Not a lot public. But a little.
Lots of changes, and more on the way.
Going public
Written by Michael on February 9th, 2010Why this isn’t a media revolution
Written by Michael on November 26th, 2009Here’s one small thing I learned at Saturday’s We Make the Media conference: from now on I’m going to avoid describing shifts in the journalism market as a “revolution.”
Not because it’s adversarial. Because it’s a false promise.
Revolutions replace the institutions they destroy. And revolutions end.
Nonprofiteers are capitalists, too
Written by Michael on November 2nd, 2009Jeff Jarvis has been pooh-poohing news that’s subsidized by governments or do-gooders:
I see another danger … that not-for-profit ventures will delay or even choke off for-profit, sustainable entrepreneurship in news. I would prefer to see various of the many funders who gave funds to not-for-profit endeavors – note $5 million give to a new not-for-profit entity in the Bay area – instead had invested in for-profit companies that can build companies that support and sustain themselves rather than rely on hand-outs. That is God’s work.
Jarvis intends this as a paean to capitalism. But he’s got a weirdly non-capitalist way of thinking about nonprofits.
Jarvis’s notion that nonprofits are an anomaly in the market system — and therefore less “sustainable” — forgets the fact that nonprofits produce goods and function within the market system like anybody else.
Sometimes they produce public services for governments. Sometimes they produce warm fuzzies for rich donors.
Wherever the money comes from, a successful nonprofit has found a market for whatever it’s producing. That’s God’s work, too.
Why a viral radio show owned the story of the financial crisis
Written by Michael on September 18th, 2009From the most important essay about the news business I’ve read this year:
“Among the assumptions I wanted to test … was the idea that news consumers really are looking for context rather than merely the latest news. After all, during years of working in online newsrooms, I’d seen plenty of deep, contextual news packages ignored by our site users in favor of weather updates and crime reports.
“The financial crisis provided an early test of this assumption. At the time, news about the crisis was ubiquitous. All at once, every news organization was unearthing news about a different aspect of the meltdown—the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the role of the Community Reinvestment Act, the status of the bailout plan wending its way through Congress. Amidst all this news, would people choose context?
“The answer was yes. The breakthrough news item of the year wasn’t an investigation that yielded some hot new scoop, it was a piece of on-the-record explanatory reporting by ‘This American Life’ and National Public Radio that went wildly viral. ‘The Giant Pool of Money’ went on to become the most downloaded episode in the history of ‘This American Life,’ garnering the award trifecta of a duPont, Peabody and Polk for its producers. Many listeners said they’d been tuning out all those crisis-related headlines until they heard the episode. For them, ‘The Giant Pool of Money’ was like a decoder ring for this news story. And once you heard it, you wanted more.”
Talk is cheap, so be useful
Written by Michael on August 12th, 2009Second in a series.
Here’s one of four core principles for today’s media market: these days, talk is cheap.
It’s a simple idea. Take a lesson from Uncle Buffett and his acolytes at Morningstar: your castle is only as good as its moat. If others can easily invade your market, it’s a bad business.
Expressing an interesting opinion is relatively easy. It requires intelligence and skill, but not a lot of work or time. Yesterday, therefore, it was doled out as a reward to people who had already put in lots of work and time.
Relevance is mandatory, so pick a niche
Written by Michael on July 31st, 2009First in a series.
Here’s one of my four core principles for today’s media market: these days, relevance is mandatory.
I’m not talking about some of your content. I’m talking about all of your content.
If you’re not scared yet, you should be.
Yesterday, distribution costs were high, which made information scarce. The only way to distribute information was to spend lots of capital on a printing press or a broadcast tower. The only way to make this investment pay off was to make everyone interested in your content.
Four principles, four commandments
Written by Michael on July 31st, 2009
Preview of a series.
Your startup will only thrive if things are changing; if nothing’s been changing, somebody already tried it. So, how is today’s news market different from yesterday’s?
Here are four principles for today’s media market, each of them with a commandment for aspiring entrepreneurs to keep in mind. They’re the guiding assumptions of this blog.
I’ll discuss each in a coming series of posts, and each of these will eventually get a landing page of its own that includes the latest news on the subject.
- relevance is mandatory, so pick a niche
- talk is cheap, so be useful
- tomorrow’s audience is watching, so make work last
- small works, so outsource everything
The four kinds of non-catastrophic breaking news, and why social media aren’t changing them
Written by Michael on July 27th, 2009
I’m a city boy. I love crowds. I believe in crowds.
But let’s get serious about the usefulness of crowdsourced hard-news reporting at the local level.
Every example of how Twitter, etc., is theoretically changing journalism seems to rely on extremely unusual tragedies, disasters or sensations.
I don’t know about your hometown paper, but in the one I work for, almost all of what you’d call “breaking news” (aside from the sports and arts coverage) falls into one of four areas:
Two kinds of products that rely on people's flaws
Written by Michael on July 5th, 2009Here’s a distinction worth understanding:
a) Products that rely on the idea that people will simply be too dumb to figure out an alternative. These products rely only on informational barriers: once you know the better way to do things, it’s no trouble to do things the better way.
Like a car mechanic who preys on ignorance in order to sell more air filters, these products breed resentment.
and
b) Products that rely on the idea that people don’t have the time or effort to pursue an alternative. These products rely on procedural barriers: even if you spent the time to figure out an alternative, you’d need to alter your behavior to take advantage of it.
Like a car mechanic who pokes around in earnest for possible mechanical problems you haven’t yet noticed, these products breed loyalty.
