Howard Owens

NOTE: My goal with "MP3 of the Day" is to find great, free, non-DRM MP3 downloads. If you have a tip for a good source, leave a comment.

Mindy McAdams left a comment on this post pointing to a video she found not boring. What I found most interesting is that the video was shot with lo-fi equipment, thereby proving that you do not, indeed, need to spend a lot of money to achieve quality results. The expense on this video is even less than anything I've ever proposed.

UPDATE: Here's a post from Cyndy Green (the veteran TV-journalist turned teacher who produced the video above) where she talks a bit about using lo-fi gear to achive quality results.

Again, the point is it is not the gear that makes the story - it’s all in the mind of the videojournalist. Once you know the process and have the basic gear, you can do nearly anything.

NOTE: My goal with "MP3 of the Day" is to find great, free, non-DRM MP3 downloads. If you have a tip for a good source, leave a comment.

Steve Outing gives us a lot to think about in his latest E&P column, Advice for Small Newspapers. It's certainly an important and worthy topic, especially since there are WAY more small papers than large ones.

1. Copy and build from the industry leaders

Among the sites Outing suggests emulating is Bakersfield.com. Good advice, and the social networking/citizen journalism stuff is important, but the easier stuff for small papers to steal from Bakersfield are the video and blog models. It's pretty basic and affordable stuff.

2. Don't hire print-focused employees

Outing suggests hiring more recent grads. The problem is, I've run across far too many recent J-school grads that are as traditional in their thinking as any crusty old city editor you care to name. I've talked to other hiring managers about how hard it is to get recent J-school grads to take positions in the online departments -- they all want to work for print. I've seen shiny new grads in newsrooms who won't pick up a video camera or file a web-first story. It's a pretty amazing phenomena. Instead, you need to develop an interview process that helps you discover who is really passionate about online. It's not enough to be able to know how to search Google, find YouTube and buy on eBay. You need journalists who are immersed in this stuff. The best hires already have blogs.

3. Hire a hot-dog programmer, one way or another

Simply put -- we need more people with technical passion and a hackers soul in our business.

4. Find (free or cheap) help and go crazy with experimentation

Easier said than done. I've offered many internships over the years, opened my doors to all kinds of "get your foot in the door" opportunities, and have found very few takers, even when the money will buy more than a beer and pizza. Rob Curley has done great with this tactic, but we can't all be Rob Curley.

8. Utilize the camera-toting army

Digital video cameras are pretty cheap these days. How about setting up a citizen loaner program, where you lend a camera to folks who sign up and let them keep it for a week. The payment you expect for loaning the camera out is a video story at the end of the week.

This reminds me of a very successful effort we did in Ventura about seven years ago: John Travolta was shooting Swordfish in downtown Ventura, so we went and bought a bunch of disposable cameras (this was before the proliferation of digital) and I went out on Main Street and approached local gawkers and said -- shoot pictures for us, and when you turn the camera in, we'll give you $20. We got lots of great pictures (all but one camera was returned) and the photo essays were popular with site visitors.

It also reminds me of what I said before about not buying a lot of expensive equipment -- instead, outfit your newsroom with point-and-shoots ... and use the left over money to arm local people with cameras. In other words, don't loan the cameras -- give them away ... they're cheap enough and enough will fall into the right hands that you'll get some good stuff regularly.

9. Mix up professional and citizen reporting

I absolutely agree. So called citizen journalism should not be ghettoized into separate sections of the site. And so long as you have a print paper, a lot of it should be appearing in print. This helps motivate participants and it promotes the web site.

The bandwagon is getting more crowded -- there's another blog for newspaper multimedia. It looks like a good resource. It definitely gets added to the blog roll and the RSS reader.

Greg Sterling is making his predictions for 2007, and a couple are worth highlighting.

User-generated content: The culture of user participation and content creation across the Internet puts a final stake in the heart of remaining doubt among pundits or brand advertisers regarding the permanence of this phenomenon.

Shouldn't it already be apparent that UGC (or whatever you want to call it) isn't a fad?

Online video keeps rolling: Video continues to gain momentum with consumer-users, often at the expense of TV but monetization seriously lags consumer adoption. And consumers resist online video ads.

My best response: Yes. And: How many video cameras has your newsroom budgeted for 2007?

More newspaper pain but somebody figures “it” out: The print newspaper industry continues to feel the pain of flat-to-declining ad revenues, but online newspapers continue their gains. Newspapers abandon resistance to the mixing of editorial and user-generated content online. And this year somebody in newspapers cracks the code and creates a good user experience that can be emulated across the industry (to some degree). We may also see the emergence of a new, national newspaper ad network.

I'm not sure. First, I'm not sure a newspaper is going to figure it out in 2007, but more importantly, if a newspaper does figure it out in 2007, it probably won't be apparent for two, three or more years. And any newspaper that does figure it out in 2007, given the history and culture of this industry, will be derided as not getting it by a lot of people in the industry -- mainly because any newspaper that does get it figured out will be so radically different that it will offend the sensibilities of a lot of traditionalists.

Andy Dickinson has caught up with an old post -- were we debate Roanoke's TimesCast.  Since the post is buried in the archives and readers might miss the pingback, I thought I'd do this post just to draw your attention to it.  Andy has some good things to day.

My friend Davin McHenry, web editor for The Bakersfield Californian, is now a blogger.

Naturally, the topics of his first posts are his cars and the virtues of lo-fi video.

I think I need to join this Yahoo! Group of video big-spenders.

UPDATE:  As soon as I posted this, I realized the "is now a blogger" is a bit inaccurate.  Davin and I once ran a blog together.

NOTE: My goal with "MP3 of the Day" is to find great, free, non-DRM MP3 downloads. If you have a tip for a good source, leave a comment.

Michael Bazeley is bored with SoundSlides. I tend to agree. I've never been a big fan of audio slideshows (not as most commonly produced, which is as a collection of static photos with music or voice over).

Most of the time, when I watch a slideshow, I can't help but think -- for all the time put into this, why not just shoot video?

I'm not knocking the value of still photography here. I'm a big fan of still photos, both as news and art, but it's important to think about your audience and how best to spend your time in service of the audience. Video, all things being equal, tells a better story. For example, I don't want to hear the disembodied voice of a subject talking over a static image. I want to see his lips moving, the particular tilt of his head or his eyes conveying his emotions. There is a depth of personality that just a voice and picture can't capture.

That said, in the right hands, with the right subject, an audio slideshow can, indeed, work very well. An example is "The House That Brian Built" (disclosure for those that don't know: the company I work for owns TownOnline.com, and I have bit of a supervisory role with it, but had nothing to do with this piece). For me, this slideshow works. It's part the subject matter, part the writing, part the quality of the narration. The danger of planning a static slideshow is that if any of these elements are subpar, you wind up with boring multimedia. Whereas, video, for the same subject, effort and talent (again, all things being equal) is more forgiving.

However, if a still photographer wants to bring his or her photos to life, fine -- do the slidshow and add the audio, but make the pictures move. Use the iMovie "Ken Burns Effect" or learn how to simulate this in Movie Maker or your other video tool. A great example is this piece onMatt McClain's photos from Sri Lanka (note: WordPress plug in is automatically embedding this video, since I'm linking directly to it) Matt McClain's photos from Sri Lanka produced by Bruce McLain for the Ventura County Star, which remains my all-time favorite "slideshows."

Slideshows don't need to be boring. Photographers need to learn to do them better, or start shooting video.

UPDATE: The House that Brian Built won a monthly contest by NPPA.

Paul Conley says he is the epitome of the Wall Street Journal's target reader, and the WSJ changes fit his consumption habit.

It's the Rubic's Cube of online advertising -- how do you get small business advertisers to migrate to self-service advertising, and/or text ads, and/or contextual advertising, i.e., any of the efficient, low-cost advertising models. If you solve that problem before anybody else, you look like the class genius.

When it comes to this class of digital advertising, nobody has succeeded in luring SB advertisers in any significant numbers, not even Google. Greg Sterling estimates that 70 percent of Google's base is small business, but 90 percent of those advertisers are businesses created specifically to profit off of Google AdSense. The mom/pop business is still up for grabs. In this post, Sterling tags AT&T and well positioned to attack this opportunity. I say, newspapers simply cannot cede this business to the phone companies. The revenue is vital to online growth and survival. There is no reason newspapers can't beat print yellow page advertisers in this space -- we can match them sales for for sales force, and online newspapers pretty much dominate their local markets already.

NOTE: My goal with "MP3 of the Day" is to find great, free, non-DRM MP3 downloads. If you have a tip for a good source, leave a comment.

Danny Sanchez enters the long-simmering debate of "is it a blog without comments."

Web managers and newspaper executives should take note. Newspaper folks sometimes think they’re hip to the Web by simply publishing or contributing to a blog without understanding that it is a much more interactive format.

Without  the interactivity provided in the comments (and actually engaging readers), a blog becomes just another publishing platform, an easy way to produce regular pages with plain information on them. And there’s nothing really new or hip about that, is there?

I left this comment:

Newspaper people should pay attention to this post from John Battelle. He highlights some key points about the value of Google page views and the threat of Google someday owning vertical destinations, not just the point of decision. Also, isn't it interesting to consider that Yahoo! could actually be better off switching to AdSense instead of building its own contextual ad platform?

Battelle is linking to this post, with this key quote:

To paraphrase an old comment about IBM, made during its 30 year dominance of the enterprise mainframe market, Google is not your competition, Google is the environment. Online businesses which struggle against this new reality will pay opportunity costs both in online advertising revenue as well as product success.

What does that mean for your newspaper?  You should think about it.

Jack Lail: Just tell the story.

He's right, of course. Story telling and story listening is part of the human experience. It's a key reason we survived the campfire age to build Rome, sail the Atlantic and fly to the moon. In other words, story telling is a survival instinct and how we convey knowledge. It's how we learn about the world around us and all its dangers and possibilities.

Just tell the story.

But story implies beginning middle and end, and not everything that will engage a person's interest is so easily classified. However, if you tell us about people, you'll get our interest. That's what local journalism is all about. So, tell people stories. Give us something revealing about people. You can do that in three paragraphs or 30 seconds as well as 12 inches or 30 minutes. I mean, you don't need a big production to tell us something. A lot of journalists get hung up on the unlimited space of the web and think they can write longer, stream longer or just throw up gobs of documents. But the true beauty of the web is that you are no longer constrained by the need to fill a certain number of inches or a certain number of minutes. You can stop telling us the story when the story is over. You cut the crap and cut the filler. Besides, on the web, where attention spans are short, shorter is better. Just tell us something interesting about people, but don't try to make the story something it's not.

NOTE: My goal with "MP3 of the Day" is to find great, free, non-DRM MP3 downloads. If you have a tip for a good source, leave a comment.

NOTE: My goal with "MP3 of the Day" is to find great, free, non-DRM MP3 downloads. If you have a tip for a good source, leave a comment.

Publishers who run AdSense should know about this: A service that blocks low-paying contextual ads called AdSense Blacklist. There's a real problem with AdSense in that a lot of low-quality ads are running with increasing frequency (the built-for-AdSense-only business that bid high, but aren't necessarily delivering a real service). If you're interested in serving readers well with AdSense (advertising is, after all, content), then you want to block these sites from your AdSense rails.

When Along Came Jones becomes a world famous blog, just remember who christened it.

Oh, and get what JJ says about the overused word, "bako,"

For me the word Bako conjures up images of being stuck in a tar pit and dying in the sun while birds tear at my flesh, I dunno that’s just me, so bakojones was out of the question. Don’t get me wrong I like the word Bako I have it as part of an email address and one of my dear friends from back in the day was the first person I ever heard use the word Bako in reference to Bakersfield like calling San Francisco “Frisco” or some such.

Yeah, but not call it "Frisco" the the face of anybody from Frisco, or you're likely to lose your face. Friscoians hate the word for some reason. Maybe it's time to retire "bako" in a similar fashion. Whadda say, Jones?

The is shocking: Social media is no mo. In the post, Steve Rubel proclaims that social media is dead. This has caused a stir in the blogosphere.

But you have to read the post to get what Rubel is saying.

There's no point in differentiating any more. The story that Dan Gillmor chronicled in his landmark 2004 book We the Media has only accelerated. We are all one and it's silly to classify us into two different species.

Rubel's point is that with established publishers joining the conversation, and conversational publishers evolving into going business concerns, Packaged Goods Media and Conversational Media are converging.

There's some truth there.

But it's worth noting that what we now call social media is nothing new. Back when I was a young buck just starting out this business (11 years ago), we called social media virtual community. The web, with its hyperlinks and personal-publishing frameworks is by design social. In a way, you can't enter web publishing without joining the conversation. It's foolish to try and be a PGM publisher on the web. What 2006 wrought was a lot of light bulbs going off in a lot of publishers' heads: "Well, hell, I ain't growing audience no more with my shovelware. Guess I better get me a blog or two." (And really, for most newspaper publishers, the thinking hasn't gotten much more beyond that so far).

So Rubel is only half right. In a way, we've always been converged. In another, PGM publishers still only see through a glass darkly and haven't fully grasped what it means to participate in the online world. In that last respect, Rubel is overly optimistic. It gives PGM publishes way too much credit for getting it and doing it.

The other key factor to 2006 was the vast improvement in conversational tools and models. The thing to keep in mind here though is that the web is yet but a mere decade or so old. The personal computer didn't really become a household appliance until 20 years or so after is introduction. If that is the adoption rate of the web, what we know of the online publishing is probably only about half of what it will be. It's a little early yet to say it's all figured out and PGM and CM are so intermingled that there is essentially no difference.

Wired's predictions for 2007 read more like a nerd's wish list (BitTorrent on TiVo, HD-DVD wins, no more dads, life on Mars, etc.) than an attempt at informed sooth-saying, but still, I had to comment on this one:

Print to Web

A major newspaper gives up printing on paper to publish exclusively online.

Ain't happening. There's still too much revenue tied up in print and not enough online. A major newspaper -- I'm taking this to mean a major metro -- couldn't support it's current news operation with a digital-only strategy. Not now. Not yet. Not for a couple to a few years. The only way I see a big city paper shutting down its presses is if it's a weak sister in a JOA and is largely subsidized by its corporate parent as an online-only experiment (something I've long thought Scripps should do with the Cincinnati Post (I believe that JOA was slated to end, but I'm not sure of the current status)).

Here's when newspapers will stop rolling presses: When digital delivery has become so much more efficient that the cost savings will entice publishers to essentially force subscribers to give up print. Revenue will have to get better of course, but what I'm saying is that the killer of print won't be so much lost revenue or increased revenue opportunity, but cost savings -- eliminate the press, the press men, the trucks, the drivers, the newsracks ... all of those polluting, environmentally wasteful inefficiencies of print delivery. Some day, that will very much tempt publishers. But we're still years away from that ... say two to five years. But when mobile devices get better, or digital ink arrives, or households become widely wired at 10mb, then publishers might have the efficiencies needed to kill print.

NOTE: My goal with "MP3 of the Day" is to find great, free, non-DRM MP3 downloads. If you have a tip for a good source, leave a comment.

Steve Yelvington is encouraging news site managers with forums and comments on stories to make a special effort in 2007 to get rid of the bad actors, the guys and gals who start flame wars, get nasty, throw tantrums and are generally uncivil and uncouth.

He's absolutely right, and I know for a fact cracking knuckles works.

Interactive features are far too important to your community and your business to be left unmanaged. They require staff guarding and participating. They sometimes require a heavy hand. And in the healthiest environments, the best participants help and are recognized and rewarded. But never, ever, should you leave the community to its own devices. The other option -- not having forums or comments -- is the worst possible option. So in 2007, suck it up, and get participation right.

Greg Sterling:

I just spent an hour lost in YouTube, watching everything from Coldplay to Steve Jobs original iPod keynote to a Dutch TV interview with rising YouTube webcam signing sensation Esmee Denters. (This woman will become a recording star off her webcam appearances, which is amazing in itself.)

This is TV for the short-attention span generation.

The power of online video and YouTube in particular will force more and more “on-demand” style programming on conventional TV. Indeed, in a relatively short period of time most of the distinctions between TV and YouTube will disappear. There are now several ways to get Internet content/video into the living room (most recently SofaTube).

All of those who criticize my inexpensive, disruptive, "good enough" approach to newspaper video should pay attention to what Sterling is really saying about what's good in online video. It's not about big production. It's about making it work and connecting with people and being relevant and entertaining.

Three years from now the $1.65 billion that Google paid for YouTube will probably look like a deal.

Did I say deal? I meant steal.

Scoff if you like, but I think he's right.

Network TV executives haven't decided yet how exactly they'll handle coverage of Saddam Hussein's execution.

You know video of the execution will be widely available. There will be quality professional coverage uploaded to web sites, and a variety of citizen media coverage available all over. Newspaper site managers are also going to have a big decision -- whether to make the video available via download, Flash, direct link, or ignore it.

The citizen journalism angle will be part of the story. This is the first head-of-state execution in the era of widely dispersed citizen journalism and easily accessible video cameras.

You could argue that you shouldn't dilute your brand by going in for the sensational and the horrid. You could argue that since the video will be easily accessible all over the net (it will probably be the single biggest download by subject, if not for one single video, on YouTube that day) that you have nothing to gain by making the video available through your own site. Or you could argue that news is news, history is history, and it isn't always pretty. You could argue that you have an obligation to deliver the news without fear or favor and that no matter the content, the story is too big to make nice with.

I know a number of people who will be involved with this decision for newspaper sites read this blog -- so, what's your decision? How are you going to handle Saddam's death video?

UPDATE: It's been about two hours since I posted this. Saddam was hung within the last hour or so. I've already been hit by more than 50 Google searches of people looking for video of his hanging.

UPDATE II: Well, a portion of this post is rather stupid. It wasn't a public execution. Nevermind. However, Iraq is releasing video shortly.

UPDATE III: There was somebody with a cell phone video camera at the executiion and the video is now on the web (meaning, in part, this post wasn't so stupid after all). Nick Belardes found it and embeds it on his site. I've been away from the computer all day, so I have no idea how MSM is handling this.

UPDATE IV: Steve Outing also did a post on this topic and says, "No brainer. Publish."

The post below is my first "MP3 of the Day" post. I've got about 30 of these queued up. I hope this is something I'll continue to do, but I've started many projects on this blog only to later lose interest ... I think that's OK to do on a blog, you know?

My inspiration and goals are this:

• I sometimes get frustrated at how hard it is to find quality, free MP3 songs. I figure if it's an interest of mine, and hard for me, too, it's hard for others who are interested as well.
• I think the CD/Album is dead. The MP3 is the 78 record of the digital age. It's all about the single song (by the time 45s came along, we had LPs). The fee-based services have two faults: They are LP-oriented (though single song purchases are possible, the navigation isn't really about one-song downloads, and besides, 99 cents is too expensive), and all but one are weighed down by DRM. (I do have an emusic.com subscription, but I find it's limited inventory almost not worth it.)
• We're all gatekeepers now. You tell me about good songs. I tell you about good songs. Together, we help the best rise to the top and find an audience. We don't need no stinking DJs or music critics telling us what to listen to.
• I want to do my small part to encourage record labels and artists to release more music as free, non-DRM MP3s, and encourage non-DRM MP3s as much as possible (whether for fee or free).

My first song is Goldmine by my friend, the late, great Buddy Blue. He left a legacy of many great MP3s on his site.

You'll note that my version of WordPress includes a plug-in for streaming MP3s. Cool, uh? After I made my first post live, I was surprised to see that, and not pleasantly, but then I figured out how to make a direct link to the MP3 on its host site (all of these MP3s are saved on the original host site).

In most cases, the source site clearly owns the rights to make these songs downloadable. There is one source site I'll use where that isn't the case, but in that case, this site has existed for years and the record companies, artists and RIAA don't seem to mind. For the most part, however, I'm looking for sites that are clearly trusted sources of free, legal, non-DRM downloads. With that in mind, send your suggestions my way -- leave a comment. I'm particularly interested in artist and record label sites that make MP3s freely available. Those sort of forward thinking people need to be encouraged.

That said, I'm not linking to anything I don't like. While I'm not suggesting my subjective taste are the end all and be all of musical quality (though I do think I have exceptionally good taste), I think the only way this exercise works is if site visitors are confident that I'm using my best judgment for my recommendations. I can't offer up a link that I don't believe is quality music. You may not like what I like, but at least know that I'm not purposely sending you down false trails. Your time with these songs should not be wasted.

One last note: I'm offering up the songs with no commentary. I think the music should speak for itself. You're not being asked, per se, to make a purchase here, but rather to invest three or four minutes of your time and see if you agree that a particular song is good. Criticism seems superfluous and even a hindrance to the main task -- getting you to the music. Keep it simple, is my motto. Besides, I should be spending whatever time I devote to this project looking for good songs, not trying to impress you with the wisdom of my musical insights. In this exercise, it's all about the songs themselves.

I hope you like this new feature. If you do, encourage me to keep doing it with comments and feedback.

NOTE: My goal with "MP3 of the Day" is to find great, free, non-DRM MP3 downloads. If you have a tip for a good source, leave a comment.

The finalists for the 2007 Digital Edge Awards have been announced.

I'm on pins and needles, of course, wondering if Bakersfield.com can beat out not one, but two sites essentially conceived by Rob Curley.

Terms I hate:

• User-generated content
• Citizen journalism
• Web 2.0
• Social networking
• Mainstream Media

But you've seen me use them, and I'll continue to use them, because I generally use them in a context where the short hand communicates the proper meaning to an audience I suspect largely gets it.

Terms I like:

• Packaged Goods Media
• Participation
• People (instead of "users")
• Distributed media

This inspired by Scott Karp:

Well, no. There is a revolution in media because people who create blogs and MySpace pages ARE publishers, and more importantly, they are now on equal footing with the “big,” “traditional” publishers. There has been a leveling of the playing field that renders largely meaningless the distinction between “users” and “publishers” — we’re all publishers now, and we’re all competing for the finite pie of attention. The problem is that the discourse on trends in online media still clings to the language of “us” and “them,” when it is all about the breakdown of that distinction.

It’s time we start adjusting our taxonomy to recognize that the tools do not define the activity or the output or the people doing it. There are large publishers and small publishers. There are people who publish for friends and family, and people who publish for professional colleagues, and people who publish for a (relatively) broad consumer audience. The revolution is that ANYONE can publish to the network and that anyone can leverage the power of the network.

While I use terms I dislike, I have a hard time in my own mind separating what the so-called pros do from what the rest of us do. It is, indeed, all just publishing. It is all conversation. That doesn't mean all communication is equal. There is a lot of crap on the non-professional side of the conversation, but not everything that has a paycheck attached is necessarily all that good, either, though some of it remains quite necessary. So if pay isn't the distinction, and venue isn't the distinction, and form isn't the distinction -- what is?

As a matter of taxonomy and clarity, I continue to use these terms, even as in my own mind, the categories of these labels are largely irrelevant.