LB's Rambles

Ignoring the Obvious

I have to agree with Jeff Jarvis on this one: sending 15,000 reporters to the political convention(s) is stupid.

I've pretty well been ignoring the convention this week (and expect to do the same for the Republicans next week) for precisely the reasons outlined in Jarvis's article and in many of the comments on his post. I'm old enough to remember when conventions WERE important, a chance to watch the political system in action - warts, smoke-filled rooms and all. Candidates would be chosen - really chosen, not crowned. Politicians would fight over issues, positions, rules, platforms and all the real inner workings of politics.

Not any more - it's all marketing, spin, counter-spin, and the glorious irrelevancies breathlessly repeated and reported by perhaps 14,900 of those 15,000 "journalists." I used to be one of them; I'm relieved to be out of that rat-race.

Where Do You Get Your News?

The Pew Research Center asks that question fairly regularly. According to MediaPost, the latest indication is that TV still leads the list of news sources for most people - but the Internet is coming up fast, and apparently at the expense of newspapers.

The total number of respondents who said they had looked at a newspaper the day before slipped from 40% to 34% from 2006-2008, according to Pew. Meanwhile, the number of people who say the visit an Internet news sites at least three times a week increased from 18% in 2006 to 25% in 2008.

I think the most significant point, though, is that there is a subset of users who rely entirely on the Internet for news - and their median age is 35, making it the lowest-aged set found in the study.

There's a lot more - check out the article.

The Wisdom of Crowds

...and what a crowd it is: Peter Shankman reports that HARO membership has now passed 20,000.

You don't know HARO? Help A Reporter Out. www,helpareporter.com. It's a simple idea which began life as a Facebook mail list and - to put it mildly - has grown. I've mentioned it here before.

Simple idea: Reporter doing research for a story needs help, ideas, answers, experts, whatever. Everybody is an expert on something. Reporter posts a query. Shankman sends out three emails a day jammed with queries. Emails go to more than 20,000 people - PR people, but not exclusively; as noted, everybody is an expert on something. And the people who can answer the reporter's questions do so, on-topic on pain of being booted from the system.

Cost to reporter: 0. Cost to PR or other expert: also 0.

That's the part that bothers PR Newswire's ProfNet (and their competitors, such as my old haunt Business Wire's ExpertSource). They have for-profit systems set up to link up journalists and PR people - for a fee on the PR side.

But there's plenty of room for both systems. And HARO is obviously working for everyone. 20,000 today...and growing. So a hat tip to Peter Shankman - who created the system and still keeps it going.

What's Not to Like About Good Service?

Last week, my home Internet service had a bad stomach ache and refused to work.

So I picked up my phone and called Comcast, which agreed that the service wasn't working, and scheduled a tech for the next day.

OK. In the past, that would have been the end of it, at least until the tech showed up.

But this time, I also had Twitter, and it was still working. So I sent out a tweet, noting the problem.

A few minutes later, up popped a reply from Comcast's digital care manager, Frank Eliason. I gave him some info (again, via Twitter) and he was able to check further on my problem. And, when the tech was due, Frank stayed in touch until the problem was resolved.

I mention him because today's Daily Dog has an article about how Comcast and other companies are using social networking to reach out to clients. The Dog quotes an article in last Friday's New York Times which goes into greater depth - and has the usual obligatory warnings about how it all feels like "Big Brother is watching you."

Nonsense.

If good service is good customer relations - and it is, and if Comcast has always had what might be termed politely a less-than-perfect record for good service - as it has, then I fail to see anything wrong with their reaching out via Twitter and blogs to improve their service and their image. Hell, as a beneficiary of it last week, I think it's great. Thanks, Frank!

HAROs of Journalism

I've written here before about Peter Shankman's wildly successful service called HARO - Help a Reporter Out. What started out last fall as a small Facebook group has grown into a website and mail list with more than 15,000 people, and the number increases faster than I can possibly keep up with it.

It's a remarkably simple concept: there are two lists. One group, the journalists, submit queries when they're looking for experts on virtually any topic. The other, larger, group consists mostly (but not exclusively) of PR people - the experts who can answer the journalists' questions. Neither group pays a penny for the service.

I rehash all this because Shankman, who is a friend, has now scored a really great article from The Industry Standard. It details HARO's brief history - and the way that PR Newswire, which has made a great deal of money from its own expert source system called ProfNet, suddenly finds itself threatened by a free upstart. If you're interested in the birth, gestation and incredibly quick growth of a good idea, take a look at this story.

On the Bias

Memo to my former journalistic colleagues: the public thinks your bias is showing. Badly.

In fact, the latest Rasmussen poll finds that 49% of voters believe reporters are out to help Obama win - up 5% from one month ago. Only 14% believe reporters are trying to help McCain win.

Perhaps even more disturbing, in terms of long-term trends, is the discovery that 45% believe that reporters would hide information if they believed it would hurt their preferred candidate. And, in a separate poll, 50% of voters believe that reporters want to make the economy seem worse than it really is.

I'm not sure what responsible journalists can do to turn their image around. But they - we - had better come up with something...

Hat tip: Instapundit

Olympic Measures

Think a lot of people will be watching the Olympics? NBC clearly does. And not just on television. So the NBC measurement folks have come up with a very good idea: experiment with ways to measure that on-line, off-air exposure. According to Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog, quoting from the AP, NBC research chief Alan Wurtzel is calling it the "billion-dollar lab."

Measurement has always been a problem for the online world. TV has ratings systems, and - whether or not you accept their accuracy - those systems have been accepted for years as reliable indicators of audience size. Web video doesn't have that same kind of system. Check out the story linked above for details on the NBC plans. A lot of us who are interested in better ways to measure video will be watching to see what NBC comes up with.

Where Do You Get Your Business News?

So here you are with a business news story, and you want to reach the widest possible audience. Gotta get into the WSJ, right? Or the NY Times Business section?

Or maybe you should be spending more time concentrating on online resources. MediaPost's Media Daily News quotes Forbes.com and Gartner as saying that a growing number of affluent decision-makers are using the web as their primary source for business news. The key finding:

In the last four years, the number of C-level executives who consider the Internet the most important and influential source of business info rose from under 50% in 2004 to 67% in 2008--roughly seven out of 10 executives.

As the article points out, that's more bad news for newspaper publishers - who probably don't really need more bad news. But it's a major point for those who have business news they want to get out in front of those C-level executives. And it's another reason why PR and advertising agencies which still don't get the web are increasingly looking like dinosaurs headed for the tar pits.

Brokaw to "Meet the Press"

NBC has decided to have Tom Brokaw anchor "Meet the Press" through the November election, filling the late Tim Russert's seat.

Makes sense to me. Brokaw is pretty widely respected - justifiably so, I think - and his stint at NBC News has included a number of appearances at "Meet the Press." The real question, I suppose, remains: who will anchor the show after the election? Brokaw? One of the cable stars? I think those of us who care about the news business hope it will be someone with enough news smarts to bring off a balanced, tough, fair and intelligent show.

In Fairness to the AP...

As a followup to my last item below, this story continues to develop. As such stories will, it has taken on something of a life of its own.

In fairness, there are two newer, lengthier posts you ought to read - a well-thought-out comment from Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine, and a longer one with very valuable background about the controversy and its background - and why the AP's point of view has been misrepresented - from Robert Cox, the president of the Media Bloggers Association.