Message from MIchael -- September 15, 2008

HOW TO DISAMBIGUATE TECHNOLOGY

THE FUTURE CRUNCH IN NEWS

NEWS CONSUMPTION FACTOIDS THAT SAY SOMETHING

THE ALTERED NEWS MEDIA ENVIRONMENT

INTERNET BYPASSING THE U.S.

MACEY’S AND GIMBLE’S


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HOW TO DISAMBIGUATE TECHNOLOGY: I think I just heard a massive “huh?” from all those wondering, like I did, what disambiguate means. According to an on-line dictionary, it means to ‘state unambiguously or remove ambiguities from.’ And that is what upstart company Angstro purports to do in culling contacts from all your social networking sites to produce an improved alternative to the Google alert system. It produces what Beet.tv called a “personalized newspaper” telling you what all your friends, associates and contacts across all your social networking sites are doing. The company is one of 52 companies that disambiguates (as well as maybe adds ambiguity) to the Internet, and which are highlighted in the TechCrunch50 conference held in San Francisco recently. (Yes, I know, 52 and 50 doesn’t add up. Apparently they’re great at technology but lousy at basic math.) A virtual walk through the TechCrunch50 list of presenting companies is a run through the efforts to monetize, incentivize and crystallize the online future.

Probably the majority of applications seem to be aimed at video gaming, but many of the efforts are targeted to the younger demographics. For example, actor Ashton Kutcher and producer Jason Goldberg are behind a company that produces blahgirls.com, “an animated clique of teenagers who enjoy providing their commentary on the latest entertainment themed news and happenings.” Then there’s Hangout.net which “turns MySpace into MyPlace, with a personalized 3D virtual room -- sort of like the bedrooms of its target audience of 16 to 24 year olds. Website Shryk.com aims at developing an online banking system (no kidding) for kids, in demographics 5 to 11, and 11 to 17 and 18 to 24. Tel-Aviv-based website Tweegee.com promises to integrate social networking, digital content and interactive tools to develop an online platform for tweens that has ‘technologically advanced safeguards.’

THE FUTURE CRUNCH IN NEWS: Just to give you some idea of what that future looks like, especially for those of you in the news business, here is a sampling of some of the start-ups on stage at the TechCrunch50 conference. Website Alfabetic provides an automated translation service in a turnkey operation that not only translates but also localizes and distributes content so that an online content provider can tap into “the multi-billion dollar opportunity of the international audience.” Website Causecast connects nonprofits, civic leaders, celebrities and brands together with media, social networking and philanthropic organizations in an “unexpected and unparalleled” convergence that will have “a positive impact on the world.” Company Quant the News has developed a website stockmood.com which tracks news stories and assesses the ‘mood’ of a stock and how its price responds to news stories. Website GoodGuide.com promises to be the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental and social impacts of products and companies. A variation of that is website Goodrec.com which provides a simplistic ‘thumbs up/ thumbs down’ recommendation system for friends and trusted sources to give, what it under-statedly calls ‘brief, to-the-point’ recommendations on products and services any time and anywhere on any platform.

Two of the more interesting websites (usual disclaimer – to me at least) offer an interesting twist on an old concept and a completely unexpected new twist. Website iamnews.com, which describes itself as a ‘global, open newsroom… for reporters, photographers, media moguls… anyone… is a crowd sourced newsroom with ambitions to one day take on A.P. and Reuters.” Founder Nir Ofir who also founded Blogtv.com says the process will ‘blur the line between the media provider and the media consumer.’ Website dotspots.com says it wants to improve online news by identifying semantically similar content across millions of news sites and blogs with the goal of improving online news for mainstream media and ‘citizen journalists’ as well. What is especially intriguing is the idea of integrating memes into mainstream media. (You may remember from previous MfM’s that a meme is a concept co-opted by the Internet world to mean any idea, thought or cultural change spread through a viral underground.) My interpretation but it’s a sort of cross pollination of ideas and information.

NEWS CONSUMPTION FACTOIDS THAT SAY SOMETHING: But exactly what I’m not sure. For example, a survey by the Pew group found that the CBS News audience has the lowest percentage by far of college graduates (15%) of any network news, whether NBC (33%), ABC (26%) or Fox (25%). Breaking preconceptions maybe, even The O’Reilly Factor (with 38%) and Rush Limbaugh (33%) have more college grads listening. As noted in last week’s MfM about the survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, only 18% of those surveyed could answer three questions about news and politics correctly. As an addendum to that, the report notes that regular viewers of The Colbert Report nearly double that number (34%) and viewers of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart have a similarly high percentage of news savvy viewers (30%) even though their viewers skew younger with roughly three-quarters of them under the age of 50. But then again, listeners to Hannity and Colmes scored even higher (42%) while Limbaugh listeners (at 36%) were more than equal to Stewart and Colbert although O’Reilly’s audience was slightly lower (28%). That’s still better than Larry King Live (19% of which could answer all three questions correctly) or ABC, CNN and Fox (all 19%). The NBC news audience was only slightly better (21%) but the CBS news audience was dramatically worse (10%).

Not surprisingly the study shows nearly half (48%) of Americans follow weather news “very closely.” The closest other area of interest was crime with a quarter (28%) of those surveyed saying they following crime news very closely. The report says half of Blacks followed crime very closely compared to a quarter of Whites. Only 7% of those surveyed admit to following celebrity news closely. What was surprising (at least to me) was the low percentage of people who say they followed community news very closely (22%). In fact it was so surprising that I checked the question. In actual fact there were two – I follow ‘local community news’ very closely and I follow ‘local news’ very closely. I don’t know how the survey differentiates those two. Although the survey authors don’t say anything about it, if you look at the charts provided, there appears to be a general decline in interest across all categories since the survey was first done in 2002. For example, community news is down from 31% in 2002. Health news is down (26% to 20%); sports (25% to 20%); International affairs (21% to 16%); science and technology (17% to 13%); entertainment (14% to 10%) and religion slightly (19% to 17%). Consumer news (13%) and business news (16%) are both flat. Politics and Washington News is flat (at 21%) over the six year period but actually up from the survey two years ago (17%).

THE ALTERED NEWS MEDIA ENVIRONMENT. Buried in a New York Times article profiling Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s senior political advisor is a commentary of sorts on the news media. In it, Steve Schmidt reportedly tells friends that the new media environment, including political websites and blogs, is “easily manipulated because of round-the-clock thirst for news, increased competition, lowered standards created by the proliferation of outlets and hunger for the outrageous.”

INTERNET BYPASSING THE U.S. A professor at the University of Minnesota who tracks the global Internet says ten years ago 70% of the world’s Internet traffic came through the United States. That has now dropped to 25%. Part of the reason for that shift of traffic, especially Canadian and European traffic, is because of the passage of the Patriot Act which allowed for the interception of foreign Internet communication, says the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Part of that is because other countries, most notably Japan which is working to connect China and India, are investing more in the infrastructure of the Internet, say research scientists at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis. The article which cites these stats in The New York Times also cites a ranking analysis by a firm called Renesys which shows that the big winners in the last three years have been Italian Internet provider Tiscali, China Telecom, and Japanese telecommunications operator KDDI. The firm, Renesys, which tracks Internet connections between providers, says all of the companies that have slipped in the rankings are American. Times reporter John Markoff quotes the Minnesota professor, Andrew M. Odlyzko, as saying, “we discovered the Internet but we couldn’t keep it a secret.”

MACEY’S AND GIMBLE’S: In keeping with the spirit of the classic movie Miracle on 34th Street, I want to send a congratulatory note to my good friends at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism which recently celebrated its Centennial of service. The school was the nation’s first, founded on September 14, 1908. Seven years later in 1915 our own Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications was founded. We, too, will be launching our own centennial plans to celebrate that founding.

A SALUTE TO STATIONS. I try to keep personal observations out of this weekly report, but I need to salute those stations dealing with Hurricane IKE as well as those stations and others who have dealt with the previous hurricanes. I am proud to say that I consult many of them. It is at times like these that news organizations in general, but television in particular, validate their value to the public.

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