The Humboldt Fire

I was reading Louis Gray this morning and he had a great post on the Humboldt fire in Northern California: The Web Offers a Window Into Paradise's Burning. He had a link to this PDF map of the homes that had burned:

The home depicted with the red arrow is my in-law's. They have been evacuated from their home since last Thursday and have not been allowed to return.

What I find interesting about this is that the best information on the fire is coming from bloggers and other citizens. The coverage by the local paper, the Chico Enterprise Record, has been nothing compared to that provided by citizens themselves. This is a major disaster for the area, but the paper just doesn't have the staff to cover it adequately. They do have a bunch of photos that people have uploaded which are quite interesting. Cal-Fire also has uploaded photos to Flickr. Ah, if only more government agencies would use these freely available services to share information...

This is just but one example of why Internet throttling and metered charges are such a bad idea. We do not want to create a situation where people have to think twice before posting this type of information. This is really important.

I will note that my in-laws didn't know the status of their own home. They are in a Red Cross shelter and are hungry for information. One of their strategies to determine if their home had been lost was to call the home and see if the answering machine was working (that's a use for a land line that I'd never considered). This worked for a time until the emergency services folks turned off the power to the area. So, we learned from the Internet that their home was indeed not damaged, but we also learned that several of their neighbors were not so fortunate.

The Internet is way too important to have our telcos and cable companies messing around where they don't belong.

UPDATE: My in-laws were allowed to return to their home. At one point, they were told that their home had been lost. Several hours later they were told that this was not the case. The fire had burned right up to the house, however. They have lots to be thankful for this evening.

Ballmer on the death of media

From an interview with Steve Ballmer in the Washington Post: Microsoft's Ballmer on Yahoo and the Future

In the next 10 years, the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down -- my opinion.

Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.

Where I think big media is in serious trouble I don't think he's right that they are going to go completely away. There will be some serious contraction though. (That one was easy-- there already has been serious contraction. :))

The bigger question- which newspaper will survive? Seriously, we may go down to one. I'm putting my money on the Guardian as the sole surviving English language newspaper. Could be the NY Times, but if I were a betting man...

Television following the music and newspaper industry trends

Television is headed the same direction as other media. The industry still wants to blame the writers strike, but they are in serious denial-- May Sweeps Sees Record Low Ratings: Strike Seems to Have Altered Viewing Habits

Low ratings during the February sweeps may have been a fluke due to the writers strike, but the May sweeps period is painting a picture of viewers out of sync with broadcast television: Shows across multiple networks rang up series lows during a time that historically lures in the viewers.

On average, the networks are off the mark by 10% from last year in total viewers and off 17% in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic.

Just more evidence that one-way, push technology is falling out of favor. Where the industry is wrong is to assume that the viewers will return:

Viewers out of the habit of watching broadcast TV might not return until fall...

That's not going to happen. People are wanting to have conversations. It's yet another example of the long tail. "The People Formerly Known as the Audience..."

QOTD: Terry Heaton on “Finding” news consumers

From Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog:

You can’t “find” anybody by insisting they come to you. Old meet new.

The blog post discusses changes in media consumption and the QOTD from a few days ago, "If the news is that important, it will find me.”

If you're building a destination web site you are more than likely going to fail. You can build it, but they won't come.

QOTD: Matthew Ingram on The Change

From mathewingram.com/work:

If the news is that important, it will find me.

So true! And it's true for a lot more than just news.

UPDATE: I was reading this article in the NY Times tonight: Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On, and came across the same quote:

Ms. Buckingham recalled conducting a focus group where one of her subjects, a college student, said, “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

It's a good read on the importance of social networks and how the expert is being disintermediated. Worth reading.

The expert is back?

The latest Newsweek features an article: Revenge of the Experts where it claims that the pendulum is turning away from user generated content and back to an expert mediated world:

In short, the expert is back. The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web. "People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information," says Charlotte Beal, a consumer strategist for the Minneapolis-based research firm Iconoculture. Beal adds that choice fatigue and fear of bad advice are creating a "perfect storm of demand for expert information."

I'd like to believe them, but the article is devoid of any data to support the claim of a "mounting demand". There is not one stat in the entire article to indicate that this is a trend. I'm sorry, but citing a percentage growth is a worthless metric.

Just because people are building some new Web sites doesn't mean anyone is going to come. Shoddy journalism.

QOTD: Michael Idinopulos on publishing

From Michael Idinopulos's Transparent Office blog:

I think of this as the dawn of the "Work in Progress" culture. We no longer think that something has to be finished before we let strangers into the conversation.

Newer more networked type of organization...

Jason Young has a great post, The Change, on the differences between the Clinton and Obama campaigns. It's not a political post at all, it's about the the impact new technologies, and more importantly, new ways of working are having on organizations and organizational effectiveness.

The post features a clip from the Tim Russert Show with guests, Noreen O'Donnell, Michael Crowley, and Eugene Robinson that is must viewing. These are people who totally get-it. Here's a taste from Jason's post:

And my favorite part - at 1:45 - Eugene Robinson begins talking about the Obama campaign, about how paid staffers, all the way down in the organization, operate with a “sense of agency” that they are a “thinking part of the campaign” - at 2:06 “it doesn’t seem to be strictly hierarchial; it could be a newer, more networked kind of organization” It’s a hypothesis, he says, but that’s the organization’s appearance.

I could say some more, a lot more, but I won't. You need to read Jason's post, and definitely watch the clip. It's great stuff!

The democratization of the tools of production

I attended a bike race this past weekend, and decided to take my camera. It was a 3 mile long course, and I walked about a mile of it taking photos. More than once on my photowalk I couldn't help but notice the number of people sporting some pretty high-end digital camera equipment. The equipment used to be so expensive that only professionals could afford it.

I feel a little sad for the people who used to make their livings taking photos. On the other hand it was kind of cool to think that every inch of this race was being documented in a way that was impossible just a couple of years ago. I took over 1000 photos. I wouldn't be surprised if the total number of images generated for this event numbered in the millions.

When I was looking though my photos this evening I came across this gem. It certainly isn't one of my better photos, but when I saw that every single person in the frame had a camera I just had to post it. Seriously, it was like this everywhere on the course. Actually, this was one of the lower camera density locations.

So when I saw this today I couldn't help but think "duh-huh": "U.S. media employment in December fell to a 15-year low (886,900), slammed by the slumping newspaper industry." It has to be tough trying to compete with an army of citizens.

UPDATE: On just this event, there were 16,384 photos posted to Flickr, it was mentioned in 18,612 blog posts, and 368 videos were uploaded to YouTube.

Zingers from the Tools of Change Keynote

From Stephen Abram's keynote at the Tools of Change conference: Will publishers matter?

• Facebook is the new threat to publishers, not Google.
• University of Alberta library doing all referencing in Facebook, and has 5000 visitors a night in Second Life.
• Syndication is increasingly important. If you're still trying to create a destination site, you're messing up.
• Phone is the dominant global device. Is your content ready?

That is some heady stuff. How are you doing?

QOTD: Scott Karp on new media networking

From Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 discussing the Yahoo/Microsoft merger: What Microsoft Buying Yahoo Really Means.

Media use to be about tightly controlled silos — now it’s about loosely affiliated, distributed networks. Legacy business can, potentially, evolve and survive, but only through a radical change in thinking.

QOTD: Umair Haque on the cost of exclusion

Sorry, I keep going back to Umair Haque, but quite honestly I don't know of anyone who is a better thinker on what's happening right now. This is related a tad to my posts of the last few days: Data is a Commodity, or How Not to Revolutionize...

The way we're discussing media is still focused on exclusion - "it's their service, they own you." That's inaccurate. In fact, what's strategically critical aren't the costs of exclusion, but the costs of inclusion.

And a bonus quote:

Let me try and put it more simple. Data is inherently valueless in the edgeconomy, because it's infinitely replicable. Any structure seeking to limit access to data will simply be too radically inefficient for the market to bear in the medium-long run.

UPDATE: Scott Karp says he doesn't totally agree with Umair's thinking: Data And The Future Of The Web

Umair is half right — we are increasingly overrun by data, and SOME of it is a commodity. The commodity data is precisely what Google has harnessed, which makes Google so powerful — the data on the open web.

And then for the life of me, I'm hard pressed to figure how he doesn't make Umair's exact point:

The future of the web will be determined by companies that can overcome people challenges — to bring EVERYONE’S data online, and make it useful. And it won’t be about locking up people’s data, but instead helping them be smart about the free flow of their data.

It will be about networking that data, connecting it, to make a whole greater than the sum of the parts. That’s why web applications are so much more powerful than siloed desktop applications. That’s why the web itself is so powerful — it’s not just about collecting and distributing data. It’s about connecting data. And about connecting people.

And that is where I got confused, as I'm hard pressed to see any difference in that and what Umair said:

Think about it this way: the lower the cost of interaction, by definition, the more abundant data is - because every interaction creates reams of data. More data is created tomorrow than was created yesterday. And so on.

What is valuable are the things that create data: markets, networks, and communities.

Dr. Bugeja responds

I posted last month about a talk I had heard by Dr. Bugeja from Iowa State. He responded in a comment, and I thought I would pull his remarks deserved to be pulled-out and given more prominence. I very much appreciate his response and enjoy the good nature of his reply. I enjoy honest discourse. Thank you Dr. Bugeja.

I also appreciate, but will decline his offer for a free book. I will purchase it and read it, however. I'm interested in the topic, and I'm sure it will be an excellent read.

Michael Bugeja said...

Thanks for mentioning my research. The quote that you selected as a citation fairly represents my viewpoint.

There is an implication that the publicity about Interpersonal Divide somehow is unethical, and that concerns me greatly, in as much as I am a media ethicist. I also am a journalist, and I prefer facts. Here are a few:

1. Iowa State University is a landgrant university. As such, researchers are expected to give speeches to organizations and otherwise interact with groups when summoned. Perhaps the speech you attended was the most recent one I have to ISU Extension. Honoraria for such excursions usually are boxed lunches, such as I received earlier this month at this event. Sometimes I do get honoaria for outside consulting on ethics codes and the like, but I take vacation days for them and do most in the summer. (For instance, I was a scholar in residence in 2005 in another state). Also, if the organization is large enough, I might suggest a donation to our student scholarship fund, as I did with the ISU Veterinary Medicine Alumni Association. In sum, I give far more many free speeches and scholarship-based ones than I ever do on my own time consulting with universities on ethics codes or journalism associations on the state of the news media.

2. My book Interpersonal Divide was researched between 1999-2004 and predicted the culture that we now have before it arrived. That's why it is cited by most major media around the world. Iowa State University is a research institution; thus, it makes public research that has been dubbed noteworthy, as a message to taxpayers that its employees are making an impact on society, especially since our official name is Iowa State University of Science and Technology. The publicity results in more presentations, which I enjoy because I can interact with people face to face rather than what I am doing now, via Internet.

3. I don't teach, so I don't assign my books to classes, although my books have been used at Iowa State. Although Interpersonal Divide is one of the most cited books in the Oxford Univ. Press line, it has sold fewer than 1000 copies. I believe, when returns were counted, it sold 6 copies between January and July 2007. That's because the work introduces a new theory--interpersonal divide--and is a research book rather than a textbook. In other words, you can find it in libraries but not typically in the classroom.

More on text books: My How-To News Writer, which you might read--just send me an address to my email account, and I will send you a free copy--is sold to students throughout Iowa and the country. I donate all my royalties--which amount to $7 per book because the Iowa Newspaper Association published it--to our First Amendment Fund. So far I have not raised $25,000 through donated royalties, but when we do reach that figure, we can endow the account and then give students scholarships, about $1,000 per year. I would appreciate it if you would review the How-To News Writer on High Touch because it is for a worthy cause, explaining the basics of fact-based journalism while benefiting students.

Finally, it's up to your viewers to discern whether I'm a jerk for questioning why six media companies--Time Warner, Viacom, Bertelsmann, News Corporation, Disney and General Electric--have been allowed to dominate the news because of technology (as well as four new media companies--AOL, Google, Yahoo and MSN--which account for about 50% of the online ad revenue). I may be misguided as well for associating the student loan scandal with the typical digital gadgets that keep amassing student debt through iPods, cell phones and laptops, all of which take credit cards sponsored by banks making deals with alumni and other university-based associations; but I point this out because I care about students and want them to be able to explicate the motive of the interface or application so as to make an independent decision on use rather than a spontaneous purchase online.

However others may label me for my questions about technology, either accurate or inaccurate, I accept that, because we have the First Amendment, which I am using now to partially correct the record of your post--appreciating that you chose an excerpt that accurately voices my chief concern.

Facing the reality of new media

David Weinberger points to this post by Donnacha DeLong: Web 2.0 is Rubbish. David does a great job of addressing the substance of the article, Is the Web as weak as its weakest link? I won't go there. Instead I want to address something that I've been thinking about for a while.

So what's wrong with it? Isn't increased participation and feedback from our "users" -- readers and viewers -- a good thing? Of course it is, but the problem with Web 2.0 is not how it introduces these elements to the media, but how it's seen as replacing traditional media.

That's the point. It is not "seen as replacing traditional media". It absolutely is replacing traditional media, and every other form of "expert mediated" content production. I just don't see how it matters whether it's rubbish or not. It could be complete crap. So what?

The people have voted with their mouse clicks. What is is. You can bitch and moan, or you can start to think about how you might co-exist in the new-media ecosystem. Longing for the days of old isn't going to save you.

Business Week on the death of old-media

Business Week has an interesting read on the demise of old-media with a focus on the San Jose Mercury News. It's a good read in that it goes back historically and talks about all of the warnings along the way that were ignored:

The collapse of Silicon Valley's daily newspaper is in many ways the story of American newspapers in the 21st century. The industry has reached a near-crisis point. Many dailies are losing circulation at an alarming rate, and local newspaper ad spending fell 3.1% last year, to $24.4 billion, while Internet advertising rose 17.3%, to $9.8 billion, according to Advertising Age.

But the shivers rippling through the Mercury News also serve as a dramatic example of what happens when industry leaders get complacent in the face of fundamental shifts. Andy Grove, who helped sow the Internet revolution when CEO of Intel (INTC ), says that cross-industry disruptions follow a predictable course: Executives ignore the challenges. Then they try to resist. Only when it's too late do they make radical changes.

The article focuses on Carole Leigh Hutton the Executive Editor of the Mercury News, and her efforts to destroy the newspaper and reinvent it as something more relevant to a new-media audience. Here's one of the "big ideas" that have been forwarded to save them:

Some hopeful signs have emerged. At a brainstorming session in September, employees suggested themed versions of the Mercury News online that provide readers with a world view through a lens of their own choosing. There might be a "green" portal for people interested in environmental causes, for instance. The best of the suggestions will be rapidly prototyped and tried out on consumers.

Sigh! They just don't get how their world has changed; the frontpage, the album, the portal, the homepage... They have been disintermediated by search, widgets, and syndication. Every piece of content is its own homepage, and any attempt to aggregate content for "presentation" through a format determined by others is destined for irrelevance. We already have our own personalized views of the Internet. We don't need another created for us by the newspapers or anyone else.

GigaOM content distribution strategy poll

GigaOM asks a really good question in their current poll. It has to do with NBC's announced strategy to create a YouTube competitor called Hulu.

Om Malik hit the nail on the head with this comment:

It is my belief that these companies are in the business of content, not distribution. Offering their content on their own properties may give them a lift in terms of page views, but at the same time they also run the risk of losing the audience that simply seeks out such content on sites such as YouTube.

I have to be honest that I seriously liked his reference to CBS.

I first mentioned this last April: CBS totally gets it!:

CBS has made a major announcement on how they plan to distribute their content through every conceivable Internet outlet (except Google). If you want a glimpse of where the world is headed this is it. This is the come-to-me Web at its best. If you are a content creator you should seriously consider borrowing heavily from this CBS strategy.

Anyone care to venture to guess how I voted?

QOTD: Howard Owens on the death of newspapers

From Howard Owens: How much longer will newspapers last?

If your core customers are dying and you’re not creating new ones, how do you stay in business?

I can think of many other institutions that should be asking themselves the same question.

Dr. Bugeja and selling through media

Earlier this week I heard a talk by Dr. Michael Bugeja director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, and author of Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age. In his talk he railed against the use of technology, and commented that it only has two purposes: surveillance, and selling. I found this quote of his at Understand Media: The over-mediated world: technology creates its own value system

The key is to nurture interpersonal intelligence. That’s the ability to know when, where, and for what purpose technology is appropriate or inappropriate. I have been advocating that institutions such as high schools, but especially in higher education, focus on that topic for their incoming students and deprogram them from the agenda of media-marketers…. I don’t believe this is a problem of the emerging generation. I think this is a problem of the profiteers of new media. I believe the solution is, as it’s always been in this country, education and information.

I was looking around a bit at the Web site of the Greenlee School and taking note of the courses they offer. I noticed a lot of courses devoted exclusively to the topic of advertising and public relations. These courses accounted for twenty-nine percent of the curriculum. Hmmmm?

I'll have some upcoming comments regarding the copyrighting of textbooks, and then requiring your students to purchase them. I'm always excited at the prospect of faculty profiteering from their students. Hmmmmm again?

One last pet-peeve of mine is the use of publicly funded resources for personal gain. There are ninety-seven mentions of Dr. Bugeja's book on the Iowa State Web site, and the University has written no less than eight press releases promoting the book. Are these news writers not paid for by the taxpayer?

WOTW: Vivian Schiller on the failed Times Select

I was reading about the decision by the New York Times to cease their failed Times Select experiment. This was the site where they put their op-ed writers behind a firewall and charged a subscription for access. We all knew this would fail, and that it would marginalize their columnists by removing them from the public discourse. They have lost readership over the past two years, and many of those readers (like me) will not return. We've moved on and are listening to new voices.

What the Times missed when starting their grand experiment was that people's patterns of consumption on the Web were changing? They missed the move to search? I'm going to speculate that there was someone within the Times organization screaming at the top of their lungs about the stupidity of this decision who was summarily ignored. Which brings me to my Whopper Of The Week:

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said.

Right, when the Times made the decision to firewall their op-ed columnists in September of 2005 you had to be living in a cave to miss the surge in search. The trend was well underway in late 2005. So, we're left to speculate what really happened when they made their decision to go forward in spite of all the trend lines.

QOTD: Umair Haque on the problem with lying

Umair Haque on the problem with the Times Select failure: How Not to Think Strategically About New DNA

The real problem with lying is that it simply never provides the incentives for people to embrace failure - and keep failing. And so new DNA never happens.

I like that. Denying reality prevents you from learning from your mistakes. I think that's true.