it doesn’t deserve it or need it. What exactly is Mr. Keen trying to protect? The 20% of the population with 80% of the wealth?

Damned amateurs!

And many people create, because it’s their life, not their livelihood (thank you, Harry Chapin). Ask funtwo if he feels slighted because 15 million people have seen his rendition of the Canon in D. Does he deserve a seat at Mr. Keen’s table?

I’m sorry, but the real tip-off about the foolishness of this book is its title. Calling amateurs a “cult” is an insult of the highest order, and Mr. Keen should be ashamed of himself. What about amateur astronomers, huh? They’re robbing the pros of all their glory, so why not attack them, too?

The biggest mistake all critics of the personal media revolution make is the assumption that it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. It’s not, and we shouldn’t buy the books of people who try to make it so.

This book will no more derail the Cluetrain than any other self-serving diatribe from the status quo. The only train wreck here is Andrew Keen.

When I first began writing about things new media, I made the choice to do so from the perspective of people instead of technology. This is because I firmly believe that people are driving technology, not the other way around. You can “understand” technology until the cows come home, but that won’t translate to new business until you closely examine what’s taking place with people.

Ironically, it is the tech company folks who understand this, not the media companies. That’s why they’ve been able to come up with concepts like eBay, Amazon, Google, and a whole host of others, while we’ve continued to play the mass marketing game of days gone by.

I’m back to thinking about this today as I prepare to speak to Phyllis Slocum’s class at the University of North Texas here in Denton. My talk is A Media Lesson for Today from 15th Century Europe. It contains a gem that is most fitting as we watch events of contemporary media history unfold.

“The Church” dominated culture at the time, and they did so through protected knowledge. The priests were the keepers of the Word of God — the source code of the culture — and they used their position to essentially govern. When movable type came along, Gutenberg printed the Bible. And when Wycliffe and others followed with common language translations, the ruling class (The Church) said, “The jewel of the elites is in the hands of the laity.”

The power of knowledge was in the hands of everyday people. Anybody could become a priest. Authority was challenged, and the whole world changed.

It’s interesting to note that one of the first reactions of the church was to propose licenses for those who could print the Bible. This sounds vaguely familiar today as the world of the professional press tries to deal with the exploding world of the Personal Media Revolution — pejoratively dubbed “User-Generated Content” by those of us who can’t handle the fact that the “jewel” is once again in the hands of the laity.

We’ve entered an era in human history when empowered people are changing everything. There’s money to be made in this new world, but the ticket for entry requires, among other things, a willingness to let go of the weighty baggage of the world that preceded it.

The jewel isn’t ours anymore, and, like the Bible and the church, maybe it never was. Our future business goals would be well-served by accepting this simple reality.

Oh, and by the way, the media is just the beginning.

(NOTE: I published an essay on this topic a couple of years ago.)

Here is the latest in the on-going series of essays, TV News in a Postmodern World. This one deals with something we all take for granted about the web — links and linking. These, I believe, are the real currency of the web and that one day, like cash, we’ll find a way to buy and sell goods and services using them. Who’ll calculate the value? “The Machine,” of which Kevin Kelly so brilliantly wrote in his 2005 Wired essay, “We Are The Web.”

Links play a key role in the web’s determination of the new metric “influence,” and this will grow in terms of validity and value as the years go by. Those of us in traditional media embrace the concept of inbound links, because we can easily see how they help “drive traffic” or distribute our content. We’re reluctant to play with outbound links, however, and this is to our detriment.

Links, the Currency of The Machine

Here is the latest in my ongoing series of essays, TV News in a Postmodern World.

This picture was taken last week during a visit to the National Press Club in Washington. I was there to meet some great people and make a presentation, but I got the chance to walk around, look at all the marvelous photographs and try and absorb the history of the place.

The Press Club represents the essence of all that professional journalists hold dear. Bathed in the lives and deaths of those who went before, it is a lasting testimony to an institution that finds itself facing significant internal and external pressures today.

On the way home, I began writing this essay, Voyeurism: Journalism’s 21st Century Crisis. As always, I make no claim to special insight or knowledge. This vision is simply my thoughts about where we’ve been, where we are, and where we might be headed. The way I look at it, it’s all there for anybody to see, but the price of a pair of glasses is a willingness to be honest with ourselves.

The people I was with in Washington agreed with me that this is perhaps the most exciting era in the history of communications, but that traditional media companies must “drive their car and fix it at the same time.” That is a significant challenge, and a how-to manual would certainly help. Unfortunately, we’ve got to make a lot of it up as we go along, and our ties to our assumptions, traditions and history might just be a net liability.