Has Inkless Wells been censored?

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Macleans political columnist Paul Wells never hesitates to weigh in with a trenchant comment or a jab at those who he feels need to be called out. And this makes him one of the more entertaining political bloggers. And he seems to be given free rein by the good folks at Macleans to take runs at just about anyone.

But has Paul met his match – in the IT Department at Rogers?

My feedreader picked up the following post:

Welcome, friends!

by Paul Wells

The good news is that, as part of the new bigger Rogers family, all A- Channel employees will be permitted to write blogs with atrocious software on un-navigable websites that will never, ever improve. Because that’s what working for Rogers offers us all. No, don’t thank us!

Well, interesting, I thought. Paul’s really biting the hand this time.

So, I wandered over to Inkless Wells to look at the original post … and guess what? It’s not there!

Yes, the headling, “Welcome, friends” appears. But when you click on the headline for the post, the following message appears where the text of the post would appear:

There are no entries at this time. Check back soon.

CensoredWells?
Only for this post. Click on the headline of any other post and you’ll see the full text of the post associated with that headline.

Has the IT Department at Rogers managed to do something that Prime Ministers, Deputy Ministers and politicians of every stripe have long wished they could do – muzzle Paul?

Now we know where real power resides.

SNAFU of the Week – PR briefing given to journalist

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Wired coverOur craving for titillation is satisfied today by the coverage of a memo from Waggener Edstrom intended to prepare a Microsoft exec for an interview with a Wired Magazine writer but which found its way into the hands of the reporter.

As I read the comments on sites covering this story, I see many expressions of disapprobation at the fact that a public relations firm would invest a significant amount of energy in researching a reporter, his predispositions, interests and past writings. I can’t agree with this sentiment.

An interview with a reporter and a news outlet is a conversation. Bad media relations comes from people who simply spout their message repeatedly and endlessly without regard for the interests or perspective of the journalist they are talking to.

We should communicate to be understood, not simply to be heard. And we can be better understood if we communicate in terms that make sense and are of interest to the reporter writing the story.

Every news outlet has different readers and a unique perspective. A well prepared interviewee should be familiar with a reporter’s previous writings, the topics she has covered, the issues that interest her and the perspective she has on them.

That’s the PR person’s job. We research news outlets and reporters as thoroughly as they research their interviewees.

And let’s remember that regardless of how much preparation Microsoft/Waggener Edstrom did, the Wired reporter still had his fingers on the keyboard. No respectable journalist ever writes a story off only one source. Wired’s readers would expect it to develop perspective on the story through independent research and by interviewing a number of different sources.

I can understand the fascination with this issue. It concerns big names – Wired, Microsoft, Waggener Edstrom. And there’s an element of schadenfreude in many of the comments.

What’s really interesting here is that we get to see behind the curtain. And we’re fascinated by how things really work. So, it’s only natural that it should draw an audience. And many people will not like what they see going on. (Have you ever gone into the garage while the mechanics have the parts of your car engine spread around like so much flotsam?)

But at the end, what the Microsoft memo shows is people doing their jobs. And with one big exception, they are doing them well. That exception, of course, is that the memo ended up in the wrong hands. A pretty big mistake. But not the end of the world. And not a great scandal either.

*Thank you to Thomas Hawk for having pointed this story out earlier today.

UPDATE: Posts on this topic that are worth reading: Giovanni Rodriguez, Jon Udell, Mathew Ingram, Eric Eggertson, and Steve Cody.

Citizen Journalism: Weapon of 'Mass' Destruction?

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The second day of ICE07 opened with a panel of Michael Tippet, Founder of NowPublic, Paul Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of Orato.com, Mark Evans, VP Operations of b5media and Angus Frame, Editor of globeandmail.com discussing citizen journalism.
Angus FrameAccording to Angus Frame, Globeandmail.com expects to receive 100,000 comments in March from readers. Frame feels that this greatly enhances the online paper’s relationship with its readers and adds an additional dimension to its coverage of news.

Paul SullivanPaul Sullivan talked about dealing with the “wing nuts.” Orato exercises some editorial control by pushing better stories and contributions to the front page. Other stories “that only their mother could love” languish in a back corner.
Michael TippetMichael Tippet indicated that NowPublic does not edit material. It counts on the community to police itself. He has found that members keep each other moderate through comments. NowPublic’s group of 30 to 40 volunteer editors attempt to demonstrate leadership in this area by flagging both good content and bad content.

Mark EvansMark Evans argued that very few people are citizen journalists. Most people would be better called “citizen observers.” They write about events but they don’t practise journalism. Michael Tippet agreed with Evans, noting that NowPublic sees itself as a news gathering site, not a citizen journalism site.

Paul Sullivan says that he thinks of people as “citizen correspondents.” We’re giving people who would otherwise be voiceless access to the public discussion. “The whole idea of citizen journalism is dangerous in the same way that citizen dentistry would be dangerous.” There is a place for amateur journalism. These voices add something unique and something new.

Angus Frame said that the conversation is really one about what the pool of the masses have to contribute and how they can participate in debate. It’s a new world in how many people can participate and the instantaneous fashion in which they can do it.

And what of concerns about libel laws? Mark Evans indicated that insurance is a necessary element of b5media’s business. Michael Tippet takes the view that NowPublic is not a publisher, but is more like a telephone common carrier. They simply provide the channel for the content. Angus Frame indicated that the Globeandmail.com uses a mediated moderation process. Comments go directly to the site. However, readers can flag content they find problematic and Globeandmail.com editorial staff will then review the comment in question.

Paul Sullivan suggests that he has tried to keep people focused on writing stories more than comments. From the outset, Orato has encouraged people to communicate first person stories. That enables people to talk about things they know best. And in return, they are given final control over their content.

And what of violent and questionable content like the Saddam Hussein beheading video? Angus Frame suggested that globeandmail.com would treat this the same as its current text contributions, relying on its community and staff editors to make the call about the suitability of the content for the site. Michael Tippet argued that as questionable as some content is, it is important to get the information out. Paul Sullivan added that it is a matter of taste. The content is already available on numerous sites. So removing it from an online news site will note eliminate access to it.

Paul Sullivan added that the content on Orato comes “from a different place” than the content generated by professional news organizations. It reflects the interests and the background of the contributors in a way that professional journalism tries not to. It also comes from places that have fallen out of the catchment patterns of traditional news organizations. Remote places and places in which front page news is not being generated.

Angus Frame acknowledged that the new engagement of readers in conversation with the news outlet has led to much more feedback on the quality and content of the coverage generated by the news organization. This is humbling. But it also makes the news organization better as it receives and incorporates this feedback.

Back to the question of whether it is citizen ‘journalism.’ Michael Tippet says whether ‘it’ is journalism is not important. What is important is that people want to do ‘it’. They are writing. They are videotaping. And they are uploading new content. What is important is that it’s happening – whatever it is called. Angus Frame asked, if it’s of value and used by the audience, why does it matter what it is called? If we can achieve a discourse between citizens, then that is what is important. Webster’s dictionary can decide what to call it.

Broadcasters and distributors discuss alternate channels for media content delivery

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Non-traditional media delivery of content has moved into the mainstream. And a panel of Scott Dyer, EVP of Corus Kids, Claude Galipeau, Senior VP Digital Media at Alliance Atlantis, Michael Hennessy, VP, Wireless, Broadband and Content Policy at TELUS and Brady Gilchrist, EVP Strategy and Head of BlueScience at Fuel Industries gathered to discuss its implications.

Scott: Webkinz can be thought of as programming. It’s providing a compelling content experience. It’s generating a huge amount of loyalty. And it appears to have some kind of revenue behind it. Is it a channel? Not now. A channel is an aggregator. Could it be a launching point for a channel? Yes, possibly.

Claude Galipeau: Three years ago, no one thought of social media as a likely source of assembling huge audiences. But it certainly is now. And for Canadian programmers, it’s a giant sucking sound going south. The social media sites are experiencing massive growth. And there’s no Canadian site that competes in this space. So, not only is Canada losing eyeballs, but we are losing opportunities to monetize this area.

Michael Hennessy: Telus is in the channels business. Today, half of the company’s revenue is from the wireless business. And Telus is trying to combine content and channels in new ways. We’re reinventing the business because we have to. We got into the television business because the cable guys got into the telecom business. We’re now a multi-platform company. What does this do? Well, if you look at our 5 million customers, we will have 10 to 15 million connection points as customers connect to more than one channel. The social media are bringing people together in communities of interest. And the television networks are picking up on the fact that they can tap into these communities by tapping into the different channels of delivery. At the end of the day, the traditional networks will end up owning this business.

Scott Dyer: From my point of view a channel is an aggregator of content of a particular kind. The narrowness of the niche of the aggregation is a function of the audience you trying to reach and the potential size of it. For us, television has been extremely successful. We’ve always believed that television is the best device to watch television. But if you deliver content that’s appropriate to the delivery channel – for example shorter on mobile – I don’t really care about the platform.

Claude Galipeau: The convention broadcasting channel as a brand has withered away. Channels that are developing brand now are focused on a niche or theme. We want to control the presentation to ensure the integrity of the programming. The issue for us is can we have channels that are monetizable?

Brady Gilchrist: Fuel Industries is a Canadian company that does most of its work in the US. Fuel does branded entertainment. Not a lot of this is being done in Canada. We do a lot of work with brands that are getting into brandcasting. Like Wrigleys. One thing we haven’t been able to invent more of is time. All of the channels are competing for the finite supply of consumer time. With the new generation of gaming we will see the introduction of “smarts” into set top boxes. Even with traditional television, people are using PVRs to use traditional channels as a content pipe. The brand loyalty is being shifted from the broadcaster to the content. This creates challenges for the traditional program distributors in figuring out how to diversify.

Claude Galipeau: The On Demand world is transforming the monarchy of the programmers. But if you look at the ratings, you can see that scheduling flow still works. But we’re certainly seeing the audience act as its own programmer with PVRs. And a lot of broadcasters see this as accretive to the linear broadcast schedule. And it’s particular helpful to serialized drama.

Scott Dyer: Looking at viewership, the research among kids suggests that television consumption is remaining stable, but that consumption of other media is increasing. The On Demand space is additive to the linear space. And even thought our On Demand programming may seem like we are passing control pack to the consumer, we still program it very carefully. It is another way of presenting the brand to the consumer. Linear and On Demand are two sides of the same coin. Looking at our TreeHouse On Demand as an example, it is hugely additive to the traditional lineary TreeHouse schedule.

Michael Hennessy: We really look at broadcasters as partners. Our business is On Demand. It is additive. Never forget that a lot of the drive for content in the On Demand space is the top content in the linear space. What distributors like Telus are becoming is aggregators. Aggregating channels and programming. Helping advertisers to target audiences and niches. However, a lot of this stuff that looks like television isn’t. It’s social activity. And as the time in this online social interaction increases, the opportunities for monetization grow as well. It’s a huge opportunity.

Claude Galipeau: Television is still a very strong medium. Mobile providers are functioning as brand gatekeepers. However, you don’t have this on broadband. So, broadband offers a great opportunities to reach through directly to the consumer.

Scott Dyer: When you look at an aggregation of content, those are the brands that are meaningful. The flattening of distribution gives us the opportunity to program narrower and narrower to interests. The narrower brands will inspire even greater loyalty.

Michael Hennessy: Our game is like the broadcaster did in the past: It’s to aggregate as much content as possible in as many ways to appeal to the broadest audience. The traditional broadcasters are not disappearing. We just want to deliver numbers to advertisers. We want to be huge, but we don’t want to be failures. And being a failure would come from thinking of content as a walled garden.

Brady Gilchrist: The market will dictate what it finds interesting.

Paul Wells delivers!

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Blogger and columnist Paul Wells brought out the largest Third Monday social media meetup crowd yet.

Paul started out quoting from a recent newspaper article that suggested that citizens have become convinced that politicians and journalists are talking primarily to one another – not to citizens. A really ornery political context. Journalists receiving nasty emails. Blogs that pounce on even the most innocent mistakes of reporters. And that describes the experience in … France.

Sounds familiar. But in fact, the French political system and situation is very different from the North American systems. However, the one thing that we have in common is the Internet.

As the new tools of social media have come online, power has been leaking away from the traditional power centres, the politicians and the media and moving to the citizenry – a radical democratization of the discourse that is essentially irresistable.

Two Canadian messengers. Two very different situations:

Robert Libman spoke out in the late 70s against language legislation that the English minority in Quebec saw as threatening to its existence. As a 28 year old, he founded the Equality Party. His party elected four members of the Quebec National Assembly. As a Party Leader, Libman challenged Quebec’s referendum law before the courts. He eventually won his case – five years after the referendum. At great cost and to no immediate effect.

Brayden Cayley is an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He was a delegate for Gerard Kennedy at the Liberal Leadership convention last December 2006. Cayley became concerned that the Liberals were going to open up the Constitutional debate again. He prepared a video that he posted on YouTube and sent an email notice of it to all the delegates at the convention. Within a week, a thousand of the four thousand delegates to that convention had seen it.

Look at the difference that a decade makes. Suddenly, the incremental cost of getting in on the great debates of the day is zero. You need a computer, an internet connection – and you can have an impact. And you don’t need to ask anyone.

As power democratizes, it makes it harder to trace, harder to define and harder to control.

The new power is diffused. It can be spread through thousands. And therefore, it can is likely to be less effective than other newer strains of new media.

Blogging’s Canadian political coming out was intended to be the 2006 Liberal Leadership convention. Bloggers marginalized themselves by hanging out in the blogger lounge, failing to mix on the convention floor. The truly engaged Liberal bloggers posted rarely as they were too busy talking to and twisting the arms of the other delegates. The few who did post regularly produced posts of little value and insight.

Sadly, Canadians do not have a lot of political bloggers with the depth of some of the leading American political bloggers. The fruitsandvotes.com political blog has a Canadian section that shows more insight and authority than the Canadian political blogs.

Canadian political bloggers need to get serious, quit their day jobs and begin to dig deeper.

Other new media, such as YouTube have greater potential than blogs for the best content to emerge. The most-accessed, most compelling rises quickly to the top.

Wikis. In the day of Wikis, governments can conduct a consultation online without the need to travel thousands of miles or ask people to leave their homes. It’s utterly cost-free. They can afford to experiment, afford to fail in this – without gouging the tax payer. And that’s worth looking at in this age of increased accountability.

The central assumption of social media is that a thousand people are smarter than any one person is.

Why is opening up and trying this worth doing? Paul cites the example of Estonia. During the Soviet era, if the government knew more about you than you knew about the government, it could be fatal. When the Soviet Union dissolved, the new government invested heavily in technology, the Internet and wireless technology. They used this to give the public unprecedented access to information the government holds about them and also to the people who are accessing this information. Cabinet meetings are essentially live-blogged. The decisions are public decisions, with decisions taken announced to the public within minutes of being made. People now know what their government knows about them and they know what there government is doing.

I f this can be done in Estonia, it can be done elsewhere. Like here. In Canada.

Which brings us to Stephen Harper. He understands the importance of channeling information through the new media around the traditional media. That’s why Harper was posting audio and video of his speeches on his Website shortly after being elected. Why he has his own channel on YouTube. Why political blogger Stephen Taylor has a better channel into the PMO than virtually any reporter in Ottawa.

So, what of the next campaign? Wells predicts that the Conservatives will run a very traditional central campaign. Having reporters filing on deadline as they always have. But while they are doing this, the Conservatives will be setting up the next day’s targeted communication – and communicating it using social media. Blogs, videos on YouTube, viral emails.

And what’s the value of the very expensive campaign plane flying across the country loaded with Canada’s top journalists? It’s a great way to cage them up.

Coda: In a question about the relevance of Paul’s Inkless Wells blog to his employers at Rogers and Maclean’s Magazine: The further you go upstream, the more interested the executives are in new media. Roughly speaking, the parts of Rogers business that Orson Wells might recognize – the traditional print properties might generate $1 of profit. The core cable business – the business that Harvey Kirk might recognize probably generates $2 in profit. The new electronic businesses, especially the wireless business, that didn’t exist 15 years ago, generate $4 in profits. And that drives the interest of the most senior executives.

“I started the blog as a hobby and now it may save my career. ;-)”

Thus said Paul Wells.

Third Monday catches a great speaker, Paul Wells

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Paul WellsWe have a great speaker lined up for the February Third Monday, Paul Wells of Maclean’s Magazine.

Paul’s Inkless Wells blog is an agenda setter in Canada’s capital. He posts on events – before they happen, while they are happening and or soon after they conclude – with an immediacy, insight and wit that makes him a must-read for other political bloggers, journalists and politicians. For many people, it’s Paul’s blog that sustains top of mind awareness for Maclean‘s, the weekly news magazine for which he writes a column. And to keep a weekly outlet relevant is a real accomplishment in the post-deadline age.

Third MondayPaul’s first book, Right Side Up, was published in late 2006. I’m only about a quarter way into it. But so far, it’s a pretty interesting, pull-no-punches read.

If you plan to be in or near Canada’s capital on February 19, treat yourself to an interesting evening of discussion with Ottawa’s social media community and a journalist who’s straddling social media and main stream media. Sign up to attend at the Third Monday social media meetup site.

Toronto Star newspaper afternoon edition in PDF format. What are they thinking?

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Toronto StarIn September, the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation daily newspaper, began publishing an afternoon edition in PDF form. CJR Daily has an interesting interview with two editors from the Toronto Star, who explain the thinking behind this initiative.

The Star is a great newspaper. And I think that the people at the Star are working overtime to explore the potential for their content of the new delivery channels and socila media. However, when I first heard of this initiative, I couldn’t quite understand what they were up to. And this interview only makes me think that this concept is fatally flawed.

First, in reading the interview, it seems that this initiative is rooted primarily is a demand on the part of Star employees to bring back an afternoon edition. There’s no sense in the interview that the paper’s readers were looking for something like this.

To the extent that the readers’ needs and wants figure into the Star’s thinking, it seems to relate to a belief that there are people who don’t have time to look at the online edition during the day, but who will have the time to download and print an eight to twelve page mini-edition of the newspaper.

Columbia Journalism ReviewEBC: Still, at first glance the idea of a new afternoon newspaper does seem counterintuitive. Why create an entirely separate edition of the paper when you can already post breaking news articles on the Web site during the course of the day?
Michael Babad: Yeah, you ask a really good question there, and it’s one that obviously we kicked around. The idea is the Star‘s Web site gets heavy traffic, so we know in fact (as you suggest) that people are looking at it throughout the day, but a couple of things. Not everybody can look throughout the day because of whatever their work environment is, and there are some [features] you can’t necessarily find — so I guess the key thing here is that editors, who have for eons put together newspapers by picking the stories, editing the stories, and presenting the stories, are giving you something that is pre-packaged, where you can at a glance get the top stories of the day, what we feel you might be interested in, plus some special things that go beyond just breaking news, like lifestyle stories, entertainment stories, puzzles. …

Huh? And people who don’t have time to read through the easily navigable home page of the star online will have time to download and print a PDF? And they’ll also want to take it with them to read during their commute after such a busy day? This sure seems counterintuitive to me.
And why did afternoon newspapers dies out in the first place? Wasn’t it because of competition from up to date, evening radio and television news broadcasts? Add to the current mix downloadable podcast content, the ability to take emails and web content out of the office on BlackBerries and even to use these devices to surf the web for up to the minute content – and it seems to me that the Star is chasing a miniscule set of readers.

There are many innovate people at the Star and in the newspaper industry. And they will evolve the medium to compete with the new media. But this initiative by the Star isn’t really a step forward. It smacks too much of simply trying to apply the old model to a new medium. And I can’t believe that will work.

Hey guys, don’t put flanged train wheels on a truck!

Linkworthy

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On the Road … Finally Shel Israel and Rick Segal’s Excellent Adventures begin! Shel will draw on his experiences and observations during this journey when writing Global Neighborhoods.

More Evidence that Media 2.0 may be less profitable than Media 1.0 Scott Karp touches a nerve with his analysis of the revenue potential for new consumer generated and social media websites. At the time of this post, he had drawn 19 strongly worded comments – both pro and con his position.
Traditional Media Still Gain Consumers Trust Debra Aho Williamson points to a study released by Lexis Nexis that “that during major national events, consumers turn first to TV, radio and print.” Not surprising. Traditional media continue to have water cooler effect for the really big events.

Edleman, Wal-Mart and WOMMA’s Code of Ethics Constantin Basturea offers a perspective on the application of marketers’ code of ethics to the Wal-Marting Across America flog (fake blog).