In an open letter to craigslist, Steve Outing asks its founders and operators to help save the newspaper industry from itself. My response:

Steve,

It takes real chutzpah to ask Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of craigslist to help newspapers salvage their classifieds businesses and thus save democracy, or at least the part of it that newspapers presumably foster.

Your clever open letter to them, at the same time congratulating and blaming, misplaces responsibility. It assumes they have the authority to solve a problem that the news industry inflicted upon itself: how to replace a subsidy predicated on controlling and authoritarian business practices.

Steve, I can’t decide if your modest proposal is naive, self-serving or tragically poetic.

Craig Newmark never set out to disrupt the newspaper industry. Motivated only by helping people out, he created a simple list for his friends, initially distributed through email, and later on the Internet when one friend showed him how to create a Web page. Their trust in him, as well as a passion for serving others through technology, gave craigslist its authority.

You miss the magic of craigslist. It is Craig’s “friends” — a community that has grown to 40 million people a month in 500 U.S. cities and 50 countries (larger than all news sites combined by several factors) — who disrupted newspaper classifieds. Call them users, customers, an audience, a market, or marketplace, they discovered that through craigslist they could do for themselves what others charged excessively in order to handsomely subsidize their businesses.

Trust in Craig, still craigslist’s chief customer service representative, remains at the heart of it. So are democratic, open markets: the right of the people to conduct commerce and journalism among and between themselves.

Meantime, newspapers charged premium prices for access to an arcane classification system that published a few, annotated lines of shorthand in very small type at the back of a dense product with limited, daily distribution. The hard-to-find, hard-to-read, one-way advertisements were distributed to parts of a relatively small geographic region for sellers and buyers to discover, at least those who happened to buy the newspaper and read the classifieds section on the very day they were prepared to make a transaction.

For a lousy experience, newspapers in growth markets such as Dallas, Denver and San Jose made hundreds of millions of dollars that drove margins of 30 per cent or more with these high-yield liners.

The experience was not significantly improved by importing this business to the online version of the newspaper. What didn’t work in print didn’t work online.

Newspapers used their profits not to expand their social mission, but rather to drive the stock price of the companies that owned them, to finance acquisitions, to reward management, and to acquire additional wealth through cost-management: death by acquisition accelerated by cutting their way to profitability.

Financing news operations has never been much a part of it; ask any editor who has asked for budget increases or additional staff to cover a society growing increasingly complex and competitive. The moral imperative is a myth perpetuated by editors and journalists, not by the publishers you (Steve) are asking Craig and Jim to help.

Now, other forms and systems – a collaborative, more democratic Fifth Estate, if you will — are emerging to replace an institution that is broken. Almost anyone can deploy the simple technology that craiglist uses. Anyone can participate in its journalism and commerce.

Publishers would be better served by implementing enlightened business strategies with a passionate consumer connection at its core. Until then, they will continue to be cast in a survival drama of their own making.

Newspapers are like a broken satellite falling of orbit. The technology is failing; the mission may soon be scuttled. To stay in orbit, the engineers must repair and update the technology systems. More importantly, the flight controllers must restore trust in the mission and its results by relinquishing control. Otherwise, Satellite Newspaper – classifieds and all — will burn up in the atmosphere.

Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster may be talented astronauts, but they shouldn’t go down with the pilots of their competitors’ obsolete ships.

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The Orange County Register confirmed it will outsource copy editing and page layout to an editorial services company based outside New Delhi, India. So much for local knowledge and the sense of place that only local publishers can deliver.

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Jay Rosen has posted his cogent take on “semi-pro journalism” on TechPresident. Provocative metaphor about the news tribe and its survival drama.

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At this week’s Personal Democracy Forum, a sponsor distributed a low-tech, but highly effective stress toy to attendees willing to listen to their pitch: a rubber ball on an elastic string that connects to a velcro band. Strap the band to your finger and you can play catch with yourself. Which is what I came to PdF to do. To my surprise, I also liked the pitch. The sponsor, a division of Washington-based public affairs consultants, uses the Internet, software and analytical brainpower to track story lines and news coverage to measure influence. Which, in a way, is what I do, too.

I discovered that a lot of folks came to PdF for the same reasons. They played catch with familiar ideas. And they used the event to measure influence, familiar and emerging. PdF soared with both activities. An impressive roster of speakers from the converging worlds of political action, civic technologies and individual empowerment stimulated, and occasionally stirred, a network of Web buddies and budding online politicos.

Missing an Aha! moment that changes the world, PdF is more noteworthy for its momentum. At this moment, you can feel democracy shifting amid civic engagement enabled by technology. PdF is a forum where you can almost get your head around that big idea. Organizers Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifrey deserve as much praise for their impeccable timing as their star-studded roster of speakers. In two days of dense programming, content frequently rose to the level of the venue, the stunning Frederick Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center overlooking New York’s Central Park.

Playing catch on an elastic string, a few highlights and insights:

– FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, high-profile tech execs and industry advocates launch an initiative to make broadband access a national priority in the U.S.

– Lawrence Lessig touts the Change Congress movement by using every distracting feature in Keynote.

– Arianna Huffington declares that she knows The Truth that others don’t. About 50 people in the audience who blog at Huffington Post say they agree with her.

– Jay Rosen likens professional journalists to a migrating tribe in the midst of a survival drama.

– Mayhill Fowler demonstrates why she’d be irrelevant without a tape recorder. Did anyone actually read her story (lead buried somewhere in the 7th graph)?

– Virtual Reality pioneer Mark Pesce forecasts that the future looks nothing like democracy “because democracy, which sought to empower the individual, is being obsolesced by a social order which hyperempowers him.” The brilliant-but-huh? text here.

– Obama Girl, because she was there.

– Elizabeth Edwards charms the conference via Skype from her living room because her flight is canceled. Husband, John, the former presidential candidate, wanders into the room and is surprised to find his wife talking into a computer.

– Mark Soohoo, the deputy internet director of John McCain’s campaign, defends his boss for not personally understanding how to use a computer. Tracy Russo, Soohoo’s counterpart on Edwards’ former campaign, takes issue. Then fireworks. The video:

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Christy Bradford, who taught me how to be an editor, died late last week at her home in Kansas City. She had been teaching journalism at the University of Kansas since 1999.

I love the description of Christy by her students at KU: “combination den mother/drill sergeant.” It was the same for us in her newsroom, a creative yet disciplined place where Christy gently demanded — and usually got — our best.

I suppose that many of us look back at a time when people, relationships, and work converged in a moment that we were meant to be a part. I had more of those moments in Detroit than I deserve, and Christy was at the heart of them. In a place as tough as a Detroit, she could find the deeper of meaning of events that became the hallmark of coverage at The Detroit News for a few extraordinary years. It was never easy, but it was always intoxicating. No one understood the ingredients of a good story more than Christy. No one had more fun stirring them into something meaningful or fun. She was a friend who taught me to be a good editor, and a editor who became a good friend.

Never sentimental, she understood that when it was time to go, it was time to go. Too soon. Too soon.

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For the past week I’ve been playing with the private “alpha” of a new social bookmarking tool called socialmedian. You can also give it a try. To register as a tester, use this code on the signup page: wemedia. (This code is available for 100 testers).
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What would you do to provide a better news service for your community? Or for any community? David Cohn, one of our We Media Fellows at this year’s We Media Miami conference, is trying to ferret out good ideas for one community, San Jose, California, from an obvious source: people who live there.

On April 19 he’s ripping a page from the tech world and organizing an “unconference” to help the San Jose Mercury News talk with and learn from, well, anyone. He’s calling the effort CopyCamp, an homage to BarCamp and FooCamp, events for software developers and techies without a fixed agenda. They set an agenda, then try to come up with brilliant ideas, new code or at least new friends.

What brilliant ideas, new code or new friends might CopyCampers come up with?
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More than 300 people from 13 countries gathered last week in Miami for our annual deep dive into the emergence of We Media as a defining force for the connected society. We’re already working on several big ideas we heard to take the conversation forward – through new research, the We Media Community, member working groups and other projects. We hope you’ll get involved – and dive in to the follow-up discussion now. You can review notes, audio (video archives coming soon) and add your own responses in the conference blog.

More to come soon.

First – in case you missed it – here are two big news items announced at We Media Miami that you should review if you missed them last week:

Technorati Tags: journalism, philanthropy, socialentrepreneurs, wemedia

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Sponsored by Washington Post – newsweek Interactive

Location: Storer Auditorium at 4:15 pm

Session Chair: Hal Straus, Interactivity and Communities Editor, Washingtonpost.com

Robin Miller, Editor, Slashdot/SourceForge

Slashdot has a multilayered moderation system for ranking comments. “If you ever get into a content rating system, do *not* call it ‘karma’.” Slashdot moderators are selected at random, and these moderators can rank comments up or down. If you’ve posted a comment, you can’t moderate. To control for group-think, Slash-Dot has “meta-moderators” a small, selected, voluntary group of “super moderators.”

Must haves:

1. Users must be able to rate things up and down.

2. Should, below a certain threshold, should comments be visible?

3. Many users doing few moderations–spread the love.

Steve Arend, Vice President Digital media Services, CMP Technology

I saw opportunities to take “noise” away from what other people want. We are producing a virtual trade show, 2nd life, where you can go in and interact with those who create the products you’re interested in. We have had cases in 2nd life, where we’ve had semi-unanimous interruptions, where we allow interactions to happen, but with the knowledge I can literally throw them off the (2nd Life) island.

There’s noise from the sales side, the engineering side, and from consumers. In the virtual world, that’s the closest I’d seen to real life. Because you can interrupt the audio portion, just like in real life. (View video clip 1.)

Links:

http://life20.net http://howmachineswork.com

Mark Jones, Global Community Editor for Reuters

Question: What’s the worst that can happen?

We try and pull in the best of the rest of the web, what other sites are saying on various topics. Global Voices-Voices without Votes. We cover what major nations around the world are doing around elections, bringing in bloggers from around the world. For instance, you can see what global bloggers are saying about US elections. However, this skews content if the blogosphere is skewed all on its own.

How do you make it clear to users that there is a difference between blogger comments and stories, and Reuters itself? Our single biggest compliant from the public is on neutrality. We get these from users, and also our network of journalists. They feel a little hurt that we’re putting resources towards other’s work. But the last thing we want is for our journalists to feel “dissed.”

Handling comments….For an organization like Reuters, which is keen on neutrality, we have all sorts of problems with comments on blogs. We haven’t cracked the burden of moderation back to the audience. I naively thought, when I started editor’s started blogs, that when we were attacked, that our supporters would ride in and save us–and they did the first few times. But then, there turned to be some mob-rule and our cheerleaders sort of got scared away.

Finally, I really want to get the two sides–journalists and commenters–to enrich the discussion. But until we have a civil discourse, the journalists just aren’t going to engage.

www.blogs.reuters.com

Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix

The real promise of the internet is interactivity. A system that gets more people engaged (even if there are inappropriate comments), is better than a system than doesn’t get people engaged. We’re trying to get the highest number of people engaged. We have over 400,000 topics, all across the globe.

When the cartoons about the Prophet Mohamed appeared on the net, we got over 2,000 comments, when we geo-located where these comments were coming from, we found most of the comments were coming from Scandinavia and the Middle East. Over time, middle ground developed. “We look at it as, are we getting an increasing amount of people, and it’s a Darwinian product, and the one that has the most people wins”.

http://blog.topix.com

General Conversation

About journalists interacting with and within the comments:

“They’re highly skeptical about this. Getting bothered with questions from users, but they’re kinda intrigued by it. They see their job as to talk to policy makers and heads of companies.” -Mark Jones

“The San Francisco Chronicle, uses the public as a club to make a point and support what they’re saying–to use it against the people who are against them. …I think a year or two from now, I will bet you a lot of money, that journalists will take comments and publish them in their stories. ” -Chris Tolles

“At the Post, we have the need to be objective, and we’ve had a lot of our opinion writers who have gotten into the ring with our commenters. For one thing, they worry about this because they’re ‘working without a net.’ -Where they’re not editorialized.” -Hal Straus

Interaction from the audience (not all who participated, but the closest person to me that I could get info from):

Jean-Baptiste, with Le Liberation.fr, where there is a web-comment page within the hardcopy newspaper. These comments are edited and selected before being printed. http://liberation.fr/actualite/media/2293555.fr.php

Other sites mentioned as having interesting interactivity features:

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/

PS Video of this event will be posted to this blog today, it was not available immediately.

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For the second year in a row we’ve documented a devastating lack of satisfaction with journalism in American – and an opportunity to do something about it. Here’s the formal press release of the new research, which we discussed in the opening session of this year’s We Media Miami Forum and Festival. The good news: Americans believe journalism is important. The bad news: They don’t like or trust the journalism in their communities. One thing is clear: Our forecast from four years ago of “the digital everything” has arrived – the Internet is the primary source of news for more people than any other. There’s no going back. The widespread dissatisfaction with traditional journalism could be viewed ominously, by those who produce and sell it, as a cause for alarm, a reflection of ongoing decline and a likely foreshadowing of further decline. But for the We Media culture a tremendous opportunity emerges – not only to produce better and more trusted journalism but to build better communities around it. In the We Media culture that’s an opportunity for everyone, including but by no means limited to those who think of themselves as media companies or professionals. Civic groups, healthcare companies, nonprofits, local governments and activists are starting to flex their muscles as story-tellers too. The future, like the past, will be full of stories. – Andrew Nachison

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Two thirds of Americans – 67% – believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

Meanwhile, the online survey documented the shift away from traditional sources of news, such as newspapers and TV, to the Internet – most dramatically among so-called digital natives – people under 30 years old.

Nearly half of respondents (48%) said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, an increase from 40% who said the same a year ago. Younger adults were most likely to name the Internet as their top source – 55% of those age 18 to 29 say they get most of their news and information online, compared to 35% of those age 65 and older.

These oldest adults are the only age group to favor a primary news source other than the Internet, with 38% of these seniors who said they get most of their news from television. Overall, 29% said television is their main source of news, while fewer said they turn to radio (11%) and newspapers (10%) for most of their news and information. Just 7% of those age 18 to 29 said they get most of their news from newspapers, while more than twice as many (17%) of those age 65 and older list newspapers as their top source of news and information.

Web sites are regarded as a more important source of news and information than traditional media outlets – 86% of Americans said Web sites were an important source of news, with more than half (56%) who view these sites as very important. Most also view television (77%), radio (74%), and newspapers (70%) as important sources of news, although fewer than say the same about blogs (38%).

The Zogby Interactive survey of 1,979 adults nationwide was conducted Feb. 20-21, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points. The survey results were announced at this week’s fourth-annual We Media Forum and Festival in Miami, hosted by the University of Miami School of Communication and organized and produced by iFOCOS, a Reston, Va.-based media think tank (www.ifocos.org). This is the second year of the survey.

“For the second year in a row we have documented a crisis in American journalism that is far more serious than the industry’s business challenges – or maybe a consequence of them,” said Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS. “Americans recognize the value of journalism for their communities, and they are unsatisfied with what they see. While the U.S. news industry sheds expenses and frets about its future, Americans are dismayed by its present.

“Meanwhile, we see clearly the generational shift of digital natives from traditional to online news – so the challenge for traditional news companies is complex. They need to invest in new products and services – and they have. But they’ve also got to invest in quality, influence and impact. They need to invest in journalism that makes a difference in people’s lives. That’s a moral and leadership challenge – and a business opportunity for whoever can meet it.”

The survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources – nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%).

Other findings from the survey include:

• Although the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism (64%), overall satisfaction with journalism has increased to 35% in this survey from 27% who said the same in 2007.
• Both traditional and new media are viewed as important for the future of journalism – 87% believe professional journalism has a vital role to play in journalism’s future, although citizen journalism (77%) and blogging (59%) are also seen as significant by most Americans.
• Very few Americans (1%) consider blogs their most trusted source of news, or their primary source of news (1%).
• Three in four (75%) believe the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.
• 69% believe media companies are becoming too large and powerful to allow for competition, while 17% believe they are the right size to adequately compete.

Republicans (79%) and political independents (75%) are most likely to feel disenchanted with conventional journalism, but the online survey found 50% of Democrats also expressed similar concerns. Those who identify themselves as “very conservative” were among the most dissatisfied, with 89% who view traditional journalism as out of touch.

Further Details: Zogby Methodological statement

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Since the presidential campaign began for the 2008 United States election,mainstream media coverage of the campaign never stopped amazing me at all.Matter of fact is,this is my first ever election campaign i have literally seen in the United States.

And though i occasionally watched other U.S. presidential campaigns and elections while still in Africa via CNN,BBC and other international broadcasters, this one is special to me because it happens to involve a black male and the first ever female running for president in the United States.

Though my native Liberia has produced the first ever elected Female head of state in Africa, i am having a very difficult time deciding when and how race plays a part in reporting the election campaign.

Though many Americans(including the very democratic front-runners-Hillary and Obama)say race has nothing to do with the 2008 presidential election,i am subtling leaning toward thinking and believing that race does have a major part to play in the up-coming election as seen during these primaries and caucuses that seem not to end now for the democratic party.

And as a journalist who lived and worked in a third world country where it becomes difficult most of the time to be relatively objective and unbias during election times,many questions are on mind:

When is race not the story? But then how to cover the “white”, “black” or “yellow” hot issues of politics and race?How can a journalist deconstruct the forms of racial and ethnic identifications that most often appear in news stories? How best can a journalist describe the way people look during elcetions that involve race?

Then,is it wrong or right for a journalist to vote during primaries and caucuses and at the same time report the news fairly and accurately?

As we( i am flying in next week too) prepare to descend on Miami next week,i hope i could get a rather clear understanding of the above questions. We Media 2008,here we come.

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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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The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is offering big bucks to support innovation in community journalism. The deadline for this year’s Knight News Challenge is Oct. 15. This is a big deal, especially in the U.S. where the commercial news industry is in decline. But it’s a big deal everywhere – in a connected culture, innovation ignores geographic boundaries. If you’ve got a project in the works, or a brilliant idea percolating, I urge you to send your ideas to Knight.

Go here for details on how to apply: www.newschallenge.org.

Technorati Tags: journalism, philanthropy, investment, socialentrepreneurs

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Here’s an interesting collaboration that nicely illustrates how seemingly different agendas can intersect: The Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog organization that focuses on expanding online access to information about the U.S. Congress, is collaborating with NewsTrust, a kind of non-profit Digg designed as a platform to evaluate the trustworthiness of online journalism.
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Topix.net  sponsored Podtech.net to produce a "man on the street" video, asking a few ordinary people (and a few not-so-ordinary media insiders, like webware.com editor Rafe Needleman, KQED Executive Director of News Raul Ramirez and craigslist founder Craig Newmark): "What’s missing from local news?"

They also posed the question to a few people at this week’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Obviously it was a loaded question. I’d say fairly loaded given the widepread dissatisfaction with journalism in the U.S. Our research earlier this year  found that 72 percent of Americans are dissatisified with the quality of American journalism.

Common answers in this video: Too little relevancy, too much sad and depressing stuff.

Sigh. Another plea for happy news. Maybe that’s the Podtech niche.

Check it out here: What is Missing from Local News?

Sidenote: Podtech should have been clearer about the nature of this video. The video is explained this way:

"To commemorate Topix’s revamped site, PodTech’s Rio Pesino traveled around San Francisco and attended the Web 2.0 Expo asking journalists, bloggers, and locals what is missing from local news."

Topix CEO Rich Skrenta tells me his company sponsored the video. I have no problem with that. But Podtech should have said so more clearly. The video includes Topix logos at the beginning and end. That may be clear enough for some, or maybe Podtech regulars understand that all its content is sponsored. I don’t know if it is or isn’t, and that’s my point. I can’t tell. I don’t know what the deal is at that site.

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