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The Devil You Know

Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

The measurement mess

In Bidness, Media on January 24, 2010

It keeps getting smaller.

There’s a pissing match today among several InterWebs iconoclasts about Comscore’s traffic counting methods and business models. Actually, to be more accurate, it’s a bunch of bitch-slapping about unrelated issues, but web traffic is the jumping-off point.

You can read it for yourself — be sure to follow the comment thread too, in which all the principals rebut. (Or, as one commenter deems it, “three poodles fighting over a piece of raw meat”).

But for me, the whole thing is sad because it reminds me of another “scandal” almost six years ago now. Several newspaper chains had been caught overstating their circulation. There was all sorts of hand-wringing over it, but in the midst of the mea culpas, I read one simple line in a column by Ed Wasserman that changed my way of thinking and in large part led me to create The Daily You as a major feature of Pegasus News:

“Still, there is an absurdity to the whole scam. Counting copies is a dopey way to gauge impact. The explosion of information channels necessarily means erosion of audience share held by dominant media. There is still nothing that can rivet the attention of a community the way its daily paper does.”

Read the rest of this entry »

 

Following BIA / Kelsey ILM 09

In Bidness, Media on December 9, 2009

 

How I manage information overload

In Bidness, Gadgets, Media, PopCult on December 6, 2009

If I’ve had a little extra bliss in recent weeks, it’s because I finally feel like I’ve mastered control of the ridiculous amounts of information I choose to and not to ingest on a daily basis. I Tweeted about it a while back and instantly got numerous responses from folks wanting to know the secret. I said:

16 yr working, 15 yr InterWebs/email, 7 yr smartphone, 5 yr RSS, 3 yr social networks – finally have info mgmt system that works for me.

First, some context. On average, I:

  • Read and react to more than a thousand emails a week
  • Send more than 300 emails a week
  • Subscribe to a couple hundred RSS feeds, for around 400 posts per day
  • Follow 700 Twitter users
  • Manage four Twitter accounts
  • Keep up with 350 Facebook friends
  • Manage a Facebook page
  • Have 15 meetings a week that have to be coordinated with other people
  • Take 20 phone calls per week
  • Have about a dozen topics that I feel like I have to be expert on at all times
  • And run a large local website

And somehow, I finally feel like I have control of it all. I trust my system and nothing seems to slip through the cracks.

Read the rest of this entry »

 

Two (more) good reasons to go to Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media 2009: Me and a discount

In Bidness, Media, me, Me, ME! on October 19, 2009

Peter Krasilovsky continues to be inexplicably kind to me and has again included me on a panel for this year’s Interactive Local Media conference in LA. I’m on Friday morning (December 11) with Neil Budde of DailyMe (formerly of Yahoo! News):

9:30 am – 10:00 am
Personalization and Local
Personalization has been synonymous with “local” from day one—in theory. Recently, several cutting edge platforms make the tie more of a reality. We’ll get deep insight into how to make personalization/local work from two of the industry’s leading thinkers and doers—Internet media pioneer Neil Budde, the founding publisher of WSJ.com and leader of Yahoo News, and Mike Orren, the founder of Pegasus News.
Neil Budde, President and Chief Product Officer, DailyMe
Mike Orren, Founder and President, Pegasus News

Funny related story: We at Pegasus News have a flagship technology called “The Daily You.” The first conference I went to after we launched that, I randomly wound up sitting next to Eduardo Hauser, the founder of DailyMe. That was my first proof that this local behavioral thing had gone mainstream.

Also, as a speaker, it turns out I can offer you (my dear friend and loyal reader) a $200 registration discount for the conference. Just click the banner below to download the coupon:

ILM09 Speaker

ILM is consistently the best industry conference I attend. It’s no BS; the moderators don’t pull punches; and everybody in the room is a decision-maker who is doing something interesting. Hope to see you there.

 

Heresy du jour #1: There are no trends in start-ups

In Bidness, Media on August 24, 2009
If these trends continue, heeeyy...

If these trends continue, heeeyy...

I went on a mini-rant on Twitter last week that I thought I’d synthesize / clarify here: The media is ridiculously obsessed with identifying trends, particularly when those trends relate to media.

So every time someone sneezes, there are a flurry of trend stories opining that everyone will sneeze soon, presumably with the same intensity and viscosity as the sneezer immediately prior.

In the market space in which I presumably operate, there were great examples at both ends of the spectrum last week. My pals at Everyblock sold their company to MSNBC, and instantly, Hyperlocal is a Business Now. Seemingly moments later, the Washington Post shuttered its “hyperlocal” site for Loudon County, VA — and voila, Hyperlocal is Dead. My friend, Greg Sterling, quickly saw the fallacies flying.

It’s not just in the hyperlocal media space, though: It can be music websites; search engines; sellers of 12th century Tahitian antiquities — if a start-up in the space is born, dies, sells or raises a nickel of capital, a trend is born. Read the rest of this entry »

 

Commentary on comment

In Bidness, Media on August 13, 2009

A few weeks ago, I had one of my periodic head-explosions over Journalist-types poncing about over how hard civil and substantive comment is to maintain on news sites. This is a topic that really frustrates me, because I think it’s really easy. And for any of the other myriad mistakes we may have made at PegNews, this is one thing that I think we’ve gotten right.

Patrick Thornton of BeatBlogging.org was doing a good job of bringing in best practices in a Twitter conversation that turned into a great article on Poynter today. As part of that, I sent him a lengthy missive on our comment practices that was way too much to fit in a roundup piece. So, for posterity, I thought I’d share it here: Read the rest of this entry »

 

A Dyna Moe model of media

In Media, PopCult on July 28, 2009
My Mad Men totem, cruising through the offices of Sterling Cooper

My Mad Men totem, cruising through the offices of Sterling Cooper

One of the first posts ever on this blog was a recognition of work by a New York artist and actress who was making weekly stylized desktop images based on episodes of Mad Men.

The artist, Dyna Moe, started doing the illustrations after doing a Christmas card for a friend in the cast of the show. I discovered her illustrations via a fansite towards the end of Season 1. We started looking forward to them every Monday during season two; quietly thrilled for her as she met the show creators when star Jon Hamm was on SNL ; and are now ecstatic to see her creations turned into the instantly-popular Mad Men Yourself” tool on the show’s official website.

I see this as a textbook example of how the new New Media should work: A fan / friend starts creating an homage to a brand. That brand does not sue or discourage the fan doing unofficial work, even though she might be making a few paltry bucks. Nor does it jump in and try to co-opt, compete or take over. It lets the homage play out. Once it becomes clear that the homage is successful and additive to the brand, it embraces that homage. It then hires the fan / friend to extend that homage in an official way that is true to the brand and the artist.

Everybody wins. Imagine that.

 

Interesting?

In Media, me, Me, ME! on July 17, 2009
And I thought these guys had editorial standards

And I thought these guys had editorial standards

I have a hard-won theory on honors and awards: You win the ones you don’t deserve and don’t get the ones you think you should.

As if to prove the front half of that, the good folks at NBC DFW recently named me one of “The 25 Most Interesting People in Dallas / Fort Worth.” Read the rest of this entry »

 

Teenage brits will save us all

In Media, PopCult on July 13, 2009
Save us, young Britons!

Save us, young Britons!

It appears that when you climb to the top of the mountain of media enlightenment, you’re likely to find a teenage boy from England. Whether you find nirvana or fools gold depends on which young man you find.

Last week, the world was aTwitter about young Scott Campbell giving up his iPod for an original-model Sony Walkman. He wrote an article that was, well, articulate, funny and nostalgic all at once. Read the rest of this entry »

 

Sour (local) grapes

In Media on June 11, 2009

How am I going to find the zen not to be bitter when barely-born low-traffic local sites are getting snapped up by AOL for “less than $10 million each.”

Welcome to the local gold rush. I was here before the road you took was built. Risked a lot to get here. Enjoy…

 

The PR / advertising disconnect

In Media on June 3, 2009

I know I tend to spend all my rant power on broken media models, but I’ve had reason lately to ponder the relationship between PR and advertising.

PR people wonder why there’s sometimes resentment towards them from media folk — I don’t think it is actually because of anything PR professionals do per se, but rather because of the utter disconnect between most businesses public relations and advertising. And I don’t think it is generally front-of-mind for most media companies because of the church-state separation. But as someone who lives in both worlds, I’ve found myself seething lately over repeated scenarios like this: Read the rest of this entry »

 

Hidden truth in Star Trek: Sarek and Pike are the same dude. And he’s a Nazi.

In Media, PopCult on May 10, 2009
Live long and prosper by pretending not to be Bruce Greenwood?

Live long and prosper by pretending not to be Bruce Greenwood?

I dragged my sainted wife to the new Star Trek flick on Friday and as usual, she found the secret hidden gem that no one else ever would.

In the morass of explosions and makeup, she was initially confused over the actor-character match-ups between Sarek (Ben Cross) and Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood). Now neither looks much like the other, but that’s precisely what lays at the root of the strange (dis)connection. Read the rest of this entry »

 

Save your tears. Please.

In Media on March 31, 2009
If you don't know what this is, quit bitching about the death of print news.

If you don't know what this is, quit bitching about the death of print news.

As the long-predicted mediapocalypse finally takes hold, I find my annoyance level with the deathbed histrionics of many in the field — especially the journalists bemoaning their lost birthrights, way of life, etc. — rising. Here’s but one example from a movie critic suffering from the “when you’re being run over by a lorry, everything looks like a lorry” syndrome. Perhaps I spend too much time gazing into the media mirror, but the sheer volume and pathos of these pieces is on my last nerve.

Part of that is because it’s hard to feel sorry for the pig who built his house out of straw and got belligerent when one of his brothers tried to bring him some bricks. But a lot of it is because people in this trade (myself included) tend to succumb to the notion that because we are the storytellers, our stories are inherently the most interesting and important.

But as the dirges drone on; as the golden remembrance of things that didn’t really pass but we’d like to think did dominate the media — and they will for the next couple years — I find myself indignant that these muses of misery were largely silent when other members of our industry suffered the same fate. Read the rest of this entry »

 

SPJ conference notes

In Media on March 20, 2009

blogging-and-website-creation-demystified (word doc)

Links

 

Boxee changes everything

In Gadgets, Media on February 8, 2009

picture-1I’ve been using my Xbox 360 as a media server in our house, but there have always been a few things that made it seem inferior. Based on buzz from folks I trust I’d played with alpha-software Boxee on my Mac a bit to see if it could be an alternative. Last week, Lifehacker ran a piece on using Boxee on an Apple TV. I’d thought for a while about building my own Linux machine to run Boxee, but I found myself at the mall last weekend, and consequently in the Apple store. Having not yet contributed to the Steve Jobs medical fund, I found myself ogling the Apple TV, which I’d originally eschewed in favor of the Xbox. But dammned if Boxee didn’t make it sound more viable; and damned if we didn’t have a big TV in the bedroom that would benefit from the Xbox. Read the rest of this entry »

 

Fair-weathered friends

In Media, Politickin' on January 28, 2009
The new refrain in business

The new refrain in business

I’m seeing an unhappy, but perhaps necessary trend in business relationships of late, one that may well be born of our troubling economic times. I can ’splain best with an example:

Last year, Google approached my company about becoming an “Authorized Adwords Reseller.” The courtship, ramp-up and launch process was high-touch. We had lots of conference calls with lots of people. We had regular email correspondence with the support team– all real people with real names. Our business manager went to Mountain View for live training.

This week, we were unceremoniously dumped from the program via a canned email with no human being’s signature on it. I did get a response to my reply of complaint, but it came from the nameless, faceless, phone numberless “Google AdWords Reseller Team.” Read the rest of this entry »

 

Stuff Journalists (apparently don’t) Like: The Chinese Wall

In Media on January 28, 2009

Note: I’ve recently become a fan of the blog Stuff Journalists Like, a different twist on the style of blog started by Stuff White People Like. I submitted the following piece to them, and after more than a week of complete radio silence (during which they posted several other items), I inquired and got a polite response that they didn’t think it fit their vibe. So, I inflict it on you here:

#66: The Chinese Wall

519px-greatwall_large

“The Chinese Wall” is a construct by which journalists have long convinced themselves (and only themselves) that they are immune to the vagaries of advertising and corporate management. Referring to the Great Wall of China, it gives a sense of complete separation with the added bonus of sounding vaguely culturally insensitive when uttered in the patois of a crusty Lou Grant figure. It also avoids the even more problematic and provincial “church and state” analogy also used to describe the same phenomenon. Read the rest of this entry »

 

Journalism’s new commandments

In Media on January 16, 2009

I’ve been pontificating on this subject for a long time, but today Robert Niles nailed it succinctly:

The old rule: You can’t cover something in which you are personally involved.
The new rule: Tell your readers how you are involved and how that’s shaped your reporting.

The old rule: You must present all sides of a story, being fair to each.
The new rule: Report the truth and debunk the lies.

The old rule: There must be a wall between advertising and editorial.
The new rule: Sell ads into ad space and report news in editorial space. And make sure to show the reader the difference.

The whole piece is well worth reading. And I’ve got a treatise on the last couplet that I’m contributing to Stuff Journalists Like this weekend.

 

A keeper?

In Media, me, Me, ME! on January 15, 2009

Not saying there’s causality here, but interesting data nonetheless: Read the rest of this entry »

 

Social media in-justice

In Media, Politickin', PopCult on January 14, 2009

From one of my attorney friends, posted from Facebook with the name changed to protect the honest:

“Chelsea” offers a secret to my FB friends. We look up your FB pages during jury selection. Just sayin… 2:58pmComment

Like all things, can be used for good or evil. I like.
 

One of these things is not like the others…

In Media, Politickin' on January 2, 2009

Saving the banking industry means saving banks.

Saving the auto industry means saving car makers.

Saving the free press does not mean saving newspapers.

 

Holidays of future past

In Media, PopCult on January 1, 2009

News came this week that the National Archive added its first ever home movie: A film made in 1956 and edited in 1995 by a family that won a Scotch Tape contest with a prize of a trip to the newly-opened Disneyland.

It’s an engaging half-hour work and it strikes me how it presages the reality TV / YouTube era. Read the rest of this entry »

 

Zoetrope blows my mind

In Gadgets, Media on December 23, 2008

Ever seen something that you so thoroughly knew was game changing that you couldn’t even effectively articulate how? Because the language actually changed with the innovation?

See Zoetrope.

Read the rest of this entry »

 

Facebook’s outbound link brilliance

In Media on December 23, 2008

As best as I can tell, this just started today. When I clicked on a link posted by one of my friends (hey Chip!), the resulting page, which was on a Wordpress blog, looked like this:

picture-12

Click for larger image

A couple notable items:

  • The banner at the top is unobtrusive enough not to be annoying, but gives the option of bringing the conversation back to Facebook, where you’re more likely to know people and follow along — generating more FB pageviews.
  • The URL on the page is a FB URL. I wonder how much havoc this creates with the visited site’s traffic logs?
  • The banner stays until you hit the x or type a new URL. I’d like to see it go away after a couple clicks.
  • We’ll implement something inspired by this for Our Little Business shortly after the holidays. We do a lot of linkout stories where people return to us for conversation and I think this encourages that without being too obtrusive.
 

Trailer: A Face in the Crowd

In Media, PopCult on December 17, 2008

For those who’ve asked about my Facebook icon:

 

Required reading: The Wizard of Ads

In Media on December 16, 2008
The Wiz

The Wiz

I’m usually leery when sales managers recommend reading — it’s typically brainless, feel-good plucky crap designed to motivate the unmotivated. So when our last sales manager pointed me at the Monday Morning Memo by Roy H. Williams, a self-styled “Wizard of Ads,” my eyes almost rolled out of my head.

But week in and week out, Williams’ missives are the most consistently insightful thing I read. He’s a master of human psychology and counter-intuitive wisdom. I generally find myself agreeing with him on some concept or other that hadn’t ocurred to me before: Take for example this week’s study of how most marketing is geared towards extraverts while alienating introverts.

If you become a regular reader, don’t miss the “rabbit hole,” which is an Easter Egg hidden in every issue. Click on the lead photo (and each subsequent one that appears) and you’ll be taken down some other, unrelated road. This week’s, for instance, is a series of thoughts, photos and videos on Audrey Hepburn.

I never thought I’d find a truly literate writer focused on sales, but Roy’s the real deal. You’re cheating yourself if your don’t sign up for his weekly email or subscribe to his podcast.

 

Signs of the times, sprinkled with irony

In Media on December 10, 2008

We’re going to see a lot more of this sort of thing…

1. Tribune coverwrap on issue of AdAge that arrived the same day as their bankruptcy announcement:

An opportunity to dodge your bills, apparently.

"An opportunity" to dodge your bills, apparently.

Read the rest of this entry »

 

CNN: Using text messaging. Ur doin it wrong

In Media on December 1, 2008
Im not alone in thinking CNN doesnt understand priority.

I'm not alone in thinking CNN doesn't understand priority.

I’ve written before about how most media folk don’t understand how properly to use text alerts, with CNN as a case-in-point.

Here’s a checklist for breaking news alerts. Fail one and hold your fire: Read the rest of this entry »

 

Was Simpsons’ genius skewering of Apple an advertising D’oh?

In Media, PopCult on December 1, 2008
"Look! It's so sterile!"

"Look! It's so sterile!"

Whether you’re an Apple fanboy (like me) or a hater, you had to enjoy the skewering delivered by The Simpsons last night. It was some of the sharper satire we’ve seen out of the show in a while. (See video clips after the jump).

But for all the merriment rampant in Apple’s Mac/PC ad campaigns, Steve Jobs isn’t known for his sense of humor on such matters. Especially when the first ad of the first commercial break was for the MacbookRead the rest of this entry »

 

Gambling on “collaboratition”

In Media on December 1, 2008
Poker in the front, cheating in the back.

Poker in the front, cheating in the back.

Great piece on 60 Minutes last night about cheating from insiders on online poker sites. What really struck me was that the bulk of the investigative lifting was done by aggrieved gamblers (who also happened to be attorneys). The point is that they piled through tons of documents and spreadsheets to prove the pattern and isolate the likely culprits. And even though the gamblers weren’t so-called unbiased Journalists, 60 Minutes and The Washington Post teamed up to follow up on their research and go ask the bad guys and their de facto accomplices tough questions… Read the rest of this entry »

 

Usability testing made cheap

In Gadgets, Media on November 21, 2008

Best idea I’ve seen in a long time.

 

The game just changed

In Media on November 20, 2008
Oh my god! They killed user reviews! You bastards!

Oh my god! They killed user reviews! You bastards!

I’m in my hotel after the day has wrapped at the always-excellent ILM08 and feeling like the guy in the sci-fi film whose calculations indicate the asteroid is about to hit while the rest of the rubes are blissfully ignorant.

I’m shocked its not all over the Interwebs already, so I guess I’ll be the first to say it. More than any other day since their founding, today Google quietly, nearly silently, took an action that will, for better or worse, change the media world… Read the rest of this entry »

 

Maybe Facebook is the killer news app

In Media on November 18, 2008
And now, the traffic report

And now, the traffic report

 

This newfangled television thing

In Media on November 17, 2008

Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney is my least favorite commentator anywhere, ever. Generally, his senile ramblings at the end of 60 Minutes bring me to apoplexy. But this week’s paean to newspapers was just sad.

To think that a discussion of the woes of newspapers today remotely calls for a comparison to television is beyond clueless, even for Rooney. Read the rest of this entry »

 

“I wasn’t losing — I was just learning how to win.”

In Media, me, Me, ME! on November 11, 2008
Lead, follow or get out o the way

Lead, follow or get out o' the way

Ted Turner has been a longtime hero of mine — It was an article he wrote about the media business that was the last push to leave a safe, lucrative publishing job to start a local media business.

I just stumbled on a nice CNN interview with him.

For me, this was the money-shot: Read the rest of this entry »

 

Warning: Follow this logic and your mind may implode

In Media, Politickin' on October 31, 2008

“So, when you say that I’m saying mean things, you’re violating my right to free speech, so your right to free speech by criticizing me should be shut off right now, goshdarnit.”

 

The fake economy really sucks too

In Media, PopCult on October 31, 2008

As a new media guy, I suppose it’s heresy to say that I find some of the en vogue (or at least formerly en vogue) services to be utterly ridiculous. Twitter’s one example (but that’s another post).

I tried really hard to see Second Life as something more than a timesuck for gullible ex-dungeonmasters and marketing consultants with enough disposable time and income that they don’t mind slow, jerky, crashing animations of their alter-fauxegos. But I’ve come up empty. I mean at least WOW gives you the entertaiment value of killing stuff.

So I find news of a real estate crisis in SL beyond ridiculous. Read the rest of this entry »