Monthly Archives: December 2009

Goodbye, Newspapers; Good Riddance, Serial-Comma Killers

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The mighty comma will rise again.Though for me there is little schadenfreude in witnessing the decline and fall of newspapers, I do find one small cause for cheer in this otherwise unsettling spectacle: the potential resurgence of the serial comma.

The serial comma is that final one in a series of three or more items, as in the phrase “red, white, and blue.” (It is sometimes known by its detractors as the “Oxford” or “Harvard” comma, as if to imply that a preference for clarity is somehow elitist or purely academic.)

Most newspapers and their style guides have steadfastly resisted the serial comma. They prefer instead “red, white and blue.”

It’s often suggested that this resistance arose from a desire for typesetting efficiency, as New York Times editor Philip B. Corbett has said:

“I suspect that journalists’ aversion to the additional comma arose in the old days when setting type was laborious and expensive. If you already have an “and,” why bother with a comma, too? The practice persists, from habit and perhaps from the sense that fewer commas make prose seem more direct and rapid—qualities we journalists prize in our writing.”

As Corbett indicates, the argument against the serial comma boils down to this: You don’t need it, and it sounds fussy and ponderous.

Although I find that the serial comma sounds more natural, I can buy the argument that it often isn’t necessary for clarity. But even opponents of serialism recognize that, at times, the additional comma is essential.

And therein lies the problem. Many writers will fail to recognize those times, and clarity will suffer. Although the use of a serial comma can lead to ambiguity too, as Wikipedia evenhandedly points out,  I’ve found that ambiguities are more likely in its absence. So for me, consistent use of serial commas is the wiser policy. (For a longer and more convincing version of this argument, may I suggest the Grammar Girl?)

Opposition to the serial comma will not die out any time soon. Many newspaper writers and editor will hold on to their old habits, even as they exchange new media and venues for old. But the decline of newspapers as an institutional influence on writing gives me hope that the serial comma will make slow but steady gains in the new-media world.

Five Reasons Not To Fear Content Farms

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The recent surge of so-called content farms has inspired a torrent of commentary from new-media pundits, most of it disapproving. Content farms (also called content factories) are web sites that produce huge numbers of short articles based on keywords popular in search engines. The leading examples are Demand Media, Associated Content, Answers.com, and, most recently, AOL. Some of these sites rely on free user-generated content; others, like Demand Media, pay small sums to content contributors.

Objections to the content farms fall generally into one or more of three categories:

  • They are bad for writers
  • They are bad for readers
  • They are bad for the Internet

It’s not surprising that people who write for a living would be troubled by the pay rates of content farms. Folio:‘s Jason Fell, for instance, noting that he used to get $100 for 300-word reviews, is appalled at the $15 per article averaged by Demand Media writers. He concludes that “online content and its creators have been devalued.” Similarly, Wired’s Daniel Roth sees Demand writers as “the online equivalent of day laborers waiting in front of Home Depot.” How, he asks of the pay, “can anyone survive on that?”

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Prediction: Apple’s Tablet Will Change Publishing

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Ihnatko: Apple tablet will spark digital publishing revolution

Ihnatko: Apple tablet will spark digital publishing revolution

Of all the predictions for 2010 I’ve read—or hope to read (Paul Conley, how about  B2B predictions as lullaby lyrics?)—the one that has me most excited is that Apple will come out with a tablet computer. This isn’t just because I’m a serious technophile, but also because an Apple tablet will have the potential to remake magazine publishing.Until earlier this week, I entertained only idle thoughts about Apple’s rumored tablet in development, mostly when experiencing one frustration or another with my Kindle. But after hearing tech journalist Andy Ihnatko talk about the tablet on the Macbreak Weekly podcast yesterday, I’m persuaded not only that the “iPad” is real, but also that it will be revolutionary.

Ihnatko was responding to news reports that an Oppenheimer analyst expects a March or April launch of the tablet and that it will squarely target the Kindle.

While Ihnatko doubted that Apple’s tablet would “own the e-book marketplace,” he did agree that the device would transform it.  “The amount of excitement that it’s going to generate just for e-publishing in general is already phenomenal.” As he noted in his Chicago Sun-Times article last week on a rival tablet computer, the erstwhile “CrunchPad,” computer makers are all preparing for “what happens after Apple releases the Tablet.” He compared their state of mind to that in a year before a world war: “No, it hasn’t been announced, it hasn’t been scheduled, but everybody’s anticipating that the world will be fundamentally different this time next year. They are making arrangements to make sure they are in the best position to survive and thrive in that new landscape.”

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Should B2B Get Excited about the Digital Magazine Consortium?

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For B2B publishers, how big a deal is the recently announced digital magazine consortium?  Does the participation of industry titans Condé Nast, Time Inc., Hearst, Meredith, and News Corp., mean our magazines will all soon be read on cool e-reader tablets? Or is it just more hot air?

For me, the answers to these questions came from an unexpected source. Regular readers of B2B Memes will know that I have mixed feelings about digital magazines.  Likewise, my feelings are mixed about the one blog on the subject that I follow, from digital magazine producer Nxtbook Media. Like many corporate blogs, it’s a mix of lightweight stories about company activities, tales of customer success, and criticisms of anyone that doesn’t like their product. Last week, though, I remembered why I follow it: Sometimes it offers some excellent insights.

It’s unfortunate that the PR bulldog instinct came over the author, Marcus Grimm, in headlining last week’s post “Lies, Half-Truths and Other Innuendos About Digital Magazines.”  The inflammatory choice of words made me suspect it would be a hack job, but in fact it was a well-reasoned and sensible discussion of the consortium’s effort. (I suppose it’s too late now, but why not use a key phrase from the post as the title: “Top Five Things You Need to Know About the Forthcoming Digital Magazine Consortium”?)

If you’re interested in the topic, you should read the entire post. But here I will cite three key points Grimm makes in casting doubt on the relevance of the consortium.

First, as Grimm notes, “there’s no reason to believe this will be a solution for trade publishers.” The consortium is all about charging for content, not growing an audience. Hence, he says, “if you’re interested in the latter, there’s nothing here to indicate a better future for you, or even a different future.”

Second, he argues against the strategy of producing a dedicated device for digital magazines: “We DON’T agree that you should make readers choose a format. Instead, let them choose the content and have the format adapt to the device [they’re] on.”

Third, he points out the silliness of the magazine industry trying to build a tablet: “The fact that the consortium is working on an eReader device is further proof to me that they don’t fully get what industry they’re in. Hint: it’s not hardware.”

Now, I suppose there may be some behind-the-scenes politics or unspoken resentments at work here I don’t know about, and as a Nxtbook employee, Grimm is certainly not an objective observer. But he’s persuaded me that the consortium is not likely to hit a home run.

Personally, I hope someone is successful at forging a viable, widely-accepted approach to porting digital versions of B2B magazines to portable readers. For me, no matter how cool the technology, digital magazines on a computer just don’t cut it. But put them on my Kindle, add some color and better performance to the device, and I could be sold on digital magazines at last.

Making Paying for Content More Personal

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Laporte: His audience will pay

Laporte: His audience will determine his salary.

In all the discussions I’ve seen of the virtues and evils of paywalls, I have yet to see any mention of the relation of paid content to social media. This is perhaps because paying for content comes off, even to its proponents, as a kind of uncool, regrettably antisocial gesture (“we don’t want to charge you, but we have to in order to survive”).

It’s not so much that money has no social role—it obviously does. But the models commonly discussed, whether subscription or micropayment, don’t quite have the give-and-take, equal-participant ethos inherent in the concept of markets as conversations. The very word paywall implies just how antisocial the concept is: “you can’t come in here unless you pay, buddy.”

It’s no surprise that most of the noise about the need for paywalls is coming from old-media behemoths like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.  or Mathias Dopfner’s Axel Springer. They want to set the terms of the payments, naturally, and I don’t imagine those terms will be very favorable to the content purchaser. In this model, payment doesn’t necessarily reflect what I as consumer think the content is worth, but what the provider thinks he can get for it. Can I get a refund if the article I buy is disappointing, or a discount if the site I subscribe to goes through a spell of lame or irrelevant content? Not likely (after all, paid circ sucks).

A very different model for payment has recently been proposed by new-media pioneer Leo Laporte. Laporte is the founder of the TWiT network (not related to Twitter, as he would be the first to exclaim here), a burgeoning new-media business producing podcasts and online video.

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