Last night Mary and I attended an outdoor concert at the Wolf Trap Center for Performing Arts with friends. On a perfect summer night, we claimed a patch of grass on the hillside, uncorked a couple bottles of wine with a gourmet picnic dinner, and talked about the things that friends talk about as we awaited Lyle Lovett and His Large Band.

Our friend Mark asked me if I had seen an amazing video. Best catch he had ever seen. Ball girl streaks down the left field line at minor league baseball game, climbs the corner of the wall like Spiderman, jumps and turns to catch the foul ball at the peak of her outstretched arm. She lands softly on the field, casually tosses the ball to the stunned leftfielder, then jogs back to her seat with a wry smile as the play-by-play announcer describes the action in breathless detail.

Unbelievable, said Mark. I hated to break it to him. It was.

The video sweeping the Internet is a masterstroke of deception, a staged event designed to create buzz through viral marketing. Chicago ad agency Element 79 created it for Gatorade. When the ball girl sits down after the amazing catch, there’s a bottle of the power drink at her feet. The implication is that the beverage has imbued her with athletic powers worthy of a Sports Center highlight reel. The payoff is not so much in the subtle product placement, but in the buzz that eventually becomes associated with the product.

The real story is how marketers can use social media to manipulate consumers as well as reality. Ball girl is actually stunt girl Phoenix Brown. Film director Baker Smith shot the “catch” after a Fresno Grizzlies-Tacoma Rainiers game last month by attaching Brown to wires and having two stunt men yank her up the wall. Smith combined footage taken during and after the game, then created the illusion of the spectacular catch on his computer using software known as computer-generated imagery (CGI).

The marketing manipulation is so slick that Element 79 never released the video, thereby distancing itself and its client from criticism about the video’s true motives. “Ball Girl” was posted on You Tube by a filmmaker associated with the agency. It has been viewed about 4 million times, has received a glowing review from Advertising Age, and been featured on CNN and ABC’s Good Morning America. Now word is spreading at a concert outside Washington, D.C.

Gatorade has acknowledged that the video has reached critical mass and helped associate its brand with popular culture. While many now know the spectacular feat associated with a power drink is a special effect, a Gatorade spokesperson says millions are still entertained by it.

But many web watchers are still fooled. From the top returns on Google:

Break.com: “A minor league ball girl makes an incredible catch on a foul ball in left field. Her coach later informed her that there is no crying in Baseball.

Digg.com: “Warning: The Content in this Article May be InaccurateReaders have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.”

Feministe: “Love this.”

And, of course, You Tube, the top return: “Amazing ball girl catch. This is the most amazing thing ever”

So we lay back on the lawn, gazed at the stars above, and listened to Lyle and his gifted ensemble elevate our souls with true music and poetry. Pure, real, amazing ….

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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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Nokia, which is obsessive about consumer research, is showing the world how to innovate from the outside-in by collecting ideas globally for free at or low cost.

At Nokia Beta Labs, the Finnish handset maker lets users test the latest smartphone software. Instead of people recording silly Web cam videos for YouTube or inventing frivolous advocacy groups on Facebook, they help make the mobile Internet more useful.

At Nokia Trends Lab, creative thinkers push the boundaries of how to use mobile technology as part of the creative process through film, music, photography and design. Thousands attend collaborative events and independent experiments around the world, all designed make Nokia devices and products more valuable to them.

At Nokia.com the company allows users to share and rate applications they have created such as screen-savers or games. Over the past year, Nokia designers have traveled to the developing world to ask users to sketch their own dream cell phones.

At its public Research Center, Nokia posted a mobile phone application called Sports Tracker designed to let runners and cyclists take advantage of the global positioning capability included in some Nokia models. Users can record workout data such as speed and distance, and can plot routes. More than 1 million people downloaded the widget and used it for sports the developers never dreamed of, such as paragliding, hot-air ballooning, and motorcycle riding.

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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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Here are the slides (PDF) from Dale’s presentation today at the NewsPaper Association of America conference in Washington, DC. (Current membership and login required for download. To join or renew, click here.)

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Social media is all the rage. But why? Why is the connected society becoming so relentlessly social? Are we smitten with the technical cleverness of Facebook and MySpace? Do we revel in the empowerment of distribution and sharing offered by YouTube, Digg and Twitter? Are we simply fools for anything new - or for the newest frontier of digital business opportunities (and cycles)? Are we like the drones in the 1985 Apple commercial – unwittingly following the crowd? Or, are there deeper human drives at work? Are there psychological and sociological reasons behind people’s eagerness to connect? In this brief guest post, psychologist and business strategist John I. Todor offers a psycho-social view of the growth of social networks and the human behaviors and aspirations reflected in the digital experience. - Andrew Nachison

Long before social media and networks such as Facebook and MySpace arrived on the scene, people were affected by rapid innovation in technology and constant change. It is difficult to keep up with what’s happening in one’s own field or area of special interest. But it is nearly impossible to avoid anxiety, frustration, and confusion when the world around you changes in unpredictable ways.

Certainly we all feel frustration when confronted with new technology. Most often we figure it out and eliminate the confusion. Or do we? Everyone knows how to use Microsoft Word. However, most people use a very limited set of capabilities. They get by until they have a need to do something new, like place a photo in a block of text. Figuring out how can be a lesson in frustration.

Our reality is that we live in a world of abundance and overwhelming choice and, while it may seem paradoxical, these conditions push us out of our psychological comfort zones.¹ We also must contend with information overload, the stress of dealing with the uncertainty and complexity brought on by change, and the time pressures associated with living in a 24/7, always-on world. All of these factors erode our sense of orderliness and safety. They reduce our sense of control, our ability to predict events in the external world. Often we cope by finding a temporary fix or we find ways to avoid these situations. It is easy to assume that each episode has only a temporary negative effect. The evidence, however, reveals a much more pervasive and enduring societal impact.

Recent research presents compelling evidence that anxiety, stress, depression², aggravation³, distrust⁴ and procrastination⁵ have all increased at a societal level. So have alienation, loneliness⁶ and our social connectedness⁷. At a personal level we are disengaged^8,9 or indifferent in more and more situations. This impacts self-esteem and our psychological system’s ability to adapt. At an interpersonal level, we are less connected, especially in trusting relationships that we can count on when the chips are down.

The Need for Sense Making

The human psychological system is remarkable in its ability to make sense out of uncertainties, face what was once complex, and make it understandable and predictable. It enables us to regain a sense of predictability and control. What once created anxiety or frustration is replaced by a new sense of order. This is fundamental to one’s self-esteem which reflects an inward knowledge of being able to adjust to change, to thrive, and even desire the new and novel. It is a critical aspect of mental well being and the foundation of happiness.

In his book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age,¹⁰ Dan Pink argues that we have plenty of information; in fact, we face too much information and too much uncertainty coming at us too fast. As a consequence we struggle with finding understanding and value in change. When we do, it is psychologically rewarding and it enables us to derive experiential value from our new insights.

Relationships and Communities

How does this need for sense making relate to our need for social connectedness? Research by Robert Kelly of Carnegie Mellon University brings it clearly into focus. In 1986 when he asked people what percentage of the knowledge they needed to do their job was inside their own head, the average estimate was 75%. By 1997 the average estimate was below 20%. You can imagine what it is today! We are dependent on relationships with others to deal with knowledge explosion and increasing complexity. Kelly was asking people about their job where they were paid to be competent.¹¹

What about the average citizens trying to adapt to waves of change in virtually all aspects of their lives?

Relationships are the essential medium. However, for relationships to work there must be mutual trust. Without trust there is lack of the openness or intimacy required to allow the relationship to focus on issues.

Peers rank at the top of trust scales. Why? Because there is a shared perspective. Recommendations of friends or associates are contextually relevant. If it is meaningful to them, it is likely to be meaningful to us. The stronger the trust in the relationship, the more credibility we put in the recommendation.

Peer review and consumer generated content are highly trusted, even though they may be posted by someone we don’t personally know. Why is this? Other consumers tend to describe the experiential aspects of purchasing a product and, importantly, focus on the experiential value derived from using the product.

In contrast, trust in companies, their marketing and employees ranks in the bottom third of trust scales. As a result, interactions between customers and companies tend to focus on the economic transaction. Lacking trusted relationships, customers focus on the best trade-off between price and convenience and companies find they must repeatedly compete with each other to win each sale.

Social theorists make a distinction between weak tie relationships and strong tie relationships. In the social networking world, most ties or connections are relatively weak. People with over 500 connections in LinkedIn have mostly weak ties to acquaintances rather than relationships that come from close interaction.

Both weak and strong ties are valuable online. The weak tie connection in a peer review facilitates an immediate decision. As the level of participation and contribution increases by all parties, the strength of the ties increases. Some travel sites start with recommendations but facilitate collaborations that result in strangers co-operatively planning vacation together and sharing real-world experiences. Similarly, online discussions among individual stock traders can evolve into collaborative subgroups that function as a shared brain trust.

Social Companies

If companies are generally less trusted than peers, does that mean they have no place in the networked culture? Are they left out?

They are if they do not become part of the conversations and an authentic member of the communities. When Fiat was planning the re-release of the Fiat 500 car, they started by building a community of interest. Five hundred days before the release, they enticed more than 8,000 people to help them design the accessories for the car. The result: popular accessories AND a highly interactive community sharing a passion and commitment to all things Fiat 500. They advised each other on how to “experience” the car. They evangelized their experiences with the car to prospective buyers. They provided Fiat with the insights to keep this community happy and loyal. And they did so for free.

Psychologist John I. Todor, Ph.D., is managing partner of The Whetstone Edge, a firm that advises companies on how to use social media to foster relationships with customers that have a real world benefit to both parties. He is also a member of the We Media Community [view profile]. His most recent book is Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked on Your Company.

Notes

1. John I. Todor, Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked On Your Company. (Martinez, CA: Silverado Press, 2006).

2. Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. (New York: Free Pres, 2002).

3. Steve Farkas and Jean Johnson, Aggravating Circumstances: A Status Report on Rudeness in America. A report from Public Agenda prepared for the Pew Charitable Trust, 2002.

4. Richard Edelman, The 2006 Edelman Trust Barometer [PDF], PRWeek, January 26, 2006.
5. Steel, P. The Nature of Procrastination. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65-94, 2007.

6. Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin and Matthew Brashear, Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades, American Sociological Review [PDF], vol. 71, 353-375, 2006.

7. Robert D. Putnam. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000).

8. Harry Hoover, Why Passionate Employees Matter (MarketingProfs.com, Nov. 5, 2002).

9. Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequence of Work in the New Capitalism, (New York: Bantam Books, 1998).

10. Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005).

11. Robert E. Kelly, How to Be A Star at Work, (New York: Times Books, 1998).

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The social web depends on content, tagging and utility created or improved by the good will of the people formerly known as the audience.

Where does good will end and greed take over? That depends on whether you’re a giver or taker. Dan Gillmor at the Center for Citizen Media is bothered by the free labor scheme he sees in a corporate blog post about new features just announced at Reddit, a commercial recommendation service and competitor to Digg owned by the Newhouse family’s Conde Nast magazine group, which, along with Vogue, Glamour and Bon Appetite magazines, publishes Wired (which publishes various blogs, among which we find a recent report on a crowdsourced Shins video shot by fans).

Reddit is looking for programmers to hire - and volunteer translators. Dan is bothered by that explicit distinction of value - cash for coders, air kisses for translators.

The finger-wagging at Reddit raises this question: Is there a qualitative, ethical or rational distinction between Reddit’s overt and explicit request for help with its product, the result of which could be a more valuable service for whoever uses it, and the implied request for help from the multitude of platforms and conversation-fueled media - like Facebook, MySpace, Kos, PerezHilton - or from the non-profit competitor to Digg and Reddit - NewsTrust? (Disclosure - I advise NewsTrust). They all depend on user-supplied content, comments, tags and filtering to create any semblance of a business model. Is asking for free translations going too far? But asking for recommendations, evaluations, comments, photos or trackbacks is ok?

Comment: A backlash against uncompensated contributions to commercial media would be fun sport to watch. Imagine if millions of people decided to dump Facebook next week, just for spite.

Analysis: The hype around crowdsourcing leads, at times, to visions of an open-source digital utopia in which everything online is produced for free by righteous individuals who donate their writing, editing, video, photo, coding, translation or whatever skills to virtuous, free, universally accessible, multi-lingual projects that are made better through the collective intelligence and will of said crowd. Professionals, meaning pay is involved, not necessarily skill, fade to black in this world. Though fantastical, the vision draws on the ancient sense of human connectedness. When people put their minds to it, anything is possible. Even Wikipedia. Indeed, the principle of shared, linked intelligence - through hyperlinks - is the bedrock of the web itself.

The ideal of digital collaboration - all for one and one for all - degrades to a more distopian tragedy when for-profit companies try to persuade unpaid contributors to expand, enhance and add value to their services. AOL built its chat-driven empire on the backs of volunteer chat moderators. But recruiting volunteers to work hard and well for your benefit isn’t easy. Commercial failures in volunteer-dependent hyper-local journalism come to mind - Dan Gillmor’s Bayosphere, for one, followed by Backfence. But so do commercial survivors, like delicious, MySpace and YouTube.

Forecast: The crowd will continue to create AND contribute - on its own terms, when and where it feels like it makes sense. Asking for help may at times appear selfish. The willingness to offer it reflects our yearning to link with and help each other.

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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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A couple of recent sketches and "what ifs" by designers offer a counterpoint - or should I say, complement - to our Search Working Group conversation about better search: what about better web sites?

Imagine if Amazon depended on customers searching generic search engines to find books and merchandise they wanted to purchase. People do that - but Amazon built a much bigger business around e-commerce by making it incredibly easy for people to not only find items they know they want  to buy - by searching for them - but also items they don’t know they want to buy - discovered by a powerful recommendation engine that matches your past purchases and opinions with those of other people. Hence: "People who bought this book also bought …"

Back in 2001 Amazon inspired Ellen Kampinsky, Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis to re-imagine news as a social process of discovery. It was called Amazoning The New.

Travis Smith (an occasional contributor to the iFOCOS blog), along with HOP studios (and life) partner Susannah Gardner, have attempted a similar "treatment" with a new model: Flickr. See: Flickring The News

Meanwhile, the UK’s Press Gazette pointed me to Oliver Reichenstein of Information Achitects Japan, who re-imagined The Washington Post as if it were a wiki.

Sure, you could now try to Digg the News, Gather The News or Reddit The News; or forget what-ifs and dive in to Newsvine, Now Public or NewsTrust (I’m an advisor); or splice it all together in Netvibes

What I’d *really* like to see is something a bit more radical and a lot more beautiful. I’m ready for Absolut News.

So - anyone interested in launching (and leading) an iFOCOS Design Working Group? Goals: crank out a series of product sketches and concepts - and maybe inspire someone to invest and build a few of them for real.

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A friend at a relatively large media corporation recently asked me to evaluate one of that company’s newspaper web sites. I removed any references to the specific paper/company not so much because I’m avoiding picking on them, but because most of the things I list I’ve seen elsewhere and I want more people at more companies to understand what to look for and why I feel they are important.

It’s very fun these days to obsess over various Web 2.0 technologies and how to integrate them into your existing site. But keeping up with the items listed below can do a lot to help companies grow and maintain readership.

Here goes nothing:

Improper copyright year in the footer - If the reader thinks you don’t know what year it is, it doesn’t do much to help credibility. I subsequently found this in a lot of places. When this extends into the second quarter of the year (as it now does as of this posting), it looks much worse than seeing it in Jan. and Feb.

Contact info without a means of communicating via the web — The site listed a collection of phone numbers for News tips, Classifieds, Display advertising, and Subscriptions. But there was no link to pages for these departments or Web-based email forms. This can frustrate the reader and cost your company a good chunk of change in the man hours needed to answer all those phone calls.

Articles with no comment functionality – I had the chance to integrate Topix.net into the iFocos site and was impressed with how easy the integration was. Such a service, or others like it integrated into the bottom of each article, could both enable reader feedback and expose the article to a wider audience. Also this wasn’t a matter of the site not encouraging any comments, as it’s blog had them fully enabled.

Registration requirement — I think the ESPN.com’s Insider approach is much better than preventing a user from seeing anything at all. If you’re going to require registration, I feel you should give the reader a tease of the first two or three grafs.

Hiding back-door views of your site — I’m a view-source kind of guy. I deleted some of the URL for a blog post, down to http://www.DOMAIN.com/CATEGORY/ and found a “test page” was exposed. This should probably be an inventory of all the company’s blogs. I also noticed that it said “Powered by Movable Type 3.16″ Much has happened to Movable Type since version 3.16. Keeping on such an upgrade path can sometimes uncover new publishing, revenue and social networking opportunities for your company.

Make your headlines clickable – Not everyone instinctively knows to click on a “permalink.” Having both the word “permalink” and the headline clickable could result in increased page vews.

OK, I lied. I am now meandering into some more Web 2.0 territory. But don’t worry, none of this requires a computer science degree or anything …

Google maps indexing - I started playing with integrating Google maps into Movable Type recently for a client. I think this is an amazing opportunity for companies to explore. What I envision is a Google map that, when you click on a specific region, your last X number of articles, blog posts etc. that relate to that area show up.

Very targeted advertising could be integrated as well in the pop-up windows in the map. When users mouse over one of the markers on the map. Constructing such a map is no more complicated than creating specialized RSS feeds.

Go where the high school kids are — Why not create an account on MySpace that features links to your latest content? You could get thousands of potential young readers to be your paper’s “friend” and communicate with them on a level newspaper execs haven’t even let themselves ever dream about.

Recruit and host guest bloggers, and make them a real part of your publishing effort – Several news sites are warming up to the idea of “guest bloggers” as part of a citizen journalism effort. However, the areas these fine folks often post into is not always fully utilized by the newspaper company. Including small widgets showcasing “Latest headlines” or articles and features related to what the guest is blogging about seems to be a natural fit that would enhance the user’s experience with the guest blog and the company’s ability to reach a larger audience.

Speaking of reaching a larger audience … claim your blog on Technorati! – Once you’ve created these blogs for guests, take the next step and get them on Technorati’s radar. Make sure the ping settings in your publishing system are correct, and embed the little bit of HTML that enables visitors to make that blog one of their favorites on Technorati.

This is obviously just a small snapshot of opportunities and mistakes out there. We’d love to hear other from you. Comment below and get those gripes off your chest!

Chad Capellman is an occasional contributor and site constructor for iFocos. His LinkedIn profile can be viewed at http://www.linkedin.com/in/capellman

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Online survey finds general public, media conference attendees agree that traditional news outlets could do a better job

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 15, 2007

A majority of Americans (55%) in an online survey said bloggers are important to the future of American journalism and 74% said citizen journalism will play a vital role, a new We Media - Zogby Interactive poll shows.

Most respondents (53%) also said the rise of free Internet-based media pose the greatest opportunity to the future of professional journalism and three in four (76%) said the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.

The We Media survey results were released by iFOCOS and pollster John Zogby as part of an iFOCOS conference on media innovation hosted by the School of Communication at the University of Miami, with major support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

In the national survey of adults, 72% said they were dissatisfied with the quality of American journalism today. A majority of conference–goers who were polled on the subject agreed – 55% said they were dissatisfied, and 61% said they believed traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news.

Nearly nine out of 10 media insiders (86%) said they believe bloggers will play an important part in journalism’s future.

“We are now seeing mainstream acceptance of what we call the Power of Us - the value, credibility, and vital expression of citizen and collaborative media,” said Dale Peskin, a managing director of iFOCOS, the organization that conducts the annual We Media conference. “We’ve arrived at a tipping point. A new definition of democratic media is emerging in our society.”

Peskin said that, until recently, many traditional news enterprises have been skeptical about We Media. “They were either fearful or dismissive of our 2003 research forecasting and documenting the change in the media ecosystem,” he said. “Now the Zogby poll provides additional evidence that “We Media” is an essential component – perhaps THE essential component – for the agenda for news and information into the future.”

“The research documents the widespread recognition that control and influence on how we know what we know is shifting to a vastly more distributed network of empowered individuals and organizations,” said Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS. “This obviously will have a big impact on how media organizations evolve and conduct business, but it’s really about how we all discover, create, share and apply information, and that’s important to all industries, to entrepreneurs, to non-profits, to governments, to individuals and to society as a whole. We are all part of the ecosystem.”

We Media Miami was conducted Feb. 7-9 with major support from Knight Foundation. The conference brought together more than 250 leaders engaged in media innovation. Participants represented a range of sectors impacting media, including new and traditional media organizations, investors and analysts, information technologists, educators and researchers, as well as bloggers, citizen journalists, and news-and-information entrepreneurs.

The Zogby Interactive survey of 5,384 adults nationwide was conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 1, 2007, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.4 percentage points. The Zogby Interactive survey of 77 members of the media who attended the Miami conference carries a margin of error of +/- 11.4 percentage points. While periodic audits show the results from Zogby telephone and Internet surveys closely track each other, a companion telephone survey of this topic was not conducted.

Dissatisfaction with today’s news reportage is greater among those nationwide online respondents who identified themselves as conservative – 88% said they were unhappy with journalism, while 95% of “very conservative” respondents said the quality of journalism today is not what it should be.

Among those respondents identifying themselves as liberal, 51% said they are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism. Dissatisfaction levels were also highest among older respondents – 78% of those age 65 and older said they are dissatisfied. Most respondents (65%) also said they believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, with the highest levels of dissatisfaction with traditional journalism among those age 70 and older (74%), the very conservative (95%), and libertarians (89%).

Despite concerns about its quality, 72% of those in the national survey said journalism is important to their community. More respondents (81%) said Web sites are important as a source of news, although television ranked nearly as high (78%), followed by radio (73%). Newspapers and magazines trailed – 69% said newspapers and 38% said magazines were important. While blogs were rated as important sources of news by 30% of the online respondents, they were not considered as good a news source as the backyard fence – 39% said their friends and neighbors are an important source of information.

However, a majority of the nationwide online respondents said Internet social networking sites and blogging will play in important role in the future of journalism. But they added that trustworthiness will be important to the future of the industry – 90% said trust will be key.

Liberal and progressive respondents were more likely to say newspapers are their most trusted source than those with more conservative ideological mindsets. But radio is the most trusted source for 28% of those who describe themselves as “very conservative”, compared with just 9% of liberal respondents.

More online respondents nationwide said the Internet was their top source of news and information (40%), followed by television (32%), newspapers (12%) and radio (12%). The youngest adults in the poll, those age 18-24, were far more likely to say they mostly get news from Internet sites—58% said the Internet is their main destination for news, with television coming in second at 18%. Fewer than one in 10 in this age group said they get the majority of their news from newspapers.

For comment or reporting on We Media, contact dale AT ifocos DOT org or andrew AT ifocos DOT org.

For a detailed methodological statement on the survey, please visit:

http://www.zogby.com/methodology/readmeth.dbm?ID=1170
For more on the We Media conference, please visit:

http://ifocos.org/2006/09/01/we-media-miami-overview/

About iFOCOS

iFOCOS is an independent not-for-profit organization committed to enabling a better-informed society. It provides a variety of services, activities and training that help individuals and organizations worldwide understand and use expanding media and communications technologies to innovate as well as to create better-informed global citizens. More about at iFOCOS at: www.ifocos.org

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Joe Lewis wrote an interesting opinion piece, positing that Yahoo’s focusing on social search in an attempt to outflank Google.

But that’s actually a positive spin on a negative situation for Yahoo. While it’s true that Yahoo has been doing significant development in terms of buying or building content sites powered by social networks, I don’t think that Google is doing any worse.

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One phrase, one song from one of the projects featured stays with me as I consider all the videos that were shown at the Grove Stage on Thursday night. “We’re all in this together”. This phrase, this song, I felt best represented and signified the entire video festival. The art of video to convey strong images, strong stories, that stay with you long after the piece is complete is a significant challenge in new media environments. Screens are small, accessibility options complex, and distractions from a piece varied. Steve Rosenbaum met these challenges with his series of images and choice of music presented on the outside screen along with the national drink of Cuba, mojitos. The images were so diverse and methodically paced, it absolutely held my attention. The theme music chosen for the piece truly brings all of the other pieces together.

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Everyone’s out on the grove, drinking mojitos and chatting away. Night has finally fallen, which means it’s dark enough for us to see the screen clearly. We’ll be watching some videos created for the web, and it’s a great end to a long, productive, thought-provoking day.

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Carlos Garcia and Omar Ramos presented and did a live demo of Scrapblog:

“Scrapblog is a free web service that allows everyone to create multimedia scrapblogs.”

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