Possibly the dumbest thing I will read today.
“As part of an experiment for my forthcoming book Brandwashed, I lined up 20 babies between the ages of 14 and 20 months. I then handed each one a BlackBerry. No sooner had their soft chubby fists reached out to take the phone from me than they touched the screen expecting it to light up. When nothing happened, a few stuck it in their mouths whilst others moved on to something more interesting.
These babies, all under two years old, have already been converted to the Apple brand.”
-What Apple Babies Reveal About Our Tech Routines, Martin Lindstrom
What baffles me about this is: had the writer never seen a baby that wasn’t exposed to Apple products? Or a pre-iPhone baby?
Children (and, in fact, everyone) react to stimuli. When a baby touches an iPhone screen, or any screen, it’s because IT MIGHT DO SOMETHING, and touching is a form of interaction.
Children also squeeze toys, and get excited when they make a noise.
If you wanted to argue that the way a child reacts to iOS devices indicates that people crave responsiveness on an intrinsic level, that might make sense. Saying children under 2 have been converted to the Apple brand because a non-responsive phone ends up abandoned is just an embarrassing, illogical leap.
Authoritarian thinking and online media.
I’m going to be inflammatory for a bit.
Traditional newsmedia organizations are proving that their supposed role in supporting democracy by providing information is incidental, rather than part of the core intent of journalism.
Put more bluntly, if you’re against the democratization of publishing, you’re an authoritarian.
I’m not going to make comparisons to the printing press, I’m going to keep it more simple: when someone says, without sarcasm, that publishing information and opinion should be left to an elite, professional class, they are saying that no individual voice should be as loud as that of an authority, and that whatever confers the aforementioned authority is the only reasonable way to determine good information from bad, they are saying two things:
1) That the average person is too stupid to be taught how to vet information they are presented with; and
2) That submission to an authority is inherently superior to an open sharing of ideas, when a topic is sufficiently important or complex.
I’m not willing to support the existence of a business that wants to undermine by ability to contribute to discourse, and thinks that a lack of media literacy is an inherent human flaw, rather than a failure of education.
As such, I will provide no monetary support, of any kind, to any organization led by someone who insists that only professionals can create value, starting with people on the authoritarian side of the citizen journalism debate.
I’m done being inflammatory, now.
Are bloggers journalists? I guess we’ll find out.
Nick Denton, in response to Jason Chen’s home being invaded by police and his computers confiscated over his articles for Gizmodo based on the “stolen” next generation iPhone. (via soupsoup) (via mikehudack)
I judge every public statement by the standard of Trudeau saying ‘Just watch me’, in what is likely the most badass moment of modern politics. This isn’t that awesome, but it does encapsulate what makes Denton great, in very few words.
I guess we’ll find out.
I’ve long been frustrated by the inability of big media sites to have a real two-way communication with the readers. I mean, reading Newsweek (or any other old media property) online is pretty much the same experience you have in print: We put out a story, you come and look at it. Comments sort of improve on this, in that now you can at least discuss a story in that space, but they don’t work all that well as a communications channel with the publication, because a) they’re nearly always crammed into a little, lesser comment ghetto on the page, which few readers, and even fewer writers and editors, ever look at and b) our staffers don’t have an easy way to join into the conversation.
My thought with Tumblr is, mainly, that there’s a lot of really interesting, creative things being done/talked about on Tumblr, and we want to be in on that. What I’d love someday is for every bit of Newsweek’s content to be easily rebloggable, and for readers to be able to experience the site not just as some static thing we program for them, but as a conversation they have with the Newsweek staffers they choose to follow.
Newsweek: Interview with Mark Coatney of Newsweek Magazine’s tumblr (via meaghano) (via tanya77)
Getting It.
Breaking news hits social networks in 3 mins; mainstream news sites in 20 mins.
(via @RachelSterne)
I’d like to better understand what percentage of that “breaking news” that hits social nets is incorrect. Is the 17 minute delta the price we pay for accuracy and actionability?
Also - for what percentage of “breaking news” does 17 minutes genuinely matter? Unless it’s “A tidal wave is heading toward Manhattan” I’m generally fine with waiting 17 extra minutes to get something that’s been fact-checked.
The assumption that news from a mainstream site has been fact-checked is completely out of line with the current realities of old media reporting. Everyone’s inaccurate now, but digital media is more likely to have an audience with built-in skepticism.
Remember - when people talk about saving journalism, they’re talking about saving this, too.
CGI Tiger Woods marital dispute. You go, Chinese TV.
the only 3 strategies for modern news organizations
- speed (TMZ, Drudge Report, etc.)
- deep (includes Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc.l )
- spin (includes Daily Show, Fox News, ect.)
There are some organizations that try to be a hybrid of two or three the most successful usually focus only on one.
I’d add a fourth - Analytical.
It’s different than deep, IMHO, because depth is a matter of detail, whereas analysis is a matter of turning information into opinion and conclusion. A great example of this is the Economist, one of the few print publications that seems to be weathering the storm quite well.
Another great example is Nate Silver from fivethirtyeight.com - a great example of a new and old media success that is based entirely on analysis, rather than reporting. The downside is that good analysis requires expertise in a subject (even if that subject is data analysis) rather than expertise in writing or reporting. Meaning, more expensive to scale / expand coverage.
So, we asked New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at last night’s benefit for The News Literacy Project, what advice did he have for young people who want to go into journalism these days, you know, given the job market? “Why don’t we not go there?” he laughed. Then he went there anyway. “Um, what I would tell them is the industry is in the midst of a massive transition,” he said. “But the core of the fundamental job is critical. We have to re-create ourselves, but the heart of what we’re going to re-create is still journalism. The way people get information is changing, but the need for information will remain constant.”
He thinks that physical newspapers will stick around as well. “The best analogy I can think of is — have you ever heard of the Titanic Fallacy?” he asked. We hadn’t. “What was the critical flaw to the Titanic?” We tried to answer: Poor construction? Not enough life boats? Crashing into stuff? “A captain trying to set a world speed record through an iceberg field?” he said, shaking his head. “Even if the Titanic came in safely to New York Harbor, it was still doomed,” he said. “Twelve years earlier, two brothers invented the airplane.”
Non-specific Journalism Thoughts.
When I was outlining potential issues and solutions for the future of journalism, one theme came up. A theme that, due to one of my best friends being a journalist, has come up repeatedly in the past.
The current model of journalistic authority is inherently at odds with the way authority is determined online. As much as getting people to pay for news is an issue, this is a bigger one.
The internet thrives on context. People who learn, and do their research online, want to be able to walk through your process. Search backward through your information. Similar to the high school math teacher that insists you ‘show your work’, the online reader wants links to your sources. Anonymity is reserved for people who need to be protected from oppressive regimes, and trolls.
Being trusted on the internet means being questioned, constantly. Your integrity, your intellect, and what compromises you aren’t telling the whole world about. It’s not just transparency - it’s the natural progression of living in a world where anyone can say they are an authority. The instinctual response to a declaration is to ask for proof - not just of the statement, but of the authority behind it.
Years ago, in conversation, I talked about how I wanted information presented online to be link heavy - not just to outside sources, but to notes, background info, longer, unedited versions of the same article. This is offensive to some journalists, because their position is one where assumed integrity is essential.
Unfortunately, your feelings don’t matter.
Internet integrity is like peer reviewed science. You are right because EVERYONE who is trying to prove you wrong has yet to succeed. This requires providing evidence, showing your process, and responding to critiques.
I’m looking forward to multimedia online journalism, where a story stays alive until the audience is done with it. Deciding that there is a single, unquestioned authority, is a good way to be ignored, online.
This is what my notes look like: New Models for Online Journalism edition.
[This is how I develop ideas - piles of vaguely sentence structured notes, that are thrown into a folder, and revisited when time allows. I’m posting this in part to get input from the handful of people who read this, and in part because I’d like to see if anyone can add that extra x factor.]
5 person teams: editor / writer (2), developer, videographer / editor, designer. Publishing on a dual schedule: ongoing socmed updates from dedicated accounts, and weekly complete, collaborative stories.
Each complete story will include text / article, research / background, infographics, interactive elements, and video. All presented as part of the whole, focused on opinion / interpretation as well as vanilla reporting.
Not paginated, organized in an online intuitive manner. Scroll down, expanding images / sections (not pop ups or diff windows). Offered in several formats, including mobile / as part of an app. Yes, will require a custom CMS. Also, offer video / print optimized versions. Not a full experience, but allows printing / podcasting as promo tools.
Redesign and publish a monthly or quarterly print version with DVD extras / video as a prestige option.
Go deep. Analysis of a story, rather than ‘just the facts”. Pure facts are important, but analysis has value. Explanation has value. Presentation has value.
Interest / Audience maintained between releases (stories) by including them in the process. Tweet / tumble updates, new info, schedule, teasers. Don’t let the scoop mentality keep you silent, if value is in the analysis, then breaking it in a tweet is still breaking it.
Scalable: 5 person teams can be added as audience / revenue grows. Stagger releases, or segment by content.
The key is multimedia content as a starting point. Defined by the online medium, rather than letting the content treat the web as a newspaper replacement or a tv replacement.
Massively collaborative: nothing is an addition. Design and video are as key as the written article. Building to the whole. Does this require tandem videojournos, designjournos, devjournos, etc? Probably. Welcome to 2K9, media is inherently multidisciplinary.
Fragmentable, sharable, remixable. Possible to open every segment in a copyable, accessible way (presuming CC licensing) let it act as promotion for saleable elements (mobile app, print collections, expanded behind the scenes access, archive access).
Create extra content, behind the scenes footage, expanded versions, edit history on articles for subscribers. This is the hard part: journos do not like being questioned, but web authority is more like scientific authority. It’s based on being able to withstand scrutiny, not a license to avoid it.
Model could work for hard or soft news. Imagine applied to TMZ ouvre, investigative, driven celeb content with background like recent film gross, media penetration, arrest history, relevance by google searches, etc.
All very raw, but definite value here.
