Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Advertising sucks. We can do better.
We just don’t have headquarters, studios, production staffs, vice-presidents, make-up people, gophers, expense accounts, expenses… and profits…. yet.
We are TV.
But we’ve just begun. In the evolution of the new TV, this is 1954: Arthur Godfrey and Friends, My Little Margie, the Adventures or RinTinTin. That was not the golden age of TV. TV then sucked. But it got better. So will ours.
And this means we have a great opportunity to reinvent TV from scratch in an entirely new medium with a new relationship with our public, new creative standards, new means of production and distribution, new economic models. We can nurture an explosion of creativity and commerce. But we have to do it right.
But then he goes sideways. From my perspective, anyway.
Blogs didn't do it right. Not the economic side of the equation. We bloggers make it extremely difficult for advertisers to love us — and many want to. They can't find the right matches: the blogs that write about what they care about, with authority and trust and popularity. They can't measure us — and to advertisers, metrics are sex. Size matters. They can’t find our names and email addresses to negotiate with us. They can’t put ad hoc buys of us together across many incompatible networks. They can't serve ads because we don’t all have 15-year-old sons who can dig into the PHP to put up the ad call. They can't track their ads’ performance. Their clients fear us. And so they give up. And thus they still give too much money to old, shrinking media. They buy dumb. They lose. So do we.
Bzzzt. Wrong frame. Advertising is Arthur Godfrey too. It's a model that never got past 1954. Worse, we've dragged it over to the Web and blogging and everything else here.
No, I'm not saying advertising will go away. But I am saying it's inefficient, inappropriate and stuck in a sell-side perspective and mentality. We have to do better than advertising. Building a Relationship Economy offers some pointers. There have to be others. Go find them. Or make them.
Open reader economics. Or vice versa.
Project Red Stripe says,
We're a small team set up by The Economist Group, the parent company of the eponymous newspaper. Our mission is to develop truly innovative services online. We already have some ideas, of course. But as champions of free markets, we abhor the concept of a closed system. This is why we would like you to submit your idea (or ideas). Just think big - and we'll do the rest.
Stowe does some digging and comes up with red dirt:
I will submit my big idea, and agree to Red Stripe's terms and conditions -- which basically says I will get zilch and they keep everything -- in exchange for a six month subscription to The Economist!
He tags them idea thieves. Ouch.
A thousand rakes of light
Blogs can top the presses is Terry McDermott's piece in the LA Times about Josh Marshall and TPM Media's outstanding job of exposing the muck behind the firing of U.S. Attorneys.
Here's the latest research job assigned by TPM Muckraker.
It all started, and continues, here.
That's what's happening at the national level.
Here in Santa Barbara we have our own web of assistants helping The Independent, Craig Smith and Blogabarbara rake local muck, especially about the News-Press, which holds the ironic position of being the Biggest Story in Town that the Biggest Paper refuses to cover.
Bonus Link: Wondering Rocks has a nice riff on Giant Zero Journalism.
Required listening
Today's Berkman Center lunch talk, by Prof. Mary Wong of Franklin Pierce Law Center is outstanding. Here's the webcast. Recognizing both the fluidity and the stability of our rhetorical frames. To look beyond contract, beyond copyright, beyond intellectual property frameworks...
This is dear to my mind. A few minutes ago she said we don't really have a clear understanding of what a "commons" is. This is close (but far from identical) to what I said here about the Net not having one yet.
Live notes...
We need inclusive rights of equal weight and footing as exclusive ones. We need to bring in more broad and flexible considerations (e.g. human rights), than the exclusive rights we give, say, to copyright owners.
The human rights framework can help.
Charlie Nesson: tremendously constraining that the burden of proof is on the user rather than the rightsholder. Especially for universities.
Thought: Possession is 9/10ths of the three-year-old. It shouldn't be 9/10ths of the law.
Mary: the concept of the user is a loaded one. Many different motivations, potential outcomes, actual uses... I'm thinking that there is something inherently subordinate to the term "user". Also to "access". Also to "-centrism".
John Palfrey is talking about "digital natives" ... can't hear the rest of his remarks. But here is something I would say if I were physically there...
We frame the Web largely in terms of real estate. We have "sites" with "addresses" and "locations" with names we call "domains". We have "architects", "builders" and "designers" and "engineers". For better or worse, this reifies the Web as a set of places that are owned. There can be no commons there, by design. Even when we use the framework of publishing -- authoring, posting, writing, syndicating -- we demean it by borrowing the frame of container cargo, and calling it "content" that we "use."
Mary: people think of the public domain as fencing in, as enclosure. We are going to be tied to the real property metaphor until we find something broader, more flexible...
Ethan Zuckerman: I worry a great deal of reframing around one of the shakiest of foundations: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "One of the most disputed and least respected pieces of international law". It has become a morass of endless argument, with no binding outcome, he says. Also, "There is this urge to get law to catch up with what is actually happening." Aspirational law. Great term.
It's over now. Look for it in the archives here.
Cause for optimism
Hometown Baghdad is a series of video shorts at Salon.
Here is the series' blog, which follows Adel, Ausama and Saif as they pursue their separate ambitions — ones very much like young men in civilized countries anywhere might follow, but under constantly dangerous conditions.
Meanwhile, Mohammad Fadhil reports on improvements in Baghdad life:
As the operations continue, the interior ministry is introducing new identification measures for vehicles used by its personnel. The new armored vehicles are unique and leave no room for confusion, while the SUV’s are getting new light-green paint with the words ‘National Police’ well visible on the sides.
From my personal experience I can tell that the men staffing the checkpoints do not take their job lightly. One can feel that a long month of hard work did not exhaust them, and I am awed by the courage of those soldiers and policemen. In a city which has absorbed more suicide bombings than all other cities in the world combined every passing vehicle or motorcycle is a threat.
I can’t imagine myself in a position where my job requires I open dozens of trunks every day and each one of those moments might be the end of my life and those of the people around me. The physical and psychological pressure is enormous, yet those brave men continue to be our shield.
I was listening to the radio this morning and the first headline was ‘Policeman killed in an explosion south of Baghdad’. The story later explains that ‘south of Baghdad’ actually meant Babil. Babil is actually 60 miles away from Baghdad. The misleading headline underscored again how most media try to associate every piece of bad news with Baghdad to maintain the image of violence associated with the city.
No doubt people who follow the news as it is being reported in the West get the impression that we’re fighting a lost war, and I feel that there won’t be a day when our struggle to live a normal life and what we achieve in this path will make headlines that run above those of death.
You look around in Baghdad now and see hundreds of men working in the streets to pick up garbage; to plant flowers and paint the blast walls in joyful colors. Many of Baghdad’s squares are becoming green and clean. The picture isn’t perfect, but it’s a clear attempt to beat violence and ease pain through giving the spring a chance to shine.
Nights in Baghdad now are far from quiet, but the sounds cause less anxiety for me than they did before. I recognize the rumble of armor and thump of guns and they assure me that the gangs and militias do not dominate the night as they once did.
When Arabs or westerners ask me about the situation and I answer that hope remains and that we’re looking forward to a better future most would say ‘Are you living in this world?’ I answer, ‘Yes, it’s you who live in the parallel world the media built for you with images of only death and destruction’.
If it surprised some of them that a poll found Iraqis optimistic, then I’m surprised that someone finally bothered to ask Iraqis how they feel.
Just as free birds would never return to the cage, we don’t want to return to the days of the tyrant. Birds do not care that beasts roam outside and would not feel nostalgic for a home or meal mixed with humiliation.
On the pessimistic side, Riverbend hasn't posted anything in a month.