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Does the Internet Make us Better Informed?

July 22, 2010 / Klint Finley

More evidence to confirm my current bias that the Internet does not make us better informed: the following Onion video has been passed around in certain circles as if it’s true. I know sometimes the Onion is a little too close for comfort, but watch the video and then read some of the comments captured from Facebook.

The full image is here. Of course, the image could be a fake, and it could be me who got hoaxed…

The Onion

I don’t necessarily think the Internet is making people less informed or more guillable – how many people believed in the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? But I don’t think it’s having a particularly positive impact in this area.

Long-Form Journalism, Contrary to Conventional Wisdom, is Extremely Popular at Slate

July 14, 2010 / Klint Finley

long form

You may recall the online magazine’s Fresca initiative — so named for editor David Plotz’s passionate and non-ironic obsession with the grapefruity beverage — which launched last year to give Slate writers and editors the opportunity to focus on long-form work. Essentially, the fellowship program requires that every editorial staff member at Slate (Plotz recently added copy editors to the Fresca pool) take four to six weeks off from their normal jobs — and use that time to produce one in-depth piece (or, often, a series of in-depth pieces) on a subject that compels them. So far, the project has netted such praiseworthy specimens of long-form as, among others, Tim Noah’s analysis of why the U.S. hasn’t endured another successfully executed terror attack since 9/11 and Julia Turner’s look at the fascinating complexities of signage and June Thomas’ examination of American dentistry and Dahlia Lithwick’s crowd-sourced foray into chick-lit authorship and John Dickerson’s reclamation of risk-taking after the financial crash gave that quintessential American practice a bad name.

The other thing the initiative has netted? Pageviews. They’ve been in the millions, a Slate rep told me: over 4 million for Noah’s piece, over 3.5 million for Thomas’, nearly 3 million for Turner’s. That’s especially significant considering the length of the pieces, which often run in the tens of thousands of words. Combine that with New York Times Magazine editor Gerry Marzorati’s claim, last year, that “contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s our longest pieces that attract the most online traffic” — and, come to think of it, with tablet computing’s promise of portable, pleasurable reading experiences — and “tl;dr”: you are on watch.

Nieman Journalism Lab: “Smart editorial, smart readers, and smart ad solutions”: Slate makes a case for long-form on the web

I can say that my longest piece at ReadWriteWeb has been my most popular.

The Best Reason NOT to Buy a Tablet or E-Reader

July 14, 2010 / Klint Finley

Justin Bolland wrote at Pizza SEO:

Don’t tell me to get a Kindle or an iPad. Dude, I work on a damn computer. For hours on end, every day. I don’t want to carry one of these demon boxes around with me like a demon child suckling my blood out through my fucking eyeballs, you read me?

I know it’s a pretty simple/obvious statement but… still. That hits home. The best reason to read books and magazines on paper is because they are not on computers.

I don’t own a tablet or Kindle or anything like that yet, but I’ve been wanting something along those lines for quite some time. And I do have an iPod Touch that I use for reading. I also own a lot of books, magazines, and comics. And I’ve been moving them around with me for years. I long for the day when everything’s on a nice simple device, backed up to the cloud, and easily searchable.

But ever since my interview with Ashley Crawford, I’ve been spending more time reading actual physical books and magazines. I’d spent the last several years trying to kick my print habit and go all digital, but I’ve gone back on the pulp – and, I’ll admit, loving it. However, until I read Justin’s post, I still figured I’d pick up an Android tablet or something eventually.

And I still may. I did spend the better part of today reading off of screens, and I doubt I’ll ever be able to get away from screen reading. But I’ve got to say, at least at this point in space-time, print is looking better than ever.

What Do You Think of the New Google News?

July 1, 2010 / Klint Finley

I wrote about the new version of Google News yesterday for ReadWriteWeb yesterday, and I’ve been a little surprised at how universally reviled the new layout is.

It seems like most of the vitriol stems from Google moving from a more dashboard-style layout to a layout that emphasizes one particular wide column in the center. I’ve mostly used Google News as a research tool instead of as a news portal, so I wasn’t particularly attached to the old view. I think the new layout is quite interesting but I’m not sure if I’ll start using it heavily.

What do you think?

No “Kill Switch” in Lieberman-Collins Bill, But There’s Been One Since 1934

June 29, 2010 / Klint Finley

Photo by w?odi / CC

Over at ReadWriteWeb I take a look at the controversy surrounding the Lieberman-Collins bill:

It doesn’t sound like a “kill switch.” The bill would require the President to submit a report describing, among other things, “The actions necessary to preserve the reliable operation and mitigate the consequences of the potential disruption of covered critical infrastructure” (pg. 84 lines 1-4). That sounds like the opposite of a kill switch: this legislation describes a process by which the president is expected to take action to ensure access to “critical infrastructure” -including the Internet.

There’s plenty of room to debate the merits of the federal government dictating the security policies of private companies, the ability of the president to continually extend any provisions beyond 30 days, the value of establishing new cyber security departments within the government, and the vagueness of the language in the bill. But this is nothing nearly so radical as some are making it out to be.

In fact, as Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ web site for the bill points out, the President already has a legislative (but of course, not technological) “kill switch.” The Communications Act of 1934 gave the president power to shut down “wire communications.”

ReadWriteWeb: No “Kill Switch” in Lieberman-Collins Bill, But There’s Been One Since 1934

Big thanks to Laura for her help with this article!

Safari’s “Reader” Mode May be Best Case Scenario for Online Advertising

June 28, 2010 / Klint Finley

It it seems like so many sites are just getting so bad with road-blocks and screen hogging ads. It’s getting like it was in the late 90s and early 2000s, with pop-ups. You’d go to a page and you’d get 3 or 4 pop-ups. And now pop-up blockers are built into all browsers, basically. So that’s not even a viable form of advertising any more. So I expect ad-blockers will become a standard part of browsers – I just don’t know how companies are going to expect to profit from advertising in the future.

– Me, in my interview with Richard Metzger.

Shortly after that interview was conducted, Apple announced it was integrating the browser plugin Readability into Safari.

Reader mode
Screenshot from the big sloppy blowjob Ad-Age gave Apple for Reader

Apple is simultaneously shipping ad-blocking technology in its browser and entering the advertising market. Some, such as Ars Technica’s Ken Fisher cried foul:

So the company that has made an advertising platform a major part of its iOS strategy is also hawking an ad-blocking technology for its Web browser, where it has no stake in ads. App Store: use our unblockable ads, developers! They help you get paid for your hard work! Web: hey, block some ads, readers! They’re annoying!

(Fisher and Ars Technica have previously protested ad-blocking)

Chris Arkenberg noted “Apple’s iAd/ad-block duality underscores their anti-Flash agenda. If they can’t own & control the platform, they will try to crush it.”

Certainly this is relevant, especially if Apple doesn’t offer the ability to block its own iAds in apps. And readers of this site know I’m no fan of Apple’s strong-arm control tactics. But it’s worth noting that Reader/Readability is a different sort of ad-blocker.

It loads the full page, ads and all, and then gives the reader the option of blocking ads while they read the content. This means, for impression driven advertising, that sites still get their pageviews – and advertisers still get some exposure, if for only a few seconds.

Fisher notes this, but worries about articles split up into multiple pages. Sites might not be able to get pageviews for each and every single one of those pages. Cry me a fucking river! The content industry (of which I’m now very much a part, now being a writer for ReadWriteWeb) is on the verge of having the rug pulled out from under it by ad-blockers, and you’re worried that you might not be able to tack on a few extra pageviews for longer content? (Some sites already let you hit “single page” or view a printer friendly version if you don’t want to click through multiple pages.) We’re going to be goddamn lucky if readers stick to Readability and don’t go all out with Ad-Block Plus – or both.

The good news for both advertisers and content providers is that only 40% of Facebook readers say they dislike ads. And I’d guess Facebook users are fairly representative sample of the Internet. That means that unless browsers start shipping with an Ad-Block Plus-like ad blocker, we can expect that at least 60% of Internet users won’t bother to install an ad-blocker more aggressive than Readability.

But Facebook’s ads are pretty unobtrusive, unlike Salon’s monstrous screen hogging ads that try to drive you off the Internet and back onto paper. Considering 40% of Facebook users are annoyed by Facebook’s relatively tiny ads, the number of readers annoyed by “road block” ads and those “Congratulations, you’ve just been selected to receive a free iFuck-in-Ass” ads are probably more in the 98-99% range (the other 1-2% are too stupid to realize those road-blocks and fake contests are ads). Those really obtrusive ads could ruin it for everyone – they’re what finally drove me to install Ad-Block Plus, something I resisted for years.

Advertisers and publishers need to forget about being able to monetize every single pageview and focus on offering unobtrusive and highly targeted advertising – and ostracize anyone who tries to push obnoxious advertising on the web before browser makers start including real ad-blocks by default.

Richard Metzger – Mediapunk Interview

June 23, 2010 / Klint Finley

Richard Metzger

Richard Metzger was the co-founder and creative director of Disinfo. He’s now the online editor at the LA Times’ alt weekly Brand X and the host of his own online talk show Dangerous Minds. He talked to me by phone on May 24th from his home in LA about the end of Hollywood as we know it, the future of advertising, and the circus that is the right-wing media.

You co-wrote a book treatment, which was originally called Hollywood Ending and then you renamed it Free for All, on the subject of digital piracy. Could you tell us about the research you did and the conclusions you came to?

This was written in the beginning of 2007 and I co-wrote this extended treatment, which ended up reading like a mini-book, with my old friend Steven Daly, who is a long-time contributing editor at Vanity Fair*. It was taken from what I had seen as someone who was working in the DVD distribution business and also as someone who was downloading quite a number of things myself , true for Steven as well and so seeing it from that insider’s perspective and as someone who was also doing a lot of downloading. We looked around and that story wasn’t really being told. Parts of the story were being told in a lot of different places, but it had never been told in one place with a narrative arc. Since the time we wrote that treatment, a number of books have come out on the topic, but nothing exactly like what we wrote about.
Continue reading

Be the First to Read My Richard Metzger Interview: Subscribe to the Mediapunk Dispatch

June 21, 2010 / Klint Finley

Richard Metzger

This Wednesday, here at mediapunk.net, you’ll be able to read my interview with Richard Metzger, co-founder and former creative director of Disinfo and current online editor at the LA Times’ alt weekly Brand X and the host of his own online talk show Dangerous Minds. We talked about the end of Hollywood as we know it, the future of advertising, and the circus that is the right-wing media.

But if you want to read the interview tomorrow instead of Wednesday, all you have to do is sign-up for the Mediapunk Dispatch, the weekly-ish Mediapunk e-mail list. You’ll get all the Mediapunk original content – rants, ideas, commentary, and interviews – at least one day before they go up on the web. You’ll probably also get some exclusive, Dispatch-only content periodically as well.

I promise never to sell your e-mail address or send you Viagra ads or any greasy shit like that.

Must-Read Glenn Greenwald on the WikiLeaks Arrest

June 18, 2010 / Klint Finley

Exactly what the U.S. Government wanted to happen in order to destroy WikiLeaks has happened here: news reports that a key WikiLeaks source has been identified and arrested, followed by announcements from anonymous government officials that there is now a worldwide “manhunt” for its Editor-in-Chief. Even though WikiLeaks did absolutely nothing (either in this case or ever) to compromise the identity of its source, isn’t it easy to see how these screeching media reports — WikiLeaks source arrested; worldwide manhunt for WikiLeaks; major national security threat — would cause a prospective leaker to WikiLeaks to think twice, at least: exactly as the Pentagon Report sought to achieve? And that Pentagon Report was from 2008, before the Apache Video was released; imagine how intensified is the Pentagon’s desire to destroy WikiLeaks now. Combine that with what both the NYT and Newsweek recently realized is the Obama administration’s unprecedented war on whistle-blowers, and one can’t overstate the caution that’s merited here before assuming one knows what happened.

And:

If one assumes that this happened as the Wired version claims, what Lamo did here is despicable. He holds himself out as an “award-winning journalist” and told Manning he was one (“I did tell him that I worked as a journalist,” Lamo said). Indeed, Lamo told me (though it doesn’t appear in the chat logs published by Wired) that he told Manning early on that he was a journalist and thus could offer him confidentiality for everything they discussed under California’s shield law. Lamo also said he told Manning that he was an ordained minister and could treat Manning’s talk as a confession, which would then compel Lamo under the law to keep their discussions confidential (early on in their chats, Manning said: “I can’t believe what I’m confessing to you”). In sum, Lamo explicitly led Manning to believe he could trust him and that their discussions would be confidential — perhaps legally required to be kept confidential — only to then report everything Manning said to the Government.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Glenn Greenwald: The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks

China Likes “Microblogging,” Not “Twitter”

June 8, 2010 / Klint Finley

Not surprisingly, China still supports the so-called “Great Firewall” approach to controlling and censoring Internet content, but also oddly mentions Twitter as a favorable development for Chinese Internet citizens. Why is that odd? Because China routinely blocks Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networking services from being accessible to Chinese citizens.

The Twitter mention, cited by a number of news agencies including the AP and WSJ, appeared in the English language version of the document released on Tuesday. It appears to have been a translation error since the Chinese language document only touted “microblog” services, and did not specify Twitter specifically. (It also appears to have since been removed on the document hosted here.)

ReadWriteWeb: China Likes Twitter (What?), but Will Still Censor It

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