2009: The Great Beginning

December 15th, 2008

Here’s the latest in my ongoing essay series about reinventing local media, Local Media in a Postmodern World.

2009: The Great Beginning

Unlike previous years, where I’ve set down my thoughts about what the year ahead will be like - with specificity - I’ve chosen this year to look at a much bigger picture. Consequently, you won’t find dire predictions from me. I’m leaving that to everybody else, for I think 2009 will be remembered as a year when real change blossomed, and I view that with only positive eyes. So I think it’s more important that we look farther downstream than the year ahead, for if 2009 is truly the great beginning, then what’s beyond next year, and what are the foundational elements that we need to be considering for sustainable growth? This, it seems to me, is what demands our attention, not dwelling on what has transpired or doom and gloom prophecies.

Posted in Essays, Reinventing Local Media | No Comments »

WUSA-TV’s “multimedia journalists”

December 14th, 2008

Warning: rant follows. I don’t get this mad very often, but this has been building for a long time.

WUSA-TV in Washington D.C. is in the news this week, because they’ve made the decision to go the video journalist route for their news department. That means the shop becomes mostly people who shoot, write and edit stories instead of the “specialists” of the good old days. It’s a budgetary move; the “multimedia journalists” will make less than the specialists did. Given what’s happening to local media companies these days, this is increasingly going to become the norm.

But you knew that.

Those of you who’ve been with me for awhile know that I was involved in the first attempt by a local station to do this — at WKRN-TV in Nashville. In the years that have followed, many stations have adopted some version of what we did back then. There are “backpack journalists,” “video journalists,” “multimedia journalists,” “MoJos,” mobile journalists, and more. Most stations have equipped at least some staff to cover the news this way, although not until the announcement from Washington this week have I heard of another station going “all the way” with VJs. In its article on the switch, The Washington Post quotes WUSA competitor WJLA-TV news director Bill Lord:

Lord says stations in Nashville and San Francisco have used multimedia journalists on an experimental basis in recent years but have backed away because of “falling quality” and declining ratings.

Failing quality? Declining ratings? Says who? With respect to you, Mr. Lord, you weren’t there. You know nothing, and you — and all the others who think they know anything about this — need to be corrected, and it is to this group that my anger is directed.

San Francisco got a lot of publicity, because it’s a big market, and the travails of KRON-TV had already been well-chronicled. But the only connections between what we did at WKRN and what was done at KRON are that both were owned by the same company and that the training was done by Michael Rosenblum. WKRN’s move was not done for financial reasons; KRON’s most certainly was. It wasn’t ratings or quality that doomed either; it was the financial struggles of the stations’ owner.

I’m mighty damned sick of and disappointed in certain elements within the industry for their relentless and automatic dissing of what was clearly a prescient and necessary move by a group of people with the stones to stand up and say, “We can’t keep doing things the way they’ve always been done and expect different results.” The handwriting was clearly on the wall back then about what was happening in the industry, and while many people talked about doing something different, few people had the courage to break the mold.

Under the leadership of Mike Sechrist and Steve Sabato, WKRN-TV blazed the trail that everyone will eventually have to follow, and while it may not have been — or be — popular with the people who like things the way they’ve always been done, we all need to wake up and smell the friggin’ coffee. Over and over again, I’ve seen well-intentioned professionals make fools of themselves in arguing why the VJ model cannot and will not “work,” when those views are completely — and I mean completely — irrelevant. The economy doesn’t care what you think. The forces of disruptive innovations don’t care what you think. Technological advances don’t care what you think. Rather than seize the inevitable, these people have set the industry back with pejorative references to “one-man bands.” Shame on you!

If you ever chose to actually examine how this is being done around the world, you’d understand that there will always be certain types of stories and events that require two (or more) people. Read the interview I did in the summer of ‘05 with Lisa Lambden about how the BBC made the switch. For sure there were problems, and there still are, but where the industry could use the expertise and wisdom of its professionals in overcoming those problems, you have chosen instead to cast stones and treat with great disrespect those who were trying to make a difference ahead of the coming storm.

Now that storm is upon us all, and what can I say?

You can bet that the young people coming up in the industry will be trained with multimedia, VJ skills. Then, too, there’s the matter of a generation of video journalists who are growing up around you in your own communities. They didn’t go to school for it. They didn’t work in smaller markets and march their way to the top. But they’re getting better at what they do, and one day, their skills will match or exceed even yours, for they are not bound by the chains of nostalgia.

So when the economic forces of reality eventually rip that job from your narrow-minded grip, I will wish you well, but I will not feel one bit sorry for you. Michael Rosenblum has been vilified by an industry he has been trying to save, and the bullshit coming from the mouths of professional news people over the years since WKRN’s pioneering move is exceeded only by the arrogance with which it has been spread.

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

The evolving world of television

December 14th, 2008

Like most people, I suppose, my television viewing habits are eclectic, brewed in the chaotic vat of channel surfing. I have my favorites, but I’ll watch anything, if it grabs my attention. If anything could be described as regular fare for me, it would be reruns of network dramas, especially crime dramas. They’re everywhere. I also love “House,” and USA has decided that hour upon hour of the medical drama will satisfy viewers, for a few months anyway.

And so this headline in Broadcasting & Cable caught my attention:

Scripted Series Scarce on Nielsen’s 2008 Top Tens
Reality, sports dominate TV lists in Nielsen’s year-end rankings

Only three of the top ten regularly scheduled shows this year were scripted series, CSI, NCIS and The Mentalist. What’s cable going to do for reruns in the future? But wait! Seven of the top ten time-shifted programs are scripted series, and what is a rerun, if not a “time-shifted” TV show?

But there’s a real kick-in-the-teeth in the numbers.

The results also suggest an age factor, as the top three time-shifted programs—NBC’s Heroes, Fox’s Fringe and ABC’s Lost—are aimed squarely at the 18-49 demo. Meanwhile, audiences for the top scripted shows on the regularly-scheduled program list all have median ages above 50—54 for CSI, 56 for The Mentalist and 58 for NCIS.

You see, local news programs are never going to be high on anybody’s time-shifted list, so the age issue is a serious problem for local broadcast companies, who make much of their money from news programming. It’s the candle burning at both ends (see: The Demographic Candle). The more scripted producers target younger people, the fewer viewers there will be for anything delivered in “real time,” and the more scripted producers target an older audience, the quicker that universe shrinks, despite the higher ratings. People do die, you know.

In its heyday, broadcasting produced a kind of “community” that current and future generations will never know. I’m always drawn to the mini-series Roots and how that programming brought people together. But the people of tomorrow will know another kind of “community,” one that doesn’t require a single, powerful message to momentarily unite. In a truly networked world, unity is possible beyond rallying cries.

I certainly hope so.

Posted in Broadcasting, Culture | 1 Comment »

“Earth Stood Still” — a metaphor for media?

December 13th, 2008

I just returned from the remake of the classic SciFi flick, The Day The Earth Stood Still. I thought Keanu Reeves was excellent in Michael Renny’s role as Klaatu. He has that alien look about him anyway. That aside, the movie pretty much sucked. It’s tough to remake such a classic and do it justice. The special effects were nice, and Gort was cool, but its role was reduced. The name “GORT” is an acronym in this movie instead of an alien name, and there’s no drama about the robot running amok. The destroyer in this film is hordes of locust-like, microscopic critters who multiply and devour everything in vast, swooping clouds. Nice effects, but give me the damned robot! And worst of all, no “Gort, Klaatu Barata Nicktu.”

The film does provide a fitting metaphor for media companies, however: you’re killing yourselves, so clean up your act or risk annihilation.

Les Moonves said this week that the network affiliate roll of local television stations will last, perhaps, another ten years. So let’s think about that for a minute. By 2020, there will be no printed newspaper and no local network affiliate television stations. One or two stations might survive by serving niche content to small audiences, or new networks might emerge. Mostly, though, we’ll get everything we want or need via the Web, including portable videos and “books” via Kindles, or some other device for reading. We’ll all be connected, and that world will be very different than we have today.

None of it will reduce the demand for news and information, but we’ll draw from an array of local, regional, national and international sources — all low-overhead, razor-sharp companies with a gift for writing and creating “content.” The companies formerly known as local media companies will have fully evolved into businesses that are paid to help enable commerce through a variety of means. I think it’s possible, perhaps even likely, that these companies will spring up from the streets, instead of the traditional seats of media power.

Various prophetic Klaatus came to the media world many years ago and offered glimpses into tomorrow. In the years ahead, we’ll find out if anybody besides the scientists geeks were listening.

Posted in Disruptions, Copyright, Reinventing Local Media | No Comments »

Personal media has a BIG future

December 13th, 2008

Doc nails it this morning in a post “A world of producers.”

There’s a good chance that the best picture you can put on your HD screen doesn’t come from your cable or satellite TV company, but from your new HD camcorder. As time and markets march on, that chance will only get larger.

…And as camcorder quality goes up, more of us will be producing rather than consuming our video. More importantly, we will be co-producing that video with other people. We will be producers as well as consumers.

Last year, Nokia projected that, by 2012, one-quarter of all entertainment would be created and consumed within peer groups, and I still believe that’s a doable number. For television stations — especially those already playing in the HD world — it’s an opportunity to create a new revenue stream by providing stock video that people can use to make their own, well, whatever.

Speaking of which… David Weinberger points to this most excellent mash-up of “40 Inspirational Moments” in film from the people at overthinkingit.com.

Posted in Technology, Culture, Video | No Comments »

Borrell: Strong to get stronger, weak will disappear

December 10th, 2008

We’re hearing a lot of prognosticating about what will or might occur next year. Experts at the UBS’ annual “Media Week” conference in New York this week, for example, are thinking that 2009 will still be a growth year online, despite the recession. Joe Mandese wrote for Online Media Daily that online is seen as a shelter from the storm.

…online advertising growth is slowing down, but it still is poised to grow at rates that would be considered healthy by any other established medium, even in good times. And during the kind of advertising recession that the analysts now say we are heading into, online actually looks like a pretty safe haven.

…Bob Coen, senior vice president-director of industry forecasting at Interpublic’s Magna unit, and the dean of Madison Avenue economists…has consistently been the most bearish for online media, but he nonetheless predicted it would grow 5% in the U.S. in 2009.

As other forms of advertising shrink, online will dramatically increase in the share of overall advertising and will account for 16.1 percent of all advertising by 2011. Coen predicts online will rise more than twice the rate of the next fastest growing media during the recession of 2009.

Meanwhile, the situation is a little different with local online advertising, where Gordon Borrell wrote in an email exchange with AR&D that “flat is the new up.”

“Online advertising will be the civil war battleground,” Borrell wrote, “where everybody tries to burn each other’s towns. We’ve already seen budgets and strategic plans for dozens of companies for 2009, and they appear to pretty much look the same: Ratchet up online sales by targeting our competitors. TV stations are going after newspaper classifieds, newspapers are going after Yellow Pages advertisers, and the radio guys are pretty much using the Web to go after everybody.”

Media companies continue to see each other as “the competition,” when we need to be looking at outside pureplay companies. The name of the game today is “enabling commerce” at the local level, and copying what others in traditional media have always done, sadly, doesn’t address that mission.

The economy is on Borrell’s mind, as it is with most others, and his view of 2009 for local media companies as a whole reflects this week’s news of bankruptcies and layoffs throughout the industries of newspapers and television.

“I think you’ll see a natural thinning of the weaker companies that made bad decisions in the past decade,” he wrote, “like investing in brand-new printing presses or expanding newsrooms and newscasts into weak audience segments.

“There’s likely to be a spate of bankruptcies and shut-downs, though the bankruptcies will be few and the shut-downs will affect only the weakest performers — a few large, second-place newspapers and quite few small fringe ones; a lot of niche-audience radio stations; the weakest TV stations that will be forced to either shut down or abandon local news programming.”

He’s also predicting consolidation among phone directories, with some big books disappearing along with a lot of little community directories.

“I’m actually more bullish on TV and newspapers, and I have history on my side,” he added “These are strong products with unique attributes that, if invented today, would be all the rage. You don’t have to plug in or recharge or wait for a newspaper to power up, it’s less than a pound, and when they say ‘please turn off all your electronic devices,’ you can keep reading. And if you’ve absolutely got to move inventory this weekend, what other medium can deliver the news about this weekend’s big liquidation sale to 80% of the market’s households?”

“Unfortunately,” he continued. “most legacy media have been oversold over the years, so we’re seeing a natural adjustment. A lot of what we’re seeing in newspaper downturn today is due to the economic cycle. Newspapers have hit their nadir. Yellow Pages and Direct Mail have only just begun their nosedive. Local broadcast TV’s losses will come mainly in the form of the weaker ones disappearing, leaving the bigger stations in an even stronger position.”

Borrell told of an ad he’d seen for a company urging its customers to “Don’t think. Know” adding that it’s a great theme for these troubling times. “don’t think about what’s going on in your local market.” he added. “Know. Companies that make informed decisions are far more likely to come out on top than those that just react. It’s a great time to be smart.”

The conundrum for local media companies is how to define “smart” in a time of extreme bottom-line pressure, because the need to serve the future is overwhelmed by the need to stay afloat. This is a very tough decision in a season of bailouts and bankruptcies.

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

Posted in Newspapers, Broadcasting, Advertising, Disruptions | No Comments »

Deconstructing the “real journalism” argument

December 9th, 2008

This subject keeps popping up from time-to-time, and I wish it would just go away, because we’d get a lot further in the reinvention of professional journalism if we could get away from the belief that its an entitlement, one that’s necessary for the survival of the species. In another conference yesterday on the future of journalism, Poynter’s Roy Peter Clark asked, “Who will pay for good journalism, enterprising journalism, in the future?” The New York Times‘ Bill Keller told NPR yesterday that “there’s a real shortage of the kind of information that I would call quality journalism.”

But the topper is Peter Osnos’ latest at The Century Foundation, Beyond the Great Press Crash of 2008. In the most absurd argument of all, Osnos blames the Internet for stealing the copyrighted material of “the press” and making money off of it.

What has happened with the Internet so far is that the suppliers of hardware, software, and transmission (search engines and aggregators) have built business models that effectively shut out revenue streams for the creators of the information that is being delivered. What has become absolutely clear in 2008 is that this new model for delivering information is a debilitating blow to the creation of quality news content. The companies making money from the internet—Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, and so on—are entitled to the riches they’ve amassed from their ingenuity and entrepreneurial skill. But as a society, we’ve got to figure out how news gathering and information distribution will be paid for from now on.

He then goes on to offer what he calls “three avenues to innovation:”

1. Reestablish the principle that news has to be paid for by someone: the consumer, the advertiser, or the distributor. (See the Platform for November 3, 2008: “Make Google Pay.”)

2. Private equity investment in new brands or renewed confidence in such stalwarts as the New York Times and the Washington Post, which are hurting badly but would revive if they can make money from others (for example, search engines) through fees for their content.

3. Accept the role of news as a public service to be supported by the community through public funds, membership, and sponsorship of various kinds. This is, of course, the model that has been in place for decades at public radio and PBS.

Osnos equates aggregators of news and information with Napster, who got sued for making copyrighted music free, and YouTube, who got sued for making copyrighted videos free. These are specious and ridiculous comparisons, for the vast majority of online news aggregators only publish what’s in RSS feeds or enough information to tease users to click on a link back to the source of the news and information — in other words, helping the business model of the creators. The Napster and YouTube comparisons are demagoguery personified, for to even come close, Google or any other aggregator would have to lift entire stories for republishing. Nobody’s been sued for that, because it isn’t happening.

This business of a public subsidy is folly and, as a guy who has been around PBS for a long time, please explain the sudden love for its business model? Who do we think we are? Surely our hubris has blinded us, for professional journalism never was God’s gift to culture.

Chris Satullo, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote a poignant farewell column this weekend. He’s leaving the paper to work for the public station, WHYY.

I leave a business that seems to have lost both the will and the way to support the craft of journalism it once burnished to a fine sheen.

It’s a business that, in its pig-headed insularity, authored some of its own woes - but now is being swept helplessly along by the cascading changes of a Gutenberg moment. The Internet is changing our world as definitively as the printing press changed Europe - and more rapidly.

In my time, newspapers - and the journalists who worked for them - have made some mistakes. We embraced a priestly elitism, failing to explain ourselves clearly to readers or to confess frankly our mistakes of judgment. We were slow to respond when people, money and power flowed to the suburbs, slow to grasp the game-changing implications of the Web (though catching up now).

We screwed up plenty. At the same time, though, we did some splendid, useful things for the Republic.

That’s the pesky paradox of it: While we could at times be as arrogant as our critics claimed, we were more ethical and adept than they would ever admit.

I really appreciate people like Chris Satullo, and I think he’s right on the money. We have done some good things, but our arrogance was our undoing. That arrogance is behind the notions that “real journalism” can’t be practiced outside the paradigm of contemporary professional news.

I have great faith in the future of journalism, although I don’t think it will ever again be supported by static ad models that produce enormous profits for publishers or broadcasters. And I have great faith that the Fourth Estate will rise again. It’s been in a coma for a long time, having been lulled to sleep by oxygen deprivation from atop the pedestals of those who’ve pretended to carry its flame while living the high life of those it was supposed to keep in check.

Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. All is vanity.

Posted in Journalism | 2 Comments »

NBC’s risky gambit: Leno to prime time

December 9th, 2008

For all of the great things NBC Local is doing, you kind of have to wonder about the mothership. The Peacock network has struggled with programming challenges over the last few years and often finds its shows in fourth place during prime time. The network is talking to affiliates about turning some of that time over to them (for what? More news?), and now we learn that Jay Leno is going to host a new show during the 10pm hour, Monday through Friday.

With Conan O’Brien taking over The Tonight Show in May, NBC had to find something meaty for Leno, or he would’ve bolted to another network. In moving Leno to prime time, the network gives up on fixes two problems: what to do with Leno and what to do with prime time.

I have never been a fan of Jay Leno. I think he stole “The Tonight Show” from Dave Letterman, and I’ve just never understood the attraction. Neither does Dustin Rowles from the snarky and raucous movie and entertainment site Pajiba (one of my RSS favorites):

How bad is this idea? It’s horrific. It’s network suicide. Who is gonna watch Leno and then the “Tonight Show” and then “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” They’re basically running three talk shows in a row, five nights a week, broken up only by a half hour of local news. Leno is gonna pilfer half of Conan’s guest. Leno is gonna beat Conan to the punch on all the good jokes. And Leno is gonna completely dilute the staying power of “The Tonight Show.” At the same time, no one is gonna tune in five nights a week to watch Leno when he’s up against actual network programming. The novelty of a primetime, late evening talk show, if there even is one to begin with, is gonna wear off in a few weeks or months, and Leno’s late-evening show is gonna tank, right along with “The Tonight Show.” And nobody is gonna tune in religiously to Leno. The people who watch Leno are the folks who have nothing else to do at 11:30 every night and find Letterman to be too subversive for their tastes (which is saying something about their tolerance for subversiveness, considering just how tame Dave has been over the last decade). There are, like, five people who love Leno. Everyone else that watches it does so because they’re too goddamn lazy to change the channel.

In an excellent piece of insight, Scott Collins at the LATimes thinks the move is fraught with risk.

…if Leno’s new program flops — and remember, it will be competing not against “Nightline” and David Letterman but rather with the likes of “CSI: Miami” and “CSI: NY” — the network will be stuck with five hours per week of low-rated programming that may be difficult to get rid of.

Second, the network is going to have to find new homes for the current series that reside at 10 p.m., including the popular “Law & Order: SVU.”

…And then there’s the Conan factor…if O’Brien’s ratings sink below what Leno was doing behind the late-night desk? NBC just handed him one heck of an excuse.

While there will be tons of spin to the contrary, this is NBC giving up. From the perspective that the network is backed into a corner, you could make a case that it’s a bold strategic move. It’s cheap programming. It keeps Leno from being snatched by somebody else. But to this observer, it’s a sad commentary on what has happened to network television in the wake of disruptive influences. Late night talk has always been what you watch to ease yourself into sleep, hopefully with a smile on your face. TV’s older audience may be going to bed earlier, but I doubt this is what NBC had in mind.

Going to sleep is, however, what this feels like from the once proud peacock.

Posted in Broadcasting, Networks | 1 Comment »

Tribune bankruptcy is a warning to all

December 8th, 2008

I just got a call from a reporter at the New York Times about the Tribune bankruptcy. Debt is the issue for Sam Zell, and the filing for chapter 11 protection is a hedge against a massive, pending debt payment. Cash flow isn’t… blah, blah, blah.

“We believe that this restructuring will bring the level of our debt in line with…” blah, blah, blah. “…we have made significant progress internally on transitioning Tribune…” blah, blah, blah. “…factors beyond our control…” blah, blah, blah.

Ground control to Major Sam: Media companies aren’t like flipping real estate, but who knew? There are those who suggest that this action is really Zell’s best bet to get the debt holders to restructure the $13 billion the company owes, and that will likely happen. This debt was incurred when Zell took the company private last year, and I thought that was smart at the time (still do). But the move also gives the company ways to deal with other forms of debt, including pricey operating expenses. It’s not pretty, no matter how its spun from Zell’s offices in Chicago.

This will not be the last major media company to file for Federal protection using Chapter 11, because many others face the same issue of enormous debt in a tight credit market. But it’s only a part of the much bigger picture of what’s happening to media in a season of disruption, and as I told the reporter from The Times, Zell has bigger long-term issues than debt. The Tribune Company owns businesses who make money by placing ads in between (broadcast) or alongside (print) scarce content. That model, I’m afraid, is dying for two reasons. One, content isn’t scarce anymore. Two, advertisers have other, cheaper ways of reaching the people formerly known as the audience. I’m not sure there’s any form of government help that can protect traditional media from that.

The Tribune Company is owned by Zell and Tribune employees. I wonder who’s going to get hosed the most in this? Stay tuned.

Posted in Newspapers, Broadcasting, Advertising, Disruptions, Economy | No Comments »

The Unbroken Web, revisited

December 7th, 2008

Last winter, I gave you a weekend gift — an explanation of Richard Adams’ “The Unbroken Web.” If you missed it back then, I hope you’ll follow the link, for Adams offers a compelling perspective on the source of creative inspiration.

This post came to mind as I read two instances of it this morning. In the first, Seth Godin tells of a friend who wrote a science fiction manuscript 25 years ago for a novel about a virus from outer space. Just as he was finishing it, Michael Crichton published The Andromeda Strain, which, well, you know what happened with that. Godin’s friend, Harry Harrison, threw his manuscript in the trash and half-jokingly noted that Crichton had “pre-stolen” his story.

The second is an article from The Inquisitr about rock guitarist Joe Satriani’s copyright suit against hot British rock band Coldplay and their “Song of the Year” Grammy-nominated “Viva La Vida.” The suit claims the Coldplay song incorporates “substantial original portions” of his 2004 song “If I Could Fly.” This YouTube mash-up of the two songs makes a pretty convincing argument for Satriani.

Now, I’m not saying that Coldplay didn’t “copy” Satriani’s song, nor am I saying Michael Crichton didn’t “pre-steal” Harrison’s book. I’m merely suggesting that creative concepts are often more than simply something that “pops” into somebody’s head, whereby that person then claims ownership and rights. I’m aware this is controversial stuff, but if you believe that Life is bigger than you are, you become witness to things mysterious and awesome. To me, Life is the source of creativity, whether that’s a reflection of everybody else, as Adams believes, or some external — yet internal — source doesn’t matter.

I just know it’s bigger than me.

Posted in Copyright, Just Plain Fun Stuff, Philosophy | 1 Comment »

Interesting…

December 4th, 2008

…that Apple is now selling the iPhone via the applications available and not the phone itself. The new TV ads are all about the “apps,” and they are introducing that word to the public at large. Next, we’ll find that term sliced out of the brand itself. After all, “app” is a part of Apple, right?

Posted in Advertising, Technology | No Comments »

Nothing brings about pessimism like a recession

December 2nd, 2008

This recession thing is pretty confusing. The government has officially declared that we’re in a recession (I called it in August). The market tanks one day and skyrockets the next. The so-called “Black Friday” was supposed to be bad, but it wasn’t. The National Retail Federation (NRF) said the average shopper spent $372.57, up 7.2% from a year ago. And despite stories of concern last week, the so-called “Cyber Monday” likewise showed sales up spectacularly. During the first 12 hours of Cyber Monday, consumers spent 27% more this year according to Seattle-based Mercent, an online marketing company that serves the retail industry (via Online Media Daily).

But a CNN Money report today signals caution, something the press is very good at doing.

Shoppers came out in droves over the weekend, motivated by pent-up demand and deep discounts, but the surge is not expected to last.

The report notes that holiday shopping is “only” supposed to be up 2.2 percent this year.

I think that the evidence from shopping this weekend is good news, and that we ought not to be tainting it with omnipresent caveats. For crying out loud, we’ve been in a recession for the past year — something anybody with eyes and ears knew — and the issue now is recovery. Folks, I know a little bit about the subject, and you don’t recover by saying you’re not recovering. Bad news multiplied has an extremely negative impact on the public, and it needs to be tempered with truthful reporting about events that show our resilience as a people.

Shelly Palmer agrees and has a warning for the press.

While dim reports on the state of retail are all the rage, if analysts and the media continue to spin the doom and gloom, they will only become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A self-fulfilling prophecy indeed. Pessimism is contagious, but so is optimism. The status quo is being disrupted as part of the massive shift from a modernist culture to the postmodern era, and the weeping and gnashing of teeth from those who can’t — or won’t — make the shift should not be confused with a general cultural collapse.

Be of good cheer. This is not the end of the world; it’s the movement of one season to the next.

Posted in Culture, Economy | 1 Comment »

Embracing the Disruption

December 1st, 2008

Here is the latest in my ongoing essay series, Local Media in a Postmodern World.

This essay is entitled “Embracing the Disruption,” and it focuses on the need for local media companies to ease away from dependence on our legacy brands to compete in the online world. There is no question that having an incumbent player in the market is a competitive advantage, but I think media companies need to reexamine this, for if our online competition is only the other legacy media companies in the market, it’s no advantage whatsoever. The real advantage incumbent media players have is in sales, but that advantage can and is being overcome, and I think we ought to be thinking differently about how we use the power of our brands. If a local internet company had a television station at its disposal, for example, it would use that station differently than the way television stations currently use themselves to promote the Web. For legacy media, it’s all about extending our brands to the Web, but for companies with roots in the Web, it’s the opposite. It’s about building new brands and new offerings based on the wants and needs of users, including advertisers.

Embracing the Disruption

Posted in Newspapers, Broadcasting, Disruptions, Essays, Reinventing Local Media | No Comments »

The First Law of Social Media

November 28th, 2008

Here is the latest in the ongoing series about reinventing local media, “Local Media in a Postmodern World.”

Social media is foreign to traditional media, but it’s increasingly the playing field in the quest for eyeball attention among the citizens of the Web. We need to know the rules of the game here, because we risk irrelevance otherwise. This essay is called “The First Law of Social Media,” which is to respect the invitation you’ve been given. This is counterintuitive to most in the media world, because we’re so used to having a stage with everybody looking at us. We set the concert rules, not the concert-goers. But life on the Web is a different animal, and we must be prepared to learn and adopt new skills and new ways of thinking, if we’re going to be successful downstream.

The First Law of Social Media

Posted in Advertising, Essays, Social Media | No Comments »

Welcome to the 21st Century, Defense Minister

November 28th, 2008

Robin Waulters has an excellent post over at TechCrunch this morning about the troubles of Belgian Minister of Defense Pieter De Crem, who ran into a blogger at a Belgian pub in New York on Monday. De Crem and several aides came to New York, even though the U.N. conference for which the trip was planned had been cancelled. He ended up getting completely soused at the pub.

Following his visit, bartender Nathalie Lubbe Bakker blogged about their visit (in Dutch), talking about how disgusted she was of how drunk De Crem was and how embarrased she was about his behavior. Worst part, she wrote, was the fact that one of the politician’s advisors admitted to her that the meetings they were there for on taxpayer’s money were in fact cancelled because the UN was meeting in Geneva (which is about 330 miles from Brussels). He reportedly told her they had decided to come to NY anyway despite being aware of the cancellation because the policital situation here was ‘calm’ and that he’d ‘never visited the city anyway’.

Somebody from De Crem’s office called the pub later and Bakker was fired, which didn’t go over very well with the Belgian blogosphere (and it shouldn’t go over very well here, either). De Crem then made a complete ass of himself in Parliament by playing the victim.

I want to take this opportunity and use this non-event to signal a dangerous phenomenon in our society. We live in a time where everybody is free to publish whatever he or she wants on blogs at will without taking any responsibility. This exceeds mud-slinging. Together with you, other Parliament members and the government I find that it’s nearly impossible to defend yourself against this. Everyone of you is a potential victim. I would like to ask you to take a moment and think about this.

The only thing De Crem is a victim of is his own arrogance. The guy got caught on a taxpayer-funded folly to New York, and that’s what he’s really angry about. “Without taking any responsibility?” How so? Bakker is the one who got fired, another martyr in the war of everyday people against the institutions of power. And I would argue that this is the role of the press, the institution of which wasn’t present at the time. Had someone with an official press card been there, I suspect the outcome would’ve been the same.

Except the reporter wouldn’t have gotten fired.

Posted in Journalism, Blogging, Citizens Media, Culture | 3 Comments »

Thanksgiving in a time of fear and uncertainty

November 26th, 2008

Tomorrow is Turkey Day and the beginning of the “most wonderful time of the year.” But this year, the economy’s in the tank; media company stocks (and company valuations) are bumping the bottom; and layoffs, buy-outs, and early retirements are everywhere. Uncertainty is the word of the day, which is actually a four-syllable word for fear.

The day after the holiday, many believe, will be telling. We’ll “learn” how consumers really feel based on what they spend. That news will propel us forward or cause us to slide deeper into the funk of 2008. That’s the way we are, or so the experts say. This is the “group think” of modernity. Study it. Categorize it. Label it. Shift it. Drive it. Manipulate it. And so it goes. Logic and reason can do no better, for they live within the world of the known. “If it exists, it can be measured,” is the first rule of science.

The brilliant mind of Kevin Kelly wrote about the origins of science a few weeks ago (The Origins of Progress, Anachronistic Science). If you want to expand your mind, read Kevin Kelly, for his is one of the most significant voices of contemporary culture. But Kelly uses science to try and answer a question about science that perplexes him: Why was science “discovered” in Western Civilization and not before? It’s a fascinating question, and one that is terribly important for us today, because we’re at the beginning of the post-modern, post-colonial era in the West.

I’ve been studying and writing about postmodernism for over ten years, and I see the conflicts of a culture in change everywhere. I actually prefer the term “postcolonial,” because, from a practical perspective, it fits better. Colonialism is a top-down, “teach a man to fish” philosophy ideally suited to the application of logic, reason and science. Where it runs into problems is when the top wants to maintain its position on top, but I digress.

The thing that Kelly refuses to acknowledge — as do most people of science — is the role of faith in the origins of science, and that brings me back to Thanksgiving 2008.

We’re in the midst of a second Gutenberg moment, in which knowledge (The Jewel of the Elites) is spreading throughout the globe like a giant mushroom cloud, and I would argue that this significantly will alter any future projections, just as the first Gutenberg moment did centuries ago.

As to why science came from Europe rather than China, I think it’s fair to point again to that first Gutenberg moment. Movable type was invented in both cultures at about the same time, but the difference is in what the printing press was used to create. The fundamentals of logic and science demand a degree of faith and a willingness to sacrifice for the greater good, and that came from the source of Western knowledge of the time: the Bible.

The only downside to science, is its tragic dismissal of that book and its place in history, for I believe it contains the source code for Western Civilization. When Wycliffe completed his common English language translation, he made this remarkable statement: “This book shall make possible government of the people, by the people and for the people.” (Aside: Lincoln lifted that from Wycliffe, so the American Civics Literacy quiz got it wrong.) Wycliffe’s claim is as true today as it was back then, for democracy requires an internal governor, which the faith of the people provided. It may seem like it’s missing in our culture today, but I don’t believe it.

Finally, man wants to be God, and it’s always been that way. This quest is what fuels all progress. We want immortality. We want to overcome time and distance. We want omniscience and power. Nothing wrong with any of that, but I would love to see science actually acknowledge it some day.

So as we stare uncertainty in the face this Thanksgiving holiday, let’s ask ourselves this: Is our faith in ourselves, our government and our institutions to figure all this out, or do we believe, as our forefathers did, in something bigger moving us forward? For me, Life is in charge, and while I certainly believe our gifts and talents play a big cultural role, I’m most thankful that something bigger than me influences everything else.

Besides, gas is now $1.69 a gallon here in Dallas. That alone ought to give each of us pause, for who could’ve imagined it just six months ago?

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

Posted in Holidays, Culture, Economy | 1 Comment »

A funny thing happened on my way to the NYT

November 26th, 2008

So I’m clicking on a link to a New York Times article by David Pogue that trashes the new Blackberry Storm phone (Blackberry Storm Downgraded to a Depression), when I’m greeted first with the below interstitial ad.

Ah, the fun of contextual marketing on the Web.

Posted in Advertising, Just Plain Fun Stuff | 2 Comments »

From my RSS reader…

November 25th, 2008

…comes the headline of the month:

“Please Be True, Please Be True, Please Be True …”

I love the Internet.

Posted in Just Plain Fun Stuff | No Comments »

Those “portable electronic devices”

November 23rd, 2008

I was on a late flight from Raleigh to Dallas Thursday and walked to the rear of the plane to use the restroom and noticed something I’d not seen before. Perhaps it was the fact that it was dark in the cabin that made me notice, but 95 percent of the people on that flight were using what the airlines lovingly call “portable electronic devices.” The other five percent were asleep.

Laptops, DVD players, Gameboys, PSPs, PDAs, you name it. Everybody was entertaining themselves — or working — in the main cabin. I took a picture of the people near me to give you an idea of what it was like.

I fly a lot and have for years, and I’ve never noticed this before. The image from the rear of the cabin was truly amazing, and it speaks volumes about our culture. Our portable electronic devices are a permanent part of us today, and there’s a certain degree of discomfort that sets in when we’re separated from them. You only have to watch what happens when the flight attendant advises everybody that it’s time to put them away. What does one do, just sit there? OMFG, what a nightmare!

I’m in my seventh decade of existence on this planet, and of all the amazing things I’ve witnessed, portable computing is the most incredible. People who grow up with this will doubtless look back at my generation as archaic and old fashioned (”You mean you actually played with rocks and sticks?”), and I only hope that history credits our resisting enslavement to the institutions of the West for at least a part of the freedom they will enjoy.

Posted in Technology, Culture | No Comments »

My bail-out plan

November 21st, 2008

$700 billion “fund” divided by 300 million, the population of the U.S., equals $2,333 for every man, woman and child. A family of four would get about ten large. We’d spend our way out of the problems.

Sigh.

(These are the kinds of thoughts that kept me out of the good schools.)

Posted in Just Plain Fun Stuff, Economy | 2 Comments »