The Two Stages of Journalism

August 30th, 2010

Here is the latest in the ongoing series of essays, “Local Media in a Postmodern World.”

The Two Stages of Journalism

Much is being written about the future of journalism in the wake of disruptive innovations to both the business model and the practice of journalism itself. It’s confusing, to say the least, until we start to view the processes of the trade in two different stages: the act of gathering the news and the presentation of what we find. Both are in disruption, but in different ways, and the wise future planner will consider them separately. Making public the gathering of the news – what we call “Continuous News” – can be separated from the publishing of finished accounts, and this opens opportunities in all areas.

Posted in Essays, Journalism | 2 Comments » |

What the entertainment press knows that we don’t

August 25th, 2010

Elin Nordegren, the former Mrs. Tiger Woods, gave her first interview — and what she says will be her last — to People Magazine. Immediately, every other entertainment press outlet picked up the story, citing the interview with People. E! Online put it this way:

Her divorce to Tiger Woods is final and in a new interview with People, the Swedish beauty breaks her long-suffering silence, saying that she’s “been though hell” but now feels “stronger than I ever have.”

TMZ.com wrote it like this:

Elin tells PEOPLE, “I’m so embarrassed that I never suspected – not a one. For the past 3 1/2 years, when all this was going on, I was home a lot more with pregnancies, then the children and my school.”

In each case, the media outlet that didn’t get the interview provided a link for readers to follow, which is writing-for-the-Web 101.

You’ll not find a more competitive bunch in all of journalism than the gossip or entertainment press, and yet they’re more than willing to provide link and reference love to each other when one gets a scoop. Their willingness to do this is clearly a part of the process of covering niche news, but why isn’t this the normal practice among so-called “real” journalists and especially at the local level?

It’s because we’re more interested in self-promotion than the news, and this is evident in our silence on matters until we “get confirmation” for ourselves, as if no other news organization is capable of presenting the news properly. The story isn’t a story unless and until we say it is, and we wonder why people are losing faith in what we do. The entertainment press — and the tech press — recognize that “the” story is a story that needs to be shared with their readers. Who cares what source gets credit?

We’re afraid that if we “source” anybody else in the biz, we might lose a reader. After all, they might discover that our competitor does it better or that the reader might discover something about our competitor that they like more than us. And so rather than inform our readers, we deny them the story until we can prove (to ourselves?) that we can get the same thing.

I’m afraid the only people we’re fooling are ourselves, for access to everybody’s version of the news is a touchscreen or mouse click away.

Transparency and authenticity are two new values for journalism in a hyperconnected world. In these areas, the entertainment press runs circles around us regularly.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment » |

It’s time to get serious about personal branding

August 25th, 2010

Australian futurist Ross Dawson predicts that newspapers will be irrelevant in Australia by 2022 but that journalism is undergoing a form of rebirth. He goes on to make some specific predictions, but one caught my attention:

The reputation of individual journalists will drive audiences. Many journalists, most leading experts in their fields, will still be employed in Australia, with public reputation measures guiding audiences on how much to trust their work.

This thinking is showing up increasingly in writings by observers about the future of the news business, and it’s something I’ve been saying for years. A New York Magazine article comparing the troubles of newspapers to the troubles of the adult entertainment industry concludes with a similar thought for the New York Times: focus on their talent.

They should work harder at establishing their talent as brands — not the editorialists, like they did with Times Select; you can get opinion anywhere — but the people whose work has actual value: the reporters. Like a good talent manager, the Times could nurture and advise these reporters, guide their careers, and manage all of their creative output. They wouldn’t just publish their stories, they’d also publish their books, book them on speaking engagements, broker their movie deals — and offer them lucrative contracts in exchange. The Times already has the best talent, and it’s possible people will pay for it.

In today’s hyperconnected, social media-driven world, people follow people, not institutional brands. Moreover, the net reach via Facebook, for example, of the staff of any news organization can and should exceed that of the organization itself, because people follow certain individuals but not others. In Spartanburg, SC, WSPA-TV anchor Amy Wood garners more Facebook fans than the station’s Facebook page altogether. She works at it, but so should everybody, because people follow people!

In my 2008 essay, Your Personal Brand, I offered ten things that people can do to strengthen their personal brands. Now that the concept is becoming more mainstream, I thought it would be appropriate to republish them here:

1. Blossom where you’re planted, because it leaves a good taste in the mouths of your co-workers and impacts your reputation. For young people especially, this includes your network, because one’s network at that age often includes people you work with.
2. Build a database of customers and people of influence. Let technology do the heavy-lifting here, but these are the people who spread your reputation beyond your own reach. Get to know them. Remember them. Help them. Stay in contact with them. This strengthens your brand.
3. Spread the brands of others in your network, for it’s the best way to motivate people to spread yours. Go to them as a customer, and let the shop owner know what you think. Help that person be the best they can be at their gift or chosen field.
4. Make personal business cards with your brand and spread them everywhere. Advertise yourself with people in person and online. Talk about what you do. Share your experiences and maybe even provide tips as part of your social networking. Everything you do, especially if it’s negative, reflects on your brand.
5. Be a good person, not an ass. People are watching, and the last thing you ever want to do is prove yourself a jerk through your behavior while your intentions tell you you’re really a good guy.
6. Get comfortable with yourself, even if it takes professional help. People intuitively recognize self-destructive or self-centered behavior, and it’s a huge turn-off. If you use, for example, your Facebook page to constantly gripe about this or that, your brand will be that of a complainer and someone who enjoys life atop the old pity pot. You can’t control what people think of you, but you can choose not to give them ammunition with which to interpret your brand as negative.
7. When someone asks for your help, offer it freely, for Life loves a cheerful giver, and your brand will continue to grow. This is also a hedge against those bad days (that everyone has) that contain bad behavior. People will know that’s out of character and cut you some slack.
8. Devote some time each day to the study of your craft, and this is especially true for young people. You don’t have to pretend to be an expert when you really are one.
9. Don’t be afraid to be human. Nobody’s perfect, although we all seem to think that we should be. Get off your own back, and soon you’ll find it easy to get off the backs of others. You will make mistakes, sometimes pretty big ones. When they happen, admit them, turn the page, and move on. Tolerate your own imperfections and you’ll discover how easy it is to tolerate the imperfections of others, and that is a good brand characteristic.
10. Be teachable and stay teachable, no matter how much (you think) you know. Run, don’t walk, to those who can teach you and help grow your brand. Seek out such people and invest your time, for it will pay dividends beyond what you can imagine today.

Personal brands ARE the future of journalism, and that includes those outside the mainstream who are practicing the craft as bloggers. Individuals will become experts in some niche and sell that expertise to those who need or want it, either as independent contractors or employees. My guess it will be more the former than the latter, for once people taste the freedom of being on their own, it’s hard to go back.

This, of course, will set in motion a whole series of issues relating to the craft of journalism, but that will be fine. Meanwhile, advancing your personal brand should be high on the list of any professional journalist’s daily chores.

(Originally published in this week’s AR&D Media 2.0 Intel newsletter)

Posted in Journalism, Media 2.0, personal media, Reinventing Local Media | No Comments » |

When the press doesn’t talk about religion

August 20th, 2010

So 18% of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim. 34% think he’s a Christian and 43% aren’t sure what he believes. The data comes from a Pew study of religion and politics and underscores, I think, the remarkable and judgmental ignorance of the American public. The study notes that it is political opponents who skew the results, but that doesn’t explain the 43% who say they “don’t know.” This is not just tragic; it’s damning evidence of the how religion has been virtually eliminated from mainstream discussions of leadership at all levels.

I’ve been associated with studies of religion for a very long time. In 1988, I led a month-long study of religion in the Tennessee Valley for WDEF-TV in Chattanooga. The project, in conjunction with the Chattanooga Times, was extremely well-received by the public, and I’ve often thought that it’s the most overlooked news “beat” in the country, especially in the South. The truth is that journalists are uncomfortable talking about religion, because it’s complicated, polarizing and easy to make a mistake. It has the potential to really make the uninformed look like an idiot, too, and what reporter wants that? Nevertheless, 92% of Americans profess a belief in God, so it’s clearly relevant to the audience.

It’s this unwillingness to talk about spiritual matters in everyday life that leads to the data from Pew. If the press doesn’t talk about it, the only source of information is peer groups, and the kind of echo-chamber nonsense of groups like certain factions of the Tea Party.

I should mention that the Chattanooga religion project DOUBLED our ratings in one month, so the interest level is there. The subject just needs to be treated respectfully.

Posted in Culture, Journalism | No Comments » |

Why don’t we trust the press?

August 19th, 2010

I have been using Gallup data for years to hammer home the point that blogging and bloggers are a response to the loss of trust in the professional press, not a cause. Gallup released this year’s data this week, and it continues the trend. Press trust has been slipping since 1976, and today just 47% of Americans have trust in the press.

For the eighth year in a row, more people distrust the press than trust it, but the curious question is why? There’s the obvious issues of bias and the he said/she said matter and others concepts of which Jay Rosen writes, including his brilliant “Church of the Savvy.”

But I think there’s something else going on that is a direct result of the Web and the exposure people are given to other ways of thinking and, most importantly, varieties of journalistic output. People can now see the same “story” in many different forms — as it develops — and that poses a serious problem for those institutions who pretend that theirs is the only voice that matters. Moreover, horizontally-connected consumers can now share their thoughts with each other, which has the unintended consequence of destroying the authority that comes with any single voice. News competition is seen for the silliness that it really is, and all of the hype that professionals have come to believe about ourselves is laid bare for all to see.

Nobody ever mentions anybody else in the world of news gathering unless a copyright claim forces it. Before the Web, this was understandable, because as far as anybody knew, our reporters had all the angles on everything. The idea that the guy across town had it first was irrelevant, so why mention it? As far as our viewers or readers were concerned, we were the font of all knowledge. Besides, we had the time to gather everything we needed anyway. It was the world of the “finished” news product.

But now, with news in real time, everybody can clearly see stories develop across all sources. We know who got it first. We know when something is exclusive. Our hype is just nonsense.

Aggregation has made it possible for news junkies (let’s not underestimate their influence on everybody else) to be simultaneously informed by anyone of their choosing, and in the development of a story, they can “see” many things and ask logical questions, such as:

• why don’t we attribute facts to other outlets?
• why don’t we link to other outlets?
• why don’t we quote other outlets?
• why don’t we curate the work of everybody to bring the audience the whole story?
• why is our “business” more important than the news we’re trying to cover?

Without any of the above, it appears to the average reader or viewer that we’re in it for the competition — to show them that we don’t need anybody else’s efforts — not to serve the information needs of the community. This has the effect of gutting our own predispositions and the very methods by which we operate, and I think it produces a cynicism in the audience that wasn’t there just ten years ago.

The people formerly known as the audience have always been more hip to our ways that we would ever admit, but the Web has further crystallized everything. We can “channel change” to determine for ourselves who has the best coverage, but the truth is we’re only interested in the story, not in any one outlet’s coverage thereof.

News is a process, not a finished product, and the Web is making that perfectly clear these days. Trust in the process is different than trust in the finished product, and this is doubtless impacting overall views of trust in the press. Professionals want to point to the product when examining the matter of trust, but I think the evidence suggests something entirely different. Moreover, I think we’re going to have to address all of this in order to rightly prepare for a future that is much more interested in the process than the finished product.

Posted in Culture, Disruptions, Journalism, Uncategorized | 13 Comments » |

“Application separation” threatens TV

August 19th, 2010

In 2003, then FCC Chairman Michael Powell made a statement while visiting students at Stanford that I’ve quoted often here. “Application separation,” he said, “is the most important paradigm shift in the history of communications, and it will change things forever.” He was talking about the ability to separate the package from the infrastructure that delivers the package.

In the world of code, XML does that by separating the content from the way it’s displayed. This allows the mixing of different forms of content and the transportation of content absent formatting. It has changed things forever.

But in the real — non-code — world, we’re separating things, too. This is what happened with the music industry. Technology allowed the separation of cuts from albums, and the digital music world was born. TiVo did the same thing with television. People could separate their favorite shows from the source and watch them when they wanted.

And now Google TV threatens to institutionalize that separation, much to the chagrin of broadcasters, cable companies and even Hollywood. They fear the same thing that happened to the music industry.

Chairman Powell, during that same meeting, also expressed a certain reality about those disrupted by “application separation.”I have no problem,” he said, “if a big and venerable company no longer exists tomorrow, as long as that value is transferred somewhere else in the economy.”

Sound like what’s taking place today?

Google TV makes no bones about wanting to separate programs from their sources and provide end users with simple, search-based access to the programs they want. According to an article in the Wall St. Journal, this is not sitting so well with some broadcasters, and it’s easy to understand why.

The Google software aims to play any video that runs anywhere on the Web, from clips on YouTube to full-length TV episodes that media companies distribute on their own sites. That open pipe has some media companies worried that their content will get lost amid a range of Web content, including pirated clips, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google’s push could backfire: Some media companies are discussing whether they should take steps to block their Web video from playing on certain devices, which is technically possible.

Blocking, however, would be foolish, for people WILL have what they want, and this is the problem with all disruptive innovations. The only issue is how difficult it might be for Google to sell the public on another set-top box or another expensive piece of hardware in order to experience the new world.

I think it’s a foregone conclusion that people will view television this way downstream, and that the best broadcasters, cable companies and studios can do is slow it down. TV has an advantage over what the music industry faced, because we can actually see it coming. It won’t change the outcome, however, for we’ve long ago entered the age of empowered consumers. People already watch “programs,” not channels, so “application separation” is already underway, just as it was for music.

Better than fighting, it seems to me, would be to spend some time innovating ways to move supportive ads to a VOD environment, or to be the one who offers the searchable (local) channel of video advertising and coupons. The old adage is that for every 100 people who see a commercial, perhaps one or two want more information. That’s the market for video-on-demand from the marketplace.

In the end, though, we must once again face what Mr. Powell so perfectly described eight years ago and realize that the world that supports media is changing, whether we want it to or not.

Posted in Broadcasting, Disruptions, Unbundled Media | 2 Comments » |

Another opportunity lost

August 19th, 2010

Facebook’s announcement yesterday of its entry into the “check-in” space is yet another blow to local media. Local businesses — many of whom already are deep into Facebook — are now being encouraged to create their “places” pages, which is what users will see when they check in via Facebook. Why is FB doing this? The gold in the hills of local advertising.

By creating a brand new directory of local businesses, FB can monetize it a hundred different ways. Already projected to make $1.3 billion in advertising next year, I fully expect that number will be much bigger, as it begins to suck advertising dollars from the local marketplace. What will local media companies do to respond? Sell more banners on their brand extension websites?

Technology has allowed anybody to do anything online for years now, but local media companies have refused to use any of it to create new value for themselves. Why is a mystery and a failure at the top of company leadership.

Facebook is already “local” in the way it is used, and local advertisers are well aware of this. By entering the check-in space — and creating landing pages for local advertisers — the company is exploiting its “localness” to not only create a rich experience for fans but also make money. The company is also opening its doors to the two top players in the space, Foursquare and Gowalla, in so doing. Brilliant.

Local media companies who insist that content is their business are going to have great difficulties sustaining that downstream. In this week’s Media 2.0 Intel newsletter, I offered five things companies can do today to begin creating new value. It seems appropriate to repeat that here.

• Data is a big part of the future, so start building databases. Begin with identifying and defining the Local Web. If we must attached an immediate purpose to it, then build a simply application that searches the database. The point isn’t to create an immediate revenue generator; it’s to build new value, and trust me, there’s value in databases of knowledge.
• Build networks of people, beginning with a loyal amateur journalist following. Equip them with knowledge. Invite their participation in what you do. Build blogs for them, if that seems smart, and aggregate their content. Show them how to shoot and edit good video. Always be recruiting new members into your group, for they will become your eyes and ears in many ways downstream.
• Build networks of websites for advertising. We recommend a horizontal ad network that serves the whole market, but vertical ad networks are there for the taking, too. Is your market home to big regional medical facilities? Create a vertical ad network to serve that community.
• Teach advertisers what you know and how to do what you do. The reality is that anybody can function as a media company today, and who better to teach the amateurs than the professionals? If advertising is content in the new world, then there’s a market for teaching advertisers how to make content. Who should have a YouTube account rich with videos related to its business? Everybody.
• Create an online video archive business that offers uncut video to those wishing to make their own shows, films or whatever. There is a market for this, because the shift to personal media is only going to get stronger, and you can create new value for your company by repurposing some of your old, raw footage. Assign somebody as keeper of this and pay them a cut. It’ll pay off downstream.

At the highest level, companies need to reward new value creation as much as they do meeting revenue goals. Otherwise, the emphasis will continue to be on making money with what we have, and that’s just not going to work in the long run.

Posted in Advertising, Disruptions, Reinventing Local Media | 2 Comments » |

Lifetime: Don’t contact us, except via postcard

August 18th, 2010

Being the consumer that I am, I do a lot of writing to companies and whatever to explain my pleasure or displeasure. Most companies are happy to hear from people, or at least they pretend to be as such.

But not the Lifetime cable channel. I wanted to drop them a line to express my dissatisfaction with dropping the show “Models of the Runway” that followed Project Runway last season. Karen and I both thought it was great and added a whole new level of drama to the actual competition of Project Runway.

So I went online to get the address, and here’s what I found:

Hilarious, right? Actually, it’s pretty pathetic and further evidence of exactly what’s wrong with the entertainment industry, which is a blatant disregard of the people they’re supposedly trying to please: the audience.

Wake up, Lifetime. Postcards? Really?

Posted in Just Plain Fun Stuff | 3 Comments » |

The Web is dead, or not

August 18th, 2010

The real danger of Wired Magazine’s story this week on the death of the Web (The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet) isn’t so much that it’s varnished BS as it is what people with a whole lot to lose will do with it. Media companies, for example, have much to gain if what the Wired article preaches is true, and sadly, I think, this will become yet another very costly diversion.

Based on data from Cisco, Wired has built a graph that seems to show browser traffic declining and app traffic on the increase. Never mind the fact that Boing-Boing has cut gaping holes in the image itself (“The use of proportion of the total as the vertical axis instead of the actual total is an interesting editorial choice.”), the reality, as Michael Arrington points out, is that much of the growth traffic on the net is video that runs via Flash through browsers.

Boing-Boing reworked the image based on actual bandwidth usage, and it comes out looking more like this:

As Boing-Boing points out, that doesn’t look like death.

But Arrington’s argument goes beyond the simple manipulation of data to make a point.

The browser isn’t dead. Web pages aren’t dead. HTML works really, really well. Check out Facebook’s iPad “app,” for example. You don’t download it from an app store, you just point your browser to touch.facebook.com. Not only does it work really well, Steve Jobs doesn’t get to have a veto right over people using it. It’s no wonder that we’re seeing a surge of traffic from the iPad to our site, via a browser.

Apps are great on mobile phones with small screens. But they are a pain to install and keep synchronized. Eventually having less local software will make sense on phones, too. All you really need is that browser virtual machine and you can pull everything else from the cloud. This is obvious. Only a bunch of hipster tech journalists checking email on their iPads all day* would think otherwise, and then make up a bunch of data to support their argument.

*Wired, not us.

I couldn’t agree more with Michael, but here’s where I see the problem. The Wired article is filled with industrial age illustrations — like railroads and telephone systems — of how markets grow and then are seized by monopolies or oligopolies.

It is the cycle of capitalism. The story of industrial revolutions, after all, is a story of battles over control. A technology is invented, it spreads, a thousand flowers bloom, and then someone finds a way to own it, locking out others. It happens every time.

The problem, of course, is that the industrial age is drawing to a close, and one simply cannot apply industrial age concepts to the new world. Why? Because money can’t buy scarcity when it comes to connectivity. THAT is the problem. We’re not just connected “up” any more, as Jay Rosen has so often pointed out; we’re connected horizontally to each other, and that blows a gaping hole in anybody’s economic theories.

What Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch and a whole bunch of others want is to find a way to sell the world on the scarcity model once again. The Wired article does that by simply announcing that because apps “work,” that means that apps are the future, regardless of how much money it costs each of us to use them.

The Wired article points out opposition to its vision but does so with a blithe dismissal that belies the self-serving nature of its theory in the first place. Wired is, after all, a magazine, and magazines want to believe that their future is apps.

The defenders of the unfettered Web have their hopes set on HTML5 — the latest version of Web-building code that offers applike flexibility — as an open way to satisfy the desire for quality of service. If a standard Web browser can act like an app, offering the sort of clean interface and seamless interactivity that iPad users want, perhaps users will resist the trend to the paid, closed, and proprietary. But the business forces lining up behind closed platforms are big and getting bigger. This is seen by many as a battle for the soul of the digital frontier.

I think Wired is right here, in that this is indeed a battle for the soul of the digital frontier. I just don’t buy the argument that deep pocket players have some inherent right to it, nor do I buy any argument that offers only a mass media, one-to-many solution. This is my essential problem with Steve Jobs, who is certainly the hero of any thinking like this. He’s a hero in the sense that he wants to help people with control maintain that control, but this underestimates and undervalues the real revolution that’s taking place within the digital world in two ways.

One, horizontal connectivity breaks the back of any one-to-many system, so attempts to restore that kind of hold will always include the breaking of the horizontal in some way. Connectivity through an app is a different animal than connectivity through the Web, for the app restricts what can or cannot be “shared.” What good is horizontal connectivity, if the connection is manipulated for profit?

Two, the cultural ramifications of the digital disruption involve the scattering of knowledge to the four corners of the earth. Since protected knowledge is the source of authority, this, too, has staggering cultural implications. The app world can conveniently put an end to this, and I don’t think people will stand for it.

I’m sure the article will sell a lot of magazines, as will the Fortune cover, “Is Google Over?” That is what we do, right?

(And for a little comic relief and perspective, read Henry McCracken’s wonderful “The Tragic Death of Practically Everything: Microsoft, Firefox, Facebook, the Mac–they live on in our hearts.“)

Posted in Disruptions, Technology | 4 Comments » |

The airlines themselves made Steven Slater

August 11th, 2010

As a frequent traveler, I feel more than qualified to add my voice to the cacophony of praise and rebuke for former Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater. He’s being touted as a “blue collar hero” by some, and he certainly has given the press something to talk about in the doldrums of summer.

My view is that the airlines themselves are responsible for the growing tension in the cabin between flight attendants and passengers, and much of it goes back to the decision to milk passengers out of more money by charging for baggage. This caused an immediate burden on carry-on luggage space, because, let’s face it, jets weren’t designed for everybody to bring such luggage on the plane.

Every flight is now needlessly delayed by the search for a spot for carry-ons, which then results in the infuriating and relentless warnings from the flight attendants to “please move out of the aisle.” I even recall one American gate agent from LaGuardia (where they grow especially obnoxious human beings) who actually said over the intercom, “Come on, people, it’s not that hard!” It was enough to make me punch her in the face and deploy the slide, but the crush of oncoming passengers kept me at bay.

I’m all for the airlines making money and for full flights, but it is an impossible situation the airlines have made for themselves and their employees by forcing weary travelers to cram everything they have into the cabin of the aircraft.

Flight attendants are leaping to Mr. Slater’s defense with stories of rude passengers, but I’ve honestly experienced more rude flight attendants and gate agents than I ever have passengers. I understand the pressure under which he “popped,” but I point the finger of blame at the airlines themselves.

You had this coming.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments » |