Jason Kristufek's We Media Blog

We find inspiration in ways that simply amaze me with their timing. It’s even more impressive when it comes at challenging and difficult times.

I’ve learned much in the past three days. Self-examination and realization tends to do that.

I found my inspiration the other night from an unlikely source: Season 4 of the West Wing in an episode titled 20 Hours in America. Despite your probable laughter, it worked for me.

I haven’t been at my best, but I will be better. No words are going to show that. So I’m ready to run.

And although my personal and professional challenges don’t rise to those portrayed via fiction in a television show, there is an underlining theme I needed to hear.

Long version (3:41)

We did not seek nor did we provoke an assault on our freedom and our way of life. We did not expect nor did we invite a confrontation with evil. Yet the true measure of a people’s strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arrive. Forty-four people were killed a couple of hours ago at Kennison State University. Three swimmers from the men’s team were killed and two others are in critical condition, when, after having heard the explosion from their practice facility, they ran into the fire to help get people out. Ran into the fire. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight. They’re our students and our teachers and our parents and our friends. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we’re reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars. God bless their memory, God bless you and God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

Shorter version

I’ve been focusing too much on the wrong thing. I’ve been stuck in the mindset that growing audience on a digital platform for a media company was limited to control over content collection and the engagement strategy behind it.

As sometimes happens, I was focusing on the wrong problem given the situation and worrying about what I can’t control. Don’t misunderstand there is still a tremendous need for quality, relevant and engaging content. But creating content is not the role of the team I am associated with. Our role is to seek out quality content from multiple sources to package it in smart and enticing ways and use smart tools to feed the engagement process.

As Judy Sims points out convincingly in comparing AOL’s new strategy against media company strategy, some potential ways to do that better are found in these areas:

• Media companies need a culture of smart online product development
• Embrace that fragmentation is a good thing
• Create a wide range of content verticals targeting multiple niche audiences

Sims notes an important point Clay Shirky made in his talk on internet issues at newspapers:  “one of the 3 non-economically based reasons that most newspapers will eventually fail is that the bundle of information they present online is “incoherent”.

The New York Times is being torn apart right now by its own readers. The number of people who go to the Times’ homepage as a percentage of total readership falls every year — because you don’t go to the Times, you go to the story, because someone Twittered it or put it on Facebook or sent it to you in email. So the audience is now being assembled not by the paper, but by other members of the audience.

Brad Garlinghouse, the president of internet and mobile communications for AOL says it best: ‘how do we take messaging to the next level?’

The importance of moving the culture and the essential task list in the online product development realm is demonstrated by this exchange. (Find the entire Q & A here)

Q: Can content-bases strategies scale? Content businesses don’t seem to get all the love that tech companies do.

A: I don’t know what our valuation will be but people in the media business look at Silicon Valley companies with envy. We have the opposite view. Let’s take some tech and be serious about it, around our content.

What makes tackling this issue interesting and fun is how we choose to scale the possible solutions. Our future relies on the things we try and the environment in which we do it.

Newspapers produced the mix of content that would appeal to the broadest audience possible. As the web allows for narrower and narrower niches of content, maintaining the old bundle cannot work.

So here are four simple tasks I can up with that can help shift the culture and move momentum in the areas where I have some influence. What do you think? Is this a good path?

• Seek out numerous community contributors across a wide range of spectrums, engage them and use and promote their content. Professional journalists are just one source of content. (A message to journalists: “For journalism, you’re not just hiring the person, you’re hiring their community too.” – AOL chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong.) If you’re a journalists, you better have a community.
• Develop a model similar to what’s going on at The Daily Blank. Check it out. It’s worth it.
• Create a kick-ass user experiences around multiple topics, whether automated or manual
• Follow the product develop discipline
• Divide and conquer

I’ve probably watched this video (embedded below) a dozen times and each time I come away with something different. The video is of the TED talk given by Benjamin Zander, the conductor of The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and it offers inspiration by, among other things, asking “Who am I being.”

His passion for classical music is astonishing, and he doesn’t get deterred by the negativity surrounding the closing of  orchestras or survey results showing that only 3 percent of the population likes classical music.

“There are some people who think that classical music is dying. And there are some of us who think you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” he says.

His talk is funny, inspiring, motivating, eye-opening and likely the best 20 minutes, 46 seconds you could spend today.

I mentioned each time I watch it I pick up something new. Here is what I heard today:

“The conductor of the orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful. And that changed everything for me. It was totally live-changing.  .  .  I realized my job was to awaken possibility in other people.” – Benjamin Zander

[ted id=286]

A few weeks ago Sean Blanda, who among other cool things put on BarCamp NewsInnovation Philly in April, called and asked a good question, and it’s one I’ve been asking myself for several months. In fact, Ryan Sholin brought it up back in April.

That question was basically this: What’s next for the NewsInnovation crowd? (If you forgot or don’t know about the NewsInnovation stuff here is the genesis of the idea and some of the original thoughts behind it.)

(Update - Sean Blanda weighs in: BarCamp NewsInnovation 2, What Should Change)

There were several barcamp-style meet-ups that occurred around the country earlier this year and seemed to come to fruition with more than 200 people in Philadelphia at Temple University. Blanda says there is interest in doing another one this coming spring, which is good to hear.

Several people, too many to name, played a pivotal role in creating the synergy that became the basis for the NewsInnovation push. But it wasn’t enough. We met, we shared great ideas but we didn’t do anything substantive with those ideas. Sholin even hinted at that in a tweet the other day: @ryansholin Love the spirit of #BCNI! (#BCNI being the hash tag for BarCamp NewsInnovation).

To my fault, even the push to continue the NewsInnovation movement has since taken an unintentional backseat. It’s a shame, really, because this industry is in desperate need of solution-seekers. There is no magic bullet or one-size-fits-all solution to the problems. But the collective intelligence can certainly offer solutions and seek out organizations and individuals to try, fail and try again.

Recently, Mallory Colliflower and Lori Marie Todd showed great interest in more barcamp-style unconferences for those interested in media and its future. They are right. We need them now, and we can learn from the past.

We want an affordable alternative to the big annual conferences, with a comparable level of networking and training that you’d pay hundreds of dollars at SND, ONA, NPPA or other conferences. We propose a BarCamp-style unconference. – @loritodd

We’d love to hear feedback on other ways or ideas to establish more affordable training and networking opportunities that don’t necessarily involve staying connected through social media. Another 10,000 words post from Mark Luckie stresses the importance of real-life relationships. I couldn’t agree more, I just wish they were more affordable. – @malcolli

Whether the NewsInnovation label stays or goes doesn’t matter. Simply put, we need more venues where smart, bright, energetic and passionate folks get together and try to solve problems.

Simply getting together, talking and then sharing ideas is not enough anymore. We have to do something. Anything that happens has to be solution-based with someone willing to try it. We can’t compromise on that. We can’t afford to have one more conference or summit or whatever you call it where a bunch people get together and talk and share ideas but nothing ever happens. It’s hard to make that statement because I’m as guilty as anyone in doing that. I have to change my behavior too, and I will.

With that in mind, here are some of the ideas off the top of my head that are topical around the media company where I work. Maybe the next round of BarCamp NewsInnovation’s or whatever they are called can come up with solutions to some of them. I know the place where I work would be interested in trying solutions to any of these problems or I would seek some organization or individual who would.

• The next great media company won’t have a web site – So what will it have?
• If a small to medium-sized media company is trying to create a new infrastructure and a new organization with a new culture, what are the specific steps to get that done? Or maybe we should stop giving newspapers and media companies our advice.
• How would you manage and build an information economy for a local media company to use?

What ideas to do you have? If there is a consensus I will redo the http://barcamp.org/newsinnovation page and update with ideas. You are welcome to do that as well. Who else wants to be involved? What’s the next step?

Here’s a sample of what I was reading Saturday morning while having breakfast at Riley’s in Cedar Rapids.

The Goalpost problem – If you’re a manager, you must assume you have thoroughbreds working for you. Your job is to give them what they need to win their respective races, agreeing with them on the goal and rewards, but then getting the hell out of the way. Until they start jumping fences or attacking other horses, you have to let them run their race. – Adam Goucher

The importance of real-life relationships – It’s the twinkle of the eye or the arch of the eyebrow. The stammering speech or the blush of the cheek. Forgive the flowery prose, but that’s what makes humans so damn interesting: the little things that can’t be picked up through online interaction. – Mark S. Luckie

The Way It Is – No intro. Just click and read it. – posted by Scott Peters

Rescuing The Reporters – Clay Shirky

Why not take a moment to define success before you pursue it? – Because there is really only one definition that is put forward by society at large. Money. Ass loads of money. Don’t get me wrong here i think money is great. I like it a lot. But if you have the same definition as everybody else then you’re competing directly against everybody else. – Alex Bogusky

Serendipity… WTF? – The declinists point to a mythical golden pre-Web era of serendipity. They say that the way people read newspapers in the old days supported serendipitous discovery far better than a website can. They claim that the experience of discovering music through radio and club DJs was more serendipitous than the experience provided by online music sites. They seriously believe that bookshops and libraries made it easier to discover knowledge by accident than the Web can. – Tim from Made by Many

Hugh MacLeod

This post is going to be a bit different. I don’t have a complete thought on this topic but I know it’s a good one to explore. I need help in finishing it, so won’t you give me an opinion?

I recently came across an excerpt of a book written by Matthew E. May that introduced me to the power of incomplete ideas.

Two things from that stuck with me from his excerpt.

In the Zen view, emptiness is a symbol of inexhaustible spirit. Silent pauses in music and theater, blank spaces in paintings, and even the restrained motion of the sublimely seductive Geisha in refined tea ceremonies all take on a special significance because it is in states of temporary inactivity or quietude that Zen artists see the very essence of creative energy. Because Zen Buddhists view the human spirit as by nature indefinable, the power of suggestion is exalted as the mark of a truly authentic creation.

Conventional wisdom says that to be successful, an idea must be concrete, complete, and certain. But what if that’s wrong? What if the most elegant, most imaginative, most engaging ideas are none of those things?

I am in search of companies or individuals who embrace and see value in incomplete ideas. Do you know of any? How do you handle incomplete ideas?

I’ve said before that ideas are cheap, and now more than ever action over talk is needed. At that same time, there are ways to act more wisely. Having a process for handling smart but incomplete ideas is one way to do that.

As someone who embraces disruption, here’s what I’ve been reading that furthers my value in those incomplete ideas:

• Research has shown that innovative ideas tend to emerge more readily in communities in which people work in small and relatively isolated groups where early stage, incomplete and vulnerable ideas are given space and time to mature. – Neil Perkin

• Great ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That’s why great ideas are initially resisted. –  Hugh MacLeod

• A great piece of art is composed not just of what is in the final piece, but equally what is not. It is the discipline to discard what does not fit—to cut out what might have already cost days or even years of effort—that distinguishes the truly exceptional artist and marks the ideal piece of work, be it a symphony, a novel, a painting, a company, or most important of all, a life.  – Bestselling business author and self-employed professor Jim Collins

• How do people come up with truly original, effective ideas? A key part of the process is actually leaving out a detail or two. Regardless of what you are trying to create, allowing it to have a blank space or two will give your brain the freedom to think more creatively. – CornerWorld

• In the networked society, companies premised upon the legacy, linear, mass-media models of: business, organisation, and marketing must think the unthinkable – in fact they must embrace the unthinkable. And work out how they innovate to survive. – Alan Moore

• “Less is the new more” Easy to learn: symmetry, seduction, subtraction, and sustainability. Very valuable to do.  – Guy Kawasaki

Here are a few random and incomplete ideas I have. Anyone want to help me with them?

• Can a core group of passionate people come together to revitalize downtown Cedar Rapids as an entertainment and lifestyle hub?

• What’s the future of the NewsInnovation movement?

• How do you turn the physical newspaper into a medium that adds value through explanatory, forward-thinking journalism while losing the stigma that comes with being a newspaper?

• What’s the best way to teach, inform and show journalists and community catalysts the value in creating kick-as, must-read local blogs?

About two years ago I was a big proponent of integrating newsrooms. I thought it was the way to go: Multi-skilled journalists, equipped with cool tools, and a new mindset ready to tackle every platform and reach audiences where they want and how they want.

At the same time, I helped hire a mobile journalist to work for GazetteOnline.com in Cedar Rapids whose responsibility was to create, collect and present information for a digital audience.

Within a few months, the mobile journalist flourished in both content collection methods and audience growth by using the latest tools and technology to publish information quickly, while also equipped with new tasks to meet the growing needs of that digital audience. The position did that, in part, by spending 85 percent of the time outside of the traditional newspaper newsroom and focusing almost exclusively on the wants and needs of a digital audience.

At the same time – and even to a certain extent now – journalists who spend a majority of their time in the newsroom still have not yet reached the level of producing digital-first content for digital audiences.  There have been huge strides made, but we struggle with the new mindset, fear and the “sucking sound of the core” like many other places across the industry.

Howard Owens, who runs The Batavian – a digital-only local news and information source, recently wrote that the original sin of media companies was in keeping its online operations “tethered to the mothership.” He instead argues that web products should be businesses on their own.

Here is his realization:

“Instead of thinking about how to generate more cash, I needed to figure out how to create a news operation that could exist profitably based on a reasonable expectation for local online revenue.”

Here is his proposal:

• Minimally staffed on both the sales and content side.
• Both staffs would operate in a building far away from the newspaper office.
• No newspaper content would feed the web site, and the online staff wouldn’t consult or work with the newspaper staff on stories. There would be a total wall of separation.
• There would also be a total wall of separation between sales staffs.
• The separate business unit would be competitive with the newspaper, not complimentary.

News tasks lead to new mindset

My colleague at Gazette Communications, Steve Buttry, writes that mindset is more important than organization in referencing the points made by Owens.

Howard has some excellent advice on starting an independent online operation and most, if not all, of the online spinoffs from newspaper organizations did not do things the way Howard is saying they should have. My point is that organization is not as important as mindset. And spinning digital operations off did not change the mindset.

I agree that mindset trumps organizational structure. But the only proven way that I’ve seen mindset change in a newsroom environment is by creating new tasks – (the show, don’t tell philosophy) – with clearly defined expectations and incentives and consequences attached to them. But even then, that process will take years to accomplish at the enterprise level what a small group, whose focus is entirely on reaching a clearly defined audience, can do in a matter of months.

Audience-first philosophy

What’s missing in many reorganizations across the industry are the wants and needs of the audience. We aren’t collecting content – both in news and advertising – with clearly defined audiences in mind.

Chuck Peters, the CEO of Gazette Communications, told me about 18 months ago something like this (I’m paraphrasing): “If you own a product and are not tied directly to revenue, how can you judge whether the product is successful?”

It made sense. I find myself asking another question too, and since I’ve stuck to a content theme I’ll continue with that: If you are responsible for putting content in front of digital audiences with a goal of increasing engagement and usage, but have no sustained and direct link between the content collectors and the audience you want to engage and reach, how can you be successful?

Especially in the digital realm, the lines between content, sales, marketing, audience and web development are so intertwined that separating those entities extremely hampers the success of digital operations.

It’s a little surprising to me that after all my study of Clayton Christensen and other thinkers on disruptive innovation  that I didn’t see more clearly sooner the imperative of a separate operation, but it is what we should have been doing. – Howard Owens

Katherine Warman Kern would probably disagree with my assessment based on the future of media will be marketing post.

Publishers/Programmers, Technology, Marketing should collaborate to identify how each platform will add incremental value to the consumer and the brand’s bottom line. To create incremental value, the media brand should leverage the unique advantages of each platform to express itself and evolve its relationships with the audience.  A fully integrated, multi-platform media brand will deliver a whole much bigger than its aggregated parts.

On digital platforms – or any other platform for that matter – having content collectors, sales staff and marketing folks focused on that specific digital audience offers the best chance for success. A small team and a self-sustainable revenue model, like the one Owens mentioned, can work.

The flip side is that on the enterprise level we will continue to market digital products in our legacy brands. We will continue to put newspaper ads online. We will continue to cover events that newspapers have always covered.

As director of new media in Ventura and VP of interactive in Bakersfield, I certainly had some grasp that online wasn’t print. I did push such innovations (at least for the time) as comments on stories, video, web-first publishing, locally focused home pages, user profiles/social networking. But looking back, I see now that I still had a lot of newspaper-think in my outlook. – Howard Owens

Newspaper readers and broadcast TV news viewers who use our online products will not solely help us grow audience. Adding incremental value to further the overall brand’s bottom line, in my opinion, will not help a product engage and reach audiences that have never consumed our products before.

It’s time to divide and conquer.

Do a couple of self-proclaimed tech guys/news junkies stand a chance competing in a crowded online news media field? While it doesn’t seem plausible, the digital age has made it possible. And sometimes, that’s enough. – Mark Briggs

The problem with doing it by heart – Seth Godin: Just like the intolerant judgmental guy who can quote you chapter and verse from his spiritual book of choice but never thought about the meaning of the words inside or the status quo protecting technician who isn’t a scientist because she’s afraid of violating something that feels like a law.

The long lost formula for start-up success. No, really – Nigel Eccles: The main problem is that it puts success down to the quality of the original idea and completely glosses over the most important factor: achieving a product that customers want enough to pay for. And even though most entrepreneurs know from bitter experience that the above story happens only very rarely (if at all), it retains a grip on how we think about growing our businesses.

Word for webstock – Bruce Sterling: We’re not going to get a future Cloud World as somehow opposed to a future Augmented Reality World. It can’t happen. The ideas can be clearly distinguished, but ideas about technology, labels for technology, predictions and suppositions about technology, they don’t map onto actual real-world technology. Human culture doesn’t work like a logical argument.

Thinking outside the internet box: Doc Searls – Now I’m beginning to think we should admit that the Internet itself, as concept, is too limiting, and not much less antique than telecom or “power grid”. “The Internet” is not a thing. It’s a finger pointing in the direction of a thing that isn’t. It is the name we give to the sense of place we get when we go “on” a mesh of unseen connections to interact with other entities.

Small newspaper, watch out. The Web is coming – Carrie Brown-Smith:  Well, small papers, your “if only” moment is heading your way. Watch out. I’m pretty confident in saying that while community news remains as vitally important as ever, small town folks aren’t somehow so “backwards” that they won’t eventually begin to embrace the same new methods of delivery that have moved into other areas faster. And to my thinking, widespread adoption of Web news habits will only accelerate as the Web becomes more seamlessly integrated into all of our lives, as cell phones get better and better and it becomes part and parcel of how we watch television.

25 things journalists can do to future-proof their careers: Chris Lake – I think it’s up to the journalist to broaden their skills, to help futureproof their careers. It may mean figuring out how to write for the web, or simply using technology as a career aid. I see a future where journalists will need traditional skills and so-called new media skills, and will not be limited to writing for one media platform.

Here are a few links and summaries of some of the things I’ve been reading the past couple days that are worth sharing.

Competing with the singleminded – Seth Godin: This conversation happens every single day at organizations large and small. You want to do the new thing, but of course you must do it in a measured, rational way. Which is great, unless your competition doesn’t agree.

Community can be so powerful – Chris Brogan: the people who live for community, the ones who know that the human-shaped web is much more powerful in the longer run than any technology out there today, those are the ones to watch.

The importance of failure – Marco Tabini: There is, however, an even more important lesson that I have learned about failure: that sometimes, failure is inevitable—or, as the colloquial expression goes, shit happens. Knowing that, sooner or later, things are going to fail is an important, almost cathartic realization that keeps the unwary apart from the wise. If you’re wondering what I’m blabbering about, check out this video of a keynote that Mythbusters’ Adam Savage gave at the Maker Faire.

Thanks for leading – Seth Godin: It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers. It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail. It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo. It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

Books for entrepreneurs – Fred Wilson: Last week an entrepreneur named Stephen who reads this blog regularly asked me for recommendations that budding entrepreneurs should read.