10 Days To Change the World

Just a quick notice to all those planning to enter the Knight News Challenge – the deadline is on October 15th, which is only ten days away.  However, that is definitely still enough time to create a short proposal for the contest, so click here and get started.

Reports of Journalism’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Every couple months or so, it seems that the whole “journalism is dead!  People only want sensationalized gossip and entertainment” story gets trotted out, both online and in traditional.  Maybe it’s a good filler for a slow news week, or the writer had just plain gotten sick of seeing Paris Hilton’s or Lindsay Lohan’s faces everywhere.

However, despite the massive proliferation of tabloid news, there is plenty more “serious journalism” happening too.  For instance, the situation in Burma, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s stateside vist, and of course the events in Iraq are all recent leading stories.  Still, though, there seems to be consistent fear of a widespread journalistic attempt to the throw in the heavyweight news towel against the onslaught of celebrity fluff, according to William Powers at the National Journal.  This is not a new fear:

“Writing in the Los Angeles Times in 1995, under the headline “The Simpson Legacy,” the late David Shaw rued what O.J. seemed to have done to the news business: “When the tabloids clasped the Simpson story to their heaving journalistic bosoms, the mainstream media suddenly found themselves panting alongside.” “

But is it really that bad?  William investigated the extent of celeb-fotainment himself.  The morning after Britney lost custody of her sons (don’t you sort of hate that is considering breaking news?), he checked out a whole bunch of news sources.  And with the exception of the tabloids (who are supposed to cover celeb dirt anyways), it wasn’t really that bad. 

“One day this week, the morning after Britney Spears had lost custody of her children in court, I went through the newspapers to see who was playing up that story at the expense of serious news. Not The New York Times (page A20). Not The Washington Post (Style section). USA Today had a Britney teaser and photo on the front page in the left column, pointing to inside coverage, but its biggest headline was “Report on Blackwater: U.S. Did Little to Restrict Guards.”

In fact, he says, if you were away from the net, the only place to find out about Britney’s kids were the actual tabloids.  Even on the web, international stories and election 2008 coverage outweighed the fluff on the big blogs and news sites.  His conclusion?  It’s all about where you look for your news. 

“I asked Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, if it’s true that serious news is alive and well. He said it’s all about where you look: “The infotainment and tabloid culture still exists in 2007…. But the reality is, stories like Britney, Anna Nicole, and even to some extent O.J. are cable and morning news fascinations much more than the media overall.”

Yes, journalism is currently in a state of flux, but that doesn’t mean that it has died, or even is no longer relevant.  The web might make things look different, and it has definitely altered our news delivery systems, but actual, non-fluffy and sensationalistic news still has an important place in the world, and in our lives.

Have an idea that might help keep the news real and not celeb-tastic?  Know how to get people the information that they actually need and want to hear?  Check out the Knight News Challenge and you could win funding for your ideas and projects.

Become the Master of Your Own Universe: Get Creative

Want to control your own destiny?  You can create something, build something, or start your own business.  Whatever you do, take a chance and get entrepreneurial.  It’s easier than ever to start a company, publish your writing or artwork, and record your own music, thanks to the web.  Need more inspiration?  Check out this post by Read Write Web’s brilliant Bernard Lunn about how Creative Entrepreneurs are the Next Masters of the Universe.

Basically, it’s time to stop complaining about the status quo and get out there and disrupt it (and if you’re lacking in funds and your idea has to do with news, local and hyperlocal communities, and/or journalism, check out the Knight News Challenge).  Yes, it’s tough to get heard over all the other “noise” on the web, and marketing even the best idea is difficult in this age of over-saturation, but in the end, isn’t being becoming a master of the universe worth it?

Get out there and change the world.

Visions of Web 3.0 From Jason Calcanis

Serial entrepreneur Jason Calcanis has written a decent definition of Web 3.0:

Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.

At first, it seems as if he’s saying that web 3.0 is the same thing as web 2.0, but without all the crap (and we all know that there will always be some useless content and spam on the net), and of course his definition fits into the direction of his current startup, Mahalo, but the idea of 3.0 building on the good aspects of 2.0 and taking them to the next level has legs.  It’s a little elitist though (only “gifted” people are involved?  How do we define this?).

One of the commenters, Arnaud Fischer, wrote:

“Right, that’s one way to put it. If Web 1.0 was about linking information then Web 2.0 is definitely about linking people. If Web 2.0 is about linking people, Web 3.0 will be about connecting and making semantic sense of people’s knowledge. Bringing together two disjointed pieces of content, computing, and creating new incremental value.”

Maybe we can combine these definitions somehow, because I think that Calcanis has left the inter-connected aspect, which is important – in the future, our networks will network.

How would you define web 3.0?

The Web 2.0 Petri Dish on Read Write Web

Today Read Write Web, one of the net’s foremost technology and digital media blogs (and I’ll admit that it’s a personal favorite of mine as well), posted about the current web 2.0 climate, comparing it to a petri dish – lots of experiments are taking place and no one really knows what’s going to happen.  Contributor Bernard Lunn says:

“The Web 2.0 world is looking increasingly like a giant petri dish. There are so many experiments, so much innovation and, as yet, relatively little real revenue. Within this petri dish are a few ideas that will turn into billions of dollars, at which point we will all say “why didn’t I think of that”? There are also lots of “what on earth were we all thinking” ideas out there. Numerically of course, there will be much more of the latter – but in $ terms the few big winners will mean it’ll all make some kind of sense in the end.”

Now, the Knight News Challenge is not about on awarding funds to companies based their earning potential (after all, they want more corporations that think about the double bottom line), but revenues are the lifeblood of any company, and it’s important for any entrepreneur who is thinking about building something web 2.0ish to realize that very few companies are actually making any real cash on the web.  However, the entry bar and general costs of doing business are still set extremely low, so there is not going to be a lack of people who are going to try to make the big bucks.

Lunn’s petri dish metaphor is extremely apt – lots of people experimenting with this and that, hoping to grow into something big and valuable.  He goes on to cover the current state of web 2.0 in a very realistic manner that is best described as cautious optimism, and ends with some advice to startup founders and other entreprenuers:

“1. Raise more money (a lot more) than you think you need. VCs have plenty of money to put to work and you need enough to ride out a cycle and really build something to last. Jason Calacanis said he raised enough for 5 years with Mahalo and he has seen a cycle come and go.

2. Get to cash flow positive quicker than you had planned. (And if you are already there, don’t take this as the time to start a major expansion built on borrowed money).

3. Accept that offer. Not the first one of course. Not the second one if you have good poker nerves. But take the third one. Live to venture another day.”

Perhaps his advice is little obvious, but really, the current financial climate is not the time to engage in major building on borrowed money.  What’s the solution?  Stay small and lean (with all the current technology, there is no need to have a huge office or other costly accoutrements, especially in a company’s early days of existence), or you could look for funding from non-venture capital sources, such as grants or contests like the news challenge (c’mon, you knew I was going to mention that).

Make A Real Impact: Build A Necessary Evil

Last week at On Startups Darmesh Shah posted about how entreprenuers can do better creating something that is a necessary evil (he uses the very apt example of tax software – it’s not fun or buy or use, but we all have to pay taxes), instead of something that is fun, cool, or sexy.  A real market of a few is better than a mythical market of millions, he says, and I’m inclined to agree.   

This makes perfect sense – build something that people need and they will come.  But how does this apply to the Knight News Challenge?  Well, most individuals consume a certain amount of local news just because they happen to live in a particular area.  People want to know what is going around them, because generally those are the events that affect them the most. 

Focus on delivering the necessary information – weather, crime, traffic, and less obvious things, such as quick un-biased summaries on the positions of local politicians during election season, for instance (although the lack of bias may be something that is easier said than done).  After all, we all know the views of candidates in the major national races, because the media covers that incessantly.  But local elections can have just as much, if not more, impact as the presidential race for the people who live in that community.  Think grassroots, not global. 

Yes, something like this might be not particularly cool, but it’ll make a difference – and it might even encourage more people to vote, because they’ll be significantly better informed.  Have a better idea for a “necessary evil” type of startup?  You know the drill.

Using Web 2.0 To Innovate: E-Democracy.Org

E-Democracy.Org, a Minnesota based organization with a focus on “the use of the Internet to improve citizen participation and real world governance through online discussions and information and knowledge exchange” (check out their About page for a lot more information about them and their mission), has created a wiki for their entry in the Knight News Challenge, and it’s open the public.

Now, companies and other organizations have been using internal wikis to get things done for quite some time now (and I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if other Knight News Challenge entrants used wikis to help put together their proposals as well), but E-Democracy.Org’s wiki is open to the public.  Besides being refreshingly transparent, opening up their project to the opinions of others could prove very valuable indeed – after all, sometimes it takes an outsider’s viewpoint to really make your plan and ideas great. 

Best of luck to them!  You can read more about E-Democracy.Org on their website and their blog.

The Lines Between New Media and Old Media are Disappearing

The times, they are a-changin’.  Traditional companies are adding some new media flavor to their pages (How many big newspapers have added blogs to their websites in the last year or so, for instance?) and websites are adding some of the positive characteristics of their print counterparts, such as clearly defined sections and easy front-page navigation.

No where is this more obvious then at the popular liberal news and opinion site, the Huffington Post (it seems a little wrong to call it a mere blog, although technically it is a group blog in the most sense of the word – content organized in reverse chronological order, and readers can comment on the articles).  Begun by media mogul Arianna Huffington two and half years ago, today the site has forty-three employees and a reach of 3.5 million unique visitors a month.  Most newspapers would love to have that kind of readership.

Characterized as an “an online version of a sprawling dinner-party conversation with a global crowd of more than a thousand well-connected friends.”, the Huffington Post currently sits at #5 on the Technorati Top 100.  However, the site is shifting towards a more traditional media model, as they’ve made a “recent move to hire a handful of well-known journalists to do old-fashioned reporting. “Our goal,” Ms. Huffington says, “is basically to become an online newspaper”.”  In addition, the company has tapped Betsy Morgan, former general manager of CBSnews.com, to be their chief executive officer.  Obviously, the Huffpo, as it is sometimes casually referred to, is not exactly a typical blog.

“Getting somebody like this to come to our site says a boatload about where the industry is going,” said Kenneth Lerer, who has been acting as the chief executive of The Huffington Post and will move up to chairman. He founded the site along with Arianna Huffington, the political commentator.”

-From the CBSnews article about Betsy Morgan’s move.

Although many writers and traditional media types have slammed the internet as the home of dilettantes, amateurs, and hacks, that is simply not the case when websites like this exist; besides, the future belongs to those who can adapt to the changing media climate, not those who try in vain to preserve the past.  In the end, there is room enough for everyone on the web – it’s not as if there is an end to the internet.

Have your own ideas for how to use the web and other digital technology to deliver the news?  Check out the Knight Foundation’s news challenge and you could make them a reality.

The Old System Can’t Last Forever: The New Media

You can’t visit a journalism-related website lately without reading about how traditional media is suffering from money woes thanks to the web, or how bloggers and other forms of online news are forcing the “real journalists” out of their jobs.  And you’ve probably heard how advertisers and marketers are flocking to the net in growing numbers.

So what’s the old media to do?  Obviously newspapers and magazines are not going to pack it in and say “game over, you win” to the web, but clearly something has to change if they want to stick around.  Today, Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine wrote about how reporters were calling for government support and funding from foundations or wealthy business moguls.  Basically, they need a steady influx of cash to replace advertisers and customers lost to the internet, or as Jeff says, “fairy godmothers who will swoop in from government or foundations or rich families to provide magic money that lets them continue to do business as they have.”  To put it succinctly, they are aiming for self-preservation, not innovation.

But the old ways of doing business can’t last forever, and trying to maintain a status quo that is tinged with nostalgia of the days before the web could be the end of many newspapers.  An artificial financial boost is not the cure for the illness that is ailing old media right now – learning to adapt to the web, working to innovate and striving to move forward and reinvent journalism as it works within all the amazing technological developments that have occurred in the recent past (and of course, looking to the future as well) – this is what needs to happen, instead of companies just burying their heads in the sand, ostrich style.

While support from the government could possible bail a struggling paper out, this seems very dangerous.  How will freedom of the press be affected when the government is funding it?  It’s tough to imagine a scenario in which a certain level of objectivity isn’t sacrificed, and the ability of journalists to criticize the government and to hold politicians accountable for their actions has always been essential for democracy.  Or do they plan to just leave the freedom of the press to bloggers?  And how do they plan to maintain the trust of the general public when they are bankrolled by the very organizations they criticize and discuss in their pages?

What about funding from foundations?  Clearly, this blog supports the Knight Foundation and their news challenge, but that encourages change and innovation.  It’s about changing things for the better, not sticking with the status quo.  Yes, sometimes foundation funding can mask a media outlet’s actual problems (because tossing money at an industry that can be hopelessly behind the times is a little like putting a band-aid on a bullet would), but if a foundation truly wants to foster innovation and growth, they can.  However, relying on outside sources for cash is also risky, because it’s a quick fix for a bigger, more fundamental problem. 

To conclude, I can’t say it better than Jeff:

“So rather than trying to find money to support the old ways artificially, we need resources to invent the new ways, the ones we don’t know yet. We need to take advantage of all the opportunities we have to gather and share news in new ways while preserving the best and most valuable of the old (and sloughing off the waste of the old). We need to explore new products and new business models and new relationships and we need to show that they are good investments, not charity cases.”

The Techmeme Leaderboard: Does It Matter What Kind of Site a News Source is?

Bloggers and other news outlets have been posting about the new Techmeme Leaderboard all day today, and one of the main topics of discussion has been how the site’s ranking system does not differentiate between blogs and other websites.  For instance, Techcrunch, Scobleizer, and the New York Times are all on their list, and it’s based on how many times a site has been linked by Techmeme in the last thirty days.

Some bloggers have been trumpeting about this will replace the somewhat ailing Technorati, but while this list is definitely useful for those who are interested technology developments and news, it cannot replace the universal reach of Technorati’s ranking systems.  After all, Technorati tracks blogs on every topic, not just the ones in the techno-sphere, and although it doesn’t include non-blog sources, it generally does its job pretty well.  And anyways, there really isn’t any competition other than Google’s Blogsearch, and that only searches blogs – it doesn’t index, rank, or otherwise organize them.  Perhaps the reports of Technorati’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Much of the other discussion has been about this list doesn’t discern what is a blog and what is not – but does it really matter what the source of a story is if it is viable and/or interesting?  It’s not like Techmeme’s Leaderboard purports to be a blog ranking system anyways, and really, perhaps it is time that popular blogs go head to head with traditional news sources in terms of respect, page views, and links.  And as bloggers gain increasing amoutns of credibility, do people really care if they are reading a blog or a news outlet as long as it has the latest scoop?

However, the Techmeme Leaderboard and the Technorati Top 100 are all about measuring the biggest players, they just do it in different ways (and Techmeme sticks to a single niche whereas Technorati’s based solely on the amount of backlinks – it doesn’t matter what language a blog is in or what it is about).  What would be more interesting, and potentially much more compelling to those who aren’t as into technology as the Techmeme crowd, would be a way of applying the Leaderboard concept to individual niches –  a foodie leaderboard, a football leaderboard, a fashion leaderboard, and so on.  Each subject could have it’s own Techmeme-style site, even, if there are enough dedicated bloggers.

Another way to take the concept to the next level would be to make a localized version of Techmeme – when bloggers, journalists, photographers, videographers, and anyone else in a specific geographic region post something, link it on the front page.  The most prominent citizen journalists could be ranked on a leaderboard (because people seem to love to compete for rankings), and readers could subscribe to the RSS feeds for different categories.

Yes, this wouldn’t be easy to construct, but once the site was built and the content is seeded, it would be an invaluable service to the area’s residents.  It would even be possible to run ads from local businesses to help keep the site afloat, if necessary.  Do you have any ideas, business plans, or projects that would fit the bill?  Enter the Knight News Challenge at www.newschallenge.org.

Want to read what others are saying about the Techmeme Leaderboard?  Check out Techcrunch, Read Write Web, Ben Metcalfe, Problogger Darren Rowse, Media Metamorphosis, and of course, there’s more on Techmeme’s homepage.