When I was in Lisbon last week, I Twittered about it and out of nowhere, I got email from a journalist who wanted to come by for a chat. That’s one of those amazing internet moments: a connection that could never have been made otherwise. João Pedro Pereira came with his colleague, Pedro Ribeiro, and we had a really enjoyable chat on the balcony of my room at the Lapa Palace under a beautiful Portuguese sun as a photographer, Daniel Rocha, snapped away. What made it such fun was that Pedro announced that they’d be playing good-cop-bad-cop; João agrees with some of what I say on the blog, Pedro doesn’t. I’m still amazed they read it. I’m more amazed at the play this got today in their paper, Público, with a page-one promo and an inside section cover. I knew Portugal was a quiet country and this is the proof! Here’s the link. If they say I’m a fast-talking American who’s full of it, don’t tell me. Here’s the cover:
We’re having an open house for accepted students at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism today and you can watch it live here. The dean starts things off at 10:30a ET; I’m on describing the interactive program at 2p ET. Here’s the rest of the schedule.
At the official blog, Google VP Jonathan Rosenberg pays wonderful 80th-birthday tribute to math prof and satirist Tom Lehrer. I’m a big fan, too. I sang his Pollution at the 10th grade talent show. Says Rosenberg: “Mr. Lehrer is the Harvard mathematician turned parodist songwriter-performer whose sense of humor, intelligence and rhythm created a cult following that, weirdly enough, anticipated a lot of what Google’s culture tries to be about. . . . He was the best kind of “geek” before the word made its way into pop culture.” Another tribute:
I think there’s something more fundamental happening in Google’s rousing quarterly report yesterday than we’re seeing in the news reports about it (which are mostly eating crow over predictions to the contrary).
I think we’re seeing a new definition of “the economy.”
The old definition meant and measured the performance of big companies and their impact on each other. This was especially the case in media and advertising, which served only companies of a certain size because only large companies could afford to advertise in large outlets. But Google’s marketplace for advertisers of all sizes represents the small-is-the-new-big economy: no limit of small enterprises that can now add up to a critical mass. The fact that it is an auction marketplace also means that this economy is more fluid; it fills in voids.
And because this is a pay-per-performance marketplace and Google is motivated to continually improve relevance and performance, it is not a market driven by scarcity of space or audience. That makes it hard for old measures of the economy and media to figure it out. It doesn’t march to static metrics like fuel costs affecting prices and dollar conversions affecting passenger miles, all of which affect paid ad pages.
This is apparently what threw Comscore’s measurements into a tizzy as it tracked what it thought was a drop in clicks on Google ads while Google said it was tuning its ad placement to improve relevance and performance. There was another variable in there that old economic measures could not predict. Were we clicking less because we were poor and depressed or because Google tuned an algorithm? No way to know. After causing a storm with this measurements, Comscore tried to back up and say that it wasn’t necessarily saying that Google would earn less; the market didn’t listen and punished GOOG by 100 points but last night it punished Comscore’s stock in retaliation.
But the pity is that ad agencies and stock analysts, reporters, and stock buyers still pay attention to these outmoded measurements and the companies that push them. That’s why GOOG went down 100 points while the company’s revenue soared 30 percent. They were selling on the wrong measurements that led to the wrong assumptions. But mere methodology won’t help. Why?
The Google economy is just different.
(Disclosure and caveat: I bought GOOG at 512 and now don’t feel quite so stupid for it, but I did feel stupid in econ class.)
: LATER: The NY Times headline this morning said that “Google defies economy.” Perhaps that’s a typo. Should it be “Google defines economy”?
My Guardian colleague Mike Tomasky reveals much in his reaction to Jay Rosen’s post about the Off the Bus blogger who reported Barack Obama’s bitter comments. Tomasky thinks that news happens by journalism’s rules and he’s upset the rules have changed and wants new rules. But who ever gave journalism hegemony over news? News is what happens and what people witness and what they can now share, with or without journalists. That’s the new rule of the press-sphere: nobody rules.
Says Tomasky: “But if the old rules are fading away, there have to be a few new ones to take their place. There can’t just be anarchy.”
Anarchy is defined that as a world without his rules. So he wants to impose some:
So there are still some things to sort out about all this. I’d suggest, for starters, that any citizen-journalist who has made political donations be forced to list them at the bottom of every post . . . . I’d also say that citizen-journalists ought to have the responsibility, when the circumstances merit it, of seeking follow-up comment from the other side (or, in the case above, giving Obama aides the standard chance to clarify). That’s the tough part of journalism. Any idiot can run a tape recorder.
So fine - let’s change the rules. But let’s at least have some.
But what happens when you take away the label journalist and just call the person a witness? Does that person have to live by Tomasky’s rules? Or can that person still tell people what she heard and saw? Isn’t that simply put free speech?
I’m rather appalled that Tomasky also thinks that political candidates of all people ought to be able to benefit from the cloak of secrecy enabled by his rules. He makes it a club and if you violate the club’s rules and report what an elected official said, what happens to you? You get ejected?
So fine, eliminate the label of journalist. Citizens can listen. Citizens can talk. Citizens can share. Citizens can publish. When they hear something newsworthy, citizens don’t need to go running to flacks to make sure it’s OK to repeat what they heard. In that case, I’d prefer to have citizens telling me what happens. They are less beholden than journalists. They don’t care about the rules. They care about the news. That’s what happened in Off the Bus’ story. If it had been a journalist hearing what she heard, would she have run to the flack to get a cleaned-up version, as Tomasky suggests? Would she have kept it secret because that’s what his rules said? Or would she have reported it, as Off the Bus did?
Oh, and on Tomasky’s suggestion that citizens reveal their contributions, how about this: I still want journalists to reveal their sympathies. I’d say that’s every bit as relevant and fare more often hidden.
Richard Haass has a brilliant essay in Foreign Affairs, just out, arguing that we are moving from a world structure of multipolarity and bi- and unipolarity — that is, the Cold War and its aftermath — to an age of nonpolarity — that is, nobody’s in charge.
We are entering an open marketplace of influence. I think of this as a molecular era, when any of us are atoms that can attract and repel from other atoms around any common interests. The internet — read: Google — makes it possible for us to broadcast our interests and then to find, coalesce around, organize, and act in concert around them. One no longer need control institutions to control agendas, for the institutional structure is fading as are the institutions themselves: Haass chronicles the dilution of governments and other static bodies. I regularly follow the crumbling of the power of the fourth estate, the press. See also the fall of the firm. And add to that the long-ago decline of the first estate, the church. You could say that this is the day of the third estate — the rise of the people — which might otherwise be seen as anarchy except for the internet’s power to enable organization. But that organization is ad hoc; molecules can dissipate as quickly as they come together. We are still organized, only differently. We can organize ourselves even around old borders and rules. (See Andrew Tyndall’s ideas for how such organization can work.)
At last, here’s Haass setting forth is theory of unipolarity:
Today’s world differs in a fundamental way from one of classic multipolarity: there are many more power centers, and quite a few of these poles are not nation-states. Indeed, one of the cardinal features of the contemporary international system is that nation-states have lost their monopoly on power and in some domains their preeminence as well. States are being challenged from above, by regional and global organizations; from below, by militias; and from the side, by a variety of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations. Power is now found in many hands and in many places.
Besides six major world powers, he lists regional power; organizations (the powerful alphabets: UN, IMF, EU, OAS, OPEC, WHO); nation-states (e.g., California); companies; global media outlets (as opposed to declining local ones); militias (as he calls them); terrorist organizations; NGOs (he uses the Gates Foundation as an example).
“Today’s world,” he says, “is increasingly one of distributed, rather than concentrated, power.”
This includes, of course, media: “Alternatives to U.S.-produced and disseminated television are multiplying. Web sites and blogs from other countries provide further competition for U.S.-produced news and commentary. The proliferation of information is as much a cause of nonpolarity as is the proliferation of weaponry.”
Globalization and the falling of borders to many flows — “rom drugs, e-mails, greenhouse gases, manufactured goods, and people to television and radio signals, viruses (virtual and real), and weapons” — also has an obvious impact:
Globalization reinforces nonpolarity in two fundamental ways. First, many cross-border flows take place outside the control of governments and without their knowledge. As a result, globalization dilutes the influence of the major powers. Second, these same flows often strengthen the capacities of nonstate actors, such as energy exporters (who are experiencing a dramatic increase in wealth owing to transfers from importers), terrorists (who use the Internet to recruit and train, the international banking system to move resources, and the global transport system to move people), rogue states (who can exploit black and gray markets), and Fortune 500 firms (who quickly move personnel and investments). It is increasingly apparent that being the strongest state no longer means having a near monopoly on power. It is easier than ever before for individuals and groups to accumulate and project substantial power.
In the end, Haass argues that is is a more disorganized though not anarchic world: “With so many more actors possessing meaningful power and trying to assert influence, it will be more difficult to build collective responses and make institutions work. Herding dozens is harder than herding a few.” True, but I’d also argue that at a smaller scale level, it is easier to organize and influence than it ever was for those outside of institutions.
It’s the centralization of control that is really disappearing. Control moves to the edge. That does not mean the world is out of control (except to those who used to control it).
I think this is a big deal: LA Times editor Russ Stanton said the paper will “train all editorial employees in new skills in every medium in which we work (print/web/TV/mobile/radio).” I hope that also means training everyone in new opportunities: collaboration, networks, opening up the process… (By the way, I was honored to be included in Stanton’s reading list.)
Some people think I’m nuts for blogging when I could be doing real work (as if writing newspaper columns were the only real work). They ask me how much money I make directly from my blog and the answer is: not much. But to me, the blog is worth a million dollars - or more - for it brings me value in many other ways. So I thought I’d give you an accounting of that worth.
Last year, Buzzmachine.com, which has been in business, loosely speaking, since 2001, made $9,315 (£4,655) from two blog ad networks, $1,866 from ads on my RSS feeds, and $2,674 from Google ads, for a total of $13,855. Though I’ve written many a blog post and column lamenting that there aren’t better, richer ad networks to support grassroots media, when I add that up, I’d say it’s not too shabby. Nonetheless, you’d still be forgiven for thinking I shouldn’t have quit my day job.
To make the money I don’t make teaching, I consult and speak for various media companies and brands. The only reason I get those gigs is because companies read the ideas I discuss at Buzzmachine and ask me to come and repeat them in PowerPoint form and explore them with their staff. I’ve also been asked to teach executives how to blog (a class that should, by rights, take about two minutes). That work and the teaching get me to a nice income in six figures. So I’m not looking quite as idiotic now, I hope.
It was also because of the blog that I got this column. The MediaGuardian editors asked me to take some of the topics I write about online and turn them into columns; the newspaper is an aftermarket for the blog. It pays a bit, a few hundred dollars a column, but that’s not why I do it. I enjoy the discipline of taking the lumpy clay of a blog post and moulding it into a column. I like discussing column ideas with my community before I write them. And I quite like having you readers as an audience. So please don’t tell my editors that I like doing this so much I would do it for free.
I just got a book contract because of a notion that began in the blog and that I kneaded over and over for about a year. As I write What Would Google Do?, I continue to explore ideas on my blog, helping me to think them through. The US contract roughly doubled my consulting income last year; international contracts may add more.
If I add all that up over the past five years and the five to come, to me the blog is worth a few million (dollars, not pounds, sadly). But it’s worth even more than that. Buzzmachine has taught me about the new architecture of media; I wouldn’t have learned that without jumping into the new world myself. The blog has stoked my ego, getting me on TV and on conference stages to blather to audiences far and wide.
It has also checked my ego, as my readers never hesitate to challenge and correct me. It has forced me to be more open to new ideas. It has given me a second career playing with new toys; professionally, it keeps me young. Personally, it has made me countless new friends and reconnected me with old ones, owing to a blog’s ability to give a person a strong identity in Google searches.
People ask how I have the time to blog on top of everything else. But the real question is, how could I not blog when it leads to so much more? Finally, for a proper accounting, I should also give you the other side of the ledger: the blog costs me $327 a year for hosting. So this is one web 2.0 venture that is profitable.
