thoughtsignals

Online Journalism Review has a Q&A with Baristanet co-founder Debbie Galant, a former New York Times Columnist.

On the site’s approach to journalism: “We are much more … shooting from the hip and smart-alecky. We’re more like the front of the book in Newsweek or like those sly Entertainment Weekly-type magazines.”

On earning a living: “We’re now after two years really starting to make some decent money. It took at least that long to build up the readership so we could become a viable competitor in the local advertising market. It certainly helped that during that time Liz and I both have husbands who were bringing in the health insurance and the steady income.”

On the competition: “Our shining hours have been during fires and this microburst last summer that was just like a tornado and that’s when we utilized the medium really well. … And the local newspaper surprisingly enough, even though they were out reporting it and even though they have a website, they didn’t use that material and saved everything for their newspaper on Thursday–which was two-and-a-half days after everything happened. And so we just really felt like we completely kicked their butts.”

This is fascinating stuff, well worth a read if you’re interested in the future of local journalism and in the idea of hyperlocal journalism especially.

Link.

BusinessWeek has a piece on how to have your dream job (sort of) and still make a decent living:

When it comes to your life’s work, you can take one of two paths: You could be sure you’re doing what you love and deal with the risks and low pay that could accompany it. Or you can work a day job that’s tolerable and frees you up—and pays—enough to allow you to do what you want after work. Following your passion can mean taking a chance, but for purists, unfulfilling day jobs aren’t an option. What counts for them is practicing their craft, whether it’s acting, basketball, singing, or designing.

Link.

Part 5 of the New York Times series on how faith-based organizations have carved out exemptions for themselves from conventional government regulation and taxation:

It looks like a business and, in many ways, acts like one. But it is beyond the reach of most of the rules and government oversight that apply to businesses — because it is a church mission.

This is the “medical bill sharing ministry” known as Christian Care Ministry, based in Melbourne, Fla., the largest of a handful of similar ministries around the country.

Link.

My previous posts on this series are here, here, here and here.

The issue here is not whether or not religious organizations should have constitutional protection against government interference. The issue is when are those protections taken so far that they end up giving the religious organizations an economic advantage over organizations — when do protections from government interference morph into government subsidies. At that point, the government is aiding the establishment of a religion. And that’s unconstitutional.

Online Journalism Review has a great Q&A with John Battelle (the guy behind Federated Media and Searchblog) about online journalism, blogging, and (most interesting to me) the business model for online journalism.

There’s no doubt that traditional media can and will continue, but it has a hard hump to get over. Traditional media is in the business of sort of corralling talent. [As a newspaper reporter], you don’t talk to readers. Your job is to talk to your sources. Institutionally, these organizations have grown up managing reporters, not talent. When I was editing at Wired, my job was to produce writers and manage 50-150 talented, half-crazy freelance writers, and I think it really got me ready to do what I’m doing now. People with influential blogs are talent and they don’t want to be told what to write about.

There’s an interesting dynamic going on in new media right now.

The big old media companies (newspapers, TV stations, etc.) are losing their audiences and their share of advertising money; they’re trying to figure out how to integrate new media (Internet, mobile, etc.) into a new business model to make up for the business they’re losing. If they’re not successful at this, then we’ll have a lot of big companies that will eventually go out of business — with all the attendent economic and social chaos that causes.

At the same time, we have scads of small new online media companies, like Federated Media and Gawker Media, trying to figure out an online-only (or online-mostly) business model. (For example, consider the issues PodTech is facing trying to balance production and bandwidth costs with advertising revenue.) The small new media companies don’t have much to lose, in a way — it’s not an industry with hundreds of thousands, or millions, of employees, investors counting on their success for their retirement investment, etc. But they have a lot to gain, obviously. (The individuals working in those small media companies are risking a lot, but it’s mostly their individual risk.)

Will the big media and little media meet in the middle? Maybe.

Will all the little new media startups get bought out by Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. and essentially become small pieces of giant media/tech companies? Maybe. (And if that happens, do we risk losing the valuable diversity that lots of small companies bring to the ‘Net?)

Will the big media companies eventually wake up and figure it out and win the battle for the fast-growing online advertising pie? Maybe.

Will the little companies outmaneuver the big companies and make lots of individual bloggers and techies, if not rich, at least as well off as they would have been if they’d worked for a big traditional company? Maybe.

Will several of the above choices happen simultaneously? Are there other possibilities?

I don’t know the answer, but I think that making a living in the media right now is, existentially speaking, both scary and exciting because of the transition we’re seeing. And I think John Battelle and Robert Scoble, among others, are both likely to be among the first people to figure all this stuff out.

Part 4 of the New York Times’ series on special exemptions for faith-based organizations:

Religion-Based Tax Breaks: Housing to Paychecks to Books

Also today, Diana Henriques, the reporter who has written this series for the Times, writes about how faith-based orgs are seeking more exemptions, still, from various government regulations and taxes. Link.

BTW, you can read Henriques’ bio here. Turns out she’s currently a senior warden at an Episcopal church in New Jersey.

My previous posts on this here, here and here.

The New York Times has the second in its series of articles on how religious organizations, including, potentially, hospitals and universities, are exempt from employment laws that govern secular groups. That means, basically, they can stop unionization drives, fire employees whose health care bills may prove expensive or force out people who campaign against discrimination.

But judges also have applied the exception to dismiss cases filed by
the press secretary at a Roman Catholic church, a writer for The
Christian Science Monitor, administrators at religious colleges, the
disgruntled beneficiaries of a Lutheran pension fund, the overseer of
the kosher kitchen at a Jewish nursing home and a co-founder of Focus
on the Family, run by the conservative religious leader James C.
Dobson. Court files show that some of these people were surprised to
learn that their work had been considered a “core expression of
religious belief” by their employer.

Link.

(See my post from yesterday on this subject here.)

Google’s convtroversial Book Search is helping publishers sell more books, according to Reuters.

“Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers,” said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press.

She declined to provide specific figures, but said that sales growth has been “significant”. Scollans estimated that 1 million customers have viewed 12,000 Oxford titles using the Google program.

This is unsurprising. There are lots and lots of books out there, most of which sell only small numbers of copies. For publishers and authors the biggest problem is simply connecting with people who are potentially interested in their books. Google, Amazon and similar services help do that. Writer and blogger Cory Doctorow has a longer, more eloquent explanation of this here.
Link to Reuters story.

The New York Times has a lengthy piece about the growing body of regulatory exemptions and tax breaks that religious organizations have won across the country. In many cases, these special provisions give churches a competitive advantage over secular nonprofits in providing services such as child care.

In recent years, many politicians and commentators have cited what they consider a nationwide “war on religion” that exposes religious organizations to hostility and discrimination. But such organizations — from mainline Presbyterian and Methodist churches to mosques to synagogues to Hindu temples — enjoy an abundance of exemptions from regulations and taxes. And the number is multiplying rapidly.

Some of the exceptions have existed for much of the nation’s history, originally devised for Christian churches but expanded to other faiths as the nation has become more religiously diverse. But many have been granted in just the last 15 years — sometimes added to legislation, anonymously and with little attention, much as are the widely criticized “earmarks” benefiting other special interests.

An analysis by The New York Times of laws passed since 1989 shows that more than 200 special arrangements, protections or exemptions for religious groups or their adherents were tucked into Congressional legislation, covering topics ranging from pensions to immigration to land use. New breaks have also been provided by a host of pivotal court decisions at the state and federal level, and by numerous rule changes in almost every department and agency of the executive branch.

The special breaks amount to “a sort of religious affirmative action program,” said John Witte Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at the Emory University law school.

Link.

On a somewhat related note, here’s how one atheist respond’s to the question “Why do atheists care about religion?” in a video on YouTube: Link.

Creating Passionate Users has an incisive post on the differences between what kind of employees CEOs say they want and what kind of employees most managers actually want (and get). Does this sound like any place you’ve ever worked?

So yes, I’m thinking Mr. CEO of Very Large Company would say that their company should take the upstart whatever-it-takes person over the ever-compromising team player. “If that person shakes us up, gets us to rethink, creates a little tension, well that’s a Good Thing”, the CEO says. riiiiiiiiiight. While I believe most CEOs do think this way, wow, that attitude reverses itself quite dramatically the futher you reach down the org chart. There’s a canyon-sized gap between what company heads say they want (brave, bold, innovative) and what their own middle management seems to prefer (yes-men, worker bees, team players).”

Meanwhile, USA Today reports that more people are working at “third places,” like coffee shops. A big part of the attraction seems to be the ability to get away from the distractions of the office (not to mention not having to sit in a cubicle). Whether this is really a sustainable trend, or not, remains to be seen.

But some question the permanence of such work. “It remains to be seen if this is a cultural breakthrough or a generational artifact,” says Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

“The obstacles remain those bosses who insist on face time and bean counters who equate being outside the office with wasted time,” he says. But the reality is “most businesses run on 24-hour work cycles that follow the sun around the globe. That means it’s not where you are that matters, but what you’re doing.”

And the current issue of the Economist has several stories on the escalating “battle for brainpower.” One article says workers, especially talented, workers are gaining the upper hand over employers.

THE world headquarters of what its proprietor jokingly calls “Pink Inc” is in the attic of a redbrick house in north-west Washington, DC. Children’s pictures decorate the walls; highbrow novels are jumbled up with business books. Daniel Pink spent much of the 1990s working for the Clinton administration, ending up as chief speechwriter for Al Gore. But in the late 1990s he decided to branch out on his own. He now makes his living as what he calls a “free agent”—doing a bit of consulting, giving speeches, writing articles (he is a contributing editor to “Wired”) and books, including, in 2001, a book about people like himself, “Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers are Transforming the Way We Live”. Mr Pink has no doubts about the changing balance of power in the corporate world: “Talented people need organisations less than organisations need talented people.”

he Economist piece mentions blogger, by the way, as one class of folks who need organizations less than organizations need them (link; you can watch a short ad to get one-day access to the Economist’s premium content if you’re not a subscriber).

What does all this mean? If you’re an individual cultivate your talent (and your visibility and your network, without which all the talent in the world is pretty useless). If you’re a company, improve your working conditions and make sure the office reality matches your rhetoric.

As a quick followup to my aside (scroll down to the bottom of the post) on Greensboro’s blogging/online biz startup community, a few folks have said they/we are working on it, over at Greensboroing and Billy in comments. Glad to hear it. I can’t wait to see (and maybe report on) some news out of this.

(And Beth, I’ve never said Greensboro is not a serious blogging community.)
FWIW, the folks at The Deal have a few insights from venture capitalist James Slavet on what he looks for in social networking startups.

He said he looks for an authentic vision from the founder. He also takes into account the early growth rate. And he isn’t deterred from investing in a company that is only popular with the early-adopter crowd. This was the case when Greylock originally invested in Digg and LinkedIn.

Link.

It’s probably good to note here, too, that despite all the media attention venture capital gets, that’s not the only way to start and grow a significant business.