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| Monday, August 14, 2006 |
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Resurrecting Dr. Science 
| | Remember Dr. Science ? ("He knows more than you do." And says, "I have a master's degree. In science!") Remember radio? He's still on that. But he needs to podcast, mostly so I can listen to him when I drive to San Francisco today. |
And succeed
| | On the surface, the analogy between high priority package shipment and high priority packet delivery seems like a good one. Upon closer examination, simple physical limitations show these two worlds to have very different operational characteristics and completely opposite unintentional side effects. |
| | The point of this post is not to argue about the exact details of packet forwarding or courier company operations. The point is that centering the discussion about complex topics like network neutrality around analogies to other systems is foolish. The lost detail results in uninformed decisions. |
| | No disagreement there, except around the suggestion that analogies are foolish. In fact, analogies — and their close relatives, metaphor and simile — are necessary to understanding, well, everything. For more on that, see my comments under Dan's piece. |
Re-speaking of journalism
Security check point
| | What a screw up on the heels of this week's threats. Just think, with RFID, americans at home and abroad carrying passports can be located and identified. You gotta love it. Guess how long it will take to break the security on these things. A heartbeat. Avoid getting one if you can. |
Continued cluetraining
| | There are potentially billions of filmmakers now with digi cameras, camcorders and mobile phones who can make films which mimic on some level that which we've already seen in a cinema or on TV, and the web provides a free global platform for all of them. But coming back round, via the ideas of ClueTrain, to the British Free Film Movement - the no-budget 16mm British movement that predated Dogme and Cinema Verite, there is some hope for those of us who will never see a big budget and want to express something beyond that which commercial TV and cinema currently offers. For amidst the countless pages of the web, what is left then to stand out, but our own story, our experience and perception of the world? |
| | What's left is for independent artists and producers to disintermediate the bloated and ossified production and distribution systems of the entertainment industry. |
| | A lot of work to be done there. But count on it happening. |
Blogging for business
| | Blog-happy? It has only been a couple of weeks that I've had this column and I've already been attacked by some blogosphere inhabitants of Santa Barbara. Bloggers are folks with their own personal Web sites, which they can use for whatever end they please with impunity. Some of these sites have had a big impact on politics, technology and journalism. |
| | Curious about the typical blogger profile, I found that the blogger demographic has been studied by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and published in The New York Times (July 20, 2006). According to that published report, ". . . only 4 percent of all Americans have blogs," but ". . . 39 percent of Internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs." |
| | Some 37 percent of bloggers use them as personal journals to "share" with others. I think that this compulsive public disclosure of usually, if not hopefully, passing thoughts, emotions and impulsive behaviors indicates an exhibitionism spawned by so-called reality TV and bad behaviors of celebrities getting positive attention. |
| | It used to be that folks wrote autobiographies to detail some significant journey or challenge survived, with the desire to share life lessons learned and wisdom gained. No more -- now it is as though every errant thought should be embraced by the outside world as having greater significance than the burp it really is. |
| | The New York Times quotes an author explaining that the blogosphere is about niche subjects. "Niche media is 'me' media, and the blogosphere is the ultimate manifestation of that," he said. |
| | That is all our society, and our city, need: more folks focused on themselves, esteeming themselves over respect for ideals and each other. |
| | (I'd link to the piece, but it's already behind a paywall.) |
| | So here's some honest, friendly and truly well-intended advice to Wendy, Laura and Travis Armstrong (publisher and editorial page editor). |
| | First, try to understand what blogs really are. There are over 50 million of them, and many are outstanding publications. Some are by first-rank professional journalists. Some report from war zones. Rather than attack and malign the whole category, look at bloggers as a resource. They can perform a useful and time-honored journalistic role, as stringers. Sources. Feet on the ground in Santa Barbara. A way to tap into the community and get good editorial at the same time. Hey, when citizen journalists are becoming more numerous and helpful every day, why not take advantage of them? |
| | Toward that end, look at what I wrote in response to an anti-blog column by Travis in April 2005. Here's the gist: |
| | Again, my purpose here isn't to play gotcha with the News-Press. The paper needs constructive help, not rebukes. It's a good paper. I read it every day. I'd like us to help make it better. So here are three suggestions for the paper: 1) Reach out to, and take advantage of, local bloggers, friendly and otherwise; 2) Encourage blogging by your own staff (no need to host, as the Scripps papers do — too complicated, and not necessary); and 3) Open those archives — not just to subscribers (registered or otherwise), but to Google and other search engines. Search engines are the reference sections of the world's new library. Excluding your work from that library reduces the paper's authority. For more and more of us, if you're not on the Web, it's like you don't exist. |
| | Which brings me to my second point. The News-Press is getting creamed in the "world's new library" for the simple reason that Google sees, and indexes, every blog in the world. Also countless other sites and sources. All while the News-Press continues to bury all its old (and even some of its current) editorial behind a paywall that's so reader-hostile that it even punishes paying local subscribers — all to squeeze a few extra bucks out of a declining loyal subscriber base. I can't find a single newspaper that's worse in this regard. Meanwhile the cost in reputation is high. Maybe even incalculable. And how much money does the paper make by selling old editorial? I don't know, but I'll bet it's no more than a few thousand a year, tops. Not worth it. |
| | If the paper syndicated its editorial with RSS (really simple syndication) and opened its archives to Google AdSense advertising, it would raise its profile in the world and make more money. I'd bet, in fact, that the bulk of Santa Barbara content on the Web would come from, and be credited to, the News-Press. Until then the paper remains a large empty space whenever anybody looks up "Santa Barbara". (The News-Press, a landmark institution in the heart of Santa Barbara and its history, doesn't even make the first page of Google results. SBindymedia.org does. I'd never heard of it until just now. |
| | Wendy and the paper have done some good for this town, and they deserve credit where it's due. Every time I punch 1290am on my car radio, I'm grateful that Wendy brought local news radio back to a University town that doesn't even have its own NPR station. (The best we have is a 4-watt translator for KCLU from Thousand Oaks — which does a nice job, by the way.) Yet 1290 AM — "The Santa Barbara News Press Radio Station" — doesn't have a website, and doesn't podcast. It does stream live for listeners with Windows Media Player browser plug-ins, but that excludes everybody with iTunes and an iPod: an enormous population. |
| | Rather than bust the paper and its station for being clueless about the Web, let's look at the huge opportunities that would open if the paper took advantage of the cheap and easy opportunities for expanding its service and getting its stories out, through the Web, and through podcasts. |
| | I can't find my original offer to come down, meet with the paper, and detail some of this same advice. But it stands. |
| | [Later...] Kent Newsome: Thank goodness my hometown paper has embraced RSS and blogging. |
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