Business: June 2008 Archive Page

I noticed something fishy about Josh Harris's Jupiter Media Metrix back in 2000, when I wrote "Parasites on the Internet." Now Harris tells BoingBoing that his next project was a $25 million joke:

I now acknowledge that Pseudo Programs, Inc., a New York City based Internet television network founded in 1994 and sold from bankruptcy in 2000 was the linchpin of a long form piece of conceptual art. Pseudo burned over $25 million in private and institutional capital over a span of seven years. Pseudo was a fake company.

NYT:

For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse. This year is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.

Ad revenue, the primary source of newspaper income, began sliding two years ago, and as hiring freezes turned to buyouts and then to layoffs, the decline has only accelerated.

In contrast to the way things are going in the outside world, our print newspaper has been growing steadily since I arrived.  The quality of the articles, the physical size of the paper, and the number of issuses per year have all increased.  The traditional journalism skills the students learn while producing the print paper translate well into academic studies, but the end result is that they're being prepared for the jobs that are disappearing as journalism continues to move online.

That's not to say that students aren't exposed to new media. They blog in every one of my English/journalism classes, we've had students interning with web CMS and video production,  and I teach at least the basics of Flash.  But so far, each time I have presented students with the opportunity to expand either the print or the online publication, the momentum has ended up favoring the print side. 

I'm hoping to be more active in the online paper this fall, tying more class assignments into the technical and conceptual work that goes into maintaining the online paper, so that the small online staff can focus on innovation and quality improvement, rather than simply duplicating the print paper online.

New media skills continue to be in demand, there's a strong market for editors and technical writers, and journalism is not disappearing.  I'm hoping this fall to make the Setonian Online more central to the students' perception of what counts as valuable professional development.

Wish me luck!

I was busy at the Hypertext '08 conference these past few days, so only now am I following up on the AP vs. Bloggers story. According to NYT blogger Saul Hansell:

one key issue is the A.P. wants to protect the headline and first paragraph of its articles. He suggested that this will put The Associated Press in direct conflict with bloggers. "If AP's guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we're headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use," Mr. Cadenhead wrote on his blog.

Although The A.P. wouldn't talk to me, several people I interviewed who have spoken to A.P. executives this week said the organization appears to be internally conflicted and has not yet been able to come up with a clear fair-use position.

But unless something changes, Mr. Cadenhead's experience indicates that The A.P. is going to assert a much stricter interpretation of fair use than most people on the Internet are used to.

Want to quote 5-25 words from an AP story? That'll be $12.50.  ($7.50 for non-profit or educational use.)  The AP has published a form that details the cost of an "Excerpt for Web Use" license.

The AP has a right to discourage people from posting the full content of articles online, just as you or I retain the copyright to our own writing (unless we explicitly give those rights away).  But to charge money even for brief quotations is to reject the Section 107 of the Copyright Act -- known as the "Fair Use Exception." 

§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Note that copying an entire book (or song, or movie) in order to avoid purchasing it is not "fair use."  Showing a clip from a movie in class, or posting quotations from a novel to back up a review or literary research paper, are all covered by "fair use."

Access to the words of public officials, as reported from various news sources, is an important part of the democratic process.  A candidate being interviewed on ABC should be able to quote from what an opponent said on NBC, and someone who calls in on a CBS show should be able to quote from what a guest said on CNN. The Fair Use Exception recognizes that anyone engaging in "criticism" or "comment" should have the same the ability to quote brief passages from published materials.

Here's a great idea to annoy your online readers while generating ad impressions.  Take a random idea, come up with about 10 examples, find random stock images to illustrate the examples, and put one idea on each page, to force readers to click through each one.

Boston.com has a collection posted under the title "Business Galleries."  The advice in one, "Saving for College," is interesting, but the random stock photos of people using laptop computers added exactly nothing to the value of the article, and splitting it across multiple pages is just insulting. I feel exactly the same way when the TV news uses two 15-second "teases" ("Coming up after the break: Are America's children learning enough about what celebrities wear to their parole hearings?") for a 60-second story.  TV is about making an emotional impact, and when the news is trivial, you can get more bang for your buck by making the same shocking point three times, rather than putting all that time together to explore the issue in more depth.

Someone must feel that sprinkling tiny nuggets of content across multiple pages is worthwhile, though I'm always angry at the designer for making a deliberate choice that forces me to click, click, click.  I have ad-blocking software installed, so I never even see the ads anyway.

I can understand putting one photo per page if the photos are compelling enough to keep the reader clicking through the whole narrative, but come on. I'd rather see a random Flickr image than a generic stock photo.