Future of Media

Q&A Part IV: Interview with Michael Rapoport

2009-12-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

Q6. Brief bio of Michael Rapoport:

A: 1999-present: Columnist writing the "In the Money" column for Dow Jones Newswires, focusing on delving beneath the surface of financial statements and market trends to find the stories that companies would rather investors not know about.

Awards:
Finalist in World Leadership Forum's Business Journalist of the Year awards, best wire service journalist or team, 2008

Society of American Business Editors and Writers "Best in Business" award, wire service columns, 2007

National Headliner Award, best news service columns/commentary, 2001

Dow Jones Newswires Awards for best work done by Newswires journalists, 2001 and 2007

1996-1999: Reporter for Dow Jones Newswires covering courts and legal issues, stationed at federal courthouse in Manhattan

1995-1996: Copyreader on the desk at Dow Jones Newswires.

1993-1995: Editor for Dow Jones News Retrieval (now part of Factiva), working on business-news databases and other projects

1985-1993: Reporter for various daily newpapers in Connecticut

Master's in journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, 1985

Bachelor's in English and political science from University of Rochester, 1984

Q7. What are the three top websites you read everyday?

WSJ.com - the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. Subscription required, but I'm sure the NYU journalism library would have access to it.

SEC.gov - the Securities and Exchange Commission's website. Useful for finding companies' securities filings, learning about SEC rules and enforcement cases, and how investors, companies and everyone else interact with regulators.

The Big Picture (http://bigpicture.typepad.com/) - The best blog about Wall Street and American business, written by Barry Ritholtz, head of a securities-research firm.
Columbia Journalism Review's The Audit (http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/) - Critique of business news.

Q8. Please recommend a few books on writing or on business and economics.

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis (A classic about Wall Street's take-no-prisoners culture.)

Conspiracy of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald (The best book on the Enron scandal.)

Wall Street Versus America by Gary Weiss (About the routine corruption in the securities industry.)

The Financial Numbers Game: Detecting Creative Accounting Practices by Charles W. Mulford and Eugene E. Comiskey (Shows you how to find when companies are bending the truth about their numbers. Mulford is a frequent source of mine.)

END

Q&A Part III: Interview with Michael Rapoport

2009-12-19T09:27:00.000-08:00

Q5. Take one of the stories you mentioned above, explain how extensive was the reporting before you sat down to write? How many people did you talk to? Who were they? What kind of documents did you read?

A: Assuming that we're using the Freddie Mac column that we've talked about: A lot of the answer to this question we've already spoken about or should be in the answers to the previous questions, but basically that column came about because I had previously forecast that Freddie would have to write down its deferred tax assets, for the reasons we've discussed. When they did so, I noticed that there was a substantial chunk of deferred tax assets they WEREN'T writing down, and the reason they gave was that they were related to losses on securities that they expected to recover, and thus they thought they could still use the deferred tax assets; thus they still had value and the company wasn't required to write them down.

As it happened, I had also written about the issue of these securities losses that the companies thought would recover, and I knew that they were unlikely to recover - both because they'd already lasted a long time (more than a year) and because a lot of them are related to mortgage-backed securities and other bad assets that are unlikely to come back.

From there it was really just a matter of confirming my suspicions with a couple of accounting experts. As a columnist, what I'll often do is find something that I THINK is valid, but accounting is so complex that I like to run my hypotheses past experts in the field, to make sure that what I think I'm seeing is accurate. I also go back to the securities filings - in this case the company's latest 10-Q quarterly report - to get a fuller picture of their position, as well as the numbers that are critical to my argument. In this case they said, "Yup, that's it" - so that even though I didn't quote any of them in the story, I could put forth my opinions with the confidence that they were valid.

In the process of doing all this, I found that Fannie Mae, Freddie's fellow mortgage-finance giant, had done something much like Freddie, on a smaller scale. They had written off something like $21 billion in deferred tax assets. while keeping $4.6 billion, using the same reasoning as Freddie. (Again, look at the story itself for the correct figures; I'm just using the figures I remember off the top of my head.) So it was only fair to include them in the story as well.

From there, it was simply a matter of calling the PR spokespeople of the two companies to give them an opportunity to comment, and to write all this up in a way that would make it clear to the average reader - which can be pretty tough in itself sometimes when you're dealing with complicated accounting topics.

To be continued...

Q&A Part II: Interview with Michael Rapoport

2009-12-18T09:26:00.000-08:00

Q3. How do you look up statistics for companies? Which sources do you think are most reliable?

A: The SEC filings are the most reliable sources, and they're available through the EDGAR system at the SEC's website, sec.gov. These are the equivalent of sworn statements that the company's CEO and CFO have to certify are accurate - if they're found to have knowingly put false information in the filings, the SEC can sue them for filing false statements.

What used to happen, before the Enron scandal, was that many companies would, not outright lie, but skew things in their favor by reporting what they called "pro forma" earnings - their own measurement of their results, stripping out anything they wanted to. So they would say, for instance, "Our earnings for the quarter were 20 cents a share, but without bad things A, B and C, they would have been 50 cents a share, and we think that's the important figure." They ignored the fact that they couldn't simply wish away A, B and C, or treat them as unimportant. Because of Enron and the other accounting scandals, and because of the Sarbanes-Oxley securities-reform law and the regulations passed in association with it, companies have to be clearer in their press releases; they have to acknowledge when they're using measurements of earnings that aren't in accordance with accounting standards - known as generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP - and show how those measurements are reconciled to GAAP measurements.

Q4. How do you build your network? How do you stay in touch with your sources?

A: In the course of covering a beat regularly, and writing stories about that beat regularly, you're going to come into contact with people who are useful as sources - officials of the companies you're covering; major investors in those companies; representatives of other constituencies who have an interest in those companies, like labor unions or regulators; outside experts who have an interest in those companies or that industry, like academics and think tanks; and many others.

Any of those people who are in a position to know about things worth covering on that beat, or who can provide valuable perspective on issues and stories that come up on that beat, it's worth your while to cultivate. Even people with an ax to grind, like the analysts working for investment banks, can be useful, so long as you remember that they may have a bias. Call your sources every now and then to talk about what's happening on the beat; send them stories or other information you think would interest them (only publicly available information, of course); and when you include them in a story, send them a copy of the story.

In terms of professional PR people, they're official representatives of the company, and they're usually not going to give you a scoop on something that the company isn't ready to announce. But good PR people will work with you to get you the information you want for your story, even when that story isn't going to be favorable to the company. They have a job to do, in representing the company's point of view, but they'll recognize that you have a job to do too.

To be continued...

Q&A Part I: Interview with Michael Rapoport

2009-12-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

Next four postings will be a Q&A series with an award-winning business columnist Michael Rapoport, Dow Jones News Wires. How does he find story ideas, how to build and keep his sources, and what reporting tools he recommends to use.

Q1. Take one story you've done and describe how you came up with the story idea.

A: The most efficient way to come up with story ideas is to have a good grounding about the topics. It is important to know how to look at balance sheets and how to read financial reports because companies will always try to put things in the best light, with a spin favorable to them - they'll downplay bad news, or not frame it in a way that would allow investors to fully understand its implications.

For example, I did a story a few weeks ago on Freddie Mac's tax assets. Freddie Mac was saying the company didn't have to write down some of their assets because the losses were temporary and were going to be recovered. Therefore, the company will still be able to use the deferred tax credits in the future.

But I knew it was BS because they had already endured for long periods and because a lot of them were associated with mortgage-backed securities and other bad assets that are very unlikely to recover soon.

So when I heard it, I knew it was worth writing about. I knew Freddie Mac certainly needed to write down its $18 billion deferred tax assets even though it interpreted laws in their own likes.

Q2. What will be one piece of advice that you would give to business journalists?

A: Always be suspicious when you look at numbers. Three years ago, there were a lot of mergers in telecom industry. In a story I did on SBC Communications Inc. (SBC)'s acquisition of AT&T Corp, I was comparing the savings the companies were touting with their combined total annual operating expenses, and pointing out that it would be virtually impossible to save, say, $15 billion in expenses on day one after the merger when the combined companies' expenses were $62 billion - you don't cut nearly 25% of your expenses overnight.

So you had to do your own calculation. I do my own calculation a lot. Sometimes it turned out to be something, sometimes not. But my advice is always aware that the company is not going to tell you everything.

In terms of what "tools" I used in looking into it, I think all I did was note that the companies had said that their savings were on a "present value" basis, and start asking questions about exactly what that meant. As noted in the story, it appears to be something that sophisticated professional investors would understand and take into account, but not necessarily something obvious to the layman or the average small investor. I suspect that sort of thing happens a lot - companies speak in their own language and cut corners in their explanations, and gloss over things that are important for investors to understand. And average investors don't press them on it, which they should - it's the equivalent of needing to read the fine print before signing a contract.

The company is not going to tell you any more than it's required to, and when it's in a press release they will try to spin things to their advantage. They'll bury the negative stuff on page 19 of a 20-page press release, or tell you that a gigantic charge against earnings isn't important because it's non-cash. The more you know about how to read financial statements and what's important in evaluating a company, the better you'll be able to let them know that you're not falling for their BS and get to the real story.

To be continued...

Video: Garrett Popcorn Shops - Once You Pop, You Cannot Stop

2009-12-14T22:10:00.000-08:00

Find out whether it is the different way of making popcorn, the interesting mix of flavors, or the mention by Oprah in her favorite list, has made Garrett Popcorn special.

Video: The Moth - A Fun Night Out

2009-12-12T21:21:00.000-08:00

Looking for a cheap and fun night out in New York city? Try the old-style story telling.

Video: Americans Weigh In On UK Bank-Bonus Tax

2009-12-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

What does Main Street say about the UK's 50% tax on bank-bonus pay? Americans have a wide range of sentiment. While some say the tax is too lenient, others think it is a stupid move altogether.

Data Aggregation The Next Big Thing For WSJ Graphics Team

2009-12-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

Who goes to work thinking how to put himself out of work? The Wall Street Journal’s graphics editor Jovi Juan says that’s what gets him up every morning.

Juan who oversees the graphics design team of the Wall Street Journal’s online edition says: “We are spending more time designing simple software for reporters to do graphics themselves instead of having us do it for them,” so that his team can be freed up to start build the next big thing: data aggregation.

But after three years on the job, Juan is nowhere closer to the goal.

The problem is not the technology. Over the years, the team has built an photo editor software called “cropper”, a simple gadget that lets reporters who want to post photos with their online posts crop the photos to a standardized size and pixel for the WSJ.com. Another software Chart Builder was created for reporters to build flash. “We've made it a lot easier to use, but a number of reporters do not want to learn it.”

He said it is the toughest part of moving forward: the old mindset. But majority of the reporting team would eventually have to move on. And only then can Jovi's 8-person team start to aggregate Dow Jones data and make it sharable.

Eventually, everyone will be able to access to the data and visualize it. The idea is to build WSJ's own Many Eye program, an online data visualization tool.

Two or three years down the road, there is a distinctive possibility to get paid through WSJ's data site, Juan says.

Is Hulu's Business Model a Pet Rock?

2009-12-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

I love Hulu.com. Many news media publishers love Hulu, too, for different reasons. The free online TV provider seems to be offering everyone else in the online media industry a successful business model but itself. Read the story here.

The Big Money After A Year

2009-12-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

When Slate.com decided to start a new business site, The Big Money, it couldn't have picked a more ominious start date: Sept. 15, 2008, the day that Lehman Brothers, one of the biggest American banks, collapsed. A year later, James Ledbetter, the site's editor-in-chief, can only marvel at the timing and consider one big question: Will the The Big Money ever make money?

The site had orginally plan to launch as general interest business news site, but changed gears to focus much more on the market crash. Today, readers will see a site that has made yet one more turn---to its original plans, covering more technology and social media. As a result, AIG articles have given way to Google stories. Apple's advertising strategy led the home page recently. The Web site also stepped up its effort to adopt social media itself. In the first week of December, the fans of its Facebook fan page has nearly tripled.

Recently, it also launched The Big Money Facebook 50, a ranking of the brands that are currently making the best use of Facebook. The Web site plans to make the list an annual feature, its own verision of the Fortune 500 but for companies that are social media savvy. “I think it will turn into something like that, but the difference is our list is more subjective,” said Ledbetter.

Indeed, the Big Money list uses various metrics—including fan numbers, page growth, frequency of updates, creativity as determined by a panel of judges, and fan engagement—to decide the ultimate rank on the list, according to the explanation on the site. Readers can send in suggestions and comments on how to rank the list, too, either through its Facebook fan page or directly from the Web site.

New Media Re-tweet: How Google Will Help Newspapers

2009-12-09T12:57:00.000-08:00

Eric Schmidt: In 2015, what is it like reading online? Mi_Kuhn Google's Chairman & CEO in the #WSJ on a new, digital business model: How #Google Can Help Newspapers. http://bit.ly/895j8L #Media

A Tin For News

2009-12-09T12:45:00.000-08:00

It wasn't a business Newstin planned to get into originally. But an incident turned out to have become a service that endeavors to provide Internet news readers the first experience in global news reading.

Using its patented Cross Language Data Retrieval technology, Newstin started its business in 1998 to create IT solutions for business clients. But the technology's great potential in arranging all types of online information inspired its business development director Jeremy Lopez to use it to organize Internet news.

"We've enabled our readers to get news tailored to their unique needs. It goes beyond key words search," said Lopez, who joined Newstin in 2006 to start this global news aggregation project. For example, a reader can type in a search phrase such as “technology” and the site is able to pull out stories not only contain the key word “technology,” but related articles on IT and inventions.

Newstin subscribers can search for stories on selected topics retrieving from hundreds of thousands of sources from around the world such as the U.S., Czech, and China. The Web site pulls in stories from main stream media, blogs and press releases from each country and list them either by relevance or time. What's better: Everything is free.

Newstin also encourages its members to play an active role in the site. Any member can suggest new sources to the existing 700,00 categories. New sources are subject to be reviewed by the Newstin editorial team before being added to the list. But the result of this Wikipedia-like approach is a soaring number of sources. As of today, the site has 15,000 sources from around the globe and it is growing daily.

The concern of the ever-growing online sources including blogs is their viability. “Every moment, all the data has been piled. But to determine the authority of the sources is one of the most difficult thing,” Alan Mutter, an independent media investor and veteran media watcher.

The key word is “reliability”. For that, Newstin seems to have some way to go. “Its content stretches too widely that it's not clear to me whose needs it is serving,” said Mutter. “It needs to be more focused.”

Advertising A Hope For The Big Money

2009-12-03T15:41:00.000-08:00

James Ledbetter, editor of The Big Money, says reader involvement remains a central mission for the site. With that open-arm attitude, the site's traffic has responded positively, with 6.8 million unique visitors globally, according to Quantcast, a service that tracks online metrics.

Critics, however, doubt whether traffic means bucks for The Big Money. "I believe it has readers since it offers interesting stories," said Alan Mutter, an independent media investor and a veteran media executive. “But the question is whether it is attracting advertising and able to become self sustainable.”

Such concerns have definitely hit home; last year, two big advertisers, American Express and Infinity Ads, pulled out. “That just said how bad our advertising industry has became in the crisis,” said Ledbetter. Later in the year, the Web site re-established relationship with American Express to cooperate video projects on the site. Dell, meanwhile, exclusively sponsors its current Facebook 50 list project.

Still, The Big Money relies financially on its mother company, the Slate Group. “We are very dependent on the network to get advertising. Without Slate, there is no Big Money,” Ledbetter said. In the next few years, the Web site's revenue might not grow big enough to self sustain, but its editorial group believes advertising is going to become the main revenue stream in a long term. And that, Ledbetter believes, relies largely on the quality of content. "Yes, we will be irreverent if we need to be,” said Ledbetter. “As long as its witty and intelligent, and continues to attract advertising.”

Tell Me How The Web Feels

2009-11-30T18:55:00.000-08:00

Since we have the Web, people have become lazier. People spend increasing number of hours ordering things online, searching for things online, and meeting friends online. Now the Web is using a technology called sentiment analysis to tell us how the Web feels.

What it does is it gathers the feedback from people and let you know what the mass thinks of a piece of news item, a restaurant, a dish, etc. For example, if you search for a restaurant when you are out with friends, it doesn't just tell you the list of restaurants nearby and what types of food they serve, it also tells you what the overall sentiment people have about this restaurant.

So the Web has become smart enough to decides for us.

Another Web site that uses this technology is Newstin.com, a news aggregator that measures the sentiment for each piece of news it has on the site. When a news article shows up on the site, it also shows a vertical bar that colors either green or red, with green meaning positive sentiment and red meaning negative.

For instance, if you search for Obama on Newstin, thousands of news items will show up in the search result, each with a different color bar beside it. With a quick glance, readers can get a rough idea of whether the majority of the news about Obama recently is complimentary or derogatory.

One sentiment analysis provider in San Francisco Scout Lab said the technology has become advanced enough for it to not just decoding numbers, but also decoding feelings on the Web.

Inside eReader: Paper-Like Display Technology

2009-11-29T17:13:00.000-08:00

We have to talk about E Ink Corporation to fully understand today's eReader market and technology.

Scan through all the competing eReaders in the market, Kindle, Sony's eReader, Nook, eSlick, Cybook Opus. They all share one thing: the same display technology.

The technology is called Paper-like display. The developer is E Ink Corporation, which has been mentioned in this blog a couple of times.

Who is E Ink?

E Ink was founded in 1997 based on research started at the MIT Media Lab. It is the leading supplier of low-power electronic display technologies. The technology is indispensable for a digital book reading device that requires extremely low power consumption, allows long hours of reading without repeated charging, and protects the eyes from backlight blast.

The Lab is on the frontline of display technologies. Recently, it talked about future ePaper:

“I believe that the killer application will be eTextbooks for students. This trend has already started and with the arrival of flexible displays and color ePaper in 2010, that market is likely to ramp quickly. Flexible Active Matrix (because the segmented SURF displays are already flexible) and Color ePaper are the future trends.”

Translation Is The Bottleneck For News Aggregators

2009-11-27T17:09:00.000-08:00

Started with six staff in Prague, capital city of Czech Republic, in 1998, Newstin.com was initially funded privately by its CEO and founder, Frank Vrabel, and a group of angel investors, affluent individuals who provide capital for business startups. Right now, it is in the process of a new round of fund raising, according to Lopez. And it is also in talks with advertising agency Double Click (http://www.doubleclick.com) for partnership.

The site provides English translation from ten languages such as Spanish, Japanese, and Arabic. For many Web sites, language is the barrier in creating a global online community. Even Facebook has language limitations. Its members have to speak the same language to be able to communicate. "We are jumping across these differences to lay a foundation to interconnect all the editions," Lopez said.

But media experts say the site still faces challenges. Besides being able to further verify its sources, the other challenge is its translation quality, a universal bottleneck for translation services.

The site uses Lingual World (http://www.lingual-world.com/), a third party translation services. Based on a recent poll, readers are generally happy with the translation, Lopez said. But translations between certain languages are tougher. "It's much harder to use machines to translate from Chinese into English," Lopez said. "But you get the gist of the story."

Critics doubt whether readers are getting the accurate gist because even Google's translation tool is said to be distorting the meanings of the original languages.

The next big thing for the team of 30 in central Europe is to build an interactive platform for readers to leave comments on the site. Translation to English will also be available to enable readers around the world to read comments in different languages and communicate with each other.

In the past two years, Newstin staff grew from six to 30. It also opened its first international office in Silicon Valley of San Francisco.

Industry watchers think the site has its fingers on the problem. But it will take a long time to solve it. Whoever figures out how to build a fast, convenient, and reliable way to find what readers want will have a successful business.

eReader: B&N Nook Has A Huge Book Database

2009-11-25T16:39:00.000-08:00

Few can compete with the number of books that owned by Barnes & Nobles. This is a very reason why it makes sense for the bookstore to produce its own eReader --- the Nook.

With over a million titles ready to be downloaded, Nook was born with an advantage.

B&N's boasts on its Web site: The #1 feature of Nook: Over One Million Titles. "Readers can easily get bestsellers and new releases, your favorite eNewspapers, and eMagazines all delivered fast and free via 3G wireless or Wi-Fi. Browse the vast Barnes and Noble eBookstore and sample any eBook for free," the site wrote.

Okay, so you have a million titles, the next question is how many Nook can store. B&N has the answer. Feature #2: Endless Shelf Space!

“Store as many as 1,500 eBooks, eNewspapers, and eMagazines on your nook’s 2 GB of internal storage, so you'll never be without your favorites. Need more space? Just add a Micro SD card,” the site says.

Except that Kindle has 360,000 titles, which are still far fewer than what Nook has, other eReaders in the market either have deals with Barnes and Nobles, or they have very limited number of resources.

Think about it. If B&N owns the copyrights of so many books, it will become the market maker of the eReader market. As a result, the best technology is likely to follow the most powerful player in the market. So Nook is going to advance much faster than the rest of the eReaders. As a customer, you want to own the company and its product that has much room for growth.

Still not convinced? Let's throw some icing on your cake. Nook has a set of designer cases that will make you look so cool.

See some designs:

The Lightest eReader On the Market

2009-11-23T15:58:00.000-08:00

The Cybook Opus weighs 5.3 ounces, almost half of the weight of the smaller Kindle that weighs 10.2 ounces.

But its slim figure holds a big memory. Its standard 32 MB memory can be expanded to 1 GB. Although Kindle has a larger memory, 1 GB which can store over 1,000 books might be much larger a collection than the books on most people's book shelves.

Cybook Opus, not as well marketed as the Kindle Reader, has an owner that pioneered the ebook reading device market since 1998 - Bookeen.

The gadget which greatly resembles Kindle also uses the same display technology that Kindle uses --- Paper-like display made by E Ink Corporation.

It comes a little bit smaller in size 6” x 4.2” x 0.4” than Kindle's 7.5" x 5.3" x 0.7". Its screen size is 5”, one inch shy of that of Kindle's.

Surprisingly, there wasn't much market excitement at the introduction of the stylish Cybook Reader earlier this year. Blog Obsessable mentioned that the product has only “teased the eReader market, few other details are available.”

Selling at $249, the nicely-designed Cybook seems to have a strong competitive edge in the eReader market if it promotes itself a little more aggressively.

Users of the gadget seems to be happy, too. One customer left a review saying:

“I'm soooo glad I found this device. Its light and stylish, perfect for my commutes and travel. I find the booksonboard.com for downloading books a very good source for my ebooks, so thank you Bookeen for getting me going in such a positive direction with my new reading experience. I struggled with deciding on a Kindle but hated, hated - the design - this is soooo much more stylish. I recommend any women who needs her electronics to match her stylish lifestyle to get the opus.”

Well, just by the number of “o”s that the reviewer put behind “so”, we know Bookeen's Cybook makes at least one customer very content. And there, “sooo much more stylish” is definitely a big selling point among women readers.

eReader Battle: eSlick vs. Kindle

2009-11-21T05:12:00.000-08:00

eSlick is a digital book reader developed by Foxit Software late last year and has been on the market since this year. When it was first introduced, it had a significant advantage over Amazon's Kindle which at that time was sold at $359. eSlick undercut the price by introducing it to the market at a promotional price of $229 and then $259 later on.

The eReader uses an electronic-paper display designed by E Ink Corporation, the same company that makes the Kindle's. The light reflects off the images and words on the screen instead of lighting the screen up with a backlight. That makes it a lot less strained on the eyes and provides a sharp, black-and-white screen that reads just like it would on real paper.

So now you can read text just as easily in bright sunlight as you would in your own living room, says on its Web site.

Based on the E-ink technology, the eSlick does not use any power to maintain a page display while only using power when an image is changed, says its Web site. This means that no matter how long the page is displayed, it uses no additional power.

eSlick and Kindle come close in size, eSlick Reader has a dimension of 7.4" x 4.7" x 0.4" which Kindle is 8" x 5.3" x 0.36". So Kindle is a slightly larger but a tiny bit thinner. Both have 6-inch screens. But eSlick weighs a lot less than Kindle, 6.4 ounces versus 10.2 ounces.

The big drawback of eSlick is it doesn't have wireless connectivity like Kindle does. So readers will not be able to think of a book and download it on the go. That requires more planning and to be less spontaneous.

But "at least that process is free," according to a gadget blog. "Automatic newspaper delivery to a Kindle costs at least $10 per month--each. Blogs cost $1 to $2 per month--each. At least with the eSlick, you don't have to email your own documents to yourself, as you must with the Kindle," it says.

Over 64,000 eBooks are now available for eSlick, including new releases, best sellers and classics, with new ebooks added weekly to the eSlick eBooks store. It is only a small fraction comparing to Kindle's access to more than 360,000 books. This is an area Kindle is likely to have an absolute advantage in the market for a period of time, thanks to its owner Amazon.com.

So far, the eSlick device menus are only available in English. But it allows you to read any document or eBook written in any language.

Now the price of Kindle has now gone down to $259 since, which one would you go for?

(All the comparison in this article is to Amazon's Kindle, not Kindle DX)

To see a video about eSlick, click here.

eReader Battle: Sony vs. Kindle

2009-11-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

Sony's eReader marketer seems to have a clear idea in mind: Target different group of customers with its 3-tier price level from $199 to $399.

Compared to the prices of Kindle $259 and Kindle DX at $489, it's clear that Sony is targeting a much wider group. The lowest range of the product line Sony PRS-300 Pocket Edition, which sells at $199, is sold at ToysRUs, a kid's market that Kindle might not be interested in yet.

Sizes of the two eReaders come in very close to each other. Sony's PRS-600 Reader Touch measures 0.4” thin and weighs 10.1 ounces. Kindle is 0.36" think and weighs 10.2 ounces.

The display technologies are identical. They both use paper-like display system made by E Ink Corporation. The technology doesn't light the screen using a backlight, instead, the light reflects off the words and images on the screen. This causes a lot less strained on the eyes, according to the Web site.

But one customer complained in the Sony's Reader site:

"I've had this product for less than a month. The reader is nice but as a traveler like I am it is a waste of money since most of my reading time is in areas with low light. I travel on planes at night time hours and do not like to use the lights on the air craft. The reflection it gets in brighter areas makes it hard to read. I think it is a waste of money for continuously traveling person like myself and will not recommend it to anyone."

Well, that said, Sony's eReader does give a chic look. It also offers in three colors, white, red, and black. Again, a design that goes along with its market, a younger and less tech-savvy group.

I think Sony at least has an advantage in its price compared to Kindle.

Slideshow: The Creation of a Poster

2009-11-17T14:55:00.002-08:00

Like everyone else in recession, Jordan Seiler, a young artist in New York, cuts cost with his new project - the Recession Special. He makes posters from second-hand bestsellers bought from Scrap Bookstore for 48 cents each. And that is all the cost.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Podcast: When Michael Milken Doubts Ratings

2009-11-13T13:17:00.000-08:00

Michael Milken built his investment theory, junk bond, on American credit ratings thirty years ago. Today, however, at the wake of the financial crisis, Milken told investors that ratings are so unreliable that it is, in fact, one big reason that has caused this crisis. Should we still believe in his theory then? Listen to my podcast:

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Beijing Pulls Obama T-shirts From Shelves

2009-11-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

Less than a week before Obama’s first visit to

China

, South China Morning Post wrote yesterday about Beijing's new urgent target: T-shirts featuring US President Barack Obama dressed as a red guard." The story is behind the firewall, here is the full text:

Forget bootleg DVDs and counterfeit watches, authorities in Beijing have identified an urgent target to clamp down on: T-shirts featuring US President Barack Obama dressed as a red guard.

Tongue-in-cheek T-shirts showing Obama wearing a red-star revolutionary cap - the type favoured by Mao Zedong and state leaders during the early Communist rule - have been on sale since last year's presidential election.

Another design shows Obama dressed in Chairman Mao's trademark zhongshan suit and clutching the Statue of Liberty under one arm.

"They sell very well, and seem to be popular with both foreigners and Chinese visitors," said the owner of one souvenir stall near Houhai Lake, in the heart of the capital. "But I don't have any for sale at the moment and I doubt you'll be able to find one anywhere in the city this week."

The owner, who asked not to be named, declined to give reasons for the lack of stock.

But it appears the authorities are keen to prevent any form of embarrassment during Obama's first state visit.

One stall owner on Nanluoguxiang Street, a popular bar street north of the Forbidden City, said the Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce was behind the clampdown.

"I got a call from the department this morning," he said. "They said they had heard that some people were selling Obama T-shirts near here and they me told not to sell any more. Later on, three officers came to my shop to check, and they told me not to sell any this week."

A sales assistant in a neighbouring souvenir shop, who also asked not to be named, said officials became even more zealous when she had said the shop had no Obama shirts on sale. "They took away all our Mao Zedong T-shirts instead," she said.

One shopper, who gave her name as Liu, said she was disappointed that the T-shirts were no longer available.

"I bought one last week to give to a colleague," she said. "But when I came back on Sunday with another colleague to get some more, there were none."

Obama is due to arrive in Shanghai on Sunday, then visit Beijing from Monday to Wednesday.

(Kristine Kwok in Beijing and Will Clem)

How to Use Garageband Video 2

2009-11-08T17:53:00.000-08:00

(by Big-O Org)

Go to Video 1

How to Use Garageband Video 1

2009-11-08T17:23:00.000-08:00

(By Big-O Org)

Hyperlocal: Everyblock

2009-10-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

Everyblock.com was bought by MSNBC in August. The five employees who worked to start the hyperlocal site with the Knight Foundation funding now work for one of the biggest media in the country.

The site is a neighborhood news site that aggregates items from blogs, Craigslist, Yelp, and Flickr. The idea is to bring everything together by geography for people who are interested in a particular area.

The Web site currently covers 15 cities aournd the country, from New York to Dallas (beta). The home page and the green color scheme remind me of Patch.com, another hyperlocal site that focuses in New York area.

Once you click on a city, it brings you to the local home page where you can type in a specific address and look for restaurants, bars, events nearby.

Choose from a list of subjects, then the site brings you further into that topic. For example, under the restaurant tab, it then breaks further down into different boroughs of New York City, until it gets down to the level of the block that is chosen.

Maybe hyperlocal sites are getting some momentum. Because Everyblock is not the only lucky duck, this June, AOL bought Patch.com with $7 million.

Video Editing: How to find free photos online

2009-10-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

A few good sources for anyone who is looking for photos online for your multimedia projects:

Flickr
www.vintagepixels.com good for old pictures like WWII photos etc
www.adigitaldreamer.com/gallery/
www.masternewmedia.org
Stock Xchng
Library of Congress (it has a Flickr page which makes things easier)

Make sure when using these shared photos, credit the sources and caption your photos if appropriate.

NewzCrawler Comes Handy For News Junkies

2009-10-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

NewzCrawler is a new software that looks very much like an Outlook email system. But it receives RSS feeds. So instead of receiving emails, you receive new blog items that you have signed up to.

Some say NewzCrawler is the most powerful RSS feeds organizer in the market. It has three main sections, similar to Outlook, there is a section for folders on the left, the list of new items on the top right, and the full text on the bottom right.

Introduced in September 2008, the software designer NewzCrawler.com seems to be a creative bunch in reorganizing news online.

It's not free. To be able to download it, there is an annual expense of $24.95. Not a terrible price given that it does offer extra features that the free Google RSS feeds reader doesn't.

NewzCrawler allows a user to organize news and blog items in customized folders. It also has a search engine that helps readers to locate a particular item quickly.

A CNET review said: “Of all the commercial RSS newsreaders we've reviewed, none beats NewzCrawler for its breadth of features, ease of use, and intuitive interface.”

To learn more about the software, please go to its Web site.

Podcast Introduction: I am Listening

2009-10-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

An audio piece provides an active process that forces the listeners to create images in the heads, like making a mental movie. Different than the visual experience which causes neurological exhaustion, audio listeners are stimulated because of the active participation --- Dean Olsher, radio producer for the former The Next Big Thing

There are some bullet points from Olsher's speech today:

On the audio subject: What they say is secondary to how they say it. It was to express the subject's emotions that no one else is able to capture. Information, in that sense, has no place in this situation. That is the mistake that many podcasts are making in real life.

On Structure: Always think of a podcast story in terms of arc: the beginning, the development and the ending of a story. Therefore, you have an event instead of just having information.

On How-to: Get upfront and personal. Feel comfortable to invade the subject's personal space. Stop making hmmm sound to your subject as the subject is speaking, instead, getting used to the dorky nodding and smiling.

On Choosing the Subject: Audition your subject beforehand without letting them know it. Decide brutally who will be in your piece. In business podcasting where you deal with money and number, it is a little harder to make the podcast more compelling. Making narrative might be an option.

And finally, make it engaging, make it engaging, make it engaging.

Video Technique: the Basic Five Shots

2009-10-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

For anyone who just starts to shoot videos, follow the basic Five-shots sequence.

1. The Hand Close-Up:

Why: It tells the audience what the subject does.
How: Camera should be held right next to the hands. Hands take up most of the screen.
Difficulty: difficult to make sure that the hands fill the screen and the shots are close enough.
Pitfalls: Many hand shots are not close enough therefore do not turn out to be as engaging.

2. The Face Close-Up:
Why: It tells the audience who the subject is.
How: Camera should be held right in front of the face. The face should take up the whole screen.
Difficulty: This might be the most difficult shot in the five shots because the camera is right in the subject's face and might be uncomfortable for the subject.
Tips: Take the shots later in the interview after the subject is more relaxed and is used to someone holding a camera around him/her.

3. The Medium Shot:
Why: It gives the audience a sense of surroundings of the subject.
How: Shoot from head to torso.
Difficulty: Easy. These are one of the most common shots in raw material.
Tips: When framing such shots, make sure your subject is 1/3 to the left or right of the screen. Don't put the subject in the center of the screen for aesthetic reasons. If the subject is on the left 1/3, make sure that he/she looks to the right so that there is little dead space on the screen.

4. The Wide Shot:
Why: It gives the audience a larger sense of surroundings.
How: Shoot from head to toe.
Difficulty: Easy. Another very common shots in raw material. Normally, there will be enough medium to wide shots material. Make sure you don't have too many of those and too few of the close-ups.
Tips: Same frame structure as the medium shots. In order to get a good wide shot, communicate with the subject and know where the subject is going to move from and move to so that you could anticipate and take the ideal shooting spot before it takes place.

5. The Over-the-shoulder Shot/The Point-of-view Shot:
Why: It shows the perspectives from the subject towards the surroundings as if the audience experience what the subject is experiencing.
How: Camera held up against the subject's shoulder from behind, showing part of the subject's head and shoulder.
Difficulty: Easy.

Extra: The creative or the experimental shot:
Why: Add variety to raw material. Add personal style to the video.
How: free style
Difficulty: Varies depending on how creative the videographer is.
Maybe something like...

Video Editing: How to find free music online

2009-10-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

There are a few resources and tips on getting the music you want for your video in compliance with fair use.

A very resourceful Web site is www.archive.org. This is an open source site that is created to share human knowledge universally, for free! There are deluge of texts, moving images, and music uploaded by everyone around the world. Think of Wikipedia. This is a wikipedia in content sharing. You can find a lot of music in this link on the Web site.

And, Wikipedia never fails. Find all the free photos here.

For beginner video producers, these two Web sites should serve you well for the time being.

And then, I got a tip from the editor of CareerTV.com that another way to get your favorite music onto the video is simply play it loud and record it into Final Cut. But he did also say that such behavior is not strongly encouraged. :)

My Gadgets

2009-10-22T20:12:00.000-07:00

To start a video project, I invested in these items:

* Camera --- Canon FS200

Cost: $329.99
Where to buy: Best Buy (622 Broadway, New York)
Phone: 212-673-4067
Check out more details of the camera here
My comment: I recommend this model. It's very light. The image is pretty steady and it is easy to upload footage to laptop.

* External Hard-drive --- Seagate 250GB FreeAgent Go

Cost: $79.99
Where to buy: Best Buy (622 Broadway, New York)
Check out more details here
My comment: Unless you have decided to take up video projects for a long period of time, you don't need a 250GB if it is just for one semester. Each 3-minute video (including raw material of about 45 minutes) counts about 3-4GB.

* Editing Software --- Final Cut Express (Academic version)

Cost: $69 with student discount
Where to buy: NYU Computer Store (242 Greene Street, New York)
(212) 998-4672
Check out details here
My comment: Final Cut Pro costs $999.99, Final Cut Express costs $299.99. This Express Academic version is really a bargain. It works very well. I strongly recommend students to take advantage of the discount.

* Case for the hard drive

Cost: $11.95
Where to buy: www.amazon.com
Check out the list of cases on Amazon here
My comment: I personally like this design the best, but I eventually bought this, because it has more pockets for the cord and a USB memory card.
Don't buy it in a store. It is cheaper to buy online.

Video 1: The Insider Tour

2009-10-22T20:10:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Insider Tour was started earlier this year by a former Deutsche Bank derivative trader Andrew after he lost his job in the financial crisis.

This is a 3-minute profile of the tour, with Tom Comerford, tour guide and a staff of Goldman Sachs. This is the first video I ever produced:

An Interview with Mara Schiavocampo

2009-10-22T20:08:00.000-07:00

Mara Schiavocampo is a host for NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams. A pioneer of new media journalism, Schiavocampo reports, produces, shoots and edits video pieces, blogs and shoots still photos.

Schiavocampo was recently named to “Television Week's” list of the "next generation of television news stars" and is the National Association of Black Journalists’ 2007 Emerging Journalist of the Year, the first broadcast journalist ever to win this prestigious award.

Here is an interview with Schiavocampo on her opinion about multimedia journalism.

Q1: Everyone is talking about digital journalism and each journalist should be able to not only report, write, but also blog, twitter, take photos, shoot videos. What do you think are the pros and cons of such trend? Is this the future of journalism?

Mara Schiavocampo (MS): This is part of the future of journalism. I think that as we move
forward we'll have people working in traditional ways, new ways, and
everything in between. There will be full crews with a correspondent,
cameraperson, audio person and field producer, and there will be
solitary digital journalists. You'll have producers shooting and
shooters producing. Nothing's going away, we're just adding more.

Pros: greater control over your work and the ability to cover stories that
otherwise would be ignored. Cons: Perils of multi-tasking...do too much
and everything suffers.

Q2: How do you decide what medium to use for a particular story? How do
you try to make a story stand out and not be buried? What are the
limitations for each medium?

MS: It's just a matter of choosing the best tool for the job. If something's
really visual, video or pictures work best. If you want to get something
out quickly from the field with limited resources, file a short blog.
Spot a cute element that doesn't warrant a full story? Make it a video
blog. There are so many options that you can really choose the best
medium for the story.

Q3: What medium is the most challenging and the least challenging?

MS: Of course it depends on the individual story but generally speaking
video pieces are the most time consuming. Generally speaking shooting
takes much longer than say an interview for print, then there's logging,
then scripting, then editing. There are just more steps than you'll find
with other mediums.

Q4: What is your benchmark for each medium? Are there any role models
that you look up to in each medium?

MS: In terms of video journalists I admire Travis Fox of the Washington
Post. There are also so many talented people here at NBC like Nightly
News Associate Producer Victor Limjoco or Producer Anthony Galloway.

Q5: How have you adapted your style in terms of delivering the news in
utilizing different media?

MS: Solo digital journalism pieces tend to be a little looser and more raw,
less like a traditional piece. Video blogs are even more light and
relaxed in terms of production value. Blogs can be anything you want,
from casual to much more serious.

Q6: What is the most gratifying medium that you have worked with so far?

MS: I love shooting stills but unfortunately that's probably my weakest
skill. I'm a work in progress. Overall I'd say video. I love all the
layers in the storytelling - the story, the visuals, the sounds.

Q7: Who are your biggest competitors in each medium and how would you
compete with them?

MS: The thing with the web is that everyone's a potential competitor. Most
news websites offer everything, from text to video. So the NYT website
is as much competition as ABC. In terms of competition we just make the
best effort to serve the audience in an authentic way.

Q8: New media industry is still trying to find the silver bullet to make
money, what is your expectation of the new business model?

MS: I'm asked this question all the time. If I knew the answer I'd be rich!

Q9: How does audience of each age group respond to new media? Is this
something that only caters for young audience?

MS: Generally speaking younger people are earlier adopters and more willing
to try new things. Studies have shown that they also get a lot of their
news online, so based on that, I'm guessing our web audience is younger.
But these days, watching a clip online or reading a text piece is
becoming so common. Even my mom does it! So I feel like we're moving to
the point where some use of technology can be found in every group.

Q10: What are your advice for journalism students to prepare
themselves to become competitive in today's media?

MS: Be really active media consumers. See what's out there and how people are
watching and reading it. Become part of the audience that you're trying
to serve. Know at least the basics of different mediums like shooting
video, editing, writing text, etc. Also, I always advise people to set
up their own website and just start creating content. Even if no one
sees it, it shows potential employers that you're engaged and proactive.
Plus it's a great place to practice and make mistakes.

Intro: Video project of Life in Recession

2009-10-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

In the next three months, I will keep a journal of my life as I carry on with the multimedia project for my NYU master program in journalism --- "Life in Recession."

The video project will feature three groups of people whose lives have changed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers a year ago.

From a former investment banker who is forced to take on a brand new endeavor, struggling writers who find new ways to market themselves and middle-age women who bravely step out their comfort zone to make a living.

How are these people surviving the recession? What are they doing now? What have they done to get here?

This is a one-person team that will spend the next three months reporting, producing, shooting and editing the videos. As my first video project, the journal will share with you every step I make as the project moves along. It is a daily dairy of the growing pain and gain as a traditional journalist develops digital journalism skills.

Size Matters: Introducing a Larger Kindle

2009-05-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

Amazon announced its latest version of Kindle today in New York, featuring a larger screen, a new built-in PDF Reader, auto-rotation and a much larger memory than the existing Kindle e-reader, as it prepares for a Kindle textbook university trial project to be launched this fall.

Six universities will take part in the Kindle trial project. A few hundred students will use Kindle as their textbooks in the coming semester. Barbara Snyder, president of Case Western Reserve University, one of the participating schools, said they are very excited about the project and the school will observe how Kindle affects students’ way of reading and taking notes. “The e-book technology may prove to be even more transforming,” Snyder said. “Students do not need to carry heavy textbooks. Kindle will help our students stand taller.”

Amazon has reached agreements with three leading textbook publishers, Cengage Learning, Pearson, and Wiley, to provide e-textbooks for the device. That will expand the number of the thousands of textbooks already available on Kindle. The Kindle textbook prices are still under discussion. “The prices of the textbooks will be a la carte now,” Laura Porco, director of Kindle Books at Amazon, said. “But it is reasonable to expect the digital version will be cheaper.”

Kindle DX has the feature for highlighting and bookmarking. Students can also take notes on the page and store the highlighted part and the notes into a clipping file on Kindle. The new PDF Reader comes with Kindle DX supports documents like annual report, industry report, and sheet music, in PDF format.

Amazon is accepting pre-order for Kindle DX now to be delivered over summer at the price of $489. “Current Kindle users will not get order privilege,” Steve Kessel, senior vice president of WorldWide Digital Media at Amazon.com, said. “Kindle DX is not a replacement for the 6-inch screen Kindle. We are building a Kindle family here.”

When Kindle DX arrives the market in summer, it will come with 37 U.S. and international newspapers including New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe, at a price from $5.99 to $14.99 per month. The New York Times Company and Washington Post Company are also launching pilot projects with Kindle DX this summer. The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Washington Post will offer the Kindle DX at a discounted price to readers outside the home-delivery areas.

“The project is an excellent example of the convergence between print and the Web,” Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. chairman of New York Times Company, said. “This is to showcase how we can best use of new technology to offer quality newspaper experience to the readers, providing access of the Times and the Globe whenever and wherever they want it.” The price for the discounted newspapers has not been decided, but it will be in the range of $9.99 per month, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Amazon.com carries over 275,000 titles in Kindle version from major publishers. Since the first Kindle e-reader was introduced 18 months ago, the unit sales of the Kindle version have increased to 35%f of the sales of the physical books. That is to say, Amazon sells 35 books in Kindle version every 100 physical books it sells under the same title. “Amazon.com has been around for 15 years. That is an amazing increase given the short time that the gadget was introduced to the market,” Kessel said.

Young and Free, power of social media

2009-05-03T19:48:00.000-07:00

Young and Free, this young people's social network Web site launched first in Alberta in June 2007, has jump started 2,600 new checking accounts and $3.4 million in new deposits for Servus Credit Union, a cooperative financial services company that offers most services like a bank.

More encouraging data: an additional $17 million was lent to new account members, and $1.4 million is generating 15% yield from mutual fund. That is, using the Servus's 3-year bank loan rate 4.15%, there is an interest income of $705,500 and return from mutual funds of $210,000. The cost to run the Web site, including operating expenses and fees to the marketing company, is $630,000 for the last 19 months.

Return on investment: 45%.

Wonder why?

Imagine if all your friends have a pair of Nike sneakers, would you want a pair too? Very likely. This is what Young and Free does to its members. It takes an image of a social network, filled with fun activities. Members create blogs, share videos and exchange new ideas. Some members say: Young and Free is everything I want.

Once the members are there creating content and actively take part in the Web site, they are ready for a leader. This is where the spokesperson comes in. In each Young and Free Web site, respectively in Alberta, Texas and South Carolina, a month-long campaign started to search for an annual spokesperson, who is "the voice of Young and Free 2009." The winner is an overnight celebrity, a community star that every members like and trust.

His/Her job is to create five blogs a week to entertain the members. The content subtly incorporate the concept of Credit Union. What is it? How does it work? Why is it better than a bank? His/Her benefit is $36,000 annual pay, a free Mac Book, a HD video camera and a car with Young and Free logo.

Now the "peer power" comes into play. People want to hear advice from friends, especially the ones that they like and trust. The more members sign up to the Credit Union's checking account, the more people want to sign up.

The last but the key thing about Young and Free is, quoting its inventor, president of Currency Marketing, Tim McAlpine: "Everybody is talking about creating conversations online. When it comes to sell products, it is taboo. We have the product right in the Web site. I am selling the product, but very subtly."

Direct to the point, sell the product! And there they go, an old-school Credit Union is the new black. The name relates to youth, to fun, and to hip.

Only the members of Young and Free should be aware: The name of the Web site should really be Young and Not-Free.

2009 Pulitzer Prizes Winners

2009-04-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

2009 Pulitzer Prizes Winners were announced yesterday. These are the journalists who still give us "glimmers of hope" for the future of journalism.

Public Service
Alexandra Berzon, Las Vegas Sun: Construction Deaths

Breaking News Reporting
New York Times Staff: Eliot Spitzer's Resignation

Investigative Reporting
David Barstow of The New York Times: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hands

Explanatory Reporting
Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart of Los Angeles Times: As Wildfires get wilder, the costs of fighting them are untamed

Local Reporting
Detroit Free Press Staff: Kwame Kilpatrick: A mayor in crisis

National Reporting
Staff of St. Petersburg Times: the coverage of 2008 election

International Reporting
Staff of The New York Times: Special coverage: Pakistan and Afganistan

Feature Writing
Lane DeGregory of St. Petersburg Times: The girl in the window

Commentary
Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post: Eugene's winning columns

Criticism
Holland Cotter of The New York Times

Editorial Writing
Mark Mahoney of The Post-Star, Glens Falls, NY
Editorial Cartooning
Steve Breen of The San Diego Union-Tribune

Breaking News Photography
Patrick Farrell of The Miami Herald

Feature Photography
Damon Winter of The New York Times (photo above is one of the winning photos)

Online Advertising: We Have The Basics Ready

2009-04-20T19:25:00.001-07:00

The idea is brilliant: If the ads start to increase revenue, advertisers will be willing to pay more. Haven't advertising agencies figured that out years ago?

Maybe they did offline, but not online, yet. The frustrating thing for advertising agencies are: The market is there and it's huge. Twenty billion dollars are ready to be spent in online advertisement as of last year and over one billion Internet users (potential buyers) are there hanging out on social networks. But the creative advertising agents are stuck. They can see the cake is there, fresh and tempting, but they just don't have the "silver bullet" to break the glass and get it. But some people said they might have figured it out. It's called Behavioral Targeting.

“We don’t guess, we figure you out and know what you want and how much you want to pay,” said Sheldon Gilbert, 33, CEO and founder of Proclivity, a data tracking system that provides the clients with their customers' shopping interests, purchasing likelihoods and level of expenditure.

Behavioral targeting not only records the purchase information, it also traces every step of someone’s online activity. “The massive change is to track micro behavior, such as the blogs you read and the community Web sites you browse. We collect the data, and based on your behavior, we analyze you and know what you want before you actually make the purchase.”

“It’s the whole new level of targeting that makes Behavioral Targeting a potentially successful online business model,” Lars Perners, professor in consumer psychology at University of Southern California, L.A., said.

Gilbert said clients of Proclivity systems have seen an average of 26 percent increase in their revenue and 100 per cent increase in click rates. Datran Medi a said in its internal survey that its clients’ ads click rates doubled or tripled after adopting behavioral targeting.

Let's see how it works among three players in the game: technology providers, advertisers who have the money and Web sites who have the platform.

Technology providers like Proclivity make money through subscription. Advertiser's revenue increases given the data provided by Proclivity and Datran Media are credible. The Web sites are the losers. It seems like we have sugar, flour and butter to make a cake. Now we need is a good chef, someone who could put all the ingredients together and bake it at the right temperature for a right amount of time.

Kenneth Wilber, professor in online marketing of University of Southern California, said “it might be harder to build database as big as Facebook or Yahoo than people think,” Wilber said. He agrees Behavioral Targeting has a clear proposition. But it is a very young technology and advertisers have a long way to go before using it on a regular basis. “If I were an ad network, I won’t be thinking about how to increase my revenue now. I would think how to merge with social networks,” Wilber said.

If the model is moving towards success, we should expect to see a lot of merges in the sector soon. Technology companies merge with social networks to combine their massive database; technology companies should also think of themselves more than technology providers but ads networks, who are brokers who put ads on most of the Web sites.

“I think behavioral targeting will become a successful business model but it will take three to five years to really take off, longer than most people think,” Wilber said.

The science part is done. Now it's art to make it work.

Who Are Those People Familiar With The Matter

2009-04-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

Since when have newspapers started citing unnamed sources over and again --- according to people "familiar with the matter"? Does that bother you? It bothers me.

LA Times reported earlier this month that "a person familiar with the matter says IBM intends to pay $9 to $10 a share" to acquire Sun Microsystem; February's Washington Post started its story on SEC's investigation into Stanford as "a range of federal agencies... have been investigating allegations of fraud and possibly other illegal activity at R. Allen Stanford's companies for at least two years, according to people familiar with the matter;" Today's Wall Street Journal front page story brought the whole matter to a new level:

"More than three months into a medical leave from Apple Inc., Chief Executive Steve Jobs remains closely involved in key aspects of running the company, say people familiar with the matter. Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook runs the day-to-day operations at Apple, these people say. But Mr. Jobs has continued to work on the company's most important strategies and products from home, they say. He regularly reviews products and product plans, and was particularly involved in the user interface of the new iPhone operating system that Apple unveiled last month, these people say."

Who are "these people"? Why should readers believe in THEM? Speaking from experience, I admitted that sources ask to be anonymous, or on-the-background, for sensitive topics. But abuse of such leeway can lead to lazy reporting and incredible stories.

John Paczkowski's Daily Digital blog mentioned a New York Post story last year that got facts dead wrong by citing people who claimed to be familiar with the matter:

" The reason Microsoft hasn’t announced the slate of dissident directors it plans to nominate to Yahoo’s board isn’t that it’s already too deep in negotiations with Yahoo to bother–it’s that it can’t find any dissident directors to nominate. This according to “sources close to the situation” who tell the New York Post that Microsoft hasn’t managed to line up a single candidate for Yahoo’s board. Not a one.

Huh. That said, there is one little caveat.

Other sources–“sources familiar with the matter”–tell the Post that Microsoft does in fact have a slate of 10 board candidates and two alternates locked and loaded and will pull the trigger on nominating them if it must.

Holy Shiite … what a story. Incidentally, sources with knowledge of both “the matter” and “the situation” tell us that the Post has got this one dead wrong–the first part of it, anyway."

So it is unsettling to see increasing number of reporters from major publications, especially business and Wall Street coverage, are citing such anonymous sources. It is particularly alarming in a time when blogs and online news sites are eating up traditional newspapers. Credibility is one of the few things that newspapers still hold onto in the battle against uncensored online content. If newspapers give up its credibility, they give up the battle.

Social Media Coordinator Wanted

2009-04-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

Newsday.com is hiring, thanks to social networks that have been taking the blame to be killing newspapers like News Day.

This might be the most ironic but encouraging news today: Newsday.com has an opening for Social media coordinator. The job description, a first of its kind, I believe is to get Newsday.com viral using Fark, Digg, Facebook and other social networking sites.

Smart move. Newspapers have finally figured it out: The secret is not to alienate the Internet, but to work with them, or, even better, to take advantage. Newspapers need to think in a win-win scenario. Social networks are good tools for marketing newspapers, in Newsday's case, even created media jobs. In return, successful newspapers might be financial sources for the online sites. Work together, we might find out a new business model. Didn't they say: Prosper together and die alone?

Twitter Traffic Explodes by an Annual 1382%

2009-04-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

Do you know over 60% of the 7 million unique Tweeters are, surprisingly, not teens who gossip about school and prom dates, but adults between 35-65 years old?

Well, this recent demographic shift has caused an explosion in Twitter's traffic, a staggering increase of 1382% from 475 thousand just a year ago. See chart on the left.

Not only its traffic soared, Twitter has also been in the spotlight.

Computer World said "Twitter traffic skyrocketed thanks to middle-age tweeters," USA today exclaimed Twitter's surging traffic is deafening. BlogPulse, an online traffic metric site, followed up with a chart to show that in March 2009, the number of blog posts about Twitter has taken up 1.2% of the total blogsphere.

In a time where everything is pointing downwards, the uptick is definitely a confidence booster for the founders of Twitter as well as anyone else dying for good news.

So here comes the ultimate test: Now Twitter has made it in expanding its user value, we can't wait to see whether user value would eventually translate into greenback.

Twitter's Biz Stone on the Colbert Report

2009-04-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

In response to the readers request, here is the video of Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, on the Colbert Report of Comedy Central about why we twitter, who twitters, and where Twitter is going.

That's what he said exactly: "We are recognizing the differences now between profit and value... Right now, we are building our value. That means we are expanding our service worldwide."

I have heard complaints from Twitterers that the website's service has become instable recently. Maybe expand your bandwidth first?

Twitter Is Over Capacity

2009-04-06T14:31:00.001-07:00

Two minutes ago, I was trying to log onto Twitter to post my new blog entry, but I was having difficulty. Twitter says on its front page that:

Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.

A few days ago, Twitter's co-founder Biz Stone said on The Colbert Report that they were not at the stage to worry about revenue now. The goal is to catch the momentum and drive up the traffic. Well, they just officially made it!

Video Revolution

2009-04-06T07:01:00.000-07:00

One person, one camera, one day, no stand-up. We just try to tell a story.

A veteran video reporter Michael Rosenblum, the founder of Rosenblum TV, is reshaping traditional TV production by replacing high-cost television crew with one journalist with portable cameras and much affordable editing software.

The cost of a portable camera and editing software has gone down from $1 million to $1,000 when televisions used on-the-shoulder cameras and traditional editing suites. Not only the prices have fallen so much, the gadgets are also much easier to use. Ten years ago, it was necessary to have a production team with a cameraman, a sound man, a producer, reporters and a van. Not anymore. "Any 9-year-old can shoot and edit a video now. Time has changed," Rosenblum said.

In 2006, Rosenblum, a former CBS reporter, started a video training program in New York and Santa Barbara. Most recently, he teamed up with Jeff Jarvis, director of the journalism department of CUNY (City University of New York), to give one-day workshop of video shooting.

People with no experience walked in the studio taking courses from "one-day introduction" to "one-week professional training." In a 4-day program, students learn everything from video shooting, scripting, tracking, editing, producing to uploading. The course charges $2,500 per person and are booked up through 2009, according to the registration desk at its New York office. "It's the public that wants to join in. It's like blogging, video blogging, or vlogging, is become a very powerful process," Rosenblum said.

"I always told cameramen that they were in an archaic job that doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't make me the most popular person in the world, but I could not care less." Rosenblum restructured BBC a few years ago. As a result, BBC cut its cost by 70% and the number of cameras covering the news on a daily basis has increased from 85 to 750.

Some critics say "they are trading quality for lower cost." The fact that Rosenblum would choose a cheap $200 Flip camcorder over a $5,000 one speaks for itself. "What Rosenberg is doing is making affordable housing," Adam Najberg, an editor of the Wall Street Journal who oversees its video branch, said.

"What we are comparing here is between raw footage on the web and excellent story telling," Najberg said. What Rosenblum is doing is a jump-start to push people into the area, but even a godfather can only do this much. "It is up to everybody to go ahead," Najberg said: "It is like in baseball, even though few will make it, everybody eventually wants to play for the Yankees."

But some productions on Rosenblum TV say the opposite. The Healing Fields, a documentary done by Alexandra Garcia, a student of Rosenblum TV workshop, won this year's Washington Post video grant. Websites like travelchannel.com have solicited Rosenblum TV to use its productions on a regular basis. They pay $250 for one-minute production they use.

Who Are Doing Reporter's Job? Comedians!

2009-03-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

How sad is it to have a comedian represent the free and independent media while the real journalist, Jim Cramer, looks like a joke with his sleeves rolled up and defending himself about the CEOs he interviewed: "We were friends! I trusted them!" Ugh, really? I thought I was half a globe away from China. Shhh, let's watch the video. It speaks louder than any words.

Cover it Live

2009-03-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

I'd like to predict, the emerging of something like Cover-it-Live, a website enables live reporting of events, would simply subvert traditional news reporting and writing. Because if we can report news sentence-by-sentence as it goes, why bother take extra hours to write it in "the inverted pyramid".

CoveritLive, a Toronto-based start-up founded in late 2007, says on its website that its users has been using it cover "millions of occasions from niche events like chess tournaments in Germany or local elections in London, to marquee events like the NFL draft and American Idol."

That is not to say journalists are becoming bookkeepers, a job that meticulously records numbers, in this case, facts (my least favorite job in the world). But journalists might want to consider one thing. There is obviously no advantage to compete speed with people reporting from CoveritLive, so where's the edge? Using an analogy from the finance industry, data recording and analysis are two different jobs. Let it be it in journalism, too. Let the CoveritLive reporters collect the facts. Journalists take the facts and ANALYZE them. Time to toss "objectivity" out of the window.

The Wiki Talk --- The Wikipedia Revolution

2009-03-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

I thought I knew Wikipedia pretty well until last night after I attended my friend Andrew Lih's (left in the picture) book launch at Columbia's School of Journalism.

Lih started off by an astonishing statement that when he first encountered Wikipedia, he thought it was "sheer lunacy." "Why would anyone trust or even go to the site?" Lih wondered. After checking out the website, he was suprised to find "the articles on the site were actually pretty good!"

Wikipedia is a good example that: a concept that works in practice but doen't work in theory. This is what Lih's book: The Wikipedia Revolution is based on. Today, Wikipedia is one of the top 10 most visited websites around the world.

If you think you knew Wikipedia quite well as I did, try to answer a few questions.

Do you know where did the name Wiki come from (hint: it has little to do with the fruit Kiwi)? How did Wikipedia come into being? Who are the Wikipedians and who are the vandalists? How do Wikipedians from different countries consent on spelling rules? And do you even know Wikipedia has a main page?

The name Wiki came from "Wiki Wiki" bus, a quick bus that takes people in between terminals in the airport of Hawaii. The idea of the Wiki software is it is a quick way to edit content on the Internet.

Wikipedia was started as an idea of a conventional encyclopedia that the content is to be free. The original name was Nupedia.com. The website hired a bunch of PhDs in various fields but only produced 12 articles after the first year. When the website adopted the Wiki software, which allows everyone to edit any page at any time, within a several months, they produced hundreds of articles, ten times as they used to produce in a year.

Many vandalists are traced back to high school servers during the time from 9am to 5pm. Most of the vandalists are high school students who are bored in class.

As to the spellings, British and American wikipedians argue through the years. The final concensus is if the topic is British-related, it would be "colour"; if American-related, "color".

Andrew Lih is inviting the readers to keep writing the last chapter of the book. You can write and edit at: www.wikipediarevolution.com/wiki.

The full live report on the presentation and Lih's Q&A can be found here.

The Daily Beast: Online Syndication is Butter

2009-03-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

Launched 5 months ago today, The Daily Beast, a new kid on the Web, is getting a lot of attention: 2 million unique visitors a month. The master heads are hoping the buzz would, some day, turn into bucks.

But not now. For the time being, the Daily Beast doesn't need to worry about "food hunting." With $18 million funding from New York media mogul Barry Diller (left in the photo), the 24 Daily Beast staff, led by Tina Brown (right in the photo), is on a free ride to hunt for content. The goal is to keep driving up the traffic.

As Brown said in a recent interview: "I think news is the best marketing budget. I'd rather have news than a marketing budget. If you have stories people want to read, that's the best way to market your site. It's much better than pictures, posters, and expensive advertising."

And Ms. Brown is in a perfect position to do so. Former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, talk show host and author of book Diana, Princess of Wales, Tina Brown, 54, has done it all in journalism. It's hard not to have A-list writers flocking on her site.

Tina's long-time friend, Chris Buckley's column, started at the Daily Beast's launch, has been a huge traffic driver. It's been picked up everywhere.It's one of the great fun things about the traffic metrics to be able to see. It's still driving months after it was published. “We published the piece whenever it was, and now I can see people are going back to the new piece about having left the National Review, but they're also then going to the other piece to see what he said in the first place. So it's been great for us.”

Edward Felsenthal, a veteran at the Wall Street Journal, left earlier this year to join the Daily Beast as its executive editor, said the website also serves as a semi-refuge for traditional print and book writers --- an easy way to publish on the Web. "We receive phone calls from well-known writers saying 'I just wrote a piece, but I don't have a computer. I have to fax it to you.'"

The Daily Beast is in line with Drudge and the Huffington Post, but it is "not trying to be any of them." "We don't want to be another aggregator," Felsenthal said. The content goes through the editors with twists. "It sifts, sorts and curates. We accept and we reject."

The website pays a fee to its contributors and demands a fee from other websites that link to its content.

"I think online syndication is a great idea," Felsenthal said. The website is already making modest money from it. "Syndication is not bread-and-butter yet, but, butter."

Stay tuned and stay toned...

89-Year-Old Journalist Signed Onto Facebook

2009-03-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

I met Roy Rowan, a 89-year-old Time-Life journalist, at a Reuters event two weeks ago. We set up to meet a week later for an interview so that he can tell me all about the telegraph age of reporting. However, at the end of the day, Rowan signed up for Facebook and joined the latest trend in media.

Another week later, Rowan has reconnected with over 30 friends on the social network, including a former employee he hired nearly 30 years ago. Rowan put up a link http://www.royrowan.com and a fishing photo on the page. One of his Facebook pal calls him "the handsome devil". Within days, he is full-blown on Facebook. But only a week before, it was the same man who told me: "I only write on my computer. I don't download much and I don't enjoy reading online."

You really couldn't blame the old man. When Rowan started his writing career in Shanghai back in 1947 upon bumping into then Time-Life China bureau chief at a jazz bar in Peace Hotel, telegraph was the predominant technology for transmitting stories across the ocean. It took an average two weeks to ship photo negatives back to New York's Time-Life building.

For the next decades, Rowan has remained on the front line of journalism writing about the battles of China's civil war, the Cold War in Europe, and President Ford's (right in the photo) military action to secure release of the Mayaguez, the American cargo ship in 1975.

Until our conversation entered the Internet age, Rowan paused and asked me: "So tell me what you've got out of Facebook?" It didn't take me long to explain what Facebook was and how it works.

"So you are saying Facebook is even quicker to reach out to people than websites?" Rowan asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Then I should sign up." Just like that, Rowan joined the Internet community. To me, the greater joy came from the realization of a fact that it lies in every journalist's heart the desire to keep up with the latest and stay open-minded.

Rowan, "a handsome devil", who is younger than him at heart?

Photo Courtesy of Roy Rowan

The Problem Is Not The News

2009-03-02T20:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the respected editorial writer for the Arizona Republic, Doug MacEachern, harangued a blogger for taking pleasure in writing about the demise of newspapers.

"That is the irony of the loss of the Rocky Mountain News. There is no diminished demand for its product. For its paper product, yes. And for its advertising space. But not for its genuine product, the news. The 'Rocky' earned four Pulitzers in the last decade. Its problem was not its news."

No, the problem is not its news. The problem is not to confuse news with information. To me, news means information that is investigated, verified and delivered in a timely manner with precise writing. Therefore, blogs do not provide news. This blog, for example, offers information and personal opinion, but not news.

Information and news are two different animals. Imagine the different amount of work goes into the news and blog posts. Anybody can write a blog post in thirty minutes while all the news pieces require fact checking, editing, writing and rewriting. That’s a difference between McDonald’s and six-course French dinner. If blogs could ever replace newspaper and magazines, it would have happened within the past few hundred years since the first English-language newspaper appeared in Amsterdam in 1620.

If curiosity as a human nature triggered the very existence and prosperity of news, then suspicion is another human nature that keeps gossip and incredible information away from trustworthy news.

If there is a problem with news today, it is that we need it more than any other time in human history. By that, I don't refer to information. Ask yourself a question as a reader: how much do you trust the information you read on a blog. We all need trustworthy news, particularly in an information-overloading time like this.

So I would like to echo what Mr. MacEachern had to say that the problem is not its news. And I also empathize his sentiment for getting a little defensive as an old-fashioned journalist over the topic of the demise of the print. But seriously, reminiscing as much as you like, but the truth is even if we devour McDonald’s day and night, what we really crave for is the French feast.

Newsday and SF Chronicles' Desperate Moves

2009-02-27T13:06:00.000-08:00

At second glance, Newsday and San Francisco Chronicle's bold move to charge online new s content seems to be pulled out of desperation rather than strategic planning.

Despite of my strong belief that readers should pay for online news, reality is it is too late for any individual publications to reverse the free trend. When it only takes one more click to take a reader to free alternatives, what will be the incentive to pay? Very little. We need sea change to reverse sea change.

This requires an aggregator with a scale as big as Google to serve as the content provider and the gatekeeper that prevents paid content to be circulated elsewhere online for free.

Newsday and San Francisco Chronicles’ attempt of fee-based model is likely to hasten the failure of these two renowned US newspapers. Both their announcements were made at a timing that led to suspicion that they were made in panic.

Cablevision, owner of Newsday who bought the paper last May with $650 million, has recently written down its value by $402 million, nearly 70 percent less.

While in the statement this Tuesday, management of San Francisco Chronicle, Hearst Corporation, announced that

“San Francisco Chronicle newspaper is undertaking critical cost-saving measures including a significant reduction in the number of its unionized and nonunion employees. If these savings cannot be accomplished within weeks, Hearst said, the Company would be forced to sell or close the newspaper.”

According to the website, the Chronicle has had significant losses since 2001 after Hearst bought it. The losses in 2008 exceeded $50 million and it expects to get worse in 2009. Two days later, the paper's management team held an emergency meeting bringing about the creation of "pay-per-view sections on the Web site."

Lessons should be learned after the New York Times lifted its pay wall. Although the FT and the Wall Street Journal are successful examples for charging online content, it has applies only to the financial news sector so far. Unless Newsday and SF Chronicle come up with some brilliant ideas, otherwise, it is questionable to pick up what has been proved wrong. Didn't people say: “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me"?

If it doesn't work, at least, Newsday and SF Chronicle would get the last bit of money (if anyone signs up) before their demise. And the rest of us could say: See what I've told you? It’s not working, again! But I am still wondering: why hasn't Google jumped on the idea, yet.

Letter To The Editor: Something's Gotta Give

2009-02-25T22:14:00.000-08:00

Reader Daniel Hernandez, reporter of the Chunichi Shimbun newspaper in New York commented on the previous post: RE: Shall Readers Pay For Online News? Hernandez also keeps a blog on the Huffington Post.

"I agree. They've created a monster. But I still think they can turn it in their favor and turn a profit. They got us addicted -- that's usually the hard part -- now they need to cut us off.

I think an e-commerce company like PayPal has to handle micro-payments. We won't have patience to sign up for every newspaper. It's gotta be a one account for all sites kinda thing. And if any of 'em want it to work, they all need to do it. If you got 'em all in a room -- and there really aren't that many newspaper companies -- they'd all agree they need a new way to make money.

But how do blogs fit in? They point out articles no one would ever catch, but paraphrase the content. That could be a real problem if a blog's free and a paper ain't. But is it legal to quote paid content? I don't think so. Either way, something's gotta give there on both ends. This model wont work for much longer."

American Social Networks Trudging Into China With Difficulty

2009-02-23T09:12:00.000-08:00

Facebook's effort to expand into the largest Internet market might be thwarted facing strict Chinese online police and local competitors.

Murdoch's MySpace, launched in China early 2007, has so far proven to be barely a success, with less than 10 million users at the last count, comparing with the Chinese rivals at 100 million users.

Xiaonei.com (On Campus), a Chinese social networking website, has in last year raised $430 million, which surpassed the capital that Facebook has. David Chao, a venture capitalist who was on the board two years ago when they were looking to fund Xiaonei, said he didn't think western sites are able to compete any time soon. He told Matt Marshal that: "history tells us there’s not going to be too much to worry about an outside, non-Chinese born company taking a big chunk of the Chinese market."

Despite the adroitness western social networks might have in screening porn and violence, the China challenge surfaced when it comes to figure out how to deal with the politically sensitive content. Without a good understanding of Chinese culture, western owners, despite the attractive applications and features, lost the edge to their Chinese counterparts.

Chinese websites, on the other hand, have grown to adapt to the gate-keeping role and have developed the world's most sophisticated Internet censoring system. Growing number of private websites not only filter thousands of "forbidden phrases" every second, but the database has been ever expanding. Some sites hire hundreds of employees to manually go through pages and press the "delete" button. Conventionally, extra attention ought to be given before and during NPC/CPPCC (National People's Congress/The Chinese People Political Consultative Conference) each March when most protests and petitions take place.

As Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN China correspondent, media expert and analyst of China online censorship, wrote in the Wall Street Journal blog recently that China's new subtle approach towards Internet censorship is not good news for western social networking sites as well.

"The strategy seems clear: Give China’s professional journalists a longer leash to cover breaking news even if it’s not positive — since the news will come out anyway and unlike bloggers, the journalists are still on a leash. At the same time, clamp down on blogs, chat rooms and video-sharing sites that might allow too much unfettered discussion of the news."

Although China's tempting number of Internet users, 298 million at the end of 2008, keep luring western big names like Facebooks and MySpace, this cake is not ready to be shared yet.

Time To Consider Paying For Your "Lunch", Again

2009-02-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said to Fortune magazine recently during an interview about the survival of newspaper: "the culture of the Internet is that information wants to be free." For Google whose business goes way beyond providing information, it is a fair statement. But for news publications, such statement can be dangerously misleading.

Most content providers use free information as a tool to market themselves in order to, eventually, get noticed, get a deal for other apps, and get paid! Michael Noer, executive editor for Forbes.com, one of the very few profitable websites, said: "If I didn't want to make money, I'd go home and write a journal."

Publications that failed to do so are creating plenty problems in their tradition part of the business. Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time magazine, admitted in The Daily Show that "we made a mistake" to have made online news free which he thought might have pushed the print to the edge of obliteration.

However, I believe plenty of bloggers and website founders did not start disseminating free online information just to make money. Many began with a passion of the free exchange of ideas and a handful is running successfully on voluntary writers/editors and charity. But even they are worried about where to get the funding for next year. Any business needs to be able to, at least, self sustained. Worry about passion after we know where the next meal is.

The abundance of free online information is likely to, eventually, wipe out the print business. It might not be a bad thing. When that day arrives, the dynamics of news business would switch and the news websites might be able to start charging again. Call it assumption, but the Internet doesn't want to kill the print before killing itself, does it? Internet needs to charge, but in a whole new way. For example, micro-charge: an idea brought up in Isaacson's cover story: How to save your newspaper or there will be thousands of mini Googles that offer applications and services alongside content.

Crowdfunding: Hire Your Reporters and Decide Your Stories

2009-02-16T15:47:00.000-08:00

Spot.us is testing a new idea of journalism. It is inviting readers to hire your own reporters and decide what stories you want to hear. They are calling it: crowdfunding. Cool idea! And it fits right into the micro-fee model we discussed in the previous blog.

So far, Spot.us has funded 13 stories since its launch last autumn from a radio show on San Francisco’s new car and tent cities in the economic crisis (listen to the audio) to a news story on the safety of Bay beaches and water after Cosco Busan oil spill a year ago. The stories raised $550 and $560 each.

David Cohn, the 26-year-old founder of Spot.us, is very pleased with what he has achieved: 13 stories have received full funding, and three more are halfway to success. He is ready to bring the half-year-old newborn to the next level Spot.us 2.0.

The idea I like the most is to have a blog with every story pitched and make the reporting process public, which Cohn calls "beat blogging". It'll make reporting more like a video game where game players walk through every scene with the hero.

But the website, as exciting and promising as it seems, faces plenty of challenges. Cohn illustrated some in his post “Spot.us deals with the good and bad of the limitations.” One of its most crucial challenges, I believe, is how to control the quality of the products. The questions that I would like to have Cohn address are:

How much time does the reporters have before a story is published? What does the website do to make sure a story is thoroughly investigated and well written? Is there a screening process for any reporter who pitches a story? How does it work? What if the donors are not happy with the quality and seeking for a refund?

However, it doesn't hurt to try. As professor Jay Rosen told New York Times that: “My own feeling is that we need to try lots of things. Most of them won’t work. You’ll have a lot of failure. But we need to launch a lot of boats.”

In the end, the stimulus bill is a crowdfunding project, isn’t it? We don’t know whether either Spot.us or the stimulus plan is going to work eventually, but “god, we keep trying!” And I hope both "boats" would sail.

Shall Readers Pay For Online News?

2009-02-13T13:11:00.000-08:00

To a large extent, many major publications dug their own tombs and jumped in, hoping there is a heaven, until they are more than half way to the hell. Now they admitted that they screwed up.

“We made a mistake!” Walter Isaacson, the president of Aspen Institute, a DC-based educational and policy studies organization and former managing editor of Time Magazine said to Jon Stewart in The Daily Show recently. The mistake that Mr. Isaacson was referring to was when the print moved online, the news should never have been free.

He is right. The mistake was they started a price war with online news aggregators and bloggers and sold themselves short.

What Mr. Isaacson and other decision makers back then hoped for was the free news would have driven up traffic which was thought to be the key to attract ads. But the plan didn't quite pan out.

If the idea was to copy what the telecom companies are doing: give away the cell phones and charge for the services, it won’t work because telecom companies like AT&T owns both the services and the phones while Time doesn’t own advertising companies.

So now what? If we cannot make magazines "narcotically addictive" as Stewart suggested in the show, what can we do to make readers pay?

Mr. Isaacson’s idea was to charge micro-fees and I couldn’t agree more.

In fact, I agree to such an extreme that I think we should charge per article instead of per magazine edition. Therefore, readers can choose the topics they want to read instead of being given the bunch of articles. Besides, charging by articles will ultimately bring down the fee from dollars to dimes or cents. Price for each article should also go up as more readers buy it. This encourages readers to buy as early as possible.

Yup, I strongly support that quality writing should be paid. By the way, did I really hear Isaacson say: “We gotta have some system where some journalists are getting paid…!” Really?

Will Kindle Save Journalism

2009-02-10T21:09:00.000-08:00

Amazon launched kindle 2.0 this Monday, the latest electronic display gadget. What they failed to mention was the new product might soon have a negative impact on industries from paper mills, furniture manufacturers, shipping companies, to people like librarians. But it might save journalism.

As Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, said his vision is to have "every book ever published in any languages available in 60 seconds." As of today, there is a selection of over 200,000 books ready to be downloaded into Kindle.

Using Amazon's current database, the largest of its kind in the world, it is easy to find out what people want to read and that's where Kindle is starting with --- the bestsellers. "But eventually we want to move to the long tail," Bezos said.

Compared to Kindle 1.0, launched 14 months ago, the newer version has a 16 shades of gray versus 4, pages turn 20% faster, battery life is 25% longer, process is stronger and it reads to you.

If Kindle 2 reaches the mass audience, it will overhaul industries that heavily rely on the print. If there is less printing, a lot less paper will be needed; there won't be need for bookshelves; newspaper/magazine delivery services will be out of business; in a long run, we won't need a library and librarians might need to find new jobs.

But on the other hand, publishers of New York Times and the New Yorker could cut down printing cost substantially and still be able to charge the same amount of money for their Kindle versions. As a matter of fact, print publishers are so excited that a whole list of newspapers and magazines have already released their Kindle editions from Time ($1.49 per week) to the Wall Street Journal ($9.99 per month). NYT's Kindle edition costs $13.99 per month, the most expensive news publication on Kindle.

Kindle, a new platform where there is no need to print but readers still pay, might save a dying industry.

The newspaper still stirs

2009-02-09T12:38:00.000-08:00

Newspaper is not dead, yet. Although, it will, and soon.

This may not sound nostalgic to some people. Many that are older than me are still holding dear to the idea of the printed paper, magazines and books. "No, they cannot die!" And some might even believe that it is about the confidence: If every one of us holds up the belief that print media will survive and keeps buying, it will survive. It works like the stock market. Or, is it?

The last time the newspaper business was in trouble was back in 1765 when the British Parliament decided to levy a new tax, requiring government-issued stamps on each printed-paper. Beginning November that year, printers pay halfpenny for every half sheet and two shilling for every advertisement.

Jill Lepore's recent story Back Issue in New Yorker magazine recalled: "On October 31, the New-Hampshire Gazette appeared with black mourning borders and, in a column on page 1, lamented its own demise: 'I must Die!” The Connecticut Courant quoted the book of Samuel: “Tell it not in Gath! publish it not in Askalon!” The newspaper is dead!"

But newspaper was not dead. After the Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 in the midst of opposition. Newspaper stirred and came back to life. But this time, it is not the government. It is the technology that has invaded. This time, newspaper will die.

At the center of the issue is the question of the fundamental function of the newspaper --- to disseminate information as fast as possible. What if there is a way to disseminate more information much faster, and for free? The technology has made it a reality. In a matter of a few years, digital newspapers and online news have dramatically changed our way of obtaining news, no matter whether we like it or not.

But I think it is time to celebrate. Newspaper is going to die, but news will go on. Newspaper is taking a whole new shape and become omnipotent. It is not the time to be nostalgic although you are feeling the pain.