BuzzMachine

Among the tools for networked journalism I’m wishing for is a simple one for creating collaborative data bases.

When the Brian Lehrer Show mobilized the people formerly known as its audience to find out the prices of groceries across New York, they entered their findings in blog comments, which were laboriously compiled by hand. How much better it would be if the show had a simple data tool — as simple as blogs and wikis — to set up the basic fields their reporters could have used to report back. It would also be wonderful if that data could then be searched; if calculations could be run against it (give me the mean, the average); if it could visualized in charts; and if it could be exported for mashups (e.g., plotting it on Google Maps).

I don’t know whether this is it. But looking at my referrers this morning, I saw that someone N Levels, a startup, had created a form to gather data I asked for earlier: a collaborative data base of wi-fi speeds and prices in hotels. Here’s a description of N Levels that others of you will understand better than I.

The goal of N Levels is to enable users to create their own “information networks” that overlay and complement today’s web page and hyperlink structure. By information network, we mean a set of objects that are connected by relationships, forming a directed graph.

An object is a collection of properties which represents “something” - it could be a physical entity, animal, person, concept, idea, or absolutely anything. A relationship is a label that defines how two objects are related to each other - for example parent-child, location, containment, etc. An object and its possible relationships is defined by its schema, or “object type”. By having well-defined schema, it becomes easy for humans and software to traverse, consume, and extend an information network.

I was talking about such tools for collaborative journalism I wish someone would build with Clay Shirky when he came to talk and share his wisdom with my entrepreneurial journalism class. Clay’s students could do it and we’re talking about that.

Here’s another one I want: When a reporter, pro or am, uses a camera phone to take a picture — or, for that matter, to upload text, video, audio, anything — wouldn’t it be wonderful to attach the data the device knows: time and date, of course, and also GPS. This then allows gangs of reporters to submit information that can be plotted on maps and timelines and then associated with other data. See this Dutch experiment in which reporters were given mobile phones that fed through a server that did some of this.

And, of course, once news and data is in such a system, it can also be retrieved by location. See Socialight’s brand new service in London: Text 88811 and your GPS phone will give you nearby establishments and also fellow users’ notes.

(And that reminds me of my lunchtime conversation yesterday with Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham about the big trends we’re all watching. One of them is the tying of web to real things and places. Fred took a picture of me on his phone and thanks to Dave Winer’s programming sent it to Flickr and onto Twitter. I said that photo would be so much richer if it had the GPS attached and then folks could see where we were eating and eventually who’s nearby. But I digress.)

What other tools of networked journalism do you wish for?

I like this shot from the Networked Journalism Summit. More shots here .

njs009.jpg
Originally uploaded by CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

Roy Greenslade, a fixture of British journalism — former newspaper editor, now journalism professor and newspaper columnist and blogger — writes a powerful post today submitting his resignation to the National Union of Journalists there. Posts by Shane Richmond of the Telegraph and me appear to have been the last two straws. Roy writes:

. . . I still believe journalistic skills are essential. I also believe that there is a future for professional journalists - people employed by media outlets whose daily job involves them in reporting and transmitting text, photographic and video content. But I also recognise that the so-called profession of journalism has to adapt to vastly changed circumstances. In effect, every citizen is now a journalist.

Richmond rightly points to the NUJ’s underlying assumption that the net is a threat to journalism when, of course, it is much more a threat to the union itself. Why? Because the union, as with the print unions of old, cannot possibly adapt to meet the revolutionary demands of a new technology.

There is a difference, of course. The skills of compositors and linotype operators were eradicated by computer setting and on-screen composition. Journalistic skills are not entirely wiped out in an online world, but they are eroded and, most importantly, they cannot be confined any longer to an exclusive élite group. Secondly, the union’s internal demarcations - such as reporter-photographer, reporter-sub, reporter-camera operator - are now utterly irrelevant. All of us must be multi-media journos from now on.

Then we come to the preservation of jobs, which has been the union’s 100-year raison d’être. I cannot, in conscience, go on supporting this crucial plank of NUJ policy when it is so obvious that online media outlets will require fewer staff. We are surely moving towards a situation in which relatively small “core” staffs will process material from freelances and/or citizen journalists, bloggers, whatever (and there are many who think this business of “processing” will itself gradually disappear too in an era of what we might call an unmediated media).

But that’s only part of the problem. It is also clear that media outlets will never generate the kind of income enjoyed by printed newspapers: circulation revenue will vanish and advertising revenue will be much smaller than today. There just won’t be the money to afford a large staff. . . .

Holding these views, which are completely divergent from the union’s current policies, means that I should resign from the NUJ. After a membership stretching back 42 years, this is a painful decision. But I think it would be hypocritical to remain inside when I am now so opposed to the union’s central aims.

I do believe, most sincerely, that journalism matters. I also think the act of journalism matters. But the brave new world opened up by the internet makes protectionist organised labour on the lines of the NUJ outdated.

: In the interest of balance, here is a link to a piece Donnacha DeLong of the NUJ wrote as the union’s multimedia commission commenced the survey that resulted in the report that sparked this reaction. Snippet:

Recent technological advances are changing the landscape of the media. This has been predicted for many years, but the past year has seen technological convergence finally take root in all parts of the media in the UK and Ireland. Video on local newspaper websites, broadcasters blogging, press officers with cameras, magazine podcasts.

These developments present huge challenges for the NUJ. The union is separated into sectors for broadcasting, newspapers and agencies, magazines and books, PR, freelance and new media – divisions that are increasingly uncertain and may soon be obsolete. The union needs to change – but how much, and in what ways? . . .

The question is – have the industrial divisions of the union been an obstacle to communication in the union? Journalists in different disciplines have often had a tendency to focus exclusively on things in their own disciplines and ignore what’s happening elsewhere. The NUJ’s structures may only have institutionalised these tendencies. The NUJ is often criticised for resisting technological advances – portrayed unfairly as Luddites by employers who are unwilling to provide adequate training or decent pay. The existence of the union’s New Media Industrial Council shows that, on the contrary, the union is engaged with the new technology sector. . . .

: LATER: Neil McIntosh joins in.

: LATER: Adrian Monck pipes in.

I’m going to be in London working all next week and the first bit of the week after. So I’m just hanging out on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 3 and 4. Anybody around? Drink?

Shane Richmond of the Telegraph tears apart the “report” from the National Union of Journalists — of which he is a slightly sheepish member — that attacks the means of new media in British news organizations. I mocked it yesterday as “whiny, territorial, ass-covering, protecting-the-priesthood, preservation-instead-of-innovation” and Jay Rosen is egging me on for more.

But I’ve decided that a different tack is in order. For it occurred to me that if you’re a union representing journalists today, you probably don’t know which way is up and who’s the enemy and what you’re fighting for. All the old reflexes and relationships are archaic. Unions are structured to fight The Man but now that Man is no longer all-powerful, requiring the joining together of its workers to balance his might. Now the Man is quivering in his loafers, less powerful, poorer, smaller, unsure where the world is headed. Battling The Man could weaken the only guy who is, if not on your side, at least in the same boat with you. Do you really want to go throwing the deckchairs overboard at a time like this?

The very notion of the collective — the essence of the union — is changed. No longer is it about employees gathering together inside an institution to battle for their share of that institution’s value. Now the collective is more likely to be a gathering of independent agents who may work collaboratively, with or without that institution.

Indeed, some of those independent workers used to be employees and union members, but then they got laid off and decided to try to make a go of it on their own. See the story of Rick Waghorn, made redundant from his newspaper and now covering football on his own. See the similar story of Debbie Galant, who left behind the platform of the New York Times and created hyperlocal pioneer Baristanet. See, also, plenty of people who are starting journalistic endeavors on their own without a history of working for newspapers under union protection: Brian Stelter moved from blog to newsroom. Josh Marshall has a media empire growing. Rafat Ali wanted to be a journalist and is now hiring them.

So what is their relationship with the old institutions, including the union? Through old lenses, you’d say their the competition, the enemy. The old union cant is that they are taking work and jobs away from the professionals. That has been the NUJ’s attitude toward citizen journalists. But what if those citizens are your former members? What then? And in the new economic ecosystem of journalism, the relationship should be collaborative. As Mark Potts said at the Networked Journalism Summit, if you’re going to succeed at being small, you probably need to be part of something big. And the Jarvis corollary: If you’re going to succeed at being big, you need help from many smalls.

So what is a union’s role in that universe? That’s a hard question. I’ll propose a few answers.

I’d say that a union has to make itself valuable by making its members more valuable. That won’t come from sitting back and making demands — for just as the institution no longer has a stranglehold on news and distribution, the staff no longer has a stranglehold on creation. So I’d suggest that the union should make sure its members are trained in every medium and means of newsgathering and storytelling — and don’t just demand that employers train, do the training yourself. Act like a collective, a generous community: Get members to train each other. In the comments under this post, Time Inc.’s guild says it’s pushing training. Well, good. Can’t have enough.

I’d rethink the idea of job descriptions. Unions were built to protect them. Look at that NUJ “report” — it gets pissy about nonphotographers making photographs. Get over it! Look at Flickr. We can all — reporters among us — take photographs. So help them take better photographs. Train them.

Rather than whining about doing new jobs, demand to do new jobs. I content that everyone — everyone — in a newsroom should be trained to make slideshows and videos and podcasts even if they never actually make them, for it opens up their thinking to new ways to tell stories and helps them understand why the world is doing this and perhaps helps them improve the products they’re working on. So train away!

Then I’d rethink what membership means. Is it just employees? Maybe it’s those dreaded independent folks you see as a threat. Why would they become members? Well, you’d better give them something: In the U.S., that would be health insurance. And training. And libel insurance. And networking to get work. You have to make your union valuable to them — by making them more valuable in the marketplace of news and content — and only if they do that, will they join. And once they have, it’s in your interest to improve their work and value. So no longer can you sniff about these damned amateurs trying to do what the professionals you protect now do. Now you’re in this together.

If you want to get really fancy, a guild could become an ad network to help support its members. But that gets mightily complicated, for that puts the union in competition with the institutions with whom it now negotiates. Messy world, this.

And you’d also try to become a catalyst for innovation and invention and the creation of new companies. And you’d try to help make them as successful as possible. You’d see yourself in partnership, not at wawr.

It’s hard to imagine a union thinking this way. But I’ll argue that if they don’t, they’re more quickly doomed that the news organizations they’re still trying to wrestle with.

You probably can’t see this unless you’re Ken Sand’s friend on Facebook, but he just posted a job opening at Congressional Quarterly for a “technical journalist.” Getting past the irresistible straight line — ‘well, technically, I’m a journalist’ — it’s telling that such a job description exists:

The technical journalist/Web developer will join a new editorial projects team that will be responsible for conceiving of and building dynamic Web applications, maps and mash-ups for CQPolitics, CQ’s free content site that is being expanded. The Web developer/technical journalist will be collaborating closely with two other team members, and will need to be able to communicate effectively with non-technical colleagues. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience building data-driven Web sites and tools using XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML, XSLT, Django or Ruby on Rails, Ajax, and Flash, and a demonstrated understanding of relational databases and experience with open-source databases like MySQL.

Oh, yes, and hooking paragraphs and taking rewrite.

Maybe I’m more aware of this because I’m a Hillary supporter, but it does seem as if the New York Times is taking any opportunity to swipe at her. Yesterday’s page one carried a story that was shocked — shocked, I tell you — that the Clinton campaign might actually be feeding stories to the dreaded Drudge Report.

….But it was a prime example of a development that has surprised much of the political world: Mrs. Clinton is learning to play nice with the Drudge Report and the powerful, elusive and conservative-leaning man behind it. . . .

That people in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign orbit would tip off the Drudge Report to its fund-raising numbers is in part a reflection of her pragmatic approach to dealing with potential enemies, like Newt Gingrich or Rupert Murdoch. . . .

The site is a potent combination of real scoops, gossip and innuendo aimed at Mr. Drudge’s targets of choice — some of it delivered with no apparent effort to determine its truth, as politicians of all stripes have discovered at times.

Would they be equally shocked if Rudy Giuliani or John McCain tried to get good publicity from, oh, the New York Times?

And it’s not as if the Times doesn’t benefit plenty from
Drudge. Last I checked, Drudge was the single largest nonsearch referrer to both the Times and the Washington Post. And I’ve heard executives from major publications and blogs say that they wouldn’t piss off Drudge because he sends them so much traffic.

So why are they so shocked that Clinton might try to get a favorable link? What’s the news there? Or is it an opportunity to slap Hillary while she’s up? Just asking.

The Guardian’s American invasion is fully underway with the launch today of Guardian America. Unlike, say, the Times of London’s international home page — which is just de-Britted a bit — the Guardian is putting resources behind its American effort, with a staff in Washington and reporting aimed at the American audience. Here’s U.S. editor Michael Tomasky’s welcome letter and here’s an enjoyable defense/defence of their stubborn use of British spelling and style. (Disclosure: I write and consult for the Guardian. I’ll be there next week.)

Connect these dots to create the job description of the 21st century editor:

* The Guardian is hiring a tag editor — a keyword manager, they call it:

Guardian Unlimited requires a keyword manager to look after the labelling of our content online to ensure that it is consistent with the needs of the reader and the editorial values of the Guardian and Observer. The role requires attention to the demands both of a considerable content archive and of a fast-moving news operation, and involves work across media; from text to cartoons, video to podcasts. It would suit either a journalist with a particular interest in archiving, or someone with a background in information science who possesses a keen editorial sense.

And I hope the person understands the value of the metadata added by the audience. Sitting on his or her desk on the first day should be a copy of David Weinberger’s Everything’s Miscellaneous.

* The Times of London has hired a search editor.

The Times’ Search Editor is to explain to the editorial staff how the search structure of the Web functions, work on indexed pages and improve the rankings of their newspaper articles in Google, Yahoo! and other search engines.

The Times of New York has had About.com SEO god Marshall Simmonds making it more searchable and it has been paying off.

* See Jay Rosen’s coordinates for a news site and note the new job qualifications therein: organizing community effort, presenting data, aggregation. I’d add others to that, including the idea of curating.

* Listen to the talk at the Networked Journalism Summit at CUNY and you’ll hear a lot about journalists as managers and from me you’ll hear talk about journalists as entrepreneurs and innovators and I’ve been arguing that journalists must become curators and community organizers.

* See Michael Rosenblum coming to teach our students at CUNY his method for making compelling video stories without the trucks. Everybody can make TV now.

I say that’s all exciting: new frontiers, new things to learn and create.

Now try to connect these dots from the other side of the old/new divide:

* Alan Mutter posted earlier this month on the brain drain afflicting journalism; it’s a self-inflicted ailment:

But the young net natives, for the most part, rank too low in the organizations that employ them to be invited to the pivotal discussions determining the stratgeic initiatives that could help their employers sustain their franchises.

“In most organizations, the people with the most online experience have the least political capital,” said one mid-level online editor at a newspaper. “It seems like the pace of change inside media is slowing, tied up in politics and lack of expertise in managing technical projects – while the pace of change is continuing apace outside our windows.”

Members of the wired generation say the process, bureaucracy and caution common to most media companies steals spontaneity and edginess away from ideas that could be appealing to their peers. . . .

“I don’t understand or like the media,” said the online newspaper editor who’s planning his exit. “Blogging has shown me that I don’t really need the guys that own the presses anymore. I’ll probably stay in journalism, but I can’t wait to get out of the media.”

* I found this whiny, territorial, ass-covering, protecting-the-priesthood, preservation-instead-of-innovation faux report from the UK’s National Union of Journalists to be particularly disturbing as they complained about things that are not done their way in various unnamed journalistic institutions trying to go online:

- A chapel at a Newsquest title in north of England told the commission that “stories are going online unsubbed” directly from a newsdesk.
- In some publications, “there are no experienced journalists working on the websites and copy is handled by web technicians“.
- The ease of copying and pasting leads to journalists under time pressure to “simply lump text across without proper consideration of its quality or reliability”. . . .
- Single-journalist video reporting has clear drawbacks, the report says. “To have to seek out information and people to interview, then interview and photograph or film them, then have to write and voice the script, is an inefficient way of working and can never produce such good results as a team.”
The report stresses the need for proper video training. “Untrained or semi-trained writers or photographers have been turning in such poor video material and taking so long to do it that even the meanest employers appear to be taking notice,” the report says. Several publications reported having to ease up on enthusiasm for video as reality caught up with quality expectations. However the report also acknowledges that “in centres where video training has be thorough, and the journalists are given proper support, work of high quality is being done.”
- Members from a regional daily told the commission: “There is real concern over lack of policy/guidelines and lines of responsibility between papers and web … things would be better if there was a dedicated video unit subject to the web team so decisions about what to cover and how could be integrated into the day’s news plan”.
- “The practice of reporters taking photographs is becoming widespread, to the detriment of the quality of images.”

Oh, ferchrissakes. Bring back wooden type. How many of those kvetchers are going to be qualified to act as search or tagging editor … or survive on their own when they’re laid off?

I was ready to pull my hair out when I saw Mindy McAdams pointing to this post by a just-out-of-school journalists in a newsroom who — unlike the old days when young people had to spend decades working their way up to being heard — is included in planning for the future. This gave me hope.

I have to admit, I have sat in on more than one conversation where people discussed an idea that there is no way in hell would float with my peers. How do I know? Because like those peers, *I* am attached to my iPod, digital camera and cell phone on a 24/7 basis. (OK except in the shower or bed, but within reach of both should the need to text a friend or hear my favorite song strike me.) *I* am more comfortable going without food than the Internet, because I know skipping a meal won’t kill me, missing up-to-the-date information seems like it might. *I* barely remember a time before Google was a verb and IM was an acceptable form of conversation even with my parents. *I* have never subscribed to a print newspaper or paid for cable news, and yet *I* am never the last to know, because I have breaking news and Google alerts, RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook newsfeed, among other things, keeping me in the loop both with what’s happening across the globe and also among my closest buds.

But here’s the thing: *I* was invited to those conversations. . . .

s the best use of my talents at this point as a reporter covering school assemblies and school board meetings with a few in-depth enterprise packages thrown in each week? Or am I squandering — or allowing to be squandered — the best years of my life, when I really should be able to experiment, take chances and occasionally even screw up, just because I have to pay my dues to get to the point where I can do those things?

No. 1 qualification for journalist today: accepting change.

I’m an idiot. I was just writing a post recommending David Weinberger’s Everything’s Miscellaneous — which I recommend constantly to editors, publishers, technologists, and investors — and so I wanted to link to my earlier post raving about the book and its importance in society. Only I now see that I never posted it. I’d read the book in galley form and had to wait to blog about it until it was released. But then I must have thought that I had blogged about it since I had talk about it so often (and the usual order for bloggers is to write about things first and then repeat what they’ve blogged in real conversation). So I’m the absent-minded professor. My brain is miscellaneous. I need someone to tag it. I’ll pay particular attention to the ‘missing’ tag. I’m criminally late to this but I do heartily recommend David’s book to anyone who wants to understand the fundamental change in the architecture of information in society, including media, learning, and business. It’s a mind-opener and almost as fun as listening to David himself. So if you haven’t already followed someone else’s recommendation to buy Everything’s Miscellaneous, please follow mine.

My Guardian column this week summarizes my lessons from the Networked Journalism Summit at CUNY. I’ve written about that at greater length on the blog. (Here’s a nonregistration version of the column.)

: UPDATE: The registration wall around Media Guardian has dropped. Bravo. Nevermind that they have the bad sense to let me write for them, Media Guardian is the best media coverage anywhere. So now you have no excuse.

Curmudgeonly contrarian Nick Carr picks his head up and comes to the defense of TimeSelect — after it is dead and buried — but misses some obvious economic realities. Carr quotes a Financial Times columnist who quotes a University of Chicago study (warning: a PDF filled with formulae) that points to the Washington Post and argues that the paper and its online site were not complementary but competitive and so the Post should have tried (as the Times did) to get money out of its online audience while the getting was good.

But this ignores the essential economic fact here that newspapers are no longer monopolies. With the internet, they gained new competitors the world around and lost the pricing power that their monopoly over production and distribution gave them. So it’s foolish to judge the Post or Times in isolation as if they could demand and get money from consumers who can now go to plenty of other sources.

Carr et al also ignore the economic reality of Google and the link becoming the new means of media distribution. If you hide your stuff, it cannot be found. And so long as you are hidden, your competitors will grab that distribution and marketshare from you.

Fred Wilson quotes a commenter on Carr’s blog, SidneyV, who instructs:

In periods of fundamental technological change & discontinuity, leaving money on the table may well be a smart strategy. . . . Sam Walton (whose descendants collectively are now the richest people in the world) pointedly refused to price the goods at the “going rate”, which a Harvard Business School prof of that time would have considered stupid. So Times would have been better off if they had recognized it at that time. At least they are smart enough to recognize it now. . . .

BTW, in late 80’s, Larry Ellison, nobody’s fool as a businessman, enunciated it thusly: in early markets, maximize marketshare, not profits. NY Times should have become *the* go-to place for news & views online. They always had the breadth & depth of content. The fact that they let a whole lot of other sources jump ahead speaks volumes of their failure of vision.

Carr thinks the Times left money on the table by taking down the wall. I think they burned money by putting it up. And once again, nowhere have I seen a decent financial analysis of the cost of TimesSelect: the cost of marketing to acquire subscribers and cope with churn, the cost of customer service, the cost of ad revenue lost, the cost of traffic lost to other sections and advertising lost there as a result. Clearly, the Times made that analysis and tore down the wall.

Matthew Ingram also rebuts the study Carr so dearly wishes to rely upon, first quoting the its conclusion regarding the Post: “Removing the [news website] from the market entirely would increase readership of [the newspaper] by 27,000 readers per day, or 1.5 per cent.” To which Matthew responds:

He therefore concludes that the Post has lost $5.5-million in newspaper revenue as a result of providing its news online for free. Does that make any sense? It might to an economist, but I would argue his thesis fails the reasonability test. If the washingtonpost.com website were to disappear or be locked behind a pay wall tomorrow, does anyone really think that 27,000 people would suddenly go out and start reading the paper edition?

Gentzkow clearly does. I think they would be more likely to just go elsewhere for their news, such as Google News or Yahoo News or MSNBC or CNN. It might be tempting — and make for a much simpler business case — to argue that a product like the Post competes primarily with its own website, and vice versa, but I don’t think that is the way things work.

Rob Hyndman also points out to Carr and company that lots of the people formerly known as readers like using the internet and wouldn’t it be foolish for a newspaper such as the Post or the Times to push them to competitors by putting up a pay wall?

Note finally Alex Patriquin’s analysis at Compete.com of NY Times op-ed audience since they took down that wall: “…[T]he Opinion section has more than doubled unique visitors, while the overall NYTimes.com site has grown by roughly 10% in the same period.”

Carr accuses of me being a member of the free-content hallelujah chorus who, he says, “take as a personal affront any attempt to charge for ‘content’ online.”

But Carr misinterprets me and projects a motive on me that is not there. I’m not saying necessarily that I want content to be free; hell, I’m a writer for a living and if I could be paid for my writing — and paid more than I am — I’d be delighted.

Instead, I am saying that content is free and companies like the New York Times and writers like me (and my students) as well as Carr had damned well better figure out how to work with that essential economic reality. Wishing that you could charge as if you were still a monopoly protected by the size of the gas tank of your nearest competitor’s trucks is foolhardy and dangerous. Carr’s analysis is as wistful as it is incomplete, sloppy, and hazardous.

And — this is what blows Carr’s mind — one response to this new networked economic reality is to view other media sources — your paper, the other guy’s news web site, your writing readers’ blogs — not as competitors but as complementary sources that enable you to do what you do best (and get the maximum value you can for that via advertising) and link to the rest (saving you the expense of inefficiency that news media still carries from its legacy today). One response to competition everywhere is to open up to collaboration, enabling you to identify and exploit your greatest value in a new economic reality.