Creativille

CBJ book review: Emotional Intelligence 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:01:00 +0000

Emotional Intelligence 2.0
Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
TalentSmart, 255 p., $19.95

Anyone with a copy of Gallup’s Strengthsfinder 2.0 on the shelf probably did a doubletake when they saw the cover of Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Save for a shift from red to orange and an additional stripe, the covers are nearly identical.

That’s likely intentional. Those looking to tap into core talents can take the Strengthsfinder test online, then read about who to put those strengths to work. The folks behind Emotional Intelligence 2.0 offer a similar tool, but in this case, it is to measure how well you react emotionally to situations.

In both cases, the book (and accompanying online component) promise to help the reader identify aspects of their personality that are often difficult to self-detect. And, once identified, they promise to help you maximize those aspects to achieve success.

“Emotional awareness and understanding are not taught in school,” the authors write. “We enter the workforce knowing how to read, write and report on bodies of knowledge, but too often, we lack the skills to manage or emotions in the heat of the challenging problems that we face.”

They go on to claim that emotional intelligence accounts for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs, and is the single biggest predictor of performance in the workplace.

Emotional intelligence is made up of four skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. The authors take up several pages explaining what each of these is and how they affect your decision making and work habits.

The bulk of the book, however, is given over to strategies to improve your emotional intelligence in each of these four areas. After taking the online assessment (each book comes with a code that allows you to access the site), you can look for ways to address shortcomings.

Even if you don’t take the assessment, the book has valuable advice that can guide you through a process of self- improvement. For example, the section on self-awareness includes tips like “stop and ask yourself why you do the things you do” and “get to know yourself under stress.”

For those with low self-awareness scores, following such advice can help to boost those figures.

Beyond that, the book offers some brief information about emotional intelligence that helps to put the idea in perspective. It’s an interesting, helpful little book that, like Strengthsfinder 2.0, can help you on the path to self-discovery.

CBJ Book Review: Ignore Everybody

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:12:00 +0000

This originally ran in the May 18-24, 2009 issue of the Corridor Business Journal.

Ignore Everybody
Hugh MacLeod
Portfolio, 159 p., $23.95

Having read Hugh MacLeod’s wildly successful blog, Gaping Void (www.gapingvoid.com), for the past four years, I feared that a whole book of his musings would be a bit too much.

That’s not a slight, necessarily. When you’re used to reading bite-sized nuggets from someone with an outsized personality like Mr. MacLeod, the prospect of 159 pages of the stuff is daunting.

I needn’t have worried, for Ignore Everybody was transforming. Where Mr. MacLeod’s blog posts offer the occasional burst of insight and inspiration, a book full of such thoughts was truly moving. I can safely say that this was the first business book I’ve been compelled to read in one day, and the first that made me actually feel like doing something immediately afterward.

Mr. MacLeod was a New York marketer with a cartooning background who started drawing cartoons on the backs of business cards while killing time in bars. He scanned these, uploaded them to the web and then wrote blog posts about marketing and cartooning to run with them. Today 1.5 million people monthly visit his blog, and screen prints of his cartoons sell for hundreds of dollars.

That in and of itself would be worth a book, and while Mr. MacLeod does share much about his own odd career path, he really focuses on his thoughts about creativity. He shares 40 such insights here, from “ignore everybody” to “none of this is rocket science.” In between, on pages liberally sprinkled with his funny, bawdy and incisive cartoons, he offers something that reads like a mash up of affirmation, advice and inspiration.

This may sound slight, and anyone paging through this in a bookstore would be hard pressed to argue otherwise. But it does what it sets out to do. Mr. MacLeod makes his point (“Ignore everybody”), amplifies it (“The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.”) and then expounds on it for a page or two.

Each point is poignant enough, but it is the aggregation of all 40 points that drives home the key point: indulge your creative self, but don’t put so much pressure on yourself to make it your be-all end-all that you quash the energy that made that creative outlet so rewarding in the first place.

CBJ Book Review:

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:15:00 +0000

This originally ran in the May 18-24, 2009 issue of the Corridor Business Journal.

Pow! Right Between the Eyes!
Andy Nulman
Wiley Books, 244 p., $22.95

I love comedy, but I find that when people try to blend comedy and business advice, the results are usually so stale as to be off putting at best, worthless at worst.

That makes Andy Nulman’s book a – wait for it… surprise. His book, subtitled “Profiting from the Art of Surprise,” certainly tries to get the reader laughing at the same time he is learning, but it does so with just the right balance of mirth and worth that it is the rare example of a comedic business book that works.

Mr. Nulman’s key tenet is this: “The element of surprise is the most important aspect in contemporary business.” In a world where you can go into a McDonald’s in India and get a burger that tastes just like one in Cedar Rapids, or walk into any Walgreens and know exactly where to find the cold medicine, that might seem a strange thing to believe.

But, Mr. Nulman writes, the problem with the expected is that it doesn’t generate any excitement about your product. “The end result is a yawn-inducing, decreasingly effective, peasoup-esque haze.”

Surprise your customer – or better yet, your potential customer – and “it slices through the dreariness of the dreaded ‘murketing’ message.”

Once he explains why surprise is vital and describes what it is, he spends much of the rest of the book telling the reader how to do it. Here, Mr. Nulman’s background in entertainment is put to full use. He knows how to present a case study and make his pitch, engaging the reader at the same time he stresses key points.

Two important chapters, however, are the difference between the book being a novelty and being seriously valuable. In them, Mr. Nulman warns against undertaking marketing efforts solely for the sake of shock and titillation. In one, he shares what a surprise is not, while in the other he cautions that while there is value in surprise, done wrong it can have unintended consequences. Constantly raising the element of surprise can be just as boring as having no surprise at all, he warns.

For those looking for quick takeaways, the chapter “The Art of the Business of Creating Surprise” is the best destination. Over the course of 60 pages, Mr. Nulman offers several ideas and anecdotes about ways to use surprise to spread the word.

CBJ Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:13:00 +0000

This originally ran in the May 4-11, 2009 issue of the Corridor Business Journal.

So You Want to Start a Business?
Edward D. Hess and Charles F. Goetz
FT Press, 194 p., $18.99

There is an interesting distinction in the subtitle of this book, which reads, “8 Steps to Take Before Making the Leap.” In the introduction, the authors write that they actually are addressing the eight mistakes that typically derail startup businesses.

Further, they write that these mistakes are at the real culprits behind failures that have been attributed to a larger perceived problem: the lack of capital. “Running out of money is the result or consequence of more fundamental, underlying failures,” they write.

The book begins with an introduction that lays out what those eight mistakes are, then recasts the problem to state its solution when it is given its own chapter. For example, the first mistake is “choosing a bad business opportunity.” The related chapter is titled, “What is a Good Business Opportunity?”

The book wouldn’t be as valuable if it simply left things here. It’s one thing to know how to avoid a problem. It’s another to see why you’re prone to make that error in the first place and to recognize if you already have. An early chapter provides the needed context, better explaining what these errors are and what they lead to.

In the case of the first mistake about good and bad business opportunities, they authors write about ideas that seem good, but that won’t earn you enough to cover costs and make a living. Execution is more important than the idea, they write, and without it, a good idea can lead to a bad business opportunity.

With that context in hand, the first chapter makes more sense – as do subsequent chapters thanks to their own contextualizing introductions – and sets you up for the math-intensive discussion of product, customers and execution that follows.

Other problems covered in the book include selling at the wrong price, failing to hire and retain the right people and being unable to grow and scale the business. Each is discussed in a technical chapter that really uncovers the nuts and bolts.

As usual, this book might be of help to someone contemplating making the entrepreneurial leap, but it seems as if it would be better for someone who has already taken the plunge but who is dealing with challenges. Here, the immediate application of its concepts to a problem might be more helpful than the more abstract guidance they offer someone creating a business plan.

Flawed business plan revealed!

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:02:00 +0000

Pearls Before Swine, 4/20/09

Gee, when you put it that way, it does seem kind of silly. Where was Goat when we needed him?

Josh Feese succeeds with unique sales pitch

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:32:00 +0000

Radiohead made headlines in 2007 when they allowed fans to pay whatever they wanted to for their new CD, and several other artists followed suit. That was a great thing, for it was a fine example of offering choice to consumers. Rather than assume they would steal the music if given the chance, the band let consumers decide what the music was worth.

Drummer Josh Freese is building on that notion with his second solo album, Since 1972. He is offering packages that cost between $7 and $75,000. The low end price gets you a digital download, the top end gets you a five-song EP written about you and your life, recorded by Freese, one of his drum sets, "take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL's Lamborgini," and Freese's membership in your band for a month (plus much, much more).

It seemed like an inventive lark when it was announced earlier this year. But then a funny thing happened: People took him up on it. In a pos t on the Nine Inch Nails message board, Freese writes that "I have sold 150 of the $50 of the packages and all 25 of the $250 packages (those went in the first 24 hours.) In less than a week I have sold 4 of the $500, 2 of the $2,500, 2 of the $5,000, and the big old $20,000 package!"

The $20,000 package sale has earned Freese some press. Wired.com's Underwire blog has the story. It seems fan Thomas Mrzyglocki had some inheritance money and a desire to get away from things for a while, so he bought the package and hung out with Freese for a week. According to Wired.com, Freese said, "I really do like the kid and know that it's a bizarre experience for him."

Meanwhile, Freese has earned unbelievable press for an album that would likely have garnered a handful of reviews had it come out through traditional means. Giving fans a choice, and being willing to go well beyond the norm, has earned him some fans, some notoriety and some cash. Though, he tells Wired.com, it's not about that: "I've made a little bit of money," he said, "but I'm not out shopping for cars, you know what I mean?"

CBJ magazine round-up

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:31:00 +0000

Originally published in the April 13-19 issue of the Corridor Business Journal.

The cover of this month’s Portfolio is either a few months too late or a couple of years too early. Either way, it’s odd to see one-time Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in thick coat and jeans staring somewhat defiantly at the camera. The cover story is about Ms. Palin’s plan to build a $40 billion gas pipeline out of Alaska, and how and why the plan has been derailed. Of more interest is a companion piece about Exxon and what are expected to be its battles with the Obama administration over environmental issues.

Another interesting piece looks at “the Steve Jobs Economy,” estimating the Apple CEO’s worth to the economy. Adding not only the sale of its products but also software and ancillary products sold for them and the products of competitors spurred by his innovation, it estimates a value of $30.8 billion.

Wired this month looks at the nation’s power grid and the challenges we face because of it. The piece suggests seven ways to fix the grid, and expresses hope that the Obama administration is poised to do so. The suggestions include generating power anywhere possible, storing it in “super batteries” and pushing conservation efforts more aggressively.

The issue also includes a fascinating article called “The Brain, Revealed,” that looks at efforts to more fully map and study the organ that controls it all. It’s a comprehensive look at what we know, and what we have yet to discover.

Fast Company’s cover this month profiles Chris Hughes, a founder of Facebook who was instrumental in creating the MyBarackObama.com web site that is credited with helping to connect Mr. Obama’s supporters, raise $30 million and form 35,000 volunteer groups. Just 25, Mr. Hughes is given considerable credit in the piece for Mr. Obama’s election. Regardless of the accuracy of such plaudits, he was clearly a factor, and that success shows how, in the right hands, social media can be a very powerful tool.

The issue also has a list of 10 ways to fix the auto industry. No. 1 on the list? Let Mr. Obama take over. Some critics would say that already has occurred. Stay tuned for the results.

Web is killing the business of journalism

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:00:00 +0000

Jeff Jarvis is angry again, because of course he's right and others are wrong. This time his ire is targeted at those who responded to a very unscientific survey of " prominent members of the national news media" by The Atlantic for a piece about the affect of the Internet on journalism. According to the piece, 65 percent of those surveyed believe journalism has been hurt more than helped by the Internet.

This, of course, has Jarvis hopping mad: "Restrain me," he writes.

Alas, The Atlantic probably errs by not presenting the question more effectively, and Jarvis, myopic as always, errs because he's not savvy enough to see the real question and answer behind the piece. You see, the Internet has damaged journalism. There's no question. What Jarvis is angry about is that this would seem to indicate that web-based reporting is inferior. Most of it is, but that's not the takeaway here. It is that the Internet has damaged the business of journalism. Of that, there is no debate. Other factors have played a part in the demise of newspapers and other newsgathering organizations, everything from greed and managerial incompetence to the rising cost of newsprint. But the web is what has so thoroughly slammed newspapers. If the rest were the first small rocks to slide down the mountainside, then the web is the thunderclap that triggered the landslide.

Many wags have compared newspaper companies to buggy whip makers. Whatever. But using that analogy, the newspaper folks are saying that cars have damaged the business of making and selling buggy whips. Again, there is no debate there. But the Jarvises of the day would say, "How dare you say carmakers can't make a quality buggy whip!" That's not the point, is it? In that case, buggies and cars conveyed people, but they were very different. In this one, newspapers and the web both convey information, but they are very different. And yes, the car killed the buggy just as surely as the web is killing newspapers.

Now, The Atlantic doesn't ask, nor do the queried journalists respond, with answers to this exact question. But that is the overarching Q and A in this discussion. Sure, they say that reporting suffers, that attention spans are being shortened. But what they are really saying is that the way we once did business has been irreparably damaged. For some reason, this rankles Jarvis, who continues to push for the demise of print products despite the fact that some of us still prefer to have that option in the mix. Anything that gets in the way of that seems to make him see red. Too bad that so clouds his view.

What is killing newspapers? Not what you think

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:45:00 +0000

Finally, a look at the real reasons newspaper companies are failing. Yes, revenues are down everywhere because of a soft advertising market and a loss in subscription revenue as readers flock to the web, but, as Daniel Gross writes today in Slate, "not every newspaper company in the country has gone bankrupt as a result. And the failures may say more about a style of capitalism than an industry."

He cites the examples of Sam Zell, who put down 4 percent of the $8.2 billion asking price for the Tribune Co., somehow leaving it with an impossible-to-manage $13 billion in debt. Other, slightly less egregious examples are cited as well.

This proves, of course, that the calls from this corner and elsewhere that publicly traded companies should be prohibited from owning newspapers is not the answer. I still think it's a start. taking papers out of the hands of public companies that put profit gains before all else would surely help. A bill introduced by Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin that would allow newspapers to more easily operate as nonprofits is worth following.

Of course, you can't legislate stupidity, so problems like those brought on by Zell and others are hard to avoid unless the marketplace does a better job of stopping such maneuvers.

Peabodys recognize online work

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:06:00 +0000

This year's Peabody Awards reflect the ramped up online shift undergone by media in the past year, as YouTube, the Onion News Network and the New York Times web site.

The 36 winners of this year's award were announced today by the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, which oversees the awards. The awards recognize "the best in electronic media for 2008."

"The works recognized by the Peabody Board this year not only reflect great diversity of content and genre, but also true technical innovation and the varied roles of new distribution systems," said Peabody Director Horace Newcomb, in a release. "The list of winners this year clearly indicates a changing media environment that will continue to require judgment and evaluation through the Peabody Awards process."

In addition to the usual spate of television shows and documentaries, the awards this year reached into cyberspace to recognize digital excellence. The organization called YouTube "the video-sharing web site that puts a boundless array of video artifacts, from historic political speeches to cell phone videos, at every Internet user's fingertips," in honoring it with an award, while the Onion News Network was noted for it's "video parodies of newscasts and newsmakers (that) are so shrewdly conceived and produced that they're often hard to distinguish from the real thing."

The latter is a strange one coming on April Fool's Day, though it is not unprecedented -- Stephen Colbert has a Peabody or two as well.

"We recognize the great transformations affecting dissemination of news and information," Newcomb said in the release. "The variety of choices available to citizens does in fact range from the best traditional journalism expanded for the web, to sharp critiques in the form of parody and satire. Both can achieve a level of excellence that reaches the Peabody standard and both require citizens to respond with careful analysis of their own."

Minneapolis Fed offers recession tracker

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:28:00 +0000

The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank has created an interactive presentation on its web site called “Recession in Perspective” that allows users to track the current recession against other post-World War II recessions.

The page can be found here. It includes data about the recession on a state-by-state basis, offering a look at the unemployment rate in each state for each of 10 recessions after 1945.

On a national basis, it also compares output among the various recessions. “This page provides a current assessment of ‘how bad’ the recession is relative to past recessions,” the creators write. This offers a perspective about the length and depth of this recession as it relates to those of the past.

The 10 previous postwar recessions have ranged in length from 6 months to 16 months, averaging about 10 1/2 months. The current recession has surpassed the postwar average, but its total length will only be known when the Business Cycle Dating Committee retrospectively determines the final month of the recession.

The site will be updated as new data are released.

Labels subsidize success in bid to break big acts

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:34:00 +0000

Coolfer reported last week about comments made by Edgar Bronfman Jr. at the Deutsche Bank Securities Media and Telecommunications Conference, and I found one of his statements interesting. I agree with him, but he doesn't take things far enough, and his shortsightedness is part of the reason why the music business is failing.

Asked about artists releasing music directly to consumers as opposed to going through major record labels, Coolfer reports that Bronfman "firmly defended the value of the record label model and the company's role as financier and risk-taker. "This question is a decade old," he said while recalling his days with Polygram in the '90s. After ten years, Bronfman said, the answer is that it is still very complex, complicated and expensive to launch an artist. Record companies are only entities putting up the capital against the launch, and record labels will continue to be the only ones in a position to do that. He finished with a bang: 'The artist going direct is a false notion, has been a false notion and I think continues to be a false notion.'"

He's right, up to a point. Yes, it is extremely expensive and time consuming to launch an artist these days. There are examples of bands and artists that have gone it alone and made a fairly successful career for themselves (Ani DiFranco, for example), but they are few and far between.

The problem, of course, is that labels are fickle, and after putting hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of dollars into breaking an act, they'll cut their losses if it doesn't work. That, perhaps strangely enough, works very much to the advantage of artists.

No one can break an act like a major label. They offer top-flight production, graphic arts, tour support, ad buys and more. A band can go from a regional phenomenon to a nationally known entity in short order. Even if they do nothing more than flop, their name is out there, and their fan base will have expanded significantly. Once they are dropped, that name recognition doesn't go away. Many artists have taken that path, knowing they would make next to nothing during the major-label stint, but consider it an investment. I remember interviewing the Posies' Ken Stringfellow years ago after the band had been dropped by DGC. He said he'll always have the people that discovered him thanks to DGC's promotion as an audience who will likely pay attention to what he does in the future.

So, Bronfman is right: Major labels are still the best way to break bands. But any band with an ounce of sense would bolt at the end of that first contract, guaranteed, unless they're one of the tiny fraction of acts that blow up big, to make more money on their own. Meanwhile, the labels lose money because they spend so much trying to break big acts but don't have the patience to let an artist's audience grow over time.

Blurt: mag to web and back again

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:49:00 +0000

This may be a first: A magazine that folded and morphed into an online-only product is now set to launch... a magazine.

Harp magazine, one of the best music titles to debut in the past decade, folded last March. It was purchased by JazzTimes parent Guthrie Inc. in 2003, and in announcing its closure last year, Guthrie CEO Glenn Sabin said, "Unfortunately, Harp's critical acclaim never translated into sustaining commercial success. Harp's lifecycle was ill timed with the precipitous decline of the music software industry, coupled with the consolidation of the consumer magazine newsstand business and rising paper and postage costs."

Those behind the mag, including publisher Scott Crawford, quickly regrouped and launched Blurt, an online magazine/web site. It is essentially Harp online, with a normal daily-updated web presence and a quarterly magazine. That product was essentially a magazine in all aspects but the presence of paper. Instead, users would click through pages in a dedicated web-based viewer.

At the time, Crawford lauded the “green-minded, digital-only format,” conveniently forgetting that Harp's old-fashioned print-on-paper format was doing just fine until commerce intruded. And now?

“It’s sort of a new paradigm,” Crawford told FOLIO: magazine. “We’ve gotten to the point of wanting a physical product to help brand the site—we want it to be the ‘soul’ of the web site in print.”

Translation: web ads sell at only a fraction of the cost of those in print, and if we want to survive, we'd best get ourselves on the newsstands. The magazine will appear quarterly and will retail for $4.95. It will debut in mid-March.

It's an interesting trajectory, the polar opposite of most newspapers and an increasing number of magazines. It will be interesting to see if the magazine repurposes online content, or vice versa, or whether it will offer completely original content. As a commenter on the FOLIO: piece points out, many web sites have tried and failed the move to print, including eBay and Motley Fool. Blurt's leg up comes from the fact that most saw that as an extension of a print title that already sold 60,000 copies a month, which should make Blurt's 30,000 print run a reasonable proposition.

I for one welcome the change. While I was a Harp subscriber from the beginning and have kept up with some of Blurt's coverage, I've read no more than the first digital issue. If I want to see stories laid out on a page, I want to be able to hold that page in my hand. Blurt online would do better to ditch that aspect of its presentation and stick to frequently updating its web page, leaving longer-form pieces to the print product.

A voice of reason in newspaper/online debate

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:28:00 +0000

Allan Mutter offers the first analysis in the debate about whether newspapers could stop printing on paper that actually makes sense. Others, always unfathomably gleeful about the notion of the news no longer coming on paper, suggest that simply shutting off the presses is a logical solution to financial woes. Get rid of the cost of paper, printing and distribution, and you cut the business to its core, they argue. Cedar Rapids Gazette Editor Steve Buttry asserts that subscribers are paying for those costs with their subscriptions, not the news (thus ignoring the fact that they might also be paying for convenience or because they prefer that method of news delivery).

Jeff Jarvis raised interesting if flawed points in a December post about The Los Angeles Times when he took news that its online operation made enough to cover the editorial payroll as an indication that the Times could cease printing and go online only. What he ignores, of course, is that:

--the paper makes exponentially more on the paper product, and thus would lose those revenues,
--there are dozens (in this case) hundreds of people who sell and create those ads, as well as those who maintain the web site, none of whose salaries are included in this computation,
--no discussion of benefits or other costs is included in the discussion,
--any such move means drastic cuts in budgets and staffing. Preach all you want about crowdsourcing and the democratization of news, but coverage will suffer, at least in the short term.
--people might actually prefer the print product.

Mutter explores these (save for the last, which no one seems to care about) in his post. The most direct line, which I'm amazed even needs to be stated at this point, is this:

"But we are a long way from seeing a publisher make the proactive decision to pull the plug on a profitable print-on-paper operation. That’s because pulling the plug is not a decision a rational publisher can afford to make."

Those with no stake in the outcome but who have learned that being loud and cantankerous can double for veracity in the blogosphere will argue otherwise, but Mutter is exactly right.

Print may well go away as we move to online-only formats, but it won't happen any time soon. And I realize that the fact that I prefer to read a newspaper at the breakfast table with my family rather than sit by myself in the office scanning an RSS feed makes me some sort of out-of-step dinosaur, but as long as there are a few of us left, newspapers will need to cater to us if they hope to earn advertising revenue. If Jarvis got what he wanted and newspapers all stopped printing on paper tomorrow, most of those companies would be out of business by the end of the month.

Dilbert points to future of self-supporting comics

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:09:00 +0000

A new media marketing lesson was offered in the comics pages of newspapers, of all places, last week. Scott Adams' "Dilbert" strip featured a story line in which Dilbert is so bored at work that he created his own company, Dilbertfiles.com. The first mention last Monday didn't raise and red flags for me, but by Wednesday's strip, which seemed a bit forced, I decided to check out the URL to see if it was a real company. It was. Adams has licensed Dilbert and Dogbert to a Dutch online storage and file transfer company, and used three of last week's strips to promote it.

By mid-week, comics purists were up in arms, according to Editor and Publisher magazine. Product placement in a comic strip? Blasphemy. Or is it? As newsprint, far and away the dominant channel for comics, makes way for online presentation, expect more of this. Those who draw strips will earn far less from digital presentation, where they'll likely only appear in a few (or maybe only one) spots, than they do from newspaper syndication, where they appear in hundreds. Not everyone is like Adams, with the ability to sell endless numbers of licenced products and books, so artists will need to look to other revenue streams to survive.

At some point, the evolution of this process will likely mean the end of syndicates. If there are no newspapers in which to place your strip, why syndicate? Better to have your own site where you can do your own marketing, sell your own products and talk directly with your audience. For the time being, however, it's still probably smart to align with a syndicate. Much like small bands that sign with major record labels with no hope of seeing much money during the course of the contract, they'll benefit from the elevated exposure. Milk the system until you become a household name, then go out on your own where you'll make much more per unit and have significantly lowered overhead costs.

White House starts blog: is it enough?

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:12:00 +0000

It felt strange/exhilarating/preordained that when I added the feed for the White House blog to my RSS reader yesterday. Of course the Obama White House has a blog. That seems a given. Of course, the Bush White House may also have had one, but I didn't ever hear of one and was never compelled to check for myself. Politics aside, it simply didn't seem like something an administration that had such a contentious relationship with the press would think to have, never mind the ability if would afford to speak directly to the public without, in the words of Sarah Palin, the filter of the mainstream media.

But as I added the feed, I wondered what I would really gain. Will I learn anything I won't already have heard many other places by the time it hits this blog? Will it simply be propaganda? Without a comment function, and thus a chance to engage in dialogue with the populace, does it even count as a blog or is it really a press release machine? It feels like a good start, but just that -- a start. If Obama is serious about transparency and collaboration and accepting the best idea regardless of origin, then this needs to be the first of many online and interactive initiatives. The White House has caught up with the technology available when Bush took office; it shouldn't wait long to catch up with the rest of us here in 2009.

Hirschorn to Times: Drop dead (by May)

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:24:00 +0000

Michael Hirschorn's provocative article in this month's Atlantic, "End Times," is the piece to read this week. In it, he suggests that the print edition of the New York Times, and thus, the Times as we know it, could be gone by May. Regardless of the math involved, that's a startling supposition.

My gut reaction is to rebel and worry. How could that be? But of course, business decisions that have nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of the paper are likely to sink it (and many others). I joked with someone today that my sound financial advice is "don't spend what you don't have." Sadly, a lot of media entities are going to go under in 2009 because they failed to follow that simple rule.

I'll get my main beef with Hirschorn's piece out of the way now. It's this ridiculous sentence: "It will also mean the end of a certain kind of quasi-bohemian urban existence for the thousands of smart middle-class writers, journalists, and public intellectuals who have, until now, lived semi-charmed kinds of lives of the mind." Bold words from a former VH1 exec and Spin magazine editor. Ever worked in a real newsroom, Michael? I doubt it, or you wouldn't call the grueling work of a good beat writer "a quasi-bohemain" existence that is part of a "semi-charmed life of the mind." Sure, having an inside look at the world and being able to flex creative muscles as you convey your view of it to the masses can seem like a pretty sweet gig, but it's hard work like any other, and to dismiss it is to be blinded by the tall buildings obscuring your view from Manhattan. I've long railed against opponents of "the media" who are really talking about the Post, the Times, the Journal and the networks -- not the thousands of papers and TV stations in smaller markets. It's sad when someone from one of those larger markets paints his own industry with the same broad brush.

That aside, there are thought-provoking aspects to Hirschorn's piece, but he doesn't take them anywhere. He throws his bomb by declaring the Times near dead, and then seems content to sit back and watch for the fallout. There is an entire analysis to be spun off from this short paragraph alone:

The conundrum, of course, is that those 1 million print readers, who pay actual cash money for the privilege of consuming the paper, and who are worth about five figures a page to advertisers, are far more profitable than the 20 million unique Web users, who don’t and aren’t. Common estimates suggest that a Web-driven product could support only 20 percent of the current staff; such a drop in personnel would (in the short run) devastate The Times’ news-gathering capacity.

I don't read the Times in print, but I do read the local daily that is also the subject of much "kill print, move online" talk. But media companies will die an even quicker death if they simply ditch paper and move to bits and bytes, for web ads draw a fraction of that earned from print ads, and no one pays for a subscription to a web site (the Journal notwithstanding). Some editors, like the Gazette's Steve Buttry, have interesting notions about what people pay for with a subscription (he argues it's simply the paper and the delivery, I argue that while that might be what they are actually paying for, most subscribers would say they're buying the news carried on those pages. No one pays to have blank paper delivered to their door). Why kill the one thing actually making money for you in a rush to move online, knowing it'll probably kill your product thanks to the resulting cuts in the process?

Why not, to get back to the central tenet of this blog, offer choice? If people want something to read at the breakfast table, why not offer it until it becomes economically unfeasible to do so? Of course, some may say we're already there, but if papers didn't need to pay off billions of dollars in debt accrued by executives whose eyes were bigger than their wallets, that might be a long ways off.

One last point: I read Hirschorn's piece online, not in print. I might not have done so had it not been among the shortest things I've ever seen in the Atlantic. had it been one of the magazine's typical 20-pagers, I would have printed it out or sought out a copy of the magazine. Not everything works online; some things, gasp, actually work better on paper. 'Nuf said.

Ultimately, Hirschorn's piece is the latest in a long line from those on the sidelines telling newspapers how things ought to be.

2008 will be seen as a transition

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:18:00 +0000

It seems a day can't go by without bad economic news here in the Corridor. Just this week, Cryovac announced a plant closing in Cedar Rapids that will idle 260, while Lee Enterprises over in Davenport is close to delisting on the NYSE because it's stock is trading for too little. These are just the latest in a string of bad news.

Moving into a new year, I'm guessing that 2008 will ultimately be seen as a transitional year. It was tough -- and early 2009 promises to be as much so or more -- but likely marks the beginning of the true transition to a new economy. Looking at what suffered, it seems to be old, established entities, from newspaper companies to music labels to car companies. At the same time, however, the new things that are springing up to take their place (in the case of the first two, anyway), aren't exactly lighting up the skies just yet. Yes, the web has overtaken print as a place where people get their news (both still far behind TV, however) for example, but few are actually making any money at it.

But things will change. The hardship of 2008 will see to that. Those uneager to do so have little choice now. If 2008 will be remembered for all of the bad news, it is also likely to be recalled as the beginning of something new. What that is remains to be seen. There are plenty of people ready to say that print will die, record labels will fold, that anything not intensely local will move away. They may be right. It will be interesting to look back at this time next year to see.

Digital is an option, not a replacement

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:17:00 +0000

Two seemingly disparate things have come together in my mind that help to amplify a point that I think is lost in the rush to declare most forms of hard media dead and to anoint digital anything and everything as the new king.

First came yet another Jeff Jarvis-related firestorm, this time over a New York Observer profile in which he is pitted (wrongly, he writes on his blog) against mainstream media types like the New York Times' Bill Keller. Jarvis is earning a lot of ink (digital and otherwise) because some see him as gleefully dancing on the grave of print journalism. I don't think he is, but I can see why some people think it, and that brings me to the second thing that hit the news today.

Atlantic Records announced that for the first time, digital sales brought in more than those of compact discs. While on first blush that would seem to support the arguments of those who say digital is (slowly, quickly?) killing all other formats, I think it really points out something more interesting: Fully half (or, 49 percent if you want to be specific) of the sales of Atlantic's music products came in the form of CDs. Despite the fact that we are rapidly moving toward a digital-only world, half of the company's customers choose to buy their music on discs of plastic.

I buy more of my music digitally these days than I do otherwise, but I make a decision every time I do buy music whether to go digital or disc. It's exactly the same decision I made back when I was in college and CDs were becoming the norm, only in reverse. If it was an impulse buy that I didn't imagine I would be listening to years later, I would buy it on the cheaper, admittedly inferior cassette. If it was something I knew (or at least suspected) I'd want to keep around for a long time, I'd pay the premium for a CD. Today, I'll get something on digital for a quick reward, but I'll still opt for a CD for the long haul. The superior sound quality, security and storage of a CD far outweighs the convenience of zero storage space that an MP3 offers.

The same thing applies to papers. While Jarvis and others are quick to say that newspapers as we know them are dying off, what they seem to miss is that many, many people still get a lot of their news from words printed on paper. (This is a very small sample, but check out this poll at Old Media, New Tricks blog. Even some of these most-plugged in netizens get their news from a print paper). Steve Buttry of the Cedar Rapids Gazette acknowledged this during a recent online chat. While the digital audience is growing that is where he expects to see the company's growth, "the print edition of The Gazette has a huge audience and large revenue stream that we think will support a healthy business for many years to come."

When I get up in the morning, I like nothing more than to scan headlines in the local paper while having a cup of coffee. The last thing I want to do is get right back on the computer to try to nose around news sites. You simply can't scan or sample on screen the way you can with a paper spread out on the breakfast table. But later in the day, online news is all I peruse. It would be a shame to lose one of those outlets.

The key, then, is for all media to look for ways to improve and bolster the core product while embracing digital outlets as an enhancement. Heck, the digital outlet might soon become the core product, but that doesn't mean the paper product should go away, just like CDs don't necessarily need to completely give way to digital. Choice is the key. The economics of offering choices are the sticking points that need to be worked out, but there are niche markets available all across the spectrum for those who figure out how to do so.

Jarvis sums it all up

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:51:00 +0000

Jeff Jarvis did something today that would be instructive for anyone pushing a particular point of view or who has written extensively on a given subject: He summed it all up.

In a post today on his Buzz Machine blog, he responds to questions from readers who were drawn to a fray between Jarvis and Slate writer Ron Rosenbaum over what Rosenbaum saw as Jarvis' gloating over the death of print journalism. Rosenbaum misrepresented Jarvis' POV, but Jarvis did himself no favors with a rather childish response. So, today's summary was a nice step back. Jarvis has been writing about the shift of journalism for a long time, so it was instructive to read his thoughts distilled in one post.

It put me in the mind of two of the most recent posts I've written here: Friday's reboot and one from a couple of years ago just before taking a long layoff. There I wrote about my efforts to wrap my arms around a unifying theory that could explain all of the things I was thinking. Friday I wrote that I still think, two years later, that those ideas are still valid, and that events over the past two years have only solidified that viewpoint.

Forcing yourself to summarize your position can be a positive thing. I coach writers to do the same thing. Summarize your story in a headline and a subhead. If you can't do it, you probably don't have a focus yet. And if your headline doesn't accurately reflect what a reader finds when they get to the story, then you probably think you're writing about something you're not.

Jarvis clearly knows where he stands, and this post is going to be referred to for a long time to come. Is he right? Not entirely, if I'm any judge. But it's compelling, well thought out and sure to spark discussion, and there is a lot of value in that no matter the accuracy of the prognostications.

Creativille (slight return)

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:07:00 +0000

I’ve begun Twittering lately, and the resulting ability to keep tabs on the ideas of thought leaders from various industries has energized me in the same way that my immersion into blogs thanks to my first RSS reader did a few years ago. I’m not among those who think Twitter will displace blogs, much as I don’t believe the Internet will displace print media. But I do know that information consumers have much more to choose from these days, and that makes it an exciting time for those of us who revel in such freedom of choice.

This blog began a few years ago after I read books by a number of big thinkers – Thomas Friedman, Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Anderson et al – who sparked my own thinking about issues of business, technology, arts and culture. I used the blog to grapple with a unifying theory that could help all of these things to line up in my mind. I finally hit upon the idea of Unlimited Choice. It’s not great, sounding like a generic cell phone or cable television pricing tier, but it gets at what I’m after.

Essentially, the diversity of media through which information is shared means that people can choose how much or how little to absorb. They can choose what they want to hear, read, watch or experience. They can choose when to do so, for how long and at what cost.

This is all restating what I have written here before, but there is an amplification that comes thanks to the deafening debate about the fate of the media going on. As if it wasn’t bad enough to read constantly in online news reports and even-more-frequent blog posts about the impending demise of my industry, I now read such opinions and analyses on a minute-by-minute basis on Twitter.

I drifted away from Creativille (if that isn’t a Jimmy Buffet song in waiting, I don’t know what is) as other pursuits took precedence, but the recent conversation of which I’ve been a part has drawn me back in with a refined purpose.

There is no doubt that the news industry is in trouble. But there are plenty of people who are trying to point us all in the right direction. The diversity of media I mention above has sprung up because technological advances allow for it, of course, but also because consumers increasingly demand such choices. They no longer want to wait for the morning paper to see a sports score, or for the evening news to get the weather, or for the local CD shop to stock a CD to hear a song. They want it now.

At the same time, however, the still do want the newspaper and the evening news and the CD shop, but not for the same reasons they once did. The want the newspaper as a permanent record and a place to read longer stories. They want the evening news to see high-resolution video. They want the CD shop so they can hold that deluxe boxed set in their hands before pulling the trigger on a purchase.

So my purpose here is twofold. To explore the continuing ways that technology, business, media and culture intersect, and to look at ways the new age of unlimited choice is affecting the way people produce and absorb media.

I was able to engage in a brief dialogue about a couple of my ideas during an online chat with new Cedar Rapids Gazette Editor Stephen Buttry this week. I wrote that the media has three roles: gathering news, filtering out what is most interesting and then offering context and analysis. Buttry wrote that consumers can fulfill the middle role of filter just fine thanks to services like Digg.com, which is true. But I’ll stand behind the idea that we’re professional filters, hired by our readers to sift through all of the information out there and present the best of it. That job is harder now, because everyone has access to pretty much everything, meaning no one needs blindly trust our judgment.

So, welcome. I hope to pick up where I left off many months ago with similar content and some new ideas. The conversation is happening, and this is my attempt to be a part of it. In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter and, for those interested in more specialized writing about music and books (or even more specialized writing about the music of Robert Pollard), you can find me elsewhere. And, of course, there is always the Corridor Business Journal and CorridorBuzz.com, where I’m dealing with these issues from the front lines.

Meeting unknown needs

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 17:57:00 +0000

The next step in the world of unlimited choice is figuring out what people need before they do. Case in point: I just picked up a new iPod Shuffle, as much for the shiny-new-thing factor as for discerning any true need for it. For $80, how could I not buy one? Thing is, I can suddenly see a number of different situations in which it would be handy to have a tiny batch of songs clipped to my coat. Without Apple having made such an appealing product, I likely would never have determined such a need.

A new beginning

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 19:16:00 +0000

While I've been remiss about posting here of late, that is not an indication that I haven't been thinking. When I started this blog, I wrote about the fact that I've read many of the leading business/thought books of the past couple of years, and feel as if there is some unifying theme that ties them all together. I tried out ideas like "on-demand culture" and spent a lot of time writing about The World is Flat and The Long Tail, but seemed no closer to tying it all together.

I've been inspired lately by Traci Fenton, who runs the organization WorldBlu. Fenton's group pushes the idea of "organizational democracy," a concept she says is somewhat drawn from a synthesis of ideas from herself and others. She cites the work of Jim Collins, Thomas Friedman, Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley, among others, saying they “have been coming at it from different pieces of the pie. What organizational democracy does is it brings it all together, and says it’s about creating an entire system,” she said.

I have similar thoughts about the Long Tail and related notions of choice and search. I'm a believer in Chris Anderson's notion that the Long Tail will revolutionize the world, as the availablity of more and more products liberates consumers. At the same time, I understand Barry Schwartz, who might be seen as the anti-Anderson, who preaches that too much choice actually can make us very unhappy. Somewhere in all of this is John Battelle, whose work in the field of search seems to be a bridging link, or at least a way to capitalize on Anderson's ideas while ameliorating the effect's of Schwartz's.

The result? An emerging sythesis of my own: Unlimited choice is the ideal, as long as people also are allowed to choose the level of choice from which to choose. As you can tell, that doesn't quite have the punch of a suitable book subtitle, so perhaps some amplification is in order. Essentially, the Long Tail can and should enable people to have as much choice as they like. Take books, for example (as Anderson does in his book). Those who want unlimited choice can shop at Amazon.com or whatever comes next, browsing digitally through hundreds of thousands of books. Those who want a more directed search with fewer options, could visit a Barnes & Noble or other superstore, with 150,000 some odd titles within reach. Those who are content to read popular works and who don't necessarily want to browse or explore will likely be happy with the 20-40,000 titles in a mall B. Dalton or Waldenbooks.

Thus, choice works best when consumers are allowed to choose the level of choice from which to choose. Can I integrate the work of Richard Florida, Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Friedman, Stephen Johnson and others into this? Perhaps. At least now, after more than a year of nibbling at the edges of this idea, I feel as if I'm starting to see it as a whole.

YouTube + WMG = ?

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:36:00 +0000

An announcement that YouTube will partner with Warner Music Group would seem to be good news. According to a release from YouTube, the aggreement means that WMG music videos will be made available for viewing on YouTube, as will "behind-the-scenes footage, artist interviews, original programming and other special content." The surprisingly thing is that this content also will be available for YouTube users to incorporate into their own videos.

It's not clear what this means, exactly. Can I create a video of my vacation with a soundtrack drawn from WMG's roster? Can I mash up a WMG artist's video with my own sounds? That all remains to be seen, and I'd guess those things will be ironed out after YouTube and WMG execs see exactly what users do with the content.

One sticking point with potential agreements like this has been money. According to this agreement, YouTube will use a new "advanced content identification and royalty reporting system" that will allow for royalties to be paid on both WMG's own content as well as that created by users. It mentions sharing advertising revenue as well, which means YouTube is obvioiusly moving toward an ad-supported system, at least in this partnered content.

It's an idea whose time has come, and should benefit both parties; artists get better exposure and YouTube has some content of guaranteed quality to draw more viewers. One potential problem: WMG is likely to be more vigilant about limiting content featuring its artists to that which is official and sanctioned. Look up your favorite WMG band -- I chose Wilco -- and see how many live clips and assorted videos are up currently. It will be interesting to check back and see how many are still there once this partnership takes flight.

Participating in Hollywood

noreply@blogger.com (John Kenyon) — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:13:00 +0000

Fast Company this month features an interesting look at Jeff Skoll, the eBay founder who has turned to Hollywood with the desire to create meaningful, socially relevant feature films. He has a heck of a track record: His Participant Productions company has funded "Syriana," "An Inconvenient Truth," "Good Night and Good Luck" and the forthcoming "Fast Food Nation," among others. The most compelling fact in the story is this: All of Participant's films thus far have been profitable save for "North Country." The takeaway from that? "Here's the first secret of pro-social business: When you give outstanding people the chance to work on something they care passionately about, often you get a great result."