(creative commons flickr photo)
Social Media Content Optimization with Whitepapers
Ive been looking at several niche social media platforms beyond the usual YouTube, Viddler, and Vimeo for video and even beyond Doc Stoc and Scribd for documents. For instance I recently ran across a great place to upload PDFs and whitepapers for social media pr called YuDu. What a fun name….huh??? Also Inked has fantastic looking package to wrap around your best whitepaper…inevitably they will make them more sticky.

Social Media Content Optimization with Video
In the video space, which combines the some slideshare features with the look of vimeo is Omnisio (unfortunately kind of hard to remember…but like omnicient). Why do a slidecast when you can do a video cast. Its where the folks from startup school decided to host their videos. I still think that Slideshare rocks and i imagine gets 50x or 100x the traffic…perhaps orders of magnitude more. Its a great platform for presenters, trainers, and elearning specialists to show of their wares and spread their message. I also think its a great place for universities to host content from conferences and lectures.

Social Media Content Optimization with Animation
Three other content optimization tips for professional animation. I really like the work my friend Mitch did here. Animoto is a fantastic free tool which animates photos with your music.

Blog posts, stories and other good stuff I’ve seen this week on writing, freelancing and the digital media business:

Elance: Cash is King – The freelance marketplace’s monthly index shows demand is up for article writing (+2) and way up for online writing (+12).

Amazon introduces the Kindle DX – The newest version of the bookseller’s electronic reading tablet out this summer will have a 9.7″ making it well-suited, according to Amazon, for magazines, newspapers and textbooks.

Tweetsurfing: what it is and why all writers should do it - Motley Fool writer Tim Beyers explains the finer points of trolling Twitter for interesting tidbits that could turn into story ideas.

Twitter is down: 15 alternative things to do – The techies at Twitter took down the service for scheduled maintenance on Friday afternoon, leaving a lot of people with a lot of extra time on their hands, including the writers and readers at TechCrunch, who came up with a hilarious list of other things to do (many of which centered around bitching about Twitter being down).

Retraining wire and feature editors to be web curabors – Call it the copy editor’s full employment act. If editors can teach themselves SEO and link out to related material, Publishing 2.0 argues, they’ll never be out of a job.

Finding the fun in querying – Freelance writer and fellow WordCount Blogathoner Heather Boerner is doing a 30-day series on persistence, which includes this installment on getting over query angst.

When freelancers flake we all suffer – Almost too painful to read, this post from writer and editor KT Hinderer on freelance foul ups is a good reminder that if you ever get in a jam on a story, don’t think your editor won’t notice. Better to fess up and suffer the consequences than to “burn bridges before you can even finish building them.”

Its been a while, but you lucky lot have 2 days for one! Enjoy the dose….

Articles:

MediaGuardian - Virgin Media viewers to get ITV shows including The X Factor on catch-up

Mashable - TwtApps Offers Beautiful Simplicity: Twtcard, Twtpoll, and Twtvite

eMarketer - Seven Predictions for 2009

Econsultancy - Silicon Valley’s irrational focus on ‘disruptive technologies’

Journalism.co.uk - Hubdub’s news pundit winners: who got it most right and most wrong?

Publishing 2.0 - The Problem of Media Economics: Value Equations Have Radically Changed

Gigaom - True Lies of Music Industry

Gigaom - Why the Consumer Electronics Show is Going Greener in 2009

BBC Click - Webcam brings users to life in 3D

BBCNews - Windows 7’s new features

BBCNews - Windows Live’s new features

BBCNews - Little Boots tops music tips list

MediaGuardian - Freesat now in 200,000 UK homes

MediaGuardian - BBC, ITV and BT plan broadband Freeview service

MediaGuardian - Turn on, tune in, and log on to MySpace

MediaGuardian - Skins series three: Meet the new characters

Mashable - Google Maps: 100+ Best Tools and Mashups

MediaGuardian - The death of the bonnet: BBC to overhaul costume dramas

Mashable - 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design

Blogs:

Guardian Technology Blog – Ballmer’s CES debut: the post-match report

PDA - Reviews site Yelp is coming to the UK – and bringing the parties

Buzzmachines - Inventions and opportunities lost

PDA - Social TV coming soon: iPlayer on boxee, MySpace on telly

Websites:

Hubdub – Predicting News

To be even more up to the minute, please check out my delicious page….

Perpetual tweets on the Twitter social network can perturb your followers, clog the info-pathways and waste everyone’s time.

By Hannah Williams
Nov. 21, 2008

Twitter’s 140-character tweets enable users to share information – short and sweet, but many Twitterers, intrigued by the voyeuristic nature of the social network, abuse their privilege and instead create the confusion, clutter and consumption that is Twitter.

 “Twitter users opt in to following the ‘tweets’ of the individuals or organizations from whom they want information – you follow the messages from the people you want to follow,” said Janna Anderson, director of a research project called Imagining the Internet.

 The flow of information, however, is hard to tap into (as you can only search people by email or Twitter name) and overwhelming to follow (as people tweet simultaneously about every aspect of their lives). 

“It’s called ‘microblogging’ because some people use it just to inform their friends about what they are doing minute-by-minute, for instance writing things like, ‘I just voted for Obama, and now I’m headed over to Starbucks to get my free cup of Election Day coffee,’” said Anderson.

 News flash: No one wants a play-by-play of your life. Even if you lead an extraordinary life and exercise the pithiness and wit enough to attract a multitude of followers, your compulsive tweeting perpetuates the time vacuum that is Twitter. 

“Twitter is massive waste of time,” writes Publishing 2.0 creator Scott Karp, a self-proclaimed recovering Twitter addict. “Let me immediately qualify that — it’s not that ALL of Twitter is a waste of time. It’s that TOO MUCH of Twitter is a massive waste of time.”

 Twitter could be a potentially useful info-sharing tool, but too many people create noise that impedes the communication exchange.

 “[T]he noise to signal ratio is WAY too high,” as is the impulse to tweet just to tweet, explains Karp.

 “It allows you to follow the information shared by interesting people you don’t even know and they are sometimes sharing extremely useful data,” said Anderson. 

 Key word: sometimes. Even the tech and media experts Anderson follows tweet haplessly about their day-to-day experiences and engage in Twitter-moderated conversations with other users.

 “The nature of networks means it’s impossible to ever follow everyone who the people you’re following are following — because then you’d have to follow the people those people are following, and the people THOSE people are following (and before you know it, you’d be Scoble — and few people have that superhuman capacity). So it’s guaranteed, by definition, that your Twitter feed will be filled with half conversations,” writes Karp.

Karp compares Twitter to social networks like Facebook and MySpace, defining them as “socializing on steroids, round the clock, always on, with no limits or boundaries or clearly defined utility.”

Social media are not inherently bad, but can be a major distraction from more important, more pressing activities, if the user overloads on mediated interaction at the expense of living.

 Obsessive twittering is mutually detrimental, preventing both parties from experiencing real life, as they are either slavishly tweeting or following, removed from reality and living through mediated platforms.

 Moral of the story: think before you tweet. Be respectful of the network, other Twitterers and your followers. Would you want to read your tweet?

 Karp writes that Twitter is a fun, easy and interesting – but not indispensible – web tool. “I got addicted to Twitter, and then tried seeing if I could live without it. And I did just fine.”

Most of the news coming out of the newspaper business is glum, worse than glum actually. Lay offs. Shrinking ad pages. Financial instability. Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service recently dropped their rating of New York Times debt because of the paper’s declining revenues. Imagine that, the Grey Lady a junk bond.

But not everybody’s pessimistic about the future of the news business. In fact, there are quite a few optimists who believe the trauma hitting the industry will lead to new business models and opportunities for those editors, reporters and other workers who keep up with the changes.

Here’s just a sample of what commentators are saying about the transformation that’s now taking place, and why it could be a good thing:

Why we should feel bullish for the future of journalism – DigiDave, aka Dave Cohn, wrote this meditation on the future of the news biz from an airport lobby on little sleep. Put aside his youthful enthusiasm – and the f bomb he throws in for effect – and he makes an interesting point about experimenting with business models. Try enough, he says, and some will stick. Cohn doesn’t just talk the talk. With the grant money he won in a Knight News Challenge last year, he’s helped start Spot.us, a marketplace for news where readers can write in to request stories they’d like to see written and donate money toward making it happen.

For other business models, look at FieldReport.com, which is paying thousands of dollars for personal essays, or investigative news Websites such as ProPublica, Environmental Health News and BailoutSleuth, which are being funded by philanthropists or foundations – a throwback to the days when newspapers were owned by wealthy captains of industry.

The market and the Internet don’t care if you make money – News organizations can’t live by the same assumptions they always held about their business, says new media analyst Scott Karp, on Publishing 2.0. The market doesn’t care about traffic or eyeballs, it cares about networks, something Google, Facebook and YouTube have already figured out.

Why it’s a great time to get into journalism – To those who risk much will come great rewards, says social media expert Paul Gillin, who blogs at NewspaperDeathWatch. In this post from October, Gillin recounts the story of one enthusiastic college student who parlayed a summer intership with a major daily newspaper into a paid blogging/reporting gig there.

Like a Molotov cocktail hurled into a crowd, Publishing 2.0 blogger Scott Karp has ignited the already heated debate about the future of journalism and publishing with his most recent post, entitled “The market and the internet don’t care if you make money”.

He’s pinched the title from Seth Godin, the marketing pundit who is peddling his latest book Tribes, but Karp takes the idea and runs with it in a long screed about how the Internet has broken the newspaper industry’s business model, a topic about which plenty of people including myself have written about ad nauseum. But Karp offers a detailed and particularly articulate discussion of this issue, writing that “Nobody has the right to a business model – Ask not what the market can do for you, but what you can do for the market.”

As usual with this sort of thing, the comments are as entertaining and thought-provoking as the blog post, and as a former journalist I can relate to the responses from people in the traditional media. The words of Thomas Jefferson, author of the American Declaration of Independence, still echo in my ears as one of the main reasons I got into the media business: “Given a choice between a government without newspapers and newspapers without government, I would not hesitate to choose the latter.” The media have an important role in informing society and keeping governments honest. But while Jefferson specifically mentioned newspapers, if he was here today I think he would understand and approve of the Internet and blogging. It is the same principle he was talking about back in the 18th century - free speech. Whether it’s Rupert Murdoch or Ariana Huffington or Joe Bloggs exercising that right doesn’t matter.

At the end of the day, say what we will, the market doesn’t care about ‘quality’ journalism and comprehensive local news coverage. We collectively need to find a model that works in this new and changing environment. I agree with Karp that a future business model lies in the power of networks, not the power of monopolies.

[Reproduced from Zazoo blog]

Stop biting those nails.  We’ll know soon enough.

***

Swivet lists the pros and cons of various social networking sites (in completely normal, non-techy language)including MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and more.

***

Scott Karp Publishing 2.0 talks about how to increase your followers on the microblogging site Twitter.  Specifically, he talks about ”narcissisistic” Tweets — updates that only refer to yourself / your product — versus linking.  This concept (referring only to yourself vs. linking to others) can also apply to blogs.  While an author (or publishing house or freelance publicist) obviously wants to promote their book(s), if you only ever talk about your book(s), you risk losing the interest of readers.  On the other hand, if you also link to similar blogs / sites, not only do you provide variety for your readers, but you reach out to other bloggers.  (When you mention another blog on your site, the other blogger gets a “ping.”  Obviously, popular blogs like Boing Boing or Gawker will get zillions of pings, most of which they will ignore by necessity, but many bloggers do keep track of who mentions them and will investigate those blogs.)

Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 is evangelistic about what he terms “link journalism“: selecting and sharing links to the best content around the web (either as an extension of your content or as a goal in and of itself) rather than being a pure content producer. Today he reviews the new Washington Post Political Browser, where staff writers and editors share links to the stories they’re reading around the web.

Eric [Pianin, politics editor for washingtonpost.com] acknowledged that washingtonpost.com is “late to the party,” but in fact the Political Browser puts the Post way out ahead of many other news sites — while many have begun to recognize the value of aggregation and links, most have been slow to act.

As Eric points out, it’s “not just aggregation.” (Heck, any algorithm can do aggregation — that’s increasingly a commodity.) What Political Browser has set out to do, according to Eric, is put The Washington Post “stamp of approval” on the choice of stories, and to provide “insight” into what’s important in the sphere of political news on the web.

Also looking beyond commodity aggregation, The Post believes, with good reason, that a lot people who are interested in political news and in the Post’s political reporting would find it interesting to get “inside the heads” of Post journalists, to see what they are reading and what is informing their reporting.

This is a great example of how a traditional media brand can leverage its reputation and trust factor to succeed on the web. I agree with Karp in that it’s ludicrous to pretend that competitors aren’t a mouse click or Google search away.

• Virtual boyfriends are all the rage in Japan (TechCrunch)
• Lynn Crosbie chats with uber-blogger Perez Hilton (Globe and Mail)
• Content sites vs. aggregators (Publishing 2.0)
• 8 tools for better bookmarking (Webmonkey)

Reuters.com published this deansguide article September 19, 2008

Scott Karp author of the blog Publishing 2.0 wrote a eye opening and somewhat startling report about the uber news site the drudgereport.com. In his article he is able to debunk aka discredit two major assumptions being pushed forward by marketing guru’s, website “experts”, and bloggers everyday: You should never send readers away from your news site by linking to third party content. Since we as bloggers are trying to deliver huge value, news, and new tips, the following is very important in your strategy.

Assumption #1

“You shouldn’t send people away or else they won’t come back to your site.”

Assumption #2

“A page with links that sends people away has low engagement, which doesn’t serve advertisers well.”

As Scott states, I support his statement 100%,: “But if you actually look at the data, both of these assumptions are completely wrong.”

Newspaper Association of America: Top 30 News Sites Ranked by Sessions per Person (May 2008)

Top News sites Ranked by Time per Person: Source CyberJournalist.net

The Results: Just the Facts

1. The top site has 2x as many sessions per person

2. The top site has almost twice as much time spent per person

Biggest Take Away of All

According to Scott and his logic is clearly supported here: “But the most important difference between the top site and all the other sites, is that this top site — Drudge — has nothing but LINKS.”

That’s right folks the Drudge Report is essentially a giant blog built on links to other sites with a little content thrown in for direction. Drudge beats every fresh content news site by a 2 to 1 margin.

Analysis

More SEO gurus around the country are beginning to rethink the idea that fresh content is no longer king. Content in many ways is still king. What is important to understand is that it is better to send your readers away IF you provide them such great value that they will return to your site as a starting point for the quest for answers to their questions.

Note: Realtors need to understand that they can link to more successful agents, bigger companies, and experts in the field without fear of losing their readership–if they are providing great content even if it is pointing to other bloggers.

Scott’s Update to Objectors

Commenter’s objection “Drudge’s session numbers are worthless. Unlike every site on the list, Drudge has an artificially high auto-refresh rate of something under 3 minutes, I think it might even be as low as 2 minutes. The conclusions are fairly obvious– every person who leaves Drudge’s page open in a new tab, or leaves their desk for lunch created dozens or even hundreds of “new” sessions.”

Scott’s Retort

“I find it ironic that most of these commenters came here from Techmeme, a site that has nothing but links and that auto-refreshes. Techmeme, like Drudge, is INDISPENSIBLE for its users, something any news site should want to claim. And Techmeme has found the key to unlokcing value for advertisiers (hint: it’s not display ads) — sponsorships in the form of content links, just like Techeme’s editorial content.

And really, what news site wouldn’t want to be open in a reader’s browser being refreshed all day, instead of hoping for drive-by referrals from aggregators?”

In my opinion, there is almost always a hidden agenda or motivation behind many objections. Before analyzing and supporting objections, it’s always best to understand who benefits and why. I believe Scott did a fantastic job here.

It has to be said that Scott Karp doesn’t bother writing anything until he’s got something decent to say. Most of his entries deserve a star in anyone’s Google Reader. Drudge Report: News Site That Sends Readers Away With Links Has Highest Engagement and Why Every News Site Should Put a Continuously Updated News Aggregation on the Homepage add to the continued debate around the production of and linking to content and the drawn out Google epiphany of send send them away and they’ll come back most days.

Another element that requires a footnote in this debate is the fact that many of the sites in the list found in the first of the above articles carry ads (some of them many many ads) that encourage users to click away – and some sites (even those in the list) carry competitor ads.

So many slow uptakers and fence sitters and walled garden sites have to (a small degree and in a perverse way) been practicing a form of send send them away for years.

(Obviously the average numbers of clicks on banner ads is miniscule compared to average site traffic but nonetheless the principle is worthy of mention.)

I have to admit, I never subscribed to a daily newspaper. I love news and get them in many ways. When I ride the train to Manhattan I’d always look for the paper another passenger had left behind. On rare occasions I was even observed digging through the tubs of used newspapers at the Hoboken station. Killing time on a train with no internet connection is when I desperately need a newspaper. Mostly, I get my news online. What could be better than up to the minute, targeted news?
Well, in a futile effort to turn back time, the Philadelphia Inquirer is trying to fend off declining print circulation by giving the print edition more relevancy. How? By instituting a policy of “print first” and instructing staff not to break stories on line.

I’ve talked recently with a few people in the publishing industry. While all share the same core problem: advertising for their online media does not compensate for the decline in print ad revenues and smaller circulation, none thought that this trend is reversible and that by restricting your online content, demand for the print product will suddenly rise.

It brings up a few good questions.
Is the printed newspaper as we know it doomed for extinction?
I think so. Good content still has a market, and it will still be paid for by advertising prior, during and around the content. Since so many of us carry with us everywhere our electronic reading devices (from the laptop, through the iphone to the Kindle), the need for a printed boundle of broad content will diminish.

How will publishers make money then? What is the future business model?
We all know that charging users for online content works only in very special places where the content is of high professional value or the employer, rather than the consumer, pays the bill. Many of the paid subscribers of the WSJ.com or the Harvard Business Review HBR.com do not foot the bill themselves. Nobody else is able to charge for content. Salon.com have tried every possible avenue in the last few years and settled on just tons of advertising.

What can the local newspaper do? what will publishing 2.0 look like? Become the center of local information and local community. Open up and think about the paper not as an employer of journalists, but as a provider of unique and easy to access valued content.
The content will come from many sources. AP, Local reporters, Local analysts, Community journalists, local and global bloggers, etc. The publisher returns to being a content publisher rather than a content producer. By sifting through the mountains of content, editors can clean, categorize, source, filter, tag and recommend content so we as users get relevant content we care about (and are willing to tolerate the ads that accompany them. In one of the successful models I’ve seen, the premium accounts main premium is the removal of most ads.)

Advertising budgets are moving online (33% increase in the last year) consistently with the increase of time we spend online. As ad technology, bandwidth and targeting algorithms improve, a publisher that can deliver a highly segmented audience with a high quality ad experience will be able to ask for top dollars.

Online advertising rates will increase. As we move towards a 100% trackable media, the difference between TV and the computer will diminish. Both channels will deliver similar content supported by ads. Advertisers will pay by reach, and if the quality of the experience is the same, an interactive experience where the user can click the ad and go to the advertiser should be worth more!.

The newspaper will become local media center that is more open, interactive, customized and relevant. Eventually, even profitable.

I’ve been linked to this article in The Atlantic by Nick Carr before…but I never really dug deeply into it until recently…Is Google Making Us Dumb?

It sounded to me like some relic of the past era, really…a way for old people to cling back to their superior generations long past (didn’t you know…when they were kids, kids actually respected their elders…and there weren’t diseases and mental illnesses such as we have now. People just sucked it up as they walked 20 miles in the snow up hill both ways to school.)

But it strikes a chord in me. I’ve gotten into discussions with many people who assume that…if you don’t read for fun you must surely be some kind of neanderthal. You’re anti-intellectual. Now, we have a scapegoat — it is Google and the rest of the internet’s fault that we want things NOW and aren’t patient enough to dig for it (but digg is still ok).

The sentiment isn’t completely unfounded. I know too many people on MySpace or Facebook who write in their Favorite Books section: “Books? Who reads those?!” In varying levels of spelling or grammar creativity or color of language, no less. Looking at their works doesn’t inspire confidence. These are people who feed the coffers of pop culture…that impressive, yet “inferior” bastard cousin of “high culture.” MTV over museums, things like that. You don’t have much hope for the future when you hear them talk about what they are doing, what they have done, or what they want to do with their lives.

So I understand partially why it is shocking when I mention I have few favored novels (ironically, though, I am fond of the behemoth works in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series…but they are oh…so…long). Do I not have aspirations? Do I not think deeply? Personally, I just don’t get into it very easily. People immediately sour their opinion if I point out the fact that books are just words on paper, and with fiction…those words mean incredibly little. AT LEAST with nonfiction, I learn something useful every time…so that keeps me going for more. With the internet though, it’s even better, because I am not required to invest massive amounts of time to get information.

But silly me, the internet doesn’t count as reading! It is a perversion of what is supposed to be a higher, better way of novels and treatises.

I used to defend my position with something by Annie Dillard we had to analyze in AP English years ago:

The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, and it smells good. Writing is mere writing, literature is mere. It appeals only to the subtlest senses–the imagination’s vision, and the imagination’s hearing–and the moral sense, and the intellect. This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks you and exhilarates you, as if you were dancing next to the band, is barely audible to anyone else. The reader’s ear must adjust down from the loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can’t yet hear a thing; it will take half an hour to pick up the writing’s modulations, its up and downs and louds and softs.

It seemed so simply true…being able to get absorbed into a novel is just a private sense for a select few. In any case, you have to warm up to novels, so even if you have this sense, there are other media which are much more immediate. Video games, movies, and now…the internet.

The only thing I couldn’t reconcile was…how could I say that not having a patience for reading was as good as or better than having a sense for it? This discovery only allowed for pity — just as some people pity people who would much rather listen to pop music over classical (just because) — and not equality.

So, eventually, I came back to Carr’s article…and this time, it had a hyperlink to Scott Karp’s blog…so I decided to click into it (and Karp had some insightful things to say about the difference between quoting and linking: [and maybe my senses are dull, but I sense some animosity -- Karp actually has a lot to say regarding Carr's article]).

The plot thickens when Karp’s actual words are put into context: instead of lamenting his loss of voracity in reading (as Carr infers), he asks if instead, this isn’t an evolution that the internet allows us.

It makes a lot of sense to me exactly as he describes: we are making a transition from the old, dominant mode of thinking linearly…to a new mode of thinking based on networking…loose association…jumping from point to point.

When writing articles (however rarely I do so), I wonder if I can herd everything into a sensible article. I have a bunch of jumbled roads of information I want to travel down and I have a lot I want to link. It all makes sense to me…but only in context to the stream of thought which unfortunately cannot be easily conveyed.

So, then, what if the answer is as Karp says later on in his Connecting the Dots of the Web Revolution?

Maybe I don’t need 250 page books anymore because the web enables me to connect ideas and create narratives that I used to depend on book authors to do for me, because I wasn’t able to access all the information and connect all the dots myself.

Scott Karp is definitely onto something with What The Newspaper Industry Could Learn About Do Or Die Innovation From General Motors.

There is no doubt that new approaches and ways of thinking in corporate corridors are vital. As Charles Leadbeater discusses in his book We-Think ’this closed model of leadership is increasingly ill-equipped to cope with the demands faced by large organisations’.

There may be nothing particularly innovative about the Volt and it may well become a glorious failure, but it’s the fact that after so many years of the closed model of leadership, GM has recognised that its only future lies in a far more alert, open and participative approach to business and innovation. And of course it is correct to compare this to the dilemmas facing the offline print media industry (and particularly the newspaper industry).

Sticking ones head in the sand is ultimately not a long-term strategy. Print media may well excuse that they have so much to lose but as is becoming more obvious they’re likely to lose anyway – if they don’t shake off the shackles of tradition.

To paraphrase Dickens, it is the best of times and the worst of times for the newspapers business.

The worst of times: layoffs, more every day including downsizing at some of the country’s biggest papers. Just yesterday, the Los Angeles Times said it was cutting 250 jobs, including 150 in the newsroom, bringing its total editorial staff to 700, down from 1,200 in 2001. In recent days, job cuts have also been announced by the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Hartford Courant, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and many others.

But the best of times? Some actually think so. Newspapers are cutting jobs to save money as they grapple with lower advertising revenue. But at the same time, the more innovative papers are reorganizing newsroom operations to create the news organizations of the future, organizations with an integrated newsroom that will produce information to appear in a variety of forms: print, online, on air and on mobile devices.

So is the glass half empty and getting emptier each day, as some news industry prognosticators believe? Or is it half full, and poised to eventually fill up again, some optimists believe?

My take: newspapers of the future will have to act like the Internet start ups I’ve written about for so long. They’ll be a lot leaner so they’ll have to do more with less. And because they don’t have as many layers of bureaucracy, they’ll innovate much faster than they could as larger, more established organizations.

Here are a few recent articles about what’s happening in the newspaper industry to read and decide for yourself:

THE PESSIMISTS
Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News examining combining some jobs – The rival dailies are considering merging photo departments and other jobs as a way to cut costs.

What newspapers still don’t understand about the Web – In this post, Publishing 2.0 – a Website that covers the evolution of media – gives newspapers, and the Washington Post in particular, an A for effort but a lower grade for execution in moving material online and making it relevant to local readers.

‘There will be no newspapers delivered in paper form.’ – Ballmer – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s big dis of the present newspaper and magazine industries in a wide-ranging Q&A with the Washington Post published in June.

THE OPTIMISTS
Times to cut newsroom staff and pages published – LA Times Editor Russ Stanton’s memo to staff about job cuts and reducing the number of pages printed by 15 percent a week.

The future of journalism, part I – Social media and online news expert Paul Gillin’s take on what newspapers need to do to transform themselves for 21st century.

Editor & Publisher’s Best of the Web – Thanks to Paul Gillin for bringing my attention to this regular E&P column on innovative things newspapers are doing on their Websites.

Save the Press – Long-time reporter and writer Timothy Egan’s New York Times op-ed piece on the present state and possible future of U.S. newspapers. Don’t miss the comments section.

Where do you think newspapers are headed?

I’m at Book Expo America in LA this week, so here are a few random thoughts and links that I”ve stored on the shelf:

A thought-provoking piece appears in the current issue of Newsweek, called The Dumbest Generation? Don’t Be Dumb, discusses a new book by Mark Bauerlien of Emory University: The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30)

The reviewer writes:

It really aggravates him that many Gen-Yers are unapologetic about their ignorance, dismissing the idea that they should have more facts in their heads as a pre-Google and pre-wiki anachronism.

Here’s a contrary perspective from another author, who happens to be the moderator of the session I’m currently sitting in (“Scaling the New Economies: In Search of Book Publishing’s 2.0 Business Model”)

In “Print Is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age” – published in hardcover last November, and now available for the Kindle – author Jeff Gomez challenges authors and publishers to think creatively about the new medium: “It’s not about the page versus the screen in a technological grudge match. It’s about the screen doing a dozen things the page can’t do.” Digitized words should count for more. “What’s going to be transformed isn’t just the reading of one book, but the ability to read a passage from practically any book that exists, at any time that you want to, as well as the ability to click on hyperlinks, experience multimedia, and add notes and share passages with others.”

So we seem to be moving towards a grazing style of literary consumption, and away from the more traditional “three square meals a day” paradigm. It’s now possible to read a few pages of your favorite novel on your iPhone while in line for the ATM or in the airport departure lounge. Or listen to it on your iPod. That is if you’re not too busy Twittering…The whole world is suffering from digital ADD.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/138536

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121115298895702155.html?mod=todays_columnists

For an opposing view on the digital future, involving a Print on Demand offering see this letter:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121193712530024831.html

Da quando le nuove tecnologie stanno innovando il mondo dell’editoria la possibilità di pubblicare testi, immagini e video personali è resa sempre più semplice e accessibile agli internauti. Quindi colgo l’occasione per presentare Issuu, un servizio on-line completamente gratuito che permette di pubblicare sul web i propri lavori come fosse una normale rivista. Dopo una registrazione rapida e gratuita basterà caricare il proprio documento in formato pdf per renderlo fruibile su internet.

L’ho provato personalmente presentando ad un esame universitario una ricerca di gruppo su timeet.com e il risultato è stato ottimo grazie alla possibilità di sfogliare il documento sullo schermo proprio come fosse cartaceo. È lo stesso procedimento utilizzato da Dweb (il “D di Repubblica” on-line) che pubblica settimanalmente la rivista sia nelle edicole in accompagnamento al quotidiano che gratuitamente on-line.

Il risultato estetico è notevole e inserendo opportunamente le categorie dove collocare il proprio lavoro (moda, viaggi, fumetti, architettura e quant’altro) sarà più semplice condividere con colleghi e comuni lettori le proprie idee e progetti (www.issuu.com).

Via | Maestroalberto

Scott Karp posted an interesting piece at Publishing 2.0 about what he calls the “web content conservation movement.”  In this day and age, between websites, blogs, Twitter and social networking sites, there’s way too much online content out there for any of us to keep up with even a fraction of it.  So Karp suggests that rather than posting anything that pops into your head, post only what others would find interesting or useful (or, I would add, amusing).  Add value to your post by including a link so instead of creating something completely new, you’re directing traffic to something that already exists.

What this means for authors who blog / are thinking of blogging but who are intimidated by the time commitment, is that blogging doesn’t need to take a lot of time.  A successful blogger needs to provide readers with regular posts, but rather than always having to sit down and produce original posts, an author blogger also has the option of simply commenting on someone else’s.

Os caras do Publishing 2.0, o lugar onde estão algumas das melhores discussões sobre a nova web, já tinham dado o toque: as máquinas de busca estão mudando totalmente a maneira como consumimos na Internet.

E isso se aplica também ao jornalismo, lógico.

É por essa razão que temos falado também sobre a monocultura do Google _assunto que, apesar de prometido, passou batido na aula passada e que vamos, obrigatoriamente, retomar nesta semana.

Quem sabe onde está o que quer na rede usa o sistema de feed e nem precisa ficar navegando atrás de coisas. Quem não sabe, maioria absoluta das pessoas, deveria sistematizar e concentrar suas buscas para localizar diretamente o que procura ou coisas relacionadas.

Pois bem, é justamente essa centralização de buscas que está tornando paulatinamente desnecessária a consulta a uma home page. O papel de abrigar o que há de um melhor num site, positivamente, é feito de forma muito mais eficiente por um sistema de busca do que por sua primeira página.

Falando nisso: como você navega?

Yesterday was the Publishing 2.0 event in Amsterdam. Perfect location, interesting crowd and some nice speakers.

On the photo you see some of the people that I met. The organizer Rebecca van Rijn of Emerce, Marianne Spier a manager of the interactive university and Ruben Timmerman of usarchy. Ruben gave together with Marianne Zwagerman of Telegraaf media the most interesting presentations. Ruben showed how you can improve your site with easy steps. Less is more still prevails. And Marianne gave some cool insights into the chaos strategy of Telegraaf. And the digital Telegraaf is freely available as from today on your mobile phone. I really believe in what they are doing. Not trying to centralize it all, and even giving enormous independence to certain sites that they exploit.

In the end the most important message I received was: innovation does not come from huge companies, so do not even go there. And please copy the successful things what others have done before. Cool.

In the eternal battle between good and evil, I mean print and online, Minonline reports that print is not dying (according to a Time Inc. exec, at any rate).

Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 recently coined the term “link journalism” (basically, hyperlinks in an online article) and explains more here.  What this means for us book publicists is that even if a book or author is only mentioned in a piece, if that mention includes a hyperlink to the author’s website / blog / Amazon page, readers can click through and potentially buy the book.  Which is pretty much what a review or interviews does — only those are much harder to get.

TVNewser reports that MNSBC’s Tucker will be cancelled.  More details are expected later today.

XM Satellite Radio’s presidential election channel POTUS ‘08 launched a new show, Politics Nation, this past weekend.  The show is hosted by Real Clear Politics associate editor Reid Wilson and The Politico’s Josh Kraushaar.  The weekly radio show will air 10 a.m. to noon ET.  According to the release, Politics Nation “will focus on this year’s presidential and congressional races. The show will also carry the weekly presidential radio address and Democratic response.” 

Among the Sunday morning talk shows, NBC’s Meet the Press comes in first, CBS’ Face the Nation second and ABC’s This Week third.

I asked this question on Linked In.  I wonder what you think.  Can small time niche publishers beat Amazon?I provided 9 ways small publishers can beat Amazon.  Do you have a 10th, 11th, or 12th?