How about a little kerosene for the fire? Consider this post as a counterpoint to A.L's On Blogs and Media. Joe's Why 2004 Was the Year of the Blog also covered this subject on Dec. 31st. A.L's article and the ensuing discussion might be considered normative: 'What should be'. Here I'm putting on my Venture Capital Analyst and Futurist hats to go more in-depth and take a descriptive stance: 'What is and might be'.
The Power Law of Individuation
I've been a big fan of the Long Tail argument for the differentiated power of citizens' media, and the importance of many small players.
It's based on the power law distribution of attention on the net, first demonstrated empirically by Huberman and Adamic. The Long Tail metaphor has the merit of simplicity, and I will argue from it below. But first it's important to acknowledge some limits of the model as its being used in both rhetoric and analysis.
The One True Power Law Curve of Attention is really a composite of many separate curves. The original research found this pattern recurring across everything from educational to sexually explicit sites. Every 'carnival', from the famous Carnival of the Vanities to Recipes to Capitalists to Grand Rounds is an obvious marker of yet another power law curve, and they proliferate into topical and hyperlocal niches beyond our individual perceptions.
When we talk about going up against the legacy news media, or public affairs and political outlets, it's easy to forget this: The Long Tail is the sum of many small dreams.
The composite Long Tail curve gets and deserves attention as a clarification of the competitive positions of legacy and citizens' media. There are only so many hours and (insert your favorite currency) to go around. What is taken up by citizens' media perforce comes from the share of legacy media. Combine that explanatory framework with the recent Pew Internet study of blog usage (PDF) - ably summarized by Jeff Jarvis - showing high double digit Compound Annual Growth Rates, and adoption figures that are clearly past the proverbial 'knee in the curve'. Even in the absence of proven business models for citizens' media, that degree of change draws the attention of analysts (you can follow one thread of discussion from my own blog.) And if you interpret the gibes of legacy media writers and editors as evidence of their fear, they've noticed as well.
The Long Tail is a recipe for the degradation of the business model of the legacy media through a thousand cuts, the mighty brought lower by the many. It is fundamentally about attrition, about weakening the choke hold of the MSM on culture, political discourse, and revenue, but without necessarily dislodging them from the top of the big curve and their anointed places in the content value chain.
But I wonder... In a war of attrition, there comes a moment when the besieger senses the weakness of the defender, and brings his power to bear on weak points in the lines. So with Grant before Petersburg, and Foch and Haig in 1918. Perhaps hard to pull off when the protagonist is an emergent system, not a hierarchy or individual commander. But if those of us interested in taking a few chunks off the legacy media, for profit or not, pass around intelligence and analysis without getting committed on details like business models too early, it might come together.
So where are the weak spots? Following are some of my observations, and an open invitation for others to kick in data and analysis here or elsewhere. Perhaps there's a ' blogger triumphalist plot' - or at least a pony - in here somewhere.
Metro Daily Newspapers. These guys were hurting even before blogs. Their advertising revenue stream is being shredded by the likes of Monster, eBay, friendster, and Autotrader. If Craigslist alone is taking $50-65m of revenue away from Bay Area newspapers, what must the combined damage across the industry be? With job, car, personal and even garage sale ads being attacked by the net, papers with metro coverage are then ill-positioned to serve the remaining local business advertisers, who do better with rags specific to their neighborhoods.
The depletion of the top line is followed by expense cutting in the form of staff reductions, making coverage ever thinner, and fact checking apparently an optional extra in many cases. Dependence on syndicated material keeps rising, while its quality does not. Credibility is dropping, and brands are at risk. Who will pick up the pieces?
National and International News Desks Why restrict this to the print media? The networks have long complained that news is a loss leader, though it also spins off cheap prime time fodder in the form of 'news magazines' such as the tarnished 60 Minutes. With more and more viewers turning to the Internet for primary coverage, and Fox trying to corner the center/right audience, everyone else is fighting for half of a dwindling market. And once again, the scarcity item is local coverage, where the networks and cable channels have no resources.
News syndicators Reuters and the AP have been noticed missing a few garments of late, something to do with publishing falsehoods and shilling for terrorists. Beyond the political aspects, it points up just how thin their coverage - and often quality - have become. It would be triumphalism to say the blogosphere is ready to step into that spot as yet, but the coverage that it has provided around the Ukrainian elections and the tsunami tragedy show the potential for depth. I'm not sure if its going to be an international newsblogger's cooperative, or a new form of syndication empire, but this area is ripe for a big vision wedding breadth of coverage with depth at need.
Features syndicators Start with the opinion columnists, since that's a blogosphere strength. Is there anyone paying attention who still thinks the likes of MoDo and Pat Buchanan are really providing better writing, analysis, and data than the blogs? How about the Meet the Press hacks and their kind? From there we can get into mining all those power law curves for the best in recipes, medical opinion, investment advice and onwards.
Advertising. Still the big enchilada, even after the Internet has taken away significant revenue. Remember, the legacy media cannot compete on precision of message delivery. They are broadcasters, no matter their physical embodiment. There's no way their annoying attempts at gathering audience demographics via registration can compete in the long run with analytics fueled by text analysis, link networks, conversational patterns, and even individual reading habits. The attention and value pie are going to get redivided among the creators, advertisers, and customers. Figure out how, and there's a whole herd of ponies.
Each of these deserves a long essay, if not a business plan, but I'm not writing them (yet). They are all fantasies today, but they are big dreams. It feels like the year for them.
One of the errors in office automation was to computerize paper based tasks. Progress didn't happen until the work flow and business processes themselves evolved to take advantage of the technology.
When we analyze systems we can benefit from identifying those aspects that are artifacts of technology and so subject to elimination or reformation when new technologies emerge.
Addendum to your Features Syndicators section:Comics that address the blogosphere on a day-to-day basis vs. tired syndicated-middleman MSM derivatives.
Tim,
Fascinating post. I linked and tracked to it as I was addressing similar issues. MSM seem to be reacting as many other formerly dominant companies/industries have when faced with similar challenges. Ultimately, I think they will seek to co-opt the blogosphere in order to survive. My two cents, FWIW.
(Chris M) You wouldn't have any candidates in mind, wouldja? (Love your stuff.)
"A subscription is a bundle of a different sort. It combines multiple transactions into one by collapsing them in time. It therefore adds a futures element to the transaction. More so than the spot transaction of buying a single item, trust becomes an issue. The purchaser is betting that the supplier will be reliable in the future and, in the case of a media periodical, continue to deliver a collection of content of value."
Or at least, content of interest, which seems to be how much of the establishment media supports itself these days: Entertainment, sports, celebrity gossip, music and movie reviews, all larded up with lots of splashy graphics. Likewise broadcast news, which lives off the network entertainment divisions.
Since blogs show a low level of interest in diet tips and the adventures of Michael Jackson, is there really an economic competition going on here?
Tim,
See this link to a post I made in the comments in the new Becker-Posner blog:
Link Here
For this link to this piece titled:
The Power and Politics of Blogs - Blessed Be for the Internet and the Blogosphere
(take off from Dan Drezner's academic piece)
With that in mind we're trying to spur a debate in the Blogos to fact check Gary Mastumoto's new book, "Vaccine-A." Anthrax vaccine is causal factor for Gulf War Syndrome?
See this link to a discussion here at WOC:
Link Here
Ron Wright, Moderator
HSPIG Forums Site
www.hspig.org
Glen, you mean like this Michael Jackson blog or that diet blog? Just because you and I don't care about it doesn't mean it's not out there.
But if your point is that the hottest point of immediate conflict is in news, I'd agree. One reasonable outcome is for that stream of information to end up disaggregated from the branded entertainment bundles. (One of the reasons it's there for video - 'public service' - dwindles along with the over-the-air audience share.) It might also be a reasonable outcome for that function to end up effectively outsourced to some new model content provider built around citizens' media.
If you can buy one of those scenarios, then the question is where does the unraveling stop?
Tim - "where does the unraveling stop?"
Not until the enemy has been reduced to a smoldering pile of DNA fragments! In the words of Johnny Cash: "May all the world forget you ever stood; may all the world admit you did no good."
But seriously - not to underrate Michael Jackson blogs, but I don't think they pose the same challenge to Big Media that the political blogs pose to Big Media's news organizations. And it seems to me that the blogs are not attacking the economic underpinnings of Establishment News, nor should they necessarily attempt to do so. "Real" news - and the journalistic class that deals with "real" news -is already an economic liability.
What is under attack is the idea that Establishment Media has some sort of privileged frame of reference on the news, some sort of unique authority. This threatens the central myth of the MSM: That they are a progressive crusading force interested only in the truth. (A similar myth surrounds so-called trial lawyers, but one war at a time.) This myth probably peaked during the Watergate years, and has been plummeting ever since.
The defenders of the Establishment Media (nearly all from the left) know very well what's at stake here, and it isn't money. Though they stridently deny that Big Media is their partisan ally, they seem awfully eager to take a bullet for the likes of Dan Rather. Why, to protect Viacom stockholders? Would they do the same for Union Carbide?
Glen - I hear ya, and you can probably infer my sentiments from the original post. But this is the 'is and will be' thread, not the 'should be' discussion. I'll just say that if you want your (business) enemy dead and buried at the crossroads with a stake in the heart until the DNA is fragmented past possibility of reassembly, it's hard to beat coming up with a viable business model that both eats that enemy's lunch, and is impossible for him to respond to, due to vested interests or structural limits. And it's fun and profitable!
"Start with the opinion columnists, since that's a blogosphere strength. Is there anyone paying attention who still thinks the likes of MoDo and Pat Buchanan are really providing better writing, analysis, and data than the blogs? How about the Meet the Press hacks and their kind? From there we can get into mining all those power law curves for the best in recipes, medical opinion, investment advice and onwards."
The opinion columnists are definitely the weak spot, and they overlap quite readily with the bobbleheads on TV. I think you'll find widespread agreement on left and right about that. Over the time I've spent blogging, my contempt for the Senators and Congressmen who go on these shows has also grown. To the extent that the blogosphere can encourage better behaviour and higher standards of evidence among this crowd, so much the better. Competition is good.
This is not to say that I'm a blogosphere triumphalist, as I noted in other threads. I think that reporters do a vastly better job of most things that involve calling people, ferreting out insider information, etc. than do bloggers. Ass-chair reporting can only take you so far, and few if any bloggers are going to be able to put together an in-depth, six-month investigation of a topic. Most of us have jobs. It would be a shame if the combination of craigslist and corporatism (synergy, whatever) made it so that reporters couldn't make a living. Consider the fact that in 2002, ABC only had 6 foreign correspondents on its payroll. If hyperlocalization happens, it will be interesting to see how one figures out who is trustworthy and who is not. It may well just be a big mess.
For me, blogs are about a filter (or personal editors) and an ongoing conversation rather than they are about "fact-checking" the media, though that has its uses. Still, the fact-checking function really isn't all that different from ye olde letter to the editor. It's just easier and more transparent with blogging. And everyone's got their own take on the facts ... I can cite a Brookings Report, someone else can site a Heritage report, and then we have an argument. Still, I find that enough bloggers have more understanding of technical issues than do many reporters such that the blogosphere adds real value on some news topics. Jonathan Weisman has an incentive to get his econ. right with Brad DeLong breathing down his neck every day.
praktike - "Still, the fact-checking function really isn't all that different from ye olde letter to the editor."
Oh, but it is. The editor could always ignore the letter, or at least ensure that the publication got the last word. The letter did not go rampaging about on its own.
I know that many publications honestly addressed their critics. But only because they chose to, and under circumstances that they controlled. Others notoriously did not.
fyi... in my discussions regarding this stuff, issues relating to jobs are really a big deal for us. In economic dislocations, jobs are normally lost, but I think editors and journalists will do better in this one, with more funding for investigative journalism.
I don't know what CL or me personally will be doing, but preserving and improving jobs is a priority.
Craig