US newspapers head south. What will happen to Indian nupes?

American newspapers are getting thinner, local news is up, stock tables have disappeared. So have TV listings. Revenues are down. Picture is expected to worsen.
So reveals a survey of editors in 1,217 -- and only 259 responded.
The survey comes from Pew Research Center under something called the Project for Execellence in Journalism.
More stuff in this in Reuters Mediafile here

Now, I do believe that Indian newspapers will get thinner as well.

Can you measure journalism? How much is Picasso worth per square inch?

How do you measure journalistic productivity? Can you put numbers on stories executed to judge reporters? What the hell is a good-quality story? Does it involve writing? Balance? Reportage? "Consumer" value? Editing? What is the value of designers/copy-editors? Ideators?
Who should decide the quality? A vice-president with an MBA?
Is this a science? Is this an art?
What is subjective?
What the hell is objective?
No easy answers, but here is an interview with Chicago Tribune editor by Reuters Mediafile, which I am providing as food for thought/grist for mill.

(If I have the answers, I am not going to tell you now:))
And, oh yes! If you read the script below carefully, there is an open acknowledgement that newspapers are in crisis.
That is something that Indian newspapers don't seem to be saying...how interesting!

Here is the interview:

Tribune Co is keeping media reporters and headline writers busy these days with news of how the company is trying to turn around its newspaper business and stay afloat under billions of dollars in debt - all while creating a culture that, as Chicago real estate tycoon and newly minted press baron Sam Zell says, does not take itself too seriously.

That is growing more difficult as the company embarks on another round of job cuts at its papers, sparking fear and loathing among employees, and launches an ambitious plan to redo the papers' sizes and looks. Tribune also set journalism types' tongues a-wagging with its plan to review reporter productivity as a possible condition for staying on board. That might not sound so controversial, except that many people have interpreted that as saying it's not about the quality of your stories, it's about the quantity.

Gerould Kern, Tribune's vice president of editorial and the successor to departing Chicago Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski, addressed some of these topics in a phone interview with Reuters.

Q: What is your immediate task as the new editor of the Chicago Tribune?

A: As we report almost daily, the newspaper business is in a crisis. And I want to do everything I can in my power to save it. And you know, the Chicago Tribune has played a huge role in the history of the nation and the city, and I know it and I'm proud of it and I want that history to stretch far into the future. So I'm optimistic that we can solve these economic problems, the economic dislocation that faces us and that we're not only going to survive but thrive in the future.

Q: How do you make the business thrive with fewer people?

A: I think it becomes a lot harder and that's going to force us to be a lot more innovative and entrepreneurial and resourceful than we've ever been before. There's been a lot of misinformation and confusion about productivity as a topic. I think the idea's fairly simple. Let's turn over every stone, let's do every smart thing we can to stretch the resources, to use them to serve people and build our audiences and bring in revenue to support journalism.

It means our full-time professional staff is going to get smaller. And that's been happening to newspapers all over the country. And yet we're having to support more local media channels than ever before. … At the end of the day we still will have the largest newsgathering organization in this city by far. And if we are really smart and resourceful about using them we will be able to a fabulous job for consumers in whatever channel they choose.

Q: What do you say to the reporters who say they're scandalized by the idea of being judged on how many stories they produce, rather than the quality of individual stories?

A: I think it is unfortunate that this has been focused on in this way. I understand it based on some comments that [Tribune Chief Operating Officer] Randy [Michaels] made on the middle of that call. Let me just say this: I talked in a broader sense about productivity, which frankly is the way I'm looking at it. What can the whole organization do that's smart, that's strategic, that's resourceful.

But on bylines: All of our newspapers are looking at all kinds of information to see what is valuable in making some of these tough choices… Some of our newspapers in some departments have been doing byline counts over the years. It's not the first time that anybody's ever done that. From the beginning, we made it clear that this should be viewed as just one data point and, frankly, probably not the most valuable and that it had to be combined with other information. … Everybody knows for instance that you have to evaluate investigative reporters differently than other kinds of reporters. Because reporting takes a long time… And everyone was aware of that.

In the end, the information and the judgment calls [were] left strictly up to editors in the newsroom and that's where it will remain. So, I think much more is being made of it than really is there.

Editor & Publisher mag to offer electronic edition

I remember my days 20 years ago, when I used to visit the American Center library and thumb through a magazine that stood for a vibrant newspaper industry in North America. It is now available in an electronic "same-as-print" edition, thanks to a partnership with Hyderabad-based Pressmart. Pressmart is an amazing company which is putting some of the world's leading newspapers into online editions that look the same.
Here are some details from the media statement:

E&P Publisher Chas McKeown said "the Pressmart state-of-the-art solution will provide our readership access to Editor & Publisher on multiple digital distribution channels including eEditions; Podcasts; Mobile devices and eArchives."


Editor & Publisher is the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.

Based in New York City, the magazine dates back to 1884, when The Journalist, a weekly, was founded. E&P was launched in 1901 and merged with The Journalist in 1907. E&P later acquired Newspaperdom, a trade journal for the newspaper industry that started in 1892. In 1927, E&P merged with another trade paper, The Fourth Estate. In January 2004, E&P switched from weekly to monthly publication, while revamping its Web site to offer more breaking news and content on a daily basis.

E&P Online (www.editorandpublisher.com) offers breaking news free to all visitors in our Top Stories section. Each week, selected proprietary stories from E&P staff are made available free to all visitors, but the majority of our analysis, industry news, features, columns, and trends are restricted to E&P subscribers.

See, I told you? Video Entertainment in 2013 Will Be Less Than 50% Traditional TV

More market research in the US reveals more about Life After YouTube (and Hulu, and broadband, and mobile video!).
TV is fading away in the sense we know it.
Mediapost, quoting Solutions Research Group on a study covering US media consumer behaviour, says: "While daily time with TV will remain close to 4 hours, traditional TV's share of the total video entertainment pie is projected to shrink from 63.9% today to 47.1% by 2013, given the overall increase consumers' in total video-based entertainment consumption"
It kind of validates a lot of stuff I have been writing on this blog since it began in 2005.
Am I supposed to say: Watch this space?

What the Long Tail did next?

The Long Tail, did you say?

How about the tail wagging the dog?

Here is a company which is trying to aggregate chunks of the long tail and converting it -- or trying to convert it -- to a thousand-pound gorilla.

Or should I say, a hydra-headed monster?

Here is the story

How to fool the media..lessons from Helion VC

Now, now.
Ashish Gupta is a nice bloke. He is the guy who co-founded Junglee.com which was sold for a reasonably obscene amount to Amazon.com. Ashish has gotten rich, and he was always clever (You know, IITK, Stanford, all that). He is one of the key blokes in Helion, a confident, smart venture capital fund.
Ashish also knows his Hindi well. He probably has heard the story of Ashwathama from the Mahabharata (Read it here)

To cut a long story shot, Yudhishtra does not lie but wants to weaken Drona. So he announces the death of an elephant called Ashwathama in a manner that conveys to Drona the impression that his son is dead.
The story is now re-told in the age of venture capital funding.
Helion has supposedly denied funding SMS Gupshup -- a hot Internet startup founded by some very smart guys of whom I have written.
The so-called denial, which is reproduced below, came after very respected technology blogs including GigaOM, TechCrunch and others reported it.
Please read it below, and then read my comments that follow, which I have marked in bold letters.

 

 

HelionVC Denies Funding SmsGupShup While SmsGupShup Is Silent On The Issue

via WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India by Rajiv Dingra on 7/6/08

Well last week the news of Smsgupshup being funded for 10 Million $ by Helion Venture Capital and Charles River Ventures was published all across the leading digital blogs in India. It all started with a plug by pluggd and spread to medianama which also had an excellent article on why Smsgupshup would need the 10 Million $ (medianama is started by the earlier editor of contentsutra), vccircle and contentsutra itself (which aggregates news from vccircle now a days for the lack of an editor). Also techcrunch seems to have picked the news up as well and linked to pluggd as the source. They have an update as well terming it as an unconfirmed story. (thanks raghav for the techcrunch update)

While all this was happening WATBlog was trying to get in touch with both SmsGupShup and HelionVC on any official update on the status of the funding if any. And here I am publishing the respective responses from the concerned parties on the issue.

Response from Chirag Jain, VP India Operations "Thanks for your mail. Unfortunately we have not issued any notification and are not in a position to make any comments at the moment."

Well the above diplomatic answer was expected. But what was not expected is a categorical denial from Ashish Gupta, Managing Director - Investment Advisor of Helion Venture Capital.

Ashish Gupta

When we emailed Ashish the following "Just wanted to confirm this story and if possible get some bytes from you on the same. SMSGupshup has raised 10 Million $ funding from Helion VC. Will await your response on the same.

Ashish sent us the following one line reply "the line below is incorrect."

On probing further with this question "Would it be correct to say that helion has participated in the 10 million funding? Will await your response."

Ashish Replied "we have not done any funding for Gupshup."

So as far as we know and from the Horses mouth itself and not from any reliable anonymous source the funding has not happened through Helion Venture Capital atleast till 4th of July and thats when we recieved this denial from Helion.

So did blogs report something on speculation? And why didn't Smsgupshup deny the story? And who are these sources that are confirming the story when Helion itself seems to be denying the same! No one will know until and unless both these parties come forward and speak up. On the issue of Smsgupshup's funding I have no doubt that they both need and to certain extent even deserve the funding given that smsgupshup has taken off as the premiere group sms service provider. But who are these investors we shall hopefully know soon

---

My take: Please read the above carefully.

1) Ashish denies funding Gupshup -- What he does not say, in true Yudhishtra style, is that the company that owns SMS Gupshup is Webaroo Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd.
You don't fund a Website -- you fund the company owns it

2) Helion routinely issues newsletters and tom-toms its investments. If it has not done so in this instance, it is because the funding has not tied up, or the news got leaked before the deal could be ready for announcement. It probably is still in an advanced state of negotiation.

3) There is no outright denial -- If the deal was closed with no funding from Helion, it would have been more forthcoming in its denial

4) There is a vague, cryptic sentence that says "The line below is incorrect" -- What line? Why be cryptic?

It is very clear that the balloon got out of hand before it could be filled with Helion's helium...so we got a lot of hot air.
Smoke and mirrors?
We shall wait the final and official word. But I will stick my neck out and say the original story was not a plug.
Blogs attempting to break new ground in journalism need to read through the spin and denials.

PaidContent marks a milestone

The acquisition of PaidContent by the UK-based Guardian group confirms (again) my belief that "blog" is just a word -- It can turn into a business and become part of the mainstream media. Indian-born Rafat Ali has taken the group of sites logging the growth of the digital publishing industry in a "collablog" publishing venture to new heights and has thus become a pioneer. He joins the likes of Sabeer Bhatia and Vinod Khosla in marking new milestones in the Internet economy. The New York Times found it relevant enough to write a meaningful story

Can Pitchh.com make the ad biz more transparent?

My friend and fellow blog-world philosopher Rajesh Lalwani has brought in the business of competitive pitching into the open -- and on the Net -- with Pitchh.com.
Yet to check this site out but the idea looks promising and disruptive. Basically, we can try to answer the question: If it is competitive, who should there be a closed loop?

CBI= Central Bureau of Insinuation?

The Arushi murder case in Noida is proving to be an excellent case study on police and media behaviour in India.
CBI fumbles and bumbles
Media grumbles and mumbles
And they both tumble.

Questions and Answers:

Does the media think CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) is a judicial or quasi-judicial agency?

Yes

(For Gawd's sake, someone should tell them it is just the federal police...just a bunch of guys who swapped khakhi trousers for ill-fitting safari suits, ok?)

Does the media understand or care to explain to the readers/viewers the nature of CBI?

Who cares? A story a day keeps sensible analysis away

Can you cover up one bad allegation with a whitewash spin?

Yes. Why not? CBI is in the business of uncovering crime, not blaming the innocent. That is a job for the media to do.

Why is Arushi being the only victim getting so much media attention?

Because she is a regular middle-class TV-watcher-populace's game.

Does this help anyone?

Who cares? You can't win elections with TRPs, but you can make money

---

In the light of all the above points, here are some new expansions for CBI:

Central Bureau of Insinuation
Central Bureau of Improvisation
Central Bureau of Innuendo
Central Book-keepers of Innocence

Inside Bloomberg..reads like a movie script (And the discovery of a legendary journo!)

Anyone wants to write a Wall Street-meets-media movie script? This story on Bloomberg, whose terminals dot financial dealing rooms worldwide (and which played a vital role as Brand X during my years in Reuters) can provide valuable grist. A very good read.

Now, I wrote the para above a few minutes ago and wanted to find out who wrote that riveting, well-researched stuff that seemed like great journalism and great literature all at once. Turns out she is a colossal woman, knocking 80 years of age and a legend in her lifetime..
I did not grow up reading Fortune magazine, and therefore, I am not surprised I had not heard of her before. But I am patting myself on the back for smelling out such a figure by simply waking up to the quality of her work. Here is a biographical sketch of Carol J. Loomis, the author of that piece which I strongly recommend.

The Google-Yahoo war should go to WTO, not Washington

I chanced upon this post by the Silicon Valley's respected Net-watcher Om Malik, and it seems he has forgotten his days in Delhi. Basically, he wonders if the war over Google's alliance with Yahoo (and by implication, Microsoft's acquisition/merger attempts) should go to the regulators -- by which he means Washington's powers-that-be.
The Internet is a global medium, and I don't quite fancy US-centric people holding forth as if the rest of the world does not matter. They have not learnt their lessons from Vietnam/Iraq, whatever...


So, here is my beginner's guide to anyone commenting on the Google-Yahoo saga

1) The US is not the only nation in the world. It is one of about 150. George W. Bush doesn't get this. Do you?

2) Google is a global search engine and Yahoo is a global media company. The World Trade Organisation (WTO), not Washington, is the place to decide anti-competition issues on this.

3) Online advertising is not the only kind of advertising. Google's share should be measured as a part of global advertising revenues in all media.

4) If online ads are to be treated separately, let it be done only for US IP addresses and let there be technologies to segregate and analyse all this. (That will give use to more startups.Wow!) Or else, revenues should be segregated on the basis of geographical origin.

5) Google is leading the process of creative destruction in the global media industry as a whole. Anything disruptive in this nature is by definition pro-competition until such time as it acquires critical mass in market-share. And digital ads have only just begun!

6) If Microsoft's desktop market share in OS or the browser war is not a problem, why should Google's online revenue share should be?

7)In the case of document standards, the International Standards Organisation showed the way to go. Let there be a similar global discourse (oops, do they use this word at Stanford? Must ask my friends from Oxford). This should be done at the World Trade Organisation.

Geneva, not Washington, is the place to decide this. And Mountain View and Wall Street are small dots on Google Earth.

Or how about the United Nations, Om?

The Logic of the Four Screens

The "Silver Screen," television, PC and now mobile handsets --media convergence is increasingly about converging these four and optimising their mix. I am not even talking about print here. My friend Ajay Jain makes an interesting analysis of the four-screen play in his site here

Wisdom on the Sun Valley: Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one

At Sun Valley, Idaho, global media moguls are meeting this week for the annual retreat that is fabled to generate mega deals. Now, will moguls be spelt as Mughals this week? In other words, how important is India for the likes of Google, Yahoo, Newscorp et al?
No doubt this is an interesting market, but, as the Reuters report observes, the US economy is the prime concern, and issues like the Microsoft-Yahoo saga dominate.
Now, while that happens and we look for the signals, here is some sobering insight. When the likes of Murdoch, Eric Schmidt (Google) and others confabulate, where are the journos?
They are busy reporting it all. Is any of the moguls/Mughals in question a former entertainer or journalist? Very few, if at all.
In the end, this is about business.
All those who have woolly ideas about the power of the media must remember my friend Srini's e-mail drop-line: The freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.
That saying, I believe, is credited to A.J. Liebling of The New Yorker magazine

Media vs Media...When one news organisation covers another

What happens when a media organisation does a story about a rival? How does the dog cover dog when its job is to eat it? An interesting article in New York Times is at its ranting best.

I am not even commenting, but the plot does look familiar.

State of Hindi news television ...hilarious

A promising site provides much-needed satire on Indian media.



Fly You Fools - An Indian Webcomic about Life.

Courtesy: http://www.flyyoufools.com

Why YouTube must be saved -- (Oh, help me watch the Bhutto speech and Liril ad)

YouTube is in the news. In the US, privacy groups are worried that it may be forced to share viewer data. In India, two companies of the T-Series group hav dragged the online video-sharing site owned by Google to court for copyright violations.
But I had the delight of catching Riz Khan, the former BBC and CNN anchor, again today after I logged on to YouTube. Riz is now with Al Jazeera which interviewed me yesterday on Asian economic issues. I could not watch myself on air because Indian direct-to-home cable operators don't seem to be offering the Qatar-based global channel.
YouTube and online television are a boon for people like me, who like to have a choice. It would be a pity if the channel does not evolve a meaningful business model to help us enjoy and find online videos. I have stumbled on some great stuff on YouTube, like rare Carnatic music recordings and a Bhutto speech made in 1971 that brings out the flavour of the man for a generation of folks like me who did not have access to such stuff.
YouTube is also a delightful source for retromercials -- or ads that bring nostalgia back. Here is that lovely Liril ad we grew up on.
Or a piece of music that made me sit up and discover a guy called A.S. Dilipkumar -- who later became known as Bollywood and Tamil movie composer A. R. Rahman.
Somone puh-leez make sure YouTube does not suffer.
Are you listening, Sakina Arsiwala?

The Long Tail? I prefer to say the Shorter Head

An engaging concept that is shaking the world is that of the Long Tail, a book by Chris Anderson based on an article he had written -- to the effect that content and much else in the age of Internet is getting fragmented in choices and opening up countless possibilities in content and commerce. This is being challenged in a Harvard Business Review which in turn is being discussed rather well in this piece in TechCrunch.
I am yet to catch the original book, but it is intuitive as well as empirical that we are spending more time on the Net and doing stuff I would not have been able to do as a kid.
(For instance, the other day I caught on YouTube an engaging video of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's outburst at the UN Council in December 1971, when Bangladesh was carved out of Pakistan -- it certainly inspired me enough to want to read more of that period, and created a "demand" inside me! -- more on that later)
Now, the Harvard review, in my opinion, must be analysing "facts" of the present, while concluding that the Long Tail is not going far in generating a sufficient variety of demand.
My argument is not that the tail will lengthen, but the head will become smaller.
Mass media of today is like the head, and the Internet is like the tail. People will continue to need some common ground for their social and communal needs but will flock to bigger sources for bigger things.
I am beginning to liken the Internet like water: We use it all the time, and have various devices and uses for it and do it based on our ease and necessity. If you draw water from a river and irrigate a field with a canal, the chances are high you visit the river-bank less everyday. It is a bit complex from the point of view of advertising metrics, but the Long Tail and the Short Head are a fact of life now, Harvard or no Harvard.

Who is PR for? Companies or their honchos?

"You don't do the Boss column anymore?" the PR person asks.
"No," I reply, with an increasing sense of glee.

Dealing with public relations folks is part of the drill I have to go through, but you will not believe the number of PR agency dudes and dudettes who have called me about a column called "Boss Day Out" which we at Hindustan Times also ran for a while later under the tag "Boss After Work."
It was a nice thing to tell readers about the other side of the blue suits and pinstripes, but it can get a bit sickening when every two-bit trainee in a two-bit PR agency calls you up to discuss the two-bit CEO of a two-bit company. Very often, the request was to prop up a 20-something with a fat title who got there because papa told him.
Ah, figures. The honcho signs cheque, agency pleases honcho, agency hounds press. All is well with the world. But does that do the company any good?
There are companies that I have never heard of or rarely so, and the PR person would call up and say nothing about the company and often prop up somebody who in our scheme of things is hardly high enough (Gawd! vice-president-marketing isn't quite it!).
That's some tripe hype gripe!

LA Times or Layoff Times? Net is in. Nupes are down. Jobs are cut

Here is a story of job cuts in Los Angeles Times, with the details of how the Internet is eating into the newspaper business in the US.
It feels strange at a time when newspaper launches are getting common all over India, with new editions being launched all around and even brave, new brands hitting the market, even in the English language business, where, presumably, readers have or will have increasing access to the Web.
Am I missing something here?

The dilemma of business journalism -- or how the US media messed up on corporate woes

A perceptive article in Newsweek talks of how the US media failed to predict corporate troubles lays threadbare the intricacies of business reportage -- which the writer remarks suffers from the same syndrome as sports journalism. You celebrate what you need to examine, and forget looking deep into something because you need to cultivate the sources or hang out with them.

Hiring biases are real!

The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) represents advanced countries. And, despite all the talk of political correctness, there are clear biases that are part of the recruitment culture there. A survey by OECD illustrates this. Here is the release.

I write this after my last post on supposed biases in media organisations -- just to illustrate a point that biases are everywhere!

Ethnic Indians arrive in global media scene (Adventures through the glass ceiling?)

First, a bit of tom-tomming. This post is the 100th since this media blog kicked off about three years ago, when I started this to illustrate the then-largely-unknown concept of the blog to a bunch of media students I was lecturing at COMMITS, a media school in Bangalore..
It is fitting that I should hit this landmark number with a story in Mint on how Indians are rising to new highs in global (read Western) media giant labels such as Time and Wall Street Journal. The story links these appointments to the rise of the "India story" which kind of devalues the merit of the people in question-- as if to say that these people are making it big because they are Indian and not solely because they are capable of running global set-ups. I am not sure if that is the correct way to look at it.
Some of the dudes in question are my former colleagues who left Indian shores for greener pastures. and have worked hard to get where they are. There is plenty of Indian talent both at home and abroad, though some of the people in question have swapped native Indian wisdom and depth for US-ishtyle reportage which has its own charms and balancing qualities.
When I left myself for Reuters, there were those who cautioned me about the perceived glass ceiling in international media companies. I did not find any significant problem, except with occasional individuals or their worldviews that concealed unconscious biases.
I will not say there are no biases at all in Western media organisations, but I will add that Indian companies have their own biases. There was certainly a period in both information technology and media when Indians had to work harder to get to the same spot but that has changed a lot. It is an evolving world in which professional values are being increasingly recognised, though there is some way to go both in Indian and international organisations.
Some look at everything through the looking glass of self-loving mirrors and others through imagined glass ceilings. In the end, the details differ from case to case, person to person.
Now for the big question: These are big labels they work for, but will they stay big? In the "World is Flat" globe of level-playing fields, is the media industry an exception?
Bring on a guitar. I'll sing "the answer is blowing in the wind."

Should you blame an Indian sub-editor who has not heard of Johann Bach?

A Goa-based group has pulled a fast one on three Indian newspapers, concocting a story about the arrest of a Nazi war criminal called Johann Bach. Reuters has a highly effective blog that has chronicled the fiasco.
Mercifully, I have heard of the Western composer Bach and even Nazi war criminals...but I am not particularly outraged by the goof-up. It is true that there is a new generation of journalists in which many lack historical knowledge. It is equally true that chief sub-editors and news editors of the old vintage are few and far between, thus reducing the cross-checking culture.
The Reuters blog rightly remarks that a Google search would have got an easy cross-check.
However, I do want to ask if Western reporters or subs have heard of Thyagaraja or Muthuswami Dikshitar, the leading Carnatic music composers or face frequent challenges on learning about 18th Century India when they do their day-job.
The point I am trying to make it is that Indian journalists working in the English language media have to carry an enormous amount of general knowledge on both the Western world and India to make things work.
Frankly, there is neither sufficient incentive nor enough facilities or mentoring available for them to do this seriously.
A call centre agent with a fake American accent makes more money at the age of 20 than a master's degree-holding print journalist in a leading newspaper at the entry level. Unemployment is not exactly a problem for fluent English speakers in India, and the old charms of smooth writing or idealism is no longer drawing enough people into Indian newspapers (the better ones with similar talent go for advertising, television or even consulting jobs!).
You gotta pay and train for the right talent. I don't see that happening.

Bloggers need to honour copyright -- and must be respected for theirs!

I spoke at a workshop organised by the Indian Blog and New Media Society last weekend, and faced some questions on copyright of content produced by bloggers. It stays with them, as far as I know -- but then, they also need to honour other's rights.
Here is an article on how Big Media is watching bloggers. Well, Big Media should also realise that bloggers are also challenging them, somewhere!

Crime is hot on Indian TV, but it will not pay for long

If there was statistical evidence needed for the overkill that Indian news TV channels are doing with crime stories, especially the Arushi Talwar murder case in Noida/Delhi, it is here.
An article in The Hindu's Sunday magazine says: "A study by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) says that six channels beamed news and special programmes on the double murder for 39.30 hours out of a total 92 hours prime time — from 19:00 hrs to 23:00 hrs — between May 16 and June 7."

Here is my prediction. In the next six months to one year, there will be a dramatic shift away from crime news.

A lot of this had to do in my opinion/interpretation with the prices of television and cable connections dropping to points where TV sets and satellite TV became affordable for millions. This class, which I call the "neo-TV-literate" was wooed with stuff that turned them on in the TRP game. At the same time, the cost of launching new channels and the imperatives of winning market share generated a cycle of "competitive populism" in the space from the supply side.

The cycle is playing out like an IPO boom in the stock market and something -- as they say -- has gotta give.
I do not expect gross TRPs to rule the roost at all and we will have an ordered play of TV news channels. I am not going into the ethical, social and responsibility-related issues here. Some of them are valid, but I don't believe in rantings passing off as informed discourse.

Some useful advice for young/budding/aspiring journos

I found these focused points from Aniruddha Bahal (famous for Tehelka exposes and the Bad Sex writing award for his novel) highly commendable to journos who still believe in looking for something beyond raises and bylines.

To Wiki or not to Wiki, that is the question...

It is out. A few years ago, my friend Sanjit used to mock at newspaper features that ended with an impressive byline that went "So-and-so, with Internet reports"...those were the days when the Internet itself had an authoritative ring to it whereas the case was simply one of a harried writer in a hurry hacking a dubious source.
Now, the Internet is understood to be less-than-excellent, but its latter-day user-generated encyclopaedia, Wikipedia is often used by journalists, including yours truly. I confess that I use it, though it is a dubious source, but also add that I trust my own intuition, experience and cross-checking to know when to use it. Of course, I have never thus far "cited" it as a source.
Now comes an interesting article in American Journalism Review that discusses the issue threadbare.
As long as publishers don't want to spend (enough) on reportage and research, and as long as editors are not willing to cross-examine reporters and as long as reporters -- either out of laziness, ignorance or indifference -- use Wiki to meet deadlines faster or easier, the threat of information pollution is real.
Which brings me back to my favourite theme: Loser Generated Content.
Few people care to acknowledge that good journalism is both capital and labour intensive. If you are short of time or funds, reportage will tend to suffer. Somebody has to pay for it. Usually it is the reader.
Activists, well-intentioned citizens and affected parties cry foul about bad reportage, but few are ready to pay for good stuff.
I once asked a bunch of complaining folks: Will you pay 10 rupees to buy your paper?
The answer was silence, or some kind of fudging.
I used to like a lot an old VIP suitcase ad. Its punchline, based on an old Arab saying, was just right: You can't get a camel for the price of a goat!

Here is my presentation on where blogs are -- and can go

On June 7, I made a presentation to the Delhi Bloggers Bloc on classifying blogs and what they could mean from the point of view of the mainstream media.
You can view it here -- though the size seems larger than it should be!


Uploaded on authorSTREAM by madhavan

When the media looks at itself...with good wishes to Medianama

My friend Nikhil Pahwa has started his own venture to chronicle the media industry. While I wish all the best to Medianama I have some points to ponder.
When I started this blog three years ago, it was with the idea of talking to media students to whom I gave a lecture. Otherwise, I was a bit sceptical/cynical about the media talking to itself about itself, but now I am wiser.
Every industry needs its own vertical, and sites like Exchange4media and Indiantelevision are doing a rather good job in making the community come alive for its own purposes. Medianama and Nikhil's previous employer, ContentSutra fit into this matrix, and hopefully, so does this very blog.
This, I can see now, is not a case of "Mirror, mirror on the wall,..."
There is more to this than incestuous Narcissism. I find Indian companies generally have poor internal communications. This may not be intentional, but it is there. Very often, media professionals rely on stray gossip, hearsay and malicious slander to inform themselves about their own companies or industry trends. Vertical Internet sites can and do step in to clear the air, and should not be confused with blogs with malicious intent or content.
The simple fact is that there is always a market for truth and facts -- though we can quibble on the demand, supply and pricing factors. If you are in the business of facts, accuracy and truth, there are ways to face the competition in the marketplace. Journalists often pursue truth -- without knowing how to market it. Hopefully, they will live and learn. We all do.

If Indian newspapers can use copy from AP, why can't US newspapers get editing work done in India?

News is out that Orange County Register, a California newspaper, will have some copy editing done in New Delhi by Mindworks Global Media, an editorial services company founded -- incidentally -- by some of my friends and old colleagues. As someone who played a role in Reuters when it began doing global editorial work out of Bangalore in India with the aim of sharing some of the work thus far done in the US and the UK, I have been witness to the term "outsourcing" creeping in to journalism.
But I don't like to call it editorial outsourcing. At Reuters, the official line was clear: This is "product development" because work related to content is a core function, whereas "outsourcing" is a term best applied to "non-core" work done by a company.
Does that sound uncomfortable/inconvenient/confusing? Please read on.
Not happy with having screwed up spellings and grammar in the English language, the US political culture is adding fuel to the fire by usurping the term outsourcing to describe any work done somewhere outside the West.
I mean, does India "outsource" the manufacture of Boeing jets to the US? Does India "outsource" the manufacture of a search engine to Google? (Never mind that large parts of the search technologies are now developed in Bangalore -- and Google News was developed by an Indian, Krishna Bharat, who used to be based in Bangalore and played a key role in Google's R&D work there, as you can see here)
In the age of globalisation, it is considered good business to do work or source products and services from where it is most optimal. I use the word "optimal" consciously, because price, quality, detail vary from customer to customer and it is for the customer to decide the issue of "value" that takes into account all factors.
Outsourcing is/was used by management theorists to describe farming out of work by a company to another when the nature of the work was "non-core" -- for instance, a bank may hire a security agenty to supply guards, when it believes that its core function is lending and borrowing money in the form of loans or deposits.
Somewhere along the way, shifting of work to India or China began to be called "outsourcing" whereas the correct reference should at best be "offshoring." Ideally, it should be simply called what it is: globalisation of services, aided by new technologies like high-bandwidth telecoms and computer networking.
Now, there is a more subtle, sophisticated opposition like this one to shifting some editorial work to India, on the grounds that it kind of takes a sacred work outside its home base.
But surely publishers know better? And surely global competition is part of the business for the whole of the editorial value chain?
When an Indian newspaper editor can use an Associated Press copy on Chilean politics meant essentially for readers in the US Midwest, is that not a kind of a less-than-sacred warp?
Cultural presuppositions are a part of journalism and publishing. As a schoolboy, I grew up reading Enid Blyton and all sorts of stuff about British culture and later, I devoured the works of US writers. There were those in India who called all that "cultural imperialism". And now we have 21st Century Luddites who oppose globalisation of editorial work.
Young recruits at AOL's Bangalore office learn about Hollywood movies to serve American customers better. It is called training for business -- and usually involves cultural compromises, both for service providers and those who source them.
So I leave you with a simple question: If Indian newspapers can use AP copy, why can't American newspapers get some editing work done in India?

When journalism touches literature...(Or why I like this Reuters story on Bill Gates)

Do I miss Reuters, people ask.
Of course I do. A dozen years in a world class news agency is not something I am going to forget in a hurry, though the company has changed a lot, including the recent Thomson merger that takes it to a new level in financial pursuits. Beyond the pennies and pounds lies ye olde agency that encourages good writing. There are days when I see a great story that makes me long for those days. I saw one today on Bill Gates leaving Microsoft to focus on philanthropy.
First, I don't like the headline (OK, I began praising the story, but my job here is to critically appraise the story)..it kind of leaves a bland, newsy touch on what is essentially a personality profile.
But what I love about this story, in the best traditions of good agency journalism, is that it paints an engaging picture of the man without sounding opinionated. The trick is to capture through a sheer use of facts and imagery the essence of a personality whose character traits are revealed in the process.
Bill Gates played poker, dropped out of Harvard, had the gut feel to spot a big technology trend ahead of its times, played hard ball as a businessman, was born into a privileged family, hired his pal with a similar flair for cynical humour (Steve Ballmer) as fellow leader in a breathtaking career -- and after all that is ready for a philanthropic binge at the young age of 52.
If that does not inspire a movie, what will?
This is the kind of story that takes journalism to the doorsteps of literature. It is a challenge for the reporter! I love it.

PR agencies take blogging seriously. Should they?

About 3 years ago, I came across a PR agency in the US talking about "Blogger Relations"...and it was an early recognition of the emergence of bloggers as influential people, somewhat like traditional media. PR agencies are recognising this and today's survey by Text100 confirms that one of the world's leading PR agencies is taking bloggers seriously.
I have my doubts on some issues. I am concerned about misuse of blogging but you cannot stop it anymore than you can stop abuse of conventional media. It is more difficult. But it is clear that blogging, or what I call "micro-publishing" is a fact of life.
I have said this many times: Random writing is not blogging -- and certainly not the type media or PR practitioners should take seriously

Here below is the release from Text100 on the issue.



APAC bloggers call for PR people to get online and blog
Text 100 asks 153 predominantly business, technology and news bloggers across APAC what they want from PR and corporation

Text 100 today announced the results of the Text 100 APAC Blogger Survey a new survey aimed at helping the PR industry and its clients better understand bloggers in the Asia Pacific region.

Key Points

In what is believed to be the first survey of its kind conducted in Asia Pacific, this survey highlights the similarities and differences between bloggers across APAC and their preferences for working with corporations and PR agencies.
In a positive sign for the communications industry, 84% of respondents welcome contact from public relations practitioners and the corporations they represent.
Electronic communication is king for APAC bloggers: 58% preferred email, followed by online comments on their blogs, as the preferred means of contacting them.
Similarly, emailing of press releases and interviews or discussions ranked in the top two as the preferred formats for receiving content (67% and 60% respectively).
APAC bloggers are not particular about who they engage with, but prefer to talk with active bloggers and whoever is closest to the story – not necessarily the traditional spokespeople.
Two thirds (67%) of respondents spend less than 8 hours of their working week on blogging.
Bloggers concerns included receiving unsolicited spam from PR agencies, and were frequently critical of the content they received, feeling it was inappropriate and unusable.
While most bloggers ignore traditional press releases, 88% were aware of so-called Social Media Releases and indicated they were in favour of using elements such as videos, quotes, pictures and links from these releases in their posts.
Text 100 surveyed bloggers it knew and those referred by friendly bloggers, not wanting to spam people it didn’t have a relationship with. Text 100 feels the views of the survey’s sample pool are a fair reflection of influential news, technology and bloggers across Asia Pacific.
Text 100 intends to conduct this survey annually across Asia Pacific and to potentially involve other regions over time.
Note: 153 mainly business, news and technology bloggers from eight countries across Asia Pacific responded to the survey. 125 bloggers completed the full online survey, and results were analysed by Hong Kong-based research company, Aha! Research.

Quotes

"The survey showed that effective PR agencies need to make social media part of their DNA. Understanding the nuances of bloggers, for example, should be part of every PR person's toolkit, and not simply relegated to a 'digital group' or 'online team'. To succeed, PR professionals must increasingly become grounded in social media." "It was also interesting to see two quite distinct 'flavours' of bloggers across Asia: those who took a commercial, publisher-like mindset to their blogging, and those who proudly retain their amateur status."

—Michael A. Netzley, PhD Practice Assistant Professor of Corporate Communication Singapore Management University

"The survey was well conducted and is representative of bloggers from across Asia. It's interesting to see Malaysia appears to be ahead in terms of PR/Corporate and blog collaboration. The salient points are distilled and valuable; know your audience, be well informed, be familiar with their blog and blogs in general and most importantly - respect bloggers."

—ShaolinTiger, (www.shaolintiger.com)

“This survey showed that though bloggers in Asia Pacific have some parallels with their counterparts in Europe or North America, there are some differences that communicators should consider. Encouragingly, Asia Pacific bloggers on the whole welcome interactions with PR companies and their clients. But they are mainly part time bloggers, so agencies must take care to contact them outside of business hours and ensure content is relevant. The key learning is to get to know the bloggers and their blogs before picking up the phone or sending that email.

“If I was to use this survey as a baseline as to where the PR industry is at in terms of its success and relationships with bloggers, I would hope that the results of next year’s survey show a far deeper and more connected PR industry that is using the social media tools far more effectively to listen, prepare and engage with the APAC blogosphere.”

—Jeremy Woolf, APAC Peer Media Lead, Text 100 APAC

“The ‘perfect storm’ of technological, business and societal change means the way corporations must communicate has changed forever. At Text 100 we have worked hard to stay ahead of these changes and interpret what they mean for our clients.”

“This survey was designed to provide our teams and clients with greater insight into what is fast becoming one of Asia’s most influential media groups. To me, the results show a community that wants to engage with corporations in our region and presents a great opportunity for PR agencies and the companies they represent to forge very powerful relationships.”

—Ava Lawler, Regional Consultancy Director, Text 100 APAC

Now, Flash applications with embedded ads...(Mochi cobbles them up!)

Now, startup Mochi Media has got funded because it enables game developers to embed ads within their Flash games. This means Flash applications can become (after pdf files, Web pages et al) as a credible advertising platform. I think it has tremendous implications.
I didn't see any Indian name in the management, but I do wonder if the name came from the Hindi word for cobbler!

Media set for zillion-scale growth (Er, what about crude and food prices?)

I love those forecasts. Everybody from Goldman Sachs to your friendly neighbourhood IT consultancy was making predictions in 1998-2000 about the way the Internet will grow and grow and grow. And then came the Dotcom Bust that saw startups and listed companies alike go belly-up!
Take forecasts with a pinch of salt-- but like your teenage crushes, they always make you feel good, even if they take you nowhere.
This week comes PricewaterhouseCoopers' forecast about growth in the media industry.
Media revenue is globally set to rise 6.6 per cent a year to $2.2 trillion (A trillion is one billion and one billion is 1,000 million) by 2012, says the forecast. The 6.6 number does not sound unrealistic to me, given the single digits, but I am once-bitten, twice shy.
The Hollywood Reporter's despatch mentions Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) as the major growth driver.
It says: "Growth in the roaring economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China -- the so-called BRIC nations -- will outpace the more mature markets of the U.S. and Western Europe, with PwC forecasting 13.6% average annual growth in BRIC compared with just 4.8% annual growth in the U.S. media industry and 5.4% in Western Europe.

By 2012, the report predicts that the media business in BRIC will total about $250 billion, compared with $759 billion in the U.S., about $633 billion in Western Europe and $166 billion in Japan."
Oh, I really love that. And given that newly affordable TVs and exploding mobile handsets will drive new kind of content and games and entertainment, it sounds plausible.
But then, I am reading all this amid a sub-prime crisis in the US (and ergo, global) economy. With crude prices and food prices high in many parts, I need to also worry about the price of salt. If all of us take a pinch of it with such reports, I am sure the price of that grain will go up as well!

After IT crorepatis, digital ad crorepatis are here...

The digital ad business is going places -- and so are the people that make it happen. Here comes news that Quasar Media, incubated by Smile Interactive, has created seven crorepatis (For the uninitiated from outside India, that means those who earned more than 10 million rupees -- about $250,000 -- great money in India). The money comes from selling 75 per cent in the company to global giant WPP and early shareholders in the startup gained a lot, it seems.
Hmmm, that's neat money for Indian budgets, and also a nice sign that startup success is travelling outside the tech domain, though it must be said that this is technology-driven ad biz that we are talking about.
In the past, it is technology and softtware companies that spawned crorepatis, as companies like Infosys and iflex went public.
I think public recognition of the kind of money the staff made is also a nice way of luring scarce talent into the startup environment. Otherwise, people who do not make that kind of money are not the kind that talk about it.
Now, what does all this mean for content companies? I wonder.

Talking Technorati: How to make sense out of Loser Generated Content?

It is official! This blog has entered Technorati, which classifies blogs by tags and tries to promote them, and creates a floating chaos in which a combination of tagging by keywords, categories and "favourite" labels bundles content and shoves them around the Internet.
Phew! If this is an alternative to journalism, I am not sure if it will work.
Technorati is commendable for its work, but I do believe some kind of an organization of content going beyond tags and keywords and automated software will be needed. If academic PhDs and Nobel prizes need citations by well-regarded people, I presume the same might apply for blogs. Or at least, the better blogs will be paid for, either by subscribers or advertisers -- and there must be real "blogamediaries"
I am sceptical about a democratic soap box oratory on the Net passing off as "citizen journalism!"
I spoke to the Delhi Bloggers Bloc on June 7, and taking a media-centric view, wanted the men/women among bloggers to be separated from the boys/girls of the Blogosphere.
Why should a good blogger be different from a good newspaper columnist or journalist? In the end, I see good blogs as an extension of good journalism -- not an alternative. At the presentation, I referred to many blogs as "Loser Generated Content": if the blogs are useless, the bloggers are losers anyway; and if they are useful and not compensated for in a meaningful way, even good-quality bloggers must be losers!
I can't wait to see more credible organisational and business models to honour the better blogs. Of course, you cannot ban or ignore the mass of blogs anymore than you can ban or ignore random letters to the editor. But I plead for sense and sensibility. Surely technology and tagging must have their limits?

Bollywood strikes back at critics -- this time with blogs!

If any proof was further needed that blogs can mean a whole new world, it is here. Bollywood director Ram Gopal Varma (didn't realise he was a blogger!) is now talking straight to fans, and what's more, giving point-by-point rebuttals to some of the biggest names in film criticism!
Here is how he is going about it.
Ramu has an interesting, non-moralistic, devil-may-care approach to movie-making and it seems, blogging as well. He kind of lambasts two of India's most respected, or at least, followed, critics, Khalid Mohamed and Deepa Gahlot (Disclosure: I count them both among my friends, but not sure if this blog entry will make a difference) and others as well -- for ripping apart his latest work, "Sarkar Raj." He questions their credentials, the way they question his work. This is like a game of cricket without umpires.
The wars between movie makers and critics, columnists and politicians, sportswriters and sportsmen are all as old as the hills, but people like Ramu can now just give vent to their feelings. Somewhere along the way, the film critic of the types mentioned above became sort of upper-middle-class, leaving the space wide open for film-makers to reach out to the "ornery" people, like they always have done. Blogs have come to the rescue of those whose letters to the editors will never be published in full!
I see a new kind of divide, very much akin towhat one sees in politics, where the populist lot loves to hate the "value-based" kind of criticism. Deepa is dead serious most of the time, and Khalid loves to mock. Ramu hates them both! (Deepa also says Ramu has got FACTS wrong...and that is for RGV to rebutt!)
My own views on the issue are quite warped: Is the critic supposed to take a personal view of the film, or is the critic representing the average movie-goer's sensibilities to decide whether one should go and watch a flick or not? Given that English language newspapers in India are fast matching Bollywood audiences in getting patchy and becoming what a high-end critic would call "dumber" in sensibilities, I only have to say that the answer is blowing in the wind.

IPTV is here, challenging DTH, cable -- and prime-time (Goodbye TRP!)

When I had begun predicting the end of prime-time TV about three years ago on this blog, I was not clear how it will happen, though I understood technology and my own industry (er, media) enough to get the direction. Podcasts, USB-drive-enabled DVD players, downloads on DTH -- and downloads even on Worldspace Radio -- have been among the factors that have steadily helpled this trend, not to speak of firms like Tivo and Slingmedia.
Now this week, I may formally add IPTV to this list. A huge ad in Hindustan Times (a front-page jacket, in fact) announces the arrival of icontrol, which at Rs. 199 a month is a sort of cable TV-meets-telephony-meets-Internet-meets-broadcasting story. This, in partnership with Aksh Optifibre, is a fibre-driven broadband story. BSNL has a similar thing going across India.
Can't find details immediately on the Net, but here is some slightly outdated detail on the shape of things.
Television rating point (TRP) , that holy grail of broadcasters looking for ad money, is going to be weaker than ever before in less than two years from now.
If I was Ekta Kapoor, I would be sleepless -- or I may be accepting the reality that sooner or later, people will watch something because they want to, not because they have to.

Nawaz Sharif is bad for Mush, Internet is worse!

Ha, ha, ha! General Musharraf seems to have used his diplomatic powers (the only bit of civilian power he seems to officially enjoy now) to stop Geo TV from broadcasting talk shows believed to be "against" him. The trouble with these guys in uniforms is that the only thing they understand is power...and perhaps it is wise to speak to them in the language they understand. Officially, reports have it that Dubai authorities have threatened to cancel Geo TV's broadcast licences if the shows are not stopped.

Now, I have some cute lil points to share:

1) If Dubai Media City wants media business happening out of their wonderful emirate, they must learn to deal with media's half-brother, a.k.a. Democracy. The irony is that Malaysia, Dubai and Singpaore are keen to attract foreign investment in the tech business but now they have to accept the M in the holy trinity of Technology, Media and Telecoms....and it is a package deal, really. Singapore's excellent infrastructure has helped some media companies overlook its less-than-democratic credentials, but it is a tricky business.

2) The Pakistani general, in his glorious labyrinth (to borrow the memorable phrase from the title of Marquez's novel) will hopefully wake up to the fact that political and military powers are not the only forms of the five-letter thing. Technological power is such that you can now convert that Geo TV programme into a podcast and message it across the planet and have it watched in Detroit, Dera Ghazi Khan or Dubai. Okay, that may be a while away, but how about some cheap DVD recordings smuggled on camel's backs from the Balochistan border? Aunties in Lahore can watch it in peace alongside Indian soap serials or Bollywood movies.

Oh, I am not even talking about YouTube here.

Like I said at the beginning of the post: Ha, ha, ha!

The tug-of-war between media firms and ad networks

Just what is going on in the world of Internet advertising? Ad networks -- those systems that use technology to pump online ads to various websites, are on the defensive because media companies (oh, at least some of them) are forming their own networks which we could call captive ad networks (basically, like their own ad departments, with some tech thrown in perhaps) Now, ESPN says that this is because the brands their sites get does not seem to be matching its image. Sounds like a good reason, and probably has its origins in the automated way ads are pumped into content sites.
However, I am still not convinced. My suspicion is that if content is created in one place and technology takes care of a good part of the placement of advertisement -- and more important , the pricing of an ad is determined in a measurable, transparent way -- a good bit of fat-cat executives who collect ad cheques may be on their way down -- or out.
I think the last word on how ads should be placed on the Net will take a while to figure out.
I am playing the devil's advocate here, but am keen to find out what is going on in a universe full of gazillion Web pages. Meanwhile, here is a very readable, gossipy, chirpy story on the business, with some great quotes. Loved reading, actually. Be warned, it is part fact, part fiction.

Is India ready for a digital publishing explosion? (Because US seems to be getting there)

Sitting in India, it is difficult to map out how Internet publishing will pan out over the next few years, but I do believe that at least for the English media, it will make a big difference. There is a reasonable chance that anyone who writes/reads English will earn enough to buy a PC and a Net connection, with both becoming cheaper.
Here is the big one from the US: Internet is set to become "Medium Number 2" --next only to direct marketing!
This is based on an IDC survey (respected agency, mind you!), which also records that this is despite recession clouds over the United States economy. I only hope such numbers do not go the way of the Web 1.0 hype when B2C, B2B and all that gave way to P2P and C2C in the Web 2.0 way.
Here are the operative parts from the IDC release, and a link to the statement follows:
"During the forecast period, Internet advertising will grow about eight times as fast as advertising at large. IDC finds overall Internet advertising revenue will double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012.
"The Internet will go from the number 5 medium all the way to the number 2 medium in just 5 years, making it bigger than newspapers, bigger than cable TV, bigger even than broadcast TV, and second only to direct marketing. Video advertising will be the principal disruptor of Internet advertising over the next five years by attracting the most new marketing dollars"

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp%3Bjsessionid=GO1LTXAYTD3CACQJAFICFGAKBEAUMIWD?containerId=prUS21260308

YouTube closes in on TV market mechanics-- Are you listening, media buyers?

Here is one more development in my long chain of predictions to the effect that prime-time based viewing will give way for podcasts...a bit like newspaper magazine sections stealing a march over other periodicals. And also, this is a crucial development for marketers and media buyers who determine the way advertising budgets are spent.
YouTube has come up with more ways to measure who is watching its uploaded videos. When media buyers can measure who is watching what, it is much easier to load ads that go with the videos.
If this data is test-driven, I will not be surprised if online video steals a clear march over TV in attracting ads.
Here is the link to the official Google blog entry.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/demographics-now-available-in-youtube.html

The Craziest Disclosure On Media Coverage I Have Seen

Talk about transparency! We know that media insiders follow ethics -- or try to -- and disclosures are part of the business of ensuring reasonable transparency and neutrality. But how about a situation where the disclosure is a catch-all that sounds like the old saying, "Caveat Emptor" (Let the buyer beware)?
I came across Alley Insider (http://www.alleyinsider.com), a technology community news service run by Henry Blodget, a former Wall Street investment analyst, which just stops short of telling the reader, "Believe us at your own risk!"
Here is the link and the operative text. I found it funny, but it may not be so!

http://www.alleyinsider.com/team

Full Disclosure: We own stocks, mutual funds, private investments, and/or checking accounts, some of which are securities of or accounts managed by companies we cover (We do not have a policy against this). We generally prefer that the stock market goes up, not down, and we occasionally write about the stock market. We have friends, colleagues, former colleagues, and valued relationships in the community we cover. Some of us manage or serve on the boards of companies we cover. All of these factors, along with our pre-existing biases, preferences, beliefs, education, knowledge, experience, work ethic, and IQs, may affect our coverage.

A peep into 21st Century news gathering

Sent to you by Madhavan via Google Reader:

RSS + social media = “Passive-Aggressive Newsgathering” (A model for the 21st century newsroom part 2 addendum)

via Online Journalism Blog by paulbradshaw on 4/21/08

Just when I thought I’d put the 21st century newsroom to bed, along comes a further brainwave about conceptualising newsgathering in an online environment (the area I covered in part 2: Distributed Journalism). It seems to me that the first stage for any journalist or budding journalist lies along two paths: subscribing to a reliable collection of RSS feeds (and email alerts); and exploring a collection of networks. The first part is passive; the latter, more active. So I’ve called it, tongue-in-cheek, “Passive-Aggressive Newsgathering”. But if that sounds too Woody Allen for you, you could call it “Aggregating-Networking Newsgathering”.

Not quite as catchy, though, is it?

Note: an edited version of this was published in Journalism.co.uk as How to: use RSS and social media for newsgathering

As you can see from the diagram above, each RSS element has a social equivalent. Here’s the detail:

Blog and site feeds/Social RSS readers

This is a basic requirement for any journalist: know the news sources - mainstream and blogs - in your specialist areas, and subscribe to their RSS feed using any of the many RSS readers out there. The result should be a one-stop page that you check into every morning that aggregates any new stories since you last checked. You may want to develop further strategies, such as folders for different areas, or for feeds that you check every day, every week, or less often.

But some RSS readers do more than just allow you to subscribe to feeds - they have social elements. Google Reader, for example, will “recommend” feeds you might be interested in (in a panel on the right of the screen), based on the feeds you already subscribe to (and what their subscribers also read). Bloglines, in addition, allows you to click on any of your feeds and see others who subscribe to that feed - and what other feeds they subscribe to (see image below - although this feature doesn’t appear to be included in their latest beta). Other readers will have similar functions (if they don’t, consider switching reader - you can export your subs across very easily). This is a great way to find new sources of news and information.

Twitter and Twitter tools

Microblogging service Twitter is a particularly up-to-the-minute source of news - again, with RSS feeds you can subscribe to, as well as mobile notifications. Twitter is by nature social - you choose to ‘follow’ someone’s ‘tweets’ (updates); and people choose to follow you. You can see who someone is following, and who is following you. There are also tools like Twubble, which will recommend twitterers based on your friends, and Twits Like Me, which recommends twitterers based on interest. These can lead to useful contacts and sources of news you might not otherwise have come across.

A good way to find Twitterers in your area is to look for links on their blogs and article pages, while Twitter is searchable too. But that’s just the start. You can search Twitter itself for specific people, but if you’re covering a local patch, Twitterlocal allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed of tweets within a certain geographical radius, while specialist reporters should subscribe to results of relevant keyword searches using Tweetscan. If you know an event is coming up that is likely to spark protest (e.g. the running of the Olympic torch) then it’s a good idea to set up this feed in advance.

Bookmarking site feeds, networks and tags

Bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg and Reddit (plus all of these) are a goldmine of information and leads. As well as being searchable, most offer RSS feeds of individual tags, contributors (anyone who uses the site to bookmark webpages), and networks (collections of contributors). At the very least, a journalist should be subscribing to feeds of keywords in their area (e.g. this is the feed for the tag ’social bookmarking’), and if possible, prolific bookmarkers interested in the same topics (here is the feed for my bookmarks) or networks of bookmarkers (here’s mine).

But to do the latter, journalists need to use the sites themselves - the more active you are, the more you will get out. Every time you bookmark a webpage, you can see who else has bookmarked it (see image below). You can see who bookmarked it first (and is therefore potentially the quickest source). You can see their comments, and the tags they use. You can see what else they’re bookmarking. And you can add them to your network so you’re kept up to date on what they’re bookmarking generally.

All of this can generate more useful contacts (the bookmarkers), more sources of news, and more understanding of your area.

Facebook feeds/Social networks

Journalism is all about contacts. Social networks are a fantastic way of finding and managing them, whether those are existing contacts, contacts of contacts (which you can now see), or members of relevant interest groups (the Online Journalism Blog Facebook group is one you may consider joining ;)). You may want to join more than one social network: Facebook is a good catchall, but LinkedIn is good for more professional networking, while there may be specific ‘beat’ networks you can join - such as for doctors. Alternatively, you can create your own using Ning.

One great feature of Facebook is its feeds, which include Friends Status Updates and Friends Posted Items (both in the lower right corner). Again, subscribe.

Google Alerts/’similar pages’

Google’s whole success is built on social media: its rankings are calculated (in part) from how many people link to a site. But it’s worth exploring other features too. Every result from a search, for example, will include a link to ’similar pages’. This is a great way of refining your search. Similarly, the advanced search feature includes the ability to search for pages that link to a particular website.

Meanwhile, it’s basic journalism practice now to set up email alerts for particular search terms. You can do this through Google Alerts - the default setting is ‘Comprehensive’, but it’s better to use the drop-down menu to select the more specific ‘News’, ‘Groups’ or ‘Blogs’. Alternatively, any search done through Google News or Google Blog Search or Google Groups will give you the option to sign up to email alerts or, for the first two, an RSS feed.

Flickr feeds, tags and clusters

For anyone who needs images or needs to talk to photographers, Flickr allows you to subscribe to feeds by individual photographers, or to particular tags (you’ll find them at the bottom of each page).

But the site’s real strength is its social features. A simple search will bring you simple results - but click on any tag in those results, and you’ll be presented with a tag cluster (see image below). This draws on user behaviour to suggest other tags you might be interested in, as well as omitting irrelevant results. You can click through to results from the cluster, generate another cluster from another tag, or go to results from an individual tag. From there you can rank results based on recency or - another social feature - “most interesting”.

And of course you can see a tag cloud of the most popular tags at the moment - a good way of getting a feel for the zeitgeist.

If you’re more interested in people than pictures, clicking on any photographer’s profile will allow you to see their ‘contacts’ and groups, while you can browse profiles based on interests and other biographical information (you can also search groups and people).

YouTube feeds/related videos

Like Flickr, YouTube is a social beast. Click on any video and you’ll be presented with related videos; click on any user page and you can see who they subscribe to. You can rank results by how users have rated it, or how many times it’s been viewed. And you can click on a video’s tags to browse through content that way. The site also hosts a number of groups under the Community tab.

In addition the site offers numerous feeds - a list of the main ones, plus instructions on how to create feeds for individual users or tags, can be found here.

Technorati feeds, fans and tags

You’ll see the orange RSS icon throughout Technorati - you can subscribe to headlines and ‘rising posts and stories’, and filter by ‘attention’. You can subscribe to results from a particular search, or a specific tag (a motoring correspondent, for instance, might subscribe to search results for “Longbridge plant”, or the tag ‘Ford’). You can even subscribe to blog reactions to a particular site.

Equally impressive are the social features. Search results are presented with recommended tags you might also want to click on; blogs and posts are ranked by ‘authority’ (numbers of reactions); and you can see which Technorati members have declared themselves a ‘fan’ of a blog - then browse through the other blogs they’ve ‘faved’.

And like Flickr, you can get a flavour of “what’s percolating in blogs now”.

LibraryThing feeds and tags

Finally, it’s worth noting the social and RSS features of books community LibraryThing. As well as the traditional author and title fields, the search facility allows you to search by tags, members, groups and talk messages. You can then subscribe to a feed of results for that search, or to a feed for a particular member, group or tag.

It’ll come as no surprise that the site also offers related tags and members whenever any search is made, while the site’s groups offers one way to find leads and contributors.

coComment feeds, groups and tags

coComment is a service which tracks your comments for you, so people can subscribe to a feed of comments you make on other sites, or communicate with you directly. This has obvious applications for journalists - if you find someone in your ‘beat’ who is a good source of leads, you’re going to be interested in their comments, and what they’re commenting on. If they’re a member of coComment, you can subscribe to their feed. If not, a flattering email suggesting they check it out might be required…

Aside from the feeds there are plenty of social elements at coComment - you can browse tags, look at popular ‘conversations’, join groups, or browse commenters themselves.

Some journalists might think it’s too early for coComment to be useful to them - at first glance, most ‘conversations’ appear to be in the technological sphere - but getting in there early and spreading the word could give you a significant advantage as the technology spreads.

All this, however, is only laying the foundations for having your ‘ear to the ground’ - saving yourself time through use of RSS, and generating contacts and engendering serendipity through social media.

No doubt I’ve omitted some RSS and social service-providing sites (for example, other RSS readers, while a social podcasting service must be out there) - and overlooked some tricks on the above sites. I’d love to know your recommendations and tips.

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