Kathlyn Clore

The Internet tour guides whose job it is to notice and point out just exactly how the ‘Net has taken over our lives really like the term “Statusphere.”

Now TechCrunch wants to know if this new -sphere can save journalism. The answer is a resounding No.

Don’t get me wrong, I like this term a lot. Reading the words of online sociologists who sit around and make up these words reminds me of the first time I heard David Weinberger speak about his book Everything is Miscellaneous. I felt like Homer Simpson, smacking myself on the forehead going “Doh! It’s so obvious… Why didn’t I write this down first and get to travel around to cool conferences talking about this!”

But there is a big problem with the Statusphere: It is merely a kind of echo chamber.

TechCrunch writer Brian Solis points out, “It is the Social Effect that determines actual reach, resonance and the course for individual content.”

This is true, but has has a negative and positive effect. And the negative effect is, in my opinion, more of a problem for the Average American Jane than for the Ramblin’ Renaissance Man.

Lately I have come to realize, for example, that some of the most useful “Friends” I have on Facebook - a product I have used since 2004 - are not the grade-school comrades with whom I’ve reconnected with. Sure, it is fun to see who has gotten married, who is having children, et cetera. I dig the gossip.

But the more interesting content I find via my Facebook network comes more and more from people I have met only a few times: Friends I made in a short time who then moved to another place, nice people I have met on airplanes, colleagues I have met at conferences. I don’t actually know these people particularly well, and that’s maybe why I delight in seeing what music, links and commentary they post. I find things that surprise me.

Example: An Italian girl I lived with for a few months posted this video as she was about to attend Cesária Évora’s concert:

I’ve never heard of Cesária Évora before, but I enjoyed this song so much that I used YouTube to seek out more of her work. So soulful…

So in this way, the Statusphere exposes me to content I enjoy but might not find otherwise. But I think that in the United States, my experiences are rather unique: In the last five years, I have lived on the East and West coasts as well as in Europe. I’ve traversed the Atlantic Ocean eight times. (And no, I’m not in the military.) Obviously, I’ve done this moving around because I think it’s a good idea to travel and be exposed to new ideas and new people.

So

when I consider, say, friends who have not traveled outside the United States, who are living in the same state in which they grew up and have never lived anywhere else, I wonder if the Statusphere is as useful. Plenty of Americans speak only English and spend their lives within only one or two states without ever applying for a passport. Can a vanilla network really bring someone a neapolitan Internet news/culture experience? I don’t know if I think this Internet so powerful that it can overcome the routine of life.

Which is why the Statusphere will not save journalism.

The other night, after I poured some red wine out of a bottle whose cork had been pounded in rather than out, I made an incoherent remark about feminism.

As the bottle was passed around and shared in tiny plastic cups at an intimate gathering of about 100 random Europeans and an amateur DJ, my friend Ruth followed up with a perhaps more coherent remark.

She suggested that that the ongoing Internet revolution (the Web 2.0/ “make your own way with your own network” idea) is perhaps ‘for feminism’.

After all, she said, so many tools and concepts - RSS, social networking, tagging, hyperlinks, viral content - enable you to break free of mainstream thought. You can really experience news and content in whatever way you’d like. Nothing is dictated.

And, advancing the discussion in another direction, it also seems like the “freelance culture” that’s popping up because of all the layoffs in the MSM, is particularly good for women content producers (er, journalists… Such a 1.0 word, eh!). We can work online from anywhere, which enables all kind of offline adventures, be they travel or reproduction related.

I agree that Web 2.0 can be for feminism. Point, Ruth.

But am I a feminist? Do I want to rock some Web 2.0 feminista action? I don’t know. And in a world where even Wikipedia makes feminism seem confusing, how can I know?

I dig sports, for example. I dig women’s sports. I will even pay to watch women play sports. I’m psyched that there are more women in a lot of universities than men. I also think women should have equal pay for equal work (and often don’t get this). I think it’s good to have women CEOs and managers. I think it’s possible that Sonia Sotomayor will bring something extra to her job because she’s a woman and a Latina. And I think that’s wicked awesome. I sometimes hate that a women’s looks are so much more important than a man’s. I hate the fake dichotomy between “working” and “career” women and the idea that I should be one or the other (but would be of course the highest form of women if I attempted and was successful at both). And I think people who do developing work in third-world countries can get further by teaching a women to read than a man (she’ll teach her children (read: daughters) what she knows, a man would not be as likely to do so).

Do these things make me a feminist?? Who knows. But I do find a lot about these topics online - and I find myself sharing articles about these ideas with female friends. And I’m more exposed to these ideas because of my friends.

Because, I also think this stuff is complicated. Should women change their last names when they get married? Seems like a question for feminists. I think no — it represents a massive loss of identity.

And findabilty! Try and find a married women in the phonebook, for example. You’ll quickly realize it’s a hellofa lot easier to find her husband, especially if she has a common family name.

Also - As a 20something female who is a heavy Facebook user, I find myself more and more often confronted with status updates from women whose names with which I’m unfamiliar. Those old friends from high school are now called something else, which totally confuses me when I’m quickly looking around my Facebook network. I actually sort of increasingly despise these acquaintances for changing their names, for some reason. It’s like they abandon their old selves, or something.

I also hate that most of these women will create more confusion for me as they inevitably fumble around and end up changing how they list their last name. It’s just all too contrived.

But on the other hand, what happens to the children of women who don’t change their last names upon getting married? Does the child of Jane Smith and Doug Jones become Jennifer Smith-Jones? Maybe - but now Jennifer Smith-Jones is in a real bind if she wants to keep her hyphenated last name and have children with her future husband. Because if Jennifer Smith-Jones makes babies with Kameel Johnson, it would be somewhat absurd for the child to be Susan Smith-Jones-Johnson.

See? Not so clear cut.

I wonder if I have to know if I’m a feminist to use Web 2.0 to explore feminism…

As my current boss would say “This would be a great Ph.D topic”.

IF YOU’VE MADE IT THIS FAR: Enjoy!

Right now, the overwhelming majority of online journalism is free.

A lot of publishers, journalists, bloggers and editors would greatly prefer that news content not be free. For a lot of reasons, the most important one being that these people like to eat. And sometimes - contrary to popular belief - they even like to eat food other than Maruchan Ramen noodles.

The need to eat unites all people. As does the need to drink (water, not beer, although the need to drink beer also unites many people).

Tim Windsor of Nieman Journalism Lab recently wondered if news content online could be monetized in the same way water has been monetized. After all, water is a commodity people once could access for free (and still can, in some instances… depending on tax situations and how you consider environmental impact).

According to Wikipedia, though, the global rate of consumption of bottled water “more than doubled between 1997 and 2005″. In the United States alone, consumers purchase “8.6 billion gallons for 28.9 percent of the U.S. liquid refreshment beverage market, exceeding sales of all other beverages except carbonated soft drinks, followed by fruit juices and sports drinks.”

Clearly, this is a big business.

Windsor wonders “Why is it that consumers cheerfully pay more for thirst-quenchers than we do for the fuel that moves our vehicles and our economy?”

I also wonder about this. And also must point out that many young adults, after consuming so much Green living propaganda, are loathe to buy bottled water. My boyfriend and I, for example, each purchased bottles of juice a few months ago when we first visited the local grocery store in our new hometown. We chose carefully, selecting juices we would each enjoy. But the ultimate factor in our decision of which juice to buy was about the bottle size: Would it be useful to reuse as a water bottle at the gym? Size of the mouthpiece was the most important - when you’re on the treadmill and you need to pick up your water bottle, you want something that’s easy to drink out of.

Regardless of our thriftiness, I agree with Gina Chen’s assessment that the reason people buy bottled water is convenience.

She concludes:

“If people are paying for convenience when they buy bottled water, charging for news content will only work if readers feel they are getting something else — not just news. Something they want desperately. Something that makes their lives easier the way grabbing a bottled water from the fridge does.”

I agree. And I think this is becoming an argument for a subscription model. After all - I don’t pay for YogaJournal videos (which I highly recommend) online, but I do pay to have the magazine come to my house. That way I can read it whenever and wherever I want. In short, I’ve bought into a trusted brand whose offerings I can experience in several ways.

Lately I have been starting to do some work for a local newspaper in California. The editor who is working with me told me that the paper is currently pulling back from its practice of just “throwing everything online” and is waiting until they figure out how to make money with the web to use it.

Can’t say I agree with this logic - why not participate and build up the brand until such time as there is a way it can be successfully monetized?

To me that’s sort of like saying “I won’t go to the gym until I know I have the perfect bottle of water to take along.” Or some other lame excuse people (I) make when they don’t quite want to exert the effort it takes to go to the gym.

Just get on the treadmill already!

Perhaps considering the treadmill is more useful than considering bottled water when thinking about business models for journalism.

We get on the treadmill because we think it is good for health (or how we look), right? And we pay for that treadmill, either to have it in our home or to have it at a gym we are allowed to access.

Obviously, we could run outside. Man has been doing so for thousands of years… (women maybe for fewer years But now we go to the gym, acting like gerbils on a running wheel as we pursue health and beauty.

We read stories because they’re also good for our (mental, social and sometimes economic) health. Same thing.

BONUS: “The Ramen King and I” podcast on Ramen noodle wisdoms.
Iconic Noodle Celebrates 50th Anniversary, from NPR

I agree with the Columbia law professor who says “To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist.”

But I also agree with this comment Marissa Mayer made during this month’s U.S. Senate hearing on the future of journalism. I had not read Mayer’s testimony until editing this summary of her talk, written by an Italian entrepreneur for the EJC.

It’s one of those comments that helps you view today’s media landscape through a smart lens. Mayer does not suggest any actual steps news publishers should be taking, but she describes a useful way for them to think about the content they publish.

This comment and its use of “basic atomic unit of consumption” is one of those that leaves you smacking your forehead ala Homer Simpson and wondering why you didn’t say this yourself. So obvious… But like they say about contemporary artwork, “Yeah, but you didn’t do it…”

Mayer said:

“Changing the basic unit of content consumption is a challenge, but also an opportunity. Treating the article as the atomic unit of consumption online has several powerful consequences. When producing an article for online news, the publisher must assume that a reader may be viewing this article on its own, independent of the rest of the publication. To make an article effective in a standalone setting requires providing sufficient context for first-time readers, while clearly calling out the latest information for those following a story over time. It also requires a different approach to monetization: each individual article should be self-sustaining. These types of changes will require innovation and experimentation in how news is delivered online, and how advertising can support it.”

Last night I watched Lord of War, a 2005 film in which Nicholas Cage stars as a witty arms dealer.

I recommend the movie for its dry humor and quirky portrayal of illegal arms dealers.

During the movie, Cage’s character often tells his troubled brother, played by Jared Leto, “that’s not our fight.”

He says this line most often in Africa, it seems, during moments when Leto’s character is obviously troubled that the arms deal the pair is brokering will enable a

mass killing.

I wonder if the “it’s not our fight” line is true in the case of Parwiz Kambakhsh, an Afghan journalist recently sentenced to a 20-year prison term for blasphemy. Kambakhsh says he is innocent.

In my e-mail today, I received a note asking me to sign a petition about this case. The Kabul Press website is circulating a petition asking the U.S. State Department to exert political pressure on the president of Afghanistan - as they pressured the Iranian government to release Roxana Saberi - in order to prompt Kambakhsh’s release.

The question is, though, is this a fight for the U.S. State Department?

From what I have read about this case, things don’t look good. Justice is not being served. It does sound like this young journalist is not getting a fair trial.

But this case is one involving an Afghan citizen who is tangled up in his own country’s legal system, however shoddy that system may be.

Saberi, though, is a U.S. citizen. So of course, the State Department owed her (in my opinion) at least some help.

But is the U.S. State Department the right government body to petition here? Is it the job of the U.S. State Department to fight for the rights of Afghan citizens?

I think a petition would be better directed at the government in Afghanistan, the UN or another international body.

No new ideas were introduced during this month’s U.S. Senate hearings on the future of journalism.

But I did find a few with which I disagree.

This vanilla bit of insight from Arianna Huffington, first off, characterizes the essays on the Senate’s website:

“We stand on the threshold of a very challenging but very exciting future. Indeed, I am convinced that journalism’s best days lie ahead — just so long as we embrace and support innovation and don’t try to pretend that we can somehow hop into a journalistic Way Back Machine and return to a past that no longer exists and can’t be resurrected.”

This is not a new line of thinking.

Of course journalism has to change. The newsgathering industry must find a way out of the perfect storm Huffington aptly describes, the blizzard created by a lack of advertising revenue and the simultaneous proliferation of the Internet. For many years (15, Huffington says) this storm went largely unaddressed by rigid newsrooms (and the universities that produced their staff) that failed to adapt their approach to content creation.

Huffington lavishes praise on non-profit initiatives like her Investigative Fund, The Center for Public Integrity and ProPublica. These foundations exist to endow the serious investigative work of freelance journalists “many of whom have lost their jobs”.

She also thinks highly of citizen journalism initiatives and says more of them will come on the scene. Citizen journalists are, according to Huffington, “engaged readers can, among other things, recommend stories, produce raw data for original reported stories, write original stories themselves, record exclusive in-the-field video, search through large amounts of data or documents for hidden gems and trends, and much more.”

Plus 10 points for a nice definition, Arianna. Minus 50 points for failing to address a major problem with citizen journalists: They are not paid for their work.

And that means that they’re basically free labor. The addition of more citizen journalism sites to the online publishing landscape means the addition of sites that don’t pay content creators. Or maybe they pay writers, say, $7 an article. Or, maybe a penny a word. Or how about a tiny percentage share of advertising revenue, which writers receive after they publish their first 15 articles?

Such pithy offerings may be the free market price of some content online, but these offerings do not represent a livable wage. These wages don’t fund content that was written after interviews, research or beat reporting. They don’t fund writing that adheres to a journalistic style guide. These prices don’t pay for reporting that includes FOI requests, travel or well-edited multimedia production.

Huffington also says she doesn’t think the government should subsidize “what exists now.” I agree.
She misses the mark, though, when she fails to delve into the problems of “what exists now”.
Part of “what exists now” are business conglomerates that include many kinds of businesses within their portfolio. Consider Sam Zell, for example, who bought The Chicago Tribune and The L.A. Times in 2007.

He has a big portfolio of holdings, as described here. The Tribune and Times are just two of many holdings within his big company.

When he mismanaged his entire portfolio by taking on more debt than he should have, he put the Tribune’s operations in jeopardy.

Perhaps regulations should be written to prevent newspapers from being part of large portfolios managed by people who are more interested in real estate than newspapers.

That idea brings me to David Simon’s testimony.

He presented a engaging essay, but it goes awry with this graf:

“Similarly, there can be no serious consideration of public funding for newspapers. High-end journalism can and should bite any hand that tries to feed it, and it should bite a government hand most viciously. Moreover, it is the right of every American to despise his local newspaper – for being too liberal or too conservative, for covering X and not covering Y, for spelling your name wrong when you do something notable and spelling it correctly when you are seen as dishonorable. And it is the birthright of

every healthy newspaper to hold itself indifferent to such constant disdain and be nonetheless read by all. Because in the end, despite all flaws, there is no better model for a comprehensive and independent review of society than a modern newspaper. As love-hate relationships go, this is a pretty intricate one. An exchange of public money would pull both sides from their comfort zone and prove unacceptable to all.”

I don’t understand why Simon takes issue with journalism that takes public money while failing to mention the similar pitfalls of accepting private money.

Everything I have read about sustainable media development says the key to long-term success is a diversity of funding sources. Every freelance writer will tell you this is true: a diverse revenue stream is important for long-term survival.

Why rule out the government as one of those funding sources? A government’s job is to collect taxes from its citizens and use the resulting tax revenue to improve the lives of its citizens.

Journalism done with money collected from the citizens would be, by nature, accountable to those citizens. And it is in the government’s interest to fund a free press (which I mean in a platform-neutral sense), because the press is useful for distributing all kinds of information to citizens.

Giant private companies (and, to a lesser extent, publicly traded companies) don’t always have that interest. And they are given extreme leeway (as compared to the government, at least the U.S. government) when it comes to transparency about their budgets. A look at today’s unemployment rolls tells us what a good idea it is for businesses to be intransparent.

It’s easily riskier to take money from private companies – which can stonewall and intimidate journalists to a greater extent than public companies - than it is to take money from the government.

That point addressed, I find it hard to understand why Simons can simultaneously think:

“But a non-profit model intrigues, especially if that model allows for locally-based ownership and control of news organizations. Anything that government can do in the way of creating non-profit status for newspapers should be seriously pursued.”

and

“Lastly, I would urge Congress to consider relaxing certain anti-trust prohibitions with regard to the newspaper industry, so that the Washington Post, the New York Times and various other newspapers can sit down and openly discuss protecting their copyright from aggregators and plan an industry wide transition to a paid, online subscriber base. Whatever money comes will prove essential to the task of hiring back some of the talent, commitment, and institutional memory that has been squandered.”

Right on. I hope the Senate strongly considered these thoughts. But I fail to see how a non-profit model funded entirely by private money is a good idea.

I clicked on this France24 video hoping it might reveal something useful for me to think about when I take pictures.

It didn’t.

But the fashion photographer who was the central character in the video did say one quote that resonated with me:

“There is no such thing as a naked body. Even in the nude the body is decked with signs and conventional codes designed to reveal it, tell a story and reproduce it.”

I agree based on my handful of nude beach/sauna experiences (it’s amazing how much personality and individualism people can (consciously or unconsciously) project even without clothes!) and the times I’ve spent in bustling city centers.

When you’re surrounded by advertising all the time, like in London, Brussels or Chicago, it really grates on you, starts to impact your perspective.

Only when you then escape, retreat away from the city noise to the country, do you realize how bombarded you were. Doing things like going from having a television to not having a television also helps.

Still, I think once people live through a time in which they are heavily bombarded by images, they are always impacted by this experience. This quote speaks about that (to me at least).

There seemed to be a major dearth of international coverage on CNN this weekend.

Granted, I don’t have a television in my apartment. But I did get in front of the tube for about 45 minutes Sunday at a local fitness center (long enough for content to begin repeating itself). I also hopped on to CNN.com Saturday afternoon to browse their video section.

I didn’t notice much of anything in-depth about the violent post-election problems in Moldova, protests in Georgia or the extreme unrest in Thailand.

For news about those events in particular, I have been relying on the many feeds in my Google Reader (is it possible to follow the news without RSS anymore?) in addition to videos from Russia Today.

The only international story happening on CNN, it seemed, was the dramatic Navy Seals rescue of an American man being held by pirates.

Yes, this is a good story… But I really find it sad that Americans cannot inform themselves about world events via national news channels. These broadcasters have really become (at least in the U.S.) entertainment platforms.

So glad to listen to this radio report: Radio France Internationale

Laws like these, working through government monitoring groups and Internet Service Providers to block users who download copyrighted material without paying for it, seem preposterous.

The laws seem to infringe on privacy rights and be impossible to enforce correctly (for myriad technical reasons).

Myself, I always waffled on the issue of “illegal” downloading - until I moved to the Netherlands.

There I realized that major news content providers, like NBC, block bits of their content outside the United States. I was unable to watch, for example, the NBC coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. That’s because NBC only had the rights to broadcast the Games in the U.S. Outside the U.S.; a Dutch TV station bought the rights to show the Games inside the Netherlands.

So I was unable to watch Michael Phelps on demand, or any of the womens’ soccer matches I would have like to have seen.

The other programming I was frustrated to be locked out of was streaming re-runs of Grey’s Anatomy. ABC makes the shows available on Fridays after the program airs Thursday evening. It’s about the only television program I watch regularly.

I could, though, legally buy Grey’s Anatomy on iTunes. In fact, I’ve bought about two whole seasons.

Then I realized, halfway through 2008, that if I wanted to save space on my hard drive and put my Grey’s episodes on CD, I was only able to save the raw information - not the actual shows. Apple did not (until recently) make it possible to burn the shows on to DVD for viewing away from the computer.

If I download the shows using torrent files, though, I can burn them on to a DVD and watch them on a television.

I realized then that this “illegal” downloading was more useful than paying for programs.

Also, as a journalist it is hard to have much sympathy for the major artists who complain about the money they’re losing because of illegal downloading. Google and other major sources co-opt the work of news reporters all the time!

And, give a thought to what author Paulo Cohelo thinks about this issue. Perhaps “illegal” downloading can spur sales.

For more: Global Voices Advocacy.

The Brookings Institution released a report Monday examining how close Americans live to their jobs:

“In almost every major industry, jobs shifted away from the city center between 1998

and 2006. Of 18 industries analyzed, 17 experienced employment decentralization. Transportation and warehousing, finance and insurance, utilities, and real estate and rental and leasing showed the greatest increases in the share of jobs located more than 10 miles away from downtown.”

I think this is a bad thing for newsgatherers. In fact, it would be interesting to study the downward trend in newspaper subscriptions to see if it lines up with this trend (of course, the proliferation of the Internet is likely to line up too, also a big contributor).

Most Americans who live more than a mile away from their jobs are likely going to work by car. And this transport time means less time in which to consume content. That’s for sure bad for newsgatherers, especially considering the ratcheted up battle for eyeballs in today’s attention economy.

There are obvious environmental (and perhaps economic) benefits to living close to work. There are environmental and economic benefits to building more public transportation infrastructure.

I would argue that these benefits would extend to content creators.

Further, after a read of the data in this report I would guess that in the past 10 years, newsgatherers themselves have become more likely to live away from the city centers of the communities they cover.

Is that good or bad? Depends on your perspective… If more of the general population is also living away from the center, I guess it’s good that the people who cover their communities also live “out”. But I also think living out of the center is a less connected experience.