The Blog Posts I haven’t Written

I have lots of ideas for blog posts.  Every day an idea will pop into my head, sometimes it is many times during the day.  But I rarely get a chance to sit and actually post.  Something else gets in the way - work, life, something.  What are some of the posts I wanted to write, but never did?

- Dear Marketer: Just ask me what I want, I will tell you

- What I learned while traveling through an airport in rural Kentucky.

- 3 things my 1-month old son taught me.

- 4 things my 3-month old son taught me.
- 11 things my 5-month old son taught me.
- What the hell happened to CNN?

- Dear Marketer:  Be honest, do you think I am that stupid?

- I finished the New York Times Crossword Puzzle (on a Wednesday!)

- “All Hat and No Cattle” (or, Why I support Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the Democratic Primary)

- Why Cut and Paste functionality is so important to me.

- Media Rules! at the National Press Club.

- My experience at the Genius Bar

- Dear Marketer: Please help.  I don’t understand.
- The Politics of Investing

- Opening Day at Nationals Park

- When you only hear part of the conversation…
Those are just the ideas I can remember, or find references to in my notes (I have a pocket full of notecards, ideas scribbled on a piece of paper or in the margins of a book).  I am sure there are more, many more.  I haven’t figured out a good system yet for keeping track, or converting those ideas into actual posts.  But I want to.  I am open to suggestions.
My new plan is to Twitter (twitter.com/brianreich) my ideas for blog posts, and then go back and use that listing as a reference.  We’ll see how that goes.  I also just need to find more time to sit and write, to spill my thoughts and organize my writing.  I am open to suggestions on how to do that as well.

Age of Conversation

Today marks the official release date of “Age of Conversation.”

What is that? It is a collaborative effort of 103 bloggers and online types – a book that we all co-wrote and are now beginning the effort to co-market.  It is also an experiment in distributed media, a test of whether a group is really more powerful than the individual.  The goal was painfully simple:

- Pull 100 authors together on a single project 
- The overriding topic was “The Conversation Age” — where you take it is up to you.
- The items are short - one 8.5″ x 11″ page — it can be words, diagrams, photos (again up to you).  If it is words - about 400, give or take a couple.
- We write it quickly and get it out there. We publish electronically.
- We make it available online for a small fee and we donate 100% of the proceeds to Variety the Children’s Charity — which serves children across the entire globe

It all started with an off-handed remark on a blog post and grew from there.  The credit for both launching and facilitating the project goes entirely to the editors, Gavin Heaton and Drew McClellan.  I have never met either, but I was honored and flattered that they would let me participate.

All signs in this suggest that this crazy little experiment will be an overwhelming success… Age of Conversation is an interesting book and will get significant attention, hopefully driving good sales. 

More information, and the option to puchase the book, is available at www.ageofconversation.com.  Go buy a copy!

CEOs Blogging, Sometimes Awkwardly

I want to give a little shout out to Jason Goldberg, the CEO of Jobster.  (Full transparency, Jason is also a friend of mine - we used to work together).

Jason has become, with help from the mainstream media, the poster child for why CEOs should not blog.  First the two local papers - the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Jobster is HQ’d in Seattle) dinged Goldberg, presumably for not scooping them before releasing his comments to the blogosphere.  Today, the New York Times gets into the act, reporting on Jason’s blogging with the following lede:

Some executives, like Jonathan I. Schwartz of Sun Microsystems, pull it off with aplomb. Others, like Jason Goldberg of the online recruiting company Jobster, have had more difficulty.

The article isn’t that bad - mostly straight reporting - but the examples that the reporter, Damon Darling, chose seem to imply Jason is struggling.  He doesn’t mention the countless posts where Jason talks about good hiring practices and shares his personal theories on business leadership.  I don’t see a lot of CEOs offering that information up for free on a blog - or even offering it up at all in most cases.
Jason deserves a lot of credit for using his blog to help explain some major changes at Jobster over the past few months - including the downsizing of nearly half the staff.  Most CEOs would hide behind a press release, a spokesperson, or not say anything at all.  Most CEOs wouldn’t try to explain their actions, let alone submit to questioning from the general public.

At times Jason’s blogging has been awkward – at first denying there was any trouble, only to later change tune.  He explained that his obfuscation was a necessary measure designed to give the employees of Jobster first knowledge of the impending changes.  That seems plausible to me, and at least he came up with a reason — not your typical CEO move.

Don’t let them get you down, Jason.  The press hasn’t figured out yet how to report on CEOs who blog, and more importantly, tell the truth about what is happening in their companies.  Other CEOs should take a page from your book.

Update: Jason sent me this ‘Confessions of a CEO Blogger” video he put together.  Good to see he’s not taking all the criticism too seriously.

Presidential Announcements v2.0

I had this really long, eloquent post written about how all the candidates are using the web to launch their political campaigns.  I hit the wrong button and the whole thing was lost.  I won’t try to reconstruct the entire thing, but let me try and summarize a couple of the key points.

John Edwards announced his campaign for the Presidency with a web video.  Barack Obama used a web video a few weeks later to do the same.  And now Hillary Clinton, who announced her intention to run for President on Saturday, has used a video on her Website to break the news.  It seems you can’t be a candidate for President - at least not a Democratic candidate - without launching your campaign on the web.  (Memo to Joe Biden and Bill Richardson, who announced their candidacy’s on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows — you might want to check to make sure your announcement registered at all, or consider posting the video of your appearance on YouTube to make sure people take it seriously).

Both the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post used Senator Clinton’s announcement to analyze the role that the web will play in the upcoming campaign.  The LA Times offers a brief history of the highs and lows of internet campaigns over the past decade, writing:

The Internet’s power both to make and break politicians has been vividly demonstrated in recent years.

In 2004, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean jumped from political obscurity to grab the front-runner’s position in the initial stages of the Democratic race largely on the strength of the interest and fundraising he generated online.

Last year, Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) watched his reelection campaign — and his hopes of emerging as a prime contender for the GOP presidential nomination — go down in flames after a video clip of him addressing a young man of Indian descent as “macaca” made the rounds on the Web.

Barely a factor in campaigning 11 years ago when Clinton’s husband won reelection as president, the Internet has become an integral part of the political landscape, with every major candidate fielding a website and seeking to create a virtual community around his — or her — campaign.

But with the recent advent of YouTube and other video-sharing sites, analysts said the most intriguing aspect of the evolving use of the Web may be as part of an immense game of political “gotcha,” in which campaigns seek to catch opposing candidates off-guard and off-message, as happened to Allen.

By contrast, the Washington Post took more of an editorial stance on what makes for good web video in politics, offering this comparison Clinton, Obama, and Edwards:

Unlike other candidates (coughBarack Obamacough), whose videos might have been produced by a guy with a cellphone camera, Clinton’s announcement was a veritable showpiece of Hollywood-style set design, lighting and cinematography. While Clinton, looking radiant in a red jacket and flattering makeup, affected the demeanor of a kaffe-klatching neighbor while speaking about the Iraq war, energy, Social Security and health care, the camera swung with pen dular subtlety between a background tableaux of framed family pictures and a fabulous table lamp exuding a warm glow. In fact, the background is so eye-catching, so crowded with totemic details, so bursting with semiotic potential, that I missed whole passages of Clinton’s statement the first time around. (And yes, I do want that lamp.)

The effect was one of breathtaking political shrewdness and brilliant staging, like a mash-up between “The West Wing” and Diane Keaton’s latest holiday heartwarmer. And for all its studied spontaneity, its air of having been pre-tested, choreographed, and managed to within a microfiber of Clinton’s mascara, it worked, if only to provide a little eye candy within a grainy sea of canned speeches and awkward iChats. The aesthetic sophistication suited Clinton, who, as a former first lady and a U.S. senator, would look hopelessly out of place in most other contexts (rocking the mom jeans in the Ninth Ward? Uh-uh. Maybe an ornate Senate office, but where’s the zazz in yet another wall of law books?), and the look and the script warmed up a woman portrayed as either an amoral ice queen or control-freaky dragon lady by her political opponents.

Three quick points: First, the novelty of launching a campaign on the web should have worn off a long time ago.  The web is not even close to being the most dynamic vehicle for delivering information anymore, politics has just been slow to embrace what virtually every major consumer brand and entertainment company in the world has been doing for the past five years.  A really nice website, a blog, or even a web video announcement is not enough.  Its time you ran a fully funded, fully supported effort online to promote your campaign - and to engage the audience that chooses to get its information there instead of through traditional news or campaign events (which are still important as well).  Second, announcing your campaign online sets all of our expectations very high that you, as a candidate, will remain committed to using the web.  John Edwards, you have already created behind-the-scenes web videos about yourself, recorded podcast conversations about issues, and similar.  Are you going to keep doing that when you are visiting four states a day - so we can see what really happens to a person when they don’t sleep enough, eat healthy, or have complete control over their message?  Hillary Clinton, you are taking your web efforts to the next level already, inviting the audience to create the first guest blog post to be published on your site and hosting a series of live video chats with the web audience over the coming week.  Are you going to host live web-chats every week, about any topic?  Are you going to take on the large and vocal segment of the online audience who questions your policies, challenges your positions, and even insults you personally — or will your web campaign, like your offline efforts, be so highly managed and controlled that it fails to really engage people?  Finally, the media needs to find a better way to cover and express the value the web plays in this upcoming cycle than how they are currently doing it.  We have all read, time and time again, what a big impact the web is playing and will continue to play in politics.  Its time to assign a full time, daily reporter to cover each campaign’s online efforts.  It is time to hold the campaigns accountable for what they say will be an online, grassroots fueled effort and put the same scrutiny on their web efforts as you do on their fundraising, their television ads, their speeches, and — even in some cases, their clothing.  Just as you have pushed increasing resources into covering traditional news through the online medium, now its time to recognize that the online efforts of a presidential campaign are also news and cover them accordingly.

It should be an exciting couple of years for those of us who live, work, and love the online medium.  I will definitely be watching to see what happens.  I hope the political world realizes the potential that it has to reach and engage the audience before and lives up to its end of the bargain.

Update: I wasn’t totally fair to Bill Richardson.  He has a very nice website (here) and has posted his announcement video to YouTube and other places.  He has a MySpace page, a Facebook profile, etc.  He’s following the new media playbook pretty much to all the way.  We will have to wait and see how that works for him.

The Future of Newspapers

I have been thinking a lot about the future of newspapers lately. 

The topic is not a new one - the various threats to print newspapers have been debated publicly in media and technology circles for several years now (and probably for quite some time out of the public’s view).  Despite numerous articles, conventions, discussions and predictions, I don’t think that much has been decided or even made more clear in that time.  I certainly have more questions than answers.  I don’t think anybody really knows what is going to happen.

A full discussion of the future of newspapers would take up more than one post, and would need to include people with far greater knowledge and perspective on the subject than I have to offer.  That never stops me from offering my opinion though.  And while I will try to organize my thoughts more clearly in the future, and invite friends and colleagues who work in the newspaper business to weigh in, for now I just I wanted to share a couple of recent articles about this debate that I thought were really interesting.

First, The Week magazine, writes about The Decline of the American Newspaper.  The article is a well organized summary of the current state of newspapers - with a little bit of editorial perspective to round things out.  For someone who is new to this debate, or just needs a refresher, the article is organized around seven key questions about the newspaper industry.  The questions include:

1. Why are newspapers in deep trouble? 
2. Where did the readers go? 
3. What’s the problem? 
4. What is the newspaper doing about all this? 
5. Is that strategy succeeding? 
6. So are newspapers going broke? 
7. Can anything be done?

For me, the future of newspapers has to include some localization of content and expertise.  I am an avid newspaper reader and nothing bothers me more than the AP-ification of the world’s information, when all the articles pull from the same sources and not a single bit of additional perspective is added.  Don’t get me wrong, the AP provides a valuable service and I use it regularly to keep track of events happening around the globe.  But I don’t consider that to be the true value that newspapers can provide.  According to The Week, I’m not alone in thinking this:

Publishers are experimenting with generating several versions of the paper to target various market segments, such as young people. Some may start giving away their papers free, relying entirely on advertising revenue. One school of thought is that newspapers should become “hyper-local,” focusing intensely on community news not available on the Web or TV. But most industry experts believe that the era of print newspapers is nearing its end. Newspapers, says media analyst Ken Marlin, “have to either adapt to the new economics, or die.”

Next up is “A modest proposal for reinventing newspapers for the digital age” by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic Monthly.  The article begins with an overview of, EPIC 2014 (now apparently updated to EPIC 2015) an online movie that predicts the future of the media that results from technological innovation (or assimilation as the case may be) and continues through a discussion of the various models that newspapers might try to integrate to become profitable.  Hirschorn settles on this recommendation/thought:

The current Web-publishing model that newspapers are using isn’t likely to become financially viable anytime soon. With few exceptions, the media businesses thriving on the Web either are low-cost blog-like efforts or follow a many-to-many model, in which communities create, share, and consume content. Publishing an article on the Web gets you one click; getting your users to write the article for you gets you a thousand clicks, and costs less to boot. In other words, turning your users into contributors increases their engagement with your site—each click is, after all, also an “ad impression”—while simultaneously generating more content that you in turn can sell to advertisers.

Now we’re talking!

Last on the article list for this post is Michael Wolff’s Billionaires and Broasheets in this month’s Vanity Fair, a look at the recent push by various moguls to buy into the print newspaper business.  Wolff alludes to most of the reasons I can imagine a billionaire would want to buy a newspaper - boredom (as might be the case with Jack Welch who is rumored to be interested in buying the Globe), frustration with the perspectives of the editorial board on an issue that is close to them personally (as is the case with Hank Greenberg, who is rumored to be interested in buying the New York Times), or maybe even ego (as is the case with Ron Burkle and Eli Broad, who are rumored to be interested in the LA Times and who probably think their investment and management savvy might be able to reshape the media biz).  For what its worth, Wolff’s contribution to the debate is summarized at the end of his article as follows:

Of course, the Internet is a bitch. On the other hand, the Internet is an inefficient way for a big man to throw his weight around. A newspaper really is the much more effective bully pulpit.

What’s more, given a host of new papers—The Daily Geffen, The Welch Globe, The Greenberg Times, The Broad Journal, The Burkle Shopper—freed from the deadening template of the people who theoretically know how to run newspapers, maybe the people who know nothing at all about newspapers will stumble onto something that makes them shout and sing (Eli Broad recently offered that it might be a good idea if the L.A. Times had more pictures of donors at charity events … well … maybe).

Anyway, now is not the time to worry about the unknown. The unknown is the only hope. Make the deal.

I don’t know yet what the future of media looks like - I’m working on figuring that out right now.  I don’t believe that the demise of newspapers will come any time soon, and I don’t see that takeover of journalism by faceless and emotionless technology (as is suggested by EPIC) will be realized any sooner.  I know that profitability is the chief concern of any business, and as long as journalism is considered a business (instead of say an art, or a public service) then groups like the New York Times and the Tribune Company will look for ways to monetize their coverage of world events.  My hope is that someone in the middle of this debate will realize that one of, if not the primary value, that newspapers have always offered to the public is editorial perspective and journalistic excellence — a way to help all of us who consume news on a mass scale to understand what is relevant, important, and why.  That seems to have gotten lost in this debate, and in our news industry today as a whole, and needs to return to both.

Old Media Scare Tactic… About New Media

This week’s issue of U.S. News and World Report features a blurb about the future of political communications.  It reads:

Political Ads: From Bad to Worse

Sorry if you hated all those candidate calls at dinnertime during the last two weeks of the midterm elections, but it’s only going to get worse in 2008. Both parties plan to invade your computer with instant messages and pop-up ads, and your cellphone and BlackBerry will get zapped with text advertisements. But there is good news. They plan to cut back on TV advertising because it just isn’t as effective as the Internet.

I don’t disagree with the facts — political campaigns will absolutely adapt to meet the changing communications needs of the audicence.  I do, however, take issue with the presentation.  The tone of this little blurb is a sad example of how old media — the stodgy magazine writer in this case – has to scare traditional political folks into believing that more focused, more personalized communications is somehow bad. Campaigns will not recklessly send text messages or use pop-ups (nobody uses pop-ups anymore!  c’mon!) to reach voters. 

Puhlease. 

NPI Memo Encourages Organizations to Engage Blogs

The New Politics Institute tapped Jerome Armstrong, world famous political blogger and co-author of “Crashing the Gate” (with Markos from DailyKos) to write a memo encouraging progressive campaigns and organizations to engage the blogosphere. 

What a tremendous waste of time!

The memo included five tips for campaigns and organizations to follow:

1) Take the first step with outreach to local bloggers:
2) Have a daily-updated website to engage and empower the bloggers:
3) Be on the blogs and advertise on the blogs
4) Get your opposition research onto the blogs
5) Put your commercials on YouTube

And this earth-shattering conclusion:

The blogs are both a critical component of building a long-term progressive infrastructure and an important tool right now. There is little downside, and lots of upside, for candidates, causes and campaigns to engage them now.

To be honest, I’m a little offended that NPI felt that it is providing value by writing this memo.  I work in this space every day and I know first hand that campaigns and organizations understand the size and influence of the blogosphere.  They are aware of the benefits and pitfalls the blogosphere presents and are well down the road of figuring out if, or how, to integrate blogging into their organizational communications. 

I appreciate that NPI wants to be on the cutting edge of the conversation about how to use the web to promote political activity - and to date they have done a pretty good job of positioning the organization as knowledgable on these issues.  But this memo breaks no new ground and talks down to the reader.  They could have done a lot better.

Read the Engage the Blogs Memo yourself and let me know what you think.

Notes from New Orleans

I spoke last week at the Public Radio Develment and Marketing Conference in New Orleans.  With nearly 700 development professionals and station managers, it is considered the “premiere educational event for fundraisers within public broadcasting.”

First, a thank you to Betsy Harmon, a consultant and advisor to DEI (the conference organizers) for online fundraising and e-mail marketing, who organized the panel and invited me to join.  Second, a thank you and an apology to my co-panelist was Deb Ashmore, the Director of Individual Giving, WXPN in Philadelphia.  XPN is a pretty innovative station when it comes to the use of the web and Deb had a lot of good information to share.  I went first in our presentation and most of the questions from the audience that followed focused on elements that I had raised (I think, because a lot of what I talked about was new, and probably outside the comfort zone of the audience).  We had planned for the session to generate a brainstorm for how to use new tools to raise money, and instead we spent much of our time explaining and advocating.  I am hoping this is just the first of many panels where Deb, Betsy and I can collaborate - there was such a tremendous amount of energy in the room about the use of new media that I know there is a lot of interest in finding ways to get hands on with this stuff.

Here is a copy of the powerpoint from my PRDMC Presentation.  I will offer some observations in another post.

Globe Endorses Blogging in Politics

The Boston Globe editorialized on the benefits of the blogosphere’s role in politics on Sunday.  Here is what they wrote:

POLITICIANS OUT to control the Internet will surely suffer rude surprises.

It’s the age of the virtual soap box. Just as self-proclaimed orators once stood on hand crates to pontificate, political bloggers sound off on websites. They post photographs and videos. They check facts, amplify fallacies, and hit with the force of a wrecking ball.

Howard Dean tapped the raw power of the Internet. When Senator John Kerry ran for president, he hired blogger Peter Daou to manage the campaign’s Web communications. Last month, Hillary Clinton hired Daou for her 2006 reelection campaign, a bid to be reelected as New York’s junior Democratic senator that could be a test run for the presidency in 2008.

On Daou’s own blog, the Daou Report, he says he wants to expand Clinton’s “relationship with the netroots,” the grass-roots community of bloggers. It’s part of a larger effort to close the triangle between the political establishment, the mainstream media, and bloggers. Daou has useful experience in building common ground: His blog posts commentary from the left and right to establish a comprehensive conversation in one place.

But it’ll take more than Daou’s work for Clinton to close the triangle.

An early battle has been won: Bloggers have become a force to be reckoned with. Many mainstream journalists and readers are paying attention. The next step is harder: focusing blog content where it can help define the future. In both mainstream news and blogs, scandal gets attention: Just type Ann Coulter’s name into Google’s search engine.

It’s more compelling and useful to read posts on issues such as “Ed Wonk,” an anonymous teacher whose blog can be found at educationwonk.blogspot.com/ on issues such as how Florida educators are skeptical of the No Child Left Behind Act and about violence crippling Baghdad University.

Blogs can help shift the conversation from here’s-whom-we-hate to here’s what the country needs in order to have 21st-century schools, hospitals, businesses, streets, and nursing homes.

One lesson of American politics is that opponents have to find common ground. Beating the other side into submission doesn’t work; neither does waiting for the opposition to see the light.

Another lesson is that politics lags. It can take years for good ideas to become practiced policies. Blogs could do great good by pushing the establishment to shorten this wearying time-table.

The blogosphere has rough neighborhoods full of singeing criticism and fiction masquerading as fact. But, for the most part, blogs are a new frontier for public discourse. They matter. And they could matter even more.

Welcome to the conversation, Globe!  I couldn’t agree with you more. 

Top Science Blogs

Out of 46.7 million blogs indexed by Technorati, five scientists’ sites make it into the top 3,500.  This, according to a survey by Nature reported on the San Francisco Chronicle Blog yesterday.

The big five are:

Pharyngula (no. 179) is described as “Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal.”

The Panda’s Thumb (no. 1647)is a group blog by observers and critics of the intelligent design and creationist movements.

RealClimate (no. 1884) provides commentary on climate science news by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists

Cosmic Variance (no. 2174) is a group blog, edited/authored by physcists, who muse about scienct, as well as art, politics, and miscellaneous trivia.

And Nick Anthis, aka the Scientific Activist, (no. 3429) offers revelations about a NASA official who was accused of squelching interviews about global warming contributed to the official’s resignation.

According to Nature, they “trawled the web to identify as many science blogs as possible. Although there are many popular blogs produced by science writers, we included only those written by working scientists covering scientific issues.”  They then asked Technorati to give each a rank.