Kip

HA! - Mona N.

subscribed ;) - Kip

The North Koreans must be hallucinating their asses off! - Ňicķ

Don't forget the Chinese! - Roberto "Maverick" Bonini

From http://www.amazon.com/Systems-... btw. Amund, information can also be noise. - Paul Buchheit

I'm not suggesting that this is an entirely closed system, but let's not forget the echo chamber that we are all in at this very moment ;) - tagami

There are almost no closed systems around. - Benedikt Koehler

To me it seems that if you have a closed system, then the information will criss-cross each other may times, and u will get a lot of noise, but also some modified better information(call it remixing the information) .I love to see these type of philosophical questions. Paul, do keep on pouring this type of philosophical one-liners. - Varun Mahajan

This was especially true in college when we would go out to the cow pastures and collect "magic" mushrooms, and then dry them under heat lamps in our dorm rooms - Kip

can't recall the source, but in college i read a book on systems theory that stated complex systems 'do what ever is needed' to maintain equilibrium. and that real change comes from outside the system. - MikeAmundsen

heck, publish that and it's your second book. nice thoughts... thanks. - adam christensen

What every geek wants! The hot chicks, the cool toyz, and a private Star Wars screening with Lucas. - Todd Jordan

Got the cliff notes version of that thing Scoble? :) - Nathan via twhirl

Todd: well, I have two out of those three. I saw Star Wars with the guys who started Hotmail, though. Does that count? :-) - Robert Scoble

Robert: we'll go with that for private screening. :) - Todd Jordan

Oh yeah, LOVE - they want comment love, and soc net love - hint hint - Todd Jordan

Nathan: cliff notes? I'm looking at differentiating myself from other tech bloggers. That means telling PR people (most of them, anyway) to either get me interesting and different stories than TechCrunch gets, or routing around them and finding my own stories that don't require them to be involved at all (like StackOverflow). - Robert Scoble

Robert: cultivating a variety of relationships has got to be key. I'd wager your biggest key to success is two things: persistence, relationship building. - Todd Jordan

haha. I appreciate that but to be honest I read the article. I was just attempting to be humorous :) - Nathan via twhirl

Winnov! I integrated those into a video conferencing project back in the '90s. - Peter Dragon

I thought I was going to hate it, but it made total sense. Thanks for not ranting! - Jason Kintzler

why, even after all the times i've posted to your blog, do I still have to wait for my comment to be moderated... - Zee from WeDoCreative via fftogo

Zee: I don't know why your stuff is still getting moderated. I approved it, though. - Robert Scoble

Will someone tell Scoble PitchEngine is worthy of a look-see? Zee? htttp://pitchengine.com/alpha - Jason Kintzler

Jason according to his post - you may need to camp out on his front lawn...But heck, considering the topic at hand & the rants you've given Scoble - it's worth a few minutes away from friendfeed to have a look at. - Zee from WeDoCreative via fftogo

Jason: if you're gonna pitch me, at least get the URL right! :-) Here it is: http://pitchengine.com/alpha/ - Robert Scoble

Thanks Zee! Goldberg, will you second? - Jason Kintzler

Lol, yeah - was gonna say :) - Zee from WeDoCreative via fftogo

Thanks, must have been the nervous jitters... - Jason Kintzler

Def. need to check out PitchEngine...worth a look. - Eric Miltsch

Great post. Just had a meeting with PR and AR today, so your post was especially refreshing to me. - Matthias Zeller

Robert, I believe that this is one of your better posts. Thanks! - Tal Keinan

My office is in Wyoming, we can Qik-it while fly fishing. - Jason Kintzler

Commented on your blog re: how important is Techmeme, anyway? - Kip

Robert, I enjoyed your blog post again, just like your others. I know nothing about the PR business, but it's good to hear it from your perspective. Keep up with the good work! - imabonehead

Todd Jordan, I absolutely do not want hot baby birds! - MiniMage via NoiseRiver

Robert, your post is a gift, excellent and thoughtful. I hope more people read it and learn. Thanks. - Cathryn Hrudicka

There's passion. About what I've no idea forgive me. I started watching your podcast because you made developers focus on why their gadget was useful and that came across again in the post. I don't come from a tech world perspective like so many new and coming users and when I find someone who can bridge the info. gap it's a gem. Most times TechMeme is in the "so what" chasm to folks like me. You didn't do that often in the podcast and have used some of the things I found there. I cannot say that about many - Boo

One thing you didn't explicitly say (or if you did, I missed it) - know who you're pitching to and tailor your message accordingly. Some people DON'T want PR pros on their front lawns. :) Your interests differ from Louis Gray's interests, or from Corvida's interests. In fact, some people probably shouldn't pitch to you at all, but should pitch to Corvida because their product more closely aligns with her interests. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo

BTW for the record, I didn't beg Dave Winer for a link. I either asked him what I had to do to get a link (which is what I think I did) or I jokingly begged him for a link and he took it the wrong way. Big difference even if he didn't see it that way. - Alex "Maverick" Scoble

And as for PR people figuring out how to exploit blogging, et al, if you hadn't showed them, someone else would have. At least you got something to show for it. - Alex "Maverick" Scoble

Ontario: actually if Corvida or Louis like something there's an extremely high chance that I'll like it too. I read both of them like a hawk. - Robert Scoble

Interestingly, I covered most of this ground in my post yesterday (the only one in the meme Robert didn't cite). The PR person is an evolving position, one that's moving past someone who can click send on a press release and towards someone who needs to be part entrepreneur and part researcher/resource for the journalists they work with. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

Mark, sorry for missing that. Mark's post is here: http://mashable.com/2008/08/12... - Robert Scoble

http://www.peglegentertainment... - todd

best post in awhile! actually, the last few have been really good! - Jeff Douglass

PitchEngine is certainly worth a look-see.... it seems to have a good foundation for what could be a better way to organize pitches. Brogan is already a fan and I could see it getting some serious legs. - Jason Goldberg

excellent one (again) Robert. It will be interesting to see if new startups and PR firms will actually read it and start acting upon it. I think theTechMeme game is a game that everyone (including the echoing bloggers themselves) will find increasingly boring and less effective ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

I appreciate long posts. It lets me really get into the material. - Denton Gentry

Lay it all out. I love it. - Capn' "One-Eye" Longman ☠

I like this post. Robert, you set the idea of WHAT a tech blogger should be trying to do front and centre. While not all of us may have PR firms flooding us with pitches, we can find intersting stories ourselves in other ways, because those stories are out there waiting to be found. - Roberto "Maverick" Bonini

Some long posts really lose me, but when Robert rants I'm glued to it from top to bottom. Great post. - Sarah Perez

Good stuff, but #8 was uncool. It sounded like you said "Spam Friendfeed so that your item comes to my attention." You didn't mean #8 that way, did you? Because that just transfers the game that you're already tired of (competition to show up on TechMeme) over to a new playing field (Friendfeed) - Matt Cutts

I think they want sponsorships! - Adam

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

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? - Chris 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 suppor