More:

• CB: The nature of broadband providers make it such that things will be open and transparent
• Question: “What advice would you have for the old media institutions re: their conception of authority?”
  • RS: The most important thing is to be right. Mike Arrington said he wants to be first, but I’d rather be right rather than first. It goes to credibility, and the blogosphere / internet is a really democratic place. Credibility does matter, and that’s why if there was a story broke on a blog with a spotty reputation, well, I’d always go to the New York Times. But on the other hand, because I’m a media critic, there are times when I do read something on the NYT that I want to punch a hole in it. Not everyone has time or resources to fact check, so everyone has to find their own balance — including the readers.
  • LF: Digg’s a joke, and Wikipedia’s a joke. The NYT shouldn’t worry about those guys. They need to worry about their own work — the cream / cheese rises towards the top. The minute you worry about the competition you’re dead. Just focus on doing good work and people will find it. For NYT to be worried about Digg? Come on.
  • CB: The newspapers were blindsided because people find as much trust in entities like TechCrunch and the Huffington Post. The hubris was their downfall.
  • LF: The NYT vs. Drudge is a great example. Its one guy. TechCrunch is killing Wired or whatever … he’s just one guy. He doesn’t need infrastructure. He just hustles and gets his story. The hustlers are more dangerous than businesses / entities.
  • RS: And now Mike Arrington doesn’t have to hustle — all he has to do is open his mailbox.
• Question: “How would you encourage old media to move online?”
  • LF: Your family won’t eat if you don’t (laughter)
  • CB: I’m surprised there’s any reluctance from the journalists point of view. I think every …
  • LF: You motivate them by giving them their freedom. When I was Hollywood you have to serve a lot of masters. I write it, I edit it — my videos — and it doesn’t need to be checked by anyone. Its liberating and I don’t know why any writer wouldn’t embrace it.
  • RS: If you want to motivate, teach them how to read their technorati stats — and ego will be a motivator. There is a snobbery that is in print. Its one thing to be online its another thing to be in glossy print. Reach is also a significant motivator

Panelist discussion with Loren Feldman, Rachel Skylar, Cynthia Brumfield:

• CB: broadcasters have never relied on on advertising revenues in the same way that traditional print media has; and yet they are loosing their audience to new and diverging media. Physical distribution of content, whether it be newspapers, magazines, or the music industry, will be fatally impacted by “the internet”.
• LF: ” Should big media be afraid of individuals such as yourself? ” The mistake is that the Internet isn’t a “little TV”– its a different medium entirely, and there’s room for both.
• “Google is destroying journalism — what do blogs, rss feeds and GoogleNews do for media?”
  • RS: It complements different forms of news, as if you only have 5 seconds then you’ll choose one thing … if you are in another space and time (like Muskoka) then you’ll need something else. There is something social about the portability of print media
• “Will traditional media go the way of the dinosaur?”
  • CB: My own parents used to subscribe three newspapers, but because of the online consumption of news, that has all changed. My father now reads 20 newspapers a day. It may not be possible *because* of Google — but the newspapers have felt the impact of that, and have felt the competition thereof. The efficiencies of Google is the real danger.
• Question: “What about new forms of entertainment in this kind of world?”
  • LF: uStream.TV is going to be a mechanism for event-based programming, and is a great opportunity for live-based programming.
  • CB: Less professional programming has a special allure, such as Justin.TV .. doing the most mundane things and it seems fascinating. Girls kissing (you had to be here) or watching Cheese age — there’s a niche for everything.
  • RS: The tools at our disposal are amazing, and the barriers to entry have collapsed. Even if there’s little talent, the best stuff will rise to the top.
• Question: “With more tools at your disposal, how will ownership of those pipes affect the content?”
  • LF: I’m not nearly smart enough to answer that — I just want people to watch my stuff
  • CB: Net neutrality, therefore, is the big issue; cable TV providers, it turned out weren’t the villains — rather, it was the telephone companies trying to charge companies like Google. It is too late for broadband providers handpicking content, however. A rational response is to charge as per how much people use.
  • RS: Google, with its buying of dark fibre, shows how far they’re thinking ahead, and that’s why Google’s doing so great.
• Question: “Do you perceive your content or tools being used differently between different age groups?”
  • LF: The attention economy means that the length of content will shorten. Being “damn good and damn short”is important to getting that attention.
  • CB: I have a teenage daughter, and they will be happy to wander in enclosed spaced. First its myspace, then it was xanga, now its facebook. They don’t seem to want to cruise and do what people in their 20’s do. They don’t do email — they do instant messaging. With Facebook’s opening up of its API, it will provide all the more reason never to leave. It seems like their world has shrunk than expanding
  • LF: Its funny because its like AOL
  • RS: I am a huge harry potter fan — and I know that everyone is going to be reading the last Harry Potter novel. Do you think that quality and ingenuity is a factor in holding attention? There’s no reason to sacrifice quality …
  • LF: Newspapers are never going to anywhere — they’re going to still be here 200 years from now. There’s a tactile sense … newspapers have to survive. I can get information from the New York Post faster than the Huffington Post (laughter). Not everyone has a computer yet — I know its hard for us to believe but that’s very much the case. When I’m in a diner I want to read a newspaper — if I get pickles on it, I won’t go crazy (laughter). Newspapers need to change content and go in depth rather than break news. The days of breaking news are done; the days of them analyzing and editorializing is the future
  • CB: Do you think the average 20 year old will want to read it in a diner 20 years from now?
  • LF: They will always be around — they’ve been around since journalism. They need to cut their infrastructure, they’re scared and don’t know how to react. They’re not idiots just old school guys. They’re just blind sided just like the record industry. I think it would be a great disservice if newspapers did go under.

It would be easy to take the blogger’s road with Neil Henry’s piece at the San Francisco Gate: he’s an old dinosaur who gets many of parts of his rant wrong with his discussion of the decline of traditional media in the face of Google. Yes, yes — that much is plain. But how about what’s right with the rant?

How about the part about the role journalists play as a mechanism to balance the massively dumbed down soundbites that often pass for news? How about holding oneself to a higher standard, where conflicts of interest are avoided, rather than courted?

While I’m a fan of citizen journalism, the subtext of what Professor Henry is saying is true: there is an overwhelming drive towards mediocrity in many western / north american cultures with respect what ordinary people want to read about or be informed about.

If what passes as popular culture is indicative of what the public wants, then its clear they don’t want to be challenged — they want to be entertained.

And I think that’s as much of a driving factor behind the decline of traditional news outlets as any other.

I’m not sure *what* the solution is, but I do believe that technology and services such as Google are inevitable in the way that they are able to repopulate and recirculate the news as it shows up. But precisely because Google — or if not Google, some other piece of web technology would be doing it — tears down the walls between different news outlets and shows them side by side do we actually get an understanding that for *most* news pieces, for global news, well … the reporting is actually pretty similar.

Do yourself a favour and go to Google News right now to see what I mean. News is logically grouped into bunches, with all the news from different outlets being provided under a single headline from a particular news source.

Inevitably very few provide any real perspective or opinion on the matter. Many, it appears, simply repeat what everyone else is saying.

My heart goes out to people who are talented, but who can’t find a job. But I think the problem has LESS to do with journalists and more to do with the institutions they belong to.

Newspapers, not journalists, are having trouble with finding ways for their print revenues to grow.

Newspapers, not journalists, are pushing towards their own content to what appears to be a rehashing of global content found around the world.

And its Newspapers, not journalists, who seem to be more concerned about rescuing “lost” revenue from Google than coming up with evolutionary ideas about how their businesses should run.

But yet its Newspapers, and traditional institutions that are like them, which are really in the position to enforce what Professor Henry is alluding to — and that is a sense of best practices for journalists.

I love blogging as much as the next man, but I think that its precisely because of its independent and cozy or colluding nature (which is sometimes a good thing, as Mike Arrington will attest) that we still need good journalism.

Sometimes that can come from blogging and bloggers.

But as the paid posting movement shows, when you own your own blog and are beholden to your own best interests rather than the public good … sometimes that doesn’t produce the best blogging *or* reporting.

I don’t know if getting Google to sponsor journalists is a good thing. After all, then all it does is cast aspersions on the integrity of those journalists when it comes to their coverage of Google.

So what *would* be the solution?

Well if the answer were simple all of traditional media outlets would be pursuing it already. But clearly its an uphill battle for two reasons — one, technology makes it hard to monopolize a given district or region when it comes to news; and two, traditional media lives in a milieu where its audience may not always know or understand what is “good” for them.

In a market driven economy, after all, the Lindsay Lohan’s of the world will always outrank Peace in the Middle east.

Can citizen reporters, bloggers, and all manner of “amateur” reporters replace professional journalists? I’m not sure, but I think that the line is blurring. And whatever is the outcome of the evolution we’re witnessing, I’ll agree with Neil Henry on one point:

No matter who is doing the reporting, there ought to be some method of ensuring some, or perhaps, most, stick to both issues that are important, and moreover, the ethical and moral high road when the potential for conflict of interest arise.

[we can debate what "important" means, however, I think we can all agree that celebrity culture isn't one of them]

It looks like Medill School of Journalism at NorthWestern University is trying to lure programmers and web developers towards its master’s program in Journalism with a scholarship or three.  This has been developed courtesy of a grant by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (to the tune of over $600k).

The’s school’s site has all the details, but this is what struck me as being interesting:

We believe there are programmers who want to do work that makes a difference to society’s future,” Gordon said. “We want the new scholarships to generate interest among computer specialists who want to make a difference and who might never have considered applying their technology skills to journalism.”

and …

Students awarded Knight News Challenge Scholarships will complete the same academic program as other MSJ students. The first academic quarter is spent learning reporting and storytelling skills in multiple media. At least one other quarter is spent in Medill’s Chicago newsroom, covering a beat and creating multimedia stories.

As part of the program, scholarship recipients will have an opportunity to apply their technology skills to journalism in an “innovation project” course in media management, new media publishing or magazine publishing. In these classes, teams of students create new products or work to solve a problem facing a media company.

I think it was Dave Winer who mentioned that for print media to grow and change, there has to be change at its roots (I’m paraphrasing liberally of course) — and that journalism should be a required course for students.  Since he doesn’t have a search on Scripting.com (and therefore making it difficult to find that particular piece) I’m hoping that’s what he wrote.

Nevertheless I think there is a grain of truth to that sentiment.

Print media is being assailed on all fronts, and in spite of optimism on behalf of their European bretheren, the reality in North America is brutally slow growth (if at all), and dwindling offline profits  that can’t seem to be matched by the growth of online sales / advertising.

Magazine and newspaper publishing is going through a time of transition, and amongst all the other tricks it can pull out of their hats, clearly re-energizing itself with a hot injection of cross-trained personnel can be nothing but a good thing.

Formal training can help with this as the Medill Scholarship will no doubt do.  And I think if nothing else, its a signal that schools are acknowledging this change, and want to be a part of it.

What will be interesting, however, is what the graduates of the master’s program decide to do and where they will go.  Will any / some / many of them enter the program with an eye to be hired by new or old media companies?  Probably.

Or will be see any of them use it, and the contacts made within the context of the degree, as a stepping stone to something else entirely? 

Will any of them start their own mini publishing empires, starting with a strong technical foundation, edified by their learning experiences on journalism, focused on a narrow subject or niche of their own choice?

Maybe.

In fact, it almost sounds like blogging to me.

And in that case, what could a program in journalism offer to a potential or existing blogger, where recent history has shown has formal education isn’t a prerequisite of any kind for success?

Besides that, would graduates who go out on their own and “self-publish” under a blogging paradigm — would they be considered “professionals” or “amateurs”?  Is that something that goes along with your educational credentials or the fact that you’re creating a profitable concern?

Because there are so many interesting questions that revolve around this debate I’m convinced that the distinction between amateur and professional is not a binary one, but, like many things in life, a distinction that is blurry where both terms are points on a continuum.

This blurriness will no doubt continue to evolve and change as experiments in citizen media, crowdsourcing, and social / participatory media — coupled with the maturation of blogging as a medium and tool — continue to grow.

My, my, my. Just a few weeks after the hew and cry over how idiotic and ludicrous Sam Zell’s comments were about trying to work “something” out with those “boys” at Google for Google News ripping off content at the Tribune, what do we have here?

A report out of the Scotland Sunday Herald that Google has capitulated to several UK newspapers in deals that would allow them to continuing “syndicating” their content for a fee. This is pretty Big News as Google hasn’t yet capitulated to anyone else — except the AP in North America, Agent France-Presse en France, and Belgium in … well, Belgium — so, it seems to be trying to hold their ground on all manner of fronts, including the YouTube front against Viacom.

Which, as the article rightly points out, might be the reason why you haven’t heard anything from Google just yet as it tries to fight off other newspapers ’round the world for these rights.

Google settling with newspapers — is this any surprise? Not really.

After all, we’ve heard from executives at Google that they feel that Viacom’s legal wranglings are nothing more than an elaborate gambit at trying to affect the licensing of copyrighted content on YouTube.

… which seems de rigeur these days.

And didn’t we just see Rupert Murdoch pull the plug on Photobucket’s widgetized videos days before its actual purchase? Who knows how that might have affected negotiations and the final purchase price (”See? We *own* you Photobucket … “)

So in spite of how, yes, Google doesn’t make any direct cash off of Google News, they have clearly deemed it a priority, and I think in this year we can forsee it making all kinds of deals to make sure that it is able to broadcast and / or be able to report on all kinds of content. Goodness knows it has the cash to do so, and it was almost prescient when it made its purchase of YouTube that it set aside a $200 million dollar warchest *just* to deal with its legal issues.

Google buying start ups every few days … making aggressive deals with content providers … building a dark fibre network punctuated with data centers …

Google’s on the move, folks. And the year’s not even half over, yet.

A few weeks ago, there was a lot of interesting debate over Sam Zell’s comments after he bought the Tribune Company, a conglomerate of media properties that includes quite a few prominent newspapers, such as the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune. The comment that attracted a lot of ire was about how he would try and settle things with Google as he felt that Google’s news was getting a lot of their content “for free”, and that had to change.

Well you can bet that somewhere, wherever billionaires hatch their plans, Sam Zell is sharpening his knives.  There’s a report right out of the New York Times that reports the Times Group, in addition to the Tribune Company and Gannet Company (which owns the USAToday) as having declining revenues this quarter as compared to last.

The reasons?  Many, but soft ad sales are at the top in areas such as real estate in and in classifieds.

While its too early to tell if USAToday’s changes will yield long term fruit (it seems like a success in the short run), and indeed any “internet” related initiatives, the real issue is if these changes — if any changes — which increase internet revenue will be able to match the decline in print revenues.  After all, its clear from the post that internet revenues are rising … just not as fast as print revenues are falling.

And you can bet that Zell, and his other media bretheren, are fully cognizant of this fact, all the while eyeing Google’s recent surge in ad sales that was reported just a few days ago.  Lest we forget exactly how profitable Google has become, it earned an extra 61% increase in revenues over the same period as last year — mostly thanks to ad sales and grabbing market share from Yahoo!

Sam Zell said in that interview at Stanford to give him “two weeks to make himself a genius“.  Well, Mr. Zell, its about two weeks.  Your revenues are down.  Google’s are up.  What’s your next move?

Looks like billionaire real estate tycoon Sam Zell has jumped right into the newspapers “alive or dead” meme with his 8 billion dollar purchase of the Tribune media glomerate. There’s a lot of discussion roiling around the blogosphere about things, but I think most of them are missing the Real Issue about newspapers and their relationship with Google.

Its a long train of thought — but bear with me, because I’ll get to the Real Issue in a second.

His most notable quote about his recent purchase, and more importantly, his belief about how newspapers should interact with Google was as follows:

“If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing, what would Google do?” he asked. “We have a situation today where effectively the content is being paid for by the newspapers and stolen by Google, etcetera. That can last for a short time, but it can’t last forever. I think Google and the boys understand that. We’re going to see new deals and new formulas in the media space that reflect the reality of cost benefit.”

What if Zell Got His Way?

Let’s do a thought experiment for a second, and forget that Google News doesn’t actually make a cent off of advertising (although, yes, it might be making it indirectly).

Let’s further assume that Google *is* cutting into potential revenue, because the Tribune *could* charge for its content, let’s say, for example, through licensing fees and so forth; or perhaps, through “lost” ad revenue, as people who find the Tribune through Google rarely travel to any other page on their site.

And what if Sam Zell had his way, and got Google to stop indexing the Tribune’s media properties, let’s say, through the force of litigation (and it seems like that’s the only way to do it — although I suspect that it would really use the billions of market cap at its disposal to fight it).

You would then get Zell’s perfect scenario: Tribune would then be able to put an offer down on the table, whereby it could extract a few shekels from Google in order for the privilege of Google to index the Tribune’s media properties. Without payment, no listings.

Well, what would happen then?

I suspect that Google would yank the Tribune’s listings while they fought it out in court. It would remain in limbo for a long time.

I think the question remains: if Sam Zell’s objective, is, as he states himself, “to increase revenues and cut costs while supporting quality journalism”, would getting Google to delist Tribune properties, in fact, increase revenues, all other things being equal?

I don’t think so.

And that’s because his perfect scenario hinges on a critical assumption: people would be as comfortable going directly to Tribune media properties directly for news, rather than finding their news elsewhere, through other news “aggregators”.

Like, for example, Google.

Now let’s savour for a minute how hilariously absurd this assumption is.

….

done, yet?

To be fair, there is only a single scenario in which his assumption would apply, and that is for local news. For national and international news? Not a snowball’s chance in hell. If I had the resources, I’d do a “man on the street” video cast polling random people with the open ended question “where do you find information or news on the web?”

Google isn’t the Internet, but for many people, its pretty damn close. And I’m not even talking to you, the people reading this blog, who probably also use it for email.

Why would Zell want this? It would clearly be a losing proposition on behalf of his media properties, because, Yes, I believe, in fact a great deal of traffic from all media properties does come from Search Engines, and that by cutting them off, over all traffic would slow down, with the exception of local traffic. Since newspapers are dependent on online advertising as a revenue model, over all revenues would grind to a halt.

I think the real reason why he doesn’t want Google to list his media properties, and perhaps he’s echoing the sentiments of many owners of newspapers, is that he’s worried about the Real Problem with Google.

The Real Problem With Google

The Real Problem with Google is that it levels the playing field. All newspaper brands are laid out equally and fairly. Everything is judged on name and content alone.

Google, as it refers to newspapers, is the ultimate commoditizing force, allowing users to judge which news they would like to read based on the content (headline and copy) and relevance of said content.

If I was Zell, this scary stuff is the REAL problem that I’d be worried about.

And that is that the vast majority of any news in any topic is the same. Pick a category. Let’s say, “Technology”. Subscribe to a few RSS feeds of your favourite newspapers. At any one time, the biggest stories will not be substantially different from each other. There’s a duty to report on things that are newsworthy, sure, but often times there is nothing more than what is reported at the competing newspaper.

No alternate opinions, no breaking news, no hard-to-get interviews.

Hey, its almost like blogging! ;)

Look, the problem with Google is not that its disintermediating the newspapers (although they are), but that they are commoditizing their content. And I would argue that the latter is the Real Problem.

Imagine waking up one day and knowing that your best selling product was like everyone else’s, and then having that illusion lifted in front of your customer’s eyes. That’s what Google does for News.

Or, if you want to put it in a positive way, it is an evolutionary force which drives news organizations to create better content. If they can’t, then they will necessarily not be selected, because their content is no different than the masses.

Again, it almost makes me think of blogging!

So, Zell’s faced with a real quandry: What would he rather have?

Traffic, which drives ad revenue and helps the bottom line, but at the expense of commoditizing his brand, and in the long run, making it difficult for him to derive revenues for an undifferentiated business.

Or, preservation of his brand at the expense of decreasing his traffic down, and ultimately his bottom line?

Zell’s chosen to fight Google on this one, and it seems like he’s going with the second option, which is reasonable. But he’s contradicting himself if he thinks that he’s hoping to maintain or increase revenues by cutting out search traffic for the sake of his media brands.

Now, if he plans to go “hyper-local” that’s another side of the story, because that’s one thing that media properties can really do well on.

Or, if he plans to put a lot of effort into “quality journalism”, putting funds into creating awesome novel content that online folks want to read — that too would be something else. But, as he stated, he’s looking to cut costs, rather than increase them in the short term.

And hey, perhaps that’s the reason why we’re reading and debating about Zell’s quote in the Washington Post, and not, say, the Chicago Tribune or the LA Times.