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Memoirs are generally untrustworthy affairs, especially when penned or ghost-penned by retired politicians or athletes seeking to cash in on their glories with a fat advance and a chance to put onto the record their version of the past with no arguments or contradictions. But rare is the memoir of a man of letters, a literary autobiography as it were. Some writers, like Steven King, have written strong reflections on the craft of the writer, weaving in their own life’s plot as a framework, but for the most, the autobiography is at best an opportunity for we readers to be taken into the conspiratorial confidences of the tale-teller and given a version of events that at best is written with the same verbal grace as their non-Onastic work, and at worse whitewashes controversy and settles past feuds with the awesome singularity of the printed page.

Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Melville, Hemingway … few literary lions have written about themselves, indeed some like Pynchon are impressive in keeping their biographies off of the page, and limited to but a few cryptic paragraphs on the edge of the dust-jacket and end papers.  Literature resists critical psychoanalysis and the text is supposed to speak for itself, but yet the reader wants more insights into the dark influences behind the fiction: hence the cottage industry a few years back into tell-all biographies of John Cheever, the tortured alcoholic chronicler of Mad Men-era suburban New York and Westchester. The result was a bit embarrassing in the end.

I have not been a close fan of the political journalist Christopher Hitchens over the years. His work in Vanity Fair has occasionally come into view, but I haven’t been a fan in the sense of buying his books and seeking out his work in the Nation and television talking head-fests. For some reason I bought his memoir Hitch-22 and have been picking away at it this summer, slowly immersing myself into the life of what could be one of the last true British men-of-letters. That he has esophageal cancer didn’t come to my attention until I was half-way through the book, a relief as I am glad I didn’t come to the book with some morbid rubber-necking as a motivation. I had first become aware of him when he assailed my former employer, The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, and my late colleague, Susie Forrest, for their first Pulitzer Prize for reporting the Willie Horton scandal during Michael Dukakis’ failed run for the presidency in 1988.   Then came this astonishing video of Hitchens undergoing waterboarding so he could report on the experience first hand.

The book is remarkable and opens with the type of astonishing development that any novelist would crave. Hitchen’s mother, a relentlessly self-improving English woman hiding her Jewish roots from the strictures of post-WW II English society, abandons her career naval officer husband and ends her life in a lonely Athens hotel room with her new lover. The effect, the development puts into place a foundation for the rest of the tale that never relents.

Hitchens intelligence and ambitions are unwavering. His mind is obviously astonishing. But it is is dogged refusal to back down from a life-long hatred of totalitarianism, to proudly wear the jingoistic labels of “Trotskyist,” to reject religion and faith and willingly face his attackers that makes this work a true profile in courage. His early calls for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, his proud embrace of American citizenship despite an upbringing as the consummate Englishman, his love of the language and the fun of word play …. in the end it combines into what I have to declare is my favorite literary autobiography ever.

The greatest part of my journalism career will always be the people I met in the newsrooms along the way, the old timers and crusty senior members of the masthead who would consistently display some courage or curmudgeonly craziness to inspire a young reporter. One of the greats will always be Forbes’ automotive editor, the great Jerry Flint, who passed away on Saturday, August 7 at the age of 79.

Jerry was the king of Detroit car reporters, covering the beat for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times before setting off on a 31-year career at Forbes. I best remember him for three things:

1. Convincing me in my first year at Forbes, when I was working out of an apartment in Boston as the “New England Bureau Chief” (a bureau of one, me), that I could expense my utilities and even a cleaning service through my monthly expense report. “Really? Gee!” and I took the bait, filing the receipts only to get called on the mat by my boss for being the Mark Hurd of Forbes in 1988. “But Jerry Flint said …”

2. After starting Forbes.com in 1995 the ad sales force was told to take me around to the big accounts to sell them sponsorships on this new thing called the World Wide Web. One of the first stops was Detroit, center of a lot of print ad pages back then, as GM was the magazine’s biggest account. I was hauled around the city (my first time there) by the ad guys and eventually taken to the offices of J. Walter Thompson to pitch the Lincoln account. Jerry was in town and used as a lever to get the meeting with the Lincoln execs. I had no idea the kind of clout he carried, but there I was, a “portable” projector in tow (the thing had wheels and a handle and weighed 50 pounds) and my Toshiba Satellite, and Jerry flies in, dapper as always, and the kow-towing began. I had no chance to make my pitch. We were taken into a windowless conference room, the table covered with ominous lumps shrouded in cloth.  Next year’s models were going to be unveiled to Jerry and the Lincoln designers were very nervous. As they unveiled one car after another, Jerry looked on, finally saying with a sarcastic smile, “Hell, they’ll always be cheap Cadillacs with big lumps on their asses, won’t they?”

3. On Nova, the PBS show, there was a documentary about America’s love affair with SUVs and minivans. Jerry made a cameo inside of some Soccer Mom Wagon, sitting in the back seat and popping open, one at a time, all the cup holders. When he got to 17 his point was made. “May drive like a shoe box but it holds a hell of a lot of Slurpees.”

Jerry was old school, but Jerry owned the car beat. As the New York Times obituary said this morning, he loved big noisy cars.  Here’s Forbes memorial.

I tend to be a sucker for completing surveys from brands I love and the New York Times is one of them. This morning I invested 15 minutes in a lengthy survey on my willingness to pay for a variety of schemes to deliver NYT content to me via print and online. As a staunch hater of pay-walls, yet an inveterate paid subscriber of the Wall Street Journal Online (as well as a paid subscriber to the print editions of everything from Woodenboat to Baseball America, the Times and the Atlantic Monthly) I contradict myself when I say on the one hand that information should be free versus my practice of paying for stuff that I really want and prize.

The Times is obviously going to a paid model. But here’s my proposal to them. Segment your circulation in a pyramid model. At the top are print subscribers who cough up the big bucks to have a wad of paper dropped at the end of the driveway every morning. Those subscribers get carte blanche access to everything. iPad apps, smartphone apps, NYT.com. No questions, no up-charges, no nickle and diming. The rest? Well, tier it from a monthly model but don’t nag the user to death with micropayments and day passes.  I would rather be hit once and hit hard than suffer the death of a thousand cuts.

Gauging from the dozen or so pricing schemes offered up during the interminable survey, the beancounters at the Times are crunching through a lot of models, models driven by the panoply of platforms they have to deliver to: paper, PC browser, iPad, Smartphone, e-book readers. But what came through for me, as I tried to pick the best pricing scheme like a new set of eyeglasses at the optometrist – “Better this way? Or this way?” — is how much the Times is important to me and would rank, along with a handful of sources, as the only publication Iwould cough up $50 a month or more to read on whatever device I decide to read it on.

While I wish there was an advertising model robust enough to subsidize publishing and keep the paywalls down, the truth is the old display model of CPMs does not work, sponsorships are barely hanging on, and marketers will carry their ad dollars to volume ad networks and paid search for the foreseeable future. So, if keeping the reporters and editors of the Times employed means paying for digital access, then so be it. I will pay.

The one thing I may not pay for much longer is the print edition. Much as I love it, I seem to be the only one in the household who does. So … iPad get ready, you may be the preferred platform for the foreseeable future.

via Bloggers Be Warned: FTC May Monitor What You Say – Advertising Age – News.

AdAge reports this old news (which has been sent to me by enough people that I have to comment)

“Thinking about letting a big-name blogger test-drive your new hybrid in the hope he’ll post a glowing review about it, or maybe sending some beverage products to an influencer, hoping she’ll spread the word?

“You might have to think twice, if the Federal Trade Commission follows through with its proposed plan to start regulating viral marketing and blogs.”

Libertarian sensibilities and First Amendment misgivings aside, I’d support a truth-in-blogging disclosure policy. I’m sickened by the ongoing”twilight of objectivity” as the  traditional press fades away, and the online replacements — from review sites gamed by business owners, to payola agencies that build buzz for a fee — aren’t stepping in with any kind of ethical compass.

Those who play it straight will have no problem. I just want to make sure when I see someone raving about a product or service that I know the terms on how they came to try it. If they bought it themselves, all the better. If they took a test drive or loaner — then tell me. If they cashed a check for the “review” — they better disclose or I hope both them and the writers of the check get whacked for the deception.

This morning the New York Times reports on the annual meeting of the Associated Press, and the remarks by AP Chairman William Dean Singleton that the organization “was mad as hell” and not going to take it any more from the portals and internet sites that use, abuse and profit from  its content under the guise of “fair use.”

Rather than rely on the Times — an AP member — for the news, I dug out the full text of Mr. Singleton’s remarks:

“On Saturday, the AP Board of Directors unanimously decided to take all actions necessary to protect the content of the Associated Press and the AP Digital Cooperative from misappropriation on the Internet.

The board also unanimously agreed to work with portals and other partners who legally license our content and who reward the cooperative for its vast newsgathering efforts — and to seek legal and legislative remedies against those who don’t.

We believe all of your newspapers will join our battle to protect our content and receive appropriate compensation for it.

AP and its member newspapers and broadcast associate members are the source of most of the news content being created in the world today. We must be paid fully and fairly.

We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories. We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more.

You will be hearing more about this important and exciting campaign in the coming weeks and months, but I wanted to share this with you today. I know all of you will be looking forward to playing a big role in this cooperative effort. “

Here’s the problem in a nutshell.  The AP is ticked off at Yahoo and Google and other big portals for running ads against excerpts of its content — even when those excerpts and headlines link to the full-text version on the original AP member newspaper’s website. AP wants to be paid by the portals for the privilege of lifting its headline and ledes and then linking back to the full-text. They’ve been moaning about this since early 2008.

From the Times article:

“This is not about defining fair use,” said Sue A. Cross, a senior vice president of the group, who added several times during an interview that news organizations want to work with the aggregators, not against them. “There’s a bigger economic issue at stake here that we’re trying to tackle.”

But the details remain to be worked out, she said, including how to limit use of articles and how to share revenue. When asked if The A.P. would require a licensing agreement before a search engine could show specific material, Ms. Cross said, “that could be an element of it,” but added, “it’s not that formed.”

This reminds me of the edict of a former CEO of a former employer (not Forbes) who decided that he would ban links into his content by competitors.

This also reminds me of the lawsuit pending here in Massachusetts by Gatehouse Media against the Times and Boston Globe for linking to Gatehouse’s weekly newspaper websites and drawing its headlines and leads together in an attempt to create “hyper-local” aggregators.

I see two fundamental religious differences in the philosophy of linking and linkage.

1. Internet geeks and techies, like myself, see the “hyperlink” as the essence of the Web and that most content on the web should be linkable and not walled off.

2. Publishers and lawyers want to be compensated for the cost of producing the content that gets linked to, and are aggravated by ads sold against a page containing a link to the page they created.

Prediction? AP is clutching at straws. This is an embarrassment for them and their members who are hurting hard and need all the traffic they can get. The quid pro quo in linkage is traffic and the portals are dumping billions of free page views into their laps. Shut off the links and start chasing sites on a battle against the concept of “fair use,” replacing the debate into one about “fair share” and no one wins.

I would no sooner pay a blogger to mention a product or service than I would pay a reporter for the same coverage.

The notion of engaging a third party — agency or individual — to produce content about a brand or product is tantamount to deceptive advertising and a mark of stupid desperation on the part of the marketer who approved it. (clarification: and then publish it as being ostensibly “objective”)

I have no issue with lending a product to a blogger or reviewer affiliated with the mainstream press under the usual terms of a loaner/reviewer program. I would not gift product or services  nor pay a fee to the writer.

Note the last word: “writer.” Bloggers, like journalists, are “writers” in my mind. I don’t care if their preferred medium is an audio podcast or a video Vlog — if they publish content publically and with an eye of making money from that traffic via advertising or promotion of their services, they are, loosely, to my mind, a “writer.”

If bloggers want to be accorded the same respect and gravitas of a professional journalist/writer then they need to abide by the same code of ethics. Journalists don’t accept money to cover stuff. Period. They may do that in some backwards nations, but not in the USA. Bloggers who join any sort of program that compensates them for coverage of any kind — positive or negative — openly disclosed or not — are, in my traditional ethical mindset, crossing the line.

Bloggers in the social media space — consultants and theorists — are probably due some excuse if they check out these services and report on them dispassionately. But as an ongoing revenue stream and practice — it’s grounds for not being considered in any media plan. I understand there are many bloggers who need to make some money from their blog and I don’t dispute their right to monetize their traffic, but payola is crossing the line. Contextual advertising, or an overall sponsorship is one thing. But paid posting is a no go.

Bloggers don’t need to behave like a Washington Post reporter: accepting no gifts, no junkets, pay for “free” coffee, and avoiding anything that would indicate a bias. Blogs seem more like oped — at least at a personal level — than the press, but if a blogger wants the respect and authority accorded to the mainstream press then they need to behave like one. Disclosure statements are not enough.

I recently unfollowed one prominent social marketing blogger and columnist for perceived ethical transgressions. I regret that I am unfollowing another today. I am not going public with my unfollow list, but let’s say there is a coterie of social marketing bloggers — not actual marketers but theorists or agency people — who are really pissing me off with their echo chamber and questionable ethics. I am turning them off.

I am not going to call people out in public anymore. This social marketing niche is getting way too incestuous and repetitive and frankly, stupid in its repetitive back slapping, re-affirmation, ego stroking, and over amplification of the same desperate case studies.  Rather than squawk and bitch I am simply turning up the squelch. End of rant.

Disclosure: I don’t run ads on this blog, I used to be a reporter, no one sends me free stuff (other than Uncle Fester), and I need to stop being angry so much.

Esteban beat me to this on Dec. 4th

Mark Cahill on PC Mag’s decision to ditch dead trees and go all-digital, a reminder of why Mark remains one of the best media strategists out there.

“I believe we’re seeing the tip of the iceberg. Those that can make the jump will start to make that jump quickly. Notably, I expect to see trade journals become a relatively rare beast. Ivory towered experts lecturing professionals about their profession is a thing of the past. Instead, users will gravitate to profession-based niche social media. The journals will slowly cease to exist, and the magazines that remain will be serving the less technical of the professions.”

PC Magazine To Kill Print Version | All Things Cahill.

* Mark and I worked together at Reel-Time and IDG.

If I pay for the New York Times to be delivered to me in hard copy every morning, do I have an automatic right to the electronic edition delivered to my Kindle? If I pay the Wall Street Journal.com an annual fee do I deserve to get the Kindle edition for free?

This is a buy once/use many times in many different formats argument – not a multi-user argument, though the metaphysics of simultaneous media consumption is very trippy, e.g. I pay one pay-per-view charge for the movie and the entire family can watch it. But each of us pays a ticket to enter the theater (obviously because the theater is in the business of renting seats, not content). Being a music copy protection crank, and a notorious copyleftist, I will acknowledge my responsibility to pay for original works and not pirate them, but must I pay, as the man said in Men in Black, for The White Album yet again because a new format has been developed?

The newspapers in particular – that’s a tough one. Obviously they need every dime of new revenue they can get, and if they can build circ electronically then power to them, but what about faithful subscribers to that content in other mediums? Should we not get an all-inclusive license however we want it delivered? I can see the papers actually paying me to go paperless – a green rebate like the grocery store that knocks a nickel off the tab for every recyclable bag I bring with me in lieu of paper of plastic. But no, I suspect a couple things at work – specifically to the Kindle case.

1. Kindle doesn’t feel like an open format that the New York Times can offer like, say, a PDF version for download from its site. It’s Amazon’s and that’s that.
2. Amazon is getting a piece of the transaction, so what do they care that I pay the NYT directly for the paper edition?

So, what happens if Bezos opens the Kindle format to the public domain and publishers can suddenly go direct to their subscribers, and if their circulation management tools are strong enough, recognize a subscriber seeking a multi-channel license and discount it accordingly?

Amazes me that 12% of all Amazon purchases of that portion of its book inventory that has a Kindle version are indeed for Kindle owners. E.g. – take a best seller, put it online in print and kindle formats, and more than ten percent of the customers buy it for the electronic device.

The jungle drums of the Forbes.com alumni network are starting to rumble today, reacting to the piece in Gawker yesterday and Valleywag this morning that Forbes.com is making a power move on the print side at Forbes Magazine. “What’s your take?” emails are hitting my inbox.

So rather than indulge in some sort of retromingent nyah-nyah-told-you-so crap — it’s been eight years since I’ve darkened the Forbes door and I have nothing but positive memories (save for the f@#king CueCat). Let me give some useless armchair quarterbacking. First, read the Valleywag stuff:

“A tipster tells us that a “big shakeup” is coming, with the editorial staffs of both magazine and website getting “smashed together.”

Death Of Print: Forbes.com exacts revenge of nerds on Forbes.

My take:

1. Forbes.com’s president and publisher, Jim Spanfeller, is a magazine publisher first and foremost. It’s in the guy’s blood — Inc Magazine, Yahoo! Internet Life — the man is a publisher’s publisher and essentially would now be (if the rumors are true) be rushing into a void left open for the past decade when former publisher Jeff Cunningham departed for CMGI. The “publisher” named to replace Cunningham was Rich Karlgaard, the founding editor of the late tech mags Upside and Forbes ASAP. Rich was given the publisher title in the late 90s when Forbes was hot to establish a toehold in the Valley — opening a big bureau in Burlingame near the row of airport hotels so they could get some logo love visible from 101.

2. Karlgaard is an editor first, and not an ad guy. Where Cunningham was a classic space salesman — the guy who could sell pages, Karlgaard was the intellectual technology front man, a great speaker who had a solid tech network in the valley. Forbes brought in former American Express publishing exec Jim Berrien to semi-fill the Cunningham shoes in NYC at 60 Fifth Ave.. update: Berrien is no longer with the business, and I have no insights into how the ad side of the magazine is organized.

3. Spanfeller consolidated Forbes.com following the interim CEO reign of Jeff Killeen, who was brought aboard during my stint at the dot.com to put a professional CEO face on the business during the pre-IPO planning of 1999. When the bubble popped, I bailed, Killeen hung on a year, but without a solid publishing/ad sales background, was outgunned and moved on to become the CEO of GlobalSpec. Enter Spanfeller.

4. Spanfeller took the business separation put in place during my tenure and by the pre-IPO structuring to really set Forbes.com off on its own trajectory.  That separation gave Forbes.com its own corporate structure but an exclusive reprint license to the magazine content. The new editor in chief, Paul Maidment, came in from the Financial Times. With no past allegiance by Maidment to the print side (but interestingly an executive editor’s title on the print masthead), the beginning of a serious separation from the magazine side was underway, paving the way for Spanfeller and Maidment to build Forbes.com into what it is today — a completely independent operation with a robust balance sheet and a business model fundamentally different from the mag. The mag and the dot.com never played well together (update: no print/digital operation ever has and ever will anywhere IMHO). I was able to hold things together in the early political years as an alumni of the dead tree, but with me out of the way, I understand things drifted further apart, with some experiments in “loan-a-writer” going on with print people serving in the dot.com newsroom, etc.. Efforts by some of the print side to get involved — Dan Lyons asking for a blog, getting rejected, starting Fake Steve Jobs — never were really welcomed.

5. The mag feels and reads like a deer in the headlights. All mags do, but Forbes is sort of where it was in 1995. Bill Baldwin, my ex-boss, is the smartest man in the room, but he’s a contrarian and happiest in a geeky tax code/mutual fund fee story. He has not put Forbes in a miniskirt and halter top the way Andy Serwer has tarted up Fortune.

6. Forbes, as a brand, is very very proud of the dot.com — Forbes.com kicked the snot out of its print competitors early on because Tim Forbes gave it carte blanche to do what it needed to do without any political bullshit from the print side. Now I think Forbes and Elevation Partners are killing the division between the two properties — likely undoing the corporate separation put in place during the IPO process — and co-locating the edit teams.

Predictions:

1. Baldwin moves upstairs and a new EIC comes into the print side. I’d bring Gretchen Morgenson — Forbes alum — former contender to replace Jim Michaels, back from the Times.

2. Ad sales get merged.  Spanfeller becomes the main man on the business side for both print and dot.com sales.

3. Karlgaard remains in the same role. After all, he brokered the Elevation investment.

4. Elevation starts to throw its weight around more. I agree with Valleywag. This mashup is their doing.

Sorry publishers, but a sure sign that you suck is when you start running those deceptive double-underlined Vibrant Media/IntelliText ads on your articles. Forbes.com had the wisdom to crush these long ago (after an tribute to slain Moscow bureau chief Paul Klebnikov carried a double underlined link to a life insurance advertiser). I just went to PC Magazine to read a perfectly decently article about PC vendors and crapware/bloatware, and lo, hover over the wrong thing and this black hole sort of appears (like the second coming of the popup from hell) and obscures the text. Do I really need to see the word “laptop” emphasized and see this black chasm until the unit renders?

Want to know why Engadget and Gizmodo and TechCrunch and GigaOm are eating the lunch of the tech press? Because of crappy shenanigans like Vibrant’s. Or rather, lack of. update: and kudos to sites like CNET that also forego the linky-badness.

Geez PC Mag. Maintain your dignity. I have told our teams NOT to run these types of intrusive tactics out of respect to our customers and readers. I may have to do the same with our agency when it comes to running on sites that permit this stuff.

This is a very important column by David Carr on the effects the Web 2.0 Games are having on the containment of content by the mainstream media. Very important. This is it ladies and gentlemen. Image of little boys with their fingers in leaking dikes comes to mind. Take 10,500 athletes, give them video cameras, cell phones, whatever, and watch them share what they see with the world.

“On Friday, NBC spent the day trying to plug online leaks of the splashy opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in order to protect its taped prime-time broadcast 12 hours later. There was a profound change in roles here: a network trying to delay broadcasting a live event, more or less TiVo-ing its own content.

Consumers have no issue with time-shifting content — in some younger demographics, at least half the programming is consumed on a time-shifted basis — they just want to be the ones doing the programming. Trying to stop foreign broadcasts and leaked clips from being posted on YouTube — NBC’s game of “whack-a-mole” as my colleague Brian Stelter described it — was doomed to failure because information not only wants to be free, its consumers are cunning, connected and will find a workaround on any defense that can be conceived.

The Media Equation – All of Us, the Arbiters of News – NYTimes.com.

Dan Lyons ends a couple weeks of silence after pulling down the shutters on the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, quitting Forbes, and joining Newsweek as their new Steve-Levy-Tech-Eminence.

The new blog is The Real Dan

“So I wanted to get out and stay out. I really did. I wanted at least to have the summer off. But stuff keeps happening and I can’t resist. Jerry Yang and Carl Icahn and Steve Ballmer continue doing their frigtarded three-way monkey dance. It’s getting to be like one of those Ricky Gervais bits in the original Office (the funny one) where he lets the scene go on too long and it goes from being funny to being painful … and he still won’t stop. He makes you watch. It’s terrible but you can’t look away. And, if you’re me, you can’t help rushing to the computer to make fun of it. So thanks a lot, Ballmer-Icahn-Yang, for not letting me getting any rest. Just when I thought I was out, you pull me back in. Bastards!

Plus look at the ridiculous shit happening in the rest of the Valley.”

Good to have him back, I was missing my daily dose.

Reel-Time.com joins the NameMedia Inc. family of niche community sites – Reel-Time Forums

I won’t get all weepy and sentimental, but my first web project — Reel-Time: The Internet Journal of Saltwater Fly Fishing, has been sold after 13 years of private operation by myself , my co-founder Thorne Sparkman, and editor/webmaster, Mark Cahill.

The site goes to Name Media, the Waltham, MA domain company founded by IDG’s former CEO, Kelly Conlin.

I was a founder-emeritus for the past five years, backing out of the partnership with Thorne as my interest in the site waned and my ability to fund it declined along with my interest. I came up with the concept and name in 1994 when Chris Locke (co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto) asked me to write a series of columns on the impact of the Internet on journalism for Internet-MCI, one of the first major portal plays. In that column I basically made a version of the Long Tail argument, saying the infinite scalability of the net would lead to the dominance of niches. The syllogism was that a website about fishing would not be as successful as one about fly fishing, which in turn would be less valuable than one about saltwater fly fishing, etc.

So, as a strawman, I discussed the theoretical business plan of a site called “Reel-Time” as a play on “Real Time” — another business plan I had kicked around with Mitch Kapor in 94 when we thought there would be an interesting place on the net for a 24 hour, real-time news site.

So, over sushi one night in NYC, my fishing buddy Thorne Sparkman (who worked in digital at Time Warner Electronic Publishing) and I agreed to launch an actual site called Reel-Time. We registered the domain, spent a week at my place on Cape Cod coding the first HTML, hacked an email archive tool into a crude discussion/community forum, and launched via word of mouth on the USENET fishing forums.

Was it a success?

Sure. Here’s what I got out of Reel-Time:

1. I never got paid a dime. Seriously. 13 years. Not a penny. I suck as an entrepreneur.
2. I met a ton of great people.
3. I was given the challenge to launch Forbes.com on the basis of my experience launching Reel-Time.com
4. Everything I know about dealing with online dickheads, flamers, lusers, and the tinfoil turban club I learned at Reel-Time
5. The knowledge that if you want to ruin something fun, make a business out of.

Mark Cahill, the man who kept Reel-Time ticking, helped broker the sale with Name Media and will continue to drive the site. Me? I watch on, glad that something that started in my bedroom in 1995 will continue to live on past my inept management.

“When Reel-Time.com, the Internet Journal of Saltwater Fly Fishing was started in 1995 by Thorne Sparkman and David Churbuck, the internet was still in its infancy. Over the years, Reel-Time.com has grown to become the premier destination on the web for Saltwater Fly Fishermen, offering vibrant forums, up to the minute fishing reports, and informative articles.

“That success came at the expense of a lot of work and investment by Thorne. Indeed, over the years there were a great many people who put in a lot of hard work, from David and I spending many a sleepless morning in front of the computer cranking out Fishwire reports, to the Forum Moderators, whose selfless efforts are one of the prime reasons for our success.

“I’m pleased to announce that today begins yet another stage in the Reel-Time.com journey. The site has been acquired by NameMedia, Inc. of Waltham, MA, a major player in the emerging field of niche community media.

So, what’s it all mean to you”

Associated Press expects you to pay to license 5-word quotations (and reserves the right to terminate your license) – Boing Boing

Oh dear. From Boing Boing comes this piece of news,  like IDG’s infamous anti-linking edict of a few years back, one of those dumbass King Canute edicts destined to be swept away by the tide of progress. Here’s the deal: The Associated Press, a coprolite concept of a global news syndicate used by newspapers to fill their editorial holes with standard news (bus plunges, fungible coverage of the world’s events, items from outside of the local circulation foot print) and to share their original reportage back into the pool in return, has decided that bloggers must pay by the word when they quote from an AP article.

To me that’s like asking me to pay a toll to get off the superhighway and visit a dying town that time has forgotten.

“In the name of “defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt” the Associated Press is now selling “quotation licenses” that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that “fair use” — the right to copy without permission — means “Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.”).”

Full disclosure, I am total copyleftist. I hate crap like this. Whenever an organization with an intellectual property axe to grind (MPAA, RIAA) starts getting “smart” about the digital world, they almost always put on the egg makeup.

Today’s NYT has a piece by Steve Lohr on the occasion of IDG (publisher of InfoWorld, PCWorld, CIO, etc.) achieving the vaunted print/online revenue crossover.

“In 2002, 86 percent of the revenue from I.D.G.’s publications came from print and 14 percent online. These days, 52 percent of the revenue is from online ads, while 48 percent is from the print side.”

I joined IDG for a brief period in 2005 to help with that transition, ultimately leaving at the end of the year to come to Lenovo. What I saw was a company in the throes of a difficult transition from decades of print excellence to the more ephemeral but pressing world of online news. Print and online dichotomies were tough, but in the end it was the red ink that pushed the print legacy to one side (InfoWorld went online only) and broke down the old artificial barriers between print and online editorial staffs.

Mike Friedenberg and Bob Carrigan were the two guys I worked most closely with, and both are prominently and deservedly called out in Lohr’s piece.

While publishing is not the profit engine of Pat McGovern’s empire (that honor falls to his venture capital operations), it is the flagship of the global brand, and seeing the transition occur, sooner than most traditional publishers, is a good sign for the future of a pretty beleaguered profession.

Marketonomy: Web 2.0 Expo: Bloggers vs. Reporters

Christopher Kenton is at Web 2.0. This insight hit me hard. I remember the days when the press room was the rowdiest place in the building. Comdex. Massachusetts State House. Now — press rooms are morgues. All the fun is with the bloggers. You betcha.

“When you walk into the media lounge, it’s deadly silent. There are a couple of rows of banquet tables, about half full. People diligently typing away, head down. You walk two doors down to the blogger lounge, and you can hear the buzz outside the door. Similar rows of tables, but they’re all full. There are couches with people lounging with their laptops. Pandora radio is set up putting out tunes. There’s a small video/sound stage setup for video interviews. But most of all, people are engaged in conversation everywhere–talking while posting, twittering, texting.”

Henry Blodget, Redeemed?

Here! Here! I must chime in with my respects to Blodget for his redemption. When he first popped back onto the scene a few years ago like a bad echo from bad days I was predisposed to sneer and say, nah, he’s painted with the Big Stink. No more. Silicon Alley Insider is a serious piece of work that is high in my reader. Roben Farzad writes on Businessweek.com:

“So I must tell you, I now admire Henry Blodget—for his audacious reincarnation as a tech and media blogger and author. I find his work indispensably frank, stuff you see all too rarely from an ex-insider.”

Ouch! Newspaper revenues take biggest plunge on record | Tech news blog – CNET News.com

Uncle Fester points us at this grim news:

“Total print advertising revenue last year dropped 9.4 percent to $42 billion from the year before, according to the Newspaper Association of America. That’s the biggest decrease since the NAA began measuring ad expenditures in 1950.

“Total advertising revenue, including online revenue, decreased 7.9 percent in 2007 from the year before.”

I want to see the percentage state of online revenue in the newspaper industry — that last paragraph infers a decline in online revenue for newspapers, which I know is not the case in the UK at least.

Cape Cod TODAY and WBUR

One of the better destinations in my daily rounds of the virtual landmarks is Cape Cod Today, an aggregation of blogs covering local news and opinion around Cape Cod and the islands. (Walter Brooks, the  ex-New York Post founder extended an invite to me to contribute, but I am far happier on my own server covering non-Cape Cod stuff as well as the occasional clam rant.)
Cape Cod Today is significant for a number of reasons. First, if a network of bloggers such as the Huffington Post can be said to be the future of national media, then Cape Cod Today is driving home the impact of blogs on local coverage, bringing life to the local “news hole” in a way that a budget challenged daily paper cannot. I don’t see CCT as a replacement for the Cape Cod Times — but as a bit of an anarchy laden, opinion-filled news that brings tired staples of the local press — the police log for example, to vivid life. Cape Cod Today broke the Wampanoag casino scandal last summer, through the reporting of Peter Kenney — aka the Gadfly — a fixture of the local cable-talk radio circuit. That scoop focused a lot of attention on CCT and sealed its reputation as a credible daily news source.
As always, the action is in the comments. Gauging from the ad count, the site is doing pretty well. Here is a transcript of a recent NPR profile of the network.

“He is known as the Blogfather of Cape Cod, Walter Brooks. Since 2003, Brooks has recruited 150 Cape bloggers to cover Cape news from tip to toe. All but five of the bloggers write for free. Most of them turn out opinion pieces. But most of them are also retirees, or are still working in their current professions. Their backgrounds are varied: ex-politicians, ex-policemen, ex-teachers, current teachers, current harbormasters, current artists. Not a pimple-faced pajama wearing basement blogger among them.

Brooks admits many of the blogs on Cape Cod Today are hit or miss. Many of them are nothing more than a daily rant. Nevertheless, he believes they are changing the way news is covered on the Cape, and that they’re breaking news.”