joemichaud.com

Still in an officially pre-launch stage, but it’s live: ConcertRat.com

The idea is that you can create a diary of concerts you’ve attended, and display your  notes, reviews, photos, images of tickets, setlists. It’s connected to Facebook, so you’ll see who else was there among your friends.

The Bigger Idea is that as people add their material, Concert Rat can become a wiki-like compilation of all concerts, present and past. Upcoming is, well,  upcoming.

What we need right now is people to use it, and give feedback. The system is rock solid, thanks to ace programmer Paul Caiazzo, but we want to continually improve usability. And ideas for further development and features are very welcome. (What would you want in the iPhone app?)

So try it out and hit the big blue Feedback button.

”All the new companies are not spending a nanosecond on the iPad or thinking of ways to charge for content. The older companies, that is all they are thinking about.” Marc Andreessen, Netscape founder, as quoted by TechCrunch.

Marc Andreessen has some simple advice for newspapers and magazines: “Burn the boats.” Cortes supposedly  ordered his ships burned after arriving in Mexico in the 1500s to prevent his men from even thinking about heading home to Spain.

In this case, Andreessen means ending media’s fixation on the print model by shutting down print.

I happen to believe shutting down print would be insane, businesswise, since most of print media companies’ profits still come from print.

But I agree with his larger point: that smart, successful, innovative companies are looking forward, looking to where consumers are moving, and moving to meet them. Meanwhile, legacy media companies are essentially saying, in Andreessen’s words: “We know where the market is and we are not going to go there.”

How does an existing media company begin operating like an innovative startup? Unfortunately, it doesn’t  happen easily or cheaply. As shown in Clayton Christensen’s  groundbreaking book “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” the solution is to let the existing enterprise go its merry way, while spinning off  some of its profit to  create a skunkworks startup that probably will end up competing with the existing business. Yes, that sounds like what some newspaper  and magazine companies did in the 1990s, while they still had profits to spin off.

These days, the skunkworks are gone, replaced by  a laser-like focus on what Christensen would call “sustaining technology” like paywalls and iPads. Those aren’t bad efforts, of course, but they won’t stand a chance against competitors whose vision is only forward.

Given the economic realities of newspapers and magazines, the best we can hope for is some vision at the top, providing cover and resources for a few internal innovators to truly explore new territory and burn their own boats.

Just added a new post over at SustainableNews.Biz on the local merchant’s view of advertising.

Cross-posting since the new blog is so new.

That iPad is one cool thing, eh?

No question, it will change how people watch videos, listen to music, type stuff, look at photos, play games, and read books, magazines, and newspapers.

What it won’t do is change the economics for newspapers.

Newspapers’ economic problem is this:  their expense structure depends on advertising, and high advertising rates. Very little of their revenue comes from print subscriptions. So one would think that when a new delivery vehicle comes along, like the iPad, the question would be: how well does the ad model translate to this vehicle? Will advertisers pay a premium to appear alongside quality news content, as they do  in print?

But no, the question is “Will the iPad enable newspapers to charge people to read news?”

I guess the answer is yes, they’ll be able to charge.  But the real answer is that  nobody will buy, and now we have some evidence of that reality.

According to The Observer, only 35  people have signed up for Newsday’s subscription model after 6 months and $4 million of site development. This isn’t a prediction or debate anymore, it’s reality.

Back to the iPad’s potential impact on newspaper advertising:  from the photos and videos I’ve seen, the screen looks like it’s big enough to display ads and content simultaneously.

I expect the highest potential could  be a magazine-style presentation:  the tablet is held horizontally, with two facing pages. One page would be content, and the facing page would be a full-page ad. As the user flips pages, new ads appear.

Even so, that’s a big leap for newspapers to make in technology, layout, ad sales, ad production, etc. But at least it’s not as big a leap as expecting people to pay to read news.

I’ve set up another blog — SustainableNews.biz –  to focus  on the ecosystem of local news startups, and specifically on the solo journalist trying to get something off the ground.

Not much there yet, but stay tuned. Even better, if you come across anything along that topic, send it over.

Robert Niles hits a critical issue in local journalism with his post  “Doing journalism in 2010 is an act of community organizing“.

An incredible number of newspaper jobs were eliminated in 2008-09 (40,000  in 2009, and 21,000   in 2008 according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics), and many of these journalists are taking a shot at running their own local news website.  Writes Niles:

Many people who leave the paper for the blogosphere are running one-person shows. As such, they need to not forget about those other important roles within the newspaper business: editorial page advocacy, community leadership and, yes, ad sales. If you’re running a one-person shop, you can no more afford to abandon those roles as a newspaper could afford to dismiss everyone on its staff who fulfilled them.

Trouble is, the modern newspaper  is filled with highly specialized positions. And worse, people are discouraged from performing another professional’s duties, such as a reporter taking photographs, or a copy editor writing editorials. That’s not a  problem when  staffs are big, but those specialists are ill equipped when they’re on their own.

Niles focuses on the community-building challenges of solo journalism, and I totally agree.

I believe the toughest line to cross will be economic. Solo journalists must learn how to run a business and ask for money. And that’s something they have been specifically trained  to believe is antithetical to journalistic  ethics.

Fact is, journalists in the 19th century managed to drag a press  across the plains, set up shop, write news, sell ads and print the thing. Somehow journalism survived.

Today’s solo journalists can and will figure out how to do it again, but they’re up against some huge societal and cultural barriers, not to mention their own career experiences.

These newly solo journalists need to face those realities head-on, as they invent  new ways to do local journalism — before their severance runs out.

Steve Outing’s “Stop the Presses” column has ended with the  recent closing of Editor & Publisher magazine. In characteristic fashion, Steve uses his final column to muse about what might have been, if only the newspaper industry had behaved differently over the past 15 years, and to make a few predictions.  It’s worth a read.

Not to get all eulogistic, but I have always considered Steve Outing  responsible for a tremendous amount of early progress at  “online newspapers” in the 1990s.  Certainly his column held up the best examples of work in the field, but more importantly,  starting in 1994,  Steve hosted the first  listservs for people working in online news.

In a business where everything was new and nothing was known for sure,  we were able to share learnings and mistakes, get questions answered, and to start friendships that continue today.  At the time, I remember feeling that what was happening on those lists was pretty special. These were all busy people, dealing with the stresses of a startup business, system crashes, internal politics, whatever. Yet they took the time to share what they were discovering, to respond to dumb questions, to ask their own questions.

I know running the list must have been a chore: those early email systems needed regular attention, and there were some interesting characters among our ranks.  I’m guessing Steve  got more grief than thanks for his efforts at the time.

So for the record:  Thank you, Steve, for taking the initiative with that list, and sticking with it.

Steve mentions in his final column that he has a new project, the Digital Media Test Kitchen at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Sounds like a cool gig -  a fresh chance to look at the media world from outside the newspaper lens.  Keep an eye on this next phase of Steve’s career at SteveOuting.com

There often comes a point when something that’s been up in the air starts to settle.  This is one of those times, and it’s important for local sites:

According to an Anderson Analytics survey of college students, “Facebook was viewed as ‘cool’ by a whopping 82% of males and 90% of females. All other SNS’  (social networking sites) were deemed “lame” by significant percentages of both male and female collegiate users. In particular, MySpace–the granddaddy of SNS’–was considered ‘lame’ by the largest portion of college students (31%).”

Significantly, Anderson Analytics found no falloff of image for Facebook as its user base has expanded into these kids’ parents generations and beyond. And it found that Facebook now tops Google for usage among college kids.

The relevance of Facebook’s critical mass is twofold for local news sites: first, at a time of scarce resources, Facebook remains an area worth devoting staff time to, such as posting news items. Maybe you can dial back your effort on MySpace  (if any). Or if you’re not doing much with social networking, you can start, and just focus on Facebook for now, maybe Twitter later.

Second,  Facebook’s  critical mass of members makes Facebook Connect look even more attractive as a piece of your site’s infrastructure. Connect gives you two things that are expensive in time and money to come by otherwise:  a registration system that forces accountability for postings, and exposure to lots of people efficiently (through Facebook’s news feed) as people post to your site.

So if you’re running a local site and trying to figure out where to spend scare resources, here’s one place: Facebook.

An editorial on The Digital Journalist site, entitled Let’s Abolish ‘Citizen Journalists’ argues that journalism is being undermined by the presence of people who report on news but aren’t on the payroll (or freelance roster) of a recognized news organization.

It goes further, claiming that news organizations are digging their own graves: “Because of declining revenues, newspapers, magazines and TV stations actually think they can get these ‘volunteers’ to replace the professionals.”

First,  in 30 years in journalism, I have never heard of any news manager  seriously considering such a thing, let alone doing it. (I suspect that the perspectives of The Digital Journalist are colored by its heavy focus on photojournalism, and yes, citizen photos/video have made news. But who sees that as a coverage strategy?)

More troubling to me is that this editorial reinforces the age-old canard that all journalists are members of some kind of priesthood. The editorial cites Afghanistan and the White House as venues where citizen journalists will never tread. True enough. But how many professional journalists will go to Afghanistan or the White House, regardless of their credentials?  And how many professionals will attend the local school board meeting, compared to public-sprited “amateurs?”

There are too many shades of “professional journalist” to allow any blanket description. Professionals can be hacks, and amateurs can serve the public interest.

The comments on Let’s Abolish ‘Citizen Journalists’ do a fine job of picking at its arguments, so please check them out, especially Howard Owens’ reminder that “citizen journalism” is how journalism got started in the first place.

My main problem with the priesthood attitude is that journalism needs all the help it can get, professional or not.  “Professional” news organizations are in economic whitewater right now, unable to reinvent themselves fast enough to fulfill their public-service.

Anyone who cares about the importance of a free press in a democracy should support and encourage journalists, professional or not. If you’re a professional, good for you. Strive for excellence,  strive to advance the public interest, and hopefully someone will pay you. If you’re not a professional, well, same goes for you.

Just stumbled onto the first instance I’ve seen of a mainstream news site using Facebook Connect as a way to ID users in comments.

Back in February, I suggested the new system could be a breakthrough for news site managers tired of all the anonymous trolls. Until now, I hadn’t come across anyone taking that leap. CNN/Money is requiring commenters to use  Facebook Connect, and it looks fairly new, but I can’t tell for sure.

Check it out on this story about stocks. It’s a ripe topic for trolls, but you’ll notice most of the folks are pretty calm. Also note their Facebook pictures next to their posts.

Best part is, their post will appear on their Facebook news feed. Who wants to look like a troll to their friends and family?

If other sites are doing this, please add them in the comments. I’m very interested in following this.