Time to Surf the Wave of the Personal Brand

Politico’s version of the negotiations describes how NYT executive editor Jill Abramson and Washington bureau chief David Leonhardt fought hard to keep Silver at the paper because they saw his “brand within a brand as a wave of the future,”

Mathew Ingram’s recounting today of blogger Nate Silver’s leap from the New York Times into the welcoming arms of ESPN underscores a trend B2B journalists and editors ignore at their peril.

For the moment at least, editorial personal brands are growing more powerful primarily—or most obviously—in big media.

My sense is that most B2B journos are largely unaware of the trend, or largely unwilling to hop onto it. Sooner or later that will change, but whether most of the journalists who have the experience to take advantage of the trend will actually do so is an open question. Being an expert in your field is a requirement for a robust personal brand, but not the only one. If you don’t consciously cultivate your brand, it won’t take root in the new media age.

That means blogging, using social media, and—you may shudder to think of it—promoting your brand. And need I add, you must do this with enthusiasm?

And lest I seem to be piling it onto editors unduly, I should note that B2B media brands need to be as cognizant of this trend as individuals. As Jeff Jarvis said in a tweet Ingram quoted, they need to be thinking of themselves as platforms for building individual brands—something I see few B2B publishing companies doing.

Time is running out. The wave of individual branding will overtake B2B media soon, and the only question is whether you’re going to be surfing the wave or struggling in the wake.

The Case Against Content Worship

Via the Media Briefing, this thought-provoking if rambling takedown of publishers’ unwarranted faith in content:

“Once upon a time content in this industry was the reworked press releases that kept the advertising apart on the printed page. It was never valuable and it isn’t now. What is valuable is a deep understanding of what users need in order to better accomplish their work – and a determination to build technology and content into contexts that make improvements that people will pay for and where they will deposit their own content as well.”

The author, David Worlock, is rightly appalled that at a recent conference of publishers, the halls rang with the refrain that great content is the key to surviving the digital transition.

I don’t think Worlock would claim, any more than I would, that excellent content has no value. But what he does say, I think, is that content is not the end of successful publishing, but a means to it. As he puts it, the “new publishing” consists in ”understanding how users work and supplying . . . content in the right context and with the right interface.”

If you think content is king, you should ask yourself the question Jeff Jarvis posed last year: Is the greater value to be found in content itself, or in “the relationships and data it can spawn”?

Think carefully. Your survival may depend upon the answer.

Is Advertising in New Media Doomed?

For many in B2B publishing, the future hinges on a simple question: Is online advertising viable? The answer, unfortunately, is not yet clear. But to me, at least, one thing is certain: advertising will only work where it is based on transparent, equal, and positive relationships among publisher, advertiser, and consumer.

Photo by Chris Wheal This was a topic raised in last week’s episode of This Week in Google. At about 46 minutes in, the conversation turned to a recent dispute between Microsoft and the Apache Software Foundation involving the way websites track users with cookies, a key requirement for many online advertisers. For unclear reasons, Microsoft’s newest web browser, Internet Explorer 10, comes with user preferences set to Do Not Track, rejecting all cookies by default. Apache, which makes the software that runs most websites, objects, saying users should make that decision, not Microsoft.

Whatever comes of this controversy, the danger it represents is clear. If advertisers are denied even basic information about who clicks on their ads, they will have little incentive to continue advertising. And independent content providers, in turn, will have even less revenue to keep them going.

As “This Week in Google” host Leo Laporte said, how people think about cookies and privacy really depends on how you frame the discussion. If you start by saying that cookies are used to track and collate information about your behavior on the web, it sounds bad. If you say instead that they help websites and advertisers deliver personalized information that you want, it’s more acceptable.

My point isn’t to say that tracking is always a good thing. It isn’t, particularly as used in a mass-media context. But in the healthy sort of relationship between publisher, advertiser, and reader/visitor that you traditionally find in the B2B world, it’s not just a good thing, but a necessary thing. As Jeff Jarvis said in response to Laporte, “media needs to build a relationship with people, but that relationship requires knowing you, and knowing something about you, and being able to act positively on that” (58:19).

In practice, this means two things for publishers. First, earning and keeping the trust of their users is paramount. They must respect their audience and practice transparency in all their dealings with them.

Second, publishers need to hedge their bets and search vigorously for advertising innovations and alternatives. As David Johnson wrote today on MediaShift, the “online advertising experience is awful. There’s no dancing around it, and all the talk about saving journalism isn’t dealing with that fundamental problem.”

Ultimately, audience and advertiser need each other, and will find ways to share their information. It is a necessary relationship. But if independent publishers cannot find persuasive ways to demonstrate their value in that relationship, they will be cast aside with few regrets.

Photo by Chris Wheal

Jeff Jarvis Strikes A Blow for Web History

Buzz Machine Sept 2011

Nearly two years ago, I wrote that while the Web has a future, it may not have a past. Exhibit A in my argument was the lamentable state of Jeff Jarvis’s influential blog, BuzzMachine. Started in the aftermath of 9/11, its archives offer an invaluable chronicle of the development of new media in the 21st century. But as I noted, trying to dig through those archives was nearly as arduous as excavating Troy. Links to the first few years of posts were hard to find, and when you did, they were encrusted with spam advertisements.

A year and a half later, thanks to son Jake Jarvis, the archives have been restored. Though it means quite a few of the links in my article have been broken, I’m happy at how easy it now is to read through those early posts. True, they don’t have the original look and feel, and they have squirreled away somewhere the ominous old blog title, “WarLog: World War III.” But you can always find samples of the original on the Internet Archive.

In all, it’s a good day for the history of the Web, one I wasn’t sure was coming. Now if Filloux will just correct that typo….

Innocent and Malignant Typos and the Case of Filloux v. Jarvis

Picture of a fainting heroine

Overdosed on typos?

As one who cares more than he should about such things, I’ve been spending way too much time today mulling over Rob O’Regan’s recent post on eMedia Vitals, “Can you spare 15 minutes in the battle against typos?”.

Like O’Regan, I suspect, I have an unhealthy sensitivity to typographical errors. To this day, I’m still suffering post-typographic stress from the discovery 27 years ago that in my first published book review, for the Nashville Tennessean, I asserted that the novel’s protagonist died from an overdose of “heroine.”

Much of the pain of that error came from the fact that it was permanent. That day’s press run was done forever. The only comfort I could take was in the knowledge that few people would read the review, fewer would notice the mistake, and all would throw the paper out a few days later.

In today’s online media, of course,  it’s easy to repair such mistakes (as I’ve done in my archived version of that fateful book review). What’s odd is how few people bother. Though O’Regan is too nice to name the writers or publications, he notes that three of the four errors he cites have yet to be corrected, several days after publication. (Me, I’m not so nice: Come on, Stefanie Botelho and Folio: magazineSilicone Valley is almost as embarrassing as heroine.)

In those rare moments when I can look at them dispassionately, I can see that most typos are innocent. Some people will be amused by Silicone Valley; no one is hurt by it.

But there’s another class of typos that, left uncorrected, suggest a subtle malignity. For the reader, they are indications that the writer’s argument might not be trustworthy. A recent example, for me, is Frédéric Filloux’s critique earlier this month of a Jeff Jarvis blog post on the status of the article in journalism.

In my opinion, Filloux simply gets it wrong. I could respect his view, however, if I thought he was actually trying to get it right. But a critical typo, uncorrected now for nearly two weeks, suggests that he isn’t trying, and worse, that he doesn’t care to. “To support his position,” Filloux writes, “Jarvis mentions Brian Settler’s coverage of the Joplin tornado.”

Settler? Nope. The New York Times reporter’s last name, of course, is Stelter.

Is failing to spell Stelter’s name correctly an innocent mistake? Maybe at first (though even then it’s a sign of carelessness). But after two weeks, it starts to fester. It would undercut even the most thoughtful argument, not just Filloux’s impulsive rant.

In a subsequent attack on Jarvis’s advocacy of process journalism, Filloux says, “personally, I’d rather stick to the quest for perfection rather than embrace the celebration of the ‘process.’” I would suggest to M. Filloux that the quest for perfection begins at home.

Fortunately, it’s not too late. As Jarvis says in a comment on Filloux’s post, “publish first and correct later has *always* been the rule, except now we can publish earlier and correct sooner.”

Should you care as much as I do about typos? I don’t recommend it. To be a productive writer, you need a tolerance for innocent slip-ups. But if you care about the truth—not to mention perfection—you’ll make sure they don’t turn into malignant ones.