lovehate: Citizen Journalism - An Oxymoron

I never thought I'd miss the days of some wide-eyed day-shift reporter who never thought they were ever going to do anything but read headline copy go painstakingly over a diagram or schematic 35 times while so-called experts, who were usually just whoever could be reached by phone first, were called to comment on the same picture. I never thought I would miss that until the Hudson River Splashdown.

What followed on CNN was some of the most painful reporting I have ever seen since the network kept vigil outside of Brett Favre's plane on the tarmac for 45 minutes when he came to NYC before signing last season.

I don't know, or want to know, the reporter's name as I've tried to burn all record of it from my skull, but CNN talked to a man who saw the plane touch down in the river from his 25th floor office and then disappear from sight behind other buildings. Ben Vonklemperer's moment in the sun was peppered with questions like: "Did the plane seem in distress?", "Were there any obvious signs something was wrong?", and "How do you think the pilot handled the situation?" This is a guy in AN OFFICE! One minute he's pushing papers around a desk and the next he's being called into services as a field correspondent in avionics.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as excited about the prospect of 10,000 points of information streaming in from an array of sources when a crisis arises. The web is equipped to deal with such information, the television networks are not. Two friends and I sat in front of the CNN web feed while this poor guy was being asked to wax intellectual about things he had no idea about, and one could tell from the tone of his voice that he was as dumbfounded at the questions as the viewers were.

Citizen Journalism is an oxymoron.

A citizen can witness, absorb, and even find ways to interact with a story. Their participation in a story is, in many ways, part of the story itself. A witness is flooded by perceptions from one viewpoint at one time. They are qualified to relay just that, one viewpoint from one time.

A reporter's job is to parse the viewpoints and opinions and statements and subjectivity and objectivity to craft what comes to be, at least with everything available at the time, a definitive statement about the events until the next definitive statement comes along. The web scares the hell out of real reporters and journalists. Let's face it, the concept of being "scooped" has always been the death knell of a story. If someone reports before you do, your story is derivative. Television news, with it's current technology, will ALWAYS be scooped by the web.

But reporters shouldn't be afraid of this. They should, instead, still take the time to craft the story instead of providing us the equivalent of a Twitter hashfeed over the air. This immediacy to journalism, while intoxicating to some viewers, yet strangely excruciating to me, has turned journalism into rehash and reporting into commercial fishing: let's cast a big net and see if we can come up with anything.

Twitter users are not journalists. They only qualify as reporters at the semantic level and, most often, the only real information their reporting in how many other people are tweeting the same things. Someone who snaps a picture on their iPhone may or may not be a good photographer, but they are certainly not a journalist.

Television journalism is dying because networks are trying to keep up with a medium that moves fast that cable news feeds or satellite hookups. The reason these so-called "citizen journalists" are getting any credibility at all is not because citizen journalists are getting better, but simply that traditional journalism is getting worse.

On a sliding scale between Ron Burgundy and Walter Cronkite, the credibility and attention to crafting a clear, concise story places almost all citizen journalists well below Burgundy. Traditional journalists, however, are showing themselves quite adept at closing that gap... maybe that's how they roll.

citizen journalist

lovehate: Monetizing Microblogging

One of the greatest things about the web is the freedom that it gives to explore and browse at will anywhere on the continuum between the sacred and the profane. That freedom is further enhanced largely by the fact that other paying for your PC and your monthly server usage, most things can be done for free. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter's hundreds of millions of users grow exponentially all based on the fact that someone is offering them up a service for free.

Now let's face it, free doesn't necessarily mean your eyes won't wander to the seeming wallpaper ads that start to creep up the sides of your profile pages on MySpace and Facebook. But the ads are just that - wallpaper, and wallpaper becomes fairly innocuous to us as time passes. Quite truthfully, while I know there are side-scroller ads every time I'm on Facebook, I can't for the life of me remember even one by name. And so I continue to equate my media desensitization to free Facebook.

With the expectation of Twitter monetization sometime this year, the question remains: how does one monetize a microblog?Imagine if Facebook could only monetize the status updates... what would they do? I, though not the first or last to wander through such meandering miasma, will try to offer a few possible alternatives for what you might be seeing in your Twitter (or tweets') future.

1) Offer up a Pro Version

Such a Pro version would be a subscription type of service that would offer a couple of dozen customization options, maybe an "official" Twitter client, a 12seconds or Seesmic-like video option, and an opt-out choice on Number Two.

2) Tweet Ads (full Twitter Corporate Accounts)

Whether only once, or once a day, big name companies will buy into forcing tweets onto your page. Picture a Coke or Pepsi ad coming up with a special image or flash animation. Companies could tweet links to Twitter-only coupons and special offers. Dell has done this to great success with it's followers. If the follow choice was taken out of the equation completely a company could ensure millions of direct views a day... maybe they pay extra to keep it at the top of your list for 24 hours.

3) Tweet Ads (specific users/follwers)

Full Twitter ads would cause an uproar, though this uproar could be alleviated if the Top 20 were enlisted to support such a campaign. Imagine if Kevin Rose or Leo Laporte was offered 10, 20 or $50,000 from a soft drink company to push one tweet a day on their followers. Imagine if Jason Calacanis was offered $100,000 for a month's worth of Tesla Tweets. What if Robert Scoble was paid the same amount for permitting Palm to pitch the Pre? Would the loss of the disgruntled followers dissuade from the money to be made? Twitter could act as the agent for such marketing and retain sole denial over any independent ad pitch.

Let's face it, if Twitter's monetization ideas are too harmful to the service, it will have to be the Top 20 who effectively kill them.

4) Expand services

Maybe, now that Twitter has ceased to be a real website presence and more of service, it's time for them to get into the Social Networking game full bore: profile pages, widgets, etc.. We're all looking for the next Facebook killer even before Facebook has outstretched MySpace in the US. Perhaps Twitter could provide the social networking platform for the upcoming decade.

While these choices may range from likely to out-of-reach, the simple truth is that VC funding doesn't last forever. With the initial round Web2.0 deaths or fade outs already at our door, Twitter may realize that while the writing's not on the wall, someone's has started to circulate Sharpies. They're stuck between the Scylla and Charybdis - a next step is imminent, but do your take the chance on monetizing, make a mis-step, and start to fade, or do you start to listen to buyout/merger offers while the service is still seen as pristine?

With Fail Whales behind and dollar signs ahead, someone's set to make a bundle if they can walk the fine line between mildly annoying users and plain pissing them off. Walk like a prophet, or run at a loss.

a tweet deal

thinglets: A Blogger's 12 Step Program

  1. We admitted we were powerless over blogging—that our opinions had become unmanageable... and then blogged about it.
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than the web could restore us to sanity... and then Tweeted it.
  3. Made a decision to turn our keyboard and our webcams over to the care of Baud as we understood It... and then Facebooked it.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves... and then MySpaced it.
  5. Admitted to Baud, to ourselves, and to every other human being the exact nature of our wrongs... and then Pinged it.
  6. Were entirely ready to have Baud remove all the defects of character mapping... and posted a pic of it on Flickr.
  7. Humbly asked Baud to remove our fail whales... and waited for it to happen.
  8. Made a list of all persons we had ReTweeted, and became willing to Friendfeed them all... and so did.
  9. Made direct messages to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would deprive Followers... and so we Dugg their posts.
  10. Continued to take social network inventory and when we were wrong promptly went to Seesmic and apologized... in 60 seconds.
  11. Sought through webcam and keyboard to improve our conscious contact with Baud as we understood It, typing only for knowledge of Its knowledge of us and the power to carry that out... to Technorati.
  12. Having had a virtual awakening as the result of page views, we tried to carry this message to luddite friends, and to practice such messaging in all our affairs... until something better comes along.

blogging

lovehate: Content Authority on the Web

Web2.0 has taken us to a place where we now have the tools to disseminate any information far and wide through networks of contacts, friends, followers, etc.. Since the web has also become the great repository of content, one would think that the two naturally go hand in hand. And in many cases they do just that. We are about to hit a point, however, where a traditional media critic would shake their head and most people would wander blindly.
 
We have become far better educated on the workings on traditional media than the outlets would like to have us. For those who care to look, it's not difficult to see that television, radio and print media skew content to affect advertising. In fact, many of us, while we would like to wag our fingers in shame, often just give a wry smile of self-satisfaction that we have once again caught sight of the wizards behind the curtain. We assume there is an agenda behind everything. We're jaded. We may not know the content gatekeepers by name, but we know their motivations and, thus, infer their tactics.
 
And we do begrudge them in our own ways. Maybe it's because they've cancelled our favorite television show because the ratings never took off. Maybe it's because I can't listen to an afternoon drive time personality without four minute commercial breaks every ten minutes. Maybe it's that my local arts & entertainment weekly seems more concerned with filling up pages with ads for massage parlors and escort services than reporting on movies or music. But no matter how much we begrudge them, we reluctantly "get it" and grin and bear it from week to week.
 
This is what the traditional media critic understands, condemns and rails against when they think it can make a difference. We try to peddle whatever influence we may have with the gatekeepers to shape our vision of a medium more friendly to the consumer. After all, "shouldn't the public airwaves belong to the public?" we decry in our moral outrage.
 
Over the past decade for most (and two decades for some) the trickle of information from traditional media outlets to online ones has turned to torrents. Where traditional media often suffers from a lack of original content, the web has an abundance. Where traditional media has stifled creators to fitting a formula for acceptance, the web (on many levels anyway) is free of formula and parameters. If you want to post or upload something, go right ahead. But how many people could get any of their YouTube content broadcast on traditional media outlets? The gatekeepers that we view so cynically would never let an untrusted, unproven element enter their content. Their filters are what has made their media so safe, constrained, and, in many ways, boring.
 
The New Media critic is one that is more overwhelmed in trying to keep up with, and report on, the vast array of content and technologies. They write articles on websites, blogs, microblogs, streams, aggregators, sms, feeds and every different flavor and alpha and beta associated with them. What I think many of them are missing, or maybe just can't think of an audience interested to hear about it, is the incumbent problem that arises from a system with so much unrestrained content: new media is still media. The rules will remain the same. In an ocean of content, the end consumer needs a boat to sail on - i.e. gatekeepers have evolved from other popular consumers who have been given such authority.
 
The oft-regurgitated and imitated internet memes are not the result of someone in a suit wringing their hands together in Montgomery Burns-like Machiavellian glee. Instead, maybe it's through sites that offer "suggestions" or "favorites" and then ratings on the favorites. Maybe it's through thousands re-Tweets and site hits based on an innocuous post from a someone with 50,000 microblog followers. And it's not just memes, there is a small group of web authorities that knowingly or unknowingly craft popularity within the medium. And while I certainly don't begrudge them their popularity or their influence, they are a big reason why LOLcats exploded. For every popular web authority that dropped a harmless "this is hilarious" and link to "I Can Haz Cheezburger", 50,000 people went scrambling off in Prell shampoo-like fashion to tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on....
 
I'm not saying that New Media doesn't need a gatekeeper system of some sort, but, plainly, we just can't sit idly by and allow a microscopic trickle of content get reduced from the ocean. I'm all for the banal and the idiotic popping up it's absurdist head into pop culture once in a while. But when banal becomes popular, and popularity breeds more banality we're becoming no better than the television pilot writer who decides not to write a script that is controversial because it will never get picked up. Such a pattern reduces, not the entire web, but indeed the popular and public face of it to its lowest common denominator - far from the wild, untamed frontier we might like to think it is.
 
I hope the pattern isn't inevitable. I hope all the rules of old media don't apply to new media, but our lifetimes of training to be passive consumers have left few of us with any need or want to treat the web any differently from television. While many still see the user-based ownership potential over the web, two things are happening that are very old school: 1) popularity is breeding power and 2) the influx of the general populace means even more people who want to be fed instead of hunt and gather. I fear an impending timeline that will make New Media an outdated concept. The providers of content may be different, but the rules to gain access to the audience will be the same.

gatekeeping

lovehate: Twitter Play-By-Play

Really? No, I'm seriously sitting in awe here.

I get that people are pumped up for this US election, and while I swore I wouldn't do another lovehate rant on elections, this is not so much on the elections as what people are doing while the election is happening: twittering... REALLY?

Are we so starved for social intercourse that we are willing to snippet snipe about red state/blue state maps and exit polls? Sure there's reason for commentary about several things to do with an election. Discuss the results and potential impact of how the country has once again been split down the middle and wax electoral about policy shifts and the economy. Engage in dialectic and diatribe about how pundits and media have sullied the political process. Deride Wolf Blitzer, Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann. Criticize the networks for declaring winners based on exit polls before everyone has even voted. Type insight. Type observation. Be bold and above all, complete your thoughts, because while I encourage all bloggers to express themselves, I wish they would do so with well-developed ideas that went on for longer than 140 characters.

While I obviously have an affection for Twitter, and appreciate the role microblogging has occupied in the social networking community, I can honestly not think of one of the many great people I follow that would prompt me to spend the night in front of a browser window watching pithy comments like "Wow, how about that Ohio map!" I'm more interested in hearing about what Ramen noodle seasoning people are using while channel surfing.

All respect to the power bloggers and Web 2.0 gurus who's followers will hang on every word of their Twitter, Laconi.ca, Plurk, or Pownce election coverage. If you've got followers that want to know what you think on a minute by minute basis, you've done a hell of a job in consolidating a loyal following who will hang on your every word. and, for bloggers, followers are currency. You've established a community that hears your opinions on tech or media or gadgets and integrates your subjectivity into their own. Kudos for that. I would have it no other way. I don't have time to keep up on every new media advancement and I heartily appreciate the podcasters and bloggers that parse down daily and weekly events in tech for me in compartmentalized segments.

Am I really missing the boat on the online ocean that makes it hip to engage in blurb ineractions about something that, by sitting in front of your computer, you're doing less to participate in than a person standing in line with their registration card? I honestly don't begrudge someone who gets a kick out of spending their election night (or any night for that matter) lost in a sea of millions of tweets if they honestly get a kick out of such things. Really, you could be doing far worse things like... oh, I don't know... watching network coverage of the election with pundits in formation like a line up of gargoyles sitting behind a desk that looks like it came off of page 63 of the Ikea catalogue.

If you really look forward to being part of tweet ocean during a big event. Have at it. Curse my idiocy and create yourself a special avatar for the night. But, if you're like me, who generally respects the input of the people whose tweets you follow, ignore the flood of shock and blah that accompanies the event. Take two shots of NyQuil, pop on a live version of Mandrake Root by Deep Purple, and wake up in the morning where the results of what happened the night before will not have changed... actually, just go to election.twitter.com and watch it for ten minutes - you'll achieve the same effect as the drugs and the music.

electweets