Endemic

Oh nos!

Everything went fairly well. Some minor health issues, but she’ll be fine in a few days. We’ll be back in 10 days for another round of shots.

She has an interesting way of sleeping.

Starbuck is asleep on the job.

Today I asked on Twitter:

If you were going to start charging for a free, ad-supported product, would you pick one of the nation’s worst economic times to start?

Well, would you? People are cutting back on spending right now. I don’t understand why now — besides desperation — makes sense for news orgs to erect paywalls.

Industries considered traditionally “recession proof” aren’t doing so well in this economic downturn. Even the venerable land line is being axed at many businesses. If an industry that hasn’t relied on advertising is feeling the heat right now, how do you honestly think a traditionally ad-supported product like news will do if news orgs try to charge for it?

There is only one way to find out, and it looks like we will later this year. Godspeed.

The AP is planning on encasing its content in a DRM-like “wrapper” to ensure that their content and headlines aren’t used without their consent — and without payment.

Being paid for your work sounds like a good idea. But the AP is going further than ever before with its copyright claims over its content, and blatantly ignoring Fair Use:

Tom Curley, The A.P.’s president and chief executive, said the company’s position was that even minimal use of a news article online required a licensing agreement with the news organization that produced it. In an interview, he specifically cited references that include a headline and a link to an article, a standard practice of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, news aggregators and blogs.

Asked if that stance went further than The A.P. had gone before, he said, “That’s right.” The company envisions a campaign that goes far beyond The A.P., a nonprofit corporation. It wants the 1,400 American newspapers that own the company to join the effort and use its software.

The AP either has never heard of the Fair Use Doctrine or openly opposes it. I’m betting on the latter. Now, it’s important to note that Fair Use is a defense, not a right and it doesn’t explicitly spell out anything about word counts, headlines, links, etc.

But from the people I have talked to, headlines and links fall under current definitions of Fair Use. The question then is this: Is the AP gearing up for a court battle? If they implement this policy they will find themselves in court by at least the EFF and probably many more.

Some more thoughts:

1. I hope the AP didn’t spend too much time or money developing this DRM-like “wrapper” — Hackers will quickly break whatever copy protection AP devises, and I’m not sure how many member newspapers will join in anyway. Beyond that, I’m not convinced this wrapper will survive legal challenges. This could have been a giant waste of time and money.
2. This wrapper better not harm user experience – DRM always works like this: It never stops people who really want to steal or break the law, but it almost always hinders law abiding, paying customers. Will this extra layer of code eat up CPU cycles and RAM, bring computers to a halt and not even work on some machines? My guess is that this negatively impacts law abiding users. User experiences matter.
3. People may simply stop using AP content — If AP content is to become inherently un-Web friendly (unsharable, which is how the Web works), wouldn’t it stand to reason that people will simply use other content instead? I like sharing links. If the AP wants to stop me from doing that — and by extension, sending traffic their way — I’ll read and link to other content. There is nothing the AP does that is that unique that I can’t live without the AP.
4. Not everyone at the AP thinks this is a good strategy — From what I can gather from people I know at the AP, not everyone is on board with this strategy of fighting how the Web works. The AP feels like a disjointed company. Some clearly don’t get the Web and dislike it, while others at the company are developing kick-ass Web and mobile apps. The AP has one of the premiere news apps on the iPhone, and yet other people at the AP dislike the Web. I can only imagine the division decisions like these are creating.
5. Maybe the AP wants a court challenge — Fair Use remains a murky concept on the Internet, and a lot has changed with the fortunes of traditional news publishers. Even though I don’t think a court challenge would go the AP’s way, if they received a more favorable view of Fair Use handed down by the courts, it might be a game changer.

“Not offending people is not a business model. You have to have something to say” – Dan Froomkin, PDF 2009.

Inoffensive, “objective” journalism isn’t good journalism, it’s good business. At least it was before the Web. In a world where printing presses — and by extension, competition — are scarce, it’s good business to try to appeal to the largest audience possible. A good way to appeal to the largest mass possible is to try not offending anyone.

This naturally leads to journalism that tries to triangulate both sides and sit somewhere in between. Not every story or issue has two correct sides. Good journalism is about trying to find the truth, but the truth can be offensive to people who don’t want to hear it.

Writing a story about climate change? Get a scientist on the record talking about how it is happening, then go find someone to say that it is not happening or that man isn’t causing it. Then make no determination of which side has more evidence or what the preponderance of science supports.

Instead, take the inoffensive — often ineffectual — middle ground. Let readers “decide” based on the “evidence” presented. This will usually lead to many stories and issues appearing as if there is consensus. Offense minimized.

Then came the Internet, and smart people didn’t want this limp reporting anymore. They wanted experienced and knowledgeable journalists to help them make sense of it all. People want journalists to help them find the truth, no matter how offensive that truth may be to some.

This has become a problem for newspapers. The notion of modern objectivity doesn’t serve journalism, it serves making money. At least it did.

After the Web took off, niche publications, blogs, social media, etc began to flourish. Suddenly it was OK to offend people. Suddenly it was OK to tell people what they didn’t want to hear.

Why? The barriers to entry for starting a Web site or blog are incredibly low. Building a printing press took a large investment. A good way to pay if off — and rack in monster profits — was to try to appeal to as large of an audience as possible. But starting a blog is free and building a professional Web site is a fraction of the cost of a printing press (let alone operating and running said press).

Now appealing to everyone doesn’t make business sense. At least, it’s not a requirement. Suddenly it makes sense to appeal to niches. The nicheification of content is at the core of the Web. People have diverse interests, and the Web allows those interests to flourish.

Want to write about just science stories? Start a blog for free, and you’ll probably find more success by not trying to be in the middle ground all the time. If you’re knowledgeable about a topic, people want to hear what you know and think.

I don’t envision a future where we see giant 1,000 person newsrooms anytime soon. But if newspapers want to survive, they’ll have to consider creating passionate journalism again. They’ll have to consider offending people.

They key to offending people is to be right. I can respect someone who challenges my beliefs when they are right. After all, that’s a main way my beliefs change over time.

To bring this back to the lede, newspapers need more Dan Froomkins, not less. Dan was not afraid to offend people, and at one point, he probably challenged everyone’s views. He was willing to tell the truth and be fair and honest.

His brand of objectivity wasn’t to give both sides to every story, but for him to try his best to find the truth. And that can often be “offensive.” But that’s also what made Dan so popular and respected.

People are turning to blogs and new media outlets precisely because they find much of traditional media too afraid to tell the truth. But if newspapers accept that objectivity isn’t about telling all sides to every story, but rather about finding the truth, I believe they’ll find better success moving forward on the Web.

This is a comment I left on today’s Poynter Chat on teaching social media:

The notion of “objectivity” has been a big part of the downfall of traditional journalism. It turned into passionless, he said-she said nonsense. And people are smart enough to know that no one is truly objective. That’s why transparency trumps all.

The ideal would be to be transparent about who you are, what you do and what you believe and then try to go about objectively reporting. That’s what I strive to do.

The altar of objectivity has led traditional journalism down an unfortunate road of giving both sides of every issue equal time. That’s not objective. That’s just perverse.

Being objective should be the quest for finding truth, not for equivocating on every issue.

But no matter how we define objectivity, transparency should be the key to what modern journalism is about. It’s at the heart of the social Web.