The Content Crisis Deconstructed
August 13, 2009
Business Week’s Lars Bastholm wrote an interesting article. When I read it, I thought about a wacky professor I had at Duquesne University decades ago who loved beyond all reason the approach to textual analysis pinned to Jacque Derrida. (If you cut that class in modern critical analysis, you can get a brief here.) On the surface, “The Content Crisis” is another one of those the “sky is falling” articles that “real” journalists write. When these crisis revealed articles appear in traditional magazines like Business Week, I take notice. My reasoning is that the top brass at McGraw Hill probably does not think to much about the pressures on the worker bees in the journalistic hive on Sixth Avenue. The worker bees do think about what is happening to the magazine industry in particular and the broader traditional information industry in general. A write up like Lars Bastholm is essentially a news story about that now tired phrase “the content crisis”. Passages like this one are recycled like newspapers by the Rumpke Corporation which operates in Harrod’s Creek:
What I propose is that phone companies and Internet providers just slap additional content fees onto their bills. Sure, I don’t like the additional fee. But if a $10 monthly content fee was added to both my existing AT&T and Time Warner bills, and in return I got access to all the content I wanted, it would feel pretty close to free.
The article argues that a magazine can charge for content. The money, however, would be collected by an outfit such as AT&T and Time Warner. Okay. I wonder if Mr. Bastholm knows how money is shared by a utility across multiple providers? That question is one that has been sidestepped in the write up. That question is an important one, however.
The traditional world has morphed. One cannot go back. Image source: http://www.astrococktail.com/images/Deconstruction700.jpg
The article concludes with what was probably in journalism school a killer peg:
So when you think about it, is $20 a month really a big price to pay for saving movies, TV, music, magazines, and newspapers and getting rid of unwanted advertising in one fell swoop? It feels like a bargain to me.
What triggered the Derridaesque moment for me were these notions waddling through this addled goose’s brain:
- The article is less of a news story and more of a plank in a political platform for Rupert Murdoch’s campaign to charge for information with a nod to the microcode method favored by the Associated Press. I can see the senior editor, the publisher, and one McGraw Hill vice president standing in the hall with copies of the print publication, smiling and nodding about a job well done.
- The notion that a utility (essentially a monopoly if set up correctly) will share money in a way that returns the lion’s share of the revenue to one supplier is at odds with my experience. Utilities, due to buying power and market control, force suppliers to deliver at very competitive rates. Instead of a payday, the utility wheels and deals. Coal is a commodity to Duke Power. Information is a commodity to AT&T and Time Warner. Forgetting what business utilities are in will lead to a financial surprise when the first payment arrives 45 to 90 days late.
- The solution advocated in the article does not address the broader challenge. The children of publishing executives—possibly Mr. Bastholm’s own or his friends’ are not interested in traditional media as much as I was when I was young and callow. In fact, each generation in the demographic pipeline younger than the preceding cohort will be less and less interested in the “traditional” approach to information.
Yesterday I had a conversation with a young journalist. I asked about the person’s recent experience in journalism classes at one of the * major * journalism schools. I jotted down that person’s comment because it underscores the need to deconstruct what Business Week has written about “the content crisis”. The journalist told me:
I think that my professors know that the media and news world is changing. But the classes don’t reflect that change. Now that I am working, I see first hand that the traditional approach to news is not where the opportunities are. Online is the future and it has arrived. (Editor at a magazine publisher located in the United States.)
As M. Derrida observed, “Every discourse, even a poetic or oracular sentence, carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things and thus an outline of methodology.”
Stephen Arnold, August 13, 2009
New Media Guidelines for Search and Access
August 13, 2009
Imediaconnection.com’s “Metadata Secrets for Expanding your Content’s Reach” struck me as a useful back to basics for traditional media executives. Ben Weinberger has gathered seven tips that provide some useful advice (use analytics) and some that is going to be as clear as Aramaic to media executives (intelligent metadata in a metadata management framework). If you want a shopping list of what to do to stay in business, you will want to add Mr. Weinberger’s write up to your archive. The killer omission is the plumbing required to permit implementation of some of his tips. Mr. Weinberger may want to acquaint himself with MarkLogic. MarkLogic, may I suggest you brief Mr. Weinberger?
Stephen Arnold, August 13, 2009
AP to Restrict Some Content
August 12, 2009
An eager beaver reader of the addled goose’s Web log sent me a link to “Why the Associated Press Plans to Hold Some Web Content Off the Wire”. The author is Zachary M. Seward, and the source is the Nieman Journalism Lab. (I assume that this is an outfit similar to Google’s Lab.) The story reports that owners—oops, members—of the AP will not be permitted to publish some AP content on their Web sites. The idea is that the owners—oops again, members—would link to content that resides on an AP repository. You will have to read this write up yourself. The words “confidential” and other legal sounding words are used in the document. These cause the addled goose to shed some feathers. There is also a reference to “link value”, a term which seems to refer to Google’s method of determining ranking in a search result list.
Several questions flitted through the addled goose’s tiny brain:
First, the AP is owned by its members or at least that is what I thought when Barry Bingham Jr. explained the relationship to me in 1980 or 1981. If the AP is owned by members, why can’t a member do what he or she wishes with the content produced by the organization he or she owns? I suppose the notion is similar to the home owner’s association which restricts what a home owner can do. Maybe this is more like the owner of a mall, which operates as an independent entity with regard to certain rules and regulations. Tenants—oops, members—give up some rights for the benefits the mall delivers. Maybe the mall analogy is infelicitous. The malls not far from Harrod’s Creek have fallen on hard times but I suppose the mall owner will continue to exercise its legal suzerainty over Trixie’s Nails Shoppe.
Second, what happens to an owner—oops, member—who gets out of line. The likelihood of the AP finding another outfit willing to pay for ownership—oops, membership—seems as if it would be time consuming and expensive to replace a fallen owner—oops, member. If that owner—oops, member—is a big gun outfit struggling to keep its powder dry, will there be a legal dust up?
Third, will the Internet users who read a high value content story somewhere expend the energy to summarize, reference, or describe that story? Posting such a summary may require the AP to defend its conceptual and fungible turf. What if the offender is a high school student? What if the alleged violator is an errant blogger?
In short, I applaud the AP for putting on its thinking cap. However, if Mr. Seward’s write up is understood by me and accurate, I think there will be some interesting consequences of this action.
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
Kids and Downloading. And the Parents?
August 12, 2009
Short honk: TechDirt’s “New Study States the Obvious: Kids Download a Lot of Music.” The most interesting comment in the story was:
A new study, sponsored by UK Music (the UK organization that’s looking to get ISPs to put in place some sort of blanket licensing plan) has found that over 60% of kids in the UK admit to file sharing, with 83% of those admitting to doing it regularly, and those surveyed claiming to have downloaded an average of 8,100 tracks. Think about that for a second. 8,100 tracks.
As the kids grow up, what changes?
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
Google Wave: Perturbing the Data Pond
August 11, 2009
I read Anil Dash’s “What Works: The Web Way vs. The Wave Way” and scanned some of the comments about his write up. I agree with most of the information in the write up. The one point I would add is that Wave is not one thing. Wave is a plastic bag made of Google technology that contains quite a number of features and functions. Some of these can operate as a stand alone service; for example, Gmail, the JavaScript beastie of remarkable capability. Other functions need the Google datasphere to work; for example, the time slicing across different Google functions. In my opinion, until the plastic bag metaphor is considered, analyses of Wave will be in terms of software such as SharePoint, which is too limiting for the Googlers’ innovation.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
Shocking Search News
August 11, 2009
The Washington Post dropped a bomb shell next to the mine run off pond here in Harrod’s Creek a day ago. The Washington Post reprinted a TechCrunch write up that had been timing out for us. The headline? “Which Search Engine Do You Choose In The Blind Test?”
This search tool strips out all the branding, so you’re forced to really think about which results you like better. And early results showed a much more even distribution than Google’s 70% market share would suggest: Google: 44%, Bing: 33%, Yahoo: 23%. The score keeping feature was removed when people found a way to game it, but you can still run the test against yourself and see which search engine you really like the best. Too bad the one I seem to like will shortly be mothballed. The tool was created by Michael Kordahi, a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft.
I am nervous about quoting this much text from a newspaper, but I thought it was important to remind myself that Yahoo will become Bing.com and that the person creating the test works / worked at Microsoft.
I am still surprised by the fact that when Bing and Yahoo are added together, the combined score is bigger than Google’s miserable 44 percent. I had been drinking the Kool-Aid from various consulting firms that Google’s market share was more than 70 percent in Web search. Maybe these are two different scores? Heck. What difference does that make. For this golden moment in research, Bing and Yahoo have more moxie than the Google.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
Baseline: A Magazine on a Diet
August 11, 2009
I have saved some back issues of Baseline, a publication aimed at enterprise information technology executives. The January 2005 issue contained what I lovingly describe as “crazy numbers”. What this phrase means to me is an analyst / journalist prepares cost estimates for an enterprise software system. The January 2005 article was “Calculating Costs of Installing a Work Flow Management System”. The analysis appeared between pages 44 and 45 as a foldout. The cost for the system was presented as two numbers and the editorial content showed where those numbers originated. Robert McNamara would have been proud of the zero base approach. The assumptions were not as precise as I would have liked, but I did find these estimated costs most useful:
- The start up applications cost was $1,574,720. I don’t know what this phrase means exactly, but, please, keep in mind these are 2005 dollar estimates.
- The operations applications cost was $174,460, which was about 10 percent of the start up applications costs.
- The total applications costs were $1,749,460.
To this total, Baseline’s analysts added:
- Startup infrastructure costs of $247,160
- Operations Infrastructure costs of $39,320, about one-sixth the total infrastructure costs.
I found these numbers useful to explain why a different and more detailed cost analysis was needed. The reason was the various costs that are not included in the Baseline analysis. One example: where is the provision for indirect costs associated with managing the IT crowd when an outage causes extraordinary expenditures. And, where are those provisions for urgent fixes, opportunity costs when the system fails, and the cost of manual workaroiunds as the workflow system undergoes surgery.
Baseline is in rough seas. Image Source: http://www.yourglobaltravelguide.com/wp-content/gallery/namibia/abandoned-boat-in-rough-seas.jpg
I loved this feature in Baseline; it was my stalking horse to show why and ArnoldIT analysis was needed to avoid another information technology cost surprise.
The publication in 2005 had high production value as well. The charts and graphs were painstakingly illustrated. The magazine had 84 pages, some interesting advertisers like Hitachi who paid for a booklet glued into the magazine itself. The editorial was interesting. There was a good mix of features on old shoe subjects like customer service and some briefer items I found interesting like “Jail Break”, which told about a prisoner who compromised secure information.
The Baseline that arrived on Thursday, August 6, 2009, caused me to ask the question, “Why bother?”
The publication was 34 pages and lacked the features that prompted me to save issues for years. The stories were very similar to ones that appeared in earlier issues. The ads, well, were skimpy. The cover showed an illustation about risk but the magazine came in a second cover that said:
Maybe you were out of own. So we are sending you another reminder to renew your subscription to Baseline.
Nah, I was not out of town. I just don’t find the publication compelling any longer. The feature I liked was long gone. If the publication shrinks, what is the justification for paying for paper, ink, printing, distribution, and the entire non editorial work force. Post the information on SquareSpace.com and call it a day.
I did click on the renew button and I was greeted with one of those number online surveys. I know that much of the data collected in this way is bogus. I used to click on the first choice in order to qualify for a free subscription when I used to read trade magazines. Now I look elsewhere. If I want an opinion, I can find a podcast and listen to a pundit.
I think the trade magazine sector may be in for some rough seas. Those numbers were crazy but they helped me sell more sophisticated analyses. I suppose creating those flights of fancy, like the nifty graphcs, were too expensive. Like those professionals, I fear I am a gone goose from the Baseline subscription list.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
Traditional Media Explains Why It May Be Marginalized
August 10, 2009
Short honk: Navigate to the New York Times’s article “Breakfast Can Wait. The Day’s First Stop Is Online”. In my opinion, the article does a good job of explaining why traditional media are being marginalized. Note the pattern. Up. Online. Leave. No time for the newspaper. Not a hint of interest in a magazine. A book. Not a source of fun for anyone except grandmother. How will traditional media respond? Hybrids; that is, a marriage of traditional publishing and new technology. Great idea. How will these solutions be fit into a day that begins with email and ends with surfing YouTube.com?
Stephen Arnold, August 10, 2009
SAP and Its Evolving Business Model
August 10, 2009
First, the Tibco rumor and now the SAP on demand software strategy. Managing Automation’s “SAP Unveils an On-Demand Software Strategy for Large Enterprise Customers” surprised me. I had dismissed SAP’s cloud chatter as fog. Not so according to Jeff Moad, a member of the Managing Automation editorial staff. He wrote:
At a recent SaaS conference in Amsterdam, John Wookey, SAP’s executive vice president for large enterprise on-demand, said the company plans to roll out a series of SaaS products for large enterprises that integrate tightly with SAP’s on-premise Business Suite and run on the Java-based on-demand platform that SAP acquired along with Frictionless Commerce in 2006. SAP will concentrate on selling the SaaS offerings to existing users of its business suite rather than new accounts, Wookey said. SAP’s SaaS offerings for large enterprises will include some existing and some new products. Existing products include SAP’s CRM on-demand and e-sourcing services. SAP CRM on-demand will be migrated to the Frictionless on-demand platform…
You can get a consultant’s viewpoint and some verbiage from SAP top brass. For me, the article triggered three thoughts:
- How will SAP make up the shortfall between the revenue from its traditional approach to licensing and deploying its software and the “cloud” model?
- If there is strong uptake for SAP cloud services, from where will the engineers needed to service the clients come? If SAP trims down the functionality, won’t the savvy buyer look for lower cost cloud options or just fire up some coders to create a solution using Google or Microsoft functions?
- What will customers be getting? Will this service be a 2009 version of Microsoft’s early push into cloud computing?
- Whither TREX search?
I don’t have answers, and I didn’t see them in the Managing Automation write up.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
Washington Post Riffles Google Books
August 10, 2009
First, the source: the Washington Post. A traditional newspaper. Presumably the Washington Post is aware that Google has become the poster child of the network-centric world in which traditional media must operate. Second, the Google: a company that has destabilized Yahoo, annoyed telecommunications executives, and operates by playing three D chess in a world happier with Tic Tac Toe.
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The editorial “Google’s Fine Print” identifies one of Google’s chess moves in a Tic Tac Toe world. Traditional media want the game to be Tic Tac Toe. There is an elegance to it and the business model predicated on taking intellectual outputs, putting them on paper, selling ads, and charging enough money to build information empires like those enjoyed by William Randolph Hurst, among others.
The problem, however, is that in order to win at Google’s game, the folks on the other sides of the 3 D chess board have to know what game is being played. Google has been grinding away at indexing and archiving information for quite a while. The Books interest kicked in a year or so before Google hired a wizard and Caere executive to move the Google parade toward books.
Then Google invoked fair use and started digitizing with some partners who were sufficiently Googley to figure out that playing Google’s game was a reasonable undertaking. Folks objected. Google negotiated. A deal emerged. Now, after the fact, the Tic Tac Toe crowd wants to play their game.
I have written many times that dealing with Google requires a different understanding. The traditional media are one group of Google contestants lagging in the game playing expertise. Keep in mind that Google is an “as is” outfit. The Tic Tac Toe crowd is working on the “to be” scenario. Publishing will be in the same two person raft as Microsoft and Yahoo. That craft is not going to close the gap, let along leapfrog the Google.
Let me think. Google said it would index the world’s information 11 years ago. Since that time, Google has been playing its game of 3 D chess. Now more than a decade later, the Washington Post wants to play Tic Tac Toe. Well, maybe the lawyers will pull off the Greek deus ex cathedra play. Will that change the fact that no other entity can do what Google is doing to preserve and make accessible books and research information. A national library? Right, good luck with that one. How about a commercial database company? Fat chance. Some of thsee outfits would sell out to Google in a Kentucky Derby minute so the lawyers and accountants who run these information sweat shops can buy a house in France.
Tell me how wrong I am. Just keep the “as is”, the signed deal, and the available archive in mind. “To be” arguments will not hold the addled goose’s attention. The Christian Science Monitor has weighed in as well.
Stephen Arnold, August 10, 2009
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