media | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

You call that a graph?

A good chart can help tell a story, all too often though graphs are designed to mislead.

One way to illustrate a story is with charts. All too often though misleading graphs are used to make an incorrect point.

A Verge story on Groupon shows how to get graphs right – clear, simple and tells the story of how the group buying service’s valuation soared and then plunged while it has never really been profitable.

The vertical axis is the key to getting a graph right, cutting off most of the y-axis’ range is an easy way to mislead people with graphs. In this case you can see just the extent of Groupon’s valuation, profit and loss over the company’s short but troubled history.

Since its inception, The Verge has been showing other sites how to tell stories online, their Scamworld story exposing the world of affiliate internet marketing sets the bar.

Using graphs well is another area where The Verge is showing the rest of the media – including newspapers – how to do things well.

For Groupon, things don’t look so good. As The Verge story points out, the company’s income largely tracked its workforce which grew from 126 at the start of 2010 to over 5,000 by April of 2011. Which illustrates how the business was tied into sales teams generating turnover.

The spectacular growth of Groupon and other copycat businesses couldn’t last and hasn’t. The challenge for Groupon’s managers is to now build a sustainable business.

For investors, those graphs of Groupon’s growth were a compelling story. Which is another reason why we all need to take care with what we think the charts tell us.

Graph image courtesy of Striker_72 on SXC.HU

2013 – the year of the incumbents

Deloitte consulting’s technology, media and telecommunications predictions for 2013 sees smartphones, tablet computers and televisions causing a data crunch.

Bigger, quicker and more congested are the predictions from consulting firm Deloitte’s 2013 Technology, Media and Telecommunications survey.

In Sydney last Friday, the Australian aspects of the report were discussed by Clare Harding and Stuart Johnston, both partners in Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications practice.

Most of the predictions tie into global trends, with the main exception being the National Broadband network which Stuart sees as addressing some of the bandwidth problems that telecommunication companies are going to struggle with in 2013.

Technology predictions

For the technology industry, Deloitte sees 2013 as being a consolidation of existing trends with the trend away from passwords continuing, crowdfunding growing, conflict over BYOD policies and enterprise social networks finding their niches.

Some technologies are not dead; Deloitte sees the the PC retaining its place in the home and office, with over 80% of internet traffic and 70% of time still being consumed on desktop and laptop computers.

Deloitte also sees gesture based interfaces struggling as users stick with the mouse, keyboard and touchscreen.

Media predictions

Like 3D TV two years ago, the push from vendors is now onto smart TVs and high definition 4K televisions. As with 3DTV, much of the market share of smart and hard definition TVs is going to be because television manufacturers will include these features in base models.

Deloitte’s consultants see 2013 as one where “over the top” services (OTT) like Fetch TV and those provided by incumbents delivered start to get traction on smart TVs with 2% of industry revenues coming from these platforms.

Catch up TV is the main driver of the over the top services with 75% of traffic being around viewers watching previously broadcast content. This will see OTT services firmly become part of the incumbent broadcasters’ suite of services.

The bad news for some incumbents is the increase in ‘cord cutters’ as consumers move from pay-TV services to internet based content.

Smartphone and tablet computer adoption which is expected to treble will be a driver of OTT adoption as viewers move to ‘dual screen’ consumption, the connections required to deliver these services will put further load on already strained telco infrastructure which is going to see prices rise as providers respond to shortages.

Telecommunications predictions

The telecommunications industry is probably seeing the greatest disruption in 2013. With smartphones dominating the market world wide as price points collapse.

One of the big product lines pushed at this year’s CES was the “phablet” – while the Deloitte consultants find it interesting hey don’t seem convinced that the bigger form factors will displace the standard 5″ screen size during 2013.

As a consequence of the smartphone explosion is that apps will become more pervasive and telcos will try and build in their own walled gardens with All You Can App to lock customers onto their services.

With smartphones moving down market, largely because of the cost benefits for manufacturers, Deloitte also predicts many new users won’t access data plans given they’ll use the devices as sophisticated ‘feature phones’.

Data usage will continue to grow, particularly with the adoption of LTE/4G networks, although much of the growth will still be on the older 2 and 3G networks as lower income users choose plans which don’t require high speed data.

The looming data crunch

There is a cost to booming data usage and that’s the looming shortage of bandwidth, Deloitte sees this as getting far worse before it gets better.

With bandwidth becoming crowded, prices are expected to rise. In the United States, the “all you can eat” nature of internet plans is being replaced with “pay as you go” while in Australia data plans are becoming stingier and per unit costs are rising.

The London Olympics were cited as an example of how the shortages are appearing – while the Olympic site itself was fine, outside events like the long distance cycle races strained infrastructure along the route. We can expect this to become common as smartphones push base station capacity.

Where to in 2013

Deloitte’s view of where the telecom, technology and media industries are heading in 2013 is that incumbents will take advantage of their market positions as technology runs ahead of available bandwidth.

In Australia, governments might be disappointed as telcos internationally aren’t interested in bidding huge amounts for bandwidth. As Stuart Johnston says “globally what we’re seeing is that carriers are not as willing to spend. It’s not the cash cow that governments are expecting.”

For government and consumers, we’re going to get squeezed a little bit harder.

While things do look slightly better for telcos, broadcasters and other incumbents there’s always the unexpected which eludes all but the most outrageous pundits, it’s hard to see what the disruptive technologies of 2013 will be but we can be sure they are there.

The main takeaway from the 2013 Deloitte report is that smart TVs, 4K broadcasting, tablet computers and smartphones are going to be the biggest drivers for the technology, media and telecommunications industry for this year. There’s some opportunities for some canny entrepreneurs.

Can media salespeople think digital?

The future of journalism is bleak if sales teams can’t figure out how to sell ads on news sites.

The future of journalism is bleak if sales teams can’t figure out how to sell ads on news sites.

Eighteen months ago News Limited, the Australian print arm of News Corporation, put out the first indications that content was going behind a paywall.

This was always going to be controversial so a softening up process was put in place including the then head of News Digital Media, Richard Freudenstein, speaking at various conferences.

Inviting bloggers to a briefing on News Limited’s online future was another strategy which, predictably, resulted in varying views on the prospects from attendees like Laurel Papworth and Ross Dawson.

Another part of the process was Freudenstein penning the odd article for The Australian describing the rationale behind the paywall.

“And we will have completely solved how to sell advertising across print, tablet and digital.” Freudenstein said at both the end of his Australian article and a later Q&A at the Mumbrella 360 Conference.

Sadly this appears not to have been the case, a year later News was struggling with digital revenues.

This is not just a problem for News Limited or Australian publications, The Economist looked at the struggles of print media in 2012 and cited a graph from Reflections Of A Newsosaur showing how newspapers’ digital revenues have been flat lining for nearly a decade while their print revenues collapse.

One of the reasons for traditional media’s stagnation is their salespeople have been bought up selling newspaper display ads, are locked into antiquated KPI’s and have commission structures that reward print over digital.

This was bought home to me a few weeks after News Limited started its charm offensive at a presentation by Cumberland Press, News Limited’s suburban division, where the salesman told a room of small business owners about the range of print advertising products available in the local newspapers.

Not once was True Local, News Limited’s Google Places competitor, mentioned. When I asked about it, the salesman waved the idea away and said he’d throw in an annual sub if I took out a week’s worth of quarter page display ads in the Manly Daily.

Many of the small business owners in the room thought that was a good deal, which shows its not just newspaper managers who are having a digital steamroller running over their revenues – but that’s a post for another time.

As The Economist and Newsosuar shows, News Limited’s experience in selling digital advertising is the norm and it’s genuinely shocking that newspapers’ digital revenues have flatlined while the revenues of Google and other online advertisers soar.

When News Limited announced its new strategy they also announced a community site to discuss the issues of digital news gathering and online advertising. They called it The Future of Journalism.

Just over a year later The Future of Journalism site looks like this;

That’s a dismal view of the future of journalism but it’s pretty accurate if somebody can’t figure out how to sell ads on news sites and break newspapers out of their online advertising stagnation.

The Lives they Loved – Another future for journalism?

The New York Times asked readers to send in memories of loved ones who had passed away in 2012 – is The Lives They Loved one of the futures of journalism?

The New York Times’ wrap up of the year’s obituaries may give us an idea of one of the many futures for journalism.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that obituaries are just dry recantations of the lives of dead white men and they often are – particularly when about celebrities or undistinguished politicians and businessmen.

Good obituaries though are masterpieces and those of society’s genuine unsung heroes are moving and educational. A well written obit of an obscure but deserving person is usually a rewarding read.

As part of the their summation of 2012, The New York Times has taken their obituaries one step further by asking readers to submit photos and stories of their loved ones who’ve passed away during the year.

The Lives They Loved is the result, a wonderful collection of touching photographs and stories of parents, partners, children and friends who have passed away in the last year.

User Generated Content – UGC – is one of the foundation stones of new media. The idea is the audience themselves provide the content which frees services like Facebook, YouTube or I Can Haz Cheeseburger from the costs and irritations of actually creating things that people are interested in.

The New York Times project may well show that traditional news channels with their dedicated audiences and relevance to communities may do UGC as well as any hot new Silicon Valley startup.

While User Generated Content isn’t the future of journalism, it almost certainly will be one of the them. Whether it turns out that old media use it better than the newer upstarts remains to be seen.

An infinite number of blogging monkeys

Are writers standing out from the noise of the web?

With the recent kerfuffle over writing for free, I thought I’d spend Christmas Day re-reading Chris Anderson’s Free.

Deep in the book there’s the pertinent quote;

Abundant information wants to be free. Scarce information wants to be expensive

This is key question all writers, and anyone else in the creative industries need to ask, are we just adding to the tsunami of abundant information or are we adding something insightful and unique that has scarcity value?

On the web there’s a unlimited number of monkeys writing rubbish, even if we’re the one that’s managed to bash out Hamlet nobody is paying much attention.

We need to be better than the noise, and the sites we give our work to – whether we get paid or not – need to be a step above those churning out rubbish.

Poor journalism and social media

Fairfax gets the Sandy Hook shooter story wrong and blames social media and shows how broken their own journalism is.

Brother’s plea shows up online failings crows the Sydney Morning Herald over social media’s role in misidentifying the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

The problem for the SMH is that social media wasn’t responsible for the story. As the Washington Post reported, CNN and various other outlets misidentified the shooter as his brother who had to take to social media to correct the record.

For the mainstream media, the Sandy Hook shooting was not their finest hour; not only did they misidentify Ryan Lanza as the shooter, but they mistakenly reported his mother had worked at the school. When the Daily Mail does a better analysis of the story than many outlets, you know something is wrong.

Something is certainly wrong at Fairfax as the cutting of resources results in the Sydney Morning Herald being three days behind the story and factually wrong on key aspects – not to mention adding a smug headline that is embarrassingly incorrect.

While the writer of the SMH article should be held to account for sloppy work and poor research, the real responsibility for this embarrassment lies with the paper’s editors and management who should be ensuring what appears under the masthead is accurate and reliable.

Both The Age and Sydney Morning Herald are essential to the fabric of their respective cities, this story is a good example of the important role the SMH has in shining light on the arcane dealings of the city’s business community. Fairfax can, and should, do far better than a poor, badly researched story on social media.

Ironically, the mis-identification story quotes media academic Julie Posetti as saying “anyone with an internet connection could now contribute to and comment on the breaking news cycle without going through the filters of the traditional media.”

At Fairfax, those filters are broken with the breathing space from selling its New Zealand digital operation, the company’s management has an opportunity to fix their credibility problem and focus on its core business.

Pulling up the drawbridge

Is the unpaid content model of unpaid journalism not only unsustainable, but hypocritical?

“Online bloggers and tweters are not subject to the financial incentives which affect the print media.”

While there’s much to disagree with in Lord Justice Leveson’s Australian speeches last week, particularly the bizarre suggestion that bloggers and social media are driving the decline in journalistic standards, he is correct about the economics of online publishing. It’s tough to make a buck on the web.

It’s so tough, many of the new media startups are founded on not paying for the articles they publish. This model has become so entrenched, that some venture capital investors will only invest in media start ups if they don’t have any reporters or editors.

Pure platforms

New media startup Buzzfeed‘s founder, Jonah Peretti, mentioned Silicon Valley’s reluctant to pay writers in a staff email republished by Chris Dixon;

Tech investors prefer pure platform companies because you can just focus on the tech, have the users produce the content for free, and scale the business globally without having to hire many people.

This antithesis to paying creatives and content creators is one of the notable aspects of the current Silicon Valley model, who needs editors and writers when a billion people will post to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram?

Arianna Huffington has been the most successful with this model in the media industry, parlaying a largely unpaid for content business into a fat pay-off. Chris Anderson described this model best in a description of his website Geek Dad’s economics.

Reading the comments

For readers, much of the value in sites like the Huffington Post and Geek Dad lie in the comments stream where readers give their views and experiences and build the communities so many investors and advertisers are looking for.

This is a point made by Rachel Hills when commenting about Australian website Mamamia’s payment policies;

When I visit Mamamia. I don’t go to Mamamia for the articles, which usually don’t tell me anything I haven’t already read somewhere else. I go for the comments.

Rachel concludes with the thought that Mia Freedman’s Mamamia is providing a platform for discussion. This is true, but that’s no different from newspapers, the six o’clock news, current affairs shows or even the weekend’s football match.

Those football players, newsreaders and journalists are all paid for their work, just like Chris Anderson and Mia Freedman were as magazine editors.

The hypocrisy of unpaid content

Which leads us to the core hypocrisy of the unpaid content model; its promoters – people like Mia Freedman, Chris Anderson and Arianna Huffington – have all been well paid in their careers yet now choose to deny the next generation of writers and journalist an income.

A business adviser once remarked to me that the management of a corporation that were locking in their entitlements while cutting middle management were “pulling up the drawbridge”, that line seems apt as older, affluent journalists demand younger ones work as unpaid contributors or interns.

The bleat from online publishers is “we can’t afford to pay contributors”, in most other industries being able to pay your workers is a measure of whether your business is solvent. That many new media outlets can’t may mean that the entire industry is insolvent.

Writers get exposure

Were the local cafe to say it couldn’t afford to pay its waitstaff, but it was giving them valuable work experience they’d be rightly scorned for exploiting workers. There’s little difference with online publishers.

It may well be because there is no shortage of manipulative, attention grabbing garbage designed to provoke reactions and increase pageviews, which is the flaw in the “writers get exposure” excuse used by many of these sites.

As middlemen, publishers have to add value in order to have a role, ‘offering exposure’ to unpaid writers isn’t a reason in itself. This is an industry with shaky foundations and it’s not surprising founders are desperately trying to find greater fools to fund their exits.

Image of Michael Arrington from Kevin Krejci on Flickr.

Life in the mob

At a time of easily generated moral hysteria, it’s best to keep your head rather than joining the mob.

The reaction to last week’s tragic passing of a nurse over a hoax phone call shows how hysteria and cynicism in new and old media fuel each other.

Having created villains, in this case the two hapless Sydney radio hosts, the mainstream media creates a moral outrage to stir up the mob which in turn generates more headlines.

As with the Hillsborough tragedy, this allows those in positions of responsibility the opportunity to avoid scrutiny and accountability.

In this case we see the hospital management demanding action being taken against the Sydney duo while conveniently ducking questions about why poorly paid nurses are expected to act as switchboard operators on top of their already considerable responsibilities.

Now we’re seeing calls to make practical jokes illegal – no doubt there’ll be a wave of teenage boys being prosecuted for making prank phone calls when panicked politicians pass poorly drafted laws to deal with the ‘problem’.

Our taxes at work.

Your mission in life is to use your brain and not to be one of the torch bearing mob.

If it’s you the mob are looking for, then it’s best to lie low until another headline or something shiny distracts them.

Are bloggers immune from the law?

Bloggers and social media users don’t have the resources of newspapers and broadcasters. Does this give them a legal advantage?

Last week Lord Justice Leveson of the British inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press gave his first public speech since handing down his report to the UK Parliament.

In this speech, Lord Leveson claimed that bloggers and social media users have an advantage over traditional media channels because they don’t respect the law. This is nonsense and detracts from the importance of the UK inquiry.

Speaking to the Communications Law Centre in Sydney last Friday, Lord Leveson gave his perspectives on how privacy is evolving as the media struggles with a 24 hour news cycle and the rise of the Internet.

One particular point he made was how the differing economics of traditional media and internet channels affected moral judgements.

“online bloggers or tweeters are not subject to the financial incentives which affect the print media, and which would persuade the press not to overstep society’s values and ethical standards.”

This view seems flawed – the reason for the UK inquiry into the ethics of the press was because the reporters at some of the nation’s top selling newspapers were overstepping society’s standards. They were doing this in the pursuit of profit.

At the other end of the scale, Leveson’s implication is that because most bloggers and social media users aren’t making money from their operations this makes them more prone to flaunting the community’s laws and morals.

What that view overlooks is that those bloggers, Facebook posters and Twitterers don’t live in magical castles sipping the fragrant, rainbow coloured milk of bejewelled unicorns – they have day jobs that pay for their online activities which often makes them far more aware of societal norms than those locked in the hyper-competitive and insular world of professional journalism.

Later in his speech Leveson expanded on this theme with a comment about the jurisdiction of bloggers and their servers.

The established media broadly conforms to the law and when they do not they are potentially liable under the law. In so far as the internet is concerned there has been and, for many, there remains a perception that actions do not have legal consequences. Bloggers rejoice in placing their servers outside the jurisdiction where different laws apply. the writ of the law is said not to run. It is believed therefore that the shadow of the law is unable to play the same role it has played with the established media.

This view is clearly at odds with reality as again it was the widespread failure of the ‘established media’ in conforming to UK law made Leveson’s inquiry necessary.

Bloggers and other internet users being somehow immune to legal consequences is a clearly not the case.

A good example of this are the various British computer hackers and webmasters who’ve found themselves facing extradition to the US for actions which are either not illegal in the UK or would face minor penalties.

Probably the best example of Internet users facing the full force of the law is the persecution of Paul Chambers who was prosecuted and convicted for making threats against an airport in an innocuous tweet that the local police and airport management thought was irrelevant.

The force of the law that was thrown against Mr Chambers was impressive compared to the somewhat reluctant efforts of bringing charges against the dozens of journalists, editors and crooked policemen exposed by the Leveson inquiry.

At the heart of the difference between the traditional media and the online communities is a power and economic imbalance. Despite the declining fortunes of newspapers, they are still politically powerful, influential and well resourced. Which is a good reason why prosecutors, police and politicians are reluctant to hold them account for their excesses.

On the other hand the vast bulk of bloggers are not; they don’t have a masthead to hide behind or a large, well funded legal team to defend them which actually makes them an easier target for litigation and criminal charges.

Some bloggers may believe they are immune from the law, but the reason for that is because they are ignorant of the legal system’s reach. Some of them will pay for that ignorance.

The idea though that bloggers and social media users have some legal advantage over traditional media outlets because of their comparative poverty and location of their servers is simply wrong.

If anything the advantage is firmly in favour of those working for big business. This is the real lesson of the UK media scandals of the past two years.

Feeding the content beast

Can the tech media change its spots

One of the sad truths of the tech media is just how much news is really regurgitated media release, this is part of a bigger problem where online channels demand that sites deliver content and are ‘first’ to get announcements online.

Yesterday’s Google-ICOA scandal where a forged media release was regurgitated world wide across the tech and general media illustrates the weaknesses in the latter imperative when a fake announcement was released through PR Wire, a news release service.

To exacerbate the problem, the forgers used PR Wire’s Premium service which guarantees the release is not only distributed across services like Bloomberg and Reuters but also passed on to Associated Press which in turn distributes the story to hundreds of media outlets world wide.

Which is exactly what happened; here’s the Sydney Morning Herald’s report ripped straight from the wire. A quick Google search on a phrase in the AP report shows 1,259 other outlets also spat out the same Associated Press story.

Nobody at PR Wire, Associated Press or at any of the 1260 outlets chose to call Google or ICOA to confirm the story was true. Neither did anyone at the various tech blogs who chose to rewrite the PR Wire release as ‘news’.

Around the world at mainstream newspapers, tech blogs and online news services writers are under massive pressure to feed the content beast which is why these mistakes are inevitable.

The content beast also means a lot of rubbish gets published, just to keep new material churning across the home page. A good example is in yesterday’s Gizmodo article on how to save money on soda machine gas refills.

While the writer and editors thought this tosh – which was probably inspired from a media release – was worth posting, readers quickly pointed out that using industrial gas for food uses is dangerous and the economics dubious.

A classic example of the audience being smarter than the writer; something becoming increasingly common as poor quality garbage is posted under provocative, attention grabbing headlines.

The question is whether the content beast is worth feeding, readers don’t care and increasingly we’re all struggling to reduce the noise and clutter in our inboxes and social media channels.

Reducing the noise is becoming most internet users priority and this means publications whose value is dubious will end up being winnowed out or, even worse, being ignored.

In the market where users are reducing clutter it’s only the useful, relevant, trusted and genuinely informative sources that will survive.

For Associated Press, this means they are going to have to terminate their relationship with PR Wire if they are going to remain useful and trusted.

AP’s clients are going to have to add more value than just spitting out whatever turns up on the wire as the SMH and 1,200 other sites did with the Google story.

The tech blogs are most challenged of all. Increasingly they have little to offer except a race to the bottom in regurgitating spin and third rate articles.

It’s possible that the Google scandal is good for the tech media, it’s going to force the sites with a future to do smarter, better writing and rely less on PR releases or shouting “first” when they get a story.

The ones who don’t are history and no-one will miss them.

A weird case of Stockholm syndrome

Some business have been trapped by their own technology. This is one of the problems for many news organisations.

Hacks and Hackers are regular informal meetups where technologists and journalists get together to discuss how news gathering is changing in the digital age. The November Sydney meeting featured a discussion with Aron Pilhofer, founder of the original event and Editor of Interactive News at The New York Times.

Aron had some great views on how journalism is changing and some of what he mentioned about the New York Times’ digital adventures was off the record

Some gems from Aron included just how ‘dirty’ raw data is from government agencies and how journalists can help open data advocates make their stories more accessible. Those topics are for future blog posts.

One of Aron’s comments about the challenges of the media was how many news organisations are trapped in “a weird case of Stockholm syndrome” – where their output is limited by their Content Management Systems.

It’s notable how many businesses, not just in media are constrained by their own systems – what was set up to serve the organisation has instead has become the master.

Of all the take aways from Aron’s talk, the Stockholm Syndrome of poor CMS’ is the most universal across industries – organisations pay a fortune to multinational consultancies for poor software platforms that management then tries to shoehorn their staff and business processes into.

This rarely ends well and usually creates more problems as the business loses flexibility, which is exactly what has happened to new organisations.

Sometimes biting the bullet and writing off a poor investment, particularly in software, makes damn good sense.