The Things on My Mind

In a cab after a long, long day at work. No energy for real post but did want to give a shout out the the boys in Green and White. Go Spartans!

Ugh. It’s Saturday afternoon and I haven’t posted in a while. Not really by choice, mind you. It’s been so busy that finding the time to post has been harder that I would think. Here’s a short list of the events of the past week:

• Got my temporary crown installed put in crowned. The story behind this is last week, I was having a apple for breakfast and I felt/heard a “pop” at the back of mouth as I bit down. So off I went to the dentist who told me I had cracked my tooth and that I would need a crown. But she couldn’t do it that day because the whole thing was going to take two hours. Tuesday was the big day and it went about as good as oral surgery could go. By the time I got home, I was so exhausted, sitting down in front of the computer was not in the cards.
• Wednesday was a fantastic 13-hour workday where I spent eight of those hours in front of my computer reading through, editing, and reassigning issues and bugs for the project I’m working on at work. Needless to say, getting away from the computer was a necessity for my sanity’s sake
• Thursday was poker night. Not my game but a friend’s game. It’s a dealer’s choice, $1/2 fixed limit game with a $40 buy-in and a good group of guys. I was not playing well and knew it at a few points. But I managed to eke out a profit of exactly one dollar. Mainly due to two hands of razz: one where I made a wheel against two opponents that went all the way to showdown and another where (if I recall correctly) I made a 76 against an 86. Next Thursday is poker at my place and I’ll try to pay closer attention and give a detailed report.
• Friday was fantastic. A birthday dinner at one of the best steakhouses I’ve ever been to: Keens Steakhouse. It’s decorated with clay pipes all over the ceiling, as it used to be a pipe club for the celebrities of the early 20th century. They’re known for their mutton chops but I opted for the surf ‘n’ turf. We started with whiskey. Well, I had whiskey, some had bourbon, some had rye, and some had whisky. Then came the oysters, which led to a call of bullshit on my oyster taste. I dissed West Coast oysters to a foodie from Portland, Ore. and he chastised me. So we ended up ordering a dozen, half East Coast, half West. After eating, I stood and yea, still stand, by my original assumption. Two bottles of red (I think a Cab and a Haut-Medoc; the Haut-Medoc was very good), a rare filet mignon, lobster, and a grappa for dessert. A cigar between bars and another whiskey to close out a fantastic night. I think it was best I wasn’t writing anything when I got home.

Which leads to today. I was supposed to start it off playing softball but the previous nights activities led to me sleeping through the alarm and mild headache. Dreams of accomplishing things slipped away as I vegged out. I’m off again for a continuation of the birthday celebrations in a bit. I’ll be back to some substantive writing in a bit. Just need to catch up with the rest of the world…

At the dentist getting a crown. Thought I might use the opportunity to try the iPhone WordPress app. Wish me luck.

Last week, I was out to dinner with a group of friends. At some point in the meal, the topic of newspapers and print and their future. This was a table with over 50% of those seated at it making their living off people reading things printed on dead trees. The discussion came around to the death the newspapers in Seattle and Denver. I brought up a point that I had read in the New Republic:

Whether the Internet will ever support general-interest journalism at a level comparable to newspapers, it would be foolish to predict. The reality is that resources for journalism are now disappearing from the old media faster than new media can develop them. The financial crisis of the press may thereby compound the media’s crisis of legitimacy. Already under ferocious attack from both left and right for a multitude of sins, real and imagined, the press is going to find its job even more difficult to do under economic duress. And as it retrenches in the face of financial pressures, [director of Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, Tom] Rosenstiel says, “More of American life will occur in shadows. We won’t know what we won’t know.”

Paul Starr’s point is that without local journalism, the lesser Blagos of the world will run rampant. Throw in that the formerly two-paper towns will be losing one side of the story, and you start to get the picture: the views that people will be exposed to will be narrower and less in-depth.

Enter the hero of our story: the Internet! Yes, one of the things that brought about the all of the above will actually save the day. Besides, as one of my friends mentioned, those guys weren’t doing a very good job anyway. There are always standouts, but most of the time, local newspapers (due to declining ad revenues—we’ll get those momentarily) were laying off Starr’s venerable reporters and serving as reprint services for the wire services like AP and Reuters. The variety of views online will replace those reporters and keep our public officials honest. Well, almost. Much of what it found online is just aggregation of and commentating on existing sources, including those being “driven out of business” by the situation at hand! Are we caught in some sort of vicious circle?

Well, there are some innovators out there. There are places like ProPublica, trying to do unbiased reporting as a non-profit. Think PBS or, better yet, NPR but as an online-only newspaper. “ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest,” reads their About Us page. Their funding right now comes from the Sandler Foundation. There are questions about the possibilities of bias but from what I’ve read, I don’t see it but it is worth noting. Much like the one-paper town only getting half the story, it can’t be ignored.

Another story (in fact, the one that inspired me to finally get all these thoughts organized) is that of GlobalPost. They’re starting from the premise that ad-supported news sites (there’s that advertising thing again — I promise we’ll get there) can essentially be loss leaders. In yesterday’s NY Times, there’s was a borderline hagiography of the idea that it would be possible to *gasp* make money in the news business on the internet! It’s by harnessing the latest trend in media—communities and user-generated content— and making it feel more like being part of the club. By signing up for their Passport service (currently $199 or $50 for students), you not only get exclusive content but you actually get to help shape the content. The Passport “allows you to join [them] in the editor’s chair. As an active member in an elite community, you’re invited to present story ideas on topics you think matter, stories that you want to read and share with your Passport colleagues.” It seems great on paper but here’s the key grafs from the Times piece that puts the lie to their plans:

Only a couple of dozen people have signed up for Passport, said Philip Balboni, GlobalPost’s other founder and the president and chief executive. The site is depending on marketing partnerships to generate subscriptions, some discounted, and hopes to have more than 2,000 by year’s end.

Two months in, the Boston-based company says demand for the free site — the mainstay of the business — is ahead of expectations. It has logged 250,000 unique users who have visited at least once, compared with the 90,000 Mr. Balboni had hoped for by now, and 1.1 million page views, more than half from returning visitors.

I give them points for coming up with something new but most users are used to free content. The Internet is littered with the bits and bytes of failed attempts at subscription-only content: TimesSelect, Salon Premium (which still exists but loses money and can be gotten around by viewing an interstitial ad). Eric Clemons writes very clearly about this in the fantastic article Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet. This is something that’s near and dear to my heart since this is how I’m making my living. He’s spot on in that people don’t want, need, or trust advertising. People like Clemons have some good ideas. The ideas of social search, a hybrid of a search engine and your social network, and contextual mobile advertising, which is really only limited by mobile technology but could be a big growth opportunity, are the ones that make sense to me.

I’ll admit, I’m don’t know where all this is going to end. I do know I get my news from a variety of sources online, both “traditional” and “new” media. I don’t think that print newspapers are going away. They’ll probably continue to consolidate or just plain go out of business. I think new publications like ProPublica and GlobalPost are going to be great. They’ll probably fail too and be replaced by those who will learn from their mistakes. Clay Shirky said it best:

For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.

Coming Soon: The Kindle, the ebook, and print – living in harmony

Bloggers have the right to stay anonymous. We’re continuing our battle to protect and preserve your constitutional right to anonymous speech online, including providing a guide to help you with strategies for keeping your identity private when you blog.
- Electronic Frontier Foundation > Bloggers’ Rights

When I first started thinking about blogging, one of the first questions I asked myself was whether or not to do so anonymously. Well, I probably didn’t word it like that. I’m paranoid by nature and generally shy. So it was probably more like, “Do I really want people to tie me to whatever ramblings I put on the internet?” And now that I’ve actually posted something, I still don’t have the answer.

The odds are that if you’re reading this, you know me since, at this point, I’m doing my own advertising. (“Hey! Read my blog!”) So talking about anonymity might seem a bit silly. But it’s actually a pretty serious subject. The quote opening this post was one of the first places I went when I was doing my research. I knew I’d be blogging about my work at some point and I wanted to see what I was getting myself into. I’d heard the Washingtonienne saga and while I’m not comparing my possibly upcoming blog post on effective internet marketing to the details of the sex lives of Congresspeople, people can and do get into trouble for blogging.

So how much is safe to reveal? I kept the bio on this site relatively short. But do I give up some air of respectability by not revealing who I am? Being anonymous does give me a shield to hide behind. I like that. If you take a look at my blogroll over there, about half of those are anonymous (or at least started anonymously). And one of the main reasons inspiring me to do this is that I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read from these blogs for a long time.

In the end, I guess it won’t matter that much. I’ll stick with my faux pseudonym and just reveal what I want as I go along. And if I ever spout some opinion that makes you, the reader, want to know more about me, call me out. Just don’t be surprised if I keep it on the down low when I get back to you.

So I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. This first post should be an introduction of sorts but for the real deal, check out the about pages. It’s my birthday today and I’ve decided that it will also be the “birthday” of this blog. I’ve planned and hemmed and hawed and tweaked and now it’s time.

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