Read my latest essay.

Then read Scrolling: No Longer a No-No by Poynter’s Fons Tuinstra, where he writes that scrolling is actually the tool of choice for younger users.

Told you so.

I’m spending Master’s Saturday tweaking the html of my blog, so that it’ll fit the style of the new AR&D site.

UPDATE: Been working on it, and it’s just about where I want it. What do you think?

Your favorite network executive and mine, NBC’s Jeff Zucker, on print reporters:

“The thing they want is for the [TV-news] business to die faster [than the newspaper business], because that’s what makes them feel better.”

Yup. That’s what they want. Deep, huh? Now you know.

One of the big topics of discussion around the blogosphere this weekend was an emotional response to an Arizona RIAA lawsuit against an illegal downloader of copyrighted music. The music industry sadly continues to pursue legal remedy for its own malfeasance, and reports about various suits are commonplace discussions. Suing your customers is, after all, a highly crappy business practice.

Most of these stories are about sharing files, but this one had a twist.

According to a Washington Post story about the suit, “the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer” — that the MP3 files the defendant made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

This is what got the blogosphere all riled up. How DARE they tell me what I can do with MY music! The only problem is that the story isn’t, well, precise. The assertion regarding the simple copying of a song for personal use was not a part of the lawsuit.

Blogger and new media thinker Robert Scoble jumped aboard the story and wrote that the RIAA is actually doing consumers a favor by forcing artists away from the fold.

This behavior will make sure people buy (or steal) music directly from bands. See how Radiohead did it. By doing that, the price for music will go down thanks to fewer intermediaries. RIAA is just helping us get rid of them, which is good for everyone who loves music…Radiohead put the power of setting the price in OUR hands. Brilliant.

The truth about the matter appeared in the comments of Scoble’s post and elsewhere, and the sources of the story backed off.

Three commenters to Scoble’s post, Jerry, Louis and Shelley, raised serious questions about the journalistic practices of those who spread the story and used the opportunity to criticize citizens media as a result.

JERRY: Have you actually read the briefing, or are you just basing your sarcasm on information you skimmed from other blogs? Why not read the actual briefing then make your argument?

LOUIS: It seems pretty obvious to me from these comments that none have read the actual briefing. It doesn’t say the RIAA wants to prevent is (sic) from copying music for your PERSONAL use.

SHELLEY: The summary judgment and the follow-up brief all specifically state that the law suit is based on the distribution of the files, not the ripping of the files from CD…Facts, people. I know facts aren’t fun, but can’t we try focusing on the facts? At least, from time to time?

JERRY: So much for the accuracy and reliability of “citizen journalism”. And people complain about the accuracy of the MSM?

JERRY: I guess the adage “don’t believe everything you read” applies to the blogging world, too. Too bad most bloggers don’t apply it. Most are more interested in getting linked to than getting facts straight.

With respect to Jerry, this case shows the value of citizen journalism, not its shortcomings. As I pointed out in Scoble’s comments, the Washington Post was involved in this. They may have gotten their “tip” from the bloggers, but they were involved just the same.

Before the blogosphere, before citizen journalism or citizen media, before the people formerly known as the audience had the opportunity to publish for themselves, mainstream media outlets could operate with impunity with regards to the shaping of stories. This is called setting the information agenda, in which the only spin that matters is what the media company says.

Imagine, if you will, if the Washington Post had run such a story 10 years ago. Who would’ve provided the correction? Where would it have been published? How far downstream would the story have gotten before the focus shifted?

The point is that citizen journalism doesn’t function like the mainstream press of years gone by, because comments to a blog post or story ARE A PART OF THE STORY. News is a process, not a finished product, and this is crystal clear in the world of citizen journalism. As such, the fact that Jerry and Louis and Shelley could help set the record straight makes the case FOR the practice.

They and others might argue that the incorrect story shouldn’t have ever seen the light of day in the first place, but that idealistic perspective strikes at the heart of the problem of gatekeeper journalism. Journalists are no less human than anybody else, and despite elaborate (or not) systems of vetting, mistakes are commonplace. If we accept that, then any open and transparent method of immediate correction moves journalism forward, in my judgement, and not backwards, as many in traditional media would have us believe.

75-year old Mona Shaw might be able to tell you why. It’s because nobody listens to customers/consumers anymore, so we’re taking things into our own hands. Mona’s story involves Comcast, missed appointments, and lousy service. So she paid the local office a visit with a hammer, destroying a keyboard and a telephone and knocking over a monitor. She was arrested for disorderly conduct, but what does a 75-year old woman care about that?

“It’s totally not like me to do stuff like this,” she told Potomac News. “But it is so irresponsible and so disrespectful [what they did]. I can’t think of any company reacting that way. It’s like they got you in their clutches and they’ll do what they damn well please.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

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.

Reaction to the name of NBCU and News Corp’s new video portal has been almost entirely negative, and I’m afraid I have to agree. I mean, “hulu?” For the uneducated, the two media giants announced the partnership before they’d hired anybody or had a name for it, so media bloggers and observers dubbed it “ClownCo,” which would’ve been a better name than hulu, for crying out loud.

This portal has been so hyped as God’s gift to online video that any name they came up with would likely have bombed, especially with the tech community — which includes the people who’ve written the book on online video without the “help” of the networks or studios. Old media just doesn’t get that new media isn’t created in a board room with fancy consultants (oh shit, I’m a consultant!), because the results are usually just varnished horse crap. Hulu? The first thing people did was research the word in various languages, and the meanings are almost too funny to believe. In Indonesian, it means “butt.” In Swahili, “cease and desist.”

The problem is that the fuss over the stupid name casts a pall on what is really a smart move by NBC and Fox, namely creating a single portal for video instead of asking people to come to each branded site. Of course, it would be better if all networks were a part of this, and I think announcing the project without a name or a more complete partner list was a huge tactical error.

Some people simply have too much time on their hands. This is hilarious, especially if you have a television news background or anything resembling a geek gene in your DNA (or both).

Thanks to TechCrunch for the tip.

Google News delivers the best headlines. Sorry, I couldn’t resist:

Behavioral targeting is the path for local media companies who want to leapfrog their competitors in the online advertising space. Most companies are slow to move in this direction for many reasons. One, they just don’t understand it. Two, it requires building a local network of websites. Three, there’s no demand for it from local advertisers (yet). And four, nobody else is doing it (yet). That last one is the greatest barrier to progress that I encounter on a regular basis in my work.

A new report from eMarketer may accelerate growth in the space. Behavioral Targeting: Advertising Gets Personal projects significant growth over the next few years.

The $1 billion that eMarketer projects for behavioral targeted ad spending in 2008 represents only 11% of the US display, rich media and video market. With the greater attention paid to overall ad targeting, however, and the rising focus on brand messages online, this market will nearly quadruple by the end of 2011.

Behavioral’s share of total online ad spending will grow from 2.6% this year to 8.4% in 2011, and its share of display and rich media spending will grow from 8.9% to 25.8%.

But those numbers could actually be low, if the local media industry moves aggressively into this area. It begins with the creation of local online verticals and the building of a network of local sites. I tell clients that this should occur in two phases: build your own network first and then work to include other sites in the market. And this, of course, assumes the ability to serve this type of advertising, too.

Behavioral targeting is the Holy Grail of online advertising — whether it’s video or display — because targeting brings with it higher rates. If you are serious about growing an advertiser-supported business online, you need to be proficient in this area.

I wrote “3pm” in an Outlook email this morning, and the spell checker asked me if I meant MP3. Sigh.

Here’s the link to this week’s newsletter. The tease? Lessons from the Upfront and Streaming Media East. (I know, pretty dull, huh? But the content’s good!)

Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo!?

Thomson wants to buy Reuters?

EMI for sale?

Google or Gannett want Monster.com?

Westwood One is for sale?

Private equity firms want to buy AOL?

And, of course, Rupert wants the Wall St. Journal?

In the words of the immortal Frank Barone, “Holy Crap!”

(thanks to I Want Media)

My job requires that I register and join many, many website databases, nearly all of which require a username and password. In the beginning (when the heck was that?), this was fine, but it has gotten to the point where it’s pretty friggin’ ridiculous trying to remember literally hundreds of username/password combinations. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone back to a site where my cookie has crumbled and have tried to log back in only to be greeting by some words on a screen yelling at me, because the stupid username and password don’t match. AUGH!

Then there’s trying to recover a password only to find that the email address on file is no longer in use. And since my favorite username has already been taken (by me, of course), I have to start the registration process all over. Grrrr.

But nothing irritates me like sites that force their own password rules on me, especially those that require “at least one number” in the mix. WTF? I mean, really. Why should you care what I select for a password?

Maybe it’s because it’s Friday, but can we puh-leeeeeeze have some uniformity here?

Or not.

Here is the latest in the ongoing series of essays, TV News in a Postmodern World. This one — To Brand or Not to Brand — deals with an issue that seems to come up wherever I go, the conflict over how to brand (if at all) the various components of a viable web strategy. It’s controversial, because our intuition and instincts suggest we should slap our brand on everything we do. However, the laws of the web are often contrary to those instincts, and so we must challenge our assumptions at every level in the creation and implementation of businesses online.

At AR&D, we recommend what we call a Simulpath™ strategy for local media companies, one that splits business concepts into those that best fit with the mass marketing models of Media 1.0 and the other that fits with the direct marketing models of Media 2.0. Our instincts about branding these various businesses must be in line with the nature of each path, and that can a be difficult concept for broadcasters.

We must always remember than we’re television stations in the real world, with competition we can see simply by changing the channel. Online, however, we’re just a URL - a single pixel on an enormous canvas that makes up the whole of the web. Marketing here can be a very different animal.

I’m on the road today for a presentation, so I won’t be blogging much. I did, however, want to share an event from my weekend visit to Nashville that was, well, a little jolting.

The high school journalism conference was at the Opryland Hotel, a Gaylord Hotel property of some renown. It costs $10 to park in their lot regardless of how long you stay, but I was surprised with the attendant asked me for $10.93 upon exiting.

“You tax parking?” I asked the fellow.

“Yes sir,” he replied. “9.25 cents per dollar.”

It was a first for me, and, I suspect, yet another example of rampant consumer price gouging by those who (think they) can get away with it.

Ack!

In a story about her appearance at Kansas State University Friday, the Topeka Capital-Journal looks at what former New York Times investigative reporter Judith Miller (who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal a source in the Valerie Plame case) thinks of the blogosphere.

The blurring of entertainment and news and the relaxing of journalistic standards can be seen in online bloggers who are critical of people without giving them an opportunity to respond or who don’t post corrections when they learn that what they have posted is wrong, she said.

“I’m worried about bloggers,” she said. “(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it’s repeated as fact.”

While she advocates a federal shield law to protect mainstream journalists from divulging their sources, she doesn’t favor extending that to bloggers who don’t follow the standards and ethnics of the journalism industry.

Still, she wouldn’t restrict a blogger’s right to publish online. She said some bloggers have been invaluable in uncovering government flaws.

“I’m glad to welcome them as long as they agree to the standards,” she said.

This is the kind of contempt prior to investigation that makes it impossible to have a fair discussion with mainstreamers about the value of the blogosphere. Rather than throwing flame bomb generalizations such as the “rumor” quote above, why doesn’t she give us chapter and verse? And who has the right to determine the standards upon which journalists must abide?

This is so old, but just when I think the argument is over, stuff like this appears again. Feh.

So I’m doing a little research this morning for a new essay on postmodernism and the right brain, and I discover something while googling “Age of Enlightenment.” These four links contain exactly the same Wikipedia content.

Wikipedia
Answers.com
Quickseek.com
Arikah.com

So either Wikipedia is selling its content to others who are monetizing it, or others are just stealing it. The point is that Wikipedia’s reach is beyond its own website, and I didn’t know that before.

(A chill just went down the backs of the “but you can’t trust it” crowd.)

Max Kalehoff writes of marketing’s conundrum with new media in an interesting piece in today’s MediaPost Online Spin. He laments the lack of any clear definition of a term that’s been bandied about for the last couple of years, engagement. Marketers are hoping we’ll all agree on what that means, and Kalehoff has done a nice job of summarizing the problem. The commentary cites Robert Scoble’s contributions to the discussion:

Scott Karp (Publishing 2.0) correctly noted how new-media people “may be ahead of the curve on formats and hip notions like ‘conversation,’ but they’re actually playing catch-up on the deep, intractable problems of media– like how to prove the value.” Scoble validated this, but, to my delight, he also tackled the monumental elephant in the room. Yes, the one that so many avoid: the connection among engagement, action and sales.

Scoble wrote: “So, why should engagement matter to an advertiser? Well, as an advertiser I want to talk to an audience who’ll actually DO something. Yeah, I’m hoping to get a sale. Yesterday Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of Active Words, was driving me around and told the story of when he was in USA Today. He got 32 downloads. When he got linked to by my blog? Got about 400. My audience was (and is) a lot smaller than USA Today[’s], but the engagement of the blog audience got his attention. How could we measure audience engagement?”

There is no be-all solution to measuring engagement; heck, the advertising and media industry is having a hard enough time agreeing on a definition! But the lack of action, sales or a defined business outcome in all the pondering is a problem.

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