Real Journalism Takes Root in the UK
March 26, 2010
Short honk: I enjoyed reading “Independent Titles Sold to Lebedev Family Company”. I am looking forward to the new owner’s approach to outfits like Google and how the new owner will relate to fellow moguls. Some of the big dogs in “real” journalism have quite interesting work backgrounds. For example, if you navigate to www.cluuz.com and run the query with the quotes “Alexander Lebedev”, you can see some of the connections he has.
The passage from the write up that I slipped into my Quotes folder was:
In addition to the London Evening Standard, The Lebedevs also co-own, with President Mikhail Gorbachev, Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s few pro-democracy newspapers. The paper has a reputation for independence and high-quality journalism. Anna Politkovskaya, whose fearless reports from Chechnya resulted in her assassination in 2006, worked for Novaya Gazeta.
I can’t recall if a Courier Journal & Louisville Times reporter was killed. Journalism has its upsides and its downsides. One plus for Mr. Lebedev will be getting memberships in exclusive clubs. Who is going to object?
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Notice that I don’t offer any clever insights. I will report writing for nothing to Companies House when I am next in London.
Google Beyond Text Sample Chapter
March 23, 2010
Stephen E Arnold’s new monograph about Google technology is just about complete. The study will be available in May 2010 from Intellas Press. The monograph focuses on Google non-text technical disclosures. Like Mr. Arnold’s previous three Google studies, the focus is on Google’s technical capabilities. Mr. Arnold’s 2009 study, Google: The Digital Gutenberg examined the company’s infrastructure as a digital River Rouge; that is, information goes in one end and complete content objects come out the other. Google Beyond Text tackles rich media, including images, audio, and video. The research has consumed more than one year and relies upon Google’s open source disclosures in technical papers, financial filings, and patent documents. You can get a sense of the type of information in this important new study by requesting a sample chapter from the monograph. The chapter that is available in draft form and without charge discusses the gap in Google’s non-text capabilities. Among the companies discussed are Catch Media, La La Media, and DoubleTwist. The book is intended from technically inclined individuals, investors, Google competitors, and those interested in a book that skips the “Sergey and Larry eat pizza” approach to Google’s technical systems and methods. You can request the sample chapter by navigating to http://www.theseed2020.com/gbt/. A PDF will be sent to you without charge. The hope is that you will either provide some constructive criticism and maybe order a copy of the monograph when it becomes available.
Ken Toth, March 23, 2010
This was a sponsored post supported by ArnoldIT.com. This is a marketing article.
eBook Search Engines
March 22, 2010
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to “The 5 Best Ebook Search Engines”. My eyes and eBook readers are not like peanut butter and chocolate. I know that a large number of people are getting on the eBook reader bandwagon. The search system that Work Up seems to favor is MegaPDF. I did some testing and got mixed results. For example, a search for Silesian Station returned some unusual results, including a one page PDF from the Book Thief. You are on your own. I prefer to buy hard copies.
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2010
A free write up. I suppose I can report “free’ to the Free Public Library here in Louisville, Kentucky.
One UK Media Companies Pays Tribute to Two US Media Companies
March 18, 2010
Read “How the New York Times and CNN Try to Keep Up with the Tech Companies.” No, not the article. The title. First, the notion of “try”. The write up makes clear that the NYT and CNN are in try mode. Calvinistic? A less gifted pair trying to cope with Sergey and Larry? In French, “to make an often tentative or experimental effort to perform”.
Second, notice the phrase “keep up with”. Not “lead” or “change the game.” The notion is that a couple of 40 year old former high school stars are in fantasy camp with a bunch of retired pros and some college players. Yep, “keep up with”, not go “toe to toe” or “push the boundaries.” The details of the write up are interesting, but what is omitted are:
- Explanation of what Facebook has done to become one of the largest sites on the Web and a preferred source of news for lots of folks in some tasty demographics
- How these two sites plan to leapfrog Google and Yahoo
- Where the money will come from when it becomes necessary to build software, implement enhancements, and do big time research.
- What about that traffic challenge? Eyeballs are needed, then more eyeballs.
I think these questions make clear the challenges traditional publishing companies face as they try to learn new tricks, make them work, and find ways to pay for the costs that software and systems for the Web bring to the party.
Stephen E Arnold, March 18, 2010
Free, uncompensated information. I will report this writing for no money to the Jefferson County shelter manager.
Newsosaurs
March 15, 2010
I read “It’s Hard To Watch The Newsosaurs Turn A Blind Eye To Their Own Extinction” right after I flipped through the New York Times’s Sunday magazine clone from the Wall Street Journal outfit. Let me comment on each information MIRV and offer a couple of observations from my search vantage point.
First, TechCrunch’s write up has a killer comment:
Everyone wants to wall off the Web and keep grazing on declining ad revenues.
I agree. This is a combination of fear, anger, and ostracism. I enjoy pointing out that in the information economy, the traditional giants no longer own the country club. Each day, the former owners find their future will be as caddies to the new information elite. This is, I suppose, a bitter pill to swallow. The TechCrunch article includes the much quoted “burn the boats” admonition from one of the early superstars of the zippy-doo Web that is not the cat’s pajamas. Like Google’s advice to struggling industry, the listeners think that their outfits have already burned the boats, embraced technology, and reinvented themselves. This mismatch between advice and its perception is characteristic of the domain collision that is now taking place. The passage that caught my attention in the TechCrunch write up was:
The longer media companies wait, the bigger disadvantage they will have when they cross over to the other side and find a whole new host of competitors who never had any print legacy businesses to protect. Those competitors right now are blogs and online news hubs who are still furry little rodents in the underbrush, but who won’t stay little forever. The sooner print media companies cross over, the sooner they can be on pure offense. Their online strategies and business models won’t be crippled by any allegiance, or need to protect, to the old print business. If they wait until their online revenues become 25 or 50 percent before they fully commit, it will be too late.
I don’t disagree with the thought. I disagree with the “will be too late.” It is too late.
The example to wish I refer is the oversized, glossy, 80 plus page WSJ Magazine filled with “reading.” Well, that’s interesting. I just counted about 32 pages of ads plus a number of features that are tough for me to determine if these are placed for consideration or are actual editorial. The stories focused on cars and fashion with a profile tossed in for good measure.
I remember being told by my Financial Times’s delivery agent before I dropped my print subscription that he tossed the magazine insert because it was too much of a hassle. I wonder if my delivery person for my Saturday WSJ will follow the same path.
Did I read any of the stories? The answer is, “No.” None of them appealed to me. I have a person who works for me who drives a Mini Cooper and it seems to have constant tire problems. I am tired of with it executives who overcame hardship. Who hasn’t? Fashion? Not interested. I wear black Travel Smith jackets, black never wrinkle pants, and black shoes that do not set off any alarms anywhere I travel. Spare me the trendy. Was there any financial info, business intelligence, or juicy insights into making money grow? Nope. The WSJ added sports and now it is adding a New York Times’s magazine type publication every couple of months.
What’s my take?
- WSJ is going after the NYT advertisers. That’s okay but the effectiveness of print ads have to be demonstrable. That might be tough unless the editorial product provides some content consideration. The boundary between an auto story and an advertiser might be getting a few molecules narrower, might it not?
- The problem with traditional media is not content; the problem is finance and business models. Offering me 30 pages of ads in 80 pages of paper is somewhat 17th century in today’s world.
- The Financial Times’s last home delivery offer to me was $50 a year. Will the Wall Street Journal face the same subscription challenge as readers discover that blending sports, Details magazine editorial, and business profiles might be out of step with what subscribers like me do on a Saturday?
Now search? How will I be able to locate the Gucci suit on the WSJ Web site? Answer: Not until the WSJ figures out image indexing and some other search tricks. I bet that when the iPad version of the WSJ Magazine comes out I will be able to click on a suit and see a map of locations where I can buy a suit that will fit most 20 year old soccer players. Maybe for some folks. Not for me.
Stephen E Arnold, March 14, 2010
No one paid me to write this article. I will report a failure to charge for my writing to the editor of the Army Times, an outfit focused on information in the modern world.
Hating Search
March 14, 2010
I think search sucks. I don’t hate search. Rupert Murdoch has a different view. Navigate to “Video: Rupert Murdoch Loves the iPad, Hates Search”. The idea is that the “legendary founder of News Corp.” is not happy with “the content stealer.” What’s interesting to me is that this message about hating search is delivered in electronic form and appears to reference a video. There’s a great quote in the write up as well in my opinion:
But search on the Internet whether it be Bing or Google, whatever, it’s free and they simply take all our expensive and we think very good content such as Wall Street Journal or whatever and what they call they scrape it and they use it for search, it gives them their raw material for nothing and then they have this very clever business model of charging for searching it, we don’t get any of that. And they are technologically brilliant, they are a long way ahead but they do not have the right to do it if we want to stop them.”
My view is a little different. The question is, “What about Facebook and Twitter?”
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2010
No one paid me to point out that Google is not rowing its boat in the social media river quite as quickly as some other firms. Because I reference water, I will report non payment for this write up to the Maritime Administration * and * the Coast Guard.
CMS, Search, and Signal Flares
March 14, 2010
In my first Internet monograph—Internet 2000: The Path to the Total Network, published in 1994 by Infonortics Ltd., Tetbury, Glos—I discussed the challenges Web information posed. One of my points was:
The Internet is different from, print, video, or facsimile because it can incorporate elements of each medium in real time.
Content management systems focused on making HTML Web pages and making it possible for non programmers to create a page, ftp it to a server, and handle the various scripting issues that arose from the hackathon that HTML triggered. Since I wrote that sentence in 1994, the point-and-click browser model has supplanted other types of computer interfaces. The simplicity for the user insulates the user from the complexity beneath the surface. Even the phrase “code behind” baffles most Internet users with whom I speak.
Content management vendors have responded in one or more ways:
- Some have stuck to the “it’s really easy” method. When the customer discovers that CMS is not easy, the vendor moves on to a new town. This 19th century frontier entrepreneurship works as long as there is a “new” next town. But as Americans have learned, once one hits that Manifest Destiny barrier, life gets tougher.
- Some CMS wizards have tried to beef up their CMS to handle the increasingly complex features and functions. These systems work * when * the client has enough money, computing expertise, and stamina to see the job through. Not surprisingly, once a six or seven figure job is done, no one is too eager to reengineer the system to handle the “next big thing.” So the system just keeps doing what it is doing until the company does a rip-and-replace, which is another six or seven figure job. When these jobs go off the rails, then litigation often results.
- Some CMS vendors shift gears and become something that is more narrowly defined. Examples range from customer support content management to certain types of eDiscovery work. The idea is that replacing those glittering generalities with more narrowly defined functions makes it possible for the company to survive or successfully sell itself.
- Go open source and hope that the halo about “community” puts Neosporin on the infected wounds of what was originally code written for a single client and then boldly marketed as a “solution”.
- Mix and match.
When I read “Latest MySource Matrix Release Includes Funnelback Search Integration for Superior Search Capability”, I thought about the long journey that CMS vendors have traveled since making and managing Web pages became the equivalent of the Oklahoma Land Rush for some 19th century type entrepreneurs.
Funnelback is a search engine that is now part of Squiz, “a supported open source solutions company”. Funnelback is a search and retrieval system that was nurtured in an Australian university and research Petri dish.
The key point in the write up was:
MySource Matrix has been integrated with purpose-built Funnelback binaries incorporating powerful features for improving search results such as Contextual Navigation, Featured Pages, Type Formats and spelling suggestions. The Funnelback Search Page asset has been expanded to make it easy to implement these features. Scripts are available within the Funnelback package which can be configured to update the index, giving the administrator control over the frequency with which the indexer is run, according to the amount of content being indexed and its dynamic requirements.
My take on this is that the open source CMS created a situation in which some users were not able to locate content. The addition of search as a utility bolsters the CMS. My hunch is that CMS is morphing into a “portal” or “platform” play. Will this make users happy? I don’t know. The recent work we have done suggests that users cannot articulate what they want or need when it comes to content creation and management.
I am delighted that search is being added to a CMS. I am not confident that search alone can address the many hurdles that a CMS must jump over. Most people are not in the content producing business or are most CMS users programmers. Software that tries to facilitate both processes in a world that is shifting to rich media has a big job to tackle.
CMS is, in my opinion, increasingly a problem. Consultants are reinventing themselves. Roll ups are taking place. Open source solutions are proliferating. In short, CMS is and is likely to continue to be a black eye in the enterprise software sector.
Stephen E Arnold, March 14, 2010
No one paid me to write about content management systems. I will report non payment to the GSA, which has a heck of a content management system.
Google, Data, and Owning the Golf Club
March 11, 2010
I remember when I first interviewed with Barry Bingham Jr., then the boss of the Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co. The newspaper was a monopoly and it had a document from a government official saying it was okay for us to own the morning and evening newspaper, the top TV station, the top AM and FM station, and to have other information related businesses such as high volume printing, door knob ad packet hanging, a ham company, and, oh, yes, an electronic information publishing company. That unit was also number one in revenue per record on the big commercial online systems.
One of my recollections of that interview was my question about revenue and profits. I spoke with him in 1980, so my memory of that meeting in his sunny office looking down Broadway in Louisville from the Courier Journal’s main building was along the lines: “Don’t worry. When people spend money for advertising in this area, we get most of it.” He went on to point out that he would subsidize my riding the bus to work because after working in New York and Washington DC, I was not an automobile buff. He also pointed out that I was expected to volunteer in various civic groups, which for me included helping with youth soccer and contributing to the Chamber of Commerce’s first “Advanced Technology Council.” Yep, 30 years ago I thought Louisville was an advanced technology center. Go figure.
After that initial meeting, Mr. Bingham and I became friends. When he had a computer problem, he would come over to my house and we would fix his Mac. After the sale of the Courier to Gannett, he and I would have lunch at least once a year. I had to make sure I had my wallet because Mr. Bingham would often arrive in his beat up Datsun without any money even though he worth was in the big money.
At one of those lunches, he made a comment about owning the country club. My memory locked on to this analogy, and I want to share it before I suggest you spend some time working through a Google presentation about newspapers and advertising. Here’s the country club story. His view was that newspapers were the owners of the country club. The newspapers decided what to emphasize and in the case of the Courier Journal what issues to push. The Courier Journal, when I joined as an officer of the company, was ranked on a couple of lists as among the Top 25 news papers * in the world *. The Courier Journal employee ID pass was a sure fire ticket to many events. When I wanted carpet samples from the now defunct Stewart’s Department Store, I showed my Courier Journal ID and was able to haul off a dozen carpet samples. The salesperson told me, “I will come by your house, answer questions, and pick up the samples.” Now that’s power. In New York, a carpet sample to go required a driver’s license, a credit card, and a one page form. In Louisville, the Courier Journal was the owner of the country club, employees were members, and the influence of the company, its employee practices, and its reputation in the community was remarkable. I joined the Courier Journal after a stint at Booz, Allen & Hamilton and (if you can believe this), the Courier Journal had a bigger stick that the venerable firm founded in 1917 by George Booz. Amazing. What’s become of the Courier Journal? It has been Gannettized, and I don’t recall the paper’s receiving any big writing awards. Most of the special sections are recycled wire service stories and photo essays showing people with shoes or Derby hats.
Now navigate to Scribd and download Google Newspaper Economics: Online and Offline by Google’s chief economist Hal Varian. After you work through the data, ask yourself these questions:
- Who owns the country club? Traditional newspapers or the “flat” world of Internet content?
- Who are the caddies in the age of the “digital Gutenberg”? Internet companies or newspaper publishers?
- What must newspapers to do to regain their revenue flows?
- What can newspapers do to regain their commanding position in the information food chain?
I have my answers. Please, post yours in the comments section of this Web log. I won’t grade your responses, but I will look at them and see if I have missed anything in Dr. Varian’s data centric description of a business sector struggling to find a revenue stream.
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since the presentation was given for an FTC group, I will just say, “Freebie.”
Real Journalists May Have Lost Touch with IT Reality
March 9, 2010
Keep in mind that the addled goose’s Web log, which you are now reading, is a marketing vehicle. It contains on good days old news. On bad days, the addled goose recycles his own talks which he delivers for tacos and Pepsis. I am not a journalist and I don’t pretend to be one. I am not even a public relations person. As I approach 66, I entertain myself capturing information that I otherwise would forget and documenting my thoughts, which are subject to change. When was the last time, a 65 year old could remember where he or she put the keys to the automobile? See what I mean.
When I read the Cnet write up about a post I saw last week, I thought, “CBS’s real journalists are now thinking about themselves in a meta-way.” Navigate to “Has Business Press Lost Touch with the Tech Industry?” CBS is a real company and it does real news. Cnet is a real news outfit, if I understand set theory. The point is that an azure chip outfit called ITDatabase figured out that the real journalists are writing about topics that are popular. I think this is using humans the way Google uses popularity algorithms. I am sure the “real” journalists would disagree. That’s okay.
For me, the most interesting passage in the write up in Cnet was:
Enterprise IT is woefully underrepresented, despite being the cash-cow in the industry. “In the overall editorial agenda,” the report says, “enterprise IT is treated like consumer tech’s snaggletoothed twin. It barely even makes the family photo.”
Let’s think about this statement.
First, publicly traded companies are covered with a bit of fancy geometry by the investment analysts tracking these companies. The information is usually able to deliver a couple of nuggets. The reason is that most of the analysts talk to people * other than public relations * and * business development officers *. Most of the real journalists recycle familiar contacts, preferring to quote names the writer assumes the readers will recognize. So when the word “search” appears in a story the same handful of “experts’ get quoted. The result is that the stories really don’t change too much from article to article. Google is an advertising company. Bing is gaining share. Autonomy is the leader in enterprise search. The statements in the article are true because they are in the article. Tautology meets routine.
Second, figuring out what is going on in a technology field is tough for three reasons. [a] The jargon is impenetrable. A “real” journalist may not have the time to figure out what the words mean. Example: faceted search or taxonomy. [b] The sources are often running the game plan. Take a look at the comments by tech leaders. There are buzzwords and a jab or two at a windmill. Not much substance because the focus is the sound bite. [c] A tech company sells products that a really complex. The wizards at the company cannot be trusted to answer a question because the wizard might point out that a specific feature is different from the function described by the marketing person. Guess who gets in trouble? The tech person so there folks are shuttled away from the lights and the cameras.
Third, I heard that publishing companies are getting rid of staff. The numbers quoted at a conference last week struck me as pretty high. The person pointed out that newspapers were shedding jobs at the rate of 1,000 per month. Wow. What will be left? What’s left, if this number is accurate, are people who have to write from news releases, contacts who are warm and familiar, and topics that are listed on Tweetmeme.
When the money goes away, algorithms will do this work and, of course, folks with time on their hands like this addled goose. Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 9, 2010
No one paid me to write about how I write this blog. Wait. If I buy myself lunch this afternoon, I will be getting paid. I will report the write-for-food angle to the FCC.
Possibly Unfair Criticism of Real Journalists
March 9, 2010
I heard about a frustrated programmer who found a livelihood as an azure chip consultant. The fellow tries hard. He writes a Web log that takes on software companies with a feather duster. When I read “UK Press: 21st Century Journalism hits an All Time Low”, I thought the author was writing about this blogger fellow and his simplifying gang of mavens. I was wrong. The article challenges the quality of journalism in the UK, and the author read old newspapers as part of his research. For me the most interesting passage was:
Some editors seem to have a funny idea of what’s newsworthy. They also seem to have an odd idea of what people find interesting to read and are bending over backwards to put press releases by celebrity agents instead as newsworthy stories, these are often recycled in other major newspapers. Round me, people are losing their jobs left right and centre and only today, I have had yet another person speak to me about regular elder abuse in care homes. Front page stories about celebrities are an insult to the British public.
I wonder how Google’s smart software would populate a newspaper with its snippet and segmenting technology mixed with a dash of its context server? Maybe some day.
Stephen E Arnold, March 9, 2010
No one paid me to write this short item. I will report the fact of non payment to the Department of State, an outfit on top of activities in the United Kingdom.
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