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It’s going to take some time to think through the implications of the settlement (PDF link) announced today between the New York Times Co. and GateHouse Media, over the issue of NYT’s Boston.com site aggregating content from local sites belonging to GateHouse, but my first instinct is that it is almost unrelentingly bad. Why? Because while the settlement is not a legally-binding precedent — the one piece of what might be called good news — it still involves the New York Times voluntarily refraining from what many would argue is perfectly defensible behaviour. As Joshua Benton notes in his post at the Nieman Journalism Lab, that could well embolden other publications to launch similar cases, on the assumption that if the NYT caved then someone else might too.

The Times tries to argue that this settlement does nothing to change the way it approaches linking to or even quoting from external sources on its websites, but that clearly isn’t the case at all. It completely changes the way the paper does that, but only when the content involves a GateHouse website. The NYT claims that it will continue to link to and quote from external sources whenever it wants, but will no longer do so with GateHouse content (under the agreement it can continue to link, but can no longer aggregate content in an automated way, and has agreed not to quote from a GateHouse site).

(for the full post, see the Nieman Journalism Lab blog)

As part of the lead-up to mesh 2009 — taking place at MaRS on April 7th and 8th — we’re pleased to announce a new “micro-sponsorship” campaign that we’re calling “Friends of mesh.” We’ve had a number of requests over the years from both individuals and companies who aren’t interested in a traditional sponsorship arrangement with the conference, but who would like to be able to show their support for mesh in a smaller way, so we came up with FOM. All you have to do is register through InviteRight and sign up as Friend of mesh, and for $1,500 you get a ticket to the conference, your logo on our home page and on screen at the event, plus a pass to an invitation-only VIP social event — and of course the eternal gratitude of myself and the other four mesh co-founders 🙂

Amid all the doom and gloom about newspapers laying off staff and closing bureaus and even — as in the case of Tribune Co., parent company of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun — filing for bankruptcy, there has been very little attention paid to one of the main reasons for those cutbacks and business failures. And I’m not talking about a decline in journalistic principles or the sudden departure of advertisers for other online properties, or anything as apocalyptic as that. One of the main reasons has very little to do with journalism and everything to do with the world of mergers and acquisitions.

That reason, as several astute observers have pointed out (including former newspaper exec Alan Mutter at his blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, and most recently a commenter at the political blog Talking Points Memo) is debt. In the case of Tribune Co. — acquired by corporate raider Sam “Grave Dancer” Zell — and several other major newspapers as well, acquisitions and corporate financing have created the conditions that led to much of the pain they have inflicted on the papers they own. Tribune Co. has built up a staggering debt load of $13-billion, and and chains like McClatchy have accumulated their own unwieldy debts over the past few years, by acquiring newspapers from family firms and smaller chains.

(read the rest of this post at the Nieman Journalism Lab blog)

I know there are probably already nasty emails on their way to my inbox based solely on the headline of this post. Apple better off without Steve? How is that possible? It’s difficult to even think about the iconic consumer electronics company — now so much more than just a computer maker — without thinking about Steve Jobs. Apple is Steve Jobs, and Steve Jobs is Apple. That’s one of the main reasons why so many people (me included) were so concerned that the company come clean about Jobs’ health over the past few months — because he is so intertwined with the company in people’s minds and certainly in investors’ minds. Every time he appears in a photo looking gaunt, the share price tumbles. How could the company possibly be better off without a man who is a strong CEO, visionary genius and celebrity spokesman all rolled into one?

For the record, I’m not saying that Steve Jobs should cut his ties to Apple, and I realize that speculating about his departure is going to be seen as in bad taste by many people, given his personal health issues. I wish him nothing but the best, and I hope he is around for many years to come. There is no question that Jobs’ vision and laser-like focus on usability and value have worked miracles on Apple’s business model and its share price over the past few years — miracles that many seasoned industry observers never imagined were even possible. So how could not having him around be a good thing for the company? Just stay with me for a minute.

Let me put it this way: While Apple is a successful and widely-admired company with some excellent products, in many ways it is also pretty close to being a cult, as more than one person has argued (with the latest being Dan “Fake Steve Jobs” Lyons, who writes in his recent Newsweek column about how the company is treated with kid gloves by most of the mainstream media). This is hardly surprising, when you think about how low Apple had fallen just a few short years ago. Anyone who can take a company like that and turn it into a market-leading powerhouse with a stock-market value of $75 billion is going to inspire not just admiration but an almost religious devotion.

Continue reading “Why Apple might be better off without Steve”

Anyone who has followed my posts here for any length of time knows that I’m passionate about the future of journalism, so it gives me great pleasure to announce that I’ve joined the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard as a contributing blogger. My posts will be showing up there several times a week, along with the posts of two other journalist/bloggers I’ve come to admire: Tim Windsor, a former online VP at the Baltimore Sun who also blogs at Zero Percent Idle, and former newspaper publisher Martin Langeveld, who also has a personal blog called News After Newspapers. I’d like to thank Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab, for giving me this opportunity.

Continue reading “Me: Joining the Nieman Journalism Lab”

The photo that captured the incredible survival of the passengers of U.S. Airways Flight 1549, a shot of passengers standing on the wing in the middle of the Hudson River and sitting in an inflatable life raft, was taken by a guy named Janis Krums, who was on the ferry that was going to pick up the stranded passengers and snapped the pic with his iPhone. Within seconds, it was on Twitter, and within a matter of hours it had been viewed by almost a hundred thousand people (I reloaded the Flickr page several times, waiting about two seconds between clicks, and the number of views went up by 50 or 60 each time).

Continue reading “The future of eyewitness journalism”

Update:

Belkin has released a statement saying it was unaware such activities were taking place and that it is “extremely sorry.” The company said that Belkin “does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this. We know that people look to online user reviews for unbiased opinions from fellow users and instances like this challenge the implicit trust that is placed in this interaction.” The full note is at CrunchGear.

Original post:

A couple of days ago, an astute blogger poking around Amazon’s Mechanical Turk “crowd-sourcing” engine discovered that someone from Belkin — a company that makes computer and electronic peripherals like mice, USB hubs and so on — was paying people through Mechanical Turk to submit fake reviews to Amazon of Belkin products. The wording of the ad (which offered to pay the princely sum of 65 cents for each review) was very specific. It said:

Continue reading “Word of mouth can’t be manufactured”

I guess I am getting soft in my old age, but as soon as I saw the video of Capucine — a young French girl who tells a magical story filled with monkeys and tigers and Winnie the Pooh and a hippopotamus that is allergic to magic — I fell in love with her, as did hundreds of thousands of other people who saw the Vimeo video. I showed it to my wife and three daughters, who also loved it. So we all eagerly read a story in the National Post this morning about how Capucines’s mother is using her daughter’s Internet fame to raise money for a charity that builds libraries in developing countries. So watch the video, and read the story — and then go buy a T-shirt. I just bought one for each of my daughters, and am seriously thinking about buying one for myself.

(Note: This was originally published on the Globe and Mail website)

Although it is still very much in “beta” mode (and possibly even alpha), I’d like to talk about a new project the Globe has just launched along with the Dominion Institute — a project aimed at capturing some of your thoughts and ideas about a range of public policy issues. It’s called the Public Policy Wiki, and you can find it at http://policywiki.theglobeandmail.com. I mentioned it briefly on Twitter the other day, and we’ve already gotten some great input from a number of contributors.

The idea behind the wiki is simple. Public policy in Canada often develops behind closed doors, with limited (if any) input from average citizens or even knowledgable outsiders. We’d like to throw open those doors to some extent, and the wiki seemed like an interesting way of doing that. It is still very much an experiment, but we think it’s a worthwhile one. Interestingly enough, I found out just yesterday that Barack Obama is doing something similar at Change.gov called the Citizen’s Briefing Book.

Here’s how it works: We’ve chosen one important policy issue to start this experiment — the federal budget (which the Finance Minister is expected to introduce on January 27). We have background analysis and perspectives from a range of policy experts, two proposals on which you can vote or comment (one from TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond and one from Canadian Auto Workers economist Jim Stanford) and a forum where you can have your say.

Then there’s the wiki itself. We’ve prepared some “briefing notes” of the kind that federal ministers would have submitted to them in the lead-up to a budget. Each one addresses a specific policy recommendation — a tax cut, an auto-industry stimulus package, a Green Fund, a GST rebate, and so on. You can vote on each note, or you can use the wiki tools to actually edit these notes, and you can also create your own and have others contribute to it, as two contributors have already done.

Once you have had your say on the various proposals, we will pick the most popular briefing notes and submit them to the Prime Minister and other senior officials in Ottawa. For more on the details on what a wiki is and how you can can use it to contribute to the project, see the FAQ page at the site. I’d like to thank you in advance for contributing, and I’d also like to thank everyone who was involved in getting this experiment off the ground — including the team at the Globe and also Marc Chalifoux, the executive director of the Dominion Institute, for all of his help.

Why did we decide to do a wiki? For all their strengths, newspapers historically haven’t been all that good at the “two-way” information exchange, or what has become known as the “conversation.” Feedback or input from the general populace has typically been restricted to letters to the editor, “man on the street” surveys, and periodic focus groups.

The one-way nature of the newspaper business isn’t just a result of arrogance or lack of interest — it’s also a function of technology and time, and the limitations thereof. Finding people to interview on different topics isn’t an exact science, and even the most diligent journalist often misses people who might have worthwhile opinions. And public policy bodies such as the Dominion Institute face similar limitations when it comes to getting public input.

That’s why social-media or “Web 2.0” tools such as blogs, commenting systems, Twitter, Facebook and wikis are so fascinating. They dramatically lower the barriers to entry when it comes to getting input from knowledgeable (and, in some cases, not so knowledgeable) readers or interested people of all kinds. Even a single person on Twitter or Facebook can touch hundreds or even thousands of others, some of whom may have valuable viewpoints on something that a journalist is writing about (I’m @mathewi on Twitter, if you want to connect with me there).

We’re hoping the wiki will do that — and if it succeeds, we plan to use similar tools to solicit your ideas and input on a whole range of public policy and social issues, in a project we are calling the “Two Million Minds” experiment. I’d love to hear what you think, so feel free to email me at [email protected] or send me your thoughts via Twitter or my Facebook page.

Although it is still very much in “beta” mode (and possibly even alpha), I’d like to talk about a new project that the newspaper I work for — the Globe and Mail in Toronto — has just launched along with the Dominion Institute, a project aimed at capturing some of your thoughts and ideas about a range of public policy issues. It’s called the Public Policy Wiki, and you can find it at http://policywiki.theglobeandmail.com. I mentioned it briefly on Twitter the other day, and we’ve already gotten some great input from a number of contributors.

Continue reading “An experiment: The Public Policy Wiki”

The mesh 2009 team — that’s me, Rob “Hohoto” Hyndman, Stuart “Tripharbour” Macdonald, Mike “FreshBooks” McDerment and Mark “I’m a consultant now” Evans — have been working hard trying to nail down some kick-ass keynotes for the next mesh conference (April 7 and 8 at MaRS in Toronto), and we have a couple we can announce now: Jason McCabe Calacanis will be doing the business keynote, and Jessica Jackley Flannery is our society keynote. We’re pretty excited about both of them, and hope to have our media and marketing keynotes lined up soon.

Continue reading “Mesh09: Calacanis and Kiva to keynote”

David Carr, the New York Times media columnist, muses in a recent column about how it would be great if the newspaper industry could somehow come up with an “iTunes for news.” After all, record labels were on a long slide into oblivion just like newspapers, right? And then Steve Jobs came along with iTunes and saved everyone’s bacon, and now the record industry is just as profitable and healthy as it used to be, right? Wait — you mean the music business isn’t as profitable and healthy as it used to be? Hmmm. Maybe there’s a flaw in Dave’s analogy somewhere.

Continue reading “An iTunes for news? Dumb, dumb, dumb”

Over the years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve continually made the argument (as plenty of other people have as well) that comments are an integral part of a fully-functioning blog. As part of my new job as communities editor at the Globe and Mail — which I wrote about here — I’ve been encouraging writers at the newspaper to not just read the comments but also respond to them. Why? A couple of reasons. One is that it helps to improve the tone of the comments, since it helps to make it obvious that a) someone is reading them and b) someone actually cares what is being said.

Continue reading “Fred Wilson and the power of comments”

There’s been plenty written about the news that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is up for sale, and that owner Hearst Corp. says if it doesn’t sell in 60 days the paper will become Web-only, or will be shut down completely. Some have argued that as the perennial second paper in a relatively small market, the PI has been doomed for some time now (it hasn’t turned a profit in almost a decade, apparently) and that the news about the Post-Intelligencer may actually be part of a strategic move by the Hearst family to acquire the newspaper’s main competitor in town, the Seattle Times.

I don’t have any strong opinions on any of that really, although I agree with Alan Mutter that being the second newspaper in a fairly small metropolitan market doesn’t look like a great value proposition at the moment (if it ever was). What really struck me was the story that the Post-Intelligencer wrote on its own demise — and in particular a photo that ran with the story, which I’ve included here (click through if you’re reading this through a feed reader). There’s not much remarkable about it, at first glance, but for some reason I kept coming back to it and thinking about it as I was reading.

Continue reading “Some thoughts on the Web and print”