(r)evolution

Natural Resources

This blog mainly is mainly reference material for my occasional lectures in the U.S. and abroad on how technology is transforming journalism and politics. During spells when I don't feed the beast, I bookmark useful resources; find them through the del.icio.us link on the right. Some of my magazine work and personal writing is also archived here.

Parallel Universes

While I'm in St. Petersburg, talking about what's happening on the digital media playground across the Atlantic, I'm gaining insight into media in Russia, where a lot more is at stake than new brand platforms. Consumers of state-directed TVs and newspapers, often older and rural, live in a completely different information universe than users of the web, which has close to 50% penetration with broadband in most cities. The web is very likely monitored, but it is so far uncensored. Of course, those wide open spaces attract plenty of ugly chatter, racist and otherwise. But Russians are using the web in innovative ways, for real journalism and civic engagement. This Internews report has captures examples: Download RussiaNetworkSociety. For straight Russia Internet stats, try this Ogilvy presentation.

The Content-Centric Universe

I really like Brian Solis's latest version of the Twitterverse. But when I think of communication strategy, I still see a website packed with quality content at the center.



First Stop Moscow

I'm in Russia talking about tech politics and digital journalism. Here are PDFs of the presentations: Download Russia1,  Download Russia 2.

Some tools mentioned:

WordPress.com (blogs)

ExpressionEngine.com (blogs/websites)

Tumblr.com, Posterous.com (microblogs)

Bitly.com, Backtweet (link shortener, Twitter metrics)

Soundslides.com (Audio slideshows)

Flipboard.com, Zite.com, Instapaper.com (orbital content)

Internews.org, Knight Foundation (civic journalism)

Lynda.com (Training for all software)

Salesforce.com, HubSpot.com (CRM, integrated digital marketing)

Many more resource links in the right column, and in this post below. 

 

What Makes This Picture Great

Humans caught up in history.

Can Trove Get Into Orbit?

With mobile, the balance of power today is tipping toward orbital content, where people are actively or passively saving to platforms such as Instapaper and Flipboard to consume on any device at the time of their chosing. The shift is being reinforced by platforms like Qwiki that enhance existing content. 

For Washington Post news aggregation site Trove to become a winner, it has to push aggressively beyond its newspaper roots to become an open platform that adds value through the user experience, not just through the 10,000 content sources it currently offers. Meanwhile enjoy its Taiwanese video treatment.

SXSW and Back

My notes from SXSW focused mainly on the iPad and platform revolution but I couldn't resist writing about The Game Layer on Top of the World.

Fresh collection of visual storytelling tools

The Reynolds Center for Business Journalism published this superb list of a dozen data analysis and visualization tools. Useful both for computer-assisted reporting and visual storytelling.

In addition, Jody Brannon and members of the Online News Association Educators group assembled the following list of mostly free storytelling tools.  

Audio
SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/ Like YouTube, but for audio, and it has some cool features like timed comments and creating groups around topics. Some journalism-related samples.
Cover It Live: http://coveritlive.com/
Jamendo: http://www.jamendo.com/en/ Royalty-free music

Video
VYou: http://vyou.com/: conversational video
LongTail Video: http://www.longtailvideo.com/: open-source video player
AutoTune the News: http://www.youtube.com/show/autotunethenews

Charts
Google Fusion Tables: http://www.google.com/fusiontables
High Charts: http://www.highcharts.com/: Interactive javascript charts

Timelines
TimeToast: http://timetoast.com/
Dippity: http://www.dipity.com/
Intersect: http://intersect.com/
Capzles: http://www.capzles.com/ Social timelines

Fark founder: Wisdom of crowds is overrated

Fark.com founder Drew Curtis thinks collecting public input on news or policy issues is vastly overrated.

via thehill.com

Even the crowds need an editor. Just look it up on Wikipedia. 

Publishing Backwards

When I see the iPad, I see interactivity. When magazine publishers see the iPad, they see the chance to restore print layouts to their former glory. Great post on why it won't work:

I have an informal filter on how interesting and innovative a new content-related development or device is -- if a large number of people from incumbent companies (especially big ones) are excited about it, then it's not actually interesting or innovative enough to matter much, because that means it's too similar to the current way of doing things. That's why the industry loves "enhanced ebooks" at the same time they're totally missing opportunities to re-imagine the "job" their product does for the customer.

Think Tank? Media Company? Both?

From my remarks at We Media Miami:

Close to 2 million people come to the websites in the American Progress family each month for news and information, generating more than 10 million pageviews. We sell ads on our blogs. Our main policy site, AmericanProgress.org, can pop up in Google news searches. Research on our sister organization's blog, ThinkProgress.org, can turn up the same day on the Rachel Maddow show.

So is this a non-profit think tank, or a media company? Is what we're doing policy communications, or the future of journalism? Well if you agree with Clay Shirky that the future of journalism will be a collection of special cases, I'd argue that what we do is part of that.

Python as a Journalism Tool

It's a trend that goes back at least to Adrian Holovaty's 2004 chicagocrime.org; young journalists getting wrapped up with computer code. So is Python now an essential part of the journalism skill set? No, but it's important to recognize that there is more than one way to add context to events. As the Guardian puts it:

There will always be different ways of doing journalistic work. One way will be to go out or pick up your phone and ask questions, find the correct information and write it up; another way will be to find the information and built a platform around it.

Teaching Entrepreneurial Journalism

It looks as if Jeff Jarvis is becoming part of the solution, teaching his students to think about new business models rather than simply finding a new way to do what journalists have always done. And it's spreading.

At Fort Hood, "Citizen Journalism" Meant Real-time Mistakes

For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved.

via www.techcrunch.com

Richard Li's New Journalism Venture

That said, insofar as we are a niche player based on a subscription-model, we are part of a great migration away from general, advertising-based printed news products and toward something more economically sustainable.

via www.asiasentinel.com

If the future of journalism is a collection of special cases, as Clay Shirky wrote, then this is one venture that has a chance - Greater China business news for subscribers who pay because it makes them money. That said, in addition to competition from Bloomberg, Thompson-Reuters and Dow Jones, there's the question of whether journalism backed by one of Asia's most influential families can transcend influence, or whether that's even the goal for this low-margin venture.

Getting All Googly Over Government

Listening to Jeff Jarvis, "citizen's media" maven, talking about government as a network at the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC. The usual dreamy technotopia, painted in the primary colors of his new Google book, but a couple of good points: government has to be allowed to fail, and trust is inverse to control. Best ideas came from the crowd; expectations still wildly exceed how fast government can evolve.

No Monopoly on Journalism

Jane Hamsher, who commits journalism daily on her blog, firedoglake, deftly dismantles claims by mainstream publishers that portray mainstream media companies, good journalism and democracy as inseparable.

Big Screen E-Readers: Too Little, Too Late

On a day when the NYT Co. is talking about closing the storied Boston Globe, its Technology section reports on a lifeline thrown to old media in the form of big-screen electronic readers that make it easier to sell news by subscription coupled with large-format adds. While content consumption clearly continues to morph into new formats, this development is not going to save the news business, for several reasons:

• Contrary to myth, the news business model did not collapse because publishers gave their content away free online. It collapsed because the web provided millions of alternatives for advertisers to reach potential consumers, breaking the distribution oligopoly of media companies;
• Publishers are not going to be able to get all news back behind subscription walls, and most readers will still seek free content. And it's worth noting that subscription revenue that is generated will need to be shared with tech companies such as Amazon and Apple, who are likely to control the first platforms to gain critical mass.

Still, devices such as Amazon's Kindle are welcome in that they make it easier for consumers to find the content they want, and generate revenues that can help content producers piece together some kind of future.

UPDATE: TechCrunch likens newspapers' hopes for big-screen e-readers to throwing a Hail Mary (and Arthur Sulzburger is no Doug Flutie). It points out these devices could make a real impact in the monstrously overpriced world of textbook publishing.

Here Are the Slides

I'm conducting seminars in Turkey on how technology is changing media and politics in the U.S; the message to students is to combine core values with new media skills. Here is one set of slides Download Presentation1.3.ppt. Meanwhile, the  New York Times did an overview on how journalism schools in the U.S. are trying to balance change with tradition; a veteran journalist comments that good storytelling still demands rigor and critical thinking. 

Trying to Build a Great (Subscription) Wall

Gordon Crovitz, Steven Brill and Leo Hindery are thinking big with Journalism Online, a site that seeks to serve as the ultimate gateway between publishers and news consumers. Seems like an old weapon for a modern battle, which is to find business models that support journalism in a highly decentralized, online world. Maybe it can get some traction with specialized business news, though that's basically what the WSJ does already.

Update: Jack Shafer points out in Slate that even if all publishers did join, the blogs would just subscribe, rewrite, claim fair use and sell ads.

Obama's Grass-Roots Machine Sputters

The first test of Obama for America, the vaunted 13-million-person campaign mailing list folded somewhat uncomfortably into the Democratic National Committee, had little impact on the budget process, the Washington Post reports.

Creative Destruction

Finally, a pair of "death of newspapers" columns that acknowledge reality, a prerequisite for directing thought to what's next. They are noteworthy because so much of the genre has been devoted to figuring out new ways to keep doing the same thing (while the rest has gone to over-hyping unproven replacements). From Clay Shirky:

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

Similarly, Michael Kinsley writes:

We're in a transition, destination uncertain. Arianna Huffington may wake up some morning to find The Washington Post gone forever and the nakedness of her ripoff exposed to the world. Or she may be producing all her own news long before then. Who knows?

Neither touts a single medium or activity as replacing newspaper journalism, but rather a number of overlapping special cases, some of which will become part of the landscape. It's not the newspapers that society will seek to replace, however, it's the journalism. As Kinsley puts it:

If General Motors goes under, there will still be cars. And if the New York Times disappears, there will still be news.

DC Tech Czar Goes National

Appointing DC's Vivek Kundra as federal CIO is a concrete step toward open, responsive government. The 34-year-old has a vision, but wrestling the beast of government IT to the ground won't be easy, especially when the CIO's power may in practice end where the civil side of government stops and the security side begins. In the meantime, if Obama wants to deliver a high-voltage charge to the transparency process, he can name Carl Malamud as Public Printer of the United States.

Brother Can You Paradigm?

Walter Isaacson's cover story arguing that micropayments could save journalism is just plain embarrassing. That tends to happen when journalists try to figure out new ways to keep doing what they've always done, rather than looking at how people actually use the Internet and figuring out where the opportunities are to do something new. Don't get me wrong -- I was a longtime practicioner  of hardcore journalism -- but NYT.com is not the iTunes store, as Eric Etheridge and Michael Kinsley so deftly explain.

Obama Back to Campaign Mode to Sell Stimulus

Organizing for America pumped this video out to the former Obama campaign list as the president prepared to head for townhall meetings to pitch the stimulus. He has a two-fold challenge: mobilizing public opinion, and mobilizing it effectively in the complicated, muddy battle over ammendments to the stimulus bill.

Reality Check

 The Obama message machine is blowing tires and leaking oil as it tries to race the stimulus bill through Congress, where Republicans are seizing on anything that smells like pork and cooking up a time-proven narrative of Democratic waste, the Politico reports. Part of the problem is that the Chicago crowd needs to adapt at lightning speed to its more skillful Washington adversaries. But the other is that Obama has been separated from his powerful list, which resides outside the White House at the Democratic National Committee, and the commmunications team inside is still struggling with technology and staffing. Stay tuned.

No Need for New Ideas? Think Again

Sometimes you need to step outside of your own box to really see what's in it. The Social Democratic Party in Sweden feels a lot like the Democratic Party in the U.S. right after Clinton; convinced that they have figured out the formula for governing and interested only in new tactics to get back in power. The problem is, while it may once have been true, new ideas for tackling new problems are critical to keep a movement fresh and give voters something to vote for, rather than simply something to vote against. That's part of the explanation for the stunning ascendancy of the Center for American Progress, my employer, while the leading centrist think tank of the Clinton years has stagnated around its philosophy of "it's the Third Way or the highway."  

Content Morphs But It's Still King

What's a think tank or policy research shop to do when a friendly president takes office, vows to let people speak directly with the White House, and commands a 13-person email list outside? What they do best -- publish the content that advocacy organizations don't have the infrastructure to create, the government is too hamstrung to produce, and that they think matters most. Nor just policy ideas, but policy ideas polished, packaged and repurposed in ways that make them accessible to diverse audiences, especially as multimedia.

Introducing the Tech President

The seminars I conducted with the Prime Group in Europe last week focused on what it really means to have a president who embraces technology and science -- for campaigns, e-government, policy, and advocacy (hint: policy already matters; steps toward transparency and participation are mostly window-dressing but may start to change management culture and more in the long run). Most takeaways are published in this blog; the PowerPoint outline can be downloaded here.

Brussels blogger Gerald Loftus did a nice summary of the European response, presented by the thoughtful and charismatic Vice President of the European Commission, former Swedish minister Margot Wallström. While she spelled out the differences between Europe and the U.S., she clearly welcomes the trend toward more public engagement, something that feels far removed from the halls of the European Parliament.

Whether online or face to face, whether in the old media or the new, both in the EU and the US, what democracy needs is a real conversation, in plain language, between the people and the politicians. A conversation that shapes policy. Politics from the bottom up rather than top down. That's the kind of democracy I believe in. And so does Barack Obama.

Now back to America, where the battle over the stimulus bill makes it feel like politics as usual, at least for now.

URLy Progress

 The stimulus bill is the first piece of legislation to include a URL where the public can track the spending.

Facts Make a Comeback

What's will be the biggest, most immediate impact of having a president who gets science and technology? He's interested in making decisions based on empirical data (A.K.A. facts) -- a radical departure from the past eight years.

Next will be policy, e.g. energy, health care IT, education, broadband.

Online participation and transparency will have a real impact too, but it will take time.