Jeffrey McManus » Deep Thoughts

Free Advice: How to Save Journalism

jeffrey — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:07:49 +0000

On Twitter this morning I was getting cranky at an organization that desperately needs to retain me as a consultant but won’t for whatever reason. I approached the point where I was about to dispense free advice (which violates rule #2 of consulting).

Amy thought that I was putting out a general call for free advice, so she asked me to provide some free advice to fix journalism. That is something I can sink my teeth into. So here are some quick thoughts:

Eliminate the distinction between “mainstream media” and “blogging”. Blogging is mainstream and has been for years now. What we’ve been referring to as “mainstream media” is really “large corporate media,” and that model is finished.

The newsroom is dead. The near future of journalism will involve small, self-organizing teams that pursue their own business models and resemble networks of cooperating small businesses more than monolithic institutions like the New York Times, the AP or NPR.

The days of picking fights with men who buy ink by the barrel are over; the web server is the new printing press. Reporters need to educate themselves as to the implications (business, technical, social, etc.) of this. One important implication is that the “news hole” is now infinitely large.

People who get their news from one source (particularly if that source is television) get what they deserve. But conversely, if TV news is the path of least resistance for news consumers, that’s our fault.

We need to find a place for the thoughtful, informed editor in the new order. (It’s not Wikipedia.)

Eliminate middlemen. All of them, if you can. Even the ones who want to give you something for free in exchange for fractional control over your printing press.

Understand the difference between “objectivity” and reporting the side of the story that happens to be bullshit.

Make alliances to achieve critical mass. This flies in the face of the stereotypical reporter who spends all day fighting city hall and hammers out a screed on deadline. That model is dead (to the extent that it was ever true to begin with).

Eliminate the divide between reportage and technology, and figure out a way to bring technologists closer to reporters.

Figure out what technology product managers do, and emulate them or retain the services of one.

Eliminate the divide between editorial and the business side of news reporting.

Eliminate the divide between “hard news” and what people really want to read about. The part where newspapers permitted stuff like sports and celebrity news to become the bailiwick of sites like espn.com and tmz.com was a colossal error. One Perez Hilton could fund a team of investigative fireballs.

Figure out a way to make “citizen journalism” a first-class citizen.

Look at PBS and NPR as one possible model for funding, but make sure you ultimately have more than one revenue stream. (Note the case of Ana Marie Cox, one of the few political commentators worth reading, whose magazine folded in the final weeks of the presidential campaign and who staged a one-person pledge drive to raise the funds so she could continue covering the campaign.) And never stop looking for new revenue streams.

Think about new taxonomies for news that will enable new syndication opportunities.

Make buying professional news as easy and as cheap as buying an MP3 online.

Free Advice: How to Save Journalism is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

I Don’t Think That “Business Model” Means What You Think It Means

jeffrey — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:44:04 +0000

Continental Cuts 3,000 Jobs as It Grounds Planes – NYTimes.com

Continental’s move, which equals a 16 percent reduction in its capacity, had been rumored in industry circles on Wednesday. The details came in a message to employees from Continental’s chief executive Lawrence W. Kellner and its president, Jeffrey A. Smisek.
“The airline industry is in a crisis,” the two executives said in the message to employees. “Its business model doesn’t work with the current price of fuel and the existing level of capacity in the marketplace. We need to make changes in response.”

It is about time that these airlines realize that charging for tickets is a horribly outdated business model. I’m looking forward to the airlines switching their business model to a pure CPC advertising model, where you click on a flight attendant when you see an ad you like, or perhaps a freemium model where you board the plane for free and can pay halfway through the flight if you like the service. If you choose not to pay, you must complete the rest of the flight while seated in the lavatory, or perhaps they eject you with a parachute (which is also sold onboard for a nominal additional charge).

I Don’t Think That “Business Model” Means What You Think It Means is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

In British Library Reading Rooms, Flirting and Even Giggling

jeffrey — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:26:31 +0000

Link: Shh! In British Library Reading Rooms, Flirting and Even Giggling – New York Times

Researchers have been grousing about the boisterous atmosphere and crowded conditions at the British Library for years. But the dispute — a philosophical battle, really, over who should be allowed access to a great national library — spilled out in public last week when The Times of London published an article quoting various distinguished figures complaining about the out-of-control mood over spring break.
The article described how the author Lady Antonia Fraser had been obliged to wait for 20 minutes in freezing weather just to enter the building, and another 20 minutes to leave her coat at the mandatory check-in desk.
It described how another writer, Christopher Hawtree, had been “forced to perch on a windowsill” because he could not get a desk.

To my way of thinking this has far less to do with British schoolgirls annoying people by giggling in a hallowed institution of learning and far more to do with the way that academics seek to impose their mores on students. It is a fact today that most students have mobile phones and a lot of them have laptops. Would it be unreasonable to adapt to this? It seems natural that the “net native” generation would turn to collaboration more readily than previous generations (and why is this necessarily a bad thing?). The problem isn’t these boisterous kids, it’s that our academic institutions (once again) haven’t caught up to the way that people want to learn, communicate and collaborate. The institution of the library clearly isn’t serving these students’ needs. That doesn’t make it automatically the students’ fault; it may not even be Lady Antonia Frasier’s fault. It seems more likely that we are actually in need of a new kind of institution, one with some aspects of a library but without its monastery-esque structure and mindless bureaucracy.

I’m running into this kind of thing myself as I take a community college class this semester (which I know I haven’t mentioned here yet — I’m planning on saying a lot more about this once the semester is over). Suffice it to say that when you see a huge sign outside a campus media center that says NO COMPUTERS ALLOWED and doesn’t permit students to photocopy out-of-print texts under the principle of academic fair use, there’s something fishy at work there — it certainly isn’t the interests of students that are being served.

In British Library Reading Rooms, Flirting and Even Giggling is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Hoopty Rides: How To Be A Professional Amateur

jeffrey — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:46:11 +0000

Link: Hoopty Rides: The Long Road to the Cover of Make Magazine.

"As an amateur in all things, I have found great commonalities to approaching subjects as a newbie. I think the greatest skill that could be taught in schools is how to be a professional amateur as that is the single skill set that unlocks everything. Nobody likes to assist a know-it-all, but there are lots of stone killer experts that get a kick out of sharing knowledge with thoughtful individuals that are deeply curious, respectful, have a firm handshake, don’t interrupt and will meet your eye."

Veteran blogger Mister Jalopy has some poignant thoughts to commemorate getting on the cover of Make Magazine. We learned long ago to respect Mister Jalopy’s wisdom, which is why we had him officiate at our wedding back in 2000.

Hoopty Rides: How To Be A Professional Amateur is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

A Rank Amateur Upgrades His Subversion Repository

The Magic Is in the Tweaking

jeffrey — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 22:32:07 +0000

Link: The Magic Is in the Tweaking

Entrepreneurs are stubborn souls, not easily discouraged by something like initial failure. And, while there are no exact figures, according to small-business specialists, it is quite common for a founder to stumble at first, only to find a way to bounce back soon after.

The Magic Is in the Tweaking is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

“We’d All Like To See California Be Carbon Free.”

jeffrey — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 23:56:25 +0000

Link: Officials Reach California Deal to Cut Emissions – New York Times.

The Assembly speaker, Fabian Núñez, who sponsored the bill along with Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, said at a news conference here, "We feel that California has always been a leader in protecting the environment."
"We now have moved it to the next level,” said Mr. Núñez, a Los Angeles Democrat. "We’d all like to see California one day be carbon free."

This makes me a little nervous, particularly in light of the ban on liquids on airplanes. I mean, if they’re not going to allow my body fluids and they’re not going to allow my carbon, there’s not going to be much of my body left to do anything with. I suppose it’s only a matter of time before they find calcium harmful and start banning peoples’ skeletons, etc.

“We’d All Like To See California Be Carbon Free.” is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Lin

jeffrey — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 22:55:20 +0000

Lin by renshin39171.

More photos of our friend Linda, who passed away last week, are here.

Lin is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

No related posts.

Tim on the Death of Oil

jeffrey — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 21:43:47 +0000

Tim posts on a talk given by somebody who is seriously trying to convince us that all the oil is running out.

Some people (including Chuq) posted in Tim’s comments that this sounds farfetched, and if it weren’t for the war and some short-term supply problems driving up the price of gas, this kind of talk wouldn’t get much play since it’s been on people’s minds for many years now. I vividly remember going through the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry during the oil shock of the 1970s and seeing a futuristic electronic countdown of how much oil the world had left. I seem to recall the countdown was at about thirty years or so. It’s now thirty years later, so clearly the doomsayers made a boo-boo.

It’s easy to freak out about this kind of stuff because people react more to bad news than good news. But I’m more of an Ultimate Resource 2 guy (the idea is that no natural resource will really ever run out as long as the real ultimate resource — the human mind — can figure out ways to synthesize more of the resource, or invent our way around the need for it).

That said, we obviously do need to get off the oil anyway. If stories like this prod us in the direction of pebble-bed reactors cracking hydrogen or big fusion tokamaks churning out the cheap and clean juice so I can run 20 more servers under my desk at home while I whiz to work at 150mph for a total monthly energy charge of $0.85, then I suppose it’s just as well.

(This is the second post tonight that I started writing as a comment on someone else’s blog, hm, wonder what that means.)

Tim on the Death of Oil is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Pope Blue Ribbon

jeffrey — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 10:58:13 +0000

I was wondering how to say "pope" in German yesterday and I noticed in a news photo today that it’s "Pabpst". That means for you trucker-hat-wearing hipsters who are re-discovering America’s worst lager, you’re really drinking Pope Juice, ha ha. I’m thinking this also means that we should be able to come up with a better nickname for the big guy than "Ratzo" or "Ben".

For some reason I can’t fathom, I’m obsessed with the ritual of papal succession. I don’t really follow il papa’s doings when he’s not dying or being elected, and I’m not Catholic or anything, but for some reason, I could not get enough pope news in the last month. I realize that may make me weird, but as I mentioned yesterday I’m generally weird when it comes to news consumption.

Pope Blue Ribbon is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Carole to College of Cardinals: Play Ball!

jeffrey — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 21:55:23 +0000

On the way to work this morning Carole half-heard something on the radio and said "huh?" She thought it was weird that the Cardinals would be performing ancient rituals and voting in secret when they should be, you know, playing baseball down in St. Louis or somewhere. No, dear, this is the College of Cardinals. You know, the ones in Rome, picking a pope.

Maybe you had to be there, but I thought it was funny. Anyway.

This was the first day commuting down to work with the whole family. It was pretty cool! Celeste took to the iPod pretty well, except on the way home, she complained of pain in her ear. We’re hoping it was a pre-existing ear infection (since she was only hurty in one ear) and not, as I initially feared, a result of blasting the soundtrack from Mary Poppins at maximum volume for an hour during our freeway commute home.

Carole to College of Cardinals: Play Ball! is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.