Exclamation blog: Stories, Ideas and loud noises
Big Chance for Big Media: AP Tries to Jump on the iPhone Craze
The Associated Press, that symbol of all that is old media, has made a surprisingly tech-savvy move. As Forbes’ Brian Caulfield reported May 7, the global news service is hoping to gain a prime spot on a screen that is viewed regularly by some of the most plugged in folks on the planet – the Apple iPhone home page.
The AP is hardly the only news organization that wants to be in on the mega iCraze, but with its new “Mobile News Network” the AP has a shot at being placed as the first “News” button on the home screen of that ubiquitous toy of techno-yuppies known as the iPhone. At this point, only a handful of widgets are on that often used screen, and most are provided by new media giants like Google and Yahoo, or by Apple itself – such as weather, maps and stock quotes. (All this will soon change, but that’s another story.)
Caulfield describes old media companies’ desire to get on these phones their “best shot at digital relevance,” and I couldn’t have put it better myself. (Full disclosure, Brian was my editor at one time, and he still ranks among my favorite biz tech journalists.)
Like so many other news services, the AP chose not to carve out its own online destination, instead choosing to let Google, Yahoo and various news outlets aggregate and distribute its content. Now, with old media looking down the barrel of a gun, this kind of move could be too little too late. But it’s at least a sign that someone over there is thinking outside the box.
Caulfield reports that so far at least, Apple hasn’t announced that it’s taking up the AP’s offer. Could this be a case of closing ranks? For my part, I hope Apple decides to play ball on this one. To me, the AP is a little bit like the older aunt you invite to your party, knowing that even though she might not understand any of the talk about Twitter tweets or whether Robert Scoble’s going to show up, she’s intelligent and reliable – and she’s been around long enough to bring some experience to her observations of the world.
You Down With IDG? Yeah You Know Me
Steve Lohr of The New York Times writes today about publisher IDG and the state of its business. Like many magazine and newspaper publishers these days, IDG has been one that seemingly was struggling. Infoworld went online-only and Computerworld is now a fraction of its size and thickness from a few years ago.
But don’t let these print issues fool you, the Times reports that all is well with IDG who is raking in more revenue from online advertising (52%) than print advertising (48%) and is growing its revenue by 10% per year (70% of their revenue is from publications). Layoffs and killing print issues seem to just have been smart business decisions and not acts of desperation.
This article puts some debates to rest — whether online ads can replace lost print revenue, or, if there’s any hope for struggling companies publishing print publications. IDG is a niche publisher, which helps since they do have a loyal tech audience, and PC World and MacWorld are mainstays that will always do well, but it’s nice to see that there is hope for an online transition for many of the traditional tech publications we love here at LaunchSquad.
What’s become clear is that it’s not an online-offline thing — just because a publisher was never in print doesn’t mean it’s immune to the issues facing the publishing industry (see, CNET). And, on the flipside, there is hope and opportunity for formerly traditional print publishers like IDG.
I guess it’s easy to confuse struggle with change.
Blogger comes out, WaPo not amused
As anyone on the receiving end of one of my link filled IMs, e-mails or Tweets can tell you, I love sports blogs. There’s a small circle of about 10 of them (led by Deadspin, Fire Joe Morgan, Kissing Suzy Kolber and With Leather) that have superlative, hilarious writing and style and attitude that is basically a giant middle finger to the traditional sporting press.
And, as a former sports writer, I can say that gesture is very much needed.
The two worlds collided yesterday after Michael Tunison, aka Christmas Ape on Kissing Suzy Kolber, was fired from the Washington Post after outing himself on KSK. This is interesting in many different ways.
For the most part, the vanguard of the traditional sports press despise bloggers because they aren’t trained journalists who went to school for four years so they can be treated like scum by athletes. For the most part this vanguard is a bunch of self-aggrandizing pathetic writers who couldn’t recognize important prose if it hit them in the face. The Washington Post took offense, not to some of Tunison’s edgier posts on KSK, but to the fact that he said he was “totally f**king hammered” in the picture accompanying his post outing himself. Because, you know, no respectable journalist has ever gotten drunk when his or her favorite team went to the Super Bowl. The parrot may have been a bit much.
It’s pretty obvious that Tunison was canned because of the blog.
Anyway, the reaction has been pretty comical. The fairly sizable KSK and Deadspin communities reacted by taking over Dan Steinberg’s blog at the WaPo online.
The traditional media’s reaction to blogs is a constant source of hilarity. For the sports media to get upset over fans writing about sports is the epitome of stupidity – they are, after all, the people the media is (or should be) writing for. What difference does having a piece of paper make when you’re spouting off about sports? Just because I went to journalism school, does that make me more qualified to write about baseball than the guy with an accounting degree who spends his spare time crunching baseball stats? No. If he knows more than me and can write, well…
There are plenty of reporters who are embracing new media and are doing fantastic work, so it’s very unfair to lump traditional media in one big group, but a message to those who are afraid of blogs: Get over it. You’ll be working for one soon enough.
Wired Into Politics
Though 2004 was really the first election in which the Internet played a huge role, digital politics is very much starting to mature in 2008. Tech media site have interviews with candidates, viral videos are swaying voters for the first time, and, for God’s sake, John McCain has a MySpace page. There has, of course, been a lot of chatter about who has a voice, who deserves to have a voice and what they should be saying.
The traditional media complain that bloggers aren’t qualified to seriously cover something as important as presidential politics, bloggers complain that establishment reporters are too locked into their Beltway circles and have lost touch with mainstream America, and just about everyone agrees that political discourse is too shrill.
You know what? That’s great. That’s actually the essence of democracy.
I have never enjoyed politics as much as I have the past two years. For somebody like me, who is a politics junkie (it’s a medically-defined mental illness, I’m sure), this is the golden age of political discourse – there literally is too much information out there. For somebody who cannot get enough information, that’s heaven. I can instantly look at poll information, have access to political news from the best sources – both from traditional media and partisan outlets – and see or hear just about any speech made by any candidate.
It’s a fantastic, wonderful time to be a political observant – I spent last Thursday parked in front of my TV with my laptop popped open and I literally had every bit of information available sitting right there. Who cares if that information comes from a veteran journalist who’s probably jaded and too cynical, or a blogger who does this in their spare time. Too cautious or too loud, it’s still information, and too much is never enough.
The Promise of Journalism 2.0
Is journalism dying? It’s too easy to view the field as a declining one as a fast-increasing number of [mostly amateur] bloggers sprint to get their copy online, often ignoring factual accuracy, embargoes and other processes journalists are schooled to consider. As businesses and PR firms like ours consider a story in an influential, high-trafficked blog to be the new “holy grail” in media, one can’t help but think the fate of true professional journalism may be doomed.
As a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism, I was taught to value the societal role and contributions of publications like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune … Anna Quindlen’s column in Newsweek. The Pulitzer Prize-winning articles of Friedman, the amazing sports stories of Rick Telander – that was the holy grail of journalism. But today, as a publicist for the new generation of tech innovators, I find myself in a different role. I am part of a changing industry of journalists, bloggers and media professionals– an industry called Journalism 2.0.
Journalism 2.0 is a melting pot of different people, ideas and approaches to the digital information age. The industry is not declining, it is evolving, just as the Web is evolving into “Web 2.0” and sales is morphing past the old days of cold-calling into “Sales 2.0.” J-schools like Medill are tailoring their curriculum more and more to focus on the role of “new media” in order to prepare a fresh crop of students entering a completely different era.
Rich Gordon, a professor of journalism I studied under at Medill, blogs regularly and inspires his students to blog and think of journalism with a “new media” mindset. In one popular article I remember, he wrote, “But I, for one, do not believe that journalism’s future is gloomy. In fact, I think that when we look back on the early years of the 21st century, we will recognize it as a period of exploding opportunity for journalists and the start of an exciting new era for journalism. I also think it’s quite possible that we’ll look back on these years as a period when a better informed public began to emerge, thanks to new communications channels and technologies. Am I nuts? Maybe. The signs of decline in traditional forms of journalism are real. But declining audiences and financial returns for newspapers and television news do not necessarily translate into worsening prospects for journalism, nor into a more poorly informed society.”
As Journalism 2.0 continues to mature, so do its problems and limitations. Journalists are curious people, and they report best by touching, feeling, experiencing. I recently spoke about these issues to my good friend and colleague Tim Roberts, who I reported with at the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Tim’s feeling was that Journalism 2.0 has brought readers closer to reporters and made more information available to the public than before. But he says it has also produced many more distractions: “Reporters who spend too much time in front of their computer screens are not getting a very complete view of the world (even with Google Earth).”
I think that insight is spot on. Journalism 2.0 should continue to get bigger, connecting reporters, bloggers, publicists, students – and most importantly, the public – to one another. But its complexities should not replace the subtle details, nuances and thoughtful analyses that can only be told through a story in the Times (or NYT.com for you J2.0-ers out there) that makes you stop and think.
