Tim Russert

by Brian Reich | 14 Jun 2008, 2:00am

There will be many moving obituaries written and eulogies delivered honoring Tim Russert.   He deserves all the kind words that people share.   And we will all be better for remembering his contributions - to our lives, and our society - as a journalist, author, and human being.  

He was a giant in the media, as some have said the most influential journalist of this generation.   His passion for sports was significant, and his knowledge of and genuine support for  the teams that he loved (the Buffalo Bills, the Washington Nationals) was truly incredible.   Most importantly, however, he was just a wonderfully nice person — happy, warm, interested, thoughtful - whether he was meeting you for the first time, or talked to you every day.  

I didn’t know Russert well enough to offer anything truly meaningful in the wake of his death — others will have better words and deeper memories to share.   I met him twice, both while working for Vice President Gore, and like millions of others watched on Sunday morning and countless other times as he displayed his talents.   As a Washington Nationals season ticket holder, I also saw him at the ballpark quite a bit.  

Two quick memories:

The first time I met Tim Russert, I was working for Vice President Gore as his Briefing Director in the White House.   I remember arriving early on a Sunday morning to the NBC studios in DC in advance of an appearance on Meet the Press.   I was the only person from the staff who had gone straight to the studios (everyone else would arrive with the Vice President in the motorcade later).   I was sitting in the conference room shuffling documents and Russert came in to ask me when the VP would arrive.   He made a point to introduce himself (like I didn’t know who he was) and asked what I did for the VP.   I answered, and then awkwardly transitioned the conversation to football — a topic I felt much more comfortable talking about.   Russert’s eyes lit up and we proceeded to have a discussion about the prospects for the Buffalo Bills season (dim, at best).   The whole encounter probably lasted only a couple of minutes, but his interest in my thoughts was genuine and appreciated.   Later that morning, Russert came to see Gore in the conference room where we were all waiting and Gore introduced everyone.   When he got around to me, Tim said “yes, Brian and I met earlier.”

The second time I met Tim Russert, also while working for Vice President Gore, was at that Naval Observatory (where Gore lived, and we were doing a taping of Meet the Press).   Again, I was on site early and again I was the only person from the Vice President’s staff  to be on location ahead of time  (the others were doing final prep at the house a couple hundred yards away).   And again, Russert made a point to  come over and talk to me   — only this time, when I told him that we had met during Gore’s last appearance on the show, he seemed to remember (or pretended really well).   I had helped our internal policy and press teams with the research for the interview — we spent weeks pouring through policy positions, past statements, transcripts of Meet the Press and everything else we could find to try and out-research Russert and his staff - so  this time  I felt like I had more insight into how Russert’s mind worked, at least enough to support a conversation.   It worked, we talked briefly and he asked my opinion on a few pressing issues.   Little did Russert know, I was pumping him for information to aid Gore in the interview.   My most meaningful contribution gleaned from the conversation with Russert was an update on the Bills season prospects (still dim, at best).   Gore made Bills references both on-air and in private conversations with Russert, which he lated thanked me for helping with.    

Both times I met Russert he was generous with his time and interested in our brief conversation.   In the 8+ years since, I have watched him hundreds of times on television and seen him at baseball games in DC on at least a dozen occasions.    I certainly can’t claim to be a friend or even an acquaintance really.   I am just a fan.    But, I am still very sad about his death.   He was a truly great journalist and an upstanding person and I will miss him.

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Public Media 2007

by Brian Reich | 25 Feb 2007, 2:00am

I spoke  on a panel Friday morning at  Public Media 2007, the Interactive Media Association’s annual conference.   The conference brings together the folks from the public broadcasting (radio and TV) communities who are focused on interactive (read: online) communications.   While the public broadcasting community has been an innovator in many ways online, the  conference  was appropriately focused on figuring out how NPR, PBS, and all their member stations and partner groups could make the  leap from being public broadcasters who have operations online to being leaders in the  broader public media  space, and leveraging technology to do that.

Here is a quick  excerpt from  the conference overview  on what was driving this discussion:

For one thing, all media is taking a digital form and “public service publishing” has expanded dramatically–if you extend the definition of public media to any individual or organization creating and distributing media “in the public interest.”   Technical advances and innovations have eliminated barriers to entry. The cost of audio and video production has spiraled downward. Podcasting and media aggregation sites, where you don’t need a license to distribute audio and video, now reach millions of desktops and iPods.   With ubiquitous blogging software, everybody can be a journalist, a critic, a pundit at a cost of no more than $20 a month.  

The speed of this change has been nothing short of revolutionary.

I sat on a panel entitled “Leveraging Social Networks” which promised to answer the burning question: “How can public broadcasting stations can leverage social networks to increase engagement and build audience?”   The panel was moderated by Vinay Bhagat, the Founder and Chief Strategist of Convio and featured Dick McPherson, a consultant to the public broadcasting community, Heather Holdridge from Care2 and David Woodrow from Gather.com.

I  was generally disappointed with how the conversation was framed.   The easy way to think about social networks is to look at the existing technologies in the field and  figure out how to use them.   In other words, since MySpace has  more than 50 million users, they must be a place we can go looking  to engage our audience.   Or, since more than 65,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube  every day, we should be uploading our shows because that’s where the marketplace is headed.   There is not enough consideration about why these properties may or may not be valuable and not enough thought about what makes online social networking function successfully.

I kicked things off with a presentation (here is my iMA Presentation) that framed social networking and new media in a broader format.   My point was simply that social interaction online, and social networking more specifically, has been happening for a long time in many different formats — and innovations in technology will only expand on that.    Successful communities are built and fostered online not because of the technology that facilitates the interaction, but rather its the content and experience that people create and share that drives interest.    Public media organizations need to think strategically and creatively about  what they produce, how if they want to truly  engage their target audience.   I think I resonated with the audience, but honestly am not sure.

Dick McPherson followed me and challenging the audience to focus on specific goals they wanted to achieve online (i.e. build community and membership, not raise money) and broadly about how to creatively execute on those efforts.   Heather and David offered case studies about what works within their networks.  

Now, I do not mean to disrespect either Care2 or Gather.com, both of which  I think are terrific organizations and both of whom were well represented  by my fellow panelists, but they are only two of the dozens of options currently available to consider.   I am not a big fan of presenting personal case studies on panels because it should be obvious that I would biased towards the things that I have done.   That was the case with both Gather.com and Care2, who have been working with public  broadcasting groups  to build out social networking efforts.    It just  seemed to me that the message of the panel was too much about how public media groups could use those two platforms and succeed.   Maybe they are the best two networks for public media.   Or, maybe the public radio community should be looking at more examples, and more opportunities.   I don’t know, but most people probably left that room thinking about launching Gather.com groups or launching petitions through Care2 and not enough of them were considering all the other venues available to them.

I did make one point at the end that was good, and I think resonated.   A woman in the audience asked for our opinions on how many social networks should a station target and what kinds of resources should they put into the effort.   A good question.   However, in asking the question, she referenced ‘us’ (meaning the station) and ‘them’ (referring to the audience members who would be part of the community).   After everyone else had offered specific answers to her questions, I  jumped in, adding  something to the effect of: Its very important for you as an organization, for your staff, your talent, whoever, to see themselves as a part of these communities.   You are not separate.   It cannot be us vs. them.   Most likely, the reason that your audience might be intererested in joining and contributing to a community that you organiz is the same reason that you, as a staff person at one of those stations, work so hard to make it successful.   Its about the content, its about the experience, its about your contribution to our society.   If you see yourself as separate from that community instead of as a part of it, you are missing the boat.

I got a lot of nods, and a pat on the back from one of my fellow panelists for making the point.   I probably sounded a little righteous, but maybe that helped get the point across more effectively.    I enjoyed being on the panel and would love to help the public media conversation move forward to where it desperately needs to be, but  I am not sure I was able to broaden the perspectives of anyone in attendance with respect to the framing of a conversation about social networking.

Thank you to Teri Lamitie of WGBH in Boston for the invitation.    I very much enjoyed the conversation and I hope that I was able to contribute some interesting thoughts to the discussion.   Please invite me back to do it again.

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Citizen Media’s Breakthrough Moment(s)

by Brian Reich | 15 Feb 2007, 2:00am

When we look back and try to identify the breakthrough moment(s) when citizen generated media found its way into the American consciousness, the credentialing of bloggers to cover the perjury trial of Scooter Libby, and the subsequent recognition by traditional media of their efforts, should be right  near the top of the list.  

The New York Times  profiled the bloggers at  firedoglake, the liberal collective that has been providing online coverage of the trial since it began in today’s paper.   There is actually nothing new about bloggers covering trials  – there was terrific newspaper blogging of the Enron trials by the Houston Chronicle for example –  but the independence of these bloggers has made it very different.   The firedoglake bloggers, and their conservative counterparts, are introducing a whole new perspective and new  energy to otherwise traditional coverage.  From the article:

Even as they exploit the newest technologies, the Libby trial bloggers are a throwback to a journalistic style of decades ago, when many reporters made no pretense of political neutrality. Compared with the sober, neutral drudges of the establishment press, the bloggers are class clowns and crusaders, satirists and scolds.

“They’re putting in a lot more opinion and a lot more color than the traditional reporters,” said Mr. Cox, adding that the bloggers were challenging “the theory of objective journalism.”

While I think that including independent bloggers in the coverage  of federal trials  is a tremendous step forward — and a necessary one — for both the legal and news industries, I worry that critics will seize on the fact that the bloggers are partisan (or worse, in the case of firedoglake, liberal) to diminish their contribution.     I also worry that all citizen media will be framed by this one, high-profile situation and that the non-traditional conventions of the contributors to  firedoglake (such as nicknaming Vice President Cheney “Shooter”) will give other organization pause when considering  granting bloggers full access  to cover events in the future.   Everyone, most importantly the traditional media folks (newspapers, TV, radio, and established online journalism sites) should fight these stereotypes with all their energy.

There is such tremendous opportunity for citizen media practitioners (read: people) to provide  perspective and color to the coverage of all sorts of events that furthers the cause of journalism and helps to inform society.   The work that firedoglake and others are doing at the Libby trial is just one example of how this can work, but its a great model and a huge step forward for the cause of citizen media.

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Presidential Announcements v2.0

by Brian Reich | 21 Jan 2007, 2:00am

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: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.

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 (

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SRI In the Rockies: The Big Picture

by Brian Reich | 30 Oct 2006, 2:00am

I spent the weekend in Colorado Springs, CO attending SRI in the Rockies, the annual gathering of the socially responsible investment industry in the United States.   I was there to  participate in a panel about online marketing and host a  topic table at lunch on the same topic.   I also had an opportunity to attend some of the speeches and sessions — and learned some new things about climate change its impact on disease, micro-finance and, perhaps most interestingly, the future of the internet.

Bob Veres, an author, speaker, and one of the most influential people in the financial services industry (socially responsible or otherwise) gave a talk entitled ”The Next Society.’   The focus of his talk was how the world of sustainable investments has changed, and continues to evolve, and how the world is now following the lead of SRI - for the better.   He noted that a decade ago, social screens were seen as a depressant on fund performance while today, social screens are the very best way to evaluate corporate character and avoid surprises in your portfolio.  

Then he launched into a commentary on the changing nature of communications and how it relates to the tough work of changing the world.   Here are my (rough) notes:

- The media industry is in crisis.   Stories are covered and then disappear.   Stories are covered by people who don’t know much about the subject and who have a very short attention span.   The future of news will be an environment where you can access a lot more information, a lot better information, from people who know a lot more than reporters.   And it will make everything more focused, more meaningful, and more actionable.

- The web has created a hostile world for advertising.   As we move towards the web as a content delivery vehicle, corporate america will not be able to artificially create demand for their products and services.   It is harder and harder for advertisers to gain interest and traction.   That is why TV advertising is suffering and that is why the future of communications will be information/content-centric, and not marketer driven.

- We are experiencing the death of the consumer economic system.   Why?   It doesn’t relate to the issues that people actually care about most.   That has also given rise to the concept of “Life Planning.”   People are finding they don’t want more stuff.   They want more fulfillment from their lives.   How do they know?  

Ask yourself, if you had one day left to live, what would be your biggest regret?   Write down 30 goals you want to achieve this year (the first ten will be easy, the second ten more difficult, the third ten will make you did deep).   If you had all the money in the world, what would you want to do?      

- How can we change the world?   He offered two directives:

1) Operate in your zone of personal genius.   Imagine a circle, with a circle inside that, and a circle in side that.   At the center of that innermost circle is a   blue dot  that represents your greatest energy, focus, and passion.   That is where we must all operate - get rid of the distractions and just work within our blue dot.

2) Hire a coach to help you get there.   They will help you put aside all of the work you do for others and help you focus on just what you need.   The coach will nag you because they will present your own goals back to you in such a compelling way that you will do for them what you can’t seem to find a way to do for yourself.

- The way we work is changing.   You are going to see most of the world’s work being done by ad hoc teams who are experts in their field and who are operating within their blue dot.   You will see corporations (who right now have office buildings filled with generalists and inefficient information flow based in hierarchy not expertise) “melt like sugar cubes in the rain.” The people who own the assets will control them - you won’t need marketers, etc.

- The internet will become the superconductor of human and financial capital.
The speech made  me think.   Not sure quite yet what it all means, but rarely does a conference speech make me think like this one did, so that must mean something.

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Shut Up & Run the Ads

by Brian Reich | 28 Oct 2006, 2:00am

I wrote a post yesterday discussing the marketing efforts behind Shut Up & Sing,  the new documentary about the Dixie Chicks and their criticism of President Bush.   You didn’t see it?   Nobody did.   My  computer froze up and I lost the text before I was able to put it up online.   Too bad — when I wrote it yesterday morning, this was a small story and my analysis looked really solid.   Now its a big story and I am late to the conversation.   Alas.

So what are people talking about?

The documentary tracks the fallout that resulted after lead singer, Natalie Maines, said she was “ashamed” that President Bush was from Texas, the Chicks’ home state.   The comment  prompted a boycott of the Chicks’ music by conservatives and opened up a discussion about freedom of speech among scholars and those in the music industry.   Time passed, things died down.   But now, the documentary has brought the controversy back to the fore — and with a new twist.

A handful of media venues have refused to run advertising promoting the movie.   The LA Times covered it yesterday.   There was a story on NPR’s Weekend Edition this morning.   And the Washington Post summed it up this way:

It all started earlier this week when Weinstein submitted ads for its new Barbara Kopple documentary “Shut Up & Sing” to the broadcast networks for review by their standards and practices departments.

NBC said it “cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.”

CW said it “does not have appropriate programming in which to schedule this spot.”

Weinstein said: “Eureka!”

And on Thursday evening, it sent out a news release headlined:

“In an Ironic Twist of Events, NBC and the CW Television Networks Refuse to Air Ads for Documentary Focusing on Freedom of Speech.”

“It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America,” bemoaned Weinstein Co. co-chairman Harvey Weinstein.

“The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is sad and profoundly un-American,” he added.

As I see it, this hubub was not only anticipated by Harvey Weinstein and his team,  it was a key part of their promotional strategy.   How else would you get coverage for a small-budget documentary film in today’s big-budget Hollywood movie promotion craziness?    We have a very  tense election cycle coming to an end just two weeks from now, and a national media that is feasting on  any criticism of the war, or the President, they can find.    All you had to do was light the fire.  

Of course, now the networks are in a no-win situation now — if they don’t run the ads, the press continues to cover the story (helping the movie gain traction, and the stations look selectively moral), and if they do run the ads, they look like they caved.   I think they should run the ads - networks would benefit greatly by becoming a part of the political dialogue and  letting the population decide on its own.   Be fair, show ads promoting and criticizing the movie if that opportunity exists, but don’t limit one perspective from being heard because you are afraid of your audience.

Give credit to Weinstein and Co. for recognizing the opportunity to use the news cycle to promote their movie.   It is not a new strategy — MoveOn got into a similar fight with CBS around the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, and I have had clients whose online ads that venues have refused to run because of an arbitrary content standard.   In both cases  press coverage resulted and the message ultimately got to the target audience.  I don’t think it will work  for any movie or event, but its a strategy that more organizations should understand and pursue.

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Why Newspapers Still Win (sometimes)

by Brian Reich | 16 May 2006, 2:00am

Mark Cuban and I are on the same page when it comes to the value of newspapers.   Print newspapers continue to offer more substance than their online news counterparts.   This is what Cuban wrote on Blog Maverick  over the weekend:  

So if the choice came down to newspapers at the breakfast table, or regurgitation online. Newspapers at breakfast win.

Whats the moral of the story ? Depth and differentiation beat speed and regurgitation.   I read the NY Times business section with a grain of salt, knowing it can be less than factual, but I read it every day. I   know that they differentiate themselves by finding topics of interest to me that I cant find anywhere else. If they find something I care about, the net, among other tools, allows me to find out more. The NY Times business section gets my business because their stories are different from the stories I read anywhere else.

During the playoffs, I make sure to read the local newspapers because they have made the decision to differentiate their coverage to include depth and in some cases differentiated information, far beyond what is available online. If they invested the same effort during the season, I would be sure to read it every day. Im sure fans of other sports and topics would feel the same way.

I love the speed and access to news online as much as anyone, but I read because I want to learn something.   Until the online news business model  prioritizes content over aggregation, there will always be room for thoughtful reporting, analysis and commentary.   Since  print journalists seem more committed to producing that kind of content, there will always be room for print newspapers as well.

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News of the Future

by Brian Reich | 11 May 2006, 2:00am

The Wall Street Journal asked readers what they wanted their news of the future to look like.   They responded:

Readers want more context and background included in news reporting. They want new ways to receive their news, on next-generation handheld devices, for instance, rather than simply on a Web page. They want fewer ads — especially the kind that animate or show up in popup windows.

It turns out that they also want more-telegenic news reporters.

The full article is here.

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Newspaper Circulation Down

by Brian Reich | 9 May 2006, 2:00am

No surprise that print newspaper circulation continued to decline, according to data released on Monday.   In fact:

Of the 25 biggest papers in the country, 20 reported drops in circulation. Of the five that did not drop, the gains were all less than 1 percent. Those were USA Today (2,272,815), The New York Times (1,142,464), the Chicago Tribune (579,079), The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., (398,329) and the Detroit Free Press (345,861).

I start each morning reading newspapers — the Washington Post, Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, the LA Times, and the  Chicago Tribune — but I read all of them  online.    I do read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in print,  but only  because I like having something to read while waiting for the bus.   On days when  I drive into the office, I read those papers online.   Its just a personal choice to have something in my hands for the commute, not a deliberate choice to support print.  

Newspaper publishers spin the drop  saying it is part of a strategy to push more information online where advertisers find greater value.   If that is true, then the strategy is working becuase “newspaper-run Web sites had an 8 percent increase in viewers in the first quarter,” according to an article in the Tribune. “The data …found that newspaper Web sites averaged 56 million users in the period, or 37 percent of all online users in the period.”

Here is more coverage from the Boston Globe, Seattle PI, and LA Times.

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We Media Global Forum

by Brian Reich | 2 May 2006, 2:00am

I am in London this week for the We Media Global Forum, a two-day conference (May 3 - May 4) exploring the impact of technology and the internet on media and society.   The event is co-sponsored by the BBC and Reuters and hosted by The Media Center.

I will be moderating the online  conversation at the Forum  – helping to make sure the opinions and insights of  the media, organizations, bloggers, and others who are watching  and participating from near and far are heard as a part of the conference.    I will also be  helping to lead a wiki-storm, the outcome of which will be a call-to-action for conference participants, and others who are interested,  to support bottom-up media.   More on that later.

More information about the conference - and a link to the online chat - are available online at http://www.mediacenterblog.org/events/06/wemedialondon/home/.

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