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November 13, 2004

So who's your pick for vice president?

: Cheney's in the hospital. Not to walk over him while still warm, but what if he's not veep anymore? What if he can't be inaugurated in January? What does the Constitution say about that?

Amendment XXV Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

It says "whenever."

So who's your pick to be his replacement? I'd pick Rudy Guliani for most anything these days; he's not exactly a Bushie but then, he'd stand a damned good chance of winning next time and with four years near the White House under his belt, he'd beat Hillary handily.

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The third axis of media: Medium, message ... and messenger

: At a meeting in Washington about making media more positive -- at which I felt quite out of place, but that's another story -- someone started in on the standard analysis of media -- medium v. message -- and that's when it occurred to me:

There is now a third axis of media: The messenger matters.

At the Online New Association in Hollywood, AP head Tom Curley made the old analysis with different terms: content v. container:

First, content will be more important than its container in this next phase...

You cannot control the "containers" anymore. You have to let the content flow where the users want it to go, and attach your brand -- and maybe advertising and e-commerce -- to those free-flowing "atoms."

But this, too, leaves out that third axis (though he starts to address it later). To keep alive this festival of alliteration, I'll say that in his analysis, the third axis of media beyond content and container is conversation.

This truly is new to media.

Media wasn't distributed before the internet. Now it is. Enter new messengers: citizens.

Media wasn't two-way before the internet. Now it is. Enter new modes: conversation.

It matters whether a message comes from a journalist who's trying to act objective... or a journalist who's being transparent about his or her perspective... or a partisan involved in the story... or someone in power... or a citizen (whom we used to call, in a centralized, one-way world a reader, viewer, user, consumer). The messenger matters.

And it doesn't matter, really, whether the message comes in print or video or online or HTML or RSS or MP3. But it does matter whether there is the opportunity for back-and-forth and questioning and addition and improvement. The conversation matters.

And there's the matter of time, too. Now news is instant and so analysis, fact-checking, perspective, and background all come later. Some see speed as a disadvantage: News is too fast for the truth to catch up. But speed can also be an advantage: I heard this week that it was only 18 minutes after Dan Rather's boo-boo that the truth started catching up with him. And look at stories this week about conspiracy theories on supposed vote irregularities: The Washington Post and the New York Times each conceded that though the theories started on the internet, so did their debunking. The messengers got their message out quickly by new media; other messengers joined in to add knowledge and correct mistakes; it happened quickly; we're all better off for it. Time matters, too.

: Now see Clay Shirky from that very Times story and his ruminations on quoter's remorse afterwards. What Clay said in The Times:

[Shirky] suggests that the online fact-finding machine has come unmoored, and that some bloggers simply “can’t imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president.”

And what he said about what he said:

But most of what rubs me wrong is that the quote is framed in a way that makes it about identity, not activity. One way to present this would have been to define an axis of interest: ‘some Democrats “can’t imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president.”’ Another would have been to define a relatively neutral category: ‘some writers “can’t imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president.”’

Neither of those seems wrong, but the way it’s phrased, I seem to be suggesting that there are bloggers unmoored from the fact-checking pattern because they are bloggers, rather than because they are Democratic partisans who publish their thoughts using weblog tools. And that’s where it goes wrong.

I have long been of the opinion that the word weblog has no crisp meaning anymore, and is going to fade as a defining term for the same reason ‘portal’ did — there are too many patterns to be conveniently contained by one word. But here the nature of weblogging and webloggers is defined, from outside, as not just a category, but an identity.

In short: The messenger matters. Or in other words: Sometimes, the messenger is the message.

: Now go to the rest of Curley's speech at ONA. He's a little too hung up on the content -- which is damned understandable, considering the business he's in:

The franchise is not the newspaper; it's not the broadcast; it's not even the Web site. The franchise is the content itself.

Still, that shows an understanding of the atomization of content. He also quite admirably understands the power of RSS as a new means of customized delivery and of weblogs as a new means of publishing.

And, as we've seen so clearly in the last year or so, consumers will want to use the two-way nature of the Internet to become active participants themselves in the exchange of news and ideas. The news, as "lecture," is giving way to the news as a "conversation." ...

There are 4 million bloggers out there on the Internet, making 400,000 posts per day. That works out to roughly 16,000 posts per hour, or about as many stories as the AP sends out in an entire day. And we thought we had a "fire hose!"

Some experts estimate that as many as a half-million of those bloggers are actually making money at it. Indeed, only 16 of the top 100 blogs, as tracked by Technorati, are ad-free....

An active two-way connection to the audience has always been the secret to success in our business, whether you're talking about inspiring a letter to the editor or selling classifieds and cars.

We can't help but benefit from this new engagement, and if some of the new "consumer-contributors" become "professionals" in their own right -- well, then, you've got more potential members for ONA.

He's 90 percent of the way there. Doc Searls would sit him down and teach him that we're not consumers anymore. But still, give the man credit.

: Last week, I went to three conferences (ouch): Ad:Tech (about online advertising), Foursquare (filled with top media execs and money people... and, no, I don't know how I got in either), and that meeting in Washington that was kind of about new media.

What struck me about all three is that they're getting there but they don't understand that third and new axis of media: the messenger.

They don't fully understand how distributed media is quickly becoming and how the old centralized marketplaces are becoming outmoded and what that is doing to all their businesses: Media companies are being challenged by their customers. Delivery companies are being challenged by a world of open standards and open source. Marketers are being challenged by their customers, too.

They don't understand how to engage in the conversation, how to go two-way: how to switch from DC to AC.

They don't understand that they're not in control now. That's what it's all about: Control. And given half a chance, your customers/consumers/readers/viewers/listeners/users/students/constituents/voters will always take control.

See Jarvis' First Law of Media: Give the people control of media, they will use it. The corollary: Don't give the people control of media, and you will lose.

Maybe I should call it Jarvis' First Law of Life.

We're taking control. We're contributing. We criticizing. We demand to be heard. We demand conversation. We want recognition for who we are and what we do and what we say and how and where we say it.

We messengers matter.

: LATER: See Jay Rosen on time and blogging at the ONA.

: But celebrity still matters, too. At ONA, Fimoculous is star-struck (he ain't the first) by Wonkette:

Post-party, en route to the bar, Wonkette passed by. I did a quick 180 and shuffled toward the elevator bank, where she was headed. Sliding in just as the doors were closing, I quickly realized I was in a packed elevator, and trying to start a conversation was going to be embarrassing. I mumbled a few words to her, she mumbled a few words back. She looked tired, so I left her alone.

Funny, here I am in Hollywood, and if Jennifer Aniston walked by, I would hardly care enough to give her the once-over glance. But if our favorite internet media starlet happens to sashay by -- that's completely a different story.

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Vlogger

: Amanda Congdon has an (almost) daily vlog.

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Citizens' marketing

: Here's a rundown of the viral marketing for Firefox. Of course, Firefox is as much a cause as a product; this won't work for most products. But it does show the power of the people formerly known as customers and now known as partners in this world of distributed media. [via Steve Rubel]

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