Online Media Cultist

Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0, one of the crazy-smartest people writing about the interwebs and what-it-all-means today, continues his exploration of the over coverage of breaking news stories with a piece called The Declining Value Of Redundant News Content On The Web. In this case, Karp uses the Microsoft-Yahoo non-merger aftermath as a means to display how “it’s a problem to have 2,000 stories about the SAME THING,” showing a numbing sampling of Google News results as a visual example of how many publishers offer nearly the same thing about the same story.

I agree that this over coverage creates a glut of stories that are nearly identical to one another, that it presents a disservice to readers who are trying to make sense of it all. But I think it’s important to explore why publishers jump on the bandwagon in the first place. Karp likens mass coverage of breaking news stories to 100 newspapers and 50 TV stations covering a factory shutdown in one single Midwest city. It’s an interesting analogy, but I’m not sure that it quite works.

The global nature of the web coupled with a 24/7 publishing environment creates a never ending chase for page views and ad revenues. In other words: publishers aren’t all covering the same story to provide a public service; they’re doing it because there’s a marketplace for huge stories – massive interest for a brief window of time – and everyone is desperately trying to cut themselves in on a piece of the action. That doesn’t mean that everyone will get rich doing this, but obviously there’s some payoff in hopping on the bandwagon.

The conclusion that Karp comes to is that everyone should “BE ORIGINAL.” Of course, this is harder said than done, and everyone will have a different definition of “original.” Scott likes to use Google News when showing examples of over coverage. And Google News is a great news search engine.

But I would argue that “the answer” – if there’s indeed an answer to this problem – is smart content aggregators and smart people networks to help individuals filter out what is the most important, the most original, the most valuable stories in a fluid environment.

The best example I can think of in terms of a smart content aggregator is Techmeme, as well as Memeorandum when it comes to general news and politics. Mixing in individual trusted websites and blogs along with a smart content aggregator or two is a great way to stay on top of breaking stories without getting lost in a sea of sameness.

And what I mean by smart people networks: this can come in many forms, but I’m particularly thinking about Twitter and Friendfeed when it comes to breaking tech and online stories. Building trusted friend/contact networks allows links to get distributed from trusted people to individuals in real time. Social networking sites like Facebook and instant messaging applications like AIM or GTalk can also provide a basis for a smart people network.

So in conclusion I don’t see the deluge of over coverage ending anytime soon. The potential to get in on the action is simply too tempting for publishers. Or, alternatively, many publishers will feel like they’re not legitimate if they don’t write something about a story that everyone else is talking about.

However, over coverage can be combated through a combination of smart content aggregators and smart people networks.

I expressed some pretty strong concerns about Shyftr over the weekend, a site that (until Sunday, at least!) creates community around full text RSS feeds.

There are pretty strong opinions on both sides of the debate. One of the best counter-arguments to my stance came from Scott Karp, who believes strongly in “information disintermediation” (a let your comments go free and they will return to you kind of philosophy), and serving the user’s needs over the content publisher’s. However, Scott couches this argument in the belief that disintermediation works – comments on a story appearing on the likes of Digg, Friendfeed, and Shyftr – only if you can read those very comments collected in one place, back on the original site where the story was published.

I’d be happy to buy into this but unfortunately we’re not quite there yet. Therefore, I’d counter- (counter-?) argue that what Shyftr does is a disservice to both the content publisher and to users, who are still forced to follow the conversation through a byzantine network of aggregators and aggregators of aggregators.

Now, while we’re digesting this lets remember that Shyftr did just change the way its platform works… in part. Shyftr announced the following on Sunday: “We will only display the title, author, and date of an item where discussions occur outside of the reader. We deeply respect content publishers, and it is not our intention to cause unease.”

It took me some time to wrangle with what this change meant, and I’m still chewing my brain on it. But while I admire that Shyftr is trying to better respect the rights of publishers, I still feel that this is a little bit of a smoke-and-mirrors move.

In essence, it’s saying: you can still read the full text here (without having gotten permission from the publisher to republish the full text RSS feed on the Internet) and, what’s more, if you want to comment, follow us behind Door Number Two where you can comment away on a page where we don’t provide the full text of the story.

Beyond being an awkward user experience, I don’t see how this fundamentally changes my original arguments.

Louis Gray continues to defend Shyftr gamely, writing:

Unlike some have speculated, Shyftr is not on the dark side of the Web, a content scraper or a splogger (spam blogger). Instead, the service is trying to grow and find a niche where friends can share and comment on feeds, and over the last few months, I’ve grown to like the service and respect the individuals behind it, so I hope they can overcome this blip and work with the blogosphere.

I have to say that for where we are right now, Shyftr needs to stop publishing full text feeds. Doing that will place it back within a range where publisher rights are protected and user needs are being met.

Scott Karp uses the Eliot Spitzer story – no, not the tawdry bits but the fact that is a wall-to-wall, traditional/new media Media Event of Proportions the Likes of Which – to talk about link journalism: “There is a HUGE opportunity for news brands to redefine what they do for such “media frenzy” stories — to focus on helping news consumers find the BEST coverage of the story.”

In other words, Karp found 2,580 stories covering the Spitzer story on Google News. Many of these stories were retreads of a much tinier number of original reports, with many opinions and angles thrown in from all over the web and all over the world.

Karp smartly points out the growing need for online reporting that covers this wide world of reporting:

Here’s the really interesting question — what are the five Eliot Spitzer stories according to EVERY news brand covering it via link journalism? What’s the collective judgment of the hundreds of news brands swarming over this story on who’s got the best coverage?

I would go even further though. If a news source was able to grab the five strangest stories about the Elliot Spitzer story, the five stories most off the mark, five most interesting stories from bloggers outside the US or Europe, the five stories that best showcase the impact on the 2008 presidential elections, and on and on… this would be in effect outstanding original reporting, or link journalism as Karp says.

Karp points to his own Publish2, currently in private beta, as a place that will bring the “best news on the web.” I look forward to checking it out when it opens up to the public.

There’s no one more interesting to read, in looking at the future of technology from a consumer standpoint, than Mark Cuban.

Case in point is a recent piece called IntraNets vs InterNets, in which the Blog Maverick speculates that the future of the Internet is actually… not the Internet, but Intranets, “a contained network managed to optimize the performance to meet the needs of the participants on the network,” which can theoretically provide download or “throughput” speeds vastly higher than what is currently possible over Internet connections.

Applications built on these Intranet platforms could then in theory be far more complex than web-based applications:

Ive sat with several of these network providers and what I’m telling them, and I think they are listening and following through, is to offer a platform or intranet applications. A platform for applications that confirm that the user and application host are on the same network, or possibly even on the same network segment. Make 100mbs or higher throughput a guaranteed service level to that application.

When that happens, people a lot smarter than me will come up with applications that blow away anything we are seeing now. I dint care if you call it Web 10.0 or whatever, but the reality is that the applications we will see then will be amazing.

Another must read when looking at the (nearer term) future of the Internet is Scott Karp’s Publishing 2.0. I’ve been following closely of late an in depth exploration of how newspapers are scrambling to increase profitability in the online space. Each day provides a fascinating analysis and proves out Scott’s theory that the current standardized online advertising model doesn’t do justice to the current online publishing marketplace.

It’s an exciting time, and we’re lucky to have minds around like Cuban and Karp who are several steps ahead of the conventional curb.

Jack Lail over at Random Mumblings was kind enough to nominate OMC for something called the Thinking Blogger Awards, which is sort of an ongoing meme where bloggy folk nominate five blogs they dig and that get their cranium cranking.

According to Jack – who is the managing editor/multimedia for The Knoxville News-Sentinel – the awards date back to February 11th of this year on The Thinking Blog, which kind of makes sense, I would say!

So, without further adieu, these people make me get my think on:

1) Tony Hung at Deep Jive Interests. Tony delivers provocative and original ideas with regularity, which is saying a lot given the noise and clutter and talent out there. He also tends to cover a lot of the topics that I’m most interested in!

2) Scott Karp at Publisher 2.0. As I’ve written before, Scott provides an intellectual and philosophical perspective on the massive changes going on in technology and media and the convergence of traditional and new media.

3) Mark Cuban at Blog Maverick. While many people know Cuban as a guy who made a lot of money in tech and then went on to buy a basketball team, he’s one of the most original and outspoken people in the blogging game today. This guy is several steps ahead of the curve, particularly in terms of where video and television and the distribution of content is headed.

4) Jason at Webomatica. Webomatica is a fun and interesting site that covers online media with a good healthy portion of pop culture for good measure. The good ideas are aplenty over there, which is why it’s essential reading for me.

5) Steven Cohen at Library Stuff. Full disclosure – Steven is an old friend of mine (he grew up on my block on Long Island!) that I bumped into at a conference a few years ago. He’s also way out on the bleeding edge of what’s new and hot in online media. You want new tools, apps, websites, and cool things you can do with the web, Library Stuff is all over it.

According to Jack, The Rules are as follows:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

Growing up on Long Island, it was my daily ritual to grab whatever part of Newsday I could get my hands on to read during breakfast. These days, I have my laptop and while I do a cursory scan of the news headlines (and typically get a shot of politics via ABC.com’s The Note), it’s the online media blogs that have emerged as the places I spend most of my reading time.

Compiling a Top 10 list was both easier and more difficult than I thought it was going to be. My favorite of favorites were quick plucks, but near the bottom of the list it got rough going as to who would make the final few slots.

This list of course reflects my own interests and passions, which include: online media and the web 2.0 world in general, blogging-as-profession, the blogosphere, social news, social networking, the MSM-blogospheric convergence, start-up culture, and online entrepreneurship.

I’ll try to update this list over time to see what additions and changes may be warranted.

#1 - mathewingram.com/work - Mathew Ingram
Ingram, a technology writer with The Globe and Mail in Toronto, combines the best elements of journalism with the best of the blogosphere, making for a smart, interesting, and opinionated take on news related to a wide range of online media- and tech-related issues. I find I most often agree with Mathew’s takes, which occasionally are controversial, so more than anything this is the case of an online publication that perfectly suits me, the reader. That more than anything is a wonderful endorsement of the blogosphere and online media as Long Island (and, now, Pasadena) is a long way away from Toronto!

#2 - The Jason Calacanis Weblog
Jason Calacanis is fun to follow. Former CEO of Weblogs Inc. and “relauncher” of Netscape as new styled social news engine, Jason is for the moment an “Entrepreneur in Action” for Sequoia Capital. He also can’t help but write brief, passionate, and decidedly outside-the-norm opinions on a wide array of subjects. From following his blog babies from Weblogs to strategizing the LA housing market (no easy feat!) to making an impassioned blogospheric plea regarding the Genarlow Wilson case, this is a must read blog for ambitious bloggers and online media cultists.

#3 - TechCrunch - Michael Arrington
TechCrunch has become something of the daily online newspaper for all things web 2.0. This is the preeminent place to find out what start ups are up to and what moves the big guys are making in the online space. Arrington is opinionated and occasionally self-inflated, but the information that he pumps out day-after-day makes TechCrunch an absolute must to stay afloat in the 2.0-ish rapid currents.

#4 - Mashable! - Pete Cashmore
Mashable! has evolved into a TechCrunch for those interested in social networking and the massive changes going on in that space. No one else keeps up with the dizzying myriad of social networking, widgeting, and third party add-ons like Cashmore and Mashable!

#5 - ProBlogger Blog Tips - Darren Rowse
Yet another must read for bloggers, this is Blogging 101 for bloggers who are serious about increasing readership and making money from self-publishing online content (extremely difficult feats, both). It helps greatly that Darren is relentlessly positive and upbeat and provides a steady stream of tips, updates, and strategies for the blogging life. He’s also deeply enmeshed in the community side of things, which is certainly leading by example!

#6 - BC Magazine – Sci/Tech - Phillip Winn, Daniel Woolstencroft, Steve Wild, Raoul Pop, Diane Kristine, Bruce Kratofil, John Vaccaro, and many others!
I can’t leave out my brethren and sistren over at BC Magazine’s Sci/Tech section. Each day you can find a great variety and diversity of news and opinions on the tech and online media worlds.

#7 - How to Change the World - Guy Kawasaki
On his about page, Guy boils down his entire mission statement to two words: empower entrepreneurs. And that’s what each post gives you: tightly focused advice on how to reach the next level, whatever that might be. Again, I must gravitate toward positive and forward-thinking personalities, and Guy is nothing else if this. Inspirational and practical stuff both.

#8 - Publishing 2.0 - Scott Karp
Scott is unmatched in shedding “web 2.0″ and the current state of online media in a philosophical and intellectual light.

#9 - Blog Maverick - Mark Cuban
Self-made millionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is delightfully blunt and compelling on a myriad of subjects, from the massive repercussions of the shift from TV to the Internet, to why men shouldn’t wear ties, to how NBA referees should do a better job, and that’s just for starters!

#10 - Deep Jive Interests - Tony Hung
I discovered Tony through a recent guest blogging stint on ProBlogger, and he’s quickly become one of my favorites. The good doctor goes deep on all aspects of blog-world, from the blogger v. journalism debate, to the use of widgets, to linkbaiting, and onward.

Honorable Mention
There are many, but I’ll hold to just two:

* Micro Persuasion – Steve Rubel
* Mapping the Web - Aidan Henry

Update: None other than Mathew Ingram was kind enough to point out to me that I mistakenly labeled the great Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 as Steve, not Scott. Sorry Scott!