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.

A Whole Lotta Blather to Get to The Point

Three long posts to get to the payoff, but here it is. A very necessary part of our governmental ecosystem is dying. The creative destruction underway in the legacy media is like a wildfire where the lack of logging and clearing of land has left the tender ripe on the forest floor.

Journalism as we know it today exists like a giant whale, feeding on a plankton of advertising that fills the seas. Journalism has survived in its current form on what is functionally a tax upon commerce called advertising.

It is directly funded by advertising. But the ocean is heating up and off the plankton for our media whale. Call it website warming.

Think about it. Since the dawn of Madison Avenue, newspapers -- then radio and television -- survived on their ability to be the most efficient mechanism for promoting commerce. The producers of goods were willing to pay these purveyors of public opinion a tithe to bring people to their door. It wasn't a required tax, but it was a taste off the top of the books nonetheless to the piper.

Today's one-to-many system of communication allows people to let other people know the same information, and unless the brand of an institution gets in the way of that, people will tend to trust other people more.

Ah, yes, brand again. Let's say for the sake of argument that the legacy media were to fully collapse into some eight-track tape anachronism. Who is left with the resources to promote their POV? That would be the institutions -- both public and private. The job of the fourth estate? Bought out at a bankruptcy auction by the other three.

Before we go off on some Ben Richards worm-hole, roll back to these couple of counters.

At some point, a new revenue source will appear for the legacy media that carries with it standing and reputation -- again, brand -- and they will move right into the future.

But the digital media stands ready to fill the gap immediately, and what will differentiate the good from the bad -- well, guess: reputation.

Consider this: who really believed the National Enquirer had the goods on John Edwards? The previous week, they were as likely to have the inside scoop on Oprah's latest diet or space aliens living in our midst. The traditional media harrumphed, but at the end of the day, the Enquirer had a good bit of the story down.

Did that make the Enquirer have a better news brand than the New York Times? For many, no, the brand that is the NYT endures.

How does that relate to our digital natives? I predict the successful ones will be the bright kids that look back to the future. That realize they can short-cut the time it takes to build a reputation -- you don't need a century of newsprint, just ask Politico or Little Green Footballs (or gasp, Matt Drudge). While it may come at hyper speed, the digital brand is build with the same care to the details -- being right, being sourced, being vetted, knowing when you're being played. A melding together of the time-honored traits of journalism with the time-smashing techniques of digital media. Being first doesn't count over time if you're nothing but first with the rumor when others are next with the truth.

Pretty exciting stuff.

All The World Is A Stage

For the past nine years, I've been involved with the local storm spotter training. Continuing evidence of the digital era, four guys show up to record the Tulsa NWS training session. They were uber-weather digi geeks, quite proud of how they didn't need any of that old-school ham radio stuff. I suspect they MP3'd up the event along with their video.

Usually, these training sessions are somewhat embargoed, and contain some copyright material. But, it was in a public space and at a public university, so there was no hesitation in recording and potentially putting it on-line.

OK, this isn't like Justin.TV hijacking content. It is more of a wake-up for anyone in a public forum -- you should expect that you are going to be recorded.

This is the end of "off the record." The end of background briefing. And, for transparency, I can't say that's a bad thing.

However, don't let this illustration give anyone the feeling that life is more transparent. In fact, I believe as we become accustomed to "new media" we will become more -- and better quality -- performers.

The digital natives are quick to remind us old folk that the beauty of SNW is the ability to construct your public personality. As one said, a current college student has three distinct digital profiles -- resume avitars -- Facebook for friends, MySpace to advertise themselves, Linkdin to get a job. While these profiles may be at great odds, they exist as extentions of the reality that is the person who created them.

Welcome to the big show.

The Brand, The New Media and The Future, Part III

Mythbusters is a brand. The hosts are likable. They build up a reputation for truth. Then, you hit the one episode that you have personal knowledge that what they are saying is lacking -- radios on airplanes -- and then poof, the brand is busted.

The guys took the government-industry point of view that electronic devices would surely interfere with navigational devices and communications gear in the pit resulting in the sudden and fiery of all on board if we flipped on our iPods at the wrong moment. OK, that was a stretch, but no one is carrying powerful FM transmitters or AM sets with huge ferrite antenna bars to throw off the coms. By the way, how do you think the pilots keep up with the scores of games? By turning their nav radios into the AM broadcast band to listen.

Nevertheless, if Virgin America and other breakout airlines can now offer WiFi on the airplane, and new systems to allow use of regular cellphones on board -- wait a minute, what happened to all that interference we were suppose to cause?

So, there it is. Now, replace some of the key elements in my story. Let's say Mythbusters was a politician, or a university, and it sought over time to take its information, its brand, direct to its fans, its supporters, its constituents. Again, as long as the veracity of the brand remains in tact, the institution can continue without impediment.

Who challenges the Mythbusters? Sure, they'll do fan shows and retest their work. Let's switch to another part of the Discovery family. Who's going to buy into Man vs. Wild upon its return to the old flat screen after it was revealed the star wasn't exactly always roughing it as much as it appeared in the show. It was counterbalancing media that outed the story, and for a while, forced the show off the air. Without that coverage, would anyone -- beyond that handful of people with a personal experience perhaps in surviving the Amazon -- have blown Bear's cover?

Enter the new media.

The Brand, The New Media and The Future, Pt Deux

If reputation is all we have, how does that relate to the creative destruction occurring in the mass media?

People want to believe in things bigger than themselves. Society is based upon this. Perhaps more than opposable , it separates us from the beasts.

From serfs working for the king to followers to religions, society needs mass forms of belief structure. The difference today is those structures are almost more easy to achieve in a virtual than a physical association. Our media is delivered by means that not only make it simple, they tend to encourage association.

The traditional newspaper, created by editors and writers who were disciples of the cult of objectivity, or the legacy broadcast entity, tempered by the offices of standards and practices, the FCC and the perceived threat of "fairness doctrine," brought the media consumer a product that was reasonably inclusive of a range of points of view in the middle of the road.

The interconnection of supportive opinion, blogs, materials and message boards carries the reader not into a broader view, but rather into an ever tightening spiral toward self-affirming thought. What does suffice for points of view become more like opposite camps, hurling invective at each other with giant virtual trebuchets. Call it the Crossfiring of America.

Here's where the story gets dark. Manipulation is inherent in the human system. From society enforcing its standards of decency to evil-doers seeking to work to their own ends, followers will be urged to drink the kool-aid. And, they will, particularly as long as they are motivated to believe. When there is no challenge to the mindset, when there is no equal and opposite force, it will continue.

Such is the case when the media challenges an institution that has its faith and trust in tact with its base. Only when the faith and trust -- the brand -- is injured, will the opposite opinion to the believe of those inside the citadel break. For those in the local area, I'll point at the unusual case of one of our smaller universities where the administrator was hailed as the next coming in academic leadership. A handful of wrong moves, the sweater snags on the nail, and in what seemed like an instant, the emperor not only had no clothes, he had no job.

What happens when there isn't the counter balance of the media to ask the question?

The Brand, The New Media and The Future

In celebration of post #400, a multi-part discussion on the future of the career once known as sports information.

Once upon a time, the sports information director was the keeper of the flame in almost every athletic department. A trusted confidant, the holder of the institutional memory, the link between generations of student-athletes and coaches to a college or university.

In the late 1990s, the SID died. The role was divvied up among a host of new job titles that feasted on the position like Ebola virus on a wildebeest. Assistant athletic directors for media relations, for marketing, for internal operations. Then came the internet, and more people into the pot. Publications coordinators, website coordinators, new media directors. Soon, the public relations professionals rode in to managed individual coaches and athletic directors.

I once went on an interview at another D. I school for a upper level administrative job, and the athletic director looked me straight in the eye when I asked if the SID office was under my position or independent. "They're nothing but a bunch of stat keepers," he said, the words dripping with disdain. In other words, if I wanted those useless twits answering to me, OK by him. (An aside, he didn't last long there, and it was a good thing I didn't take that job.)

And, like a shortstop, a centerfielder and a rightfielder all charging after the same Texas Leaguer, these different jobs began trying to call the ball when it came to managing the image and reputation of the department. At many schools, political infighting that only a department faculty meeting could appreciate ensued.

The result? You guessed it. More times than is acceptable, the ball falls to the ground uncaught among the fielders.

In the never ending drive to be relevant and hip, PR-types have pounced upon the buzz word of the early 21st century: brand. Brand management is de rigueur, but who is the brand manager in athletics? Same pack of hyenas will compete to be that person. At a lot of places, it will get lost in a hybrid definition of making sure the right logos are used or the correct verbiage is in place.

What does it really mean? In my humble estimation, brand equals reputation, pure and simple. You either have a good reputation, based upon postitive perception of your [fill in the blank -- team, product, school, etc.].

All the talk about brand takes me back in time. My dad had a brand -- well, if a reputation for being a hard-livin', gamblin', rock-n-roll night club owner that always had the hottest spot in town is a brand. For all the oddity associated with that lifestyle, there was one thing all the folks would say about Smitty -- his word was his bond. His brand wan't all that other stuff, it was the trust other businessmen had in him.

In college, there were a couple of journalism teachers and later one history professor who constantly reminded the students to be careful, their reputations -- at the end of the day -- were all they really had.

What, for heaven's sake, does any of this have to do with new media and the future? Everything.

I've Said It Before, Let Me Say It Again

Brand.

One word. One image. One focus. The future.

To that end, post 400 -- hopefully later this week -- will begin a series of comments on how that works in the new media world and for college athletics.

Meanwhile, digest this appetizer from Bloomburg News courtesy of our director of new media, Blair Cartwright. He emails this link last night.

The gist of the story is in bad economic times, the strongest brands have the best performance and the brands that put resources into building image perform at the top. Local giant Walmart, of course, fairs well in this article.

The money quote:

“When the economy tanks, the really strongly branded companies take much less of a hit than price-cutters,” said Frankel, who has worked with companies such as Walt Disney Co. and Honda Motor Co.

Long Week, Semester Looms

A week of consecutive home games and project completions makes the blog a dull place. With an open date upcoming along with pre-semester prep work over, I'll have come special posts on some new theory work to celebrate the 400th entry here.

In the meantime, from the frozen tundra of the SEC's northern outpost, here's one quick post to lay down a marker for a new malaprop.

After visiting Joseph-Beth Bookseller to scan through then purchase Sal Paolantonio's new book, "How Football Explains America" (more to come from it -- I can tell you it should be required reading of anyone in the industry), I turned to Kyle Kellams and noted in response to a question he asked me:

"Well, it's the kind of story you could only read about in the movies."

Halfway through the sentence, my mental on-air spell check was going off, but I couldn't stop myself. Kellams looks at me and we both bust out laughing. That stayed funny the rest of the night.

Now to just work it into today's broadcast . . .

How Do You Know It's True?

One of the courses I have long hoped to see back in the UA curriculum is History of Journalism. I have two reasons, and no, neither one is because I'd be perfect to teach it.

The first reason is the natural outgrowth of doing "We're History" on KUAF. Been a while since there was time to cut a new episode (and not quite so many media fumbles since the election), but the gist of the series is the short-sighted and misuse of history by our media. A big part of the approach I'd designed for the course was to teach journalists how to utilize professional history to their advantage and to avoid the dreaded "unprecedented" pitfall. The second is obvious -- to give these digital natives some sense of the field.

Here's living proof again of the lack of historical perspective. The historical hoax of the last American pirate was revealed recently by George Mason University professor T. Mills Kelly. Kelly, a part of the Center for History and New Media at GMU, turned the digital natives upside down with a well conceived story of Edward Owens. It was part of a semester course in which the 15 graduate students concocted every aspect of the "history" of Mr. Owens, right down to Wikipedia entries and a supporting faux diary.

Kelly took it one step beyond as he launched his fake into the media world, and until the reveal, got away with it. Kelly's going to take a lot of heat for this from the serious academic types, but he did it for the right reasons -- to show just how simple (notice, didn't say easy) it can be to pull the wool over the public and the media. Say, here's your first clue: the name of the course was Lying about the Past. (As usual, the Chron has a great coverage of the course.)

Does it undermine our faith in history? It should.

We live in a world where plenty of people believe Americans never walked on the moon, that Oswald didn't act alone and Guilani was a key conspirator in the destruction of the World Trades.

A healthy skepticism is an important part of citizenship.

Another of my favorite pastimes (huh? well, something for between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m., OK?) is the NPR show, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Their end of the year story circled back to the Dana Perino -- Cuban Missile Crisis brouhaha they helped stir up. This week, the host Peter Sagal, had Perino back on to claim the whole thing was a comedy skit, that her husband hadn't really chided her ("Oh Dana") about not knowing the difference between the missles of October and the Bay of Pigs.

But, wait, wait -- it got so much media play. Hosts across the country were calling Perino out as yet another Bush appointment gone wrong. So, was her Dec. 2007 NPR appearance the "exaggeration" she said it was? Was Perino playing the media, knowing that overly smug anchors and commentators would pounce on her?

It does stretch belief that anyone who would rise to her position would not know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was -- I thought that at the time.

So what worse: a history professor that turns his profession and the media on itself with a hoax, a public relations professional who pranks the media or that same PR person would actually be ignorant of a major part of American history?

Happy 2010, Now Go Read Something

Searching for my early blog validation on this one and not finding it handy. Nevertheless, for years I've said that the essentially written nature of the internet was driving a revival in writing and reading. Why? Well, what are you doing right now. Please, hit yourself on the forehead for effect right . . . . now.

Here's my backing -- this WIRED coverage of a University of San Diego study that shows -- shocking -- that reading is going up, not down.

Takeaway from the USD study: Reading, which was in decline due to the growth of television, tripled from 1980 to 2008, because it is the overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet.

I could have told you that. As much as I liked to read as a youth, I'd never, ever have picked up a two-pound leviathan like the last Harry Potters. 13 year old daughter? And her friends? Can't get enough of these monster books.

Hello NCAA colleagues -- before you kill those printed media guides . . .

Happy New Year

Here's to this one working out better than the last.

Two Ends of the Spectrum

I'm very supportive of our fans, and try to go out of the way to help them. However, when you get helpdesk emails like this:

Request Description:I am presently using Windows Vista
Business.  When I try to acquire the audio feed, I keep having a problem
with my internet explorer crashing and closing.  I am using 230kbps dial
up with my Alltel mobile phone.  Could you please assist me with this
issue:  I am presently missing the OU/AR game... !!! 

Um.

Well, it's certainly ambitious to try to take any level of streaming content, even audio, by tethering to a cell phone. Not saying you can't do it -- I've tethered many a day to update the website or surf content. Let's just say 230K might be hitting the phone (maybe) at one point, but I'd highly doubt you're going to maintain that with the type of consistency needed.

I'll applaud the desire to stay connected.

Streaming media -- audio, video or data -- is the greatest challenge you will face. No matter how much tech support you line up behind the effort, it is always vulnerable to gremlins. This is the internet at its highest low. By that, I mean very few people go on-line when they are happy; once again my concept that commentary on-line for the vast majority is an essentially negative medium.

Want to check your self-esteem? Read the tickets for your schools' website for a week, or maybe just one day when you're having a streaming event.

I don't necessarily fault the passion (even the frustration and anger), but it has given me a different perspective when I get mad with some other provider. Next time you get torqued, remember, there is a human, not a computer, on the other side of the browser.

On the other side, there is the growing number of content providers that are enabled by our continuing lowering of the technology level. Dan Gilmoor spoke to this future in which all the fans have 3G connectivity with HD phone cams to not only blog or twitter, but to stream our events.

Last night's OU game had generated its share of iPhone picks of the facility, and several blog-like diaries. At least one had to get a pretty good platform into the stands, or one heck of a thumb set. This will be a growing trend, and if they are university students or staff, they'll have access to the facility wireless and the potential to send their blog work out in real time.

We need to begin to prepare more and more for these two extremes -- servicing our fan's digital consumption needs and managing our fan's digital creation desires.

Speak the Heresy

I learned long ago in graduate school, it's plagiarism to steal from one; it's research to steal from many. Another great bromide I've promoted here is to see the public relations future, watch the current political races.

Submitted for your approval for the umpteenth time this year -- the Obama internet machine glimpses the one-to-many future. The fund raising. The FRIEND raising. Here's another story about some of the inner works by Jose Antonio Vargas from the Washington Post. The payoff quote:

Now, because of technology in general and the Internet in particular, politics has become something tangible. Politics is right here. You touch it; it's in your laptop and on your cellphone. You control it, by forwarding an e-mail about a candidate, donating money or creating a group. Politics is personal. Politics is viral. Politics is individual.

Search and replace "politics" for "college athletics."

Here's the killer detail: More than 90 folks on the internet staff. That's 10 less than 100. That's about 90 times the number of dedicated internet personnel in most athletic departments. It's 45 times the number at Arkansas.

One more line from Vargas.

It also means using the Internet to invite people into the process, giving them something to work for, offering them a stake in victory or defeat.

Tell me friends, does he speak for politics or [Your Team Name Here]?

As you read the story, there is a very important detail about the Obama internet machine; it was organic to the organization, embedded in every operation from communications to fund raising. You cannot overlook this point.

The next wave of successful internet isn't outsourced. It isn't sold off to some conglomerate. It's managed and directed by people who know the landscape, who know the local players, who are integrated within the wider community of the institution. As sure as astro-turfing shows up, so will those who claim they can ride in and immediately begin to reap Obama-like rewards.

No, that starts with natives who know the countryside. People who understand the brand and live the culture. Hmm, now what office best embodies that . . . .

SID Simulator

OK, how much can you get out of Hell's Kitchen as a video game?
Oh.
My.
God.
My wife hasn't put down the Wii remote (even bypassing her beloved Price is Right new Wii game -- which is also pretty cool). The tart nasty is right there from Gordon Ramsey's faint praise and snide commentary. But the adrenalin rush of balancing the front of house with back of house and the strangely tense feeling you get from the stock Ramsey cliches (COME ON, PLEASE; You DONKEY!).
Want to get a good feel of what its like in the SID office on a late October weekend with home soccer, road streaming volleyball, a football game and the start of basketball season -- jump in on the middle levels working five tops and the back kitchen with three pots and an oven.
I need you to really, seriously, up your game, says Gordon.

Yeah, And He Likes to Hear Himself Talk

Took time this morning to answer some survey questions for a student at Baldwin-Wallace on a senior thesis. A lot of the subjects covered here in the blog, most notably Fan First.
Couple of the questions got me thinking a little after the hour and a half (he seemed a bit surprised that I'd take that much time on Boxing Day -- well, there's no games today).
The first one -- did I feel it was necessary to see a story in the newspaper to have considered it successful? I think the yes answer wasn't the one anticipated, but it is that it remains important to have a story covered by the area's dominant news brand. That it appears in dead trees or on-line isn't the key; it is that the local legacy agenda-setter of news deemed it worth. That remains important.
The second -- what did I see different about the media today? As you might suspect, this is where things got long-winded but I think a generational mind-set shift is in play. Boomers and Gen-X'ers still cling to the Watergate-era impartial journalist model. Being a fan of the Ben Bradlee school takes you right there.
But if you were born in the 1990s, Bradlee and the Washington Post was something that was forced on you in a movie watching assignment in mass comm class. The way you grew up consuming news was from the Crossfire school -- two polarized commentators duking it out. Whole networks are programmed this way today. Doesn't matter whether you're a Fox, CNN or MSNBC follower -- the formula is the same from 7 eastern to 10 eastern, conflict journalism.

All The President's Commentary

Saving my anniversary copy of All The President's Men for later, I sit up with the features and commentary disk. Throughout the pieces, the lions of the era -- Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Linda Ellerbe -- opine how today it could never happen.
They point out how much it takes in manpower and money to support investigative efforts. How if faced by the right-wing machine of talk radio and the Republican White Houses today how they doubted a media institution like the Washington Post could stand up against the corporate pressure.
I'm sitting here -- granted with a lot of cough syrup -- amazed at the lack of faith displayed.
Two key thoughts come to mind. First, a legacy media company does have assets that can be threatened. But they also have lawyers, reputation and numbers to resist. The New York Times certainly didn't back off when the Bush administration put the pressure on over the WMD stories.
Second, and more important, the blog and cloud have advantages that Woodward and Bernstein could not imagine. What exactly is a government or corporate entity going to do to a committed blogger? It's asymetrical warfare. The institution has the assets and reputation -- both is could lose. What's the blogger got? A computer? A rented apartment?
The cloud of bloggers can't be hit directly. It's like the Resistance Movement. Knock out one investigator, he's already shared his info with five others who can pick up the trail. Just ask Dan Rather, it grows like a virus.
Still, it was funny to watch the legends say it can't happen again. Tres pompous.

On the Holiday Reading List

Our good friend and citizen media savant Dan Gillmor brings to our attention a new report from the Berkman Center on the new media called Media Re:public.

There's is much to read and digest in this report, and that will wait for days off [HA!] during the holiday break. There is one highlight for now, and it is a new breakdown that the authors propose regarding the different flavors of media:

Legacy Media -- They began in the pre-Internet era, and while may be very active players, remain non-native. A great term rather than "traditional" or "main stream."

Web-Native Media -- Better than "new media" -- or as one colleague said, if you're in charge of new media, does that mean I'm in charge of the old media -- or "advanced media" -- another comment being, so if MLB had an advanced media division, does that mean the rest of public relations in backward -- and it speaks to the nature of the beast: these are media born on-line that exist for first distribution on-line. When the creators of Fark.com and RegretTheError.com write books, they don't become legacy -- their content was created for original distribution on-line.

Participatory Media -- To me, this is the best term; better than my own catchy B&B (boards and blogs). These are, using the Jay Rosen phrase "people formerly known as the audience," the interactives, and an intersting point is made -- we had these before and we called them letters to the editor, CATV access and radio call-in shows.

I like the way they related to the past -- another constant theme that there are indeed constant themes. Scale and speed are the real change factors, not the internet itself.

Dan also weighs in on the GateHouse v. NYT dispute on copyright.

Merry Christmas

Nothing like the gleeful squeal of children getting just what they wanted for Christmas. An iPhone for the oldest, a digital camera for the youngest.
So three old classic movies for me -- and a hellacious chest cold. Somewhat of a twisted family tradition; I can recall the Christmas' without either illness for family catastrophe on my two hands.
But I digress. I haven't seen one of my all-time favorite movies in years.
None of other than the greatest John Wayne documentary of all time.
Uh, that would be Hellfighters, thank you.
As a child, I was obsessed with the Red Adair legend, and rewatching the movie (unremastered on DVD and while wide screen, quite rastered) with an adult's eyes I can see why. No less than three holidays (a New Year's, a Christmas and a wedding) get trashed by the call out to put out a oil rig fire. Hmm, paging Dr. Freud.