Yahoo’s Purchase of Associated Content and Journalistic Industrialization
Journalistic End Times, Pre-chewed Food for Thought
The new rules of content are simple:
- The content must be SEO-friendly.
- The content must be available for every topic imaginable.
- The content must be cheap to produce.
- The content must generate ad buys.
Yahoo’s purchase of Associated Content last week, for a whopping $90 million, highlights the growing race for ad dollars going on among the Internet’s biggest players. The best way to get those ad buys is to offer companies highly-targeted content that will attract a niche audience. The best way to get the most esoteric content in the shortest amount of time is to prioritize quick and dirty efficiency over expression.
The result is something akin to an online industrial revolution, with content sweatshops churning out cheap, choppy, but sufficient bullet point lists and how-to videos. Like most physical factories, the emphasis is on making money, not producing quality work.
Sure, the content has to hold up, but it’s far from thoughtful exploration. The fact that I’ve been working on this post for about four hours (I wrote the end first) would make me worth less than $4 an hour to Demand Media.
Demand Media advertises itself as the leader in social media, claiming:
“Every day Demand Media makes it possible for people to create and publish valuable content, for millions of Internet users to engage around passionate communities, and for thousands of websites to grow with social media features their audiences want.”
The idea of “social media” has been through more mad libs than I can count, but there are still surprises to be had by the liberties taken at its expense. Media is media, but affixing the word “social” implies that there is some emotion, some modicum of unprovoked human expression involved.
Or it seems it should be that way. Phrases like “the death of journalism” have been thrown around for years, but if you were looking for the smoking gun, here it is.
The goals of companies like Associated Content and Demand Media are light years different than those of the Star Tribune or Los Angeles Times. Both need money to survive, but while content factories produce useful content solely to sell ads, we have to believe that most writers at these newspapers still want to tell a story.
But it takes too long, and it’s too inefficient. Major newspapers across the country now rely on this Sam’s Club model to fill the empty space by writers they could no longer afford to keep on staff. In turn, many of these writers now find themselves absorbed into the very system that is working hard to replace their brethren, churning out 30-minute articles and videos on how to draw horses or steep green tea.
We want content, we want it now and we want it pre-digested.
In 2009 Wired covered Demand Media in depth, dubbing it “The Answer Factory,” and the nickname is scary accurate.
Content Sweatshops, Algorithm-based Ideation
Companies like Demand Media employ a huge number of freelancers, producing content in bulk for pennies per piece. These are the “how-to’s” you find on sites like eHow, and each one pays about $15 if you’re a writer – $20 if you’re a videographer. You get paid even less to proofread.
The process is more machine than human, a journalistic terminator of sorts – intent on subjugating search results through esoteric optimization and algorithm-based imperialism, while struggling to portray a human facade.
Contributors operate more like factory workers than content creators, fitting blocks of information into prescribed patterns without much creative flexibility, racing towards mindless efficiency. It’s not a commentary on the creators themselves, but the system they’ve been left to create within.
With Demand Media, it’s all about the idea-generating algorithm. Computers analyze user searches, ad buys and competitor content to find holes in the material that’s online – ranging from semi-general (kayaking) to very specific (origami frogs) – and spit out keywords.
Another algorithm then determines what context these keywords might be queried within and regurgitates a meatier, but jumbled lump of search-optimized phrases terms. Finally, a human editor picks this up and, for 15 cents, turns the mess into something resembling a title.
Then it’s creation, editing, plagiarism-checking and posting. Someone, somewhere, will now be able to find a tailored article detailing the fine art of constructing a pirate hat out of construction paper. Perhaps they will also click on an ad for a trailer of the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean while they’re at it.
And it’s not just about content that people will want to read – it’s about content that advertisers will want to pay to have their ads placed on. Most of the money generated by these companies comes from PPC-based ad buys. To get make more money, you’ve got to have more ads – to get those ads, you have to have content to attach it to.
So the machine continues to turn. In the near future Demand Media hope to produce one million pieces of content a month. Sooner or later, traditional journalism will seem like John Henry racing the steam engine.
Mass Production Gone Mainstream
Demand Media isn’t alone in this quest for content, either. AOL’s Seed system, introduced last year, operates in a similar fashion, and Yahoo’s recent purchase of Associated Content highlights the search engine’s desire to join the fray.
In light of Yahoo’s recent partnership with Bing, the move makes sense. With Bing handling search and Yahoo taking over the ad network, it’s no wonder Yahoo is looking for ways to produce more advertising revenue. For $90 million, Yahoo now has a stable of 350,000 contributors shelling out content based on algorithms designed to maximize ad buys.
Even Google has dipped a toe, using video content from Demand Media to pursue more ad buys on YouTube. Google also powers ads on sites like eHow, so while they’re not yet in the content game they seem more than content to dine at its table.
For those of us who still like our answers with inflection, there are places to go, but how far are you willing to dig. Are you prepared to siphon two-three pages of Google search results to find something worthwhile?
General Motors Hopes for a Battery-powered Recovery
We’re on the cusp of a battery revolution. On Thursday, General Motors will begin battery pack assembly at its plant in Brownstown Township, Michigan. It will be the first plant of its kind in the United States and, one can hope, start a trend rather than a flash in the pan.
Remember the stimulus package – that controversial, Titanic piece of legislation? Well you can thank our government, at least in part, for this leap forward on the part of GM. Way back in March, the president announced plans to reward advances in battery technology for the support of electric vehicle proliferation in the states.
General Motors was one of many companies that applied for some of the $2 billion+ in federal funding under the Electric Drive Vehicle Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative.
The money wasn’t just to boost hybrid vehicles in the United States, but to boost our competitiveness in the “battery wars.” Most of the batteries that power your phone, laptop, and various mobile devices and pending tablets come from overseas. Companies like LG, in South Korea, currently hold a rather large market share. While General Motors will be using cells from LG, the actual manufacturing of the battery packs will be going on right here – or in Michigan, rather.
Just as the United States has a role to play in battery production, GM, and the Obama administration, is hoping that there are also gains to be made in the area of more efficient automobile. Having grown up on a steady diet of Buick Leasers, Oldsmobile 98s and Cadillac DeVilles, I can say without reservation that I do not equate U.S. automobiles with either efficiency or the future of driving.
That’s not to say that I don’t love Buicks – just drop by and I’ll take you for a ride in mine.
But when I think compact efficiency, I think Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, etc. However, with the exception of the Prius, most of the models rely on fuel efficiency. Battery-powered cars, while not new in concept, have yet to reach any sort of critical mass. So, cars like the Chevy Volt enter into a race that is still very much anyone’s game.
The Volt’s lithium-ion battery pack will be able to charge both on board, by way of an internal combustion engine, and externally, from a plain, old household current. This means that, just as we now plug our phones in overnight, so too may we, in the future, charge our cars while we sleep. According to Discover Magazine, that’s a good 40 miles out of 80 cents of electricity. Not too shabby!
Learn more about the Chevy Volt below.
[via earth2tech]
NASA Helps Farmers Dig Healthy Crops
Farmers are using satellite views of their land for strategic management of their crops, marketing, and soil. Strategy, no matter what you’re ‘field’, is a always a matter of perspective.
The images help the Thomases root out problems caused by Canadian thistle and other weeds, NASA adds. “They help confirm that their crops are growing at least 10 feet from the borders of a neighboring farm–required to maintain organic certification. They can also spot the telltale signs of bottlenecking in the fields—where flooding is over-saturating crops–and monitor the impact of hail storms.”
Said Thomas, “We’d have to walk our entire 1,200 hundred-plus acres on a regular basis to see the same things we can see by just downloading satellite images.”
Thomas recently began providing her farm’s coordinates to her buyers in Japan. “There’s no more ideal way I know to show how healthy our crops are to someone thousands of miles away,” she said.
Social Media is Dead – Long Live the New Fresh
My Google homepage looks like “Night of the Living Dead.” RSS feeds roam the screen like zombies with unfulfilled shopping lists. I don’t have a helicopter, so there’s no way I’m getting out of this.
Oh, didn’t you hear? Sometime ago RSS died. There wasn’t a big going away party – just a few close friends. And yet … it wanders the Web … hungry for brain.
I’m late to the party. To be fair, TechCrunchIT is not in my Google Reader and I wasn’t there when Steve Gillmor took its pulse. Rather I was alerted to the fact that RSS had passed by way of Twitter. (case in point?) Sam Diaz concurred last week – RSS is, indeed, dead.
In fact, it seems like everywhere you look, things are dropping. I keep waiting for someone to tell me that social media is dead – and then what’s next? No media at all? Will we transmit thoughts and perception telepathically through Motorola chips implanted in our brains?
It seems like an ongoing trend to declare things in absolute statements. These are a few I’ve heard over the last year:
- Teens don’t tweet.
- Newspapers are dying.
- Public relations is dead.
- Kill your blog.
I could go on. I think it’s a mistake to relegate things that are no longer the trending norm to eternal slumber. Plus, more often than not, it’s simply not true. Teens do tweet – they’re just not the homo superior of the realm. Newspapers, as a whole, aren’t dying; the medium is becoming sustainable in the new information economy. Public relations isn’t dead – it’s certainly due for a shift in perspective, but it’s very much alive.
At this stage in communications, things are changing so fast, we don’t have time to see the gradient shift. The next hot item is just stepping out of the car and something needs to clear space on the runway. It seems like we’re no longer content to watch things play out. We have to kill off yesterday’s headlines so that we can herald tomorrow’s.
Plus, the age of Twitter is very much the age of catchphrases. “Microblogging is emerging as a viable, and worthwhile, form of expression and networking,” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like “blogs are dead.” Plus, the latter leaves room for a link to the full article and any subsequent re-tweets.
I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. I love Twitter … most of the time. Best of all, I have the option of skimming in Twitter and then doing a deeper diver later into my reader. I also check certain sites, friends’ Delicious accounts, etc.
I just don’t think that Real Simple Syndication is dead. It’s been tweaked, torqued, twisted and integrated. I think the main idea, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that we no longer rely soley on our Web aggregators to inform us. Well, yeah, we have a few more options. That doesn’t mean that RSS died, it’s just not the only player on the field.
Collective Soul just released their eighth album, but I still take the time to listen to “Shine” and “Pretty Donna” – they’re just part of a steadily growing playlist.
At most, I think we can say that certain functions of RSS have been adapted and customized to fit other formats. The future of social media, newspapers, public relations and so on and so forth isn’t death, but integration and adaptation. We don’t have to predict the future, because it’s constantly shifting – and it won’t be the same for everyone.
Some of us will abandon RSS for Twitter. Others will use both. Perhaps some will just use RSS. Or maybe some new tool will come along that combines the best features of everything and then we’ll all use that?
Isn’t that what Google Wave is supposed to be?
Announced in May, and recently available to some Apps users, Google Wave seems to be a jack-of-all-trades for communications. Is it a messenger, a mailbox, document sharer, collaboration tool, project dashboard … all of the above? But it enters the picture with a basket instead of a scythe. It’s not here to kill AIM or Twitter or e-mail – it’s here to take the best of relevant technologies and integrate and adapt them.
Evolution is constantly going on, but we don’t have to qualify things in absolutes. Remember, video did not kill radio – radio went online.
"Hybrid thinking"? … Think again.
“Obama lauds innovative spirit … Future economic prosperity depends on building a new, stronger foundation and recapturing the spirit of innovation.”
Historically, tough economic times have catalyzed surges in innovative thinking - Hewlett Packard and Polaroid were formed after the Great Depression, MTV came close on the heels of the recession in the 1980′s, and Apple’s iPod (developed during a sharp decline in sales and margins of consumer electronics in 2001) joined the “pantheon of game-changing innovations born of hard times, alongside Depression-era breakthroughs such as nylon and the jet engine.” (HBR, July/Aug. 2009) If history repeats itself, the current economic downturn is the perfect storm of opportunity for innovation.
The rustling in the bushes is all there – at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer suggests that, “Companies and industries that continue to pursue innovation during tough economic times will achieve a significant competitive advantage and position themselves for growth…” … And, “… companies investing countercyclically in R&D (biz-code for innovation) during downturns tend to outpace their competitors on the upswing.” (HBR)
What all this means is, between random jolts from the Federal Reserve and the pitch and yaw of consumer confidence, companies and industries around the world are rifling through drawers, combing executive profiles, and making the mad dash into the ethers in search of both survival and triumph in the huge pot of gold at the end of the Next Big Innovation. Suddenly, the fluffy and elusive x-factor of creativity/innovation/design has become the imperative “it-force” behind economic recovery and prosperity. From Washington to Wall Street, everyone is using the “I” word, rushing into the vortex with new takes on how to pin down and quantify innovation.
Dev Patnaik, founder and chief executive of Jump Associates, a Silicon Valley growth strategy firm (clients include Nike, Target, and Hewlett-Packard) discusses the underpinnings of innovation in this month’s Fast Company, ”Forget Design Thinking and Try Hybrid Thinking.” Fast forward to his point, Patnaik suggests that there is a unique role that designers and their skill-set/way of thinking can play in making everything — products, services, experiences, and industry-specific entities such as finance, education and government — better. He then pushes beyond that thought to propose that something bigger is going on in the minds of successful innovators:
“… something bigger is going on, more powerful than the adoption of a single school of thought. The secret isn’t design thinking, it’s “hybrid thinking “: the conscious blending of different fields of thought to discover and develop opportunities that were previously unseen by the status quo …”
We’re not talking about “multi-tasking” here … True hybrid thinkers (you know who you are) traffic in the cracks between traditional areas of expertise and are able to ”connect the dots between what’s culturally desirable, technically feasible, and viable from a business point of view.” The new face of innovation demands that we “see the world through multiple lenses and draw meaning from seemingly disparate points of data.”
According to Patnaik, “hybridity” matters now because the problems we need to solve are too complex to be handled by any one skill-set. Gone are the good old silo days where depth in a single field trumps breadth in multiple areas. Audiovox design executive Lou Lenzi asserts that those who want to innovate, must be “one part humanist, one part technologist, and one part capitalist.”
Well, “hybrid thinking” might be a catchy modern phrase, but it isn’t a new concept. In the spirit of “Everything old is new again,” hybrid thinking can march to the back of the line behind lava lamps, lime green and liberal arts. Two words for Dev: 1. da; 2. Vinci.
John Hope Bryant: Our First Dood
The Push tagline, “Push the Future in New Directions,” reflects our mission to, on the one hand, track the people, ideas, and technologies that are shaping our future while, on the other hand, give people the tools and inspiration required to be Push-ers in their own right.
“A person with no hope is the most dangerous person in the world. We need to give individuals a stake in the system, or they will seek to destroy it. This is silver rights in action.”
John Hope Bryant says he’s out to make smart sexy. That the next emerging markets are in our own back (mostly urban) yard; that our communities, in terms of an economic recovery, are (dys)functioning as underperforming capital; that people have to see options before they know they have options; and that role models who can make smart sexy are critical to showing the way to success.
Pay-Per-Pee: You've Got to be Kidding Me
There are many ways to survive a recession, but trust me, charging your customers to use your bathroom is not one of them. Irish budget airline, Ryanair, recently admitted to toying with the idea of pay-per-use restrooms, but let’s hope it never leaves the discussion table. Many things came to my mind when contemplating this experience:
*What kind of currency are you going to put the meters in? If Ryanair chooses the euro, they’re leaving out the UK: a huge portion of their market.
*How much are you going to charge? Will it eventually cost extra if you want the door locked?
*What happens if you don’t have any change? Will you then have to endure the humiliating experience of demanding of the fellow sitting next to spare a euro or you’ll simply pee in your chair?
Right, so we live in a world where everything has a price, but it’s hard to know where to draw the line. Using the bathroom is a very personal and regular part of one’s life. It seems like a human rights violation to be depriving someone of, or charging for that privilege. Next, there will be an Oxygen Fee tagged onto our ticket price.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Ryanair. As an avid, albeit poor traveler, Ryanair is my saves-the-day airline for cheap flights and European jet-setting. I’ll give up my feet space, I’ll surrender being trendy for the sake of only taking a carry-on, and I’ll even pack my own lunch, but I won’t put a price on my dignity.
Business Cards for Jerks
Do you want to add a little more meat to your resume? Try handing out your business cards in beef jerky. A carnivore’s delight to networking, MeatCards provides custom made beef jerky business cards via a 150 Watt CO2 Laser Beam. No joke. Their website simply states, “these business cards have two ingredients: Meat and Lasers“, with the added disclaimer that “MeatCards do not fit in a Rolodex because their deliciousness cannot be contained by a Rolodex.” Is this for real? Yes. Can you eat the business cards of your competitors? Not recommended. The guys behind MeatCards assure that their product is edible, but they make no promise of it being palatable; due to legal implications, they don’t plan to market it as such.
Nonetheless, it is an interesting concept. I feel like their target market may be somewhere between the avid outdoorsmen and the die-hard rodeo rider, but anyone keen on standing out from the rest could probably be served well by a MeatCard. Who cares if you get a call back for an interview because your contact information smells like Mesquite BBQ? You still made it to round two!
And why do I get the feeling these cards were designed by a bunch of stoners? The conversation probably started with, “Dude, what if the whole world was made of beef jerky?” Upon agreeing this would be a good idea, they decided to start small – with the business card, but full-blown hickory-smoked venison resumes are likely what’s next. (Or maybe that’s just the Wisconsinite salivating in me). I can just hear PETA starting up their cannons for this campaign, but I got to give props to MeatCards for adding some flavor to the workplace.
Green Xchange provides platform for sustainability collaboration
Nike, Best Buy, and Creative Commons all seem to agree that “corporate colloboration” has a much better ring to it than corporate secrets. Their debut of a new sustainability cooperation tool called “Green Xchange” paves the way for the sharing of intellectual property in the name of widespread innovation. Within this platform, companies can grant the access of their sustainability research and development initiatives to other companies. This access can be provided free of charge or for a price, at the individual company’s discretion.
Obviously, competing companies are not always going to be keen on working together, but conclusive research on product sustainability can be used by more than one industry. The example that Agnes Mazur gives on the WorldChanging blog is that of a truck tire manufacturing company using Nike research on maximizing the efficient of air pressure in sneaker design and applying it to truck tires. This type of collaboration, with some consideration for free market competition, can save a lot of time and money. It also has great potential to accelerate the sustainability movement, which is good news in a world where it is increasingly evident that our carrying capacity has already been reached. Check out the informational preview here: Green Xchange
When Worlds Collide: The Newsroom
Take a peek at this highly amusing skit from Landline TV that laments the woes of the changing newsroom. Oh, nostalgia…
Mein Kampf: The New Business 101 Primer
As PUSH advocated at our 2005 conference feature “Lessons from Deviants” and more recently in our “Diamonds in the Rough” post, more often than not, there is a method to one’s madness and that method is worth studying. Indian business students have certainly caught onto this strategy, as demonstrated by the recent increase in demand for Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf. In the last six months, sales of the book surpassed 10,000 copies in New Delhi alone.
The owner of a Mumbai-based bookstore explained the phenomenon as such: “They [Indian business students] see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it”. In other words, however twisted that vision was, his business plan to execute it was not. The passage of time may now have finally afforded us enough distance to critically study the methodology behind Hitler, Goebbels, and others that created such an impressive force to be reckoned with… And the fact that Indian business students are the ones with enough savvy to recognize his logistical merit is a nice little jab of irony for Adolf. It just proves you don’t have to Aryan to be smart.
A Preview of A Global Dinner Party
This Monday, I had the opportunity to attend a test dinner of the Push Institute’s much-anticipated Global Dinner Party (now in its pilot phase) at the home of Sam and Sylvia Kaplan. The guest list included four lawyers (from corporate to entertainment to constitutional/security-torture-rendition, our mayor, a singer, a serial entrepreneur, a college student in need of a free meal/younger blogger (me), and others. The three-course dinner featured matzoh ball soup and salad, a Middle Eastern main dish, and chocolate meringue for dessert, but the conversation undoubtedly proved to be the main affair – so much that, I confess, I rather slacked off on taking notes. Like a good meal after a long day (when you don’t stop to wipe your face until you’ve cleaned your plate), I became so engrossed in the conversation that I did not pause to take notes for fear of missing the debate.
In our review of the evening, Cecily explained that “The aim of A Global Dinner Party is to bring people together over food and ideas, to share and challenge thinking about where we’re headed. We’re creating a 3-course menu of questions on topics such as energy, immigration, life expectancy, worldviews, exploration of space and ocean, morality, and other such juicy stuff. If the conversation broadens and inspires people’s thinking, all while having fun, then the dinner is a success. Ultimately, these are the kinds of experiences that ultimately impact how decisions are made — which is how change is made — and that’s what we’re after! Share a dinner, create community, and change the world — what could be better?”
Discussion for the evening focused on (which) factors that create a stable and robust society. I’m not sure that we arrived at any answers, though there was agreement that a malleable framework (ability to identify and adapt to change) was indeed a key aspect. Some thought that framework depends on the soft stuff of trust and community, while others leaned toward the hard stuff of social institutions, i.e. government, constitution, laws, banks, schools, health care, philanthropy, etc. It’s a chicken-egg/nature-nurture dialogue, but consensus wasn’t the goal, rather this group preferred to describe how a stable and robust society feels, looks, behaves. Terms used included safety, diversity, education, resilience, identity, production of goods and services, access to opportunity, common good, and leadership. Tom Wiese, my partner in the one-on-one discussion even argued that lazy people were an important aspect of society because the ambitious are motivated by others lack of action. – Interesting take!
The conversation then moved to encompass the benefits of our increasingly open-source government. With the introduction of interactive internet tools, more people are able to weigh in and hold sway. Nate Garvis of Target Corporations argued, “We have been suffering from a failure of creativity. We tend to throw the government and military at every problem. We use old tools for the new age when what we really need is more social innovation. The internet tools we now have allowed us to expand greatly in the world of social innovation.”
I could continue, but it doesn’t merit much for me to give you a play-by-play. It is our hope that every global dinner party will have its own unique face, but all will offer the opportunity to engage.
“The dinners are by design,” Cecily says. “It’s a way of humanizing ourselves.”
“I think we are surrounded by messages that drive us apart,” Nate adds. “We need to focus more on what we have in common and what better place to bring us all together than over the dinner table?”
Essence Exposed: When the economy breaks, what happens to the soul?
If you can get past the stuffy British accents, this discussion panel on whether the free-market model has created a moral vacuum (put together by the Guardian) is definitely worth the listen. (It’s only about five minutes long.) It includes insights from Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Richard Sennett, a sociologist; and Susie Orbach, a writer.
Dr. Williams starts off by pointing out that the current economic crisis is just as much about pride as it is about greed. People share “the absolute terror of not being in control, the need to always be setting the agenda” and when people don’t have that, they tend to freak out. To put this in a business perspective, Cecily states, “There’s a human tendency to want to have everything figured out before taking action. For example, you often see people whose work life isn’t satisfying, yet wait to know exactly what they want to do before making a change. But you can’t really figure things out in your head; experience is the only way to really know what works and what doesn’t. That’s not to say that thorough research and preparation aren’t needed, but it is a reminder to not suffer the ‘paralysis of analysis’. The best one can do is to set a direction and just start moving.”
As it is, there are plenty of parallels between what the individual is feeling and what a business experiences in a time of recession. Richard Sennett points out that “modern capitalism reconfigured things like careers so that it’s no longer a meaningful concept for people to perform short-term jobs.” Short-term investment became much more popular than long-term gains and views, and when put in this kind of short-term regime, both people and businesses suffer.
Why does this happen? Orbach argues it has a lot to do with identity. “We now have this thrust…for a self that is so fractured that it can only be experienced through the latest accomplishment…” she explains. Their is an immediacy to our well-being, we tend to view our lives in terms of a checklist and when we’re in between checked boxes, we have a total loss of who we are. Orbach touches on the fact that we lack a sense of continuity and fluidity in what it is that comprises us. “It”, that feeling of self-satisfaction, simply comes and goes in such short-term wavelengths that it’s difficult to process. Our lives have become so external that we forget how to nurture our own identities.
“That is why branding is so important,” Cecily says. “A well-defined, deeply rooted sense of purpose should drive business strategy. As we know, conditions and trends can swing wildly, yet purpose is constant. Purpose is what makes a brand resilient and adaptive. In traumatic times, such as we’re in, it’s important that decisions be guided by the basics, ‘Is this who we are? Is this what we do? Does this fit?”
A brand, done well, is a distillation of purpose and personality. Branding is a process of translating that subjective, squishy stuff into objective terms. It’s an interesting process; the aim is to find language, metaphors, archetypes, style that moves seamlessly from subject (company) – object (brand) – subject (consumer) – object (purchase). A brand that resonates across all channels is a brand that has successfully articulated its purpose and meaning. This is why it is also the seat of strategy, the cause of resilience, and the driver of loyalty. – Pretty important stuff.
We do this as individuals too. Take Facebook, for example. We have objectified our identities in the form of the page and by adding you as a friend, joining groups, and exchanging information, we’re saying to one another – “Hey, I like who you are! I like what you’re about!” It’s all about bonding and belonging which, when extended through a community of like-minded people gives a sense ‘tribe.’ Essentially, that is the same relationship a business should have with its clients, even though it usually doesn’t play out in such obvious terms.
“Remember, no one else can ‘do’ you,” Cecily says. “It’s you, your brand, your identity. Don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others. Just stay true to you, then use that sense of conviction to guide you through the rest.”
Diamonds in the Rough: What companies can take from criminals
The April issue of Wired features an incredible retelling of the 2003 Antwerp diamond heist, where thieves managed to penetrate 10 different security systems in order to reach their loot. They would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for the careless disposal of a garbage bag carrying incriminating information…a garbage bag that they happened to have tossed on the land of a man who is gets red-faced when he says litter on his land. August Van Camp made a habit of calling the police every time he found garbage on his property and the day the diamond thieves left behind theirs was no different.
Now, 4 out of 5 involved in the heist are serving jail time. The man known as the “King of Keys” has never been found and neither has the estimated $100 million in diamonds. Leonardo Notarbartolo, their ringleader and the man who finally agreed to speak with Wired, is not giving away the location of the loot, but what he is willing to tell us – is the method behind the sheer, brilliant madness of their plan. It a method that Cecily argues, business can learn a lot from.
In 2005, the Push Conference featured a segment entitled “Business Models: Lessons from Deviants” where Cecily pointed out that innovations often come from society’s outliers — people who deviate from the norm. “For example, take the next generation of video technology,” she explains. “Where does that usually come from?” I think I might know the answer to this one: if storks brought us babies and the eagles carried freedom and democracy for all, it seemed plausible that the pelican would bring us movies…You need a fair amount of space to store that large, unwieldy film reel, right?
“Pornographers,” Cecily informs. “Law breakers are really more like law get-arounders. People who can pull off capers such as this demonstrate sophisticated research, analysis, systems thinking, and planning. To what end? To exploit vulnerabilities in the system. This is why innovators in the pornography industry are usually the ones coming up with new ways to ‘share their wares,’ as it were.” I raise my eyebrows…Go on….
“I’m certainly not endorsing criminal activity, ” Cecily assures. “Consider the Antwerp diamond thieves. They planned for that heist for a long time and in intricate detail. They built a replica of the vault to rehearse every detail of their strategy to determine, precisely, how to get around many, many layers of security surrounding the vault. Whatever else you may think, you’ve got to admire how crazy smart it is, as well as the commitment, patience, organization, and execution of the caper. That kind of thinking is what’s needed in the innovation process too.”
“Because we learn and process information best through experience,” she continues, “simulations — such as the diamond theives had — priceless (or at least $100M worth).” The diamond thieves may have walked off with light prison sentences (Nortarbartolo is serving the longest at 10 years) and loot that is mysteriously stashed, but their real goods are the qualities they already had to begin with: careful planning, patience, and precision in execution. Luckily for the business world, these kinds of goods are available anywhere as long as you take the time to foster them.
Future of cars uncertain, Honda reveals its side-project: a mind reading robot
Scientists at the Honda Research Institute have been doing a lot of thinking lately, and they’re never just your run-of-the mill thoughts. As of yesterday, Honda thoughts now have the power to move robots. Japanese scientists introduced Asismo this Tuesday. Asismo is a bipedal, humanoid robot that has a 90% success rate of reading its operator’s mind, then carrying out one of four commands.
With mind-control technology, the idea is that eventually we can take the teapot off the stove when we’re in the other room or warm up the car without even having to go outside. Honda scientists explained the “brain-machine interface” as having sensors that pick up electrical signals in the scalp and the ability to translate them into the appropriate actions. There is obviously a bit of a processing time-delay – probably the same amount of time it would take for you to get up off the couch and complete the task yourself – but hey, who am I to knock on something so scientifically progressive, high-tech, and trendy? I know if I were still seven years old, I would be begging my parents for an Asismo for Christmas. The amount of time I spent dreading washing dishes would’ve given me plenty of time to think through the whole affair and delegate the responsibility to my pet robot.
Honda stressed that Asismo is still a baby, not yet ready for introduction to the market. The unpredictability and diversity of a person’s day-to-day thinking makes it difficult for Asismo to function universally. A brain must be analyzed for up to three hours prior before taking a trial run with the robot. If Honda is really smart, however, when Asismo is finally ready for market, they should change its name to Wall-E. The fans would go wild! (Myself included.)
The Reich-AIG Smackdown
Jon Stewart single-handedly revived Celebrity Death Match last week with his-much-talked-about, searing (and, oh so satisfying) rebuke of Jim Cramer’s lack of accountability — and that of his colleagues at CNBC — as a financial “entertainer.”
This week Robert Reich jumps in the ring, unloading a fresh can of whoop-ass on AIG and their astonishingly brazen-yet-craven defense of the $100M executive-bonus (or is it ‘bogus’?) payout.
Reich counters AIG’s claim of legally-binding, preexisting agreements with refreshing common sense (full post here):
AIG’s arguments are absurd on their face. Had AIG gone into chapter 11 bankruptcy or been liquidated, as it would have without government aid, no bonuses would ever be paid (they would have had a lower priority under bankruptcy law that AIG’s debts to other creditors); indeed, AIG’s executives would have long ago been on the street. And any mention of the word “talent” in the same sentence as “AIG” or “credit default swaps” would be laughable if laughing weren’t already so expensive.
…This sordid story of government helplessness in the face of massive taxpayer commitments illustrates better than anything to date why the government should take over any institution that’s “too big to fail” and which has cost taxpayers dearly. Such institutions are no longer within the capitalist system because they are no longer accountable to the market. To whom should they be accountable? As long as taxpayers effectively own a large portion of them, they should be accountable to the government. But if our very own Secretary of the Treasury doesn’t even learn of the bonuses until months after AIG has decided to pay them, and cannot make stick his decision that they should not be paid, AIG is not even accountable to the government. That means AIG’s executives — using $170 billion of our money, so far — are accountable to no one. (emphasis mine)
It’s common knowledge that the handful of executives who take a $1/year salary (CEOs at Apple, Yahoo!, Google, Citigroup, Ford, among them) is little more than a PR move. The extraordinary wealth of these men (mega-millionaires to billionaires all) continues to grow through recalibrated bonus and stock option packages, all while appearing to martyr themselves for the health of the company. Stunningly, the folks at AIG appear to have no pride (or its inverse, shame), and maintain an impenetrable sense of entitlement to extravagant parties and pay scales. It’s crazy, it’s unconscionable — and worse — it’s deadly.
I stand by my earlier assertion that causes of the collapse of our financial system really aren’t complicated. Sure the financial instruments themselves may be, but the principles of the game are exceedingly straight-forward.
Roubini: Economy Undergoing Death by 1000 Cuts
Back when hedge fund managers were still riding high, Nouriel Roubini’s forecasts of financial collapse earned him the moniker “Dr. Doom.” Turns out that Dr. Doom was eerily accurate in his projections, turning previous snicker-ers to sycophants hanging on his every word. A profile written on him in the NYT Magazine, August 2008, begins with warnings he’d issued two years earlier:
On Sept. 7, 2006, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, stood before an audience of economists at the International Monetary Fund and announced that a crisis was brewing. In the coming months and years, he warned, the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession. He laid out a bleak sequence of events: homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt. These developments, he went on, could cripple or destroy hedge funds, investment banks and other major financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
(read the full article)
Naturally, Roubini now enjoys a new kind of celebrity along with a heavy schedule of speeches, writing, and interviews. Yesterday, he was a guest on MSNBC and warned that the recession will extend into 2010, and that if stronger measures aren’t taken (by the government), that an “L”-shaped stagflation (as happened in Japan) is in front of us, rather than the “U”-shaped recovery we’ve been hoping for. Flattening any illusion that good times will return, Roubini says that the worst is still yet to come.
[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2196827&w=425&h=350&fv=]
When presumed financial wizards and experts say that they didn’t see the financial meltdown coming — that no one could — it feels like a deer-lick-size piece of salt being ground into a wound. There’s a whole lot of blame to go around, most of which can be hung on the delusion/ideology/myth that significant leverage will predictably yield significant wealth. I don’t know about you, but a visceral “Are you **!!?* high?” sense of distress screams inside me at such an assumption.
Many describe the “financial instruments” (of mass destruction) engineered in the last decade as too complex to understand, as they were designed, in fact, for opacity. I’m sure that’s true, but like gravity, there are simple principles that govern wealth creation and its management. Creating capital without any tie to a real asset is just crazy — and that’s not hard to understand.
I often say that, like Rodney Dangerfield, futurists don’t get no respect. The human brain just doesn’t accept what’s not in front of it, and rejects even well-reasoned arguments such as Roubini’s when they’re at odds with present conditions. Fear is hard to grasp when one is insulated by the comfort of big cars, houses, and bank accounts. It’s one of the reasons why humans tend to wait for crises to make changes, and why denial can run so deep.
My advice: 1) subscribe to Roubini’s RGE Monitor newsletter, and 2) start paying futurists the respect they’re due.
Meaning Business the Branson Way
The Executive Chairman of the Virgin Money Group, Jayne-Anne Gadhia offers four key points on how to keep being “cowboy” when the business world enters the badlands of recession…
1) Strong partnerships
2) Product diversity
3) Efficient marketing
4) Cost management
These are clearly logical and appropriate responses for the times, but I was more struck by Richard Branson’s (Virgin entrepreneur) post directly after hers. “People often wonder what makes Virgin different” he starts off and goes on to elaborate about the caliber and purpose of “Virgin people.”
Cecily has a lot to say about this. “What makes Richard Branson’s company so successful is that he’s not selling airfare, cell phones, or music, he’s selling a ‘territory of meaning’ (her term). When you have a strong identity, such as Virgin does, you can offer almost anything. Branson’s approach to business has been somewhat unorthodox, but he’s proved this strategy time and time again.” She says the ‘territory of meaning’ concept is illustrated beautifully by Virgin: “The very essence of the Virgin brand is its Explorer spirit, restless and always moving into virgin territory. Virgin is brave, at times bawdy and brash, and always, always forward-looking.” But the real genius of this brand, says Cecily, “is its tongue-in-cheek ‘rebel with flair’ attitude that puts the notion of virginal purity on its head. It’s this kind of double-entendre of meaning that’s just so winning: Adventure + Irreverance wrapped around luxurious experiences.”
(Here’s Sir Richard at a press conference in Boston announcing flights to the “Left Coast” — LA, SF)
Sir Richard in Drag, Boston, 2/12/09
According to Branson, “Virgin Group enters industries that aren’t well-run and need to be ‘shaken up,’ and the U.S. Airline business is one of them.” People who’ve flown Virgin Air rave about it. That makes them raving fans, by the way, so U.S. Airlines, which tried to keep Virgin out of their markets for 20 years, have reason to be nervous. A look up his sleeve: Branson is reported to have reached out to Captain Sully Sullenberger recently…
In many ways, it all comes back to being a good salesman. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, it’s whether or not you can actually sell it. Particulary interesting was the point Gadhia emphasized: it’s important not to view costs as fixed and variable, but bad and good. The way you decipher the bad from the good is to make the benefit to your customer priority #1. If it’s at the greatest benefit to the customer, that’s a cost you need to keep.
“Amen!” is Cecily’s response. “Woe to those who start slashing expenses based on dollar amount. Unfortunately, that’s a survival tactic most companies embrace when revenue starts falling, along with squishier ROI such as marketing. No company, no matter its size, can afford to forget that it’s core business is sales.”
“Excellence and customer service is the cost of entry to the market. You don’t get to make it past ‘Go’ if you don’t have those two things in your operation. The game is really about generating loyal fans of your work. To do so, you’ve got to clearly stand for something, you’ve got to mean something to your customers (again, the Virgin example).”
To complement Virgin’s advice to evaluate costs based on benefit to the customer, Cecily recommends businesses go back to the basics:
1) produce something that people want
2) have a clear point of view (territory of meaning)
3) touch people’s lives
4) keep expanding your network
This last point can be addressed by developing/refining a social media strategy. “The high-touch, high-context environment of online social networks is designed to leverage connections exponentially,” Cecily says. “Where else can you find more than 12,000 people added to your network everyday for zero cost? It’s a market you can’t afford to ignore.” She reiterates the importance of creating relationships, “the game isn’t to see how many ‘friends’ you can make, but to leave people better off for having been in contact with you. You create online fans not by selling to them (or giving mundane status updates), but by establishing a point of view and backing it up with content such as opinion/editorial on something of substance, linking to relevant stories, or sharing found ‘delights’ (i.e. music, video, commentary).” It’s not surprising to learn that Richard Branson blogs and Tweets (@richardbranson, 40,400 followers) too.
Branson’s and Cecily’s strategies are just two of many for making your way through the business badlands, summed up as, “Mean and mind (your) business!”
I'd Like to See the World as One (Big Franchise)
“Our greatest export has always been the American way of life and nothing is a better symbol of true Americana than McDonald’s and Coca-Cola,” says Cecily. McDonald’s recent $120 million investment into the expansion of its Russian franchises and Coca-Cola’s $1.2 billion commitment to Russia in the next 3-5 years certainly supports this claim. After years of hanging idly in streetside cafes, Europeans are flocking to the idea of fast and tasty food.
Some analysts have argued that the downturn in the economy has assisted in the success of cheap food joints like McDonald’s, but the fact remains that McDonald’s has always had a strong staying power – especially outside of the U.S. In 2008, McDonald’s reported a net income raise of 80% for a total $4.3 billion. 4 percent gains were garnered in the U.S., but the majority of their profit came from Europe and elsewhere. McDonald’s experienced 8.5 percent gains in Europe and 9 percent in Asia/Middle East/Africa.
Cecily explains why Coca-Cola has been equally successful: “Coca-Cola is an enduring icon that has wrapped itself in the idea of wholesomeness (what it stands for, not its ingredient list). Further, as the ‘real thing’ Coke promoted its beverage as a main-stage mediator for world peace, asserting that when people share something in common — a taste for Coca-Cola, for example — the likelihood of living in ‘perfect harmony’ just might be possible. Captured in their “I’d like to see the world as one” commercial (1971), that association is as burned-in to the American psyche as any brand can be. And for that matter, the world’s psyche.”
Russia is an attractive place to expand for many reasons. A growing middle class, with growing appetites for global goods, is a good bet for McDonald’s. And now with the $25 billion China has agreed to pump into Russia, in exchange for an increase in oil supplies (a pact just reached on 2/16/09), the country is a great investment for companies like McD’s and Coke.
Cecily continues, “America and Russia have been at odds recently over security and ideological issues. From their opposition to Bush’s missile-defense program, cozy relations with Iran and China, and their incursion into democratic Georgia last summer, Russia is clearly on the other side of a number of strategic interests for the U.S. Since countries that do business together are less inclined to go to war with one another, serving up Big Macs and Cokes in Russia may help quell the tension. – Now that’s a value meal!”
MWC: Something Smart & Something Snazzy
The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona recently wrapped up shop this past week and some of its exhibits made me positively giddy…
Smart Communications walked away with an award for its Alternative Power for Cell Sites program. This program uses renewable energy sources to power cell sites in off-grid locations. The Phillipines currently holds 68 cell sites. 41 are run on wind energy, 27 use a mix of wind and solar power. Operational savings include lower diesel consumption, less carbon emissions, better community relations and seamless service in off-grid areas. They’ve got the right idea: black is the new green. Instead of Black Friday, we can make it Green and come out just fine.
Secondly, I love, love, love the NTT docomo Samsung nameless projector contraption that was debuted. Confession: I have always wanted to be a secret agent. I’m obsessed with James Bond, yet ironically, I’m not not so technologically savvy. However, I’m working on the latter defect in order to keep up with the times. Ntt docomo Samsung introduced a mobile phone that also doubles as a mini projection screen for films and TV shows. You can see a video demonstration of it here. It’s a bit heavy to handle and I’m not sure the premise is so practical, but it sure looks snazzy.
It’s like the upgraded version of the drive-in movie. I think the oversight here is that it’s a lot easier to carry around a hand-held flatscreen than it is just to have the projection capacity. I can’t exactly see myself being like, “Hey guys, want to watch a movie?!” and then having to find an entire white wall suitable for projection purposes. Maybe, if I was in jail. I think the best market for the projection mobile would be for college professors. Students would definitely sit up and listen to someone who had such a fancy gadget… and if they can design one that fits into a cufflink…professors could appear as they were projecting their lecture notes directly from their hand, probably the closest thing yet to godliness.
Up Shit Creek? That's exactly where today's farmers want to be
In the mean time, while Detroit is figuring out all to get all of its ducks/cars in a row, local communities are not holding their breath. One Californian dairy farmer has rolled out its own survival package in the form of a cow-pie powered 18-wheeler. As a child, I recall visiting my friend who lived on a farm. We would stand outside her holding tank of manure, scratch our heads, hold our noses, and threaten to push each other in if we gave too much sass. I never thought to ask whatever happened to that manure when it finally filled up, but I’m happy to see that there are now more viable solutions than those (literally) stinking hot summer days on the farm. To be more specific, Hilarides Dairy manages the manure made by 10,000 cows to create 226,000 cubic feet of biomethane each day. This will decrease their Central Valley farm’s diesel fuel consumption by 650 gallons a day!
“Money is the most powerful incentive,” Cecily says. “It is certain that gas prices are going to rise to unseen levels again and farmers need to find a way to protect their interests. Rather than waiting to see if car companies to re-organize in a more sustainable manner, farmers are being innovative themselves.”
To me, the best part about this particular plan is that it shows progress from our initial platforms. The sustainability headlines have long been profiling people who have been using leftover oil and grease from local restaurants to power cars and buses. A major drawback to this is that the collection process can be long and tedious – traveling to and from area restaurants and transporting large volumes of grease to an adequate staging area is no easy task. By producing biomethane fuel on factory farms where large amounts of manure are already available will significantly diminish this problem.
If the stimulus package is able to restore some of the economy’s liquidity, sustainability is definitely one of the first realms of promise that private investors could look into. “The auto industry does not have the capacity to re-tool its entire system to work in favor of sustainability. That would be a too daunting of a task in the present moment,” Cecily comments. “But private investors with a view for the future could certainly step up and provide funding for pilot projects that focus on fuel-efficient cars and manage these relationships for the time being. This is an excellent time for innovation.” So yes, shit happens, but the good news is, we can make it sustainable.
Here are a few related links to browse:
Zero Pollution Motor Cars – The Air Car
Gas 2.0 Oils, Biofuel, A Revolution
Chinese firm launches hybrid car
The video below is of a farmer in India who has proved that the manure-to-methane process is even effective on a small-scale. He uses one cow to create the cooking gas needed for a family of four.
Note to Newspapers: Don't Short-Change Yourself
In my last entry, I practically argued for the end of paid journalism and as Push Institute founder, Cecily Sommers pointed out: I basically shot myself in the foot. “Say you’re a journalist who really believes in her work, who also has a family, and struggles to make ends meet. Then that’s a different set of considerations,” she says. “We need to understand that ‘life is commerce,’ that we constantly e-value-ate the worth of things, activities, people, time whether it’s in numerical terms, or simply opinion-based.”
Cecily launches her argument: “Here’s the deal: change is not inherently good or bad. Change is more like a symptom (but not in the pejorative sense) that has root causes that are constant and predictable: resources, technology, demographics, and social organization.” She continues, “What’s important is to understand how these forces interact (it’s what she calls “Change Literacy”), and then to make good decisions.” She goes on to say that in order to do that, you must first set set aside personal philosophies and belief systems, then study a situation in all its glorious complexity.
“Values matter,” says Cecily, “and are factored into the decisions you ultimately make in the end.” She makes a distinction between values and beliefs (or ideology): “While values tell you what you care about, beliefs are a determination of truth. That’s slippery stuff; beliefs act as an unconscious filter of what and how information is absorbed. As such they can distort or limit real understanding of the situation at hand.”
As an example, Cecily said she grew up in a family that believes business is bad and/or money is evil. “Obviously, it didn’t keep a passion for business from growing in me,” she says, “though it didn’t help either. What I discovered on my own was that business is a wonderfully creative platform. It’s also a pretty powerful social instrument, an actor in the world, a tool for change. Like change itself, business is neither good nor bad, it’s what you do with it.”
As she was talking, I recognized that the attitudes and beliefs Cecily described in her family is a mindset I may have adopted as well. I view mine as a self-defense mechanism. Being raised without much cash flow, I pretended that I was snubbing the allure of business, when in reality, it had been snubbing me from the start. Not only is this childish, Cecily argues that “it is an assumption that limits learning. Worse, it can limit your experience. You need to say to yourself: well, this is the world, given who I am, how can I be the most effective, successful person in this world?” If ‘life is commerce,’ as she says,then ultimately, you need to know both your value and your values, then be responsible to each. If you choose otherwise, you’re thrusting yourself into a cyclical argument with reality. (Basically, in more erudite words, she called me a “dreamer” too. *sigh*)
“Value is dynamic; it is forever shifting,” Cecily says. “The pain of change is a shift in values, whether your own or society’s. For instance, every generation believes, as they grow older, that things are getting worse (she said there’s a word for it: “chrono-centricism”). It’s just that things are different and older people are no longer a part of society’s creative thrust; usually they don’t want to be at the center of things anymore, but neither do they want to feel left out. The way the world used to work makes sense to them, while all the newer stuff doesn’t. Every generation, as it ages, starts to feel anxious about the world, and interprets it as ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’.”
I am experiencing that “pain of shifting one’s values” right now as I write this. Can Walter Isaacson really be my friend? If I want to live in this world, I guess so. Cecily offers hope, however.” It is equally important to have boundaries,” she advises. “You have to understand business for what it is, but it doesn’t mean you abandon your values. You can go to the soup kitchen and help out or give back in other ways to the community, outside of work. It is ineffective when you let these values permeate your business model, however, because then you are not assigning the appropriate worth to your endeavors. If you keep pushing against the fact that the world functions through commerce, you are only impoverishing yourself.”
Don't Nickel My News
Walter Isaacson, former Chairman and CEO of CNN and Managing Editor of TIME, is vying for the “re-commoditizing” of the newspaper, but so far, most of his claims are falling on deaf ears. Isaacson makes his argument in last week’s TIME Magazine with his piece, “How to Save Your Newspaper” and is following up with many animated discussions, including my favorite – his appearance on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. He is convinced that there is room to move in the decline of the newspaper industry – that if citizens can be hooked hard by the iTunes phenomenon, surely a similar business model can be designed for the news industry. The New York Times scratched their dalliance in this idea in 2007 and the only major newspaper in the U.S. currently operating under an online subscription model remains the Wall Street Journal.
Isaacson warns that “free news” will come at the consequence of quality content. “Charging for content forces discipline on journalist: they must produce things that people actually value,” Isaacson states. He also criticizes the popular method of fostering profit through advertisement dollars. He says, “Publication’s primary duty should be to its readers, not to its advertisers. You will weaken your bond with your readers if you do not directly depend on them.” As a writer, I happen to disagree with both of these statements. As far as free news compromising quality content, this is easily refutable. Do Habitat for Humanity houses fall apart in a year? I don’t think so. In fact, they are probably twice as valuable because they were made not for profit, but for the betterment of the community. They have an inherent worth that is much more powerful than you think. The daily beat reporter has never been a lucrative occupation, but it’s a spot that’s still consistently filled. Why? It’s for the same reason that musicians continue to play at their corner coffee shop even though their chances of making it big are miniscule. It’s out of a love for what they do. If Isaacson is implying that a lack of adequate compensation is going to make a lazy journalist, I argue that they probably shouldn’t be a journalist in the first place – they’re not in it for the right reasons.
This holds true for his advertisement argument as well. If a newspaper makes its profit solely through advertising, Isaacson’s implication is that the paper will be less conscious of its readers. Doubtful. You still need your readers to visit your website, pick up your paper, in order for those advertising dollars to work. You might not directly depend on them, but like most things in life, it is a system, and your readers indirectly influence your survival. You lose your credibility; you lose your advertising investments.
Here’s where my idealism starts to creep in. Why does everything need a price? The growing field of economic anthropology addresses this incredible tension between market and society where a numerical value is the only way we know how to determine the worth of something, yet there are so many aspects of human nature that lie outside of this measuring rod. We put a price on emotions when we award thousands of dollars in “pain and suffering” lawsuit settlements. We put a price on our houses which really, for many people, are a huge part of their individual identity. (This may not be true to the modern-day transient American, but for many people they live where their family has been for generations and feel indelibly connected to the land). American technology writer, Dan Gilmor, tells us that “journalism is shifting from a lecture mode to something that resembles more of a conversation.” So the question is, when did we start charging for conversations?
“A penny for your thoughts” is a colloqualism that’s been around forever and I hate it. It is a metaphor that reduces us to vending machines of information and I don’t think this is true. Personally, I am a heart on my sleeve kind of girl and I will talk to anyone and any animal until my lips turn blue. Some people call this a “dreamer,” implying a sort of otherwordly quality, but on the contrary, I think the ability to share makes you more real.
In conclusion, I am embracing the demise of the newspaper as a form of “creative destruction,” something beautiful will appear in its place. I secretly hope that Isaacson’s ideas get mired in the mist and we start to treat our exchange of information and ideas as something sacred, something above the realm of the market. The internet has done a great job of starting us along that path, so all we need to do is keep on PUSHing.
