Content Matters

Michael Kinsley, of Slate, wrote an interesting article this week on the future of newspapers.

The core theme was that the newspapers have some strong assets, in particular, their brand, their ability to create massive amounts of content, and their reputation (Jason Blair aside) as a “trusted source”.  At the same time, their manufacturing process, delivery methods and end-user usability have hardly evolved since the early days of the printing press.

From a customer experience standpoint, newspapers are clearly diminishing in value.  When I talk to people to find out whether they still read a print version, I find it’s highly dependent upon their commute.  I still have the New York Times delivered each morning, but that’s largely because I have a commute that’s over an hour, on a combination of railroad and subway.  Those with a short commute, or who drive, don’t seem to find a printed newspaper that valuable.  In essence, the printed newspaper has become like an iPod – it’s a means of killing time, as opposed to a primary source of information.

Kinsley’s take is that “The trouble even an established customer will take to obtain a newspaper continues to shrink, as well. Once, I would drive across town if necessary. Today, I open the front door and if the paper isn't within about 10 feet I retreat to my computer and read it online. Only six months ago, that figure was 20 feet. Extrapolating, they will have to bring it to me in bed by the end of the year and read it to me out loud by the second quarter of 2007.”

Kinsley’s conclusion is that the traditional way of manufacturing and delivering newspapers cannot last.  The bright side, for Kinsley, is that if newspapers can eliminate their printed versions, they will be more profitable (assuming they can retain their advertising base), as the cost to print and deliver a paper is higher than the price.  Of course, only those newspapers willing to aggressively “eat their young” will be able to recreate themselves in a more useful way, while remaining profitable. 

I hope that some of these trusted sources can make that leap.  The quality of investigative journalism that you get from the Washington Post, the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal is not something you'll find on a blog or in a regurgitated press release positioned as news.  The cheap way out will be for papers to simply syndicate more of their content, as many smaller papers already do today.  But, those who try that approach will find that by adding no value, they'll no longer be relevant.  Instead, I hope that the major papers will invest more, not less, in those areas where they create value, and that local papers take a similar approach to creating content relevant to their community.  I expect that in the next few years we will see more newspapers fail and fewer trees getting cut down.

Reports this past week about Google refusing to comply with a U.S. Justice Department subpoena for search records were top stories in newspapers, on blogs and probably contributed to an 8% drop in the price of Google stock.

Unfortunately, most of those media outlets got the story wrong, positioning it as a privacy issue.  In reality, the issue was not about privacy, but (from Google’s standpoint), protecting trade secrets.

The Justice Department, in an effort to understand what sites might be delivering illegal pornography to users, apparently subpoenaed search and results data from Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL.  While the other three complied, Google refused.  The purpose of the request was to document typical profiles of Internet use, to defend the need for the Child Online Protection Act, passed in1998.

What the Justice Department requested, though, were not records of individual users.  Instead, they were merely looking at aggregate records of a week’s worth of search queries and of one million URL’s from the Google index. 

Whether or not the Justice Department should have access to that is not my area of concern.  Taking the “slippery slope” argument, particularly in light of how this Justice Department has viewed Executive powers vs. rights of privacy, it’s legitimate to make the argument that these subpoenas are inappropriate.  My concern is more how this news has been portrayed through the media.  If you skim articles in the NY Times, Washington Post and elsewhere, a reader would get the impression that it was a privacy issue.  In other words, that Google would be disclosing the identity of its users, along with what they searched for and the sites they visited.  A Washington Post article began "Google Inc. is rebuffing the Bush administration's demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet's leading search engine _ a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance."  That’s simply not accurate reporting.

The reporting is very similar to the articles a few weeks ago, that the NSA (or No Such Agency, as it was historically known as) was violating privacy rights by using cookies on their site.  To read these articles, you’d think that the NSA was tracking the activities of users, then matching that to identities (and possibly to phone intercepts which are one of the things NSA is renowned for).  Again, that’s not the case.  Using cookies, they could know that “a user” had returned, and would be able to track their click patterns, but users don’t register at the NSA site.  There’s no authentication.  Cookies could not help the NSA identify individual users in any shape or form.

These two stories demonstrate a tremendous gap in the technical knowledge of the media.  I don’t expect political or business writers to understand the nuances of cookies nor of search engine indexes.  But, I do expect them to do the due diligence to understand the key aspects of the story.  And, from the articles I’ve read, that’s just not happening.

We see similar problems when politicians jump on the bandwagon creating legislation to “solve” problems that don’t exist.  The fax-ban, postponed in 2005, was a good example of legislation that could impact many businesses, but which served almost no purpose.

Technological changes are impacting our lives in significant ways, and will be sure to raise many new ethical and legal issues in the years to come.  Somehow, our political and media leaders must take steps to understand the impact of those changes before they speak or write about them.

BTW - kudos to Danny Sullivan and Search Engine Watch, who were one of the few to get this story right from the start. 

This headline, Netflix names ex-US postmaster as COO, landed in my newsreader this afternoon.  While it might strike many people as odd (after all, the postal service isn't where most of us think of tapping the best content industry talent), it really reinforces the reasons why Netflix is winning the DVD rental wars.

When I added Netflix to my list of 50 Content Companies that Matter, one of the key differentiators was that "Netflix focused its efforts on building the logistics infrastructure to scale its business".  Early on, Netflix understood that developing an infrastructure that would make it simple and painless for its users to use the service was the key to success.  No one ever felt that Blockbuster provided a good user experience, and it will be a while before the efforts of Yahoo, Google and Microsoft begin to pay off.  In the meantime, Netflix continues to create raving fans among their users, with loyalty comparable to that of Tivo.

Hiring former US postmaster William Henderson as COO will help them continue to execute at a high level.  While the postal service may not win accolades for its customer service, they excel at consistently delivering mail and small packages on time. 

According to CEO Reed Hastings, "Bill Henderson is about the only person on the planet who looks at our volume of mail as a trickle". 

It seems like the perfect hire to ensure that the Netflix infrastructure can support their goal of 20 million subscribers by the year 2025.

 

Though we're not even at the halfway point in January, two new blogs have launched this month with a focus on the content space.

Clare Hart, the innovative CEO of Factiva, has just launched From the Hart, a CEO blog focused on the world of business information.  Under her leadership, Factiva has reshaped the world of business news, delivering workflow-based solutions for CRM, reputation monitoring and other business needs. 

The Bloom Group is a leader in professional services marketing.  I had the pleasure of working with them on a research study, in combination with business guru Michael Treacy, on behalf of the U.S. Chamber.  Ed Hastings of the Bloom Group has just launched a personal blog, That We Know, focusing on IT, content and the world of professional services.

Welcome to the blogosphere Clare and Ed.