Eric Johnson

HAHAHAHA - Anna Haro

:) I'm "directeur" and I like it. This post from Andy won't be deleted - directeur

you weren't supposed to laugh anna ; p - Marco (aureliusmaximus)

Hehe - Alex Scoble CISSP

i just warning you @directeur if you invite stephen hawking I won't be able to bring myself to utter another word in this room again - Marco (aureliusmaximus)

great room concept. kudos, directeur! - karen2

Thanks karen2 :) - directeur via NoiseRiver

Clearly I've got to smarten up my act here -- I even had to Google BDFL, for heaven's sake. - Eric Johnson

Tell her brother or sister (your mom or dad) to tell her to cut it out..they would love it..or at least mine would. - Scot Duke

Ontario, tried that and failed. I think my uncle (the offender in my family) took it as a challenge and starting sending them out at a higher frequency and with text in caps with minimum three font colors. - Kamath ॐ

ask her to NOT send those lame things out...False, stupid waste of time. - Susan Beebe

http://www.thanksno.com/ - Kevin Barrow

Create an email alias or secondary addy that you use as a filter for messages like that. Contact your aunt (and only her) and tell her that you have a new email address that she needs to send to. :-) - JA Castillo

If I was hustlin in the streets passing out my CD or performing, I would be working for tips. What makes the blogosphere any different? LOL - ♫ Rahsheen™

Nobody is going to click on ads, but then, is anybody going to give tips? - possible248

I don't see the tips thing working either - Shey

I think people would rather drop a dollar or two if they like my site or maybe buy my music. - ♫ Rahsheen™

Try TipJoy. Tips seem to come when you create something (a plugin etc) or when you can save someone time/money with your post. Google search, and text link Amazon products that are appropriate to the content you're writing also have worked a little for me. I make enough to cover my small hosting expenses. - David Knight

Good ideas, David. I have been looking into monetizing with Amazon, but all that type of stuff makes me zone out. Yeah, I'm lazy :) - ♫ Rahsheen™

I had a tip jar up for a bit and never got a cent. Ads are working much better. - Jason Kaneshiro

Agreed. No one clicks ads anymore. - Sarah Perez

@Rahsheen - hate to break it to you bud but chances are it won't make one bit of difference. I've had a donation option in the sidebar for quite some time now and haven't had it used once - Steven Hodson

This has been debated and debated... but I think neither route makes sense. Unless you are a household name, running ads is more trouble than it's worth. Instead focus on content and delivering value. - Louis Gray

Some people are getting tips. Look at the featured items on http://tipjoy.com/ - Bruce Lewis via fftogo

+1 Louis - Eric Johnson

Louis, I think I asked you this before, but I wasn't around for the answer. Are you saying to wait until I become a household name, or to just forget about making any money entirely? (probably worded that all wrong, but you get the point :) ) - ♫ Rahsheen™

Rahsheen - i've decided to do weekly nude shows - saturday nights - $49/hour - Allen Stern

I don't agree with louis as far as they being more trouble than they're worth. I still write about whatever I want, and have spent nearly zero effort on ads after setting them up. It's nice to be able to cover hosting costs and then some. And I'm hardly a household name. - Jason Kaneshiro

Awesome! I wonder if live webcam pr0n is still profitable... - ♫ Rahsheen™

Allen, is that part of your Let's Talk Fitness program? - Hao Chen

@Allen Just say where! - Shey

People actually pay for pr0n online? Really? I can get more pr0n than I'd ever need, even from my iPhone.... requests for pointers met with derisive laughter. - Jason Carreira

Yeah, but can you get a live webcam nude show from somebody who is simultaneously giving you tips on Social Media and GTD? Eh? Eh? - ♫ Rahsheen™

How much revenue can you potentially create from ads?? And how realistic are profits, seriously. - Mona N.

I like Sushi, and I like Ice Cream, but not together... - Jason Carreira

"How much revenue can you potentially create from ads" ?? Maybe Markus F of plentyoffish, made buckets on adsense. His main revenue comes from there ! http://plentyoffish.wordpress.... - Peter Dawson

Go for the tip jar. But offer something of value in return - and be clever. - bob corrigan

In an entirely unrelated thought, would you rather see Horatio Caine of CSI:Miami fame sipping a Starbucks Super-Hyper-Frappo-Chai-Latte-Chino in the middle of an investigation. . .or have a Starbucks ad appear between segments? It goes to why I think ads don't work on blogs, they spoil the "wa" of the experience. - bob corrigan

Get it where you can. whatever works. Just don't make up a disease and ask for money, cuz that's actually illegal. Not to mention you'll go to hell. - Josh Haley

@Josh Can i have some money please.....just a little bit, rofl Off to HELL with my sorry ass - Gordon Swaby

Josh: ROFLMAO!!! That's hilarious. Certainly not going that route. @bob I have a couple of ideas, we'll see how they turn out. - ♫ Rahsheen™

become an internet porn start- everybodys a dog on the internet !! - Peter Dawson

Try being a "Troll" Half the people like you the other half are scared of you! LMAO - Igor The Troll

Craig: I saw something yesterday that makes me think affiliate marketing is going to be a BIG deal in about four years. But will it be in time to save newspapers? We're going to lose quite a few in the next four years. - Robert Scoble

Have you checked out http://blog.spot.us ? - Gerard Barberi via twhirl

There's two issues here: one is that the product of journalism is so easily distributed now, it makes the purchase of its artifacts (the physical paper) unnecessary and even unseemly. - Jim Benson

Interesting. I don't think that funding of journalism ala carte like that will work that well. It might here and there, but the real problem is we don't know what kind of journalism we need until after we see it. Would anyone have done ala carte funding to break open Watergate, for instance? No. Not before the fact. Not very sexy for anyone. After the fact? Yes. - Robert Scoble

The second is that advertising was never quantifiable and never worked very well even in a highly regimented economy. Now, with a more distributed economy, blanket advertising is totally ineffective. -- To solve this we need to solve both problems. (1) dealing with a diffused distribution model and (2) dealing with a diffused economy. - Jim Benson

Jim: the second part (that advertising isn't quantifiable) is what is killing newspaper business models. If you're a business, where would you rather put your ad budget? The local newspaper or Google? I know where I would rather spend my money. - Robert Scoble

Value used to be assigned to two things (1) the object and (2) bulk eyeballs. Repackaging the assumptions of media is key here. They are no longer making a broadcast or a paper (a single big sellable object), but, rather, a lot of diffused things which is monetized in different - but not entirely dissimilar ways. What's funny is ... for news ... context sensitive ads are not applicable. At a school shooting story you don't want adds for automatic weapons, for example. - Jim Benson

Regarding ala carte: I'm going to do another week in Washington DC. It costs about $10,000 to take a video crew there and get media done for a week. If it weren't for a serious sponsor I'd never get to do that. But that's not even serious journalism. To really chew on a story like Watergate you need months of investigative and relationship-building work. Maybe even years. I doubt it could be done by an outsider. That means having millions to fund that kind of work. Ala carte just ain't gonna do that. - Robert Scoble

Jim: good point, the packaging and distribution of news is totally changing. Local news is moving to sights like Topix, too. - Robert Scoble

here's one idea via spot.us: "If the public has a freelance budget, reporters don’t have to wait for an editor to approve their story. Now they can seize the day and pitch the public." http://blog.spot.us/2008/07/29... for example, crowdfunding Scoble-like reporters/bloggers. something like a PBS for the blogosphere. - ~C4Chaos

What's interesting to me is that I'm now in a VERY small town, & the TV broadcast doesn't cover what happens up here in this tiny hamlet. So I'm more dependent on the local rag then I ever was back in the Bay Area. Perhaps creating newspapers that that focus on smaller geographical areas or "types" of people (SAHM moms, environments advocates, etc.) - which is, of course, what bloggers have been able to do with microniching. - Michelle MacPhearson

By thee way, it's interesting that FriendFeed is good for a topic that can be settled in about 20 back and forth messages, but isn't good for longer topics that need a longer effort. We could build an entire conference for a few days around this topic. It's important for our society to figure this out, yet putting all the pieces and all the thinking together on this is very difficult. Admob, for instance, has one tiny piece (really great ads for iPhone) that can play a part in saving journalism. - Robert Scoble

Unfortunately people are getting too used to free everything and seem to be surprised when people need to put food on the table. My wife is a magazine editor so I know first hand how the magazine industry is basically going downhill fast. People are getting laid off daily and taking pay cuts. I would have to say that the current magazine business model will be done soon after newspapers. Not even by virtue of sales and subs but by the reallocation and sheer lack of advertising dollars in this economy. - Scott Lockhart

C4Chaos: let's be honest, though, a crowd-sourced journalism is going to give us all the news we already get. Celebrities and sports. Who will fund some geek to do investigative journalism that sounds really boring? I just don't believe in the masses. I think we need a better idea for how to fund this stuff. And, there's a lot working against you. The people with audiences are too busy to tear themselves away from what they are doing. - Robert Scoble

I still think the key word is Quality. If institutionalized journalist will be able to bring good quality stories the people will buy their paper. In areas like army and politics the veteran publicist have the advantage since having better sources to deliver the stories, in other spaces like tech there's an advantage for internet journalists. Conducting profound inquiries that lead to great documentary/particularized stories can do the work as well, specially on weekend editions. second thing is to establish good internet website to channelize readers to the newspaper brand and maintain popularity within all mediums. Third, is to attract more celebrities to share stories/pictures. Don't forget that a vanity fair cover is more tangible than a 1 second image, passing by on an internet server. Fourth, fighting on good sources and talents. You keep them, you get more readers. Fifth, focus on what you can instead what you can't and make the system efficient. - Nir Ben Yona

Nir: I'm never buying a newspaper again, no matter how good the journalism is inside. Neither is my son. So, bad assumption there. Second of all, the $.50 you pay for the newspaper does NOT pay for the content inside. The advertising does. So, if the advertising disappears the great journalism disappears too (which is happening VERY rapidly in the Bay Area as the newspapers have laid off hundreds of journalists recently). - Robert Scoble

I might be coming across as a Kevin Kelly fanboi today but here http://bit.ly/3aAu3e he suggests that people like to pay because it is; "1) A way of connecting. 2) A sign of approval. 3) A vote. 4) It indicates an alligence with the maker. 5) It feels good to the payer, to support." Hopefully this model might work for journalism, music, and other forms of digital art and expression - jeremy ettinghausen

Nir: I can tell you with a very straight face that good journalism does NOT get readers. What does get readers? Comedy, celebrity, and sports and small, bite-sized news nuggets. - Robert Scoble

Nir: also, we live in a Google World: a world of niches. Some niches pay better than others. Great journalism about digital cameras or cars pays MUCH better than good journalism about world peace, for instance. Why? Because Google's advertising system is biased toward transactional audiences and rewards the creation of content that feeds those audiences. - Robert Scoble

Nir: I would have to disagree with you and agree with Robert - it's ALL about the advertising. That's why magazines give away subscriptions at ridiculous prices compared to their newsstand cost - guaranteed eyeballs to sell ads against. Even if readers were still reading newspapers and magazines at the same rate as they did in the 80s, if the advertising $ today were being diverted to more directed internet campaigns (Google, etc) the industry would still be in decline. - Scott Lockhart

good point on crowdfunding, Robert. but i was thinking more of a PBS model. (also been reading stuff on this topic on http://www.pbs.org/idealab/). the PBS model had been successful for a long time now so its a good place to start. isn't that similar to crowdfunding but without the crowd necessarily dictating what stories to cover? speaking of media and journalism, maybe we can get Danny Schechter (aka "News Dissector" who produced Weapons of Mass Deception) pitch his two cents on this topic. - ~C4Chaos

Seems to me there are two problems at work: producing paper is quite costly on the expense side (big fixed costs, typically union labor, etc.). And on the revenue-generating side, there seems to be not enough of what folks want to read (not enough local, overreliance on AP wire, etc.). I'd argue that papers' reporting isn't local enough/specialized enough to have value. With the right local/specialized content -- some professionally reported, some user-generated -- why wouldn't PPC work for the papers? - Eric Johnson

Oddly I was just thinking about this subject. Unfortunately I came up with very little. One possibility is to create an Xprize type mechanisms so people are richly rewarded for the often unrewarding work of journalism. The key isn't newspapers per say, but supporting the idealism of those who take on the sacred work of providing societies' mirror of truth. This is a distributed people's journalism rather than one organized around artificial organizations like a paper. - todd

The PBS model will not work on the web. Why? Because the web decentralizes and disaggregates things. PBS worked because of the bundling of things together. Yanni raises more money for them than Nova does. But on Web bundling Yanni with Nova makes no sense. - Robert Scoble

Robert: I'm the founder of Spot.Us (mentioned above). I agree that Water Gate wouldn't have been pre-funded, but reporting like this http://wiki.spot.us/election could merit pledges. Right now spot.us is in a VERY early stage (pre-alpha really) - but I do think it's a potentially new revenue stream. Not a silver bullet (I don't think there are any silver bullets), but it can't hurt to try ;) No matter what: I want to thank you for bringing the topic up - it's incredibly important. - David Cohn

losing newspapers is not a loss, look at the stack in your room you haven't read, look at the shallowness of 98% of all reporting ... - Gregory Lent

To continue the idea of support create a legal fund to help fight the battles. Lobbying groups to help fight the muzzle. Organize like a church or non-profit so people could contribute to a support network for journalists. Driving journalism solely through profits may not make sense. Journalism a higher social good packaged like spam. Maybe it should be organized more like other higher callings we appreciate? - todd

Private and public funding seems like a more likely avenue to save journalism. Paper press though is all but dead. - Todd Jordan

I'll go along with Robert, where does an advertiser put his funds? Naturally they want to market to people in their market and not just splash an ad out for people who are not in their market to see To survive the newspaper industry will have to start going further into targeting their ads to a market instead of the the shotgun effect. - Scot Duke

I know nothing about journalism, I'm just a professional code monkey. But I have a crazy idea - what about something like similar to kiva.org to fund journalism? - imabonehead

Gregory: I think you would be surprised at how much news that is spread on the web was first broken by paid journalists, even today. I think the real issue is that the method of information delivery is secondary. It is more about having a free and independent "press" (or wordpress) that holds us all accountable and can provide its contributors a living. So losing newsprint itself is not a loss, but losing the 1000s of reporters and writers that are able to do what they do because of it, is... - Scott Lockhart

@imabonehead Kiva.org is a BIG inspiration for my project: spot.us - in fact, I often just explain it to people as Kiva.org or Donors Choose for journalism. - David Cohn

David, cool. Didn't see the url mentioned earlier by other posters. It's still an early Saturday for me. :) - imabonehead

Robert & Scott: I totally understand your point and i do agree when it comes to day-by-day journalism. After all, it is a lose-lose situation for the institutionalized papers, they can't fight the speed and accessibility of internet news and info, especially for busy people like us who have no time for long articles reading while working. On the other hand i do find niche journals like Science Magazine or Nature for example, able to maintain worldwide readers with quality publication and pro debriefing. - Nir Ben Yona

Nir: I would have to say that I be surprised if they are doing well... Magazines and newspapers are fairly different, yet similar in a lot of ways too. The magazine format with its combination of design and short and long form journalism is a little harder to replicate online and hasn't been done all that well to this point. If you want to see what is happening at least in magazines, even with very niche titles: check out http://magazinedeadpool.com/ There's a whole blog devoted to publications going under - Scott Lockhart

<continue> with experts sharing their thoughts and researches. That is a quality journalism that attracts readers. Robert, i'm sure your 14 years son won't mind getting a monthly pro car magazine or a "PC Mag" alike version if he's into tech or gadgets. My point is that there is a place for quality and somehow (maybe naively) i'd like to think some people do go after interesting stories and not just "Celeb Gossip". Maybe it is the same as after the bubble burst, sort of a cleaning occurrence... - Nir Ben Yona

in an ideal world there would be a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for journalism where journalists could practice their craft free (or almost free) of corruption. a combination of philanthropy/non-profit/donation and subscription model as opposed to journalism run as a for-profit business would save journalism standards. for example, The Nation (see http://www.thenation.com/) is running on a combination of subscriptions, advertising, and donations. - ~C4Chaos

<continue> to let the good prevail. In my vision, in 10 years, the big newspapers will have a weekly internet edition threw their website and a weekend edition with more investigative stories. - Nir Ben Yona

This year in magazines these are the losses in advertising revenues for some very established US magazines. What were are seeing here is just destroying their already small profit margins: Entertainment Weekly (-16.8%), Kiplingers Personal Finance (-15.3%), US News & World Report (-30.3%), Home (-30.9%), and Scientific American (-20.3%) Lucky (-12.2%), The New Yorker (-20.1%), and ESPN The Magazine (-14.8%) - Scott Lockhart

sorry for possibly over-commenting this thread, but it is a subject close to my heart and my shared back account. :) Cheers! - Scott Lockhart

Nir: you're wrong. My son thinks magazines are pretty worthless. He reads MacRumors and Engadget, both of which bring him much better and more timely news than any magazine can (and more of it, too). FastCompany is actually doing very well compared to the magazine industry, which is interesting (it grew last year). But the category it is in lost several competitors, so overall the trend is right and probably will catch up with FastCompany at some point which is why we're investing online more and more. - Robert Scoble

Scott: but maybe it is part of the global recession that has dropped margins everywhere, not just in journalism. - Nir Ben Yona

Here's the process: 1. End of newspaper advertising ends artificial subsidy funding of "quality" journalism; 2. Supply & demand takes effect; 3. We start to get our first picture of what value people will put on different types of information. - Dan The Plumber Conover

I'm interested in saving journalism, but the question posed here seems to be about funding. Guess it's a chicken-and-egg thing. Seems like the distance between the reader and the writer has knocked a lot of the middle folks out of the picture, and it's harder to justify the kind of money they're asking for. When it comes to value in journalism, however, I still prefer hard facts over style, design, even spelling and sometimes grammar (and I'm a picky art director). Trust costs more than packaging? - Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ ᴷᴵᴹ ᴬ

Two things journalism can offer: targeted "local" audiences, and credentials/journalistic integrity. Where do you go to find out news about a specific area (geographic or topic)?, and where do you go for the truth?. Both are worth something. - Kip

We'll know an awful lot more about the future shape of journalism about a year or so after the 20th century metro newspaper system collapses/goes on life support (I'm guessing by summer of 2009, but that's a guess). But the one thing I'm pretty sure about is this: There won't be one way of funding journalism, and we won't lump everything that gets reported under that one heading anymore.The fundamental idea: There should be a logical connection between the info you produce & its supporting revenue streams. - Dan The Plumber Conover

Robert: i guess i'm a dope concerning nowadays kiddies. As for FastCompany, i do hope you will keep delivering the good stuff as long as possible. BTW, do you agree with my conjecture of a daily internet edition and weekly hard-copy version, coming up in few years? - Nir Ben Yona

I think you will get a mixture of rich corporations and individuals trying to fill the gap, like Google. But pushed out from the security of the newsroom, there will also be a flurry of entrepreneurship among the journalists who are displaced. Don't assume that subscription won't work in the future, either. It may well be that newspapers have actually been obscuring the need and opportunity for a higher quality journalism. I believe The Economist has achieved impressive growth against the secular trend. - Tim Penn

journalism doesn't necessarily imply newspapers, does it? - pixites

No, but about 90% of what "A-List" blogs do is NOT journalism. I'm no authority, but I'm beginning to see why people say there is a difference. "Editorial Discretion" Oh, @Tim, you're absolutely right. Online and print content can thrive in a subscription model if there is value. The mistake newspapers made was giving it away in the first place. - Andrew Feinberg

And the general newspaper model makes zero sense now. A daily packaged product can work for niche content, but who reads the entire newspaper? I use the big paper websites for different reasons (local, national, international, etc). Political news? Niche publications. I buy (or sometimes expense) Roll Call, CQ and CongressDaily. People in the Cable/Internet/Telecoms buy CommDaily and WID. There are tons of other niche trade pubs that are thriving. It's the blob of daily newspapers that needs to be split up - Andrew Feinberg

It's important to realize that journalism is a process, not a product. Newspapers might not survive but the craft of Journalism will. The question is... how? There are no concrete answers right now - but I do think that practicing journalists are earnestly trying to figure that out (for the first time). @Robert - I don't think Ala cart funding for journalism will lead to Brittany Spears stories. There are ways around that - I'll try and write a blog post at blog.spot.us with more details. - David Cohn

Since there is no known answer to this question, the most important thing to do right now is launch as many possible experiments in as many possible directions, increasing the likelihood that we will find good answers a little faster. But it's vital to understand that this is essentially *research* -- practical research, but research nonetheless. And in research, the dead ends are valuable too. Short-term business thinking inhibits this understanding. But the desperation of the industry moment only intensifies that short-term mindset. - Scott Rosenberg

This is currently an unsolved problem, a hard concept for some to grasp. Every possible answer--rich people! foundations! internet advertising! crowdfunding!--has some pretty glaring defects. No one has the solution yet. Right now the most promising developments are Talking Points Memo (http://is.gd/1cVX), funded by ads and reader support and doing investigative journalism of the kind we want; Pro Publica, funded by rich people (http://is.gd/uLu) and spot.us, which is crowd funding. - Jay Rosen

Jay lists 3 good funding sources. Also consider: Nonprofit corporation (supported by pledge drives, sponsorships, foundations, etc.); true-cost intelligence subscriptions (as with STRATFOR) and smart amalgams of keyword/display/classifieds/and various affiliate-type programs. And where I think it gets REALLY interesting is when you start creating information tools that have specific value to the end user. You add value, you take profit. - Dan The Plumber Conover

The trick? In Web journalism, you're paying for people costs. You're not paying for trucks and paper and ink and presses. So when people say "The Web can't pay for journalism" what they're REALLY saying is "The Web can't support newspapers and TV stations." - Dan The Plumber Conover

The thing I'm really looking forward to putting my energy into is developing some kind of smart, shared business infrastructure that would connect individuals who make content to all the reliable services that a new-media businesses will need to make money. You might be able to make some money writing useful articles and selling your own ads and doing your own site, but that's not a bright long-term prognosis. And yes, I'm a newspaper guy who signed up for a buyout last week. - Dan The Plumber Conover

Won't journalism always win Pulitzers? Which brings a sort of global cache and prestige... which is what newspapers hope to gain, such that the world will pay attention, right? That's at the highest level. There can always be prestige and prize for journalism at all levels... even if it has to come from new sources. - Christopher Galtenberg

it's so easy... just do as in Italy, where crap newspapers (most all of them) are financed by the government! - Luigi Centenaro

Newspapers are thriving in the ethnic market, primarily at the local level. The reason for the success is that their readership is starving for intl/local ethnic information. Weeklies are the way; most papers are run by journalists from their respective countries-it is extremely streamlined. Journalists need to take the initiative with sales professionals and open up local, weekly newspapers that serve specific niches/markets/topics. Also, home delivery is a must, as is a strong grass-roots component. - Harold Cabezas

Robert, I think you could ask a different question here, too. Was there a journalistic failure running through the housing bubble and its aftermath? In his new book, Robert Shiller suggests there was, but he made the arguments clearly before about the tech bubble. Given the scale of importance of this story, if we ask what might journalism have done differently, the answer might also suggest useful commercial or funding structures. - Tim Penn

Altrustic funding isn't the answer. Newspapers will have to stand on their own merits just like any capitalist enterprise. I'd like to more Nritish style - Hutch Carpenter

British style that is. More point of view included in the reporting. You win on your point of view. - Hutch Carpenter

Journalism needs a couple of things (1) a lower distribution cost structure and a lower news acquisition cost structure. If you look at online news folks (like Scoble, others) they've found an effective way to lower the distribution costs of their journalism. To lower news acquisition cost you need to look for alternatives to collecting news, whether it's UGC or leveraging a freelance network like Beet.tv is doing with TurnHere (disclosure - I work for TurnHere). - Morgan

<continued morgan> (2) the big media companies need to move quickly into diversified news outlets (as has been mentioned above) reducing the number of pages in newspapers, moving from trying to bash the mass over the head and instead move towards aggregating the long-tail of news consumers to roll up in to a critical mass not through one communication vehicle (i.e. a paper) but through many diverse channels. Finally they need to go for more sponsorship money and less ad money as we've seen in other biz. - Morgan

whatever it is can't be based on lame-O advertising cuz i NEVER click those. - Susan Beebe

I haven't commented on this yet because I really don't have anything substantial to contribute yet. But it's had me thinking for 24 hours. I guess that's not a bad thing. - Chris Baskind

One of the things implied in all this (at least for me) is the idea of completely self-selected news. It's an exciting development to be able to do that, but what are we missing? Scoble hits it on the head when he says Watergate reporting wouldn't get done under this model. If we're going away from news bundlers like newspapers, can we find a new business model to finance serious journalism? And what does a society without serious journalism look like? - Tom Landini

I don't like that I can't tell when these comments occurred. I have no idea if I should bother to comment. Has the conversation moved on or do people come back and talk more?? And what's with not being able to use paragraphs? Lots of text is a pain to read. - Dawn

Lots of interesting thoughts here. I have to say that this very subject is on my mind daily as I personally aggregate Hispanic news and have done so for 3 years to the tune of 40k+ posts. Just one niche among many but I worry about the loss of journalists especially since at least within the Hispanic community it is perceived that there aren't enough journalists covering issues important to them. Anyway, yes everyone can pick their own news but the flip-side is that there is so much news especially now through aggregation that I believe that a lot of solution boils down to relevancy. I don't think journalism needs saving. What needs saving is how to pay for the service journalists provide our society. Relevancy can build a greater audience. Building an audience around relevancy either via aggregation (hand-picked aggregation in my case) or some other method/service would provide a better avenue for targeting by advertisers and the necessary money they provide and maybe this will help pay a journalist for the - Tomas

Dawn: yeah, time stamps on comments would be very cool. Generally I find a conversation on FriendFeed can go on for about a day. Same with this one. it's pretty much died out, even though a few interesting comments have trickled in today. - Robert Scoble

Then FF will never go mainstream. "Non-passionates" don't want to have to be plugged in 24/7 in order to be able to participate. Thanks for the clarification. - Dawn

I'm actually doing a three-post series on how the internet has changed the economics behind the publishing business this week on Eat Sleep Publish. I'm also doing an event (a mini mini version of what Robert suggested above) in Seattle this Septermber to get smart ppl together to round-table about what the business model is. Robert - you going to be in town? - Jason

All I can say is - I hope newspapers will not go away - since I enjoy the print medium and the ability to carry my paper without having to plug it in every time. One of the reasons why i pay for my Economist is the convenience of having it, rolling it up and enjoying it without having to wait for XP or MaxOS to boot and show it. And even with always-on OSes (like Palm and iPhone), still enjoy the feel of paper. - Sanford

Further to my comment about Robert Shiller and the role of the press in positive and negative feedback loops, a full review of the book is here http://bit.ly/1IFiZb, with further links out. - Tim Penn

Question: WHY do we want to save journalism in the first place? Why not let it die its own death like fax machines and pagers. - Mukund

In the UK we have something that will buck the trend: the BBC. It's funded by a "licence fee', which you have to own BY LAW to have a television in your house. I.e. If you don't have a licence, you're busted. Sure, the BBC has to justify the fee annually, but the UK population seems, on the whole, happy with what it gets: unique, high quality local and national TV, Radio and web uninterrupted by advertisers. A place where in depth "Because it's important" type journalism may still be able to flourish? - Tom Beardshaw

Very good advice, Thomas. A comment on no. 6 ("Groups"): I remember Flickr staff mentioning that not only photos that are in too many groups (more than 10-15, as a rule of thumb) get penalties for their Explore rating. Allegedly, this is also true for photos that are in the *wrong* groups, specifically the ubiquitous "post 1, comment x" groups. So not all photo critique groups might be good when you want to get your pictures into Explore. - Ole Begemann

Ole, I hadn't heard that certain groups penalized photos but have seen Flickr staff in the past mention that posting your photo to too many groups will reduce it's visibility with their algorithm. - Thomas Hawk

Re: no. 5 ("Explore"): more criteria that seem to influence whether a photo makes it to Explore: the presence of EXIF data, geotags, title, description has a positive influence; faves and comments from people who are not among your contacts seem to count more than from contacts; faves and comments from popular photographers count more than those from nobodys; a photo that gets 2 or 3 faves within minutes after uploading is more likely to make Explore than one that gets faved 15 times within 24 hours. - Ole Begemann

Thomas, I'll try to find a reference for this. - Ole Begemann

Good point on EXIF data Ole, yes, photos in Explore are required to have EXIF data. My own guess as to why this is is that if a photo has EXIF data it is more likely to be your own photo vs. something you simply ripped from the web. Not foolproof of course but I'd guess that this policy is in part due to a desire to increase the authenticity of the photos promoted on Explore. - Thomas Hawk

If you look at the photos in Explore, the only "Leave a comment" groups that I see with any regularity are TWTME and 1-2-3 groups... what makes them special I'm not sure, other than they're amongst the largest groups in general. But you see very few of those award groups or "leave x comments" groups in the photos in Explore, so I suspect that Flickr must be penalizing them. - Eric P

Thomas, that's a great refresher on the original article. Some great tips. - Tom Quinn

And Thomas, throwing reciprocation in as a "bonus"? It should have been #1 or #2. The vast, vast, vast majority of comments and faves that I receive are from people whose stream I previously visited. The only real exception to that is when a photo is high in Explore, which results in a torrent of views/comments/faves from strangers. - Eric P

Yep Eric. Reciprocation is very high. Bonus tip might not be the best place for it. It's very important. Faving back when people fave your work, commenting back. Adding people back as mutual contacts, etc. All encourage activity on your photostream. - Thomas Hawk

Eric, participation groups don't penalize your photo from Explore best I can tell. This photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/n... from a few weeks ago was in the Deleteme Uncensored critique group and was #3 on Explore as well. - Thomas Hawk

In fact just searching flickr for the save10 tag from the DMU critique group along with "explore" brings up a number of photos: http://www.flickr.com/search/?... - Thomas Hawk

Good post, *IF* getting attention is important to you, as opposed to using it as a vehicle to just share photos with people - Eric Rice

After I read your original article on Flickr popularity a while back, I began reciprocating every comment received. That worked very well. - Tom Harrison

Eric, true. Some people have no interest in their photos receiving attention. I do think that the majority of people posting on Flickr though do appreciate when their photos receive some attention. Lots of people do not though. I have friends that only publish private photos that their friends can see and opt out of every public aspect of Flickr. I think these people though are the exception rather than the norm and think that Caterina's quote is pretty typical of the most active users on the site. - Thomas Hawk

Thanks for digging my article Aaron! :)