A growing number of San Franciscans are fed up, not just with startups, but with techies in general. With their apps and buses, their gourmet coffee and skinny jeans, their venture capital wishes and IPO dreams. They’re tired of watching rents soar, friends forced to relocate and beloved neighborhoods drained of diversity.
I understand the frustration, but wonder: Are we embracing a soft xenophobia applied to a sector rather than a race, to some cohesive elite tech class that doesn’t exist outside of our own minds?
Temple understands the frustration because every resident of San Francisco (minus the super rich) knows how tough it can be to make this month’s outrageous rent or mortgage payment, and next month’s and so on. San Francisco is a real jewel, and the city’s cost of living is a reflection of this fact.
The truth is that a lot of this debate isn’t actually about rent, gentrification or economics, or anything rooted in a real class struggle. Some of it is just hipster-on-hipster hatred. Middle-class humanities majors grumbling about middle-class computer science majors.
“It’s amusing at some level,” Waldman said. “People are complaining that their nice cafe views are being ruined by Google Buses.”
Personally, I like to say, “Make digital disruption your friend.” It’s an acknowledgement of what is, and a call to action.
Change comes quick today. I started writing and sending email as a daily routine in 1997. I was 32. Sixteen years on, things have changed more than I could have ever imagined. Today, we are hooked on our devices, reliant on them, as if they are actual appendages.
I lived in the Bay Area before email. In 1990, I moved from a shared rental in Noe Valley to my own one-bedroom apartment in the Berkeley Hills. I had a view of the Bay and Mt. Tam from one side, and a balcony and view of the hills out the other. Concerts at The Greek Theater and The Warfield cost $25. If I remember correctly, I was making $26K and it was enough. I can only imagine what it would take to live in the same apartment today. Whatever the price, it’s not technology’s fault for the radical increase, just like it’s not tech’s fault that concerts cost $60 to $100 today, or that a college education costs $200 Large.
Arguably, it is technology’s fault that a modest ranch home in Silicon Valley goes for more than a mil. So, to the the graffiti artist’s point, “Fuck your startup.” On many other points though, I have to give it to the inventors and dreamers.
Temple argues that, “San Francisco changes because the world changes. It was formed in a gold rush and reshaped by every one that followed.” Yes! And when any one sector (entertainment in L.A. or media in NYC) makes a massive impact on their city and region, it’s a rising tide floats many, but not all, boats situation.
I do believe we might challenge tech startups on non-economic grounds and get them to ask tougher questions of themselves. Like, is this new widget or App actually needed? It might be interesting for a moment, but will it endure? Digital matter is awfully fleeting. For instance, you can see the web as an archive, and use it that way, but whatever’s on top when you open the chest, that’s what’s current and what gets noticed, shared and remembered. There may be a great volume of material under that top layer, but it’s invisible to some degree, buried by the weight of what’s current.
Many tech advances are real advances, but many more are not. Understanding the difference is more than the difference between success and failure, it’s a compass that developers and entrepreneurs can use to guide their decision making. It all boils down to serving humanity, in tech, in communications and in business. When we build tools to help people do bigger and better things, with greater ease and lowered costs, we’re on to something. So yes, “Fuck your startup” if it’s not adding value. That’s a message I can get behind.
It’s been one week and a day since the terribly disappointing season ending episode of “Downton Abbey.” I do like a well made dramatic series, so Downton’s seasonal close leaves a void. One we are attempting to fill by watching “House of Cards,” the newly released series from Netflix.
Already, Darby and I have consumed 11 of the 13 episodes, and we will likely watch the last two this evening. What’s interesting is Netflix intended us to watch the show this way. Instead of doling episodes out once a week, like network and cable TV have done for decades, Netlfix released all 13 episodes at one time on February 1, 2013.
“Our goal is to shut down a portion of America for a whole day,” the show’s producer Beau Willimon told The New York Times in January.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Netflix Chief Content Office Ted Sarandos said, “The Internet is attuning people to get what they want when they want it,” Sarandos said. “‘House of Cards’ is literally the first show for the on-demand generation.”
The LA Times also notes that the absence of ads means that each episode has more time for story lines and relationships — as much as 15 more minutes of story per television hour. That’s an opportunity missed in my opinion. Some of the plot lines in the show are incredulous at best, and the portrayal of female journalists is outrageous — “I used to suck, screw, and jerk anything that moved just to get a story,” Janine tells Zoe over green curry. But let’s stay with the business side of the story here, and look at how Netflix came to the decision to develop and distribute their own content in the first place.
David Carr of the Times points to the company’s adept use of data.
Big bets are now being informed by Big Data, and no one knows more about audiences than Netflix. As a technology company that distributes and now produces content, Netflix has mind-boggling access to consumer sentiment in real time. Netflix looks at 30 million “plays” a day, including when you pause, rewind and fast forward, four million ratings by Netflix subscribers, three million searches as well as the time of day when shows are watched and on what devices.
I suppose the all the data did make it easier to invest in big stars like Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, and director David Fincher (he directed the first two episodes). But there’s also timeless storytelling here. In fact, Netflix is not the first to produce the Michael Dobbsnovel. BBC aired a four-show run in 1990. Amazon Prime members can view the episodes here. The original programs are also available on YouTube.
Chris Brogan has unleashed a meme, or narrative construct, that helps sum up what you want to work on, change or improve in the coming year.
My friend, Dian Crawford, is participating in #mythreewords. Her three words are “Velocity, Simplicity and Laughter.” I had to consider my three words for a bit, but eventually landed on Grateful, Committed and Traditional.
Grateful. My mom is a glass-half-full person. But this trait did not come down to me via genetics or environment. I am quick to point out what is missing, rather than what is there. Can I change this about myself? I think I can, but it will take a realignment of sorts and a more spiritual approach. Speaking of, we watched this little film last night called Happy. The filmmakers visited people around the world who are happy and the common denominator, in case after case, is close connections to family and friends. When you have these bonds at the center of your life–and to a large degree Darby and I do–you have much to be grateful for. So, I can look at my present work situation, for instance, and a) chastise myself for not earning more money and making a bigger name for myself in the four years since leaving my last job, or b) I can see that I am more successful now than ever, on the right path and that the money and recognition will come. Bottom line, I am grateful to make a living as a writer and thankful for all the people who help make this reality possible.
Committed. I have lots of ideas and my mind wanders. For most of my life my body wandered with it, from one state to the next, one job to the next and from one group of friends to the next. I am grateful for the depth and diversity of experiences, no question, but I’m also intentionally working to go deep, to connect and plant roots. Oregon may not be the perfect place for this, but no place is. Advertising may not be the perfect profession either. But since when is perfection required? What is required is confidence that being here in Oregon is right and good, that all can be achieved here, as a writer, a businessman and a person. On the writerly front, I will need to be more committed than ever, as my plans for 2013 are on the ambitious side. I intend to write fewer blog posts and more long-form pieces, including new short stories and a book about marketing. The plan is to write a chapter or story a week for 16 weeks starting now.
Traditional. I got a record player for Christmas this year and a collection of used records, including Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell, Katy Lied by Steely Dan and Happy To Be Just Like I Am, by Taj Mahal, among others. I grew up in an analog world, but I lost touch with it. I do not see losing tough with it as a positive. There’s no doubt that I was (and still am) genuinely excited by certain digital developments like push-button publishing and streaming radio. But it’s not all good. For me, it’s about using common sense and determining what is, and is not, an actual advance. Take cell phones. They suck as phones, but we accept the dropped calls, the spotty reception and lack of audio quality (to say nothing of the high prices) as the new norm. It’s stupid. You know what else is stupid? I was driving on I-5 today and this guy in the middle lane was going way too slow. I passed him on the right, as I approached my exit and I looked over to see him texting. On I-5 with cars and trucks everywhere going 60+ miles per hour. We’ve made some advances connected to digital culture, but we’ve also regressed. Of course, I can’t concern myself with which video games are rotting the minds of millions, or what other corrupt forces are at work. All I can do is pause, examine and evaluate for myself what I find valuable and what I do not. Increasingly, I see that Facebook and Twitter can be enriching, but there’s a cost attached–even if the cost is only time spent. I want to write and read books, not completely out of context microbursts from friends and strangers. Ergo, I will be grateful for and committed to our traditional works of American literature (like Moby Dick, which I have started to read on my Kindle).
It occurs to me now, I could change my three words to “Read Moby Dick” and call it good.
Newspaper readers don’t have the kind of relationship with newspaper reporters that they do with famous columnists, authors or the talking heads on TV. As far as readers are concerned, newspaper reporters are pretty much anonymous. So what’s the big deal, if some of the nation’s best newspapers including The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Houston Chronicle and The San Francisco Chronicle are running articles written by offshore “reporters” and publishing them with a fake byline?
I guess it depends on your point of view. It’s clearly a big deal for journalists. One of the best in the business, David Carr of The Times, notes, “while the rest of us were burning hot dogs on the grill last week, the newspaper industry seemed to be lighting itself on fire.”
Clearly one of the brightest coals in that fire, is the This American Life piece on Journatic, a content farm owned in part by the Tribune Company.
The Journatic employee, Ryan Smith, who spoke to This American Life, describes how he pretended to be from the Houston Chronicle when speaking to a source in Texas for a story. He also describes how much of the copy he was tasked with editing originated in the Philippines and was full of grammatical errors. Smith also wrote a confessional for The Guardian about his experience at the company.
My stomach turned and my guilt grew. The company I was working for was harming journalism: real reporters were getting laid off and were being replaced by overseas writer-bots.
Naturally, Journatic’s CEO Brian Timpone, has another story to tell. “We were writing things that were controversial. Our writers were being threatened individually by the subjects of stories. We did it to protect them from the threats.”
He also notes that the articles in question needed to have bylines so they would show up in Google News results. Uh huh.
As a writer, I am a knowledge worker and member of the Creative Class. Which is to say, I am busy developing not only words that make meaning, but dollars that make ends meet.
That’s the deal with the Creative Class. Creative people gather in special places, and through the power of our collective ingenuity we create wealth for ourselves and the communities we call home.
But not so fast. “The Rise of the Creative Class is filled with self-indulgent forms of amateur microsociology and crass celebrations of hipster embourgeoisement,” argues Jamie Peck, a geography professor and vocal critic of Richard Florida’s theories.
Freelance writer Frank Bures of Minneapolis shared that gem in Thirty Two, a new bi-monthly magazine for the Twin Cities. Like me, Bures was seduced by the idea that we aren’t alone in a world where writers are not highly prized. No, we’re members of a club. No, not a club, a class. Yes, we are in a class where we’re always learning and striving, and the future is bright.
Bures suggests that Florida “took our anxiety about place and turned it into a product. He found a way to capitalize on our nagging sense that there is always somewhere out there more creative, more fun, more diverse, more gay, and just plain better than the one where we happen to be.” Given how dreamy writers and entrepreneurs can be, it was an easy sell.
Bures also recounts conversations with Brazen Careerist, Penelope Trunk, on the topic. Bures calls her an “apostle of Floridian doctrine.” Nevertheless Trunk points out, “If you want to look at a city that’s best for your career, it’s New York, San Francisco or London. If you’re not looking for your career, it doesn’t really matter. There’s no difference. It’s splitting hairs. The whole conversation about where to live is bullshit.”
Of course, “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit,” notes Harry G. Frankfurt. Which makes me want to point to other popular tropes that are really just steaming piles of fecal matter. (more…)
Warren Buffett, the greatest investor the modern world has ever known, just ponied up $142 million to add Richmond, Virgina-based Media General to his list of prized companies.
Media General operates 18 network-affiliated television stations and their associated websites, plus several dozen community newspapers across the Southeastern part of the U.S. Titles like Richmond Times-Dispatch and Winston-Salem Journal are well known, but most of the others like The Goochland Gazette and The Bland County Messenger have small circulations in the range of 5,000 – 25,000, according to paidContent.
Is the old man getting sentimental, or is this truly a wise investment? Both, I reckon.
“I’ve loved newspapers all of my life — and always will,” Buffett, who delivered newspapers as a boy, wrote in a letter introducing himself and his newly formed BH Media Group to the Media General team.
Berkshire Hathaway purchased The Omaha World Herald, its hometown newspaper last year, and has owned the Buffalo News since 1977. Buffett has also been on the board of The Washington Post and owned a large share of that national paper for years. One might say he’s making Omaha something of a genuine media town now. As a native of the hilly river city, I’m happy about that.
Of course, there are others with other more important media matters on their minds. Professor, consultant and writer Clay Shirky, for one. He argues that “ordinary citizens don’t pay for news. What we paid for, when we used to buy the paper, was a bundle of news and sports and coupons and job listings, printed together and delivered to our doorstep.” Shirky believes that news has always been a loss leader subsidized by advertisers. And now those advertisers are off to greener pastures. “Ad dollars lost to competing content creators can be fought for; ad dollars that no longer subsidize content at all are never coming back,” he contends.
GigaOm writer, Mathew Ingram, adds that “the subscription price of a newspaper and circulation revenues in general have historically only accounted for a small proportion of a media company’s overall revenue. In most cases, the bulk of that revenue comes from advertising.”
I’m a fan of both Shirky and Ingram, but I don’t agree that all the value is in the platform. The Oracle of Omaha believes there’s value in content and he wants his new newspaper managers to find ways to maximize that value for readers (who will be asked to pay for the content, regardless of the platform). “It’s your job to make your paper indispensable to anyone who cares about what is going on in your city or town,” Buffett outlines. (more…)
Digital Book World is running an interview with Seth Godin, author of several best selling business books, including Unleashing the Ideavirus, The Bootstrapper’s Bible, Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, Poke the Box, and more.
Here’s a slice of the interview, where Godin advises writers to walk way from their financial expectations.
Q. Many authors hear your message about being willing to give away their books for free, or to focus on spreading their message but their question is: “I’ve got rent to pay so how do I turn that into cash money?”
A. Who said you have a right to cash money from writing? I gave hundreds of speeches before I got paid to write one. I’ve written more than 4000 blog posts for free.
Poets don’t get paid (often), but there’s no poetry shortage. The future is going to be filled with amateurs, and the truly talented and persistent will make a great living. But the days of journeyman writers who make a good living by the word – over.
I don’t know how these halcyon days of writerly bounty could be over, if they never existed in the first place. The great majority of writers have always struggled to earn their way in the world. They either work odd jobs like bartender or taxicab driver, or they find a way to apply themselves as a teacher, or in a commercial setting like advertising, publishing, journalism or entertainment.
The future is going to be filled with amateurs, says Godin. And Mathew Ingram of GigaOm, commenting on Godin’s piece, is right to note “the rise of the amateur, powered by the democratization of distribution provided by the Web and social media.” Although “amateur” sounds more and more archaic to my ear each day. I prefer the word “apprentice.” There’s pro, semi-pro and apprentice. Apprentice captures seriousness of intent, in a way amateur does not.
Certainly, there are plenty of amateur writers, amateur photographers, and so on. Which is great, people need enriching hobbies. But the premise is about getting paid to write, and that’s why it makes sense to reframe the discussion around pro, semi-pro and apprentice. These are the people hoping to make money from their writing, and the people equipped to do so, via a mix of talent, training and good fortune.
Regarding Godin’s advice to offer content for free, I agree, as long as there’s a mix of paid and free in the writer’s bag. He says he’s offered more than 4000 blog posts for free. Great, I have offered more than 10,000 for free, but he also sells books, and I sell advertising (on AdPulp) and my writing there sometimes leads discerning readers to hire me to write copy for them. In other words, we get paid to write for free.
Thankfully, the buzz around free is starting to fade a bit. I’m actually happy to see so many newspapers begin to charge for their online editions. When you have exclusive content, as many city newspapers do, you can and should charge for it. The rise of eBooks is another game changer, where authors can and should charge a small price for their homemade digital book or booklet.
I do appreciate what Godin is saying, and it is good to approach your craft with humility. At the same time, a pro is a pro, and pros get paid. As do semi-pros, and on occasion, apprentices.
I lit up this morning when reading an article in the pages of Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab.
The article describes the inner workings of AllNovaScotia.com, a startup business journal in Canada’s largest Maritime Province that charges a healthy $360 a year for access to content. From what I can tell there is no free version.
AllNovaScotia has 5,950 subscribers, whose monthly dues generate 80 per cent of its revenue. Three people with different email addresses can share a $30 a month subscription, but they can’t pass the stories on to anyone else without some effort. The publication — produced by a staff of 14, 11 of them reporters — is locked down in Flash, making sharing usually a cumbersome ordeal of cobbling together screenshots. No sharing buttons here.
A focus on people and their wealth makes AllNovaScotia a different beast from typical business coverage that focuses on companies. People’s names are bolded in stories, frequently paired with their corporate compensation and the assessed value of their house. An almost-daily feature is Who’s Suing Whom.
Lots of things to consider here. Work your niche, and offer somewhat lurid content if you want people to covet it and pay for it (AllNoviaScotia is published by David Bentley, who co-founded a gossip publication called Frank Magazine in the 1980s).
The other thing is don’t hesitate to charge for content, once you’ve determined how best to serve your audience. “You can’t be in the content business and not get paid for it,” Bentley says. Emphasis on business.
All of which leads me think how we might modify AdPulp’s editorial product so it doesn’t compete with the trades or other ad blogs, but delivers the perfect mix of stories and images that ad pros will gladly pay for. Like photos of themselves sunning in Cannes and gossip about who is sleeping with whom back in Manhattan and Santa Monica. Plus, the dish on which creative directors are total assholes, and which producers are the most fun to party with on location.
Of course, there’s just one small problem with my plan. I won’t put out a pub just for money. Yet, there is clearly a way to offer the meaty substance that real journalists cook up and industry cocktail chatter in the same vehicle. Sounds like AllNoviaScotia has it figured out, and I imagine many other niche and regional publishers are about to discover the right approach, as well. Because “You can’t be in the content business and not get paid for it.”
Author and consultant, Joseph Grenny, writing in Business Week, sees a future where we learn to manage our internet addictions with the help of technology.
Smartphones, tablets, MP3 players, GPS-enabled gadgets, and ubiquitous Internet access will continue to feed and exploit the natural human proclivity toward immediate gratification. In 2012, we’ll become more acutely aware of the degree to which our lives feel more virtual than real—and our relationships, pleasures, and aspirations seem shorter-term and shallower.
While some will try to stave off these effects by taking Luddite oaths to eschew technology, others will create solutions that help us make electronic tools our slaves, not masters. Offerings that allow us to shut off texting in moving cars (Text Zapper, for one) or voluntarily block our own impulsive access to IMs and Internet surfing (Freedom and Anti-Social, for example) signify our realization that we are behaving in ways we don’t like. As the gap between gratification and happiness gets larger, entrepreneurs will step in and provide solutions.
At lunch today, I was thinking there was a time not so long ago when we were fully present at lunch. Our phones wouldn’t ring because there was no phone. There was lunch and if one was alone, maybe a book or newspaper to pass the time. Not now. Even if no one calls, someone could call, text or IM and that possibility changes the mood in the room.
Personally, I think we need more than a suite of Apps to solve the growing distraction problem. Maybe daily meditation and a reorganization of one’s day into digital and non-digital segments. I know I am seeking a better balance this year. Without this balance, one can fall through the Web’s portal to another time and place, like Alice through the looking glass. Clearly, there’s much to be fascinated with in world within a world, but it’s not the real world and right now the real world needs some work. Don’t you think?
Are you suffering from Information Age blues? Drowning in data with no time or inclination to sort through it all? You are not alone.
“The issue nowadays is to some extent the need for good filters, pushing away information after centuries of seeking it,” writes Quentin Hardy, Deputy Tech Editor of The New York Times.
Hardy attended a lecture in Berkeley last week by Harvard’s David Weinberger. Weinberger’s new book, Too Big To Know grapples in part with the problem of too much information. Weinberger also believes that “the Web’s ever-changing structure of links undermines hierarchical analysis by allowing everyone to see and contribute different points of view.”
Since Aristotle, there has been at least lip service to the idea of teleology, a process of discovery that leads to greater and greater understanding. We have invested much of our society in making such a process better.
Now, he said, the model of a protean, ever-linked and ever-changing world is killing that. “The dream of the West has been that we will live together in knowledge, that there is One Knowledge. The Web is saying ‘Nice try,'” Mr. Weinberger said. By its very success we know that “the Internet as a medium is far more like the world we live in” and “the Web is closer to the phenomenological truth of our lives,” he said.
Weinberger responded to Hardy’s article with a post of his own. For one, he thinks the headline in the Times piece is misleading.
“I don’t think the Net is ruining everything, and I am (overall) thrilled to see how the Net is transforming knowledge.”
I shared Hardy’s writeup with my friend DK, who is a professor of philosophy. DK wrote back to say the writer “should have mentioned Nietzsche. This article focuses on epistemology–but there are also social issues involved.”
Detailing one such social issue, DK says it is “interesting to note how the students’ writing skills have plummeted in the last several years. They write in sentence fragments with no command of American English–like they’re sending text messages.”
Which goes to this increasingly difficult issue at the heart of the too much information problem: Who has time to think? When the volume of information is pumping at full throttle, and you are gaming on one large screen, while using a desktop, laptop, tablet and/or phone for other tasks, there’s no time to read or write and no time for measured reflection.
DK is right to be concerned about the deterioration of basic communication skills in his students. And I am right to be concerned that I read fewer books that I once did. Why am I reading fewer books? Because the time I once reserved for reading text on paper is now given over to reading, writing and rearranging text on the screen. Plenty of thought and care go in to these acts, but where is the long arching story that requires deep concentration for hours and days on end? Where is the place in our hectic lives for the literary equivalent of the long walk in the woods? The answer is it is all available — the short form eBooks on every topic under the sun and the long form classics.
I think what our media abundance calls for is a greater degree of media literacy and also some personal restraint. It takes a disciplined reader to tackle Heidegger, Joyce, Yeats, Faulkner and the like. The reader must work for the pay off, as instant gratification, to say nothing of the game layer, is nowhere to be found.
