Category: Stuff

Lessons from the (failed) Rocky Mountain News

The newspaper industry today talks a lot about the need to get paid for its content online. But in the late ‘90s, Denver was an experiment in essentially free newspapers. By the peak of the newspaper war, more than 400,000 subscribers to the two Denver papers were paying a penny a day for home delivery. The Rocky was bleeding money and the Post was heading the same direction. So the owners called a truce, asking the Justice Department to approve what’s known as a joint operating agreement, which allows newspapers to merge business operations while maintaining separate and independent newsrooms.

The agreement, written in 2000 under the direction of two seasoned newspaper executives – William Burleigh and Dean Singleton – didn’t even mention the Web. Yet another sign that the Web was an afterthought all along. The Web wasn’t perceived as central to the success of the new business. It was believed that savings from combining the business operations of the two papers plus the ability to raise advertising rates would produce very healthy returns for both owners. Instead, what happened was that classified revenues dropped by more than $100 million a year from the start of the JOA to the end, and national and display categories tanked, too.

via johntemple.net

This is an amazing speech, written with such absolute clarity from a newspaper leader that ended up losing his job along with everyone else at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.

These kinds of warnings have been written for the newspaper industry for a long time now, with special urgency over the last 5 years. But the analyses and recommendations remain largely unheard.

So-called journalists seem to deeply misunderstand their role in society and all the executives are leading the industry, company by company, to oblivion.

Posted via web from jmproffitt

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: An unintentionally scary video about alternative energy

Alternative energy is the next big tech market, the one that will spawn the next Google, or Apple, or Microsoft. But guess what? Those companies probably won’t be based here. As Thomas Friedman pointed out in his column a few days ago, the Chinese are racing past us. They’re investing billions — in physics, in nanotech, in material science, in fuel cells, in solar. They’re going to own this market.

Meanwhile we sit here with our heads up our butts, debating things like a gas tax or whether power plants should have to cut back on CO2 emissions and whether we can make this leap to a new paradigm without hurting our economy (read: without hurting the companies that sell oil and run coal-powered generators and which contribute loads of money to politicians in Congress.)

via fakesteve.net
via fakesteve.net

Fake Steve knows the truth when he sees it.

Posted via web from jmproffitt

Public media execs are paid far more handsomely than you’d think

Former NPR CEO Kenneth Stern, who departed in 2008, is atop the pubcasting list, receiving $1,319,541 as part of his four-year contract. Another former exec, PBS COO Wayne Godwin, who served from 2000 to 2008, was paid $398,063. Current PBS CEO Paula Kerger, $534,500, up from $424,209 at end of fiscal 2007. Rounding out the list, in descending order: Laura Walker, CEO of WNYC Radio, $474,808; Al Jerome, KCET president, $426,688; Jeff Clarke, CEO, Northern California Public Broadcasting, $406,501; Neal Shapiro, WNET president, $400,570; Sharon Percy Rockefeller, WETA president, $391,904; Thomas Conway, WNET v.p., $374,321; Daniel Schmidt, WTTW president, $347,491; William Kling, Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media president, $347,217; Jonathan Abbott, WGBH president, $337,870; Jon McTaggart, MPR/APR CEO, $313,967; Joseph Bruns, WETA executive v.p., $303,108; Linda O’Bryon, Northern California Public Broadcasting chief content officer, $282,360; Paula Apsell, senior exec producer at WGBH, $278,209; Dean Cappello, chief creative officer, WNYC Radio, $272,072; Deborah Hinton, KCET exec v.p., $251,446; Dennis Haarsager, NPR interim CEO, $219,369; and Reese Marcusson, WTTW CFO, $214,397.

via current.org

Of this list, only Kling at MPR and Haarsager at NPR are worth the money. Paula Kerger’s pay is particularly obscene, given how poorly PBS is run from a strategic perspective — she’s a booster, not a leader. Of course, that’s what the stations want (a booster), so it’s really their fault, but still.

It is very true you have to pay well to get good talent, even in the nonprofit space. That said, the notion that any of these people would make more than $250,000 annually is absurd. Only those living in Manhattan would need to make more, given the shocking cost of living there.

Some say you have to have well-paid execs so they can hobnob with the rich and powerful in their towns to raise money. That’s also true, but it’s only relevant if your mission is to be part of, and to reinforce, the existing power structure in your town. If your mission is true public service, the hobnobbing should be an afterthought, not a primary objective.

Please… tell me… who’s breaking the $250,000 barrier amongst leaders of homeless shelters? What about women’s shelters or rape support groups? Anyone working in mentally or physically disabled services camps getting rich? What about community blogging and news projects? Yeah. That’s what I thought.

It’s interesting to note that Jack Galmiche, one of the best CEOs and public servants in the public media world, is not on this list. Yet he led the nation in starting up the “Facing the Mortgage Crisis” project in St. Louis.

Perhaps everyone would grab the brass ring if offered, whispering “my precious” all the way to the bank. Shoot, I’d love to make wads of money, too. But in a public service organization? That doesn’t seem right to me.

Recommendation: $250,000 cap + a COLA for cities with cost of living indices of 150% above average or higher; absolute cap of $350,000.

Gmail + Twitter = Crash

Seriously? Yet another Gmail crash? And then Twitter on the same day?

Gmail only gave me a little trouble (via IMAP) this morning. But Twitter’s now dead and I can’t reply to some direct messages.

Good for Twitter on getting $100M in additional capital. I hope you use it on infrastructure.

And Google — You guys are supposed to be the pros. How can I recommend Google Apps if all you can do is crash every two weeks?

Sheesh.

Posted via web from jmproffitt

Yeah, I’ll take my chances with that $1,305 payout anyway

We find that mortality increases following the arrival of monthly Social Security payments, regular wage payments for military personnel, the 2001 tax rebates, and Alaska Permanent Fund dividend payments. The increase in short-run mortality is large, potentially eliminating some of the protective benefits of additional income.

via nber.org

If you haven’t seen Alaska retail around PFD time, you’re missing quite the spectacle. Big TVs, cars, guns, snow machines, booze — it all goes out the door so fast it makes your head spin… at which point you crash your car and die.

But I’ll take my chances this year, just like the last 7 years.

Posted via web from jmproffitt

Google Sidewiki launch

Help and learn from others as you browse the web: Google Sidewiki

What if everyone, from a local expert to a renowned doctor, had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through?

Now you can. Today, we’re launching Google Sidewiki, which allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page.

[YouTube Video]

In developing Sidewiki, we wanted to make sure that you’ll see the most relevant entries first. We worked hard from the beginning to figure out which ones should appear on top and how to best order them. So instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed. If you’re curious, you can read more on our Google Research Blog about the infrastructure we use for ranking all entries in real-time.

Under the hood, we have even more technology that will take your entry about the current page and show it next to webpages that contain the same snippet of text. For example, an entry on a speech by President Obama will appear on all webpages that include the same quote. We also bring in relevant posts from blogs and other sources that talk about the current page so that you can discover their insights more easily, right next to the page they refer to.

We’re releasing Google Sidewiki as a feature of Google Toolbar (for Firefox and Internet Explorer) and we’re working on making it available in Google Chrome and elsewhere too.

Posted via email from jmproffitt