Media Future Now

Internet = News

Larke Paul — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:15:50 +0000

According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the internet has now surpassed all other media except television as a main source for national and international news.

The survey also presents data about young people (ages 18-29) who say that their main source of national and international news is equally split between television and the internet. I can't help but wonder, did all of the respondents make the traditional distinction between a TV and internet channels? What about people who watch television programming on their computer, via their internet connection?

For some (and not necessarily in the younger age group), the convergence of TV and the internet has already occurred. It's no longer about what hardware/platform one chooses (say a computer or a television set) - it's more about the availability rate, type and amount of content. It appears to me that the best selection, ability to personalize and various medias (videos, articles, radio) of content are available with the click of a button, but it's no longer the tv clicker, it's the smaller, sleeker box in the room. For those that can't be information deprived, there's also another favorite device - the mini-computer that also has telephony functions. They are expensive, but like every gadget, they'll make their way down to planet earth on the pricing scale.

A “buddy system” solution for the electoral college?

Andrew Mirsky — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:16:12 +0000

Crossposted on K Street Cafe. Randall Lane wrote a provocative piece in Monday’s New York Times suggesting a “ballot buddy system” among the states to permit apportioning of electoral votes among counties or congressional districts. The idea seems like one of those suggestions likely to go nowhere, except when you realize that (a) 2 states (Maine and Nebraska) have already moved in that direction, (b) the 2000 election may have permanently disencumbered any remaining pillars of the infallibility of the electoral college system and (c) the Obama campaign’s social media breakthroughs may have demonstrated the irrelevance of the system in the first place.

(Full disclosure: Lane is President of Doubledown Media, a corporate law client of my law firm.)

In “A Ballot Buddy System”, Lane argues that the big win for deconstructing the electoral college was vividly illustrated in Nebraska, where Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin both campaigned in Omaha in the last weeks of the 2008 campaign – something not otherwise thought likely for an otherwise reliably red state. When counties are in play, versus whole states, “winner takes all”, a different campaign dynamic kicks in.

Of course, the Obama campaign campaigned just as vigorously in reliably red counties in Ohio and Virginia, states that were viewed as vulnerable but where lower loss margins in Republican counties could sway the state-wide picture. It may therefore not be entirely predictable what would happen if apportioned voting becomes the national norm.

The constitutional argument for apportionment is that abolishing the electoral college would require a constitutional amendment, while individual state action of apportioned delegations would not.

As background on the problem, Lane’s essay is well-written in the Forbes tradition of understandable explanations for complex problems. (In a former life, Lane was Washington bureau chief for Forbes.) But Lane’s most nifty idea is that of his title, suggesting a system where equal-size electoral states (e.g. New York and Texas) that are, respectively, reliably Democratic and Republican can be persuaded to go the apportionment route to soften the political blow of the loss of a state-wide red or blue margin. That may be, but that too gets complicated by the disproportionately skewed demographics of a state like New York, heavily Democratic in just a few, albeit populous counties, while Texas is more broadly Republican.

Which simply raises obstacles that have to be gotten around, but that need not kill the deal.

What’s more, there’s political precedent for this sort of thing. The admission to the Union of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959 was smoothed by recognition of the states’ balanced party representation – Alaska was likely to be heavily Republican, and Hawaii equally so Democratic. For some background on this, see this AP story from June 30, 1959.

Change.gov is model for web-based grassroots

Neil Hare — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:55:17 +0000

Check out the Obama transition site change.gov and read this piece on it in today's Post by Dan Froomkin "You Mean We Can Talk Back." This represents the shift I've been discussing from e-mail to web-based grassroots and every member of Congress and interest group should follow suit. Similar platforms should be created for elected officials and interest groups and then they can monitor the results online as Tom Daschle the incoming HHS Secretary is doing on change.gov.

The one caveat for all concerned is that not every response will be what a politician or interest group may want. But, that is ok. Then they can take a position and explain why and defend it. There's nothing wrong with that and people understand that their personal opinion won't be followed every time -- they just want their voice heard. It's called democracy and this is the future of grassroots.

Neil Hare
Global Vision Communications

Gamers – Why it Matters to New Media

Andrew Mirsky — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:42:17 +0000

I’m not a gamer, and at a recent Social Rockstar Workshop with Chris Melissinos, Chief Gaming Officer of Sun Microsystems, when the question was asked “Who in this room identifies themselves as “gamers”, maybe a quarter of the Social Media Rockstar group raised their hands. Melissinos surveyed the room and laughed, “Well, that’s great, and the rest of you are and you don’t realize it yet.”

I guess. But it is pretty hard to ignore what’s going on in gaming and its impact on society and new media in particular. Two big things: First, this is not your grandfather’s Atari. (Grandfather?) But even more important: The term “games” itself is a tad anachronistic, in light of games’ pervasiveness well beyond entertainment, to education, vocational training, business applications, music and the arts, and on and on.

So, when you read up on the topic of gaming, you get a smattering of comments like this one from Scott Sharkey in “Top 5 Things I Learned from Videogames”: “On one hand, they're murder simulators preparing us for shooting sprees (because locking, loading, and firing an M-16 is exactly like pushing the Control key). On the other hand, there's the backhanded admission that maybe they're helping us improve our hand-eye-coordination (whatever the hell that means). I know I never got any better at throwing a baseball; I can't read my own handwriting; and I don't think Duck Hunt taught me anything except the futility of shooting imaginary guns at my pets.” (Snarkey from Sharkey).

Of course, that’s coming from the gaming community itself, probably trying to put a nice spin on spending a lot of time in their mothers’ basements. But when you ask around and you meet pretty respectable guys in the new media community like Lawrence Swiader, formerly CIO of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (and now of National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (www.thenc.org)) spending time gushing about applications and exploring the uses and the really fabulous societal utility of this field, you do start paying more attention. And unlike the porn industry argument about how the perils of ignoring an economic sector so absurdly large and growing, games actually have major potential positive aspects.

Although it’s also hard to scoff at the innovations for the internet driven by the porn industry and its well-heeled fan base.

At Media Future Now our goals are several, but education and knowledge about the business and technology of media and new media are at our core. We have no plans to become a gaming meetup or particular advocates for games and gaming. But we are excited to learn more and introduce our skeptical – but innovative – membership to an important – yes, important – part of our world.

We asked 2 of our members to weigh in:

Mike Proffitt, Associate Director, IT Ops, Atlantic Media (www.atlanticmediacompany.com): “Games are still one of the best ways to impart information. At their simplest level they define rules for interaction and deliver consequences that are in a defined space that encourage strategy. Games are an easy and creative way to engage new media users in a direct or indirect way to spend their time with your content and to interact with it in your defined space.”

Limor Schafman, President, KeystoneTech Group (www.keystonetechgroup.com): “Games and virtual worlds are a medium for telling a story, engaging a player (read that also as a consumer, a constituent, a student, any person interested in a topic) in an interactive, even immersive experience which … leads to true understanding, buy in, involvement, knowledge, recall, engagement, enjoyment. Here’s a simple example – reading about architecture is informative. Having to construct a building brings a whole other level of learning, experience and knowledge. Working with a team to construct the building brings another level of learning. Virtual engagement takes passive knowledge and makes it alive and “visceral.””

Job Posting: Atlantic Media/Government Executive Media Group, Manager of Online Products

Andrew Mirsky — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:00:44 +0000

Our friend Tim Hartman of Atlantic Media’s Government Executive Media Group is seeking a Manager of Online Products. If interested in the position, please contact Atlantic Media, via www.atlanticmediacompany.com, or contact Tim directly at THartman@govexec.com.

Here’s the position description:

Government Executive Media Group seeks a highly motivated, entrepreneurial individual to join our ranks as the Manager of Online Products. Working closely with the Director of Digital Publishing, the Manager of Online Products will play an integral role in implementing Government Executive Media Group's business strategy for its growing online portfolio, including GovernmentExecutive.com and Nextgov.com. The ideal candidate will be well-versed in digital media trends and possess deep knowledge of online audience development.

Responsibilities Include:

Manage new product development projects from conception to implementation

Derive business and editorial insights from internal web traffic analysis and knowledge of the external online publishing industry

Work closely with editorial leadership on web site optimization strategies

Serve as a key liaison to information technology group

Educate business unit on best practice web trends

Qualifications Include:

Strong business intuition; entrepreneur-at-heart.

Significant experience in an online news publishing environment

Demonstrated project management experience

History coordinating web development projects across multiple departments

Keen knowledge of emerging trends in the online media sector

**********

To apply, please visit www.atlanticmediacompany.com.

The Atlantic Media Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

CAP Event Raises Two Good Questions

Neil Hare — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:56:37 +0000

Last week, Alan Rosenblatt of the Center for American Progress (a fellow Tufts alum, I might add), hosted another terrific round table on the impact of technology on this election and what the future might hold. His panel included Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifray who I quoted in my last blog post and Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washingon Post who covered the election from a tech perspective. Much has been written about how Obama used technology so successfully in his campaign to organize his constituents and raise money, but two questions came up that bear much discussion going forward:

1. Is what Obama did with technology replicable by other candidates or advocacy campaigns? and
2. How will what Obama did in his campaign be transferred to governance and grassroots?

My answer to the first question is a yes/but. Yes, Obama has provide a road map for using social networks to organize, emails and text messaging to mobilize, and micro donations to raise tons of money. He has also once and for all, I hope, shown the advocacy community the power of a database. All those politicians and interest groups who have a fractured databases held together with scotch tape with little information about constituents have to now wake up and get organized there if they want to compete for money and activists in the future.

The but, is that the message and the messenger still matter most even in the age of technology. Rasiej made the point that Obama was the right politician at the right time with the right message, which fed into new media and the demographic using it. The "hope and change" message and Obama's great oratory gifts created a "movement" that worked online. Not every politician or advocacy campaign has that. Remember, Hilary tried using the online videos as well but no Wil I Am type video went viral for her -- instead she got Big Brother. Campaigns of all types have to work much harder on their message in terms of wider appeal -- not just to the old pigeon holed groups of the past. Obama and the internet showed that people are now empowered and informed by technology and cross party and demographic lines for the right message. The same boring messages delivered by inarticulate messengers will not fly in the future.

Second, how will technology be used for governance? My answer is transparency is needed and Members of Congress and the agencies need to be willing to hear directly from constituents -- both the good and the bad. In addition to a weekly You Tube address, Obama needs his agencies to fully disclose their documents and proceedings online with summaries and invite public discussion. And, Members of Congress need to put their floor speeches, committee remarks and draft legislation on their websites and invite respectful discussion. They should want to know what their constituents think in real time and be forced to act accordingly -- either accepting or rejecting what they hear and explaining why. Remember, Congress has a lower approval rating than President Bush and they should welcome an opportunity to hear directly from the people.

These topics require much greater discussion as well as how we plan on conducting grassroots in the future with web based tools and social networks -- my favorite topic! I look forward to having it.

Neil Hare
Global Vision Communications

The Internet's Impact on the 2008 Election

Neil Hare — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:49:28 +0000

There is terrific article in today's Politico on the impact of the Internet on the 2008 election written by Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum entitled The Web: 2008's Winning Ticket. This is a must read for online political operatives.

The statistics of web coverage each candidate received especially in terms of web video tells the tale and is one major indicator of Obama's margin of victory. Obama posted 1,822 videos to YouTube to McCain's 330 and there were 104,454 videos mentioning Obama across 200 platforms to McCain's 64,092. Web surfers spent 14.6 million hours watching Obama videos online to 488,000 hours for McCain. And, most interesting, is that the cost of equivalent 30 second spot TV buys for this viewership is reported to be $46.9 million for Obama to $1.5 million for McCain. That is an incredible advantage for Obama in a race where he already had a money edge on McCain.

The lesson for all politicians out there is that they must use online video in the future to cost effectively attract eyeballs. They certainly won't have the money to purchase the equivalent amount of TV. Now, other politicians might not be as compelling as Obama but there is little doubt that elections will be won or lost in the future based on who received more traction online.

Neil Hare,
Global Vision Communications

Privacy in Public: Social Media

Andrew Mirsky — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:40:41 +0000

Legal issues with privacy in social media stem from the nature of social media – an inherently communicative and open medium. The cliché is that in social media there is no expectation of privacy because the very idea of privacy is inconsistent with a “social” medium. Scott McNealy from Sun Microsystems famously drove home the point with his aphorism of “You already have zero privacy. Get over it.”

But in evidence law, there’s a rule barring assumption of facts not in evidence. Here it’s more simple: Where was it proven that we cannot find privacy in a new communications medium, even one as public as the internet and social media? Let’s go back to basic principles. Everyone talks about how privacy has to “adapt” to a new technological paradigm. I agree that technology and custom require adaptation by a legal system steeped in common law principles with foundations from the 13th century. But I do not agree that the legal system isn’t up to the task.

All you really need to do is look more widely at the law.

Privacy writers talk about the law of appropriation in privacy. The law of appropriation varies from state to state, though it is a fairly well-established aspect of privacy law. Basically, it involves the right to control how your image and identity are used, and in particular to prevent others from exploiting your image and identity. You generally do not forfeit this right of privacy by putting yourself in public. (Witness, for example, the uproar last year when Facebook launched its NewsFeeds and Beacon services.)

That’s fine only to a point, since appropriation defines privacy as a property right that only you can exploit. It doesn’t address the conceptual problems of access, interference, the right against being bothered, and the other sorts of constitutional privacy rights generally covered by the idea that we have the right simply to be let alone.

More interesting may be something completely different, like the public sphere. If social media becomes THE means by which we communicate, it then would seem to take on characteristics of other public communications such as the telephone lines, the cell phone airwaves and “public” spectrum. Long ago the airwaves and the radio spectrum (including the wireless spectrum) were appropriated for regulation by the government under the FCC and its predecessors. Long ago, too, the principles governing the regulation of the telephone lines were brought under a “utility” formulation, at least in part out of concern for the debilitating effects of unregulated competition in a basic public need.

The internet may be the first of these public spheres to defy easy geographical jurisdiction by the US and other governments. But the regulatory framework has nonetheless been developing apace, probably much like the history of regulation over the 19th century railroads in the United States.

And yet, while you are communicating on the public telephone lines, in no way have you given up your expectation of privacy by doing so. Well, that is not entirely true, and that’s the point.

The government is required to get a warrant to tap your phone. Why? Because there’s an expectation of privacy, which can be overcome by a 4th Amendment showing of certain unusual cause. Yes, the information is out there. Yes, you’ve made it available, but how is that really different than what is happening on the telephone lines?

Then there are the “company town” cases. These involve situations where a single employer is, for all practical purposes, THE government in a town. There were many of these cases in the early 20th century involving mill towns, steel towns and other major industrial company towns. The companies operated company stores, they employed the police, they provided public services and utilities, and they were the only employer. The companies argued that various company actions like workplace rules or speech limitations did not subject them to constitutional principles such as the 1st Amendment (which generally apply only to governments). The courts eventually ruled that, because of the influence of the single-employer, the companies were effectively “the government” because they were, effectively, acting in the place of the government. (According to a National Geographic story last year, Disney was able to exempt itself from any of these shackles in Florida through sweetheart deals with the state legislature in the 1960s. That’s a story for a different day.)

The internet is a public place, perhaps as “public” as the town square or any other place as there ever was. Some would argue (and many have argued) that social media realizes the ultimate forum in communication democracy.

As a public place, you do and should give up a level of privacy by virtue of being in public. And so that is the philosophy behind 4th Amendment search and seizure cases where the government argues a lower expectation of privacy by virtue of your putting yourself “out there”.

Thus there is an expectation of privacy in your home, but less so in your trash that you put out to the curb. Less so in your car. Less so on the telephone lines. And less so on the internet. Expectations still are there, but lesser than in other places.

There’s nothing new about this. But that’s the point. It is not correct to say that you forfeit an expectation of privacy because you put so much information about yourself out there on the web. You do forfeit an absolute level of privacy, but you do that anyway by leaving your house.

What the big deal may be is the assumption that because you are in public and everybody can access you, that everybody can have you. As Daniel Solove wrote last month in Scientific American, “Instead of viewing privacy as secrets hidden away in a dark closet, they considered the issue as a matter of accessibility. They figured that most people would not scrutinize their profiles carefully enough to notice minor changes and updates. They could make changes inconspicuously. But Facebook’s News Feeds made information more widely noticeable. The privacy objection, then, was not about secrecy; it was about accessibility.”

Again, this really shouldn’t be such a remarkable legal matter, since it has never been true that because you’re sitting in a public coffee shop writing this blog, you are therefore suddenly naked and out there to be approached, hit-upon, barraged or assaulted. There are laws against all of these things, including criminal laws, laws against playing a radio on the subway, laws against solicitations and panhandling, and laws requiring permits for all sorts of public protests, appeals, speeches, parades and … noise.

You cannot very well argue that your privacy is intruded because someone learns something about you from something you put on Facebook. But when Facebook (or some successor fabulous social media community) becomes the de facto communications medium in this country, we might very well expect that we will develop the same kind of limitations on access that developed over time on the telephone lines. Or maybe that the law will evolve to recognize the necessity to facilitate such “public” information – and for the same purposes – in the same way that we now provide such information to the telephone company, to the social security administration and to countless other organizations, governments and utilities, all so that we can simply function in a complicated society.

From my perspective, it’s the younger generation and full-on social media users who are more keenly aware of the privacy issues than my older generation looking down our noses. Again, it goes back to the definition of what social media is other than, ultimately, an evolving public communications medium. And if that’s the case, the expectation that we nonetheless retain our right to limit how our identities are exposed, shared, mixed, aggregated, commercialized and exploited is not unreasonable. But nor would such an expectation be inconsistent with how all major earlier public communication media have legally developed.

Oprah, Google, Books, Copyright and My Law Firm

Andrew Mirsky — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:36:19 +0000

What would happen if Oprah endorsed my law firm? Are you wondering? Are you really? I don’t have a book to shill, or product to hawk other than my supreme skills in contract negotiation (I suppose). And parsing fair use, privacy and copyright law. But I do have thoughts on this week's two cosmic developments in the book publishing world: Google settles its 3-year old lawsuit with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, and Oprah intends to endorse the Amazon Kindle.

I do wonder: Which is the more important anthropomorphological event? (Is that even a word?)

Google always settles its lawsuits, so the settlement isn’t surprising in and of itself. The Authors Guild and AAP had sued Google over its Google Print Library Project in 2005, claiming that “continuing, irreparable and imminent harm” was and would continue to be suffered by publishers because of Google’s copyright infringement. Google had announced the staggering goal of scanning every book ever published – and with the help of the New York Public Library, the University of Michigan and several other major libraries, was modestly on its way to achieving it.

Google argued, as it usually has argued in copyright suits, fair use and, alternatively, non-infringement in the first place. Google relied on a legal theory blessing a “transformative” use as a permitted copying because of its public value and purpose, and argued that the Library Project qualified squarely as transformative.

I wrote at length about these arguments in Folio magazine last year.

Google today reportedly agreed to pay $125 million to settle with the plaintiffs and also agreed to establish a “Book Rights Registry” to allow copyright holders to receive electronic royalties. It was reported this morning in The New York Times.

The Financial Times also reported late last week that Oprah Winfrey intends to endorse Amazon’s Kindle digital book reader on her show this Friday, including interviewing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos about the Kindle on the show.

The blogs are abuzz with expectations of a bump in Kindle sales and the death of Amazon’s print sales business. (About this latter concern, the FT quotes Bezos saying “… when somebody buys a Kindle and the period after, they buy 1.6 times as many Kindle books as they bought physical books prior to buying a Kindle, and they continue to buy the same number of physical books.”)

The interesting thing may be neither result, with book sales still a $24 billion market and the biggest threats still being (a) people simply not buying books as much (electronic, print or otherwise) and (b) likewise, electronic books far from a serious scant percentage of the reading public consumption. (Anyway, a Washington Post book review last weekend on bird watching reported that spending on bird watching outpaced book spending by at least $6 billion in 2007.)

Live-Blogging from the Oct. 21 MFN Event

Troy K. Schneider — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:37:00 +0000

I'm at today's discussion (thanks to Verizon for the great meeting space), and will update here and there with any notable comments and links...

12:35pm: David Almacy of Waggener Edstrom is the first speaker, talking about the early evolution of the White House web site. Interesting stuff on trying to measure impact and negotiate government regulations -- PLUS the inside scoop on the genesis of the BarneyCam.

12:38pm: Almacy -- who was Internet & E-Communications Director in the Bush White House -- talks about the ad hoc syndication efforts as they tried to get outside WhiteHouse.gov. Getting iTunes to create a government podcast section, getting RSS feeds into Google News, etc.

12:40: Tivo distributes podcasts. Who knew?...

12:46: Predicting where .gov goes from here: More video, both live and recorded, the Twitter/franking-regulation kerfuffle being a watershed for government officials learning to use these tools. Talking about John Culberson using Qik to interview the press interviewing him.

12:50: Transitioning to the panel discussion -- Fleishman-Hillard's Benjamin Coffey Clark, Blattner Brunner's Ernie Mosteller, and Washingtonian's Sarah Romer, with Roll Call's Pete Cherukuri moderating.

12:56: Quick rundown of the online ad and client-services biz from the panelists. According to Romer, buys from existing advertisers is steady and even growing -- it's the new-business side that's looking increasingly grim.

12:59: Coffey Clark notes an interesting consideration for reaching Hill eyeballs: for folks whose job involves thinking about what's on the minds of constituents and "regular folks," sometimes it's MORE effective to reach them through non-political pubs. IE, catching them as their looking for restaurant reviews or reading a sports blog on the weekend can be a really effective "bank shot."

1:05: Almacy has a great term for a challenge I've long tried to explain to people: "The Plop Factor." IE, you can walk into the CEO's office and plop today's NYT or National Journal magazine on the desk to show how your message got out. There's no good equivalent for online -- "plopping" a screenshot on someone's desk just isn't the same, and it doesn't take too many screens of Google Analytics before folks' eyes glaze over.

1:16: Cherukuri poses a good question to the panel -- how do Newspapers fit into the current business landscape. Romer demurred on handicapping the Post's business model, but says that magazines like hers are still in a fairly good place relative to papers.

Mosteller is more pessimistic, noting that papers now have to compete with so many other sources of breaking, local news -- most of which have no overhead or even a profit imperative.

1:28: Coffey Clark predicting that an Obama Administration would offer a great teachable moment to get businesses to focus on technology in general, and online advertising/media inside the Beltway in particular. His point is that, fairly or not, Obama is seen as a tech guy in a way that McCain is not.

(It's worth noting, though -- as Mosteller did -- that McCain was early to the Web. And folks do forget that he was the first candidate to raise REAL money online in 2000. Of course, eight years ago, "real money" was six to seven figures, not the mid-nines!...)

1:31: Almacy notes that mobile is the under-discussed media, given how much the campaigns have used it. Of course, one reason we don't talk about it much at these venues is that folks haven't figured out how to really monetize it very well yet... :)

1:33: Turns out that a guy from the firm that powers Obama's mobile operations is here. It's a very small world.

1:37 OK, we're into the last bit of Q&A, and off to Verizon's FIOS show-and-tell.