Category Archives: Media & Culture

Black & white dreams

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My dreams always seem to happen at night. Rather the dream scenario unfolds after dark. Or so I’ve always thought. Could be all those episodes of I Love Lucy.

“A 2008 study at the University of Dundee in the U.K. found that people who grew up when television was invented sometimes have dreams in black and white, while those who have experienced only color television usually have colorful dreams.”

“…almost all of our dreams have a narrative quality. Most of the ones we remember also have some sort of troubling aspect to them, which is why they stick out in our minds.”

From article on what blind people see when they dream.

Obits on TV

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We’ve been fiddling around with the Internet for about 15 years and tried lots of different ideas. Streaming audio of debate from the state legislature; oral arguments from the state supreme court; online database of accident reports format he state highway patrol; and –as the say– the list goes on. One idea could never get off the ground was Obits Online. This was back in the late ’90’s as I recall.

Funeral homes would log in to our online database and post funeral announcements. The public could search by name, date, city, etc etc. We pitched the funeral home associations in Missouri and Iowa (maybe some other states, I don’t recall).

The idea never got off the ground because most funeral homes were still trying to figure out their fax machines and were convinced the people in their communities were not using computers and were unlikely to do so any time soon.

I bring up this stillborn digital baby after spotting this story (AdAge.com) about a TV station in Michigan that’s running on-air and online obituary ads after three of the region’s four daily newspapers reduced publication to three days a week.

obt-screenshot“For $100, the station will run the deceased’s name and photo on-air and publish a full-length obituary on ObitMichigan.com. Full-screen graphics listing names of people who have passed away are broadcast during the local station’s morning and noon shows Monday through Friday, as well as on weekend morning shows. Viewers are pushed to the website for more information about the deceased as well as funeral-services information.

The station’s owner, Meredith Corp., expects to roll the concept out to its other stations and says it is also in licensing discussions with other station groups.

At $100 an obituary, it’s not clear that WNEM or Meredith has really tapped a massive vein of cash. Revenue from obituaries “is a teeny subset” of overall newspaper-classified revenue, said Mort Goldstrom, VP-advertising at the Newspaper Association of America. Fees charged by papers can range from as high as $1,000 for a major metro to a few hundred dollars for a midmarket paper. And many small community and weekly newspapers still run obituaries for free.

WNEM started running obituaries in August at no charge, to get people familiar with the service and to work out any software bugs. Since launching as a paid service in early September, executives said, the station has over 700 obituaries in its system.

The new obituaries are also prompting a change in the way people go about their daily routine, he said. “The biggest issue that we have is the elderly people that don’t have the ability to pay for internet access or don’t have a computer. Now they see it flash on TV and those that don’t have a computer can call the funeral home and ask for information,” Mr. Luczak said.”

Having the TV station to promote and leverage the idea is an important component. I hope they make some money and provide a useful service.

Do you need a “website?

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My pals at the local yoga center have been asking for my advice on re-doing their website. Since my advice is free, I don’t have to worry too much about it being good advice. But if I were doing this and didn’t have to answer to a committee (or Vishnu) I think I might go in this direction. (Nothing original here, BTW. Regular readers know who my influences are)

Don’t make people come to you (or your website). Take your information to where they are: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, etc.

I like posterous for feeding these social nodes. And it gives you a nice, clean, low-maintenance “place” to park your domain.

“All spokes and no hub”

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Steve Rubel suggests the next big media company won’t have a website:

“Conceivably the next great media company will be all spokes and no hub. It will exist as a constellation of connected apps and widgets that live inside other sites and offer a full experience plus access to your social graph and robust community features. Each of these may interconnect too so that a media company’s community on Facebook can talk to the same on Twitter.

Facebook might be the first venue where this starts. It could become a mini news reader for millions who don’t care about RSS or Twitter. Over time this may obviate the need to create large news sites. It’s easier to create a rich interactive experience there than start a new news site and hope that people come to you. They won’t have time to find or visit.”

Bomb shelters or spaceships

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If you were recruiting for someone to manage a news organization in 2009, what skills or experience should you be looking for? What would the job description look like? (Since I know nothing about print, I’ll limit my questions to broadcast)

In my experience, most people who make it to “the top,” come from the sales side of the business. The men and women who made their bones in the newsroom occasionally wind up running the show but they are the exceptions. So we’re looking for sales and marketing experience, yes?

Someone who can figure out how to sell the advertising that funds company. Someone who can recruit and train people to sell 30 second radio and TV commercials?

What about this Internet thing? Do our sellers need to know how to sell banner ads (or whatever), too? Or does our manager have to manage two distinct type of sales departments? “Traditional” and online?

Strategically, do we manage the business we have today and hope it lasts a long time? Or, do we try to anticipate what our business will become in three, or five, or ten years? No easy task.

Clay Shirky says the advertising model that has defined and driven news organizations worked because advertisers didn’t have alternatives. Now they do.

But I’m getting away from my original question. Do we need a manager that is real good at “where we’ve been?” Someone with a good handle on where we’re headed? (if such a person exists) Or both? (tall order)

What if advertising –as we have come to know it– plays little or no part in funding news organizations in the future? Uh, let’s not go there. Too murky and scary.

As you can see, I have no answers… just questions. And I’m not sure they’re even the right ones.

Maybe it comes down to finding someone who knows how to build a spaceship, verses someone who knows how to build a bomb shelter. The spaceship has to get us to a very different place. The bomb shelter will protect us for as long as our food and water hold out.

“The audience is being assembled by the audience”

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NYU professor and Internet thinker Clay Shirky on the future of accountability journalism in a world of declining newspapers. On the advertising-based business model of journalism:

“Best Buy was not willing to support the Baghdad bureau because Best Buy cared about news from Baghdad. They just didn’t have any other good choices.”

On the death of the home page:

“The number of people who go to the Times’ homepage as a percentage of total readership falls every year — because you don’t go to the Times, you go to the story, because someone Twittered it or put it on Facebook or sent it to you in email. So the audience is now being assembled not by the paper, but by other members of the audience.”

You can listen to Professor Shirky’s talk here.

One never has enough clever people

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I don’t think of myself as clever but it is something to which one might aspire. This article at FinancialPost.com identifies the attributes of clever and why organizations need such folk:

“The truth is that organizations need a particular kind of clever employees — people with a propensity for innovation and even iconoclasm. People who happily tread on organizational sacred ground while seeking new ways to produce sustained economic growth.

Clever people are highly talented individuals who have the potential to create disproportionate amounts of value from the resources that an organization makes available to them.”

And how does one spot a clever boy or girl?

  • They know their worth (their skills are not easily replicated).
  • They ask difficult questions.
  • They are organizationally savvy.
  • They are not impressed by corporate hierarchy.
  • They expect instant access to decision makers.
  • They are well connected outside of their organizations.
  • Their passion is for what they do, not for who they work for.
  • Even if you lead them well, they won’t thank you.

Jeff Jarvis on “the Nielsen Revolt”

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“The presumption of old media was that everyone in the audience saw every advertisement and that’s why ads were bought on the basis of the size of the audience. Size mattered. But today, what advertisers really want is verification that their ads reached the audience they were sold – not just in size but in relevance.”

Creativity

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Leo Babauta has a very good list of tips on how to cultivate your creativity. Here are a few of my favorites from his list:

  • Shut out the outside world.
  • Reflect on your life and work daily.
  • Just get it out, no matter how crappy that first draft.
  • Teach and you’ll learn.
  • Drink ridiculous amounts of coffee.
  • Write all ideas down immediately.
  • Turn your work into play.
  • Get lots of rest. Overwork kills creativity.
  • Don’t force it. Relax, play, it will start to flow.
  • Do it when you’re excited.
  • Don’t be afraid to be stupid and silly.
  • Small ideas are good. Don’t need to change the world — just change one thing.
  • When something is killing your creativity, kill it.
  • Most of all, have fun doing it.

If I might add one idea to this excellent list (be sure to check out the full list from link above), you have to be in an environment that will allow (better yet, encourage) creativity. I’ve been so blessed for most of my working life. I guess this means working for the right company or working for yourself.