Race against time

Finding the next great algorithm: from Page Rank to People Rank

Thought provoking post in five parts by Seth Goldstein (whom I only just discovered via PaidContent).

Goldstein starts with the premise (widely shared here) that "the latest shift in online consumption has been the institutionalization of amateur publishing tools."

That in turn has opened the door to the possibility of a new organizing principle that can bring order to bear on the torrent of information, communication and interaction that has been unleashed by these tools.

In computing terms, it is nothing less than the creation of the next great algorithm.

"Hovering over this endeavor is the shadow of the last great algorithm, namely Google search engine," Goldstein writes, which at its core is all about Page Rank.

"[T]ranspose people for web pages, and you see how the race for the next great search algorithm has less to do with organizing static HTML content than with coordinating the constantly changing expressions of millions of distributed people...

It was only a matter of time: Google moves into branded advertising

Times has a report this morning that Google will begin running brand advertising "with graphics and animation" on many of its partner Web sites, in addition to "the short text ads that have been Google's hallmark."

This should pretty well erase any doubts that Google is in the mass media business.

Times says the ads will appear on the thousands of publishers' sites with which Google has an advertising partnership, though some -- particularly those that have established relationships with marketers -- may elect not to participate.

Ad placement will still be placed based on Google's auction system; but instead of bidding on keywords, advertisers will have the ability to bid for placement on specific sites. "For any given page, Google's auction system compares how much money the brand advertisers are bidding to show an ad on that site to the amount that keyword advertisers have bid if someone clicks," the Times writes. "Not surprisingly, it will display whatever ads will bring in the most money."

Times quotes Chris Schroeder on the concerns this is likely to arouse among mainstream publishers: "If you are a big publisher," Mr. Schroeder said, "this concerns you, because at the end of the day nothing is more important than your relationship with marketers and your ability to control your own ad inventory." He speculates though, that big sites may eventually fall in line.

Perhaps of bigger concern to traditional publishers, this may improve the revenue outlook for bloggers and other small publishers who until now could not tap into spending by large brand advertisers.

Times says Yahoo! is not likely to be far behind.

Are we paying attention yet?

Business Week gets past the hype surrounding blogs and zeros in on the real significance of this phenomenon for publishers and everyone else concerned about audience.

They're fairly shouting from the  the rooftops:

"Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they're going to shake up just about every business -- including yours. It doesn't matter whether you're shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.) "

Not to put too fine a point on it...

In its report on Google's blow-out quarterly earnings yesterday, Toronto's Globe and Mail observed that the search company's $1.3 billion in revenue puts it on course to surpass the earnings of some other well-known media brands:

"If Google generates as much in the final three quarters of the year as it did in the first, it's revenue for 2005 will top $5-billion -- most of that from advertising." (With first quarter profits of $369.2-million, by the way, Google had a 30 percent rate of return).

"By comparison, Gannett Inc. said advertising revenue at its 101 U.S. newspapers last year was $4.4-billion. At New York Times Co., revenue from all sources was $3.3-billion last year."

And you thought Google Maps was cool?

Just look what happens when you overlay Craigslist on Google's new mapping technology. Awfully close to a killer app.  Which goes to the issue of investing in innovation raised by Murdoch, Merrill Brown and others in the posts below.           Who would you bet on? Inventor Paul Rademacher? or Classified Ventures? Not a settled question to be sure. But if Criagslist charged home sellers just a half a point for every successful closing it put together, Craig Newmark's outfit could conceivably net more than any newspaper classified franchise and put pressure on traditional brokers to boot. That might just put him in a position to, as he says, "help newspeople and newspapers survive the big transition, and thrive." [See Newmark on news below].

Going native? Murdoch takes the industry to task

Rupert Murdoch delivered a remarkable speech at ASNE this week -- remarkable not so much for its content as the fact that Murdoch himself was the messenger.

He cast himself as a digital immigrant who "grew up in a highly centralized world where news and information were tightly controlled by a few editors, who deemed to tell us what we could and should know."

He admited to having been "slow to react" to the changing news consumption habits of those, like his two young daughters, who will "never know a world without ubiquitous broadband Internet access."

He urged his fellow executives to embrace changing audience behavior before it is too late.

"I do not underestimate the tests before us. We may never become true digital natives, but we can and must begin to assimilate to their culture and way of thinking. It is a monumental, once-in-a-generation opportunity, but it is also an exciting one, because if we’re successful, our industry has the potential to reshape itself, and to be healthier than ever before."

Excerpt: Rosen's interview with Bill Grueskin, ME, WSJ Online

From Rosen's Q&A with Grueskin: "What I think is changing is that for years, the debate was largely about distribution of content; that is, how do we get our stories in front of readers and do it in a way that brings in money and doesn't upset traditional revenue models? With these deals in hand, I think we are going to see the debate go beyond distribution and on to the content itself -- how do we report the news so it works online?

"Any newspaper Web site that limits itself to repurposing content from the paper is in serious trouble. Any newspaper site that fails to recognize the value of the paper's brand and content is in serious trouble. So there you have it. I'm firmly and unequivocally ambivalent about this.

"[Y]ou have to come up with a new language of journalism, with traditional roots in our standards, but that treats online like the revolutionary medium that it is. And then you have to hammer it home with your staff."

BBC's Richard Sambrook on participatory media

Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC's global news division, discusses how he reconciles the Beeb's core editorial principles (truth, accuracy, impartiality, independence, accountability and serving the public interest) with blogging and other forms of citizen journalism.

"I don't believe participatory media threatens these values in any way," Sambrook says in an e-mail interview in Hypergene Media Blog. "In fact, the opposite, I think a more participatory approach and relationship with audiences strengthens all of these values."

"For example, in terms of truth and accuracy — and impartiality and diversity of opinion — these can only be strengthened by being open to more perspectives and the knowledge and understanding of the audience or users. Many argue that truth or impartiality are impossible to achieve. I'm not sure I agree, but I certainly believe that the attempt to achieve them raises standards and that reflecting a wide spread of opinion and perspectives is the best way to attempt to do so."

The interview offers a useful catalog of the BBC's various citizen journalism initiatives.

Gannett looking for more small-scale acquisitions

Gannett Looking For More Topix-Like Acquisitions [via Paid Content] : That's according to CEO Douglas McCorkindale, in an earnings conference call today: he is seeing more deal possibilities in smaller, nontraditional businesses such as Topix. He said he does not expect much acquisition activity involving big newspapers and broadcast outlets in the short term due to uncertainty over federal media ownership restrictions.

The gray lady gets a makeover

Blogs, it's been noted, depend heavily on mainstream media for their traction. Blogrunner has taken that concept and applied it to the Mother of all Mainstream Media, effectively representing the Times online as the blogoshere sees it.  Blogrunner's technology essentially allows you to put weblog style "trackbacks" on conventionally published web stories.

Imagine if we deployed this on the site. With each headline on the homefront, you could indicate how many weblogs had referenced that story. And you could give readers and ALT view (which is what you see here) that essentially re-orders the headlines on the site based on the number of blog citations.

The Times' first instinct might be to shut Blogrunner down for infringing on their trade dress. But if they stop to give it a second thought, they (or we) should consider buying these guys out.

Rosen lobs another bomb

"Laying Newspapers Gently Down to Die."  Poetic, provocative, it reminds me of a headline that appeared in a far left campus newspaper on the oft-rumored occasion of Francisco Franco's (actual) death in 1975: "Franco, Dead at Last."

Thus has Jay Rosen -- certainly the most prolific and often one of the more thoughtful commentators on the subject of media -- proclaimed the death of newspapers.

"Dead, more or less" he avers, "But curiously profitable". Rosen argues that newspapers' relative strong financial performance in the face of declining readership and circulation is in fact one of the signs of the strategic peril in which the industry finds itself.

"We deliver you less and charge you more." Whether consciously or not, Rosen argues, newspapers have begun "harvesting" their market position. "This is not theoretical. It is not a drill. The kinds of things we would expect to see if the newspaper industry had consciously chosen the profitable demise route are starting to show up in behavior."

Most notably a failure to invest seriously in the future. "No R & D rush.  No large investment in the future.  No siren call to find the new model."

He quotes Phil Meyer, certainly no bomb thrower, to the effect that the "death spiral" might well be irreversible.

But perhaps most interestingly, is this, concerning "Craig Newmark of craigslist, which is causing so much trouble for the newspaper business by grabbing the classified ad market online.  Here is Newmark at his weblog March 3: 'I don't really know what I'm doing, but I really think a tipping point in journalism is happening, and I think it's time to get involved.'"

Rosen further quotes Newmark saying: 'My guess is that either me, personally, or my craigslist team, will promote work which merges professional and citizen journalism, along with more fact checking and more investigative journalism... [I]t's really important to us that we help newspeople and newspapers survive the big transition, and thrive.'

Newmark, incidentally, will be our guest at this year's White House Correspondent's Dinner.

 

Abandoning the news

Merrill Brown, under the aegis of the Carnegie Corporation, has crafted a comprehensive, well-argued overview of the current crisis confronting media:

"In a world where national leaders are turning away from the news media, citizens have an increasing lack of confidence in the press and young people are moving perhaps permanently away from traditional newsgathering organizations, a radical rethinking of how news is delivered seems necessary — even overdue," Brown writes.

He counsels news organizations to invest more aggressively in what until now they have regarded as their "secondary" platforms; to develop news geared to the consumption habits of younger audiences; and to leverage hundreds of very capable, technologically savvy Internet executives" within their own organizations.

Yahoo! 360

Charlene Li gets an early look at Yahoo! 360, a social networking tool that includes authoring features.

Says Li: "The profile page contains the usual features from social networking sites friends, profile, lists of things you like to do, where you work/went to school, and groups that you belong to on Yahoo! Groups. But it also excerpts content you’ve created that you want to share with your network. This includes not only a blog, but also photos from Yahoo! photos, reviews created on Yahoo! Local, and LAUNCHcast Stations."

The elephant in the room: AFP sues Google

Now it starts to get interesting.

Agence France-Press sues Google for $17.5 million alleging copyright infringement and seeks an order barring Google News from displaying AFP headlines and photos on its website. Google responds by removing links to AFP content from its site. But almost immediately, at least one small publisher -- an AFP client -- cries foul, saying the Google's response has effectively ruined it's business. Bob Hoffman, publisher of politicalgateway.com contends that Google's decision to blacklist his site in response to the AFP suit has effectively put him out of business:

"What does this mean for our site? No news aggregation, no news syndication, no news on search engines, no readers can find us, no traffic. Add all this up and you can see the economic value of the site is gone... So what to do now? We have tried contacting Google over and over. We have deleted almost all AFP content (which we paid dearly for) to try to appease them. Not a single answer back. AFP just says ‘sorry’."

And therein lies the dilemma: Though publishers have watched nervously as Google has stretched the limits of fair use to create an automated news bot whose audience rivals that of some of the bigger players, many of those players benefit directly from the traffic Google provides.

One can only wonder how Tribune, Knight Ridder and Gannett will view the suit, having just announced that they are each acquiring a 25 percent stake in Topix.net, a service that aggregates online news -- much like Google News.

State of the Media 2005

The second annual State of the News Media report  (from the Project in Excellence in Journalism) offers a useful overview of the current state of play.

"[T]echnology is transforming citizens from passive consumers of news produced by professionals into active participants who can assemble their own journalism from disparate elements. As people "Google" for information, graze across an infinite array of outlets, read blogs or write them, they are becoming their own editors, researchers, and even correspondents. What was called journalism is only one part of the mix, and its role as intermediary and verifier, like the roles of other civic institutions, is weakening. We are witnessing the rise of a new and more active kind of American citizenship - with new responsibilities that are only beginning to be considered.

In this new world, we continue to believe journalism is not becoming irrelevant. The need to know what is true is all the greater, but discerning and communicating it is more difficult."

Among the report's major observations:

• There are now several models of journalism, and the trajectory increasingly is toward those that are faster, looser, and cheaper.
• To adapt, journalism may have to move in the direction of making its work more transparent and more expert, and of widening the scope of its searchlight.
• Despite the new demands, there is more evidence than ever that the mainstream media are investing only cautiously in building new audiences.

Yahoo! nabs Flickr

Feeling like the 1990s all over again.  Flickr confirms that it's been snapped up by Yahoo! and offers a Q&A on the acquisition.

Never read, you say?

Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at the Disney Theater: While showing a chart comparing his paper’s tiny bulk sales to those of hotel-doorknob fixture USA Today, Mr. Sulzberger scoffed at that paper’s "Never Gray" advertising slogan. "Should be ‘Never Read,’" he said.

And then there was this (courtesy of the New York Observer):

Local circulation? Off, thanks to marketing cuts. Stock price? Down and not rising. Expenses? Still growing faster than revenues.

"I wish I could see relief in sight," Mr. Sulzberger said.

Mr. Sulzberger also said that he is "bitterly disappointed" by the paper’s lack of diversity, a condition he has pledged to remedy.

Media, technology and the common good

Video excerpts of the Media Center's Harvard symposium, beginning with Richard Sambrook, Director of the BBC World Service and Global News Division, talking about the BBC's multiple efforts to put storytelling and journalism tools into the hands of thousands of people around the world and the challenges that arise from enabling so many to tell their own stories. -kw

What do women really want? Arrrrrghh!

Media Man (or is it Blog Boy) Jeff Jarvis struggles to break free of the "Future of News" miasma and offers some pointed suggestions for creating the local news organization of the future.

Writes Jarvis: "I'm writing this post on the train returning from perhaps one symposium on the future of news too many. They can be very frustrating, howing the same rows over and over until you find yourself stuck in a rut: Who's a journalist? What's journalism? How do we support newsgathering? How can blogs be trusted without editors? How can big media be trusted without bloggers? Why is the sky blue? What do women really want? Arrrrrghh! So why do I go? It ain't for the food. It's because I care about the news business and know we need it; I want it to survive."

Yahoo! Retrospective

Jess Baron of Yahoo writes: 

This evening Yahoo! launched an interactive “Netrospective” content package documenting the 100 most important moments on the web in the last 10 years:

Also, to celebrate its 10th birthday Yahoo! is giving everyone in the world (sort of) free ice cream (via 3,423 worldwide Baskin-Robbins locations). Print-out your coupon for free ice cream.

Burning down the house

Susan Goldberg, executive Editor of the San Jose Mercury News (and formerly of USA TODAY) on the challenges facing the industry:

"We regularly write page one stories about companies and industries that were slow to recognize a sea change in their businesses, and sat by as spectators as their market share eroded...

"I'm here to tell you that the days of tweaking need to end. We need to truly change -- and in a big hurry. And change not only how we get people the news, but how we present it and even how we define it...

In varying degrees, newspapers across America are waking up to the fact that our collective house is on fire... [But] even though our house is on fire, there is opportunity to be found when you sift through the ashes...

"I look forward to the next 20 years I plan to spend as a journalist. I fully intend to work like hell to reinvent a business that I love and that is a cornerstone of our free society."

Read the full text of Susan's remarks to the 21st annual National College Newspaper Convention.

E-Media Tidbits: Yelvington on RSS

Steve Yelvington of Morris Digital Works makes the point that, "as more media companies hop on the RSS bandwagon, we're going to have to confront some legal questions: Who owns the feeds, and what can be done with them? Ownership is easy -- it's just copyright. But licensing is complicated."

Distributing headlines on non-commercial sites in exchange for traffic is an easy call. But what constitutes non-commercial use? Google News pulls in headlines and thumbnail photos, but has no ads on the page; MyYahoo allows it's users to pull in headlines and places ads on the page; C|NET gives similar control to users but has no ads, at least of yet. Commerical use? And if so, do we care? Shouldn't we be doing the same? Or should we all be crying foul?

Paid vs. Free: Should WSJ throw open the doors?

Adam L. Penenberg, writing for Wired News, argues that the Wall Street Journal "should take the bold step of jettisoning its subscriber model and open up its archive to the public....

"[T]he next generation of readers is growing up by accessing news over the internet, and one place they are not surfing to is WSJ.com. With their habits being formed now, there is little chance the Journal will become part of their lives, either now or in the future."

Takeaways from API's Emerging Technology Conference

Andrew Sherry sums up the big picture takeaways from the Media Center's emerging technology conference:

We’ve reached a tipping point. A new wave of cheap, powerful technology is about to cross from the world of techies and early adopters to the connected masses, and it could trigger the second big wave of innovation and competition on the Web.

We’re talking software such as TypePad that allows individuals with no technical or design expertise to create good-looking blogs; RSS, an XML protocol that allows others to read what they write; and newsreaders, which allow users to decide what RSS feeds they see. Mainstream media have started to take advantage of RSS to distribute their content, but the reality is that it’s now technically possible for anyone with a reasonably fast computer connection to easily share words, photos, music and even video with ease.

What will ensue is an explosion of content generation similar to the one that followed the birth of the World Wide Web – call it the daily Web. And with it will come an explosion of technology businesses to search, sort, mine, monetize and otherwise make this information useful. Some winners will emerge. They will likely get bought –or crushed -- by the five horsemen of the new economy: Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, eBay and Amazon.

Emerging Technology: Gillmor video

API has posted video of Dan Gillmor's comments at the Palo Alto conference: Part 1 is here. And Part 2 is here.

Times purchase of About.com

Very interesting blog post by John Battelle portraying the NYT purchase of About.com as a deliberate step into micropublishing, which he says can be profitable not only in aggregate numbers but also in playing down the long tail. The comments are interesting because of they take a pass at defining the revenue numbers around individual blogs, or in this case, About sections.

Also see Allan Sloan's take on the finances of the deal, which by his calculation netted the Times a $160 million tax break.

And this: Mike Phillips, editorial development director for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, reacts to Jay Rosen's ruminations on the Times' purchase of About:

"I head into the afternoon back where I was last week:

• We need to get serious about open source journalism.
• We need to get serious about moderating local civic discourse rather than gate-keeping it under the old ed/op-ed model.
• We need to get serious about Web-centricity. This is the big one. It means building deep, highly useful local data bases and floating on top of them local news and local conversations in whatever combination of online and print makes sense. That, in turn, calls for deep cultural and operational change in the newsroom.

"That's not easy, but intensely local newspapers can pull it off. They are influenced by the MSM, but they aren't full members. They aren't as bogged down by all that tradition and all that arrogance. Many of our own newsrooms are in the early stages of the transformation.

"And at the New York Times? It's never gonna happen. They know it, too. Must be why they had to buy a no-brainer."

-AS/KW/LS

Who owns L.A.'s mediasphere? The Times busts a move

The LA Times decides to take it on the chin and wins some (grudging) respect from an alternative LA Voice: Who Owns L.A.'s Mediasphere? The Times Busts a Move describes recent changes that op-ed editor Michael Kinsley has made, including a feature called Outside the Tent in which anointed critics will be invited to beat up on the Times.

Political Bloggers - the new paparazzi - Blog Maverick

Thanks to Steve Yelvington for pointing out Mark Cuban's amusing take on political bloggers as the new paparazzi:  "In the world of political blogging, bloggers are the new paparazzi and the traditional news media reporters and columnists are the new targets... In every major conference, at every major speech, sitting at tables in restaurants, there is going to be a blogger or podcaster with microphone, PDA, Videophone, laptop or paper and pencil in hand. Listening. Taking notes. That information is going to be transmitted to and from a blog entry and placed in the hands of “the readers”. Unlike celebrities who hear or see the flash of the camera, the gatekeepers don’t know they are there. Blogging in plain site. Questioning everything."

Cuban's answer? Invite them into the tent.

Michael Wolff on Media

Vanity Fair media columnist Michael Wolff opened his keynote at the 2005 SIIA Information Industry Summit in New York City earlier this month with an entertaining if possibly apocryphal story about the founders of Google:

 "So we were talking about the Google business. But Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't want to really talk about the Google business. They wanted to talk about another idea that they had. And the idea was -- this is an appropriate pause -- for Google underwear. And we spent the next hour sitting in this plane talking about the underwear business. We talked about Google boxers and Google briefs and the fortuitous circumstance that Google with the two 'Os' would make an incredible bra.

There it is. And the moral of this story is that this is the paradigm in the technology business: They will fuck it up. They will. There's just no way that they cannot screw it up. So that could be good news."

We could all take heart. But not so fast.

Wolff goes on to draw an interesting distinction between being in the information business and the media business -- and the gradually declining value of information: "...we have seen the fall of the price of information become significantly more dramatic. It's been astounding, which prompts the question: "Why are you still here?" And it is the question. There is a set of answers. One is the existential answer: You're dead but you don't know it. The other answer is the perfectly human, practical response, which is that the industry is dying, but industries take a long time to die and we all will actually be dead before the industry finally expires. Or there's the third thing, which is just, you know, the industrial revolution happens and people are still left on the farm."

Well, perhaps, but before you bet the farm on it, you may want to read the blurb from Publisher's Weekly, which said about Wolff's book:

"A thin veneer of self-effacement does nothing to blunt the tremendous display of ego slathered over this superficial analysis."

 

Newspapers & RSS, Thoughts of Newspapers as ISPs in the 90's

Josh Hallett has an interesting piece on the parallels between newspapers' early and ultimately abandoned embrace of ISPs and the latest rush to create branded news readers. hyku | blog - Newspapers & RSS, Thoughts of Newspapers as ISPs in the 90's .

Excerpt:

"I don't see many of the early adopters using the LA Times or any other papers' RSS reader, we'll stick with our NetNewsWire or Bloglines. But we're not who the papers are after, they want the other 97% of net users. For many net users their first introduction to RSS will be via a newspapers 'new subscription service' (RSS to the rest of us). I assume that many of the papers will make some mention of RSS, but for the most part they will come up with a catchy name for their news readers. Users will not even know they are using RSS."

The New Yorker: Fact

Nicholas Lemann looks at beleaguered MSM and worries that there may be no devine right to good journalism.

"Journalism that is inquisitive and intellectually honest, that surprises and unsettles, didn’t always exist. There is no law saying that it must exist forever, and there are political and business interests that would be better off if it didn’t exist and that have worked hard to undermine it. This is what journalists in the mainstream media are starting to worry about: what if people don’t believe in us, don’t want us, anymore?"

More from Palo Alto ...

Liz didn't send a photo, but I found this one on Flickr, taken by another conference attendeee Ross Mayfield and posted from his Treo.

Liz writes:

 Hitting the road early tomorrow, so here's a few fast thoughts:

Dinner and presentation at Yahoo was interesting more for what wasn't said than for what the three panelists -- Neil Budde, Craig Forman and Scott Gatz -- actually divulged, which wasn't a lot. Content is one of their key pillars, along with community and personalization, but aside from that, little was gleaned, despite persistent questioning from yours truly following the talk. They seem a little surprised that their move to LA has attracted so much attention. One exec. claimed that that they weren't planning to release any info. about it until the LA Times got ahold of the move, forcing their hand. Now they're scrambling to articulate their plans. OK, it's a theory.  OTOH, some folks felt it was significant that they opened up as much as they did. Apparently events of this sort are not common with them. Their big sales push was to encourage publishers to offer Yahoo RSS feeds. Lucy Mohl from the Seattle Times asked the question that was on the minds of many when she inquired if Yahoo might be planning to help news organizations make money, so they could, you know, continue to gather the news that power those increasingly popular RSS feeds. Budde fielded that one -- maybe someday there'll be micro payments, he said, although the tone in his voice made it sound like that could be a long time coming.
Earlier in the day, Jim Kennedy of AP brought up the issue of how news organziations will be able to afford to pay for newsgathering, so it's clearly a topic on many people's minds. No simple or even smart solutions were presented, alas.

Some other notes:

Hottest topic was probably the suggestion that a combination of a blog, photo blog and PubSub could substitute for a big media website soon.

As we continue to think about blogs and their role on our site, perhaps we could consider striking a deal with a company like Feedster, particularly in areas where we need inventory, such as Travel or Tech. They will soon be able to monitor the content enough that we might feel comfortable using it.

Regarding community journalism, a company called Buzznet is doing some interesting things with photo blogs at the Ventura County Star (a Scripps newspaper). www.vcstar.buzznet.com. Also, best place to roll this out on a local level would be in cities that offer free wireless. These communities are primed to take the next step. Are any Gannett papers is one of these cities?

Ross Mayfield gave a passionate pitch for Social Text, a wiki-based collaboration tool. He made the point that these community-based publications need a strong leader or two, plus a cohesive group, to thrive.

And finally, my favorite buzz concept: Hot Topic Publishing. Esme Vos used the phrase in describing her blog, which covers the municipal wireless scene. She plans to do it for another year or two, then move on to something else. She's making money by charging for company profile pages.  Each profile contains a description of the company's offerings, as well as links to news about its city projects and recent product launches. it's clearly labeled as a sponsored page. I like this idea a lot -- it's fast, flexible and doesn't outlive its usefulness. What would be good Hot Topics for us to publish?

Emerging Technology...

Andrew Sherry and Liz Lufkin are attending an API seminar entitled Emerging Technology, Business and Policy for Senior Executives, in Palo Alto, CA, courtesy of fellowships provided by the Online News Association.

The forum brings together news directors from Yahoo! News, Wired News, Red Herring, Flickr and others.

Some early posts:

From: Lufkin, Liz <llufkin@usatoday.com>
To: Sherry, Andrew <asherry@usatoday.com>; Wilson, Kinsey S <kswilson@usatoday.com>; Czarniak, Chet <cczarnia@usatoday.com>
Sent: Wed Feb 09 11:16:13 2005
Subject: RE: day one

Good morning, I second Andrew's comments. Couple more thoughts:

- The beauty of RSS is that people will want to read things not because of where they're from: NY Times, for instance - but for what is said, and when. On some levels, this commodifies the news. But on others, it provides opportunities for people and companies who can figure out how to deliver what people want, when they want it. Voice and material that is viral will have a big impact.

- Aggregators are on the rise, apparently. (Blog Lines was just picked up by Ask Jeeves, etc.)  I know we've talked about this some already - as Kinsey has pointed out, we're a de facto aggregator -- but I wonder if there's more we could be doing to leverage our experience in this area.

  -  Kinsey, to your comments last week, Dan Gilmor is looking for a business advisor. Perhaps we should introduce him to someone at Gannett? :) There was some lively discussion after his talk about why newspaper and broadcast companies were failing to keep pace with the fundamental changes that are rocking the media landscape. Dan blamed it on Wall St.'s insistence on high profit margins.

- Lots of talk about how search and RSS are going to merge. Not sure I see why, exactly, but will ask the question at some point.

     -----Original Message-----
    From:     Sherry, Andrew 
    Sent:    Wednesday, February 09, 2005 11:02 AM
    To:    Wilson, Kinsey S
    Cc:    Lufkin, Liz
    Subject:    day one

    Kinsey,

    Very good conference. Key takeaway from the first session: the publish/subscribe model has gone mass market through RSS and blogs, and there is a revenue model (embedded ads in RSS feeds and blogs).

    Ideas that we could implement immediately: distribute advertising via RSS feeds (eg travel deals); pump an RSS feed out of Ben’s weblog; start migrating newsletter subscribers to RSS.

    Many practical details and caveats available when time permits but scheduled from 8 am to 10 pm today.

    Thanks and regards, Andrew

Web +10

Here's a useful set of links on Cyberjournalist.net to some of the material that came out of Web+10 at Poynter last week. Poynter's Howard Finberg, who organized the conference, has promised to post a complete set of presentations, but in the meantime, this provides an overview. - kw

David Akin of CTV: It's Not the Blog. It's the Net.

PressThink: David Akin of CTV in Canada: It's Not the Blog. It's the Net.. Aiken cuts through the hype surrounding blogs and puts them in their appropriate journlaistic context.

"...The blog is an increasingly important tool for newsgathering and for maintaining a connection with the community or ecosystem of those that you report on. That last part was the bit that surprised me as I started blogging. It has made my print reporting interactive. I write; I publish. And that used to be the end of it. Now, I write, I publish and a community of people who have special knowledge or who are deeply interested in the topic amplify, correct, modify, or extend the reportage. For a beat reporter, this is fabulous, because I now have more knowledge about my beat...."

"...What raw data, if you will, are bloggers putting into the system? Where is the reportage? I say that knowing that there are some perfectly excellent examples of this sort of 'raw media data' -- from tsunami video footage to eyewitness accounts of bombs falling in Baghdad. But it's so rare that bloggers create real 'value', that a blog post becomes a primary document. Bloggers will tell you they are witnesses. I don't think so. They are lawyers trying to convince you of a case. Well-trained, top-flight reporters are witnesses..."

How to improve newspapers' editorial pages

On CyberJournalist.net there is a quick discussion of Dan Gillmor's ideas, which surfaced at Web+10, about revitalizing newspaper editorial pages.

Blogging the Big Game

All:

Here's an update on our blogging efforts for Super Bowl week...

* Our Super Bowl front is live at http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/front.htm. In the position where you see "Today's Best Bet," there will be promotion of our blog item, beginning Tuesday.

* We'll be maintaining our Super Bowl blog from Tuesday through Friday, and then again on Sunday night during the game. Tuesday through Friday is when we're looking for contributions from the paper's reporting staff. (Sunday night we will handle the blog from the office.) Our primary staffing to receive your blog items will be between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Items received after 6 p.m. will be given consideration for kicking off the next morning's blog, unless we find ourselves with available time.

Epic

"It is the best of times. It is the worst times. In the year 2014, people have access to a breadth and depth of information unimaginable in earlier age. Everyone contributes in some way. Everyone participates to create a living, breathing mediascape. However, the press as you know it, has ceased to exist. The fourth estate’s fortunes have waned. 20th-century news organizations are an afterthought, a lonely remnant of a not too distant past. The road to 2014 began in the 20th century."

A provocative vision of the future cooked up by two former Poynter interns, Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson on a long drive through South Florida. Not as far fetched as it might seem at first. It's been revised a couple of times since they first created it in early 2004. -kw

The next 10 years

Notes prepared for extemporaneous remarks to visiting members of the Asian American Editors Association

I want to talk to you today, not so much as the online guy. But as a guy who for the past 10 years has been keeping a very close eye on the changes in the media landscape and what it portends for our business.

The first 10 years of the Internet, was really just a warm up act. In many respects it simply extended the audience fragmentation that began with the advent of television, and continued with the introduction of FM radio, cable television, and other mass communications innovations.

The next 10 years is likely to be far different. Mass media in general and newspapers in particular are likely to face challenges unlike any we’ve ever seen before.

Technology has not simply created another competing medium – another platform if you will. It has begun to profoundly change news consumption habits and with them, the very fundamentals of the business.

Simply put, there will be less money available to support news gathering; the public’s trust in mainstream media is likely to continue to erode; and we will confront new forms of media consumption, communication and interaction that do not comport with our long-established notions of how news should be disseminated.

Why do I paint such a stark picture? Let’s look at what’s happened over the past 10 years.

Sulzberger comments spawns debate on NYTimes fees

"It gets to the issue of how comfortable are we training a generation of readers to get quality information for free. That is troubling." It was a small quote at the end of a long cover story in BusinessWeek about the future of The New York Times, but the words of publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. set off a wave of debate on whether the Times would start charging for its popular flagship site, NYTimes.com. BusinessWeek's Anthony Bianco said that "disagreement rages" within the Times on whether to charge or remain free, and that disagreement was mirrored in the public at large. A Dow Jones exec told the AP that he would be delighted if the Times started charging an online subscription fee, just like Dow's WSJ.com. But that contrasts sharply with Dow's recent move to buy popular free, ad-supported site CBS MarketWatch.

Blogger David Rothman spoke for many Times readers, saying that Sulzberger shouldn't overcharge people and alienate online readers. "Readers cherish the New York Times, yes," Rothman wrote. "But it is not as essential to their daily routines as the Wall Street Journal is to the business world." Rothman goes on to list eight ideas to cure the Times, including better online databases, closer ties to bloggers and more online video. - From the OPA Intelligence Report.

Framing the issue

The following is an e-mail I wrote to fellow members of the Poynter Advisory Board in preparation for a discussion of issues facing mainstream media that took place at Poynter on Jan. 13-14.

Look forward to talking with everyone on Thursday.

Lauren's twin themes give us a great foundation for Friday's conversation. As she suggests, we're in the midst of a fundamental upheaval in the way people absorb, interpret and consume news, which in turn is putting enormous pressure on the economic underpinnings of the business. Surviving the upheaval may well require rethinking what constitutes news (Bill's point about making ourselves indispensable); rethinking how we gather news (where do we deploy those diminishing resources?); as well as rethinking the economics of the business (can we find new ways to aggregate audience?).

I've jotted down some thoughts we may want to throw in the mix (or discard) as we delve into the conversation. Also provided links to Rick Edmonds take on the state of the industry; (an early version) of the introduction to Dan Gillmor's new book "We the Media"; and a link to story about a path breaking experiment underway in Greensboro.

Here are some explicit issues we may wish to address concerning economics and journalism: