Sips from the Firehose
A blog that seeks to filter the internet into a refreshing, easily-gulped beverage
Jun 29
Posted: under journalism, Multimedia, Uncategorized.
Tags: cat, death, Duce, life, loss, love
On Friday, I had to lost my cat Duce to a terrible illness. I am going to devote this post to remembering him, because he was such a large & special part of my life for the last 8 years. This is the last notice my friend will receive on this earth, and I want to do this right, to honor what he meant to me and to the other people he charmed and brightened the lives of. [...more]
On Friday, I lost my cat Duce to a terrible and swift-striking illness. I am going to devote this post to remembering him, because he was such a large & special part of my life for the last 8 years. This is the last notice my friend will receive on this earth, and I want to do this right, to honor what he meant to me and to the other people he charmed and brightened the lives of.
If this strikes you as over the top, please click over to the regularly scheduled media criticism & analysis; but let me have a moment here, please, because this has struck me at a deep & unexpected level.
Our Honeymoon Never Ended
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Jun 22
Posted: under Newspaper Deathwatch, Unconventional Research, Webconomics, Wrongheaded solutions.
This came to me via the Media Giraffe project at UMass (and a very special h/t to Janine Warner, currently filming a video for Microsoft up in Seattle), and I was inspired to write a long comment in response to it. Basically, Circulate is the creation of a team at the Donald Reynolds Journalism Institute [...] [...more]
This came to me via the Media Giraffe project at UMass (and a very special h/t to Janine Warner, currently filming a video for Microsoft up in Seattle), and I was inspired to write a long comment in response to it. 
Basically, Circulate is the creation of a team at the Donald Reynolds Journalism Institute that includes Martin Langeveld, who blogs for the Nieman Journalism Lab. Langeveld made the announcement of its existence on the “News After Newspapers” blog, and I was initially somewhat blase about it, due to these early grafs:
Circulate is a holistic, user-centric solution aimed broadly at sustaining journalism in a digital world, with specific relevance to the ongoing exploration of paid-content models for newspaper Web sites. Circulate enables experimentation with subscription and per-item user charges, but as a user-centric content discovery tool, Circulate goes well beyond the announced features of other systems that have been proposed in that space.
Circulate will be rolled out in phases. Initially, it will be a browser add-on that you can have always handy as you move around the Web. Circulate will function on multiple platforms to allow full portability: a mobile application is planned, possibly first as an iPhone application, along with user start page and e-mail notification options.
Oh Christ, I thought. Not another scheme to try to gin up a variation on the paywall strategy that has been a disaster everywhere it’s been tried. Well, let me qualify that – it’s been a disaster when erecting the paywall was thought to be the only measure needed to “solve” the “problem” of the internet.
DIGRESSION ALERT: When the subject comes up, and the cranky content publishers insist that charging for content is the only way to survive, my response is that yes, you can and probably should charge for content. But you can’t charge online for the same old stuff you’ve been selling offline. The audience doesn’t want it, won’t pay for it, and can find the same ol’-same ‘ol in a lot of different places. If you really want to change your news organization to charge people for content, that content has to be something that people perceive enough value in to be willing to type in the credit card numbers/click PayPal.
And – here’s the real core – producing, marketing, updating & charging for that kind of information is going to require just as wrenching a philosophical change as any of the other so-called “pie in the sky” digital triumphalist schemes that invoke the “information wants to be free” mantra. I’ve worked for publications – currently still do, as a matter of fact – that survive by charging for content, rather than via ad support. It’s a different way of thinking – far more intense, in some ways, than what newspapers have become acclimated to accepting as their regular content strategy.
END DIGRESSION.
What made me see this as more than a rehash was these three grafs:
As a Circulate user, you’ll be able to have an account with a home-base publisher, like the local paper, and optionally profile yourself. Then the Circulate system will go to work and discover and present to you information that’s really relevant to your interests. You’ll be able to set alerts if you want, but you don’t have to. Circulate won’t start out carrying advertising, but eventually when it does, you’ll see advertising that matters to you, not blindly-aimed mass-market ads. And it sets up the possibility that you could optionally subscribe, through your home-base publisher, to valuable information at hundreds and eventually thousands of news and other websites, all at a low monthly blanket rate.
Circulate will feature social functionality, so that you can share and discuss content (but its content recommendations are not sourced through “collaborative filtering”). Over time, you will be able to select additional features on Circulate as they are developed.
Importantly, a core, fundamental value at CircLabs is user privacy. While Circulate will work best when the user shares information, that will happen with the user’s explicit permission, not by virtue of obscure language buried in user agreements no one reads.
Well, bravo.
Circulate is setting itself up as a “Find Engine” that actually does something for you that doesn’t already exist. Something that you can’t replicate by opening up a new tab or typing in the search box in the upper right corner.
That’s the key: to successfully sell something, whatever that thing is, if it’s information, it has to be information that isn’t available anywhere else. If your audience is saying, “Aw, I heard/saw/know that already,” then you’re screwed.
The book “The Return of the Player” ends with the anti-hero making billions by making the concept of a “Find Engine” work; maybe I’ll excerpt a couple of grafs from the book to illustrate what the vision was of this as of 2004 or so. At the time, reading it, I thought it might have something of a core of value, but that the online marketplace was not ready for it yet. Maybe it is now.
Anyway – here’s what I wrote in response:
Interesting concept, guys – although I have to admit that reading through the first few graphs, my stomach sank when I read “charging for online content.” Way too many collective clock cycles are being devoted to coming up with arcane ways to try to extract some kind of revenue stream from online readers. Most tend to be veneers over the failed strategy of erecting paywalls over existing content, without really given a thought to how the core product has to be radically different for the consumer to be willing to yank out the wallet.
Reading further, it became evident that what you’re doing is a variation on the “Find Engine” concept – that is, that the app/site/widget/whatever will take over for the Almighty Google, and serve you up the information that you need, when, where & how you need it.
OK, that’s interesting.
You also addressed the core problem with a Find Engine – that is, if the app/whatever knows enough about you to be able to accurately (and if it isn’t accurate, what use would it be?) know what you want, then isn’t that a treasure trove of information about you that could be hacked/exploited/sold? Well, yeah. We all start to feel a bit creepy about the thought that something in the machine knows us & is ratting us out. Despite the fact that it happens all the time …
Well, to a certain extent, it does. Big online ad agencies get quiet & change the subject when people bring up the idea of a “Universal Cookie.” Which would be far easier to implement if Circulate takes off.
Anyway – one suggestion. You talk about mobile, and indicate that one of the first moves might be to develop an iPhone app. While I applaud your willingness to engage with this new platform, you might want to check the numbers. At a recent Online News Association event I helped organize, Nick Montes of Viva Vision laid out the numbers involved with selling content – I’m posting the video and a description in the next day or so.
Briefly: the iPhone has market penetration of 9M handsets in a US market of 250M+ handsets. Nice, but not staggering.
But the real eye-opener was that Verizon makes about $20 billion a year from selling/licensing/streaming content. The much-touted iPhone App Store is likely to make Apple about $300 million.
Basically, you’d be pouring sweat equity into constructing something for a platform that comprises about 1.5% of the money on the table…
Anyway – I look forward to seeing what Circulate looks & feels like. At least you’re trying.
Technorati Tags: Circulate, Find Engine, newspaper curmudgeon, online commerce, paywalls, charging for content, newspapers, information engine
Jun 09
Posted: under new media.
First, a h/t to Jeff Jarvis for this one - it really rings a bell for me, particularly in light of my own experiences last fall with the “Obama-Haters Fall for Nigerian Prince Scam” story. Basically, the insight is that traditional media – newspapers, to be precise – tend to approach news the way photography [...] [...more]
First, a h/t to Jeff Jarvis for this one - it really rings a bell for me, particularly in light of my own experiences last fall with the “Obama-Haters Fall for Nigerian Prince Scam” story.
Basically, the insight is that traditional media – newspapers, to be precise – tend to approach news the way photography approached capturing images before the invention of the movie camera and long strips of flexible, high-speed film. That is, to work and work, stick your head under the big black sheet, remove the cap from the front of the big heavy unwieldy camera, and tell everyone not to move for a half-minute or so.
The parallels to newspapers are that the news only happens once per day. That it takes a whole lot of effort and preparation, and the use of crazy heavy equipment (ever tried to deal with a jammed printing press? I did, on my first day working at the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram) that restricts what you can do and how frequently you can do it. Meanwhile the movie camera (and the web) allows you to do an ongoing series of snapshots of reality; one that gives far richer context to the events and brings them to life in a whole new way.
In this context, I guess you’d have to say that Twitter is the mini-DV camcorder to newspaper’s Matthew Brady-style bellows & glass plate camera.
So what does this mean to journalism & trying to filter & report reality back to a wider audience?
If the truth must be corrected – wouldn’t the truth finally
have to be the sum total of process AND product? Shouldn’t it be a
document of changes which tells the truth about editing, as well as
about the information being edited? And wouldn’t it imply information
is only momentarily true. That the end of a story doesn’t have to do
with truth it has to do with interest or the loss thereof?
(snip)
But journalism? Is it about the artist or about the facts? And
how can there be facts if the facts change? We don’t want the
journalist to be a slight of hand man. Yet blogging real time makes
that so. Different from newspaper news. So shouldn’t the document be
different?
Should not the process of accruing information then be documented ?
Well, yeah. Since my first foray into producing multimedia reports, I’ve felt that one of the strongest things that the web has to offer both the content producer and the audience is the ability to let the readers “peek behind the curtain” and see all the things that reporters saw & considered, and omitted from the final report.
“Every edit is a lie.”
–Jean-Luc Godard
Not so much. I tend to think – and this blogged is named because of that – the basic function of a reporter/content producer is to filter the reality stream down into the essential. If you’ve ever had to sit through a friend or family member’s unedited vacation videos, you’ll immediately know what I’m talking about. The equivalent these days is watching the streaming video coming through Mogulus or Kyte from cellphones around the world (and soon to be coming from iPhones – w00t! x infinity).
So while the process of editing, filtration, curation (whatever that buzzword is interpreted to mean this week) to arrive at the digestible info-bit is the value-added, I do think that being as open and transparent about what you’ve done is also a big value. I learned this from my case study that I did years ago with Schibsted Media – they have three levels of online video: 1) the short clip on the front page that teases readers into clicking into the article; 2) the edited 30-second to 5-minute piece and 3) the whole unedited video.
As Sverre Munck told me at the time, there aren’t that many people who want to see the whole interview and watch all the outtakes, but those who do are fanatically devoted to it, and are your most loyal readers.
To me, it allows the audience to go into to your subject material and draw out their own construct. If they want to do a mash-up or remix using some of my video, by all means, go for it. I don’t do this lightly – there are a lot of things about trusting the audience that still give me the heebie-jeebies. I can quite easily imagine scenarios where a well-funded organization – let’s say the coal strip-mining industry – does some serious astro-turfing, and goes into reports about the effects of dumping mountaintops into formerly clean streams, with an eye to cherry-picking data to justify their profit margins. And then using the assembled plastic chorus to yammer incessantly in blogs, chatrooms & the growing “info-cloud” to drown out the reporters and citizens who are complaining about their kids growing up with tentacles instead of legs.
The thing is: that already happens today.
Again, going back to my experience with the Obama-hatin’ story, and the lessons I learned from it: openness and trusting your audience can empower them to deputize themselves and take the story further, and in directions that the original reporter could never have imagined. Telling your story in slices, with the audience chipping in along the way, will probably be the future model for how real serious investigative journalism is done. I hope.
Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, moving pictures, process journalism, trust the audience, crowdsourcing, newspapers
Jun 05
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Janine is all smiles as we finally get to bring our sick cat home. He’s about 1/4 his normal weight and still so fragile; but at least we got him put of the cage be hates so much. [...more]
Janine is all smiles as we finally get to bring our sick cat home. He’s about 1/4 his normal weight and still so fragile; but at least we got him put of the cage be hates so much.
Jun 04
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Tags: New Media Migration, newspaper death spiral, Newspaper Deathwatch
Do not count me - yet - amongst those who hope that, well, now that it's (allegedly) become clear that newspapers are fated to die, then let's just get this over with. I still think that they can turn things around - the recent LA Times excellent Mapping LA project is a great step towards building the kind of hyperlocal database and information exchange network that could take off and fulfill all those dreams about the possibilities of digital local coverage.
While I am all for the development of the new content & biz models touted in Xark!, I don't think they are ready - yet - to step into the line of fire and take over in collecting and distributing the information that we need to be able to function effectively as a society. Hell, as a civilization.
The anger in the screen on Xark! is palpable, and I will cop to feeling it on more than one occasion. But I am not yet ready to give in to it. to throw in the towel and just lean back and toast marshmallows over the flames. [...more]
We’ve reached the “Aw to hell with them, let it all burn” stage
Just a quick late-night hit while I prepare to shoot an interview tomorrow at KCET.
I’ve spent much of the last couple years of my life trying to come up with case studies, strategies, training programs, tools and mash-ups of all the aforementioned, all aimed at illuminating a clear pathway for the newspaper industry to follow to save itself from “The Crisis.” My last big project was the Audience Planbook for the NAA, which was supposed to lay out a step-by-step process to building new businesses that take advantage of the technological innovations that have changed the way we get news.
I’m not so delusional and narcissistic as to think that I have some revealed, holy wisdom that can turn around the momentum of a massive, multi-billion dollar industry by myself. But I had hoped that maybe my voice, along with the voices of those who I recruited (shanghaied? hoodwinked?) into writing chapters in the Planbook for me, would spur some kind of change. This hope has grown harder to sustain in the last couple of months.
And then there’s a straight brass-knuckles shot to the chops like this, on the Xark! blog:
What will these media executives do when that reality hits them?
When these debt-burdened chains, stripped of journalistic talent by a
decade of profiteering, their web traffic reduced by 60 percent by
their paid-content follies, their pockets emptied by the cost of the
proprietary paywall systems offered by Journalism Online LLC and other
opportunistic vendors, what will they do?
Will they buck up and
go back out into the fray with fresh ideas and leadership? Or will they
fold, casting bitter eulogies to their own imagined glories as they
exit the stage?
The chances of them adapting well to another
failure are dubious. Remember, these are the same people who have acted
as if there were no other options, even when those options were
practically gift-wrapped for them. As if Newspaper Next never happened. As if commerce hubs and C3 and all the interesting, exciting ideas that are practically everywhere today do not exist.
They don’t get it. They don’t want to get it. And in many cases, they’re literally paid not to get it.
America’s
journalism infrastructure – from corporate giants to non-profit
foundations like the American Press Institute and the Newspaper
Association of America – is funded by dying companies. So when you hear
about efforts to save newspapers (and, by extension, journalism),
understand that answers that don’t return the possibility of double-digit profits and perpetual top-down control aren’t even considered answers. They’re not even considered.
They’ll do anything to survive… so long as it doesn’t involve change.
Click on over and read the rest of the piece. And then go to the comments section – because the action is always in the comments – and check out the long, impassioned note from someone trapped in a sinking newsroom. 
Do not count me – yet – amongst those who hope that, well, now that it’s (allegedly) become clear that newspapers are fated to die, then let’s just get this over with. I still think that they can turn things around – the recent LA Times excellent Mapping LA project is a great step towards building the kind of hyperlocal database and information exchange network that could take off and fulfill all those dreams about the possibilities of digital local coverage.
While I am all for the development of the new content & biz models touted in Xark!, I don’t think they are ready – yet – to step into the line of fire and take over in collecting and distributing the information that we need to be able to function effectively as a society. Hell, as a civilization.
The anger in the screen on Xark! is palpable, and I will cop to feeling it on more than one occasion. But I am not yet ready to give in to it. to throw in the towel and just lean back and toast marshmallows over the flames.
Jun 03
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Tags: Blogging, cats, vet
I’ve been remiss in posting here for the last couple of weeks. Some if that has been because of all-day video shoots and travel to & from the Bay Area. But this is the other reason. My cat Duce, who I rescued from a cage just before 9/11, is clinging to life after an intestinal [...] [...more]
I’ve been remiss in posting here for the last couple of weeks. Some if that has been because of all-day video shoots and travel to & from the Bay Area.
But this is the other reason. My cat Duce, who I rescued from a cage just before 9/11, is clinging to life after an intestinal blockage worsened into peritonitis over the weekend.
I’ll return to writing about digital media & new revenue models in due time. But for now, just send some positive virtual vibrations (in a Bob Marley meets Twitter kinda way) in the general direction of the Century Vet in Culver City.
