AUGUST 11, 2009

Ever since I was a teenage kid with snobby taste in music, I’ve loved the Canadian indie rock band Metric. (OK, “rock” is a bit of a strong word for the group, but “emo” reflects poorly on me, so that’s what I’m going with). After a two-year layoff, the group recently came out with a new album called Fantasies, which is pretty good but nothing to write home about. Much more interesting, though, is how they funded the album - rather than putting themselves through another onerous major label deal, one that dictates creative direction and only nominally compensates artists for record sales, Metric decided to start their own label and build their own studio with the help of grant funding from the Canadian government.

To me, this speaks volumes about where, exactly, paid media is heading. As I’ve written before, plummeting-to-nonexistent distribution and publication costs have ended major media companies’ role of “gatekeeper” - one that they held solely due to the scarcity of space on record store shelves, or column inches in a newspaper.

But even more notably, I think the Metric experience points one viable way forward for media outlets struggling with the competition of the web - government and/or nonprofit funding. Canada, for instance, has decided that to a certain degree, cultural protectionism is preferable to a completely free market. They’re fine with having a somewhat distinct Canadian culture that exists with government protection and subsidy - a goal that’s accomplished in a number of ways, including “Canadian content” laws that require 35% of content broadcast by radio stations be of Canadian origin, as well as the grant system. Of course, this priority is made a bit more urgent by the presence of a culturally and linguistically similar behemoth on the southern border, but many western countries have similar laws.

Like the Canadians, who have decided that it’s worth sacrificing free market efficiency for a little diversity in culture, I think it’s worth exploring a similar model for journalism. We’re quickly finding that in an age of cutthroat competition for journalists, bloggers like Perez Hilton (who commands $72,000 for a full-day sponsorship) are rising to the top. Far be it from me to criticize a guy making money, but I think we can agree that celebrity gossip won’t fill the void left by the increasing unprofitability of investigative journalism. This is a place that I think a well-targeted government grant program, or an equivalent non-profit organization, might be able to step in and cover the significant costs of hard-hitting journalism - recognizing that a vibrant but protected press is superior to the alternative of no press at all.

Enough seriousness - let’s rock (kind of). Here’s “Gimme Sympathy” from Metric’s Fantasies.

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JUNE 26, 2009

When I was in high school and college, my teachers and professors tried to teach us the importance of research sources, especially in relation to information found online.  They taught us what to look for when evaluating a website’s legitimacy, and how to credit it as a source.  Back then, content without any sort of official association or credential received no consideration.

Today is a different story:  The New York Times reported that Wikipedia is now being listed on Google News alongside traditionally reputable news sources like The Washington Post and CNN.  A spokesperson for Wikipedia said, “Google is recognizing that Wikipedia is becoming a source for very up-to-date information.”

Wikipedia has an entire section of the site devoted to breaking news. Its mission statement states:

Wikinews’ use extends beyond original reports, by providing free, neutral, integrated summaries of the news from elsewhere. It will already be useful even if the subject range covered will be full of gaps—because in these subject areas, we will already benefit from the collaborative wiki model. It will grow to become more useful every day.

Due to the efforts of an enormous community of contributors, Wikipedia is very useful throughout the development of breaking news stories. As more details come out about a news event, Wikipedia contributors update the site with new information and attempt to provide the most accurate, neutral representation of all reports from all sources. This can provide much needed context when the stream of reports becomes too overwhelming. A recent example of Wikipedia’s usefulness as a news source came in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death - reportedly, almost 500 edits were made to Michael Jackson’s Wikipedia page in the space of 24 hours as contributors rushed to provide the most accurate, up-to-date information.

At TMG, we follow trends like those related to user generated content and the power of consumers and Deep Listening.  With that in mind, it’s interesting to see that user-generated content and immediacy are redefining news sources, and that a crowdsourced site can provide some order and context when there is a deluge of information.

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JUNE 3, 2009

What do you get when you give a group of Lord of the Rings fans $5,000? You get The Hunt For Gollum, a LOTR sequel that premiered last month. While the story is “inspired by the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien,” the production is actually an unauthorized fan film that takes place in the same universe and follows the same storyline as the original famous films.

I first heard of the production from Boing Boing and I was interested enough to check it out. Like many fan films,  The Hunt for Gollum was available on various video sharing sites. I watched a little bit of the film and, I have to say, for only a few thousand dollars, they made it look just as good as the multi-million dollar versions!

With over 700,000 views on YouTube, it looks like the film is a success. But is it reason for Peter Jackson and the Tolkien Estate to call their lawyers? The website for the production carries a very hefty disclaimer that starts with, “‘The Hunt For Gollum’ is an unofficial non-profit film being made for private use, and is not intended for sales of any sort. No money is being made from this film, and no one was paid to make it.”

It’s clear that the film is a tribute to Tolkien’s work and to the LOTR films. The fact that it was produced and posted online without interference hopefully demonstrates that “The Tolkien Estate” understands that fan films like these are beneficial to their intellectual property, not harmful.

There are other movie franchisees that have been tolerant of fan film productions. Are you a fan of “Star Trek”? Then maybe you’ll like Star Trek: New Voyages, a fan series that picks up where the original series left off. Even though Kirk and Spock are played by lesser-known names, the series has become so popular that original cast members have made cameos.

My favorite fan film series happens to be Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager. As the younger brother of Darth, Chad manages a grocery store… and hilarity ensues. Lucasfilms has embraced the use of its IP and even encourages it. The company sponsors an annual Fan Movie Challenge where it judges fan made films inspired by the epic trilogies.

While many companies are often quick to use litigation to protect the use of their images and trademarks, these brands clearly realized that fan creations actually enhance the brand in ways beyond marketing and advertisement.  Perhaps more companies should think twice before suing for copyright infringement.

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MAY 14, 2009

One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack.  Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life.  When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear.

- Maurice Jarre, French Composer & Conductor

The quote above was attributed to composer Maurice Jarre on his Wikipedia page and was cited by a number of news sources when they reported his passing in March.  However, the composer never uttered such words; the posting of his quote was an experiment conducted by a student, Shane Fitzgerald, about “how our globalized, increasingly internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.”

The [student’s] obituary-friendly quote…flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material…even though administrators at the [Wikipedia] twice caught the quote’s lack of attribution and removed it.  A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud.  So Fitzgerald told several media outlets they’d swallowed his baloney whole.

Some journalists have gone as far as calling the student a “jerk” or tried to shame him for taking a month before notifying the papers that they cited a false Wikipedia entry when they reported on Mr. Jarre’s passing.

I’d like to take this opportunity to applaud Mr. Fitzgerald for reminding us that some of the “old media” rules, such as sourcing, should still apply in the new media age.  It’s true that the decline in old media (staff reductions or newspaper closings) as well as the rise in new media (e.g., Twitter breaking the news of the Hudson River plane crash) creates an undeniable pressure for reporters to find and report information faster than ever before. However, accountability in reporting is still an expectation – regardless of the forum.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s tale serves as yet another reminder that technology is rapidly changing how, where, and when we receive our information.  It often occurs at a pace much faster than many of us are comfortable with.  Finding the right partner to help your business will ensure success as it navigates through the daily minefields that new technologies create.  Cheers, Mr. Fitzgerald.

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APRIL 15, 2009

If you’ve been anywhere near the blogosphere in the past few months, you’ve noticed that one of the dominant themes of conversation has been the apparent demise of “traditional media” - i.e. newspapers and, to a lesser extent, the publishing industry as a whole. The list of major dailies that have either shut their doors or moved to online-only distribution is quite startling and probably familiar territory for anyone reading this blog.  Indeed, on our social media team, it’s become kind of a predictable cliche when someone e-mails us a story about yet another newspaper folding.

The blogosphere is all about commentators, and there are a few that have buttered their intellectual bread by loudly and apocalyptically predicting the demise of the newspaper industry’s business model. Clay Shirky is my personal favorite, with Jeff Jarvis coming a close second. These folks are feted all over the web for saying out loud what everyone intrinsically knows - that there’s little future in a business model that requires consumers to pay for creative intellectual property. I can make a copy of a band’s best song in five seconds and send it to everyone I know in about a minute, without that group ever seeing a dime. I can re-post a newspaper article on this blog or my own, even challenging it or refuting it in the process, destroying not only the article’s credibility but also the protection the newspaper has over its own created content. We know this. Bottom line: people are no longer willing to pay for media or information except in very specific circumstances.

What’s disappointing, though, is that none of these thinkers seem to be considering the social ramifications at play here. Shirky, for instance, punts in his latest blog post. But if anything is clear, it’s that the development of a commercial model for news and information distribution pre-figured modern democracy, and continues to uphold it. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the pamphlet that laid much of the intellectual groundwork for the American Revolution, was not only a work of philosophy and political activism - it was a cash cow for its author and publishers, going through 25 printings in the first year alone. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the book often credited with galvanizing the abolitionist movement and providing the spark for the Civil War, was the best-selling novel of the 19th century. I’m most familiar with American history, but every social movement of the modern era - from civil rights to feminism to gay rights (as well as other movements we might consider less savory) - has had, at its heart, one or more works of for-profit journalism or advocacy.

And that continues today. Without the profits to sustain long-term investigative reporting, do you think we would’ve seen the Abu Ghraib expose in 2004? The story on Walter Reed that surfaced in 2007? More important, would anything have been done about those gross miscarriages of justice had journalists not shined a light on them? On a local level, who covers City Council meetings? Who pesters the city comptroller about missing funds? Who writes a story on the potholes in that dilapidated neighborhood on the other side of town and ultimately gets them fixed?

This isn’t to lionize journalists or authors. There’s been a lot of shoddy work in those fields, to be quite honest. But the for-profit press serves as a vital check on the excesses and inadequacies of government, and there’s one reason that those writers, thinkers, and activists have been able to do the work they’ve done - money. I just think that the sooner we figure out a way to re-monetize creative intellectual property, the better.

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MARCH 11, 2009

Television is always more interesting when there’s a feud going on, don’t you think? Not a fictional feud, but real life drama, like the current battle between CNBC and The Daily Show.

If you happened to have missed the rant by Rick Santelli (on-air editor for CNBC and host of “The Rick Revolution/Chicago Tea Party“) on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade last month, you missed quite a show. From my view, the rant appeared to be completely staged, a well-planned gimmick designed to bring some attention to Santelli and CNBC. I’m not the only one to suspect that, although Santelli has denied the accusations. Regardless of the real motive, the clip did indeed become the buzz of the day, eventually reaching The White House and garnering Santelli an invitation to appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

But that’s when things got interesting. After accepting the initial invite, Santelli canceled his appearance on the March 4th episode of The Daily Show. Stewart used the cancellation to rip on the entire CNBC Network during his opening monologue. Stewart left no stone unturned, taking shots at everyone from David Faber to Jim Cramer. Not to be outdone, Cramer, the Mad Money maven, responded to Stewart’s attacks several times, including during an appearance on the NBC family of networks yesterday. And that was only the beginning. (For full details, as well as links to all the battle footage, check out this post from Nicholas Graham at The Huffington Post.)

The news, in theory, is supposed to be objective and non-biased, but as this situation clearly indicates, the line between news and entertainment is becoming more and more blurred. As a result, we often get more”views” than news. Why? One word: ratings. People tune in to see drama, but what about plain, old-fashioned, unbiased reporting? Nope. We complain that the news has become biased, yet it appears that if it isn’t - if there isn’t something added to make it interesting like drama and arguments - we won’t watch.

If viewers want the news networks to report unbiased news, then they must be the ones to hold them accountable. We live in a consumer-controlled society - we, the consumers, get what we want.  If we truly want news, then we must turn the “entertainment” off!

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MARCH 2, 2009

I always discover something new when I read Undercurrents - not only things that I may have missed in the news, but entirely new things about the blogosphere or new ways of finding and sharing information. And that was certainly the case last month.  As usual, Undercurrents covered a remarkably diverse set of topics - from a hot new product called the Snuggie to cutting-edge social networking web sites.

For example, consider the rapidly evolving world of social networking where new ideas pop up as fast as the grass on my lawn in the spring. Gloria wrote last month about the race to lure users away from Facebook and how some social networks like BeBo and FriendFeed are remaking themselves into one-stop aggregators for people’s digital lives.

And Gayle produced an illuminating blog about Yelp, a Web site that bills itself as a community-driven city guide that has also been accused of manipulating its ratings to extract payments from the businesses and merchants it reviews.  This example underscores the point that not all information on the Web is reliable, and that in this age of information-overload the careful reader must approach all information with a skeptical eye.  The websites that engender the most trust, Gayle points out, are the ones that take transparency seriously. And for any information provider, whether it is a cutting-edge site or a free city newspaper, trust is the key to long-term viability.

Transparency is a topic that comes up often on Undercurrents because it’s so important to creating trust in an expanding universe of information.  Who you trust ultimately means who will survive in this mega-information age.  Monica wrote about the timely topic of the need for greater transparency in credit, a need underscored by the deepening credit mess that is choking our economy.  She focused on an idea advanced by two authors that broader credit safety regulations should be adopted, including the formation of an oversight panel like the Consumer Product Safety Commission.  Corey wrote about transparency, too, arguing that transparency doesn’t mean the indiscriminate dumping of information into the public square.  Even in the name of transparency, businesses and governments should be careful to put their information into context.

And the Snuggie?  It’s a blanket with arms — an old product that has found mass market appeal through a new marketing pitch and a good dose of luck.  Our blogger Kristen argued that the infomercial used to pitch the product was so bad and out of touch that its ineptitude actually attracted attention, even spawning YouTube parodies.  All that attention triggered a word-of-mouth buzz among consumers.  And that, Kristen argued, is what has helped produce some 4 million sales so far.

There was much more great blogging on Undercurrents last month, from Mallory’s look at the renewed interest in sewing that reflects a back-to basics movement in a troubled economy, to Michele’s examination of a newsweekly’s effort to reinvent itself in the declining days of print.  All in all, another rich and varied month on Undercurrents.

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FEBRUARY 17, 2009

Can too much transparency be a bad thing?

Political debate this week here in Washington centered on an unprecedented effort to stimulate the flailing economy by passing approximately $800 billion worth of tax cuts and new government spending. Any government attempt to spend that much money is rightfully - and necessarily - going to be a long, complicated, drawn-out affair, and the stimulus debate proved no exception.

But the availability of new tools to track the provisions of the bill made this time different. Sites like Stimulus Watch allow those interested to investigate exactly how stimulus money will be spent on projects like new police cruisers for Youngstown, OH and downtown quiet zones in San Diego.

I’m usually reflexively in support of anything that remotely resembles a transparent database of government actions, and I was certainly in support not only of sites like Stimulus Watch, but also the White House’s own transparency efforts on the bill. But after watching how the opposition used that transparency to muddy the political waters to its own advantage, I’m a little more indecisive.

Consider GOP Chairman Michael Steele. Steele made a point of ridiculing some of the more esoteric-sounding provisions in the bill, like the one that calls for the removal of “fish passage barriers” from the nation’s streams and rivers. The only problem? Academic studies seem to indicate that the passage barriers are both an environmental problem and an economic problem for fishermen, and that the removal of the barriers would create jobs, the expressed purpose of the stimulus in the first place.

Without the necessary context to understand the provisions of the bill, many Americans likely heard Steele’s objections and agreed with him. After all, what are “fish passage barriers” anyway, and how does their removal help American families?  Not realizing that the provision could indeed be useful, not only intrinsically but also for the purpose of creating jobs, political opponents of the president used his own administration’s transparency efforts against him. Steele proved how easy it is to sort through a database like Stimulus Watch, cherry pick a few projects that sound easy to make fun of, and start stereotyping the largest government undertaking in the past five years as full of nonsensical projects and “pork”.

What’s the lesson for businesses and organizations undertaking their own transparency projects? Transparency alone is not enough to adequately represent your intentions to the public. Instead, it can be just an opening for your critics to take you out of context unless context is provided. Listening to questions and objections and responding to them in the spirit of good faith is a necessary part of any transparency initiative, and without those, transparency might be more of a liability than an asset.

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JANUARY 28, 2009

We’ve posted quite a bit recently about Twitter - different ways individuals, organizations, and communities are using the service, along with a few reasons why some choose not to use it. Similar to the way I use Delicious and Digg, one of my favorite uses for Twitter is to find great content. Twitter serves as a great tool for helping me keep up with virtually any subject I’m interested in.

My favorite Twitter account to watch over the past few months has been TheMediaIsDying. It is keeping tabs on the ever-changing world of “old media” - sharing the cutbacks, layoffs, consolidations, and closures taking place at outlets around the world. Here’s a snapshot of TheMediaIsDying tweets from this afternoon:

I’m not the only one who is fascinated by watching the media landscape transform before my eyes. TheMediaIsDying passed the 10,000 follower mark today, a phenomenal feat, especially when you consider that it first tweeted on November 19, 2008.

Margie at Flack Rabbit is also addicted.

It’s nothing fancy, mind you. There are no links to blog posts, polls or questions. They don’t talk back or engage their audience. Just Tweeting the facts, ma’am. The profile says they are ‘helping flaks pitch better and update lists.’ No matter what its utility, TheMediaIsDying is fascinating and (so far) accurate.

Although exactly who is behind the Twitter handle is unknown, Blog Herald was able to score an interview with the account’s elusive creators last week. Describing themselves of “a collection of concerned pr professionals who are trying to help in a bad situation,” the 8 or so people behind the TheMediaIsDying gravitated toward the microblogging format over a traditional blog because they’re not looking to offer commentary. Twitter’s 140 character limit suits the “news” well.

And, despite the majority of bad news-laden tweets, TheMediaIsDying is not cheering the death of traditional media:

There is a big misconception out there about us with people saying we like reporting bad news which couldn’t be further from the truth. We welcome all good news and hope one day the service won’t be needed.

Shifts in both the way we communicate and the media we use to do it have long been central themes of New Persuasion. My colleague Mike did a great job of addressing the shift in power from institutions to individuals in his post last spring. The traditional channels just don’t hold the same power they once did. If the media isn’t dying, it’s definitely changing- quickly, dramatically, and irreversibly. And I for one feel grateful that TheMediaIsDying is here to help us keep up with it.

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JANUARY 23, 2009

American journalist H.L. Mencken once wrote, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”  A cunning satirist and acerbic critic of American life and culture, Mencken is regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the first half of the 20th century.

If only Mencken were still around to read the 2008 edition of the “Top Ten Unfounded Health Scares,” published annually by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).  I wonder: what would Mencken have to say about the “imaginary hobgoblins” – or unfounded health scares – that are menacing our population today?

Since its founding in 1978, the ACSH has been dedicated to separating real, proven health risks – such as smoking cigarettes – from unfounded health “scares” based on questionable, hypothetical, or even nonexistent scientific evidence.  In each case, the ACSH says its researchers review the charges made against a given product or substance, or even against an entire community.  They then discuss the basis for the charges, the reactions of the public and the media, and the actual facts relevant to what risk (if any) ever existed.

In its introduction to the “Top Ten Unfounded Health Scares of 2008,” the ACSH boldly asserts, “The following list of scares is meant to reassure Americans that our health and well-being, and that of our children, is not really under attack by insidious exposures to disease-causing chemicals.”

Although widespread public fears and concerns over matters of health and safety are not new to our time, many of them have curiously emerged in this era when Americans enjoy better health, an ever-increasing life span, a higher standard of living, and a greater scientific understanding of the causes of human death and disease than ever before.

To that end, in the article “10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong,” Psychology Today’s Maia Szalavitz explains why our brains are “terrible at assessing modern risks.”  Among the reasons: risk and emotion are inseparable; fear skews risk analysis in predictable ways; we underestimate threats that creep up on us; and we prefer that which (we think) we can control.

But it’s not always our fault for misunderstanding modern risks.  Every day, we face a barrage of statistics, media coverage, and fear-mongering politicians, many of whom provide us with conflicting information.  What we need, argues the ACSH and others, is responsible, balanced, scientific reporting – a united effort to bridge the gap between journalism and science.  As a member of TMG Strategies’ New Persuasion and Risk Teams, I am proud to say that we joined this effort long ago!

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