French Bloggers and the Riots

You will often hear journalists in America and other free nations lament the treatment of journalists in some more oppressive countries. Reporters Without Borders, for example, speaks out regularly on behalf of reporters who try to find the truth, even when putting their own lives, and those of their families, at risk.

But I wonder if this commitment to free speech around the world trickles down to bloggers. The French Government arrested two bloggers today for what is seen as their roles in the Paris riots. The charge being "inciting harm to people and property over the internet" seems particularly troubling to me.

I have not read their blogs, as I don't speak French, and I can't judge whether they took part in other actions that may or may not be illegal under French law. But if they are in jail only because they wrote things that the government finds inflammatory, then that is just wrong. Should the government start to crack down on everyone with a computer, for fear they'll spread thoughts that are determined to be against the best interest of the country? Haven't we been down this road before?

This is why I'm not a fan of the federal shield law as it is currently written. Because it specifically ignores bloggers, it creates a "second class" of journalists, sanctioned by the federal government. Yes, I know this technically applies to only specific situations and limited circumstances. But the concept just leaves me feeling a bit nervous. I'd rather the law be inclusive, like the one proposed in Massachusetts (I'll post more on that later).

iTunes-ing of TV

If you want to watch your shows for free, watch the commercials. If you want to watch your shows later with no commercials, pay a buck.

That's what the TV networks are saying with this new distribution idea of selling TV shows after the first broadcast. Of course, if you have a TiVo you don't really need the buck a show to watch it later, but who knows how much longer that's going to work as it is.

Regardless, Forrester has it right when it points out that this is the end of scheduled television. In fact, this was the idea behind TiVo and other DVRs all along, that time no longer matters.

But I think one other thing is missing in this: soon geography won't matter either. Until now, geography bound broadcast television. Yes, we have cable and satellite, but when it comes to true broadcast, rules and regulations are in place to make sure we see certain things: local news, local sports, local weather, etc. But over the last 20 or 30 years, the business was such that local TV stations, once brimming with self-produced children's shows, news, variety programming and even sitcoms, handed over that production power to the networks.

I'm hoping that soon local stations will be able to tap into the same distribution network that the broadcast networks are just learning to use. Maybe even with branded content distributed via RSS. Maybe the world will be filled with stations like WGBH here in Boston, which produces a ton of PBS fare. Maybe the old WCVB will come back, offering innovative shows like Jaberwocky and Park Street Under.

More likely, we'll just have an easier way to buy porn.

99 cents for Jenna Jameson anyone?

Do Lines Still Exist?

About a year ago I got into an online argument with a friend of a friend about whether Saddam Hussein had any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). I contented that none had been found, but this other person kept telling me they had.

I asked her for a link to a credible news source with evidence that there had, in fact, been evidence of this. What she sent me was a link to a right-wing blog which contained a long and well-crafted post that pointed to pictures of some trucks. The author looked, point-by-point at the trucks noting how he believed they were used to produce some kind of WMDs. The author hadn't seen the trucks first-hand, but only the pictures.

This, my foil told me, was a credible source. I contended it wasn't, but realized that I didn't have a good reason why not. It certainly seemed credible, just as credible as any other. My basic argument came down to the fact that if this was real evidence, and if evidence existed, it would certainly appear in a source like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post.

It also started me wondering about how to define a credible source. I've talked quite a bit about trust on this blog, but trust means different things to different people. It also leads to a fragmentation of the news.

During a speech at Brandeis by a woman who used to work for CNN in an Israeli bureau (sorry, can't remember her name), she tried to make the argument that the news reporters don't try to be pro or anti Israel, but then, a few minutes later, noted that she has become more conservative as she's grown older and found herself watching and agreeing with Fox news, pretty much abandoned her old employer. Basically, she's only listening to news that leans toward her way of thinking. I'm guilty of this myself, to a degree, by specifically avoiding Fox News, as it's too conservative for my taste.

Then there is this, today, from Reuters reporter Barry Garron about the recent West Wing episode that ran live, as if it were a true presidential debate:

In some ways, though, the biggest winner was the viewer, particularly those who have seen real presidential debates where rules are negotiated and statements are carefully crafted to stay on point, get out the message and drive home emotions through words that have been carefully tested in focus groups. This episode, though scripted, seemed more real than the actual debates. It showed what a real debate might be if candidates ever decided to risk being themselves and confronting the issues and each other. Odd as it may seem, it gives viewers a basis for comparing actual presidential debates and what is possible.

The episode, with its use of the NBC News logo and the appearance of real-life newsman Forrest Sawyer as moderator, also raised the question of the propriety of blending elements of network news with entertainment. In general, it's not a good idea to blur the two.

So here is the blurring of news and entertainment in a way that makes entertainment seem more real--a scripted show that seemed less scripted than an actual debate. We also have the blurring of media in which some sources are seen as credible, regardless of history. And we have the blurring of opinion and news, which has been going on for some time.

This puts much more pressure on the news consumer to understand the "facts" that are fed to us, but I'm not sure that most people are given these tools. I once wrote a story for a publication called Fresh Cup about a local tea shop. I went in to talk with the owner after it came out and she kept calling it an "ad," even though it was, in fact, an article. She never paid anything for it, I wrote it independently as a reporter.

If she can't distinguish between an ad and an article, how can we ask her to distinguish between fact and fiction? Have we reached the point of simply too much information?

Catching Up and the Future of TV

I haven't had a chance to write in a few days, but I have a lot of ideas that will be coming out over the next few days. This includes a coming post on the shield law, especially as Massachusetts works to enact one of its own (one that appears quite good, actually). But not just now.

In a true blending of media, Yahoo and TiVo today announced a content deal. While Yahoo will provide some content, including TV listings and other such things, the deal does not include video.

We all know that a TiVo box is basically a computer with a big hard drive and some software that records TV. More generically, it's a computer that saves content, only that content tends to come from cable or sattelite rather than from the Internet. Still, the box does have a little-used Internet connection, the feature that Yahoo will be using.

But when TiVo gets interesting to me is when it can take vidoe via RSS from the Internet. The Yahoo deal is a step in this direction.

Why does that become intereting? Well, think about this. Imagine you have a TiVo box and you tell it that you like Star Wars. The way it's set up today the box will feed you the movies and documentaries that are on TV. As George Lucas comes out with the Star Wars cartoons and TV series, those will also show up. But if it's connected to the Internet, suddenly your box will also be filled with fan films, of which there are hundreds, if not thousands. Suddenly, anyone with a camera and some time can create something in the basement, put it on a blog like this one, and reach a massive audience.

What's more, when you turn on your TiVo, the fan films will be co-mingled with the Lucas-produced content. Yes, they're all on an even playing field.

Not scared enough by that? Ok, let's try this.

NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, the WB and UPN spend a lot of money developing programming for specific audiences. They are, in fact, creating a visual brand. You know what you're going to get when you turn on Fox, NBC or the WB.

They see their airtime as precious and produce content that will sell. Of course, there are a lot of great shows that never see the light of day. Maybe they just stink (though soome of those do manage to get on the air), maybe they're just too sophisticated for the audience. Regardless, they're cast, produced and edited, but never seen. So there is talent out there that is not getting its airtime.

What if the producers released it just as the Star Wars fan films do? What if your TiVo, in watching your viewing habits, realizes that you like relationship-based sitcoms: Friends, Mad About You, Will and Grace, etc. Then it finds other sitcoms to feed you, those not necessarily on network television but just hanging around on a Web site. If they're co-mingled and the "brand" of the network no longer matters, how much is ad time on NBC really worth?

I see blogging, podcasting and video blogging as a step toward this eventual reality.

Trusting Dan

If you live within earshot of Boston you can't ignore the furor over Theo Epstein and the role that Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy apparently played in the whole mess.

A quick recap goes like this: the Red Sox were close to a deal with their boy-wonder GM when a column appeared in Sunday's Globe giving out details that Epstein realized came from his boss, Larry Lucchino. That set of a chain of events that led to him tossing in his red socks and walking out onto Yawkey Way for the last time as a Sox employee. There' s a lot of he-said-she-said in all this. If you're really interested in the story you should check out some other blogs.

So, what does this have to do with issues I'm writing about? In a word: trust.

The New York Times Company, the parent of the Boston Globe, owns a portion of the Red Sox. Frankly, a small part. Still, it's enough to have people making accusations, like that Lucchino called in some favors to the Globe to get their top columnist to write something for his side.

Is this true? Probably not. But it doesn't matter. In an age when newspapers are struggling to maintain readers and relevance, anything that erodes public trust is dangerous. And that's just what happens when a city's primary publication invests in a business that is so central to the city.

What I can't understand is that while the Globe would never consider making a significant investment in Gillette (now part of Proctor & Gamble) or in John Hancock Insurance, owners were willing to invest in the Red Sox.

Maybe it has something to do with the way we view sports. Not as a business, but just as entertainment.

Even so, I'm curious as to how this plays out over time. The New York Times has already experimented with charging for columnists, as has the Globe's cross-town rival The Boston Herald. What if the Globe wants to consider this kind of move. Will people pay money to read columns by writers they no longer trust?

I'd venture to say that they wouldn't.

National Shield Law?

Journalist are wringing their hands over the Lewis "Scooter" Libby indictment, worried that journalists such as Tim Russert, Matt Cooper, Robert Novak and Judith Miller will be paraded before a jury and forced to testify against their own witness. They worry that this leads us further down the path of the media becoming an arm of government, a frightening fact that the shield law (either written or law through court cases) is meant to avoid.

But a fact is lost in this: without the leak itself there is no crime. This is not a case of a journalist being called before a court because he uncovered some corruption within the government that a prosecutor couldn't prove. In this case, the leak of a CIA agent's name is, in itself, illegal.

Dan Kennedy puts it best when he says:

This has always been a lousy case for anyone who thinks there ought to be at least a limited reporter's privilege. Washington reporters, compromised by the ways of Washington, claimed a reporter's privilege not to protect a whistleblower or to expose government corruption (as Taricani did), but, rather, to maintain their promise of anonymity to a source or sources who may have outed an undercover CIA agent and thus undermined national security. I understand why they had to do that, but there's nevertheless something unclean about it.

Now it's important to note that the indictment is about obstruction of justice, not about the leak. It's about the lies that prevent the government from finding out who, in fact, made the leak. But the leak is central and that is what makes this case special and why it will not lead us down the dark path of journalists as an arm of government.

Careful readers already know my stance on the shield law. I still believe that in the new media landscape it's next to impossible to write an appropriate shield law and, I believe, it's unnecessary. A source has many reason for coming forward, they are not always altruistic. Those forces will continue to be at work.

Kennedy believes that instead of trying to define who is a journalist but "I think it makes much more sense to define "journalism." Lisa Williams is not a journalist, but she's producing journalism. (But then what do we do with all those journalists who are *not* producing journalism?)" he said in an email.

I'm not entirely sure I agree, as it becomes a semantic argument. Should the court consider the relative value of each article in question based on a set of given criteria? Why is it up to the court to decide that?

And what about he simple issue that the first amendment is granted to the full population, not to a protected class?

One other thing keeps coming to my mind. While journalists talk and talk about the shield law, they're not sending investigators in to examine the evidence that brought this country into Iraq. More than anything, this should be the central issue, not the protection of a few reporters.

Who is the Little Guy Now?

Back in 1994 I remember reading in the Boston Globe, an interview with Mitt Romney's wife. This was during his Senate run against incumbent Ted Kennedy. It was also a time when I, and many like me, couldn't find work. The term "under employment" was thrown around a lot, and while we know now that the tech sector was the verge of a major upswing, at that point in time a lot seemed bleak.

So Ann Romney starts talking about her early life with Mitt and how they "struggled" because he had to sell off some of his stock, and that the carpeting in their apartment didn't match. A later debate between the two secured in my head the following thought: how can this candidate be so out of touch that he makes a Kennedy look like the "everyman"?

I had that same feeling today when I read that Microsoft plans to start an online library project similar to Google's, but it's going to do so by working with the Open Content Alliance. This is the same day that Google CEO Eric Schmidt dismissed the lawsuits from authors and publishers over Google Print as "routine."

So Microsoft, the company feared for its predatory practices that seemingly put Netscape out of business, is suddenly on the side of the "little guy"? Talk about a PR nightmare!

The issue here comes down to trust. As I've said before, Google's basic idea is "trust us, we promise to do no evil." But evil depends on perspective, and it seems that Google's forgotten that.

In July, Patricia Seybold, CEO of the analyst firm bearing her name, wrote a report called "In Google We Trust?" in which she cautioned companies about jumping into bed with the search giant. "Never before, in the seven years that we've been holding our semi-annual visionaries' meetings, has a single technology suppler been the focal point for so much of the group's discussion," she wrote. That struck me as pretty amazing, considering the role that Microsoft plays in so many organizations.

In the report she encourages companies to have some kind of Google strategy, whether that is working with the company directly or just recognizing the role that Google searches play in driving business.

One group that does work directly with Google is Penn State Press, the publishing arm of Penn State University. In fact, Tony Sanfilippo, director of sales and marketing, is a key case study for the Google Print program, singing its praises as helping drive a print-on-demand program the publisher uses to reduce inventory and boost sales.

But that doesn't mean Sanfilippo is completely happy with Google. He's criticized them openly, including an open letter to the company printed in the September 26 issue of Publisher's Weekly, in which he called for many of the same things I called for in my previous post (I hadn't read his letter until after I wrote the post). Here's a brief excerpt:

If Google is already planning to scan our books and add them to their search results, why couldn't they offer our press a high-resolution copy, in addition to the file they are already offering the university library from which they obtained it? With books that are out of print, that would allow publishers to offer the title through print-on-demand, and Google to rank it among its search results, with those glorious "buy the book" links.

In an email to me the other day, Sanfilippo acknowledged that he has not heard an official response from Google, this even as he's a customer reference for the company. Being a tech PR guy, I know how hard it is to get customer references, and they all must be treated very well. At the very least Google owes him a response.

Sanfilippo points out that from his perspective, in the non-profit university press sector, Google can very easily hurt the business. "The libraries included in the project are among our best customers. University libraries buy most, if not all of what university presses publish. These libraries have all bought or subscribed to our digital content in the past. Now they won't need to anymore. We're talking about tens of thousands in lost revenues," he told me.

Then there is the fact that digital files don't exist for much of the backlist, including out of print books that are still under copyright.

But here's where things get interesting, and I'm not sure of Google's intentions. Once Google has the digital file, can it eventually get copyright? Or does it just plan to be in business long past the point at which the book moves into the public domain?

All that said, Sanfilippo points out that he still loves Google Print for publishers, as that is an opt-in program with strict limitations, not an opt-out program over which they have no control over their copyrighted material.

There are many publishing houses that make a lot of money printing books in the public domain, which means they are more in the "packaging" business. So what happens when people don't need to buy the packaged book but can still get the content? Or maybe Google can print it for them, as I've suggested before?

"I think Google may be shooting itself in the foot," Sanfilippo continued in his email. "By ignoring the concerns of publishers, Google may in the long term betray the trust they need, if they really are considering content distribution. Either way, they most definitely seem to be publishing, the only question is will they be doing it legally or illegally."

Yes, there is that "trust" word again. How much will it matter in the future? If people can get the information from Google (as I do daily) will it matter if anyone actually "trusts" the company?

Kevin Werbach actually has an interesting perspective, in which he points out that the lawsuit, if successful, may bring the Internet to a halt. It's worth a read.

By the way, in a related piece of news, Google gave a glimpse of Google Base, which moves into classified ads. Yes, those same ads that were once ruled by newspapers, now by Craigslist and eBay, but may end up in Google's hands. But when Google has the books and the content and the classifieds and the news... how does any other content provider make money?

I also wonder if the guys in Redmond look south and see a younger version of themselves, and if they look toward IBM and find themselves looking in the mirror.

How to Save the Traditional Newsroom

In the last post I said I had no ideas about how to fix newspapers. Well, now I do, thanks in large part to a brainstorming IM session with my co-worker John Moran.

I think John Cass is on the right track when he points to hyperlocal journalism as a key element in fixing newspapers, but I think it's only a start. There are a number of hyperlocal sites out there (I've talked a bit about H2otown.info) but can these help make money?

The real problem, as I see it, is that newspapers had that role as community source but lost it.
Frankly, I'm not sure they ever knew they had it, but it's what gave them power.

Often you hear journalists talk about their role as storyteller at the proverbial campfire. The image is of ancient humans sitting around at night, not long after feasting on their latest kill, telling tales of the hunt. One person leads telling everyone what happened that day, all other tribe members rapt with attention.

Great image, but wrong. The campfire is a circle not a stage. It's not just one story being told but many. People are talking to each other, some are calling out their own stories. It's an organized cacophony.

But all this times newspapers looked at themselves as the source for information. The one place local residents turned for news. And with older technologies, like newsprint, TV or radio, they were right.

So, what do they have now? Let's just take the example of the New York Times. As far as I'm concerned the paper's biggest asset is trust. People trust the information in it. Yes, you hear a lot of grumbling about inaccuracies in the Times, but for the most part this is where America turns when it truly wants information about the world.

This is also why the cases of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller hit so hard, they struck at the very trust that we, the readers, hold dear.

So, how would I fix it? First, I'd put all online content behind the pay firewall except for breaking news. Yes, you heard me right. I'd make people pay for content. In a move similar to what they've already done with select content, I'd make it so regular print subscribers easily get passwords so they can log in as well.

The argument that people won't pay for content is bunk. They will. How many people pay for HBO? I have DirecTV just so I can get Jets games on Sundays here in New England. Then there is cable penetration, which is very high in this country.

What would Times readers get for their money? It has to be more than just news, they have to become part of a community.

Readers should be allowed to post hyper-local content. Since registration will probably contain a certain amount of geographical information on each subscriber, a reader in Hackensack, New Jersey should automatically receive content that comes from other readers in their area.

However, a community is more than just about geography, it's also about likes and dislikes.

This is where things get very interesting. People who buy their way in must be allowed to comment on stories, not just in letters to the editor or in forums (though, these should still exist) but in comments attached directly to the story. What's more, they should be able to create their own spaces within the New York Times site, being able to focus the news as they see fit, a place where people can "clip" stories or even have searches on terms that are important to them. But here's the kicker: that should be public, this way other others can follow the various editions of the paper. Leaders would arise, just as they have in the blogosphere.

Along the way the Times would be collecting information on its readers, and then feeding content to the readers based on their interest. This isn't Earth-shattering technology, Google does it daily by feeding ads based on what's written in a blog or even in our emails.

And yes, I know that this kind of idea is called a blog or wiki, but I don't want to be bound by those titles. Newspaper sites must find ways to harness the power laid out before them, while levering the trust they earned by delivering us the news for the last century.

Once they have this community, they may earn back the classified ads or other revenue-producing concepts that could save them from financial ruin.

There's obviously more to explore here, like how to take lessons learned by gamers to make massive amounts of information easier to absorb.

Keeping Readers, Losing Community

The media industry is buzzing about cuts at the Boston Globe and the New York Times. These are nothing new, as the whole industry seems to be in a financial tailspin, even as ownership posts regular revenue gains.

Dan Kennedy has a great post today making the case that the Boston Globe has held onto its readership, it's just that the readership shifted from reading the printed form to the online version.

In the grand scheme of things, this is what was predicted years ago and what publishing companies thought they wanted: readers without having to spend money on newsprint or production. So why all the sour faces?

Because they can't make money this way. It boggles the mind, but with the same readership spread over two medium, traditional newspapers just can't figure out how to make a go of it. This is especially troublesome when you consider that most newspapers admit that the daily 50 cents or $1 you pay at the newsstand covers only print-production costs while advertising makes up the bulk of revenue.

What pundits fail to note is the steep decline in classified advertising. It used to be that newspapers were our only consistent community source for information, so it made sense to advertise that old couch, used car, house or yourself in the pay-per-letter space in the back pages.

But walk through any office in any major city and ask 20 somethings where they found their apartment and I guarantee they'll tell you "Craigslist."Ask them where they looked for a job and the answer will be "Monster." Ask them about the massive REM poster on the wall and they'll tell you "eBay." These are things that used to be pretty good profit centers for newspapers. Think about it, a whole page, paid for by the letter. Compare that to a massive display ad, which brought in just a few thousand dollars, or a page of news, which cost the paper more.

The problem is not that the newspapers lost readers, it's that they lost their role of being central to the community. But then again, the Internet changed how we think of a community, as some are geographic while others are based on interest. So how can newspapers regain this ground?

Honestly, I have no idea.

My Issue with Sources

There is a story that's getting some good play today in the Boston news regarding a European vacation that several state representatives left on last night, even as the legislature was trying to dig through key pieces of legislation.

The story on the front page of the Boston Globe "City and Region" section (below the fold) and written by Frank Phillips and Michael Levsenson points out that the trip includes six legislators, including key members of the leadership, as well as a state lobbyist, House clerk and others.

Interesting story, but as I read further I started to realize why this became such a big deal. The headline is "Legislators' trip could delay work in House," suggesting that these six members are so key as to shut things down. While that fact is mentioned in the lead paragraph, the key support for this statement is on the jump page:

Still, the trip stirred grumbling within the House ranks, where some members, who did not want to be quoted by name, felt the trip had come at the worst time....

and

With this trip, "they've shut the House down," said one frustrated member. "It's stunning. Short of the budget, this is the busiest time of the year."

What are the political beefs this person (or persons) speaking has with the legislators in question? Is this a political friend or foe? What sorts of state-funded projects may have been cut from this person's home region because of moves by the House leadership?

Without the information of who this source is, I the reader, am not able to make this determination.

Is this a real story, or is this just political back biting? Frankly, without more information, I just can't be sure. I'm left to trust the Boston Globe that it's something worthy of its prominent placement.

In the new media world, I'd like more information by which to make this determination.

Google Suit and the Long Tail

It's in the news again, the author's guild is suing Google for scanning books as part of the Google Print project.

There are several anecdotes floating around, like the fact that Google needs to scan a full book to make search itself more accurate, and that it's goal is to have nearly all of the Earth's information digitized and searchable at some point in the future. I've heard stories about authors and editors of hundreds of books being told they have to fill out a form for each book they don't want scanned, which is certainly a cumbersome and difficult job.

But why aren't authors embracing the idea of having their books digitized, and simply ask that Google make the search information available to other companies? Or what about requiring Google to present the digitized version to the copyright holder to do with as they see fit?

I still believe that the author's will eventually benefit from this project thanks to a possible print-on-demand system. This is the long tail in progress, and as John Cass pointed out, it may be something that Amazon should get involved with.

But I also understand that Google's basic mantra in all this is basically "trust is, we promise to do no evil," and I'd like to believe that. But I also can't help noticing that when you type "Chuck Tanowitz" into the search engine my Blogger.com blog and other older items come up ahead of my Typepad blog, and the other blog as much more information. I'm sure Google has a reason for this, but it makes me wonder.

So my point is, you may not trust Google, but rather than stopping them authors should find a way for the company to share its work. Isn't that what the Web is all about anyway?

Judith Miller and the Times

You may notice that I've stayed pretty mum on this whole issue. There are two reasons for this. First, enough pundits are weighing in on the topic and I don't need to add my voice to the chorus and second, this isn't an issue that crosses over into new media that easily.

As time moves on I may stop and take a look at the credibility issues it creates with the traditional media and how that compares with the "friend of a friend" idea. But that's a topic for another time.

Who is a Journalist part 2

It looks like the issue of legally defining the rights of blogger/journalists may be closer to coming to a head.

At a speech on Monday covered by Editor and Publisher Senator Richard Lugar, who is sponsoring a federal shield law, said that bloggers would not as of now fall under the definition of a "journalist."

As quoted in the story:

"As to who is a reporter, this will be a subject of debate as this bill goes farther along," he said in response to a question from Washington Post Deputy Managing Editor Milton Coleman. "Are bloggers journalists or some of the commercial businesses that you here would probably not consider real journalists? Probably not, but how do you determine who will be included in this bill?"

And how is a journalist defined in the bill?

...an entity that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means and that--

(i) publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical;

(ii) operates a radio or television broadcast station (or network of such stations), cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier; or

(iii) operates a news agency or wire service;

(B) a parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such an entity; or

(C) an employee, contractor, or other person who gathers, edits, photographs, records, prepares, or disseminates news or information for such an entity.

This definition certainly takes away some of the vague language that exists in the New York law, but is that fair? If this bill should succeed, should the definition be even tighter than the state laws?

How do you determine who will be included? I had an email exchange about this with Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times columnist and author of several books on the law, including the iconic Gideon's Trumpet.

He's not a fan of the shield law, even as he notes that the Times supports it. "Do we really want to immunize potentially millions of Americans from legal process?" he asks. It's a question that gave me pause.

Apparently Lugar agrees, deciding instead to maintain to a more traditional view of a journalist. But this creates other problems, as the Editor and Publisher story points out. If the government is defining a journalist, then that is basically like giving out licenses, something no journalist would support.

Lewis weighs in on this, as any good professor would, by sending me back to the books:

In Branzburg, Justice White's opinion of the court warned about the difficulty of defining journalist. We strongly, and rightly, resist the idea of any official license--which in many places is a form of governmental control.

But how else is the beneficiary of a shield law to be chosen? By the courts? That is, will judges draw your nice distinction between different kinds of bloggers? I think myself that the development of the internet has made Justice White's objection far more daunting.

So I went back to the original opinion to see what White had to say back in 1972:

The administration of a constitutional newsman's privilege would present practical and conceptual difficulties of a high order. Sooner or later, it would be necessary to define those categories of newsmen who qualified for the privilege, a questionable procedure in light of the traditional doctrine that liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as much as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition methods.

The opinion goes on to point out that freedom of the press is a "'personal right' which is 'not confined to newspaper and periodicals.'"

Do we really want to be messing with something so personal?

I think we should bury the shield. Yes, a journalist's most key asset is the ability to gain information, especially information that may otherwise be hidden. But, remember that any source generally has a reason for talking, and that reason is often far from altruistic.

The most famous of the secret sources, Deep Throat, never came to light since the testimony he would have provided never became necessary. To their credit, Woodward and Bernstein had a series of other sources to back up what they were being told secretly, Watergate was not a single-source story.

Still, in the absence of information Mark Felt was ascribed certain altruistic characteristics. Were his motivations so noble? The recent news about his background certainly makes the issue far more murky.

So let's not be too quick to grant a shield for some people to hide behind, and instead look at who is telling what stories and why.

Blending the Media: Battlestar Galactica

I generally reserve my commentary here for nonfiction-related media, but in the case of Battlestar Galactica, the use of multiple media is so compelling as to be worth noting.

If you haven't watched Battlestar Galactica on the SciFi channel, you should. It's one of the most well written shows on TV that blends good storytelling with some great social commentary. Of course it has a few good special effects, but what interests me most is how it gets the most out of the various media: TV, podcasts, blogs and forums.

At its heart this is an aggressive TV show that relies on a relatively small band of rabid fans. I'm sure the producers would love the kind of ratings that a show like 24 or Survivor get, but that's not the goal here. The unit of measure are the other shows on the SciFi channel and, more importantly, on basic cable.

While the show deals with sensitive subject matter, I wouldn't say it pushes the boundaries of the medium, and that's a good thing. Yes, the writers often run up against network censors and there have been some recent complaints about a rape scene in one episode, but this is a show that lives comfortably in TV. In fact, Executive Producer Ron Moore told an E! Online Forum that he has no intention of doing a feature film since that format wouldn't allow him the same storytelling arc he currently enjoys.

You see, the show doesn't insult its viewers intelligence by forgetting the past and problems aren't neatly wrapped up at the end of each hour. Instead, story threads that begin with a look or a comment in one episode extend over weeks and months. A story arc in the first season started toward the middle, ended with a cliff hanger in the season finale, then took another 7 episodes in season 2 to truly wrap up.

I started watching this show with the miniseries, but it was the podcast that brought it to a new level for me. Each week, Moore records a podcast designed to act in the same capacity as a DVD commentary--only you can play it even as you're watching an episode for the first time. This is really aimed at DVR users to give them a reason to watch the show a second or even a third time, adding a layer of storytelling not available before, but also helping make listeners more invested in the show and, in turn, the brand.

As a viewer/listener I get to feel as if I know the man behind the series a little better. I can hear his dogs barking and the phone ringing, even the leaf blower outside. It's the lack of production quality that makes it even more compelling. I'm not just listening to Ron Moore, but I'm sitting with him, in his house, as he gives me a personal journey through his creation.

Then there are the forums on the SciFi network Web site in which viewers can discuss and comment on the show, as well as a blog that Moore doesn't keep up that regularly. But that's OK! He obviously prefers the podcast to the blog. Also, Moore does, in fact, read the forums. How do we know that? Because he said so on his podcast!

The DVD is next, with season one now out and season two due out soon.

How does print media fit in with all this? Frankly, not in any major capacity other than with a few reviews in print publications and feature stories such as one that appeared in the New York Times Magazine.

A series of blogs have popped up around the show, which is to be expected. And I'm sure people involved with the production track those as well.

It'll be interesting to watch how this continues to proceed and whether all forms of media can build the strong fan base such a show needs to survive. Considering that Battlestar Galactica 's going into its third season, it's already a pretty successful run.

Truth in Numbers: PR and the Blogosphere

Edelmen PR and Technorati just completed a terrific study on how bloggers interact with PR people. Of course every blogger is different, but since these people chose to take the study they're a pretty self-selecting group of (most likely) business-related bloggers.

On his blog, Richard Edelman has a quote about how PR people should be interacting with bloggers:

Companies must enter the blogosphere in ways that respect its values and norms. We should never assume we can barge into a conversation; we need to ask permission to interact. We must always be transparent about who we are and what our motives are. Communications should be based on genuine understanding of each person's interests and needs. When companies or agencies act duplicitously, we should recognize that they are interfering with human conversation, and we should not stand for it.

Great advice.

But I think we should take things one step further, we should become bloggers ourselves. It doesn't have to be a complex blog or something you update daily, and it's probably best not to be just another PR blog, but focus on a hobby or your family or something that you are passionate about. I learned more about blogging from writing about my children than I ever could have learned by simply reading a bunch each day--though, I do that too.

So get out and blog, but blog about something that feeds your true passion.

Google the Publisher?

I heard an interesting comment on an NPR podcast the other day. The fact that I was actually listening to an NPR podcast is interesting in and of itself, but lets just talk about the comment.

During a piece about Google’s desire to search book content that originally aired on Day to Day, Xeni Jardin talked about why the Author’s Guild was suing Google.

But toward the end of the piece, during a discussion with host Noah Adams, Jardin said the following:

If the idea behind this lawsuit were extended to the Internet, there wouldn’t be any search engines. What’s the difference between Web pages and books? What is Web page owners could sue Google for indexing their pages?

It threw me. “What’s the difference between Web pages and books?” Would anyone have asked that question a year ago? Two years ago? You can actually break this down to “what’s the difference between a blog and a book?”

Frankly, other than the income potential, I’m not sure. If someone can give me a good definition I’d love to hear it.

But she seemed to throw away the following line and that had me thinking:

If publishers say they want Google to make the whole book available through a print-on-demand program, they can do that… otherwise they only get a preview of what’s inside so they can borrow or buy the book somewhere else.

I can’t find any information about a print on demand program through Google, the only options on the Google Print results pages are for you to purchase the book through the publisher, Amazon or a few other options. So I’m not sure if Jardin was speculating here or of she has information that I can’t find.

But print-on-demand makes complete sense and it actually lines up perfectly with Chris Anderson’s Long Tail concept. Publishers have long hoped to find a way to sell out-of-print books and they’ve launched a few ventures to this end. I'm not sure how successful they were, but my guess is: not much. They relied on local book stores to fulfull orders from people who knew what they want. But how do you know you want a book that's out of print? Chances are, you had heard of the book somewhere, probably by reading it or for some academic purpose (why would marketers waste their time on an out of print book?). On the academic side, you probably will be happy with the library. Otherwise, some searches of a few used book suppliers will do.

But if you combine Google's search capabilities and reach with all the books that have EVER been printed, you may have something interesting.

A few toner-based printing presses placed in regional locations around the country could make it so no book is ever really out-of-print again.

Who is a Journalist?

It sounds like such a simple question. What makes you a journalist?

In American society, we all have the same right to free speech. Yet many states have shield laws protecting "journalists" from having to reveal their sources. This issue has come up recently on the national level with people asking about a national shield law in the wake of the recently wrapped up Judith Miller case.

New York is such a state, and considering the number of media outlets that operate within its borders, this is probably a good thing. So how does New York define a journalist? A "professional journalist" is

...one who, for gain or livelihood, is engaged in gathering, preparing, collecting, writing, editing, filming, taping or photographing of news intended for a newspaper, magazine, news agency, press association or wire service or other professional medium or agency which has as one of its regular functions the processing and researching of news intended for dissemination to the public; such person shall be someone performing said function either as a regular employee or as one otherwise professionally affiliated for gain or livelihood with such medium of communication.

There are a number of interesting qualifiers here. My favorite is as someone who provides information "for gain or livelihood..." in other words, you have to make money doing this. How many bloggers out there make nothing for their work but do it for the love of writing or finding things out? What if one of these finds themselves with a “source” who provides some sensitive information? Could this person duck behind the shield?

A bigger question for me is “would they?” But let's explore that another time.

Another interesting definition in this of "news," which is defined as

...written, oral, pictorial, photographic, or electronically recorded information or communication concerning local, national or worldwide events or other matters of public concern or public interest or affecting the public welfare.

Obviously, many bloggers wouldn't fall into this catetory. Yes, a blog about a person's homelife is interesting, but it certainly wouldn't meet the standard of "matters of public concern" or "affecting the public welfare."

But there are certainly blogs out there that do meet this standard, such as Lisa Williams' H2OTown.info. She's a citizen who started a blog about local information. She's been interviewed on "Open Source" about the hyperlocalization of news, has been invited to events as a member of the local media and is part of the "power blogger" set. BUT, does she make money at this, or is it a hobby? And if it's a hobby, does she qualify?

Also, what falls under the definition of “public welfare”? And does a blog have to meet this criteria outside of the article that would be the subject of that particular court battle?

I guess these vagaries are what make the law the law. So I posed the question to someone much more experienced than I am, Vincent Blasi, professor at both Columbia Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law. I took his class as a journalism student in the early 90s, which he taught with Anthony Lewis, who was then writing the "Abroad at Home" column in the New York Times.

Professor Blasi agrees that as court cases come up, this will test the definition of a journalist and he agrees that a blogger/journalist probably deserves the same protection as a newspaper or broadcast journalist. However, he believes that the courts may create a rather narrow definition, but not because of any reason that you and I may expect.

…most courts are hostile to shield laws and construe them narrowly whenever the language permits -- and sometimes even when the language would seem not to permit. So I would predict that many courts would simply say that “journalist” means someone who writes for traditional publications and that if bloggers are to be protected, the legislature will have to change the statutory language to make that clear.

It'll be interesting to see how the courts handle this and whether they even approach the issue when it comes up.

But if bloggers want to benefit from the shield, we may have to first organize, then try to update the law.

Target Acquired: Focusing on Ads

So there I was, standing in a mockup of a newspaper printing plant in Durham, NH, looking at some cutting edge technology: an inserter. An inserter is a machine that literally inserts sections into an overall newspaper. With enough pockets (spots that hold sections) and the control to start and stop these on the fly, you can create a newspaper package that is different for certain geographic regions. The goal was to get to the "carrier-level" in which each carrier had a different package. This enables a publication to deliver targeted content to a specific neighborhood, thereby opening up some levels of advertising to new markets.

That was back in 1999.

A couple of years later, in the trough of the tech recession, I attended a discussion about online advertising. A woman stood up and asked a speaker, who worked for a major advertising firm that bought millions of dollars in banners and other interactive ads, whether he would pay a premium for a targeted, captive audience. He laughed and said he wondered why he would when he could get millions of impressions from a place like Yahoo for almost no money. His assumption was that whatever audience he wanted would be included in that larger group.

At the time he was right.

So now look at this quote from an InformationWeek story about Google's patents:

In a broader sense, Arnold [Stephen E. Arnold, who has written a book on his one-year odyssey studying the search firm] believes Google is building a “patent fence around search” technology as the firm moves to codify its unique competitive advantage. An ultimate goal of the firm is to deliver completely individualized ads to users.

The problem with this model before was that the value proposition just wasn't there. Yes, you could target individuals, and maybe that had value, but how much? And how expensive would it be to offer that kind of functionality? Would advertisers be willing to pay the extra money for it? Would the targeting result in more effective ads?

Would it be enough to justify investing a few million dollars in an inserter?

Yahoo Sets its Sites on Conflict

You've probably seen the coverage Yahoo! is getting about its foray into original journalistic content thanks to Kevin Sites. Since Yahoo has, until now, been little more than an aggregator, the traditional media companies, many of whom have content distribution deals with the Internet giant, are rightfully nervous.

But this misses some of the point. Sites is a respected, long-time journalist. It seems what Yahoo actually did here was to enable sites to expand on something he had been doing: a blog.

What's even more interesting is the way, in which, Yahoo is approaching journalism. Rather than going after the "big stories" by sending in a big-name journalist to cover the big news story of the day/week/month (hurricanes come to mind), Sites and his team (yes, there is more than one person here) have a schedule of conflict hot spots that includes such places as Somalia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.

This is what every true journalist wants to be doing, telling the stories that don't get told. Going to the places that US political interests tend to ignore, then helping people places like London, New York, Boston, Boise and Los Angeles better understand what is going on. This comes from the Hotzone:

We will be aggressive in pursuing the stories that are not getting mainstream coverage and putting a human face on them. We will not chase headlines nor adhere to pack journalism but vigorously pursue the stories in front of and behind the conflict to give readers a more complete picture.

If this holds true, then what we're seeing is a niche that is going to be wonderful to watch: true journalism.

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, the Middle Seat column focused on the recent JetBlue flight that landed with its landing gear twisted. Part of the decision that had to be made on the flight was whether to let the passengers watch their own drama unfold on TV. Frankly, from an aviation standpoint, the malfunction was a semi-routine issue. A plane is designed to land like this, if necessary, and the personnel on the ground had plenty of time to react.

Yet, there was Paula Zahn on CNN going on and on about all the horrible things that might happen. While the Journal story talked about the affect this may have on passengers in flight, it was accepted that CNN's rampant, depressing and alarmist speculation was just part of the process.

Frankly, it shouldn't be. The only reason the story had any play was because it happened during the right time (east coast prime time) and they had live video. If it happened at midnight pacific time, it would have been a small piece in the paper and a short voice over during the morning shows.

I hope the Hotzone succeeds, and I hope more properties follow Yahoo's lead in promoting true journalism.

Journalistic Infrastructure

In any disaster recovery scenario, it's best to have a distributed infrastructure. I thought about this recently during the New Orleans flooding, where families who live in tight-knit groups found themselves with nowhere to go. I compared this to my own family, which is scattered along the eastern seaboard and realized that in case of an emergency in one of these cities any member of my family has another place to go. Not just to stay, for support through whatever it is that had happened.

The same concept holds true for the Internet. It's very nature of being distributed keeps it afloat, even when part gets shut down.

This concept is starting to take hold in journalism, as citizen journalists, stationed all over the world, are now able to reach the rest of the world. So in the case of the tsunami of December last year, we could see video and hear reports within minutes of the event.

Television needs to learn from this model, since it has the pieces in place. Since its inception TV has relied on local affiliates for everyday news gathering, but when it comes to the "big story," anchors and reporters parachute in from Washington, New York and Atlanta. This is a great strategy for something like the war in Iraq, in which it would be impossible to ensure that reliable sources could be had on either side of the combat lines.

But in most situations, like Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, this is exactly the wrong thing to do.

A local reporter who knows the area is in a much better position to understand the nuances of a situation and provide better information. The problem is, national news people think they know best, so they'll send in Matt Lauer and Anderson Cooper and any of a number of named-brands to "report" from a beach in Galveston, Texas. What can Matt Lauer add to this situation? And the networks aren't the only culprit's. More and more local affiliates from around the country will send reporters, like 7 News in Boston (full disclosure: I worked there as a producer in the mid-90s), which sent Christopher May to Galveston for Rita.

What will it take to end this practice? Unfortunately, the inevitable high-profile death. Some day soon a major anchor or reporter is going to get killed while standing in the wind. Maybe their edit truck will get blown over, or their building will collapse. I'm not sure what it is, but it'll happen.

And only then will the bigwigs in New York and Washington start to look for a different answer.

Media Relations: Reaching Out to Bloggers

When I first started talking about blogging to my colleagues in back in 2003, few wanted to hear it. Most felt the blogosphere was about a bunch of geeks talking to themselves. My sessions on the topic were sparsely attended.

I kept thinking about Monster.com. Back in 1994 when I was just out of grad school, a friend told me about another friend of his who was starting this small site. I looked at it and found only tech jobs, then ignored it. I also didn’t bother to try and find a job there either, which I think was my friend's intent.

Just one bonehead move of many during the early tech days.

Flash forward to the early days of blogs. Yes, at the time it was just a bunch of techies, but it felt like Monster.com all over again.

So here I was talking up the idea of having our clients start to blog. Those of my colleagues who didn't run for cover when I started talking, dismissed the idea of starting one and only wanted to know “how do you pitch a blogger?” Media relations people are, in fact, media relations people. They pitch.

In the blogosphere that’s the wrong thing to do. We tried traditional methods and unless you want to cultivate a long-term relationship with each individual blogger, it just doesn’t work. For some, like Robert Scoble, this isn’t a bad thing. But for others, it becomes a cost-benefit analysis and in most cases, the long-term relationship gets tossed.

So, how do you get taken seriously by bloggers? The easiest answer is to jump into the pool and become a blogger yourself, but use your blog strategically and join in with other existing conversations.

For a good example of what works, let me introduce you to Buzz Bruggeman. If you’re a power blogger you know him already. Buzz is a former lawyer who runs a company named ActiveWords--I heard him speak about how his blog strategy is driving business at the Blog Business Summit in San Francisco last month. The heart of what he talked about is basic customer relations using the blog as a tool. On his own blog, he responds to all his comments, responds promptly to customer queries, but also also comments on other people's blogs.

He had two very interesting stories. In the first, he identified reporters he wanted to be in front of, then did the research to determine what blogs the reporters were reading. That enabled ActiveWords to get good reviews in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal without doing major media relations outreach. His tools in this weren’t the phone and email, but comments and links. Once he identified the key bloggers, he carefully commented on their sites and created trackbacks to his own. This wasn’t spam, but relevant additions to the conversation at hand.

He also wrote about topics on his blog that would be relevant to the blogger he was targeting to attract their eye.

This is a careful and long-term strategy, it’s not for everyone, but effective.

The "comments" and "trackbacks" help build both credibility and influence. Most of the bloggers I’ve spoken with agree that a comment on a site is personal validation. One presenter equated it to having a stall in a marketplace in which a person walks up and says hello, it's a very personal relationship. So if a client wants to get in front of a blogger, a basic suggestion is to encourage them to add relevant comments to the site. In other words: get into the conversation.

In another story Buzz relayed how he regularly received emails from a customer with technical questions that he answered and/or forwarded to his technical people, always resulting in a prompt response. One day he started to see links in from this guy's blog that resulted in several downloads. It turns out that the customer was a blogger and he spent a bunch of time writing a five-part review of the product.

Amazing “coverage” by someone with a following, and it took nothing more than than good customer to cultivate that kind of evangelism.

Another interesting offshoot of this strategy is a piece written by InfoWorld editor Jon Udell back in 2002. Jon is a good reporter and tends to write about topics and ideas he finds of interest (including my client). But if you read his story you find that he quoted other bloggers about ActiveWords. So endorsement begat endorsement. Powerful stuff.

What's Honest?

I live in Massachusetts, where every governor seems to have aspirations beyond his current job. This past week, Governor Mitt Romney went on national TV to talk about disaster planning in Massachusetts.

Let's ignore the substance of his talk for a moment. Romney is considered likely to run for president, even as he's dismissed this sort of talk. But what I noticed about it was his choice of venue: CNN.

Boston has many fine media outlets including the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, WCVB, WHDH, WBZ, WLVI and WGBH. All have news divisions and all are pretty major. So why go on national TV to talk about regional policy?

The answer to that should be pretty obvious: he wants national exposure. His words and his actions just don't match up.

So why bring it up here?

Because in the blogging world readers demand honesty. A blog just doesn't add much to the conversation if the author is trying to hide something. This is, in part, why Dave Taylor suggests that CEOs don't blog. He touches on what I consider to be the real reason when he writes:

ThereÂ’s one more factor to consider when inviting executives, particularly a corporate CEO, to get involved with a company blog: the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, among others, keep a very close eye on what executives at companies share with their investors and customers. Forward looking comments can lead to trouble, but disparaging a competitor in a parenthetical remark can burst into a major corporate wildfire without warning too, not because the remark might be extraordinary, but because itÂ’s the CEO who is saying it.

The fact is, CEOs--especially those of public companies--are legally beholden to their shareholders and investors, and few others. They also know too much, including information that could, if released prematurely, have a severe impact on the company. So they can't be completely open and honest in all their posts, because it could violate the law.

Still, there are those CEOs who should, in fact, start blogging. This is a strategic decision that must be made by the company in conjunction with the marketing and PR people. But I look at it this way: if you're a spokesperson for the company and thought leadership is part of your message, then you NEED a blog, because your voice counts.

Global PR Week

It's time again for Global PR Week. I had a lot of fun reading the articles and discussion during the last one and this version looks much better. Now that blogging has truly caught on, many more people are already scheduled to submit articles and I'm sure more people in the PR community will be checking in.

Moving RSS Off the Desktop

RSS is a great technology. If you're a regular reader, you know about my love for the Google Toolbar. And Charlene Li agrees with me.

RSS is a great technology, but everything I'm seeing keeps it connected to a computer desktop. Charlie Wood is working on some interesting tools that take enterprise information and make it portable. I corresponded with him a bit via email and there seems to be plenty more coming down the pike in this direction. Great stuff, but these still use traditional "geek" tools, like computers and handheld devices like Blackberries.

Why do these things need to be tied to the desktop? At the Blog Business Summit I heard someone talk about a watch that would receive information to tell you if your meeting location had been moved. That's great!

I would love to see people developing things that take advantage of advancements like home wireless networks along with RSS. I envision devices like a digital picture frame that pulls information from a pictures folder, so I can update the picture frame in my parent's house by just adding or removing photos from something like Shutterfly. Or, imagine a wallet-sized frame that updates whenever it detects a network, so I can have pictures of my kids with me no matter where I am, and they're always updated. If I'm on a trip and they do something cute that my wife catches with our ubiquitious digital camera, I will see that the next time I take out my little "frame."

Another tool I'd love to see is a dial on my office wall that can easily be configured to show me how slow traffic is moving along my home commute.

The trick is to make such tools work with minimal configuration.

Hey, while we're at it, why not a clock that shows me where all my children are! Fit them with a GPS system (or a GPS cell phone), feed it through to my clock and whamo! It's one of those clocks that Ron's mom has in Harry Potter.

Though, I could do without the setting that says "mortal danger."

More on Google Blog Search

If you're around the blogosphere you probably heard something about this already, but I noticed today that when people enter my blog from Google's blog search engine, it doesn't show me the search terms they used.

That struck me as very interesting, since one way people track the effectiveness of their search engine optimization is by how people reach their site. If the blog search doesn't tell you, then tracking becomes that much more difficult.

It's reasonable to assume that Google will emerge as a primary source for most people, so I just won't know what works and what doesn't. I also wonder if this is a functionality that Google will apply to its primary search portal, which could have a massive impact on the entire SEO industry.

Google's New Search

If you haven't checked it out yet, you need to try Google's blog search. It is, in my opinion, far above the others.

While most people in today's blogosphere value timeliness above all else, as the medium evolves it's going to become more important to find information buried within these growing logs. Google understands this, giving you a default search by relevance rather than date. Of course, you can always go back to the date search.

Good stuff, worth checking out. Plug in a few of your business messaging statements and see what comes up. It's a chance to get into the conversation, if you're not already.

The Changing Landscape

An interesting study today from a firm called Outsell points out that advertising budgets are down in B2B publications in favor of putting ads online.

This makes total sense. For a long time, the only way to reach smaller audiences was through these targeted publications. But as blogging and search continue to gain ground, those same audiences can be reached through other venues.

But what does this mean for PR? When people ask about my clients, I often joke that they haven't heard about them because they're not supposed to hear about them. Why would you want to know about a supply chain software company if you don't have anything to do with the supply chain?

One of the more gratifying moments was when the CTO of a company in a related field was at my house and had heard of just about all of my clients. A director at Novell had the same reaction. We'd reached our audience.

Our primary way of doing this is to keep our clients' names in the tech and trade publications. Big business-press hits like BusinessWeek and Fortune are great, but they don't tend to drive sales. So if the publictions that make up our bread and butter work are going to be hurt, thereby further diminishing editorial pages, our ability to serve our clients in these areas will diminish too.

On the entreprenurial end, we already run into trouble since most publications see Microsoft, IBM and Oracle as being more important and worthy of their attention, so if more of us are fighting for fewer pages, we're in for a tough haul.

The answer is to change what we offer our clients and how we approach "public relations." It's no longer just about the media and getting "hits", but about all the tools we can use to reach the right audience.

Demanding Radio, Not Podcasts

What if you just wanted to hear Howard Stern's fart jokes?

I know several people who would laugh themselves silly all the way to work, just listening to fart jokes.

This is possible, though most people would say it's unbelievable (some would even say "undesirable").

If you went up to a person and asked "do you know what a podcast is?" chances are they'd answer "no." Most of my friends can't figure out why I'd bother downloading people talking into my iPod and listen to it later.

But what if you asked "would you like to just listen to Howard Stern's fart jokes?" or "Would you like to have NPR's Marketplace avaialble to you whenever you want?" chances are you'd get a resounding "Yes!" (Stern fans may give a more colorful answer)

Forrester’s Ted Schadler believes that podcasting is, in part, a fad. To a degree he's right. But I also don't think we will always call this "podcasting." I made a few comments to this end on his post.

This gets interesting when we start combining technologies. Let's combine a mobile hard drive with WiMAX and RSS. Now you have a system that automatically downloads new content whenever it senses an Internet connection. Build this into a car and let you subscribe from a Web interface, or better, let you take your subscriptions with you wherever you are, and suddenly you have radio when you want, where you want. Add in a bit of tagging on the content production side, and suddenly you can have your very own "Howard Stern Fart Joke Feed."

These things aren't so far away. The city of Philadelphia is already working on pervasive wireless, and I met a very smart guy at the Blog Business Conference who dropped a large hard drive into his car as part of his voice modifications.

While it's all possible, the technology should never be visible to the end user. As an example, consider that early photographers had to use complex cameras and glass plates (developed themselves), which evolved into film, which evolved into "point and shoots" which evolved into digital cameras. We no longer worry about lighting, exposures and developing, but just point, click and look. Each step brought photography one step closer to the masses.

When it's done what you have is essentially "radio on demand." While this will further erode radio’s audience it won’t kill it entirely, since time remains a factor. Because you're essentially storing data to listen later, if you want "timely" information you'll still have to tune into news radio.

An Educated Consumer

We think that with all this information, we're so smart. We can know about anything just by typing some search terms into Google.

Newsflash: we're not.

A few days after the initial reports of looting in New Orleans I flipped on CNN and noticed something funny: the looting footage hadn't changed. Here they were talking about the rampant looting, but they had no new pictures. I had to wonder, if they have no new pictures, is the looting continuing in that way? Was that an isolated moment? How widespread is it really? Was it just in part of the city?

Over time I think I have answers to some of these questions. It appears that the looting wasn't as widespread and rampant as first thought, though still terrible. It also seems to be a much smaller group of people than first expected.

People who really DO know about this stuff wrote about the issue in the Boston Globe this past Sunday. Basically, the experts interviewed noted that while some violence and looting took place, it was blown out of proportion by the media. One section in particular caught my eye:

Clark McPhail, author of ''The Myth of the Madding Crowd" (1991) and an emeritus sociologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that people interpreting the footage of looters last week often fell prey to common misconceptions about collective behavior. Two of them: that everyone in a crowd shares the same goal, and that a collective frenzy overwhelms rational thought. For example, he says, that crowd you thought was ransacking Wal-Mart for consumer goods no doubt included people who indeed were ransacking Wal-Mart for consumer goods. But there were also mothers getting diapers, thrill seekers checking out the action, people trying to persuade their friends not to loot, and others just milling about.

''I have looked at probably more film footage of protest events than anyone else," says McPhail. And in contrast to what many people think they see in such situations, almost invariably ''it's just amazing how little violence proportionally took place."

What we see on TV are pictures. The people telling us about them are reporters in that they are simply there, but they're not experts in psychology or in crowd control or in security. They are just people, like you and me, looking at a piece of a puzzle and trying to figure it all out.

Back when I was in TV I hated writing health news. I hated it because in the little time given to the story I could never fit in all the qualifiers for a given issue. I remember getting calls from little old ladies who would ask questions like "I saw on your news that my drug may be bad for me, should I stop taking it?" My answer was always the same "talk to your doctor, 'mam."

But what worried me more was the people who didn't call and who based their information solely on what they saw on TV. Information written by a guy who didn't even take biology in college.

Bridging the Divide

There is no doubting the digital divide and what it meant in a disaster such as happened in New Orleans. But despite their lack of digital communication, I believe that even the poorest members of New Orleans society had/have TVs and radios.

But look at this story about a radio station called KAMP that some organizers are trying to set up in the Astrodome. It's continually blocked. I'm sure the bureaucrats blocking think they have some "good" and "rational" reasons for doing so, but the net result is a lack of information.

Yes, I know that the Astrodome has loud speakers, and any truly necessary information can reach the people, but when you have a population it's important that they also have a regular and reliable source of information. This was one, easy way to do so, by using a technology everyone in the Dome understands and is familiar with using. If you handed everyone laptop computers and told them they can get information on a Web site, would the entire audience know what to do with it? Probably not.

But a radio, that's something they can all relate to. Give out the radios, give out headphones, let the station broadcast. People need to know.

A Bright Light, but Who's Watching?

Over the last week I've heard many anchors quoting the 2002 Times-Picayune series (written by Mark Schleifstein and John McQuaid) warning of the dangers facing New Orleans should a large hurricane hit the city. I've also heard about a Mr. Bill ad warning of the dangers of an eroding coastline. These are great examples of the "bright light" journalists talk about. Here they were, doing great work, shining the light on the true dangers lurking in the darkness.

Why didn't anyone listen?

I can't help but think about all the "woolf crying" that I hear on local TV. I'm bombarded with promos telling me how there can be hidden dangers in my back yard, and how cell phone batteries may burst into flames and burn my ear. I've heard stories about supposed radiation poisoning I could get from making calls with certain phones and why floride in the water is just a bad thing. I've heard about the dangers New York City could face in case of a major earthquake, and how a similar earthquake could liquify the landfill in Boston's Back Bay.

Are all these credible? Maybe. But how do you absorb and process all these facts? Can a news consumer truly be expected to worry about all those things at once without going nuts?

During the leadup to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US military intercepted plenty of messages that, if read correctly, could have predicted the attack. That's great in hindsight, when we know the result. But at that point in history there was so much noise that codebreakers had no way of knowing what was real and what was noise. How can they determine a true message from one that was there just to throw them off?

I feel the same way when watching TV and reading the paper. What is relevant and what should I toss aside? With the constant flow of information now in front of me, I no longer know what I need to know and what is just nice to know.

From PR perspective, breaking through the clutter is becoming even more difficult and our impact lessened. Even if I have a device that can save lives, it's a struggle to get people to hear my message.

Crossing the Digital Divide

On Thursday, September 1, FEMA Director Michael Brown told CNN that he just learned about the people in the Convention Center that day. The media had heard the stories, but I can’t help but wondering how those voices, which rang loud and clear on CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS, didn’t break through the apparently soundproofed walls of the FEMA office.

Rich Edelman has a great post about the role the digital divide played in the government’s slow reaction to the tragedy that is New Orleans. His point is that if a major blogger was stuck in the Superdome or in the Convention Center, there is no way the government could have ignored the building crisis there. If the poorest of New Orleans had a voice before the waters came, their pleas would have been heard loud and clear, even in the FEMA office.

What I can’t figure out is, how do we get the people online in a major way? My wife points out that every major library has Internet access, but I say that’s not enough. In this society we wouldn’t ask people to go to a post office to make a phone call, we wouldn’t ask people to gather at the local pub just to watch the news on TV. In fact, I’m sure most of the poorest members of New Orleans society have TVs, phones and microwaves. But do they have even an outdated computer and Internet access?

Here in Boston there was a period of time in which Verizon provided DSL service to places like Newton, but not to neighborhoods like Allston, which is home to a much more modest level of income. I’m sure a similar divide exists in most cities.

Is this just a business issue? Are companies only giving powerful access to people who are willing to pay for it? What factors have to be in place to move Internet access from a luxury to a necessity? Do hardware prices have to be cheaper? Does access have to be cheaper? Is it not an economic factor at all, but a content factor?

You often hear people talking about the “Golden Age of Television,” that time in the 1950s when the airwaves were dominated by smart writing and highbrow comedy. Programs like “Your Show of Shows” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” dominated TV then. Of course, what you don’t hear is how the cost of owning a TV then made it a luxury only available to those with quite a bit of disposable income, meaning upper middle class white people. That’s not the case today, with TV in most households. How did TV cross that divide? What factors made that a reality? Was it a need for information? Was it the need to know about Vietnam? Was it just the availability of cheap hardware?

Blogs can give voice to the voiceless. A blog can reach a global audience, or it can just reach your friends. The reach is limitless and so long as you tell a good story, the audience will come. It’s time we started hearing some better stories.

[Katrina]
[Media]

Teaching Children to Handle News

As parents, my wife and I have struggled over the years about how to deal with the news. Our oldest was 2 and a half during 9/11, too young to process what was going on, so we did our best to keep most of the images from him. We'd been to the World Trade Center just a few months before, so we worried that he would remember them and feel a sense of connection.

Overall we find it difficult to have the news on with our children around, simply because it's so unpredictable. There may be a political story we want to hear, then, immediately after, will be a story about a deadly shooting in Dorchester or something from Iraq. Also, as most parents know, kids understand more than they let on. I remember listening to news radio with my oldest in the car, I think he was still under 3, and he asked me what a governor was. Turns out, he was understanding some of the stories about then-Governor Swift. I liked that he was learning politics, but worried about what else he understood. I tried to stop listening to news radio with him in the car at that point.

After the tsunami in December we struggled over how much to tell them and erred on the side of caution. But when our then 5-year-old went to school a few weeks later he came home and told us about it as if we hadn't heard. At that point we decided there were certain things that we had to tell him and show him. He needed to hear these things from us and know that we are here and can answer questions.

If nothing else, he needs training on how to handle the news. Over time I've tried to explain that things are on the news simply because they are unusual. They don't happen all the time. If they did, they wouldn't be news. As adults we can process this type of information, but children don't yet have that capacity.

At first we showed them some of the images from Hurricane Katrina. In a sense, we knew what to expect from watching coverage in the past. There would be pictures of strong winds, powerful rains, flooding, broken homes, people crying, water being handed out, etc.

But obviously the story took a turn. The TV has gone off, they know what they need to know at this point: that there was a hurricane, that people are suffering, that they need help, that we need to send it.

I don't want them to know how a government can abandon its own people, that people can take such advantage of a bad situation, that a horrifying scene can continue to get worse. There is no way for a child to put that in context.

Honestly, there is no way an adult can do it either.

[Katrina]
[Media]

Blogging in the Fast Lane

John Cass has a great interview with a GM customer about the mega-automaker's blog. She has a couple of interesting things to say, especially about how angry she is with the company. She's not just angry because she hasn't received her Pontiac Solstice, but because she hadn't heard from GM even after going through traditional channels, then posting a comment on the blog. The point is, the issue the blog was created, in part, to address (customer service) is falling victim to GM's other problems.

Frankly, GM should be commended for taking the risk and blogging. Its executives opened themselves up to a lot of customers by doing that. Bravo!

But I just don't buy the blog. I'm not opposed to the slick editing and rewriting the posts obviously to through, I just would rather hear more heart-felt posts from Bob Lutz that talk about his love for the automobile. Here is a man with an amazing collection and a deep love for all things auto, a love that goes back through most of his life. That should come across online, but it doesn't. Instead we hear how great the Solstice is, or how a particular month was excellent for the auto behemoth.

How much of a problem is this? Well, GM announced a recall of 804,000 SUVs because of breaking problems. That's no small amount of customers. But nothing showed up on the blog about it. In fact, the last post was roughly a week ago and addressed some of the customer service issues surrounding the Solstice.

But there's one thing lacking from this blog: passion.

Lisa Foltz: I think there are positives about the BLOG. Most impressive on the Solstice Blog was the passion people have for this new product. You can feel the excitement in most of the people. Gives me some reinforcement that the product is a good one.

That's a great point. One of my clients points out that as an entrepreneur, one of her greatest assets is her passion and it's something she holds onto above all else. The three companies she's started over her career have always centered on her one passion.

This is something that can easily come across in a blog as the "voice." On the GM side, the automaker has an opportunity to grab people with that passion, not just for vehicles like the hot Solstice, but for other cars as well. I would love to see them reach out to other people who may love their cars, like the "Tuners," those people who spend 10s of thousands of dollars putting modifications onto their vehicles.

For a long time the cars of choice were Civics, Toyotas, Subaurs and Mitsubishis, since they are small, cheap and easy to modify. This is a big business, so much so that some automakers have started to develop vehicles that could be modified from the showroom, or that specifically cater to this demographic.

But never mind the market itself, these people are wonderful brand ambassadors who sing the praises of their vehicle. I'm sure there is some kid out there somewhere with a modified Grand Am, why isn't GM reaching out to him? Helping him become a star? Why isn't Lutz or one of his other executives going to a Tuner show, finding a tricked out GM vehicle and reporting back on what they found? The Escalade alone has a rabid following, tap into it!

Remember the old Pontiac tag line? "We Build Excitement." They need to remember that.

I love that GM is out there, but I'd like to see them do it right and deliver some good stories. Let us get to know Bob Lutz the car lover, not just Bob Lutz, GM figure head.

[GM]
[Media]
[blogging]