Business: April 2005 Archive Page

AP started as a cooperative. Today, it is a cooperative in name only. It’s time to take a lesson from music swappers and invent the new AP – a digital cooperative, a Napsterized news service.

The 21st Century news business needs a peer-to-peer network that lets local operations drive cost out of their non-local news packages, divert resources to local web content creation and operate on a level playing field with bloggers, citizen journalists and internet pure plays. --Bob Benz and Mike Phillips --Time for a change: The Associated Press as Napsterized news (Online Journalism Review)

This is a reasonable attempt by the mainstream media to "get it" when it comes to the internet. Another detail that caught my eye:

Confronted with the rapidly growing need for web-specific content like Flash files, audio clips and other multimedia elements, AP has chosen to spend more of its members’ money to create that content rather than facilitate content-sharing among its members.

I'm planning to introduce a Flash unit in an upcoming (Fall 2006, if memory serves) New Media Projects course.

Pick Up Ax Link-O-Rama (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

This year, I've taught Anthony Clarvoe's play Pick Up Ax in two of my courses -- Intro to Literary Study and Media Aesthetics. If you're just itching to find out what my students had to say about this play about geeks who listened to rock music that was recorded before they were born, here's a Google search for 'Pick Up Ax' on blogs.setonhill.edu.

A few years ago, I wrote a brief article on Pick Up Ax in the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games newsletter.

The publisher's website features a brief Clarvoe bio.


Some reviews:

Pick Up Ax reveals how distant such ideals now seem. Its protagonist—far from feeling heat, let alone compunction, for swimming with (past) a school of very nasty sharks—is rewarded for his less-than-ethical actions; and not just in the outcome of the plot, mind you: we actually kind of like and admire this guy, in spite of the fact that—or, more disturbingly, maybe because—we recognize in him the soulless signposts of our recent Age of Greed (NYTheatre.com)

Here's a mostly positive review that praised the production more than the writing.

The company says that its plays are chosen ``for their fiery vitality and thought-provoking topics,'' and this play was very often fiery; but thought-provoking? Well, yes, if the message was that the meek shall inherit modern technology or that the nerds will get their revenge. It seemed unsure, too, as to whether it was a morality play or a realistic one. (Off-Off Broadway Review)

Just today I found a delightful Pick Up Ax photo gallery, featuring photos of the mood room in action.

The game scene is resorting to faddish ideas from years ago to try to appear original. I'm surprised they haven't come out with Pet Rock software yet.

None of this will save a doomed industry. The business is going to attempt to sustain growth and creativity by making game players buy newer and newer machines. Computer gaming has always been sustained by never-ending improvements in resolution and realism. But once we get to photorealism, what is going to sustain growth?

That time is drawing near. We are already getting pre-hype for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 2, as well as the new Nintendo. All this will do is make the visuals more lifelike and the blood and gore more realistic and nauseating. While the kids who are used to this "progress" may not be put off by it, newcomers may be repulsed and skip these new generations of machines altogether.

If that doesn't flatten the market, the never-ending need to satisfy the demanding full-time game-player should do it. --John C. Dvorak --Doom 4: End of the Game Industry?  (PC Mag.com)

Predictably, Dvorak's getting trashed by twitch-thumbed gamers on Slashdot, but Dvorak's curmudgeonly demeanor is only endearing to a point.

Incredibles DVD Freezes in My Player (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

The other day, my wife picked up a copy of the widescreen, 2-disc DVD of The Incredibles. The movie disc loaded, played the FBI warning, then froze on the screen that threatens our little family with legal action if we ever offend The Mouse.

I'm used to the annoying tendency of DVDs to refuse to let you jump right to the menu, but this was ridiculous. The screen froze at the warning, and didn't do anything. The only way we could get the DVD out was by shutting off the player.

The bonus features disc plays just fine, and the disk that hung in on our DVD player worked just fine in my laptop. The DVD has imprinted on it "www.TheIncredibles.com/support," but that URL leads to an error. Hacking the URL leads to a Disney site containing no obvious technical assistance.

We brought the box back to Wal-Mart to exchange it, and the same thing happened.

My son suggests that we return the DVD and get a videotape instead, but I doubt Wal-Mart will allow that. Maybe somebody else Googling for this problem will find this page and we can commiserate...

PR is not dishonest. Not quite. In fact, the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren't dishonest. They give reporters genuinely valuable information. A good PR firm won't bug reporters just because the client tells them to; they've worked hard to build their credibility with reporters, and they don't want to destroy it by feeding them mere propaganda.

If anyone is dishonest, it's the reporters. The main reason PR firms exist is that reporters are lazy. Or, to put it more nicely, overworked. Really they ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves. But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. After all, they know good PR firms won't lie to them.

A good flatterer doesn't lie, but tells his victim selective truths (what a nice color your eyes are). Good PR firms use the same strategy: they give reporters stories that are true, but whose truth favors their clients.

[...]

We estimated, based on some fairly informal math, that there were about 5000 stores on the Web. We got one paper to print this number, which seemed neutral enough. But once this "fact" was out there in print, we could quote it to other publications, and claim that with 1000 users we had 20% of the online store market. --Paul Graham --The Submarine (PaulGraham.com)

The distractions of constant emails, text and phone messages are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis, according to a survey of befuddled volunteers.

Doziness, lethargy and an increasing inability to focus reached "startling" levels in the trials by 1,100 people, who also demonstrated that emails in particular have an addictive, drug-like grip. --Martin Wainwright --Emails 'pose threat to IQ'  (Guardian)

Theater owners are in three different businesses: showing movies; showing advertisements--previews, which must be shown as part of their contract, don't generate any revenue--and selling popcorn and soft drinks. The only business that makes a profit for them is the third, so it makes sense to cater to teenage males, who gobble the most popcorn and slurp the most soda. This demographic is reputed not to give a hoot if the picture is fuzzy and dim, as long as they can see the explosions.

[...]

It's hard to imagine even Wal-Mart imposing the kind of rules that made the Hays Office ridiculous, such as requiring married couples to be depicted sleeping in twin beds. But does freedom always improve art? Or to put it more provocatively, does censorship always hurt it? What is the proper place of public morality in popular art? Is it different from the place of morality in elite art? What is the appropriate standard by which to judge Hollywood movies?

[...]

But like the new censorship, the new technology raises the quality question. The advent of the DVD has paralleled that of the CD. Not only has it influenced the packaging of new material, it has stimulated the re-packaging of old. We may regard with mixed feelings the prospect of buying our favorite childhood TV shows in immaculate-looking boxed sets, but that is only the tip of the marketing iceberg. The DVD is making whole libraries of movies as available and accessible as the paperback made whole libraries of books. Will this help to educate the public about the history of film, thereby developing its taste and improving quality overall? Or will it degrade taste by reducing the experience of watching a movie to something you can do any time, anywhere, on your ever-miniaturizing laptop? (Lawrence of Arabia . . . Coming soon to a video phone near you!)

Granted, it is probably too soon to assess the aesthetic impact of the DVD--not to mention the whole "digital revolution" of which the DVD is but the leading edge. But Epstein's reluctance to address the quality issue also hobbles his attempts to come to grips with the enormous change that stands at the heart of his study: the one that occurred in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the power in Hollywood shifted away from the moguls who founded the studios and toward the top stars, the top directors, and the agents who perfected that power in the new "art of the deal."

[...]

Speaking of the theater, it might be worth taking a moment to consider how Epstein's mode of analysis would illuminate that realm. The theater industry, if you'll pardon the expression, is a lot older than the movie industry. But think of all the regime changes it has gone through. In ancient Greece, it was part of a religious festival sponsored by aristocratic citizens who competed fiercely for performance spots and prizes. In Rome, it was the plaything of plutocrats, who cared more about the lavish special effects than about the drama (sound familiar?). In ninth-century Europe, plays were performed in church by priests. In Renaissance Italy, there was the elegant proscenium of Aleotti and the funky commedia dell'arte of the streets. In Elizabethan England, the Globe Theater was run as a profit-making venture by entrepreneurial actors and other investors. The French bourgeoisie plunked down good francs to see realistic drama. And in spite of themselves, the Communists gave the world Bertolt Brecht and the post-Revolution Moscow Art Theater. What is the point? To quote one of those entrepreneurial actors, "The play's the thing." Under all of these regimes, the theater has been dominated by a lot of junk. (Even the Globe Theater featured bear-baiting on off nights.) But in most eras, the junk has been punctuated by a few great works, which is why we bother to pay attention at all. --Martha Bayles reviews Edward Jay Epstein's The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood --Hollywood Means Business  (The Weekly Standard)

There's even a passage in this review that defends Patrick Stewart as an accomplished stage actor. Bayles knows her stuff.

"God forbid, if someone shot the President, which network would you turn to? It will be cable, the Internet--something other than General Hospital being interrupted." --Sam Donaldson, former ABC News anchor --Donaldson: Network News Dead (BroadcastingCable.com)

And there is no doubt that there are profits to be made in the reconstruction business. There are massive engineering and supplies contracts ($10 billion to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan alone); "democracy building" has exploded into a $2 billion industry; and times have never been better for public-sector consultants--the private firms that advise governments on selling off their assets, often running government services themselves as subcontractors. (Bearing Point, the favored of these firms in the United States, reported that the revenues for its "public services" division "had quadrupled in just five years," and the profits are huge: $342 million in 2002--a profit margin of 35 percent.)

[...]

As in other reconstruction sites, from Haiti to Iraq, tsunami relief has little to do with recovering what was lost. Although hotels and industry have already started reconstructing on the coast, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, governments have passed laws preventing families from rebuilding their oceanfront homes. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly relocated inland, to military style barracks in Aceh and prefab concrete boxes in Thailand. The coast is not being rebuilt as it was--dotted with fishing villages and beaches strewn with handmade nets. Instead, governments, corporations and foreign donors are teaming up to rebuild it as they would like it to be: the beaches as playgrounds for tourists, the oceans as watery mines for corporate fishing fleets, both serviced by privatized airports and highways built on borrowed money.--Naomi Klein --The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (The Nation)

Klein sees, in the global outpouring of support in the wake of December's tsunami, a crass, opportunistic colonialism. Instead of rebuilding the small fishing villages, the money will be used to build industrial fishing farms, and more tourist facilities.

Of course, rebuilding costs money. It's shocking to think of the displaced villagers still huddled in refugee camps after all this time, but Klein is using that emotional image not to draw attention to the villagers' plight, but as ammunition for a political statement.

And there's nothing wrong with that -- this is an opinion piece, not a news story. But I was bothered by Klein's selective use of Condoleezza Rice's January statement: "I do agree that the tsunami was a wonderful opportunity to show not just the U.S. government, but the heart of the American people. And I think it has paid great dividends for us."

Klein trims the quote, writing "Condoleezza Rice sparked a small controversy by describing the tsunami as 'a wonderful opportunity' that 'has paid great dividends for us.'" As Klein puts it, Rice seems to be saying that the tsunami paid great dividends, but grammatically speaking, "opportunity" is just as plausiblly what she was referring to when she said "it". Taking the whole statement in context, I find it obvious that Rice was speaking of the American response to the tsunami, not to the tsunami itself.

Rice's original quotation was easily googlable, and since my expertise is in language, I can easily see what Klein has done to Rice's original statement in order to make her (Klein's) position stronger. But because I'm hardly an expert in international finace or global politics, I don't know what other detials Klein has similarly dressed up to suit her argument.

I found Klein's ethical argument about the nature of the "reconstruction" to be gripping and convincing. I actually started blogging this editorial out of a sense of outrage at the treatment of the tsunami victims. But her conclusion is an attack on Rice, and not a very effective one. It reminds me of the attacks against Bush for insisting that the U.S. government will never stop thinking of new ways to harm our country and our people. Of course, Republicans are just as silly when they act as if Al Gore really claimed to have invented the internet.

Grammar flaming is fun, but it doesn't change minds or solve problems. If you just want to incite your own loyal supporters, then that's another story.

"Certainly, I didn't do as much as I should have after all the excitement of the late 1990s. I suspect many of you in this room did the same, quietly hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp away." --Rupert Murdoch, "old media" mogul. --News must adapt to web, says Murdoch  (Guardian)

Simply counting the volume of conversations and comments and the number of trackbacks is one indication of the size and scope of the network surrounding your blog. Whether or not those comments are in agreement or disagreement requires content analysis, but presumably positive or neutral comments would be indicative of a healthy relationship between the blogger and his/her audience.

Examining the credibility and authority of the people who are commenting and/or linking to the site is another way to assess the impact and importance of the blog.

One needs to look beyond just quantity of postings or links to the quality of the dialog. I like the way Dennis G. Jerz of Seton Hill University categorizes blogs in his classroom and have adapted his categories below:

"Coverage" -- The number of times your brand or issue is mentioned.
"Depth" -- How deeply does the posting discuss the brand? Is it just a passing mention or does the blogger go into the subject in depth with numerous links?
"Interaction" -- What was the nature of the interaction? Was the posting designed to solve a problem, compare different brands, or simply allow the author to rant?
"Discussion" -- What was the nature of the discussion? Was it a true dialog with extensive exchange of ideas, or was it just bantering back and forth.

Jerz further classifies comments as:

Comment Primo -- a comment that launches a discussion on someone else's blog
Comment Grande -- a long comment posted on a peer blog, which is then advertised via a cross-blog posting
Comment Informative -- in which a commenter uses his or her particular knowledge in order to flesh out a general or incomplete statement made in a peer's blog entry
Link Gracious -- a link that draws attention to the source of an idea or to a good conversation happening on someone else's blog

Consider also adding Tonality, an indicator of the health of the relationship between the blog community and the brand. If the tone of the posting leaves a reader less likely to do business with your organization it is negative. If the posting leaves a reader more likely to do business with your organization, or recommends the brand, it is positive. If it essentially just discusses facts it is neutral or balanced. --Katie Delahaye Paine and Andy Lark --How To Measure Blogs, Part One... and what to do with the data (The Measurement Standard (via Cymfony))

Apparently the folks at Cymfony were so excited that they appeared in this (subscription-only) article that they pasted the whole thing on their website. I've added extra line breaks for legibility. The link goes to Cymfony's copy, but it originally appeared on The Measurement Standard. I note that authors removed "xenoblogging" and "wildcard" from the categories I proposed, and their interpretation of "interaction" is very different from what I intended. Still, it's a good article, one to which I'll return fairly soon, since this summer I'll be helping two different university administrative units launch PR blogs.

Odd that the article is written in the first person, but is credited to two authors.

I spent quite a bit of time sorting through (and adding to) my collection of blogging-related bookmarks. Several of these have been linked here previously, but I thought it would be useful to compile them for easy reference. Here, for example is a (perhaps somewhat arbitrary) collection of blog criticisim links... --William Cole --Blogging Workshop (Donut Age)

A useful collection of links... I'm flattered to be on it.

In the spirit of endism, here's a list of all the forms of major media and how they're trending. Make of it what you will.

Flat to Down to Way Down:

• Music: sales last year were down 21% from their peak in 1999
• Television: network TV's audience share has fallen by a third since 1985
• Radio: listenership is at a 27-year low
• Newspapers: circulation peaked in 1987, and the decline is accelerating
• Magazines: total circulation peaked in 2000 and is now back to 1994 levels (but a few premier titles are bucking the trend!)
• Books: sales growth is lagging the economy as whole

Up:

• Movies: 2004 was another record year, both for theaters and DVDs
• Videogames: even in the last year of this generation of consoles, sales hit a new record
• Web: online ads will grow 30% this year, breaking $10 billion (5.4% of all advertising) --Mainstream Media Meltdown (The Long Tail)

To include books along with all the other media dinosaurs is misleading.

The growth rate of books seems flat, but compared to the other traditional media, books look healthy.

I'm also not sure that measuing the advertising dollars spent on the web is a good way to measure the importance of that media. So, while the author coyly withholds commentary in an attempt to appear unbiased, the selection and organization of this particular list carries an ideological slant. I'm not criticizing the author for having an ideology, I'm just noting the rhetorical impact of the author's compositional decisions.

Although a failed business enterprise, Laurel?s Purple Moon seemed to do exactly what it had planned ? hit it off with girls. Her idea that games should consist of relationships, values such as loyalty, love, and courage, and conflicts such as jealousy, cheating, exclusion, racism, materialism, and broken homes seems worthwhile, but as a young girl I also would have wanted some action as well. Perhaps there is a happy medium that would please both boys and girls ? a video game that incorporates action and physical complications into an in depth storyline filled with rich characters, relationships, emotional conflicts, and growth. --Johanna Dreyfuss --Utopian Entrepreneur (The Long and Winding Road)

My student Johanna Dreyfus reflects on Brenda Laurel's Utopian Entrepreneur. I'm looking for this game, too, Johanna! Let me know if you find it!