Survey Finds Slack Standards at Magazine Web Sites
The only thing standard about magazines’ Web sites is that there are no standards.
That is the chief finding of a research project conducted by the Columbia Journalism Review, which surveyed 665 consumer magazines on the practices and profitability of their Web sites.
“There isn’t yet a generally accepted set of norms for this new medium,” said Victor Navasky, chairman of the magazine. “There’s chaos out there.”
» via The New York Times
Gannett — the largest news company in the US and second worldwide after News Corp — reported total revenue of $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter, and profits of only $133.6 million in the same quarter. Of course, the fourth quarter was Gannett’s best. For 2009 overall, profits totaled $441.6 million, after special items were taken out. That’s less than a half billion dollars in profits, or about 7% of what Google earned. And that’s the biggest U.S. news company.
The New York Times eked out a yearly profit of $19 million. McClatchy, a gain of $54 million. Media General, a loss of $35 million.
Positive or negative, those are all small numbers. They all point to the same reality: newspaper companies’ place in the business world is greatly reduced. They simply don’t have the wherewithal to acquire businesses that will be the building blocks of tomorrow’s growth. Their low profit numbers are proxies for their reduced horizons, their reduced reporting impact and their reduced institutional and community clout, as well, though those are issues for another day.
» via Nieman Journalism Lab
Decades before TiVo became a verb, I started down the path of better living through tape delay. From March Madness to midseason Mets games to my masochistic relationship with the New York Jets, I flat-out prefer to watch on delay. While the rest of you are spending three-plus hours slogging through an NFL game, I’m polishing it off in a tidy one hour and 45 minutes. Not to mention that I’m taking in the action after having spent the day frolicking with my wife and kids. Yes, time-shifting strengthens the American family.
» via Slate
I just finished a book — Richard Price’s excellent “Lush Life” — hardly a noteworthy feat except it’s the first book I’ve read cover to cover in several months. It languished for years on my reading list, which has itself grown longer by the week. In fact, of all the books I’ve read in my life, a shockingly small percentage have been read in the past several years.
This has a lot to do with the people who write, publish and sell books. The big threat to Amazon’s Kindle isn’t people reading e-books on the iPad or the Nook. It’s that books are becoming fringe media.
» via GigaOM
“I think we’re all walking around in a big Saharan data sandstorm,” Jacobs said.
But it wasn’t always this way. People used to live in an “information monarchy,” where the New York Times, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and other top publications set the standard, Jacobs said.
“Now it’s more of an information democracy,” he added, “or maybe an information anarchy, which is great in some ways, since we have so much more information out there, but it brings with it a boatload of confusion and chaos and uncertainty.”
» via Live Science
A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both “confusing and harmful” to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an “always on” digital environment. It’s worth noting that Gessner, for his part, never once used e-mail and was completely ignorant about computers. That’s not because he was a technophobe but because he died in 1565. His warnings referred to the seemingly unmanageable flood of information unleashed by the printing press.The skepticism and fear continues today:
By the end of the 20th century, personal computers had entered our homes, the Internet was a global phenomenon, and almost identical worries were widely broadcast through chilling headlines: CNN reported that “Email ‘hurts IQ more than pot’,” the Telegraph that “Twitter and Facebook could harm moral values” and the “Facebook and MySpace generation ‘cannot form relationships’,” and the Daily Mail ran a piece on “How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer.”But, we’ve not a shred of evidence to back up the claims:
All of these pieces have one thing in common—they mention not one study on how digital technology is affecting the mind and brain. They tell anecdotes about people who believe they can no longer concentrate, talk to scientists doing peripherally related work, and that’s it. Imagine if the situation in Afghanistan were discussed in a similar way. You could write 4,000 words for a major media outlet without ever mentioning a relevant fact about the war. Instead, you’d base your thesis on the opinions of your friends and the guy down the street who works in the kebab shop. He’s actually from Turkey, but it’s all the same, though, isn’t it?Mmmm. Kebabs. But, alas, we need to be scared of something:
In contrast, the accumulation of many years of evidence suggests that heavy television viewing does appear to have a negative effect on our health and our ability to concentrate. We almost never hear about these sorts of studies anymore because television is old hat, technology scares need to be novel, and evidence that something is safe just doesn’t make the grade in the shock-horror media agenda.In short, older media institutions whipping up fear of the newer media institutions.
Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge
“IN MONTH XI, 15th day, Venus in the west disappeared, 3 days in the sky it stayed away. In month XI, 18th day, Venus in the east became visible.”
What’s remarkable about these observations of Venus is that they were made about 3500 years ago, by Babylonian astrologers. We know about them because a clay tablet bearing a record of these ancient observations, called the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, was made 1000 years later and has survived largely intact. Today, it can be viewed at the British Museum in London.
We, of course, have knowledge undreamt of by the Babylonians. We don’t just peek at Venus from afar, we have sent spacecraft there. Our astronomers now observe planets round alien suns and peer across vast chasms of space and time, back to the beginning of the universe itself. Our industrialists are transforming sand and oil into ever smaller and more intricate machines, a form of alchemy more wondrous than anything any alchemist ever dreamed of. Our biologists are tinkering with the very recipes for life itself, gaining powers once attributed to gods.
Yet even as we are acquiring ever more extraordinary knowledge, we are storing it in ever more fragile and ephemeral forms. If our civilisation runs into trouble, like all others before it, how much would survive?
» via New Scientist
FRONTLINE: digital nation : watch the entire documentary online
Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it? And is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we’ve gained?
The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones.
And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.
» via The New York Times
What makes it easy for an educational institution like Cushing to jettison its books is the assumption that the words in books are the same whether they’re printed on paper or formed of pixels or E Ink on a screen. A word is a word is a word. “If I look outside my window and I see my student reading Chaucer under a tree,” said Mr. Tracy, giving voice to this common view, “it is utterly immaterial to me whether they’re doing so by way of a Kindle or by way of a paperback.” The medium, in other words, doesn’t matter.
But Mr. Tracy is wrong. The medium does matter. It matters greatly. The experience of reading words on a networked computer, whether it’s a PC, an iPhone, or a Kindle, is very different from the experience of reading those same words in a book. As a technology, a book focuses our attention, isolates us from the myriad distractions that fill our everyday lives. A networked computer does precisely the opposite. It’s designed to scatter our attention. It doesn’t shield us from environmental distractions; it adds to them. The words on a computer screen exist in a welter of contending stimuli.
» via Rough Type
Doug Hardy, an associate editor and Internet supervisor for The Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn., wanted to increase page views on its Web site.
Mr. Hardy had heard about SeeClickFix.com, a local advocacy Web site that lets users write about issues to encourage communication between residents and local government. SeeClickFix users post a complaint about problems that occur within a set of boundaries on a Google Map, like graffiti at a bus stop or potholes on a busy street, and the site communicates the problem to the appropriate government agency and marks the problem on the map.
Users can comment on the issue or label it resolved. Government agencies can post on the site to respond to residents, and journalists can use the site to communicate with readers and see which issues are most pressing to people.
Ben Berkowitz, the chief executive of SeeClickFix, said the tool went beyond government: “Anyone can be held accountable: a business, nonprofit, even a private citizen.”
» via The New York Times
Digital distribution is getting a little more love from some content providers this season as they experiment with releasing digital downloads of shows before the DVDs become available to consumers. However, this trend remains in the experimental stage, despite years of studios dipping their toes into the simultaneous- and early-release pool, and some providers remain steadfastly against giving the Internet any sort of advantage over their precious (and dying) DVD sales.
Two examples of providers who are tipping their hats to online distribution come via the Wall Street Journal. One is Sony Pictures, which has begun making the animated movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs available for rent to the owners of “some Sony TVs and other devices,” even though the film won’t be on DVD until January 5. The same also applies to Showtime’s Weeds. The producer, Lionsgate Entertainment, chose to put episodes of the latest season online a week before they come out on DVD—a good move, since DVD sales are no longer allowing studios to print money like they used to.
Along the same lines, the hit AMC series Mad Men has been releasing its episodes online the day after airing, like many broadcast network shows—this has kept fans happy and buzz on the Internet strong. Similarly, other movie studios have spent this year closing the release window between DVD and video on demand (VOD) availability through certain VOD services.
» via ars technica
Original Content — Copyright © 2010
Christopher D. Barth.
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