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Android as a moat protecting Google's (advertising) castle; "advisor-tising" and the Infovalet

We exchange email yesterday with my CircLabs Inc. colleague, Jeff Vander Clute, about a blog post written by venture capitalist Bill Gurley. Gurley's post  (LINK) argues that Google is giving away the Android operating system -- and many things around it -- because no one can compete with free and the mass adoption of these free services is making Google's advertising business unassailable.

Vander Clute remarked about Gurley's thesis:

Fascinating points leading up to the legal destruction of wealth. It stands  to reason that the marginal cost of software development going to zero in the  long run means upside going to zero. Entrenched players for whom software > development is cheap or a byproduct can choose to give away a version of  *your* product for free or less than free.

Right. So one begins to realize this essential truth -- Google is neither a technology company, nor a search company. It has become a marketing company. Currently its business is the selling of advertising. It didn't start out that way. It started out intending the organize the world's information and make it useful and accessible. But now Wall Street expects it to feed its advertising juggernaut first.

For the advertising to remain effective, Google is going to have to learn more and more about us. The looming battle: On what terms does it learn about us and operate in what I've begun to call the "advisor-tising" space? For Google the engineering and software -- Android, maps, apps, wallets -- is now focused on drawing more and more of us in, and learning more and more about us, so that we can be better and better packaged and presented to people who want to sell us something.

At least in the world I come from, there is the intention to provide a service -- civic information -- that rides atop advertising and is served by it rather than vice versa. At least that's been an aspiration for the news industry and the continuing focus of its best thinkers.

The good news: Gradually, Google -- and Facebook -- are going to figure out that being the "infovalet" requires a new kind of trust relationship with the user if you want to remain their most-favored agent. And that will involve providing something of value beyond a lot of free, ad-supported services. How about news? Google has for now one of the must trusted and recognized brands in the world. It will need to adopt the role of infovalet to keep that enviable position.

Figuring out that relationship is the next phase of the web and what fascinates me and why I crafted our RJI white paper as "Paper to Persona." And it's a playing field where news organizations have strength -- if they can just learn to use technology as adroitly and innovatively as do Facebook, Google and Amazon.

Rethinking the news marketplace in an age of blogs

When the marketplace for ideas teems, does journalistic ethics still require fairness and balance? In a monopoly newspaper town, the prevailing wisdom for 50 years or more has been that the newspaper is basically the "marketplace" and therefore it must present multiple viewpoints -- even when its own business interests are at stake. But as that monopoly wanes, does the obligation to be the "marketplace" wane as well?

This question is begged by the report of the Washington [state] News Council on the coverage by the dominant Spokane daily, The Spokesman-Review, of a downtown shopping mall which its family owners developed.  (LINK TO NEW ENGLAND NEWS FORUM SUMMARY) The newspaper was concerned about a perception that its owners nfluenced coverage (or lack of coverage) in a case where those owners held a financial interest in a project. The paper agreed to hire the news council as a sort of "contract ombudsman" to review the situation. The news council has finished the report.

Prof. Norman Sims, of the University of Massachusetts journalism program, observes:

"The WNC stands on the very solid ground that says the only newspaper in town ought to be absolutely objective in its coverage of local news. But there is also the very solid ground that says the owners of a newspaper have a right to speak as they wish about public issues, and let the buyer of the newspaper beware. It's Col. McCormick vs. the SPJ. Question is: In today's world of blogs, reporters-for-hire (ala Bush administration), Fox News, etc., is the SPJ position still relevant?"

AUDIO: MCLA senior proposes a new paradigm for responsible journalism: "Objectivity as truth"

Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts senior Jen Thomas gives a one-hour oral defense of her Commonwealth Scholar graduation honors thesis -- an examination of "Objectivity as Truth" as a new approach to journalism. Recorded April 25, 2007. Introduction by Bill Densmore.  Thomas is a double major in philosophy and journalism. 
CLICK ON THE RIGHT CARAT ON THE BAR BELOW TO LAUNCH STREAMING AUDIO

OR download MP3 -- Download objectivity-as-truth-thomas-mcla-04-25-07.mp3  (27.6MB/1 hour)

What is "citizen journalism" and what is its impact? Q&A with grad student

A few weeks ago, a graduate student emailed asking for some thoughts about the term "citizen journalism." Here are the questions, and my replies:

In your view, what is meant by the term “citizen journalism”?

The phrase "citizen journalism" is an imperfect attempt to describe a new class of observer and participant in the public sphere. Before the industrial revolution, citizens communicated   and engaged in civic affairs locally.  Communication from the world, the nation or the state arrived delayed over many days. This was OK, because commerce moved at a slower pace, too. As a result, a citizen could play a civic role without having to own a printing press, or a radio station. Most events of consequence could be experienced personally. While there was an important role for the commentator on politics and government -- first pamphleteers and later small newspaper publishers -- the "news" was local and personally experienced and so the role of journalist was neither well developed nor a vital necessity. 

As the world's population grew, commerce became national and then global, and the telegraph and then telephone and then ship and air travel dramatically quickened the pace of commerce and the easy of movement of citizens . . . and as population concentrated in great cities . . . news that might affect a citizen's business or life began to happen quickly and often remotely or at a time or place impractical for the citizen to experience personally. In the public sphere, it became impossible for an elected official to reach all the voters on a face-to-face basis.  And so the civic sphere began to depend upon proxies of the public to gather critical news -- journalists. 

Really until the Internet, mass communication -- broadcasting and major newspapers -- and become the only practical means to provide citizens with the information they needed to be informed voters and effective citizens.  Over time, these services have become heavily influenced by commercial interests to the point where entertainment, rather than information necessary for the functioning of democracy, dominates.

The Internet is a disruption. Now individuals, with very inexpensive tools, can reach hundreds or even thousands of fellow citizens based solely upon the quality or relevance of their message rather than their ability to afford printing presses or a broadcast service.  Many citizens are taking advantage of this. And some of them are behaving in ways similar to the patterns that so-called "professional" journalists have adopted -- attending meetings, talking to sources, reviewing documents, analyzing and summarizing matters considered newsworthy.  And yet they are doing this not as a full-time job but as an avocation, or perhaps a part-time concern.  It's too early to tell what sort of impact this development will have on the public sphere.   The phrase "citizen journalism" describes this new development.

What do you think about the rise of citizen's journalism?

As noted above, this is a fundamental shift in the way information necessary to a democracy is transmitted.  It is diminishing the role of professional editors as "gatekeepers" and arbiters of public dialogue.  A story of consequence will emerge in spite of the inability of the traditional media to unearth it or cover it.   This is good in the sense that it means a worthy story cannot easily be censored by omission.  However, is may also be bad, in the sense that unsubstantiated gossip and rumor can elevate to a level perceived as "news," and affect the public sphere in potentially harmful ways.  It makes necessary a new role for the traditional journalist -- that of an information valet -- a trusted consultant to the public, helping sift news from nonsense and present each in appropriate context. Now the citizen has easy access to either -- and needs help understanding which is which. Services like NewsTrust.net  become vital.

Do you think citizen's journalism is a threat to the media industry?

No. The threat to the media industry is the end of the "pinch points" of expensive presses and limited broadcast licenses. So long as the Internet remains relatively inexpensve, egalitarian and unregulated -- and so long as the suppliers of Internet "pipes" are obligated not to discriminate in their carriage terms on the basis of content (so called "net neutrality") -- the physical limitation on information conveyance from one to many, and from many to many, is gone for the conceivable future.  This is undermining mass-market advertising as a business model and requiring media companies to rethink how they do business.  The rise of citizen journalism is not a critical factor in this disruption.  It's enabled by it, that's all.

What effect has citizen's journalism had on your daily work?

In human terms: Information overload.  There are now so many sources of information on so many topics it is difficult to find time for original thought or analysis. We are literally drowing in information. Hence the need for the information valet.  See:  http://newshare.typepad.com/newshare/2007/04/news_organizati.html

Do you think the media industries should embrace citizen's journalism?

Let's avoid the term, since it means different things to different people. I think news organizations should be in partnership with citizens who are practicing journalism. In fact, they always should have been. For much of the last 50 years, they were able to make a lot of money and grow without partnering with citizens. Now they will have to, or die.

What has citizen's journalism meant for newspapers? television? News that appears on the Internet?

It simply means these news organizations must rethink their relationship with their audiences.
See: http://www.newenglandnews.org/?q=mission 

What do you think about the claim that citizen journalism has democratic potential?

It certainly has potential. We are at the beginning of a grand experiment in which we will learn whether it saves, or destroys, participatory democracy.  Our research for The Media Giraffe Project  suggests that many of the people taking on roles as citizen journalists are profoundly concerned about fairness, accuracy, facts and balance in what they do -- all of the things to which professional journalists aspire.  They are also profoundly concerned about making a difference -- about righting what's wrong and about shinning light on dark crevasses of human behavior.  This bodes well for democracy.

Because citizen's journalism does not necessarily go through the same vetting process that mainstream journalism goes through, what do you think the public at large needs to understand about citizen's journalism?

The public needs guides and services -- information valets --  which report on the quality and reliability of  news sources.  This measure of trustworthiness has been the value of brands in the mass-communication era.  Over many years, the public formed an impression of the reliability of such brands as The Associated Press or The New York Times or a network news operation, based upon many years of familiarity with their reporting.  As new brands emerge, that sense of reliability is unknown and untested.  The reliability of Matt Drudge is evolving.  What Drudge does is similar to a political columnist, who in the print world would be termed a journalist.   A service like Newstrust.net allows the public to rate the reliability and quality of news sources.  This will gradually be seen as a vital service.

CONFERENCE: The New(s) England Revolution: April 7 at UMass Lowell launches New England News Forum

Registration is open for the New England News Forum's April 7 inaugural public gathering: "The New(s) England Revolution: From Politics to Courtroom to Classroom." It's a one-day interactive seminar for teachers, journalists, local and political bloggers, community videographers and active citizens exploring how changing media is changing civic engagement. DOWNLOAD PDF FLYER

RFKJr. appeals for vigorous press to "take America back" from corporate power

The son of slain attorney general Robert F. Kennedy -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- received the William O. Douglas Award for service to the environment at the Sept. 17, 2005, Sierra Club Summit in San Francisco. In his acceptance speech, he invokes the memory of the late Supreme Court justice, describes President Bush as "the worst environmental president in history," warns that the media is failing to play a role in checking what he perceives as corporate power's domination of government power, and concludes: "But America is worth fighting for and it's worth dying for. Those of us who know that it's worth fighting for have to take it back now from those who don't."

Kennedy concludes:

"And we what we have to understand as Americans is that the domination of business by government is called Communism. The domination of government by business is called Fascism. And what our job is is to walk that narrow trail in between which is free market capitalism and democracy. And keep big government at bay with our right hand and corporate power at bay with our left.

"In order to do that we need an informed public and an activist public. And we need a vigorous and an independent press that is willing to speak truth to power. And we no longer have that in the United States of America. And that's something that we all, puts us all, all the values we care about in jeopardy because you cannot have a clean environment if you do not have a functioning democracy. They are intertwined, they go together."

TruthOut.COM had the full text at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091705Z.shtml

UPDATE: It's now available HERE.

Here are excerpts related to the media:

We Must Take America Back By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Saturday 17 September 2005
Speech delivered at the Sierra Summit 2005 San Francisco, California

There is nothing wrong with having business people in government. It's a good thing if you're objective is to recruit competence and expertise but in all of these cases these individuals as I show in my book, have entered government service not to benefit the public interest but rather to subvert the very laws they're now charged with enforcing in order to enrich the president's corporate pay masters.

They have imposed enormous diminution in quality of life in this country.

The problem is most Americans don't know about it, they don't see the connection and the reason for that is because we have a negligent and indolent media and press in this country which has absolutely let down American democracy [applause]. All this right-wing propaganda which is planned and organized and dominated this country, the political debate for so many years talking about a liberal media. Well, you know and I know there is no such thing as a liberal media in the United States of America.

There is a right wing media and if you look where most Americans are now getting their news, that's where they're getting it. According to Pew 30 percent of Americans now sway that their primary news source is talk radio which is 90 percent dominated by the right.

22 percent sat their primary news source is Fox News, MSNBC or CNBC, all dominated by the right and another 10 percent, Sinclair Network which is the most right wing of all. Thats the largest television network in our country. It's run by a former pornographer who requires all 75 of his affiliate television stations and this is where Mid-Westerners get their news, red state people get their news, all of them have to take a pledge to not report critically about this president or about the war in Iraq.

Then the rest of us are - the majority of Americans are still getting their news from electronic media and it's the corporate-owned media and they have no ideology except for filling their pocket books and many of them are run by big polluters. All of them are run by giant corporations that have all kinds of deals with the government and are not going to offend public officials.

REAGAN AND FAIRNESS DOCTRINE

'This all started in 1988 when Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine said that the airwaves belong to the public. They were public trust assets just like our air and water and that the broadcasters could be licensed to use them but only with the proviso that they
use them to promote the public interest and to advance American democracy. They had to inform the public of issues of public import. They had to have the news hours. None of those networks wanted to show the news because it's expensive, they loose money on it. They had to avoid corporate consolidation. They had to have local control and diversity of control. That was the requirement of the law since 1928.

'Today as a result of the abolishment of that doctrine, six giant multi-national corporations now control all 14,000 radio stations in our country, almost all 6,000 TV stations and 80 percent of our newspapers, all of our billboards and now most of the Internet information services, so you have
six guys who are dictating what Americans have as information and what we see as news.

"The news departments have become corporate profit centers, they no longer have any obligation to benefit the public interests, their only obligation is to their shareholders and they fulfill that obligation by increasing viewer ship. How do you do that? not by reporting the news that we need to hear in to make rational decisions in our democracy but rather by entertaining us, by
appealing to the prurient interests that all of us have in the reptilian core of our brain for sex and celebrity gossip [applause]. So they give us Laci Peterson and Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant and we.re today the best entertained and the least informed people on the face of the earth and this is
a real threat to American democracy.

THE PIPPA REPORT

"If you look at the Pippa Report and I've known this for many, many years because I do 40 speeches a year in red states Republican audiences and there is no difference. When people hear this message and what this White House is doing and the Gingrich Congress, there is no difference between the way Republicans react and the democrats react except the republicans come up afterwards and say, 'Why haven't we ever heard of this before? I say to them, "It's because youre watching Fox News and listening to Rush.'' And 80 percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don't know what's going on [applause].

"I don't know if any of you saw the Pippa Report which came out after the last election but it confirmed everything and this is kind of a digression but this whole talk has turned into a digression. The Pippa Report was done by the University of Maryland and it showed that there is no -- you know all these Saturday morning gas bags, the political pundits you see on TV talking about the moral difference and the ideological difference between red states and blue states.

"There is no difference.

"The only difference is there is a huge informational deficit in the red states and I've known this for a long time reaction I get people and the Pippa Report confirmed that by going and asking people who voted for Bush and who voted for Kerry about their knowledge of current events. What they found that of the people that voted for Bush had the same ideology, the same basic values, they were just misinformed. 70 percent said that they believed that Saddam Hussein bombed the World Trade Center, 70 percent believed that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, 64 percent believed that President Bush strongly supported the Kyoto Protocol and strong labor and environmental standards in our foreign treaties and on and on."

"When Pippa went back and asked them what they believed, there was almost no difference between what the Republicans and Democrats believed where America should be headed. The problem was a huge information deficit because the news media in this country is letting down American democracy and democracy cannot survive long without a vigorous news media."

-- END EXCERPT --

ETHICS: Case studies from weekly journalism

From 1983 through 1992, Bill Densmore co-published with his wife two weekly newspapers in Berkshire County, Mass. A former Associated Press reporter, Densmore found in the papers' award-winning coverage ongoing examples of ethical issues. The attached case studies have been used in lecturing and teaching at Williams College, the University of Massachusetts and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Download ethics_case-studies_densmore.doc