Tag Archives: internet

The Next News Media Metaphor – The Sports Team

Many things going on that I want to talk about… Excited about working on Mozilla Drumbeat, a project the Mozilla Foundation that is getting ready to launch. Open Data stuff at the City of Vancouver (some new things are afoot). Watching (in the background) In the Loop – amazing, hilarious and dark. But, for now ruminating on my conversation today with Mathew Ingram (currently of the Globe, soon to be with GigaOM) and an interview I did with a Ryerson Journalism Review writer on the future of media and newspapers.

One of the things that struck me about newspapers is that their conundrum is even greater than we think. Mathew and I were talking about how the “magic” and “mystique” of the newspaper has disappeared. There was a time when we could pretend that columnists in the Globe actually had 300,000 or 400,000 (saturday) readers. But this was in an era when we couldn’t actually measure readers. We pretended (and still do) that each newspaper got read, sometime multiple times.

It reminds me of the memorable opening scene from Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It by Ken Auletta and below described by Erick Schonfeld:

The first scene is a 2003 meeting with Mel Karmazin (then CEO of Viacom) at the Google campus with a sweaty Brin, Google’s other co-founder Larry Page, and CEO Eric Schmidt. At the end of a his visit, Karmazin tells them he is appalled that Google is “fucking with the magic” of the media business by actually telling advertisers which ads work and which ones don’t.

The internet is has fucked with the magic of newspapers. And that’s scary for anyone who grew up under the old model. Forget about the advertising (that’s the part google messed with). What about the simple ego bash and job justification crisis of suddenly being able to see exactly how many readers looked at your piece and how long they chose to stay. And what about discovering that that number is nowhere near what you’ve been telling yourself for years.

The era of collectively lying magic is over. The average globe weekday circulation is 330,145, the Star’s is 446,493 and the Post’s 209,211. How many of those papers got read? Half? (the morning was too busy, kids had early practice, didn’t have time for a coffee break today, no one grabbed it from the airport lounge or hotel room). Of the remaining papers, most readers skim the paper and maybe read one or two of their favourite columnists plus a news story or two that really catches there eye. In short I suspect most columnists maybe get read, in print, by 60K people. But we don’t know, cause there are no good metrics.

Online, the world is different. The editors know who is getting read and who isn’t. No ifs, ands or buts. Suddenly your value to the newspaper (financially) becomes very clear, very fast. Valuable columnists and reporters attract what website people call “uniques” (e.g. a unique person visiting your website – each unique visitor may click on several articles and thereby generate a number of pageviews). Advertisers care about the unique visits, since 100,000 different people seeing an ad is worth a lot more than one person clicking around the site 100,000 times and seeing their add over and over again.

And what attracts lots of unique visitors? The same things as what drives everything else on the internet. Reputation and thus… brand. The most successful writers (or, er… bloggers) are those that people wake up everyday saying… I want to read her! This is even more true today where there is SO MUCH content being created most readers simply cannot separate the noise from the signal (even with twitter, which is probably the best tool). So having a strong brand is essential. This should be a good news story for newspapers and media companies since they have established brands and so, in theory, should have a leg up on bloggers like me.

The problem is – I suspect – that the brand that matters doesn’t solely or even primarily reside with the newspaper. People need someone to connect with – a newspaper is a nice filter, but it offers no connection, no intimacy. The personal brand of columnists and journalists will likely become equally, if not more important than the newspaper.

But this doesn’t mean newspapers are dead. Just that they need to be sure they know how to manage talent in an era where that talent’s brand is more and more important.

And we have a model for that. Sports teams.

For years Sports Teams have had to increasingly co-manage their own team (media platform) brand with the brand of the players (writers). The rise of the sports superstar has altered how sports franchises work in much the same way they may the newspaper biz.

So the bad news is, the talent is going to consume more of the value generated by news organizations. The good news is threefold. First, good newspapers have always managed talent – so there is some skill and process already in place around this. Second, newspapers now have real tools by which to measure their columnists. Who’s being read and who isn’t? Essentially, every managing editor should pick up a copy of Moneyball stat. A good newspaper is going to have its senior talent – its stars, if you will. But it also needs to have a mix of people on the second and third line it is grooming for later – in case a star gets injured or, is simply too expensive to justify.

Finally, there is a larger and deeper talent pool to draw from. Not only are there the local papers and a number of niche community papers to look at, there are an army of bloggers (many of us aren’t that good, but what we lack in talent we make up for in sheer numbers). And successful bloggers come with established audiences and the advantage of maturing in the online world and not the “magic” pre-internet media environment. They are used to looking at the hard numbers of pageviews and unique visitors. The opportunity to write more seriously, get mentored, and access a platform that can deliver more eyeballs will be tempting to anyone who writes well.

But I suppose none of this is that shocking. In a world where human capital is increasingly the most important asset and where personal brands are more easily established, maybe every organization is going to look more and more like a sports franchise.

19th Century Net Neutrality (and what it means for the 21st Century)

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So what do bits of data and coal locomotive have in common?

It turns out a lot.

In researching an article for a book I’ve discovered an interesting parallel between the two in regard to the issue of Net Neutrality. What is Net Neutrality? It is the idea that when you use the Internet, you do so free of restrictions. That any information you download gets treated the same as any other piece of information. This means that your Internet service provider (say Rogers, Shaw or Bell) can’t choose to provide you with certain content faster than other content (or worse, simply block you from accessing certain content altogether).

Normally the issue of Net Neutrality gets cast in precisely those terms – do bits of data flowing through fibre optic and copper cables get treated the same, regardless of whose computer they are coming from and whose computer they are going to. We often like to think these types of challenges are new, and unique, but one thing I love about being a student of history, is that there are almost always interesting earlier examples to any problem.

Take the late 19th and early 20th century. Although the term would have been foreign to them, Net Neutrality was a raging issue, but not in regard to the telegraph cables of the day. No, it was an issue in regards to railway networks.

In 1903 the United States Congress passed the Elkins Act. The Act forbade railway companies from offering, and railway customers from demanding, preferential rates for certain types of goods. Any “good” that moved over the (railway) network had to be priced and treated the same as any other “good.” In short, the (railway) network had to be neutral and price similar goods equally. What is interesting is that many railway companies welcomed the act because some trusts (corporations) paid the standard rail rate but would then demand that the railroad company give them rebates.

What’s interesting to me is that

a) Net Neutrality was a problem back in the late 19th and early 20th century; and

b) Government regulation was seen as an effective solution to ensuring a transparent and fair market place on these networks

The question we have to ask ourselves is, do we want to ensure that the 21st century (fibre optic) networks will foster economic growth, create jobs and improve productivity in much the same way the 19th and 20th century (railway) networks did for that era? If the answer is yes, we’d be wise to look back and see how those networks were managed effectively and poorly. The Elkins Act is an interesting starting point, as it represented progressives efforts to ensure transparency and equality of opportunity in the marketplace so that it could function as an effective platform for commerce.

Dear Valpy: social media isn't killing democracy, it's making it stronger

So I’m really worried I’m becoming the one man rant show about the Globe, but as long as their columnists keep writing stuff that completely misunderstand the intersection between technology and politics, I feel bound to say something.

First it was Martin Lawrence, who was worried about the future of the country since his profile of young people was (as my friend put it) limited to “an unthinking, entitled drain on the country I call home and pillage without contribution…”

Now Michael Valpy is worried. He’s actually worried about a lot of things (which don’t all seem to hang together, but the part that has him most worried is that Canadians are becoming segmented into smaller groups and that this threatens the fabric of our democracy and country.

The premise goes something like this: the decline of main stream media and the rise of social media means Canadians are suffering from a social cohesion deficit. Increasingly we will have less in common with one another and engage in narrower and smaller conversations. As a result, there will no longer be a “political agenda” we all agree we should be talking about. It is all summed with a quote from a Carleton University Professor:

“The thing about newspapers is that you always find things you didn’t know you were looking for. You come across views that you don’t agree with or don’t like,” says Christopher Waddell, director of Carleton University’s school of journalism. “When you’re searching for things on the Internet, I think it’s much less likely that you’re searching for things that challenge you. You’re much more likely to be searching for positive reinforcement.”

and it goes on…

“Society is always better when someone is trying to undermine your views. And particularly, social cohesion is better, because being challenged forces you to think through why you believe what you believe. It’s the stimulus for debate and discussion and a recognition of multiple others.”

What’s so frustrating is that Waddell and Valpy arrive to the debate both 3 years late and with the wrong conclusion. As Steven B Johnson, who wrote one of many fantastic pieces on “serendipity,” might ask: “Does Michael Valpy even use the internet?” But of course a main stream media columnist and a professor who trains them would naturally see a diminishing role for main stream media as a threat to democracy and the very fabric of the country. This argument has been tried, and frankly, it doesn’t have legs. Democracy and Canada will survive the decline of mainstream media – just as it survived before it existed.

Indeed, the decline of mainstream media may actually be healthy for our democracy. Here are two thoughts for Valpy to stew on:

First, comes from Missing the Link, a piece Taylor and I wrote ages ago which keeps proving to be handy:

The “necessary for democracy” argument also assumes that readers are less civically engaged if they digest their news online. How absurd. Gen Y is likely far more knowledgeable about their world than Boomers were. The problem is that Boomers appeared more knowledgeable to one another because they all knew the same things. The limited array of media meant people were generally civically minded about the same things and evaluated one another based on how much of the same media they’d seen. The diversity available in today’s media—facilitated greatly by the internet—means it is hard to evaluate someone’s civic mindedness because they may be deeply knowledgeable and engaged in a set of issues you are completely unfamiliar with. Diversity of content and access to it, made possible by the internet, has strengthened our civic engagement.

This strikes at the core of how Valpy and I disagree. To be harsh, but I believe fair, he is essentially arguing that we may be better off not only if we are dumber, but if we are collectively so. The country is better, stabler and safer if we all talk about the same thing (which really means… what does Toronto/Ottawa/Ontario insert favourite centralist scape goat here, want). Hogwash I say! Diversity is what makes Canada great, and it is, paradoxically, the thing that binds us. Certainly for my tribe the value of Canada is that you can come here and can be what you want. There is a common value set, but it is minimalist. The central value – now protected by the charter – is that you can be who you want to be. And that is something many of us cherish. Indeed, don’t underestimate the fact that that is pretty strong glue, especially in a world where there are many countries in which such a right does not exist.

Second, I think there is compelling case to be made that it is main stream media that is killing democracy. Virtually every political analyst agrees that ever since Trudeau the power of the Prime Minister’s office has been steadily increasing, more recently to a degree that arguably threatens the role and function of parliament. Do Committees matter any more? Not really. Oh, and name a regional MP who has real weight – someone on par to John Crosbie in his hey day. Pretty hard. What about Ministers? There authority (and accountability) is not even a slice of what it used to. And cabinet? Even it toes the line of the mighty all powerful PM.

What parallels this rise in the PMs absolute power? The increased used of modern technologies. TV and polls. With TVs the Prime Minister can speak directly to Canadians everywhere – without having to be mediated by pesky local MPs or representatives. And with polls, the prime minister doesn’t even need local MPs to give him or her the “sense on the ground.” But imagine a world where the two very things that Valpy fears are in decline – polling and mainstream media – actually do disappear? With a citizenry fractured along hundreds of conversations there are all sorts of information niches for MPs to fill and play important roles within. More importantly, without effective polling MPs local knowledge and local community connections (enhanced by social media) suddenly becomes relevant again.

If anything polling and mainstream media (especially TV) were killing our democracy. Social media may be the reason we get it back.

Why the Internet Will Shape Social Values (and not the other way around)

The biggest problem in predicting the future isn’t envisaging what technologies will emerge – it is forecasting how individuals and communities will respond to these technologies. In other words I often find people treat technology as a variable, but social values as a constant. Consequently, as they peer into tomorrow, technology is examined only in terms of how it will change (and make easier) tasks – and not on how it will cause social values and relationships to shift. By treating social values as a constant we assume that technology will conform to today’s values. In truth, it is often the reverse that is the case – social values change and come to reflect the technology we use.

For example, I find people ask me if I’m nervous about blogging since, 20 years hence, someone may dig up a post and use to demonstrate how my thinking or values were flawed. Conversely, a friend suggested that social networks will eventually “auto-delete” photos so that any embarrassing pictures that might have ended up online will not be searchable. (Let’s put aside the fact that a truly embarrassing picture will likely get copied to several places.) In short, these friends cannot imagine a future where your past is accessible and visible to a wider group of people. In their view an archived personal history is anathema as it violates some basic expectations of anonymity (not to be confused with privacy) they are accustomed to. In their minds our mistakes, misadventures or even poor fashion choices need to be forgotten (or hidden in the vast grayness of history) in order for us to be successful. If not, we will somehow become social pariahs or certain doors may forever be closed to us.

To put it another way, it presumes that our future employers, social circles and even society in general will punish people who’ve ever had a thought others disagree with or will refuse to hire someone who’s ever had a embarrassing photo of themselves posted to the internet.

Really? If this is the case then the jobs of tomorrow are going to be filled by either the most conservative and/or timid people or (more troubling, but less surprising) by those best able to cover their tracks. I’m not sure either of these traits are what I’m want in a prospective employee. Should I hire someone who is afraid to publicly share independent thoughts? Do I want to work with someone too risk-averse to push a boundary or have fun? Or worse, should I contract someone who is highly adept at covering up their mistakes? If the jobs of the future are going to require creativity, originality and integrity why would I hire for the opposite traits?

Perhaps those whose lives are more visible online will be discriminated against. But it is also possible the inverse could be true. Those who have no online history have no discernible, verifiable track record, no narrative about how their values and thinking has evolved over time. While such a history will be filled with flaws and mistakes, it will at least be open and visible, whereas those who have lived offline will have a history that is opaque and verifiable only by their own handpicked references.

If anything, I suspect the internet is going to create a society that is more honest and forgiving. We will be returning to a world of thin anonymity – a world where it is difficult to escape from the choices you’ve made in the past. But the result won’t be a world where fewer people take risks, it will be a world that recognizes those risks were necessary and expected.

What would such a world look like? Well naturally it is going to be hard to imagine, because it is a world that would likely make you deeply uncomfortable (think of how hard it would have been 25 years ago to imagine a large swath of the population being comfortable with online dating). But there are perhaps microcosm we can look at. While dysfunctional in many ways the culture of Silicon Valley – in how it treats failure – may be a good example. While I’ve not lived in the valley, everything I’ve read about it suggests that it is hard to be taken seriously unless you’ve taken risks and have failed – it demonstrates your willingness to try and learn. It is a community where it is easy to look into everyone else’s past – either by searching online or simply asking around. In this regard Silicon Valley is deeply honest – people own their successes and their failures – and it is a place that, in regards to business, is forgiving. Compared to many places on the planet, past failures (depending of course on the nature of depth of the error) are forgivable and even seen as a necessary right of passage.

All this isn’t to say that we should be limiting people’s ability for anonymity or privacy online. If someone wants their photos auto-deleted after 5 years, please let them do it. But let us at least always preserve choice – let us not architect our technology to solely conform to today’s social norms as we may discover we will be willing to make different choices in a few years.

When good companies go bad – How Nokia Siemens helped Iran monitor its citizens

Last week my friend Diederik wrote a blog titled “Twittering to End Dictatorship: Ensuring the Future of Web-based Social Movements” in which he expressed his concern that (Western) corporations might facilitate oppressive regimes in wiretapping and spying on their citizens.

Now it appears that his concerns have turned out to be true. As he points on more recently on his blog:

The Wall Street Journal reports that Nokia and Siemens have supplied Iran with deep-inspection technologies to develop “one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale”. The Washington Post also reported this.

Siemens has not just sold the “Intelligence Platform” to Iran, but to a total of 60 countries. Siemens calls it “lawful interception”, but in countries with oppressive regimes everything that the government does is lawful.

The New York Times reports that China is requiring Internet censor software to be installed on all computers starting from July 1^st.

Of course, being Nordic, the Nokia Siemens joint venture which developed and sold the monitoring centre to Iran has a strict code of ethics on their website that addresses issues of human rights, censorship and torture. In theory this should have guided their choice of selling equipment to Iran – obviously it has not.

So Diederik and his friends have started a petition to enable people voice their concern over the failure of Nokia Seimens to adhere to their own code of conduct by selling advanced technology to help the government of Iran to control its citizens. I hope it takes off…

10,000 hours and The Coming Online Talent Explosion

About half way through Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success and, if he’s thesis and the research it is based on is valid, I think we are in for some exciting times in the online writing world.

Gladwell talks about how it takes about 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in area, subject or practice. Referencing a study of musicians that sought to determine how many “natural” talents their were, Gladwell notes that:

“The curious thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals” – musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time that their peers did. Nor could they find “grinds”, people who worked harder than everyone else and yet just didn’t have what it takes to break into the top ranks. Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. What’s more, the people at the very top don’t just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”(H/T Tim Finin)

How much harder?

“In those first few years everyone practiced roughly the same amount, about two or three hours a week. But around the age of 8 real difference started to emerge. the sudtents who would end up as the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else. 6 hours a week by age 9, 8 hours a week by age 12, 16 hours a week by age fourteen and up and up until by the age of 20, they were practicing – that is purposefully, and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better – well over 30 hours a week. In fact by the age of 20 the elite performers had totalled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives, by contrast the merely good students had totaled 8000 hours and the future music teachers had totaled just over 400 hours. “

He then cites example after example of this trend. 10,000 hours – usually attained only after about 10 years – is a magic number.

Well, two years ago my friend Taylor and I wrote this piece about the 10th anniversary of blogging. Since the blogosphere is only about 12 years old there are not that many people who’ve been blogging for 10 years – moreover, the scant few who have are most likely to be those who work, or and deeply interested, in Information Technology. If Gladwell is correct it means that virtually all bloggers (self-included, only 3.5 years) and especially those without an IT background, are likely well short of the 10,000 hour mastery threshold.

This is exciting news. It means that despite the already huge number of great blogs and bloggers we are probably only experiencing a fraction of what is to come. Given bloggings exponential growth I’d wager that the world is about 2-5 years away from an explosion in writing talent. Today all sorts of people who would never have previously written are writing blogs. Many are terrible, some are good, and fewer still are excellent. But what is important is that they are gaining experience and learning. With more people reaching that 10,000 hour mark, more talented people will also reach it – consequently, we should see more gifted writers. Better still, it is possible their talent will be restricted to blogs – but perhaps not. As these writers get more recognized some they will shift to books, or magazines or whatever new medium exists by then.

All in all, the first half of the 21st century could be one of the greatest for writers – and as a result, for readers from thereafter too. The internet’s writing renaissance could be upon us soon.

How an old media drudge's actions explain the death of newspapers

Taylor and I have received a lot of link love, comments, and emails since posting the piece Newspapers’ decline is a sign of democracy not a symptom of its death, but one commentator has been the standard bearer in the defense of the traditional newspaper: copy editor and blogger for the Baltimore Sun John McIntyre.

John and I are are involved in a healthy debate over the future of newspapers. In addition to commenting here at eaves.ca, he’s written two critical piece on his own blog. What is most interesting however is that while John disagrees with us in his comments and blog, his actions demonstrate our point. Democracy is better served by the rise of the internet – even if that comes at the cost of the physical newspaper. Why? Because our audiences are better served – and informed – by observing (and participating) in our debate.

Consider our exchange in the abstract. Here are two differing perspectives (mine and John’s), which would never share the pages of even his newspaper. Not only are they directly engaged with one another, but we link to one another – sending readers to one another! We may disagree, but the act of linking requires us (and asks our readers) to acknowledge and engage the other.

But consider too, the very practical. The centerpiece of John McIntyre’s attack on our post was his claim that the US constitution does protect the freedom of the press. In countering our assertion that “Newspapers are not a precondition for democracy—free speech is” John argues that:

“The Constitution does in fact protect newspapers. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Or of the press. Newspapers. Over the past couple of centuries, the legal understanding of the press has been expanded to include, for example, broadcast. But it is clear in the text that the authors of the Bill of Rights foresaw a need to protect the press — what we could now understand as organized journalism — in specific language beyond the protection of the individual right.”

But this is actually a misreading of the constitution. The term “the press” wasn’t referring to newspapers or claiming that they are necessary for democracy (or that even journalism is for that matter). It was stating that Americans have the freedom of expression both in speech and in writing. In this manner, the constitution could have said “abridging the freedom of speech, or of blogs, or word documents, or PDFs.” Indeed, it was one of John’s own reader’s (slugwell) that supplied the legal analysis from Princeton University that confirmed his misinterpretation:

“Despite popular misunderstanding the right to freedom of the press guaranteed by the first amendment is not very different from the right to freedom of speech. It allows an individual to express themselves through publication and dissemination. It is part of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression. It does not afford members of the media any special rights or privileges not afforded to citizens in general.”

This back and forth – this focusing of the argument, the identification of errors and misunderstandings – is physically impossible in the traditional newspaper, and for reasons of culture and pride, remain rare in online editions. And yet, this is what makes blogs so compelling to their readers. Readers are able to learn more, dive deeper and participate in the evolving product (there is no final product on the internet). Alternatively, if they aren’t interested (as many readers of both John and my blog probably aren’t) they move on.

In his second post, John decries Wikipedia because “it advises its readers not to rely on the accuracy of its entries.” At least it advises its readers! But John himself benefited from (or was victim to) the very forces that make Wikipedia trustworthy – others came to point out the errors of his analysis. This is, paradoxically, what makes Wikipedia so trustworthy (and the Baltimore Sun less so – their retractions and errors are printed discretely, away from the prying eyes of readers). Even as he decries “new media” he enjoys and takes part in its benefits.

But let me finally return to this notion of respect. I don’t agree with John, but I respect him – which is why I link to and write about him. More importantly, I think we agree on more than we disagree. John states that he was responding to “a Canadian blogger’s post rejoicing in the death of the newspaper.” Let me concede that our tone sometimes makes it seem we are gleeful about the decline of newspapers, this is not the case. Let us be clear, Taylor and I aren’t celebrating the death of the newspapers. While we take issue with the industry’s argument (and hubris) that they are a precondition or necessary for democracy, anyone who reads our piece, Missing the Link will note this line:

“However, unlike the work of our techno-utopian contemporaries, our critique should not be seen as a jubilant celebration of a dying industry. Traditional media has served society well, and with the right attitude and adjustments, could continue to do so for the foreseeable future.”

As avid newsreaders and commentators, our problem is with how newspapers – and the news industry in general – has been profoundly unimaginative, blind, angry and reactionary towards new technology and possibilities. Our goal in bursting bubbles is to focus the debate on what’s possible and what’s next. Above all, we want news writers to once again talk about how they can better serve the public, not on how the public should serve them.

Print Media: Nostalgia is not a growth model (or, on why being online is better than than paper)

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Two years ago Taylor and I wrote a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review (which they opted not to publish) critical of Kuttner and the CJR’s faith in the print-hybrid model for media.

After having it sit on our hard drives all this time we are putting it up for reading and commenting. It is, sadly, more or less as relevant today as it was when we wrote it. Here is a link to the full version of Missing the Link: Why Old Media Still Doesn’t Get the Internet.

And here’s another of my favourite passages, (written before the arrival of the kindle!):

Print Media: Nostalgia is not a growth model

Mostly, it is baby boomers who are nostalgic for newsprint, and they are not a growth industry. Sure, there are some, younger, holdouts. But these are generally students of the Columbia Journalism School, not those they hope to write for. Yes, the texture of a newspaper is nice – but the newspapers can’t afford to print and distribute them and, so far, you’ve been unwilling to pay a premium for it.

More seriously, media traditionalists often cite two examples— incidental reading and ideological objectivity—to explain why physical newspapers will and should remain the main distribution channel for print media. However, the purported value of physical newsprint simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Scanning the pages of a newspaper is indeed a virtue. It exposes readers to articles they might not seek out, broadening their range of news and opinion. However, this process is no different from what happens online. Links, aggregators and email steer readers to a far broader range of articles than they could conceivably imagine by simply flipping through a newspaper. Indeed, the internet enables this incidental reading better than newspapers. Take the BBC website, where any given article has links to related pieces both across the internet and in different sections of the site. A political article might cause a reader to click on a link to a related piece in the Science/Nature or Africa sections. Once there, they are confronted with an array of ‘incidental’ headlines. The tunnel syndrome argument simply doesn’t hold weight.

The other oft-cited example of the value of newspapers is that they prevent readers from falling into self-selected ideological silos. The argument follows that, when left to their own devices, innocent readers will gravitate towards the poles of their ideological bias. What they need, and should pay for, is a physical entity that provides them with a limited, but ‘healthy’, range of information.

This argument ignores the fact that many newspapers operate as ideological poles themselves. The New York Times clearly favors the left whereas the Wall Street Journal appeals to the right. More importantly the internet, unlike print media, provides tools to overcome these silos. Not all content delivered through an aggregator will be consistent with a reader’s perspective (indeed, one can imagine a customized aggregator that specifically targets news pieces that challenge its readers). More importantly, the internet gives readers the freedom (and safety) to select content from a broader range of perspectives. Most liberals wouldn’t be caught dead with an issue of the National Review in their hands, and when was the last time you saw a pinstriped Wall Streeter reading the Nation? But thousands of liberals read the Corner (the group blog of the National Review). This is because the ease, speed and anonymity of the web stimulates exploration that the physical world prohibits. In addition, many posts are written in response to other pieces, to whom they inevitably link (imagine the Nation sending readers to National Review!). Neither traditional nor New Media can single handedly mediate or resolve political difference, but at least New Media links the poles to one another, rather then creating isolated playgrounds where pundits can safely take shots at one another.

While sometimes seen as nostalgia, these arguments are simply a proxy for a deeper set of concerns felt by elites who fear the day the unkempt masses are finally freed to choose and read what they will. Controlling your customer has a never proven to be a sustainable business strategy, and for a business deeply concerned with freedom, it is disturbingly anti-democratic.

This piece is pulled from a longer piece we wrote called Missing The Link: Why Old Media still doesn’t get the Internet.

Some of my favourite Vancouverites on Net Neutrality

A couple of Vancouverites can be seen below talking about the danger currently facing the future of the internet here in Canada as our government allows the telco’s to determine who will be the winners and losers of the digital age.

If you haven’t already I’d strongly encourage you to head over to the “SaveourNet.ca” facebook group and become a member.

broadcast artists in a communication world

Just a brief follow up on yesterday’s piece. One reader yesterday pointed out that the CRTC did “get the internet” and that it was the interveners – The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) that “didn’t get it.” I think there is lots to dive into about the CRTC but part of his point is well taken. Check out this problematic quote from ACTRA:

“The Internet is just another media-distribution platform like any other that we’ve had,” said Stephen Waddell, executive director of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. “And in our view, if the CRTC doesn’t give some opportunity to Canadian content to have a place on that platform, we’re going to be immersed in non-Canadian content.”

The number of problems with this statement are almost overwhelming. Building on some of the reasons I discussed yesterday the internet is not like any other distribution platform. Rather than analyze it line by line, I thought I would hand things over to Clay Shirky, who in Here Comes Everybody explains how our friends at ACTRA are caught in the same dilemma as scribes at the end of the 15th century:

Consider the position of a scribe in the early 1400s. The ability to write, one of the crowning achievements of human inventiveness, was difficult to attain and, as a result, rare. Only a tiny fraction of the populace could actually write… In this environment a small band of scribes performed the essential service of refreshing cultural memory. By hand-copying new editions of existing manuscripts, they performed a task that could be preformed no other way. The scribe was the bulwark against great intellectual loss…

…Now consider the position of the scribe at the end of the 1400s. Johannes Guttenburg’s invention of movable type in the middle of the century created a sudden and massive reduction in the difficulty of reproducing a written work… a scribe, someone who has given his life over to literacy as a cardinal virtue, would be conflicted about the meaning of movable type. After all, if books are good, then surely more books are better. But at the same time the very scarcity of literacy was what gave scribal efforts its primacy, and the scribal way of life was based on this scarcity…

…The spread of literacy after the invention of movable type ensured not the success of the scribal profession but its end. Instead of mass professionalization, the spread of literacy was a process of mass amateurization. The term “scribe” didn’t get extended to everyone who could read and write. Instead it simply disappeared, as it no longer denoted a professional class.

This is what the internet has done to radio, television and cinema professionals. It has radically lowered the barriers for the creation of Canadian content.

So do we lament the loss of scribes? Not at all – we are liberated because today we can all write. Has the acerage quality declined? Possibly, we aren’t all writing Dante’s Inferno. But the best writing is way, way better (and better paying as well).

Will we lament the loss of television, cinema and radio (I doubt they will disappear completely) no. Something new and more interesting will arise to replace it. With the end of scribes we didn’t writers, instead we gained something far more valuable, the growth of contemporary authors! (who in 1350 could have imagined a world of authors, book stores, top 10 best seller lists?)

Now, imagine if there had been a tax on every printing press to pay for scribes to continue copying books… that would have just made books more expensive and less accessible.

We must acknowledge ACTRA fear of the new world. However self-serving, it is rational and genuine. Everything is going to be unpredictable for a while. But the future also the opportunity for something new an amazing – unimaginable ways for new types artists and mediums to describe the human condition and touch our souls. Just because it won’t be the way it has been done – through the broadcast mediums of radio, television, and cinema – doesn’t mean that it won’t be good. Indeed, I predict, that once the dust has settled, there will be more artists, producers, actors, and creatives in general, many of who will continue to get paid well. It’s just that the line between amateur and professional will be more blurred. There may even be a role for a professional association – although I imagine it will look, much, much different. Scary, yes. But also unavoidable.