As I try to unclutter my garage, —a consequence of procrastinating the decision of what to do with this and that, typewriters definitely have to go this time around—, I'll try to see if e-readers really have the magic for news delivery as its been touted long before the current San Francisco Las Vegas CES show.
CNETting the CES comments on e-readers and the like, the Intel LG smartphone and Nvidia Tegra II tablet although pricey, knock me off my feet. You must watch the videos to get a feel of their navigation, images won't do.
Here's the thing. I've always thought and I've tried to make the point that we humans —our readers— are a lot more complex than what meets the eye. If you don't believe me, check Levin's apologies here, or how he lost trillions believing that online news was going to be the hole in the donuts, going forward with the Time Warner - AOL merger.
Levin concurs that the consumer "experience" is driving online traffic.
Aha! I think it'll be safer to keep the stuff I don't understand while my wife is away on vacation, —better safe than sorry, don't you agree?
Bottom line: the devil is in the details. All the dah-dah and doo-doo has to be weighed against this fact. As a good example, videos (even laptop screens) hinder the tranquil zen-like environment of news-paper reading, which is so helpful to its advertising.
I'm sure designers will agree that typeface, font size, leadings —which, seem to be minute issues— are precisely what makes reading effortless and transparent. But, by moving news into an immense and totally different media, like the Internet, people tend to forget these basic axioms.
E-ink and touch-screen (operating systems) adoption in e-readers are enormous strides towards making these machines less objectionable to magazine and newspaper reading —dramatically improving reading eye stress and navigation.
As a matter of fact, the tablet should reign as the new laptop hardware standard. It's easy to foresee that touch-screens will also serve as keyboards when needed, making manufacturers drop keyboards altogether.
When asked, David Cohn sees his organization's mission as that of a provider of local investigative reporting, funded by the community.
The process is initiated with news "tips" that the community feels are stories worth covering. Reporters propose news "pitches" based on these tips, while editors from Spot.Us provide an estimate of the cost, and screen both pitches and reporters. Finally, the community or news organizations finance through their donations each approved pitch.
And it doesn't end there, if a news organization finances 50% of the cost, it gets the exclusive. If not, it will get published at no cost at any organization willing to publish it — blogs, New York Times... Of course, we're talking of a 100% financed story. If not, it gets scrapped —well, not really... the reporter involved could also donate part of his time too.
Finally, this is an Open Source project. I read that there's already a site in Japan using the same piece of software.
If you really want to get a deeper look into this problem, I suggest you read (the 75 pages of) Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal, by William Powers, or you can check the excerpts in italics down below.
This question brings me back to Heidegger's assertion, the great philosopher of the 20th century, that we are truly very complex creatures. So complex, according to Dreyfus, that we may never be copied by computers.
The following cloud of concepts gives us a good overall feeling of how media outlets differ:
Print
Online
TV
in the flow
annoying
captivating
limited
powerful
glamorous
settled down
search and destroy
entrancing
immerse
fleeting
fleeting
thinking & planning
quick read
attractive
closed and finite
immense
transient
select
inscrutable
motionless
unstable
immutable
unwieldy
satisfying
overwhelming
easier editing
difficult editing
no editing
light reflecting
light emitting
light emitting
easy on the eyes
toll on eyes and brain
easy navigation
tolling navigation
minimum navigation
Like the hinged door, paper magazines have thrived deep into the electronic age because the way they convey information remains, for some purposes, more useful and satisfying, in ways that can be hard to describe except anecdotally.
Paper not only conveys tranquility by being immutable, but there are times, when we need to think with our hands. I still prefer to get my bank statements in paper. I also jot down telephone numbers and ideas, as well as, do some note taking and planning on paper.
And although digital servers have made paper storage obsolete, or libraries cannot compete with digital database sorting and others, paper is still an excellent communication device. I print my digital travel itineraries, kids’ homework and copies of important presentations. And, I would only send condolences in a hand written note —no e-mail here.
Which brings us to recognize maybe the most notable property of paper: it adds a distinct "value" to its message.
Paper has intrinsic qualities that: 1)make it easy and enjoyable to work with, 2)help us make sense of information and 3)are conducive to certain kinds of reading and thinking, —properties that new media, for all their wonders, have not yet been able to match.
Lazy Sunday morning, late breakfast in bed, reading our favorite section of the newspaper.
It's amazing to realize that magazines and newspapers have clear advantages over online and TV advertising, precisely, because of its lack of hoopla. The magazine and newspaper experience is a quite one, —readers view their ads when they please and within a peaceful Zen attitude. In contrast, readers tend to avoid ads in Online's speed reading and TV's entrancement environments. In the former, readers are too focused in their urgent search; and in the latter, they react annoyed by skipping channels, —TV ads interrupt their entrancement.
Sellen and Harper found that paper has four affordances that specifically assist reading:
(1) Tangibility. This refers to the way that we navigate a paper document or book using our eyes and hands together. “When a document is on paper, we can see how long it is, we can flick through the pages . . . we can bend over a corner while searching for a section elsewhere. In other words, paper helps us work our way through documents.”
(2) Spatial Flexibility. When working with multiple paper texts, they can be spread out around a large area or reduced to fit a smaller space, depending on our needs.
(3) Tailorability. With paper it’s easy to underline, scribble in the margins and otherwise annotate a text we are reading.
(4) Manipulability. Because paper can be moved around, one can shuffle effectively among different paper sources, for example putting one page aside in order to concentrate on another.
The first of these, tangibility, isn’t available at all on a two-dimensional screen. The others are more difficult to achieve with computers and other electronic media, as anyone who has “written” in the margins of a digital document can attest. As the authors put it, “It is as if people need to use their hands and eyes to fully grasp the meaning of the text in question. People really do understand what a document conveys by physically getting to grips with it.
“[T]he physical feel of the paper meant that little attention (and especially visual attention) had to be given over to the task of page turning. Much of the information needed to navigate was both implicit and tactile. Similarly, physical cues such as thickness of the document provided important tacit information about where in the document the reader was. All of this . . . meant that readers were not distracted from the main visual task.”
In contrast, one of their subjects had this to say about online reading: “I was getting very annoyed and clicking on those things and shouting at it . . . . I just found that it took ages and ages. I was losing interest – it was distracting me from the point.”
Thirty-six consumers were interviewed, half of them frequent magazine readers. The other half were people who watched at least two hours of commercial television a day and also read at least one magazine a month. The study found that the way consumers react to ads in hard-copy magazines is in fact very different from how they respond to commercials on television.
The distinction came down to a matter of control. Because viewers cannot control when TV commercials are shown or how long they will last, they tend to feel trapped by the ads, which those in the study spoke of as disruptive, distracting and annoying.
Meanwhile, the subjects had largely positive views of ads in magazines, and the main reason seemed to be the sense of control that paper inherently affords: The reader turns the pages at will, deciding what to look at and for how long. One subject said: “A magazine ad is like a glass of wine because I have the time to sniff it and appreciate it . . . It’s there, I can take it or leave it . . . . Because I have control, I can take the time to make particular decisions [about] which ads I will savor and absorb.”
In the last decade, digital reading has become a part of everyday life, yet it hasn’t replaced reading on paper. McDonald says that at the moment screens are not used predominantly for flow-style reading – settling in and losing one’s bearings – but for a kind of high-intensity foraging. “When one is reading on the screen, it’s sort of like speed reading, information-retrieval mode. ‘I’m looking for something. Now I’m looking for something else.’ It’s very purposeful, it’s very utilitarian. . . . There’s something about it being on the screen that signals to people to hurry. It’s pushing the page-down button, just having your finger on the clicker and scrolling. It’s a higher speed, more nervous kind of thing.” Screen-based reading, he says, is “very much about ‘search and destroy.’”
The paper news should provide long-form, in-depth coverage, while the Internet should be interactive, immediate, provide an open dialog with the audience and throw in all those nifty doo-dads and videos people love to play with.” This distinction is not so much generational as operational.
The digital medium serves up content differently from paper, and we go to it for different kinds of reading experiences – “search and destroy” versus “settle down.”
It has little to do with age and everything to do with the human mind, which does not evolve so quickly that those born after 1980 read and think in a fundamentally different way from everyone who came before them. In effect, the content that works best on the Web, for readers of all ages, has migrated there, while the “long-form, in-depth” stuff clings tenaciously to paper (even when it’s on the Web, people are less likely to read it there).
Thus the public exodus from newspapers is not a rejection of paper, but an objection to using it for hard news and other utilitarian, quick-read content (including, not incidentally, classified ads) that gains little or nothing from arriving in that format. It’s because this content has always been the core mission of newspapers – they’re called newspapers, not “essaypapers” – that the industry finds itself in the tough spot it’s in. The two sides of its culture have been pulled apart, and the side that drives the franchise wound up in a not-so-profitable medium.
Before you start reading, you might want to check out these two excellent posts: from Dan Conover here, and from Clay Shirky here.
I'm watching History Channel's "Monster Dinosaurs". A change in habitat is bad for the prevailing or perfectly adapted animals; extinctions are akin to throwing the dice in evolution, it may or may not give forth better species in the new environment.
The Internet's world wide web
Let's analize the new environment.
The Internet extends its reach quite a bit, to the www, or worldwide, to the far reaches of the web's network. As a consequence, optimal content should have universal appeal (i.e. Google search, Facebook, Wikipedia).
Publication is immediate and storage —or hosting— costs are close to nil. Breaking news and large archives can take good advantage of the immediacy and database features of sorting, retrieval and linking (i.e. Wikipedia, Google books, Facebook).
Articles, fields within a database, may include text, sound, images and videos. Since more senses are involved, videos should be the preferred communication media (i.e. YouTube).
It's a two-way street, communication can go both ways. The more content from users, the better —it's cheaper. (i.e. Facebook, Wikipedia, MySpace).
Let's try to propose a publication model that takes advantage of these features.
But before we go on, we have to grasp a major Internet limitation —it's computer based. To put it bluntly, it's like pinching a mirror, not much satisfaction in the smell and touch sensory areas; and worse, reading stresses our eyes, quite a bit more than print on paper.
I found content that works a near perfect example. It develops web page content from thin slices of news: Bridal's Guide, Your Garden, Body & More, Home Style, Car Guide... It extends its reach to readers from a variety of publications through syndicating their service. It's not perfect... it lacks user content derived advantages, and no feed into print.
Beetles are incredible... Far more interesting than dinosaurs.
I've already flatly stated that it's disheartening to see how traditional news outlets still fail to comprehend current technology.
The fact that online editions leave very little money on the table has been a major source of confusion for publishers, hindering online, as well as, in my opinion, print growth.
While I watch an old favorite "Dr. Who's: The End of Times", let's review some of the weaknesses that I feel require an urgent change of course:
It's alarming to see the great number of publications that hold back breaking news from their online edition to protect their print counterpart.
Isn't it obvious that the market is going to exploit this blatant weakness? Why not rethink the online edition as a service to the community with associated benefits. It has the potential side effect to draw readers into both editions, online and print. Greater online traffic not only means greater online ad revenue, but, also should attract subscribers to the associated print editions —if and only if, the contents of these editions are quality topic reader centered articles, with follow-up calls feeding into each other.
This immediately brings us to the major issue of repeatability.
It's quite obvious that these editions must carry different, although, often complementary content. They can deepen their online articles with opinion in the print edition, and broaden their print articles into the inexpensive online edition —with related archive database background.
Content from Wire, TV, radio, and online, needs to be chopped away; carrying brief, or excluding completely, repeat articles in the print edition, to strike an appropriate balance between accomplished news and non-repetitiveness.
And, yes, yes, of course! I'm watching Henry Evans being interviewed by Bloomberg, where he stresses the importance of quality journalism, or in a few more words: the value of honest, unbiased and brave investigative reporting, —which unfortunately we don't see as often as we should.
If you stop to think about it, a bias knocks out the "other" readers from the get go —not a very smart move, if you want good circulation numbers. Honesty, on the other hand, builds the best brand possible for any publication by attracting an extremely loyal following. Further, brave and heroic feats are not only rare, but, admirable, which we also know to attract reader attention by the plain etymology of the word. Did I mention that they're also the right thing to do?
Technology has significantly altered the branding of a publication.
In a technologically dialogue rich world it's very rude not to allow the other person to comment. Further, a publication's persona becomes transparent. Dishonest behavior is spotted from a distance.
If it's not interesting, it's not worth reading...
Journalists must also use and take advantage of the new tools at their disposal to quickly grasp an article's impact, to enable them to quickly morph their publishing topics closer to readers' interests. Again, if you don't, they will.
I'm sure there's a lot more. I'd love to hear from you.
As an engineer for a newspaper, I get to read plenty of technical stuff.
Yesterday, while visiting Google's AdManager it hit me: I recalled my disappointment when Google abandoned AdPrint, a system that would facilitate the process of taking ads in our print publications. I'm sure this was a tough decision for Google, they left on the table gazillions of dollars, considering that 90% of the ad revenue still originates in printed magazines and newspapers.
So, why did they do it?
Well, it's called "cutting the supply lines to the enemy". I still have a vivid recollection of how a small newspaper in Latin America climbed to a national circulation in the coattails of an overconfident leading daily. The renowned "diario A" agreed to haul "diario B's" newspaper bundles to subsidize their trucks' circulation costs —an unforgivable mistake, that "diario A" would soon sorely regret for years to come.
So, Google devilishly cut any aid to the frail print ad revenue lifeline —to assure its complete dominance of the advertising market.
AdManager is a wickedly brilliant piece of software, which basically acts as a traffic cop for the ad traffic into a publication, yielding at any moment, those ads that maximize the periodical's ad revenue.
The importance of technology (in wars) is well recognized since the time of the machines created by Alexander's engineers, which were the key to the submission of their besieged cities. Or, the more recent Brit engineering feat, the ingeniously gargantuan cement barges devised to navigate the British Channel and maroon in the less defended beaches of Normandy, meant to surprise as unloading docks for the hundreds of thousands of tons of equipment required for the invasion of Europe during World War II —the Nazis fortified the French ports, never imagining this flash of genius to the Allied disembarkment problem.
After foolishly bungling for years the reaction to the threat posed by the Internet's rising stars, printed periodicals face foes with magnificent internal technology developments. In our print world, technology is mostly outsourced, and what little is done internally does not suffice, —if the New York Times doesn't hold the flood waters, none of us will.
In other words, none of the old and established news organizations has developed systems as good as Google's, period. For an explanation, you might want to take a look at the hippo concept (from Avinash Kaushik's presentation) outlined in this previous post.
We also know that search engine technology has changed forever the advertising landscape, including that of radio and TV. In essence, search engines have solved the fundamental problem: the buyer's need to find a product; and in a very efficient and inexpensive way.
Adding insult to injury, the Internet allows news organizations universal and instantaneous reach, making wire news a repeat for the reader, and allowing local organizations to be cannibalized by their strongest peers. Further, Google facilitates millions of bloggers to have a free ride at publishing, with some very worthy and attractive commentators. As a consequence, content value has also diminished enormously.
I know these are all depressing negatives for anybody in the print business. So the real question is: how do we get out of this mess?
This problem is very similar to the one we face with China's manufacturing prices. There is no way of escaping the facts: labor prices in the rest of the world must come down to meet the lower price of labor in China. As well, print advertising prices must come down too.
So, the print industry must dramatically change to accommodate these lower prices.
In this respect, readers prefer to visit a select few places to shop for their news, —we seem to simply jump to the appropriate response, without considering any alternatives—, which is quite a positive for any small news outlet with good brand recognition in its local area, established over a long life of serving its readers.
Current technology offers the tools that allow us to further understand our readers like never before. It's a two way street, journalists need to commit themselves to this dialogue, or constantly adapt and align themselves to their readers' topics of interest —which by the way does not change the objective, it's always been this way, it argues for using these new tools to better serve our readers.
To sum it all up, with a current recession not helping, there's still a lot of restructuring to do to get to that advertisement equilibrium price in the print-digital news organization combo —although, breaking apart the news organization to allow for their individual optimization is a fundamental tenet to the overall solution.
But most of all, we all have to look at these very confusing times as opportunities, the dust will eventually settle, and the few that have learned to adapt will reap the rewards.
I leave you with this inspiring "Virgin" video from Richard Branson, who has repeatedly bought his way into companies against all odds and recommendations, if he believes there is a way out —which, I definitely do.
In this amazing (hour long) video Avinash Kaushik explains web analytics, and more. I warn you, it's not a recent video, circa 2007, but, it's still the best explanation I've seen of the basic tools to improve a website.
He poses that the vast majority of websites are based on the... hippo factor, or on the highest paid person opinion in the room at the time a website design decision is made; which I'm sure sounds familiar to many. But, there's definitely a better way: to test the ideas through our visitors opinions, with the optimizer tool, for instance.
In essence, he is telling us that we must better understand our visitors: who they are, why they're there, or what do they want; and that this is possible —the tools are out there.
When thinking about content, he mentions a great tip from Guy Kawasaki: visitors must have learned something useful when leaving your site —which doesn't necessarily include what a good time you had last Saturday night.
Site Improvement Subjects with Priorities by Avinash Kaushik (explanation at 40:12 mins into the video)
He is saying that it's possible to dig deeper into the numbers, —visits and averages, tell a very poor story; whilst Google and others provide us with wonderful (and free) tools to do so: Google analytics, keyword, sktool and optimizer, as well as compete, are just a few of them.
But, Voice of Customer is the first in his list of priorities, which is asking the visitor directly: why is he at your site, is he leaving satisfied, and if not, why. I've found LimeSurveypollDaddy and survs to be a couple of nice little (free) survey application, which I suggest adding at the end of every post.
Then, he suggests we dig deeper into the so called Multiple Outcome Analysis, or what is (are) the objective (s) of the website, and how to measure it (them). Or, what is it that we want to achieve with our website. For example, if self-promoting, measure book sales, conference appointments... plus a second outcome could be to contribute your subject matter of expertise to fellow bloggers.
A Clickstream Analysis, or studying our website to determine what keywords are bringing our visitors into our website, and what other popular keywords might also bring them in; as well, as those less popular, in the long tail, that might also bring in a substantial amount of visitors to our site.
Again, Avinash's video is a must see for anyone trying to get a grasp on what is going on out there in cyberspace.
Han aumentado mis conocidos --no tanto, pero, se me abrió un mundo. Me sorprende sobretodo que siendo tan pocos, siento tanto (subrayando sensorial: no es solo intelectual, es experimentar nuevas formas de expresiones).
