BuzzMachine

Bill Keller of the Times responded to my complaint about his speech and characterization of my views about professional, mainstream media and journalism and citizens. I’m glad we’re moving closer together but I still want to correct the record. The exchange. First, from Keller:

Jeff,

After reading your long response to my Guardian speech, I concede it’s time to push the Refresh button on my summary of the debate. It’s clear that you (and others I used to think of as blog triumphalists) have moved some distance from our 2005 “citizen journalist” exchange and from the day you lectured a New York Times offsite meeting about the certain doom mainstream media faced at the hands of amateur journalists (bloggers) and our own readers (Digg was big on your agenda that night.) I hope it’s clear — from what we’re doing on our website, and from that speech last week — that I’ve moved some distance in your direction. My respect for blogs as a tool of journalism is not the least bit grudging, and my conviction that professional journalists should collaborate with their audience is heartfelt. That’s especially true when you have an audience as educated and engaged as ours.

We may — I’m not really sure — disagree on the relative parts to be played by the amateur and the professional in our journalistic future, or on the pace of change. We don’t disagree on the value of what you call “networked journalism.”

My aim in the speech was not to demonize anyone, but to give heart to the many journalists and consumers of journalism who worry that quality journalism is endangered. For all the many things the new medium has brought, it has not supplanted trained reporters in the field, the discipline of good editors, or the backing of brave and independent journalistic institutions. And many mainstream journalists have proven themselves enthusiastic and agile practitioners of the new forms. The enemy, as I said in the speech, is not disruptive technology, not bloggers, not press-hostile government. It is the despair that derives from an inability to see the enduring value of the old and the promise of the new.

Cheers,
Bill

My response:

Bill,

Thanks so much for the response. I’m delighted that we’re meeting on the road, even though neither of us is exactly sure where it will lead.

I’m particularly glad to hear you endorse the value of networked journalism and I eagerly await seeing collaborative efforts from the Times and its public. You do, indeed, have a very wise crowd and that is a mighty force waiting to be mobilized to serve journalism and society. If I may suggest, you might even want to ask them for collaborative ideas; I’m sure they will have many good ones.

I’m also eager to push that refresh button and move forward, not back, leaving this tiresome us-v-them debate behind.

But I can’t do so without still correcting the record. I’m afraid you misremember and thus mischaracterize my stand. And considering that I am teaching students bound for professional journalism at CUNY and that I write about this very topic for the Guardian, where you spoke, it’s important to me to be clear on that record.

I’ve never predicted and certainly have not wished for the doom of professional journalism. Quite the contrary, I have been arguing — apparently not clearly or forcefully enough — that collaboration among professionals and citizens is a key not just to survival but growth for journalism.

If you can show me a citation to the contrary, I’ll fess up to it. But I do not find the sentiment you refer to in our 2005 exchange. Neither did I find it in the presentation I gave at the Times offsite. I looked up that Powerpoint and it included these lines:

We live in a post-scarcity era
Q: How do you grow with a citizens’ media world that doubles every 5 months?
A: You share: content, training, tools, promotion, and, yes, revenue.

And this:

The crowd is wise.
How do we enable the people we called our audience to become our partners?

And this:

How do we break free of the shackles of our medium and our history and become enablers… aggregators… connectors… networkers… trainers… vetters… and members of our community?

At the end, I filled a few slides with ideas for collaborative, networked efforts with your wise crowd and ended them with this hope:

This is how we grow.

Bill, that doesn’t sound like the threat of a would-be conquerer or the schadenfreude of a blog triumphalist with a death wish for mainstream media and journalism. Because it’s not. I have been consistent in this: I argue that we need professional journalism and organizations to survive and prosper and I hope that one way, just one way, to help journalism — indeed, to help it grow — is to work collaboratively with the public because now we can. That was the point of my initial hubristic open letter to you that started our exchange. I want to see these worlds come closer together, not move farther apart. That is my constant theme.

So we agree that we need journalists trained and supported in reporting and neither I nor any blogger I read has ever suggested that they should be supplanted. They can, however, be complemented.

There is nothing to be served by continuing the us-v-them debate. It is unproductive and ultimately damaging and certainly has become boring. Can we mutually call it over? Yes, press that refresh button, please. Let’s talk instead about the new opportunities we have to support journalism — both the activities and the business of journalism — by using new tools, including those of collaboration. As I said in my blog response to your speech, I would very much like to hear your vision for that, your vision for the future we all want journalism to have.

Early next year, I’ll be holding a conference next door at CUNY on new businesses models for news. Let’s discuss it there.

As is my habit, I’ll be blogging this: a coda to our earlier exchange.

Thanks,

- jeff

LATER: Keller responded to my email and I to his, both below. I don’t intend to make this a Dickensian serial as was our last exchange. But I’ll share the latest. From Keller:

Jeff,
It’s nice to renew the conversation, and thanks for clarifying your views on the coexistence of professionals and amateurs. Whether or not you intended to come across as a blog triumphalist and prophet of mainstream media doom, that’s certainly the way your audience — at that Times event — understood you. Perhaps it was in the ear of the beholders. In any case, I’m happy to be corrected, and will be careful to credit your good sense and good will when this subject comes up again.
Cheers,
Bill

And my reply:

Bill,
Oh, doom is still possible if mainstream stewards do not care for their charges. We agree that the collapse of professional journalism would be tragic. I warn against that. But then, as I demonstrated with the slides I quoted in my last email, I try my best to suggest how that doom might be averted — and I’m glad to see the Times taking some of those steps. Does that make me an advocate of doom? Hardly. A prophet of doom? Not even. An ally in the race against doom? I’d hope so. I think this is a case of what I heard from the natives when I lived in California (and one also hears from veterans of therapy in New York): You and your colleagues may be “projecting.” I suggest that the paper’s management should stop seeing enemies at every corner and start seeing allies, even colleagues. That’s my point.
Onward. I’m eager to hear your ideas for collaboration with citizens and see these ideas in the paper and online.
best
jeff

Meanwhile, friend Jay Rosen sends this wonderful example of the potential for mobilizing citizens in acts of journalistic collaboration from — cough — the Washington Post and Dan Froomkin, writing at NewAssignment.net, HuffingtonPost, and Neiman Watchdog (now that’s thinking distributed):

Bloggers and other citizen journalists have a new and exciting opportunity to find and shed light on stories the mainstream media are missing – by combing through transcripts of recent Congressional oversight hearings. Without any fanfare, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has started posting preliminary transcripts of many of its hearings on its Web site, giving everyone a chance to pore through testimony and find news the MSM may have overlooked.

After four years during which virtually no administration officials were called to Capitol Hill to explain themselves, the new Democratic majority in January revived the tradition of closely examining Executive branch activities, with House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman leading the charge. But with a few exceptions, you wouldn’t know it from reading the paper or watching the news. One of the dirty little secrets of Washington journalism is that very few news organizations assign staff to cover anything but the most high-profile hearings and debates on Capitol Hill. As a result, few if any reporters show up for oversight hearings – and those who do tend to leave early. . . .

This is a great opportunity for citizen journalists to become Washington reporters. If you find some overlooked news in these or other transcripts, e-mail me your blog posts or your findings, and I’ll try to make sure that they aren’t overlooked as well.

Zenith Optimedia came out with its regular report on ad spending (coverage at AdAge, PaidContent, and MediaGuardian). Online will hit many milestones:

We predict internet advertising to pass three milestones over the next three years. We expect it to overtake radio advertising in 2008; to attain a double-digit share of global advertising in 2009; and to overtake magazine advertising in 2010, with 11.5% of total ad spend.

That will put online third behind TV (37.5% share) and newspapers(25.4%). Nothing surprising there.

What strikes me again is how behind the US is versus the UK and Europe. Says PaidContent: “Britain, Denmark, Norway and Sweden are the only four places where online ads account for 15 percent or more of total spend, according to the TimesOnline. But Zenith’s projections say that will change by 2010, when the internet will comprise more than 20 percent in each of the same four markets and more than 15 per cent of the ad spend in ten other countries.” Adds MediaGuardian: “Internet ad spend is currently ranked behind radio globally but will surpass the medium’s share next year. In the more developed UK market digital ad spend passed radio last year.” Note that this occurs even though UK radio is better than US radio.

Why is the US behind? Is it that the national media markets in those countries are more competitive and thus, perhaps, innovative? Is it something about the culture of American agencies or advertisers — and if so, what? Is it the nicotine habit of TV upfront here? Is online just more of a pain to buy than upfront? The audience is shifting online faster than the advertisers. Online is more efficient and measurable and more competitive, thus less expensive. So tell me: why are we behind?

Your theories or, better yet, experience?

Bob Garfield continues his jihad against Comcast with a live podcast (oxymoron?) on December 11 featuring me on the same bill with Ralph Nader and Harry Shearer. Bob’s not letting up.

Yesterday, I sent Bob what I thought was astounding statistics from the oft-quoted University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index on Comcast and cable and satellite TV, which reported that the industry suffers “the lowest level of customer satisfaction among all industries covered by ACSI.” Yes, even worse than airlines, hospitals, and Microsoft. Yet, of course, they still make money money because they enjoy monopolies … for now. Says ACSI:

There seems to be an element of monopoly-like pricing in the cable industry: basic cable services rose 5 percent in 2006 and 93 percent over the past decade, nearly four times the rate of overall consumer prices during the period. Such pricing power usually comes with some level of monopoly protection and most cable companies have little competition at the local level. This also means that a cable company can do well financially even though its customers are not particularly satisfied. Comcast is one of the lowest scoring companies in ACSI. As its customer satisfaction eroded by 7% over the past year, revenue increased by 12%. Net income went up by 175% and Comcast’s stock price climbed nearly 50%. In the first quarter this year, Comcast added 75,000 new cable TV subscribers, a 49% increase, and posted an 80% rise in earnings over the previous first quarter.

In short: They can still make money screwing their customers.

But be warned, cable oligarchs: Your monopoly will end, as newspapers’ did. You will fall. But for you, no one will cry.

I wish Google would win wireless spectrum and use it to create an open network that will finally bring cable and phone companies the competition they, and we, so richly deserve. Cable’s business is built on telling its customers what they cannot do. Google is built on letting us do what we want to do. Cable needs an attitudectomy.

Here’s my Guardian column this week, a much shorter and more cogent version of this post about changes in friendship brought on by the social web.

Now this is targeted advertising: I was looking at Platial — the site that lets you push pins into Google Maps — for something I’m writing and I found an ad there for the Sony GPS add-on to cameras, which lets you record your location with your photo, a cool device I saw in action at the Guardian. It’s perfect targeting — and, I’m sure, not expensive marketing — and it struck me that no Google algorithm would have made that placement. In fact, Platial would know best what plays with its audience. This reminds me of the discussion of sell-side advertising, the idea of the publisher picking the ads because it’s the publisher who best understands the audience and the context, and the advertiser pays on performance. It still makes sense; we just need the infrastructure to enable it.