// listening to the wind pull the barn door off its hinges.
// listening to the wind pull the barn door off its hinges.
Month: December 2008
So says an online current affairs and culture magazine funded by who? Oh, that’s right. A traditional print publication – Washington Post Company! Like I’ve said before, traditional news gathering organizations still provide the best content. Though, I believe that trend is changing. Still, Slate (online news media) is owned by Washington Post (traditional print media).
Good grief! If newspapers stop printing, what will I use to wrap all the Christmas gifts?
We work, we play, we marry, we grow old, we dust ourselves off and keep going, all in a quiet hopelessness, neither loving much nor expecting to be loved much. We hang drapes in our pit and hunker down. All is weariness; what has been will be. And then Christmas comes.
Andrée Seu
I’m embarrassed to say that since college… I’ve been so busy speechwriting for Kerry and then Barack that I haven’t been reading all the good literary stuff I used to read…
~Jon Favreau
NOTES:
1) Mark Warren, “What Obama’s 27-Year-Old Speechwriter Learned From George W. Bush,” Esquire, accessed December 20, 2008, https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5339/barack-obamas-speech-writer-1208/
Big ideas often demand a marketing strategy that is a lot more difficult than marketing gravity…. When in doubt, market gravity.
Seth on the death of the personal blog
From BlogAsheville:
Many local bloggers have neglected their blogs recently, with varying reasons/excuses.
So, do bloggers need a bailout too? No. Read Seth’s take on the personal blog demise:
There’s a difference between a blog about YOU… and a blog about the reader. Guy Kawasaki’s blog, and my blog for that matter, are not about us, about what we ate yesterday or how great we are. They are about you, the reader.
I guess there’s an easy analogy:
Your blog could be like a newspaper (written by a staff)
or it could be like a book (written by an author)
So, enough about me. How about you?
The point is not to show up on a list, the point is to start a conversation that spreads, to share ideas and to chronicle your thinking.
“not all data is equal”
From Seth Godin:
If you looked at web activity, you could rightfully assume that the web consists largely of porn, gossip, Britney Spears searches, trolls, trivia, anger, complaints, flirting and self-absorption.
If you look at the logs of who is calling your toll free number, you could rightfully come to the conclusion that 92% of your customers are mad at you and the other 8% are merely stupid.
If you look at the ads in the magazines you get, you could understandably come to the conclusion that all people buy is cars, pills and shoes….
Figure out the difference between early warnings and selfish noise. Figure out what’s loud merely because it’s angry and personal, and what’s loud because it’s important.
// i know, i know. my inbox is filling up. i left a book at a clients office. press proofs were delivered. and, yes, i will call you.
Brands could learn a lot from rock fans’ loyalty
Rock fans are some of the most loyal people in the world: they wear the t-shirt of their favourite band with true pride, like a badge of honour.
It’s a market that is relatively unknown to the world of fashion, but what’s interesting is that many bands make most their money through merchandise sales, so it’s worth understanding rock fans. The merchandise has to fit the image of the band – there are the standard t-shirts and songbooks but often there is something special which really represents an artist.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I’d add that brand is more about the experience (in the case of rock fans, the attitude), than about the product or service.
// kidlinger calls and says, ‘when you coming home… i’m making chocolate chip pancakes.’ AWRsome! who needs to work when thar’s pancakes?
“You organise your CD collection according to the Pantone chart.”
// isn’t there something larger than a venti?
// i think i saw every hour of the night. oh, insomnia, thy name is kidlings.
// crazy, i can’t sleep, though it’s been a busy day. i’ll try reading a philosophy book on the topic of tradition which i just acquired.
// you know you’re from wisconsin when you walk outside, it’s 29 degrees, and you tell those inside; “yeah, it’s a bit chilly this morning.”
I feel like such a lemming, but here’s my GPOYW (courtesy Adobe Illustrator Live Trace feature).
Clay Shirky: to see how tech can lead to social change, ask people who’ve done it what works and what doesn’t (via socialreporter). Long version.
“The way we hang on to important patterns of behaviour is through storytelling…” (from the video). That is so important. It reminds me of something I heard on this week’s episode of SOF:
Because that is the only way we can make sense out of life, is through the stories.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
// nothing better than a 2 mile hike in 20 degree weather to make me feel at home.
The (read) sky (between) is (the) falling (lines)
AdAge.com opens an article with these dismal facts:
Newspaper ad revenue fell almost $2 billion in the third quarter for a record 18.1% decline, according to new statistics from the Newspaper Association of America. What’s worse, newspapers’ online ad revenue fell for the second quarter in a row.
In another, companion article titled “Huffington Post More Valuable Than Some Newspaper Cos.,” AdAge.com offers this regarding blog value versus newspaper value:
The [$100 million] funding means Arianna Huffington’s news blog is now considered more valuable by its backers than quite a few publicly traded newspaper companies…
The irony is that The Huffington Post “rarely provide original content” (to quote myself) but “select and repackage… information.”
In a CJR piece by Robert Kuttner with an urgent deck that reads “Newspapers have a bright future as print-digital hybrids after all — but they’d better hurry,” he writes of an interview with a 21-year old colleague. In their conversation he attempts to establish an argument in defense of the printed newspaper. Mr. Kuttner writes:
By now I was feeling very last century. And then Ezra… handed me a trump. You have one thing right, he volunteered. The best material on the Internet consistently comes from Web sites run by print organizations.
My take away is this:
- Newspapers that don’t adapt to the print-digital hybrid should go the way of the buffalo.
- Newspapers that embrace the print-digital hybrid should do so quickly and reorganize as a news organization using the full depth of the new media platform. After all, newspapers are content providers who have been relying on a single (print) platform too long.
- The Huffington Post is funded. In a little known interview, the publisher of World magazine made the following statement:
As public companies that do most of the news-gathering cut back on their investments… We see an opportunity to increase news resources in the non-profit world. We may be looking at a paradigm shift in this industry from for-profit news-gathering to non-profit news-gathering.
Coffeehouse Junkie 