A Web Design Critique of Google News
I recently critiqued the redesign of Newsweek, and was pleased to see the positive response. I sorta promised that this would become a regular feature for me, so I'll try to hold to that.
I'm only looking at homepages. Critiquing a whole site is a lot of work. I'll do it someone wants to pay me though :]
After leading a webinar for CoPress on homepage design, I've done a lot of research into mainstream homepages – what works and what doesn't. For the second go at this, let's look at Google News.
LINKS | Down With the AP?
- Image via CrunchBase
There's been a growing feeling that the AP is not our friend in the media industry, but this week, that feeling seemed to bubble over. We've got some rough numbers to show that they're not helping us, and with the rise of ESPN local sites, the AP is rapidly loosing it's marketplace.
I don't know if I'm ready to sign their death sentence yet, they do seem to have some smart people working for 'em (I look to the New Model for News study and their iPhone app). Yet, it's painfully obvious (after the youtube fiasco) that the AP is a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.
These are my links for April 14th through April 18th:
The AP is outdated and increasingly irrelevant; so are Printies
AP thinking of future:http://www.ap.org/newmodel.pdf - Interesting 'atomization of news' but still top-down publishing model. –@GregElin on March 23
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- Image via Wikipedia
Daily Kos: State of the Nation: Newspapers make up 20% of the sources for The Daily Kos, but blogs make up near 13%, the second most. The AP? Less than 1%.
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“On the other hand, I will be gleeful when the AP goes out of business. I’m actually shocked at how little we depend on those jerks.”- Daily Kos: State of the Nation
- Hanging Tough: Financial Page: The New Yorker: This is the mindset the media industry needs to have: take risks, experiment. Either you’re going to fail, or come out on top. Non-risk isn’t gonna make you succeed.
- Why top-down syndication is broken: This is it: the newswire isn’t going to be top down, but bottom up. We’re crowdsourcing news, that means you can’t control abundancy. Take that AP.
- Garca Interactive: How ESPN Chicago sticks another nail in the newspaper coffin 26 and what to do about it: Common sense on what to do about saving your niche before someone scoops it up from under you. My favorite: fire the management. They’ve failed, bring someone new in.
- Journalism Online Just in case you were wondering what a plan for failure looks like…
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“A strategy is a product of a big vision of the market and where it’s going. It’s about abandoning some markets to concentrate on others. Newspaper companies don’t have a strategy. Newspaper companies have tactics, things they do to respond to other people’s strategies. Until newspapers get a strategy of their own that helps them decide what to do and what not to do, they are doomed to see all the high-potential market strategies owned by everyone else. Which leaves newspaper companies to grumble about unfair everything is and not much more.”- García Interactive: How ESPN Chicago sticks another nail in the newspaper coffin … and what to do about it
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“Let me be the first to tell you that saying you aim to be a “world-class platform-neutral news information provider” just tells me you haven’t got a clue about the future, are too scared to make a guess and are hoping someone else will get it right so you can copy them.”- García Interactive: How ESPN Chicago sticks another nail in the newspaper coffin … and what to do about it
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"Instead of feeling diminished by the Huff Post's excerpts, more publications might want to pre-empt the site by serving distilled versions of their own articles. That's right: Even the Post and the Times and the Journal can learn something about how to serve readers from the Huffington Post." –Hey, journalists! Stop getting all huffy about the Huffington Post's "lifting" of stories. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine
Numbers
- Measuring user engagement: Lessons from BusinessWeek: It’s a good breakdown of how to measure user engagement on a story. This is a valuable metric, that we really need.
Engagement is high, now we just need to harness it.
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Lest there be any doubt, the internet is used by all age groups.
The Wall Street Journal Has Their iPhone App All Wrong
Alan Murray is executive editor of The Wall Street Journal Online. This interview was taped on April 4, 2009 at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.
This is the first video in this series great series by Nieman Labs where I've really disagreed with Alan Murray. His logic that "when you're done, you're done" with a newspaper just doesn't hold. Especially with a paper like the Journal that is intended to have a huge depth of information. I'd predict that very few people actually sit down with the paper for 45 minutes to get that 'completed' experience.
Further, regardless of either of our opinion on print, the iPhone is a different medium as Mr. Murray points out. It's not a blackberry, but it's certainly not print! With constant web access and push notifications coming in full force with iPhone OS 3.0, why limit your app to the 'you're done' feeling?
Instead, recognize that a cell phone, and an iPhone in particular is a uniquely customizable experience. Especially for a paper like the WSJ, which is trying to follow the freemium model, that want for customization is something that can be capitalized on.
Allow users to select what kind of business news they want to receive, maybe even allow them to pick stocks to have news alerts on. Heck, you could even micro-charge for that feature, 15 cents for every company you track, 3 bucks for each industry. Then, deliver them the news on that particular topic, instantly. Use push, use the notification system of the phone to alert them of the most important stuff.
Utilizing the iPhone medium the way it's intended to be used (it is opinionated design after all) is really the only way to have good odds at a successful app. Mobile is and is increasingly a huge deal for the media industry. It would be great to see someone get it right.
LINKS | Generation Y Has Inherited the Media
“Maybe, just maybe, the existing model for generating, distributing and monetizing content could benefit from a Ctrl-Alt-Delete reboot.”- Can the Statusphere Save Journalism?
It's been two weeks since my last one of these, which is in part due to laziness, and in part due to my wanting to get a good list going on a contentious topic: Generation Y needs to take over the media.
I'm increasingly convinced that the 'old media' model is broken largely because the old folks just don't get it. Not to say that there aren't people in 30s-70s who don't get 'it,' just that there are too few, too few in a position of power, and too few who get 'it' enough.
These are my links for March 29th through April 13th:
"You blew it"
- 'Star Tribune' Withholds Select Print Content From Web: Talk about Baby Boomers not getting “it.”
- Print is still king: Only 3 percent of newspaper reading happens online: There's a lot of fuzzy math done here, and reliance on numbers that may or may not be accurate. (readership is 2+ per copy!?) (avg. person reads 24 pages/day in print!?) Maybe I'm too genY, but I just don't see how this is possible.
- CIRCLE - A nonpartisan research center studying youth civic engagement and civic education. College Students Talk Politics: It's a valid point: GenY might not really pay attention to news b/c they feel like it's not relevant to them. It's largely just talking heads yelling at each other. Argues against Infotainment and for the masses being smart.
- Streisand effect: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”
- "NCAA: Greet the 21st century" : The Editor's Log : Blogs : News-Record.com : Greensboro, North Carolina: NCAA is trying to prohibit people from expressing opinions on Facebook!? They need to get over themselves.
- 1. Solve journalism's data problem. 2. Kill the AP. 3. Invest in the next market. BuzzMachine: Jarvis calls for the disbanding of the AP. In light of how backwards they have been, I’m for it.
- NYTimes-turned-NPR Exec: "Not Very Bullish on People Paying for News Content" - mediabistro.com: WebNewser: CEO of NPR in the news for the second time this week with details on how Times Select was a failure despite making 10 million/year.
- The speech the NAA should hear BuzzMachine: I love a good rant, and Jarvis delivers. I think I’m still hoping he’s wrong – that newspapers still can be re-tooled to work online, but I fear he’s right.
- Google's Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It: A good, old fashion, smack-down of the old fashion old media. “Robert, I’ve been creating original content on the internet for about 12 years longer than you’ve been editor of the WSJ. Shut up. Seriously, shut up. To say something like that simply indicates you really do not understand that all blogs are not echo chambers. I mean echo chamber? Sorry, that’s the mainstream media, too.”
- Google a 'Tapeworm:' WSJ Exec: Here’s more of the ‘old media’ mind-fuck.
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.
LINKS | Generation Y Takes on the World
Things our grandkids will never understand.
Last week has lead me this generalization: Generation Y fundamentally understands the internet, and therefore the current state of the world, in a way that older generations just never will.
It's a generalization and not a maxim, because as folks like John Bryne, Bryan Murley, and even Steve Jobs remind me that us youngin's aren't the only ones who get it, we're just in the majority.
These are my links for March 21st through March 27th:
Generation Y, X, BB…
The following are excerpts from #editorchat from John Bryne of Business Week. I'm throughly impressed with his insight. It gives me much hope for the older generations.
“There will be many Born to the Web enterprises over the next few years that will teach the mainstream media a thing or two. #editorchat”- Twitter / JOHNABYRNE
“They think that some day online advertising will offset the print decline and help support a broken print model. #editorchat”- Twitter / JOHNABYRNE
“Online readers also earn more than print readers and are more likely to be female. #editorchat”- Twitter / JOHNABYRNE
“Of our total audience, about 38% are online only; 31% magazine only & 31% are both online and print. #editorchat”- Twitter / JOHNABYRNE
“There’s overlap in our print and online readers3 but generally our online users are 10 years younger and more highly educated. #editorchat”- Twitter / JOHNABYRNE
- On the other hand, the following is a tweet sent by a Syracuse University student during a lecture by Ryan Sholin on 'new media.'
“@ryansholin I’d prefer that we have fewer citizen journalists. You don’t see me trying to be a citizen software engineer or citizen waiter.”-
Twitter / benjgcPut this up there as Generation Y not “getting it”
- 2020 vision: What's next for news: A fantastic bit of futurism on the journalism business.
• Industry will shrink/re-make itself
• The semantic web plays a huge role and datamining becomes key
• Collaboration among local news sites for ads and info
• New business models like endowments, non-profit, etc
• copyright law needs a re-think
• The idealist unbiased journalist dies, starts reporting for interest groups - Newspaper ownership and the fourth generation syndrome | yelvington.com: Steve argues that the current generation of newspaper owners are more interested in spending money than their own business.
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“When I got my first computer back in 1984 or 1985, it was a Mac and there was this program called Hypercard by Bill Atkinson. In a very basic way, Hypercard teaches you the basics of how computers [and software development on them] work.” Being who I am, this obviously struck a chord. I wondered if he has hit upon a simple truth about the evolution of computers… and their users. Early on, the software and tools that were available to users were more about working with the capabilities of the machine than what you could get done with it. That lead to every computer user innately understanding the architecture of the machine. Of course, it also lead to scaring many people off, but for those that stuck around, to this day we all have a very true understanding of the what, why and — most importantly — how a computer can (and can’t!) do the things it does.”- At SXSW Michael Penn Talks iTunes, Film, Music, and Hypercard! - The Mac Observer
- Newspaper Execs: Still Sleepless in Seattle - ClickZ: Vin speaks from personal experience about the staff and history of the Seattle PI. In Vin’s opinion, the staff is top notch, but the Hearst Corp. has shackled them.
Journalism Business Models
- Nonprofit journalism: It's in the numbers: Presents numbers dating back to 2006 on the average number of bylines, pages, and sections in the local paper. It’s not really good news.
- Md. Senator Proposes Nonprofit Status For Newspapers - Baltimore News Story - WBAL Baltimore: Current rules don’t allow print media to report on political issues (apparently). A senator has stepped forward and suggested that we allow them to do so.
- A scenario for news BuzzMachine: Think of this one more like a “Jarvis Manifesto”
- “The most profitable newspapers have tended to be monopoly markets with circulation of 20,000 to 100,000 readers. These are not sexy papers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, which have historically have significantly low margins.”- One Banker’s Plan to Save the Newspaper Industry - Deal Journal - WSJ
- Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet: Controversial post by a UPenn Prof. He refers to his own research on how people interact with ads. Most interesting: the break downs of what and how you can sell online.
“The problem is not the medium, the problem is the message, and the fact that it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed.”- Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet
- A fantastic quote from rev2oh
“The wonder of the web is that it gives readers more and more control every day over what information they consume. Fighting against that trend is futile. Trying to improve the banner ad is like trying to motorize a horse.”- RevenueTwoPointZero » Advertising on iPhone
Just plain nifty/WTF?
- The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine gets a new data center: Apparently the entire internet can fit into a shipping containter. 4.5 petabytes, 1TB RAM, and 63 servers.
- The 13 Most Essential Plugins for WordPress - Nettuts+: Totally fantastic list.
- What Happened to the Land of the Free?: Very long, very detailed piece arguing that the government has become too powerful. Well researched, well opined.
- BBC NEWS | Americas | US high school 'held cage fights': WTF!? A Dallas school was holding cage fighting matches, with students!?
- Goodbye Google | stopdesign: Google’s top designer quits ostensibly because Google doesn’t understand good design. Here’s the thing: they’re still successful. They don’t have Microsoft levels of shitty design, so what’s the…
For the Photogs in the house…
Amy O'Leary is a multimedia producer at the Times. This interview was taped on March 22, 2009, at the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, where O'Leary was a speaker.
Newsflow: How Journalism Is and Will Be Generated
The News Ecosystem according to Steve Johnson. Click for a larger version.
Steven Johnson, co-founder of outside.in, gave a very good, well thought out, speech at SXSW on the state of the news industry last week. In the transcript on his blog, he shares a slide on how he envisions the future of the news industry.
Steven has a good, albeit simplistic break down of how this new paradigm is working. I'm sure I agree with the flow of the information News → Commentary → Curation → Distribution. Seems to me that you'd have to distribute before you can get comments back, and that you'd need to curate the commentary… Forget it, the the chart is simplistic.
Steven does have the right context for this though:
Now there’s one objection to this ecosystems view of news that I take very seriously. It is far more complicated to navigate this new world than it is to sit down with your morning paper. There are vastly more options to choose from, and of course, there’s more noise now. For every Ars Technica there are a dozen lame rumor sites that just make things up with no accountability whatsoever.
I agree whole heartily with his point and I like the broad strokes of his chart. But, I suggest that this diagram far too simple to describe the new paradigm.
As Steven says, “The implied motto of every paper in the country should be: all the news that’s fit to link.” What his model is missing is the intricacies of linking, how data will be distributed to not only the customer, but among all of those gathering and generating news.
Hypothesizing on the new newsflow
Licensed under Creative Commons. Click for a larger version.
Yea… not as easy to understand right? I’ve got arrows going all over the place, and there’s not clear rhyme or reason to the way information flows. My apologies, these relationships are chaotic and often have many nodes. Let me make the key points:
Data is key. As Tim Berners Lee has predicted, the future of the web is “linked data.” This is is something that Steven addresses, but only briefly. As the semantic web becomes reality, displaying and accessing data will become the important role for journalism to fill.
ESPN Shouldn’t Use Their Monopoly to Take Advantage of Students
- Image via Wikipedia
ESPN.com has me angrier than TIME.com right now. They've sent an email to the sports department at The Daily Orange asking them to contribute content to ESPN.com for the NCAA tournament.
I'll go ahead and quote portions of their email in two quotes. I'll break in between for analysis.
Here’s what we’re interested in:
- Cross post opinion and campus reaction/color during the NCAA Tournament in the ESPN profile space (description below). Could start with Final 4 picks.
- Send an e-mail to me and removed for privacy once you’ve posted
- Include URL of the post on ESPN.com with brief description
- Include any related URLs
Break: If you’ve read that carefully, you’ll see that ESPN is trying to crowdsource their reporting. They’re asking college journalists to write about the topic they know best, their campus, then package the content with a neat little bow, and send it off to them to be used…
Here’s what I can do with your content:
- Posts considered for the P1 box below the poll on the front of ESPN.com
- Best posts included in campus roundup file
- Best posts shared with our college basketball editor
…no where important.
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
Hulu's Superbowl Ad and the Boxee Fight - O'Reilly Radar: “I’m sure Hulu is totally pissed. They pretty much said just that in a somewhat more stilted way. The real insult, though, is calling the people who made them cut Boxee off “content providers.” They…
- Why I dislike micropayments, don't mind charity, but really have a better idea Network(ed)News: What a fantastically simple idea for a journalism business model: charge for interaction with the content creator. Donate some money to the site, and the chances of your comments etc being responded…
- Walter Isaacson: You've got it all wrong | Musings of an Anonymous Geek: Theodor Nelson writes the equivalent of a very long blog post as a response to Walter Isaacson’s use of his name in his argument for micropayments for news. Essentially, Nelson wants to use a…
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Interview: Wired's Chris Anderson on the 'free' business model | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com: Chris Anderson, author of Long Tail, discusses the Freemium business model.
- Tech Tools Day 1: Tomorrow's Journalism and Journalists - The Next Newsroom Project: “Readers have never been willing to support this industry economically,” Fine said. “Her advice for anyone in the news biz was direct: ‘I know that not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur,’ Fine…
- DigiDave | Communication is Key: Journalism Beyond Newspapers - Don't Become Nonprofits - Work for Them: Dave Cohn makes a good point: journalists can market their services toward non-profits who need the press and often can’t get their message out there.
- Forget Micropayments -- Here's a Far Better Idea for Monetizing Content: Steve Outing endorses Kachingle, a micro-payment service for websites with one distinct caveat: paying is still optional. The user decides on how much they want to pay for their news, and all the…
- Will paid content work? Two cautionary tales from 2004 Nieman Journalism Lab Pushing to the Future of Journalism: Good look at the failures of the Paid Content model: LAT, and the Albuquerque Journal. End with a reminder: just because Editors think that they are entitled to make money from content, it doesn’t…
- Op-Ed Contributor - You Can't Sell News by the Slice - NYTimes.com: A New York Times op-ed on why paid content won’t work. Oh, and that even if it did, the revenue wouldn’t “save newspapers.”
- What does engagement mean for newspapers? - Eat Sleep Publish: A good summary and batch of links on why engagement on sites is important.
Top 15 of 2008: The leading regional newspaper sites shuffle their ranks Nieman Journalism Lab Pushing to the Future of Journalism: The top regional newspapers have seen a significant increase in pageviews.
- lectroid.net Blog Archive Newspapers could actually try online: Really solid advice on how to evolve your print newsroom into a real, online newsorg. Topics include: Staffing, web design, and workflow.
- Reflections of a Newsosaur: How to charge for content. Theoretically.: Alan Mutter jumps on the micropayment bandwagon as the most “logical way” to make money online. He makes the wrong assumption that “Consumers might not like being micro-nickled and nano-dimed for…
Web Journalism
- The Doc Searls Weblog : Saturday, March 24, 2007: Fantastic list of things that newspapers should do on their websites to make them more relevant to users (read: user friendly)
- How an NYT developer built a new way to read the news online: The ‘new’ interface is a great move for the Times. It does distinctly reminds me of http://newser.com and I think corrects one of the major flaws of current online newspaper design: the lack of…
Micropayments Lead to Piracy
Since the TIME cover story that re-rose the micropayment debate last week the topic has been beaten to death across the web, but I want to raise just a few more points that I haven't seen elsewhere.
Information wants to be free. No matter what, people will find a way to get it online. We’ve proven this time and time again with music, movies, software, and video games. No, don’t laugh – video games are a multi-billion dollar industry, that represent some of the greatest achievements in technology in the past decade.
These three heavy-weight entertainment industries have proven that charging for content online leads to … quasi success. Yes, iTunes, Netflix, and Steam have been able to deliver paid content to a mass audience, and they do if far easier than if you try to pirate download the same, but piracy is still rampant.
Make it free, or the pirates will. The TIME article, and others like it, refer to the 'iTunes model' when the talk about micropayments for news. Yet, this analogy is flawed:
- Music, movies, software, and video games are content that has ‘repeat use’ value. News is read once, then mentally file away.
- Music, movies, and video games are entertainment, a luxury good that carries a far different intrinsic value than an essential good like news. Software isn’t a luxury good, but it is a productivity tool that also doesn’t have the intrinsic value that news/information has. Besides, software doesn’t really have the micropayment model either.
- It’s easy to preview content on iTunes, it’s near impossible to provide an accurate preview of information without providing the … information.
I’d be willing to bet that if a news service tries the paid content model people will find someway to get around the pay wall. If they’ve found a way to steal entertainment goods, trust me, they’ll find a way to steal the news.
And that sure doesn’t sound like a Fourth Estate to me: a system where the people have to steal their information!?
Better to let the traditional newsroom die, or run a smaller operation. You can’t tell me that every reporter in a current newsroom actually earns their keep.
If micropayment schemes ever actually gain traction, people will opensource the news. We can mashup twitter, youtube, blogs, and aggregators to get a reasonable approximation of the information that we get now. Granted, it would be much shorter form content. But since we mostly skim the news right now anyway, the user wouldn’t see much lost.
Newspapers Oughta Sell Their New Expertise
Inspired by a small point made by Jeff Jarvis, I left a comment on his blog saying that I thought he had struck gold — a way to supplement ad revenue at local newspapers.
To adapt to the Internet, newspapers have been forced to evolve, some have become experts in ‘new media.’ A term that I hate because, really what is ‘new media?’ When does it stop becoming new, and what will we call the media that comes after it? Is everything just eternally ‘new media?’
The current definition means that a ‘new media’ expert is up-to-speed on blogging, linking, short form video, Facebook, Twitter, other social networks, etc… All of this expertise is a real commodity that many businesses would love to tap into.
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.”
Links | “Journalists Are the Biggest Terrorists”
These are my links for January 19th through January 22nd:
- PhotoScavengerHunt — recent flickr upload
Night. -
- Journalism.co.uk :: 'To succeed online student journalists must collaborate outside their own university': Greg Linch gives a good overview of the current state and goals of CoPress
- “Whitney is an accomplished Times veteran whose work I’ve admired over the years. But this memo sums up some of the very reasons why so many believe the mainstream media is doomed to irrelevance.”- ‘The New York Times’ Facebook problem | Coop’s Corner - CNET News
- Journalistopia » Tinkering | Danny Sanchez -
- Barack Obama's inauguration speech ... crafted by 27-year-old in Starbucks | World news | The Guardian: The Guardian (of all newsorgs) has a great profile on Obama’s head — 27 y/o — speech writer.
- UI.Layout Plug-in - Home: jquery plugin that allows for ajax layout of massive proportions.
- Journalists are biggest terrorists: Zardari - PakTribune: “Journalists are the biggest terrorists,” —President Zardari
A showreel of work from the Guardian’s Dan ChungViews:
318
2
ratings- Inside the Transition: Technology, Innovation and Government:
Members of the Transition’s TIGR team explain how technology can bring reform and transparency to the… - Photographing the President: A look from 2 TIME photogs on covering the Bush White House.
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No Wonder They Don’t Trust Us
Warning: the following is a rant. I'll keep it short.
It drives me crazy to see journalist putting the nail in their own coffin. E&P just republished an AP story that politely complains that Israel still isn't letting journalists into the Gaza war zone.
No wonder 54% of the public doesn't trust the media anymore. Instead of playing Fourth Estate watchdogs, these journalists have been nicely asking the courts of Israel for permission to do their jobs. Nevermind the fact the Israeli government and Hamas are controlling the story and spewing propaganda. It's still a good idea to wait on one of these governments to allow you into a region when they can control what you see.
Grow some balls.
Do your jobs. Please. You're only hurting yourselves through your laziness and ignorance. Don't moan about how hard it is. If were easy, we wouldn't need professional journalists in the first place!
Journalists are expected to add value to what people on the ground tell us in order to curate and inform the mass-public about the actions of governments, industry, and events of the day. How can we do any of that if we're not able to report!?
Journalists. Step up. Now.
Again, TIME Is Making Good Steps…
I've said before, I'll say it again. TIME is really starting to get this interweb thing. Take a look at the beginning of a Swampland blog post:
Commentator sgwhitefla got me thinking in the last post…
A writer, from a major news source, responding to a commentator!? How very, blog like!
In other news, it seems like TIME is already following a possible business model for an online newsroom.
Just to prove that I'm not a total fan boy: TIME is facing some financial difficulties. But… this restructuring may be a part of the need for a smaller, sleeker newsroom (more on that soon!)
Yes, “It Is Our Fault”
A few weeks ago, I as I was sitting down in my 'office'* in The Daily Orange 'newsroom,'† I noticed a book sitting next to my curmudgeon office-mate, Andy. Noting the rather dilapidated state of his paperback, I read the title: The Powers that Be.
My curiosity piqued, I flipped through it, read a summary (a review of the "good ol' times" of journalism) and the copyright date (sometime in the 70s). What choice did I have but to mock Andy for reading out-dated literature about a now-dead job while wishing for the return of drinking on the job. I told him to do like me: read a few blogs instead.
Andy's a great guy – we get along really well, even if we disagree on… everything. His focus (both personally, and as the Enterprise Editor) is on improving the quality of writing and reporting around the paper. The rants about ledes and grammar Andy goes off on would make Wooward cry.
My job, as the Exponent of the Evolution, is on expanding the use of 'new media.' It's all about the blogging, podcasting, videos, tweeting… I'm also not the quality hound that Andy is. It's all about the 'version 1' for me; if we can just get something online: we've made progress. We can worry about improving the next version.
In a recent round of blog posts (1, 2, 3) responding to a Washington Post article on the victimization of the press, Jeff Jarvis writes:
The reason to take responsibility for the fall of journalism is to take responsibility for the fate of journalism. Who’s going to try to save it if not for journalists? We are indeed responsible for the future of journalism and we have about one minute to grab that bull by its horns.
-BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » It is our fault
Realization strikes: Andy and I aren't that philosophically far apart. We're both trying to 'save journalism' – through different routes.
Though I firmly believe that newspapers are the only medium that is doing true journalism nowadays (broadcast TV sure isn't), I think that the future lies in the ability of newspapers to adapt to the internet age. They've got to realize that blogging, the link, multimedia, commenting, and an unlimited newshole have forever changed the business.
Andy would rather focus on the basics – good reporting. He argues that the bar is constantly being lowered (an example) and saving journalism means raising it back up through better sourcing, good writing, etc.
I'm still think that reporting is the most important service a newspaper provides (sounds obvious, but tell that to the bean counters), and Andy is one of my premiere video podcasters. We're willing to recognize the strength of the other's arguement-–we just have different approaches to journalism.
Saving journalism is not just about moving a newspaper online, it's not about figuring out a new revenue model, it's not about multimedia, it's about finding the balance of all three to ensure the future of the media information industry.
And that future is… us. The current generation of college graduates who are aware of the what the internet can do, who aren't biased by the way things used to be (Andy possibly excluded). There is a gap of understanding between generation X & Y on the use of the web. With a younger, more tech savvy generation coming into the industry it's up to us to figure out how to meld the nutty world that the interweb has become into the the sphere of journalism.
The problems that the newspaper industry face right now can largely be overcome by realizing that we're not in the newspaper business, we're in the media information business. Those of us young'ins who are just starting in this industry have an idea of how to reinvent journalism to survive in the internet age.
If you've got a computer problem, who do you look to for a fix? You're nearest 15 year old who has already forgotten more about computers than you ever cared to know? Journalism has a computer-problem right now. Take a look at us young folks for a fix.
* My 'office' is more of a conference room. † The Daily Orange 'newsroom' is a converted house. So there is no real newsroom floor, there are no real offices, we mostly consider ourselves lucky to have a desk and a roof.
Newspapers Need a Platform
Check out my post here.
I would have typically written a longer form piece here, but I've come to realize that a) I have very little time for blog writing anymore, b) it was a more appropriate post for CoPress to comment on, c) Let's face it, more people read CoPress than read here :)
Four More Newspapers Intend to Drop AP Over Rates
"What we are paying for is not cost-effective," says Smith, who notes that he would save about $32,000 per year under new rates, but still sees the nearly-$400,000 annual cost as too high. "The money we save will help me preserve local staff jobs."
-Four More Newspapers Intend To Drop AP Over Rates
I'm not sure what my stance on the AP is right now:
| Pro | Con |
| They're a massive, national news gathering organization that is able to put a lot of fee on the ground | They're really big and bureaucratic. |
| The service can now be more custom tailored to local newspapers | The AP charges a lot of money for a service that most papers use (at least partially) as a backup. |
| To assure the existence of professional journalism, the a large collective like the AP can ensure that they get paid. | The copyright débâcle. |
| The AP is an established brand that is proven to provide a useful service. | The Ohio collective. |
I'm probably missing a few points, but those are what come to mind first.
…and, it looks like I don't really have a point to this post. Just a musing that the AP needs to tread carefully.
Some Photogs Can Write
I am a very lucky man. I've spent the last 24 years at the Los Angeles Times as a photographer and a photo editor. I can tell you what it's like in the eye of a typhoon, in a firestorm, under an offshore oil platform or the wrong side of the green line in Mogadishu. I know what a whale feels like and I've buzzed icebergs. I've had lunch with rock stars and seen President's sweat. I've tried to get Carolyn Cole out of jail, even.
When I die, I hope I have a bag of popcorn, because if my life flashes by, it's going to be a hell of a show.
Best of all, I've had the pleasure of your company. I can't imagine a more engaging, talented and dedicated group of people anywhere. Years ago, I was cooling my heals at some news event next to a New York Times reporter who had worked here. She said, "Oh! The Los Angeles Times! The New York Times is warm on the outside but cold on the inside. The Los Angeles Times is warm on the outside and warm on the inside."
Civility. Kindness. Fairness. Intelligence. These are the qualities that pervade the Los Angeles Times. Stay here for a while, and it get's in your blood.
Those folks who pine for the demise of the gatekeeper media don't know squat. What people really want out of the news business is a fair shake. We do that here. We worry about the truth and getting it right the first time.
There were 1,200 of us, but now there are a little more than half of that. I like to think that the Los Angeles Times is not so much diminished as dispersed. All those folks who have left the building still carry the Los Angeles Times spirit around with them. It's my turn to join them.
I am a very lucky man.
Bob Carey
-Laid off LA Times photog, Bob Cary, via Tell Zell: Bye Lines, LA Times
Censorship ➔ Ambivalence
Photo: Stefan Zaklin/European Pressphoto AgencySomething has been bothering me for a long time about my generation (1980-1999~ish): we're ambivalent.
Let me take a moment to explain: I'm not talking about coffee vs. tea, or McDonald's vs. Burger King. It's not even an issue of Obama vs. McCain – we're just as clueless as the rest of the country when it comes to politics.
- - - - -
Our parents we're one of the greatest generation(pun intended) of upstarts the US ever saw – they were responsible for protesting the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and Watergate. The Baby Boomers, they knew how to protest. We, just don't seem to care.
There are tons of issues that the youth of this country could get riled up about. My top three: We've got a president that's blatantly broken the law with a do-nothing congress to boot. We're involved in not one, but two, failing wars that kill more of our generation every week. We've broken the prison system with more inmates than it can handle – largely due to the failed War on Drugs.
And what do we do? Do we write petitions? Vote out our congress? March on the Capitol? Riot? Demand that the troops come home? Do we do anything even remotely radical?
Bring back the 70s.
At least the hippies, blacks, and press knew when they were getting screwed. They stood up and did something about it. They marched, protested, investigated, demanded, pursued, and were otherwise activists!
- - - - -
So, all that's been on my mind for about a year. Obviously, I'm perturbed by what I see to be a failing of my peers. Which is why when I read an article about the lack of true war photography in the New York Times, I felt both more perturbed and a little relieved.
Obviously, preventing pictures of dead soldiers from appearing in the press is yet another example of the Bush Administration's efforts at censorship.
…military commanders worry about security in publishing images of the American dead as well as an affront to the dignity of fallen comrades. Most newspapers refuse to publish such pictures as a matter of policy.
-4,000 U.S. Deaths, and a Handful of Images - NYTimes.com
Yet, as the article points out, during the Vietnam War, the press published photos of dead soldiers, civilians, and whatever else they please. This, in part, got the folks back home disgusted with the war. It got them out in the streets protesting the war. Perhaps this dumbing down of our media coverage has caused the American people to forget these wars. To forget their responsibility to tell the government when it has strayed down the wrong path.
I'm satisfied that I've found part of the explanation, but I'm more troubled by what the slow decay of the media is causing.
War in Georgia
Georgian soldiers race past an apartment block in Gori after Russian warplanes dropped bombs on the city. GLEB GARANICH / REUTERSFor whatever reason, the US was caught unawares when Georgia attacked Russia last week. We've been slow dealing with the situation.
First off, we don't really understand it. Most Americans still don't understand the difference between Sunnis and Shiites – that's been seven years now. This conflict came out of nowhere, and the average American (myself included) really doesn't understand the reason for the fighting, or even who's really involved.
Update
The NYT has an article explaining some of the background.
To make matters worse, we've got a juicy political sex scandal in Edwards, a tight presidential campaign, and the Olympics going on right now. Needless to say, our sex-crazed media is on top of all that instead of a war that no one understands.
Reuters has done a remarkably good job of doing what they do best – keeping foreign agencies so that they can respond to something just like this. Right now, this is a bigger story than Afghanistan and Iraq. In my opinion, it beats out another sex scandal, a tired presidential campaign, and a sporting event. This is about a war between two countries who's people don't live in the Bronze Age.
When I first looked at TIME's collection of photos my first reaction was: "meh, more war photographs."
But here's what's different: this is a modern war. Fought with modern tanks, modern armies where both sides are uniformed, and civilian casualties that no one is apologizing for. This is a big deal. Once you get past your seven-year familiarity with war photos, these photos reflect their own importance.
Update
The Denver Post also as a rather good collection of AP photos.
NBC Olympics: Annoying, Incompetent, Liars?
NBC is doing a heckuva as the US's only provider of the Olympics this year. They've got tons of coverage on TV, and an extensive online coverage system too. Naturally, with such a huge operation there are … difficulties.
Annoyances
Watching the coverage online requires Microsoft Silverlight, which (now) supports Macs, but it means installing some Microsoft bloatware onto your system (yuk).
Silverlight is competitor to the ubiquitous Adobe Flash. In this blogger's humble opinion, MS has no chance to take the market. It's annoying to have to install the software just to watch the Olympics. Of course, kudos to MS for getting their software in such a preimo spot (we'll ignore the MSNBC connection). I sure do wish NBC had provided a Flash alternative though.
Incompetencies
On Technically Incorrect | CNet, Chris Matyszczyk blogged about his experience watching the Olympics online. Let's just say that NBC was less than professional:
Wait, wait.
The scrolling commentary has political news: "Iran, USA detente at the head of the main peloton as Iran's climber Hussein Askari takes a flyer and is joined by (we think) USA's Jason McCartney."
We think? We think? This might be a U.S. assault on Iran. And all they can say is "We think"?
-Censors not able to keep up with NBC's online Olympics coverage | CNet
And, it seems that NBC has concluded that if their talking heads are writing, and not talking, they can spew even more BS than they typically do:
This is how he has just spoken to me in writing: "The first time up the major climb of the finish circuit has substantially damaged the peloton, but we are still waiting on names and time gaps."
So this commentator is telling me he has no idea who is winning, no idea who is second, no idea who is third, and no idea of the time differences between the riders.
Lies
Slashdot is a news aggregation site for nerds. If someone on that site notices something fishy going on with the news media, you can be pretty sure that a) What they say happened, happened. b) It's pretty out of the box because, this is not a site that usually notes this kind of thing. Below is the full text of the blurb on Slashdot.
"Viewing the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony online at NBC's Olympics website, you can see that the order in which the countries were presented was very different from the actual order of the countries in the ceremony, as listed at Wikipedia. NBC skipped roughly 100 countries ahead, then jumped back and forth, apparently delaying the appearance of the United States in its home market until later in the broadcast. (In fact, the US team was shown on the infield before they were shown marching!) NBC did not acknowledge this in its broadcast. Is NBC altering the reality of the broadcast to boost ratings? Was this true only online, or also in the live broadcast?"
-Slashdot | Did NBC Alter the Olympics' Opening Ceremony?
Bear in mind, that if you live on the West Coast of the US you got to watch these opening ceremonies a full half day after they happened – just so that NBC could show it to you in primetime.
I'm going to enjoy the Olympics throughly, I'm also going to take everything that NBC shows with a grain(s) of salt.
Update
Technically Incorrect has posted another article about digital fakery in the opening ceremonies and the continued use of the word 'live.' Read it here.
In case there was any doubt – NBC is raking in the dough from this Olympics. According to Sean McManus, Olympic commercials cost $1 million a piece.
Zell Hell
A three-story high headline on the side of the LA Times building this Friday morning. via tellzell.comI'm off for a week of backpacking, but I had to leave with this:
Sam Zell took over the paper in January. After promising that the path to growth was not through cuts, he immediately began cutting. So far, Zell has ousted over 200 reporters, photographers, copy editors and editors from the Los Angeles Times. Hundreds of other editorial workers have been fired from other papers in the Tribune chain. This is not business acumen. This is not saving money. This is suicide.
Our aim is to convince Zell that he has taken the wrong path to bettering our paper—both journalistically and financially. But if we cannot do that, then our aim is to convince Zell to sell the paper to an owner who actually cares about Los Angeles, about great journalism, about kicking ass and taking names and speaking truth to power.
I have the fortune not to work for the Tribune Co., which as I've said previously is not going about its business the right way, so I have no direct stake in the matter. But, I do lend my full support to these guys – unions are a tricky thing, but at this point – may not be a bad idea.
"Take Back The Times."
Esquire Gets It…
Before you read this please bear in mind that the gentleman is the deputy editor of Esquire – a major international magazine.
“The whole chain had to be reinvented,” said Peter Griffin, the deputy editor. “The interesting thing is it has almost nothing to do with the normal way of putting out a magazine.”
-News Flash From the Cover of Esquire - Paper Magazines Can Be High Tech, Too - NYTimes.com
Griffin is referring to Esquire's investment in New Media technology – a digital magazine cover. That's right, a dynamic, moving 'paper' magazine. There are no images that I can find of this baby in action – but what a great idea!
Not only that, but this is pushed by some of the top editors of the Media Industry – the very folks who are often accused of not getting 'it' when it comes to New Media.
Cheers Esquire – I'm looking forward to it!
note: Esquire – I really hope that you can deliver this technology at a low cost. If you charge double for a moving cover magazine, you'll do well on the initial issue, but once the novelty wears off, people will forgo the lack of functionality for lower costs.
