Dana Blankenhorn

News Sites Play Hide the Pickle

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 16 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Throughout the Web, the information with the highest cost and lowest return is news.

For me to appear at an event in person, I have to get dressed, get there, stay there, and get back home. It's a full day production. It keeps me from doing anything else.

The problem is that all this effort doesn't bring me any more page views than I'd get from just picking the story off the wire and commenting on it. Less, because I'm not a major news player.

The problem I face is exponentially greater for the major news player. Everyone links to the first person with the story, sometimes with credit but more often not, and the number of page views the first-mover gets may be relatively small. This isn't all bad. Often, the best story is the one that is well-considered, that brings in other facts, that's researched with links and thought through before it's published.

As a result, news sites have been engaged in a growing game I call hide the pickle.

Round Two of the Copyright Wars

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 13 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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I have been following the copyright wars since their inception, in 1997. I watched the passage of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, and the No Electronic Theft Act.

Both had a similar aim, to keep people from stealing making and re-selling copies of material subject to copyright, now that technology allowed for clean (or nearly clean) copies.

My sympathies here are purely with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and blogs like Boingboing, which hate these laws as attacks on freedom of speech, of association, and the free exchange of ideas.

Time Is Money And Money Is Time

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 12 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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All the talk about the price of content misses the point.

Content has a price, always. Whether you're reading content, listening to it, or watching it on a screen, the price is your time.

Time is the most valuable asset any of us have. Our time is limited. We must spend big hunks of it sleeping, eating, and traveling. We spend a third or more of our time making the money we need to sustain us.

What's left, the time available for content, is thus very precious.

I got a clue on this when I received an Amazon Kindle Fire for Christmas. I'd gotten Amazon Prime for the cheap shipping, thus I suddenly had access to all sorts of “free” content. Lots of TV shows I missed, lots of movies. Too many, it turns out. When I try to catch up on a series I thought I'd like, I find I'm taking time away from reading I could be doing.

Cheap Corruption of the Tea Party

Like the Civil Rights marchers of a half century ago, the Tea Party came to Georgia politics determined to make a big difference, and to be better than the sleazy politicians who bent to every wind.

They're not. There has been plenty of corruption in African-American politics. Since I've lived in Atlanta I have seen my city's mayor convicted of it, watched a succession of city councilmen and school board members resign in shame over it. Even our sheriff shot his deputy, for the crime of running against said sheriff, and winning. 

To a degree today's Tea Party rising in Georgia is a reaction against all that. They see the Clayton school district lose its accreditation, the Atlanta schools mired in a cheating scandal, and the DeKalb Schools run so badly the board has to be replaced. They have a lot to be angry about, and figure they, from their exurban lairs, can run things better than those who live and vote in the affected areas can. Thus we have the spectacle of the state trying to take over the city's transit system, which local taxpayers pay for, and basically sell it off to private interests, believing that private is always better than public, and never mind Halliburton.

But what has been most surprising about this crowd is how easily they're corrupted. 

Learn This Medium

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 3 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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There are lots of stories written about how “young people” are “clueless” about using the Internet.

These often feature pictures left on Facebook of people being young and stupid. Young and stupid are sort of synonomous.

But it's true. People have been fired from jobs, or lost an opportunity for advancement, because some biddy saw something they wrote or said online that, in the clear light of day, they probably should not have written, said, or had photographed.

I would hope that, over time, as this medium becomes a natural, normal part of growing up, we might be more forgiving of this. The whole argument is pretty stupid.

The Real Cloud Problem is Identity

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 32 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The whole “cloud problem” FUD being sold by the media and Steve Wozniak over Apple's so-called iCloud service comes down to one word.

Identity.

It's a simple word, one we use every day. And it is a real problem.

But only because we choose to make it one.

Golden Age for Writers

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 29 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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I'm doing pretty well these days. I write each day for TheStreet.com, do a few pieces for Seeking Alpha, and I'm usually done by noon.

But I'm not alone. These are golden days for writers.

The reason is that, while newspaper editors keep whinging they don't know how to make money and that people refuse to pay for news, lots of companies have cracked the code.

1. Identify a business, industry, or lifestyle to focus on. Politics can be a lifestyle.

2. Offer ample opportunities for interaction. Scale it. Keep people talking back-and-forth to one another. You're building a community. Focus on that.

3. Show that your community represents your target market – that you have a big share of buyers in your target – and sell against it.

4. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The Cloud Starts Now

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 26 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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One thing tech reporters often ignore, or forget, is that most companies don't live on the bleeding edge.

It's easier to ignore now, with the consumer market dominated by gadgets that anyone can afford, but which can go from latest-and-greatest to obsolete within a year.

The business computing market isn't like that. It's much bigger, and what works tends to keep working until it becomes obsolete.

So I make it a practice to connect, once in a while, with the realities of the business computing market. And I was fortunate that Red Hat invited me to witness their annual Summit in Boston, so I could listen to their customers.

Last Roadblock to A New World is Removed

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 23 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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In writing about Ipv6 Day, which was Wednesday, reporters struggled to offer a sense of what it means.

We're about to run out of Internet addresses, they said. (Well, there's a workaround, but...) Remaining Ipv4 addresses are rising in price, and we're going to run out of new ones in 2014. (True, but...) Ipv6 is better – more efficient, more secure, inevitable. (As to the last, well, sorta...)

The fact, we've been kicking the can on this for a decade. Ipv6 was actually proposed in 1996, the idea being to expand the address space from four sets of three hexadecimal numbers each – xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx – to eight sets of four – xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx. Instead of having 32 bits – 4.3 billion addresses – you have 128 bits – 3.4 x 10 to the 38^th power addresses. You convert from one to the other by putting zeroes in front of the Ipv4 number.

Publishers Screw Google News, and Google News Screws You

Over the last few years I have come to rely on Google News. It provides the most links to every news story, and scanning the main page gives me a one-minute view of the headlines, not just globally but in my areas of interest.

But lately publishers have been screwing Google News with new policies, and Google News has in turn been screwing its readers.

The reason: paywalls. Publishers think you should pay for reading their stuff. Fine, I won't read my stuff.

But Google doesn't want to piss them off, and still links to it. Worse, it now links without identifying the paywall. This is sometimes because it has made deals with publishers for “publicity” purposes, giving those who link to stories through Google News some access to the actual stuff. (Although if you try to leave that particular page you quickly find you're out of luck.)

It's for this reason that I avoid The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. I can find out what's going on without them, thank you very much. They are not as essential as they think. And if we're forced to pay separately for each newspaper we look at online, how many papers are we going to look at? Exactly.

The purpose of these paywalls isn't so much to make money as to eliminate competition. Make a successful paywall a requirement for competing and there will be a whole lot less competition. 

Worse is what Google is allowing The Financial Times to do. They offer a story on Google News, but if you click on it you don't go to the story. Instead you go to the paper's main page. This is a strategy right out of Murdoch, circa 1998, and it's stupid. I have sometimes found Google adding a preliminary page to this hosing, saying that you're going to some long URL (which savvy readers can identify as the home page, although it includes all sorts of cookie data in it) and you should click here to give permission for the move.

Not good enough.

The old policy made sense. Identify when there's a paywall, or a forced subscription wall. Let me make the choice whether to click or not.

Better yet. Don't offer a link to something you're not letting people link to. (Or charge for the link as you would for an ad, and identify it as such.)