Another Plea for Sundays

Granted this is long winded and occasionally pretentious, but darn it, I'd like my full measure of Perspective back along with the Books section of the local paper. Without further ado, a letter to the editor:

Dear Messrs. Greenberg and Kane:

It is wholly a pleasure to engage plastic Chiclets to charge phosphors and diodes in response to the recent decisions of the legacy media enterprise known as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Today’s Perspectives section carrying an obituary to the printed word that was performed either with tremendous irony and just a soupcon of insider’s joke to provoke responses similar to my own, or the complete and total lack of full awareness of the precipice really is systemic of newspapermen.

If I may engage in a moment’s self-promotion – as no self-respecting net media type would not plug their own blog – in my response last month on-line to the downsizing decisions of the ADG by dropping Books and Travel, I noted that it seemed like self-mutilation. Those of us still buying the print edition, are we the best demographic for Style? Gee, if we like our trees dropped on our doorstep, chances are we’d like to read about bound editions of them, AND read the opinions of others about them.

Can I find book reviews elsewhere? Absolutely. But I have become accustomed to the opinion of those I know, and put value in the Brand – there, I spoke the buzzword de jour – that is the motley crew of my local newspaper. In homage to Mr. Greenburg, I seek the Southern opinion on Books, not one that was made in New York City.

Instead, we get more encouragement to go on-line. For those of us in the Great Northwest, a scold that you savages out in the distant hinterlands should log on to continue imbibing in the delivered wisdom of those located in the Central like Philip Martin. Speaking of Mr. Martin’s essay, as he joins the chorus to wring hands and peel bells for the passing of his medium, could we not recognize a truer loss? The departure of the statewide community the statewide newspaper brings.

More and more, the paper becomes an index, and a dated one at that, for what we might find on those pesky internets.

The paperless office we were promised along with The Automobile of Tomorrow has not come to pass. Nor will it. As long as man has committed written language to surface, the quest has not been for the slickest browser, it has been for the cheapest fixed medium. Until the day when Our Scientists can bring us The Newspaper of The Future, some organically grown flexible LCD that can also double as a wrapping for our leftover Soylent proteins, the consumption of paper will continue to increase.

Note to the Greens: Within every home, attached to almost every desk, there is a small cut-sheet printing press. While it lacks the romantic charm and distinct odors of spinning rolls of the printing plant, it fuels our insatiable need for pulp. Quite fiction to think by eliminating a printed edition we save our environment. Have you checked out the amount of heavy metals contained within a single computer, the carcinogenic components of toner and ink cartridges?
But I digress from the central thesis, and do so at my own cause’s risk. After all, I have long ago exceeded the magical 140 characters that all net worthy know is the limit of both our expression and attention span.

Let me restate in the haiku-like form of the Tweet: This isn’t fighting the future; Raising hand to note, can’t force the future; adapt to our needs, give us right info on right platform.

If we believe the RIAA, digital formats were the end of music. Before that, if we believed the Motion Picture Association of America, the video recorder was the end of entertainment. Today, Cassandra speaks through the Legacy Media; those internets are the end of days.

By the way, as sure as the Paperless Office was going to save the forests, even though we are hip deep in the Worst Economy in Recent Memory, sales of CDs and DVDs, both music and moving picture, are up last quarter. How can that be? Because the internet is the most recent incarnation of the most effective advertising medium known to man. The future isn’t in Free Content. Regrettably, it is a proven business : any good dealer will let you have the first taste for free.

The Sunday newspaper is about convenience, just as books are about convenience. Edward Tufte is right – there are some things that work best in print, but you have to be imaginative enough to escape Flatland and give us the content we seek in the medium we want. Stock prices and sports scores are dated, the weather map and forecast is useless when frozen in print.
A sense of salon, that true Value Added content that can only come from experienced writers and editorialists – this is what we seek. And when what we want has migrated on-line, the Sunday paper ceases to fulfill its utility. So I salute you in your march to the edge by reducing the portions of the newspaper of most interest to those who still sit on the porch (and, to be frank and forthcoming, other places) on a Sunday morning to read.

We can’t pass our Kindle back and forth in the coffee shop. We don’t gather ‘round the flat screen. People still trade newspaper sections back and forth on a casual weekend. Reading is an individual art form, and if you haven’t noticed, reading is going up. How can that be as this slack-jawed, finger-twitching wireless X-Box controller generation knows only how to engage either in Mortal Kombat or NCAA 2009 Dynasty Mode? Generation Twitter texts, not talks.

Mourn the passing of the personal letter at your own peril. Before the rise of the E-Mail Leviathan, just how many of those personal letters did you really write? Today, how many more notes to friends and colleagues to you write because it’s easier to sit down at the keyboard, compose and transmit?

Having far exceeding the 700-word limit – wait, let me guess, it can go on-line where word-count is infinite – let me close with the admonition that we, the Loyal Reader, aren’t deserting the newspaper for the browser. Far more often it is the quintessential definition of that old Whittaker Chambers saw as the print edition becomes that curiosity shop unvisited by the public thanks to the decisions of the owner. We want to drop in and visit, particularly on the weekends, but increasingly there is nothing we want to see.

Good night, and good luck.

OK -- I did warn you it was long.

Harry Truman Strikes Again

Remember my favorite Truman quote -- The only thing new in the world is the history we don't know. I'm still just working the fringes of True Enough (again, anyone who tells you spring and summer are "slow" in academia is a liar or tenured full professor), but I've blogged here about the key outlines.

Discovered this quote in another book I'm co-skimming at this time. It's from the 15th century French essayist Michel de Montaigne:

Truth for us nowadays is not what is, but what others can be brought to accept.

Our internet age isn't always as unique as we'd like it. If our weather isn't unprecedented, we can't make the changes we want. If our crisis aren't the worst of all time, hard to justify our suffering.

At the same time, I got another validation for Farhad Manjoo's thinking while visiting with a colleague recently. At a particular school, the new coach arrived and demanded a media guide that had "none of those records or history." Ah yes, let us create our own reality in which our program is one of the finest in America. Don't let the fact that its suffered dozens of losing seasons get in the way. We are the Bestest! Go Lake Woebegon High -- where all teams are above average.

Here's for hoping our variable realities can get reconciled back to a time where there are certain truths.

Sorry for the Outage

Courtesy of a cut in my DSL feeder line that put me off-line from the home for the past five days. Not enough time in the business day to post anything.

Why I Like Soccer

Unlike many sports that I need a rooting interest or some connection, I find I can just sit down in front of any decent quality soccer game and kill a few minutes. During the seasons, it's a great unwinder.

So today, I plop down on the couch and with nothing on early, I see what's on Fox Soccer Channel. Hmm, World Cup qualifier. Iran and Saudi Arabia, OK, I'll give this a few minutes. Turns into a half hour and a great reminder of what futbol means on the world stage.

The politics, the passion, the game -- it was all there. Two ancient rivals -- and by that I don't mean just the 20th century cartography inventions of Iran and Saudi Arabia. There were a sold out 100,000 men in the stadium for a must win home match for Iran. There were three great goals, 2-1 Saudis, and plenty of on-field scuffles.

The soccer was good -- and that keeps me watching.

The drama was high -- look, there's the President of Iran watching his team implode in the final 10 minutes.

The politics were great -- notice, 100,000 men; no women are allowed to attend. Parse that. The commentators noting that Iran can't get friendlies, which affects their game polish severely.

The sport was excellent -- the name on the back of every Iran jersey: I.R. Iran. A perfect touch for a team that's trying to come together and emphasis the team. No individual names, a we are one approach.

Don't tell me soccer isn't serious everywhere else -- the rumor was floated at the end of the telecast that a $5 million bonus was on the line for the Saudi players if they came away with the win.

And, the real obvious takeaway, how small is the world that in Fayetteville, Ark., I can watch a soccer match from Iran with voice-over announcers in Canada creating the English-language commentary.

Winners Write The History

There's an old adage in the history business -- winners write the history. It refers to conflict, usually wars, in which the victorious side's cause takes over the historical record. In our context, the American Civil War is one of the easiest analogies -- the Union was right because it won. That's not an endorsement of the Confederacy; it's the recognition of a fact. Had Hitler succeeded, would Franklin Roosevelt not been cast as a war criminal who singled out people of Asian origin for concentration camps?

To bring another old saw to bear, the line from The Right Stuff: No Bucks, No Buck Rogers.

Winners and losers in the business world are measured in dollars, not sense. And once the big winners in the net media world figure it out, I can predict who the "Big Three" of the early 21st Century are.

Of course, the old Big Three networks, who commanded the media stage and set the national agenda were ABC, NBC and CBS. They are gone. They can barely fund their core functions, much less pay for the type of news organizations they once had.

The New Big Three networks: Google, Yahoo and Fox Corp.

Huh?

What made the old Three was advertising. Money. The Bucks for Buck Rogers. Today, who has the advertising dollars? Primarily the web-based ad network of Google, and to a much lessor extent Yahoo and Fox Corp (notice, not Fox or Fox News -- the mothership).

The sports world got a taste of what this means. Who funded the investigative journalism that turned over the latest round of tawdry recruiting issues in college sports? That would be Yahoo.

When the Googleplex decides it is time to reshape journalism, they will unleash a firehose of funding that will make every net media outlet associated with them masters of their domain.

How they do it, and to what ends are yet to be seen. Could be meet the old boss, same as the old boss. Could be time for something completely different.

One thing is for sure. The new winners are about to write the first draft of history.

Can't Fight the Future

Regardless to my opinion on Twitter, you have to roll with the trends. We've kept an address -- ArkRazorbacks -- in the back pocket since December of last year, but had the sense that it would compete with our website, and thus hurt live blogs, live stats, etc., and just take eyeballs away from the overall click count.

Two weeks ago, I decided to go all in and start using the devise to promo the big stories from here, and send out scoring alerts occasionally.

Take note to this growth curve: 3 followers to 47 in one week; 137 and growing this week.

That's natural growth, no promo on the main site yet. Who's on the follower list? Almost all our 20-something media and most of the net native media that cover our teams.

Here's how I cast it for an administrator here -- feel free to chime in if I missed the target.

50 and up will get out content by subscribing to our blast email list out of the website, and read all the copy inside their email client
35 to 50 seem to grab the same info off the RSS feed, scanning the outbound paragraph to decide what they'll click through to
Rising generation through mid 30s, they want the Tweet to the mobile

Same content, different platforms based on the needs of the user.

John Dvorak -- a devout Twitter distopian -- gives some basic reasons to use it in his column this week. I like his closing statement best:

So anyone who doesn't "get" Twitter is probably on the right track, because there is nothing to get. You invent a use for yourself, if you can manage to think of something useful for it to do.

Your Website is Your Beat Reporter

Further confirmation of the continuing shift from local media coverage to institutional media coverage as the Houston Chronicle dumps three beat reporters on colleges. If you're interested in Rice, Houston or Texas Southern, their SID offices just became your best information source. Excuse me, only information source.

Shocked to Learn

Claude Rains has nothing on the internet community. In England, privacy advocates are just soooo surprised about the latest.

"The U.K. government is considering the mass surveillance and retention of all user communications on social-networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo. "

Vernon Coaker, the English equivalent to Homeland, wants ISPs to keep "communications data" for long periods of time. To read more, jump to ZDNet Asia's story, which was sent out on the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's feed a few days ago.

Not Just Newspapers

To give us all a break from the end of newsprint, could be worse -- you could be an Air Force cadet learning to fly traditional dogfight for the F-22, a plane that might not ever go to full production, against the Russians, an enemy that might not ever materialize. Or a Naval Aviator, learning to slam onto carrier decks that might no longer sail the oceans blue.

Not unlike the quandary of who will bring us our news, think this one through -- who will fly our airliners if the U.S. military gets out of the Top Gun business.

A Perfect Spokesman's Description

Chuck Todd was on NPR's Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!, and said this regarding White House Press Secretaries in general and the current occupant, Robert Gibbs, in particular:

His job isn't to make news; his job is to move the message

Indeed.

This is Going to Get Me in Trouble

For two weeks since I read this, I've debated how to address it. I considered posting it anonymously, because it must be said. At the end of these weeks, I decided I would not be true to myself and my own disdain for the hidden.

The shame of our national organization, CoSIDA, was on full display in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

When you look at the national average salaries for administrative positions within higher education, the Assistant/Associate Athletic Director for Sports Information/Communication is by far the lowest within athletics. In fact, there are precious few administrative positions in all of academe with a lower national average.

I know that the leadership of the organization has been very concerned with realigning CoSIDA away from its independence to an alliance with NACDA. That train has left the station.

One of the promises is of having more access to the decision making table. Fair enough -- let's do something about these numbers:

The national average for our administrative lead positions: $46,020.

That's the only position in athletics under $50,000. It's about $10,000 less than the average for the asst/assoc ADs of compliance (you know, when you think about it, another shame on our field). All other positions -- over $60,000.

It's not just that our profession is low on the pay scale and perhaps longest on hours and commitment. Let's bring it down to this: In the page long listing of literally hundreds of averages for positions all across the campus, there were only nine -- NINE -- that paid an average of less than $50,000.

They are:
Assistant Director of Student Activities -- $41,796
Assistant Registrar -- $42,637
Dean of Greek Life -- $45,000
Housing Officer Residence Life -- $45,576

INSERT THE SIDs HERE AT $46,020

Asst Director of Campus Rec/Intermurals -- $46,444
Director of Mailing Services -- $46,630
Associate Director of the Bookstore -- $47,280
Assoc/Asst Director of Women's Center -- $48.470

This is no shot at any of these other professions. I'm sure they put in their labor as well, and many of them also get or need an advanced degree for consideration. But look at those titles -- Only two are directors -- Greek Life and the Post Office. The rest are subs to a higher paying executive (assistant directors). The assistant/associate ADs for media are usually commanding a staff and front-line with the media and general public.

Let's get the membership motivated and the leadership directed to start dealing with this systemic problem. Retention has become a big buzz word, and the "dead zone" between 10 years experience and 25 years to retirement. Well, I wonder why?

If you can shift across campus on average to become an associate director for publications -- the lowest paying job on average in the external affairs/public relations wing -- for almost $10K more -- $55,085 -- why stay in athletics? Why not go over the wall into the private sector? This is where our best and brightest are headed, and for good reason. The entire rest of University Relations averages above $60,000.

We can be told all day long about how important we are, how valuable to the brand, how critical to managing the reputation of the department. Money talks. Spin walks.

As One Dies, Another Tries

Tomorrow marks the end of the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The last victim, the Rocky Mountain Post, will try to return as an on-line edition in May if the former staffers get a 50K subscriber base at $4.99 per month. Read more brief details here, but the "premium" areas might give them the edge they need.

However, kind of sounds like after the Arkansas Gazette was bought by the Arkansas Democrat and many of the departed former Gazetteers formed the Arkansas Times. They have survived, but that was when print still worked.

Another Edition of Past as Prologue

Via Boing Boing, where Dan Gillmor is hanging out for the next week, Thorstein Veblen writes in 1915 about the state of the "new media" of the early 20th century. The quotes speak for themselves:

The highest product of this development is the class of American newspapers called "independent." These in particular -- and they are followed at no great interval by the rest -- edit all items of news comment or gossip with a view to what the news ought to be and what opinions ought to be expressed on passing events.

See if this sounds familiar:

The first duty of an editor is to gauge the sentiments of his readers and then tell them what they like to believe. By this means he maintains or increases the circulation. His second duty is to see that nothing is said in the news items or editorials which may discountenance any claims or announcements made by his advertisers, discredit their standing or good faith, or expose any weakness or deception in any business venture that is or may become a valuable advertiser. By this means he increases the advertising value of his circulation. The net result is that both the news columns and the editorial columns are commonly meretricious in a high degree.

And, a little bit for the participatory media crowd that stay perpetually upset at the legacy media referenced above:

Systematic insincerity on the part of the ostensible purveyors of information and leaders of opinion may be deplored by persons who stickle for truth and pin their hopes of social salvation on the spread of accurate information.

Rank that right up there with good old Lord Northcliffe -- another turn of the 20th century media raconteur -- "News is what somebody, somewhere want to supress; all the rest is advertising."

14:59 And Counting

The Saga of the Tweeting Juror continues. If you wish to consume his feed find him here on Twitter. I'll give him credit for being in the Tweet pool early enough to have just his first name.

Not Good News

The man who invented the internet says government snooping is the future.

Also, points out that the future is mobile.

Why Is This Book So Hard to Find?

Finally, my copy of True Enough arrived via Amazon. None of the brick and mortars I've visited recently carried it -- again, in an attempt to support my local book monger. Granted, it's a year old now, but this is a very meaningful tome. Probably why you don't see it on the average shelves.

I did get a good couple of hours with CALS copy at the downtown Little Rock location, and came away with some quick hits for the blog.

The central premise is that no longer do we fight over interpretations of events, we fight over the literal facts. I see that often with my history students at NWACC, and my students last spring at UA in journalism. Farhad Manjoo goes a little further than helping validate some of my own dark theories -- the rise of the brand and the decline of the counterbalancing media.

Manjoo posits that society works better when people trust one another, and that trust is breaking down. As trust fades, the "social capital" of a society is spent.

It made me realize something I had been watching for some time. You cannot change a truth held as self-evident through acculturation and observation. You know it to be true, because in the echo chamber you lived you came to see it as gospel and no amount of factual evidence will dissuade the believer.

Manjoo does have his own switch backs. Right after this jewel -- "A medium that makes lying easier won't foster trust" -- he attempts to use eBay to suport the point that on-line communities can be filled with trust. Obviously, he hasn't tried to buy anything there lately.

But eBay transactions are predicated on the fact I trust that you won't screw me over deliberately on a sale, and it brings up the concept of Particularized vs. General Trust. I know you to be trustworthy because I know you as a particular person vs. I don't trust people from your social group because of my general mistrust.

This is one of my early takeaway quotes, speaking of society becoming:

". . . pistons in what has become, today, a powerful engine of propaganda, one that drives nearly all the recent examples of our society's unfettered departures from "the reality-based world"."

However, his final line of the book is going on the permanent quote sheet:

"Choosing means trusting some people and distrusting the rest. Choose wisely."

Indeed.

Demon Technology

I must admit, it's not every day that one opens the local newspaper to find the latest in technology splashed across in banner type:

Twitter use prompts motion for new trial

It seems young Johnathan Powell could not disconnect himself from the outside world while serving as a juror for a local civil trial that led to a $12.6 million judgment. Gee, you reckon the defendant will move for mistrial once your Twitter trail is discovered?

E-discovery is the hot new item in jurisprudence, and Mr. Powell just got himself caught in its web.

I'll leave the news accounts for the details -- here are my takeaways. I'll try to keep them tweet length

Obviously the concept of traditional American jury duty is lost on Mr. Powell.

You look like a goober when you brag about someone else's ill-fate in which you participated.

Did you not understand digital messaging lives somewhere forever?

Or did you just think those squares on the bench were hick-rubes that wouldn't catch you Tweeting?

Legally, it appears this will be much ado about nothing with the Arkansas' standard for mistrial and the fact there is no current evidence that Mr. Powell received outside information -- either by using one of his "toys", his computer which he bragged about being smart enough to bring with him to the trial, or via Twitter. Wait, I'm sorry, that was more than 140 characters. Very well, continuing for those with longer attention spans, Mr. Powell seems quite lost in today's legacy tree version of the story that what he did was wrong.

"They are trying to make it look like I was talking about the trial the whole time I was there."

The concept is you aren't talking to outsiders when you are on a jury. No phone calls. No reading the newspaper. So guess what, McFly (oh, sorry, that's a dated reference to the time when dinosaurs roamed the earth, or at least Vic 20s), the judge means that. It doesn't matter if you made one or one hundred Tweets, you violated the rules. They call that Contempt of Court -- if you're vague on it, try Wikipedia. You gave a good lawyer an opening, and they will now exploit it to the fullest extent possible.

For all of Mr. Powell's sneering Gen-Y contempt -- "It totally caught me by surprise. I find it weird they are making a big deal about it. It's mainly because it's new and it's Twitter. It's technology, and it's easy to confuse people." -- there is plenty of well-reasoned opinion in this event. The judges get it, and that's why Mr. Powell's in dutch. New technology is a part of the court room, and guess what, Mr. Powell, your own ignorance of how it works -- that a friend of the defendant could Google the trial and find your Tweets.

Really, Mr. Powell. Did you think they just disappeared? They aren't SMS text messages. Are you confused? Let me guess, you also believe that Facebook security works and it really isn't that big a deal to pirate digital content, as long as its for your personal use and the use of your 50 or 60 friends that you've brought into your Justin.TV chat room.

At the end of the day, no one can say NWA is off the techno-legal map. We've already started to make the legal blogs, again. We can add this case to our folio of the iPhone boudoir photos at McDonalds and of course the recent unpleasantness surrounding Mitch Mustain.

Legacy Ignorance

OK, I've been a fan of the local papers, and respect the need to make cuts. The ones done recently by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette don't make a lot of sense. They've dumped my two favorite Sunday sections -- Books and Travel. Oh yes, Travel is still there -- just two pages sandwiched into the Style section.

Let's parse this decision. The people who are still buying the print edition are older. They're probably bibliophiles. Yeah, that's playing to strength -- cutting the section that the core demo is most interested in to keep sections aimed at 20-somethings that rarely if ever pick up the print edition.

Whacking down Travel -- same story, second verse. Who's going to take time to read the print edition? The older demo.

Instead, we keep plenty of space for the society section, etc. Honestly, I'd never considered dropping the subscription, but this has me thinking seriously about saving that money and going on-line. I already get the majority of my news there, and don't need another reason to jump.

Convergence Brilliance

While mourning the passing of my two favorite sections of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, I come across this slice of absolute convergence journalism brilliance by Jay Grelen. His column, Sweet Tea, is a regular in the Little Rock edition. Usually, I won't see it as I have been (key word -- been) a NWA subscriber.

Grelen writes about the repair of his old Boy Scout Timex in the Sunday, March 8, edition. His column was a very nice mix of memory lane and modern day. The closer is the key. He gives us a great story that makes us want more, then provides it through a well-balanced mix of on-line extras -- a video of the Timex worker on the paper's website. TinyURLs to old vintage Timex watches. Then the digits to the Timex outlet. I was moved to use all three.

That's the essense of quality content, and how it can overcome the limits of both the paper and the economy.

Only Thing Better than a Library . . .

. . . is a good local book store. Wordsworth Book Company in Little Rock certainly qualifies. You can really tell a well managed independent store. No matter how small, if there's a bibliophile running the shop, you WILL find a book you can't live without.

Such was the case today with Wordsworth. No, that's a quaint little store -- I'll kill some time here. Yeah, small and quaint like Claflin's in Manhattan, Kansas. I escaped today with only one book, but one I'd not seen before in any of the big boxes.

The other thing about a good local store, the sense of salon. It was evident when a Wordsworth regular came in to let the operator know that So-and-So's book club was missing from the display.

Certainly, I'll make the runs to the big boxes -- nobody puts on a magazine rack like a large section Hastings -- but I'm a sucker for the indies. Kind of like my radio partner Kyle Kellams with used CD stores, we'll throwdown for a book or two as a tithe to keep our respective genres operating.

One thing about going into the stores now -- no need to go into the children's section. That's a sad right of passage. Every really good store had a quality section, and both Will and Ashley have gotten their share of books from Joseph-Beth in Lexington, for example. In fact, several of those J-B books got handed down from Will to Ashley. Now with Ashley firmly in the Twilight series, no need for a good quality elementary school book.

This has been a good year for books on the road -- even without the obligatory stop at Square Books in Oxford (no road trips to date to Ole Miss). As long as we alternate Lexington and Oxford, it's all good.

The top road book stores:

Square Books -- Oxford, Miss. Reason enough to take the trip to Ole Miss, one that many others carp about having to take.
Joseph-Beth -- Lexington, Ky. The mothership rules over the other parts of the chain, but the location they overtook in Nashville isn't bad.
Comstock's -- Auburn, Wash. If you are into aviation, there is no other store like this.
Powell's -- Portland, Ore. Got a spare day? No, I mean that literally.
Claflin's -- Manhattan, Kansas. Don't let the fact it's almost as much a thesis and dissertation copy store fool you. I honestly can say that Kyle Kellams and I could have dropped a Franklin each if we weren't on budgets.
Wordsworth -- Little Rock, Ark. I'll give them the props, reminds me of my childhood book store, The Book Mark in Monroe.

I say road, because for used books, there is no equal to our home town Dickson Street Books. Seriously. I've seen them from east to west coast (Powell's included) and for both selection and quality, nothing beats Dickson Street. God forbid those two guys ever decide to give up the business.

Meanwhile back to the game . . .

There's No Yellow Page Listing for Whale Tallow

In a quite pessimistic essay on the future of the newspaper by James DeLong, there are several takeaway nuggets. Or as one other writer recently said, here's the 140 words for the Twitter generation:

The role of gatekeeper and certifier of expertise has largely departed, and they have lost their position as the only game in town for those who want to be informed. Experts can reach out on their own. Slovenly reporting and bias are illuminated.

and

When Hurricane Napster hit the music industry in 1999, the news biz did not sympathize with the recording industry. The editorials were full of comments about “the need to adapt” and “don’t protect broken business models.”

Still, the real strength of DeLong's work -- and it's well worth the time you'll need to invest in it -- is his revelation of something that's been a regular meme in this space: many parts of this change in media is a change, really, in technology.

He highlights three previous great changes in media, although may favorite is the second one:

The nature of the newspaper itself—a cheap, portable, disposable, random access device that could serve as a platform for content of all kinds. Think of it as 19^th-century broadband.

At the end, you get the sense that DeLong is OK with these shifts, and thus the main reason why today we buy compact flourecent light bulbs and don't worry about trimming our wicks and restocking the whale tallow for tomorrow night's reading.

Play the Woman, Not the Uniform

I've said it over and over regarding Tennessee to our own team: when you worry about the Orange, rather than matching up with the person -- you're done.

So far tonight, Auburn is playing the woman, not the unis. Right now, a 18 point Auburn second half lead. That would be tough to overcome. Tigers may be on the way to a very rare regular season-tournament sweep in SEC women's basketball.

Nothing Like a Good Library

Yeah, I know -- the true geek comes out when you make travel commentary on a local library, but the reality is there's nothing like a good, relaxing visit to a quality library. Particularly when you've already exhausted the local options.

The downtown public library here in Little Rock is one of those such spaces, and the friends of the library bookstore next door (OK across the parking lot, but it seems next door). It also afforded me the chance to do a little reviewing on Manjoo Farhad's True Enough -- a book I'd struggled to find sitting on anyone else's books shelf.

The CALS (Central Arkansas Library System) is also the home to a real hidden gem -- the Jay Miller Aviation Collection. Jay had one of the largest private collections of aviation books, real obscure texts and primary documents like NOTAMs and FAA regs.

Not the first time a road library has come to the rescue. The Nashville, Tenn., downtown branch got me up close with Neil Postmann's Amusing Ourselves to Death before I could find my own copy through the used books store system.

Rating libraries by the recent visits:

Nashville downtown (which also has one of the best little brassaries located inside the building)
Seattle downtown (fabulous architecture)
Little Rock downtown (I even liked the old location away from the new sparkling River Walk building)

Facebook's Security Weakness

The thing about Facebook's security is it is based on people. Friends can become enemies and copy party pics out. Friends can think its funny and post your intimate poses. But above all, when you post those nudes, you better assume that since people are involved, they will violate your security.

Case in point at UMass-Dartmouth as a sys admin got sacked for using his privileges within the campus IT to get access to female coed's Facebook accounts, then copy out the photos he wanted.

Yes, he shouldn't be doing it; but I return to the first rule of social network security:

Digitial assets are extremely portable, and once posted, belong to the world.

I know he was very, very wrong. The victim contributed to the risk to herself by posting the photos to begin with. That's not some "the person asked for it" defense -- absolutely not. No one deserves to be publicly embarrassed on-line.

Back in the day, risque photos were kept in the back drawer. Today, they are out for the world to see.

Make no mistake, this guy was a creep, with a webcam and some attempted upskirt shots also found on the hard drive.

For a more chilling view, read the Wired Campus Blog's entry today at The Chroncle.

Welcome to North Little Rock

The week's festivities for the SEC Women's Tournament are underway. Unfortunately, the Razorbacks are out in the first game. We're getting ready for the second session, and we are officially at a three Rocky Top count. (If you're here, ask me and I'll explain).

ALLTEL Arena -- or should I say Verizon? -- is a good venue for the event, not just because its a three hour commute for our folks. The downtown district on both sides of the river is great, the Clinton Library is a must regardless of your political perspective. Lots of cool eateries and night spots.

Meanwhile, back to monitoring the live stat feeds.

Happy 25th

How stupid am I? Today is my 25th wedding anniversary, and when Libby and I got married I was never, ever thinking that this would be a problem.

Then I got into sports information. We should have figured out this was bad when one of our first anniversaries was spent on a road trip. Now, granted, it was to Alaska for the old Northern Lights Invitational and we remember it fondly. However, since getting with the SEC, I've missed almost all the anniversaries running the stats for the tournament.

Fortunately for me, I've got the greatest spouse in the world. She has been incredibly tolerant of the sacrifice of not being home on March 3 for my job and for the SEC tournament. Getting to do that has been a privilege for 15 of the past 17 years. Today is one of those rare exceptions -- I don't have to leave for Little Rock until Wednesday morning. With any luck, we'll actually get to go out to dinner tonight (baring surprises from work).

Happy 25 honey.

Loading Media

Standing at the business end of a huge HP UV printer waiting for a set of color proofs for a project, the status display of the unit is flashing "Loading Media." A moment later, it announces "Media Jammed." The owner explains the printer has such high tolerance that it notices and alerts on the slightest variations in thickness. No small issue since this baby prints from text paper to 1/4-inch ultra-board.

That's when it hits me again -- it really is about the content, not the media.

You can feed anything into this printer. As the print shop guy said, the proofs of my layout and artwork would be good enough now to be a placemat -- sealed, water resistant thanks to the process.

It's not the media that matters, it's the content we put on it. Whether it's paper or screens, the content is the key.

Why can't we get past using that term -- media -- to refer to the content producers? We dumped "press" like the antiquity we perceived it to have become. The "media" aren't the people that produce what we want to know, to read, to see, to hear. The media is the delivery system.

Right now, it's the delivery system is jammed. Might just be that it's too thick -- imagine that.

Montgomery? Crimson Tide?

Working my way through Sal Paolantonio's book, How Football Explains America, and there's good and bad. The concept is solid, and some of the research is interesting. The repetitive nature of some of the copy makes me think it would have been best served as a series of magazine articles -- the same text cycles in a way that tends to pad chapters.

I like his points about the expression of manifest destiny and the zeitgeist of America built into the game.

But, if you're going to be one of ESPN's lead analysts for football, you really need to know that the University of Alabama is not in Montgomery. When speaking of Bart Starr, who was born and raised in Montgomery, didn't play his games there.

"But this was before Paul 'Bear' Bryant was brought home to coach Alabama, and Starr's final two years in Montgomery did not go well."

Sal, you do know the SEC closest to Montgomery is Auburn? I'd like to think this was a bad proof reader at the publisher, as there were correct references to Starr's birth place, then a following reference on the next page that was vague enough to not say they had confused Tuscaloosa and Montgomery.

It's the most obvious factual error in the book, but Paolantonio plays a little loose with his historical interpretations during the turn of the 20th century cross overs. Trying to tie the start of football to Davy Crockett, linking American's desire to associate and group together to the invention of the huddle and equating the Patriot's signal stealing scam with America's victory at Midway -- these are a bit of stretch. No, seriously:

"Yes, let's call it what it is: you've got to try to steal their signals. Don't be squemish about it. It's the American way. How do you think America won World War II?"

Sal, that's not the American way. That's the military way. The Germans were stealing British intelligence, the British were reading American mail, the Japanese were infiltrating the Hawai'ian island. But not halfway down the same page:

"But equating football to actual combat is an affront to anybody who has ever served in uniform."

Then why in the world did you, Sal.

Happy 450th Post & Let It Snow

Hooray snow! Snow leaving Fayetteville, and even better, snow in Auburn. Big, sloppy snowflakes, and by game time today about two inches on the ground.

Two great mysteries. First, how in the world did Cheeburger, Cheeburger! -- the Auburn originated southern premium hamburger chain -- fail in Fayetteville? It's always a pleasure to visit the mothership here near Toomer's Corner. The second mystery -- how does Books A Million fail in Auburn. A major university town without a major big box books store? They've even got a Barnes in Starkville (granted, it doubles I think as the campus book store).

The big upside of the snow here was being the "northerner", non plused by the flakes. Meanwhile, dozens -- maybe close to a 100 -- students and locals flocking to the front of Sanford Hall to pose with the snow and the snowmen.

Let's hope there is a de-icer at the local airport.

More Paper Problems

Coinciding with the final day of the Rocky Mountain News, the American Society of Newspaper Editors have canceled their convention. Plenty of news on this, but here's one of the extra hooks -- ASNE is considering dropping the "paper" from its title and begin accepting on-line only entities.

Better approach than French President Sarkozy's bizarre $700-million US-plus proposed bailout of the French newspaper industry.

More Fun with Hulu

Daniel Lyons' column this week Newsweek adds more to the Hulu story, including some interesting traffic numbers. It is a great read, but to me, the best line is the pull quote/kicker head:

The moral: better content wins.

Where have we heard that before.

What Will TV Do When They Come For You?

As the newspapers fold their tents, don't kid yourselves that the traditional television networks aren't next. The clue is found in the dirty secret of Nielson ratings and advertising rates.

Hulu alternatively is the anti-Christ and savior of the television industry as more and more of the prime demographic watch their video content at a keyboard devise rather than a 4x3 cathode tube.

The networks behind Hulu -- principally NBC but also Fox -- have embraced the horror with their very clever Alec Baldwin promo commercial.

Unfortunately, the bean counters do not. The advertising rates at this time for impressions given are dangerously out of balance.

Dare we say, Fannie Mae-like in their inflation of value.

Oh, not for Hulu. Click through is click through -- extremely quantifiable.

For the teleo-cable industrial complex. Nielsons and other ratings are interpretations of an audience based upon a sample, then transmogrified into huge audiences.

Like the value of that San Francisco walk-up, it's only worth a million if everyone agrees to suspend belief and say it's worth a million.

And there's really 28 million watching that program, because we all -- advertising industry, media, content providers, producers -- want to believe they 28 million sets of eyeballs are there. Unless the cable boxes and TiVo feedback penetration is much greater than we have all been led to believe -- they really are watching what your watching, whether you permissioned it or not -- then this formula continues to require a suspension of disbelieve to continue.

So the same show getting 100,000 Hulu click views is given far less value -- and revenue -- to NBC than the same show that gets a 1.2 share in the ratings.

If this bubble bursts, this crash will be dramatic; it will be catastrophic and make the collapse of legacy newspaper publishing look like a graceful departure from the stage. See, newspaper really began to hurt when the classifieds went, followed by display advertising and off we go with the whole whale-and-plankton analogy. It takes a lot of money to operate television in its legacy mode.

The value of television advertising may prove to be a Potemkin Village. If that ad stream dries up, or jumps down-scale to IPTV, there is nothing, nothing standing in the way of Chapter 7 for the over-the-air legacy stations and networks. Like newspapers, at least cable outlets can gain some money from subscribers.

Of course, this all may continue for some time. Sort of like the value of a dollar bill. It's worth is only what we all agree it is worth; intrensically, only the faith we have in it.

Pannapacker on Mediocrity

W. A. Pannapacker's essay on How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo di Vinci in The Chronicle of Higher Ed:

Productive mediocrity requires discipline of an ordinary kind. It is safe and threatens no one. Nothing will be changed by mediocrity; mediocrity is completely predictable. It doesn't make the powerful and self-satisfied feel insecure. It doesn't require freedom, because it doesn't do anything unexpected. Mediocrity is the opposite of what we call "genius." Mediocrity gets perfectly mundane things done on time. But genius is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. You cannot produce a work of genius according to a schedule or an outline. As Leonardo knew, it happens through random insights resulting from unforeseen combinations. Genius is inherently outside the realm of known disciplines and linear career paths. Mediocrity does exactly what it's told, like the docile factory workers envisioned by Frederick Winslow Taylor.

Delicious.

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Another Gray Lady On The Iceburg

Hearst Corp. drops the bomb that not unlike the Seattle P-I, the San Francisco Chronicle is headed to shutdown or sale.

"Our current situation dictates that we accomplish these cost savings quickly," Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega wrote in a memo to the staff. "Business as usual is no longer an option."

Not the best of news. Comes on the heels locally of the admission that cuts are on for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Crossfire Generation

I've made the assertion that the digital natives grew up with a different than the Woodward and Bernstein antiseptic objectivity.

They matured with the polemic of Pat Buchanan and Michael Kinsley duking it out on either side of a news maker. They revel in Obermann and O'Reilly. They like their news Crossfire-style.

Don't think it's taking over? White House press secretary Robert Gibbs unloaded day before yesterday on CNBC's Rick Santelli for being highly opinionated and highly critical of the Obama administration in a "rant" on the cable news network.

Not sure what the tipping point in this story is. Is it that CNBC now considers solid news coverage a rant? Is it that the White House decided to return fire with its own snarky statement? Or, at the end of the day, that the news coverage became the he said, she said, tet-a-tet?

Read here, consider the answer for yourself.

Sourcing vs. Brand

If I tell you a story about something that happened at the University of Arkansas, depending on the story, you might believe me. I would be a source, and perhaps a credible one because I work at the University of Arkansas.

If you read the same story on a local blog, say Fayetteville Flyer, would you believe it?

If you read the same story on a local message board, say WooPig or Hogville, would you believe it?

If you read the same story at net media website like Arkansas360, would you believe it?

If you read the same story in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette or Morning News of Northwest Arkansas, would you then believe it?

This is the stamp of Brand in the media market -- if an established name plate or call sign reports a story, it must be true. We invest belief in news brands, and our prejudices and predilections drive our selection of those brands. Don't think so? Why I wouldn't believe that trash from Fox News/MSNBC because they're a bunch of conservative/liberal pigs. See the point?

But you believed me because you knew me, and you knew where I worked. Would you then believe the same story told on the university's official website -- uark.edu or ArkansasRazorbacks.com?

This imprimatur of news brand is fascinating stuff because decades ago, it really didn't matter. You dealt with the reality presented to you by your local media, and in many cases it was a chamber of commerce Potemkin Village portrayal of your world. That didn't mean people didn't know the real story, and trade in the real story. It just didn't get into the history books.

What in the hell does any of that have to do with the title?

Your patience with the lengthy set-up shall now be rewarded (call it a test of the digital native's attention span).

The next great wave of creative destruction is upon us, and it is all about source vs. brand. Quickly to one of the hottest fronts in the war -- Hollywood. Here is an industry that lives, thrives, on insider information, gossip and innuendo -- college football recruiting only thinks it has this problem when compared to the alternate realities of the movie industry.

Reporting is at the heart of the beast, and having the best sources is the only way to compete. So the old legacy brands like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are reduced to PR organs and transactions of the day loggers as net media types like Nikki Finke and Deadline Hollywood Daily become the pulse of the industry. The Financial Times has an outstanding recap of the ensuing battle between the established Finke and two new upstart net media productions, Big Hollywood and The Wrap.

The lesson in it all for journalists is like her or not, Finke is the new age net journalist. She's networked. She's connected. She's social. And she knows your inner most secrets and is willing to publish them five minutes after she's confident they are true.

Plus, she gives us a new brutally honest assessment of what works in net media:

“People [in Hollywood] want you to tell them what they don’t already know,” she adds. “That’s what my site is all about."

How did I -- a flack in the college athletic world -- know about the story? Drudge Report. The ultimate net media mash-up -- nothing but links, nothing but breaking, nothing but the edge (of course, as defined by Matt Drudge). Like rock breaks scissors, sourcing trumps brand.

FT's reporter Matthew Garrahan gets the payoff line at the close of his article:

The media industry, at least in Hollywood, is thriving online.

I'll close with my own Hollywood dialog homage.

I want to say one word to you. Just one word.

Yes sir?

Are you listening?

Yes I am.

Sources.

How exactly do you mean?

There's a great future in sources. Think about it. Will you think about it?

Call Me Cynical

Yes, Facebook backed away from its infamous we own you forever change today.

Here's a key quote from CNN's story:

Schnitt said the company is in the process of rewording its Terms of Use in "simple language that defines Facebook's rights much more specifically."

Never said they weren't going to do it.

Here's a new twist, in some way, we should praise Facebook for being up front -- the ubiquitous THEY owns everything you post on-line, it's all harvest-able, it's all somewhat permanent.

At least Zuckerberg was being up front -- which is the way we as a society do not want our bad news -- that they were harvesting, even after you leave.

Let me riff off of the Chris Walters' Consumerist post referenced in the CNN story: Make sure you never upload anything you don't feel comfortable giving away forever. There's no need to add the rest of Walters' quote ". . . because it's Facebook's now."

That's because Google already has cached it.

Novel, But Not Unreasonable, Defense

They say the best phishing comes from the best social engineering; that the most identity theft comes physical, not digital, means.

That's Tony Harris' defense -- his girl friend used his password to frame him with a lewd Facebook post. Now Harris is suspended from Calvin College.

If he can document it, I'll believe him. Privacy is a fickle thing on Facebook. The new TOS changes certainly reinforce it. I've regaled CoSIDA with tales of friends turned enemies who outed photos and copy, notably the walk-on player who walked-off and exposed all the Facebook pages of one team in a BCS conference.

The Chroncle has the story today, and it's a read worth your time. Almost without exception, the schools that are getting away with Facebook-based discipline are faith-based; however, if you say something suitably embarrassing -- particularly athletes -- you can at least get tossed from the team.

One of the key quotes:

However, Mr. de Haan said, reprimanding students for unbecoming use of social media is not unusual at Calvin. The college’s "Policy on Responsible Use of Technology" forbids “any use of Web life (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) that is contradictory to the principles of the college codes of conduct.”

That's a good policy line that others might want to consider. In the policy I'd drafted three years ago for the women's athletic department -- used as a template by numerous other schools -- the heart of the disciplinary part essentially was extending team rules on-line. If you can't do it in real life, why do think it's OK in Second Life?

More and more, the lines blur between what is virtual and what is reality. Wild Palms, anybody?

Remember, You Gave it to Them

From the jump, I've warned users, students, student-athletes and anyone who would listen that you were voluntarily giving up way, way to much data to Facebook.

For those that might have missed it, Facebook changed its Terms of Service last week to make it painfully clear that what was yours, is theirs.

Key quote here from today's WOMMA Word:

This month, when Facebook updated its terms, it deleted a provision that said users could remove their content at any time, at which time the license would expire. Further, it added new language that said Facebook would retain users' content and licenses after an account was terminated.

That's right, even after you leave Facebook, they still own you. And as I have repeatedly tried to get clear to student-athletes regarding copyright issues -- Facebook owns your photos, owns your content. When a rights holder comes after Facebook, they will pass it straight through to the end user for copyright violations.

That will be the one case where what's theirs is really yours -- as in the subpeona.

True Enough

Late to the party on this polemic from last year, but quick scan reveals a similar feel toward where information management is heading.

Farhad Manjoo is the author, and if nothing else, I like the subtitle: "Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society."

Catchy, but I think he may be overplaying. It's not that we live in a post-fact society. Far from it. It's more that we live in the multiple truth society.

Or, as Adam Savage aptly said, "I reject your reality, and substitute my own."

More as I parse.

Teaching the Digital Natives

We need to recognize that we teach the front edge of the networked generation. Our freshman grew up with the rapidly maturing internet, and from this point forward, they will be the digital natives. Their world is the one without time or space; they have lived their lives with the answers to questions at their fingertips. They bring a more cosmopolitan view to college. We must respect them as thinkers and meet them where they are. There is no awe in the classroom. That access to information makes them both smarter, and more vulnerable. We must recognize that the low barrier to entry into Networked Media is open to all – the journalist, the honest advocate, the provocateur and the propagandist.

Multiple platforms lead to multiple personas among journalists; a rise of the punditry class. The generation that grew up with the Crossfire school of polarized debate doesn’t understand the studied objectivity of Woodward and Bernstein. The blogger generation sees objectivity achieved simply through transparency. As long as all the cards are on the table, it is an honest game. They don’t see that revealing ones bias or connections to a story does not always equal fairness. The blogosphere contends that to say Woodward and Bernstein were objective is to overlook the obvious – they were convinced of the guilt of Nixon; as surely as the New York Times staff today was toward the Bush administration and Iraq foreign policy. What they were was scrupulously fair and meticulous in their attempt to get the story right.

Is this to say that we abandon traditional objectivity because it is no longer the fashion of the day? Let me be clear – no. At the same time, we would not be preparing our students for the sliding scale of personality that exists in the Networked Media if we don’t address it. Future employers require straight news coverage, but also request opinionated blog entries. A journalist who covers the state capital turns around and appears as a part of an opinion panel in another medium.

Step Three: Think Exo-Cartonic

As an omage to Dennis Miller and the exo-cartonic . . .

Saying that I encourage students to be exo-cartonic is important. Anyone can think outside of the box. This is a time of innovation, and we must be open to being early adopters. How long before mobile bandwidth and battery capacity overcomes the hurdles to hand-held streaming video? If we have invested our time into the revival of the written word presented to us by the rise of the web site, what happens if they become the static repositories of information? Usurped by a Twittering world, mobile app’ed to the latest news feeds. However, one can’t get outside the box until they know how the crate was built, and in fact, built a few boxes themselves.

Certainly, building a resume and quality experience is important. Making mistakes and reflecting upon them are even more so. When I taught the sports public relations course, one of the standing tasks for the students were the weekly mock press conferences. Some relished the chance to command the room; some squirmed at the thought. They made mistakes. They said things they regretted. But far better to make and learn from those mistakes in a classroom.

The other change we need to bring to the classroom is an understanding of the impact of social networking upon the news industry. The crowd is in control. More and more, they will vote with their browsers for what they find important. There is a fine balance between the information they want and the journalism they need.

We must be ready to relate with the audience. The essence of Web 2.0 is the interaction. Freedom of speech is fully enabled by the Net. The result is the rise of the people formerly known as the audience. They will add information to stories. They will provide feedback. They are no longer just subscribers; they are now part of the process. More and more, they seek to have dialog with the media. And, the more Participatory Media grows, the more they trust it.

This isn’t some X-Files, government conspiracy, the truth is out there rant; people believe those they know more. The faceless byline that brings them information is not as effective as a member of the community.

Step Two: Being a Craftsman

“A poor craftsman blames his tools” is a phrase that I repeat to colleagues and students – and myself – and it reflects the repetition, the drill, the hard work that separates the journalist from the diarist, the casual blogger, the citizen media. The person whose living, whose craft, is not dependent on the quality of the product can shrug and blame the computer. In a world where content is king, and the amount of value added to that basic content is vital, it will be our job to instill an ability to utilize the latest technology. Ironically, here is where I see only journalism, not new media. Journalism education will separate the true communicators from the articulate programmer.

Clear, concise prose is written to suit the medium in question. The future journalist must be as comfortable with the crafting of prose for paper and phosphor, composing scripts for podcast and broadcast, capturing images both still and moving. There will always be a place for specialists, but the future belongs to the Networked – the digital Renaissance man.

Accuracy in the smallest detail remains the highest risk for any author. Misspell a source’s name, and you take a chunk out of your reputation. Misstate quote a document, and the laziness shows. No one believes the higher thinking if the basics are flawed. Sports is filled with examples. Will the reader trust your analysis of the event if the scoring of the box score is incorrect?

This is not to say that mistakes do not happen, but the flexibility of the Networked Media presents unique challenges to how they are corrected. There are standard conventions of for correcting the error. The transparency of the UPDATE, correcting a mistake, is accepted. The practice of scrubbing – replacing an error without notation – will do more to violate a reputation. Remember, once posted a digital account is always there, cached by the great Googleplex waiting to be revealed upon comparison. Don’t be Nixonian – it isn’t the mistake, it is the cover-up of the mistake.

What follows the basics is the difference in Net Media. A reporter did not have to consider interact with the customers on a daily basis. Being an editor did not require a technical knowledge of the printing press. These were the tasks of the publisher. They rapidly moving from need to requirement to compete in the information market place.

Tagging, placement, indexing, comment management, harnessing digital assets, management of information sharing relationships – these are the new advanced techniques for content production. Over time, understanding the basic technology will fade to insignificance, but these internet skills are the key to carrying a message to the community or bobbing in the middle of the digital ocean like a message a bottle, hoping to wash up on shore.

Johnson in The Long Tail made it clear that the difference between success and failure of the on-line enterprise is being found. Creating information is great, but it is must be easily accessed and properly indexed.

How many spent quality time learning to count headlines? Finding that right nine-character word to fit? Today it is fashioning the right key words, tagging the right subject labels.

Step One: The Basics are Still the Key

It starts with the basics: Consistency, clear thinking and accuracy. At the increasing speeds at which journalists are commanded to perform, there isn’t time to Google, to get on line and search. Drilling on the style book of your respective organization or field to insure consistency, and it starts in the introduction class and continues to graduate school.

This is the point where the basics become crucial to our mission. The four Ws and one H applied to the story. Clear, concise composition of the narrative. Good, old fashioned sourcing from two or more fully independent sources. Weeding out the opinions. These become the touchstones.

The techniques to achieve them are increasingly different, but their value to the end product remain the same.

Alongside the time-tested skills of Reporting 101, more than ever, critical thinking skills to vet and verify the veracity of sources in all forms is a basic skill. In the past, interviews and direct experience served as coverage. The Networked Media adds extra dimensions. The crowd’s participation steers the interest in stories. The bloggers and citizen journalists become a force multiplier for the ever-shrinking manpower of the mainstream newsroom. Why is so much time spent by journalists chasing blogger leads – because at the end of the day, people still put faith in the trained professional journalist.

In the end, it’s all about the story, and the ability to be an honest broker. Message is the key to content; content is the coin of the network realm. For some time, repurposing of content was seen as the key to new media. There is great economy in a capture once, use multiple approach.

The best methods recognize the differences in multiple platforms and the knitting together of content in its four forms: Written – Oral – Visual – Data.

My New Favorite Quote

"News is what somebody, somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising”

This is not the paranoid ranting of a new media think tank, it is the classic statement of turn of the 20th century British journalist, Lord Northcliffe. Journalism’s role as honest broker becomes more pronounced in a world filled with strategic communication and brand management. The “straight” news story as a point of departure for the age of opinion is vital.

CBS Gets It

Hey, did you see Letterman last night? You've got to see Joaquin Phoenix. It's on YouTube.

After seeing a couple of stories, I figured, you know, got a few minutes before tip, let's see what the fuss is about.

YouTube clip pops right up, posted 16 hours ago, about 16,000 views -- which seems low. Click on the clip and bam -- this copyright material has been removed at the request of CBS Television.

Hmm. I wonder . . .

Not only does CBS.com have the clip, it's the featured first clip on the front of the website. That's where the traffic is now, not YouTube. Talk about playing to strengths. Be the one to tell your story and protect your copyright material from others.

Oh, and if you haven't seen it either.

Creative Destruction in Journalism School

What does it mean to J-School? The most important thing is we need to become intensely digital and promote our relevance.

For all the smug comfort I can muster from the past toward today’s media market, the one area we cannot overlook is the relative short life span of J-School providing a significant role in American journalism. The rise of the Penny Press required no special studies.

The construction of the great Pulitzer and Hearst empires needed no MFAs. And the Golden Age of Radio, then Television, saw little impact from collegians. A little time spent on-line reveals a considerable doubt among the digital natives about the value of journalism school.

Of all the parts of that once relatively stable institution of American journalism, if we are not careful, the J-School could prove to be the most disposable. Our Golden Age – the post-Watergate boom – has faded away.

We must promote our strength. The knowledge base a broad-based liberal arts education provides. A blend of the best practices of the past with an opportunity to experiment with the front edge of communication technique.

Phelps Learns the Hard Photo Lesson

Call this the start of the celebrity privacy backlash. It was going to take an "all-American" type like Michael Phelps.

From Seth Myers weigh in on SNL this week with one of his Really?!? rants to our areas state-wide paper columnist Wally Hall, there is a somewhat consistant theme: what did he do wrong?

If we take the whole marijuana is illegal part aside, why does Phelps get a pass where Ben Rothlesburger, Matt Leinart and other haven't?

Because we like Michael. Because he's his mother's boy. And he's beaten the French in dramatic fashion. And you know, he's a 23-year-old and he's gonna party like a rock star.

It is a bit of good news for the celebrity class, who should get a chance to have some space, that perhaps the idea that the anonymous photo taker is getting called out as much as Phelps.

At the end of the day, Michael, you might make sure all the cell phones go into the check bag the next time you want to cut loose. Of course, you've got three months time to work that system out.

Gillmor Strikes Again

Followers of the blog know the high regard here for Center for Citizen Media and its chief thinker, Dan Gillmor. This week, Dan recapped the appearance of Robert McNeil at Arizona State with some ideas on the future of journalism school. Gillmor has done a position paper on the need for broader education -- the user and non-user -- for media. I've cast it as having a wine tasting class -- you don't know how to tell the difference in quality until you're shown.

Gillmor has a quick check list for the things that such a course of action need:

For media consumers:

• Be Skeptical
• Exercise Judgement
• Open Your Mind
• Keep Asking Questions
• Learn Media Techniques

For media creators (after incorporating the above):

• Be Thorough
• Get it Right
• Insist on Fairness
• Think Independently
• Be Transparent, Demand Transparency

Read the post here.

More on Net Media

Continuing a series of posts on "new" media

A more appropriate name for this era is Networked or Net Media. Until the computer network reached a maturity and capacity with the tools accessible to the masses to allow for the massive concurrency of real time, the “new media” was just experimental media, which often failed. We now see the emergence of information systems that are significantly robust and tools for dissemination that have little or no cost. As a result, not since the invention of written communication has the barrier to mass communications been lower in human history.

Net Media defeats both time and space. While technologists speak of going from Kitty Hawk to the moon in less than a century, society has gone from journalists repackaging events for consumption to living in real time as if we were there.

Consider Mumbai. Fifty years ago, we would have received dispatches two or three days later, perhaps a newsreel in a month. At 25 years ago, some satellite clips and a radio broadcast from the event. Today, you could participate in the attack with real-time Twitter text, streaming audio and video.

Each step along that time-line, we could have said there was a new media change. What has changed, what is truly new, is the methods of dissemination. The 24/7 cable news channel was nothing but a gateway to the era of networked journalism. The mesh, the grid, the network becomes the medium and it is open to all.

The new, once again, isn’t so new. Television was to kill radio; cable to destroy broadcast; now the internet to crush newspapers. We’ve had participatory media for decades – it was called letters to the editor. That said, it does not mean that profound changes aren’t happening. On AM radio, the music has indeed died, becoming the medium of choice for opinion – both political and religious. The age of the Big Three is over but the rise of the cable network in their place.

But Rupert Murdoch said it best in his Boyer Lectures in his native Australia in December – a time of creative destruction.

Along with the change of time and space, the networked age brings us the ability through digital assets for almost infinite supply. Chris Johnson called it The Long Tail, and it has reorganized the music industry, is working on traditional publishing and certainly hastens the demise of brick-and-mortar news groups like the Tribune Company and the New York Times.

This Just In

In a discussion yesterday with the Lemke Journalism School, I said that one of the areas that we need more quantitative research into regarding Net Media is the impact of brand.

When a story is reported from Participatory Media, at what point does it become "real"? I argue that for all the speed of Twitter, it won't flash over until a Legacy or highly respected Net Media outlet manned by journalists verifies. What we have is a tipster-confirmation system.

Well, didn't take 24 hours to get a test case. Twitter feed is the first reports of a significant layoff at the Mothership in Bentonville. First Tweets, they're just rumor until one of the Tweeters posts the official memo. Shortly thereafter, Arkansas Business enters the fray -- interestingly on the Twitter platform, Tiny URL'ing to their website.

About eight hours later, the regular media started to jump in with conventional reports. But the local Fayetteville Flyer had the jump about an hour after the Tweets began.

So again, at what point was it real? For the digital natives, the moment it started moving on the Participatory Media; if not, when it hit their local blog. Obviously as it migrates quickly into the Legacy Media at 10 p.m., it is out there.

Thinking of the force multiplier effect, did the Tweets and rumors alert our local media and send them into action, or was it the arrival of the WMT presser.

Speaking of the Legacy, the Morning News of NWA, who has had a post when ready policy, posted their latest update rewrite to their lead story at 7:31 p.m. tonight. Judging from comments, they hit the story on-line around 11:30 a.m. They've had time to build the business community reaction piece, which dropped around 6:21 p.m.

Contrasting philosophy, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette moved a brief on its website at 4:41 p.m., but referenced:

Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

Thank you for coming to the Web site of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. We're working to keep you informed with the latest breaking news.

The second line is an interesting detail -- to be honest, I haven't checked lately to see if there's been a policy change, or was this short story a one-off because of the significance of the cuts.

Oh, and by the way, for those out there in America -- Walmart with all its solid profits during a downturn laying off people at the HQ. With absolutely no pun intended, that should be taken as a sign of an economic apocolypse.

Here close to the epicenter, we would have considered Walmart bullet proof, or at least recession proof.

Now, who will you believe? In many comments and Tweets, people are opining that this is just Walmart doing some adjustment. Part of the change is pulling home to Bentonville some jobs that have been remote from the headquarters.

As they say, developing . . .

Barack Gets It

The President's trip to Fort Myers, Fla., was live-blogged today on the White House's home page. This is a bit of a breakthrough for the stodgy federal bureaucracy. This month's Wired details the hurdles ahead as Obama's team tries to transition from the free-wheeling free market world of the campaign to the government.

Everything Old is New Again

After a weekend spent pondering my navel in anticipation of a presentation yesterday, I've come up with a different label for what we do. I've been a little bothered with "New" Media from about 15 minutes after the jump. Berkman Center has its own ID set, and really like Legacy Media and Participatory Media (I'll drop my own B&B [boards and blogs] for that one), but Web-Native doesn't do it for me.

I'm settling on Net Media, and more posts to come on that. Among the reasons to be posted, what comes after New Media. New and Improved Media? Sort of the same end English and other liberal arts got into with Modern and Post-Modern. Post-Post-Modern? Right Now Modern?

Anyway, something I forgot in the talk about how JOUR 101 is different in a Net Media world was this example. One of my three points was it really still is about the basics, but we have new skills to replace old skills. If you can't write clear prose, do good sourcing, etc., doesn't matter if you're new, old, modern, what -- you won't do good journalism.

As I violate that first point -- to the point. When many of us came up, you had to learn how to count characters for headlines. A fine skill. I was great at it. Figuring out that synonym for what you want to say in the last nine characters was an art. However, desktop publishing solves that. That doesn't mean a similar art doesn't exist today -- tagging your stories requires the same thoughtfulness about what is the essense of this story in four or five words or key terms.

And some days, particularly with the front-end editor we use for ArkansasRazorbacks.com, you better still count your characters in the headline. Or you get the dreaded elipsis.

Automatic for the People, Indeed

Weaver D's is an Athens, Ga., legend, made famous by the local band REM. In dozens of trips, I've never made the stop.

That won't be the case again.

The man himself manned the counter, handing out the end-of-the-day specials I'd read about. Since I wanted the white meat, I'll not get the discount; but my radio partner Kyle Kellams opts for the dark meat.

The atmosphere was exactly what we expected, and Weaver was a hoot. There was only one couple in the joint when we walked in.

I worried about the veg, only because I'm not much of a veg person. Kellams, however, I sensed was in hog heaven. Lacking many options, I go for double rice and gravy -- a very thin, turkey and gibblets looking gravy. Well, at least the chicken looks nice.

Oh, I was wrong. Oh so very wrong. The gravy was tasty, and gave the rice a gumbo-esque flavor. The chicken was unlike anything I'd had since my childhood.

My grandmother always encouraged me to "polish the bones," and her fried chicken made that easy. Let's just say there wasn't a lot of debris left on the plate as I gleefully sucked the bones clean.

And when Weaver drifted by our table to ask how the meal was, I started to say "fanta --", but before I could get out the "tic", he shouted out "AUTOMATIC!".

Automatic, Indeed.

Bridging the Gap

One reason why I enjoy teaching the second half of U.S. history at our nearby junior college is the chance to be that bridge between old and new. There are some real constants.

In fashions -- both political and haberdashery -- everything old really will become new again. Let me be clear -- I'm not one of those history WILL repeat itself people. It will loop back through similar circumstances, but it never rolls the same.

So as I look forward on new media in particular, I see a tremendous amount of the past in our future.

Last Hit on Phelps

It has become so routine, it's hardly worth comment anymore. High profile athlete goes to party. High profile athlete gets photographed:
A) drunk
B) stoned
C) groping
D) all of the above

And the pundit-sphere has run the gamut from arrest him to leave the kid alone. On the one hand, he's a kid getting paid big money to play a kid's game. On the other, half a century ago at 23, he'd be an officer leading men to their .

This is the part I found interesting. The party was three months ago. There's the abject lesson for college athletes and their administrators. This stuff never goes away. It took a long time for the images to wind their away around the internet to a traditional media outlet that would use them. When they did, Team Phelps allegedly offered all sorts of "incentives" for the British paper to not publish.

I suppose if I were the publicist involved, I'd be throwing everything at the paper to protect my client. To me, the disturbing part is the newspaper may have been listening.

Broadening the Audience for Quality

John Cleese famously advanced the wine world with a how-to DVD a couple of years ago, Wine for the Confused. As we consider the future of journalism school, we might take a page from the vineyard. Educating our consumers to the nuances, the nutty undertones, the need for some sources to breath -- tell me the concept doesn't transfer?

Granted, there is a fine line between elevating the debate and returning to the command role of the editor (we'll decide what is news for you) to the group formerly known as the audience.

Such a lecture (or even short course) serves two goals. The obvious is to bring to the non-journalist, non-news junkie a new skill set to properly assess the web. Sort of a bit of civics to maintain that ever-so-important societal value in a democracy -- an education populace. The second is a bit more evangelical. If we are to trust the people, trust the judgment of the mob, we should take a little time to show them the basics to good journalism.

After all, as the crowd increasingly becomes the source, it would be nice if they had a touch of the 5Ws and H.

It's Called a Lack of Taste

In some Claude Rains moment (I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here), the traditional and digital media are taken aback by the use of the Obama brand to sell merchandise. Blake Rutherford's blog provides the pointer to a Bloomberg report on how White House lawyers are looking into limiting usage of the President's visage. It contains this money quote:

“I can’t remember this ever happening to an active politician before, as a spokesperson or as an image for a brand,” said Brad Adgate, director of research for Horizon Media Inc., a New York-based advertising agency.

Um. Does anyone remember pillbox hats? Jackie Kennedy styles? Perhaps the difference is today we are a lot more shameless in the exploitation of public personalities for profit. Thinking back to the style-setting Kennedys, maybe we're a little more transparent about it today.

And for those lawyers -- welcome to the public domain, baby. Kind of like trying to trademark the American flag.

This Just In

President Obama is proud of the new legislation that will cap executive compensation at $500,000 for any financial firm that accepts a government bailout.

That's less than any head football coach in the SEC. Less than I think all the men's basketball coaches. Less than 2/3rds of the women's basketball coaches in the Big 12.

$500,000 can get you an assistant coach/recruiting coordinator -- but not a defensive coordinator -- at Tennessee.

I'm not really sure what this says for America. An attempt at retroactive vengeance for a bunch of Bonfire of the Vanities-types puts the federal government in the wage and price controls business. (FYI -- The bill should have been called the Lawyers Employment Act; good luck in court. See: NCAA vs. restricted earnings coaches.)

Meanwhile, a market-driven escalation of coaching salaries the past few years threatens to cripple athletic departments, and in turn, injure the bottom line of some of our most important public institutions.

Then again, Urban Meyer did have a better year than A.I.G.

Deresiewicz is Right

Technology is terribly isolating. I notice this while sitting in the surgery waiting room this past week. I'm the only person with an iPod, and the only one who is not engaged in the nervous community that comes from these kind of places.

Perhaps it's a product of growing up in a hospital -- my father battled through a series of chronic illnesses, and as a child and teenager, I knew were all the best vending machines were hidden in the back corners of St. Francis -- but I'm just not much for that any more. Too much time spent also sleeping in ICU waiting with my mother's cancer.

So the gift of podcast allows me to escape. At least, I'm self-aware of my retreat from the community.

At the same time, the other half of my portable tech allows me to immediately become a part of a conversation with friends scattered by circumstance and ice storm. Texting gives me the sense of salon that I'm not going to have with the folks that have been randomly placed with me.

Once again, time and space are defeated by the digital age.

Here's the irony twist -- waiting in my mailbox was last week's Chronicle, in which William Deresiewicz opines the same concept in far more elegant prose. I give my highest recommendation to The End of Solitude.

There are some riveting points.

Technology is taking away our privacy and our concentration, but it is also taking away our ability to be alone.


Man may be a social animal, but solitude has traditionally been a societal value.


I particularly like this little ditty:

If Lionel Trilling was right, if the property that grounded the self, in Romanticism, was sincerity, in modernism it was authenticity, then in postmodernism it is visibility.


Deresiewicz gives us a lot to think about regarding the motivation of the digital natives, and their almost born instinct for notoriety and faux community.

From the Ministry of Silly Walks

The Pythons get the internet. Give away a quality product, and you can reap return with premium content for pay. To that end, Monty Python now has its own YouTube channel with many of their best bits available to watch for free.

Oh, but they might not buy.

Oh, how wrong. Sales on-line are up dramatically since the channel launched with the typical Pythonesque attitude:

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.

They close with the obvious:

But we want something in return. None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.

It's here.

UPDATE: Heavens. It's the Ministry of SILLY Walks, not Funny.

Did I Mention I Hate Ice

Small look at Ice Station Fayetteville. In spite of the trees on the house, we were much more fortunate than our neighbors.

You Didn't Just Say That

"I heard it. That guy, he's a d***, man."

Oops.

Open mike for one of the producers or directors, or was that one of the talent, of the local Fox affiliate. Little gap between the end of Fringe and the start of the news.

More J-School Notes

What separates the articulate programmer and the clever bystander from the journalist – journalism school.

The depth of knowledge that comes from a reflective liberal arts education is the crucial key.

It’s not the memorization of facts, and not simply the learning of key skills; not even the exercise of learning to learn.

I take this from my work teaching American history at NWACC. More than one instructor derides the teaching of "facts" as we can just google them. Unless, of course, one has no baseline of knowledge to work from, leading to over-reliance on on-line sources.

How does one judge the veracity of a Wikipedia entry? Or discern an advocate website from some strategic communication astro-turfing?

We are only as good as our sources -- whether human or digital.

Thoughts on J-School

In advance of a presentation next week on new media at UA's Lemke School, this is the first of a series of notes as I prep.

We can’t assume that we can’t live without journalism school. Creative destruction is a spectre that hangs over the hallowed halls just as it does the mass media.

America did just fine through the penny press period and the rise of the mass media. It was a vocational field, where young talent was brought up through a guild-like system.

In a digital age that can lead to the simultaneous deconstruction of the newsroom and the metastasis of news sources on-line, where are the editors, the columnists, the older beat reporters who can instruct. Here is where j-school steps into the breech.

Politicos Continue to Prove Fan First

While athletic departments continue to struggle with the idea of going direct to their supporters, politicians from Barak Obama to the speaker of the house here in the state of Arkansas. Robbie Wills is blogging the current session, including his "wall-like" side posts. His reports are picked up by other digital media in our state, and he certainly is setting his own agenda. Check his blog here, and some interesting words for Dick Armey.

Where For Art Thou, Jonah

Fayetteville's leading political blogger has disappeared.

Sorry for the Delay

This has been a very bad week. First of all, greetings from the now unthawed Ice Station Fayetteville (nod to Max Brantley). The damage here was, on a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 is no damage and 10 is total, was a strong five, maybe six. Along with almost all the trees taking potential lethal damage, I lost every antenna (something the fellow hams can relate to) and my generator got toasted. However, it is nowhere near what some neighbors (three roof punctures next door) got, so for that, I'm thankful.

I invoke the 0-10 scale as I've been hearing that a lot from nurses to my wife about her pain with surgery this week. Nothing like being in the hospital while all ice breaks loose around you.

So, my apologies to the followers. With any luck we'll get back on schedule. And for that one person who emailed asking about a project, well, you know, I was thinking about a new angle for that while riding shotgun in the ambulance carrying my wife back to the hospital on Friday, about 90 minutes after I got her home. Gosh, if all that house damage and that pesky 911 call hadn't gotten in the way. In the future, I will make sure to schedule our family emergencies around those deadlines. Thank you, in particular, for your kind thoughts.

Another Throwback

Leo Laporte is pushing Predictably Irrational with his Audible commercial today on TWIT. Premise of the book is intriguing, and before the standing Audible pitch the TWITs were talking about hard-sell tactics in the brick-and-mortar electronic sales industry. Dvorack, of course, is hearkening back to the old days.

Then it hits me. Laporte is pimping the Book of the Month Club, iPod-style. Sign up for two books of your choice. If you don't want to continue the service, cancel but the first two books are free.

I can't be the only one who see it. How many times did I sign up for a Military History or Aviation Book Club to pick off the four free books? Or the Columbia Record/Tape/CD of the Month -- following the tech iterations that followed that program. And then forgot to cancel and ended up paying full retail plus shipping and handling for some remainder book getting flushed out by a publisher.

Predictable Irrationality at work here, as I'm really thinking about it, to get a copy of, yes, Predictable Irrationality. Oh no, a circular meme infection . . . . .

Blast from the Past

There it was on the hotel nightstand, a flashback to my youth -- the HBO Guide. Oh, those were the days when you'd wait for the cable bill and pull out your only preview, your only listing for the only movie channel on your black box.

So 1978.

A sneering chuckle, that was, until going down to breakfast and discovering genuine country ham in the hot box. Oh my, if you dig around the edges, you can find that chewy, over-done slice. Just like back home with mom from the 70s.

Yes!

Sometimes, retro is good.

Changing Times on the Road

Kyle Kellams and I have hit the road for women's basketball games for years. In the past, the quality of cable television was important at the hotel. Now, it's just whether or not the WiFi is free.

Funny how for most trips, the TV -- as tonight -- never gets turned on.

Just Throw It Up On the Website

The internet is not the slap-dash place many people think. That phrase, "hey, just throw it up on the website," reveals both a lack of understanding and a lack of respect for everything digital.

Does it require a dark room filled with D-76 and RapidFixer to get photos on-line? No. A 16mm fill developing machine and a CineView to cut moving pictures? No. A reel-to-reel recorder for audio? No.

Just because the labor-intensive means of message production are behind us does not mean that creating on-line content is simple.

Because you can post a photo within a minute or so does not mean it took considerable time to arrange and present that image.

In fact, the quality of the on-line presentation has a direct proportion to the number of people and the time spent in planning.

Streaming media is another one of those vastly understood enterprises. Just because one guy with a camera can stream an event doesn't mean it will be of the quality that brand representation deserves.

The lack of respect part on "throwing it up" reflects a total inability to realize that the seemingly ephemeral website is as permanent in this digital world as a high-gloss four-color printed publication.

When you "throw it up," that's exactly what it often looks like -- puke.

I'd be interested in feed back from other digital professionals.

Laporte Weighs In

Leo Laporte, master of the new media and host of This Week in Tech, gave the closing keynote of MacWorld. Not something I would usually be seeking a copy of, but listening to Leo speak on WeatherBrains I caught bits and pieces of his take on the end of the "old media".

I've found these notes, but I'm hoping someone could find a full copy -- audio would be fine.

Don't want to offer my take off someone's quick notes, but my opening graph I think tells a lot about the interconnectivity of the digital media. While I take TWIT as a podcast, it was one of the great purveyors of new media making a cross promotional appearance on a completely different medium -- a weather geek podcast -- talking about his remarks at a conference.

There's the essense of mixing your media.

60 Days to Digital

This post has nothing to do with television, and whether or not recently inaugurated President Obama will flinch and back away from the conversion deadline.

It does concern the Post-Intelligencer, one of Seattle's long-time great newspapers declaring that it was for sale and if a suitable buyer is not found withing 60 days, it will cease paper production and go all on-line.

That's Hearst Newspapers making that move. The once profitable and powerful Hearst ready to shed a major brand. It lost $14 million last year alone. The editor announced that he firmly believed they would soon no longer "publish in print."

Here's the extra kicker -- the P-I itself made the announcement and set the stage with a video on its website.

Gee, how about that. A brand using its primary communications vehicle to go directly to its consumers to convey bad news first, to set the tone, to establish the agenda. The story is pretty blunt ("Potential Buyers -- Zero?") and somewhat negative -- including gloomy comments of staffers.

Now, the rest of us will comment from that starting point, rather than allowing other media to break the story and become the secondary commentator trying to steer a conversation started by others.