Must short media always be free?

Remember the flashing 12:00’s on VCR’s? Many people who bought video tape recorders could never figure out how to program them. Convenience is a huge factor in media consumption. Is radio the best way to consume audio material? Probably not but it’s ubiquitous and so easy to use you don’t even have to turn it on to wake up in the morning.

Wasik points out that paying is a speed bump in media consumption. It needn’t be an inconvenience. Songs are short media content. Apple’s I-tunes has effectively figured out how to charge for them by providing convenience. Songs are easy to find. There are many opportunities to find similar things. Purchasing is a breeze. You could probably find the song for free elsewhere but it would take more time, it might be a bad recording, there would malware embedded in it. We pay for the convenience of I-tunes.

Likewise there will be a market for short content when an aggregator provides an easy way to find and pay for it and an attractive interface that keeps the browser around. The speed bump of payment can be overcome by an effective micro-payment system that could charge a penny or less for short content.  Even modest payments to content producers will attract the best ones to such a site.

The aggregator’s challenge would be to find a more effective way than Google to put useful content before the viewer. There are at least two other options. Employ social networking to steer people to short content their trusted friends like or use the Pandora model. Pandora’s musicologists break down the elements of each song you like by dozens of factors (beat, vocal quality, tone, instrumentation) to provide an educated guess about what other songs you might like.

Where do pictures come in? COM597B WK 6

I’ve been having a hard time with Ryan’s dismissal of the image as a ‘weak and subordinated’ mode of story telling.

Can we stop calling corporate flack shops ‘newsrooms’?

Newsrooms research and present information to help create a more informed public. Marketing ‘newsrooms’ create information designed to sell stuff. I’ve got nothing against selling stuff. I like buying stuff. But slapping the name ‘newsroom’ on a corporate public relations office is an Orwellian mockery of journalism.  Whew! Got that off my chest. On to the assignment.

I began considering the program 18 months ago out of the concern that the disruption in broadcast media brought about by the Internet would soon engulf public radio. I felt that high-speed Internet access in automobiles would allow listeners to tune into their favorite public radio programs and other audio offerings without listening to public radio stations. This could reduce the audience for stations, hampering on-air and corporate fundraising.

I felt that stations needed to have a strong presence online with easy access to their vast audio archives and use of social media to extend the dialogue about the events, news, politics and culture that we undertake on the air. The challenges are 1 how to maintain public radio station’s strongest asset, the trust of the audience, in a new form of media, 2 how to master the new media.

A year and a half later my goals remain the same but with slightly less urgency.  High speed Internet in cars is still a concept rather than a reality. The loyalty and support of public radio station listeners continues to increase. Radio remains a ubiquitous medium. It wakes people in the morning and remains a companion in cars, the kitchen, while jogging and gardening. The simplicity and convenience of radio combined with the unique worldview offered by public broadcasters remains powerful to the audience.

COM597B Review of NY Times Video

I go to The New York Times homepage daily but I have watched very few videos. In the course of doing this assignment I found a rich library.

Reflection on Chris Anderson’s ‘Free’

I had a chance to interview Chris Anderson about his cover ‘Free’ in Wired Magazine, which later became the book. The interview was during the KUOW pledge drive so I said I wanted to talk about public radio a model for monetizing free. He demurred.

“You don’t want me to talk about public radio”, he said. “I’m your worst nightmare”. So I asked why.

“I listen to public radio programs like This American Life as podcasts. I almost never listen to my local public radio station, KQED. When I contribute money I send it directly to the shows I listen to.”

The story illustrates both the promise and pitfalls of ‘free’ as a business model.

COM597B Class project proposal

Tell me a story about Seattle – about a neighborhood, subculture, politics (the hotly contested mayor’s race), history (it’s the 10th anniversary of the WTO demonstrations), art, music, sports, people, architecture. Focus on a facet that you feel makes Seattle unique, funny, beautiful, lame,worldly or provincial.

Explore the landscape, transportation, the water (too soon?).  Explore how the outside world views Seattle, a myth about Seattle, truths about Seattle, famous local figures. If you just arrived, what strikes you? If you’ve been here for a long time, tell a story about something you learned. Make a big point about Seattle (there’s a Seattle freeze) or a personal reflection about how the city seems to you.

This idea would work because we all spend at least some time in Seattle. It’s broad enough to encompass many kinds of stories.  It would be fun to see what would emerge from such a varied group of individuals.

Reflection on Class Presentation

I felt pretty comfortable with it. I had videotaped myself doing the presentation which helped with timing. I could see how I would look to others. Everyone I presented to had good feedback and the blog posts were very useful.
Two things I learned – check out everyone else’s power point. Suna had used the same Woody Allen clip with Marshall McLuhan before I did. Bad.
And I was impressed with how Chris used visual images to demonstrate the characteristics of new media. If I had it to do over I would have played audio or demonstrated the differences in audio recording medium rather than just talking about them.

Reflection on Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons”

The Tragedy of the Commons.  Garrett Hardin

Science 13 December 1968:  Vol. 162. no. 3859, pp. 1243 – 1248
Retrieved electronically  2/12/09 from http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243

Genetically trained biologist Hardin argues in this 1968 essay that uncontrolled population growth leads to misery and ruin. He descries the right to breed as intolerable. He points to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, agreed to the year before his essay by 30 nations, as an example of this wrongheaded policy.  The policy says “the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.”

Reflection on ‘Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave’ Joseph Bower, Clayton Christensen

Bower and Christensen outline the consistent failure of businesses to stay at the top of their industries when faced with disruptive change. They explain why this occurs and offer suggestions for how businesses can avoid being left behind. They conclude that paradoxically the reason many businesses fail to remain leaders is that they stay too close to their customers. This close attention to customers makes them successful in the first place but can leave them flatfooted when faced with innovative changes.

Com546 Reflection on ‘Code Version 2.0′ Lawrence Lessig

In ‘Code Version 2.0′ Stanford University Law Professor Lawrence Lessig writes that cyberspace presents a new way to change the rules of communication and human interaction by using the underlying technology to fix problems.

“It is this capacity that raises the question that is at the core of this book: What does it mean to live in a world where problems can be coded away? And when, in that world, should we code problems away, rather than learn to work them out, or punish those who cause them? P. 30″

Lessig is one of the world’s most prominent intellectuals opposing current copyright law. He cofounded Creative Commons, a group which has established method of copyright which allows artists and creators to permit fair use of their material rather than lock in copyright that seeks to maximize profit at every step of the way. He argued before the Supreme Court against Microsoft’s monopolistic practices and in a second case, against companies trying to lock in copyright for all time.

Lessig is not a wide-eyed utopian on cyber issues he does have a romantic belief in the power of technology to change the rules online.

“…technology constitutes the environment of the space, and it will give us a much wider range of control over how interactions work in that space than in real space. Problems can be programmed or “coded” into the story, and they can be “coded” away”.

Really? Even in online video games where players share a worldview, some hack into the code to subvert the rules. In the larger cyber world where the problems are broader and more complex than a video game achieving consensus on code is at best challenging and at worst impossible. Even if there is agreement on what the code should be how would this consensus be enforced? Since the dawn of code computer hackers have been able to change and circumvent code. Open source code, which Lessig embraces, makes modification even easier.  Using code to establish control seems fraught with problems.

Lessig approvingly quotes Mitch Kapor – ‘(web) architecture is its politics’. Code has political implications but it is not politics. Politics is the imprecise humanistic science of governing.  Code is the binary science of numbers. Change in politics involves people and their relationships, exercise of persuasion and power, persistence and incremental movement.  Change in code means one person changing numbers. A better analogy would be that code is like laws. Law arises from the messy process of getting people to agree or respectfully disagree.

I’m not suggesting this is a strong enough reason to dismiss the importance of the code in establishing the rules of the road in cyberspace. But Lessig would probably agree it’s only a first step. Even as code encourages and discourages certain behavior, how do we deal with those who refuse to play by the rules and subvert the code?

Government is the obvious agency to establish code standards but Lessig is doubtful of government’s ability because he doesn’t think current government officials understand cyberspace well enough to regulate. Lessig also has a general mistrust of government. His first concern may be allayed when President Barack Obama takes office. The two were close colleagues at the University of Chicago Law School. And Lessig may get the opportunity to become part of government. He’s been mentioned as a possible appointee to the Federal Communications Commission in the Obama administration.