Visuals are the Key

A nugget of Gruen magic I came across in iPad notes. Todd Sampson was speaking of how to build an effective political commercial.

When you can graphically represent something, that is the image that will stick with everyone. Todd follows up with the nut graph:

They say with the spoken word, only 10 percent of it will stay with you for three days. If you add a visual and you will remember 65 percent of it.

Remember the best commercials that stick with you? They have a compelling visual element, an eye-catching hook. Not just a talking head. Not a bunch of B-roll video either. A message that is conveyed by the symbiotic marriage of the two.

Consider that the next time someone is asking you to scrimp on the graphics budget for any project.

Wayback Machine Rolls Out

If you're reading this on Friday, I'm likely looking out the windshield of my Mini Cooper headed to Starkville, Miss.

You're driving?

I get that a lot. Frankly, I can do my job better outside the team charters -- I get there earlier to shoot background shots and video and stay late to make the website posts so the SIDs attached to the team can depart in a hurry. Besides, I like the road.

There is something to be said for seeing America, stopping at the local mom-and-pop, meat-and-three spots; the local burger and BBQ joints. And considering the amount of gear I'm carrying, I get really tired of being TSA's favorite customer. The cost with short notice tickets is about the same, particularly once mileage is put against rental vehicles and staying an extra day sometimes for a flight. We came out slightly ahead driving to Auburn over flying anywhere near earlier this season.

Plus, I get the chance to catch up on podcasts -- you can bet there will be a series of new blog entries based on some of the ones I've saved up. And unless I get the chance to finish out that pilot's license started years ago AND the university wants to pick up charter fees, I can usually get anywhere our teams are going via commercial means within two or three hours of them. If it's a short hop trip with a change over, I can almost make it even.

For example, I'll not go direct all the way to Starkville because of hotel bookings, but that would be drive to XNA, fly most likely to Atlanta, change planes, sit in the airport, fly to Golden Triangle, get a rental, head to Starkville. Same for Birmingham or Nashville. I can drive almost all of them in 8-9 hours. Good luck flying to them in less than 6-7 hours. Remember, in addition to the hour or so flight hops, it's a 40 minute drive from the house to XNA here to factor, plus the hour for TSA.

So, if you're rolling around north Mississippi on Friday or the Arkansas Delta on Sunday morning and you see the WAYBACK plates on a Mini (and Mr. Peabody's decal next to the license), don't for get to wave.

The Wall of Noise

Phil specter may have come up with the phrase Wall of Sound to describe his unique way of mixing music in the 1960s. In 21st century messaging, I see a variation -- the Wall of Noise -- and it has a very different meaning.

Instead of creating a distinct vision and sound like Spector, an organization deliberately generates so many messages that it becomes an overload of information flowing outward. This can satisfy many purposes. For the consumers of the organization that cannot get enough about the group - from a rock star to an athletic department - this is a modern miracle. As a strategic communication tool it will often dull the overall message, too much of a good thing, and lead to an inability to articulate a clear message.

Unless that exactly what you want to do.

The Wall of Noise can also serve as a masking agent for other issues. Just like audio engineering, by raising the background level -- injecting static -- it becomes harder to hear individual items. White noise, that roaring whoosh that once upon an analog time was accompanied by visual haze on the old television screen.

This becomes a variation on the hide in plain sight strategy. The answers were right there all along, but you didn't notice them. The Gorilla Effect on steroids.

Lots of organizations stumble into creating Walls of Noise. It's so easy with the digital tools at our disposal to crank out more and more content. In the past, one, maybe two, press releases a week. The occasional video update or audio file. Active real-time reporting tools can create that in half a day, much less a week. Without realizing, the organization has reset it's noise floor.

The downside becomes changes in that stream of information become alerts those who you don't want noticing something. The change in pattern alone by the organization is the trigger for even more attention. A group who is very limited in info that suddenly starts to churn out content like mad is revealing it is in trouble. It's like chaff, the bursts of aluminum shards spewed out to avoid anti-aircraft missiles.

Far more common is the opposite; the unit that suddenly goes quiet after being very open and accommodating. They become consumed with fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, and like the proverbial deer in the headlights, freezes; hoping by being still to avoid the on-rushing crisis.

It is the change in pattern, and it takes real discipline to not vary of the standard operating procedure.

A group that creates a ton of info is best served by finding ways to keep that flow moving during a crisis, and keeping it going in the area of concern. This will raise the least suspicion. Human nature is to clam up during a crisis. In extreme events, it may become necessary to do so - for example in the middle of a life safety event is no time to push out feature stories. Prepackaged stories that detail what to do during the crisis - absolutely.

One can certainly mask a negative event within a flow of other messages. It was a tool of "self-inoculation" against bad news that many politicians use; revealing something bad about themselves before the opponent gets the chance go do so and put their spin on it. The Clinton White House appeared to master the technique, and gain a large amount of message control as a result. After all, if given the opportunity, everyone would like to be the one telling their own bad news.

WaPo for iPad

People ask a lot about iHog and I tell them, the first generation we created last year was inspired by the clean layout used by New York Times with their first app.

I've seen the future for Flatland -- Washington Post has it. It was first attracted by a snarky on-line media outlet's post picking fun at the video used to promote the app. Actually, I find it quite refreshing, including Ben Bradlee's closing line:

"These kids think Tweets twit themselves"

Which I dutifully tweeted myself last week. Since, I've downloaded the app and find it a very nice "newspaper" presentation. I wonder if that will work with a rising generation that can't appreciate a nice three column layout and the WSJ-like divided sections and the little wood-cut like illustrations. Quaint for us old folks.

More significant is the pricing structure. You get WaPo for free until February 2011 -- typical and proven drug dealer marketing, the first taste is free -- but the costs are reasonable. Far more so than WSJ or NYT, and I'd actually consider paying the rates. I wish my area papers would follow suit with this format.

Not a Good Sign of the Times

Earlier this summer, I commented about the broadening of the coverage of college sports into more of the entertainment world. Notably, TMZ's entry into "sports" coverage which ads another investigative unit on the national scene to the work being done out of Yahoo Sports. Recall it was TMZ that broke open the Oklahoma basketball business, first gaining attention for it's college effort. Previously, TMZ stuck to the celebrity news around pro sports, and usually the glitz capital (LA, NY) teams. This afternoon, welcome to the SEC as TMZ made its second foray into the Newton business.

Social Campaign for Social Results

For the past two weeks, we've carried a "widget" on our website provided by Davey O'Brien Award to promote Ryan Mallett in the fan voting. And with that passive little button, Ryan stayed firmly mired below 10th, hovering near 12 most of the time. What to do -- let's build a big banner ad and run it on the front page was the suggestion that had early momentum. That will get the attention of our huge fan base.

My counter was -- different from the widget how? Yes, larger. Yes, higher up the page. But during the discussion, the point became understood. After a while, it was conceded, you just don't notice the display ads. They don't change. They're just there. They become part of the background.

So change it every day! Sound of teeth gnashing.

Can we try this instead -- we want a specific action from our fans, who we need to interact with to achieve. The plan was simple. Go to all our social tools -- Facebook, Twitter -- and all our participatory places -- blogs, message boards, born digital media -- and give them a simple message.

O'Brien counts your vote in the overall. We want Ryan Mallett to make it to the finals. You can be a part of that process. Please go vote. Ask your friends to vote. And you can watch your progress at this website.

Mallett started the weekend at just over 1,000 votes. Starting with the on-line interactive blog for the game (adding a "Vote Mallett" button to our standing links) and promoting it several times in the blog, we began to move the needle. Changing over our Facebook friend page image to a "Vote Mallett" graphic, I started making regular posts and interacting with our fans to encourage them to vote.

Same by reaching out, under my real name, to the larger message boards on Sunday into Monday. Today, we started integrating the campus (alumni association, university relations) social tools to amplify the message.

As I type this update -- Monday evening at 9 p.m., Mallett crossed 4,500 votes. Nothing new on the website. Pure social outlets.

Pick the right tool for the right outcome.

Crisis Policy Work

Defining a crisis for a standing department policy is no small effort. The common language of FEMA/ICS and the life-safety side of critical incidents does not translate well in athletics. Personally, I see a lot of people intimidated by saying the reality out loud, and with the federal mandate for clear language, there's no euphemistic terms allowed. Followers know this was my 2009 CoSIDA Convention topic, and a regular item in this space for years.

Several weeks ago, we managed to work out what defined a crisis (since there was a dislike for the more common term in the business of "critical incident") was:

A situation that threatens to dramatically affect the lives or well-being of student-athletes or staff, significantly damage the property or operations of the athletic department, or may negatively impact the events, reputation or normal activities of the athletic department.

I'm pleased with it because the goal should be to create a policy and operational standards that can be plugged into any "crisis" -- from a tornado to a player suspension, from a life-safety incident at a practice to a major policy announcement, from a water main break that floods the stadium to a national championship celebration parade. They are all crisis -- and not all crisis are negative. Think about planning for success: what will you do if your team wins it all?

So the next step becomes separating out response levels. Most of the plans out there look at three levels; I'm going to advocate understanding that there really are four. From draft language -- and yes I'm looking for feedback here:

A routine event that has the potential to disrupt daily operations, negatively impact the department or require the communication of information internally or externally defines the difference between day-to-day events and an incident that would invoke the policy. This is an administrative decision unless the incident involves health and welfare of a student-athlete, member of the department or patron of an event.

Routine events are level zero within the critical event policy. Level one events are incidents which are limited in scope - both in time frame to resolve and overall impact on the department. Level two events are emergencies which last longer than a day in their impact on the entirety of the athletic department. Level three events are catastrophic, with impacts that are long lasting or permanent, reaching beyond the scope of the athletic department into the university and overall community as a whole.

What is your take on the "level zero" concept?

Speed Necessary for Viral?

Interesting case that I'm curious about feedback. Five of our football players were making a surprise visit to the Razorback Marching Band Spectacular to do a drum line performance. We sent our New Media crew to shoot the event, and got great HD video. We planned on building a package. That took us a day. In the meantime, we were beat to YouTube by, of course, a cell phone video.

Compare. RazorVision vs. cell phone. Obviously, we have interviews and a better angle. But in the world of viral video, we can't catch the cell phone. As of this post, we're at about 4,500 views; the cell phone video is at 15,000. They got a 10K view head start in one day.

We did all the right things -- took our video that was bound for RazorVision inside our web presence and "freed" it to YouTube. Tweets, facebooks, encouraging sharing.

So my question is this -- does it become better in the viral to get something out there and be first, or take the time to build something that shapes to what you wanted to portray. Obviously our video quality gets it another bump by inclusion in this week's ESPNU telecast.

Wildland Fire Approach to Social Media

I'd been working on this analogy of how fighting social media problems can sometimes be like fighting fires in the forests, and that sometimes you find yourself surrounded by flames. Sometimes, you have to set a rescue fire to keep from being consumed by the larger conflagration. To the old school spinners, allowing out details that set a fire -- a huge dose of truth at the right moment -- seems wrong.

I picked back up on this in Mark Drapeau's piece where he noted that in his Four Tenets of Modern Communication that "information spreads within communities like wildfire, on and off line. It has never been more important to acknowledge and try to help communities. If you're not bringing your community of stakeholders up with you as you rise, you will fall and you're gone."

Interesting.

My thoughts were more tactical, looking at how both wildfire and rumor share certain similar attributes.

Single spark or lightning sets it off, also sometimes done by arson. It grows often unnoticed in the wilderness. We send resources out to control it, or to put it out in urban areas.

The pros can try to attack it, but once it gets to a certain size, they can't stop it.

We think we can prevent it. Sometimes, we do controlled burns to limit the future scope. In the end, the ability to fight it is an illusion, and the forest fire will simply run its course.

Food for thought.

Getting Lawyered Up on Facebook

News from Connecticut today as a National Labor Relations Board backed case is set for a hearing regarding a plaintiff who was claims to have been fired for making comments about the work place on her personal Facebook account. The details include some key hurdles: she posted on her own time, from her home computer; however, business had a policy in place she was aware of.

The first major takeaway on this: there is no ruling. The item that started today's media frenzy was the announcement that the case would be heard by the NLRB. Kashmir Hill at Forbes has a solid one-stop blog post with most of the details and cautions against thinking this is settled law. Far from it, and if NLRB finds for the new case, it will be going against it's own previous ruling in a case filed against Sears. From Hill's blog:

Sears’s policy is designed to “maintain the company’s reputation and legal standing.” On a list of topics that associates can’t discuss on social media was, “Disparagement of company’s or competitors’ products, services, executive leadership, employees, strategy, and business prospects.” It also advised employees not to talk about drugs or to use profanity.


To see the actual NLRB memo on the Sears case, jump here.

The questions become: was the policy overly broad in the Connecticut case announced today, did it limit free speech, was it a legal condition of employment.

Based on the first media accounts, this does not look like a blanket endorsement of going home tonight and telling the world exactly what you think of your boss/coach/co-workers/etc. Nor an across the board blow to social media policies, either on campus or at the workplace.

There is a very interesting difference in how the story is being handled by legacy media and networked or computer industry media. The "regular" media is trumpeting the first amendment side of this hearing. One example of the breathless victory:

In what has been called a ground-breaking case, the United States National Labour Relations Board has accused a company of illegally sacking an employee after she criticised her supervisor on her Facebook page.

The AP story follows similarly on many legacy media:

A Connecticut woman who was fired after she posted disparaging remarks about her boss on Facebook has prompted a first-of-its-kind legal case by federal authorities who say her comments are protected speech under labor laws.

Same for Washington Post.

Those with more time around social media are quick to point out it is not. As today's CNET first coverage noted:

Invoking scatological language when describing the relative merits of your job is, of course, a time-honored American tradition. So is firing employees who do it to your face.

Interesting that one of the "traditional" news links was NPR and their AP story, another NPR blogger falls more in line with the networked media by pointing out if you hate your boss on Facebook, NLRB may back you but you could still be in plenty of trouble.

Among the items I noted so far:

It is an NLRB hearing. It isn't in a "regular" court of law.

It's getting a lot of coverage today like it is a first amendment case. It clearly is not. The worker is saying she was fired for the comments; the employer is saying it was a series of events. Can anyone say "Juan Williams"?

Most interesting -- and missing from the first AP stories -- was the repercussions on the poster. The item that led to trouble included the assertion that the supervisor she was mad at was a "17" which was code/jargon for a psychological patient. (Hello, Juan Williams, part deux). I pose the question for my more legal followers, does the supervisor now have a slander/libel action for being accused of being crazy (and I deliberately list both -- is Facebook "spoken" or published). As the producer of content and the publisher of the content, the worker would appear in my opinion to be "media" now.

Several lawyers have come out to say they believe it reinforces the worker position, but none have said that if you are asked as a condition of employment to sign a social media policy or confidential information policy that it would not be trumped by today's ruling.

The one thing I can say with certainty today -- this will be just the starting point -- a case to launch a thousand briefs.

And, for the record, I composed and wrote today during my "lunch hour" as I'll be working through the traditional noon time frame.

Focus Group This

Ah, a little catch-up time on quotes found out there on the internets.

John C. Dvorak tells us what he thinks about focus groups:

You can't focus group new ideas (because) there is no frame of reference.

To which Leo Laporte chimed in:

You get the best creative result if you let someone with a great vision create his vision.


Finally, J.P. Barlow:

Revolution requires persistence in intention, connection & conceptual integrity; it requires an attention span

All, by the way, came from a This Week in Tech episode. I've mentioned it before, but if you are in this business and you are not downloading that podcast -- let me be as gentle as I can, you're not being a serious Culture Officer for your group.

Listen But Understand

Comment areas on blogs and email response boxes are important. These folks define our institutions and our reputations, and answering them quickly is important. Listening to them is also, but we need to take some time to understand they may not be typical of the fans or consumer at large.

Jay Adelson, late of Digg, was speaking of his old company on a recent This Week in Tech special. He was recalling the way they had brought in some of the power users, the most active in the community, and listened to them to make some pretty wide ranging changes. They were a flop among the users at large. It brought Jay to this conclusion:

The vocal minority does not represent the interests (of the whole) they are important because they are evangelists and you have to make them content an satisfied with their experience but what they like may not be appropriate for everybody

Sage words. Adelson added something else later about how one should approach a successful on-line venture, and it hearkened back to earlier words regarding Steve Jobs' approach (ie, how do you focus group the new, because if it is genuinely out there, what point of reference does the past provide the focus group).

You are trying to delight users with product, not trying to squeeze every last penny

Drapeau Notes on Gen Y

Continuing with Mark Drapeau's Five Cultural Trends Shaping Business Communications and Public Service, he gives us some very interesting notes on how Gen Y views the public authority -- for the purposes of this blog, let's say athletic departments.

The youth are very connected, very desirous of giving back to communities, but also very distrusting of authority. That's a challenging combination. On the one hand, young fans who want to support you, yet they are going to be the first to call out any lack of transparency.

He weaves this together with another of his five points -- Web 2.0 and Open Government. Drapeau views it as a cultural shift, and he relates this to the growing desire for community among all.

". . . what was once public relations to an audience now looks a lot like public service to a community. And anecdotally, the new public relations influencers, gurus and tacticians are those who weave 'community' into their work."

Huh. So that whole interactive blogging thing, good. Well, only if you are genuine. Drapeau closes with several points about how public service is a unifier.

I think you win by showing that you care more than other companies, organizations, entities. That caring can come in many forms - thought leadership, great customer service, empowering communities to help themselves, being more transparent about decisions.

Or to distill to one line:

They just want to know that you also care about the people you're selling to and that you're not entirely selfish.

Or to a pithy aphorism, which he points out is original to Gary Vaynerchuk:

Sharing is caring.

Eye of the Hurricane

The last great twitter storm surrounded the Pac-16, and we were collectively amused. That is, if you were not a Big 12 member.

The next great unsourced event is underway with Cam Newton. We see a rush to judgment -- fueled perhaps by fear of the revelations of Reggie Bush -- and real-time reporting is right in the middle.

This is troubling on many levels in the collegiate realm. Today, by laying out an academic accusation, those that could quickly deal with this are put at some jeopardy via FERPA. Nature and the Internet abhor a vacuum, it will be filled.

That said, Auburn has taken steps to aggressively counter, including the athletic director Jay Jacobs and football coach Gene Chizik making strong statements to the media. After last week's NCAA rumors, Newton himself was made available. For its part, Florida, via Urban Meyer, has done the same. Interestingly, Auburn's official feed is only retweeting other media. That should not be read into, however, as their feed has traditionally been promotions based for it's original material. The fact they are making sure message gets out to fan base by retweeting stories shows they are engaging.

There has to be a little understanding of the demand on the media, and all sides are ratcheting up rhetoric. As an example, Chris Dufresne of the L.A. Times is getting hit pretty hard by fans. Dick Weiss with New York Dailey News points out both sides -- noting the FERPA issues and statements from Jay Jacobs -- The people you would expect like Paul Finebaum are in the eye of the storm.

In light of being burned on Farve via paid sources, are national outlets moving faster than normal in ways that are over compensating for that miss, or are we simply in the heart of a new paradigm that will require institutions to have rapid response and monitoring teams that can move quickly.

Again, we are not talking professional sports or professional entertainment -- for that matter, even government crisis events -- where once the problem unfolds there can be rapid reactions. Colleges are both academic institutions and state governing bodies. Legally and culturally, they are not rapid reaction targets.

Before the next Pac-16 or Cam, have you assessed your organization's ability to react at the speed that a university is being forced to move?

Drapeau's Five Cultural Trends

An earlier tweet that now gets some more in-depth review. Mark Drapeau is one of the public sector engagement folks at Microsoft. Not that long ago, we'd have ascribed to him the more hip title of a chief evangelist. He wrote a solid essay on the Five Cultural Trends Shaping Business Communications and Public Service at the end of October. Many of you saw my retweet of CoSIDA News on this.

He skewers the public sector (read: academica/athletics/government) with some pretty strong points.

Large organizations are often out of touch with such changes in the culture.

In his five areas, he hits one that bears closer observation for the college sports world: "Nobodies as Influencers." While Drapeau is thinking very specifically of The Situation and other made for reality stars that lack "talent" as we may have previously defined as important for celebrity, I'm reading something else.

Hearkening back to our general lack of control over our brand reputations, it is hundreds of similar "nobodies" who by virtue of the extraordinary low cost of entry into media that become some our most important clients for information. As Drapeau wrote:

Everybody has the potential to be a celebrity and therefore everyone is a potential influencer.

I found one of the comments on Drapeau's post one of the most important items, and it reminded me about who increasingly is the person of trust within one's life.

We trust the 'nobody' down the street more than any superjock making a gazillion dollars a year because it seems more genuine.

Spoke Too Soon

Yep. This flight had changed to C47; back down the terminal. But, I learn from fellow refugee from Columbia that the original first flight of the day is still on the ground.

Remembering History Class

An important realization today that three of the most valuable lessons I've learned in life came from small parts of one teacher's courses. Anyone who attended Northeast Louisiana from the late 1970s into the early 1990s encountered or knew about H. Perry Jones. An irascible teacher, his classroom exploits were legend. One of his favorites was to have graduate students carry him into class near Halloween in a coffin, from which he would rise in full Dracula costume to hand out his exam.

H. Perry was a western civ instructor, and so it made sense for him to be the first to have introduced the myth of Sisyphus and the great quote of Omar Khyaam. It was in his moonlighting as intro to U.S. that he worked in the legend of taking a message to Garcia.

Jones loved to draw on the board, and in the pre-PowerPoint era, his presentations were epic. Cartoons, stylized text, lists - all assembled on the blackboards in the 10 minute time he had between classes then erased away by the next instructor; in part to be able to use the board but I'm convinced for several intimidated by e master instructor (and showman) that was H. Perry.

Each semester - regardless of Western Civ or U.S. History - at some point he would make reference to his notes and with grandiloquent gestures say at these we the type of works that Omar Khayyam meant when he wrote his poetry; that it was like history itself, the very sands of time, that would disappear once the class was over - the moving hand of History having writ, moves on, Jones would say in his "interpretation" of the passage.

Similarly, when he sensed the students were grinding away in the middle of the semester, he would remind them that they were condemned only in the short term to their own rock of Sisyphus. That life would likely present them with challenges that would be the same eternal struggle. That the beauty of life was both the struggle, and the short period of time walking back down the hill when you are temporarily freed of the burden.

Unless you caught him for U.S. two, you missed the performance of the entire A Message to Garcia - the story of the president sending his man Rowan into Cuba to contact one of the insurgents. A staple of he U.S. Army, Perry brought it alive with his dramatic reading. His voice still echoes, his scratchy Applachian coming out when he bellowed "By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze . . ." as he performed. You left almost eager to be called upon to not fail, to face that challenge and against all odds and without micromanaged direction carrying the message to Garcia.

Performed. That's the right word for H. Perry. Or maybe, transformed.

Enough to Drive

Shifting gates. Closed paths. Happy shining people. Oh yes, please, I want me some more commercial travel.

Land in the far end of D concourse (coffee now, or later - opt for not carrying scalding water long distance) and get high-number C.

Around the detours for tram loading in D, on to C - as in, crap, this is the one concourse without Starbucks. That's OK, I'll use the old B-C underground connector. Walk the length of C and . . . What tha . . . sealed off like some abandoned mine shaft. Nice.

Settle for brew in C - that was halfway back up the concourse. Sit down at C55 - yep, end of the terminal - and five minutes later, we have a gate change announcement. Back to 33. At least I have two things going for me. A) unlike the lone ESPN-type who managed to get on my plane, I'm still not in Columbia with Holly Rowe and Co. His seat, however, cost the airline a $600 voucher. No one would budge for $400, and one passenger bid it up to $600 (sure, if you'll do it, the exasperated gate agent said). B) After schlepping my 40 pounds of gear and clothes split into these two backpacks for a couple of miles today, no need to ride when I get home.

Notice, when I get home. Continuing to have faith. Even though gate 33 says White Planes, NY.

Travel Fun

Nothing like a long day at the airport, compounded by time change and over sold. Looks like the plane in front of me this morning was oversold to start, and now has mechanical issues. The local staff is short, and the supervisor is way overloaded (I need you to stand at the service center NOW).

Of course, you'd be a little testy too if passengers were self-deplaning. Yep. Just helping themselves to the jetway. Oops. There's one blocking open the gate nine door so he can go back and forth.

I swear, there's the Maya Elliott character from Bronx Beat, complete with pink fleece, in the face of the gate agent.

Oh my, I'm boarding and this should be fun.

Cash for Sports Stories

A.J. Daulereo appeared on the stage at the Indiana University Sports Journalism forum to discuss the payment of a mystery source for the key info that led to the breaking of the Brett Farve story. He was holding the cash -- "more than I'd ever seen" -- before the delivery.

That might infer a moment of angst. That would be no.

While the sports journalism world is shocked, shocked that there is gambling at Rick's, those with a memory for the history of celebrity journalism were not surprised.

Paying for "exclusives" or providing "expenses" to travel to network television shows are standard in today's media world. The National Enquirer, who paid a hefty fee for the coffin photos of Elvis among others, finds itself considered for eligibility for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize.

The coverage and video of Daulereo's talk are very important as a guide to where this heads next. Recall, TMZ is now in the game (the Oklahoma basketball story) or the Gizmodo move over the iPhone4 and this will not go away anytime soon.