Daily Archives: November 30, 2006

Adrian Holovaty is a rock star, according to American Journalism Review.

Holovaty is quick to say that he’s not doing anything akin to rocket science; it’s just that very few of the people who know how to do what he does are in journalism. They tend to be in the computer industry, working on Internet search engines or e-commerce sites, or even in the music industry, where the concept of “mashing” data (music and vocals from multiple songs) originated. People with Web development expertise aren’t usually drawn to news, Holovaty says, because they don’t think it’s a technologically savvy field.

Continue reading →

Here’s some interesting criticism of newspapers doing citizen journalism:

As papers increase local coverage, they’ll simply have that many more people out reporting–and that many more potential mistakes.

In fact, citizen journalism is not new. Back in the 90s, when it was the nation’s largest newspaper chain, Thomson Newspapers tried it and found it totally unworkable.

If citizen journalism didn’t work for Thomson, what makes Gannett think it’s going to work now, asks Dr. Frank Fee Jr., associate professor and director of UNC’s master’s program School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

“It goes back to the days of country correspondents or stringers. They are limited in what they can do, and newspapers have never been very good about training those people,” says Fee, who has 35 years of daily newspaper experience.

Fee sees myriad problems. “There are all sorts of disruptions, including the fact that it’s going to be that much more difficult to find a citizen journalist if you have a question on deadline.”

But what Fee sees as the big issue is one of credibility, and the need of papers to protect their credibility.

“I have seen some horrendous mistakes made by people who don’t know what they are doing,” he says. “There is every opportunity for lots of things to fall through the cracks. I would be interested in seeing where we are with this in six months.”

You will never get far with me arguing that we shouldn’t do something because there is risk associated with it. The last thing we should do is be risk averse. People who make this argument don’t, I think, understand disruption. The logical question is, if we don’t make a place for citizen content, who will? The answer, somebody, and they’ll beat us in the long run (in fact, already are).

I got this link through Lucas Grindley, who writes:

Too often we assume that everyone in the newspaper understands its slow march toward bankruptcy. But the truth is reporters and editors need constant reminding that things aren’t going well financially.

I read a great essay from Harvard Business Review a year ago about managing in times of change, which includes the need to communicate a sense of urgency. I recommend it to newsroom managers. In this day and age, if you work at a newspaper and value your career, you need to understand business and how things are changing. Again, I refer you to these five books.

UPDATE: Steve Yelvington has another take on Dr. Frank Fee’s comments. Continue reading →

USC-Annenberg School of Journalism has released it’s annual survey of internet usage.

• Frank Barnako: User-generated content is not a fad
• GigaOM: Internet Getting More Social
• Metrics 2.0: Online world now as important as real world

In almost every aspect where the internet is growing, newspapers are falling behind, such as UGC and social networking (video isn’t part of the summary, which is all I read — but digital photography is (an aspect of UGC), and it’s growing, too). Here’s the summary.

Somewhat unrelated, but also from Barnako: Newspapers will feel the pain for five more years. It’s interesting to note that homes with broadband are more likely to cancel their newspaper subscriptions. Continue reading →

Pay-per-click, contextual advertising will be around for a long time and make some people very rich, but where I see a lot of untapped potential for publishers is in video advertising.  Lost Remote has more.

Just don’t do prerolll …. Continue reading →

Here’s a good story for newspaper people to read: Mistakes Made on the Road to Innovation, from Bussiness Week. It’s mainly about Kodak, but the lessons could be applied to newspapers.

It is taking time for Kodak to understand that it is an image company, not a film or camera company. Perhaps it should take lessons from Western Union. (WU ) Founded in 1851, the company has managed to ride each successive wave of change in its history rather than getting swamped. (A bankruptcy protection filing in the early 1990s was caused by management mistakes rather than external threats.) After handling the first transcontinental telegram in 1861, it spotted the opportunity to transfer money by wire 10 years later. Then, a series of firsts: a city-to-city facsimile service, a microwave communications system, a commercial satellite network, and online money transfer.

Why has Western Union been able to adapt to severe disruptions and survive over so many years? It never confused the business it was in with the way it conducted its business. At its core, Western Union was about facilitating person-to-person communications and money transfers — whether via telegraph, wireless networks, phone, or the Internet. “We always saw ourselves as a communications company,” says president Christina Gold.

I’ve heard it said that newspapers need to learn they are not in the news business, but the information business. I disagree. I think we’re in the community business.

Previous: The Telegraph is Dead. Long Live the Telegraph Continue reading →

The housing market may have cooled, but the demand for real estate blogging hasn’t.  Mark Glaser has the scoop. Continue reading →

Chris Anderson is picking up a new theme — radical transparency.

Perhaps the most interesting of these is the shift from secrecy to transparency. The default communications mode of companies has traditionally been top-down, with only executives and official spokespeople permitted to discuss company business in public. The standard rule, explicit or not, was “That which we choose not to announce is not to be spoken about.” Aside from some special exemptions, such as conferences where those employees trusted enough to go chatted guardedly with outsiders, employees were cautioned that what happened at work should stay at work. Loose lips sink ships, etc.

But over the past few years, a new breed of executive has emerged, and with them a new attitude toward controlling the corporate narrative. From Microsoft to Yahoo!, the public face of the company is increasingly employee bloggers who are trusted both internally (allowed to blog without legal or PR review) and externally (they’re just regular folk like us!). The consequence is that much that was once hidden is now open for all. These rarely include big disclosures (the real secrets stay secret), but instead tend to be about routine issues that dominate the day-to-day life of engineers and project managers. The small cost of some competitor getting early wind of a new feature is more than outweighed by the good will generated among customers by candid insights into product development. So far, so Naked Conversations.

What really interests me, however, is when this goes even further. Not just transparency, but Radical Transparency. The whole product development process laid bare, and opened to customer input. Management in public, via blog. CEOs venting, without benefit of legal counsel, in late-night postings.

I’d like to think that I’ve always been a pretty honest guy, but starting in about 2002, when I started blogging, I really took up the torch of transparency. I make a conscience effort in all aspects of my life to be as open and honest as I can be, and even in a place as public as my blog. That said, it isn’t always easy. After posting something, I I sometimes question whether I should “give that much away” about my thinking or plans. And there are also certain restrictions that I’m under that have nothing to do with my present employer, but still limit what I can say (even without a signed piece of paper, for example, I feel it’s not my place to reveal things I might know about, say, Scripps). I also have to be careful what I write when posting it might be detrimental to a former co-worker or friend. Transparency isn’t easy, but I still think it’s necessary. One of the benefits for me has been, however, that by sharing so many of my thoughts, I often get challenged by very smart people. That makes me smarter. That, I think, is a good thing.

Am I radically transparent? You tell me. Continue reading →

So there is a secret Google advertising network and only elite publisher get to play, according to John Chow.

The Google Display Advertising Network was created so Google can go after Fortune 1000 companies, which buy advertising to build a brand more than to sell a product. Google already dominates text and CPC ads so going after display and video ads is the next logical step. Google offers display and video ads to AdSense publishers on CPC and CPM format already. However, the formation of the Display Advertising Network is a clear signal that Google really want to push this forward.

This is how disruption works — start at the low end and work your way up. Google is just doing it at hyper speed.

Link via Search Engine Journal Continue reading →