thoughtsignals

I would have loved to have been at BookExpo in LA to see this panel with John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga about building online communities.

Scalzi talked about his experience establishing himself as the “benevolent dictator” of the conversational community that grew up around his blog, which has evolved into a culture that is capable of entertaining itself even when he’s not around, like when he’s up against a book deadline. Keeping the readers informed of deadlines and other parts of the writing process, he added, had an unexpected effect: “The community is kicking my ass to not blog so they can get the books.”

There’s nothing on YouTube that comes up in a quick search, but maybe somebody will post something. In the meantime, more details over at GalleyCat.

Want to broadcast your own call-in talk radio show? No problem. Thanks to BlogTalkRadio you can. Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz reports the site is drawing 2.4 million visitors a month, and giving lots of folks like us a new voice.

Most shows are hosted from home by bloggers who need no special equipment and pay no fee. The only requirement is that they put a link to the program on their Web site. On BlogTalkRadio’s site, visitors can search for programs by name or category.

The process is nearly idiot-proof. The host logs on to a Web page with a password, types in when he wants the show to air, and then — using a garden-variety phone — calls a special number. The computer screen lists the phone numbers of guests or listeners calling in, and the host can put as many as six on the air at once by clicking a mouse. Listeners can download a podcast version later.

Is thoughtsignals radio in the future? Maybe (after grad school) — stay tuned.

(Hat tip to my colleague Kathryn who first brought this to my attention.)

Cnet has an interesting interview with John Battelle, founder of the blog network Federated Media and an expert on Google, online publishing and other things. He says what I’ve been thinking for years, and what makes the Internet so interesting to me as a writer:

I believe even more than ever in the value and quality of content. What I think has changed is that the creation of content, and I’m using content very broadly here to include services as well as traditional approaches to content…but I think the creation of content has decoupled in the last five years. Decoupled from the media business–I mean Viacom, Time Inc, CNET, Wired, Condé Nast–and that decoupling means that talented producers of content, for the first time have access to distribution, tools of production, and the ability to actually execute and produce their own content without having to attach themselves to traditional media businesses.

Link.

It seems that people in Second Life behave, at least in economic terms, very much like they do in the real world. They buy goods for the status those things confer and work to earn money.

The New York Times reports:

When people are given the opportunity to create a fantasy world, they can and do defy the laws of gravity (you can fly in Second Life), but not of economics or human nature. Players in this digital, global game don’t have to work, but many do. They don’t need to change clothes, fix their hair, or buy and furnish a home, but many do. They don’t need to have drinks in their hands at the virtual bar, but they buy cocktails anyway, just to look right, to feel comfortable.

Second Life residents find ways to make money so they can spend it to do things, look impressive, and get more stuff, even if it’s made only of pixels. In a place where people should never have to clean out their closets, some end up devoting hours to organizing their things, purging, even holding yard sales.

So virtual human nature seems to be very similar to real human nature. The economic life of Second Life and the real world intersect in other ways, as well.

Italian employees of IBM are planning a strike in the virtual world, and a SL bank has experienced a run on its deposits that forced the firm to shut down.

Startup newspaper BostonNOW is printing excerpts from local bloggers in its print edition.

John Wilpers, editor in chief of BostonNow, a free weekday daily introduced last month, said he wanted to fill the paper with items that local bloggers submitted to the BostonNow Web site.

Last week, editors began culling posts and running excerpts next to articles from reporters and newswires. The blog items, which appear in gray boxes, are still relatively few, but Mr. Wilpers said he thought the feature would grow.

Mr. Wilpers, who previously edited two other free commuter newspapers, Metro Boston and The Washington Examiner, said he wanted to address what he believed was the news industry’s biggest problem: an inability to connect with the communities it covers.

I expect there will be a certain amount of moaning that this is another sign of the end of newspapers (no, their declining circulation, readership and ad revenue would be the sign of that). However, I also expect that we’ll see a lot more of that. Other newspapers are already doing this in one form or another, and many papers are printing excerpts from their own bloggers in the print edition (a sure sign that momentum has shifted from print to the Web).

Newspapers have a long history of printing things that aren’t really news — comics, recipes, letters to the editor, horoscopes, etc. This isn’t that new. But it is a good idea.

Link.

Brock Meeks writes:

This process of side-stepping MSM I like to call “hacking the media.” It is surprising easy and you have all the tools right at your fingertips. You don’t need a journalism degree; you don’t need a press pass; you don’t need to have the power of a big news organization behind you. You need a curious mind, the desire to get answers and the simple ability to open your mouth and ask a question.

This sounds good, but … here’s what really happens. Guy’s sitting on a beach with a laptop. Guy sees some photos on Flickr. Guy emails MSNBC, which then does a story. This is not “hacking” the media, and it’s certainly not sidestepping the mainstream media.

Give credit to the guy who took the photos originally, who perhaps was engaged in some citizen journalism. And give credit to Meeks for emailing his former colleagues at MSNBC about a good story. But this is not “hacking” the media, this is just tipping the media off, which people have been doing since long before the Internet was ever conceived.

Citizen journalism is real, but this isn’t the best example. I will give Meeks credit for identifying one important thing, though: news value.

How do you recognize a story? It’s anything that makes you double-clutch during your day; something that causes you to mentally backspace. If that happens, it’s probably a story.

Yep, it probably is. And worth pursuing, even if you’re not in the MSM. Link.

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.

The News & Observer has a big Sunday package that asks “Should bloggers have a code of ethics to follow?”

It includes essays by Anton Zuiker and Ruby Sinreich as well as brief profiles of some Triangle bloggers.

Anton writes:

… we haven’t agreed on a blogger code of ethics, and we never will. That’s because anyone can be a blogger, and a blogger can be anyone. In America, we don’t require artists or novelists or songwriters or talk show hosts or cell phone conversationalists to swear on a code of ethics for their chosen medium of expression. Don’t think that bloggers will be the first.

I think Anton’s got it right: Blogging by itself is a form of expression. Use it for journalism and maybe you should follow something like a journalist’s code of ethics. Or maybe you could adopt some basic principles, as Jeff Jarvis has.

Jeff Jarvis has a great post on credibility, integrity and blogging:

It is fine for a blogger or newspaper or vlogger or TV show to take advertising, clearly labeled. It is wonderful for a blogger to get paid to write, editorially. But when you write what a commercial interest tells you and pays you to write, then you are no longer speaking as yourself but in the service of that marketer. That’s fine, too, but it isn’t content. It is advertising (or advertorial, same difference). See Rules 2 and 3.

This all seems simple and obvious to me. But it’s not obvious to others, who think they can buy bloggers’ opinions and with it that buzz. They don’t understand that buzz, too, is earned. And they don’t understand that once a blogger — or journalist or publication or friend, for that matter — is bought and paid for, the credibility and value of their voice is reduced or ruined.

Credibility is the cake you can’t have and eat, too.

Jarvis’ post includes his four-point pledge of credibility and transparency, which any blogger could adopt as a kind of “blogger code of ethics.” It’s important to remember that this is not simply about doing the right thing or behaving ethically, this is about retaining your audience. If people are confused about what’s paid for on your blog and what represents your true opinions, they get less value from your blog. Less value means less reason to read, less reason to subscribe. That means lower traffic. And if you’re trying to earn money from advertising, that means less revenue.

Link.

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.