Bernaisesource

In the world of blogging, as with most everything else, ranking matters. It is convenient shorthand to see who is the best, biggest, worst, smallest, etc. And as one editor once confided in me, stories with headlines that list and rankings sell more magazines.

Technorati rankings have become a near obsession for a lot of bloggers, and Technorati's top 100 blog list is a blogosphere industry standard. And now there is a new kid on the block, The Techmeme Leaderboard, which lists the sources most frequently posted to Techmeme. As Jason Kaneshiro observed, the blogging elite now have another hurdle to overcome on Techmeme.

According to Techmeme, sources on the Leaderboard are ranked by “presence,” the percentage of headline space a source occupies over the 30-day period. "Discussion" links are not taken into consideration— only full headlines are counted.

It is a mixture of traditional and new media, and as Scott Karp points out, it’s dominated by media brands like TechCrunch, GigaOm and Engadget. There are very few “blogs” on in the “traditional” sense, i.e. a SINGLE voice, like Dave Winer or Jeff Jarvis.

Announced earlier this week, Leaderboard has generated a fair amount of media and blogging interest.

So as budding or jaded PR professionals, what should we make of it? For one, it does represent a fairly accurate reflection of the most influential blogs and news sites out there. And according to Techmeme, “it reflects the reality that both blog-driven sites and traditional sites define today's news, so use it to discover new sources, recommend sites to others, or illustrate where tech news breaks.”

My take is that rankings are a useful guide but PR professionals can’t live on presence and influence alone. Brian Solis reminds readers that you can't ignore the “Magic Middle” (bloggers who have from 20 to 1000 other people linking to them) of the attention curve who help carry information and discussions among your customers.

Numbers just don’t always tell the whole story. Chuck Tanowitz correctly adds that sometimes it is who links to you and not how many – especially if those limited few carry a fair amount of clout.

Nor is targeting the top bloggers a substitute for a carefully planned, nuanced media/blogger outreach effort. The pitch must be carefully tailored. When identifying reporters and bloggers for a possible pitch, I consider the news, the source, and the author.

And so with Techmeme's Leaderboard, we have a new way to rank sites in the blogosphere, and Technorati has a new source of competition. Care to rank predictions on who comes out on top?

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Techmeme; Technorati; Leaderboard; Rankings;

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Ahh, what confusing times we work in.  The Daily Show makes fake news more popular than real news, and marketers pass off professionally produced advertising as amateur content.  Where visibility was once the name of the game, companies are choosing to obscure, not highlight, their involvement.  At the same time, we celebrate candor, openness and authenticity.

Welcome to the world where PR and marketing professionals must navigate between real and fake, news and entertainment, deception and transparency.

When it comes to leveraging user generated content and social media, should we reveal ourselves or hide in plain site?  The new rules of transparency afford us both options.  Sometimes good publicity entails anonymity – lest we reveal the man behind the curtain.   And sometimes it is the man behind the curtain, the inside story, that we want to highlight.

It’s no wonder that Newsweek Senior Editor Steven Levy recently asked YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen at the D Conference this past spring how they felt about YouTube viewers being duped by advertising masquerading as amateur content and what they can do about it? 

For marketing professionals and, increasingly, PR practitioners, it is not enough to be informative, we have to be entertaining.  We can’t be straightforward, we have to be edgy.  We can tease and redirect, but we can never deceive. 

Clearly, hoaxes and fake news are not a new phenomenon.  Well placed disinformation has started wars and ended careers.  But as Robert Love asks in his excellent article, “Before John Stewart: The truth about fake news.  Believe it,” in the Columbia Journalism review,  “Can we continue to trust ourselves? Are we prepared for the global, 24-7 fake news cage match that will dominate journalism in the twenty-first century?...The boundaries have vanished, the gloves are off.”

Consider the following: 

• We accept television ads for pain relievers knowing full well the testimonials made by actors are fake because we know the ground rules; we’re used to the form.

• We tune in the Daily Show and while the subjects are real, the treatment is not.  They know it; we know it.  We laugh; it’s funny; it’s entertainment.

• Or the other hand, it’s decidedly unfunny when Wal-Mart Stores set up a pro Wal-Mart blog and didn’t fully reveal that the bloggers were tied to Wal-Mart.

• Or possibly it’s illegal as in the case of John Mackey, chairman and chief executive of Whole Foods who used a fake name to post pro Whole Food comments on an Internet message board.
   

So when is “fake” acceptable?  Talking to marketers and social media experts, I believe it comes down to intent and context.  Make believe is appropriate when it’s intended to entertain; it is completely inappropriate when it’s deception designed to mislead or advance an unstated agenda.

A wink and a nod to the audience may be the difference between a wildly successful viral campaign and outright hostility.  It’s the difference between the saga of lonelygirl15 who was in fact just an actress and the fake blog of a cosmetically-challenged woman Claire who was just a creation of Vichy, a division of French cosmetics giant L’Oreal.  The former was entertainment; the latter was an attempt at a fast one.

Consumers need to be in on the joke, not made to feel that the joke is on them.  At some point, there must be a sign or signal that what they are seeing, reading or listening to is entertainment or make believe.

And that’s exactly what The Lenovo Group did. Most people don’t they are the world's third-largest personal computer maker.  What did they do?  They went viral with a spoof Web site.  As Steve Hamm reported in BusinessWeek that the site attracted 3 million visitors in first few weeks.  The campaign pretended to let viewers in on some super advanced technologies being tested by the company. The site's anonymous producer had supposedly received some videotapes revealing the secret research. The joke is apparent once viewers click through to the tapes.

So how did the YouTube founders answer Steven Levy’s question?  Chen responded that it came down to a question of trust and individual decision.  He felt that it was up to informed users to decide. 

I think that is true, but it is only half the equation.  We as marketing and PR professionals must act responsibly and respectfully.  The mixed signals in the marketplace don’t give us the right to deceive even as we take advantage of new technology, new forms of content and changing consumer expectations to entertain, inform and ultimately promote our companies and our clients.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Daily Show; Jon Stewart; Steve Levy; Lenovo; Robert Love; Chad Hurley; Steve Chen; D Conference; Marketing; PR; Fake News;

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I am taking a few days off and visiting my dad in Vermont.  There is more than a nip in the air at night that brings back memories of college in New England.  But to be honest, I was thinking about college earlier last week after reading a Wall Street Journal story by Emily Steel about campus newspapers. 

It is no secret that the under 30 crowd doesn’t read newspapers – especially hard copies -- as the latest Pew Research Center for the People and the Press points out.  But don’t tell that to students at universities and colleges where campus newspapers are thriving.

The best I can tell, campus newspapers make news relevant.  They are a mouth piece for the college community and create a shared sense of identity that city and national papers don’t provide.  (In many cities, and I won’t name names, readers have been known to have some choice words for their local newspaper.)  Students have a relationship to their newspaper that most of us lack with our local paper.  That’s because the newspaper is about them and written by them.

Of course that connection doesn’t last.  Unlike the guy (that many of us can recall) who lingers on campus long after his graduation to avoid the real world, you move on after four years and form new relationships, discover new interests, and gravitate toward new sources of information.

Newspapers, though, should take note of that connection.  If campus newspapers are any indication, the issue isn't  reading or a lack of interest in news; rather newspapers must compete for the readers’ attention.  Campus newspapers on the other hand are sometimes the only source about college life.

For newspapers to be successful, they need to replicate that sense of community and establish a bond with the reader that campus newspapers clearly have.  Reader blogs, sites to post pictures and videos, and local news coverage at the micro level are some ways that have been suggested to keep readers engaged.

How to do that is a question for another day.  Instead I am going to do some bonding with my dad and take a walk with him and the dog.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Campus Newspapers; Pew Study; Newspapers;

A couple points of interest this week in the news about news that may spark the under 30 crowd to pick up a newspaper or visit an online news site.

First, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press published its biennial news consumption survey.  Second, it was announced that several newspapers including the Washington Post and The Daily Oklahoman have contracted with Inform.com, an online news aggregator to compete with news search engines and aggregators like Google and Yahoo.  Third, CNN launched  I-Report, a site that allows people to submit audio, photos, videos and other news items for possible inclusion on the web.

The Pew study revealed that traditional news outlets continued to decline as a source of frequent information for the public.  Of particular interest was the finding that the online news market is dominated by a few players including – MSNBC, Yahoo, CNN and Google.  

All of which makes the Inform.com announcement very interesting.  Bob Tedeschi in The New York Times calls it a “counterattack by publishers against Google and Yahoo who have stolen readers and advertisers in recent years.” 

So the thinking appears to be two can play at that game.  Newspapers are going to try to replicate the success of search engines and aggregators and attempt to compete head on to attract and retain readers.

I wonder if replicating a news aggregation strategy is the answer to what ails the newspaper industry.  I read newspapers in print and online regularly.  Having the ability to link to another article isn’t what keeps me coming back for more.

I think the posting, "Newspapers Adopt Blog Linking Strategy" on Blogger’s blog got it right:

“This [aggregation strategy] will be a bonus for online newspaper readers because it will allow them to easily find more news stories covering the same topic.  However, blogs go one step beyond this in that the links bloggers provide are hand-picked by people and not automatically generated from algorithms.” 

For me, the power of new media isn’t only the ability to aggregate news.  It is not about the links. (Too many links in one story can be overwhelming or distracting.)  It’s about the human touch, personalization and conversation.   The challenge is to create an open platform for sharing news along with the ability to provide editorial insight, perspective and discussion.

That’s important as newspapers face the even bigger issue of appealing to readers -- especially younger ones. 

According to the Pew study, "the growth of the online news audience has slowed considerably, particularly among the very young, who are now somewhat less likely to go online than are people in their 40s."  The study goes on to say that newspapers continue to attract "anemic numbers of young readers."

At the same time, the Pew study found that blogs that discuss news events have become a destination for a significant number of young people, especially those 18-24 -- the same group that is reading newspapers less often. 

Looking toward the future, it seems newspapers have an opportunity to reach young readers if they can determine how best to incorporate the social interactive aspects of blogging into their coverage and overall editorial content.  More than letters to the editor, social media has to be a platform for engagement and interactivity. 

Which brings me back to I-Report. CNN may be on to something as it gives an opportunity for citizens to actively participate and feel like they are part of the news process even if as reported, contributors won't get paid for their submissions.  If the success of YouTube.com is any indication, I-Report and formats like it may fuel a passion for news in a whole new generation of Americans.  

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Pew Study; Inform; I-Report;

"If we are to keep moving toward more advertising content that competes with the premium news space, we must make sure the journalism does not suffer. If we keep cutting the news hole on the front page, the section fronts and throughout the paper, we must find ways to make the journalism all the stronger."

Given the proliferation of advertising, I suspect most readers won’t care.  Journalists, a high minded bunch by nature, could be a different story.  More than likely, the loudest grumbling will come from the newsroom where reporters and advertisers generally don’t mix.  Reporters, despite covering constant change, cling to old habits. 

Putting aside the debate on whether blogging is journalism, I would proffer that bloggers are also a high minded bunch.  While at the vanguard of change, we are pretty vocal and conservative about blogosphere protocol.  There is a right way and wrong way.  Pity the ones who don’t know the difference.

It will be interesting to see how the blogging community will react as blogs become more mainstream and adopt practices that run contrary to firmly its held beliefs.  Will bloggers face the same ethical dilemmas if they decide to accept ads on our sites?  Will we stick to our guns or, in the end, will we succumb to unyielding commercial pressures? 

How long is a news cycle?  24 hours?  24 minutes?   Do news cycles still matter? 

According to a new research paper, “The Dynamics of Information Access on the Web,” reported in the New York Times this week, “36 hours is the amount of time it takes for half of the total readership of an [online] article to have read it.”  In other words, stories have a 36 hour shelf life.

In the age of 24/7 cable and the Internet, I would have expected the news cycle to be a few hours at best. 

As reported by Noam Cohen of the New York Times on July 17th, readers read in “bursts” and do not read articles evenly throughout the day.  These bursts may explain why “readership rates don’t drop off precipitously for particular articles after a few hours.” 

For news editors, viewing patterns are very relevant.  They help determine how long a story should occupy prime online real estate and how to package news items for occasional readers who visit websites irregularly.  One of the leaders of the study – Albert László Barabási -- suggested that editors may want to revisit how often they refresh content.  Perhaps there are ways to package content to suit the viewing habits of individual readers to a site and therefore give PR folks a chance to extend the life of a story.

I wanted to take a moment from all the discussion on PR 2.0 to note a piece of mainstream media news:  Dan Rather is leaving CBS.  (In deference to Todd Defren, I am sure the official press release was written old school.)  Much has been written about Mr. Rather’s 44 years in journalism, and he leaves a great deal of controversy in his wake.

As we prepare for Katie Couric’s ascendancy, I wonder if Dan Rather would have become Dan Rather had his career started today.  Can anyone starting today expect to reach the same stature of a Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, or Edward R. Murrow?  In a word – unlikely.  The impact of the network anchor has changed.

Dan Rather is very much a product of a different era when network news ruled the airwaves with a voice of God authority.  Cable and new media have done away with all that, giving viewers multiple sources of news to choose from.  

And in an even more bizarre twist, network news must also compete with fake news or news with attitude for viewers’ attention.  Today new media has made Amanda Congdon a bona fide celebrity even though the size of the audience watching Rocketboom’s 3 minute daily vlog pales in comparison to CBS Evening News.

And if Dan Rather had started today, would he have automatically pursued a network position?  And more poignantly, would he have suffered the same fate had his story about President Bush’s National Guard Service appeared on the Daily Show or in a blog?

It’s all about context I suppose.  Even as the stature of network news diminishes, the public unfairly or fairly still holds it to a different standard.

Let me get back to you.

I find it amusing and somewhat ironic to have discovered a couple of innovative online news management tools in a recent print supplement of the Wall Street Journal.  But to the Journal’s Jessica Mintz, I am most grateful. 

At the risk of sounding old school, I like reading my stack of newspapers in the morning at my desk and going through a separate stack of magazines in my crammed coach seat on Delta or on a couch at Joe’s coffee house in East Atlanta.  

I call these publications my hydra’s head -- piles of newsprint and magazines seeming to multiply despite my Herculean efforts to stay one step ahead of the good folks at Business Week, Business 2.0, the Economist, Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Time, and Wired (but necessarily not in that order).  I can be obsessive about it, afraid of missing out on that one new idea, buried in that one story in one section in one newspaper on one day. 

A magnificent obsession, no, but I am an Internet immigrant, coming of age in a print and video world.  I concentrate better by looking down at a printed page than up at a computer monitor.  I like relying on an informed editor to transform a flood of events into news, and news into analysis and trends.  I enjoy browsing through articles on topics unrelated to my profession that have triggered ideas that have been.

Yet still, I am trying to break my old ways.  I am reading more news online, but candidly, it is a little slow going -- embracing new media bit by bit so to speak.

Bloglines is one of my most recent efforts to personalize and organize my news gathering experience.  Now relevant blogs scattered across the blogosphere are still not getting the full attention they deserve, but at least I have organized them on a single site. 

The volume is overwhelming.  But as Jessica Mintz, point out, there are several new companies coming to our rescue.  More than news aggregators, these companies offer new tools that function as personalized editors.  They serve up content based on your reading habits as well as the collective news judgment and rankings of the community.

Inspired, I went online, registered and bookmarked several of the sites that Ms. Mintz highlighted including:  Reddit.com,  Digg.com,   Feedster.com,   Memeorandum.com, and Rojo.com 

Now there are far more tech savvy users out there who can better evaluate these sites, but I found my initial investigation hard going and less user-friendly than I had hoped.  I will need more time to sift through them, organize them and take advantage of them.  Clearly these sites are examples of how new media is challenging the orthodoxy of what is news, who decides news, who reports news and how news is distributed.

Meanwhile my stack of publications continues to pile up.  In the end, these sites may provide a better news experience and enable me to reference more articles at more meetings and in more conversations, but my dry cleaner won’t be any happier.  Off to wash the ink off my hands.  

Let me get back to you.