The Political Machine is Grinding Away to Shape Public Opinion

The political machines are ramping up their rhetoric in the midst of the economic turmoil playing the blame game for what's caused the country to go off track. Here are but two examples, one from the WSJ and the other from the NY Times in the last couple of days.

It's a long road to November 2012 and if these two examples are indicative of the type of storyline we can expect from the very far left and right, we have a tough and brutal slog ahead.


Meanwhile, the ball is in the hands of 12 Senators and Representatives (the Super-Committee, a Jedi Council?) to wrestle spending to ground while bombarded from both sides wit calls for far less and far more spending. How have we grown so far apart when the welfare of the country rests in the balance?

What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing. 

(Norman Podhoretz, WSJ 8/13/11)

He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president.

..."But I emphatically agree with Messrs. Limbaugh and Sowell about this president's attitude toward America as it exists and as the Founding Fathers intended it. That is why my own answer to the question, "What Happened to Obama?" is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind."

Genuflecting to the Tea Party

(Charles Blow, NYT  8/12/11)

..."What we are witnessing is an extension and acceleration of the G.O.P.’s obscene genuflection to Tea Party tenets: give no ground; take no prisoners; accept no deal."
..."David Axelrod, the Obama campaign strategist, said the candidates at the debate were “essentially pledging allegiance to the Tea Party, instead of resolving the problems of this country.”

The Way Forward for Traditional News Content Generators

Content generation and content search/distribution are severable, particularly in this Internet age, but this distinction has always been possible had content generators/publishers chose to make it so in their earlier business models. Now they under under the hammer of competition for the once lucrative advertising dollars.

Today and tomorrow, the game's best hand is held by the distributors or those who control the revenue streams associated with distribution and ease of consumption. I think the best hope for content generators is to cut deals with (or own) the distributors who create the channels and have the ability to bill and collect either micro or subscription payments.

I think device manufacturers' products will eventually commoditize so that a Kindle, an iPhone, a tablet or a Droid will be differentiated only by screen size and a few customer convenience features. The valuable distribution management and customer 'ownership' will reside with the electronic distribution and consumption channels, e.g., the wireline and wireless carriers and the cablecos. Content is necessarily king, yes, but managing its distribution and consumption will likely be the bigger revenue magnet.

U.S. Newspaper Circulation Falls More Than 10% - NYTimes.com

U.S. Newspaper Circulation Falls More Than 10% - NYTimes.com

It's a grim future for print media. It would be fascinating to correlate the home Internet penetration rates with the decline in subscriptions in the coverage areas of the non-national papers.

It's painfully clear that the traditional business model for daily print media is near the point of collapse. It's rate of decline is very similar to the loss of POTS landlines in the telecom industry.

I certainly don't have any magic bullets, but what the country cannot afford to lose is high quality news gathering and reporting. The media outlets need to find a business model that leverages the rapid development and deployment of electronic reading devices.

While print publications will have an audience that desires a tactile reading experience, that audience will die off and the reading (and advertising) experience of the future will be on portable devices. These must be very easy to use and have some built-in serendipity factors that emulates what print media offers as the eyes wander through the content.

Otherwise, the future is not healthy for traditional print newspapers and magazines.

Remembering America Online - Osnos

Osnos provides a concise history of the unfolding and folding of online and other technology titans. In the old days a DoJ monopoly lawsuit (ATT, IBM, MICROSOFT) was the leveler. Considering the outcomes and subsequent revamping, various M&A activity, etc., gave us better companies and far more innovation....all driven by technology's unrelenting pressure.

Today's print media and advertising industry is under similar siege, but not by government. "Do no evil" Google is the culprit du jour, painted gray, if not black, by newspapers and the news business for taking away their revenue. The last thing Eric Schmidt wants to wade through is an antitrust morass triggered by his growing dominance in search. No wonder he has played so nicely for a long time with now-President Obama.

Curious by omission, Amazon is a huge content distribution player and will become even more important. I'm surprised the newspapers have not attempted to get in bed with them for distribution (Kindle, billing systems, customer base, etc.) Amazon and the newspapers together could mount a credible challenge to Google for advertising dollars.

Of interest, way back when I was at NYNEX in the InfoLook days, a local newspaper publisher was frightened to death that the telephone company was about to eat his newspapers' lunch. We had many vibrant discussions. He was so worried about this camel's nose in the 'information services' tent that he became active with Vermont regulators to restrict the fledgling experimental pre-internet InfoLook online service.

Now, 15 years later, Google, originating in a Stanford dorm room from bright students then in their early teens in InfoLook days, has become one of the most powerful arbiters of internet content activity nearly 100% funded from the advertising revenue that so worried our local publisher.

It's all about the metadata!

New Journalism's Content Cascade

Interesting ruminations about a journalism model focused around the notion of a 'content cascade.' At its heart are wiki-like active repositories which is the vibrant heart of content.

I have long believed that wikis are an extraordinarily powerful tool very much underutilized. But I have been disillusioned and frustrated by the reality that so many people still believe the Internet is email and therefore fail to embrace many of the advantages of the other powerful tools. The 'social networking' phenomena may change that. Perhaps it's mostly a generational thing and the twenty and thirty-somethings will easily embrace the content cascade.

In a journalism/news organization, this makes a great deal of sense. Out of frustration a couple of months ago I recommended the idea (online, of course) to the executive editor of our local daily newspaper. Background information on a topic could be continually built into a wiki and the online consumer of 'a story' or opinion piece could follow links to relevant supporting facts and background. Local examples: wind power in Vermont; Vermont Yankee nuclear plant license renewal; Vermont agriculture, et al. The story of the day could then focus on today's news and the background stuff could be linked.

This is no panacea for the troubled newspaper business, but seems worthy of serious consideration.

Monetization of the online distribution of content, certainly is THE issue and this fellow at Harvard skips gingerly over that.

"Obviously, the thorny and perennial question of “monetization” is absent from this discussion. But the advantage of the content cascade is its efficiency and its multiplying effect on page views: reporters don’t labor over 20-inch yarns when a 10-word blog update will do; content from all over the web can create page views on a local site; readers contribute content; each drop in the stream (OK, there’s a basic unit for you) can be repurposed almost indefinitely into new content niches. The resulting vibrancy of the news site draws maximum traffic; let the marketers monetize the value of that."

Information may 'want to be free,' but the people creating it for a living must somehow be paid.

Tough Choices Loom for Newspapers - WSJ.com

Tough Choices Loom for Newspapers - WSJ.com:

Newspapers as we have known them are a dying breed. Google and other online advertisers are inexorably eroding the print newspaper advertising revenues revenues. Most major newspapers have robust online versions of their papers, but most charge nothing for access. The Wall Street Journal is the exception. From the beginning they have charged for an online subscription.

Government bailouts for newspapers will not be possible because the separation of the state from the press is as stark as for religion. So their survival options are relatively limited.

As ad revenues continue to tumble, the news-gathering and reporting will be different in this country. Robust reporting as we have come to expect may dissipate to other organizations. The Associated Press, Reuters, etc., may take on greater roles as the 'newsgatherers of record.'

It's only a matter of time before print news gives way massively to electronic news. It's a generational thing. People brought up online or with a cell phone forever present do not and will not read daily newspapers. Perhaps Google will decide to be in the news business. Maybe they'll bail out a paper or two!

"...Assuming the recession deepens, bankruptcy filings in the industry are possible. More likely, lenders will agree to renegotiate loans. In some cases investors may take control in debt-for-equity swaps. Whatever happens, existing shareholders, including families with decades of history in the industry, could be largely wiped out.

Newspaper executives are starting to do more than simply cut staff and dividends. Some have, for instance, reduced the frequency with which they publish: Freedom plans to make its Arizona daily East Valley Tribune a four-day-a-week free paper.

Publishers need to accept that newspaper ad revenue -- print and online are down 15% in the first nine months, according to the Newspaper Association of America -- isn't going to bounce back fully from the recession. Average profit margins for publicly reporting companies have halved to 11% for the first nine months of this year from 22% in 2003, estimates analyst John Morton. Drastic action is needed to reduce costs.

There are a number of options: Most obviously, there is consolidation. The cash deals of recent years saddled many newspaper chains with too much debt, exacerbating today's"

"...Another measure that some publishers could embrace is online-only publishing. Printing and distribution costs -- about 40% of revenues, estimates Mr. Morton -- could be eliminated by abandoning the physical product. Of course, online-ad revenues currently don't generate anywhere near enough to offset the lost dollars. But at the present rate of decline, online-only could be viable for some.

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site - New York Times

"Information wants to be free."

-Stewart Brand 1984


I did not intend to renew my TimesSelect subscription anyway, primarily because I disagree with so much of the Times' editorial content. In recent years they have become a house organ for liberal Democrats and, IMHO, have suffered from that stance. They may think they provide "all the news that's fit to print," but with an editorial slant that is not good for America.

The shakeup in the news business continues and we will see many more changes ahead, particularly as the Times continues to decline financially.