MediaSavvy

There’s an hilarious report of Jon Stewart tearing up a panel of editors at a Magazine Publishers of America event on MediaBistro this week. It’s way too long, but worth reading nonetheless, and includes an brilliant ad libbed analysis of the role of websites in magazine journalism:

Actually, though, Jon turns to Jim [Kelly, the managing editor of Time magazine] and addresses an ‘issue’: “With the speed of news today, how does Time stay relevant?” Jim reminds Jon that Time has a website. Jon shakes his head. “I’m not asking you how you get people to subscribe,” he says.

I had to Google Kelly to get his title, because if there’s a masthead on Time’s website, I couldn’t find it.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

GMail has changed the way that I think about email, and Google Maps changed the way I think about online maps…just as Google changed the way I think about search.
Google’s new sidebar has not changed the way I think about sidebars.
I had the same reaction to Google’s new sidebar that I hand when I first saw Netscape’s sidebar–why would I want this thing taking up my screen space? Compared to the elegant Google Mail Notifier, Google Search feels like an exercise in what can be done, instead of what needs to be done.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

The WELL is for sale. When people talk about online community, their frame of reference– whether they know it or not–has been shaped profoundly by the experience of The WELL.
I didn’t get to experience Paris in the twenties, New York in the fifties, or San Francisco in the sixties, but I did spend too much time on The WELL in the early nineties. It’s where I, and a lot of other future Web pioneers, first learned about the Internet and about net culture.
Twenty years after its founding, The WELL’s current owner, Salon.com is selling the service. Despite billions spent in lip service to building community and hundreds of millions of new users, the Internet has not delivered another community with the magic that The WELL had.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

In a guest post on Lawrence Lessig’s blog, Nelson Pavlosky asks a thoughtful question, “when we speak of taking the free culture movement off the internet and into the streets, how can we avoid looking silly?”
Here is an issue that is profound and critical to many people who deal in ideas and information. Yet the vast majority of citizens could indeed view it as silly, unfair to artists, or driven by a desire for free music.
They’re fighting this battle for the hearts and minds of the other 90% of the public with media corporations which see this as a life-or-death struggle.
A. J. Liebling advised us not to pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel. But sometimes it’s not possible to pick your fights.
Pavlosky is right to understand that the battle over intellectual property could be seen as a side show not just by bystanders, but by the movement’s natural allies as well.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

Newsweek has embraced trackback. Working with Technorati, they are providing a list of the most-blogged stories on their site, as well as trackback links on stories themselves.
This is something of a revolution–if a couple of years late. Other publishers should copy it. I’ve been ranting for more than a year that news organizations are ignoring the amazing metainformation that bloggers create for free.
There are still some kinks to be worked out. In checking out these pages, I noticed that some loaded very slowly, while the message “Waiting for mp.technorati.com” appeared at the bottom of my browser window.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

The other day, I talked to the person who manages the feeds for a large daily newspaper.
The conversation turned to private-label newsreaders, which has become something of a mini-trend among newspapers this summer. This person told me, “I get a call every two to three weeks from somebody who has the best new private label newsreader. But I haven’t seen one that has great functionality.”
I’ve never been a fan of publishers getting into the business of writing or distributing any software that is not absolutely essential. Why lock yourself in when there is so much grassroots innovation in feed-reading going on right now?
However, I’m beginning to wonder if news publishers in particular shouldn’t be offering feed aggregation on their sites — particularly on their homepages.
With Google and My AOL testing RSS on their personalized pages, and My Yahoo already strong in the market, it may be time for publishers to contemplate aggregating one another.
But that may require rethinking licensing in a way that will make everyone’s head hurt.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

The Denver Post has launched an RSS reader called News Hound “powered by NewsGator“, with a ton of feeds from their site.
News Hound emphasizes Denver Post feeds over others, and pre-filtered feeds over ones that the user chooses. You can add feeds from other sites in News Hound, but it’s a three-click process to add a feed that is not on their list. The good news is that I couldn’t seen any attempt to limit competition. While they weren’t easy to find, craigslist feeds were included when you search for feeds that mention Denver.
The News Hound application window itself is a nonstandard window that cannot be resized and devotes as much real estate to navigation as to information.
There’s an ad on the News Hound window. This doesn’t necessarily bother me, except there are plenty of ways for readers to get their feeds ad-free.
News Hound promotion page doesn’t mention “RSS”. (Thanks to Steve Outing writing at Poynter for noting this.) I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. RSS is a file format with a geeky name. This is clearly a product designed for medium and late adopters.
RSS lends itself to this kind of experimentation. After all, it makes no assumptions about how its information will be displayed by the reader. And it’s clear that the average reader hasn’t discovered the advantages of RSS feeds. A lot of early adopters haven’t jumped on this particular bandwagon yet. For those reasons, I think that News Hound is an interesting experiment.
But I’m still left wondering whether the average newspaper reader wouldn’t be happier reading their feeds on My Yahoo or Bloglines, or one of the existing RSS applications, if someone would show them how.
FOOTNOTE: I was involved in naming and launching an email alert service called “NewsHound” for the San Jose Mercury News in the early ’90s, which I know the folks at Poynter recall. I don’t remember whether we ever trademarked the name.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

Publishers are still struggling understanding the meaning and implications of RSS syndication. Can they harness the power of syndication without winding up in the harness themselves?
This anxiety is illustrated by a dustup in Romenesko’s journalism weblog today. The LA Times (along with the Guardian) is beta testing Consenda’s private-label newsreader software.
This led the LA Business Journal to report, “Conceding that online readers want a smorgasbord of news rather than a limited menu, the Los Angeles Times is developing a new Web site that would include content from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other rival news sources.”
Well, not exactly. And the Times is understandably sensitive about the subtle distinction between creating an aggregation site and distributing RSS software (which will apparently feature contextual ads). The LA Times replied in a letter to Romenesko that no, they weren’t planning a site. They were going to distribute newsreader software.
Rather than let the matter die quietly, editor of the LA Business Journal emailed Romenesko, blaming the LA Times PR machine for blinding him with copy.
So let me get this straight — the Times is not using content from other news sources but it offers us a chance to “get perspective from other news sources.” Huh?
Seems like the PR department might not be in sync with the new media department.
This back-and-forth illustrates a problem that could vex only publishers. Can they welcome newsreader users while keeping other websites from aggregating their news? Can they distribute an ad-bearing newsreader while working themselves in a lather over other sites that sell ads on pages that contain their headlines? Is there any meaningful difference between an aggregator site and a newsreader? Is it a difference that you could explain to your mom or a PR copywriter — or a newspaper editor, for that matter?
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.