Can Times get away with a pay wall?

Media leaders and experts weigh in on the New York Times' announcement that it will start charging for content. Interesting viewpoints with most of them commenting on how cautious the Times is in this move.

Will Apple's new product revitalize old media?

Given that we don't know much about it, I've avoided posting about Apple's newest product, which is to be introduced January 27. But there's an excellent story in today's Wall Street Journal headlined "Apple Sees New Money in Old Media" that caught my eye for obvious reasons.

The gist of the story is that Apple's new product, widely expected to be a tablet, will "reshape businesses like textbooks, newspapers and television. . . ." The Apple tablet will be the delivery method for all sorts of old media, revitalizing them since their content would be valuable just as songs are sold on iTunes.

The story says Apple's business plan is to make money by making the content valuable unlike, say, Google's plan where the money comes from Google advertising and content really doesn't matter (or in the case of the Kindle, gouging content providers).

I've long believed that paper versions of newspapers and magazines are easier to digest information from than a website, which generally requires you to drill down to figure out what's in a story rather than the paper version where we quickly scan it. Seems to me that Apple's product has the potential to replicate that experience. It's just a matter of waiting for the actual product to see.

What's going wrong at the Washington Post?

Building on the fiasco last year of its plans for "off the record" salons, The New Republic offers a long take on the Washington Post, the gist of which is that the newspapers is off the track and lurching from one idea to another. It's a scary thought for those who like newspapers.

In essence, the story tells a tale of missed opportunities, misjudgement, and just plain poor management (something that puts the Post in company with most newspaper companies). Though filled with inside-baseball style references, the story is very instructive of what's been happening to the entire old media world.

FTC examines Facebook privacy

I predict a continuing rise in questions about Internet privacy even as media look to increase its use of the Web for targeting consumers. The latest wrinkle is that the Federal Trade Commission apparently is looking into the Facebook privacy settings controversy.

Basically, allegations are that Facebook is tracking every move made using its site, whether users delete them or not. Questions are also raised about a new iPhone application that transfers phone contacts to Facebook as "friends," a feature that I'd never use (do I really want my plumber, attorney, M.U. Public Safety, and a host of restaurants as "friends"?).

Stay tuned. There's going to be more of these questions as media and Netizens push the envelope.

Chapter 11 draws another media group

Yet another big media group has filed for chapter 11 reorganization. It's MediaNews, publisher of newspapers in Denver, Oakland, San Jose, and Detroit.

Can nonprofits save journalism?

Will nonprofits be enough to continue the long journalist tradition of muckraking? ABC News raises that question, answering with a solid "maybe." The short answer is that nonprofit journalism has had some hits, but questions remain about its sustainability (similar to just about everything else in journalism these days). It's a nicely-done story, and I hope it has a happy ending.

An original thinker rethinks the Internet

One of the signs of maturing in the Internet and new media is that we now are getting serious, thoughtful approaches to what is happening. One of the best came yesterday (sorry, I was too busy to post it then) in the New York Times when John Tierney wrote about Internet pioneer Jaron Lanier's new book, You Are Not a Gadget, a "manifesto" against "hive thinking" and "the glorification of open-source software, free information and collective work at the expense of individual creativity."

This is significant because Lanier's one of the original thinkers who, in the '90s, was correctly anticipating the growth of ideas on the Internet, believing that "open source" idea-sharing would lead to a revolution.

Unfortunately, Lanier writes today, that revolution has taken some ugly turns, promoting not free thinking, but "hive thinking," where we find others who think just like ourselves and reinforce our views to the exclusion of new ideas.

The Internet fosters the spread of information, but we've seen all too much misinformation spread and, Lanier believes, we've become much more willing to forgo original thinking in favor of just adopting technology as a cure-all. And I apologize to him for overly-simplifying his arguments. Read the post, then read the book.

Are newspaper stories too long?

It's hard to argue with a story titled "Cut this story!" so I won't. Michael Kingsley, one of the more original thinkers among print journalists, opines in the Atlantic that newspapers are in trouble because their stories are too long. I think he's right. And he's wrong.

Newspapers are filled with way too many stories that aren't the length I'd want. Let's use the Journal Sentinel for example. Today's paper offers us yet another story on the Asian carp that's way too long, a wire story on the intelligence failures of the Christmas would-be bomber that a bit shorter than I wanted, a story on the debate over the mayor's takeover of MPS proposal that I don't need to read because I've already got all the information I needed to know about the subject and a story on tickets for the Packers that's probably about the right size (I have no interest in the subject so I didn't read it). On the other hand, it carried only a wire story on a Milwaukee gardener who set off alarms in an airport with bottles of honey and a story on a mother accused of serving liquor to middle-schoolers that cried for more detail. Most stories seemed about right.

I think it comes down to how interested we are in a subject. My brother-in-law with an autistic child reads every story he can get on autism and wants more. I love archeology so I read every story on fossils or old bones. I also follow an out-of-state basketball team and read reams on it. But not too many people want to read anywhere near as much as I do on those subjects.

Here's a case where newspapers could use the Internet wisely. I'd cut those huge stories, but link to huge stories online. I'd offer more on fossils -- online. Just as the JS brings in lots of readers who pay to read its Packers' Plus section, it could attract a lot of us online if it offered more content.

Kingsley writes about the style of writing, and he's correct in that stories often are too long, but he's wrong in that they often aren't long enough. Journalism is exciting because today we can write to a variety of lengths -- and we should.

With even free lance pay down, where will journalism come from?

For some time my mantra has been "newspapers may die but journalism will live on." That's because I truly believe it is needed, at least in its traditional role of informing the public. I still believe that it's needed.

But for the first time I must admit to cracks in my belief about journalism living on. That's because to live, it needs support, and I don't see where it's coming from. Publishers have cut not only all the fat, but most of the muscle and are now into bone in their operations. Today, I read that free lance payments are at their lowest point ever.

The new media promoters are all over the place proclaiming that it doesn't matter if newspapers and magazines fold because we can get all the news we need from new media sources, blogs and aggregators. I read more blogs than most people (I check in with at least 40 a day) and look at the news aggregators regularly, but that's not how I keep track of what's going on because the blogs are all limited in scope, often opinionated, and few do good journalism. The aggregators like Google News or Yahoo News are limited by what they find. Far too often they are dominated by blogs or esoteric sites, many of them failing even the most elementary journalism tests of objectivity and attempts to completely cover issues.

If all the professional content providers like newspapers and magazines go away, where will the aggregators find news?

New, larger e-reader announced

The newest e-reader just announced is larger than the Kindle and is touted as aimed at newspapers and magazines. It's a new technology that has gotten a lot of attention, although some reviewers are critical (ZDNet's blog says this: "While this e-reader is an interesting approach to displaying printed content digitally, it makes for difficult mobility and a lack of color consistent with other e-readers"). But it's larger size and flexibility seems to offer some advantages.

The device uses a thin, flexible sheet of steel, which the company claims is stronger than glass, and allows it to move around. Seems to me that it would be easier to read, although the larger size cuts into portability. Still no color, though.

Report says advertising to rise in 2010

New report predicts advertising will pick up in 2010. J.P. Morgan analyst sees gains all over the place in a report jammed with estimates. I don't see a breakdown between Internet and print in this (it seems mostly Internet), but there are a lot of ramifications if the projections prove true. For example, analyst Imran Kahn predicts a big rise in ecommerce, which has broad economic implications. He also predicts a big growth in global search and another in social media.

A nice look at media history and its possible futures

"Down the centuries, people have fought for the right to know more. It would be truly ironic if that struggle were to be halted in the face of history’s most liberating communications technology."

I seldom like quote leads, but I thought this one totally summed up a fascinating essay in today's Irish Times by Roy Greenslade, a journalism teacher in London. His essay does a great job of putting today's media into its historical context. As he traced the past, information speed is what's been increasing over the centuries, not information. As delivery systems change (carrier pigeons through the Internet), improved speed is what we see.

And that improved speed and access has dramatically widened the media we can consume. For example, I'm able to pick up Greenslade's essay. This is a big improvement. So is expanded media access.

But there is a downside. What if nothing replaces old media and it dies? Who will hold government's feet to the fire? We're already seeing this in Milwaukee where the Journal Sentinel isn't covering government as it used to so we have one politician who consistently misstates the truth with only a few bloggers pointing out the emperor has no clothes.

But go read Greenslade for a deeper understanding of what's happening.