MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 19): Newspapers, BookClubs, Television, George Orwell

Frank Rich in the NYTimes shares his opinion the state and possible future of newspapers:

In the Internet era, many sectors of American media have been re-enacting their at first complacent and finally panicked behavior of 60 years ago. Few in the entertainment business saw the digital cancer spreading through their old business models until well after file-sharing, via Napster, had started decimating the music industry. It’s not only journalism that is now struggling to plot a path to survival. But, with all due respect to show business, it’s only journalism that’s essential to a functioning democracy. And it’s not just because — as we keep being tediously reminded — Thomas Jefferson said so.Yes, journalists have made tons of mistakes and always will. But without their enterprise, to take a few representative recent examples, we would not have known about the wretched conditions for our veterans at Walter Reed, the government’s warrantless wiretapping the scams at Enron or steroids in baseball.

A few months ago I made a similar observation (PND):

Last week, I was discussing this topic with an acquaintance who lives in a fairly affluent part of Central New Jersey. He noted that, in a wide swath covering eight to ten townships and a number of counties, he wasn’t aware of more than one journalist assigned to that market from the larger state-wide newspapers. In Hoboken (regional HQ for PND), where mayoral and city council budget incompetence has seen our property taxes increase 50% in the past six months, there is rarely any local media coverage nor any attendance at city business meetings by traditional media. And forget investigative reporting - even in a state where you could throw a rock in any direction and hit a shady politician. The lack of journalistic attention means that one of the mainstays of democracy (the fourth estate) is eroded and this is seen starkly in Hoboken, where private citizens are forced (on their own initiative) to file freedom of information requests to gain access to basic public interest materials such as meeting minutes and financial statements.

And Rupert Murdoch was vocal this week becoming the self-interested shrill for paid newspaper content (Guardian) Nature Publishing is launching Nature Education and their first project is something named Scitable (ZDNet)

The first deliverable from the Education group is Scitable, an incredible combination of social media and a vast library of articles “commissioned, edited, and reviewed by NPG editors.” While Nature Education intends to expand Scitable’s offerings to include cellular and molecular biology and ultimately tackle the physical sciences, their initial focus has been on genetics. Exploring Scitable makes it very clear that this strategy of sticking with a single area of expertise and dealing with it expertly and in-depth makes a great deal of sense. I’m not a geneticist, but I spent enough years in the publish or perish world of biomedical research to know that they nailed this. The content is accessible, deep, relevant, and understandable. Entire college courses could be taught around this material and there is more than enough content to keep high school students digging deeper into their Advanced Placement Biology courses or to build introductory genetics curricula.

Watch the first series of Wallander stories on PBS happy in the knowledge that there will be a second series - and they won a BAFTA. (TheBookselller) Publishing Trends took a detailed look at Book Clubs (PublishingTrends)

Online retailers’ deep discounts, however, have lured away readers who might once have joined book clubs because they wanted cheap books, and any book can be found online, so today’s book clubs must offer something beyond price and selection. For PBC, that means an active online community; in fact, the club is online only. To expand its reach, PBC has linked with 37 “Alliance Partners,” including the Huffington Post and Daily Kos, and e-mails these organizations’ members about new books once a month. “Those people may buy books through us or may go on to Amazon,” Rosen says, claiming, “We just want to help these books sell, the books to do well, and the authors to do well, and this is our mission.”A look at how in failing health

George Orwell was able to finish 1984 (Observer)

This is one of Orwell's exceedingly rare references to the theme of his book. He believed, as many writers do, that it was bad luck to discuss work-in-progress. Later, to Anthony Powell, he described it as "a Utopia written in the form of a novel". The typing of the fair copy of "The Last Man in Europe" became another dimension of Orwell's battle with his book. The more he revised his "unbelievably bad" manuscript the more it became a document only he could read and interpret. It was, he told his agent, "extremely long, even 125,000 words". With characteristic candour, he noted: "I am not pleased with the book but I am not absolutely dissatisfied... I think it is a good idea but the execution would have been better if I had not written it under the influence of TB."And he was still undecided about the title: "I am inclined to call it NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR or THE LAST MAN IN EUROPE," he wrote, "but I might just possibly think of something else in the next week or two." By the end of October Orwell believed he was done. Now he just needed a stenographer to help make sense of it all.

Fears of new technology on incumbent businesses - in this case television - are often found to be unfounded. The Economist notes the impact of Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) that we supposed to destroy the television advertising model but have had nothing like that impact. In the words of one interviewee, DVR's have become "a hit saving machine" (The Economist)

Far from being revolutionary, in some ways DVR has made television more stable. With the exception of live events it is broadly true that the most popular programmes are recorded the most. Mr Wakshlag describes it as “a hit-saving machine”. Broadcast television receives a bigger boost from DVR playback than cable television. The device has made it harder to introduce a new television programme, particularly at 10pm when people are likely to be playing back shows they recorded at 8pm or 9pm.

Body Double Twits

Reading the twitter stream yesterday from BISG's Making Information Pay (#mip) made me anxious. I've spoken before at many conferences but things are different now. With heads bowed, tapping away there is out there a phalanx of twittering critics passing immediate judgement on any presenter. Well, maybe that's what an 'audience' is and like a school of fish they can suddenly turn unexpectedly from positive and engaged to "WTF am I doing here." Even today many speakers are probably happily unaware of the twittering audience phenomena, like Marcus Leaver (President, Sterling) who, in an otherwise interesting and engaging performance yesterday, happened to mention that he tried Twitter, didn't like it and some how ended up with a Twitter "body double". That's not playing fair.

Many people will know Mike Hyatt (CEO, Thomas Nelson) is an avid social network user. Why? Because he sees social networking as an important aspect of his job as CEO, and not just to spout off whimsically about this and that but to actively and meaningfully engage both his employees and customers. There would be no chance he would engage a body double twit. Mike often plays first line customer service rep on Twitter which is where his activity is significant. If he sees an item having to do with TN he will step in directly and engage with the person or persons who are either seeking help or complaining about something. A body double CEO can never do the same thing in the same way.

Played for laughs, Leaver went even further down the 'we're getting it wrong in social networking' road by telling us that the guy twit responsible for twittering on all things pregnancy - for their Good Expectations titles - recently got a response from someone that read, "I'm having Braxton Hicks contractions right now, what do I do?" It was amusing, but am I laughing because I'm imagining the helplessness of the twit or because I can't believe they've got this so wrong? If you are going to bother using social networking, be like Mike and make it real.

Murdoch on the Kindle and Paid Content

From their earnings conference call yesterday (SeekingAlpha):

If it is possible to charge for content on the web, it is obvious from the Journal’s experience. We are now in the midst of a [proper] debate over the value of content and it is clear to many newspapers the current model is malfunctioning. We have been at the forefront of that debate and you can confidently presume that we are leading the way in finding a model that maximizes revenues and returns for our shareholders. I can assure you we will not be feeding our content rights to the fine people who created the Kindle. We will control the prices for our content and we will control the relationship with our customers. Any device maker or website which doesn’t meet these basic criteria on content will not be doing business long-term with News Corporation.
Too many content creators have been passive in the face of obvious violations of intellectual property rights. We rightly hold China and other countries accountable on this important issue. But the violation of these rights is rampant on the web in our own country. Our content is extremely valuable and the violators have recognized that value.
Within the company itself, the very bright people we have at our Slingshot Laboratories are devising clever ways to monetize the content of some of our long established print properties. We will be matching their contemporary expertise and the creation of communities within our traditional -- with our traditional expertise in the creation of content. The [current days of the Internet] will soon be over.

PS: Barely a mention of Harpercollins. A tough 3rdQ means HC will need a very strong 4thQ to finish the year in positive territory. (PublishersWeekly)

Big Kindle Goes to School (Shrug)

The launch of Big Kindle looks like another round in the continuing Apple vs Amazon cage fight. Amazon looks to be on the defensive as they rush out a larger version of the Kindle for the education market in advance of Apple's proposed Tablet PC. Jobs may think that people don't read but he does know that children are educated, and education is an arena Apple has traditionally done well in. The developing convergence of education and book e-commerce is what Amazon may see as a threat: A captured market of educational materials that, should Apple enter with a tablet PC type device, Amazon could be locked out of.

For Amazon however, Big Kindle will still be giggled over by those in Cupertino. Will the Apple tablet be any better? It is certain to have a far better form factor. Whether it will be expressly suited to delivering educational content in a dynamic and forward thinking manner remains to be seen. That is certainly not within the capabilities of Big Kindle.

Several universities participated in the launch of Big Kindle and the hype around the launch hid a troubling question; namely, why these schools were in-bed with the retailer at all? On a list serve I questioned,

Don't the participating universities appear to be endorsing a hardware platform (not to mention a specific retail channel). You could argue (possibly strongly) that allowing the bookstore to be managed by B&N or Follett or even the adoption of college textbooks themselves to be little different; however, doesn’t the changed paradigm suggest an opportunity to operate on a more open field of play or is this more of the same leading to more student frustration, higher prices and deadened innovation in education?

In other words, why would the universities want to continue the (essentially) old way of doing business when most observers believe we are on the cusp of a renaissance in educational learning. The Kindle doesn't do multimedia, it doesn't do color and most importantly it doesn't do networking because the Kindle is a closed system. This is a short sighted collaboration between schools and Amazon that doesn't really suggest any major change.

As I thought about the Big Kindle development it struck me that there could still be a more interesting development. Content media companies suddenly developing a hardware delivery platform are growing like weeds from NewsCorp to Hearst, and there could be an opportunity for collaboration between the news/magazine world and education. What if CourseSmart or Safari joined one of these efforts? That would be a far more interesting and potentially game changing development than selling text book content on a Big Kindle. By definition, the hardware to support a digital magazine will be capable of all the aspects necessary in delivering a changed educational experience.

Will that happen? As it turns out some of the partners involved in CourseSmart are also participating in the Big Kindle roll out; but, what is CourseSmart if it isn't a new way to deliver educational materials to learners? That doesn't seem to be what students will be getting with Big Kindle. There may be all kinds of reasons why CourseSmart (or even an publisher themselves) won't be launching a device: The predominant reason may be the amount of print revenue tied to Amazon, and therefore from my perspective Big Kindle and education is more about marketing hype than anything fundamental. We await more developments with keen interest.

Library Associations Address Issues in Google Settlement

Fellow traveler Peter Brantley has posted on Scribd the submission by ALA, ARL and ACRL addressing their concerns about the Google Settlement agreement. This document was submitted to the court last week. Here are some of the notable passages but the document is only 22 pages long for those looking for a quick read.

On how important the database may become:

Notwithstanding these deficiencies in the ISD, an institutional subscription will provide an authorized user with online access to the full text of as many as 20 million books. Students and faculty members at higher education institutions with institutional subscriptions will be able to access the ISD from any computer -- from home, a dorm room, or an office. Accordingly, it is possible that faculty and students at institutions of higher education will come to view the institutional subscription as an indispensable research tool. They might insist that their institution’s library purchase such a subscription. The institution’s administration might also insist that the library purchase an institutional subscription so that the institution can remain competitive with other institutions of higher education in terms of the recruitment and retention of faculty and students.

And this in regard to market power:

However, as likely consumers of this essential research facility, the Library Associations cannot overlook the possibility that the Registry or Google might abuse the control the Settlement confers upon them. Abuse of this control would threaten fundamental library values of access, equity, privacy, and intellectual freedom.

This with respect to pricing:

Google will have the incentive to negotiate vigorously with the Registry to set the price of the institutional subscription as low as possible to maximize the number of authorized users with access to the ISD. Nonetheless, Google’s business model, at least with respect to the institutional subscription, may change, and at some point in the future it may seek a profit maximizing price structure that has the effect of reducing access.

Significantly, the predominant model for pricing of scientific, technical, and medical journals in the online environment has been based on low volume and high prices. Major commercial publishers have been content with strategies that maximize profits by selling subscriptions to few customers at high cost. Typically these customers are academic and research libraries. Therefore, the Registry and Google may seek to emulate this strategy in the market for institutional subscriptions.

On privacy:

Evidently, in the Settlement negotiations the class representatives insisted on these measures to protect the security of digital copies of their books; but no one demanded protection of user privacy. Users of the services enabled by the Settlement also cannot rely on competitive forces to preserve their privacy. In the online environment, competition is perhaps the most powerful force that can help to insure user privacy. If a user does not like one search engine firm’s privacy policy, he can switch to another search engine. Similarly, a user has many choices among online retailers, email providers, social networks, and Internet access providers. The competitive pressure often forces at least a minimal level of privacy protection. However, with the services enabled by the Settlement, there will be no competitive pressure protecting user privacy.

They worry about intellectual freedom and censorship:

While Google on its own might not choose to exclude books, it probably will find itself under pressure from state and local governments or interest groups to censor books that discuss topics such as alternative lifestyles or evolution. After all, the Library Project will allow minors to access up to 20% of the text of millions of books from the computers in their bedrooms and to read the full text of these books from the public access terminals in their libraries.

Addresses issues with new affiliated services:

Although the Settlement permits the Registry to license the rights it possesses to third parties such as Amazon, the Settlement does not require it to do so. Nor does it provide standards to govern the terms by which the Registry would license these rights. This means that the Registry could refuse to license the rights to Google competitors on terms comparable to those provided to Google under the Settlement.43 The Registry, therefore, could prevent the development of competitive services.

Remember the Book Clubs?

Ad age has a review of book clubs and the article touches on curation and community. It is interesting that the idea of helping information consumers navigate the plethora of choices available to them - in this case books - is being discussed with increased frequency. Ad Age:

From this article:

He views PBC not as a mere book club, but as a book community. Members can discuss their views online in community discussion forums and read exclusive content from highly regarded writers and journalists. PBC also offers a unique book-reading and charity-giving combination; books are selected for their liberal bent by a renowned editorial board (members include Michael Chabon, Dave Eggars and Erica Jong) and $2 of the proceeds from each book sale go to one of the participating nonprofits.

And this:

"We don't like to think of ourselves as pushing our books on readers; we like to think that we are curating and recommending a selection of books for our readers," Ms. Siegel said.

Direct Brands spent $51.8 million on advertising in 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence estimates, excluding internet data -- a decrease of 18% over 2007.

(My post Silos of Curation from last week).

MediaWeek Report (Vol 2, No 19): Blog Roundup: Week 18 - Schlager, Exact Editions, O'Reilly, Booksquare

Neil Schlager worries about the future of reference publishing in a post this week (SchlagerBlog):

For too long–decades now, really–reference publishers have pumped out a cascade of books (and now databases) but done very little to address a fundamental problem: discoverability. Reference books have always required a conduit–the librarian–to be used properly and fully, because their contents don’t show up in any card catalog. A student writing a paper about the Battle of Gettysburg has no idea that the multivolume encyclopedia buried away in a far corner of the library has wonderful information that can tell her everything she needs to know, unless a librarian is there to help her, and unless that librarian himself is familiar with that set. As a result, as studies have shown, print reference sections in all libraries have been gathering dust, day by day, year by year, decade by decade. The familiar library convention discussion group topic–”Is Print Reference Dying?”–is both mordantly funny and also terrifyingly legitimate. The truth is that lots of print reference is still published and bought, but most of the new stuff joins its ancestors–it sits on a shelf, unused.

The situation is only modestly better with electronic reference. Tech-savvy students may indeed be more likely to stumble upon resources that they can use in this setting, but “stumble” is still the operative word. First, they have to navigate a myriad of unique, siloed databases, with inscrutable names and idiosyncratic search interfaces. Then, they have to be careful enough to pick the search results gems from what may be a torrent of hits.

Adam Hodgkin reflects on London Bookfair as well as thoughts about the meaning of the Google Book Agreement (ExactEditions):

If we think of this rather large and hangar-like hall being occupied by the books that are currently the focus of the commercial market for books, we can also imagine a skyscraper of 30 or perhaps 40 stories being built above the Earls Court Stadium. The stacked stories of this skyscraper will each contain another 300,000 mostly older books, but this time all of them ordered, regimented and deployed in total silence and precise obedience with no noisy haggling or discordant trading. Such a skyscraper would be a serious obstacle on the flight path for planes approaching Heathrow, but its towering shadow does give us an idea of the relative scale of the Google Books Search project as set against the current (this year, last year) output of publishers in the English language. The 10,000,000+ books that Google will have in its arsenal when the Google Book Search library goes live in a year of two will completely dwarf the current activity. The 40 odd stories of the Google Books skyscaper will not need the traditional tools and mechanisms of the book trade. The transactions, accessibility, searchability, and reading of these millions of books will all be a matter of database and web-driven activity. Commercial arrangements will be settled by the Books Rights Registry or the publishers' agreements with Google and the commercial transactions and access rules will be executed by Google or its contracted distributors. There will be very little need for human intervention, except at the periphery. When authors, agents and publishers decide to put things into the system, or, at the consumer edge, when readers, searchers, librarians or consumers decide that they wish to have some form of access to the repository. Of course Google will also not need a skyscraper at all. The few hundred terabytes, possibly by then one or two petabytes, that may be needed for the Google nearly-complete libary in 2012 will comfortably fit in the confines of the whirling, bladed and racked systems, housed in a single standard freight container. We should add a few more trailers to cope with the bandwidth of a billion users, but it is all fitting nicely in the underground loading bay that they have at Earls Court. The efficiency and reliability of the Google system does not require large physical infrastructure. Push on a couple of years, and by 2014 I think one can be sure that Google will have most of the world's published literature in the Google database. How will new books then be working in relation to the 50, 60, 70, 80 stories high skyscraper of previously published but now completely databased and universally accessible digital books?

Brian O'Leary had some thoughts on curation as a method to disperse the increasing clutter of information (Magellan Partners):

But that’s not quite a business model. As my colleague Mac Slocum noted, “The world definitely needs a clear-headed curation advocate, particularly one that links it directly to revenue (this labor of love stuff only goes so far ...).”

Historically, reviewers got paid by newspapers, who relied on some mix of advertising and subscription revenue to create and deliver a comprehensive product. It’s believed that few people read everything, but the “one size fits all” model was accepted by readers and advertisers alike.

Booksellers are paid for curation when they sell something. Unfortunately, the small, independent bookstore whose title mix reflects a niche, a neighborhood or a community is hard to sustain. This curation question came to a head two weeks ago, when Amazon appeared to delist titles with gay and lesbian content.

Joe Wikert posted some video from the CEO Roundtable at the TOC conference earlier this year. It features, Bob Young (Lulu), Mike Hyatt (ThomasNelson), Tim O'Reilly and Clint Greenleaf (Greenleaf Publishing). (2020 Blog)

Back on the curation theme Clay Shirky talks about "filter failure" and how collaboration may be the answer to finding the best information and news content (Pub 2.0)

The #swineflu hashtag on Twitter serves as a good point of reference for what Clay Shirky called “filter failure.” The problem is not that there’s a wild abundance of useful information, overloading us with detail, facts, and commentary; the problem is that we don’t have the proper filtering system set up to separate trusted sources and reliable resources from rumors, jokes, misinformation, and ephemera. If those seeking to provide links to reliable information started using a hashtag such as #therealswineflu, it would likely be overtaken — quickly — by tagged content with less value, whatever its source.

So how do we solve filter failure?

We depend on humans to serve as our filters. We do this all the time, when we ask a friend a question, or talk with someone we know who happens to be an expert on a given topic. (I imagine the world’s epidemeologists are fielding a huge number of Facebook messages from old friends this week.)

When it comes to reliable sources for news that breaks on a massive scale, our best sources are likely to be Wikipedia for facts, and journalists for explanation, clarification, context, and meaningful analysis.

Tim O'Reilly discusses a new book project written in (on?) Powerpoint (Radar)

Of course, modularity isn't the only thing that publishers can learn from new media. The web itself, full of links to sources, opposing or supporting points of view, multimedia, and reader commentary, provides countless lessons about how books need to change when they move online. Crowdsourcing likewise.

But I like to remind publishers that they are experts in both linking and in crowdsourcing. After all, any substantial non-fiction work is a masterwork of curated links. It's just that when we turn to ebooks, we haven't realized that we need to turn footnotes and bibliographies into live links. And how many publishers write their own books? Instead, publishers for years have built effective business processes to discover and promote the talents of those they discover in the wider world! (Reminder: Bloomsbury didn't write Harry Potter; it was the work of a welfare mom.) But again, we've failed to update these processes for the 21st century. How do we use the net to find new talent, and once we find it, help to amplify it?

Kassia Krozser expresses some concern over privacy that may engender if the Google Booksettlement goes ahead (Booksquare)

If the settlement is approved, then Google owns lots and lots of readers. We’re locked into the Google service if we want the best possible search results. Yet our concerns were not addressed in the settlement. One such worry is the privacy factor.

Every move we make online is tracked and traceable. Generally, this is not a concern; so much data is being crunched that individuals are rarely singled out for close examination. But this audit trail can be used against us, and I hadn’t really considered the implications of my online activity in light of GBS until I read a recent call from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Physical libraries have long held firm against law enforcement seeking to use customer records against individuals (and it’s just one more reason to love librarians!). What we read should remain private to us. However, once we, as a society move beyond the physical into the digital, new rules seemingly apply. Now is the time to ensure that the GBS includes consumer privacy protections.