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Monday, April 9, 2007
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 Monday, April 9, 2007
started 4/9/2007; 9:50:28 AM - last post 4/11/2007; 5:25:14 PM
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Doc Searls - Monday, April 9, 2007 
4/9/2007; 1:50:28 PM (reads: 6036, responses: 5)
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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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adrienne - Re: Monday, April 9, 2007
4/9/2007; 8:20:09 PM (reads: 820, responses: 1)
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I'm so happy to read this, this morning -- Doc Searls. First let me just say thank you for thinking about and writing about all of this. For transparency's sake I worked in the industry for twenty years during a time the paper made its second huge transition from what is called "cold type" to full pagination. I guess that makes me a dinosaur/newsosaur (sp?) as Nikke Finke over at Deadline Hollywood puns. (She is a fab writer).
I wasn't a journalist, columnist or an editor but instead one of the people who helped create the product when it was created by hand. So I worked with many people on the staff. We all did. Because we all had to be responsible for it and also this was due in huge part, to a kind of company loyalty as well. Many pairs of eyes looked at the pages in those days before it went to press. Many pairs of hands touched the pages -- cutting them apart, fitting in stories, pulling stories -- you name it. I won't go into the whole process here. At any rate, I'm sure you are familiar with the early computers that had nothing more than a black screen and green or orange lettering? Those were called VDT's by the newspaper industry.
As technology changed, the computers also changed. You can imagine what sorts of major investments papers made in the late 80's to get everyone trained and ready to go on incredibly expensive systems, and then new printing presses to match those systems.
At the same time, the whole world was getting desktop computers. I can't remember when and how the web itself actually started, except that when I bought my Apple Performa (1994? - or so, because of going back to grad school) I just knew I was really happy to have the ability to use Clarisworks for my papers! I remember it had a connection via Compuserve already in there and the ability to send emails. It had Photoshop and Illustrator, things I had already been trained to use at work. So it was so easy, all of a sudden.
Fast forward that to now. Who doesn't use a system of some sort? But, the web itself is the great equalizer.
I bet though, there are different little groups in here that I think are called Social Networks as this web is also an evolving place, with experts from so many fields dancing around in here. And think how fast technology is evolving. In defense of newspapers on so many levels we need them now MORE than ever, and I'm not saying this out of any kind of nostalgia, either.
Just today in the LAT there was an article called "Aiming for a kinder, smarter online encyclopedia" -- called "Citizendium."
How could I have possibly known this unless I read this morning's paper. I like the feel of it in my hands, too. Maybe I might have found Citizendium by chance searching in the web by myself, but I doubt it. A reporter tracked it down for me, and if I were savvy enough to be able to link it like you have above in this post I would! I know how to follow links though. The question is, does everyone?
The world seems to use the web for so many different things. I'm not a tekkie, so I can attach to your vast knowledge of that world if I need an answer. Like, whether linking is going to now be a violation of copyright on some level.
A newspaper has always had the secondary benefit of being a shared piece of paper that many can see. I can't see how telling someone about a great story or site by linking is much different than the way one might find a paper on a bus and later tell someone about an article...
A deeper ecology would be to try and find a sustainable source of paper like bamboo or hemp, perhaps. This would allow the technology to green up so we can still have that "tactile" experience of holding a printed object without killing trees for it.
My biggest experience in a group in the web was in 2001. I was part of a writer's list for a time and we all wrote short fiction and poetry together. It took me awhile to realize that our educational backgrounds differed radically depending on age and physical location worldwide. Some could not use metaphor. Some could not spell. They were helped along by gentle critiques from the more advanced writers.
The writers for newspapers have so many descisions to make. Daily.
One wrong fact or typo makes them look foolish to the giant sea of critics that is the reading public. The pressure is immense to get it right? You can just imagine...
What concerns me in the web is a trend towards Orwellian shorthand. Newspapers have to be the stewards of the future to guard against a world where everyone speaks like this: "r u ok" for "are you okay" -- or better yet, "are you all right?." The LAT had a fabulous Op-Ed on that subject, recently.
Imagine things like Wikipedia and Google that can translate language!
Imagine on-line dictionaries! Now, was on-line how I should have expressed that, in terms of spelling? A newspaper editor would have known. Or checked. They are stewards for our culture, in my opinion.
Just yesterday, I found something in the web called Wordpress (that I have been hunting for, for ages -- in a user-friendly form!)
I think this represents an evolution, but I'm not "tech-system-smart" enough to know. Readers of this blog are though, I'm quite sure.
I'm going to quote something you said above, and I hope this is all right:
"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."------ Doc Searls.
Search Google on outsourcing and you will see trend I don't think any of us can stomach, Doc. Not when it comes to a beloved tradition that thumps (and has thumped) its way onto driveways, porches and our hearts and minds forever. To lose it would be to lose something like Thanksgiving.
Now, guess where I'll go today. "Citizendium" just to see what it's going to be about! But I have the LAT to thank for the (printed) "pointer" to the web link, and I got that in my driveway today.
Now if I only knew what a techmeme tree was...
But I have you to thank for my first stop Doc! ('cause of the way you can link above directly in the web) And see, if I was a tech person I'd understand, too. This new Wordpress seems to be related to what I think a techmeme is? Not sure, but someone here must know...
I think flickr and technorati have something to do with a techmeme, but I could be wrong. If I am, it's okay to say so, right here.
Anyway, have a great day, all.
Thank you, Doc Searls.
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Sean Coon - Re: Monday, April 9, 2007
4/10/2007; 4:00:53 AM (reads: 808, responses: 2)
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but don't you ever get the feeling that newspapers don't want to be saved?
i do feel for the folks in the newsroom (and how this affects all of us), but their lives are absolutely managed by the ridiculous profit margins newspapers enjoyed all the way up to just a few years ago.
innovation is not in these cats blood, profit is.
last year at convergesouth, we had a norg discussion -- norg standing for an association of journalists in philadelphia that are trying to figure out where they go from here. and while they threw around revolutionary terms, in the end the entire conversation was about how to feed their corporate ownership more dollars in order to receive leeway to innovate their newsrooms.
my question to them: why don't you all get some funding and start your own online/off-line newspaper?
i'd much rather have a bunch of small teams of pros doing that than watching their current cruise ships run ashore one after another.
eh..
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nvalvo - Re: Monday, April 9, 2007
4/10/2007; 9:25:50 AM (reads: 906, responses: 0)
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I think you might get a kick out of the work of this interesting character named Jürgen Habermas. Dude is a German philosopher, works at the Goëthe Universität in Frankfort am Mein, IIRC, and moonlights at Northwestern in Evanston. Wikipedia has a decent article on him, which features a picture of him talking to the (new) pope.
Anyway, his work is about the possibilities of a special kind of action he calls "communicative action." He wants to found a "discourse ethics" on the basis of action taken at the level of communication, by which he does not just mean "talking." Rather, proper communicative action is action that expands the efficacy and openness of discourse communities, especially the so-called "public sphere," a phrase he brought to its present currency. Unfortunately, because of reasons best summarized under the name "modernity," the possibilities for such "ideal speech situations" are limited, as the rationalized, systematized world increasingly overlaps with the individual lifeworld.
The book you might be interested in in particular is a very old one called The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, in which Habermas sets the agenda he has worked on for the past forty years or more. It's a history. Basically, then, he sets out two poles: First, back in the early eighteenth century, in the (especially London) coffeehouse, Habermas recognizes a place where anyone can go (well, men, anyway, who have leisure time) to read and discuss the vast numbers of tiny, polemical newspapers and broadsheets available for public reading therein. But the structural transformation he describes comes when the newspaper becomes larger and rarer, with only a few papers per city, and each can pretend totality and objectivity, which had not even been a goal of the previous works.
Why I bring this up (you might have been wondering): advertisement is key to this shift. Without the invention of advertising around the turn of the nineteenth century, this never happens. I think this is required reading for meditations on the pervasive Google=Internet paralogism.
Nick
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Doc Searls - Re: Monday, April 9, 2007
4/10/2007; 5:36:20 PM (reads: 900, responses: 1)
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I think the separation between editorial and publishing gets wider every day. Both want to save papers, but with different motivations and in different ways. Both parties (to varying degrees and in varying ways at different papers) misunderstand (IMHO) what the Web is good for, but for different reasons. The publishing side wants to leverage print business onto the Web. The editorial side stays away from the whole thing because the publishing side is running the show. That's a bit of insight I got yesterday from an insider, for what it's worth.
I also don't think the choice is between innovation and profit. It's between engagement and isolation, with editorial prefering the former and publishing prefering the latter. Again, that's a huge generalization, but pretty much how things line up.
The reason it's hard to get funding for an online/offprint newspaper is that the online advertising sells for a tiny fraction of what print advertising sells for. Combinations of the two sell best. Or so I'm told. Start-up costs aren't cheap.
And professional print reporters would rather write for print. Or for print AND online. Look at Santa Barbara Newsroom. It's a bunch of excellent reporters, all cast out of their newspaper, working hard with union help to get back on the inside. Oddly, they would much rather do that than start a new paper. They're like sailors on land who would much rather return to sea than drive a car.
Anyway, expect no big funding for online papers.
Also few in any position are imagining what will be required to succeed in a world where advertising itself becomes obsolete. Right now we're back in 1999 again, thinking advertising is going to make everybody rich. So far it's just made Google rich. Time for Plan C, and nobody has it yet.
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Sean Coon - Re: Monday, April 9, 2007
4/11/2007; 9:25:14 PM (reads: 1012, responses: 0)
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so true about the advertising model. to actually hear the "sticky" jargon being used once again, but more intensely, on consulting projects is a sign of the bubble cycle moving into the second house. the time to get liquid is approaching. (yes, i was burned before)
also, i do like your engagement/isolation dichotomy much better, though engagement seems to lead to real innovation, while isolation leads to real profit through the short-term concerns of corner office executives angling towards retirement.
how cool would it be for the pros at the santa barbara newsroom to work out a deal with mike davidson at newsvine?
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