News Design School » Lamentations

Does information have to be supported by ads?

Bob — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:06:23 +0000

From an economic standpoint, most information is simply a vehicle for advertising. We see the advertising as a distraction. But so far as the media company’s bottom line goes, the advertising is the point. Without the advertising, the information wouldn’t exist. So the history of information, in the U.S. at least, is the history of platforms that could support advertising. — Ezra Kline, Wonkblog, WaPo

Maybe we need to look at all information being supported by attached persuasive messages, advertising or some other meme. It’s always been this way, even way back when political parties supported newspapers as a way of getting their information out. In some ways that was more honest.

We are heading down a path of no return with information. It used to be that we were considered readers, then listeners, then viewers, then consumers. We more or less willingly accepted the ads surrounding our information as a way to get that information for “free.” In reality, it more or less was free.

But now we’re the ones being “consumed,” with our online tracks being followed by marketing scouts who record our every move for companies interested in our attention. We are tracked on the web, our “customer loyalty” cards are really just ways to trade a few pennies for your marketing information, and customer “surveys” do the same thing, in hopes of winning a prize.

We are talking about a “Minority Report”-like face recognition world where one is bombarded with advertising messages aimed directly at one person. Already we are seeing articles about how to “beat” facial recognition software. It will be a brave new world.

I hope we don’t look back at the good ol’ days when our information was free and so were we.

NDS owner passed over by MacArthur Foundation. Again.

Bob — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:09:58 +0000

Much to my complete surprise, I was not awarded a “genius grant” of $500,000 again this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. So it remains on my bucket list.

They picked a bee breeder, a jellyfish scientist, the guy who wrote “The Wire,” a stone carver, and a violinist, among others. They did not pick the owner of News Design School, an institution that brings the light of newspaper design to downtrodden small daily and weekly journalists.

Since 1970, there have been 828 recipients, and I still am not one of them. I need to find out that group of anonymous nominators and see if they even read newspapers. Even the judges are anonymous. Probably not a newspaper person among ‘em. Sheesh.

How to annoy people with Twitter: 6 tips

Bob — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:45:47 +0000

C’mon people!

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that started out by asking us: “What are you doing?” Big mistake. Instead of interesting slices of someone’s life or cogent and pithy observations, we get tweets like “I have a headache” or “Bad day at work.” Who cares?

Then it morphed into being asked to post the answer to “What’s happening?” That spawned its own crowd of uninspired ego-tweets. Now I get Poynter tweets re-tweeted about seven times and people seemingly racing to be the first to breathlessly tweet some big news in an effort, apparently, to bolster their online status.

Here are my commandments about tweeting:

1. Tell us not what you are doing (“I have just become Grand Poobah of Ed’s Bar and Grill on 4sq”), but what you are thinking about what you are doing. If your only thought is “M-m-m. This beer is good,” you should be embarrassed and I don’t need to know. No one does.

2. Don’t post just links 17 times a day. No one has the time to read all that stuff, including you. And you know who you are. I got a little caught up in this, and I am going to stop. Links to your own blog are okay.

3. Don’t over-tweet. Sending out 23 tweets about what is going to be in your publication tomorrow is not acceptable, no matter how much you need more readers. It is annoying and makes me want to NOT read your publication. If it is a “happening now” event, I will get the news from television or radio. Avoid shameless self-promotion.

4. Don’t tweet personal information. You may be a wonderful person, but I don’t care if you are having a bad hair day, that your cat did something really, really funny or that it is sunny outside (I don’t even know where you are, in most cases). Save your “friendly” updates to Facebook, where people are more likely to care about you.

5. Don’t make us go to twitpic.com or similar sites to look at a photo you took that is, frankly, uninteresting and often delivered without context. We get enough context-less information already.

6. Don’t ignore the wonderful limitation of 140 characters by immediately sending a second, continuing tweet. The whole idea behind Twitter is you get 140 characters and that’s it. Period. If you can’t finish in 140 characters, don’t bother. Edit thyself.

Admittedly, I am a bit of a curmudgeon and my computer is being recalcitrant today, affecting my mood, but I am rapidly tiring of tweets drifting toward the jejune. Can’t we just tweet along?

The Muse is on strike

Bob — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:28:59 +0000

I spent much of the weekend grading papers. That means (a) I spent virtually no time on my own major writing projects, and (b) I was exposed to toxic student writing, which serves to diminish my own writing skills. Those who can string seven or eight words together that actually make sense are disarmingly few.

The muse feels neglected, abused and ignored. She tried whispering sweet somethings and softly stroked my mind, but to no avail. I forged ahead with the grading, headache and all. Now she refuses to talk to me, and she is back on the couch watching C-SPAN re-runs. At least she is not smoking.

Sigh. Back to the papers.

Help me, Papa

Bob — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:53:27 +0000

Have I been a journalist for so long that I can’t write fiction? I have a folder full of story ideas, including a brand new one for a terrific novel, and a one-act play crying out for revision and publication. Yet, I hesitate. Fearful of failure, I won’t even try. The Muse can sleep through this one: I need a taskmaster. She’s still asleep on the couch anyway. Waif-like, she fades to translucent with every exhale. Drool runs down one cheek.

I recoil from fiction to post in blogs, and I send tweets to followers I don’t even know. With articles, I talk to other people. I tell their stories. It’s safer. Easier somehow. How did Hemingway do it?