You know I'm a big believer that online pairs nicely with print. You won't hear me saying that books, newspapers, magazines, and the like are dead. In fact, my own Eaglon publishes online and offline in tandem for Media Bullseye and Cork & Knife.
That's why I was not surprised, but definitely pleased, to see the news that the German version of Wikipedia will be published in book form. Read more here.
If you think the media is slow to understand the dramatic changes taking place in their own industry, you may not be surprised to know that Congress is even more in the dark. Recent reports suggest that some politicians would seek to handcuff the American media at a crucial juncture in the industry's history.
Read my commentary on this subject here.
It's not just about time. That’s the point that Dave Winer and Scott Karp are missing. Nor does every – or for that matter probably many – readers visit news sites repeatedly throughout the day. Once again, this seems like it might be a case of those of us in the echo chamber believing we are the norm.
Scott and Dave both basically argue that news sources should provide a chronological view of their news. They both frame it as an option, but clearly press for it to be the default view.
But this overlooks the fact that not all news sites are like the AP news wire providing breaking news. In fact, for many years I had access to the raw AP feed for my job and I found it to be a sometimes interesting, but often frustrating, way to view the news. It was chronological – which was great when it was a hot story I was following, but not so useful for the vast majority of news stories.
Good reporting does more than simply regurgitate the facts as quickly as possible. A powerful news article will actually have a shelf-life of more than a few minutes until the next story is published.
When the New York Giants won the Super Bowl, was that any less newsworthy at 3 pm than it was at 11 am the day after? Of course not. Did the facts change at all to merit a new story being written in the meantime? Nope. So shouldn’t it still play high up on a sports web site or a New York newspaper web page? I think so.
Certainly a chronological feed would have value to true newshounds – and as Dave points out for editors themselves. But given that most readers don’t spend all day reloading the New York Times, CNET, or BusinessWeek, let’s not get too carried away.
If you read this blog, you know that I am fascinated by media and disruption. So it was natural that Eaglon's next publication should be focused on just that intersection and named Media Disruption. There's already a bunch of good stuff up there (in my humble opinion), including an in-depth profile of Rafat Ali's ContentNext Media led by his flagship blog PaidContent (it may be the most comprehensive individual piece about Rafat's media empire to date, based on my survey of other articles).
Of course, it's not even 24 hours old and there are also articles about Martha Stewart and Emeril getting hitched, the "web-ization" of network TV scheduling, and more.
Check out Media Disruption and stay on top of the latest on this hot topic.
It has been a lot of work, but Media Bullseye finally gets to see the light of day. It is the result of a partnership between two companies I am involved with. The first, CustomScoop, I suspect most of you are familiar with. I co-founded that company in 2000 and it has been an active and successful participant in the media intelligence marketplace ever since. The second is one that I founded earlier this year, Eaglon. This startup already publishes Cork & Knife, focused on fine food and drink.
Eaglon's mission is to create multimedia magazine titles that marry text, audio, and video and delivers content both online and in print to consumers. It will own and operate independent titles (like Cork & Knife) but it will also partner with other organizations and companies to create co-branded publications (like Media Bullseye). I envision this second category as a sort of modern "in-flight-style" magazine that provides valuable content to readers, viewers, and listeners, while also helping to raise an organization's profile and credibility.
For the debut of Media Bullseye, I wrote an article explaining this theory of turning any company into a publisher. I explain how I think it might work and what needs to be done to be successful.
I am grateful to a lot of people for helping get this launched in a timely fashion (we wanted to make sure we were up and able to cover the SNCR event in Boston this week). First of all, the team of folks that I work with is second to none. In particular, Sarah Wurrey, Ian Muir, Phil Charles, and Jen Zingsheim-White all made significant contributions. And I am especially thankful to some of the early outside contributors to Media Bullseye, including Chris Brogan, Chris Thilk, and Scott Monty.
You will certainly hear more from me in this space about Media Bullseye and Eaglon, but for now just go check out Media Bullseye for yourself. (And feel free to tell your friends, Twitter followers, blog readers, and podcast listeners all about it if you find it valuable.)
This week Shel Holtz kicked off quite a discussion with his post "Why Hasn't Podcasting Gone Mainstream?" I have been participating in the dialogue in the comments on his post, but I think it merits a complete post of its own here.
Shel argues that it is a problem of infrastructure. He says that watching video online is easy, while audio is comparatively hard.
One survey found that more than half of all podcast listeners don't use a portable device. Is it because that is too difficult or is it because that's where they want to listen?
I certainly understand the argument that listening to podcasts isn't exactly simple if you want to sync to a portable device, but I don't think that's the answer to the challenge by a long shot. It is part of it, sure, and I include it among my 10 reasons for slow podcast adoption (below), but ultimately if people want to hear truly compelling content they will work hard to get it. Just look at the lengths people will go to get Police concert tickets or to buy a Wii.
Here then are the top 10 reasons I can think of why podcasting isn't yet mainstream.
Rather than dismissing old media, in this case radio, as many new media mavens are fond of doing, we ought to study it and learn from it. Fundamentally, I don't believe in new media per se. As Christopher Penn commented not long ago (I forget where), "media is media."
Chris Brogan graciously agreed to speak with Disruptive Dialogue about his advice to "media makers" who want to make a living off of creating media. This is a topic he has written about on a number of occasions, but perhaps most comprehensively in a blog post over the summer.
(Click here to listen to the 15 minute interview.)
In the interview, he stressed that his advice applies primarily to those who want to make money directly from their media content, as opposed to people who create media for their friends and family or even professionals who simply aim to raise their profile and build their reputation. This is, in his words, for "someone looking to pay their way."
At first, many successful podcasters or video bloggers "lived by their show name." Chris wanted to make sure that people understood that what they ought to be creating instead is a production company brand rather than simply a show brand. In so doing, it becomes easier to create spin-off enterprises, to sell a particular effort to another company, or fold a failure without taking the brand down with it.
In addition, Chris talked about how he has a less than 2 minute segment in each Marketing Over Coffee podcast to help build his own brand ("Social Business Class"). This represents an example of what he describes as designing content that can be "slotted in" to a larger content production. He notes that sometimes larger media enterprises may be looking for chunks of content to incorporate into their efforts, and if a media maker creates his material in such a way that it can be easily adopted, it may be able to expand its reach through partnerships.
The comments on Chris' original post were echoed in this interview in which he discussed the fact that a successful media enterprise will often create a community which will enable revenue opportunities beyond advertising. But fundamentally, media creators must be sure to understand the needs of advertisers and ensure that they are collecting the appropriate traffic and demographic data that potential sponsors will want to know. He laments that many content builders don't have the "business sense" that they need to make a living at what they do and urges them to gain that knowledge.
The interview then turned to a discussion of the merits of audio versus video as a business model, including a brief look at Shel Holtz's post on that very topic today. Chris noted that his original post has frequently been misconstrued to be making a case against audio in favor of video. In fact, he notes that he loves audio-based media and that a lot of video actually works better as audio because the video doesn't add value. In particular, we talked about the Scoble Show which we both often listen to rather than watch, although we agreed that Robert does some of his shows where the visible content adds significantly to the understanding and impact.
"I don't think people who are investing money are right now very interested in audio overall," Chris warns. He senses more innovation in the video space which excites investors, and he recalled a recent conversation where he noted how hard it is for consumers to record and post audio online as opposed to video which has a lot of consumer-friendly solutions available.
Chris notes that the Student Loan Network not only has the Financial Aid Podcast, but they also have begun to dip into video in order to do things like show how to make a perfect cup of coffee (to save money by not going to Starbucks). It underscores his point that the future will be made up of "media makers," not single silo audio, video, or text creators. Blended, or multimedia, offerings will be the ones that succeed.
Regular readers know that I rant and rave about how content really doesn't want to be free -- and shouldn't be. But with the announcement this week that the New York Times would stop charging for access to its columnists and much of its archives, the clamor about free content roared back to life. Add in rumblings from Rupert Murdoch about maybe possibly making the Wall Street Journal content available online outside of a pay wall and the story gained even more steam.
Here's my asterisk: access to content without a subscription fee is by far the most successful model so far. Especially for people producing commodity content, which for the most part is what newspapers today provide. By "commodity content" I mean stuff that readers can get elsewhere. If there are free options that are almost as good, consumers will clearly not pay for access.
But, you say, the New York Times columnists are clearly not commodities, like the news itself. Surely they create unique content from unique voices. Hardly. Some of them are great writers and occasionally they offer up some new insight. But for the most part, opinion writers are a dime a dozen. I have done plenty of op-ed writing myself in the past and I can tell you that, especially with the dawn of the Internet, there are plenty of places to go for good commentary without a subscription.
But even with this asterisk, I stand by my statement that content doesn't want to be, shouldn't be, and in fact isn't free. The Times clearly hopes to generate additional advertising revenue by opening up their site to more eyeballs. And that's great. Good content exists if and only if it generates revenue. As I have said in my New Media Cocktail e-book, that "revenue" may or may not be cash-based, but content producers must receive something of value in exchange for their time.
So hang that asterisk up but keep the value coming.
In the two months I have been running Cork & Knife, I have begun to really feel for the media. I thought I got a lot of lame pitches as a blogger, but I must tell you that it is nothing compared to the stuff that comes across my desk daily now as a result of of publishing a multimedia magazine focused on fine food and drink.
I get generic pitches that are completely unrelated to the actual content of my publication and no sense of the audience I am targeting. I get offered more free books and products than I could ever imagine (some helpful, some not). And remember: this is but a new, small media outpost. What the established players deal with must be mind-boggling.
I guess you really don't know how it is until you walk a mile in another man's shoes, do you?
It's very odd to switch sides. OK, I haven't really switched sides exactly, but I am now on both sides of the fence. Let me explain. For much of my career, I have been involved in public affairs and public relations, first in government, then in the non-profit sector, then as a consultant/advisor, and finally as a vendor. In all those jobs, my focus was on educating -- and hopefully influencing -- the media.
And now I have a venture that is the media. Cork & Knife is a multimedia magazine I founded earlier this summer to serve those interested in fine food and drink. It has truly been an education to be on the other side of the fence. Reaching out to companies to get quotes. Dealing with PR practitioners who want to have their material published.
Of course, as a blogger with some degree of reputation, I have had to deal with this a bit already. Like most bloggers with any links at all, I get pitches every week from one company or another. In addition, as someone who does some angel investing, I get inquiries that are somewhere between a plea for coverage and a request for an investment.
But this is different. I find myself now in the position of doing things in reverse of the way I have always done it. For instance, I am building a list of publicists for restaurants, wineries, and others involved in the food and drink industry in order to educate them about Cork & Knife. Like every other media publication, I want original stories. And as someone who has been on the other side of the fence, I know that PR people have the information and interest in supplying tips, leads, and content.
But how to do that exactly? I know how to build media lists. There are plenty of services that do that. But for a fledgling media outlet or publication, reaching out to PR practitioners is a whole different ball game.
If I have any readers with suggestions, advice, or comments, I'd certainly welcome them. The whole experience gives me a brand new appreciation for the working media. It's certainly a tough job, but I'm enjoying it. Of course, it is challenging to head up more than one company at a time. But I've been doing it for years with a fair amount of success, so hopefully I can continue doing it.
Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 has quit his job and is starting a company, appropriately named Publish2. He aims to "put his money where his mouth is" by betting on the vision of the future of media that he has outlined on his blog. His stated goal is to create the ultimate consumer-facing news site by networking online journalism (everything from "news bloggers" to more formal journalists).
The details are still a bit vague, though an invitation-only beta is slated for September. It sounds like something similar to what I have suggested is the future of news aggregation: a cross between free-for-all ranking sites like Digg, automated ones like TechMeme, and highly edited ones like Yahoo News. Plus it may have original content, though I haven't had a chance to read all the material Scott has put online to achieve clarity on that point.
If Publish2 really does incorporate all of these different components, then I think it has a chance to be a powerful news resources. Hopefully, it will incorporate more than just text and pictures, as my own vision for the future of media sees convergence of text, audio, and video, with the right medium utilized for the content being conveyed.
This will certainly be a company I will be keeping an eye on.
Slight change of plans in the order of launches in the properties in the new media company I'm starting. StartRocket, the site focused on web entrepreneurship East of the Rockies, had been slated to begin producing content this week. However, I have opted to delay for a few weeks to address some logistical/infrastructure issues, as well as to try to line up additional contributors before going public.
While those things are getting sorted out, I decided to release the new media site that I had slotted to launch second, Cork & Knife. This site is focused on the people that make a difference in your professional or amateur fine dining experience. Chefs, sommeliers, bartenders, servers, authors, purveyors, winemakers, and even the food media will be profiled to help foodies and gourmets learn more about the philosophies and personalities that impact the food and wine.
So, check out Cork & Knife and let me know if you are interested in becoming a contributor to that site or especially to StartRocket.
I'll keep you updated in this space on developments on both fronts.
Recently I started to write a blog post about the future of media. I planned to address the two big themes that I see playing a significant role in how we will produce and consume media in coming years. It spiraled a bit out of control and became a 30 page e-book titled The New Media Cocktail. It is available to download for free as a PDF.
The two themes I have identified and discuss in The New Media Cocktail are:
Regular readers of this blog and listeners to my Disruptive Dialogue podcast know that I have been nearly obsessed with the future of media of late. I have spent a lot of time reading, researching, and thinking about the issue. Hopefully The New Media Cocktail contributes to the great thinking already taking place in this space. I want to thank some of the most provocative bloggers in this space for forcing me to focus on and examine the trends. In particular the words and deeds of Jeff Jarvis, Mark Cuban, Chris Anderson, Dave Winer, Chris Garrett, and Jason Calacanis had a significant impact on my outlook.
I also want to thank three people who provided invaluable feedback to me on early drafts of The New Media Cocktail. Shel Israel, Sarah Wurrey, and Jen White all contributed significantly to the final product. (Though all mistakes are, of course, my own.)
It's a quick -- and I hope provocative -- read. I encourage you to download the PDF and let me know what you think. I plan to do a follow-up post soon with some of the feedback I receive here in the comments or in blog posts elsewhere.
Rafat Ali has a very candid and revealing interview with Ann Moore, the CEO of Time, Inc. The whole interview is worth a read, but I want to draw specific attention to two portions. The first one deals with the different value of online and offline readers:
The average reader of Sports Illustrated delivers about $118 to the bottom line in Time Inc. The average very engaged user of SI.com can generate about $5 in advertising contribution. I need many more online viewers to equal one magazine reader. That is why you have to go for big volume and that is why you got to have partnerships.
Now I find this interesting, and I don't doubt there's some truth in it, but I question whether we're comparing apples and oranges to some degree. One of the problems is how she defines "average reader" and "average very engaged user." We don't know whether for the print edition it includes subscribers or subscribers plus pass-alongs. And for the online what is a "very engaged user"? I assume it isn't every unique visitor, but is it every repeat visitor? 3 visits per month? Is it a registered user or email subscriber?
Time and SI are big enough properties that I assume they have studied this every which way to Sunday, but it is important to carefully study your online audience and figure out if you could actually generate the same revenue on a smaller user base. If you find that certain users/readers are more lucrative, to the extent you can focus on them, you may be able to get around the need to generate eyeballs in massive quantities just to survive.
The second point she made that I think is worth noting is on the subject of professional journalism versus user generated content:
I think one of my priorities is to make sure we build enough fences around the journalistic part of our company, that we protect it and nurture it. Real fact-based news is very important for the country, for our company, for our democracy, for your business. You are not going to want the world to just run on user-generated content. We need to protect real journalism, and it is very much in our DNA.
A company like Time can't survive on user generated content alone. And despite the real value I see in what users create, I still see enormous value in professional content. As much as we all may like to read blogs and watch YouTube videos, there's still plenty of room for magazines, newspapers, TV, radio, movies, etc. It's all a matter of balance, not an either-or choice like some would like to make it.
Traditional ("old") media finds itself experiencing an earthquake of change as online ("new") media changes the rules of the game. Some publishers and broadcasters find themselves struggling to adapt, while others thrive on the ability to innovate. The competition becomes more intense by the day and the fears among old school journalists and media executives rise in direct proportion.
Let me be clear: I am not one who believes that new media will kill old media. Newspapers, broadcast television, and terrestrial radio are here to stay. Those who innovate and adapt will thrive; those who fail will perish. The solid gold oldies and the young turks must all play on the same playing field today, and understanding how the rules are being rewritten will be key to future success for both camps.
1. Publishers are Broadcasters and Broadcasters are Publishers.
Media convergence has arrived. Newspapers are producing audio and video. TV and radio are producing print copy. Media outlets no longer find themselves constrained to one specific medium. Technology permits all media outlets to compete on each other's turf.
2. Column Inches and Broadcast Minutes are No Longer Limited.
It used to be that print reporters would see stories dropped because there weren't enough available column inches to print the article. TV and radio journalists would get squeezed out because an hour only has 60 minutes no matter how you slice it. Today, the web enables all media to publish and produce unlimited content. This is a blessing and curse because it means a lot more high quality material makes it into the public arena, but it is harder to kill low-quality stuff without telling the journalist that directly.
3. The Audience Can be a Partner in Content Creation.
When breaking news hits, the audience now contributes. Media outlets openly solicit still and video footage from cell phones or other portable devices for disasters and tragedies. Remember the student whose cell phone video footage made it on CNN in a seemingly endless loop after the Virginia Tech shooting? Local stations do the same thing for pictures of floods and other natural disasters. Even the print media has gotten into this game.4. The Media Now Competes with Its Own Audience.
The rise of blogs, podcasts, and online video now mean that media outlets are competing with their own audiences. Anybody can create a podcast that competes with NPR, a blog that competes with the Washington Post, or a video site that competes with CNN. Everyone can be a broadcaster and publisher, at low cost and with minimal effort.
5. Old Advertising/Revenue Models Will Be Replaced.
You can't put a 30 second pre-roll ad on every 2 minute news story. Nobody sticks around to watch post-roll. Podcasts aren't radio, so the same ad structure doesn't work. Full-page display advertising? Not on a newspaper web site! And classified advertising hasn't simply migrated to the web, the whole nature of it has changed. Where's the line between classifieds and eBay auctions? Between Craigslist and a yard sale? Similarly, despite ESPN's efforts, ISP's aren't typically going to pay to carry content. And subscription revenue models will need to be revamped to recognize the shifting landscape.
6. Archives are Valuable.
In the old days, the only people who cared about newspaper morgues and tape libraries were researchers, librarians, and other hard-core information professionals. Today search engines can help open these archives up to a public, hungry for information. Looking at old articles no longer require microfiche or a subscription to a legacy research service. Digging up old video doesn't need to involve a call to a service that fetches a dusty videotape and copies it. Archives can be a source for ongoing traffic -- and thus revenue -- to media outlets.
7. Niches Have Increasing Value.
The old media paradigm precluded effective niche publications. A truly focused niche would likely have too few potential subscribers to justify a magazine. Certainly a radio or TV show would be unlikely to be devoted to these niches. But highly-targeted niches have real value for audiences, content creators, and marketers and can be exploited effectively in the new media world. Consumers increasingly want to see just the slice of information they're interested in, and generic national, international, business, and entertainment news increasingly becomes a boring commodity.
8. Unedited Content is Becoming More Common.
Stories are going online in print, audio, or video with less and less editing. As news cycles disappear and are replaced by the world of instant information, credible journalists are posting to blogs and producing audio and video so quickly that editing would be impractical. Content producers must therefore trust their content creators to make sound editorial judgment by themselves on the fly.
9. News Cycles are Dead. Information is Instantaneous.
In the Edward R. Murrow/Walter Cronkite/David Brinkley era, news cycles lasted 24 hours until the next nightly newscast came on the air. Twenty-four hour cable news networks began to shrink the news cycle and Web 1.0 brought it down to mere hours. Today, the news cycle is dead. Information transmits instantaneously and responses often come before the news is completely made. In politics, a presidential debate doesn't even conclude anymore before detailed responses, rebuttals, attacks, and supplemental information has been made public. The "official" pundits have yet to offer their views on TV before the new media space has rendered judgment of their own.
10. Choices, Choices, and More Choices.
For those who thought that cable television ushered in an age of too many choices for consumers, welcome to the Media 2.0 world. There are now more information choices than there are products in a Wal-Mart Supercenter. (A Supercenter has about 116,000 different products on sale.) Even someone interested in a niche as focused as bacon can find 1,050 blogs tagged for that subject, according to Technorati's directory. (I'm sure that list has a lot of fat in it, but there's lots of meat as well -- OK, I couldn't help myself.)
Readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast know that the future of media continues to fascinate me. The opportunities to innovate and excel in this arena could not be richer. The possibilities are plentiful and the value in success is high for those who innovate and execute well. Ultimately, consumers and innovators will both win.
A Realtor in the San Francisco area tried an experiment where he compared newspaper listings to web listings. He discovered that the newspapers drove virtually no people to see the homes in question, while 89% were web-based leads. He at first attributed this to the proximity to Silicon Valley, so he tried a second home in a "more traditional market" in the area.
His conclusion? Newspapers are dead. But he writes this:
So far, the data is backing up my original thesis that newspapers ads for homes for sale are about promoting the Realtor, not the house. Buyers find houses online, either via the MLS or online real estate tools like Oodle, Trulia, etc.
The question then becomes how effective are newspaper ads in convincing people to check out a Realtor's web site? It's possible that while individual home listings don't matter per se, that the mere presence of the ad does serve a useful purpose. If they were web leads who found the web site via the newspaper, that would make them newspaper leads ultimately.
An interesting question. And I'd be very interested to see if Realtors from other parts of the country could share some data to help determine if this is a geographic phenomenon. It would also be interesting to see if it matters whether the house is at the high, middle, or low end of the regional market. Perhaps there is an income bias or an age bias? For instance, homes more appealing to empty nesters might do better in a newspaper than one more appropriate for a young family.
There are so many facets to the future of traditional media that it really is a fascinating area to watch.
From PaidContent:
For the 12th straight quarter, newspaper websites saw their ad revenues rise; this time around, the increase was 22.3 percent to $750 million in Q1 compared to the same period a year ago, according to estimates from the Newspaper Association of America. For context, online made up 7.1 percent of total newspaper ad spending in Q1 compared with 5.5 percent for the same period a year ago. In general, however, sites are not pulling in enough to offset the drop in newspaper ad expenditures. Together, newspapers and their websites totaled $10.6 billion for Q1, a 4.8 percent decrease from Q106. Spending for print ads in newspapers totaled $9.8 billion, down 6.4 percent versus the same period a year earlier, while classified revenue fell 13.2 percent to $3.4 billion.
The line between newspapers and TV blur more and more every day. Heck, we may as well include radio in the mix. The new media universe on the web allows all forms of old media to encroach on each other's territory. The Wall Street Journal and other papers provide audio and video coverage on their web sites (like Walt Mossberg's column, for example). MSNBC, CNN, ABC News, and the other networks all provide text coverage on their web sites. And radio stations provide text as well, while the others offer podcasts or other audio-only content.
Recognizing this, Mark Cuban calls for old school media to acknowledge reality and seek out more formal convergence.
Riddle me this Batman: Rupert Murdoch has figured out that Print and TV can be combined to be a vertical news organization and is willing to pay 5 billion dollars to do it. Why has no one else realized the value of combining big news brands and organizations ?
Why isn't a CBS News merging their news department with a NY Times and rebranding itself as the 6pm NY Times News ? Or with Time Magazine News ? Or NBC News and ???
Mini Media Mavens already realize this convergence is occurring and they're taking advantage of it. Think of all the podcasters and vidcasters who also blog. The likes of Robert Scoble, Jeff Jarvis, Mike Arrington, and others are establishing their own media empires that blend text, audio, and video into a cohesive platform.
Old media is doing so, but slowly and reluctantly. Cuban's suggestion has been adopted in small measure by traditional players, but slowly with more of a "dip the toe in the water" feel. Newspapers, for instance, have arrangements with TV where they contribute content. The Boston Globe, for example, co-brands some shows on the New England Sports Network and supplies reporters as on-air personalities. Similarly, the Washington Post and MSNBC have an arrangement where the Post contributes to the network and its web site.
Mark's thoughts come at the same time as the blogosphere is abuzz about the significant layoffs at the San Francisco Chronicle. It's not at all clear that convergence would help here (from afar it feels like bad business decisions got it to the point it is at), but it underscores the ongoing difficulties as traditional media try to evolve and adjust to the new media world.
Cynthia Brumfield at IP & Democracy thinks that newspapers should take their cues from the likes of those I noted above and argues:
in these days when Om Malik, Rafat Ali and Mike Arrington can whip up profitable web-based publishing empires seemingly overnight (not really overnight in the case of Om and Rafat), why can’t newspapers do the same thing? Or at least try to leverage the journalistic talent already on the payroll to forge new territories instead of letting that talent go?
If big traditional media outlets on television, radio, and in print were to take these lessons to heart, they would be able to evolve more rapidly. More importantly, however, they must learn not simply to follow the lead of the Mini Media Mavens, but to find ways to innovate on their own in order to return to the leadership spots they once held on the American media landscape.
Speaking of Shel Holtz, he has a great post about the next step in the live blogging revolution: live video. This has been a topic of conversation in tech blogs this week because of the Web 2.0 expo. I'll let Shel explain:
Over at PodTech Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang took UStream for a spin at the recent Web 2.0 conference, using the live streaming capability to broadcast panel discussions and other activities. (Jeremiah wrote about it here.)
I can't recall where I saw it but there's a great if ridiculous photo of Scoble sitting next to Chris Pirillo while Chris is typing and Scoble is wearing a head-cam. And did I mention they were on a panel at that time? Only at a tech conference...
Though I managed to be enmeshed in the recent live blogging controversy, I suspect that I'll be able to remain on the sidelines of this discussion as I'm not sure I'm likely to become a videographer. (Shel #1, Shel Israel, has an interesting post on the subject, especially since he was at ground zero of the debate.)
I guess I'll just have to stick to annoying panelists and fellow attendees with keyboard clatter.
UPDATE: Jeremiah reminds me in the comments that I saw the photo on his blog. It was from David Parmet.
When I first reported on the changes taking place at Topix Sunday, I didn't grasp just how significant the changes would be. Now that I've had a chance to actually explore the new web site and digest Rich Skrenta's explanation, I can see that this is really huge.
At first, I had thought they were changing their emphasis and some of the methodology. But now I see that it is a radical overhaul. When you first login to the new site, it looks entirely different. It really has become a completely local site. You can still get national news and such, but it is a lot harder to find those links than it was before. Clearly, this is a full-blown effort at achieving localized communities for news.
No longer can it be said that Topix provides a Google News-esque offering. For instance, there's no longer a news search option as far as I can tell, just the ability to look up pre-defined topics.
I'm not sure I completely understand some of what they're doing, however. For instance, they have forums that don't seem to be related to news or geography at all -- like the Bon Jovi forum. So while Rich emphasizes geography in his post and the Topix home page now asks for a zip code above all else, they seem to be interested in creating community beyond geography.
The notion of creating localized communities certainly seems to have merit, but I imagine it will take time to prove this concept out. It also seems to me that more beyond news is needed to create a truly sticky local community online. Events, for instance, would seem to be to be a valuable pairing, just as it is with local newspapers.
I'm sure Rich and the rest of the team at Topix has already thought this through, but if they were able to come up with a community portal that combined news, weather, events, entertainment, movie listings, TV listings, etc. based on zip code, it might be a really powerful place. But starting with news probably makes the most sense because it is the least geographically organized to date and you need to have a unique selling proposition to build that initial community from which all other things may spring.
It also strikes me that the biggest challenge will be in creating that sense of community outside of technology centers. So many of these online services are strong where early adopters and high-tech communities thrive, but find it difficult to penetrate grassroots America. It seems to me that to be the powerful local ad engine that I think the newspapers envisioned it as when they invested in the company a few years ago, it will need to go beyond the high-tech hives.
Topix will definitely be a company to keep an eye on to see how this radical shift shakes out.
UPDATE: Rich comments that search still exists, it is just hard to find. He also points to a heat map that seems to show pretty broad activity, not just in high-tech hotbeds. I based my judgment based on "random" zip code lookups, but obviously the map has more credibility than my testing.
PaidContent's Rafat Ali has the scoop on the future of Topix, the local news aggregator and search site owned by several competing newspaper companies. Apparently, as they rebrand from Topix.net to Topix.com, they will also be changing the focus of their site from software-selected content to human editors and citizen journalism.
The homepage will become a hub of citizen-generated news (more Netscape.com-like in implementation than Digg), with easy-to-use tools for users to blog/vote stories onto the main and section pages.
Much like before, the site’s focus is on zip-cod based local news. Anyone can now submit local news for any U.S. zip code through the site or through mobiles. Participants can also become editors of the local pages.
I find the new focus fascinating because I have believed for some time that as good as computers are, they can't replace editorial judgment entirely. Moreover, I believe that human review can remove some of the antiseptic feel of completely computer generated sites.
It will be interesting to see the results of the change, though I do wonder about whether the fact that they are making two major changes simultaneously will make it harder to determine the success of either. Rick Skentra is one of the smarter thinkers in the information aggregation space, though, so I wouldn't bet against their ability to pull this one off.
UPDATE: Rick has now posted a detailed explanation. Worth a read.
I was listening to Joseph Jaffe's Across the Sound podcast recently and he expressed the oft-heard point of view that "content wants to be free." Though I often agree with what Jaffe has to say, in this instance I must say "hogwash."
Simply put, there is no such thing as free content. Content providers receive value and consumers expend resources. It need not always be a pure and direct financial transaction, but ultimately producers and publishers are "paid" and the audience "pays."
Lots of Thinking About "Free Content" Today
Jeff Jarvis, who spends more time thinking about the future of media and content than most (other than perhaps Rafat Ali though I guess he more reports than predicts), wrote about this last month when he said:
Who cares whether content wants to be free? It already is. Deal with it. ... I criticize publishers for still whining about circ revenue and not figuring out the ways to go with the flow and find their cash flow in new ways.
Ultimately, Jeff and I are probably in a similar neighborhood of thinking on this, but I think it does a disservice for those of us who focus on these issues to talk about the need for content to be available for free. I realize it is semantics, but I have opined in the past on the power of language, and I do believe that talking about content wanting to be free leaves many with the wrong impression -- namely, that content cannot be monetized.
Jason Calacanis has been a particular champion of financial compensation for those who create user-generated content, and indeed he did just that when he reinvented Netscape and sought to lure link contributors from rival sites like Digg and reddit. And I support efforts to do that, though we must also acknowledge these content producers are already compensated in other ways.
Matt McAlister yesterday keyed off of something that Dave Winer recently wrote ("what we’re doing now, in journalism, as with all other intermediated professions, is decentralizing") to conclude that this whole debate is moot.
Umair Haque and John Hagel have suggested in their investigations of edge economics that any job function that makes money off the friction of distribution of information is threatened.
This kind of ends the whole debate about whether or not content wants to be free. That doesn’t really matter. The question is more about how else can we remove friction in the flow of information.
What we really need, however, is a better understanding of the value extraction and contribution process that goes on with all content. Ultimately, consumption of content results in a series of value-oriented transactions.
How Content Providers Get Paid
In each content transaction, those who provide, produce, and publish content receive some sort of payment, though not always financial. Some of the compensation models are listed below (with examples of what I mean by each)
How Consumers Pay for Content
Just as the producers get paid, so too must consumers pay. Indeed, in some cases the consumer pays in multiple ways for a single piece of content, even though the individual may not readily realize that fact. Examples include:
In addition to what I have outlined, you may want to check out Chris Garrett's excellent e-book on "Killer Flagship Content" in which he describes many of the benefits of creating blog content. Many of these translate into other media as well.
Content Isn't a Zero Sum Game
Even though content is not free, it isn't always a 1-to-1 transaction either. As you likely noticed from the lists above, what a consumer pays doesn't always match up precisely with what the producer receives. Moreover, this analysis doesn't consider how producers pay nor how consumers receive value. Ultimately, the best content is that which allows both the consumer and the producer to end up with a net increase in resources.
Conclusion
Content isn't free -- and it shouldn't be. Content producers must -- and do -- receive value for what they create and publish. Consumers must -- and do -- pay for what they read, watch, and listen to. We simply must recognize that these aren't all cash payments and receipts and that there are other ways to contribute and extract value in a content transaction.
But, please, let's end the whole "content wants to be free" meme that circulates regularly. As Jeff Jarvis has said, the debate needs to be about different things.
A bidding war for a newspaper company? Who would've thunk it? Today's New York Times reports:
The drama for control of the Tribune Company intensified last night as two Los Angeles billionaires put in a last-minute bid, topping an offer from the Chicago real estate magnate, Sam Zell, by a dollar a share.
The two billionaires, Ronald W. Burkle and Eli Broad, sent a letter last night to Tribune management prior to the company’s self-imposed deadline of Saturday, according to a person with knowledge of the proposal.
Now, the Tribune isn't purely a newspaper company. They own broadcast outlets and the Chicago Cubs, too. Nevertheless, as I noted recently on the Disruptive Dialogue podcast, Mr. Zell has publicly acknowledged a more bullish look on newspapers than the blogosphere does.
There's another catch, too. Both offers rely on employee stock ownership plans (ESOP's) to consummate the deal and both would ultimately make employees majority shareholders in the company. Now, I'm not an expert on such things (this is where it would be good to have someone like resident blogopshere expert Paul Kedrosky weigh in). But it appears that the ESOP would play the role that debt would otherwise. I wonder if this suggests a degree of risk management by the potential buyers?
I have a general familiarity with how ESOP's work in a small business setting, but much less so as it relates to taking a public company private, in large part through an ESOP. Indeed, the article makes the point that this is an untested model:
Both offers are based on a relatively unusual device of employee stock ownership plans, which have been successful for many small companies but have had mixed results for bigger companies.
Such plans, specialists say, have been virtually untested in the last two decades on companies the size of Tribune, which has about 20,000 employees.
Nevertheless, this interest in the Tribune Company should cause those declaring the death of print media to step back and consider whether the reports of its demise may be just a bit premature.
I thought now would be a good time to review the web sites of the major PR industry trade publications. Since PR Week recently announced that much of their content would be available online for free, the whole marketplace deserves a closer look. I decided to focus this roundup on what is freely available from each site, although I do subscribe to most and there is additional content behind the "pay wall" for many of them.
Here are the five industry leading web sites I have identified in alphabetical order. Let me know if I'm overlooking any you'd like to see included.
The first thing you notice when you visit the home page of Bulldog is that it focuses heavily on promoting events and training. The only apparent way to get to any free content is to click on the "Daily Dog" link on the left hand menu bar. This is unfortunate because the Daily Dog provides some of the best regular content from any of the online PR publications, and in fact is the one I read most religiously. The Daily Dog is available by email or RSS delivery (not surprisingly, I favor the latter). It includes a good mix of new account news, product announcements, commentary & opinion, and sound advice columns.
This site provides headlines and a teaser paragraph for much of its subscription content, but if you're looking for free news you're mostly out of luck. They do have a blog, but as of this update it hasn't been updated in six weeks (February 6 was the last post). Ironically, the site indicates that they used to provide content for free but have recently moved to a subscription model. The online subscription content appears to be focused mostly on personnel changes and account wins, as well as case studies.
Jack O'Dwyer's longtime -- and often controversial -- coverage of the PR industry is legendary. The web site itself is heavy on free resources, but not on news or commentary. If you're looking for agency rankings, services databases, job boards, or useful links, this site is for you. The newsletter itself requires a subscription (which many would argue is worth the price), but you won't find any of that legendary reporting and analysis on the web site for free.
The PR News web site features primarily teaser content designed to encourage people to subscribe to their full suite of content. Much of their home page is devoted to house ads of one sort or another, some featuring events, others various publications, and of course several imploring visitors to subscribe. I couldn't even find a place on the web site to find out the content of the current issue without a username and password. Overall this site offers very little for those interested in industry news but unwilling to pay for it.
First, these comments apply to the US edition of PR Week. That's the one I am most familiar with, so I am sticking with it. With the new direction PR Week is taking online, the site now serves as a valuable resource for PR pros. It has a wealth of regularly updated information. It tends to be fairly heavy on who won which contract and a little lighter on techniques and professional development. The publication has a number of companion blogs to provide more up-to-date information than the print version could have. The site does pitch subscriptions, but in a relatively restrained manner. Overall the design seems focused on content over promotion. PR Week does offer regular email newsletters to keep pros updated and RSS feeds make news more accessible for the more tech savvy readers. The primary content that remains protected for subscriber access only are "features" from the print edition. While it would be nice to see those made freely available as well, the amount of free content on this site is still impressive.
Conclusion
If you're looking for free news and commentary about the PR industry and prefer to rely on trade press rather than blogs, your best bets today are probably Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog or the newly unshackled PR Week web site. But perhaps you know of some publications that I'm overlooking, so be sure to let me know if you have other sites that you would include in this roundup.
Wired Magazine's Annalee Newitz wrote about how she hired a firm to game Digg and get a frivolous blog featured prominently by the popular site that recommends content based on reader votes. The headline is clearly meant to be inflammatory ("I Bought Votes on Digg") and the piece itself makes Digg and those who game the site look bad.
Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, a recovering lawyer, thinks Digg ought to sue Wired. Why?
Wired Magazine seems hell bent on convincing the world that Digg is falling apart. I have a problem with that because Wired Magazine’s parent company, Condé Nast, owns Digg competitor Reddit. And because Wired isn’t just reporting Digg news - they are actively engaged in using Wired to undermine Digg.
There has been much discussion of late about the ability to game Digg. In fact, Digg has publicly taken steps to restrict the ability of people to manipulate the voting system to promote specific content. The Wired story obviously indicates work remains to be done.
Ultimately, the article really addresses the bad behavior of some Digg users and outside vendors, as well as the inability of Digg so far to stop it. Does it reflect poorly on Digg? Yes. Does it seem like a blatant and unwarranted hit piece? No.
Arrington supports his claim that Wired is out to get Digg with more than just today's story. He also cites a sentence in the magazine's 2007 predictions column. In that story, the magazine predicts that Digg will become the next Friendster: "Digg holds out for a big payday but ends up like Friendster (i.e., no friends)."
Frankly, I don't have a problem with either article, whether CondéNet has a relationship with Reddit or not. Digg is a popular topic these days in the tech community and Wired covers such stories. With the elaborate corporate structures today, restricting media outlets from covering any competitor of any company within the broad corporate structure would be difficult.
The publication, of course, should disclose the relationship (assuming it is known to the reporter or editor). And Wired did disclose its relationship with Reddit, though Mike takes exception to the placement and nature of the disclosure: "Newitz does mention the conflict of interest, albeit in a parenthetical in the middle of the story (”Wired News is owned by CondéNet, which also owns Digg competitor reddit”)."
That's fairly typical of media disclosures and I have no problem with it. The fact needs to be there, but it need not be the first sentence of the story.
I'm not a lawyer, but from a lay perspective I don't see a legal case here. I don't even see an ethical problem. To my mind, both Wired items were legitimate. I simply don't see the evidence that CondéNet is "actively engaged in using Wired to undermine Digg."
Until and unless evidence emerges that the Wired story was produced at the behest of CondéNet, there's nothing to get worked up about.
As I have mentioned, I still read dead tree versions of magazines. But when I find an article I like in the print edition, I usually turn to the online version to forward links to colleagues or include in posts on this blog. It's simply more convenient and reader-friendly.
Unfortunately, Business 2.0 remains stuck in a Publishing 1.0 world. OK, perhaps it is more like version 1.1, but still it falls far short of what one would expect in today's media environment. It turns out that they don't publish all of their content online. Now, if they had it all there and charged for access to some, I could understand that. After all, I'm not one of those "all content must be free" types. I support subscription models.
But Business 2.0 publishes stuff in the magazine that doesn't make it onto the web in any form. That's very unusual for a high-profile publication these days, especially one that bills itself as "the playbook for a new generation of leaders."
So when I went to find a link for "A Startup's Best Friend? Failure" from the March 2007 issue to talk about it on this blog, I couldn't do it. It simply wasn't there. I looked high and low. Used the search feature. Got nothing.
I may yet write about the power of failure. But it will be harder to tell the story without allowing my readers to click on a simple link to read about the experiences described in the article. They can't read the original source to hear about the errors made by Dogster or Riya and how those companies learned from them and grew because of it.
Regrettably, my readers lose out on the full quality of the experience as it should have been, and Business 2.0 loses out on some readers.
UPDATE: Business 2.0 posted the failure article this morning (2/28) on its web site. Better late than never, I suppose.
Fewer people are reading more ads. That's the conclusion one can apparently draw from dueling reports this week. A New York Post piece today that more