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Monday, April 9, 2007
Who are we writing for? And why? 
| | In his 1999 essay The Longing (which became the Cluetrain chapter at that link), David Weinberger asked What Is the Web For? His bottom lines: |
| | We are so desperate to have our voices back that we are willing to leap into the void. We embrace the Web not knowing what it is, but hoping that it will burn the org chart -- if not the organization -- down to the ground. Released from the gray-flannel handcuffs, we say anything, curse like sailors, rhyme like bad poets, flame against our own values, just for the pure delight of having a voice. |
| | And when the thrill of hearing ourselves speak again wears off, we will begin to build a new world. |
| | That is what the Web is for. |
| | While Google's mission may be to index all the world's information, its business is advertising. So is the business of newspapers. |
| | So maybe when Sam Zell says "If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?... Not very." he's saying we're all writing for Google — even if that's not our intention. |
| | It could be that Zell is brilliant, and is saying something that simplifies the truth to make a bigger point, and he doesn't mind if you think he's inept if some people get the bigger picture -- which is he thinks of the Internet and Google as being the same thing, and you know what -- I bet a lot of other people do too, and they have a point. Like the public radio stations, maybe we're fooling ourselves if we think we're not writing for Google, as they are fooling themselves into thinking they're not creating for NPR. We want to cling to our theory that each of us is independent of the others, but what if he's right, and it's us vs them. What if his friends in the newspaper business decide they want to compete against us directly. What if my pointers into the LA Times and the NY Times stop working? Or what if he offers you a job to come write for his company so your pointers do work? |
| | So stop and think a bit before you stop listening, and try to get beyond your impulse to dismiss him just because he said something that's technically inaccurate. He could be smart as a fox. |
| | I don't think so, but I also don't know. And that brings us to a larger point that both newspaper reporters and bloggers alike seem to miss: that what we don't know may be more important than what we do — and that in fact it often is. |
| | Newspapers have a daily pulse. Reporters do their best to be as accurate and thorough as they can, in the context of a deadline. Which means there is often a compromise between accuracy and timeliness. When the issues and facts are beyond a reporter's full understanding, mistakes happen — so often, in fact, that some subjects of news stories won't talk to the press at all. Mark Cuban's policy, for example, is just "read my blog". |
| | Blogs pulse constantly. They are, to a growing degree, the heart and soul of the Live Web. But our ability instantly to publish what we think and what we know also leads us often to shoot from the lip. Also to lip when we shoot. Yesterday I wrote this piece, lecturing newspapers in general and Zell in particular about what they got wrong and need to get right — about the Web, Google, and trade-offs involved in posting editorial on the Web and leaving it where search engines and those using them can find it. I'm generally a high road guy, but I dropped down to a snarky elevation when I introduced my points with "Earth to post" and "Earth to Zell". Not likely to encourage dialog, those. |
| | So here's a question: What do we know about what Zell wants to do with his papers? The man has a long track record. But we still don't know specifics about his intentions for the Tribune papers. Last month BloggingStocks found his interest in those papers "puzzling". I'd say it still is. |
| | Let's say Dave's right, and that Zell may be posturing to work some kind of deal with Google. Given the new deals between Google and both the AP and AFP, things may go any number of different ways. All kinds of deals may be possible between news organizations and Google. Some conceivably could alter the simple matter of who we're writing for. It might not just be ourselves. |
| | If Web = Google comes to look like a fact for a critical mass of people and organizations, then we will all become part of the same commercial ecosystem: one controlled by a single company. |
| | I don't think we're there yet, and I think we'll never get there if systems more efficient than advertising can be found for bringing sellers and buyers together. But I don't know. |
| | Here's something I do know: for many subjects, and for much of the time, bloggers are in a better position than newspapers to practice good journalism — for the simple reason that bloggers aren't under deadline pressure. True, we often have urgencies that are similar to dealine pressures, but those are no excuse for putting a story to bed before all the required facts are in. Of course, blogging back and forth on a subject is also a great way to scaffold a story together over time. But we are often not clear that scaffolding a good story is what we're doing. Too often we're just blabbing off. Me included. |
| | It's interesting to me that the Principles of Citizen Journalism — accuracy, thoroughness, fairness, transparency and independence — are also those of daily professional journalism. The ironic difference is that citizen journalists are in a good — in some ways better — position to practice them. Especially independence. This should be an asset not only to ourselves, but to newspapers. We should be leveraging that asset with papers instead of against them. |
| | And we should make that a goal. |
| | Here's another one. Let's try to understand what newspapers and their professionals are actually going through here. It's complex, difficult and important. |
| | I'm going to say something else that may put me at odds with some blogging colleagues: Newspapers are an endangered institutional species that it is critically important to save, and to improve. To do that we need AND logic, not OR. In blogging alone we have neither the practices nor the cultures required to replace newspapers or any other established media institutions. We do have the beginnings of practices and cultures that can both stand on their own as Good Things and help other institutions — such as media, business, churches and government. To name a few. |
| | The media ecology we need, and that I hope we will eventually have, has barely begun to form. Every time we put other institutions (and their professionals) on the defensive we defer the time when we'll begin to understand how we can help each other. |
| | I'm not telling anybody to pull punches here. Just to be more careful about who and what you're punching — and why. |
| | A better metaphor: construction. What are we building here, and why? And how can we do it together? (Because we're sure not going to do it alone.) |
The ultimate contact high
| | Unfortunatley, CharlesInSpace.com is an overproduced and almost completely linkproof Flashfest. So I can't point to where the timeline says Charles' Soyuz will be docking with the International Space Station today at 1830GMT (about 3 hours from when I'm writing this). Still, interesting reading. |
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