BuzzMachine

Way back in the beginning of newspapers on the internet, my children, lots of companies thought they’d make their money as ISPs. It was the clearest demonstration that they thought of themselves as distribution companies rather than trust companies. One of the biggest efforts at starting a newspaper ISP was Infinet, which was offered by lots of papers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, but not by the papers I worked with. I argued against it. There was no way that papers could compete at scale with giants like AOL. And I said that the economics would be a killer because of subscriber acquisition costs, churn, and big investments in both technology and customer service. This, I argued — successfully — is not what a newspaper is about. For once, I was right. Newspaper ISPs died, one by one. Note the irony that Philadelphia will now be one of the first cities to offer free and ad-supported municipal wireless across the town.

Now Paid Content reports that The Pilot in North Carolina is going to offer wi-fi access from its headquarters and then in public places across its market. So a newspaper is in the distribution business again. But there’s a difference: This time, it’s not an effort to get the online version of circulation revenue from consumers. This will be free.

Is it smart? Dunno yet. On the one hand, a newspaper would be damned wise to find ways to provide extra service to local users: ‘Get my free wi-fi and get my local content and take my ads.’ On the other hand, it’s just another distribution play in a world that will value distribution less and less and newspapers have tried this before. What do you think?

The amazing Publius Pundit is following Michael Totten’s example and will be blogging from around the world, especially Latin America and Eastern Europe.

I’m riding the PATH train into the World Trade Center this morning across from a dad on vacation — it’s that season, suddenly — who’s wearing a baseball cap and shorts over his never-seen-sunlight legs. As we come into the WTC, he brightens up, smiles, and shouts: “Hey, kids, Ground Zero!”

I wanted to slap him. No, actually, I wanted to pull him aside and say:

Sir, this is still a solemn place. It is the site of a terrible crime and tragedy. And for all you know, some of your fellow passengers on this train may have been here that day or lost friends or loved ones here. If passing a cemetery and seeing a funeral going on, would you shout, “Kids, a corpse”? I’m sure you wouldn’t. Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not asking that you treat this like a funeral. It’s not. Just please don’t treat it like Disneyland. Have a little respect. Thank you.

I wouldn’t do that because I wouldn’t want to embarrass the guy in front of his kids, who already appeared plenty embarrassed anyway.

Irony defined:

When TV was a mass medium, it was tacky. See Beverly Hillbillies.

Then TV became more targeted and it got way better. See Hill St. Blues and successors.

Now that TV is shrinking, it is getting tackier and tackier. See Master of Champions. This isn’t reality. It’s cheap beer.

Tom Rosenstiel started off a panel on “finding a new definition of journalism” with a wonderful litany of roles the professionals can play. He began by saying that he — and we — hope we are past the argument about who is a journalist — everyone can do journalism — and that the definition of news itself has exploded. In this world without gatekeepers, then, professionals can find important roles, including:
* authenticating information
* making sense of information
* uncovering information
* monitoring the debate and making sure many views are heard
* convening people
* enabling.

I like that. My list:
* moderator
* enabler
* educator.

I’m at a session on Newspaper Next, an American Press Institute project to try to bring innovation to newspapers. They’re working with Clay Christensen, change guru, and started projects with various newspapers about such things as getting ads from smaller businesses; creating a one-stop resource for mothers; developing an organizational structure for innovation; increasing readership; getting broader audiences, and this: “rethink online effort to meet key information and community engagement needs for wider range of users, including nonconsumers of news.” I thought that last one might just be about citizens’ media. But, no, it’s more about “audiences.”

We’re not an audience, damnit. I think this project needs to learn how to collaborate with the people formerly known as the audience. When they launched, I was cranky about it. They’re trying to reshape newspapers but I think they should be more aggressive and imagine the world after newspapers and figure out how to get news there. They need to get out there and work with the nonnewspaper people

The project took a survey of 500 newspapers managers found that 28 percent thought their companies saw the trends and had answers; the rest didn’t. “So it’s clear that the industry has no idea what to do next,” says Steve Gray, leader of the project, who’s speaking here.

We’re getting the Christensen disruptive innovation spiel. I hate to think that there could be anyone left in the newspaper industry who isn’t aware that they’re quite disrupted. I’m eager to see innovation and experimentation that is not afraid to disrupt itself.

Now he’s starting to list the disrupters taking on newspapers, starting with free print dailies, then Craigslist. Oh, those are only the easy disrupters. Sit down and start listing how the internet disrupts the newspaper business and you’ll fill a page very fast. Start here: How about your readers writing as disruption?

Will innovation happen within the industry this way? Having been in too many task forces inside and outside news companies, I am dubious.

See, instead, how Murdoch is innovating: He’s buying MySpace. Viacom buys iFilm. Even Yahoo and Google buy the guys inventing the next things.

I said to Gray that the project seems to be trying to move a big, old barge five degrees when we need to blow up the barge and pick up the pieces and build new boats. He shifted the metaphor and said he’s trying to big, old cows to move a bit.

I don’t think that’s enough. In fact, I think that making small steps — hey, least we’re doing something, you say — is false comfort. It is dangerous.

I’m at the Media Giraffe Confab at UMass, after driving up here with Jay Rosen (four hours in the car, plotting to take the world over complete). Will blog as paneling allows.

Helen Thomas is speaking first. I’m not sure why. She dives right into her screed: “I never felt before that our country is as rudderless, leaderless as it is now.” Follow with litany of privacy fears, “the fear card,” WMDs, and “that groveling, Republican-controlled Congress.”

Well, I suppose it’s an interesting beginning to a journalism conference in the new age when objectivity is dead. We are, indeed, watching its obit.

But it’s also interesting that the woman who has thrown lighter fluid on the embers of her career with opinion and advocacy now also tries to keep others out of her game: “Everyone with a laptop thinks they are a journalist. The problem is that anything goes. There are no basic standards about what’s accurate and the truth…. Bloggers are not necessarily journalists.”

I am going to ask as a convener of the first panel, with Vin Crosbie, that we take a pledge: This is not about bloggers v. journalists, damnit. It’s not about preserving the past, complaints, seeing the people as competition, working apart, us v. them.

It’s almost official: TV upfront is down for two years running. Toot. Toot. The gravy train is coming to the end of the tracks.

I challenge anyone to read Manohla Dargis’ review of Superman and find out more about the movie than about the critic’s psychotherapy.

Dargis paints a simple cartoon sequel as a homoerotic, misogynist passion play. But, as they say in therapy, it seems she’s projecting.

There’s always been a hint of Jesus (and Moses) to the character, from the omnipotence of his father to a costume that, with its swaths of red and blue, evokes the colors worn by the Virgin Mary in numerous Renaissance paintings. It’s a hint that proves impossible not to take.

Oh, I think I could resistIntentionally or not, the Jesus angle also helps deflect speculation about just how straight this Superman flies. Given how securely Lois remains out of the romantic picture in “Superman Returns,” now saddled with both a kid and a fiancé (James Marsden), it’s no surprise that some have speculated that Superman is gay. The speculation speaks more to our social panic than anything in the film, which, much like the overwhelming majority of American action movies produced since the 1980’s, mostly involves what academics call homosocial relations. In other words, when it comes to Hollywood, boys will be boys and play with their toys, whether they’re sleeping with one another or not, leaving women to weep, worry and wait to be rescued.

Every era gets the superhero it deserves, or at least the one filmmakers think we want. For Mr. Singer that means a Superman who fights his foes in a scene that visually echoes the garden betrayal in “The Passion of the Christ” and even hangs in the air much as Jesus did on the cross. It’s hard to see what the point is beyond the usual grandiosity that comes whenever B-movie material is pumped up with ambition and money.

Maybe because the director’s point isn’t your point.

I read the whole thing and have no answer to the obvious questions: Should I take my kids to see the movie? Would I enjoy it? What’s it about? Is it exciting? Boring? Fun? Nothing. None of that. All I learn is a convuluted answer to the question, ‘And how does this make you feel?’

Those Were the Days, My Friend…. I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles…. and Seems like Old Times….

Rafat Ali’s Paid Content had its first mixer in New York tonight and it was wonderful news for him but, I fear, frightening news for the industry and economy. More than 500 people signed up and sold out the place in three hours. It was jammed with guys in nametags making pitches for their companies to anyone who would stand still and even those who would notIt .

Jane, stop this crazy thing.

It’s deja vu all over again.

Mr. Welk, turn off the damned bubble machine.

It was absolutely spectacular to see the the value, influence, and respect Rafat et al have built from the ground up, on their own. Bravo to them!

But watch out, guys. No party lasts forever.

Here’s a photo from the event. I swear that I did not (a) have a drop to drink, (b) piss of Nick Denton, or (c) goose Spencer Reiss. I just dislike those party photos.

At tonight’s mixer for PaidContent (more on that in a minute), Arthur Sulzberger was interviewed by Rafat Ali and was asked about the impact of online news on stories such as the current terrorism intelligence program on banking. Reference was made to the Pentagon Papers. Sulzberger explained that back then, because the publication went on over time, the government could see prior restraint against The Times. But today, the entire document could be put up in a moment. So they could not come after a news organization now seeing prior restraint. But then he added as a punchline that got a laugh, “treason? — yes.”

I imagined that all across America at just that moment, bloggers and editorial writers for the New York Post stuck their noses up over their copies of Ann Coulter’s latest as their eyes twinkled and their fingers twitched.

I have been mulling over the public letter from Bill Keller justifying The Times’ outing of the banking intelligence program. I think there’s an underlying logic to the letter that’s worth poking. Keller says it is not The Times’ role to judge the program — yet, I’d argue, the decision to out it is, inevitably, a judgment. To do so is to say that the program is illegal or wrong or ineffective; there has to be some reason to expose it, knowing it is secret. Keller writes:

The Administration case for holding the story had two parts, roughly speaking: first that the program is good — that it is legal, that there are safeguards against abuse of privacy, and that it has been valuable in deterring and prosecuting terrorists. And, second, that exposing this program would put its usefulness at risk.

It’s not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. While some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and while some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence, we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don’t know about it.

So that is saying that we deserve to know everything, absolutely everything. As a worshiper of speech protected by the First Amendment and of transparency as the new virtue of journalism and of reporting as a pillar of a free society, you’d think I’d be applauding that sentiment. It sounds good. But I don’t think it washes in real life. Newspapers know plenty they choose not to reveal: from troop locations to undercover cops’ identities to corporate moves that affect shareholders (you can be reporters get the same leaks blogs do). If they revealed all they knew at all times on all subjects, that would be a defensible model — ‘If we know it, you know it.’ But they keep secrets so they get secrets and also to act responsibly. So this notion that not telling us about the banking program preempts the roles of lawmakers, judges, and voters is, well, somewhat specious.

And though The Times says it is not to judge the program’s legality or effectiveness, Keller goes on to say that they weighed the government’s contention that exposing it would endanger it and they rejected that. So they did, indeed, make a most crucial judgment about the program. The Times further rejects the government’s contention that this would tip off terrorists to change their ways. So how does The Times know it has not? Inquiring minds want to know.

Keller also says, “The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest.” That may be fair in many cases, but not in all. This implies that all acts of government are spin. Sometimes, they actually are in the public interest. And acting against that is not always in the public interest. Yes, the role of the press is essentially adversarial. But the government and the press are not the only players in this drama and need not always be adversarial. There are other guys out there murdering us who also play a role. They are the enemy of us all.

What’s more amazing about Keller’s letter in some ways is its glibness. He throws off a one-liner not unlike his proprietor’s, above:

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government’s anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that’s the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.)

Now that’s patently ridiculous. Glenn Reynolds says it indicates that “Keller isn’t very bright, or else he thinks you’re not.” Yes, The Times isn’t really published until bloggers link to it.

Finally, Keller argues that the press has a special place in society:

It’s an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.

Jay Rosen wrote in 2004:

The press doesn’t own journalism, entirely. And Big Media doesn’t entirely own the press, because if it did then the First Amendment, which mentions the press, would belong to Big Media. And it doesn’t. These things were always true.

Yes, we need not only a press but also an open society of empowered citizens to balance the power of those we elect. But we also do elect those people to make judgments on our behalf. And we don’t — and should not — elect the members of the press who question them.

So when you get right down to it, this is a disagreement about what’s right. Keller is cloaking his decision in the First Amendment and the power of the press. George Bush wrapped his obvious disagreement around doing harm to the nation and our war on terror and others did go so far as to label it treason.

My bottom line, not that it matters: The government has long and and long been urged to follow the cut off the money to terrorists to both starve and uncover them. I wholly endorse that. I assumed that they were doing precisely what The Times is shocked that they were doing: following transactions. I don’t think it’s known that the program is either illegal or ineffective. But I also think it is possible enough that revealing its existence can do the program and the nation harm, so I would not have revealed it.

Ad Age critic and On the Media cohost Bob Garfield is writing a book about how the open-source world changes marketing and, so, he’s writing it openly on a new blog.

The idea is to put it together, chapter by chapter, with ideas, criticism and corrections coming from all of you out in the Bobosphere. It’s no wiki; I’m the sole author. And it will be owned lock, stock and hypertext by my employer, Crain Communications. But who cares? It’s being produced in full public view for public view.

Go see his chapter outline and get to work.