All you sucka sci blog networks better REALIZE you play for second place

Bora launched his blog network at Scientific American.  He took his time, did it right.

Don't get me wrong - I love the writing at Wired Science, ScienceBlogs.com, Discover, Scientopia, Guardian Science Blogs, Nature Network, PLoS Blogs, and so on - but Bora was really smart about this. He saw the growth in the niche, looked at what was working best, saw what could improve, and just plain NAILED IT:

Another thing I was particularly interested in was to find bloggers who in some way connect the “Two Cultures” as described by C.P.Snow. Some connect science to history, philosophy, sociology or ethics. Many are very interested in science education, communication and outreach. Some make connections between science and popular culture, music, art, illustration, photography, cartoons/comic strips, poetry, literature, books, movies, TV, video, etc. Several produce such cross-discipline and cross-cultural material themselves – at least two are musicians, two are professional photographers, several produce videos, two are professional artists, a couple are authors of multiple books, some produce their own blog illustrations. But there are also commonalities – they all have strong knowledge of their topic, they strictly adhere to the standards of scientific evidence, they are all very strong writers, and they are all enthusiastic to share their work with a broader audience. 

When I put together this group, with such diverse interests and styles, it was not surprising to discover that, without really having to try hard to make it so, they also display diversity in many other areas: geography, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, personal/professional/scientific background and more. This is something that is important for science, and is important in the science blogging world.

This is brilliant for two big reasons: first, diversity is a source of enormous strength in science and pretty much everything else.  It's the right thing to do.  Second because it makes science immediately relevant to people with diverse interests - music, art, history, pop-culture, sports, education, and so on - the network has the capacity to grow its readership much more than other science blog networks.

My initial reaction is that SciAm's emergence with a large, smart roster may thin the herd of networks a little bit. I notice some writers have left their networks to join SciAm's, and since there are only so many blog posts you can read in a day, readers will go for the quality content first.

I may flesh this thinking out a bit more but here's one prediction/caution for those writing for another network. If you start to get several emails from your editors or managers providing "guidelines" on how to write in ways that generate more traffic like throwing celebrity references in the titles or providing more posts with repetitive phrases, your network is following an unsustainable strategy.  Your editors care more about Google search terms than you.  They want your words but not necessarily your thoughts.  The first network to do this will probably be the first one to go.

UPDATE: PZ Myers is already declaring ScienceBlogs.com "dead" and hinting that he's leaving.  Pharyngula is basically half of SEED/SB's traffic and I notice that the new SciAm network has at least a couple of SB peeps on it. I'm guessing the folks at National Geographic aren't pleased.  Leave it to an evolutionary biologist to tell us what happens when something doesn't adapt to a changing environment...

Obama, Trump, and Sheen - do we get the news we deserve?

I was walking through the reception room at my office yesterday when I noticed the television.  There was Donald Trump, declaring victory for compelling the conventional wisdom to conclude that the President of the United States was a citizen of the United States.  Or something.

Captain Comb-over has been all over the idiot box lately, insisting that the President's citizenship status was questionable, and his crack research team in Hawaii was unearthing some mind-blowing stuff.  Or something. Sadly, the news media just ate it up despite knowing it was all fake.  It got to the point where the President decided to stop doing his job for 30 minutes so he could go down to the press room to explain once again  that yes, he was born in this country, and perhaps the media might want to cover real news for a change.

This constructive criticism predictably injected a dose of responsibility in the press corps, compelling them to "fact check" and scrutinize Donald Trump's outlandish claims...

Oh, wait, they fact checked the PRESIDENT'S suggestion that this ridiculous side show was item one on their agenda.  In doing so they trotted out the "percentage of the news hole" metric - one that conveniently ignores the editorial decisions of what leads the broadcast or is "above the fold" and what's on page 8.  And buried in their defense was the admission their volume of coverage of the twice-bankrupt bluster-box eclipsed their coverage of the President for a week.  So now the media is covering their coverage of one of the most ridiculous non-stories in recent memory.  Somewhere Jon Stewart is saying, "hey - fake news is MY job."

But how big an issue is this, really?  I thought I'd take a look at "coverage" from a (perhaps) more appropriate perspective - in the age of media convergence, you can't ignore blogs from the rest of whatever Pew decides to call its "news hole."  Online discussions are not perfectly reflective of mainstream media coverage, but I don't think you can deny an association.  Bloggers invariably discuss what's in the news, and many bloggers are indeed journalists.  So how did the online discussion of these events really stack up - and are there any other stories out there we could include for some context?

So I decided to look at the last 90 days of online chatter for three discussions:

1. The Trump-Obama birther debacle (I excluded references that only mentioned Trump because they may have been related to his TV shows or other business interests),
2. Any blog reference whatsoever to the term "Social Security," and
3. Charlie Sheen.

Here's what I got, using Nielsen's BlogPulse Trend Search:

Even today, in what is presumably the nadir of the Charlie Sheen saga, he's still arguably bigger than "birtherism"  and social security.  His initial burst in March dwarfs both of those other issues combined.  And don't get me started on the royal wedding.

Of course, bloggers are consumers of news more than they are creators of it.  Maybe the media is just giving the people what they want.  But I thought journalism was supposed to include some kind of professional, editorial judgment on what is news and what isn't.  In my opinion, editors are letting us down here.

News on the iPad - Zite is the early winner

I'm not much of a tech gadget guy, but as a self-confessed news junkie, Zite at first blush seems to be the iPad app I've been looking for.  I've been trying to mold my iPad into a super-news device, and Zite is a big piece.

Basically it's a smart RSS reader that attempts to customize the news you receive based on your preferences and feedback.  The format is crisp and easy on the eye, similar (though not identical) to Flipboard.  I'm surprised at how good the news sources are and I'm stunned that they are offering the app for free.    As they keep learning more about my "preferences" it will be interesting to see what kind of marketing profile I generate, and what they'll actually do with that information, but from a usability and performance standpoint I'm quite impressed.

I'm still looking for a top-notch "breaking news" tool.  That's considerably harder to pull off, though I'm sure it will involve some combination of Global Voices Online people (like Amira Al Hussaini, who just got a great writeup in NYT from Jen Preston), the major journalism-industry sources of breaking news (i.e., the wires, BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, etc.) and Twitter.  The challenge comes in curating this tool - once news "breaks," you have to identify the most credible sources of information and ping them often for updates.   You also have to be flexible enough to accommodate multiple stories and then manage multiple streams of content with an effective visual interface.  I'm also looking for something that can add radio streams in the background.

By the way, I would pay for these apps and for subscriptions to content.  So there's a business model to be won here.

Huffington Post - AOL is a bigger deal than you think

"Rosebud." 2.0

So it's all over the news this morning that AOL just bought Huffington Post for $315 million, and Arianna Huffington will be in charge of all of AOL's content development. AOL owns a number of niche media properties - sites like TechCrunch, Moviefone, and Mapquest.  Huffington Post has been trying to diversify its offering into many of these niches.

I think we may be witnessing the first real digital media business model that will be profitable over the long term.  I also think the feisty global digital media startups that have tried to have a global impact could very likely be eaten for lunch.  Consider what Ms. Huffington says in her announcement post:

At the first meeting of our senior team this year, I laid out the five areas on which I wanted us to double down: major expansion of local sections; the launch of international Huffington Post sections (beginning with HuffPost Brazil); more emphasis on the growing importance of service and giving back in our lives; much more original video; and additional sections that would fill in some of the gaps in what we are offering our readers, including cars, music, games, and underserved minority communities.. 

By combining HuffPost with AOL's network of sites, thriving video initiative, local focus, and international reach, we know we'll be creating a company that can have an enormous impact, reaching a global audience on every imaginable platform.

Remember my New Year's resolution? It's coming true -- and it's only the beginning of February. Let's go down the checklist: Local? AOL's Patch.com covers 800 towns across America, providing an incredible infrastructure for citizen journalism in time for the 2012 election, and a focus on community and local solutions that have been an integral part of HuffPost's DNA. Check.

Expertise on local focus, global reach, leveraging citizen journalism to cover important issues, with a flair for politics.  Sound familiar?  That's what Global Voices Online does right now.  (And their coverage of what's been happening in Egypt has been excellent.)  Their model of tracking and aggregating local bloggers in every corner of the world is a good one - but they've done it from a non-profit mindset.  I'd argue they do it from an anti-profit mindset.  GVO has been very resistant to work with for-profit enterprises (though there have been some exceptions) because they see it as a threat to their independence and credibility.

GVO is less than a year away from getting a titanic competitor in the form of a global media network with real financial backing, political clout, and strategically audacious leadership.  I don't think GVO will die - there will always be a place for non-profit media - but I think the leaders of GVO and groups like Internews better be thinking long and hard about evolving, adapting to the new marketplace, and looking for new partnerships.

Stupid PR Flack Tricks

Liz Gumbinner wrote again about the morons in my business.  Seems the Cool Mom Picks team put together a comprehensive, four-month advertising proposal for a company, and the company rejected it because, you know, they'd have to pay for the ads.

I'll try to make this simple.  If they're important enough for your brand to be there, buy the damn ad.

If you think you're gonna get a halfway-decent blogger to promote your stuff for nothing more than a link or some free yogurt or something, you sound more stupid and disrespectful than the "chickens for health care" candidate.

One of these days a blogger is going to call you by name.  And once that happens, you're toast.

UPDATE:  Less than 5 minutes after this posted, I got an email from a political blogger pal of mine.  He got an email from a PR flack asking him to write about an online advertising company's new online advertising product.  For free.  And then he got a follow up "reminder" email from them.    That's right - an advertising company with such faith in its ads that it tries to avoid paying for ads.

Seriously, I can't make this stuff up.

The REAL State of the Media, 2010

CNN's media critic Howie Kurtz has a show called Reliable Sources that now broadcasts online.  Everything about the show's first segment - the topic, the panel, the format - goes directly to the state of journalism today.   Seriously, it's so dead-on it's ironic. It crystallizes where we are in the business of journalism so much it almost becomes a caricature of itself.

It's a panel featuring a pundit, a former managing editor of a newspaper chain that has had severe cuts, and a blogger.   They spend their time essentially saying that journalism has been reduced to a "he-said, she-said" spectacle of political sniping.  They talk about how the news media misses the real story and goes directly to the stupid/crazy show, and even throw in Michael "heckuva job, brownie" Brown.  The money quote, from David Frum:

A conversation that ought to be about how the President has not done a good enough job has turned into how a disgraced former federal official may or may not be insane.

John Aravosis is a long-time pal. All the panelists were great.

Paying Reporters to "Move the Markets?"

Sometimes I read something and I just do a double-take.

So I read this week's New York Times piece by Stephanie Clifford about how BusinessWeek is being absorbed into Bloomberg Media, and it seemed to be this interesting story of this nimble ninja of a media company absorbing one of business journalism's last dinosaurs, but I sort of looked past the angle of the uneasy meshing of two corporate cultures.  If I want to learn about those issues in the business news industry I usually check out Chris Roush at UNC, and he had that angle covered.  What really caught my eye was this:

At Bloomberg News, where writers’ salaries are tied, among other factors, to how many “market-moving” articles they have produced, BusinessWeek is fitting in like — well, like an 80-year-old print magazine in a company that is all about terminals. 

Emphasis mine.  The story actually reiterated the concept, and credited the idea to editor Matthew Winkler - a.k.a. the guy who runs the place:

Mr. Winkler said magazine articles would be evaluated on the same metrics as articles for the terminal: did they move markets? 

 Again, emphasis mine.

So am I to understand that reporters at Bloomberg are actually "incentivized" to have an impact on the stock prices of the companies they cover?

Does it matter which way the markets move?  

This doesn't sound like a bonus for good reporting, this sounds like a bounty for corporate scalps.

I asked a good friend - an editor who just happens to have a Peabody Award to his credit - what he thought of this.  I won't quote him because I thought of writing this post after I emailed him about it - but let's just say he wasn't particularly pleased with this compensation structure.

And if you're not upset about this, if you think this is just a tried-and-true practice from a reputable media source, just replace the words "Bloomberg Media" with "Huffington Post" or "Pajamas Media" and see how you feel about stories designed to move corporate stock prices.

Media Convergence Done Right

Global Voices Online and BBC News team up.

Congratulations to Ivan, Solana, and everyone at Global Voices - and to BBC News for having the courage to try something new.

ABC News Embraces Kubler-Ross Stage Five: Acceptance

"Media Convergence" starts with the death of "traditional media," which has been withering on the vine for a while now. The latest casualty is a big one - a huge chunk of ABC News.

It's not just layoffs due to the lousy economy. It's the simple fact that the news industry has held on to a business model and cost structure that hasn't worked well for years. I was struck by something ABC News honcho David Westin said in his memo to staff.

The memo listed several provisions of the news division's restructuring plan, including an expanded use of digital journalists (who both produce and shoot their own stories), the combination of weekday and weekend operations for both "Good Morning America" and "World News," and, at the newsmagazines and other long-form programming, "a more flexible blend of staff and freelancers."

"The time has come to anticipate change, rather than respond to it," Westin said in the memo.

Actually the time to anticipate, rather than respond to, change came about four years ago. But it's nice that the media is finally embracing the final stage of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief: acceptance. (I went through how the media grappled with the other four stages here.)

The good news is the industry can look to several business models to overcome its many problems. Here's something I wrote back in March, and it sounds somewhat similar to what Westin wrote yesterday. (of course, I'm not the only person writing stuff like this.)

...if you want to see the news network of the future, just look at Global Voices Online or Green Options today. These networks leverage resources (i.e., writers) that are already in the places old-school networks would establish bureaus. Most of these independent writers already have their own platforms - and since they're freelancers, they have the ability to shop their work to a number of outlets at once. Right now it may seem weird to think you'd see the same reporter working for multiple papers or networks. But I follow the reporters I think do the best work, just as I look to specific bloggers who demonstrate their expertise in certain subjects. You could still have one network send a particular reporter to, say, a war zone and pay their way for exclusive content. But getting paid by the job might work best for both sides.

This business model would still be ad-driven, I think. I like the pro publica idea but it's limited to the resources of the foundation community. BBC is also an interesting model but difficult to justify in the US.

I'd argue that my pals at Live Oak Media are probably a better example today than Green Options, but I contribute there so take it with a grain of salt. And I readily acknowledge the ad-driven model has limitations, but we've already seen how paywalls fail.

I also think the news industry is ignoring a very important resource and process - business incubation. Non-profit media relies quite a bit on foundations; those foundations are not going to fund organizations forever. But if a few foundations got together to establish a virtual business incubator for the journalism industry, with a path toward "graduation" and profitability for fledgling news companies, we'd probably develop a few business models that worked.

The Myth of the "Green Media Bubble"

The Wall Street Journal's popular and influential Environmental Capital blog shut its doors last week, without much notice. This led to some speculation that the WSJ is part of some climate change denialist conspiracy, and others claimed there's some sort of "green media bubble."

Ummm... No. On both counts.

This is more a reflection of the reality of the media industry and how some companies are approaching it. I've spoken with some colleagues about this. We wouldn't be at all surprised to see some reincarnation of Environmental Capital behind a paywall. After all, that's where the Murdoch media-empire is headed - their approach to intellectual property frowns on giving people free access to popular content, and they're clearly not sold on the advertising-based online business model.

The question we should be asking is who will step up to be the leading provider of content in this space. Environmental Capital was a green business content powerhouse. The most popular "brands" in online green media - places like Treehugger, Worldchanging, Grist, etc. - are not business pubs.

Obviously there's the New York Times' Green Inc., but the rumors are flying that their days are numbered (again, a reflection of larger business issues in the media industry and nothing more). Another mainstream alternative is Reuters' Green Business, which has a more global feel. The GreenBiz Network, my pals at Live Oak Media's Earth and Industry , Triplepundit, and Energy Boom are next-gen social alternatives to the mainstream guys, but they're also more likely to have a pro-green bias. Alt Energy Stocks is where I go to look at thoughtful commentary and analysis on green finance. Marc Gunther also writes regularly at the same level of quality as the team at Environmental Capital. There are dozens more, and now that the all-powerful WSJ brand has retreated from the field, I'm expecting at least some of these sites will see their readership rise. If you create a netvibes tab or google reader category with these sites, you have instant access to all of it.

And this is why I'm really questioning WSJ's move. Their content was great. But it's not like there's an absence of similarly great content in this space. In this business, you can obviously assert your intellectual property rights and say people should pay for your content. But this is 2010, and the amount of excellent, insightful, and free content is increasing daily.

Why Newspapers Are Failing, Part 3,489

Most newspapers are watching the bottom drop out of their readership - even when they double-count readers. It would seem to me that newspapers (online and offline) really want to reverse that trend - at least that's what I hear a lot. So when I read that Rupert Murdoch is seriously considering removing his news sites from Google's search engines - to the point where he's negotiating with companies that have a mere fraction of the search volume of Google - I really get confused.

Restricting access to your content is not a way to get more people to see your content. That seems pretty basic to me.

Here's an analogy that works a lot better than most journalism types care to admit. A long time ago - way back before there were iPhones or Playstations or even the Wii Fit - we had this thing called a "phone book." The phone book was made of paper and had lists with contact information of all the people and businesses in your area. It was the thing people used when they wanted to know how to contact you on the phone - and remember, back then phones were actually attached to the wall by a cord. You can still see them in old movies or in museums. Phone books had sections - individuals were listed on white pieces of paper and businesses were listed on both the white and a separate section of yellow pieces of paper. (Those were called "yellow pages" - sheer genius, right?) Consumers never paid directly for the phone book - the money to make phone books came from ads that companies placed in those yellow pages near the sections that you would go to search for things like "pizza" or "plumbers" or "personal injury lawyers."

Back then phone books were really important - if you weren't in the phone book, people who didn't know much about you didn't know how to find you. Which was bad, because most people used the phone book. Sometimes other companies tried to come up with a different phone book, a better phone book, but most people still used the same phone book that they got in the first place. It had the most listings and was set up in a format that everyone understood.

So now we have a new phone book called Google. And YES, it's amazingly similar to that old phone book because, as Rupert Murdoch and his business partners keep insisting, information is (to them at least) a commodity. Sure, there are a couple of alternative (and fairly spiffy) phone books, but the overwhelming majority of people are still using the Google option, and the data seem to suggest that won't be changing anytime soon.

So now Rupert Murdoch and a few others are saying they're ready to take their names and numbers out of the phone book and if you want them, you have to go to this other phone book that pays them a fee. Of course, the original phone book will still have plenty of information and product remarkably similar to the product Mr. Murdoch "produces."

This journalism-as-commodity model, complete with artificial barriers to access, doesn't strike me as a path to long-term profitability. First, some players in this commodity model want to charge for the finished product but haven't considered the new costs they'd have to incur once the original sources of news discover their rightful place in the "value chain" of news. Second, it's just resisting the trend toward innovation and consumer empowerment. Consumers dictate the marketplace - they will find information they want to fit their interests and world view.

I think the folks at News Corp. are in for quite a shock if they think their brand is so powerful that people will use the search engine News Corp. tells them to.

Media Convergence? Or Concession of Defeat?

A colleague of mine brought to my attention the latest example of media convergence: YouTube is collecting video submissions from consumers for use on major mainstream news outlets. It's amazing how quickly we've gone from mainstream media organizations complaining that people who publish YouTube videos and write blog posts can't be trusted because OMG they're not journalists, to co-opting that same content from those same people for themselves.

And seeing how more and more media organizations are ready to sue you if you link to their content, I’m wondering how long it will take for some organization to take something off YouTube and then try to keep others from using it.

And while so much of what you find on the web is garbage, I challenge you to watch cable news for 24 hours and resist the urge to throw something at the television. And I’m NOT trying to be flip. I’m completely convinced people flock to the web for information because what you see on television is absolute crap.

Cable news’ it-girl right now devotes shows to the “socialist imagery” on the walls of Rockefeller Center, spins conspiracy theories on a chalk board highlighting the way words are spelled, and is given to intermittent fits of crying on the air. Fifteen years ago we’d have put him in a mental facility and he’d be the subject of Grand Rounds. Today he’s on prime time.

Flip the channel and you will see Octo-mom explaining to Miss Teen South Carolina where babies come from.

Is it me?

Umm.... WOMMA? It's Not About You.

So four bloggers got together to start an awareness campaign they called Blog With Integrity. Basically they saw members of their own community doing things they thought compromised their community -things like plagiarizing content, failing to disclose financial relationships, and not treating others with respect. The discussion has been all over the mom-o-sphere.

They decided to build a website that had a badge you could take that basically tells readers "I try not to do any of those things."

That's it.

After all, it's not like they're the social media police. They certainly can't enforce some code of conduct. They figure - and I agree - that people who steal ideas, hide their financial interests, or treat others poorly will eventually be exposed. The badge is basically a reminder that bad behavior affects everyone, and there are people in the community who try to do the right thing.

It's not like you need a badge on your blog to have integrity, and it's not like having the badge proves you're ethical. But it's a nice idea. Further, most communications professionals - you know, the superheroes of marketing and PR and whatnot - will tell you that the best awareness campaigns are simple in delivery and scope, and make it easy for people to participate. So not surprisingly, the campaign gets noticed.

But then I see this post from the official blog of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) that seems just a leeeeeetle beet condescending and maybe a tad defensive:

I applaud the BLOGGING WITH INTEGRITY initiative. Love the grassroots nature. And love the passion behind the program. I just believe it could use a little more bite to better clarify acceptable behavior such as WOMMA provides.

OK, four things.

First, these four bloggers never claimed to speak for the entire community of online moms. They don't believe they have the market cornered on what's acceptable behavior.

Second, this isn't about what WOMMA thinks is or isn't acceptable behavior. They're parent bloggers. WOMMA is a group of marketers. It's a different community.

Third, the WOMMA code has some flaws. For some reason, WOMMA seems to believe that the only people in online marketing communications who shouldn't be paid cash for their time and effort are the bloggers - you know, the people who have worked for a while to make their online properties so influential that marketers would solicit them in the first place. Last time I checked, asking someone to work for free didn't fit the definition of "ethical."

Finally, it's the use of the word "bite." From which I infer WOMMA asserts its code has "teeth." WOMMA's code sure has a lot of words, but it doesn't have "teeth."

So how exactly does WOMMA enforce its very detailed and specific code? How do trade associations or whatever this group is actually require anything of its members? Or do they just assume that people who write a dues check agree to adhere to this code?

WOMMA member companies have most certainly engaged in behavior that runs counter to this code. Does WOMMA put them on probation or something? Do they expell the company? Do they write a statement of censure? Do they fine them? Do they put the company in time out?

Or do they allow the offending company to use WOMMA's "brand" for PR cover when the company gets caught?

OK, I know I'm being unfair to WOMMA. There are some good people working in marketing that I'm sure get something valuable from their participation there.

But let's get real about ethics. Let's not even BEGIN to suggest that a code with uber-specifics but no real enforcement mechanism is any better than a badge that simply says do the right thing. Let's not try to imply superiority over a legitimate grassroots campaign with a "bless your little heart" and a "maybe someday you'll be as specific as we will."

And seriously, WOMMA folks, it's just not about you. WOMMA members may get to decide which bloggers they'll work with, but WOMMA doesn't get to decide what behavior from bloggers is ethical and what isn't. Let the online mom community sort out what's best for the online mom community.

Bypassing Journalism...

Yesterday morning I was listening to CNN with interest as it took a break from its continuing "Michael Jackson is still dead" coverage and reported that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was delivering a "major foreign policy speech" to the Council of Foreign Relations that afternoon.

My first instinct was to ask "What is she going to say?"

I don't remember hearing an answer to that question in the story. I did hear that President Obama has already given a bunch of major speeches on foreign policy and that this must mean that people in the White House are trying to marginalize Secretary Clinton's influence and don't you know they're rivals and don't really trust each other and gossip gossip gossip. Maybe they covered the guts of the speech later that day - I have no idea. I do know they reported on another video of Michael Jackson's hair on fire in 1984.

This is the kind of thing that drives me nuts. I'm sure that Obama v. Clinton story is catchy, but it's not news, at least to me. It's gossip - and frankly, it's not the least bit surprising that a new President would make major policy speeches when there's a change of direction in policy. It's pretty much what you do.

Thankfully, social media tools let you bypass this gossip and get to the actual source. I've heard a lot of talk lately about the death of the news "business model" and the frustration so many journalists have over "crazy bloggers" drawing attention away from their serious journalism.

When I watch CNN I want news. Often times CNN gives it to me. But if they're going to make the editorial decision that video of a dead pop star's hair catching fire 25 years ago deserves to be in "heavy rotation," I'm going to turn off CNN and get the news myself. Yes, CNN is covering real stories like the confirmation hearings for Judge Sotomayor, but shouldn't that be the top story?

Maybe as we focus on journalism's business model we should also focus on the product.

In case you're wondering, here's the speech Secretary Clinton gave. She's smart.

Media Evolution and Soap Opera Journalism

Is it me, or has the news just been one soap opera after the next for the past couple of weeks? Three stories that strike me as side shows - the death of a pop singer, the adultery of a Governor, and the resignation of another Governor - have absolutely dominated the news cycle. It's not as if there's nothing else going on.

Here's the sad truth - these stories are definitely newsworthy, at least to a point. While the public seems to think the coverage about Michael Jackson has been excessive, they clearly can't get enough of it. As for the Governors, they both seem to encourage more coverage, with Gov. Sanford continuing to grant interviews to AP and Gov. Palin threatening to sue everyone.

It's not as if these topics have been ignored in the online world, either. Statistics are harder to come by in this world, but per Nielsen's Blogpulse, it's clear to see that the "king of pop" was also the "king of posts" in blogs:

That big blue spike is mentions of "Michael Jackson." Those teensy little bumps are mentions of the Governors. I guess we know big entertainment news completely dwarfs political soap operas in the blogosphere.

I also found this - apparently the story about Jackson's death broke first on a blog. but here's what the college kids are saying about that blog:

This is NOT a story that symbolizes new media’s shining greatness. In fact, they are hardly helping matters at all...

So the story broke on TMZ, and many people followed it there and on PerezHilton.com. Who cares? Those two sites are part of the media establishment now anyway (whether the oldies like it or not)...

TMZ may not be the BIG media of yesteryear, but now, with its success, it has come to embody the same one-to-many media model we were raised on i.e. OLD not new.

I think the social media lessons learned here are twofold: first, the pace of integration between traditional corporate journalism and "new media" is increasing, and second, a popular blog that abandons true social media won't be popular for long.

The Perils Of Nomenclature

My wife is a social science researcher, and a damn good one. As I've listened to her talk about her work from time to time, I've learned a little bit about quantitative versus qualitative research. She is a stickler for rigorous methodology - she takes the time to learn things like "structural equation modeling" and "growth curve modeling" and she pays close attention to the methodology sections of the gazillions of journal articles that cross her desk, and she makes it a priority in her own work. However, it's unfair to describe my wife as a "number cruncher." I've learned from her that qualitative research - the kind of research that can't always be summed up in a formula output - is also incredibly valuable.

So it's interesting to watch social scientists build the research base for the "nascent" field of online social media, and to watch companies develop tools and systems that try to peg a value to online communication. It's really a relentless and sometimes reckless exercise in nomenclature, and it almost completely ignores qualitative research.

The smart folks at Forrester wrote a book called Groundswell (and there's a blog with the same name) that had a lot of interesting and valuable information about social media, especially as it pertains to marketing. The one thing that most people repeat about it, however, is the authors' attempts to classify people in to six categories of "audience engagement," with category names such as "spectators" and "critics." I'm pretty sure the authors stress that a person can be in one category for one topic (or product) and another category for something else, but that's a level of nuance that seems to be lost on too many of my flackitudinous brethren and sistren. (Yes, I know I'm making words up here. Just roll with it.)

Then of course I've seen countless posts from smart people trying to "define" and classify social media from their own commercial perspectives - is it marketing or public relations? Is there a "right" way or a "wrong" way to use certain tools? I've seen heated arguments that really boil down to nothing more than nomenclature - if you don't do a certain thing, you don't fit my definition, and therefore you're not... something. And these are reasonably smart people doing this. Maybe I just don't get it.

I've also seen a blog called shouting loudly from another group of smart people and one particular post caught my eye - "A Few Things Political Scientists Need To Stop Getting Wrong About The Blogosphere." In it, one smart academic type essentially disagrees with another smart academic type about a calculation of authority. Go read it yourself. The post author, David Karpf, has even gone so far as to create a "Blogosphere Authority Index" for political blogs that strikes me as somewhat similar to the Todd Andrlik's "Power 150" algorithm for marketing blogs.

These are some of the tools that PR flacks use to determine what a "top" blog is. But they're using only quantitative tools, and questionable ones at that. I could jack up my blog's "technorati authority" simply by creating a bunch of single-post blogs that link to it. I could get into a flame war with a reader and write 500 comments on one post, but it would only be two people virtually shouting at each other. Just about every measure used in calculations like these can be (and often are) manipulated.

There are people on Karpf's BAI that I'd consider enormously influential in politics, and then there are people on that same list with virtually no real influence at all. It doesn't matter how many posts they write or how many comments or links they get. If you REALLY know the political blogosphere, you know that bloggers get inbound links all the time from other bloggers MOCKING them. The political blogosphere is a nasty place, with plenty of arguments via comments and trackback links - but while these online arguments will inflate a blog's technical measures of "authority," they certainly don't equate to political influence. Verbosity is not a true indicator of political influence, at least in my opinon.

Sometimes I look at the Power 150 - apparently so awesome that AdAge decided to buy it - and I scratch my head. Again, there are some people on that list with enormous credibility and influence, and then there are people high on that list who are almost universally recognized as being unable to strategize their way out of a paper bag. Putting a hashtag at the end of your tweet doesn't make you smart if the tweet says "still stuck in this damn paper bag." And I don't care how often you use the word "Facebook" in public - being a panelist or a keynote speaker at big conferences usually just means your firm ponied up a lot of money.

You want to know influence? Don't just look at the blog, look at the blogger. Does he or she work in the industry they write about? How educated are they? Do they discuss their projects and the concepts they're grappling with? Do they publish in other platforms? Are they raising money for candidates or making more money than their competitors? And is what they're writing actually smart, or is it just a bunch of metaphors describing the trendy new social media platform? Are they appearing at conferences that AREN'T just social media marketing gigs? I'm not convinced you can combine this all into a number, though I'm sure someone will try. I think it's better to write a profile of someone than assign a technorati rank to them.

It's never been that hard to determine who's smart and who's not.

Adding My Voice

It's no secret that I've been singing the praises of Global Voices Online and its advocacy arm for some time now. So when I saw this - even though it's a contest run by organization that's working closely with a competitor - I thought it was important to add my voice to a global chorus in support of Global Voices Advocacy.

Zemanta has a new add-on tool for blogs, and they're trying to promote blogging for a cause. The cause that gets the most blog posts will win $3,000.

I vote for Global Voices Advocacy, because they represent the future of activism and communication in a newly-wired developing world.

There are dozens of great causes participating in this contest, and each deserves support. For at least part of my career I spent time focusing on the developing world and trying to find solutions through trade and intellectual property rules to the enormous public health challenges in the poorest countries. I quickly learned that there are far more urgent priorities than a rulebook and a tariff schedule updated regularly in Geneva, and the top priority can be summed up in a single word: infrastructure.

When most people hear the word "infrastructure" they think roads and bridges and ports. When they hear "communications infrastructure" they usually think about fiber-optic cables or cellphone towers. And they're right. But infrastructure is also about people. It's about people with the right training, in the right place, at the right time. Bridges don't get built without engineers and construction workers. Communications networks don't get utilized without people who know how to use them.

You could make medicines for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria available for free, but they're useless if there isn't a system in place to distribute and administer those medicines. That means you need working ports to unload the vaccines and the medical supplies, but you also need everyone from the person who knows how to drive a truck on rough terrain without tipping over to the person who knows how to give a vaccine to the person who knows how to convince others to come back regularly for care. In too many places that's all the same person, and if anything happens to her or him, the entire infrastructure is gone.

History has shown that the key to preventing disease - as well as addressing any number of injustices - is the free flow of information.

Global Voices Advocacy is providing that channel for information to flow both ways - they're quite literally building and training a network of advocates and communicators where they're needed most, and they're helping those whose voices haven't been heard before share their stories and solutions. They're building the links between those "in the field" and those in the boardrooms and the broadcast booth. Global Voices Advocacy is the human global communications infrastructure of the 21st century. It is the foundation upon which large-scale grassroots campaigns will be built.

On top of that, they're redefining the "business of journalism." The global news network of the future is going to look a lot more like Global Voices than it will BBC or CNN - a loose coalition of smart people leveraging low-cost technology for high-concept results with sound production values. They'll circumvent censorship and oppression with flip-phones and portable solar chargers. They'll download data and conduct research from internet cafes in Ghana. They'll produce compelling, high-definition content with laptops and $200 cameras. Language barriers will be virtually meaningless. Most importantly, they'll be constantly growing their ranks as people understand the value of telling their own stories and learning from others.

How can you raise awareness about a specific disease, or recruit people to address a tragedy, or offer a solution to a problem, if there's no way to tell your story to the world in your own words?

This blog post is part of Zemanta's “Blogging For a Cause” (http://www.zemanta.com/bloggingforacause/) campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

Where WOMMA Has It Wrong

I got a note yesterday from a friend in the PR business asking my take on the FTC's proposed guidance on "sponsored conversation" online. I got a similar question from another PR pro at my social media presentation last week. Essentially the Federal Trade Commission is considering imposing penalties on bloggers and/or advertisers who make false or misleading claims about products online.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association has been very active in the rulemaking process here, and that's a good thing. I think they're spot on when they insist that bloggers and/or marketers and advertisers fully disclose any financial arrangement related to a blog post or a product review. I also think that people (no matter where they work) should be held accountable if they knowingly make false or misleading statements that have a financial impact. WOMMA's comments to the FTC are based on their ethical code, which is generally sound.

There's one part of their ethical code (pdf) that poses a serious problem, however:

We stand against marketing practices whereby the consumer is paid cash by the manufacturer, supplier, or one of their representatives to make recommendations, reviews, or endorsements.

WOMMA certainly wants bloggers to review products - online product reviews are very valuable. They will certainly continue to ask bloggers to review products. They just think it's unethical to pay bloggers for them. I think this is because another model exists, one with which marketing & PR types are comfortable - traditional journalism outlets where an employee of a publication draws a salary as a "reviewer" and doesn't take compensation from companies. (Of course, that publication takes ad revenue, but that's another story.)

But here's the thing - BLOGGERS ARE NOT JOURNALISTS, no matter how inconvenient that is for marketing people. They aren't compensated for their time by a third party. They've spent their time and resources building a following as a personal publisher (hat tip to Bicycle Mark for that term) and now WOMMA wants the value associated with that following and the credibility of the blogger to help market a product. In exchange for that item of value, WOMMA is prepared to give - what, exactly?

I see the issue in three hypothetical discussions between a PR/marketing person and a blogger. First, the conversation as it typically exists today:

PR guy: Hey, love your blog. I noticed a lot of people read it. I'd like you to take this product and tell your readers what you think about it.

Blogger: Thanks, this is somewhat interesting but I'm not inclined to give you a free ad on my blog, and my time is worth something too.

PR guy: OK, if your time is worth x and you spend y time, here's xy. Just disclose this payment, please.

Blogger: Cool. I'm on it. Send me the stuff.

Now here's the conversation under WOMMA's code of ethics:

PR guy: Hey, love your blog. I noticed a lot of people read it. I'd like you to take this product and tell your readers what you think about it.

Blogger: Thanks, this is somewhat interesting but I'm not inclined to give you a free ad on my blog, and my time is worth something too.

PR guy: Sorry, paying you to review this product violates my code of ethics.

Blogger: But you had no problem asking me to provide you a service for free. That's some code of ethics you have there.

Of course, that means we'll be seeing a lot more of this conversation:

PR guy: Hey, love your blog. I noticed a lot of people read it. I'd like you to take this product and tell your readers what you think about it.

Blogger: Go away.

Most bloggers are not journalists, but many are entrepreneurs (often women entrepreneurs), and I think this is something the FTC must consider as they develop guidance on this issue. They have a right and an obligation to protect consumers from false or misleading statements that influence commerce, regardless of the forum. But because they're FTC, they should recognize that online personal publishing technology has brought about a new self-proprietor business model that doesn't really resemble a traditional trade or consumer publication - the "review blogger." FTC should consider the restraint of trade issues that threaten a new generation of technology-inspired entrepreneurs - bloggers.

Online moms don't have a trade organization fighting for their rights at the FTC. Marketing companies do. The FTC is right to insist on disclosure and accountability. Here's hoping the FTC looks out for the small, often mom-based business and entrepreneur as well.

AP Has Already Lost

The Associated Press has launched a very aggressive campaign to protect its intellectual property - and its revenue - from other online sources, particularly blogs. The campaign features some angry, if a bit cliche, language from its current Chairman:

We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories. We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more.

AP, Please don't sue me.

Julian Sanchez at Ars Technica posits another point of view on the subject, and John Aravosis at Americablog points out that AP may not be practicing what it preaches.

I had a long diatribe planned about technology and social media and journalism and economics and legal theory. But I'll spare you all that drivel and ask one thing of AP.

I'd like AP to provide some examples of what they think constitutes "fair use" of their content. If they won't, then they just can't be taken seriously.

This is an organization that tried to charge bloggers $12.50 for using as little as FIVE WORDS from an article. And this is an organization who threatened to sue people for using the embed codes AP provided when they posted videos to YouTube.

I realize AP is "non-profit," but when litigation (or the threat of it) is at the core of your business strategy, you've already lost.

John Aravosis Is Just Not That Into You

If you're a PR flack, that is.

Seems John has a bit of an email firehose problem, and he's starting to resent it:

I get hundreds of emails a day. Far too many of them garbage like this from people who have added me to their email list without my permission. Then they send me crap. I'm not writing this to whine about my bad emails, I'm trying to make a larger point. Email is a critical part of the day to day work for many of us. The volume of email we are receiving keeps growing. And for many of us, it passed a tipping point, beyond which we are now losing emails from people, not even seeing them as they come in, because of the velocity of traffic hitting our in-box.

And crap like this isn't helping. Actually, crap like this is the problem. I already have a spam filter that catches all of my spam. This crap is what's ruining my in-box.

And he concludes:

If you're sending the same email to fewer than five people, it's not junk.

If you're sending the same email to five or more people, it's probably junk.

It's an interesting rule of thumb. And while one man's junk is another man's priority, it's probably the truth.

There's no easy solution to John's problem - we all get more email than we want, and just when you think you've found the fix someone finds a way around it. And this diatribe won't stop the PR flacks and other goobers from assaulting his inbox - because frankly, they don't really read his blog. They just know he's a big-time political blogger with regular access to the President's communications team and a bunch of big wigs on Capitol Hill, and a lot of other blogs link to his. They just want John to cut and paste whatever they're sending him and post it on his blog. For free.

John can't just stop using email like some of the social media "gliterati" keep saying they have, over and over again, sometimes via email. For those of us in the real world, and who depend on communicating with people other than our closest techno-geek pals, email is the communications vehicle of necessity.

There are a couple of things John could do - for example, he could start actually following the people he cares about on Twitter - he's currently not following anyone and seems to be using Twitter like it's just another RSS feed. By being selective about who he's following, he can accept direct messages from them (getting an alert in his email essentially "validating" the sender) and send them back. He could also get a fairly interesting stream of content - sure, there's a lot of "brushing my teeth" tweets but also some useful breaking news.

Or he could continue to write about his email problem and develop a reputation among Congressional offices as a bit of a snob. Of course, John isn't a snob at all - he's trying to do his job and he's expressing the same frustrations many of us feel - but you see, there are so many people politics and in PR whose egos are bruised far too easily. Last week Robert Scoble (if you know tech business and/or tech PR you've heard of him but if you don't you haven't) unleashed his inner diva just a bit on a podcast about how he hates lousy email pitches and PR flacks let him have it, with one notable exception. I can say this - I don't think "you suck" is the most constructive piece of advice, but it should make us review what we're doing.

Personally I go to Susan Getgood first when I'm thinking about this stuff. Her latest on the topic is here. She's said before that we tend to pitch things that are our client's passion but the bloggers' distraction. So we shouldn't get surprised when most bloggers react this way. She's right.

And I'm going to recommend the "Aravosis Rule" to my social media team. I've always recommended against blast emailing anyone. But this is my "validating third party" for my 3R's post a while back. It's hard to make the case why John should care about something if you're just blasting it out to everyone.

If you want space on John's blog, it's really easy to get it - buy an ad. Make it compelling enough for people to click on it and go to the site you want them to, or put enough info in the ad to prompt action right there. John has been called a lot of things, but he's not the trained monkey of PR flacks.