Endopolis

The media business is a pretty small world, but I thought this clip epitomized it for me.

The background: Charlene Birkeland is parenting editor and blogger for Yahoo! Shine, (not to mention a fine writer and downright nice person). She's also married to my first boss at Yahoo, Jeff Birkeland (a fine fellow in his own right). In this clip, she's talking to Michaela Pereira, who I worked with at TechTV. Michaela has been rocking the morning news at KTLA Los Angeles for a few years now.

Small world.

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If you live in the San Francisco Bay area and pay attention to current events, then you probably know that tonight is Dennis Richmond's last night anchoring the news on KTVU channel 2. I'm usually not one to gush about TV news, but Dennis is one exception. (See, we're even on a first-name basis!)

I grew up watching his news shows, and greatly admire his no-nonsense delivery style. He's always serious, and it's through that persona (along with KTVU's generally high-quality journalistic and production standards) that made KTVU the must-watch broadcast each night. Well, that and Richmond's style - the man is just The Man.

I personally think that KTVU has slipped a bit over the years, as it has moved away from the longer-form storytelling and news analysis that used to make it so good and so different. Hopefully Richmond's departure won't take more away from the station. I hope it continues to produce a good show and succeed.

Tributes-a-plenty this week, but this one on KQED radio this morning (MP3) caught my attention because you get a glimpse of Richmond the person, not just the newsman.

In my living room, he'll be missed. I'll be watching tonight to see Dennis sign off for the last time.

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I've got a facebook account that I use regularly, a linkedin profile, a digg account, a mixx account, a myspace page that I hardly ever use anymore... the list goes on. I have a limited amount of time to check the websites and news sites I like, plus keep up with my social networks.

Enter Twitter. I resisted the urge to join for a long time until recently. Friends and co-workers of mine have been on it seemingly forever, but not me. Call me late to the game, but it occurred to me a few months ago that Twitter is an extremely powerful news site and information source, not just a lame micro-blogging vanity tool for geeks. Then, the Twitter coverage of Sarah Lacy's interview of Mark Zuckerberg finally pushed me over the edge, convincing me that what is going on there is real. Plenty of others have seen the light for a long time, but I wasn't compelled to join until then. Not that Twitter itself is aggregating news or building a content site. But its users are breaking news, and I finally realized that it's worth paying close attention and participating.

The general public hasn't taken to Twitter yet -- who knows if it will. My mom doesn't know what Twitter is. But there's an interesting thing happening over there that is worth watching. So far and to my knowledge, Twitter users have only made news. In other words, they post items that are relatively or collectively newsworthy and other news outlets have picked it up as part of a broader event (see Lacy vs. Zuckerberg). Less often, a Twitter post qualifies as an event within itself (see the Berkeley grad student who tweeted himself out of Egyptian prison). Like other social networks, users are connected to friends or interest groups. There's no way to know who is worth watching or when news will be made by what someone posts to Twitter. There's no Twitter news bureau or reporting staff (yet).

I guess that's what's fascinating about it -- you never know what will happen on Twitter. Now if only someone could reveal those hidden news gems. For now, the mainstream media is doing it. But, you have to think that won't go on forever.
   

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Not exactly, but Reporterist is a very interesting idea. In short, it's a service that connects freelance journalists who have stories to sell, with editors at publications who want to buy content. If an editor wants to buy a story, the two can haggle on fees (or, the reporter can set a fee). It also puts the power in freelancers' hands, as they can line up a variety of publications to which they want to pitch. If one publication passes, the pitch could go to the next one on the list.

I don't know how many other similar services exist, but I do know that this is exactly what sites like MediaBistro do not provide. Bistro, as successful and useful as it is, provides just about everything else: how-to-pitch advice, forums for writers to discuss freelancing headaches, resume and portfolio services, etc. As far as I know the site doesn't help make that final link, however, between freelancer and editor.

In this article with OJR.org, Reporterist founder Sindya Bhanoo says they've talked to many editors and that this service is needed in news departments that are looking for ways to get good original content from a variety of sources, and sometimes on the cheap. It'd be nice if more editors were willing to adopt this. As someone who has unsuccessfully pitched magazines, the waiting game can be painful for both ego and wallet.

Then, there's also a citizen journalism angle and some grand thinking behind the site.:

Bhanoo: A lot of sites are opening up to citizen journalism. But we're trying to create a place where journalists and up-and-coming citizen journalists can sell their work and start building a reputation.

Our larger vision is that it's the next generation wire service, like an AP or a Reuters. The public wants high quality, relevant news. As the industry's cutting back, a lot of regions are under-covered. Most of the editors we spoke to say they're relying too much on AP or Reuters content. At Reporterist, they will be able to look at all these stories and sort them by region or topic. Our vision is to be a wire service for local, topical news.

It'll be interesting to see how well the site does. Perhaps it'll motivate me to write something up and give it a whirl myself.

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As the news cycle winds down each year, and as reporters, editors and readers go on vacation, media outlets like to roll out their "Year in Review" packages. This week you probably saw a few of these: Hottest Gadgets of the Year, the Year's Top News Stories, Biggest Celebrity Meltdowns, etc. Yahoo News has its own Year in Review package, natch.

But as each year comes to a close I like a little more meat with my potatoes. I start with Project Censored's Top 25 Censored Stories. This year's list is, as always, thought-provoking, amusing and shocking. It contains some of the usual rants against government that are pretty well known by anyone who follows the news (like Blackwater's role in Iraq), but also some pretty outrageous reports that deserve attention (why won't the FBI accuse Osama bin Laden with the crimes committed on 9/11?).

Another interesting list I found the other day (by way of NPR radio in my car) was Foreign Policy Magazine's Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2007. Number 10 in particular caught my attention: "Armed robots take the field in Iraq." That's something you might have seen in Wired magazine, but not so much in the mainstream press. To think about the implications of robots toting machine guns is downright disturbing.

Happy 2008. 

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Great interview here with Kevin Sites, who was on the PBS News Hour recently talking about his experiences with the Hot Zone.

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Drudge had an interesting red headline the other day, trumpeting the success of the CNN/YouTube debates. Or, more accurately, that the GOP debate hosted by CNN/YouTube last week was the most-watched debate yet.

Here are the top three, according to TVNewser.

I haven't watched the GOP debate from the other night, but the format certainly was interesting and different (I did see the first Democratic debate on CNN).

It's too bad that the table above doesn't include the Democratic Candidate Mashup, which we at Yahoo! News produced and hosted in September. I always meant to come back and write a little about that experience, but since the moment is long lost I won't dwell on it a whole lot here now. I served as the product/project lead on the web side of the event, and it was the most challenging, exciting, and rewarding project I've ever been a part of.

Users seemed to like it, too. If that chart above had our "debate" included, Yahoo! News would be on top. The metrics are a bit like comparing apples to oranges, but we had well over 4 million video streams on the page, watched by well over a million users in the one week we heavily promoted the feature. Since our debate is still available to see online, people are still continuing to watch it. Let's just say the numbers are far ahead of either of CNN/YouTube's TV events.

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Last week I had the good fortune of visiting Toronto and attending the annual Online News Association conference, which is always interesting and fun on many different levels.

First, about ONA. I suppose it's refreshing to hear a room full of journalists and web publishers, most of whom work for their respective newspaper websites, stop whining. No longer do you go to a conference like this and hear "Is print dead?" or "If only my publisher understood the web." These sentiments were the rule in the industry only a couple of years ago, but no longer. Today, most everyone seems to get the value proposition. There's still plenty of refinement available to those publishers (Should I open my archives? Should I embrace user-generated-content?), but most have finally gone online at least and are dedicating resources to building their online businesses.

Publishers and journalists are trying to figure out how to make money and save their businesses. The result is that you're seeing interesting partnerships blossom, and some really incredible innovation coming from traditional print publications that are scrappy and willing to try new things, and their using the web as their testbed. Entire teams are built around multimedia projects and production. Websites are building mini-TV studios solely for online content distribution. Even college kids are getting into the mix. I heard one really interesting project proposal from a group of Kansas University and Kansas State University (who knew the two could get along?) students about a great community/governmental project that they've pitched to the Knight News Challenge. I won't steal their thunder, but I do hope they win a grant. The result would be putting online news readers in touch with their local and federal elected officials.

It's good for journalists to be business-minded. It's what pays our salary, after all. So finding new ways to create and package content while sticking true to journalistic roots and editorial integrity is so important. I'm glad that I've been able to walk this line in my own career.

Finally, Toronto was really an impressive city. I've never been so far east in Canada, and I sure would like to go back again. I didn't see a tenth of the city, but feel like I got the flavor, at least of the downtown area. The photo above was taken on the 56th floor of a building, from a bar just north of downtown during one of our after-hours mixers. I had lunch with an old friend at a cafe up the street from my hotel, and had a chance to walk around just a little bit. The city has a lot going on, and like New York it's really an all-night town. My hotel was across from the famous Massey Hall -- Sinead O'Connor was playing the night I left. If only. Someday, I hope to go back and spend some time there. 

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I've been trying to find a reason to use the new music download service offered by Amazon.com, and this weekend I finally had an excuse. I wanted to download a handful of random dub reggae tracks from a new album, then remix and mash them up on my Mac for a friend using Garage Band. You can't do this using AAC encoded tracks when they're bought from iTunes.

So when Amazon's service was announced last week, I thought it sounded interesting yet somewhat odd. You have to download and install a special client (Mac and PC versions are supported), and then you can surf the site, pick the songs you want, and get DRM-free MP3s that work on just about any devices and music players, including iPods and iTunes.

Sounds great, until you use it. I have both mainstream and eclectic tastes in music, so I was pleasantly surprised to find the somewhat obscure tracks I was looking for amongst its 2 million song catalogue. On the other hand, I couldn't find some more common mainstream reggae I wanted. ITunes had both.

But the problem with Amazon's new service wasn't the availability of various songs, it was in the purchase flow itself.  Even if I had wanted to download an entire album, there wasn't a single button to click that would initiate the purchase. I would have had to select "Buy Track" on each and every song. What's worse, is that I couldn't find a way to select multiple tracks to buy in one click, either. Instead, Amazon seems to force users to select single tracks and purchase them individually, going through the full credit card validation routine with each song you want to buy.

In short, you have to click through multiple screens in order to buy a single track. If you want more than one track, this gets really annoying. I wanted a few tracks of an album, and so I found myself going back to iTunes for convenience, and easily getting the songs I wanted. Maybe I missed something, but the Amazon service was a pain in the ass.

Also, I'm not sure why I needed to install and use the download application that Amazon forces you to use. If the tracks are MP3s, why can't you just click on the song link from the website and save-as?

To Amazon's credit, the service is the most robust download mechanism online that I've seen for MP3s. The service is advertised as in beta. I hope it improves, because I'm only tied to iTunes because it's my music management service. I have no real ties to the music store itself. If Amazon can make it easier to simply buy the tracks  you want, then I wonder why it won't gain broad appeal. On the other hand, if Amazon can offer 2 million songs as MP3s, why can't iTunes. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Apple ups the ante.

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I've been watching the Ken Burns documentary/mini-series "The War" on PBS as much as I can since it started airing last week. Lately, I find myself watching less and less. Despite its incredible scope, I can't really stomach it anymore.

At first, the series was the anti-History Channel view of WWII -- refreshing and also refreshingly gruesome, if that doesn't sound too twisted. There has been lots of blood, and many dead people, which you don't normally see with WWII shows. Most war documentaries or dramas tend to gloss over the nasty bits, sticking on quick snippets of video or photos of Allied troops blasting the faceless bad guys, with an over-reliance of film taken from old Movietone newsreel footage. Or, they over-dramatize the sacrifice at home. Not that I would know what any of that was like to live through.

Burns' series has shed new light on the real stories about the real people who fought or were affected by the war. The story simultaneously has taken us through the horrible fighting that consumed Europe and the Pacific, on both fronts.  And it tells all these stories through four main lenses: from the people of: Sacramento, CA, Waterbury, CT, Mobile, AL, and Luverne, MN.

At times the series has been touching. US Sen. Daniel Inouye has been featured at times as a "witness" to the fighting, and one of his stories has stuck with me. In an early episode, he recalled a touching and incredible transformation in his life as he went from a small-town, church-going boy to killing people on a battlefield. Other times, the series has been incredibly frank and gruesome, by showing in graphic detail what losing thousands of soldiers in a single battle looks like, with mass graves being dug and bodies piled on top of each other.

But there's the rub. So many people died in this war, and it really was the first war in which cameras were rolling to capture the fighting, the death, and the distruction. Wikipedia has an interesting tally of war dead, which seems unfathomable.  Burns doesn't focus on people dying, but he appropriately weaves their stories into the overall picture of the war.  It's the first time I've felt like I was watching a Vietnam War documentary, yet it's the Nazis and Japanese in the crosshairs. For me, all that death and destruction is getting tough to watch, and Berlin hasn't even fallen yet.

Posted by senders at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm not really sure how I feel about this story, if it's all true. To me, most hidden camera journalism is sleazy. It's also sometimes essential.

What gets me most is the chase out to the parking lot: a small mob from the conference follows the TV producer to her car, shouting questions and taking photos along the way. They turn the press/public dynamic on its ear, which is amazing to watch. But in an era when journalists are increasingly killed or harmed for doing their jobs, whether it's in Oakland or Baghdad, scenes like this are also a little frightening.

I guess she should have taken the press pass that was apparently offered to her.

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I'm not going to write about how YouTube is bettering Democracy by teaming up with CNN for its debates, one of which aired tonight featuring the democratic presidential candidates. Just because a webcam served as the interface between users and candidates, rather than a microphone between a live audience and the candidates, doesn't change the world imho. Although, it was smart of the producers to bring in a handful of the web questioners to ask a follow-up from the floor.

Still, I'll congratulate YouTube on a job well done. I watched for about an hour, and was focused on the content and quality of the questions, the overall feel of the debate, and the site itself after the debate was over. The debate was polished and interesting. I was half expecting amateur hour from users, but whoever was manning the editorial controls didn't let that happen (from what I saw). The questions were relevant and worthy of being broadcast to the TV universe. It's a different audience, and I think it demands a different approach. CNN and YouTube proved a great mix can be made between web and broadcast media.

A debate of a different kind has been taking up a lot of space online, as many users have complained that the most popular questions as rated by YouTube users should have been asked, or at least should have been featured in some way. It's a valid argument. However, just because they're the most popular doesn't mean they're the best questions, or are worthy of being asked on national TV to a crop of seasoned politicians. "Boxers or briefs?" was funny... once. We at Yahoo News keep a most popular section. If you've ever seen it, you know it's usually not the best stories or photos we have. We live by this mantra at Yahoo, and YouTube has proven again that human editorial intervention over automation is smart.

Sure, it'd be a mistake for YouTube to completely alienate its users. So part of my very unscientific analysis was in how YouTube handled its site after the debate. They've again done well, quickly posting a roundup of questions that were asked, and a big section featuring the questions that weren't asked. The recap is already posted, and the online crew obviously thought out this aspect of the presentation well. With the press YouTube and CNN earned by partnering on the event, YouTube will no doubt see a spike in users to its site from people who want to take in more than what was shown.

So, kudos to the YouTube and CNN teams on a job well done. I'm looking forward to the GOP debate on Sept. 17.

Posted by senders at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We recently got a great write-up from the Columbia Journalism Review on People of the Web.

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Jo and I found ourselves in Palo Alto on Saturday evening for dinner. Naturally, we had to stroll down the street to check out the Apple store, to see if there was any leftover pandemonium from Friday, when the iPhone went on sale. I was really beginning to hate the hype over this thing. As Walt Mossberg said, it's been unlike any event ever surrounding consumer electronics. Ridiculous.

Still, I had to see it. I wasn't expecting to actually play with it. 

The store was heaving, easily 100 people inside. The store itself has been totally rearranged from the last time I was at this particular location (granted, it's been a while).  But, a whole table just to the right of the door was set up for people to oogle the iPhone. Another shelf behind the checkout counter had another three or four units on it.

I spent a couple of minutes chatting with the Apple employee manning the front door who said, amazingly, that the opening event was less chaotic than they thought it'd be. I guess they were ready for riots, and people were generally well-behaved. That's so Silicon Valley. How boring!

After a few minutes, we wandered behind the counter to take a look. A kid was using one, playing with Google Maps. The interface looked really slick, the way you can zoom in and out using your fingers to pinch and pull the screen. Someone next to him stopped playing with a phone, so I was able to step right up and take it for a spin.

In short, the phone is unreal and to call it a "phone" isn't even quite right. It's unlike anything I've ever seen or any gadget I've ever touched. The touchscreen is incredible. The software's UI is unbelievable. It's smooth, and not overly sensitive to the touch. It does what you want it to do. The phone itself feels very solid and well-built. The form factor is really nice - it's small enough not to be a brick. The touchscreen was not really intuitive, though I could imagine getting it down after just a couple of days. Surfing the web was a little difficult because of the touch commands. I was really impressed with changing the aspect ratio of the screen, by turning the phone horizontal or vertical. The iPod functionality was really great, and scrolling through a music list was also... fun.

I only had a few minutes with the iPhone, but I nearly walked out of the store with one. I'll wait -- a 3G version will no doubt be coming, and surely Apple will be making other modifications. Hopefully the price will come down a bit. I'm sure there will be a few first-gen bugs.

I overheard someone at the store say: "you can make a call with it!" So, I did, dialing my parents who live near Portland, Ore. Surely the call plan doesn't discriminate between local and long distance on weekends, right?

Anyway, I was surprised that the call went through and my dad picked up on the other end.

"Dad, I'm calling on an iPhone."

"Nooooo!"

"Yeah, it's pretty cool. Don't worry, I didn't buy one."

"Wow!"

"Anyway, you sound really good." I truly was impressed -- the store was loud and I could hear dad crystal clear.

"You sound terrible!" he said. "Turn down the treble!"

"Alright, well I'll tell the employee standing next to me to do something about that. Although, I don't think it's Apple's fault. The phone is perfect, after all"

"Yes, definitely blame AT&T."

Posted by senders at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Editors:
    
I was shocked and saddened, but not entirely surprised, to see your note at the bottom of Sunday's Perspective declaring that the Mercury News will no longer publish the section.
    
I'm a San Jose native and life-long Merc reader, and have seen the overall quality of the paper sag over the years as it has cut newsroom staff.  Various mergers haven't benefitted the paper or its readers, and Perspective's departure is the latest example. I understand the papers are trying to figure out how to better cover their communities under new ownership, but it's a shame that often means less space in the paper to cover our communities and present truly important news. For Perspective's sake, I would be happy to nominate a couple of other sections in the Merc that might be worth ditching. All one has to do is look at where the advertising is to understand why the sections are still being published at all (i.e. Drive, Travel and Tech). Unfortunately, it's not the content that's driving those decisions.
    
Full disclosure: I work in the online news industry and am very familiar with the challenges facing newspapers and other traditionally offline publications. I'm also attempting to be part of the solution, in working for a company and business that has a solid track record of working with newspapers and publishers, advertisers, and readers in trying to extend the reach of print publications to new and far-flung audiences. We may not be perfect at doing all this yet, but we're trying and we're getting there.
    
It breaks my heart to see Perspective going away. It embodied everything that makes a newspaper great: wonderful editing and packaging of content, incredible discoverability of pieces you wouldn't expect to find, a variety of opinions, and writers exploring a range of issues facing the Bay Area and the world. It's the best section in the Sunday paper, and it's high on the list of what makes the Merc one of the best papers in the West. I looked forward to reading Perspective every week, and it's the section I always spent the most time with.
    
Meanwhile, there was plenty of space given Sunday to promote the revamped Monday Tech section, which I haven't yet read. I hope it's really fantastic, and you're making a lot of money from it. My problem is I can go just about anywhere to find information on the latest gizmos and profiles of Valley CEOs. Unfortunately, what I can't find every week is a smart newspaper section that consistently features opinion and commentary from the country's brightest thinkers and journalists.
    
I thank you for providing such a great service over the years; it's just too bad you had to kill it.
    
Regards,
    
Steve Enders
Sunnyvale

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