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Friday, July 7, 2006
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 Friday, July 7, 2006
started 7/7/2006; 5:34:50 PM - last post 7/8/2006; 9:09:36 PM
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Doc Searls - Friday, July 7, 2006 
7/7/2006; 9:34:50 PM (reads: 6858, responses: 4)
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Bad news 
| | Rumors of the coming death of the Santa Barbara News-Press may not be exaggerated. |
| | Today the firings and resignations of six of the paper's top editorial figures was a subject of a story in the L.A. Times. It begins, |
| | Five top editors and a veteran columnist have resigned from the Santa Barbara News-Press, saying Thursday that the newspaper's billionaire owner had been meddling improperly in the editorial content of the 151-year-old publication. |
| | Editor Jerry Roberts was escorted from the newspaper's headquarters before noon as several staff members cried and others hurled obscenities at the new publisher, Travis K. Armstrong, the latest in a series of people to run the paper under controversial owner Wendy McCaw. |
| | And gets worse from there. |
| | Could it be that mixing editorial with news just won't fly with these seasoned journalists? A new era has begun at the News-Press where officeholder bashing and the fate of meerkats, pigs and salamanders will rule the front page and more often than not be placed above the fold. Maybe even above the banner... |
| | As of today, Thursday July 6, every senior editor in the paper¹s news department had quit, five in all. Resignation tendered. Executive Editor Jerry Roberts returned from a vacation in Crete and turned in his resignation about 9 am. He was then escorted out of the News-Press building by Human Resources chief Yolanda Apodaca . On the way out, tearful reporters and editors hugged Roberts and wished him well. As this happened, Travis Armstrong, Roberts's nemesis at the News-Press, emerged from his office to make sure that Roberts left, reportedly saying something to the effect of, "Roberts you've got to go." According to one report, Armstrong—who appointment as publisher of the News Press last Friday precipitated Roberts' resignation—clasped his hand around Roberts' arm to help escort him from the building. This was greeted by a chorus of "Fuck You, Travis!" from the News-Press employees bidding Roberts good bye. The chorus reportedly continued for some time; one of the louder voices in that choir belonged to Metro Editor Jane Hulse, who likewise had submitted her resignation that day. After Armstrong escorted Roberts—the former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and who¹d worked for the News-Press nearly four years—he came back to escort Hulse from the building too. The day before longtime newsroom editor Don Murphy--a 19-year veteran of the paper--walked out, and at some time so did managing editor George Foulsham, who¹s been with the News-Press now just less than a year. Business Editor Michael Todd, who'd been placed on indefinite unpaid suspension last week, also resigned. Persistent but as yet unconfirmed accounts indicate that News-Press columnist Barney Brantingham, a 46 year fixture at the News-Press, also quit. Early Friday moning, Sports editor Jerry Spratt also quit. |
| | By the way, it was Michael Todd who wrote an excellent piece about a talk I gave recently, here in town. As anybody who has been quoted often in the press knows, they usually get something wrong. Mike didn't. He was terrific. We'll miss him. And Jerry. And especially Barney, who is a beloved figure in town. Think about it. The guy was here for 46 years. Barney is to Santa Barbara what Herb Caen was to San Francisco. |
| | By the way, I include no links to the Santa Barbara News-Press because they put nearly the entire paper behind a paywall. In other words, they don't want our fucking links. Which is a stupid fuck-you both to the town and to themselves. (How many dozens of dollars do they make per year selling stories at $2.50 a pop? How much do they waste in authority, as well as advertising revenues, by preventing search engines from finding and monetizing all the paper's editorial online?) |
| | And it doesn't look like there's a damn thing anybody can do to change it. |
| | I'll keep our subscription. But the death watch is on. |
Perspective
| | Why should we depend on companies that accelerate into the future with one foot on the brake pedal while they park in the middle of intersections and charge us to cross them?... |
| | "Broadband" is like "long distance": just another name for transient scarcity. We want our Net to be as fast, accessible and unrestricted as a hard drive. (And in time even that analogy will seem too slow.) |
| | The only way that will happen is if the Net becomes ubiquitous infrastructure -- something which, in a practical sense, nobody owns, everybody can use and anybody can improve. |
| | We've all heard the phrase that control has passed from the centre or core to the edge. But for some reason we spend too long believing that the edge is about new devices and even new software. |
| | The edge is about people. Control has passed to individuals. |
| | The levers that matter most are human, and their best angles on the world are all on its edge. Such as: where we're all standing, right now. |
| | Wherever your there is, you can only get there from here. |
Confusion for the sorry
| | The problem with today being yesterday has been solved. I just moved a bunch of today's posts from yesterday to today. Hope that solves things. |
Just wondering
| | To be clearer, search marketing is not Internet advertising. The brilliance of search is how it induces a direct marketing opportunity while simultaneously helping consumers achieve their immediate goals. That is why consumers love search/Google. Regardless of how you feel about the 800-pound baby gorilla, consumers love that big monster and the big monster loves Œem right back, consistently placing the consumer¹s needs above all others. |
| | - Do you search Google (or any engine to see what people are advertising?
- What is the ratio of "exposures" to actual click-throughs of AdWords "sponsored links"?
- Regardless of that ratio, is not the sum of unclicked ads not wasted?
- What happens when we find a better way for demand to attract supply, rather than just for supply to "create" or "attract" demand?
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It isn't too late
That number is too low
| | Mark Collier: The 'real' world... has never heard of Doc Searls, or Robert Scoble, or Jason Calacanis (99.9% of the country really have no idea who these people are). |
The end of the beginning
| | In an unprecedented industry move, Nashville ABC affiliate WKRN-TV announced tonight that it would begin paying local bloggers for approved video stories they submit and running those stories on its Website and in its newscasts. WKRN president and general manager Mike Sechrist told a "meet-up" of local bloggers that he could envision the day when a daily program would be made up entirely of material submitted by the community. |
| | Then Terry follows that up with a pointer to a story in Online Media Daily about a tendentious study that shows most students prefering mediated lives as couch (or desk) potatoes. The pull quote: |
| | CONSUMERS MIGHT HAVE MORE POWER over when and where they experience media than ever before, but they appear to enjoy content more--and pay closer attention to it--when they relinquish some of that control. That's one of the conclusions of a recent study by Byron Reeves, a professor at Stanford University and Kevin Wise, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. |
| | Once again, the "push" rationale rears its empty head. |
| | I wrote both more than nine years ago. The first couldn't find a publisher. The second appeared in the June 1997 issue of Linux Journal, and became one reason why I returned to full-time journalism after a 24-year hiatus. |
| | After all these years it's no longer amazing to me that all of us — and not just the mainstream media — continue to look at each other en masse as bovines, and to rationalize re-creating the same "content" and advertising wheels over and over again. |
| | We're free now. We don't all know that yet, but eventually we will. |
It isn't too late
That number is too low
| | Mark Collier: The 'real' world... has never heard of Doc Searls, or Robert Scoble, or Jason Calacanis (99.9% of the country really have no idea who these people are). |
discuss
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Susan Kitchens - Re: Santa Barbara NewsPress
7/8/2006; 3:23:22 AM (reads: 1097, responses: 0)
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The media recluse, Miss McCaw (she wants all titles to be either Miss or Mrs unless otherwise stated, right? And she's not married because so n so is described as her betrothed, right?), shall soon discover the power of search engines to insert themselves into her walled-off-private place. She keeps her paper's site shut up tight. Nothing gets out, nothing gets searched, so whatever that statement from Trainwreck Travis that you can't read on the paper's web site will not make its way into the world. (Translation: They don't want their side of the story to get out)
But oh, all the stories from the Independent, from your site, from LA Observed, from my site, from Editor and Publisher, from the LA Times, from BlogaBarbara... they will become the de-facto source on this story. They will become part of the de-facto source on her, Miss or no Ms, blond or no blonde.
discuss
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David Evans - Re: Friday, July 7, 2006
7/8/2006; 3:44:32 AM (reads: 1131, responses: 0)
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Sad to hear. Something similar happend to at the Brattleboro (VT) Reformer last year. The good news is that a group of people including my mom started the The Commons, a not-for-profit weekly newspaper. The end is indeed approaching for much of the dead-tree media, except of course for the majors.
Getting startup citizen media outlets going is challenging and rewarding. People get upset and they say, "let's start a competing newspaper" and I counter with, "how about a blog and a forum?" and start walking them through Movable Type, Adwords and phpBB. Pretty soon their clue density starts to rise, and they see the power of merging blogs with forums, non-profit status and collaboration without centralized power structure.
discuss
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joy - Re: Online Publishing
7/9/2006; 12:31:58 AM (reads: 1650, responses: 1)
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Well, since I happen to have boots on the ground concerning your subject matter...I'll take a stab at your questions...
1)Two part question: Yes, but on the other hand, I'm more nerdy than most. But I guess the real answer here is the "60% of all e-commerce transactions start at Google" stat I want to say Battelle said it, but I'm too lazy to look that up. Nevertheless, if you get a SE referrer and you're an e-commerce site - it'll probably be from Google. And it should be said that organic results are much more stronger than any adwords ad.
2)Generally, the stats I've seen hover around these ratios: for every 100 impressions of an ad, you'll see about 10 click throughs and 2 conversions (whatever your desired action). Of course the stats vary, depending on what market you're in (BtoC is different than BtoB), ad position (top three ad position on a strong Google SERPS page can garner around 10% or better conversion rate), ad placement on Google (whether it's Google proper or part of the content network) and item or service being advertised.
3)I strongly believe that ad impressions serve a good purpose - of getting a brand in front of people. However, these ad impressions can't really be measured in a traditional manner, so be prepared for the skeptics.
4)Marketers aren't thinking about when will demand attract supply, but *how* will demand attract supply. The whispered conversations I've had with other marketers goes like this, "We'd love to move to permission based marketing...it's easier and effective. However, traditional push marketing is still overwhelmingly delivering higher numbers." Marketers are starting to pay attention to blogs, technorati, etc. but aside from tech marketers, I see toe-dipping and monitoring not full fledged active participation between suppliers and their customers. (And I have to mention the corollary to the previous sentence - I know that many suppliers don't want to actively participate i.e. Apple)
Before permission marketing/demand determining supply/etc. really works we need more participation in the conversation from more people -- because for all of the blogging, tagging, commenting that is going on, we're only still hearing from the most vocal and educated people in society.
And there's my two cents on a Saturday afternoon.
discuss
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Doc Searls - Re: Online Publishing
7/9/2006; 1:09:36 AM (reads: 1310, responses: 0)
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I'd like to see hard numbers on those. I think the ratios tend to run in the lottery range, on the whole.
But, I don't know.
discuss
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