Dec 29th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
The answer is inherently unknowable, of course, but my friend Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 had a great post recently about the ROI (return on investment) of registration systems — something he only thought of when he got prompted to log in at the New York Times after somehow getting logged out. How many potential readers get turned away by such prompts, he wondered.
It’s something I’ve wondered from time to time as well, whenever I hit a registration page — as I did the other day at the Los Angeles Times. I only wanted to read one particular article, which someone had blogged about (ironically, it was David Lazarus writing a dim-witted piece about how newspapers give away the store by not charging for their content). But the registration was just too much hassle. I couldn’t even be bothered to go find a BugMeNot login. (Time magazine’s Curious Capitalist blog has a nice rebuttal of Lazarus).
What did the LA Times lose by not having me read that article? Not much, perhaps. Advertisers and management types would no doubt argue that I wasn’t worth much anyway, since I’m not a regular reader and don’t live in LA, and therefore advertising would be wasted on me. But it’s also true that my view of the LA Times and its website has gone down just a little, and I’m unlikely to link to anything there — and that is a real long-term risk, I think.
In any case, Scott’s post is well worth reading, and Mark Potts has some thoughts over at Recovering Journalist as well.
Dec 21st, 2007 | Blogs, Media 2.0 | No Comments
A number of people, including Nick Ciarelli’s lawyer and my friend Rob Hyndman, are looking at the closure of ThinkSecret a little differently than I did yesterday (in a post that got me a smackdown from no less than Fake Steve Jobs himself — thanks for crashing my blog, FS). In effect, they seem to be saying: Why all the fuss? So maybe Nick gets some cash, maybe Apple pays his legal costs, then he moves on to his Harvard studies and everyone goes home happy. Where’s the harm?
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying free speech died along with Think Secret, and I’m glad that Nick didn’t have to reveal any of his sources. That’s a win. And I think it’s great if he got some money and could move on with his life. But that doesn’t mean Apple should get a free pass for hounding him and his website for the last three years, and for being instrumental in getting him to shut Think Secret down. Maybe he was going to close it anyway, as he has suggested in interviews, but that still isn’t the point.
The point (or at least one of them) is that if Microsoft or any other large company did what Apple has done, and badgered some 18-year-old kid to the point where he decided to just take the money and run, there would be howls of protest up and down the blogosphere. But because it’s Apple, I think there’s a tendency to take the company’s side. And would Nick have decided to close his site and move on if the company hadn’t pursued him so tenaciously? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s possible that he decided fighting a $180-billion company just wasn’t worth it.
Would it be okay if Apple paid Walt Mossberg to stop writing about it? What if some other journalist was the subject of a bunch of lawsuits, and he agreed to stop writing about the company in return for cash, or in return for his legal costs being paid? Would we be celebrating that, and congratulating him for cutting a good deal? I doubt it. Maybe the only thing that differentiates bloggers and journalists is a better legal department and a corporate entity backing them up that is willing and able to fight a lawsuit.
Update:
A commenter here points to a blog post from a writer in Washington who argues that it’s a good thing that Apple hounded Think Secret into shutting down because journalists need to be kept on a short leash, and bloggers in particular “need to be chilled” — because journalism’s “moral compass needs to be un-stuck” by the occasional lawsuit. Boy, it sure is a good thing that Apple sued then, isn’t it? I guess I should be thanking Steve Jobs for keeping us “moral” then. What a load of crap.
Dec 20th, 2007 | Blogs, Media 2.0 | No Comments
The Apple rumour site Think Secret has posted a note saying that it has reached a settlement with Apple over the lawsuit the computer company filed against it for leaking company secrets, and that it is “a positive solution for both sides.” No doubt any kind of settlement that doesn’t involve millions of dollars or jail time is a relief for Nick Ciarelli — the Harvard student who ran the site and has been hounded by Apple for several years now — but I fail to see how it’s positive for anyone.
This case is separate from another case involving bloggers and company secrets, in which Apple tried to get PowerPage, AppleInsider and Think Secret to reveal the names of the sources they got their information from. In that case, a lower court ruled that the bloggers weren’t protected by California’s “journalist shield” law, and that they would have to turn over the information — but an appeals court disagreed, saying they were entitled to the same protection as journalists.
Think Secret was sued separately for divulging trade secrets — and while the site didn’t have to turn over the names of its sources, it has still been forced to shut down. Meanwhile, Apple comes off looking like some power-crazed South American dictator, the kind who can’t stand it when the media reveal government secrets and so arrests the entire press corps. I know that keeping secrets and then revealing them to an adoring public at Macworld is a time-honoured Jobs tradition, but this is ridiculous.
As Mike Masnick notes at Techdirt, this will have a chilling effect on journalists — and I’m including publications like Think Secret and Apple Insider in that description. Apple should be ashamed of itself. My blogging friend Rex Hammock has a moving tribute to Think Secret here.
Update:
Ars Technica has a good overview of the case and those that preceded it — and according to the EFF, Nick Ciarelli is pretty happy with the settlement (which the EFF suggests Apple was in danger of losing). If he got a half-decent settlement, then I’m glad. But I still think it sends the wrong message to shut the site down.
Dec 17th, 2007 | Blogs, Media 2.0 | No Comments
Scott Karp makes a good point in a post today about Nick Denton taking the helm at Gawker again (something I also wrote about earlier today). It’s pretty much the same thing I’ve been saying over and over when I talk to companies — including media companies — about blogs and social media. Let me say it again: Blogs are just a publishing system. Just because something is called a “blog” doesn’t actually imply anything positive or negative about its content (or lack thereof).
Blogs can be used to practice journalism, they can be used to practice drive-by celebrity character assassination, they can be used as a gigantic time-sink so as to keep people from doing real work (and occasionally, as in the case of The Smoking Gun, they can accomplish all three at once). They can be about serious subjects, with well thought-out opinions, or they can be the blitherings of a know-nothing with a typewriter.
Asking whether blogs can be journalism is like asking whether pencils can be used for journalism, or whether people who type can be journalists. Sure, they can, but that doesn’t mean they always are. You could make the same statement and replace the word “blog” with the word “newspaper.” Do all newspapers practice the rigorous, fact-based, dual-sourced journalism people think of when they use the word? Hardly.
What Nick Denton is looking for seems to be the prototype of a new kind of journalist, practicing something close to what Jeff Jarvis calls “networked” journalism (which Jay Rosen is also working on). An excerpt from the job posting Nick put up for a Gawker reporter:
“At its most elevated, the new Gawker hire may experiment with a new form of reporting, unique to online, in which ideas are floated, appeals made to the readers, and the story assembled over the course of several items, from speculation, and tips from users.”
Nick’s brand of Fleet Street-style journalism may not be to everyone’s taste, but there’s no question that it’s journalism. The fact is that until recently, only a small group of people had the tools required to engage in journalism. Now, the tools are virtually free, not to mention instantaneous. The combination of those two things has up-ended the journalism business — such as it was — and continues to do so.
Dec 17th, 2007 | Blogs, Media 2.0 | No Comments
According to the one-man investigative team known as Brian Stelter — formerly known as the guy behind the blog TVNewser, who beat the pants off most of the media reporters at the major dailies while he was still in school — the new editor of Gawker is none other than the founder of Gawker Media, the secretive and unpredictable Nick Denton himself. Stelter says he has it confirmed through several sources.
I wrote about Gawker recently, after the site’s top writers left — including Choire Sicha and Emily Gould. Both said they were tired of the incessant snarking at Gawker, which likes to take shots at the rich and/or powerful (and in some cases whoever happens to wander into the crosshairs). And even Denton himself has said that he wants Gawker to break more news, rather than just sniping from the sidelines.
Something similar happened at Valleywag.com. Although the site was popular, it wasn’t a crucial read. Then Denton got rid of young Nick Douglas and took the reins himself as editor, until he lucked out and hired former Business 2.0 writer Owen Thomas. The new team have plenty of snark to throw around, but they also get scoops, and that’s the real secret (although in some cases they turn out to be less than, well… true).
Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 says Nick is one of those trying to create a different form of journalism. But the big question is the one posed by a commenter on the Valleywag post: Will Nick pay himself based on page views, as he recently started doing for his writers? According to several reports, that’s another reason that Sicha and Gould left.
