The U.S. agency that regulates broadcasting, the Federal Communications Commission , has finally decided to allow publishers to own both newspapers and broadcast stations in the biggest U.S. markets. No one is happy. Publishers don’t think the ruling goes far enough. Cable TV companies say it is anti-competitive. Public-interest groups forecast a new round of media consolidation that limits choice, erodes accountability and restricts public access. And Congress will investigate. All this over declining mediums whose owners are squeezing blood from rolling stones.

But the profound impact of the FCC decision is that it catches a world looking the wrong way. We ought to cast our scrutiny instead on a ruling by the agency that regulates trade. Last week the FTC — that’s the Federal Trade Commission — allowed Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of Double Click. The ruling, which also requires approval by he European Union, will make it harder for media owners, and perhaps anyone, to compete in the place where the real money is flowing.

The Google acquisition will affect the future of American media by dominating, if not controlling, the way advertising is served on the Internet. By acquiring DoubleClick, Google takes an insurmountable leap by applying technology and knowledge to advertising and marketing. It has the potential to become the only place marketers will go to reach just about anybody.

Google deserves credit, and it has been handsomely rewarded, for a prescient vision about how media and marketing are changing. Its algorithms changed the way people search for information. Now it is changing the way advertising works. It’s secret weapon: the knowledge of us.

Google is currently amassing an enormous capacity for knowing who we are and what we do. It understands that consumers use all forms of media all the time, everywhere. With its unrivaled database, it intends to serve marketers by targeting consumers based on demographics, lifestyle and consumer behavior. With its leading-edge database technology, its lucrative search-ad business, and the possible acquisition of a company that serves 40 percent of the banner advertising on the Internet, Google can dominate the advertising marketplace in the U.S. in ways most media and marketers can’t even fathom.

Moreover, Google assumes a power to enter the private spaces of our lives – our homes, our offices, our vehicles, our shops, and our devices – with news, entertainment and commercial messages aimed specifically at us. What may be good for advertising sounds troubling for the rest of society.

The FTC concluded that Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick will not substantially lessen competition. Few competitors would agree, including media managers from around the world who converged on the Harvard Business School to learn how Google intends to sell targeted advertising in every medium everywhere. “The biggest enemy of everyone in this room is Google,” said Koos Bekker, managing director of Naspers Ltd., a multimedia conglomerate based in South Africa.

Google’s stated mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Which is to say that Google sees a business model in all information and intends to monetize it, even at the expense of privacy.

Google’s founders started with message that was somewhat less imperial: “Do no evil.”
The FTC apparently believes them. The question is: do the rest of us?

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Tribune Company is a U.S. media conglomerate that owns newspapers and television stations coast to coast, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Tribune acquired the LA Times in 2000 when it purchased Times Mirror Co. for $8 billion. All of Tribune, including the Times Mirror assets, is now worth $3.8 billion, according to newspaper analyst Ken Doctor.

Today, a Chicago businessman named Sam Zell took over leadership of Tribune through a complicated transaction involving massive debt and employee ownership. Zell sent this note to investors:

We’ve got a long way to go to shed all the things that tied us down in the past, and to realize the enormous potential we can create. You’ll see a lot of changes in the coming months.

* We will take intelligent risks and reward innovation.

* We will tear down bureaucracy and reward entrepreneurial spirit.

* We will compete fiercely but with integrity.

* We will work hard and have fun.

First thing shed: Dennis FitzSimons, the CEO who led the company to and through the deal with Zell. But shed no tears: FitzSimons took home a severance package said to be worth as much as $40 million, accord to Tribune’s Los Angeles Times.

See: Content Bridges and Editor & Pubisher and LA Times

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MTV, the Associated Press and the Knight Foundation today unveiled “Street Team 08,” a stunning collaboration that could help define newsgathering, distribution and a news-business models into the future.

Made possible by a $700,000 grant through Knight’s News Challenge, MTV has recruited and is equipping 51 young, citizen journalists to cover the 2008 elections through the lenses of their culture. MTV will run the reports as part of its “Choose or Lose” campaign and AP will run select reports on its global, online video network of 1800 media sites.

The project serves as a real-time lab that promises to reveal insights into media usage, youth culture, civic engagement, the prospects for pro-am journalism, and opportunities from non-traditional partnerships. We admire the project and look to learn from it.

Today’s press release:

December 20, 2007 – New York, NY – MTV, as part of its Emmy-winning “Choose or Lose” campaign, today unveiled “Street Team ’08”: a specially recruited group of 51 citizen journalists – one from every state and Washington, D.C. – who will cover the 2008 elections from a youth perspective and tailor their reports for mobile devices. The members will contribute weekly, multi-media reports (short form videos, blogs, animation, photos, podcasts) that will be distributed via a soon-to-launch WAP site, MTV Mobile, Think.MTV.com and to the more than 1,800 sites in the Associated Press Online Video Network. Carefully selected by MTV after an extensive nationwide search, the one-of-a-kind press corps will be armed with mobile media like laptops, video cameras and cell phones, and charged with uncovering the untold political stories that matter most to young people in their respective states.

“Street Team ‘08” members represent every aspect of today’s youth audience – from seasoned student newspaper journalists to documentary filmmakers, the children of once-illegal immigrants to community organizers. They are conservative, liberal, from big cities and small towns. The tie that binds them all is a passion for politics and a yearning to amplify the youth voice during this pivotal election. All of the “Street Team ’08” correspondents will begin reporting early next month, after an intensive MTV News orientation in New York City.

“Recent MTV research shows young people believe their generation will be a major force in determining who is elected in the upcoming local and national elections,” said Ian Rowe, VP of Public Affairs and Strategic Partnership, MTV, “and Street Team ’08 will be a key way for our audience to connect with peers, as well as get informed and engaged on the local and political issues that matter to them most. We’re proud to join with the Knight Foundation on this innovative experiment – which will also explore how coverage of youth-centric election issues can be an effective pathway to increased youth voter turnout and greater political and civic engagement.”

The “Street Team ’08” program is made possible by a $700,000 Knight News Challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Knight News Challenge is an annual worldwide competition awarding $5 million for innovative ideas that use digital media to inform and inspire communities. The Knight Foundation plans to invest at least $25 million over five years in the search for bold community news experiments.

“We hope to find out whether or not our most important political event – the election of a president – matters to young people, and whether or not if matters more when it comes to them through the lens of their issues and the screen of their cell phone,” said Eric Newton, VP/Journalism, Knight Foundation. “We also hope to find out what important youth issues are being overlooked by traditional media as the Street Team coverage goes beyond the presidential horse race.”

In addition to laptops and video cameras, each “Street Team” member will be equipped with best-in-breed tools that will aid in their reporting. Adobe Systems Incorporated is the exclusive software partner for the program, and as part of its Adobe Youth Voices global philanthropy program fostering youth self-expression, the company is outfitting each “Street Team” member with a copy of the Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 Production Premium package – a complete post-production solution, integrating Adobe’s all-new video, audio and design tools. PNY Technologies, a leading supplier of memory modules, flash media, USB drives, graphic cards and other peripherals, and the official flash memory provider of MTV’s Street Team ‘08, is donating high-end SD cards and USB flash drives for all of the correspondents.

A collaboration with the Associated Press will bring select “Street Team ‘08” reports to AP’s Online Video Network, which encompasses more than 1,800 media sites with an aggregate reach of 61 million unique visitors. “AP is constantly adding to its already comprehensive coverage of the 2008 political campaign and this collaborative project fits in with our goal of providing an even wider range of multimedia content,” said Executive Producer for Online Video Kevin Roach.

All 51 of the “Street Team” members have active profiles on Think.MTV.com – MTV’s online community where young people, their friends and some of the biggest names in pop culture come together to bring about positive social change. The Think community, a dedicated WAP site, video services from the industry-leading carriers in the MTV Mobile family and the Associated Press’ Online Video Network will be the primary platforms for the correspondents’ reports. Select stories will also be showcased on other MTV platforms, including MTV, broadcast to 88 million subscribers domestically, MTV2, mtvU and MTV Tr3_s.

The Think Community (Think.MTV.com) is dynamic, multimedia-driven and enables youth to easily learn more about the issues that matter to them most, share their opinions – via uploaded online videos, podcasts and blogs – and connect with others to make a difference. The site is one of the only to reward members for positive actions taken online or off, serving up chances to hang out with socially conscious celebs, access to exclusive MTV events, exposure on MTV and other national media outlets, as well as grants, scholarships and more. Think.MTV.com was built with the help of financial support and expertise from founding partners the Case Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Goldhirsh Foundation and MCJ Amelior Foundation. For more information or to build a profile and become involved, visit Think.MTV.com.

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Three Israeli journalists who traveled to Lebanon and Syria are under investigation by the Israeli police for travel to "enemy" countries. One of them, Lisa Goldman, has been part of the informal We Media community for some time. She participated in the 2006 We Media Global Forum in London, where she rather bravely challenged Al Jazeera’s  portrayal of terrorism and Israel in its Arabic language broadcasts and editions.

Here’s Lisa’s explanation, from her blog, on the current investigation by the Israeli Police.

And here’s her witty analysis of the investigation:

For me, the most hilarious aspect of this whole story is that it has united a virulently anti-Israel blogger and a virulently anti-Arab blogger - although I don’t think they know about one another’s existence. They would probably say that they are vastly different people, but in fact they have a lot in common:

1. They both really, really hate me - one because I am a right-wing Zionist lick spittle, and the other because I am a dangerous, seditious leftist who panders to the Arabs and endangers the security of the state

Here’s more from The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and Agence France Press via The Daily Star of Lebanon.

This is outrageous - but think about it in context: professional journalists, bloggers and ordinary people throughout the Middle East are largely cut off from each other because their countries or cultures prohibit formal contact with each other. Arabs boycott Israel and can’t or won’t meet with Israelis; and Israelis face investigation for threatening state security if they venture into enemy countries.

Blogs, the net and satellite TV certainly bring us all much closer to each other. At next year’s We Media conference we’ll hear from the organizers of the One Voice movement, an attempt to use online organizing tools to unite Israelis and Palestinians around peace. In just a few weeks since the launch of our networking platform, the We Media Community has already seen new members join from all corners of the earth (please join if you haven’t already - go here) . Blogs and multi-lingual aggregators like Global Voices connect us to information and ideas that appear increasingly borderless. Censors in China and other countries must use increasingly sophisticated tools to restrict the flow of knowledge. We are global: Yes, of course.

But walls, borders and policies that emphasize our differences remain daunting challenges to a world that could be made better through media. The We Media community has a long way to go.

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In: Knowledge@Wharton
Dec. 12, 2007
Link: Social Marketing: How Companies Are Generating Value from Customer Input - Knowledge@Wharton

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Another great group of participants is coming together for We Media Miami, Feb. 26-28, 2008. You’ll find registration and other details at: www.wemediamiami.org Here are some of the people we’re expecting to see there:

• Robert Bole, SVP, Media, One Economy Corporation
• Thomas Bosco, VP, Video Sales, FOX Interactive Media
• Jim Brady, Executive Editor, WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive
• Neil Budde, VP and Editor in Chief, Yahoo! News
• James Carlson, CEO, Bucketworks
• Philip Chapnick, President, CMP Game/CMP Technology
• Rick Ducey, EVP, BIA Financial Network
• Kaliya Hamlin, Founder, Unconference.net
• Solana Larson, Co-Managing Editor, Global Voices
• Susan Mernit, Product Manager, Yahoo! Personals
• Joan Peckolick, Founder, Selfchec.org
• Ed Keller, SciArc Mediascapes
• Jim Kennedy, SVP, Strategy, The Associated Press
• Chris Versace, SVP, Agile Equity
• Keith McAllister, CEO, Mochila
• Dariya Shaikh, US Director, Onevoice Movement
• Michael Tippett, Founder, Now Public
• John Todor, Managing Partner, The Whetstone Edge
• Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix
• Sebastian Traeger, CEO, Razoo
• Mark Walsh, CEO, GeniusRocket
• Lawrence Wilkinson, Founder, Global Business Network
• Zia Yusuf, EVP, SAP

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Thanks to the generosity of the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, iFOCOS is offering We Media Fellowships for independent, nonprofit or academic participants from any country to attend We Media 08, in Miami, February 26-28, 2008.

Who’s coming in 08? We hope: you. And many others.
See: http://www.ifocos.org/we-media-miami-2008/participants/

To apply for a fellowship, send an e-mail to info AT ifocos.org, with:

1. What’s your favorite digital tool or online communications service these days - and why?
2. What would you do with technology, communications and digital media services to make the world a better place for more people?
3. What do you hope to get out of attending We Media 08?
   

Applicants are solely responsible for acquiring the proper travel documents to enter the United States. iFOCOS does not provide support or assistance for travel visas and other immigration issues.

Join the We Media Community here: http://my.wemediacommunity.org/

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We’ve forecast the inevitability of The News Wars as news providers continue to lose audience and revenue to online aggregaters who redistribute content that others produce, frequently at great expense. Owing to parochialism and intransigence, newspaper publishers have been unable to either mount a united front or to develop meaningful innovation to compete against the Googles and Yahoos. Stay-the-course strategies and desperate deals with the Evil Axis have only deepened their despair.

A consortium of publishers now plans to launch a long-delayed assault – a kind of D-Day for the Allies. The plan, a search standard called Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP), would give them more say in what search engines are permitted to do with the content published on news sites. Associated Press CEO Tom Curley said the standard could block sites from distributing content without permission. “If you want our content, we expect to be paid for it,” Curley told paidcontent’s Rafat Ali. “This nonsense that you can just take the first paragraph or use the picture small doesn’t really fly with us. People die trying to take those pictures.” Sounds like war.

News companies could suffer costly casualties in such a war. By attempting to drive news consumers to their sites by blocking search engines from linking to content, they put at risk the largest conduits of traffic to their sites: the search engines and networks that steer people to news and information online. Those users are likely to exercise brand promiscuity – their reliance on multiple brands and supplemental sourcing – as they discover additional alternatives to content. The publishers would also face a formidable backlash from a marketplace that expects open access, as well as from advertisers who require it.

Publishers already have the ability to tag stories so search engines can’t index them. So why change the standard? A smarter tactic would be to beat the enemy at its own game by creating a superior value proposition – an engine that returns results based on context and relevance, rather than popularity.

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Google’s pursuit of all things media remains relentless. In recent weeks it announced its Android operating system for mobile phones, its OpenSocial standard to link applications across major social-networking sites, and filed a patent application for a magazine of sorts that would allow users to collate Web content around which Google would wrap targeted ads. Additionally, Google has accelerated its push into traditional media with a jobs-ads initiative as well as a digital, auction-based platform for buying and selling to TV and print publications. All of which multiplies the arenas into which Google can sell advertising, from which it derives 99% of its revenue. The formula is familiar: Sell ads around content it doesn’t own; return some of that revenue to the owner of the content; repeat. Good strategy. Google’s revenues almost tripled, to $11.8 billion, in the first nine months of ‘07 and its stock price approached $700 a share. Allergic to owning content, Google sneezes money

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A study by Nokia forecasts that 25 percent of the entertainment consumed by people in five years time will have been created, edited and shared within their peer circle rather than created by traditional media groups. Nokia calls it “circular entertainment.”

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2007 has been celebrated for digital innovation in U.S. politics. The Huffington Post teamed with Slate and Yahoo! for the first online “mash-up” debate. MTV and MySpace launched instant-messaging forums for online viewers to send questions in real time to presidential candidates. And, of course, all the candidates launched spunky web sites that feature videos of the “real” candidate. Our favorite political moment came during the first CNN-YouTube debate when Democratic candidates fielded a video question from a talking snowman that asked about global warming. How did we ever make informed decisions before digital technology enhanced our democracy by empowering citizens, engaging them in meaningful civic discourse, and exposing manipulation by the candidates and the media?

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Are you crunchy? No, that’s not  code for your political leanings, or your eating habits, or the length of your armpit hair. Get with the times, for they are a’changin. It’s code for your digital-business-award-worthiness. Of course. Maybe you’ve already won a Webby; or a Bloggy; maybe you’ve made it to the Always On Top 100 Companies list. Now try the Crunchies, from a consortium of hippy freak do-gooders - uh, no, from tech’s most influential tech startup blogs: TechCrunch, GigaOM, ReadWrite Web, and VentureBeat. I was impressed when Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff at Forrester Research added a  Social Impact category to their Groundswell Awards earlier this year. The Crunchies have followed suit, with a category for "Most Likely To Make The World A Better Place." That’s great. But seeing it among 18 other categories, like Best Video Site, Best CEO, Best Time Sink and Best International Startup, makes me wonder what kind of impact a competition like the Crunchies might have if making the world a better place was the only category. But maybe that’s too crunchy for the times.

See: The Crunchies

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It was an emotional morning at the Lake Anne Coffee House where I get my start-of-the-day latte and early take on the day’s current events.

Retirees Tom and Bill were at their usual table talking leisurely over cheese Danish. Each wore their Redskins baseball caps, maroon faded by years of sunlight and memories. Young men trickled in wearing Redskins football jerseys, the number 21 and name “Taylor” emblazoned on their backs, waiting for the neighborhood barber-shop-and-discussion-forum next door to open. A group of mothers gathered in the cramped seating room for their pre-school coffee klatch, wheeling their children in cushy strollers, one bearing a young passenger bundled for the chill morning with Redskins stocking hat and matching booties.

The talk was of the life and death of Sean Taylor. Everyone in our small corner of Reston knew the story at 8:15 a.m. on Tuesday, November 27, 2007.

Entering the coffee shop I spotted the stack of newspapers by the front entrance. One story dominated the front page of The Washington Post under this headline: “Redskins’ Taylor Critically Hurt In Shooting at His Home in Fla.”

My reaction was that of an old friend who had to deliver bad news to the uninformed.

Everyone in the coffee shop — well, maybe not the pre-schoolers — knew the sad truth, which partially explains why so many newspapers were still on the rack. They had learned about Taylor’s death, which occurred about 5:30 a.m., from television and radio reports, from Internet sites on which they were following developments, and word-of-mouth from friends, family, colleagues and contacts during the early-morning round of their daily lives.

The Post, which went to press the night before, was hopelessly dated.

What’s a newspaper to do? It takes time for reporters to report, editors to edit, designers to design, presses to print, trucks to transport, and carriers to deliver to households throughout metropolitan Washington. The process, formerly known as “the daily miracle,” takes at least a day. To get newspapers on doorsteps by 7 a.m. deadlines start at least a half-day before delivery. So the news in the morning papers occurs a day or more before you get a chance to read about it. Or to put it another way, yesterday’s news tomorrow.

That’s a big problem for newspapers like The Post. The times demand immediacy. Consumers want news from a variety of trusted sources and platforms across media and society.

Steve Klein, journalism professor at George Mason University and a former sports editor, learned about Taylor’s death at 5:55 a.m. by watching the local NBC affiliate WRC News4. About ten minutes later he received an email update on his computer from washingtonpost.com. Klein remained glued to the screens and a variety of sources throughout the day for the latest developments, communicating with his network of friends and colleagues as he learned and shared information.

Meantime, Post beat reporter Jason La Canfora started reporting Taylor’s death at 6:02 a.m. on his Redskins Insider blog, which he updated throughout the day. Hundreds of networked journalists did the same, stirred by affinity with the Redskins, media coverage, networking with other fans, and sheer emotion.

La Canfora was arguably the best of the bunch. In frequent updates he referred to Taylor, a player known to distrust reporters, as “Sean.” La Canfora also expressed personal feelings in his blog, a reporting practice that is generally discouraged in newspapers. He even took time to do something that most reporters avoid: he communicated with readers as the story unfolded, responding to hundreds of emails.

All of which begs the question: What were The Post’s newspaper editors thinking?

One answer comes from newsroom culture, a cultish ecosystem of knowledge processing of which I was part for about thirty years. Most of the news that goes around between reporters and editors is based on the assumption that they know more about the news than the audience.

The assumption is almost always wrong. Audiences in today’s connected society are incredibly informed, sometimes incorrectly, through dozens of sources including the original ones that were once exclusive to journalists. News tumbles through the mediascape, changing as it goes. What is not known at a publishing deadline will certainly be exposed through additional information and sourcing later.

On Tuesday, The Post had a web site with immediate, impressive reach and continuous updates. It had a dedicated, tireless reporter wired into sources and developments. It had an entire community connected emotionally to a story of enormous local interest. But on the day Sean Taylor died, readers of the local newspaper got this: “Redskins’ Taylor Critically Hurt In Shooting at His Home in Fla.”

Jason La Canfora’s byline appeared on the story, but the immediacy and emotional connection he brought to it through his blog were edited out.

The Post has one of the most comprehensive Internet operations in news media. Yet the newspaper marginalized it with a throwback approach on newsprint. The day’s newspaper barely referenced exceptional, developing coverage online. It made the crucial mistake of looking back at a story that events were certain to overtake. And it deleted a vital connection it desperately needs to enhance: the emotional connection between stories and storytellers. There are ways to do that, even in print.

It could be that newspapers will one day cover breaking news on digital screens but not on printed pages. It could be that a new kind of journalism will emerge to inform society, set a civil agenda for civic discourse, and handsomely reward its best practitioners. It could be that news companies will flourish on the Internet. But for now I am certain of only one thing: on Tuesday, a newspaper became less relevant in yet another part of daily life.

Dale Peskin is a former editor and news executive who currently serves as managing director of iFOCOS.

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One of the roles of media is to help people understand the world so we can make informed decisions - and then take action. The daily flood of news and information from all the big media institutions we love and love to hate is one approach to learning, sifting, filtering and evaluating all this information. Longer form magazines, books, documentaries, films, formal education and art are another. Talking and listening to friends, family and people we trust is yet another. It’s all so … much. What if you could put all of that wisdom and process in a blender and turn it into some sort of info power drink?

Technorati Tags: wikis, wemedia

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The daily newspaper in Norfolk, Virginia, announced on Oct. 23, in an anonymous editorial, that its anonymous editorial section will no longer endorse candidates for the U.S. presidency. "Presidential elections are not our beat," The Virginian-Pilot editorial said. "Our time is best spent on local and state problems, or those national ones that bear directly on us." Not like the U.S. presidency, even if it does have something or other to do with all those aircraft carriers and assorted shippy things at the U.S. Navy base in Norfolk. This is one newspaper that is taking a dramatic stand for the new new in newspapers, the call of the hyper-uber-maximus local local everything. The response to the new "no comment" stand on future presidents either validates the change, or should inspire the unnamed editorialists to find new work, fast. The newspaper’s public editor, Marvin Lake, wrote a few days after the announcement:

"I envisioned a spirited discussion, with readers reacting strongly, pro and con, one side accusing the paper of abdicating its "responsibility"; the other, declaring "It’s about time!" Guess what? It didn’t happen. I didn’t get a single phone call about the announcement. Nary an e-mail.

Ouch.

In fairness, the public editor, who does attach his name to his words, was a tad tough on the public. There were 31 comments on the original editorial. Which leads to yet another icky question: could it be that the public editor is even more ignored than the editorialists? Double ouch.

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