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A Sunday Lost to Mental Meanderings on Media

There’s no beating the feeling of waking to a lazy Sunday morning, especially one that demands no urgent work, phone calls, a quasi-mandatory dinner with the parents or anything else but my own private exploitation of the diminishing personal space I call my life. Yesterday was one of those mornings. Even Hypertext the Cat could sense I wanted to luxuriate like she does all day, an appreciation that stopped her from waking me by batting at my head as she does most mornings. Two interesting things happened in quick succession yesterday morning to dispel any luxury I might have felt at having a lazy day of quiet contemplation. The first was a special report on citizen journalism by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The second was an instant message from Chicago based web analytics management consultant, David Dalka relaying comments on “saving the media” from a former University of Chicago professor (now US federal-court judge) of his, Richard Posner. Both events happened within minutes of each other. Clearly the universe was conspiring against the concept of me taking a day off, even on a lazy Sunday.

I listened to the CBC show over morning coffee while trolling the half-dozen or so online newspapers I frequently read. The show probed the value of online journalism vs. traditional journalism, falling heavily on the side of traditional news gathering organizations. It was a smart and well researched episode, one Canadian listeners have been conditioned to expect from our federally funded broadcaster. The CBC was one of the first major media outlets to take advantage of the Internet to widen and grow its international audience. The corporation continues to use the Internet to distribute its high quality of national and international news though in recent months it has suffered sever funding cutbacks, an ironic equalizer that brings the CBC’s budgetary problems in line with those of commercial broadcasters and other news gathering organizations. There is simply not enough money coming in (whatever the source) to cover the enormous costs associated with professional news gathering and high quality reporting.

During the CBC broadcast, David Dalka forwarded the URL of a blog post from a former University of Chicago professor of his who is now a federal court judge, Richard Posner. Posner writes on media, society and IT. Like many other public policy thinkers, Posner is deeply concerned with the sustenance of a professional media, considering it one of the bedrocks of a democratic society. A few years ago, Posner predicted the current financial state of the mainstream media. Yesterday’s post postulates a solution, making webmasters receive permission to link to stories in the traditional news media, likely with payment attached. Before dismissing the idea as ludicrous, consider that others see this as a valid revenue model as well, most notably Barry Diller, head of IAC corporation and his arch-rival Rupert Murdoch, owner of NewsCorp.

For experienced webmasters, the idea of paying for a link that brings no commercial benefit is so obviously silly it is easy enough to dismiss however, news aggrigators such as Google News and Yahoo! News do see commercial benefit from stories researched, written and published by traditional news gathering organizations such as television, radio and newspaper reporters. It isn’t the presence of paid-search advertising that attracts me to Google’s news aggregator though it is those pay-per-click links that monetize thus sustain the service. What attracts me are the stories, none of which have been researched, written or originally published by the news aggregators. One can fully understand the frustration of major publishers and broadcasters watching their bottom lines push them into positions that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

It used to be said that publishing a newspaper was a license to print money. Local businesses and services had to advertise their wares somewhere and the daily paper was one of the places most adults in a community would look at least once per day. Similarly, local television and radio were advantageous mediums for advertisers, allowing the traditional media to charge whatever rates they felt necessary to sustain news gathering operations. In many cases, those operations spread across the globe bringing a diversity of well researched opinions on virtually any international issue or event. Today, foreign bureaus are long gone from most news rooms and even the biggest news organizations such as the NYTimes, CNN, the Globe and Mail and the Times of London are pulling back on their commitments to find, research and report stories about international affairs.

I am old enough to remember a time when newspapers published multiple editions per day in order to keep the general public as well informed as possible. In my family, it was not unusual for two editions of the same newspaper to be brought into the house each day, one delivered early in the morning, the other coming home from school or work with myself or my father. While I recently moved to a city blessed with four major daily newspapers, most other communities I could have chosen to live in are not as fortunate. In the city I moved from, the single daily newspaper ceased publishing on Mondays to save money. In Denver, a city I visited less than two weeks ago, one of the major dailies stopped publishing altogether a month ago.

Are we any less informed than we were a generation ago? In some ways yes, in others not nearly. Perhaps the best example of this contradiction comes from the streets of Tehran where a sizable portion of the population risked violence, arrest and continued harassment to protest what they believe to be an election stolen by hardliners in their government. As the protests grew, the Iranian government moved to expel foreign journalists though a few were somehow able to remain and report. For most of us, news from Tehran was relayed straight from the streets via the social networking application Twitter and the burgeoning citizens’ TV portal YouTube. While the veracity of such reports can rarely be confirmed, it is easy enough to argue we in the west would have known far less about the democracy movement in Iran without citizen journalists with access to web technologies.

Another example is recalled from a few years ago when CBS news carried a story on the National Guard record of former President George W. Bush. The story was supported by papers said to have come from the Texas National Guard showing the former president had neglected to even show up for the weekends he was supposed to serve while avoiding fighting in Vietnam. The papers CBS relied on were forged, a falsification uncovered by bloggers. Dan Rather was forced to resign as anchor of the CBS News team over the incident. In this case, citizen journalism worked to vet a falsity which would otherwise have been reported as fact.

At the same time, the quality of critical analysis of events in Tehran, Washington, London, Beijing, Ottawa or Timbuktu is eroding rapidly. While we can read broad strokes, we are left without the fine touches only a professionally edited writer with dozens of unimpeachable sources can offer. Because most citizen journalists are writing about topics they feel passion for, we lack the clarity of the dispassionate observer. This is good for issue identity groups but very bad for democracy as a whole.

Sadly, it all comes down to money. While many will suggest if the newspapers don’t want people or news aggregators to link to their stories, they should simply not publish on the web. That’s a rather silly suggestion considering a growing percentage of the audience is increasingly using the Web exclusively to get information. The problem for Internet publishers is complexly simple. Ad revenues derived from Internet sites tend to be far lower than those drawn from traditional mediums. That’s why the medium-market news organizations are unable to properly serve their markets any longer.

Is the idea of paying to link to traditional news gatherers a good option? Probably not. The web doesn’t work that way, at least not today. While Posner’s comments are less than useful and more than insulting to a University of Chicago grad worrying about the respect his or her degree might receive when their professors make foolish comments, at least someone is trying to brain their way through this mess. More of us should as well. We need good journalism as badly as we need a freely accessed Internet. As one commentator on the CBC said yesterday, “I doubt we’ll see any citizen journalists devote their time to civic agencies, boards and commissions. The next fifteen years will be a heyday for corrupt municipal politicians without a free media covering their actions and decisions.” He may be right but I’m not thinking about corrupt local politicians skimming or swaying millions of dollars. I’m more concerned about major information corporations and the billions of dollars to be made off the distribution of knowledge to a global society.

Those sorts of thoughts get me thinking about what we are trying to accomplish with WebmasterRadio.FM and how the experiment is working from a media for the masses perspective. We have an unwritten responsibility to provide honest, reliable and timely information which I think we’re managing to exceed. There are no real rules governing what we’re doing on-air beyond the common rules of nicety, respect and decency.

WebmasterRadio.FM is a pioneer in the online space. Until WebmasterRadio.FM hit the scene five and a half years ago, there was no radio format content dedicated to the business and people of B2B marketing. We made a radio network devoted to webmasters and the business of doing business online. We’re likely an example of the near future, the micro-focused media.

Because we draw a surprisingly diverse but reasonably specific audience, WebmasterRadio.FM is able to exist serving a set of rather large niche communities. The number of people involved in the B2B (and now, B2C) markets we cater to is enormous and will continue to grow rapidly. You know how there seems to be a print magazine for literally every topic you can imagine? The ability to broadcast digitally created content via the web allowed us the ability to ape those magazines via podcast to the online B2B and B2C worlds.

Our advertisers tend to like that sort of thing which stands to reason considering the groups that listen to us tend to be most likely to consider our advertisers’ offerings. Niche marketing on a macro scale.

Our show hosts are experts their fields, business leaders but not trained journalists. Our audience, for the most part, doesn’t need us to provide a lot of journalistic content beyond the top-of-hour newscast. Our audience is looking to hear voices they can relate to from their business, marketing, PR or technological standpoints. That’s what we deliver and that’s why our audience numbers are growing so quickly. Such is the nature of popular niches.

This brings us back to the topic of the mainstream media and the importance of settling the money trap the mainstream media model has become. Conflicting problems are inherent in the mediums used to publish content.

For traditional broadcasters and print publishers, getting information to consumers is expensive and labor intensive. Advertising rates were priced to cover the costs associated with each medium used to communicate with the public. TV and radio relied on local, regional and national advertisers to sustain their operations while newspapers could rely on local businesses and voluminous classified ad sections. For generations, the ad-driven model worked as a tightly regulated and difficult to access business that ostensibly served the public good.

The Internet has obiviously destroyed the foundation supporting the traditional media business model. The Web has eliminated many of the labor, material, and distribution costs of getting information to the people. It has also (almost) eliminated the concept of information boundaries. There is a lot of content to place ads around online and virtually no limitations to entry for new content publishers. In a classic example of the laws of supply and demand, advertising rates online are far too low to sustain large news gathering operations.

WebmasterRadio.FM feels the pinch doing our form of news gathering. We feel it is our responsibility to cover large marketing conferences, events and conventions because those are the places where virtual-world news makers and industry leaders meet in person. It’s expensive to gather news in person but even in a virtual world, that’s the best way to get the job done.

So what to do about citizen journalism, the failing foundation of an out modded model, and the inability to figure out how to pay for professionals? Who the hell knows…

WebmasterRadio.FM does a great job of webcasting and making podcast content available for download to a definable set of diverse niche communities. We’re experts, and we make what sounds to me like good talk radio for our audience, we’re not journalists in any real sense of the word.

Aside from the content, what makes us interesting from a media perspective is that we’re one of the few online radio stations who are actually making a successful go of the advertiser business model. That’s why I suggested earlier that the WebmasterRadio.FM network is actually a pioneering venture in the web space. We’re demonstrating a working ad-revenue model as webcasters and podcasters. We’re a likely example of how to make media work in the new-world web environment.

That doesn’t put food in the bellies of traditional journalists and that’s what these meanderings were all about to begin with. Sundays rock eh?

Restraining content is an option but it is an odious one. The web is about getting and distributing information for free. Free is good but free often means no pay. Creating better copyright rules and giving content creators means to exercise their rights sounds like a good idea but even the brilliant compromise of the Creative Commons licensing experiment doesn’t put food in the bellies of most content creators.

Writers used to find refuge in newspapers. Not so much anymore and blogs don’t pay the bills. I find prolonged attempts to think how newspaper publishers solve a problem like Craigslist can make one’s head feel funny after a while so let’s not even go there.

In a world where quantity defines the part of problem, quality becomes part of the solution. The other part of the problem is the perceptual divide between the virtual and the real sides of the world we live and work in. Quality content can attract good online advertising revenues if distributed to the right communities. It’s all about targeting. That’s a lesson the mainstream media will have to learn but one it takes at steep peril because the mainstream can not be directly targeted online. Whatever the Internet mainstream is, it is too big and too factionalized into micro-interest communities to be truly definable, a major strike against traditional news gathering operations operating online.

The people need to stay reasonably sharp if our thousand year old experiment in western democracy and personal liberty is to survive and prosper. We all need to be well informed on general news items as well as on our personal interests and professional specialties. The job of keeping us well informed has traditionally fallen to the free media which, as any publisher or broadcaster will tell you, is far more expensive than it is free. To keep itself honest, reputable media has developed a well honed system of checks and balances including editing and the right to respond for readers and news subjects. That model is broken and the issue has come to a head.

I wish I had words of deep wisdom beyond noting how WebmasterRadio.FM’s ability to fill the needs of several niches is wonderful and cool and probably an example of the model we’ll see more of in the future. I love what we’re doing and think it is good for the web marketing industry but I’m going to miss being as generally well informed as I am and I worry about who, if anyone, is going to attend the next civic planning meeting on my behalf.

Affiliate Convention Delegate Breakdown

The upcoming affiliate marketing conference, Affiliate Convention has released a several charts giving a detailed breakdown of exactly who is attending Affiliate Convention, where they come from, what they do and the promotion techniques they use to do it. The charts give an interesting glimpse into the make-up of the affiliate marketing industry.

The Delegate Breakdown Page on the Affiliate Convention website shows that 60% of all people who have registered to attend the affiliate marketing conference, June 17-20 in Denver Colorado, are working affiliate marketers. 10% come from affiliate networks, 9% are affiliate managers, 8% work for agencies, and 6% are merchants. The remaining 6% are sponsors, media, organizers and guests.

Attendance appears to be spread fairly evenly among segments of the affiliate marketing industry. The largest vertical sector represented will be diet, health and beauty (9%), followed by dating and finance (both around 7%), business (6%) and travel (5%).

Primary promotion tactics and techniques are fairly evenly distributed among registered attendees with 20% saying search engine optimization is their primary means of promotion, 19% identifying pay per click advertising, 16% saying blogs are their main promotion vehicles and 14% suggesting they use social networking or viral marketing techniques.

Information gained from registered attendees confirms the choices made by organizers when selecting speakers. There will be several sessions with well known SEO and PPC experts on them, along with a session devoted to social network affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Convention runs June 17 – 20 at the Denver Convention Center. The conference is free for all affiliate marketers who can prove they are working with a major affiliate network. Admission is also free to all members of the popular AffSpot Affiliate Forums.

Get a 10% Discount on SES Toronto with WebmasterRadio.FM code

Search Engine Strategies Toronto is coming up in less than two months, running June 8 – 10 at a new venue, the Sheraton Centre on Queen Street.

As the premier search marketing conference in Canada, SES Toronto is a must-attend show for all digital marketers doing business in Canada or with Canadians. SES Toronto is also one of the smaller, more intimate search marketing shows, one at which the audience gets to spend a lot of time with the speakers. In many ways, SES Toronto reminds me of SES Chicago except it is much warmer in Toronto in late spring than Chicago is in late autumn.

With a national population the size of the state of California and an affluent, well educated Internet user base, Canada is an often untapped gem of a market. SES Toronto is a key entrance point to that market for US and international marketers.

The fine folks at Incisive Media have offered WebmasterRadio.FM listeners and blog readers a 10% discount on advanced tickets for the event. Follow this link: (DS05 10% Discount) and enter the priority code, DS05 to enjoy a well deserved discount on two days of high-level search marketing education and networking.

Using Search and Social Media to Save the World

Can search save the world? That’s a question ecological researchers are asking themselves as they look at the global use of keywords in search queries and social media posts. A study from the UK and Sweden published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment suggests using web crawlers to find and spider this information could speed currently ponderous environmental monitoring procedures.

While human activity is altering the Earth’s ecosystems at an unsustainable increasing pace, human observation is tracking, recording and documenting environmental destruction in every part of the planet. As this information is thought about and recorded, it is applied to web documents, used in search queries and placed in blog and social media posts.

Once on the web in one way or another, information can be crawled or spidered and thus “discovered” and compiled into an overview of the planet’s health from the perspective of its human inhabitants.

The idea is similar to the concept of Google Flu Trends which uses search queries from across the United States to give a very accurate assessment of the spread of flu viruses across the nation.

Author of the study, Tim Daw of the University of East Anglia said in a press release, “If we look at coral reefs, for example, the Internet may contain information that describes not only changes in the ecosystem, but also drivers of change, such as global seafood markets.”

According to the blog kept by the study’s authors,

“The challenge is that existing monitoring systems are not at all in tune with the speed of social, economical and ecological changes. The implication: rapid and often irreversible loss of ecosystem services vital for human well-being and security for example, clear water, food from marine resources and agricultural landscapes, and mitigation of natural hazards.

Meanwhile, the development of informal communications and information sources across the internet offers a novel source of monitoring data to track, identify and perhaps even foresee vital changes in ecosystem services. For example the potential for webcrawlers to detect disease outbreaks based on news reports on the web has already been demonstrated. We explore the potential for similar technologies to revolutionize ecological monitoring.”

Daw and his colleagues at the Stockholm University Resilience Centre are seeking ideas, suggestions and inspiration from web users and other ecologists in comments on their blog.

Web 2.0, Social Media, Video, PR and SEO on WMR Next Week

On WebmasterRadio.FM Next Week, we’re talking Web 2.0, Social Media, Video, PR and SEO : Read more

Social Networking Conference Coverage on WebmasterRadio.FM

We’re off to Miami again today to acquire more coverage of the Social Networking Conference which continues into today at the Miami Convention Center.

Attended by many of the largest corporate and technology players in the social media, the Social Networking Conference is a two day event.

Yesterday, Daron and Eddie captured a couple speeches and a few interviews. Today it’s my turn. With a list of interviews as long as my microphone cable, today’s exercise should be invigorating.

The speakers list reads like a who’s who of corporate America. The Social Networking Conference has representatives from DowJones, SAP, Ford, Microsoft, Verizon, Sun Microsystems, Avenue A Razorfish, jetBlue, Limewire, IBM, faceforce, topix, and Social Networking Watch.

Tune in to WebmasterRadio.FM next week to hear our coverage of the Social Networking Conference or download a podcast of Social Networking Now, one of our newest network shows.

Social Networking Now – Premier Episode

The primier episode of Social Networking Now airs at 12-noon eastern here on WebmasterRadio.FM.  Hosted by noted social networking consultant Mark Brooks and the organizer of the Social Networking Conference series, Marc Lesnick.

In today’s episode, Mark Brooks speaks with John Samuels, President of Sabres Innovation Lab and Zopa CEO Douglas Dolton.

Tune in live at Noon eastern or catch the podcast in the podcast inside the Conference Channel under “Social Networking Conference” at WebmasterRadio.FM

Social Networking Now, Wednesdays on WebmasterRadio.FM

The first of several new shows in our weekly line-up debuts tomorrow (Wednesday) at 12-noon EST with the premier episode of Social Networking Now, hosted by Mark Brooks, editor of Social Networking Watch and Marc Lesnick, organizer of the Social Networking Conference series.

Featuring interviews with CEOs and executives from the major social media networks, Social Networking Now will combine the experience and humor of Mark and Marc, two of the best known names in the business of social media. The show will help webmasters, digital marketers and social network users understand the myriad of marketing and networking options available to them.

“I don’t thing there’s ever been a time in the history of man when an industry has emerged so quickly and taken captive so many human beings,” Brooks said. “This show will help people get an idea of what’s going on within the social networking industry, from the inside out, in the words of the CEOs themselves.”

Social Networking Now further expands the media partnership between WebmasterRadio.FM and the Social Networking Conference series. WebmasterRadio.FM has been the official radio / podcast network for the Social Networking Conference since 2006.

“WebmasterRadio.FM has always been the cutting edge in information and marketing technology. They are great and fun people to work with,” says Marc Lesnick, show co-host and organizer of the Social Networking Conference series. “In addition, the listening audience is well educated and far reaching in terms of their scope of internet knowledge.”

Brooks and Lesnick have years of experience surrounding social media. Brooks runs a boutique consultancy exclusively serving Internet dating and social networking companies. Having worked in the online community space since 1996, Brooks has advised the CEOs and boards of companies such as Friendster, Friend Finder, Cupid, Webdate, PlentyofFish, TRUE and others. He is a regular keynote speaker at social media conferences and his consultancy is highly sought by social networking firms.

Join Mark and Marc on Social Networking Now live each Wednesday at 12-noon eastern or on demand via podcast inside the Conference Channel under “Social Networking Conference” at WebmasterRadio.FM

On behalf of the staff, management and other show hosts, “Welcome to the network Mark and Marc!”

Tonight! Digg’s MrBabyMan at 6pm and Matt Cutts at 7pm

What would an online newspaper look like if it didn’t have an editor? What if instead of bringing one man’s bias and opinions as to what was newsworthy, it allowed hundreds — even millions — of people to vote?

That’s the idea behind social news sites such as digg, reddit, and yahoo buzz.

Tonight on Rainmaker (6pm EST) we have arguable the most influential and controversial user of social media, a man known on digg as MrBabyMan. We are going to be talking with him about his real life, how he makes a living, his podcasts, and most importantly, his rise in popularity on digg, the controversy regarding his rapid submissions and recommendations (seriously no one can read that fast), and the constant calls for him to be banned.

Loved and hated, he’s become something of an internet celebrity; he is Andrew Sorcini, aka MrBabyMan.

Immediately following that interview (at 7pm EST), will be a special presentation of SearchCast with Danny Sullivan also featuring Matt Cutts, Software Engineer at Google. Matt wrote SafeSearch, Google’s family filter. In addition to Google, Matt worked for the Department of Defense where he held a top secret clearance and worked at a game engine company. He has been at Google since 2000.

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