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Harvard Debating Open Publishing: Yet Newspapers Still Don't Get It

Everyone knows the newspaper industry is in trouble: circulation numbers are down and there a lots of staff layoffs (most recently at the NYT). I talked about it soon after Sam Zell bought the Chicago Tribune and blamed Google for killing the newspaper industry.

While the mainstream media/publishing still don't get it (free your content, syndicate it everywhere and then make money from the ad revenues and from the publicity/consulting/speaking engagements that come from having the best (and most well-known) talent), the ivory towers of academia are starting to get it.

NYT reported earlier in the week that Harvard is proposing that its professors publish their scholarship free on the web. This is a big step because we all know the entrenched motto for professors of "publish or die," so the fact that a university, Harvard no less, is debating this type of monumental shift towards free and open is amazing.

  Free Birma 
  Originally uploaded by (Erik).

What's truly important here is not the money that Harvard professors might lose from the royalties they make from publishing their article in those fancy (read: expensive) academic journals. And it's not about the fact that we witnessing the potential demise of those academic journals (we've heard that defense from the RIAA and MPAA, I note this in my list of takeaways below) because of the web yet again destroying a traditional, old media business model.

What's important here?

The formal recognition that what makes professors and their scholarship truly valuable (in the economic sense) is their knowledge and the recognition of that expertise by the greater world at large.

When publishing and writing on the web is practically free, then your reputation as an expert in a given field becomes the scarce good, not the physical good that used to be a scarce good (because of the high price of academic journals; publishers could limit supply through the need for peer-based reviewing, the costs of the reviewing processes, and the costs of producing hard copies of the journals, all of which artificially drove up prices).

None of this is ground-breaking if you've been paying attention to the market forces at work on the internet but the newspaper and publishing industries don't seem to get it.

Other key points (some which I already touched upon):

1. Free is even hitting the ivory towers of academia, a place typically slow to change-- that's a sign of the tide changing


2. This would be an opt-out system; as Lessig has advocated for copyright renewals, it makes sense that the content goes free unless you make a specific note to the contrary


3. Destroying a business model is no defense for maintaining a closed, proprietary systems


4. The opponents of open publishing are using the same arguments as RIAA and MPAA-- that should scare you


5. As John Perry Barlow has argued, The Grateful Dead didn't make money off albums, they made money by performing-- the same thing for professors. Aside-- I had the lucky chance to join a classroom conversation with Mr. Barlow my senior year at Colorado College and wish I had kept in touch with him.

Now playing: Doves - Walk In Fire

The Writers Strike and the Media Company Hypocrisy

Since Jon Stewart is offline for now, here's today's moment (more like a couple of minutes) of zen:

GE Add Takes My Breath Away

When I posted about the future of advertising I didn't exactly mean ads like this this GE locomotive spot but it's funny nonetheless. I've never thought of Erie, PA in this way before.

Berlin - Take My Breath Away


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Now playing: Nic Harcourt - Zap Mama

Bring the Love Back (The Future of Advertising, Round 2)

In case you read my advertising post from last weekend and thought

• What the hell is he talking about? or
• He doesn't know what the hell he's talking about

Don't worry, I'm not crazy or the only one engaged in this conversation about the future of advertising, seems that Microsoft is also trying to provoke this same discussion via this humorous video below:

The New Advertising Model Isn't Advertising (Which Makes It Great Advertising)

It may not be revolutionary or surprising for people who have been paying attention to the web and how its fundamentally changing the traditional Madison Avenue model of advertising but this NYT article should cement the idea for everyone.

Whether it was Adam Curry talking about podcasts changing the media world or the Gillmor Gang engaged in deeply technical Web & geek discussions/rants, the basic premise has been that with so many media options available to people now, attention is the now the most scarce resource.

Combined with the fact that the general public has been tired, immune, and oppositional to advertising everywhere we go, everywhere we look, etc., and you have a recipe for the slow death (or at least lobotomy) of the traditional advertising model. And don't think of the repercussions only for the web, the change will affect advertising across all channels and mediums.

So what does the new advertising model look like?

It's advertising that more closely reflects content that we actually want. It's more than being less explicit with your branding message (side note there — you no longer have complete control, or any depending on your industry, over your brand so get over this fact and work with the system of blogs, wikis, user-generated content, etc. to help your brand remain successful) or engaging in product placement, consumers can see right through that crap.

This quote from the article sums it up nicely (emphasis added):

"Behind the shift is a fundamental change in Nike's view of the role of advertising. No longer are ads primarily meant to grab a person's attention while they're trying to do something else — like reading an article. Nike executives say that much of the company's future advertising spending will take the form of services for consumers, like workout advice, online communities and local sports competitions."

Note the critical part: how do we approach consumers given their attention scarcity, e.g. not interrupt what they want to do or read with in-your-face ads that aren't targeted, and actually deliver meaningful, value-add content, help, or resources for them.

Likening this form of advertising as value-add content gets us thinking in the right direction. Maybe it's not really 'content' per see because it still is content with a purpose (what content however is without a purpose, explicit or not?) but it's much closer to content than it is to traditional advertising.

It will take various forms as Nike suggests, and be across all mediums but there will be at least one consistent theme: new advertising will be information or content that perhaps a person didn't know about or wasn't actively seeking out BUT it will still align with their needs, goals, objectives and will ultimately help them.

If advertising used to be about how to get people to want/buy your product or service, it's now about helping people understand how your product or service fits in their busy lives. Or put another way, it's getting back to the very earliest and most effective form of advertising: word of mouth.

There's going to be lots of hits and misses as marketers, advertisers, and consumers try to figure out all of the exact details of this new world but it's coming whether you like it or not.

And the longer you wait, as Seth Godin points out recently regarding the music industry (the  ongoing meme on The Radiohead Effect)  that is also experiencing drastic, paradigm changing forces, the longer you wait to embrace the world the longer you'll remain in mediocrity.

UPDATE: Wrote this originally on the bus returning from NYC so I cleaned up formatting and did spell checking.
 

Yes, Google Killed Newspapers

When Mr. Zell bought the Chicago Tribune a couple of months ago and blamed Google for stealing content, Calacanis and others rightly scoffed at such a claim.

My favorite news media analysis show, The Media Project, touched upon the news story but there’s wasn’t much coverage from the technology perspective, which is to be expected given that they’re journalists.

The Tribune purchase then gave way more recently to Murdoch’s bid to purchase the Dow Jones/WSJ from the Bancroft family. They first said never to Murdoch’s purchase but are now, just last week, deciding to actually meet with him and open the door for other possible suitors as well.

The newspaper industry is certainly in turmoil right now and if anybody knew how to fix it, they’re be a rich person. So while I can’t offer any silver bullet solutions, there’s certainly a consensus in the technology blogsphere that the newspapers themselves have failed to adapt to the new media age of the internet. But rather than be more introspective, the newspaper industry has generally pointed fingers at the internet, to companies like Google, and said that others are stealing their content and not being properly compensated when websites aggregate or “steal” their content.

Read Battelle’s recent commentary on this issue of Google having killed the newspaper industry. One of the more intriguing ideas is having Google and other internet players help support the traditional news media companies, to “evolve the fourth estate.”

Combine that rebuke of the newspaper industry’s woes with these 10 obvious things about their future and you can paint a good picture of what the newspaper industry shouldn’t be doing. If we eliminate all of the things the newspapers shouldn’t be doing, which pretty much entails what they’re still doing now and explains why they are not evolving with the times (they are making changes but they’re small and probably a little too late)

Great Mashup Music Thanks to PRI's Fair Game

Since I tend to be more of a night owl than ever, I sometimes find myself going to bed after 1am and when clicking on the radio (set to WAMU) to listen to news before falling asleep, I've been pleasantly surprised a few times by. PRI's great show, Fair Game. It's another gem from public radio that is of the same caliber of more mainstream public radio shows like Wait Wait Don't Tell Me or This American Life but I think it's more unknown because of its nocturnal play time.

The topics covered on the show are eclectic, quirky, and engaging; I've stayed up a few times just to hear the end of a show, a kind of "driveway moment" as NPR describes it during pledge time. And the host of the show, Faith Salie, has a laid-back personality but quick wit that provides insights into already intriguing stories without sounding forced or contrived. She seems like that cool friend that always has interesting stories on a wide yet weird range of topics and you wonder how a person could be into so many things and know so many people.

Basically, I love the show.

What finally made me post about Fair Game was tonight's show highlighting a new music mashup site, The Hood Internet. Mashups have been around awhile but these guys are focusing on mixing rap/hip-hop and indie rock songs, definitely music areas close to my heart. They're two musicians/DJs from Chicago, doing the mashups on the side, and making some good songs.

Broken Social Scene vs. R Kelly- I'm A Flirt (Shoreline)

The Shins vs Crime Mob- DJ STV SLV - Rock Yo Sea Legs

Why DRM Will Continue On- Forbes

Written 5/5/07 on my PDA  (so formatting and links are crude) but reformated on 5/10/07.]

This quote below from a Forbes article on DRM sums up why the music industry still doesn't get it:

No intellectual property business is going to cross the digital divide without figuring out how to protect its content and to ensure that transactions are associated with the acquisition of content, Nash said. The music industry simply has to solve the content security problem or risk the obsolescence of its business model.

What's wrong with this statement. A couple of things.

1. We must protect our content or we won't enter the digital marketplace- how do you expect to share your content with the world and have total control over how its used? Those two views are in contradiction. Yes, allow people to purchase your digital content but don't dictate how I use it after I've 'purchased' it. If we can't use/consume the content outside of the draconian rules and limits you've setup, then don't share your content. Perfect control contradicts the idea of sharing or selling content.
2. The content security problem (which I just  addressed above- it's not a problem, the rules of the game have changed and made perfect control over your content impossible) means explicitly that that your business model isn't at risk of obsolesce, it's already dead in its current form. DRM doesn't work so yes, you do need a different business model.

Read the rest of the article here, (I'm writing this from my mobile so no good link formatting on this post). The other great (by which I mean incorrect and ridiculous) analogy is that without DRM, the entire world would come to resemble a college dorm where downloading and 'cloning' of music would run rampant. The research doesn't show that (Forrester's and others have done the analysis- can't link to it right now) but it's the big, bad stereotype of music piracy that the music industry likes to perpetuate.

Monetizing the Smart Way

Is this really the most important concern for Old Media entering the digital age? Or at the least, are they thinking about it wrong they we they've framed it here:

'"We are very pleased to have more traffic on our sites since we took down our video from YouTube because we are able to monetize that as opposed to someone else doing so," Dauman said (PaidContent)."

I was on the metro when I read and wrote this earlier this morning so this post (busy at work so haven't blogged in awhile) isn't fully developed.

Monetization is definitely critical but I just wonder if they're thinking about making money from their digital content in the wrong way. Aren't there other, new ways that leverage the network in smarter way for making money off this content?

UPDATE: I received my first comment spam thanks to this quick post. The keyword that triggered the comment was "monetizing," a word near and dear to my heart being a web/techie person. Also being in in the research/consulting world, I had to joke with a friend that yes, it's really all about monetization and incentivizing the right behaviors- see my jargon post if you need more details.

YouTube: Obvious Yet Misunderstood

In posting about YouTube's deal with Warner Music, I mentioned Cuban's and Calacanis' takes on YouTube being a content thief without any real business model, a business that any legitimate company would have to stupid to buy.

I think Calacanis was right when he said on a recent Gillmor Gang that YouTube's Flash player interface and design could be built in about three months; absolutely, there's nothing complex there. But that's not what makes YouTube valuable.

As I commented on Fred's post:

So YouTube has harnessed great tools and interfaces for sharing both copyrighted and user-generated video but its primary function isn't in sharing illegal content. The future is in edge competencies and YouTube definitely straddles the edge between formal content creators (MSM and copyrighted content) and the future of user-generated content (peer production).

Paraphrasing Steven Chen, one of the YouTube founders, from the conference call this morning announcing the deal (emphasis added):

The YouTube experience is a combination of watching videos and finding the next interesting video. Now with Google search, we can elevate those most relevant videos in more innovative way.

That's what people have missed, glossed over, or simply ignored in their analysis of YouTube: Yes, the idea of hosting people's video and a basic Flash video-player interface is relatively straight-forward (and is easily replicated as Calacanis Netscape and MySpace have shown) but the ease of sharing/embedding videos, discovery of other relevant video, and creating a community around sharing both copyrighted and user-generated videos, are what made YouTube popular and worth $1.6 billion. Truly amazing.

Lastly, I agree with Eric Schmidt's closing comments from the conference call: this is the next step of the evolution of the internet.

What that means is that the MSM, rather than chomping at the bit to sue YouTube (as so many bloggers have advocated/predicted would happen), should be scared, very scared. Not because it means a formal acknowledgment that copyright "piracy" (I hate that term) is okay on YouTube but because the tides have officially turned against content owners and their control over distribution of their content. If the MSM ever had any negotiating clout left in the internet world, it has now lost whatever advantage it might have ever had.

Google is a giant and I don't think the MSM and their copyright concerns are going to win the "piracy" battle like they did with music-sharing. Copyright must be respected (and will be, mickey Mouse's lawyers will guarantee that) but I think those concerns are going to be negotiated under terms dictated more heavily by YouTube/Google and not by the MSM. Do both parties, the MSM and internet media companies, need each other to survive? Yes, but the YouTube/Google deal signifies a substantial shift in power from the old guard to the new guard.