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April 13, 2004

The Pres' words
: He's no Tony Blair, but Bush had strong words tonight on Iraq:

America's commitment to freedom in Iraq is consistent with our ideals and required by our interests. Iraq will either be a peaceful, democratic country or it will again be a source of violence, a haven for terror and a threat to America and to the world....
As I have said to those who have lost loved ones, we will finish the work of the fallen.
America's armed forces are performing brilliantly, with all the skill and honor we expect of them. We're constantly reviewing their needs. Troop strength now and in the future is determined by the situation on the ground. If additional forces are needed, I will send them. If additional resources are needed, we will provide them....
Now is the time, and Iraq is the place, in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world. We must not waver....
Yet, in this conflict, there is no safe alternative to resolute action. The consequences of failure in Iraq would be unthinkable.
Every friend of America in Iraq would be betrayed to prison and murder, as a new tyranny arose. Every enemy of America in the world would celebrate, proclaiming our weakness and decadence, and using that victory to recruit a new generation of killers.
We will succeed in Iraq.

Good speechwriter. Things didn't stay quite so stentorian when the Q&A began, of course.

: WEDNESDAY UPDATE: Fred Wilson fisks the Pres.

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The Pres conference
: It is as if Bush listened to Jay Rosen and ignored the press in the room and addressed the people directly. He spoke for 20 minutes regarding Iraq with more eloquence and force than usual, about our obligation and our determination. He will send more troops. We cannot think of defeat.
And it's as if the press is listening to Rosen, too, and plays its bozo role perfect, asking the first question about Iraq and Vietnam and a "quagmire."
Now I hate to bring everything back to bloggers; it's so damned blogcentric, so blogotistical, so blognoxious.
But....
If I were the Pres' press secretary, I'd invite a few bloggers to the Pres conference and make sure the Pres called on them. These people, as citizens, would represent the citizens and their questions better than the detached, obvious, quagmiring reporters in the room. The press would hate it. But how could they complain, really, about citizens coming to the White House to question power? Isn't that what reporters are supposed to do? Not challenge power. Not disdain power. Question power.

: Just amazing that the reporters keep harping on wanting Bush to say that he made a "mistake" or "failed" or should "apologize."
Jeesh, do they think this is Oprah and they're all Dr. Phil?

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Is this on the test?
: Chris Albritton gives extra-credit questions about blogging for his NYU journalism class. Would you pass?

How many blogs are there?

What is considered the first blog?

What are the types of blogs; how do they differ from each other?

Why is blogging important?

Why should journalists know about blogging?

How can it help or harm journalism?

Who are considered some of the Web’s top bloggers?

What are the top five stories each on Daypop, Blogdex and Technorati for April 23, 2004? (You’ll have to wait to research this.)

What did you learn in this class?

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Pres conference
: Jay Rosen has a pre-Pres conference message.

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Enabling the conversation
: Honest to God, I was sitting on the couch last night thinking, gee, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a link on every post to see who's linking to it and what they're saying: the point-to-point Technorati.
And this morning, I see that Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing has done just that.
Dave Sifry explains how to do it yourself.
What's so great about Technorati is that it enables the conversation: You say something; I link to it and react; you link back; somebody else links to one of us. It's the conversation.
I looked at what Cory and Dave created and explained and said to myself it'd be even better if it did one more thing. And then came a message from Cory asking for two more great ideas: A counter so you can tell whether there are links and a degree-of-separation that lets you know not only who linked to this post but who linked to the links in this post (that is, who else linked to Cory's post above).
The conversation gets more and more voices. It's a chorus.

: Hmmm. I just tried it but it didn't work for me, because it didn't pick up the anchor tag for my permalinks....

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What it takes to win
: After Vietnam, the meme (were there memes back then?) was that we either should have done what it takes to win the war or gotten out a lot sooner. "What it takes" in that case was usually code for nuke 'em in Hanoi.
I wonder what the definition of "what it takes" is for Iraq.
It starts with more troops to establish and secure order for rebuilding and elections.
Andrew Sullivan says this morning what many have said: that the war was done well but the aftermath was -- is -- mishandled:

It's worth saying here what we now know the president got wrong - badly wrong. There were never enough troops to occupy Iraq. The war-plan might have been brilliant, but the post-war plan has obviously been a failure. We needed more force and we needed more money sooner. The president has no excuses for not adjusting more quickly to this fact: he was told beforehand; he was told afterward; but he and the Defense Secretary were too pig-headed to change course. I still favor the war; but I cannot excuse the lapses and failures of the administration in the post-war....

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GMail hooey
: Ripclawe send me email properly outraged at this: A California state senator is drafting legislation to decree Google's GMail "an invasion of privacy."
As I've said before, "privacy" is becoming the most over-used and badly used word of the age.
GMail, like it or leave it, is an opt-in service. You get it free because it has ads. Don't want the ads? Don't get the service. Want the ads? Take the deal.
This is like saying that an airline needing to know where you fly to give you frequent-flier miles is an invasion of privacy.
Poppycock.

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Early Bird blog
: The Wall Street Journal reports on a compilation of military reporting in worldwide press -- the "Early Bird -- that's hot reading in Washington, from Rumseld on down.
It's just a blog on paper.

The Current News Early Bird, or simply "the Bird," as it's known around the Pentagon, is compiled by a staff of four Pentagon employees from a grubby building it shares with a sheet-metal-workers union in downtown Alexandria, Va. Articles from major publications such as the New York Times and the London Telegraph jostle with squibs from more-obscure journals, such as Inside Missile Defense and Manufacturing & Technology News.
The Bird shows how, in a capital where information is a precious currency, even a humble news digest can take on huge influence if it has the right readers. With two U.S. wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and military affairs dominating headlines, the Bird has become indispensable for many people in Washington. It has been cited in Harvard dissertations and congressional testimony and spawned copycat publications in other government offices.
The White House, for instance, publishes its own compilation of news clips for officials who want to bypass reading the newspapers. So do agencies ranging from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to the Treasury Department. The State Department's "Media Reaction Unit" operates a massive clip service that publishes updated editions throughout the day. Called "Daily Clips," it has never had the insider heft that the Bird does. "Maybe we need a catchier name," one State Department official says.

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BloggerCon wiki open for business: Making blogs make money

: I just put up a wiki for the BloggerCon session on making blogs make money. Go here and PLEASE add to the lists of:
: Ways to make money
: What we need to make that happen
: The issues doing business raises
: Ways in which blogs can outdo traditional media
Please add more than subtract.
The hope is that we go into the session at Harvard with the discussion already well underway.
Also, please, continue to leave comments on the topic here and at the Bloggercon blog.
And remember: EVERYONE is active in this session -- even if you can't be in Cambridge. That's all the more reason to add your thoughts and ideas now.
Thanks. See you at Bloggercon.

: See also the great discussion on BoingBoing's hunt for a business model. Mark Frauenfelder's post here. Forum discussion on the topic here. Rebecca Lieb's good story on all this here.

: Here's the text of the wiki so far... (click on more to see it all):
First, a list of ideas for how to make money, roughly categorized:

SELL ADVERTISING:
$ Sell ads yourself
$ Use BlogAds
$ Use Google Adsense
$ Find a sponsor (the Gonzo Marketing underwriter model)
$ Pay-per-click advertising
$ Pay-per-sale advertising (e.g., selling magazine subs)
$ Have consumers pay for an ad-free site.
$ The Salon model: watch the ad or pay
$ Create networks of similar sites for advertising (e.g., a gadget blog ad network) to get a critical mass of audience
$ Join a network (e.g., WeblogsInc.)
$ What else?

BECOME A MEDIA PROPERTY
$ Build a consumer site (e.g., Gawker, Gizmodo, Engadget)
$ Build a trade site (e.g., PaidContent.org, IWantMedia...)
$ Build a local site with local advertisers
$ Build a brand and sell out (e.g., Daily Candy)
$ What else?

SELL PRODUCTS - INDIRECTLY
$ Amazon affiliate deals, for example
$ What else?

SELL PRODUCTS - DIRECTLY
$ Sell books you've written (e.g., Lileks)
$ Sell albums you've made (e.g., Ken Layne)
$ Sell art (e.g., Hugh MacLeod at Gaping Void)
$ Sell T-shirts et al (e.g., BoingBoing)
$ Create a book from your blog and sell it (e.g., Tony Pierce)
$ What else?

BLOG FOR HIRE
$ Blog for a blogging company (e.g., Gawker Media, WeblogsInc.)
$ Blog for a company
$ Blog for a publication (e.g., CalPundit)
$ Blog for a product (see Hugh MacLeod on a movie blog)
$ Blog for a politician (see Dean and all who followed)
$ Blog for an organization (charity, political party, etc.)
$ Blog for a trade association
$ What else?

BLOG TO BENEFIT YOUR CORE BUSINESS
$ Use your blog to promote your consulting (e.g., Rick Bruner)
$ Use your blog to promote your service (e.g., Denise Howell and a law firm)
$ Use your blog to get freelance writing gigs (e.g., Tim Blair)
$ Use your blog to get a book contract (e.g., Claire Berlinski and the Julia Child blog)
$ Use your blog to get hired at a publication (e.g., Elizabeth Spiers)
$ Use your blog to smoke out what's happening in your world and make contacts (e.g., Fred Wilson at AVC)
$ Use your blog to start a lecture tour
$ What else?

SELL SERVICES
$ Consulting about anything
$ Consulting about blogging
$ Translation
$ What else?

ASK FOR CONTRIBUTIONS FROM READERS
$ See Andrew Sullivan
$ Hold an online rent party (from the BoingBoing forum discussion)
$ Hold charity eBay auctions for your blog (people donate things instead of money; sales go to support your blog)
$ Other examples?

ASK FOR CONTRIBUTIONS FROM RICH PEOPLE
$ Foundation grants?
$ What about starting a blog foundation to support worthy blogs?
$ Other possibilities?

SELL YOUR CONTENT
$ Sell to your readers
$ Syndicate your blog content to other sites (e.g., IWant Media)
$ What else?

SELL PREMIUM MEMBERSHIPS
$ Members get newsletters
$ Members get to post comments
$ Members get content early
$ What else?

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER
$ Use the blog to seed a strade show (see Werblog)
$ Run MeetUps
$ Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match....
$ Other ideas?

ODD IDEAS
$ Establish the blog credit card: for every one you sell and every dollar spend, you or a network of bloggers gets a cut.
$ Please, please, come up with crazy and creative ideas!

Second, a starting lists of needs -- things that will enable blog business:

$ Advertisers will demand statistics on blog audience and usaage: total audience size; size for individual blogs and networks of blogs; traffic; demographics; behavior.... What else?

$ More sophisticated targeting: by content, by audience demographic, by author demographic, by geography... What else?

$ Network creation: How do we aggregate a network of, say, gadget blogs to get serious gadget advertising?

$ Payment structure: The elusive micropayment.

$ Payment structure: A way for blogs to take credit cards and not just PayPal. Our Yahoo Store.

$ Performance statistics (aka ROI -- advertiser return on investment): The more sophisticated, the better.

$ An infrastructure for direct sales (how do you sell the T-shirts you made?).

$ An infrastructure for membership... including, perhaps, membership across any networks of blogs.

$ Ways to save money -- e.g., P2P distribution and mirroring to reduce bandwidth costs.

$ What else??????

Third, what are the issues doing business on blogs raises?

$ Maintaining credibility in the face of taking advertising: How to separate church from state when you're just one person.

$ Libel liability, especially when you start making money.

$ Auditing business relationships: People will want to make sure you gave them what they paid for.

$ Making a financial committment: Once you start charging money, you can't just drop the blog. It's a matter of quality control.

$ Learning how to market your blog.

Fourth (if there's time) let's list the ways in which blogs can outperform traditional media businesses:

$ We can target advertising on relationships, not just on adjacency (print) or gross audience size (broadcast) or word coincidences (Google).

$ What else?

LINK | Comments (1)

The Daily Stern

: SUE THE BASTARDS: In an excellent FindLaw column, Julie Hilden suggests that Stern should sue the government. She then gives us all the reasons why it would be damned hard to win. And those reasons illustrate clearly how government pressure is tantamount to government action: Threatening and fining radio companies is the moral equivalent of government censorship. Some stirring quotes here:

Stern is right: There are serious First Amendment issues here. So why isn't he suing? After all, a federal statute allows suits against the government for damages when constitutional rights are violated. Stern certainly has suffered damages from losing his relationship with Clear Channel -- and he's likely to suffer more....
Stern's own speech has not become any more offensive or controversial than it always was. And the radio shock jock has built his career based on the government's repeated decision not to go after him for "indecency. " It's unfair for the government to change the rules so radically at such a late date.
And it's not only Stern who is being affected. Even now, warning memos are doubtless being circulated, and speakers who are worried about losing their radio or television podiums are doubtless keeping outrageous thoughts to themselves. And that's a great shame, because speech is often outrageous precisely because it hits on truth; it is often comic because it dares to say what we all know, but won't voice.
Only speech without fear is truly free. And when the rules for speech change, for no good reason, fear is inevitable -- and, as I explained in a prior column, the "chilling effect" that is anathema to the First Amendment is inevitable, too.
Howard Stern is unusual, and admirable, to resist that chill. But he may not be able to do so forever -- and if he caves, it won't be his fault. It will be the fault of the government for putting more pressure on the right to speak freely than even Stern can bear.

Put that in granite over the door to the FCC (and let it drop on a few commissioners' heads): Only speech without fear is truly free.

: MAGAZINES: I mentioned a few days ago that I was writing a story for a magazine on the FCC and Stern. I just killed it because of the editing. I may just post it here. More on this later.

: REASONABLE: The Kalamazoo Gazette gets it. Howard Stern isn't their cup of tea but free speech is. In an editorial yesterday, it says:

Should there be sweeping legislation authorizing censorship? Even an amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Simply expunge the section of the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression?
Obviously, none of the above is a realistic approach. What could work, however, are market forces. Television and radio shows can be instantly switched, or sets turned off -- if only people would. Companies sponsoring programs whose ratings are dropping would be likely to review their advertising budgets. If seamy stuff on the Internet begins losing "hits," advertising support also could erode.
As to print publications such as the Gazette, we -- as a family newspaper -- are constantly mindful of our readers' views, which they don't hesitate to give us when they believe certain content to be inappropriate.
In other words, regulation and legislation -- while necessary in certain circumstances --- can only do so much. The real solution to what PGA and many others see as a threat to our civilization's values lies in the free marketplace. That's where censorship is perfectly legal, and can work.

: DIRTY WORDS EVERYWHERE: Staci Kramer sends us news that sports teams are now nervously hitting the bleep button:

The Atlanta Hawks apologized Monday for playing a hip-hop song that contains obscenities and other graphic language.
The song, "Party Up" by rapper DMX, was played over the public address system during a timeout in the second quarter of Saturday's night game against the Boston Celtics at Philips Arena.

It appears they ran the wrong version.

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Free wiki
: Can you recommend a place where I can quickly put up a free wiki for Bloggercon? I want to put up the list of notes -- from comments here and at the Bloggercon site and my own -- in preparation for the session on making blogs make money.
: Update. Nevermind. I found SeedWiki and it's great.

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