Say No More

After 4 years (to the day) and more than 250 posts, it’s time to move on to some other things. I’m not necessarily finished with this blog forever, but I am putting it on ice for awhile. Maybe I'll pick it up again someday. But, for now, I won’t be updating it anymore. I have some other things to focus on in my precious little free time.

I started this blog with the intent to write about:

1. My keen interest (professionally and personally) in the radically changing world of media – particularly the written word.
2. My passion for music – new, old and in between in a range of genres.
3. Miscellaneous other stuff of interest – whether funny, quirky, sardonic, beautiful, humbling or otherwise thought-provoking.      

In the beginning, this blog was 50 percent about music, 30 percent about media and 20 percent miscellany. Over time, however, it gradually morphed to being focused primarily on music. The reason for this was two-fold: 

• First, as my job became increasingly demanding, I had less time to research and then write thoughtful and (I hope) insightful commentary on the transformation of the mediascape as it relates to “journalism” as we've historically known it. And, after putting in long hours every day working in media communications, I wasn’t that inclined to do so in my few free hours.

• Second, in my professional life I’ve come to appreciate the value of tracking and using data (of all sorts) to inform decision-making in order to improve efficacy and get the most value or impact out of the effort put forth. When it came to this blog, the data was quite clear: The music posts garnered a lot more traffic than other topics.

There you have it. But now it’s time for me to do some other things. (Though in the back of my mind, I do wonder whether I’ll be able to resist the occasional post when something really compelling prompts me to do so – we’ll see.) 

In the meantime, I would like to think that at least some of what I’ve created here will continue to have some relevance or appeal, and that you might find a few posts that strike your fancy even if they have collected some dust. So feel free to browse the archives (see the chronological index at left and below that a keyword index to post topics).  And please comment if you’re compelled. I will continue to monitor and respond to those.

Thanks for reading. Peace.

Biased Media? Biased Readers!

Here's a fascinating article I just came across from the Nieman Journalism Lab about media bias, or rather how we, as information consumers, perceive media bias. Proof yet again, that context matters – and, in this case, it really matters! 


How do you determine when news is biased? Food for thought.

Today’s News: The 3 Little Pigs

The Guardian recently published a two-minute video advertisement for it’s Open Journalism series that imagines how the story of The Three Little Pigs would be covered today if it were a news story.

The video (non embeddable) is both funny and scary in the degree to which it’s on the mark. View it here.

Smells Like Curatorial Spirit

Here’s another interesting video segment that strikes close to home for me from the folks at Ragan Communications:

Music to my ears! As a bonafide “content curator” by day (that is, in fact, my current job title) and a confirmed “curatorial obsessive” relative to various personal interests the rest of the time (of which this blog is partial evidence), I live and breathe this stuff.

While the idea of “curation,” has become a trendy buzz word in the last year or so, the essence of true curatorial execution is often misconstrued. As Shel Holtz notes in the video clip above, it’s about qualified “filtering,” not mere collection and regurgitation. Good curation – whether it’s centered on creating or simply showcasing good stuff – involves qualifying the content and sourcing, providing meaningful context, and then presenting it in a way that's meaningfully targeted to a particular audience. Part of the contextualizing is making the curated content truly your own – i.e., stamping it with your own voice or brand.

At least that’s my take on it, and what I strive to do. What does it mean to you?

Content Curation

Some interesting stuff in this Mark Ragan interview with IBM’s Digital Strategist Ben Edwards ... especially around the 5 min. mark:

... particularly to someone currently going by the title “Content Curator” at work. Quite fitting for me though, both personally and professionally.

Paper E-Paper?

There’s been a lot of focus on electronic paper in recent years – that is, portable electronic displays that mimic the high-resolution, color and flexibility of real high-quality, four-color printed paper, but with virtually infinite capacity and immediacy (reload and refresh anytime capabilities).

Many media-tech experts agree that, in some shape or form, this is the next evolutionary step for “print publishing.” I’ve been following developments in this arena for a few years and I'm fascinated by the prospect of the high-resolution presentation and portability-enhancing flexibility and wi-fi capabilites these devices promise.

Now a report comes out detailing what seems to be a bizarre and maybe even ironic twist on the idea of e-paper: Disposable, paper-based e-paper!

On the surface, everything about it is pretty cool, except the most obvious question: why would you want to make it disposable? Well, because it’s cheap, it keeps the paper companies in business and we can always use outer space for the next landfill.

Read The Guardian’s full report about this latest development here.

Unbelievable

As a long-time editor and media professional, I find the recent copyright infringement incident involving Cooks Source magazine stunning not only in its flagrancy, but in the brazen stance taken by the editor, which is utterly beyond belief. (Get the backstory here, courtesy of The Guardian.)

The editor’s comment that the writer should be appreciative of all the work they did fixing up her poor copy after they STOLE and republished her article really takes the cake. Incredible! Then again, what can you expect from a publication that doesn’t even punctuate its own name correctly?

They deserve to be sued. But perhaps they’re getting a bigger punishment meted out in the court of public opinion. There has been much ado about the matter on various blogs and in social media circles in the last few days. Commenters have been sticking it to the magazine on Twitter and on its Facebook wall: “Hey, I was told I could find Crooks Source here …” and, my favorite, “Does anyone have a link to Cooks Source’s recipe for Copy Pasta?”

They’ve got some serious damage control ahead of them. I’ll be surprised if one particular self-proclaimed veteran editor, badly in need of a reality check and some professional ethics, retains her job.

Who You Calling Old? (and How?)

Here’s another entertaining and insightful missive from one of my favorite media biz bloggers: The Newsosaur himself, Alan Mutter. This one is particularly interesting to me because not only does it spotlight yet another of the ongoing follies and missteps of today’s media industry, but it also deals with demographic sensitivities that I’ve been attuned to and writing about for a dozen years or so.

Unmaking the Myth of Print ... from Gutenberg On

I just stumbled across Robert Pinsky’s recent New York Times Book Review piece on The Book in the Renaissance by Andrew Pettegree (read it here). It’s an interesting look at Pettegree’s demythologizing of the early years of print (now so revered as the modern iteration wheezes on in the sick ward) in the aftermath of Gutenberg’s revolutionary invention.

Turns out, despite his trailblazing ingenuity, Gutenberg “died bankrupt and disappointed.” Either he hadn’t quite figured out how to monetize his “hi-tech” creation (remember, everything is relative) or it simply took a few decades for the market to catch up to his idea. Apparently, piracy was problem right from the start, too.

And, in further evidence that human nature doesn’t change much, even over half a millennium, the first successful runs on the early printing presses were not what we would later come to know as the classics, but rather Renaissance pulp (albeit religious) and vanity (certificates of papal indulgences).

I doubt I have the time to dedicate to wading through Pettegree’s lauded scholarship, but I did enjoy Pinsky’s enticing summary ... and you might, too.

Friends As Curators? ... Social Media & Customized Magazines

Yesterday’s Associated Press report on a new Apple iPad app that produces personalized “magazines” – really a collection of links – curated by those in one’s social networks (i.e., Facebook and Twitter) is an intriguing prospect that shows the tech sector’s continuing creative thinking in the face of the publishing industry’s wheel spinning and teeth gnashing.

We’ve all heard about how our society is moving from the information age to the “social age” in media and technology. This new app, called Flipboard, represents one of the more interesting and progressive steps in that transformation. In a nutshell, Flipboard creates a visually engaging consolidated news feed – based on links (to articles, pictures and video) that those in your social network have posted to Facebook or Twitter. The assumption being, if it’s stuff your friends like, you’ll be interested, too.

Here’s the quintessentially Apple-esque promo spot for the app, featuring Flipboard CEO Mike McCue (his partner in the venture is ex Apple iPhone guru Evan Doll) :

There is, however, at least one potential problem with this otherwise clever, useful and interesting app. Namely, the current trend by some of the world’s most reputable media companies (Time Inc., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist et al) to put the most succulent fruit of their labors behind pay walls. If this trend continues and expands, as some industry insiders anticipate, some of those “socialized” links won’t offer much beyond a graphically appealing headline or image and a bit of teaser copy. The real meat of the content will be locked away out of reach – until you pay for it. Of course, this won't just be a problem for Flipboard, it’ll also affect the value of the links on FB and Twitter, too.

So beyond your friends own photos, videos and text-based diatribes and, inevitably, a plethora of YouTube videos, more substantial news reports and thoughtful analysis could be quite lacking in your Flipboard “magazine.” That, I imagine, is a surmountable problem. For the right price and/or degree of market penetration, I’m sure the media companies in question will be glad to work out deals with the Flipboard folks that will unlock those content doors.

If that happens, then consider me enticed. Off course, I’d want to make sure such an app had preference settings to control who exactly in my social network was curating the content appearing in my daily “magazine.” Having experienced the ... uhh ... “breadth” of our social networks for a while now, I doubt any of us would want every one of our long-lost buddies feeding that stream.

Flipboard will certainly be something I’ll be keeping an eye on in coming months. I just might have to get an iPad sooner than I thought.

No Exception

Much ado (as seen here in the Columbia Journalism Review) has been made in journalism circles over the last day or two about Politico’s mysterious editorial deletion of a paragraph in a report about General McChrystal’s controversial, career-ending comments to Rolling Stone.

The excised section in question reportedly opined that freelance writer Michael Hastings, a relative journalistic outsider (i.e., unbeholden) to high-ranking military command in Afghanistan, may have been quicker to print some of the general’s loose-cannon comments than more militarily entrenched reporters, who are more reticent to burn bridges and compromise future access by indiscriminately printing such controversial and, perhaps, off-the-cuff comments. The outrage in the media world is over the suggestion that some entrenched reporters play this game.

Hello!? Is this news? A surprise to anyone? Like it or not, that is how the world works, and journalism is no exception. To think differently is naive. Even Woodward and Bernstein made compromises to ensure future and further access to presumed valuable sources.

The Google View on the Future of News

... It’s not necessarily what you think.

This article by James Fallows in the June issue of The Atlantic offers a very interesting and surprisingly upbeat view of the future prospects for serious journalism. It explores potential paths through the current business challenges facing the news industry and sheds light on how technology can enhance substantial coverage and context, rather than undermine it in favor of dumbed-down, superficial content. It’s a very lengthy (it is The Atlantic, after all) but insightful and worthwhile read.

Quite Optimistic

This is an interesting video clip of Esquire editor David Granger’s interview with Steve Forbes at the 2010 Publishing Business Conference and Expo in New York City back in early March:

I’m not sure how Forbes reaches such an optimistic conclusion about whether America is in decline or not given the economic facts as he lays them out in his answer, but he’s more knowledgeable about this stuff than most of us. (Personally, I avoid discussions of monetary policy like the plague! ) Thought-provoking, nonetheless.

Merely Survive, or Thrive?

A recent PBS Mediashift report (read it here) provides an interesting overview of an ongoing exploration by Ourblook.com of the future of journalism as seen by a variety of industry veterans and thought-leaders – all nicely packaged in 12 short, digestible quotes. It covers a wide range of topics, from the evolution of the advertising model, digital opportunities and pitfalls, to citizen journalism and what audio and video can and can’t add to more traditional text-based reporting. A worthwhile read for those of us navigating our way through this “difficult and exciting time” in journalism.

Little Engine Thrives, Big One Takes a Dive

This is a feel-good story from journalism circles (an industry hard pressed for any good feeling these days) in which the little guy proverbially sticks it to the big guy.

In this neo-post-Great-Recession-era, people remain justifiably suspicious of big enterprises – be they big banks, big government or big media. And this anecdote reflects the rampant arrogance the bigs continue to exhibit in the face of the little engines’ nose-to-the-ground work in the trenches.

This simple-but-pride-filled Editor’s Note from a recent edition of the Bristol Herald Courier, a small newspaper covering communities along the Virginia-Tennessee border that recently won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, details the pompous, cavalier and distorted treatment the local newspaper and its staff got in the coverage of their award-winning efforts by the big men on campus – most notably, the Washington Post, which sent a reporter to spend nearly three days with the Bristol news team.

The tale, as related by Herald Courier Editor J. Todd Foster, highlights the media elite’s detachment and fundamental lack of understanding of where and how most of us live – a disconnect that is among the many forces at play in the current demise of the major media industry. The fact that big media powerhouses like the Post can’t match what a locally focused, passionately committed media enterprise can do is nothing new. But the misguided sense of self-importance behind the notion that you cannot produce great journalism unless you work at the Post, or some such place, is blind insolence.

Surely, there’s little in the print world to compare to big media’s coverage of some important global affairs, but when it comes to thoughtful and committed effort on regional and local matters, the big media players should be smart enough to avoid looking down their noses at sound – hell, Pulitzer Prize-winning! – local journalism. As Editor Foster suggests, most people will stop reading the Washington Post before they stop reading their dependable source of local news.

The smart guys at the Post should remember that Tip O’Neill’s famous quote applies to more than just politics.

10 Things I’ve Learned on Facebook

As a long-time media professional, I’ve always seen Facebook as a personal publishing platform as much as a social connection tool. It’s a useful vehicle for personal expression and (re)distribution of information and ideas – especially for those who choose to use it in substantive ways. (O.K., there aren’t too many of them, but that’s all right.)

After about a year and half of fairly intense use of the social networking site, I’ve learned a few things. This is it in a nutshell:

1. Many people have an awful lot of free time on their hands.

2. People are often not working when “at work.”

3. Humor is a very idiosyncratic thing and doesn’t always translate as well electronically as in person.

4. Some people are just plain argumentative.

5. Some people are overly earnest. (I’m probably more serious than most, but not all of the time. C’mon, people, humor is the spice of life! )

6. Many people (myself included) are obsessive about certain topics.

7. Some people feel compelled to comment on anything and everything – whether or not they have anything to say or know anything about the topic at hand.

8. Many people – and I mean MANY – comment on things without even reading them first. And of those who do read them first, some don’t do it very carefully.

9. I have more politically conservative friends than I thought (though plenty of liberal ones, too … whew!).

10. People sure do love farms (though I don’t know anyone who actually lives on one).

Time Is Right

The title of a new Feelies’ song (much on my mind since last Friday’s outstanding concert) seems an apropos entré to this brief shout out to Time magazine’s recent special issue highlighting “10 Ideas For the Next 10 Years.”

In 10 brief essays by leading thinkers, researchers and analysts (many from the New America Foundation), Time offers a fascinating overview of how America stands with one foot over the threshold of the new century, as well as some prognosis for the coming years. Overall, it’s a thought-provoking, remarkably optimistic and reasonably centrist (well, just left-0f-center, it is Time, after all) analysis of the United States’ evolving place in the world economically, politically, culturally and militarily. It holds a mirror to our recent history, and highlights key impulses already at play in our society or now percolating just beneath the surface.

The introductory essay, in particular, “The Next American Century,” by Andres Martinez, puts a surprisingly positive spin on our current national sense of society going to hell in a hand basket. It’s followed by thoughtful pieces on “Remapping the World” (bad borders and realistic means to minimize their ongoing detriment in light of current and future challenges), “Bandwidth Is the New Black Gold” (revealing how bandwidth issues will soon affect us all), “The Dropout Economy” (the future of work, education and social constructs in light of the growing libertarian impulse in America), as well as essays on U.S.-China relations, growing “white anxiety” in our increasingly diverse nation, and what it means to live in the “post-trust” era.

All worthwhile reads. Whether you go old school and pick up a copy at the newsstand or read them all online, spend 20 minutes with this Time.

Bytes for Thought

Artist: Rob Vargas / Source: Neatorama.com

Americans consume almost 19 hours of data a day, according a recent study by researchers at the University of California at San Diego. As for the zettabytes (a zettabyte is 1 billion trillion bytes), I’m not sure how they made that translation from time spent to bytes of data consumed, but it sounds impressive ... or alarming.

Template for the Newspaper of the Future?

Following up on yesterday’s rather pessimistic posting on the morbidity of print media models, this piece from BayNewser about McSweeney’s experimental newspaper project is intriguing, if not a full solution for the challenges at hand.

Chronicles of Demise

In yet another sign of the accelerating death of print media of all sorts, Nielsen Business Media today announced the closure of the 125-year-old magazine of the publishing industry, Editor and Publisher, as well as the venerable book industry periodical Kirkus Reviews. Frankly, as a veteran editorial executive, I don’t think Editor and Publisher has been a very well-executed or particularly forward-looking publication for quite some time (especially compared to Folio: magazine and other newer media industry newsletters and websites). But it is, nevertheless, another marker in the cathartic transformation affecting all media – and especially print media – today.

The simplistic argument about the snowballing death ride of print always falls back on citing the Internet as the cause. This is only partially true. It is less about the Internet per se, than it is about the increased diffusion of advertising dollars across all the various media buying options today. Some of those dollars are, indeed, going to the Internet, but the reality is that less advertising dollars overall are being spread among more outlets. And while Internet advertising is increasing, and print advertising has been falling dramatically, the added digital revenue doesn’t come close to making up even a fraction of the lost print revenue. So those with their tills open for business in both arenas are still losing out, and those trailblazers whose focus is wholly (or even primarily) in the digital realm (whether web, email, mobile, whatever) are squeaking by at best. And for most of those clinging to a solely print-based model, well, the numbers speak (quite loudly) for themselves. That business model is dead and gone for the vast majority of publishers.

Alan Mutter’s recent post in his always perceptive blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur, puts the daunting realities facing the newspaper end of the industry in stark perspective – complete with bar graphs illustrating the decline that started well before the current economic malaise. Mutter sums it up succinctly in noting that the newspaper industry (not exclusively print, but clearly primarily print-dependent) has lost almost half of its annual revenue in just the last four years.

On the brighter side, at least one media company is bullish on print media, or at least one sector of it: The 28-year-old privately held Bloomberg media company has been aggressively making its first forays into the acquisition market, most notably with the recent purchase of

Business Week magazine. Clearly, Bloomberg execs believe in the future profitability of business and financial reporting, so they’re gobbling up the bargains to be had in the current market.

There are plenty of pundits today who contend that the only print businesses that will survive the current sea change are those delivering very specialized business or financial information and those serving small niches of enthusiasts who are passionate about very specific topics. Anyone care to sign up for a charter subscription to Tennis Ball Can Collector’s Illustrated?