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January 30, 2005
Silicon Valley boom or bust? It depends on who you ask
Three very human stories illustrate the economic disparities that characterize Silicon Valley as the region struggles to bounce back, in today's San Jose Mercury News.
Chris O'Brien writes:
Ask K.B. Chandrasekhar, 44, about the Silicon Valley dream, and he'll tell you it's alive and well.Since arriving from India in 1992 with almost nothing, he is now on his third start-up, Jamcracker. His company is growing. His venture capital investments in India are going strong. It may not be the boom, but the view from the seven-bedroom house he built in Saratoga still looks good.
Ask Doroteo Garcia, 40, and he'll tell you the dream of prosperity is further out of reach than ever. Nine years after arriving from Mexico, Garcia spends his days cleaning the Stanford University art museum before pedaling his bike to a part-time job washing dishes. From the studio apartment he shares with his son in East Palo Alto, he laments that he has less money to send home since he lost his second full-time janitorial job.
Ask Steve Clough, 39, a former technical support worker who fell from Chandrasekhar's world to Garcia's during the tech bust, and he'll tell you the transition is jarring. Since losing his job in 2003, Clough has struggled to pay bills while piling up debt. From his part-time job as a high school math teacher, Clough wonders if the doors to high-tech prosperity have closed for good.
All three men are right. By the numbers, the economy is getting better and worse -- depending on who you are. Silicon Valley has developed two separate economies that have drifted further apart ever since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.
In the valley's technology economy, profits, revenues and average pay are up dramatically. But fewer people are sharing in the good fortune because tech companies are doing more with less -- they have cut tens of thousands of jobs and continue to do so, boosting the productivity of their remaining workers....
Links:
A tale of two valleys: Three workers' stories illustrate widening economic gap in area by Chris O'Brien, San Jose Mercury News, 30 January 2005
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
January 28, 2005
File under "They paid researchers to study that?"
The average Silicon Valley man is fatter and pays less attention to what he eats than his female counterparts, Associated Press reports
I could have told them that.
"At least three out of five men in Santa Clara County are considered overweight or obese, compared with two out of five women, according to a telephone survey of 2,645 residents," the AP reports.
And what are we going to do about it?
Nothing much, it seems. Quoting the AP again, "Despite the extra pounds that men are packing, researchers found that they're much less likely to diet - or even to try to maintain their current weight - than women."
But it can't be that bad. This is California, everybody eats lots of fresh, healthy food.
"According to the survey, only 18 percent of men in Santa Clara County eat two pieces of fruit a day," says the AP.
Guilty as charged.
Links:
Silicon Valley men are fatter than women, survey finds, Associated Press (in San Jose Mercury News), 28 January 2005
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
January 27, 2005
The party Prince Harry should attend this weekend
The must-attend party in Greater Silicon Valley this coming weekend... here's the invite as I received it (with the addition of links to the web pages mentioned):
The Fascist Party
Saturday, January 29 2005
@ An historic SoMa building;
indoor parking available.
Location disclosed day of event
@ http://www.fascistparty.us
9pm-Late
21+ $15
Though we don't approve of Fascism as the preferred route our Government is taking, we cannot deny the Fascist sense of style...
Polish your boots and metal and attend the ball as if it were Nuremberg 1933. You might run into our despised dictator celebrating at the martini bar and discussing Laibach.
9:00 pm Gallery of Video art by propaganda visionaries:
VJ Culture, Videojon, Romeo Alpha, Marlon McKenney
Complimentary wine served.
10:00 pm Performances by:
Infinite Kaos
Extra Sensory Projection (Live Audio/Video)
http://www.extrasensoryprojection.com
11:00 pm The Dictator Fascion Show.
Designs by:
FierceCouture - www.fiercecouture.com
Laura Dawson - www.lauradawson.com
Jason Evege - www.evegestudio.com
Appearances by your favorite dictators and the unveiling of the latest
must-have Fascist accessory!
Presented by The Princess Kennedy
12:00 am Party with DJs:
- IKAMYO [Infinite Kaos]
- Adnan [Lush]
- Alaric [Video Salon]
- Electro/Breaks and a dose of German Industrial]
www.fascistparty.us
---
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toJanuary 26, 2005
Digging Silicon Valley's roots: some Homebrew Computer Club & other newsletters online
While Tom and Candida are out digging up the latest Silicon Valley news live, up close, and personal, let's take a trip down Silicon Valley's Memory Lane and check out the collection of Homebrew Computer Club Newsletters (and more) at the online DigiBarn Computer Museum.
Among other firsts, the Homebrew Computer Club is where Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak showed off his first personal computer designs and prototypes in the mid 1970s. The newsletters are typewritten (remember typewriters?) and contain charming pencil illustrations - a fun and funky contrast to today's slick marketing materials.
The DigiBarn site also has newsletters from People's Computer Company, a non-profit foundation based in Menlo Park, California. The PCC newsletter morphed into Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia, with the tag line "running light without overbyte". (On a personal note, DDJ is where I began my career in technology business publishing, in the very early 1980s - but this old codger will refrain from telling any bedtime stories of the Golden Age of Microcomputing right this minute.)
The site also offers some images from Ted Nelson's groundbreaking 1974 book, Computer Lib. Nelson is a true cyberculture pioneer, credited as the inventor of the hypertext concept which he first published in 1963. DigiBarn links to Nelson's legendary Project Xanadu, described at the Project Xanadu History page as "the explicit inspiration for the World Wide Web (see Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal for the World Wide Web), for Lotus Notes (as freely acknowledged by its creator, Ray Ozzie) and for HyperCard (acknowledged by its developer, Bill Atkinson); as well as less-well-known systems, including Microcosm and Hyperwave."
Links:
Homebrew Computer Club Newsletters (at DigiBarn Computer Museum)
People's Computer Company & People's Computers Newsletters
Computer Lib/Dream Machines Retrospective
The History and Philosophy of Doctor Dobb's Journal
Thanks to Boing Boing for the heads-up
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toJanuary 25, 2005
An intimate conversation in the global village
Do the Internet-based voice and multimedia communications technologies developed in the Greater Silicon Valley really bring us closer together? One wired world guru argues yes and tells a beautiful story that illustrates how.
Reports John Perry Barlow, in an article worth reading in full, about his experience in becoming friends over the internet with a stranger because he could hear her voice:
The bottom line is this: they reached at random out into the Datacloud and found a real friend. And I feel like I have been graced with a real friend in both of them. Given the fact that I've been getting interesting messages from distant strangers since 1985, why do I think the big deal? Why is this different? Because these strangers have voices. There's a lot more emotional bandwidth in the human voice. I'm always surprised by the Meatspace version of someone I've only encountered in ASCII. I'm rarely surprised by someone I've only met on the phone. But one doesn't get random phone calls from Viet Nam or China, or at least one never could before.Skype changes all that. Now anybody can talk to anybody, anywhere. At zero cost. This changes everything. When we can talk, really talk, to one another, we can connect at the heart.
Barlow tells a heart-warming techno-tale that shows how Internet telephone technology can make the global village a more intimate place.
More communication is generally a good thing, but I still have my doubts. Even in a best-case scenario as Barlow describes, won't we still wind up in front of our computer screens, talking into the aether, isolated?
Links:
The Intimate Planet, BarlowFriendz, 24 January 2005
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toJanuary 24, 2005
Thumbs up and down for Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley gets a thumbs up, thumbs down in a regional report that Gary Rivlin elevates to national attention in the New York Times.
Rivlin writes:
Venture capital is on the rise, and once again Silicon Valley is growing thick with startups. Research and development funding in the Valley has hit new highs and corporate profits at area firms are generally robust.And yet, despite an environment in which entrepreneurship is strong and established firms are by and large healthy, the Silicon Valley job market remains stagnant. Household income in the area is down, and troubling disparities persist in the areas of health care, education and housing.
Those are among the findings of a report, "2005 Silicon Valley Index," released today by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, a nonprofit organization that assesses the region's economic health each year.
....The study found that the region lost an estimated 1.3 percent of its jobs between mid-2003 and mid-2004, and average pay fell by 1 percent. That drop came on the heels of the 200,000 jobs that were lost earlier in the decade - representing nearly 20 percent of the work force - when the San Jose metropolitan area, which includes much of Silicon Valley, suffered the worst collapse of any metropolitan area in the United States since the Great Depression, surpassing even Detroit in the early 1980's, which lost 13 percent of its jobs.
Links:
Mixed Report on Silicon Valley by Gary Rivlin, New York Times, 23 January 2004
Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
Friendster in the NY Times spotlight
Social networking specialist, Friendster, gets the spotlight at the New York Times today in a profile that takes away more than it gives.
In Friendster, Love and Money by Gary Rivlin writes:
Fifteen months ago, Friendster enjoyed the kind of enviable status that Silicon Valley start-ups dream of: A-list investors and millions of users flocking to its Web site to browse profiles posted by friends and friends' friends, in search of dates or playmates.So great was the buzz surrounding the company in the second half of 2003 that Friendster, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., helped define a hot new facet of the Internet dubbed "social networking."
People are again buzzing about Friendster. But that is because the company, which endured three chief executives during 2004, has seen a spate of senior executives depart in recent weeks. Just as troubling, a younger, flashier rival called MySpace has eclipsed Friendster, at least in the United States, among those in the most highly coveted 18 to 29 demographic. And Friendster loyalists have groused that the company has done almost nothing to enliven its site.
Piling on is Mark J. Pincus, described by Rivlin as "an investor in Friendster and the founder of Tribe Networks, a budding social networking Web site that hopes to capture some of the print classified advertising market."
"I think Friendster really missed their big opportunity," Pincus told Rivlin.
Rivlin's article casts doubt on the viability of the social networking category in general, and raises the prospect that Friendster's history may scare away the venture capital that has only recently begun creeping into Silicon Valley again.
Rivlin's article also touts several Friendster competitors, including MySpace (which gets very favorable treatment in the story, as Rivlin contrasts MySpace's lead over Friendster in page views and number of unique visitors), the above-mentioned Tribe Networks, and Google's Orkut.
Links:
Friendster, Love and Money by Gary Rivlin, New York Times, 24 January 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toJanuary 21, 2005
Silicon Valley 100 will generate "buzz"
Marketers are expecting the Silicon Valley elite to promote their products in exchange for free stuff.
According to Brad Stone in a Newsweek article called The Connected Get More Connected: Seeking buzz, companies will funnel free new products to Silicon Valley’s elite:
Connector marketing is coming to the heart of California’s high-tech zone, in the form of a new effort called the Silicon Valley 100.This month, 100 of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, lawyers, bloggers and promoters will begin receiving cool new stuff for free, delivered straight to their homes and offices. In return, these movers and shakers promise to sample the products and offer feedback to the their manufacturers. The companies hope that, if the mood strikes, the Silicon Valley 100 will chat up, blog on, or just plain recommend the products to friends and colleagues, generating that most invaluable of currencies: buzz.
The brainchild behind the Silicon Valley 100 is 31-year-old entrepreneur—and Connector—Auren Hoffman, founder of San Francisco marketing firm The Stonebrick Group. He hopes to turn the Silicon Valley 100 into a profitable enterprise. Companies will pay a fee for the privilege of gifting products to its elite members.
....It took three months on the phone, but the result of Hoffman’s detective work is a quirky, wide-ranging list of some of the Valley’s brightest lights, largest wallets and biggest mouths. Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is on the list. Venture capitalists Tim Draper, Stewart Alsop, Aileen Lee, Igor Sill, Bill Gurley and Ron Conway are too. Yahoo vice president Katie Mitic, Siebel Systems cofounder Pat House and Electronic Arts senior vice president Rusty Rueff are among the 100. So are technology-event promoters Esther Dyson, Tim O’Reilly, Tiffany Shlain and Chris Shipley. A local radio personality nicknamed Hooman appears, as does a young San Francisco club promoter named Trevor Hewitt. Sean Parker, one of the cofounders of Napster, also made the cut.
Hoffman says he avoided adding career bloggers or journalists to the list. “Those people have a different standard and shouldn’t be keeping free products,” he says (journalists are typically required to return products they sample for review). But many Valley execs who maintain well-read blogs are in the group, such as entrepreneurs Ross Mayfield, Brad Templeton, Joi Ito and Zaw Thet.
Silicon Valley 100 member Joi Ito speaks:
I think it is almost like an opt-in focus group. The obvious criticism would be these companies are trying to buy "buzz". The difference between this and some buzz creation companies is 1) it's not stealth 2) they don't tell you what to say. I checked with Auren and he says that we can write whatever we want about the products. When I get a product from Silicon Valley 100, I will state this clearly in any blog post that refers to it and will say what I think. I realize that the fact that we probably get to keep most of the products makes it a bit like bribery, but if it's crap, I'm sure most people will throw it away. I would be most interested in products that are still not on the market where our feedback could be incorporated in the product design. Then our feedback could be more constructive...
Links:
The Connected Get More Connected: Seeking buzz, companies will funnel free new products to Silicon Valley’s elite by Brad Stone, Newsweek, 21 January 2005
Silicon Valley 100, by Joi Ito, 22 January 2005
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toFriday Watch: Blogging & Health
Silicon Valley bloggers who aspire to be journalists, beware. It's bad for your health.
According to Beijing Today:
Checks of 1,182 reporters in Beijing conducted by the Chinese Physician's Association on Sunday showed that only 28, or 2.4% of them, were healthy.Stomach problems were the most common ailments of the tested journalists, all of whom were under 60 years old.
Results of the checks point the finger for the reporters' poor health at occupational stress. Among the people examined, 84.2% said they sufferd from chronic exhaustion, 72.1% complained of high work pressure, 62% said they did not get regular sleep, half had bad eyesight and nearly the same number were in chronic pain.
However, over 60% of them admitted it was the first time they had undergone a full-body physical test.
The 659 female journalists checked fared poorly. More than 290 suffered breast disease and over 30% had gynecological conditions, mostly the result of high pressure, nervous tension and unbalanced living patterns. The majority of the women were unaware of their health problems before the examinations.
Liang Wannian, vice director general of the Beijing Health Bureau advised all local journalists to regularly receive health examinations and build personal "health archives."
Reporters should also pay attention to their psychological health, get regular exercise, avoid foods hard to dist, minimize smoking and drinking and take vacations when they felt overwhelmed by work, Liang said.
Links:
Study shows journalism bad for health, Beijing Today via ChinaDaily.com
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toJanuary 20, 2005
Scoop! Google to Give AdWords API to Advertisers
In a move that shows how much Google is fully embracing their role as the biggest competition to conventional marketing efforts ever conceived, Google plans to give away their AdWords API to advertisers. This would allow advertisers to control variables such as times ads are served, IP addresses served to, price limits for target time slots, etc. They will not be offering the same advantage to publishers, i.e., those that use the AdSense campaign. Stay tuned . . .
| Posted toScoop! Google is about to unveil a completely revamped Adwords/Adsense program to counter inroads from competitors such as Kanoodle
As this is being writtten, about 1800 Google marketing people from its offices around the world are at an internal sales conference at a secret location in San Francisco, being briefed on a completely revamped Google Adwords/Adsense program and other new features.
Adwords and Adsense are what make Google such an incredible cash machine. The Adwords and Adsense programs deliver paid text ad links. Adwords delivers paid text ads to users of its search services and the ads are matched to the search term.
Adsense delivers text ads to readers of a web page and they are matched to the content of a page. Virtually anybody with a web page can become a member of the Adsense network and host Google ads and receive a cut of the ad revenue.
The text ads business is crucial to maintaining Google’s pace of growth and its share price, which reflects high expectations for the dominant search giant. But Google offers few tools to advertisers to let them control where their ads appear and on which web sites. Similarly, web site publishers have virtually no control over what types of ads Google sends their way. This has caused some shifting to competitors such as Kanoodle that offer such controls.
That's why the revamped Adwords/Adsense will provide a suite of tools that provide greater control, management and monitoring data to advertisers, to better target their sales messages.
It’s interesting to note that executives from Kanoodle hit town earlier this week, right when the secret Google internal unveiling is taking place. I haven’t had a chance to ask them about whether they timed it because they knew about the Adwords relaunch or if it was a coincidence.
There are 18 coaches standing by to whisk the visiting Googlers off to Tahoe this weekend. If you are in Tahoe this weekend, look out for them on the slopes and in the bars, especially the bars. If you pick up any juicy tidbits, ping me!
| Posted to Top StoriesCutting journalism away from the old print models
Dan Farber, long-time Silicon Valley watcher, and a veteran journalist, has been around this industry for a long time. Dan kindly provided a report on the Churchill Club event I missed and dropped it into the comments section of the story.
Dan’s piece is a great example of online journalism, or rather, the new kind of online journalism that is emerging and made possible by this blogging phenomenon. It allows journalists to communicate ideas and tell a story much more efficiently than ever before.
Most online news stories currently mirror print stories in many ways —- they both look very similar except that there are some web links in the digital version. But journalists, even if they write for print and online, are often asked to write to a specific length. For example, news stories might all have a uniform length of 450 words, while a news analysis is 1200 words. That is clearly a legacy from the print business model.
Online, if you can tell a news story in 150 words why stretch it 400? If it’s a 50 word story—that’s fine. Yet a lot journalists are quite good at filling up space, because most started in print journalism. I need another 50 or 100 words, our desk editors might demand, because they redesigned their pages and the deadline is minutes away. So you quickly bash out words to fill the space, background info, a share price, a couple of sentences about what happened last week. It doesn’t take the story on further. It is just words taking up space, and that, IMHO, is unfair to readers.
But within the blogging format, journalists can be succinct and use their own voice. Dan demonstrates one of the core values an experienced journalist brings to this world of online information -— the ability to tell a complex story in very few words. That’s a skill that should be highly valued in today’s information overload society. And it would be, if it were scalable…!
January 18, 2005
Introducing the first guest blog from a true Silicon Valley Watcher--Louise
Many people know full well that Louise Kehoe, my former boss at the
Financial Times, is the true Silicon Valley Watcher. Which is why it is a
huge pleasure to introduce this first guestblog from Louise, a friend and
mentor for many years.
Louise is well known in the valley from her more than two decades of world
class reporting for the Financial Times. When she first started, gaining
access to top execs and captains of industry was difficult because the
newspaper was not only an unfamiliar color but unfamiliar altogether. In
those days, the Financial Times had a circulation of less than 100,000. It
was because of the continued excellence of her reporting that the almost
unknown Financial Times brand was raised to that of a top-tier publication
in the minds of Silicon Valley's gatekeepers.
Louise recruited me to the Financial Times in 1999 and we worked together in
an apartment-turned-office just off highway 101 and Hillsdale. A large
highway exit sign close to the office said "Kehoe Way." I would joke that
Louise has been in the valley so long, they built it around her.
We were in the midst of the heady dotcom days and we were pumping out
enormous amounts of news copy. We were draining cups of tea and creating
huge clouds of nicotine smoke.
And when a really big story would break, maybe ten minutes before our very
latest afternoon deadline, that's when the adrenaline kicked up a notch or
three and we'd work together, (Andrew Heavens was working with us too) and
we'd get a stock price, get a quote from a contact, check the whisper
numbers, get whatever was needed to write that news story. Louise would
usually take the lead and pound out the story board, just seconds to go. And
then London calls and wants another 60 words! And copy editors are calling
and saying it has to be sent now, now! and Louise gets it done and squared
away. No problem, we go and have a cup of tea.
This type of right-on-the-wire-deadline-news-journalism is a rush and
something that I enjoyed. But it provides almost little margin for
error--you have to be spot-on with your angle, research and knowledge.
London deadlines ruled our world. Our first morning deadline was 10am
Pacific for the UK edition. Leisurely awakenings at the office over a
muffin, coffee and e-mail were rare. Waking up was always quick.
Our next big deadline was 9.30pm Pacific, to catch the US edition and most
probably file a story for the 1pm European edition, and also an earlier
version to catch the very last UK edition at 9.30pm.
During earnings season, news stories are written in real-time while
listening to financial conference calls. It is not uncommon to have to
quickly analyze quarterly numbers and knock out a preliminary 150 words
story for the FT.com web site by 9.30pm, then jump into the earnings
conference call and update the story, Then in between there is filing of
news to the FT.com web site, there are analysis pieces on the news to be
done, meetings with tech execs, etc.
I would head off at about 8pm, Louise usually still working. Then 7am the
next day we could come in and do it again, not knowing what news would break
that day or when. Then the dotbomb landed, but more on that at a later
time...
dk181040
Guestblog: Louise Kehoe recalls Steve Jobs' rock star comeback to Apple
It's my pleasure to introduce Louise Kehoe's first blog for the watcher! Louise has been a friend and mentor of mine for many, many years and is very well know in Silicon Valley from her more than two decades of reporting for the Financial Times. She is a world-class journalist, editor and media professional and we are honored to publish her blog. (And she has a ton of other great stories to tell...!) -Tom Foremski
1997 MacWorld was a memorable event, in many ways. I was sitting in the front row wedged between Muhammad Ali and Ellen Hancock (Muhammad is a large man, the seats were small). This was Gil Amelio’s last MacWorld appearance. He talked for nearly 3 hours. I don’t remember much of what he said, only that Ellen was suffering on his behalf, I was suffering on her behalf and we were all suffering for lack of seating space. Then Steve Jobs walked on stage. He spoke briefly, to wild applause, in sharp contrast to the reaction that Gil received. We all knew then that Gil was on the way out.
And perhaps I can turn the clock back a little further, to the day when Steve came back to Apple. With typical arrogance, Apple called a press conference with just an hour or so notice – late afternoon on the Friday before Christmas (that must have been 1996, I think). The press pack rushed down there…those based in SF arrived late. Gil took the stage in the Apple auditorium to announce Apple’s plans to acquire Next…and that Steve would return to Apple as a “consultant”.
Enter Steve, from the back of the room, bounding down the steps.
When the formal proceedings ended, we reporters rushed the stage. I had just one question for Steve: “What are you up to?” He assured me that he had no intention of reclaiming his role at the head of Apple. “Oh no Louise, I have other interests now. I have a family….” Then I asked Gil if he knew what he was doing. Wasn’t he opening the door for Steve to oust him, in the same way that Steve had attempted to oust John Sculley a decade earlier? Gil seemed sure that this could not happen. The rest, of course, is history.
But perhaps I can add one more reflection. If we are comparing notes on the most memorable Steve Jobs’ presentation, then I would have to say it was in 1984 when he and John Sculley introduced the original Macintosh. Like later events, this one was carefully choreographed. But that, in itself, was an innovation in those days. I, and many others, had been pre-briefed on the Macintosh product and I had written most of my story in advance. But the news desk wanted to add some “color” from the event at the Flint Center in Cupertino. As the event got underway, I made my way to the back of the theatre to use a pay phone (no cell phone in those days) and got through to the crusty FT news editor just as Steve Jobs walked on stage, the music started blaring and the crowd (mostly Apple employees) started screaming!
I attempted to describe the scene, but the background noise was overwhelming and the news editor was skeptical. “Where are you?", he kept asking. “You are supposed to be at a computer event!”
dk181040
| Posted toJanuary 17, 2005
Where do all the PeopleSofties go? Social Networking!
The ax finally fell, or at least started falling on Friday: About 5,000 PeopleSoft employees will lose their jobs in the wake of the controversial take-over by Redwood Shores based archrival, Oracle. The first pink-slips were sent over the weekend by express mail.
So what’s next for the hordes of Ex-PeopleSofties? They flood professional social networking sites on the internet, the business equivalents of Friendster.com. The increasingly popular virtual contact plattforms such as Mountain View’s LinkedIn, Google’s Orkut, or Ryze seem to be the last hope for thousands of current –- and soon to be unemployed –- staffers of Pleasantons’s business software maker.
According to LinkedIn’s co-founder and VP of Marketing, Konstantin Guericke, more then 50 percent of all PeopleSoft employees are now registered at LinkedIn -- two thirds of them registered in the last 30 days. "That proves that more and more people realize how important and effective social networking is to find a new position," Guericke says.
A look in the LinkedIn database this morning showed at least 2428 current PeopleSoft employees: hundreds of developers, product managers, and application analysts as well as top managers such as David Thompson, PeopleSoft's Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President, who is recognized by IDG's Computerworld as a 2004 Premier 100 IT Leader.
LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman: Build social networks before it's too late
Chances for finding a new position through a social business network seem promising: Over 20,000 hiring managers have signed up for LinkedIn, which is used by about half a million registered users in over 80 countries. The company is headed by CEO Reid Hoffman, who co-founded SocialNet in 1997 and was an Executive Vice President at PayPal.
Meanwhile, Oracle is hosting a big party later this week to celebrate the "new Oracle." The majority of the 6,000 or so "left over" PeopleSoft employees will most likely not be able to share the fun: The number of layoffs at PeopleSoft is sure to grow. So "Old PeopleSoft" or "new Oracle" folks, better listen to social networking protagonists and move quickly to manage your virtual contacts: "Start buidling your network before it is to late," Guericke says. "Anyone listening at Siebel or Lawson?"
Another helpful online source for laid-off PeopleSoft employees: the PeopleSoft Alumni Network: http://www.psftalumni.net/
January 13, 2005
Digital Hollywood redux
Hollywood wants to get closer to Silicon Valley's video game industry, a return to the hoped-for synergy of the "digital Hollywood" fever that first erupted in the early 1990s.
In a MediaPost article today, Hollywood Talent Agency To Open Silicon Valley Satellite, Ross Fadner reports:
United Talent Agency, one of Hollywood's largest agencies representing actors, writers, producers and artists in the entertainment industry, plans to open a Silicon Valley office catering to clients looking to market to video gamers. The new San Francisco office will be led by Jonathan Epstein, a 20-year industry veteran who was founding CEO of video game portal GameSpot.com, and former president of GameSpy, which he helped merge with IGN Entertainment this past summer.
....Epstein said the expanded operation will focus on negotiating branded sponsorships and takeovers for clients with online industry trade publishers, game publishers' Web sites, and online retailers such as EB.com. "I hope to work with all the media players in the market," Epstein said, which incidentally includes both GameSpot and IGN Entertainment-companies he previously worked for. "Online sites are a great way to reach gamers," he said--particularly the coveted 18-34 male demographic.
Links:
Hollywood Talent Agency To Open Silicon Valley Satellite by Ross Fadner, MediaDailyNews, 13 January 2005
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
January 11, 2005
Webby Awards extends entry deadline
The Webby Awards has extended its entry deadline to January 28.
From the organizers' call the Webbies
The leading international award honoring excellence in Web design, creativity, usability and functionality.Established in 1996, the Webby Awards is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 500-member body of leading web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities.
Links:
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
January 10, 2005
Critics? Excellent....SiliconValleyWatcher draws flack from another hack...
Lish Woodgate brought this one to my attention, saying: “OK - Now that you have critics, you know your blog is being read seriously... Read below.”
Lish points to an entry by Rafat Ali, editor and publisher of “PaidContent.org—the economics of content,” a pretty good site monitoring the online media sector. Rafat commented on my recent entry about Dow Jones buying Marketwatch for a heady $519m, and Microsoft selling Slate to the Washington Post.
Old Media Buying New: Anything New?: I am more hopeful than this slightly naive view from Tom Foremski. Always underestimate in the short run and never underestimate in the long run...that's my theory. Again, too much hype... His question, on the face of it, is a valid question, though the underlying assumptions, like the one about CBS MKTW not being a success, are just too sweeping and again, naive. "Why would two companies that have not made much/any money with online publishing make a success out of buying two online media companies that have not made much/any money publishing online?"
So, it’s "slightly naïve" but, it "is a valid question." Rafat, old chap, I bet you can do better than that…spell it out, to your readers, to us.....explain why this acquisition makes sense to you.
I think I set up a decent argument that Dow Jones has paid a lot of money for an online business that wasn’t doing that well. Combining two businesses that haven’t figured out how to profit online does not make it a good deal. I would not want to be responsible for the return on capital investment on that one over a five-year period.
Or maybe Rafat felt the need to show some support for one of his editorial contributors to PaidContent.Org, none other than Larry Kramer, CEO and founder of CBS Marketwatch. Here are some of Larry’s entries:
http://www.paidcontent.org/contentnext/larry_kramer/index.php
By the way, my original entry title and question was “Old media buying new-ish media, will it make a difference?”
I’ll explain why “new-ish media” is important in that title here:
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dk1101027
| Posted toNew-ish new media companies face formidable competitive challenges from today’s emerging new media companies
I think of “new-ish” new media companies as being companies such as Cnet with its News.com, CBS Marketwatch, The Street.com, Slate, Salon. I’ll even throw into that designation the online groups of long established media companies such as BBC Online, NYT.com, FT.com, WSJ.com, etc.
Basically, any online media company/group (producing original content) set up pre-dotbomb (2001) I would lump into the “new-ish media” category. And looking back on those online publishing ventures, I can’t see where there was any compelling competitive/operational cost advantage over traditional media companies.
Let’s take a look at what new-ish media companies had to do pre-dotbom:
+The new-ish media companies had to build a new brand (extremely expensive).
+They had to build a large IT infrastructure to publish and distribute their content.
+They had to develop, or customize content management systems to their needs so that they could publish online--a lengthy and very expensive process.
+They had to lure away lots of journalists and editors with promises of top dollar salaries because it was the dotcom boom years--a rare moment in history when journalists were able to earn a decent wage.
+They needed to hire IT experts to run their IT departments—also at top dollar salaries because of huge demand
.
+Yet they still needed everything else: advertising sales people, HR, admin staff, large offices in expensive downtown locations, etc.
Where was their cost advantage over the traditional media? Well, they didn’t need printing presses, delivery trucks, pay postage to send out subscriptions, er…anything else?
The traditional media had a profitable business model, Dow Jones for example, was making a ton of money in the dotcom boom years, and so were many other publisgers. The new-ish media companies didn't have a profitable business model, they were trying to convince/educate advertisers that online ads were a good thing. So where was the cost/competitive advantage for the “new-ish” media companies at that time?
The traditional media companies launched online media businesses too. And they did it in much the same way, hiring separate editorial staff for the online group, developing expensive content management systems to publish online and in print, adding offices in expensive media districts, and brand building. The Financial Times for example, hired Dan Akroyd (he of Ghostbusters and SNL) to head up a very expensive TV based FT.com brand building campaign.
The competitive advantages of today’s emerging media companies, such as Atomic Ventures, the publisher of “SiliconValleyWatcher.com—Reporting on the Business of Silicon Valley,” (shameless plug!), and others, are tremendous. I’ll explain here: The advantages of new “new media” companies…
dk1101019
| Posted toThe advantages of new “new media” companies…
There are significant competitive advantages for the emerging “new media” companies--those that are producing original content.
Their characteristics are that they are “blog” based, they make use of the richly diverse blog format to publish a wide variety of media content; they also use commonly available blog software; and they make use of online advertising networks open to anybody.
Most of the new media companies are being set up by professional journalists that have spotted what I like to call a discontinuity in the fabric of things. It’s what entrepreneurs have done for hundreds of years--spot a deep and fundamental shift in the economics of certain commercial endeavors and jump in and take advantage of it. Yes, shift happens :-)
Here are the advantages of today's “new” media company:
+ No need to spend very much on brand building--you leverage the brand of well-known marquee journalists and editors. If you produce online content that is compelling/relevant to your readership, your audience will find you very quickly. If you aren’t producing content that is compelling/relevant to your readership, no amount of brand building promotion/marketing will bring a lasting audience.
By definition, marquee journalists are well known and have large audiences. In the past, they used to leverage that position by changing employers. These days, they can do it for themselves…which is essentially what I have done, becoming the first journalist from a top tier publication (Financial Times) to voluntarily leave a well-paid job to become a professional blogger.
By the way, it still amazes me that many print publishers haven’t realized what is happening when they let their journalists set up their own blogs, covering much the same subjects. In some cases, the journalists are getting more online traffic to their personal blogs than their employer is getting! All while their employer is encouraging them to blog away, and is paying them a salary while they build up a formidable personal brand with "F* You" walking privileges! Unbelievable… Which is why I chose to avoid any such issue/conflict and do it honestly, leave the full-time job, then start to blog.
Other advantages of today's new media companies:
+ Great journalists and editors can be hired for very little money. Salaries are terrible after more than four years of extremely tough times for media companies.
+ Publishing professional, dynamic web sites is cheap and easy. No need for multi-million dollar content management systems.
Server-side software such as Movable Type is an extremely sophisticated and powerful content management and online publishing system--don’t even think of it as “blogging” software. And it is all built on open source/industry standard software and hardware. And because of this, it is extremely cheap AND there is a huge talent pool to draw upon.
+ There is no need for an IT department to publish news or any other online content. You can get away with an IT department of one person, and a couple of web monkeys. Most of the publishing and admin tasks are done automatically by the “blogging” software. And the pay rates for IT people are well below the $150k to $200k IT salaries we used to see during the dotcom boom years.
+ There is no need to build an IT infrastructure and maintain it. Web hosting services are cheap, cheap, cheap. In fact, I will claim that my web hosting and bandwidth fees are essentially free. That’s because the support forums at Total Choice, our hosting service, are incredible. In the early days we had a steep learning curve in combining the open source server-side software with the blogging software and making it all work together--you need at least one or two people that speak Geek. The support forums on Total Choice have always come to our aid quickly and effectively, providing a value of hundreds of dollars more per month than we pay in hosting fees.
This means our online content management and publishing and distribution platform is free. That is a huge, massive advantage over the traditional media laden with it's legacy IT infrastructure and many other costs. And it is also an advantage over the "new-ish" new media companies/organizations created more than five years ago, pre-dotbomb, many of whom have their own data centers, several internal content management systems, large IT departments, etc.
+ There is no need for an advertising sales staff to go around knocking on doors, making presentations about reader demographics, entertaining clients in expensive restaurants/locations, etc.
Today, a new media company can sign up for Google Adsense, or any of the many other blogging advertising and affiliate networks being formed. These advertising/affiliate networks will accept anybody that can deliver them clicks or customers. (There will also be less need for such advertising networks as the “new” new media companies get going...I’ll explain in a future article.)
+ No need for large offices in expensive downtown locations. I still think you need to be in, or close to the media district if you are a media company, it’s just that you need several desks rather than several floors of an office building.
+ No need for a large operational staff. There are plenty of tasks that can be outsourced or done through web services. And there is less need for a large admin staff.
+ No need for printing presses, paying for expensive newsprint, delivery trucks, newsstand boxes, etc.
That’s why there will be many successful “new” new media companies, and that’s why Dow Jones buying “new-ish” media company CBS Marketwatch is not a good deal for Dow Jones, IMHO.
But it’s a great deal for the “new” new media companies emerging, because the old guard will be distracted and have its hands full trying to integrate the acquisitions. And it’s not just Dow Jones-- there were huge numbers of acquisitions in 2004.
Look at this recent posting, “Digital Deal Notes.” , on PaidContent.org by Tolman Geffs, managing director of The Jordan Edmiston Group, a New York-based investment bank focused on the media and information industries.
There were 103 online media and services deals in 2004 valued at $7.3 billion, as tracked by The Jordan Edmiston Group (JEGI). Online deals doubled in volume and tripled in value vs. 2003. And the fourth quarter proved a strong finish with 24 deals valued at $1.8 billion. 2004 deal value was boosted by blockbusters like Cendant Corporation's $1.5 billion purchase of Orbitz; Yahoo's $575 million acquisition of Kelkoo; Dow Jones' $519 million purchase of MarketWatch; and AOL's $435 million acquisition of Advertising.com. Monster was the most active acquirer with four deals for Tickle, Job Pilot. Military Advantage, and DefenseTech.org. AOL, InteractiveCorp, Jupiter and TechTarget were also very active with three acquisitions each. Finally, a broad swath of mid-sized players bought and sold in 2004.
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dk1101017
| Posted toInvestors wary of Internet mutual funds
Despite some booming Internet share prices, investors are holding back, reports the New York Times today.
Zubin Jelveh notes:
It was a spectacular year for some of the largest Internet stocks. Google's share price doubled after its initial public offering and Yahoo and eBay staged yearlong rallies.
Despite these gains, many investors remain wary of mutual funds that focus on the sector - and for good reason, many analysts say.
The bottom line? Jelveh gives the final word to Phil Edwards, managing director of investment services at Standard & Poor's, who observes that mutual funds invested in Internet stocks "are not for the faint of heart," adding, "You've got to be willing to take a ride to the moon and back."
Links:
The Call of the Wild, Again, in Internet Funds by Zubin Jelveh, New York Times, 10 January 2005
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toJanuary 06, 2005
Further tales of the crumbling print media business model…
Oracle acquiring PeopleSoft, and Symantec acquiring Veritas is going to hurt a lot of publications, especially the business and trade press. That’s because there are now two fewer large tech companies to spend marketing dollars.
These deals will do nothing to stem the acceleration in the decline of print tech advertising. Tech advertising in business newspapers and magazines used to be huge -- during the dotcom boom years it represented from 30 to 70 per cent of advertising revenues for many publishers. If the publishers of business newspaper and magazines think that tech print advertising is going to come back, that it's just a business cycle, deals such as the above should convince them that those revenues will not return. And that means there will be more job cuts...
dk01356
| Posted toSilicon Valley Watcher named as one of most influential blogs by Bacon’s -- the media watcher bible
(Our good buddy Tom Abate at the SF Chronicle brought this one to our attention.)
This is fantastic news because Bacon’s is the gold standard in the media industry.
Check out the third paragraph in this story from Media Post’s Media Daily News (I added the bold type):
Bacon's To Track Blogs| Posted to Top Stories
By Gavin O’Malley
Monday, December 27, 2004Bacon's Information, the provider of media research, distribution, monitoring, and evaluation services for public relations and corporate communications professionals, has endeavored to light the depths of the Blogosphere. In January, Bacon's MediaSource will begin sharing with its clients the names of what it considers to be the 250 most reputable blogs, the messages they contain, and the frequency with which client-relevant information appears on them.
Ruth McFarland, senior vice president and publisher for Bacon's, said she vacillated about the significance of blogs, but was sufficiently convinced this year to assign three of her 56 editors to monitor the Blogosphere. "We're adjusting our network because no one is accurately monitoring these guys as their influence continues to grow."
Bacon's is keeping tight raps on its blog list, which covers technology, politics, business, travel, and religion. The racy Wonkette, the Miami Herald's Dave Barry, and the Silicon Valley Watcher are three well-known blogs run by "reputable, credible professionals" that McFarland said will be on the list.
800-pound gorilla
Cable TV is the 800-pound gorilla in the living room that nobody at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is ignoring.
That's the thrust of an informative article by Seth Hansell in today's New York Times, "Breaking Free of Cable's Stranglehold." Hansell writes:
Cable television companies are not among the exhibitors here at the Consumer Electronics Show. But their influence is everywhere, as equipment makers seek to work with - or bypass - the cable industry's bottleneck control over the way most Americans watch TV.
Things will only get worse for Silicon Valley companies that want to maintain or gain market share with devices to compete with set-top cable boxes that add functionality - TiVo-like DVR capabilities, for example - or who seek to make an end run around the cable companies altogether with alternative delivery channels for information, entertainment, and other services.
My investment banker buddy on in New York takes cable TV dominance as a given and continues to invest - and recommends that others do so - in the companies that dominate the cable TV market. He manages a multi-billion dollar portfolio of investment funds which regularly earn a handsome profit, with a specialty in telecommunications and broadcast, so I tend to listen carefully to what he says.
Cable TV companies had 74 million subscribers last fall when he was studying some particular investment opportunities. Some 22 million subscribers pay for direct satellite TV. That's nearly 100 million Americans who have learned to look to their television screens for programming.
These companies are aggressively signing up subscribers for high-speed Internet service.
That's a huge lead over the telephone companies which are playing catch-up on the high-speed Internet front, and looking forward to the next generation of wireless networks that will, eventually, offer mobile telephone and PDA users programming that can compete with today's digital cable TV.
Better make friends with that gorilla, fast.
Meanwhile, the company that comes up with a cheap satellite uplink that will let satellite TV (and radio) companies offer reliable high-speed two-way Internet service could make a killing. Something tells me that this prospect has not gone unnoticed in Silicon Valley.
Links:
Breaking Free of Cable's Stranglehold by Seth Hansell, New York Times, 6 January 2005
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
January 05, 2005
Special Deal: New Communications Forum
A special price of $595 for locals not requiring accomodation for the Jan. 26/27 New Communications Forum is being offered. The forum is an in-depth, two-day intensive workshop for senior communications professionals. Tom will be a panelist. Go here for information and registration. We're looking forward to meeting more of our readers.
| Posted toHow to thrive in 2005, part 2
In response to my column yesterday, How to thrive in 2005, my partner Tom Foremski comments:
I'm very optimisitic that professional journalistic practices will now become more widely known and practiced because of blogging and bloggers. And I predict that the term blogging will lose much meaning. In the same way that the "new economy" turned out to be the "economy," blogging is journalism and it is subject to the same rules that define the quality of journalism. But there will be much confusion in the meantime ;-)
Can't disagree with that, but . . .
I like the term "citizen journalists" and agree that this term, as well as "blogger" is likely to fade. "Journalist" will continue to serve, adding another layer of meaning as this new publishing medium - the so-called "blogosphere" (ugly word) - becomes familiar terrain.
Whatever you call them, the challenge for these people, as they come online to tell their stories and share their opinions, will be to adopt best journalistic practices, honestly and with integrity, and not imitate the mainstream journalists, in the business and general reader press, who have degraded the profession by passing along government and business propaganda without questioning, investigating, and putting it in context.
It will be very interesting to watch major publishing and broadcast organizations continue to respond and adapt to the blog movement. These organizations have already become, in my opinion, so involved in the strategies of their corporate owners that it is often difficult to find honest reporting in their products.
Adopting the trappings of the feisty, independent blogosphere may help mainstream publishers and broadcasters win back some of the trust they've lost in recent years, initially at least, but I fear that these organizations will use the blog format as just another vehicle to continue disseminating the products of their compromised journalistic approach.
The field seems open for honest journalists - whether they come from traditional settings or from the ranks of bloggers - to use the Web to report stories that the mainstream press (technology, business, or general reader) ignores, and to correct the misconceptions and deceptions of the mainstream press.
Nowhere will this have more impact than in Silicon Valley.
We've already seen the effect of bloggers making an end run around corporate PR organizations to report news of new products and technologies, personnel moves, mergers and acquisitions, criminal investigations and other legal actions. This activity will continue to increase.
Companies (and their public relations contractors) must assume that, sooner rather than later, everybody in Silicon Valley (I refer to both the strict geographic and less literal meanings of that appellation) is going to know, more or less, everything about what they are doing.
What was once whispered (if it didn't make it into print, and if it was really interesting it usually did) around Silicon Valley water coolers is now published - by bloggers, then picked up by the technology business and general reader press if the story warrants such coverage.
What does that kind of exposure do to a corporate communications program?
Politicians and government policy makers have discovered that, over time, cover-ups and deception and efforts to mislead the public generally don't work.
Can Silicon Valley executives maintain control through more robust enforcement of confidentiality agreements and employment contracts? Among a worker population increasingly made up of part-timers, independent contractors, and outsourced employees thousands of miles away from corporate HQ? Can they keep a lid on news, bad and good, at least for the next few weeks, quarters, over the life of a multi-year CEO contract?
I don't think so.
The trick will be to adopt communications strategies that take for granted full disclosure of bad news as well as good, and that finds in the emerging network of "citizen journalists" an opportunity to build trust and thus win respect and loyalty from customers and other business partners.
| Posted to Top StoriesOld media buying new-ish media, will it make a difference?
Last month Dow Jones bought CBS Marketwatch for about $520m and the Washington Post bought Slate, the Microsoft founded online magazine for an undeclared sum.
The question I have is: Why would two companies that have not made much/any money with online publishing make a success out of buying two online media companies that have not made much/any money publishing online?
One plus one never makes two in such cases, it usually just makes one. If you don’t know how to make money in online publishing, buying another company that hasn’t figured it out either, doesn’t improve your chances of profits. It just means you can lose more money at it than before.
On the Dow Jones/Marketwatch deal: What will be the branding? Will the new Marketwatch be WSJ-lite? Already, there is a wide cultural divide between Wall Street Journal editors and reporters, and Dow Jones wire editors and reporters. You’ll notice that there are few former Dow Jones wire editors/reporters at the WSJ and vice-versa. The pecking order for the Marketwatch staff is perfectly clear. Not a good prospect for staff retention, I would think.
Also, if people leave Marketwatch, how do you recruit reporters to a media publication so low on the Dow Jones internal cultural totem pole, especially with few career prospects to move up/across? Yes, online advertising is going through the roof right now, and that might paper-over a few problematic issues initially. It’s the longer term outlook for the Marketwatch business group that isn’t clear. Getting a decent return on that half-a-billion-plus investment is going to be tough.
Regarding Washington Post buying Slate? Compatible editorial, certainly. But, again, there is a two-tier structure in the making. AP reported that the Washington Post is looking for content for its online site.
Did you know that on the whole, print journalists look down on online hacks? And they will go to great lengths to avoid writing for their paper’s online site if the copy doesn’t also go into the newspaper? Newsprint staff consider themselves a notch or three above online/wire hacks. That is why many newspaper sites use separate staff for print and online.
At the Financial Times, we were the first to have an integrated news and feature desks where the page editors and copy editors for both print and online sat nearby each other. Even so, it took a while to overcome the internal cultural resistance to online news writing by the newspaper hacks.
Publishers of print newspapers and magazines have yet to show ANY prowess in the online media sector. And if they try, they will retreat in a hurry, because they cannot afford to expose their print business model to online.
Print advertising doesn’t have the type of metrics that online advertising possesses. You can't pin an ROI on print advertising the same way you can do it for online. If you offer advertisers a package of print and online advertising, you will gradually lose your print advertisers--unless they are large consumer brands. Why? Because the online advertising clickthroughs will be disappointing (and expensive.) Which means companies will conclude that their print advertising is not reaching their target group--and they will pull all of their ads, print and online.
That's why many print newspaper and magazine publishers risk the continued loss of print advertising if they expose their business models to online advertising. They are trapped within a crumbling business model, IMHO.
| Posted to Top StoriesJanuary 04, 2005
How to thrive in 2005
I was going to write a column about trends to expect in 2005, then decided not to bother. If you haven't already read at least one column predicting what's hot in 2005, chances are you're not looking to read one.
Without sounding too world-weary I hope, may I gently suggest that in 2005 we're all going to struggle with the same set of challenges this year that we've faced every January: threats to survival (think tsunami if you live in view of the ocean, terrorist strikes and war no matter where you live, and a range of horrors that can happen anywhere) and everything else.
Closer to our Silicon Valley home, by now we all know that blogs are the next big thing, online shopping and advertising are booming, traditional media are under pressure, and competition in technology business is fiercer than ever. These trends, with facts and figures to support them, have dominated technology business news so far this week and the weeks since before I went on holiday...and have done so for years.
I just re-read an article I wrote in 1999, "The Journalist of the Future," and was pleasantly surprised to see how, despite a headline that just begged to be ridiculed as soon as it was published, I managed to get a few things right.
Online shopping and advertising were booming back then - according virtually every technology business publication, as judged within the context of then-current expectations. Since that time, a small pie has gotten a lot larger.
I also asked, "In a Matt Drudge world where anybody can publish a Web page and disseminate information by e-mail, where journalists join lawyers and politicians as the professionals least trusted by the public, do we even need professional journalists anymore?"
In the world of overheated blogger expectations, that question has been answered with a resounding Yes.
Professional journalists are beginning to see the light, too, with an avant-garde boldly coming out in favor of blogs...as long as bloggers follow professional journalistic practices and ethics.
A kind of "damn the contradictions, full speed ahead" approach, if you stop to think about it.
Battle-hardened and cynical as I was back in '99, even I didn't expect that professional journalists could fall any lower in public opinion. Media coverage of the recent U.S. Presidential campaign, election, and vote count aftermath disabused me of that notion.
But, I did forsee the current discussion regarding the blogosphere's encroachment on mainstream media turf:
To the extent that non-professional Internet publishers fail to gain this trust, by proving themselves reliable over time, they will remain marginalized, mere bits and bubbles in the Internet's digital flood. They will pose no threat to professional journalists.To the extent that non-professionals acquire the skills and follow the processes that distinguish reliable, professional journalists and publications, the non-professionals will tend to become in many ways indistinguishable from professional journalists. The emergence of trusted Web-based publications created by people without formal training as journalists but who have acquired solid journalistic tools and skills illustrates this convergence.
One can't miss observation is that in 2005 corporations, governments, other institutions, and individuals will find ways to use the Web as they use the rest of the media: to transmit propaganda to their target audiences, earn profits, and otherwise implement their agendas.
Still up in the air: will the new wave of "citizen journalists" now flogging their blogs avoid the pitfalls that eroded trust in their professional predecessors?
Clue: the biggest pitfall is unquestioning acceptance of propaganda from leaders and authorities (including company executives and even alpha bloggers) and the subsequent repetition of said propaganda without sufficient research and reporting to put it in proper perspective or to correct any mistakes or untruths it might contain.
That's what put professional journalists in a position to be ridiculed and scorned by bloggers.
That's what threatens to put bloggers (or "citizen journalists" or whatever you want to call them) in the same position today, if they continue to pass along unsubstantiated rumors, misinformation, and paid marketing pitches without disclosing them as such.
The alternative? We can use our newfound power to truthfully tell the stories we want to tell, whether they be about politics, or the arts, or about how to survive the vicissitudes of moving forward one day at a time in Silicon Valley dealing with the tools, personalities, and organizations that set the boundaries for our professional lives. If we have to transmit propaganda - face it, that's what most of us do in our day jobs, whether we write anything online or not - we can be honest and call it what it is.
I was pleased to see the progress we've made in living out some of the promise I wrote about in 1999.
Here's hoping I'll feel the same a year from now when I look back at this column.
Links:
The Journalist of the Future by Doug Millison, 19 August 1999
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted to Top Stories
