Traveling to another city could be a lot more interactive in the next few years. Picture yourself stepping out of the airport and point your phone’s video camera at something only to see any news story, dining menu, coupons, short documentaries or whatever you can think of. That seems to be the next step for news.

Jeff Jarvis posted some points on his blog BuzzMachine about these possibilities. Out of all the videos this one is my favorite:

This is an amazing opportunity for news organizations to reconnect with their customers and get some optimal advertising opportunities that can garner the amount of money they need to run an efficient business.

Every address, every building, every business has a story to tell. Visualize your world that way: Look at a restaurant and think about all the data that already swirls around it — its menu, its reviews and ratings and tags (descriptive words), its recipes, its ingredients, its suppliers (and how far away they are, if you care about that sort of thing), its reservation openings, who has been there (according to social applications), who do we know who has been there, its health-department reports, its credit-card data (in aggregate, of course), pictures of its interior, pictures of its food, its wine list, the history of the location, its decibel rating, its news…

And then think how we can annotate that with our own reviews, ratings, photos, videos, social-app check-ins and relationships, news, discussion, calendar entries, orders…. The same can be said of objects, brands — and people.

Jarvis suggests adding these qualities to people as well as to buildings and points of interest, but I’m not sure how I feel about that. First that would require us to have some kind of RFID tag on us at all times, allowing the government to track everything (even what they can’t right now). But also, I’m just not sure there is a good market for that. Yes, it’s great to know more about other people, but there is a sense of privacy that I know would like to have, and I think I’m part of majority in that respect. (Note I said “sense” because I am aware that privacy is realitve nowadays.)

Anyway, if news organizations (such as Gannett or News Corp) could pick this technology up and get it working before Google does it for free, it might be the direction needed for news to get back on track to a successful business model.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hyperlocal Online Media Acquisitions Heat Up (brucemarler.com)
• Should Hyperlocal be Hyperniche? (onemanandhisblog.com)

My Google Reader probably trebled in size in 2009. It’s where I get at least 50% of information, gossip, inspiration and ideas on multimedia,  journalism and the future of news. As a Christmas treat, I thought I’d share some of the best blogs of 2009 with you….

Digital Journalism

10,000 words: Mark Luckie’s site is a goldmine of beautifully presented practical advice for digital journalists. His posts have become less frequent since he became re-employed, but each one is still as valuable.

Journalism 2.0: Mark Briggs is bringing out a new book for digital journalists in 2010 – expect it to become a core text on all journalism course reading lists.

Video Journalism

Advancing the Story: Deborah Potter’s blog on video journalism serves the local American market best of all, but it still has useful advice on shooting video and interviews.

Rosenblum TV: Michael Rosenblum’s blog isn’t your standard VJ fare. As the father of the medium, he is determined to see it revolutionised, and is a vocal herald of the death of traditional TV news. He has pitched for funding on an ambitious plan to give out 1,000 Flipcams in New Jersey, and launches a new video academy in New York in 2010.

The Outernet: David Dunkley-Gyimah’s single handedly pioneered the space between video journalism and cinema; his work resembles multi-million dollar Hollywood flicks. As artist-in-residence at the South Bank Centre in London, expect more news/art mashups in 2010.

Video Journalist: Glen Canning’s site offers some great practical tips for video journalists.

Bob Kaplitz: Bob Kaplitz’s blog is a must for anyone trying to get to grips with the basics of video journalism. He’s done what no-one’s really thought to do up until now – use video to teach video journalism. Clever, huh?

Radio

David Elstone: a young news editor by anyone’s standards, David’s posts on practical radio journalism are useful for any radio journalist, especially in the UK.

NewsLeader: Justin King has used Twitter very effectively this year to share advice and tips for radio journalists in the UK and elsewhere. There’s more good stuff on his blog.

James Cridland: just returned from a round-the-world tour of radio, Radio Futurologist James has posted from Canada and the US, where he’s been meeting radio producers everywhere and sharing the future of radio with the rest of us.

Photojournalism

RESOLVE, Livebooks: not just a blog, RESOLVE, managed by Miki Johnson, is also a community of photojournalists all seeking the future for their craft. The After Staff series from summer 2009 is a superb library for anyone who’s been laid off and wants to make it in the scary new freelance world.

The Travel Photographer: Tewfic El- Sawy niftily picks up the best photojournalism from around the world and showcases it. A forward thinking blog, the Travel Photographer also presents new multimedia from photogs.

Lens Blog: The New York Times’ home for photojournalism is a beautiful resource of the best images from the around the world, plus occasional advice from the experts. Great for inspiration.

Writing, Blogging & Thinking

CopyBlogger: possibly the most famous blogger in the world, Brian Clark’s Copyblogger is vital for anyone who wants to understand how to build an audience and avoid boring them with dull words.

Steven Pressfield: a recent discovery for me, Steven’s Wednesday Writing tips not only cover the art of storytelling, but also shares advice on dealing with your own mental resistance and the limiting mind.

Freelance Switch: the ultimate resource for freelancers in all disciplines,  this site has regular articles on writing, getting and keeping clients.

Lateral Action: I have referred to Mark McGuinness’ work several times in the last year, not least because it’s so damn inspiring. If you’re a creative entrepreneur, and want help staying motivated, managing your time or pushing creative boundaries head to Mark. Lateral Action is particularly special because he’s teamed up with Brian Clark from Copyblogger (above) – a dynamic duo if ever there was one.

Career Renegade: also high up on the inspiration chart is Jonathan Fields site Career Renegade. If you’re a journalist thinking of launching your own startup, and creating your own “renegade career”, for Gods sake, read his book first.

The News Business & entrepreneurship

Directors Blog: since setting up POLIS at the London School of Economics, Charlie Beckett has held conferences and given countless conferences on the future of journalism. He has also influenced the future with his ideas of “networked journalism”; his blog today provides academic insight into journalism in the brave new world.

Headlines and Deadlines: blogging from the frontline of regional press in the UK Alison Gow’s blog has insight surrounded by lots of good links.

Killer Startups: every day 15 new internet startups are posted and critiqued. You won’t find any news ones on here, at least not yet, but it’s a fantastic inspiring resource for anyone thinking of going entrepreneurial.

News Innovation: with the banner “new business models for news” you know this blog is asking the right questions; follow it and you might get the answer. In the meantime, its posted some excellent videos of Jeff Jarvis (see below) explaining why the future of news is entrepreneurship.

BuzzMachine: Jeff Jarvis has emerged as the key proponent of “entrepreneurial journalism” and is leading the way in the classroom with his work at CUNY. His blog explains with passion why the future of news is entrepreneurship. Expect more pioneering ideas from Jeff in 2010.

Online Journalism Blog: one of the best sites for analysis on all things digital, Paul Bradshaw’s blog leans towards the often ignored arena of uncovering, analysing and producing data.

Paul Balcerak: from the US, Paul Balcerak sees the future, and then writes about. He shared some of the most creative uses of video journalism earlier this year, and expertly slams down anyone who is stupid enough to resist the future.

Mashable: in the TechCrunch v Mashable war, I am (after trialling both) firmly with the latter. Techcrunchers slate Mashable for just sharing funny Youtube videos, but it covers the revolution in journalism far better and with a much more positive outlook.

The Media Business: Richard G Picard’s blogs are more like essays, but their insight into business models for journalism is profound, and should be on the reading list of anyone thinking of going entrepreneurial. His articles  in 2009 have been shared on countless blogs.

Design

Design Reviver: unless you’re solely a radio journalist you should really exploit the internet’s fantastic resources for visual inspiration. Design Reviver is one of them, featuring among other things, great wordpress themes and photoshop tutorials.

ISO50: Scott Hansen is not only a talented musician but an exceptional graphic designer who shares his own work and those that inspire him. His retro colours and collages are perfect inspiration, and his taste in music is on the ball.

FFFFound: a must for visual journalists of any kind seeking inspiration. A warning though – you’ll struggle to click through the 100+ marvelous designs and photographs from around the world which will filter into your reader.

Multimedia

4iP: it’s always worth following the latest developments from 4iP towers; they are one of the major funders of public service startups in the UK, and their blog provides a good idea of what the latest developments are – and what they fund.

Duckrabbit’s Blog: Ben Chesterton and David White have shown the rest of us how to do multimedia, especially for non-profit clients. When not producing powerful stories for those without a voice, Ben and David passionately blog about the good, the bad and the ugly of multimedia journalism.

Bombay Flying Club: meanwhile in warmer climes, the three talents of Poul Madsen, Henrik Kastenskov and Brent Foster are producing equally gorgeous content for non-profits all over the world. Their blog acts as a showcase of their beautiful work, and is a great inspiration for anyone.

Innovative Interactivity: Tracy Boyer’s seriously on the ball when it comes to using multimedia and interactivity to tell news stories. Subscribe to her blog and you’ll get thoughtful critiques of some quite amazing work which is paving the way towards the future.

A daily dose of all these blogs have filled my mind with things I never thought possible, and work of superb quality. And there’s already room for more…what blogs do you recommend?

Lots of great videos on the News Innovation website on all things HyperLocal from the recent NewBizNews conference held in November at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. This is a follow up to the FOCAS 2009 conference held in Aspen in August, where news industry pundits gathered together to discuss the future of journalism.

Lots of fantastic sessions on:

• Tools for HyperLocal sites: here and here
• Partnerships between Local Bloggers and mainstream metro newspapers
• Ad serving
• Journalistic Quality for independent hyperlocal newssites
• Starting a HyperLocal blog or site
• Marketing to, and Engaging the, Community
• … and much more

To get the gist of the “spirit” of the conference, please see the video below of Jeff Jarvis’ presentation to 500 German media executives earlier in the month:

Good stuff.

glenn

I’m sure most readers of this blog also follow US new media giant Jeff Jarvis’ blog over at Buzz Machine.

Jeff was telling us the future of journalism is entrepreneurial before anyone had really considered it and Buzz Machine is a hive of interesting writing. Today Jeff posted the results of an Entrepreneurial Journalism class where his CUNY students have been pitching their own business ideas.

For obvious reasons he’s not giving much away, but what he did reveal about the pitches that won some development cash (and those that didn’t) offers some excellent inspiration and ideas to the rest of us:

The four ideas that won some money from the McCormick Foundation are (emphasis mine)

• a platform for news assignments
• a mobile sports application
• a creative, algorithmic answer to filter failure
• and ClosetTour a new media site dedicated to fashion

And those that didn’t:

• a specialised womens travel service
• a specialised local real estate (property) service
• a cool food idea
• 2 business-to-business ideas
• a hyperlocal idea
• a service for NGOs
• a commercial service for NGOs

What’s great is the huge variety of ideas – covering news, fashion, food, sport. What’s more as Jeff notes:

A few were built around the need not just to create content but to curate it. Most are highly targeted. Some saw the potential in specialised local services. Some saw the need to go mobile to service the public. Some are international. Some are multimedia. A few saw the need to make news fun, others to make news useful.

And Jeff stressed the need for every business to cut a profit in order to survive. We must be capitalist about it now.

Anyone outside of CUNY or the US should read this and take inspiration. Although Jeff’s descriptions are necessarily vague, use them to fuel your own ideas and thoughts for entrepreneurial models. Think about the importance of serving a market, having a niche, finding a gap in the market – and being able to sum up your business in an elevator pitch.

Earlier today a friend showed me plans for an exciting news business in the North of  England, which I can’t  say anything about at the moment. But all this adds strength to my conviction that, if 2009 was the year of “great media collapse” then 2010 will be the year it rises from the ashes.

Read this post in Russian, translated by Google. Читать этот пост на русском языке, перевод Google.

I guess I was showing some travel fatigue the other day in Barnaul. As our interpreter translated for a Russian speaker, I felt a vibration from my iPhone and looked down at a text message from Mimi, sitting about four feet away on the other side of the interpreter.

“U ok?” my phone asked. My stomach was grumbling a bit. “Maybe,” I texted back.

We exchanged a look and I shrugged and resumed listening to the interpreter. Then the phone vibrated again and I looked again: “U ok?” I might have rolled my eyes. Yes, I was fine, just a bit tired. I looked over at her and nodded. She looked back at me quizzically.

The questions just kept coming: “U ok?” “U ok?” “U ok?”

Actually, getting a little annoyed.

By the time the conference took a break, we were both annoyed. Her phone was repeating, “Maybe,” “Maybe,” “Maybe.”

We were trapped in some kind of text-message loop, like a 2-year-old impatient for dinner and oblivious to redundancy. We tried clearing out our conversations, turning off our phones and turning them back on. The messages just kept coming: “U ok?”

I wondered whether 611 would take me to AT&T customer service all the way from Siberia. No. I got a voice in Russian and then in English telling me that the number didn’t work.

Back in our hotel room, lots of messages later, I went to AT&T’s web site, looking for either an international customer service number I could call or some online troubleshooting help. I tried several links and asked some questions, but the automated answers didn’t help.

I gave up in frustration and turned to Twitter:

AT&T’s online customer service is worthless. The international section gives no way to call customer service when traveling internationally.

But I didn’t just want to vent about AT&T and its web site. I wanted help. So I tweeted again:

Since AT&T’s customer service wouldn’t help, does anyone know how to stop a text message from repeating endlessly on the iPhone?

My first response came from @ATTJason:

I’m with AT&T and saw you were having trouble. Can I help? I’m following.

I replied in a direct message:

Same text message keeps repeating. How can I get it to stop? Thanks, Jason

Meanwhile, @ATTTina http://twitter.com/ATTTina/status/6358135307:

I will be happy to assist Jason has left for the day.

But Jason hadn’t stopped helping me. He suggested I turn the phone off for a few minutes. I had already turned the phone off a couple times, but wasn’t sure how long. I tried it again and the messages stopped coming.

After 7 public and direct messages from the two of them and seven direct messages from me, AT&T had a happy customer. My text messages had stopped and @ATTTina had assured me we wouldn’t be charged if the message spree sent us over our plan limit.

So I tweeted my pleasure as readily as I had tweeted my disgust:

I was frustrated with AT&T website’s customer service, but @ATTJason & @ATTTina jumped in quickly & helpfully on Twitter. Thanks!

Jason and Tina helped not only me but @davidwolfgang, David Wolfgang, a media law student at the University of Missouri. Early on in the exchange, he tweeted:

I’m having the exact same problem, so I’m curious to see what you find out from AT&T.

After I shared Jason’s solution, David tweeted back, “Thanks for the info – it helped.”

I have been watching the growing use of (or failure to use) social media for customer service, aware of Jeff Jarvis’ “Dell Hell” saga, Dave Collins’ “United Breaks Guitars” YouTube sensation (6.3 million views and counting) and the exchange between “Dooce” blogger Heather Armstrong and Maytag.

I asked Toby Bell, Research VP at Gartner and an expert in reputation management, how companies are using social media to improve customer service (and head off angry customers who could harm their reputations using social media).

Twitter is a “customer sentiment analysis goldmine,” Bell said. Smart companies can use Twitter and other social tools to “build a foundation of trust,” he said.

In my case, AT&T certainly did that. Like many iPhone users, I’ve always been annoyed at the exclusive deal Apple struck with AT&T. I hit enough dead spots in the 3G coverage that I’ve always chuckled at Verizon Wireless’ “there’s a map for that” ads (though I had some customer service complaints when I had a Verizon phone a few years ago). I was one frustrated AT&T customer, obviously willing to share my pique broadly, that day in Siberia.

And now? Well, I’m OK. Thanks for asking.

Full email response from Toby Bell:

Yes… most companies with a stake in customer service remember ‘Dell Hell’ and the trouble one blogger  - in this case Jeff Jarvis – can cause. And, most now monitor (or work with agencies that have digital media practices to do so) all social media to both understand and leverage influence there as well as react to negative reputation signals quickly and engage in conversations with the people who mention them or their products.

Twitter users jumped in with little appreciation for the potential downside of micro-blogging. Early examples of risky behavior included the woman who, after interviewing for a job at Cisco, tweeted to everyone “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” Despite not actually deciding to take the job, Cisco’s people were monitoring and reacted. Much din follows on monitoring, engagement, and reputation.

In another early case, an account executive for Ketchum lands in Memphis and tweets that it ’sucks’. FedEx, having made substantial effort to promote the town to its people, is dismayed to have its ad agency badmouthing its HQ in public. Changes ensue to policies and practices in both companies.

Twitter has become a customer sentiment analysis goldmine, but detecting and reacting appropriately to influential tweets is still art – not science. But many companies use Twitter to keep track of issues, launch trial balloons, and locate experts. It is an ‘unfocus group’ with enormous potential if related to by interested, enthusiastic, and social media sensitive pros.

Gartner published a report called “Negative Reputation Events and Their Outcomes” in 2008 that describes a number of business problems caused by social media and approaches taken to solve them – whether successful or not. The number of such negative events are growing. The number of technologies to help uncover the culprits and react faster is also growing. But ideally, companies will focus not simply on crisis management but instead on building a foundation for a positive relationship with customers by whatever means possible.

I think that Twitter monitoring can have substantial value in uncovering and remediating problems identified by the early adopters there. It can also build a foundation of trust in the companies who engage positively in social media to support enterprise Internet reputation management.

To read all three of my mobile-first posts as a pdf with a table of contents:

Mobile First Strategy
I used to watch the crowds in airport lounges when I traveled, studying how people read newspapers. Even with circulation declining, you could see people reading newspapers intently. Especially after 2001, people would have plenty of time to read while waiting for flights, and newsstands stocked a variety of papers to choose from.

Look around an airport lounge now. You’ll see more people looking into their phones than holding newspapers.

I get disgusted as people in news media companies fret over trying to squeeze some money out of Google or trying to charge for the privilege of reading our content. Whatever the merits of those arguments, they are essentially pleas to slow time down. But when I see people in the airport lounge, I know time is only accelerating with each tap of their thumbs.

My concern over this acceleration pushed me last month to call for news companies to pursue a mobile-first strategy. I was pleased with how many people agreed with my call, either in blog comments, tweets or their own blog posts. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen wasn’t satisfied, though. He called for me to “describe what a ‘mobile first’ newsroom would do differently.” That’s what I’m trying to do here, start the difficult but important job of answering the question: How do we need to work differently (not just in the newsroom, Jay) to command the attention of those people reading and tapping small screens?

In a different context (not addressing me or the mobile-first strategy), Jeff Jarvis issued a similar call to “futureshockers” this week:

What would be helpful is to see you … flesh out your own visions for a sustainable future of journalism starting TODAY.

I’ll try to answer Jay’s question and Jeff’s challenge on six levels: journalists, designers, technology, sales, marketing and executives. A successful mobile-first strategy will require effective work by all these people (and probably more; please feel welcome to add an area, or to expand on any of my suggestions here). Both men called for detail, so this post will be long, though it won’t provide enough depth in some areas (I invite you to help me add to the depth).

The mobile-first strategy needs to be move beyond advertising and embrace new relationships with the community, as described in my blueprint for the Complete Community Connection. That principle is fundamental to mobile-first success. We can’t simply transfer our failing business model onto mobile platforms.

As with web operations, a crucial question will be whether mobile opportunities should be the responsibility of a separate operation focused exclusively on mobile or whether the full operation needs to share mobile responsibilities. My answer is that if news companies want to succeed in pursuing mobile opportunities, we need to make this success the top priority and responsibility throughout the company. News companies have not succeeded in doing that with the web and may not be able to do that with mobile either.

Certainly some of the companies disrupting us will be focused exclusively on mobile (or mobile and web) opportunities, and some news companies might succeed with small mobile-only operations. I recognize the cultural obstacles will be huge, but I believe the greatest opportunity for success lies in converting an entire existing news operation to a mobile-first strategy, so that is what I will address here. If you are either a mobile-focused startup or a news company trying to succeed with a mobile SWAT team, some of the suggestions here may apply, with adaptation to your situation.

I should also humbly acknowledge here that the best I can do is point a direction and share some ideas. The real answers to Jay’s question will come from the people pursuing mobile opportunities and learning from their successes and mistakes. Here is my effort to point in that direction.

Journalists

The traditional job titles of editors, reporters and photographers are painfully out of date, and the new titles seem inadequate, so I’m just calling them all journalists for purposes of this discussion. Journalists will need to change how they gather, process and distribute information.

Every journalist must quickly get serious and fluent with metadata, data about data (think of the story behind the story). This will feel scary and unreasonable at first. Even the term is a bit scary. But reporters and photographers have always gathered more information than we shared with readers. We often have to tell editors about a story or photo, to help editors understand the context and connections, so they can understand where and how to play a story. That’s sort of what metadata does; it tells the computer, or the phone, about the story (or photo, video or piece of information), so the mobile device knows what to give the user when and where. Think of metadata as context.

Location. Where has always been a journalism fundamental, the fourth of the five W’s. Well, in the mobile-first world, it might become the first W. In gathering content of any kind, we need to provide specific location metadata wherever location is relevant. Our technology staffs will need to automate this as much as possible, when journalists are sending text or images from a location, their phones or laptops should be GPS-enabled to provide the location.

But journalists need to be able to supplement and override automatic location information. Many events and stories have more than one location, and journalists don’t always have access to relevant locations. So a journalist should be able to quickly and easily supply locations not automatically generated and correct the automatic locations.

The data and technology specialists will need to develop ways to use this location in multiple ways. We need to be able to convert addresses automatically to GPS coordinates, because sometimes content gatherers will have an address but will not be at the location physically, so their phones cannot supply GPS data. The presentation needs to let people access information by proximity to their physical location or by other meaningful ways such as a route, a neighborhood, a city or political boundaries such as school districts, wards or legislative districts.

I just enabled geotagging on my Twitter account through Tweetie, so every tweet I send on my iPhone through Tweetie bears a map that other users of clients such as Tweetie and Tweetdeck can see. While it was an amusing novelty to see tweets pinpointing me while traveling in Russia, the value will grow rapidly as we assemble news, information and commercial opportunities from all around town.

We can only begin to imagine the possible uses of location-specific information. Think back to your first cell phone. You could see that it gave you mobility, but you didn’t imagine all the ways you are using it today.

Tagging. Where isn’t the only W we need to provide in the metadata. We need to tag content efficiently with the other relevant W’s: Who is pictured in this photo or video? What is happening? When did it happen? Sometimes why or how or how much will need to be in the tags as well, and some of those questions will need to be answered many times, for each person in a story, video or database or for each date in a narrative story. Efficient tagging is going to require effective semantic tools as well as disciplined use of the tools.

Tagging will help us provide relevant content for users and will help us link to more relevant content. We can’t afford to leave tagging to the whims of individual journalists or to the arbitrary reading of software. We need to train the journalists to use the software (and keep improving the software).

I saw a blog post a while back about a politician who had been “testing the waters” for the 2012 presidential election. A semantic program posted four links with the post: One was appropriate, about the politician in the blog post. Another was about a different candidate testing the waters in 2007 for the 2008 caucuses. A third was about a different politician testing the waters for the 2010 Iowa gubernatorial race. A fourth was about the University of Iowa Hydrology Lab actually testing water. Usually a good semantic program will do better than that in suggesting links or tags.

We need to develop (or work with vendors who are already developing) better software to analyze content and suggest tags more accurately. We need to train journalists to check and correct inappropriate tags and links. We need to train journalists to understand what sort of information needs tags, so they can quickly read and correct or approve the suggested tags and add any other tags needed. Just as journalists learned to use AP style widely, we can and should expect them to follow a uniform style in tagging content.

These tags will help the mobile-first operation quickly provide content that answers the questions and addresses the needs of the user.

Investigative. Newspaper journalists tend to equate investigative journalism with long text stories, so at first blush it might seem that a mobile-first strategy would downplay or eliminate investigative reporting. But effective watchdog reporting deepens a news organization’s bond with a community and it must be part of the mobile-first strategy.

I hope that Investigative Reporters and Editors will be a strong voice in taking advantage of mobile technology for investigative journalism, just as it has with teaching journalists to analyze data and to use the web as a tool both for gathering and distributing investigative journalism. As traditional financial models for news media have been failing, some of the most encouraging business-model innovation has been in the area of investigative reporting, including the community funding of Spot.us and the philanthropic models of  ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting. I am confident investigative reporting organizations will lead the way on mobile-focused journalism as well.

Some ways that I think mobile-first strategy might shape investigative reporting:

• Crowdsourcing holds great potential for investigative reporting, as some journalists are already demonstrating. A news organization that effectively engages its community on mobile devices will have a valuable crowd enthusiastic about contributing to investigative efforts. Imagine how quickly and effectively a community linked through a mobile-first journalism operation could identify election-day voting problems.
• Emails, texts and tweets, the favored short communication forms of the mobile world, can give headlines and summaries of investigative projects, with links to full-text and video accounts or promotion for applications that users can dig into on their phones, on computers with bigger screens, on the printed page or television.
• Increasingly video, audio and databases need to be part of the presentation of investigative projects. These can be presented effectively on mobile devices and should be designed primarily for the small screen.
• Don’t rule out the possibility that people will read long text on the small screen if you engage them effectively with well-presented content. Amazon has a Kindle iPhone app for people to use for reading books on their phones. I do expect long-form writing to continue to be part of mobile-first journalism.
• Newspaper staffs spend lots of time on the print (and sometimes web) presentation of an investigative project. A mobile-first operation might sacrifice some of the print or web package because the first presentation priority will be developing a killer mobile app for the project.

Data. Some of the best innovation of web-focused journalism has been the widespread and creative use of interactive databases, which I detailed in my Newspaper Next report, Be the Answer. Databases are an effective tool for delivering location-specific information and other answers that are valuable for mobile users. News organizations need to maintain (or strengthen) their commitment to development of interactive databases and make mobile presentation a top priority in design of the databases.

One of the best-known journalism databases, EveryBlock, has developed an iPhone application. Development of applications to easily and quickly deliver answers for mobile users needs to be an essential step in developing interactive databases. News organizations need to support the development of the skills and tools for developing effective databases for mobile use.

Archives. Newsrooms maintain extensive archives primarily to serve our staffs. Most archives available to the public are usable by search and for pay (pay that brings in only a trickle of revenue). A mobile-first organization will want to offer appropriate archived information relevant to your location. The information might be free, supported by businesses who want to reach customers at that location, interested in that topic.

Effective use of archives for a mobile-first organization will require tending the metadata of content you produce and collect. I’m sure I don’t know all that we need to do to make full use of our archives, but some possibilities:

• We need to add metadata to content gathered from the public. We may do this by a combination of prompts to help contributors submit accurate metadata and staff supplementation of the metadata from contributors.
• We might want to add appropriate metadata for mobile-first use to content the organization has created prior to the adoption of mobile-first metadata for new content. For instance, in Cedar Rapids, we might decide that information about how a certain location was affected by the 2008 flood might be valuable to provide, so we would add location metadata, where needed and possible, to content in our archives relating to the flood. Or an organization might decide topic pages on community landmarks or important community issues would be helpful to the mobile audience, so the staff would need to add metadata to archived content on that topic.

Social media. I have blogged and taught extensively about social media’s impact on journalism. I see social media overlapping with the mobile-first strategy, but not duplicating. Many people engage with social media primarily on their laptop or desktop computers, so a social-media strategy needs to be focused more on how to engage through social tools, regardless of which devices people use. However, lots of people use their phones to tweet or check their Facebook pages or watch YouTube videos, so a mobile-first strategy needs to consider at every step how to use social media.

Especially as Foursquare and other location-based platforms grow, and as Twitter and Facebook start adding location metadata, any location-based service needs to aggregate social content for that location. EveryBlock shows the value of aggregating Flickr photographs and videos by location. That’s just the start of how a mobile-first strategy will use social media.

Training. Newsroom training has taken a severe hit in the cutbacks of the last few years. We can’t succeed in shifting to mobile-first strategy without heavy training in a variety of areas, both concepts such as how journalists need to think differently in a mobile-first operation and specific skills such as tagging and using metadata. (I cover training specifically in relation to journalism, but we could add a similar paragraph under each of these areas.)

Design

In a mobile-first operation, design may be both a journalism function and a technology function, or it might be a separate area of the operation, combining both skills. However you organize, you need to make mobile service the priority of everyone involved in design.

Shifting resources. Newspapers spend lots of staff time designing the print edition, and spent lots of money and time over the past few decades redesigning print editions. Considerable but less time and money has been spent redesigning web sites. None of that investment has changed the fact that newspaper circulation is declining rapidly and that most newspaper sites provide frustrating user experiences. While I personally appreciate a strong newspaper design and valued that skill (partly because I lacked it) as an editor, we need to minimize staff and consultant time spent designing the daily newspaper. Other than section fronts, newspaper pages should be templated and even automated as much as possible, so copy editors can flow content into them with minimal time spent on design.

This will make the paper marginally less attractive, but it will have far less negative impact on performance of the print product than the positive impact of all those snappy redesigns on which newspapers spent millions of dollars in staff and consultant time. Print customers pay primarily for content, selection and convenience, which can be provided in a format, still allowing for news judgment, and reserving design flair on the covers. (Of course, when big news breaks, you still blow up the templates for dramatic headlines and photo packages.)

Some staff design time will be required to automate formats of inside pages, but that will be a wise investment of time, if it saves the daily cost of print design. If this is a difficult shift in priorities to imagine, try to remember the last time you spent a lot of time and money to make dramatic improvements in the presentation of your newspaper: Chances are that you received a lot of complaints from readers, even if you thought the redesign was a stunning improvement. Spend those resources instead on delivering a better experience for the mobile user.

Web design has already been formatted pretty tightly in many operations, and most news web sites do need improvements in navigation and design. A web-first operation would spend considerable staff time in improving web design. A mobile-first operation recognizes that the best design for the larger screen of a laptop or desktop computer isn’t the best design for an iPod or cell phone. You need to both minimize staff time spent in web design, to free resources for mobile design, and keep mobile web consumption in mind when you do spend staff resources on web design (for instance, simpler display and larger headlines and body type will make for easier mobile web use).

While vastly better print design delivers only a marginally better user experience (if at all), design is critical to the mobile user experience. Type that is too small or an application that loads slowly or is confusing to use can doom a mobile project. But a “killer app” can develop viral momentum as users talk, tweet and blog their delight. The mobile-first operation needs designers with visual and technical skills to design new products and to carry out the daily execution of existing products. Staff design resources need to be shifted to ensure top priority for mobile design.

Sometimes we will want to do multiple versions of content. For instance, we might change text size on a video clip so the TV and web versions are the right size for those screens but the mobile version has bigger type that is easier to read on the small screen. But in a mobile-first operation, if you can take the time to make only one version, you make the font large enough for the mobile screen and let web and TV users get used to larger text.

Technology

The information technology staff of a news operation faces multiple, constant and often conflicting demands from throughout the operation. Priorities need to be set to ensure that technology experts, whether part of a central IT staff or assigned to a department such as a newsroom, have the training and time to help other departments execute an effective mobile-first strategy.

Development. The web-first operation (or even a print-centric operation with a web site) can make constant demands on web developers. This staff resource needs to shift heavily into mobile development. To the extent that you still commit staff time to web development, you need the training and priorities to ensure that all products developed for the web provide a strong user experience for mobile web use.

Applications. A news operation needs staff developers who can quickly and effectively develop mobile applications. The evolution of mobile devices will dictate whether you can develop effective applications that work on multiple devices or whether you have to develop separate apps for iPhones, Droids, BlackBerries and other products. But applications appear likely to become the primary platform for content and commerce in the mobile world, so they need to become a high priority for the mobile-first operation.

Apps will be important in several ways. You will use apps to deliver content. For instance, you might have apps for specific parts of your routine content, such as a calendar app, obituaries app, local sports team app or business directory app. Or you may develop apps for an investigative project, a new interactive database or for coverage of a big event (for instance, Gazette Communications might develop an Orange Bowl app, providing access to a variety of content about the Hawkeyes’ participation in the Orange Bowl).

Don’t think of apps just as devices for delivery of your content. Apps should become a revenue source, too. Just as newspaper and television companies help business customers produce advertisements for their products, a mobile-first organization is going to help business customers develop mobile apps to promote their businesses and sell their products and services. Many of the aspects of the mobile-first approach will require shifting resources from current print, broadcast or web operations to mobile operations. But development and deployment of commercial applications will produce revenue to support eventual expansion of mobile operations.

Development of commercial applications will need to stress applications whose content can be updated easily by merchants. For instance, if a local pizza parlor has an application for ordering pizzas for pickup or delivery, the operator should be able to update prices or add new ingredients or menu items easily from an office computer, so that applications will update automatically when a user next opens the pizza application.

Sales

Sales staffs need to listen to consumers and businesses and learn how to help businesses serve the mobile audience. In the early stages of a mobile-first organization, sales efforts will be focused heavily on educating and training business customers on mobile opportunities and our organization’s role in connecting businesses in our community with mobile customers.

Traditional advertising was intrusive and often unwelcome. You open your newspaper to continue reading a page-one story and photos of women in bras attempted to catch your eye about the lingerie sale at the local department store. Or you tune in the evening newscast and ads for local car dealers shout at you between the news reports. We still need to sell those ads because they deliver value for businesses in traditional ways and because they are the revenue streams that keep us operating today. But mobile revenue will keep us operating tomorrow and, as I have blogged before, we need to learn how to help businesses pursue mobile opportunities.

Mobile commercial content will be convenient and responsive, rather than intrusive. Search advertising provides the answer that the potential customer was seeking. Location-based advertising should not be intrusive or people will devise ways to turn it off. Our community apps and sites need to provide location-based tabs such as “shop nearby,” “dine nearby” or “nearby entertainment.” The user can ignore those tabs if she knows where she wants to go and just wants information on parking, for instance. But a user who clicks on such a tab welcomes our help (and the help of businesses paying us for access to these customers).

As described in the C3 revenue approach, we need to be sure we don’t fall into the trap of focusing just on advertising. Some of the best mobile opportunities will go much deeper than simply delivering business messages to an audience. We may make the sale, using a customer’s credit card (or possibly an account with us that taps into a credit card, checking account or prepaid balance). We may make a reservation or enroll a user in a class or a business’s preferred customers club. We may send the business an inquiry from the customer.

We also need to be careful not to use just a single mobile tool, such as a mobile web site or iPhone application. Some businesses may want to sponsor breaking news alerts, reaching the text-message audience with a link to the company’s web site or to its enhanced listing in our business directory. Some may want to sponsor a podcast or an email newsletter, reaching people wherever they access email.

Sales staff will need training in how mobile opportunities can work and how to teach a local business to pursue those opportunities. While we need to be willing to invest heavy sales staff time in landing accounts and in training businesses to use their apps, we also need to design self-serve mobile accounts that the business customer can change and update after we get them launched, as describe in the pizza example in the technology section.

We need to develop pricing that helps businesses use our mobile services. We can’t discount services that we know will be valuable. We need an affordable base rate, with most of our pay based on performance as we deliver for our business customers. For instance, in the pizza example, we need to charge a reasonable fee for development of the app. But most of our revenue will come from pizza orders (of course the app needs to record orders accurately for both us and the business customer). We may collect the revenue ourselves from customers’ debit and credit cards, taking our cut before we pass most of it along to the pizza parlor. Or the merchant may collect the money (in this example, we might want to leave an option of paying cash) and we invoice for our fee. Or we may use a third party such as PayPal to handle the transaction.

More and more, we need to sell customers into a full range of services. We sell them an enhanced listing in the business directory, so we can connect them with customers searching for the services they offer. We help them determine the best way to use our services to move the customer toward the transaction or to actually make the sale. We sell them location-based premium listings. We develop an app for them and help them deliver the app to the phones (or other devices) of the right customers. Yes, web, print and broadcast advertising will be part of the package for some customers, too, but we can’t just call on our usual suspects. Location-based advertising will appeal to some merchants who haven’t been interested in reaching the full community through a newspaper or TV ad, but absolutely want to reach the person who’s nearby at lunch time.

Marketing

News companies know how to market newspapers and newscasts. We shouldn’t stop marketing those products and our web sites, but the mobile-first organization will have a mobile-first marketing department. The community knows about the legacy products and will continue to find them with a reduced marketing effort.

We will need an aggressive (and vastly different) marketing effort to tell the community about all the ways we serve your mobile audience. The effective marketing strategy needs at least a two-pronged approach: sophisticated and witty to alert the savvy mobile customer to our services and simple and educational to teach the new or confused mobile customer how many jobs we can help her with.

Of course, print and TV ads will still be a part of the marketing strategy (Apple’s “there’s an app for that” ads and Verizon’s “there’s a map for that” ads have helped both companies pitch their mobile services effectively).

We need to work aggressively in sales channels to get our apps onto people’s phones. Obviously we need to use iPhone’s App Store. We also need to connect with local retailers selling phones and other mobile devices, perhaps offering free apps that introduce and promote our apps or offering to load our package of apps on each phone sold (perhaps as part of a deal that includes advertising for the retailer). We can offer classes in the community on how to use our location-based services and our applications.

We might consider cross-promoting: Get a new iPhone with all our mobile apps with a full-year newspaper subscription.

Other departments

I am sure that I haven’t described all the ways that a legacy news organization needs to embrace a mobile-first strategy. The finance department needs to work with sales on the pricing issues I discussed. The human resources and finance departments needs to update compensation to include incentives for achieving mobile goals. Human resources also needs to work on training and recruiting issues. The details will vary with each organization and its structure and strategy.

Executives

Top executives of news organizations – CEOs, publishers and general managers – need to lead the way to a mobile-first future. If you want to launch a mobile-first SWAT team but not change the whole organization, then the top executive may not need to do much more than provide resources and direction. But if you want to transform a legacy media operation into a mobile-first company, executives need to lead the way aggressively, firmly and consistently. Our default settings are powerful and the whole company or individual departments will veer back to our print-broadcast-web roots if the top bosses are not demanding and vigilant.

The bosses need to set the example by using and mastering mobile apps for their personal use and by consuming our products and rival products on their mobile devices (and talking with managers and staff about how they use them and the lessons they learn). The top bosses need to spend their most time and attention on pursuing mobile opportunities. You can say mobile is important, but if you spend your time on print, broadcast or web issues and hold feet to the fire in those areas, managers and staff will see. They will know by your actions whether mobile first is a wish to achieve in spare time or a priority for all to embrace.

Unless you’re loaded with cash (and who is these days?), you can’t pursue a mobile-first strategy without risk. Traditional media such as print and broadcast provide the revenue that supports your company. The inclination will be strong to try to pursue a mobile strategy on the side, while you protect those core operations. Top executives need to acknowledge the short-term risk of shifting resources away from those core revenue streams and also to reassure managers, staff and shareholders that the long-term risk of timidly pursuing mobile opportunities is far greater.

The top executives need to coach all managers in pursuit of a mobile-first strategy. This means tolerance of mistakes and risks in pursuit of mobile opportunities but no patience for protection of the old priorities. If the top executives preach mobile-first and practice mobile-whenever, whenever will win.

Staffing

A mobile-first operation will need different skills and a different outlook from an organization focused on established pursuits such as print, broadcast and web. Through a combination of training and recruiting, we need to move quickly to the right staff for a mobile-first organization.

I have spent enough time in the training business and learned enough new skills and new thinking myself to know that committed staff members can learn the skills and outlook that a mobile-first organization needs. The more we can help staff members transform, the more we will benefit from their other skills and their community knowledge.

But some staff members will be unable or unwilling to make such a transition. And we will need to hire some people for skills so specialized or advanced that we can’t reasonably expect staff members to reach the necessary level fast enough.

Examples to come

In coming posts, I will provide some examples of how a mobile-first operation might work, both from the company and consumer perspectives. For now, I call your attention to an example published in May by Xark! blogger Dan Conover (the post has a long lead-in that I like, but it’s not why I’m calling this to your attention; the example starts with the subhead, “From documents to data structures”). While he wasn’t writing specifically about mobile-first strategy, Dan gives a great example of how mobile-first journalists would cover a fire. Recovering Journalist blogger Mark Potts also provides an instructive example, with his critique of how the Washington Post, a renowned journalism institution, fails in its mobile operations (again, the example follows a lead-in, in this case, praising my call for a mobile-first strategy).

Let’s get started

In the coming weeks, I will be discussing this approach with my colleagues at Gazette Communications. CEO Chuck Peters has praised the mobile-first approach, and I hope we can start making some significant steps in this direction. I hope your organization starts doing the same thing. As we make progress (or encounter setbacks) here, I will share the story on this blog. I hope others will similarly share the stories of your efforts to pursue mobile strategies.

As we proceed, we need to remember the “good enough” principle of disruptive innovation that Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen taught in the Newspaper Next project. An innovation doesn’t have to be perfect to launch; in fact the cost of pursuing perfection can doom a project to failure. “Good enough” performance along traditional lines is sufficient for launch, if it is providing a distinct advantage over existing products in some new approach.

The cell phone is a perfect example. One of the first times I used a cell phone to dictate a news story was in 1995 in Herington, Kan., as authorities were searching the home of Terry Nichols, Timothy McVeigh’s accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing. The phone was huge. It dropped the signal twice during the call and I had to call the city desk back. I pretty much had to shout to be heard. And the battery was about to die (as it almost always was, because it didn’t hold its charge very long). By every respect that I would have measured the performance of the phone back in the office on my desk, this cell phone was just barely good enough. But the phone wasn’t back in the office on my desk. It allowed me to dictate from the sidewalk across the street from Nichols’ home as I watched the search. (I think Herington probably had two pay phones and 100 reporters that day; fighting for time on a pay phone to dictate would have been a nightmare.) I knew reporting would never be the same.

Now I carry an iPhone that I use to take pictures and post them to my Flickr page while traveling in Russia or to text tweets to my Twitter feed. And if my Siberian host tells me it’s minus-23, I can use my “Units” app to convert from Celsius and comfort myself that it’s only minus-9 Fahrenheit. That good-enough start didn’t mean we were settling for mediocre. It meant we were getting started on a new road to excellence I couldn’t even imagine then.

That’s what we need to do now with mobile-first strategy.

I want to share my opening remarks from the FTC workshop I attended earlier this week:

Opening Comments by Alisa Miller
“How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?”
Session:  Reducing the Costs of Journalism
The Federal Trade Commission, Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today to talk about what I believe is a incredibly important time for our democracy – how can we sustain quality trusted journalism in our county and the important role journalism plays in our society to inform, enlighten, hold power structures to account, and at its best, inspire people based on powerful story telling to live their lives better.

I am CEO of PRI, the public media network and organization focused on providing and creating global news and cultural perspectives, reaching millions each week.

In this role, I have listened to and participated in many sessions over the last year about the future of journalism, and I would like to underscore a key point that I think is missed in some of these discussions. I believe that we are not just facing a journalism business model problem, but that we are currently suffering a journalism scope and quality problem in America. Why? Because even when profits were high, the fact is that in many communities and even from mass media news sources, key beats have not been represented for years. And certainly not at levels that are sufficient given these topics importance to our society. This had much to do with what incentives were present in the commercial sector and the mass consolidation of sources and channels over the last decade or so.

With that said the impact of new media, shifts in advertising revenue and the economic downturn have only accelerated the decline.

So what can we do? I am optimistic that much is possible. I believe the future is about how we can strive to practice more what we call at PRI, “Galvanizing Journalism” PRI’s Galvanizing journalism model is driven by five major principals and is more possible than ever in our digital world:

Number one, Meet the need. It starts from asking ourselves, what are the unmet content needs that Americans have in terms of functioning in our democracy and living successfully in our interconnected world.

For PRI, this means making the local to global connection and have content that reflects the changing face of America and diverse and robust voices.

Number two, Focus resources and provide context. Focus resources on contextualized journalism and producing this journalism in a sustained matter, each day and week, responsive the news cycle and also responding to user needs

Number three, Leverage the power of partnership to tell stories differently.

This means featuring diverse voices and focusing on non-duplication of resources. We believe partnership, done right and with experience, can lead to a model that can be 3-5 times more efficient than traditional vertical journalism operations. We are a complement to and very different from these institutions. I look forward to sharing some examples as we get into our discussion.

In other words, don’t look at your editorial capacity as the beginning and end of your editorial capacity. As Jeff Jarvis said in the web world, cover what you do best and link to the rest. That should just be the start.

We can also partner far more with our public and blogs. They can provide I-witness accounts, highlight and bring issues to the fore, and crowd source to attack complex topics together with journalists.

Number four, Operate as a catalyst /galvanize organizations and resources. It isn’t just enough to create the content anymore. How are you helping and leading others to create the content too. In PRI’s case we use and create both broadcast and increasingly digital platforms to publish content and spark engagement. All at a relatively low incremental costs in order to reach people where they are.

And finally, Five, Model the transparency we seek. Use semantic web to help people make connections and understand our content better and use it to improve their lives and their communities. We also believe this will help people trust the sources of their news more.

I look forward to our discussion today and thank you again for the opportunity.

Read me, read me, help, arghhhhhh!Pheww! you are reading me, but what does this mean? How will we make money from this, arghhhhhhh!

The plaintive cry of the lesser spotted webzine trying to up its ‘unique user’ figures, in order to try and make money from them to support its physical news publication.

Rafat Ali is the poster boy for being one of the few entrepeneurs working with online business to have made a true and sustained success out of online content, funnily enough his website is called Paidcontent.org.

The essence of this site, and its UK sister publication Paidcontent.Uk run by Rob Andrew, is that specialisation is the new mother of all journalism.

Although Paidcontent.org has no physical publication, important lessons can be learnt from the principles and models which have sustained it thus far.

The most important lesson being, in the words of blogger Jeff Jarvis: ” Do what you do best and link to the rest.” This essentially means national newspapers can no longer continue to cover a broad spectrum of stories from local to national with little or no real specialisation, besides boobs on page three of the Sun and the leftist leanings of the Guardian.  Essentially they all cover, through daily reporting and supplements, everything from fashion to finance.

In an online world this cannot be sustainable, as there is too much choice and no way to capture money from this content. Instead they have to continue to cover a broad spectrum, but choose a deep specialisation which will catch a unique interactive reader group both online and through physical publication. These users will then in turn come back to the publications platforms to get need to know information.

These sentiments are echoed by some of the most knowledgeable in  the business, such as Director of the Guardian Foundation itself, Peter Preston. He argues newspapers have to stop concentrating on business models and focus their energies on content models to see them into the future. As a result the Guardian itself is experimenting with different products to decide which knowledge platform they wish to push.

This is beautifully exemplified by publications such as The Economist, the Financial Times, and even The Week, The Spectator and Private Eye. All are moving from strength to strength. What they all have in common is a strong specialisation which has a secure and returning readership whilst also covering a broad range of local and national news.

What is even more important to realise is not all of these publications even have very good websites, their secret to success, is identifying a niche in the market, be it cricket coverage or a team of specialised columnist bloggers, and catering for its needs.



Ugo e Giorgio sono due giovani professionisti con un’idea in testa: il giornalismo può diventare impresa partendo dal basso. Circa quattro mesi fa hanno deciso di creare una piattaforma web per far incontrare la domanda e l’offerta di contenuti giornalistici professionali anche al di fuori delle grandi testate tradizionali: un giornalista produce un’inchiesta, ne pubblica un estratto e la mette all’asta sul sito. Chi paga meglio e più velocemente ha l’esclusiva su quella notizia e il sito prende il dieci per cento.

Ecco a voi To Report, “riferire, riportare”. Ed è solo uno di una serie di progetti che in questo periodo stanno nascendo in Italia per organizzare e rifondare dal basso il mestiere del giornalista, indebolito dalla crisi del settore. Il Ducato online (cioè io, ndr) ne ha contati almeno cinque, nati nel giro di pochi mesi: vere e proprie piattaforme che intermediano la domanda e l’offerta, come To Report, o organizzazioni più o meno strutturate di giovani free lance. Insomma sembra che un giornalismo “diverso” non sia impensabile e che qualcuno in Italia stia provando a realizzarlo.

Il progetto To Report, un’impresa con molti investimenti finanziari e cinque soci, è nato durante i turni di notte all’Agenzia Italia di Ugo Barbàra e Giorgio Baglio: “Il principio è facile – spiega al Ducato Barbàra – Se un giornalista per piazzare un pezzo deve proporlo personalmente a un quotidiano e aspettare una risposta, perde un sacco di tempo. Il pezzo diventa vecchio. Invece così il meccanismo è veloce”. E’ stato lanciato a novembre e ora attende la verifica del mercato. (Guarda qui il loro progetto in alcune slides).

Un’idea simile l’hanno avuta quelli di Pulitzer. Anche questa è una piattaforma digitale che ospiterà inchieste, servizi d’iniziativa, notizie. Il progetto di business però è basato sul community funded reporting, ossia la produzione di contenuti giornalistici finanziata dalla community: la redazione, il giornalista o addirittura il fruitore del prodotto propongono un’inchiesta, un approfondimento. Parte un’asta preliminare nella community, nella quale si verifica l’interesse verso la realizzazione di quel prodotto e l’investimento necessario. Poi i giornalisti pubblicano una loro proposta che presenta e spiega in che modo vorrebbero svolgere il lavoro. Da lì parte la vera e propria asta. Una volta conclusa, il giornalista riceve quanto stabilito e Pulitzer prende il dieci per cento. Un sistema mutuato direttamente dall’esperienza americana di Spot.us, che ha recentemente piazzato un’inchiesta sul New York Times.

“Il nostro sistema crea concorrenza e non tutti lo gradiscono”, spiega Nicola Boccardi, uno degli ideatori. “Quando ho parlato del progetto la prima volta al Festival di Perugia i professionisti presenti mi hanno osteggiato. In un momento non roseo come questo, noi offriamo l’opportunità di fare un giornalismo più libero. Del resto i grandi giornali sono legati mani e piedi all’editore”. L’attivazione di Pulitzer, che in questo momento non ha un sito pubblico, è prevista per la fine di gennaio, almeno in via sperimentale.

To Report e Pulitzer sono progetti molto costosi, che hanno o hanno avuto bisogno di importanti finanziamenti per la loro creazione e che avranno bisogno di ingenti risorse per la manutenzione: nel caso di To Report ci sarà bisogno di una banda larga molto veloce; di un tecnico che verificherà costantemente il funzionamento dei server; di un gestore del flusso che regoli il traffico inopportuno e lo spamming. Antonio Rossano, per Pulitzer, ha recentemente chiesto un aiuto finanziario e di marketing a Telecom (guarda il video di presentazione del progetto al Working Capital). Ma ci sono anche giovani freelance che si organizzano in modo da sostenere insieme i costi, comunque meno forti. Si sono dati nomi come Il Carattere, Fps Media, Il Picco.

Il Carattere, ad esempio, per adesso è ancora un blog gratuito dietro al quale c’è un’idea che unisce cinque giornalisti e che porta molto più lontano. “E’ partita quando ho visto la cooperativa Smart News – spiega Federico Formica – e mi era piaciuta l’idea del service, una sorta di agenzia giornalistica dove il reporter pubblica parte dell’inchiesta e con un meccanismo di offerte la testata la compra. Solo che la cooperativa per noi adesso è troppo cara”. I giornalisti avevano dei contenuti già pronti e il blog era un modo veloce ed economico per pubblicarli subito. Ma il blog si trasformerà presto in un sito con un proprio dominio, da usare come vetrina delle proprie inchieste.

Per adesso il lavoro su Il Carattere è collaterale alle collaborazioni che ognuno degli autori ha con altre testate. Eppure già un paio di servizi sono stati ripresi da Antefatto (il sito web del Fatto Quotidiano) e da Alessandro Gilioli sul suo blog dell’Espresso, dove la notizia ha ricevuto oltre 2.300 visite in un solo giorno. In un momento come questo vendere è complicato e Il Carattere punta sulla pubblicità per rientrare delle spese. Intanto il materiale viene spedito alle testate, una mailing list con duecento contatti.

C’è, invece, chi la cooperativa di service l’ha costituita da subito. Si chiama FPS Media ed è stata fondata da 18 giornalisti, quasi tutti ex allievi della scuola di giornalismo De Martino di Milano. Il lancio vero e proprio avverrà il prossimo gennaio, ma il sito è già online, ha una pagina su Facebook e canali su Twitter e Friendfeed. Su Facebook, dove ha già oltre 350 fan, promuove le sue ultime iniziative e i progressi dello start-up. L’agenzia ha già fornito contenuti a Radio24 e ad alcuni house organ (cioè bollettini e riviste interni alle aziende). Il principio che muove la cooperativa è che ci sia bisogno di professionalità capaci e di spazi nuovi sui quali operare. La “freschezza” e la gioventù dei soci, la loro capacità di lavorare su tutti i mezzi tecnologici rappresentano un valore aggiunto. La grande sfida, spiegano, è sapersi “vendere”, saper fare anche marketing sulla propria attività giornalistica.

Altri cinque giovani giornalisti hanno creato ilPicco.it, definendolo un “portale d’informazione, attualità, politica e cultura”. Il loro scopo è mettere al servizio dei lettori competenza e professionalità. “Non più solo inchieste e servizi realizzati per giornali e network televisivi – si legge nel sito – ma anche la possibilità di pubblicare online i risultati di indagini proposte e sostenute dai cittadini, senza condizionamenti o pressioni editoriali”. Le notizie non sono prodotte ogni giorno, come si può vedere dal sito, il che fa pensare che per i giovani giornalisti quella de ilPicco.it sia ancora un’attività collaterale rispetto alle occupazioni principali di ciascuno.

Dall’altra parte dell’oceano il famoso editorialista Jeff Jarvis, sul suo blog BuzzMachine, sostiene da tempo che “il futuro del giornalismo è imprenditoriale”. In Italia, a quanto pare, lo sta diventando anche il presente.

I recently came back from some very interesting days in NYC at the Web 2.0 Expo and San Francisco at the Webplay Conference at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale. I thought it would be useful to gather some links and my own notes regarding this event.

For those who follow me on Twitter: i’ve been writing some stuff during the event, but the rest is here, in a compact way.

I start with the last keynote, at the WebPlay Conference, with George Zachary from Charles River Ventures (CRV). Fasten your seatbelts, that was definitely not only good news that came from a man who’s been living and following Internet businesses in the Valley for the last 15 (?) years. Here are my notes, now I let you read and understand them the way you want:

Facebook shows the path how to monetize Social Media.
Twitter is completely celebrity driven.
iPhone customers are not profitable to AT&T (neither for any other operator in Europe i guess…).
I never made an investment in a company when i felt less interested at the end of a five minute meeting (hey guys work on your elevator pitch).

Some facts and figures about George Zacharys business: 30 out of 80 firms are profitable.

Top 400 VCs had a ROI of zero.
Expectations: return 10x.
Question: where do all the big returns come from? Only a few companies we don’t talk about, small companies (correct me if i missunderstood).
Seed stage = long term losers.
Freemium model is a way.
Bitly has no business yet.
Twitter smart because they created an API. Part of the risk was outsourced to other companies.
Future of Social Media, is there an “after Facebook”? –> we had Geocities, e-Groups, Friendster, FAcebook, Twitter. The odds that there will be something new are quiet high.
Recommendations to Start-Ups: upfront costs have to be minumum. You have to have strong economics and strong margins. Focus on revenue line and gross margin.
George talked about the Quickstart program at CRV: 800 candidates, 22 chosen.
Mobile ad networks will be out of business or wil be acquired. Not a good time to start a mobile ad company.
Every net new job since 1980 comes from a start-up

Ok, got much more but since i was not sure, i prefer to drop that. So please, if you’ve been to this very inspiring event and made some notes, don’t hesitate to comment and add them to mine.

Other great stuff – from New York this time – that i really recommend you to check out:

Viktoria Trosien from Tiburon TV interviews
- Thomas Hessler, CEO at zanox
- Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine, with Jeff’s golden rule: “Do what you do best, link to the rest” and many more thoughts about the Beta World we live in.

We can say this: traffic flows along links that we click. For a few years—before google—we could even say this: a link is not a link until we click it.

But now that is wrong because google made links really something else—meaningful signals, not just infrastructure. Links have a deeply important role in pagerank, the backbone of google’s mighty search engine.

Thus the giver of a link tells google that the recipient of a link is notable or significant or worth your time and attention and consideration or engagement. This is authority—on average, at the very least.

Links are signals for authority. That authority is distributed throughout the network, and given Igon values, google built a magnificent business detecting, computing, and centralizing that authority.

* * *

We are not entitled to our own understanding of facts, which take root in the universe. Thus we call facts objective. But we are entitled to our own appreciations of authority. Indeed, appreciation for authority can only take root in ourselves as individuals and groups of individuals. Thus we call authority subjective.

There are very many facts that I will never need to learn or remember. I will rely on google to detect those answers. Like just-in-time inventory, I will have answers only when I need them, when I borrow them, avoiding the mental costs of carrying them in my jammed-up memory.

Likewise, there are very many authorities that I will never need to appreciate. I will rely on google to detect those signals. But unlike facts as stored in someone else’s inventory, something changes about authority when I don’t carry it with me. Something’s lost when I borrow authority—just in time.

Google delivers facts. And facts are facts. But google doesn’t really deliver authorities. It co-opts them.

Maybe this is why Clay Shirky calls it “algorithmic authority.”

So if I were settling a bar bet, I might well say, “Yes, you can trust me. I found that claim by clicking on the top google search return.” The page on which I found the claim doesn’t enter my justification. “Dude, I googled it” might not work for very many justifications today, but Shirky’s quite right that there’s “spectrum” and that “current forces seem set to push [algorithmic authority] further up the spectrum to an increasing number and variety of groups that regard these kinds of sources as authoritative.”

The authority belongs to the algorithm that found the source, not the source itself. Traffic flows along links out to the edges of the network, but authority pulls inward to the center.

* * *

And this is why it seems unfair for folks like Jeff Jarvis to make claims like, “The recipient of links is the party responsible for monetizing the audience they bring.”

News sites should certainly be trying to establish engagement and trust and authority with users who come from google. But insisting that this task is an imperative of the link economy seems to under-appreciate that algorithmic authority centralizes authority. Google pushes the traffic but keeps the trust—or much of it, anyhow.

Maybe the best answer to “What Would Google Do?” goes something like this: build an algorithm that detects and hordes an elusive and highly diffuse resource distributed across a network.

* * *

So Danny Sullivan can jump up and down and yell about WSJ and google and bing: “Do something. Anything. Please. Survive. But there’s one thing you shouldn’t do. Blame others for sending you visitors and not figuring out how to make money off of them.”

Sullivan can exhort newspapers to see google referrals as an opportunity. And they are. Moreover, I have little doubt that many newspapers should be optimizing their pages depending on the referrer, whether that’s google or facebook or twitter or stumbleupon or whatever. But let’s also remember that google changed links. A different kind of traffic now flows along them. And that traffic is fickler—and, yes, less valuable—than we might first imagine.

Montgomery Burns & Richie Rich

Gates & Murdoch: The unlikeliest freedom fighters by Douglas Rushkoff

News Corp weighs exclusive alliance with Bing from NY Times

Murdoch, Microsoft and Google from CJR

Murdoch madness by Jeff Jarvis

Will Murdoch’s Bing gamble pay off? from The Guardian

Why News Corp can afford to leave Google for Bing from Advertising Age

Social media’s given us all a lot of power.  Now, our words and images can be delivered around the globe, instantly.  Our ideas, secrets,  our too-much-information, business plans, collaborations, with or without our tacit permission, are made available globally, in an instant.

Social media is the tool that’s opened the veritable Pandora’s Box of connections. But who owns thisPandora’s Box?

We do. It’s ours. It is our Pandora’s Box. Like the original Pandora’s Box, ours contains our ills and sickness. These are the trolls and hackers, spammers and phishers. And they are our penchant for sharing too-much-information with too many strangers, too often. We’ve all done it. Drunk with the elixir of a personal media platform and the power to publish right now, when we are most inspired !!!!, we publish. Anything. Anytime. Anywhere.

I just did. It was a quick riff on the difference between trickle-down economics and our current stimulus plan. I’m not an economist. But, I’m a tax payer with a blog. I wrote it, published it. Still, I am guaranteed to remain without a Pulitzer. But, maybe, it connects and inspires someone else who has the same question. Maybe it will spur them on to clarify their question or idea or solution. It always helps me clarify my thoughts.

And, therein lies the possibility of social media: Hope. No, not the audacity of hope. No. This is the reality of Hope. This is Hope made real. And Hope was one of the original elements unleashed on humanity when Pandora’s Box was opened…back in the day.

But,  the Hope of Pandora’s Box fell on barren ground. The ability of her neighbors then to share their Hope was, well, limited. Small communities, isolated and the printing press was a few centuries away.

Hope is an idea, a dream, a vision. Hope is our idea, our dream, our vision. It describes our view of life. Its depth and fervor and burning fire is different inside each of us.  And with no one to share Hope or with only a few to share Hope, well Hope fails to grow. Oh, sure. There are pockets of Hope. They sustain us, our families, our communities, our nations through the darkest hours. But only with a thread.

The Hope released from our Pandora’s Box today, with the help of social media, will land on fertile ground.
And that ground is the ground of our global conversation and connections made possible through social media. Big communities, spanning the globe, instant connections, a literate society, and each of us now are publishers in our own right, able to publish the most unique content individually and collectively. And we now can deliver that content…instantly.

Wow, Zane, you’ve really rolled out the hyperbole today, you think. Really? What brought the world’s attention to the abuses in the recent Iranian elections? Well, it first started with Twitter and the Twitterati and then it went mainstream on Twitter with members changing their location to Tehran in an effort to confuse the Iranian censors. Then green, the color of the democracy movement in Iran, became the dominant color on member’s profile pictures.

Ask Motrin about the power of moms and social media to express, ahem, disdain for a condescending corporate attitude.
And then there’s the granddaddy of ‘em all, Jeff Jarvis and Dell Hell.

These are all corrective actions. The community reacts to correct an obvious wrong. And in each of these cases, there were obvious wrongs.

But that community reaction is driven first by the hope and now increasingly by the reality that our ideas, our dreams, our visions can now be shared together and in essence feed each other’s hope.

Who hasn’t turned to Twitter or Facebook or a blog for an uplifting aphorism or thought for the day? Or a joke or funny video. That lifted our spirits.

Does anyone now not turn to social media to find tools and resources to make manifest our hopes and dreams? I personally have crowd-sourced twitter any number of times for specific tools and resources. I have always found a wealth of help. Actually, it’s a wealth of hope. Because the ease of finding these resources only fuels our hope that we can accomplish our dreams, manifest our ideas, fulfill our visions.

This post is a collaborative effort made possible through the efforts of numerous people, each of us blogging, tweeting, facebooking, finding our common ideas and vision on small business and social media and now finding a means to share them instantly. Here. With you. And your ideas, dreams and visions.

There is a lot to be thankful for. And one day, we’ll spend more than one day per year being thankful. But Thursday, if you’re giving thanks, give thanks for social media. Because, it’s social media that brings us a little closer, connects us in new and different ways with new and different people. And together we all find renewed Hope for our ideas, our dreams and our visions. Because after all, they are ours together. And we now have the tools to open ourselves fully to their possibilities.

About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small business. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

Last week our online journalism lecture was taken by BBC Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. His lecture, the title of which I have borrowed as my own, detailed the changes that the journalism industry has seen since he first began his own career as a reporter in 1983. According to Cellan-Jones, back in the early 80s the industry stereotypically was brimming with men in cardigans, bottles of booze by their sides, while rows of ladies in cardigans sat at typewriters and typed up the stories…

The news teams of the 80s were split in two groups- you were either a writer or a craftworker. Under the umbrella of ‘writers’ came the reporters, the producers and the editors. Under ‘craftworkers’ came the cameramen, the sound technicians, the lighting crew and the film editors.

This is not the case today. Instead of a crew of eight or so people, one person can do almost all of these things- the research, setting up the camera and sound and the actual  reporting, before producing and editing the film themselves. What was once an eight-man job is now a one-man job, brilliant in the sense that the industry is now more multi-skilled and varied than ever, bad in the sense that there are less jobs out there for people like me.

Yet all is not lost. As top blogger Adam Tinworth said in his lecture last week, and Cellan-Jones repeated this week- if you want to succeed in the world of journalism today you have to specialise. For Cellan-Jones, this specialism has been technology. As well as appearing on UK TV screens reporting for the BBC on all things technical, Cellan-Jones is also a keen blogger. In addition to writing about his experiences with the latest technologies, Cellan-Jones also blogged on his niche campaign Broadband Britain, a blog he wrote while traveling around Britain for his blog dot.life. Not only does this highlight specialism within the wider context of technology, it also demonstrates how blogging is versatile and can be written anywhere in the world- as long as broadband is available, something that Cellan-Jones struggled with while on his mission!

Before the lecture was over Cellan-Jones showed us, via his iPhone, that he had put the following message on Twitter: “Here are the journalists of the future. What advice do you have for them?” Along with a photo. From the start to the end of the lecture about 20 people had replied with a variety of answers, some amusing and some completely bizarre. Most notable was the reply from journalist Jeff Jarvis. His advice? “Never take anything at face value.” As guest lecturers and Cardiff tutors alike have been banging on about Jarvis since the course began, it was rather exciting that he obviously has a certain level of interest in us too.

Since the lecture I have been giving the idea of specialism a bit of thought. Although the niche aim of this particular blog was analogue photography, I have always had a real interest in music and gigs, and I think that shows more when looking in my categories section. I will still aim to write more on photography (I haven’t even started on lomography yet!) but my current lack of funds is preventing me from getting any of my photos developed. Although specialism is a key part of success in journalism today, I hope that by writing this blog and exploring any topic that interests me, and hopefully others too, I will eventually find my specialist calling…