Big Media content is already excessively “diluted”. You guys simply do not get it. No one is buying the products and I guess there has been some directive to go out and blog to defend your ineptitude.

If only it were so easy.

Incidentally, Rich Karlgaard recently did a blog post on “Zero Summers” and then wrote a column on it later. Not sure if it was by design or aided in the writing process. One would have to ask him, but it certainly didn’t negatively affect the its outstanding quality.

But then again, the third-stringers at Forbes can out-pen anyone at Bweek.

“Is it better for Steve and Business Week to have held back their story from public view until it was packaged and polished and delivered in print, or to have sought out the best advice on it from an informed public by seeking collaboration via Steve’s blog as the story was being formed? Which produces a better product and a better business?”

While seeking assistance is nice, Stephen Baker has newsrooms filled with other professional journalists, plus the expert sources he did — and did not — seek out to assist with his story. Making the story development and writing process public would only drag it out, and dilute the final quality.
– Mike

But what’s left when we’ve effaced the ego entirely, Jeff? While it’s true that the new media works through aggregation and collaboration, remember that what is being aggregated has a significant “old media” component. Think of the movie criticism site Rotten Tomatoes — what makes it work is that it turns all of those superfluous movie critics you deride into a fairly good metric of a film’s worth. Would the site be nearly as useful or well-visited if it were composed only of audience feedback? Probably not.

Like it or not the ego matters in the new media just as much as it did in the old. Would I rather read Peter Gammons’ take on the 2006 baseball season or YankeeFan647 who thinks the Red Sox are “teh sux0r”? Here in Boston I have all manners of local quality sportswriting to choose from, as well as websites who specifically aggregate and comment on the old media’s coverage. While I enjoy the new media’s metacommentary, would it be nearly as valuable or entertaining without a good old fashioned ego-driven commentary at its root?

This is not so much about the value of the “scoop” as it is the singular narrative voice. Truly no one is disputing the usefulness of the open-source approach in the new media, but does that mean every effort must be a collaborative one?

Consider a newspaper that scores a sponsorship deal for a series on a new, locally developed, technology, for waste management. What’s the key factor in this scenario, first to publish, or taking an originator position, creating discussion? Which of the three parties media company , sponsor, and audience benefits the most from which action?

Managing the client relationship, while promoting discussion is high risk wire act. until the value in discussion can be quantified. When that happens, ’scoop’ takes on new relevancy morphing from destination to origination. Then scoop becomes source.

Recently, a post on Lloyd Shepherd’s site ignited a debate about DRM, which I followed across numerous blogs, but everywhere I went — and this is remarkable — Lloyd was cited as the source of the debate. Lloyd could publish an article in the Guardian, and the blogosphere would probably make the link for him.

If journalists open-sources their writing processes, the quality of their ideas will in effect protect the “scoop” — the blogosphere may run off with the conversation, but, at least among Old Media, if another brand tries to to scoop the topic, the blogosphere will keep credit where credit is due.

There’s a reason why blogging software like Wordpress automatically generates these trackbacks — to expand the conversation (or the collaboration, to use Jeff’s term). I didn’t consciously generate the trackback above. Wordpress did it automatically when I linked to Jeff’s post — someone will no doubt point out that there’s a way to turn that off.

But even if there is a way to turn off the trackback feature, CaptiousNut’s comment still smacks of censorship. Does Jeff have a copyright on this conversation? What about Jeff linikng to Steve Baker’s blog post. By this logic, Jeff should have posted his thoughts there rather than post his thoughts on his own site.

There’s a bigger issue, though, that gets to Jeff’s question about scooping vs. collaboration. Did Jeff “scoop” this issue by writing about it first, so that I shouldn’t be permitted to write about it also and then generate a link here? (Sounds pretty Old Media to me.) Or is this linking from one blog to another an essential part of collaboration? CaptiousNut seems to suggest that Jeff “owns” the conversation, but it was actually Steve Baker who started it.

Think of it in terms of brand. BuzzMachine has a huge amount of brand equity, while Publishing 2.0 has none at this point. Why shouldn’t there be an open competition between brands? The power of BuzzMachine’s brand should keep the conversation here, not censorship of a link to Publishing 2.0. And if people link of Jeff’s site to my site, it doesn’t mean they won’t come back.

If Jeff agrees with CaptiousNut that my trackback is spam, then he should just delete it. But I suspect he won’t because he practices what he preaches.

He has solicited contributions to enable him to hire two muckrakers and is already asking readers to forward news items to be investigated. While he is getting his new site operational he has a daily muck posting on his TPMcafe.com site.

By getting his funding from viewers he insulates himself from the problems that advertising brings up as well. I assume there will be some degree of interactivity on the new site as well.

I’m constantly surprised how such a young fellow can channel I.F. Stone so well.

There are other ways to generate web traffic to one’s site. Cluttering up these message threads with “I am talking about it too” posts reeks more of spam than anything else.

Just my humble opinion.

Investigative journalism that requires 6 weeks of research definitely benefits from open source community involvement. Look at Chris Anderson, Scoble and others who have written books and blogged simultaneously.

If you are worried about someone running with your idea, then you are in the closed mindspace. Despite the lack of explicit hierarchy, an implicit consensus cred exists. People credit those who originate ideas.

In fact, let people build on your ideas and potentially improve them without your subsequnet contribution: hat the life of the modern man/woman.

This discussion is treating the story as a finished product. But that is not how information works. Each bit of information helps grow new information. So when Business Week releases a story isn’t as important as when Business Week or its author or it audience walks away from a story. If this package were considered as Business Week story release 1.0, then there would be plenty of room to get readers interested in helping develop the next rendition of this story into 2.0.

Let’s stop treating stories as corpses that get sent to the morgue, but as living pieces of information that can still grow and be transformed into other forms of knowledge. Of course, that already happens informally with anything worthwhile that is written. It becomes part of a greater knowledge pool, which then helps produce new ideas.

The question for places like Business Week is: Does it make sense to help formalize the process? Does Business Week want to write the definite story with help of its audience over a longer period of time or just release the story –the kernel idea — and let it develop as it may?

A scoop is when you find out your city’s major-league baseball team is on the verge of picking up and moving, or a major company is about to go bust (or start a massive hiring spree), or the mayor’s up to his neck in kickbacks — when you uncover important facts that had not previously been public. You keep those secret until you can publish them because the fact they’re not publicly known constitutes your whole competitive advantage. If you run a daily paper, all you want is to be first by one day; if you put the information out for free on the afternoon you learn about it, and let the other guy match it in time for tomorrow’s paper, you’re giving up one major reason why people buy your newspaper instead of the other guy’s.

Even if consumers aren’t as focused on particular scoops and exclusives as the journalists are, such things must play a role in readers’/viewers’ choice of media outlet. If you’re at all interested in the news, you’re going to be aware of it when your morning paper includes nothing you didn’t hear on the radio on the drive home yesterday.

In the case of the math story, the competition isn’t likely to try to match it. The thing BusinessWeek is selling is less having spotted the pattern, and more the depth of the reporting and the quality of the writing, both of which can presumably be improved by “open-sourcing” the story.

Sometimes keeping what one is working on secret seems like the best way to uncover the details.