Will Your Next Car Stereo Help Save Radio Advertising?
On the heels of a 10 hour holiday road trip, I’m a big believer that one of the innovations yet to hit the market is a way for people to tag stuff when they’re listening to their car radios.
A few weeks ago, Apple took an important first step in making this a reality when it teamed with Alpine to bring a set of car stereos to market that allow listeners to tag songs for later download via the iTunes Music store.
I like this move, but it’s not that big of a breakthrough – after all, Shazam recently eclipsed 50 million users (who are primarily tagging when driving) and closed a round of funding from A-list VC firm Kleiner Perkins–putting them in a nice position to own the music discovery market.
The bigger opportunity – and one that has Google written all over it – lies in an easy way to tag commercials, talk show segments, news and other information while driving. This is underscored by the fact that most songs that get radio play these days are on the pop charts, are in regular circulation and can easily be found of iTunes with a click or two.
But, when you’re in your car, you usually don’t hear the same piece of information twice. News bits are regularly updated, ads are timed to optimize reach and frequency and conversations happen only once.
For marketers, giving consumers that are interested in content or promotional messages but have their hands tied when it comes to taking action, an integrated radio/Web tagging system could be just what it takes to make radio more actionable and most importantly, more measurable.
For terrestrial radio stations, this type of system creates new value for listeners and aligns radio with the important trends that have led to ad dollars moving to digital mediums.
And for everyone involved in the radio ecosystem – advertisers, stations and consumers – it combines the real-time nature of radio (which podcasting can’t deliver) with the direct response nature of the web and could help save this dying medium.
Here’s a prediction – not for 2010 – but for 2012 or beyond. Like Apple, Google will align with car stereo OEMs (or hybrid GPS/car stereo systems as they are doing with Google Earth and the upcoming Audi A8) and integrate tagging capabilities into their devices. In a few clicks, you’ll be able to “tag this segment” or “tag this ad.” These tags will then be queued locally on your stereo and eventually surfaced to iGoogle or some soon-to-be-launched dashboard that aggregates your tags from Gmail, Google Reader, Google Docs and the like.
Then, you’ll be able to listen to the content again using Google Voice (transcribed for reading via Gmail, of course) and with embedded calls to action (call this merchant, comment on this story, etc.), so that stations and their advertising partners extend the relationship with readers beyond drive time. Google could also roll out a “switch pitch” bidding system to allow advertisers to deliver offers and promotions against tagged content.
Right now, the infrastructure isn’t there to make it happen. But as Google rolls out more free wi-fi the US and as current connectivity solutions already in cars, including bluetooth, satellite radio, etc. bring the Web to our cars, it will be. And a new term, “driving the Web” will be coined.
Maybe by then, I’ll need a new mattress.
Notes from the eBook Summit in New York
Last week I attended MediaBistro’s inaugural eBook Summit at the New World Stages Theatre in Manhattan. For the whole day, my inner geek girl got to curl up with my inner bookworm and look at what lies ahead in the world of books and the move towards digitization.
For the book industry, just like music, film and photography beforehand, the move towards digitization brings with it a massive shift in user experience, and distribution. Along with this, obviously, comes major disruption to the business models of the publishing world, affecting not only authors and retailers but also publishers and agents whose roles are quickly morphing as authors find ways to self-publish online.
The summit delved deep into some of the issues that lie ahead and the change the industry will face. The prevailing attitude was summed up by Steve Wasserman of Kneerim & Williams, who said, “its all a little too early to tell”, but I think that based on the precedents set by the music industry we can anticipate some of the changes that lie ahead and what publishers need to do to capitalize on the opportunities that are there for the taking. For instance, without the physical need to print and truck books to retailers anymore, publishers need to quickly find a way to offer value to authors (such as multimedia eBook content and promotion resources) to remain relevant, otherwise, just as we have seen in the music industry with record labels, there will be increasingly less seats at the table for middlemen such as publishers.
A few of the panelists at the event called 2010 “The Year of the Tablet” and big developments are expected over the next few years in terms of eBook devices, most likely in the forms of convergence with other multimedia devices particularly the Web. However, with the preference being for ever-smaller devices, how an eReader will comfortably work within an iPhone-type device is yet to be seen. One panelist at the event said that they were aware of a dozen new eReader devices to be unveiled at CES in January 2010, with plenty more, such as Apple’s rumored Tablet device expected later in the new year.
So far, eBook device makers such as Sony understand the effort needed to ensure that readers are able to fully immerse themselves in a comfortable and immersive narrative experience, with cozy lighting and lightweight devices without too many bells and whistles. That said – they are not ignoring the possibilities that lie ahead for the book when color touch screens, digitization and 3G connectivity come into the mix.
One of the most fascinating (and possibly ADD-inducing) aspects of eBooks will be what the industry is calling the next generation of reading (Reading 2.0?) with built-in Web and interactivity including search, dictionary, multimedia content and Web connectivity. Imagine reading a book on your Nook/Kindle/iTablet, and being able to instantly Wiki/YouTube/Dictionary.com a word, phrase or scene? Or instantly search for a favorite passage? How will this change the formerly linear world of reading? Will we ever be able to get through a book again without being tempted to jump into the Web to find out more?
Just like filmmakers and musicians, authors (or their publishers) will now be expected to be full content powerhouses, producing “special features” such as author interviews, character sketches, possibly even music and video components to embellish and complement their written work. Publishers and agents will need to stay on top of this content to propel their authors forward in the new world of eBook sales, the content will be both a marketing tool and an additional revenue stream. An example of the new iteration of books with multimedia add-ons is LaunchSquad client Vook which, combines videos with books to create a whole new experience.
While the new world of digital books and Web-enabled reading is exciting, the path ahead for pricing and distribution is not yet set in stone. This week, major publishing houses Harper Collins and Random House, both announced plans to delay the launch of eBook editions, following hardback and paperback releases – an interesting move that most of the panelists saw as a stop-gap measure until they get a real eBook strategy in place. As we saw with digital music, if you do not make a product available to purchase, people will find a way to get it whether legally or not. Sony’s Head of Digital Reading, Steve Haber, put it best “We can’t be afraid of cannibalizing our physical book sales by treading too carefully into digital, because if we don’t cannibalize our sales, someone else will do it for us.” (I’m paraphrasing but that was the gist).
Pricing is of course, another pressure point within the emerging eBook market. While there is potential for experimental pricing (e.g. 99c for the first chapter of a book or $5 for additional special features material), panel members were not afraid to call out Amazon’s $9.95 pricing as a bully-tactic, a power-play to be the big shot in the industry to replicate the success that Apple had with MP3 players and their iTunes digital music sales arm. Most people in the industry see $9.95 as an unprofitable margin for authors and publishers that is ultimately unsustainable.
Just as we have seen with music, DRM is an increasingly prickly pear for the eBook industry that could determine which devices and distribution platforms become big, and which ones ultimately fail. Significantly, the move by blockbuster business author Stephen Covey to sign an exclusive eBook deal with Amazon.com (with exclusive DRM) could greatly bolster sales of the Kindle, particularly if Amazon is able to sign enough blockbuster authors upfront so as to disable efforts by iTunes or Barnes & Noble to make a play in the eBook world.
As an avid reader, book lover and geek girl, I am excited about the world of digital books and will also treasure my physical book editions as a relic of the printed past. It would be magnificent if eBooks could encourage more reading and literacy, and that as the price of production comes down, eBooks will be more accessible and the digital divide can be gapped in a joint effort between libraries, schools, device makers, governments and non-profits.
The Changing Way We Read
Media consumption has always changed over time as new technologies are developed, from fireside storytelling shifting to printed novels, or radio to the evening news on television. For years now, we have adjusted to reading on screens, but today, we are at the brink of a fundamental shift in the way we read.
Earlier this year, Rupert Murdoch suggested that News Corp would restrict all its content within paid walls, perhaps going so far as to remove their content from search engines. With Google responding by very publicly stating how they can help newspapers and adjusting to allow publishers to limit users to view five pages a day without registering, it would seem that media giants still hold power. But this is less a complete collapse of media channels and more a merging of media with new reading platforms – desktop, browser, e-reader, mobile, tablet, etc. Publishers are just now starting to innovate on these mediums, developing new experiences and new ways to read.
The e-reader market has been picking up a lot of steam recently – Kindle just had their biggest sales month since launching and Barnes & Noble’s Nook joining the market, which, despite recent reviews, has continued to pique consumer curiosity. Apple is rumored to be releasing a tablet early next year, and companies such as Vook (a LaunchSquad client), are creating new reading formats. Just in the past few weeks, we’ve seen publishers left and right announce new initiatives that respond to this e-reader and tablet excitement.
Condé Nast announced last month its Digital Magazine Initiative starting with an e-reader version of Wired magazine, and the publisher has also been experimenting with iPhone app formats for its content, in the form of GQ’s Men of the Year issue. Early this month, Time Inc. released a demo of a new digital version of Sports Illustrated, complete with photo libraries, video and interactive ads. While its own physical tablet prototype has been developed, like Condé Nast, they’re not committed to any one particular platform yet. Hearst, just last week, announced a partnership with Sprint to launch Skiff, an e-reader platform and digital store focused on connecting publishers with marketers, in 2010. To top it all off, the five major periodical publishers – Condé Nast, Meredith, Time Inc., Hearst and News Corp – are coming together to create a “Hulu for magazines,” a digital news stand where readers can purchase and manage their subscriptions. The main challenge will be to develop digital standards and formats, so that their varied content can be viewed equally on a wide variety of devices – soon-to-come color e-readers or more multi-media friendly tablet computers.
Similar to the changing way we approach reading novels and longer-form magazine pieces, the way we consume the news is still taking shape. Customization is the new way to take in news – whether it’s your Tumblr community or your Facebook feed, we are hearing about and reading news in an instant and curated way. Twitter, for some, has come to replace RSS, news sites and even search as a main source for breaking news, and with its newest lists feature, it’s even easier to filter the stream and be selective about how you skim and read. PubSubHubbub is working with blog and social networking platforms to bring these updates and posts instantaneously to your networks and companies like ShareThis (client) are helping media fit into this new “sharing economy,” allowing them to capitalize on the virality and engagement of forwarding, retweeting, liking and voting. Even Google is trying to adjust old-world media to find a place in the online way of reading, with Living Stories, which is a new project in collaboration with the New York Times and The Washington Post that presents on-going, evolving stories in a new online format. All these means are helping us stay informed of content through a closer social circle or curated set of sources.
Mobile devices, and especially iPhone and Android platform, take real-time and personalization to another level by putting the content in your hand wherever you are. Apps from local news sources like Fwix (a LaunchSquad client), Outside.in or Topix show what’s happening in your neighborhood, and Fwix’s even allows users to “report news” in real time, directly from their phones. In addition to news and e-reading, there are also many apps that are useful for saving, noting or commenting on what you read. Instapaper is an iPhone app and bookmarklet that allows users to save articles and blog post to read later, a task that it invaluable for anyone that is keeping track of news during their busy work day. Evernote (another LaunchSquad client) is another great app to save and organize not only your own notes and photos, but Web pages and text from articles. This mobile reading is a shift beyond your typical browser reading – it’s not passive reading and goes beyond the conversation, it’s also personalized, localized and relevant to what we are doing in the physical world.
Technology is changing the way humans are interacting with text, with content. There’s no standard yet as ubiquitous as unfolding the morning paper, but it’s not for lack of trying. Give it some time though, and a few platforms will start to emerge as front-runner in this nascent market. Whatever does emerge as the new way we read, it’s going to be a whole lot different than unfolding that paper.
Technology Helping to Fight Breast Cancer
In October, I took advantage of LaunchSquad’s volunteer time off policy to participate in the San Francisco Bay Area Breast Cancer 3 Day benefiting Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The 3 Day visits major cities across the U.S. to organize thousands of walkers through a 60-mile course over 3 days. The event helps to raise millions of dollars and infinite awareness for breast cancer.
I once participated as a walker in the Los Angeles 3 Day and was unbelievably impressed with the seamless orchestration of such a massive event. This year, I decided to sign up as a crew member (unknowingly checking the “captain” box in spite of my lack of crew experience), which helps organize on-event to make sure things run smoothly and the walkers are taken care of. My assignment was captain of the check-in team, which meant scanning walkers out of camp every morning and into camp every evening of the walk.
Given that we were to spend four days outside (camping at Chrissy Field) with a lot to do, I was actually looking forward to giving up technology and modern conveniences for a weekend. I figured I’d spend time outdoors, get some exercise, enjoy the gorgeous fall weather and generally disconnect, all while supporting a great cause.
But wait, technology is everywhere, even on the 3 Day.
Forgive me for stereotyping, but given the demographic of 3 Day participants (women over about 40) and the personal and emotional elements of the cause, I didn’t expect technology to play a huge role. But then I would be underestimating just how widespread the everyday use of technology and social media are in our lives.
Check-in crew team member Robin Shannon, an inspiring 6-year breast cancer survivor, led the Twitter initiative (@Walker4Life), tweeting throughout the event from her iPhone. She communicated with walkers out on the route while we were back at camp, exchanging pictures and giving updates on walker progress. Seeing the walker perspective in real-time – views from Ocean Beach and the Golden Gate Bridge, supporters who dressed up and came out to cheer, the infamous and fabulously decorated 3 Day Pit Stops – added depth to the experience and made it more complete.
I myself was decked out from head-to-toe in tech gear with a bar code scanner, walkie talkie and Nextel radio – none of which I knew how to use very well, even though I was supposed to be the young, tech industry maven. When I said goodbye to my crew members (all of whom I loved and was so lucky to work with!), we not only exchanged phone numbers, but Twitter handles and Facebook pages as well.
In advance of the event, all walkers and crew members were given online fundraising pages and I even downloaded a Facebook fundraising application for my friends to donate to the cause and see my fundraising progress.
The San Francisco Bay Area 3 Day included 1400 walkers, 250 crew members and raised more then $4 million for breast cancer research. Each person’s experience and each dollar raised was, to my surprise, enhanced by technology and social media.
This year’s 3 Day season has come to an end, but be sure to follow the 3 Day on Twitter to see how you can sign up for 2010!
Working Together For A Better Web
Tim O’Reilly kicked off the Web 2.0 Expo in New York last week with words of caution, an extension of his recent blog post “The War For The Web.” The Web visionary that coined the term “Web 2.0″ and defined the Internet as an “operating system” sees a battle brewing that is very reminiscent of one that took place over a decade ago. In the mid-1990s a browser war started between Netscape and Microsoft as the two fought for desktop penetration, eventually leading to incompatibility across the Web, as some sites were best viewed with a certain browser.
Today, things aren’t so different, as behemoths like Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are building their own platforms which are often accused of being “walled gardens,” rather than building upon the Internet as a free, and open platform. Examples include the strict review process for the iTunes App Store, Rupert Murdoch’s recent mention of removing News Corp. sites out of Google’s search index, and the inability to take your personal data with you from sites like Facebook and Twitter. To say these companies are evil is taking things too far, but O’Reilly stressed that more emphasis must be put on creating benefit for the user, instead of solely focusing on building competitive advantage.
O’Reilly sees two sides of the Internet operating system, and in a nod to Lord of the Rings, named them “One Ring To Rule Them All” and “Small Pieces Loosely Jointed.” The path we’re currently headed on is reflective of the former – a no-holds-barred death match between the platform owners, while the latter describes a world that has fewer controls and helps to foster creativity and innovation. Concluding with a quote from Jeff Jarvis, O’Reilly urged businesses to, “Do what you do best, and link to the rest.”
At Web 2.0 Expo NY, several new businesses are doing just that – innovating while also building on what others have successfully created, and opening up further development to even more people. Here are a few examples from the conference:
Boxee
Although Boxee technically didn’t announce anything new (the beta unveiling is on December 7th), CEO Avner Ronen hosted a panel on customers acting as brand evangelists. If you aren’t familiar with Boxee, consider it a social media center for your TV. Not only does it pull in your personal content like videos and photos, but you can also stream content from the MLB, Last.FM, Netflix, Pandora, and more. Since Boxee allows developers to create their own “channel,” more than 150 great applications are available to enhance your living room experience. One of our favorites is Cliqset (a LaunchSquad client), which allows you to have a real-time conversation with friends while watching your favorite video.
Foodspotting
Described as a “foodie-powered field guide,” Foodspotting was born after founder Alexa Andrzejewski realized it was difficult to search for specific dishes on existing city guide services. The Web site (a mobile app is coming soon) allows “food spotters” to post photos and descriptions of dishes they’ve eaten. “Food seekers” can then search through these dishes, and vote them up, which awards credibility points to the original spotter. The service hopes to eventually tie into different products like Foursquare, where foodspottings would be incorporated into location check-ins. Now I won’t be scratching my head when I’m trying to find the best banh mi.
EarthAid
Think of it as a dashboard for all of your utilities, the power meter of the future. Currently compatible with 106 utility companies, EarthAid empowers users by allowing them to monitor and effectively reduce energy consumption. Incentives in the form of points redeemable towards discounts, and offers from partners, and the ability to share data with friends, makes conserving energy fun.
I encourage you to explore the great videos and presentations given at Web 2.0 Expo NY to learn more about how the Web is evolving.
Exclamation Podcast: Talking Embargoes With Robert MacMillan of Reuters
During the last few years, embargoes have become a source of tension between public relations people and the reporters they work with. Where does the need for PR professionals to get their clients’ new disseminated widely intersect with reporters’ need to get the news out quickly and not get scooped? Are embargoes an outdated relic, or do they simply need to be redefined for the digital publishing era.
LaunchSquad’s Corey Lewis talks with Robert MacMillan, media reporter for Reuters in today’s Exclamation Podcast:
Follow Robert on Twitter at @BobbyMacReuters and read his work and MediaFile blog at Reuters.com. Intro music is “1492″ by Cousin Chris.
Why Facebook and Twitter Should Start Charging Users
What if Facebook and Twitter started charging users for their services? It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while and have wondered why at least one of them, especially Facebook, have not experimented with in any way.
Let’s look at Facebook in particular. Over the past few years, the service has evolved into a daily utility for tens of millions of users in the U.S. alone. I’m talking about people who essentially cannot – or at least prefer not to – live without it, whether it’s for the fun, games, social interactions, photo sharing, or like me, as just a virtual and dynamic database of your personal and/or professional contacts. For many of these users, Facebook is probably as important (and for some more so) as having cable TV, a smart phone, satellite radio, or a host of other paid monthly, subscription-based services.
If Facebook was able to get a hearty set of these users to pay a nominal monthly fee for unmitigated access to its services, the company could quickly become a legitimate multi-billion dollar business (instead of an on-paper one). Let’s look at some [admittedly arbitrary] math. Facebook says publicly they have 300 million active users, 50% of which access the site in any given day. Let’s divide that number by half again and say there are 75 million fairly loyal and passionate users that would be significantly affected by not being able to use the site. How much would those people be willing to pay to continue to use the service at the level they currently are? How about $2 per month (or the price of one over-priced coffee)? Voila: that’s a whopping $1.8 billion dollars in pure profit-based revenue. And it’s more than FIVE times the estimated total revenues the company generated in 2008.
How about Twitter? There were 23 million users during the month of September (this excludes those who are consuming content from or through Twitter, which is soon to be just about everybody, knowingly or not). We know there are a lot of people who experiment unsuccessfully with Twitter, or do not use it very often. But there’s also a growing group of daily die-hards, including a good chunk of the 40 or so folks at LaunchSquad. Let’s conservatively peg this number today at one million people who are habitual Twitter users. Would those folks pay the cost of a coffee every month to keep using it in an unlimited fashion as they are today? If they did, Twitter’s suddenly generating $24 million in annual, subscription-based revenue for itself. For the record, that’s about $24 million more than they are currently taking in, give or take a few thousand bucks.
Obviously there are some good reasons why Twitter and Facebook have chosen to not go down this path. They are in high-growth mode and, unlike most startups, they have enough leverage with their investors to keep the “path to profitability” mantra at bay. Anything that might curtail registrations and usage is a big no-no.
Of course, any movement to try and develop this business model would have to be done with great care and deliberation to mitigate the backlash.But I think it may be a mistake though for them to not add this to the short-term plan, and begin experimenting with the most loyal users and seeing what the appetite may be and where the price points are that begin to truly hurt free usage growth. Even if Facebook charged those 75 million users only $5 per year, that potentially doubles their revenues right off the bat.
Update: Given the past comments below, I want to more clearly note here that under these hypothetical scenarios, Facebook is still free for the vast majority of users.
Bigger picture, there is a potentially huge domino effect that could happen here. If a company like Facebook or Twitter, or some other big name trendsetter, could ultimately prove that the Internet does not necessarily have to be free, it could have a profound effect on the entire universe of innovation, startups, venture capital, M&A and even the IPO market. It could even hasten and ignite the economic recovery.
Think of all of the companies out there currently pursuing free service models and relying on the combustible and unpredictable advertising market as their path to success. Not to mention the set of “freemium”-model companies, such as Evernote, TimeBridge, SugarSync, Anchorfree (disclosure: all are LaunchSquad clients) and countless others who have to deal with financial markets that question their long term potential despite having innovative, valuable technology and loads of very happy users.
This could also significantly impact media companies who are trying to come up with ways to charge for the content lest they crumble and die. If Twitter and Facebook are no longer free for loyal users, Rupert Murdoch & Co. have a much clearer path to creating pay walls and generating revenue for access to content. Admittedly a lofty thought, but this could be the savior the newspaper industry has been waiting for too.
I may be overstating things here, but a world in which people more readily accept that services like Facebook are not eternally free is a very interesting one to ponder.
I’m A Local
I know it’s hard to remember a time before the Internet. Before chat-rooms – YES, even before “You’ve Got Mail.” Before the socialized Internet, your community was just your physical social environment: Your mailman, your grocer, friends, family, roommates and the physical places where you would see these people. The emergence of social Web was astounding. Suddenly we were part of a global community and you could find web content from South Africa and chat with people in Belize. Now that the Web is mobile, there is this new fascination with socializing our location. Mobile services like Foursquare, Brightkite and even Tumblr allow users to tell all of their networks where they are and what they’re doing.
You Are Your Own Paparazzi
This rings in a new phase in online social interaction – bringing your physical locale online – not just the people, but the shops, restaurants, gas stations, post offices, parks, churches. They all inhabit real-estate on the Web within these applications. Checking in on Brightkite gives you the option of cross-streets or nearby listings that include businesses and landmarks. Take a picture and include it in your check-in – then send it to Twitter and Facebook. Now, when you check in, you can easily connect with several people who are in close proximity to your activity who are also socializing their activities.
Social Historians Tag As We Go
Blogging is no exception for the digital local yokel. Devote an entire Tumblr post to a photo and tag it to a location that shows up on a built-in Google Map on your site so that your followers can know exactly where you were when you posted. It’s crazy! And speaking of Google Maps – also crazy: Do a Google Maps search for Shake Shack NYC’s and not only will you find the street view, but you’ll also find relevant photos tagged to exact locations that were submitted by users like your GPS-powered social self. We’re literally uploading our neighborhoods onto the Internet.
Digital Town Criers
You find the same thing with local news. Sometimes, if the train is ever delayed – which happens often here in San Francisco – I’ll check Twitter for updates from @NJudah to see if there’s anything holding up the system somewhere. We find out news and alerts from our online social networks, but it’s not always organized, relevant, so targeted to you and where YOU are–Hence the idea of Fwix. It combs the best of the Web–blogs, local news, even user-submitted news stories, breaking them down to the most relevant bits of information, in real time, in your city. Plus, it lets you shape your own local newswire–got an iPhone? Break the story to Fwix, and share it with your social network. Know that your news is filtered to the most important parts.
Meaningful Meetups
Forget, though, about being “nearby” and “checking in” and “running into”. As your two local communities merge, there still exist physical, premeditated gatherings – events, if you will. And services that digitize them, namely, Eventbrite, have the challenge of re-socializing an innately social idea – a gathering of people at a venue for an event. As a location-centric, web-based service they have the option to integrate with these increasingly popular mobile services while still owning the digital social future – the planned get-together, so different from the random, cheap check-in. Eventbrite, and the like, are the best of both worlds. Their site, while listing planned events, has elements of surprise and the larger sense of community (fancy a Fusion Fight night in Billings?) while catering to needs of local communities – they are a valuable entity to the growing story of the location-obsessed and the new digitized local community.
Deadspin Goes Medieval On ESPN – Is It Too Much?
It was a bad weekend to work in Bristol, Conn. Last week, the friction in the sometimes friendly, mostly unfriendly, four years of co-existence between ESPN, the sports broadcasting and online behemoth, and Deadspin, Gawker Media’s popular upstart sports blog, finally ignited a huge, flaming ball of holy-crap-this-should-be-interesting. What had been a long-standing, contentious relationship turned into a bitter feud that’s not likely to be resolved, or even cooled off for a while, after Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio posted a story with headline, “ESPN: The Worldwide Leader In Sexual Depravity.”
The post was a response to the New York Post’s revelation that Steve Phillips, a high-profile ESPN baseball analyst, had been suspended for having an affair with an ESPN production assistant. Daulerio had been sitting on the story for a couple weeks and felt he had been lied to by ESPN’s communications arm, and thus, scooped by the Post. Needless to say, Daulerio wasn’t happy about it and retaliated by unloading his inbox of rumors about the indiscretions of ESPN executives under the … well, hilarious tag “ESPNhorndoggery.”
Reactions since from both the traditional media and the sports blogosphere have been, for the most part, critical of what Daulerio did. Right or wrong, this is a fascinating story because it tiptoes so close to that imaginary ethical line that the traditional media always hysterically yell about about when talking about the blogosphere. But nobody has actually ever attempted to define exactly what that line is. Is it legal? Is it ethical? Is it based on long-standing journalistic standards?
I’d say it’s purely legal, because, well, that’s the ultimate measure of right or wrong here. Obviously, Gawker boss Nick Denton has Daulerio and Deadspin’s back here, and Daulerio was a trained, professional journalist for years before joining Deadspin, so it’s his call as to where the ethical line is drawn and if he cares about the long-standing journalist mores. Absent restraint from his bosses and from himself, defamation law is the only check on Daulerio. Clay Travis, a former lawyer and former Deadspin writer, has a pretty thorough run down of the legal issues involved and concludes that Deadspin and Gawker are pretty much in the clear, legally.
That really is the final word here. If, in the eyes of the law, Deadspin’s war against ESPN is legal, than so be it. ESPN can call it “despicable behavior,” Daulerio’s sports blogging brethren can complain and members of the traditional media can hold their noses at the messy kerfuffle that’s so obviously beneath them, but the law is the final call on legal or not, and Daulerio and Gawker have the final say on right or wrong.
And something that’s been missing from the discussion as well, is that Deadspin might have exposed a pattern of sexual misdeeds that point to a widespread institutional rot within ESPN. Not to suggest that Daulerio is today’s Upton Sinclair, or his “Horndoggery” posts an update to The Jungle, but in a sense it’s akin to modern day muckraking, just on a smaller scale. ESPN though, might argue it’s more like yellow journalism. But this is the new media environment, and these issues need to be worked out. Who knows, if ESPN files suit against Gawker, this case could establish future precedent.
Under its founder and editor emeritus Will Leitch, Deadspin basically founded what is now a thriving, interesting and exciting sports blogosphere. Under Daulerio, Deadspin might also pioneer less comfortable, but massively important new territory around standards, ethics and exactly what the new journalism is. It’ll be exciting to see.
The New Creative Economy
Great music, video games and films continue to be created and enjoyed by huge audiences, while many large traditional distributors in these industries are seeing steady declines in total revenue. The Internet is chipping away at the role of the middleman, whether it is a record label, game distributor or film studio. Simultaneously, the Web is empowering the artist and providing unprecedented channels for direct distribution and now, major sponsorships. Is this the future of the entertainment industry?
Panos Panoy, Sonicbids founder/CEO, recently wrote a very interesting post on the changing guard of the music industry. His post “Are Consumer Brands the New Record Labels?” analyzes the stream of deals that major brands are increasingly offering to independent musicians via Sonicbids. Panos notes, “major (and niche) consumer brands have figured out that music can help them sell whatever product they produce,” and thus have started to work directly with unsigned artists to provide them with music for a variety of promotional campaigns. One can certainly see how this scares record labels – if bands can produce high quality, professionally recorded music on their own dime, completely own their publishing rights and then make a profit on their music through licensing songs to Coca-Cola directly through the Sonicbids online platform, why would artists ever want to sign on to a record label who will take the lion’s share of the profits from their music?
Similarly, game developers are now releasing games online that people would normally have to pay to play, but large brands are starting to come in to sponsor the games to make them free, here’s an example. Online game network and LaunchSquad client, Mochi Media, has steadily seen more game developers leave big distribution companies to start their own production companies, allowing them to create their own games, retain all rights to their intellectual property and distribute their games to the world via the Web and mobile platforms like the iPhone. A good example is the wildly popular game catalog created by Sean Cooper, a former game developer for EA Sports.
Even in film you are starting to see some similar trends. Though distribution to theaters will always be a big money game, increasing bandwidth speeds and HD quality video players are making the Web a real platform for film distribution. An interesting example is the recent short by Director, Barry Jenkins, who is known for directing the indie film hit ‘Medicine for Melancholy.’ Jenkins created a short film called Tall Enough, which was funded by Bloomingdales of all companies, and now streams on the company’s site.
Is this direct consumer brand/artist relationship the future of the creative economy? And if so, will artist development suffer as a result of the lack of artist rep firms like record labels who (supposedly) nurture the talents of the artists on their roster? If nothing else, it does seem that if this type of consumer brand/artist relationship increasingly becomes the norm that the modern artist will need to have the somewhat rare combination of very strong creative and entrepreneurial skills to reap the rewards of this new system. But maybe that is what the digital generation is all about – only an Internet connection needed.