The ‘new media’ evolution according to a millennial photographer.

Posts Tagged ‘business’

Dear US Senator for Silicon Valley, Please Help Fix the Mobile Phone Industry

Today, I received a response from my senator, Dianne Feinstein to a canned email form I had sent to her about mobile carrier practices. The following is her response and my reply.

Dear Mr. Baker:

Thank you for writing to me about exclusivity agreements in the wireless market and your support for legislative reforms. As a wireless phone customer myself, I understand your concerns. I welcome this opportunity to respond.

Although the market for wireless phone service has become increasingly competitive, some consumers have not seen the kind of efficient, reliable, and fair service that they want. Rather, according to the Better Business Bureau, wireless phone service has become the Nation's most complained-about industry.

I appreciate hearing your support for open access to wireless networks. I understand the frustration of purchasing a mobile phone that is locked and then not being able to use it with a different carrier. There have been multiple lawsuits filed by consumer advocates to prevent wireless carriers from locking their mobile phones, or at least to force carriers to find ways to guarantee interoperability of locked phones between networks.

How the courts resolve these cases will impact what practices are allowed and whether legislative action is warranted. With our State's large business sectors and diverse communities, any change in our telecommunications laws needs to take into consideration a variety of competing concerns since it will have far-reaching effects.

Several states, including California, have enacted or are in the process of enacting laws to protect wireless phone subscribers. Nonetheless, federal legislation may become necessary so that all Americans are treated fairly. I believe that any workable solution for telecommunications reform should focus first and foremost on consumers and the public interest, while also balancing the needs of the network, service, and information providers.

Please know that I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as the Senate works to address these issues in the 111th Congress.

Once again, thank you for writing. If you have any further comments or concerns, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841.

Best regards.

Sincerely yours,

Dianne Feinstein

A Response

Senator Feinstein–

Thank you for your response. I appreciate you giving some thought to this matter.

It's clear from your email that you've decided that wireless exclusivity is not an issue that deserves to make it into your portfolio. As the senator representing the Silicon Valley, and my representative, I must urge you to reconsider.

Mobile carriers in this country have taken advantage of consumers for far too long. There are a long string of examples where legislation, not court cases are called for.

  • As covered in the New York Times last week, mobile carriers are making the us pay extra for simple services like voicemail. A bill to force carriers to allow users to set their own voicemail greetings, or one that forced them not to charge for listening to their service messages would go a long way toward controlling this out-of-control industry.
  • In most other countries, customers are only charged for outgoing calls – much the same way landlines have worked in this country. In the US however, we're effectively double charged – for both outgoing and incoming calls. This practice, effectively allows mobile carriers to  make twice as much off of each phone call. Legislation that enforced a "one charge per call" policy would go a long way toward straightening our backwards industry.
  • As you may have heard, the FCC has just began an investigation of AT&T for potentially unfair exclusivity arrangements with Apple to the exclusion of Google and other VOIP providers. The issue is one of Net Neutrality: can AT&T control what data is allowed over its network? Users pay for access to "unlimited" data rates over the AT&T network. For them to disallow certain types of data because it competes with another aspect of their business is not only anti-competitive, it's censorship. I urge you to support the FCC in this investigation and take a strong stance on Net Neutrality.

Read the rest of this post →

Aug 03, 2009 | Media Industry | View Comments

Dear Bill Keller

Dear Bill Keller,

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I had hope. I’ve been to the new Times newsroom, I’ve seen your awesome web infographics, I’ve talked with your developers, I’ve watched videos of your futurism department. There are many, many, smart people working for you.

When I asked one of your employees, why he had given up a well-paying job to come work for you he told me “…when the Times calls, you answer.”

I was emboldened when I read your byline from Iran. You, a manager, reported from the heart of what continues to be the world’s biggest story.

You sir, are in control of one of the finest journalism producing institutions in the world. Yet, people like you are pissing it away.

I was heart broken when I heard that the New York Times, which I have a deep respect and love for signed it’s intent-to-file-chapter-11 forms.

Nonetheless, I have a deep appreciation for experimentation, and I hope that your endeavors will teach the rest of us a thing or two about how to make money on the web.

Then, I read a Q&A that you did in TIME magazine. Even though the copy had to fit on one page, and your answers are brief, I’ve never seen a journalist sound as much like a politician as you did in that article. (And I use the word 'politician' that in the out-of-touch, slimy, refusing-to-be-held-accountable sort of way.)

Apologize for your mistakes. Transparency is all it’s cracked up to be.

You admitted that journalists in this country had failed as the Fourth Estate. The flat-out bad reporting when ex-President Bush took this country to war against Iraq was in-excusable. The argument for war was based on lies. To this day, the media hasn’t made a resounding statement saying as much.

You didn’t apologize.

You blamed us, the people, for creating “conventional wisdom” for you to ‘float along’ with.

If you want us to trust you, we’ve got to have an honest relationship! Tell us when you get something wrong. We’ll be mad, but we’ll trust you more because you came clean.

The smell of ink doesn’t justify its cost.

You said that print still has “a lot of life left in it.” I’m not sure if that was the diplomatic answer but I think most of us would have been more impressed to hear that you were actively looking for ways to move your operation digital; that print was on its way out as the foundation of your business.

Make a commitment to doing journalism online because the myth that, “the best of online journalism is rooted in mainstream media,”

won’t last long. I’m not sure what you define as “mainstream,” but you ought to consider re-evaluating your premise. The MSM isn’t the only group of people capable of doing journalism. Read the rest of this post →

Jul 11, 2009 | Battle, Journalism, Media Industry | View Comments

Paid Content = Paid Wifi

Wi-Fi logo
Image via Wikipedia

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve paid for WiFi access. Like most geeks, I pride myself on being able to find free internet access wherever I go. If I can’t find it, (like some airports) then web access nearly always goes into the “it can wait” column of my todo list.

Taking a step back, a service that I can find for free elsewhere is not one I’m likely to pay for, and I’m willing to sacrifice timeliness to save money.

This will be the a huge problem for newsorgs who want to go the paid content route.

Actually, the phrase Paid Content is flawed. It presumes that you’re paying for a product. Paying customers of the WSJ, aren’t really paying for the content, they pay for access to that content. You aren’t buying a product, you’re buying a service.

Let’s call Paid Content what it really is: Paid Access.

Read the rest of this post →

May 07, 2009 | Media Industry | View Comments

You Can’t Make Abundancy Scarce

My brother sent me an email tonight after he heard, Peter Fader speak. Fader is a professor at Wharton School of business at UPenn “doing datamining - they call it marketing.” Apparently, my brother found this talk inspiring, ending his first email in our resulting exchange with:

…he made some damn good points about the subscription model. b2c already is doing ok (campfire, github, etc.), it's time for consumers to pony up. His bottom line: if facebook decided to charge you $10/month, you'd pay it. No questions asked.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, or know me, or have listened to some of the top minds in this ‘new media’ business, you’ll be pretty easily pick out how totally my brother has drunk the kool-aid of the bass-akwards mind fuck that the ‘old media’ folks try to sell you.

First there was the stone age

Deep breath.

Let’s try to break this down: We are now in the information age. Where once the pinacle of technology was an iron sword, the new tech is information.

Our economy is based on the trade of IP, and yet, paradoxically, the internet has made information practically infinite. Therefore, attempting to make money by controlling the amount of information is doomed to fail.

Put another way: controlling the scarcity of something that isn't scarce can't work.

History is not a good guide here: The internet is a fundamental shift from anything we’ve experienced before. It’s as revolutionary as the printing press and as radical as the written word.  It’s both asynchronous and instant two-way communication.

Read the rest of this post →

Apr 02, 2009 | Journalism, Media Industry | View Comments

LINKS | the Rocky Dies and the Daily Emerald Strikes

So, I'll be on vacation (woot!) for the coming week which means a couple of things:

  1. I'll have limited Internet access, so don't expect a my LINKS post to be very long/exist next week.
  2. I'll have limited Internet access and don't plan on being able to get any work done. At all. Not too sure how I feel about that.
  3. My Thursday resolution to try out TweetDeck for twitter is gonna have to wait a while.

On a similar note, if any of you have any requests on how to better lay this post out or better formating or etc… lemme know.

Here we go: these are my links for February 26th through March 5th:

OMG! (and other news that broke this week)

Journalism, Examples of

Nifty Online Things

Online Journalism

Journalism Business Models

    Pew Research Center: Newspapers Face a Challenging Calculus

    Mar 06, 2009 | tumblr post | View Comments

    LINKS | Micropayments Don’t Work, but Everyone Has a Better Idea

    Somehow, I missed the links from the latter part of last week, and have been bookmarking like crazy this last week. So, ya'll get a ton of links. Apologies for the long, long list, but I've broken it up with some good videos — and I've edited down! These are the cream of the crop from February 10th through February 20th:

    Journalism Business Models

    Web Journalism

    Feb 21, 2009 | tumblr post | View Comments

    How Newhouse Can Become Relevant Again

     This post is in part a response to Lauren Rabaino’s post on how to change the Cal Poly journalism program in part an answer to the #collegejourn call for posts on how to improve college journalism education.

    Lauren’s analysis of the way to overhaul the her journalism program seems to go down the right path. I would take it just a set or two further though and stop the broadcast concentration. I'm looking at:

    • writing track: teaches reporting as any old print/newspaper prof would typically teach it, but with a strong emphasis on writing for the web. This naturally includes social networking, blogging, and audio production.
    • visual-content track These are are photogs, broadcast people, & designers. Teach a little bit of print design, but go 40-60% with web design. Photogs and video folk ought to know most of what each other does. Photogs may get some studio and photoshop time that the video folk won't and the video people ought to focus a little more on how to produce BJ style stories.
    • tech track: We need to be teaching/recruiting coders as journalists. Now that we’re on the web, we need people who are capable of running that infrastructure. We ought to be training people in web site design, database management and display, data-mining, website development, etc

    I mostly agree with Lauren’s idea of scrapping the print track, as I’ve said, teaching print design is a bit like teaching someone esperanto. It’s not like print design is going to go away, but it is far less important that teaching web design to those in the journalism field.

    Video

    I’ll go ahead and cautiously agree with Lauren, video should be taught in some form or another to all the majors. I say again: cautiously.

    Newhouse has a the ‘kid in the candy store’ syndrome when it comes to video. Soundslides are taught in beginning writing and photo classes, video/multimedia has become an integral part of nearly every lesson plan. The thinking is, ‘new media’ involves heavy use of multimedia and video, and therefore every student should be indoctrinated into the ways of ‘new media.’

    This thinking is just … flawed. Beginning photo students just don’t need to know how to shoot video … it’s advanced skill that just doesn’t need to be taught to beginning students.

    Besides, the video that Newhouse emphasizes is short-form, heavily edited video segments that last 1:30. I’m not at all convinced that the ROI is there.

    Instead, Newhouse ought to focus on the basics of shooting video (composition, lighting, uploading, etc) for those not in the visual track and long form video (10 min) for the visual folk.

    Social Media

    Every program should heavily emphasis social media. How to leverage it for reporting, maintaining a personal and professional blog, twitter, podcasting, etc… 

    One nice thing about Newhouse is it is home to a lot of up-to-date, high-end equipment. This  makes the job of learning and reporting much easier, but it’s all for nought if we’re not learning applicable information.

    An active blog ought to be viewed in the same light as getting an internship – a requirement. 

    Old media

    Just like the mainstream media industry, journalism academia is run by Baby Boomers and a select few in Generation X. Generally, these folk just

    don’t ‘get’ social media in the same way that us Generation Y kids do. How can they be expect to teach the value of something that they don’t value? Read the rest of this post →

    Feb 16, 2009 | Uncategorized | View Comments

    BATTLE | What We Need, Is Infastructure

     I’ve challenged myself to battle the management at my school’s newspaper The Daily Orange with a new ‘new media’ topic every week. BATTLE look at the struggle of a college paper trying to evolve to succeed on the Internet.

    As a follow up to my BATTLE post, What we need, is a plan, I'd like to share some the continued converstation between myself, and the ever skeptical (and it's a good thing to be skeptical), staff of The Daily Orange.

    Eight reasons why College Publisher is a problem

    1. I'm worried that other universities that produce a product inferior to our own, are so far ahead of us in the online space. This is ass backwards, and cannot be allowed to continue if we expect to keep bragging about the great tradition of the DO. It very well might become the 'once great tradition'
    2. College Publisher has ceased development of their next generation of software – CP5. No future growth does not bode well for their continued success. I'd be wary of thinking of College Publisher as a platform that will always be there.
    3. Online is both the future and the present reality. Every newsorg needs to exist online in a meaningful way. Many don't get it right, but we blatantly get it wrong.

      Read the rest of this post →

    Feb 11, 2009 | Battle | View Comments

    BATTLE | What We Need, Is a Plan

    I’ve challenged myself to battle the management at my school’s newspaper The Daily Orange with a new ‘new media’ topic every week. BATTLE look at the struggle of a college paper trying to evolve to succeed on the Internet.

    My battle this week stems from a series of emails exchanged between myself, the IT staff, and the Business Director that originally stemmed from the ad department securing online sponsorship for a weekly print feature: Thirsy Thursday — a beer (mmh… beer) reviewing column.

    The effort has devolved into a struggle to get the new IT staff up to speed, launch a new blog for Thirsty Thursday, and even redoing parts of the main website. My suggestions on that front were:

    • decisions about web design by non-web designers is usually a poor choice.
    • unilateral decisions about the structure of an editorial site by business staff is not a good move
    • I'd strongly suggest that many of our design issues are centered around college publisher inadequacies. 

    The Way Forward

    This whole process lead me to realize that what the DO needs more than anything else, is a planned approach to the Internet, which until this point, has been haphazard at best. We have no plan for forward growth, and that means that we're likely going to continue to be frustrated with each other and with our own efforts. At this point there are plenty of other colleges out there that have easily surpassed our own efforts to both make money online and leverage it as a platform.

    I for one, find this to be unacceptable. The Daily Orange has a strong tradition of … everything, and it's rather shameful to see us falling so far behind on technology that is both the present and future of the neworg.
    There are already schools that have seen their traditional college newspaper challenged (and in the case of NYU, replaced) by an online only news startup. I do honestly fear that the DO stands to suffer the same fate if things continue at the current pace.

    Feb 10, 2009 | Battle | View Comments

    The Internet Broke the Economy

     

    I've noticed that I started to think that every blog post I write must be a fantastic piece of prose. Articles that don't meet the 600+ word count don't meet the cut.

    Yea… I've been drinking too much of my own coolaid. Back to the shorter, more frequent posting for me. I suspect that it's more valuable in the long run.

     


     

    Ofcom Website | Global Citizens and Consumers in the Internet Age

    Douglas Rushkoff of NYU has completely blown my mind. It's not often that one finds a completely, world-upside-down, mind-altering … anything. But this is it.

    The thesis: The internet has turned the world on it’s head because because it destroys the traditional definition of economy: “rational actors maximizing their value through the acquisition/distribution of scarce resources.”

    Read the rest of this post →

    Feb 09, 2009 | Media Industry | View Comments

    LINKS | Please, Please Don’t Charge for Free Information

    These are my links for January 30th through February 5th:

    Feb 06, 2009 | tumblr post | View Comments

    Links for January 9th

    These are my delicious links for January 9th from 20:36 to 22:50:

    • DJ Strouse - A odd, but insightful look at what the economy might be without money as the currency.
    • How I want to redefine my role, and the reader's role, in the newspaper | By Daniel Victor - The start of a mobile journalist (MoJo) career.
    • Transparency as a PR Principle, Not a Tactic | PBS - In the internet age, where trust is a currency, companies ought to consider transparency of business a necessity if not an obligation.

      Joey's thought: If civilization has developed far enough the economy to produce at at its current rate, and enough time is freed up for people to be investing it in goods and services that aren't necessities, perhaps it's time for us to look at currencies that aren't just monetary as a means of judging our economy.
      e.g. China produces a lot but isn't as trusted as US

    If anyone knows a good way to get wordpress to display tumblr links instead of delicious via postalicious, lemme know!

    Jan 10, 2009 | tumblr post | View Comments

    Links for January 8th Through January 9th

    These are my links for January 8th through January 9th:

    Jan 09, 2009 | tumblr post | View Comments

    Links for January 6th Through January 7th

    These are my links for January 6th through January 7th:

    • Mainebiz - A new freesheet practicing the Guerilla journalism style is starting in Portland.
    • How the newspaper industry tried to invent the Web but failed. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine - The claim: Newspapers were early to get online, they just didn't get on the open web soon enough.
      The problem: Newspaper structure is inherently flawed for internet consumption. Ad rates alone cannot sustain the newsroom, newspapers have become distracted by video as their answer, and stock price is too much of a concern. There's probably more to add to that list too.
    • Public Press FAQ | The Public Press - Here's a radical idea: share your published articles with Public Press, a non-profit that receives its money NPR fashion, so there are no ads.

    Jan 07, 2009 | tumblr post | View Comments

    Links for January 6th

    These are my links for January 6th from 00:38 to 02:52:

    • Blogging, a new journalistic genre ? | Monday Note - Pretty strong argument that blogs are a great new form of journalism.
      Problem: they don't make money. Adverts don't value them and they just don't generate the pageviews an article does.
    • What is literacy? BuzzMachine - If online journalism is expected to work, the audience must be able to do the following:
      Media literacy, then, must embrace all those activities and skills, not just reading but:
      * knowing how to focus on a need for information and express that by crafting a query to find an answer;
      * knowing how to judge the relevance and reliability of sources - including the PageRank-like skill of judging sources on sources;
      * knowing how to create (and remix) content across all media types;
      * knowing how to collaborate;
      * understanding the impact of facts on perspective and perspective on opinion;
      * understanding the impact of identity and anonymity;
      * understanding the relationship of pieces of information that make up a larger story via links;
      * understanding how to make and find corrections
    • On The Media: Transcript of "You Are What You Is" (November 28, 2008) - Jeff Jarvis makes a good case for convergence. The media is now a singular: no longer do jounos choose, video, print, photo, whatever. We're cross-medium.
    • Twelve months of top journalism blog posts in 2008 Christopher Wink - Title says it all. It's a pretty darn good list of the top posts of last year. Worth reading through the list at least.
    • HuffPo Worth $200M? Em, More Like $2M - Business news | Newser - Sounds like the $25 million dollar investment that HuffPo just got may have inflated the value of the blogging newspaper. Instead of the $100-$200 million the investment was based on, it might be worth closer to $2 million. Ouch.
    • Reflections of a Newsosaur: Newspaper share value fell $64B in '08 - A look at the stock prices and market cap. of the major newspapers in 2008.
    • The Turning Gate / TTG iPhone Portfolio - iphone friendly photo gallery direct from Lightroom: Cool!
    • Lee Enterprises: A poster child for the ownership crisis | yelvington.com - Steve Yelvington breaks down the economic crisis for newspapers:
      1. The internet means long term changes, newspapers weren't ready.
      2. Global economic crisis = less adverts = less income.
      3. Newspapers borrowed when the borrowing was good, and are in the same place as everyone else in this economic crisis. They debt they can't pay back.

    Jan 06, 2009 | tumblr post | View Comments

    Your Right$ vs. Their Right$ Right? – The Digital Journalist

    While there is no question that the First Amendment protects coverage of spot-news events in public places, it is also clear that private events may be legally controlled by their organizers. Organizers may say who may or may not attend. They may also require that attendees agree to certain conditions.

    Journalists are equally free to decline to agree and simply stay away.

    -Your Right$ Vs. Their Right$ Right? - The Digital Journalist

    Good advice to photographers – beware what you agree you can('t) do with your images when shooting an event. The obvious problem for journalists is that standing on higher moral ground isn't really an option. If you don't shoot an event, someone else will, and they'll have the published photos to prove it.

    May 25, 2008 | Photography | View Comments

    Freelancers: How Do You Get Work? | Creativebits

    • Craigslist
    • Word of mouth.
    • Referrals from a past job.
    • My college buddies. (Especially Chris)
    • My colleges job board for alumni
    • Comedy Central/MTV job hunt board
    • Monster.com
    • Krop
    • Freelancers Union
    • Unsolicited resumes

    Freelancers: How do you get work? | creativebits

    Great idea for freelance work that I never considered: craigslist. Totally free and really well trafficked.

    Apr 09, 2008 | Creative, Photography, Web Design | View Comments

    Behind the Lens With John Moore – Pop Photo

    No matter how long you're in this business of conflict photography you will always feel fear. When you no longer feel it, then it's time to get out.

    - John Moore 

    Pop Photo 

    Mar 26, 2008 | Photography | View Comments

    Starbucks Announces Sweeping Changes – New York Times

    Starbucks Announces Sweeping Changes - New York Times

     I'm not a coffee drinker, but this sounds like good news overall. Starbuck's is, while a huge conglomerate, a fairly friendly company IMHO (in my humble opinion). These changes sound good to me. Besides – what's the downside to more free stuff?

    Mar 20, 2008 | General News | View Comments

    Random News Related to Italy

    Troubled Italian carrier Alitalia has agreed to be bought by rival Air France for a cut-price 138m euros(£106m:$215m) in a move to save the state airline.

    BBC: Alitalia accepts Air France offerNot that this has to do with anything that I normally blog about†. Just that I find it interesting that Alitalia, which I flew to Italy last week, offered great service. Aside from a hiccup at Milan Airport which was no fault of theirs, their service completely satisfactory. I suppose I was surprised to learn that they are struggling financially so much.† side note: huh. never really thought about that before. I blog. I'm a blogger. Interesting.I sort of hate people who call themselves bloggers. Sounds very… pretentious. Ah well, nothing to be done I suppose.

    Mar 16, 2008 | General News | View Comments