Category Archives: Media

Jun 19 0 comments
Media

Optimise this

I did a little exercise this morning, I Googled myself. It’s been a while since I checked my SEO ranking, and there are a few reasons why. Mostly I want to make sure no one has been libeling me, but it’s also a good opportunity to see just how much power owning your own domain, posting a reasonable amount of content and semi-regular linking can do for you. The answer? Not much. Not much at all.

So what did I find? Links to my podcast (work-related), profiles on Twitter and LinkedIn, a comment I left on a blog post ages ago, some fiction that was published too far back to even consider part of my current body of work, an article I did for Film Ireland and a Wikipedia entry. Between that lot, it could be said Web 2.0 applications were driving my profile, but the most powerful endorsements were from other people referencing or re-posting my work (without permission I hasten to add).

I’m actually pretty happy with this state of affairs. I’m at the stage of my career where I shouldn’t need a blog to manage my visibility, and I’m much happier tracking the global conversation than influencing it. Interpretation and reportage are the functions of a journalist, that requires a certain distance from the stories to avoid (or just limit) bias. This is easily done for me when writing on technology and film as the locus of action is usually thousands of miles away. Things become more complicated when writing about local stories as I know the people involved are good, decent folk working hard to produce something they believe in – and occasionally failing badly. Some stuff I like, some I don’t but my analyses are fair, backed up by facts and never personalised. Play the ball, not the man. Not an easy thing to do with ‘precious’ characters but that’s more their problem then mine. That’s how I work and I have a byline that proves it. You can be sure Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Charlie Kaufman and Will Oldham don’t have to worry about their Google rankings. Their work pushes demand, not linking tactics.

The point is if you’re looking to be seen let your work, not your website’s architecture do the job for you. Concentrate on what you want to promote, not the back end of your pimped out WordPress-powered blog.

As a final observation, at the first Dublin Web Summit WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg fielded a question from an audience member about new standards and how they will affect the platform. Mullenweg answered the question in a calm, easy manner that didn’t go over anyone’s heads. In reply his interrogator listed off all the standards his blog complied with and how good his SEO was. Mullenweg basically said ‘good for you’ and moved on. I noticed he didn’t ask what the guy actually wrote about. It’s like a tree falling in the woods, if no onecares what you write about does your ranking even matter? So just shut up and work on what you’re supposed to. And don’t waste your time or money on SEO courses that will be obsolete in a few months when Semantic Web starts rolling out.

Just be good at what you do. Best SEO ever.

Jun 19 0 comments
Media

The speed of truth

One of my favourite debates I’m tracking at the moment is the future of journalism. I’m doing this for a number of reasons. First off I’m a bit of a skills junkie, I like learning things and technology journalism forces you to get to grips with all sorts before filtering down to every other field. Right now I should be pretty handy with a CMS; have a passing knowledge of HTML and CSS, know how to handle a DSLR and frame a shot; manipulate images; design a page; and, oh yeah, foster contacts and write. Having a decent speaking voice for radio and TV help a lot as well. Truly the age of the ‘multimedia specialist’ has arrived and that’s great so long as the will is there on the part of publishers to upskill their staff and give them the tools to work more effectively.

The second prong of the debate is what the future of journalism will look like. At present newspapers are divided up into news and opinion across current affairs, business, arts, sport, foreign news etc. This two-tier approach gives donkey work to juniors while experts put it all in context from a personal perspective advancing their own political bias. Myers, O’Toole, Harris, hate them of you must but their word has weight.

In the new paradigm the role of the pundit remains largely unchanged but the role of the reporter becomes vastly different as the primary source of information no longer comes direct from a press release or first hand report but also from user-generated content – often from numerous sources. This works particularly well for foreign news as desks sift through a/v footage, blog posts, Twitter feeds and news wires in real time, putting together a package suitable for distribution online and in print before being forwarded for analysis. News is no longer about facts but response as well. The experience is much richer but much more prone to innaccuracy and a massive signal-to-noise ratio as ‘facts’ change on a second-by-second basis. It’s exciting but fraught with difficulties ethical and legal as stories can break without verification before spreading virally. By the time something has been passed kosher, old media gets another hammering for being too slow or behind the times. The Internet doesn’t do just process – ask IP rights holders.

The third debate, and the one that makes me smile, is what journalism ‘should’ be. This is the current hobbyhorse of netizens and early adopters who have grown up in a world of free content and are sensing the end of the social media gravy train. People even know to post pictures of their lunch on Twitter and call it ‘nom’. Heck everyone and their mother has a profile, a page and a cause on Facebook so what other unsuspecting, confused, aged demographic can we rip off next? You know it, publishers!

Now before I rush to an impassioned defence of mainstream media I will concede the following areas where print and broadcast have committed commercial suicide:

  • Lack of appreciation of the value of real-time breaking news
  • Seeing the Web as separate, lower quality medium
  • Failing to acknowledge the value of community
  • Ignoring potential of new media
  • Leaving outdated revenue models to crumble
  • Failing to convince advertisers of the quality rather than quantity of readers
  • Failing to upskill staff to produce a superior product

Ok, now the mea culpas are out of the way lets look at the commercial realities facing mainstream media, in part because of the above but also in part due to the changing attutides of advertisers and readers. As follows:

  • Readers believe they get the same product online
  • Readers believe they have greater choice online
  • Readers believe they should not have to pay for news they can read elsewhere
  • Advertisers believe larger readerships directly relate to improved ad response rates
  • Advertisers see Google AdWords as a good solution to their commercial needs

Given these, often diametrically opposed, sets of beliefs mainstream media finds itself having to adjust to a new commercial reality where sponsorships, social media and catch-up services are as, if not more, important than their first run broadcast proposition. In print some of these principles hold firm. Twitter and Facebook usage are a given for any title now. But in the same way as the broadcast paradigm has changed to embrace lighter models of production with more transient content so too must journalism. The proposition from the new media brigade is as follows:

  • News breaks in real time and should be reported as it develops
  • Information should be free
  • Everyone is an editor
  • Stories can be crowdsourced
  • A/V content is essential
  • Mobile apps are the future

Ok, all interesting and in some cases inevitable developments should you live under the following assumptions:

  • Newer is always better
  • Journalism is not a skill and can be done cheaply
  • Journalists’ produce ‘content’ – an amorphous product that wants to be ‘free’
  • All reporting is of equal value
  • Due process/fact checking is not a concern
  • The role of the designer is separate from the editorial team
  • News pays for itself
  • There is no role for (expensive) investigative reporting

Compare and contrast with the following commercial reality:

  • Journalism costs money
  • Respected analysts cost more money
  • Journalism is a profession bound by an ethical code
  • Reporters do not operate in a commercial vacuum

Which leads us to an uncomfortable truth:

  • If you want better you have to pay for it

Point by point that’s the debate as I understand it right now. As a journalist I believe my work has value. Advertisers believe so too, which is why they choose to support the publication, website and podcast I’m involved in. I support paywalls as a method of weeding out casual readers with no relevance to advertisers and curating an installed base of interested parties with money to spend. That’s the commercial reality. Just as if a punter in a newsagent looks at the front page of the Sun in the morning he cannot be counted as a reader, let alone someone of interest to an advertiers. Someone who actually pays his few cents to buy their morning paper has a much bigger chance of responding to an ad because they have an actual interest in the content. A webpage is not a billboard.

It’s not that I think the argument from the post-blogosphere new media set is without merit, but it is an outsider view bereft of any knowledge of how old media works and the challenges it faces in adopting new technologies and turning them into viable add-ons and not expensive distractions from the job of reporting fairly and accurately.

Blogging has been pretty much absorbed into mainstream media as papers get more added value from their columnists’ star power. The medium hasn’t died but control has passed from amateur to professional outlets. This is unlikely to happen with Twitter, which has successfully levelled the playing field and strikes a pretty good balance as a news, conversation and marketing platform.

Paywalls are turning into a bit of a chicken and egg dilemma. You need good content to establish a need before charging but without investment ahead of time it’s hard to come up with a production line worth a damn. For the record I’m in favour of them for niche publications or those with a high standard of writing. iPad apps notwithstanding I can’t see anything in Ireland hitting that sweet spot.

On a philosophical level, the question I’m concerned with it is what the speed of truth (i.e. the verifiable, accurate and fair) is. Is it a phonecall away to a well-placed source? Is it sifting throught hours of YouTube footage, is it deciphering Twitter detritus. Sometimes it’s quick, sometimes the dust has to settle but it can never be hysterical. New media lives on hystericism, transience and a lack of boundaries – values inconsistent with a mature, reliable media. That’s why the argument from the soon-to-be-former social media experts fails.

The speed of information is far greater than the speed of truth but it is a far inferior product. Support your local, regulated, accurate media – while it still can be.

Feb 23 0 comments
Media

On privacy and blogging

When I decided I was going to be blogging my way through Lent again I made a conscious decision not to write on technology. However, recent developments in the digital sphere have thrown up a few questions that don’t really lend themselves to the day job so I’m going to explore them here.

First and foremost what I’m interested in is the idea of curation. For various reasons, which I will write on later, I believe the Internet has been creating more problems as it has solved as a communications medium. E-mail, IM, social networks have given us a world of unparallelled connectivity, but with them 419 scams, spam, identity theft and cyber-bullying – not to mention the problems of jurisdiction thrown up by cases such as hacker Gary McKinnon, who by rights should be festering in a US federal penitentiary but for the goodwill/stonewalling of both UK and EU judiciaries.

I have a host of e-mail accounts with different services, numerous social network profiles and this blog to maintain. Each of these facilities bring with it certain levels of access that I’m fairly fastidious about maintaining and yet the one outlet where I vent the most, this humble blog, is wide open to the Web where any Tom, Dick and R/tard can visit, shill for products, hurl abuse or get caught in my spam filter. What’s more hundreds of spiders a day crawl this site looking for relevant information to bring back to their mother servers so more people can come visit, shill for products and hurl abuse. I can do without any of that.

When a journalist approaches me for work the first thing I ask them for is an example of their writing, either something published or, preferably, a blog that I can poke around and get a more rounded idea of their style. This is fine for budding hacks looking for a leg up but I’m beyond that stage now. When I started blogging it was anonymously for my own betterment while writing for print, when I bought my .ie it became more of a locus for a dialogue with the Web but Twitter it more than meeting my need for that kind of interaction right now with a minimum of personal disclosure. If you’re a friend, chances are you’re on Facebook, a business contact gets an invite to LinkedIn and anyone I’m ever likely to sit down with (or whose wit I appreciate) I hang out with in short paragraphs. Twitter has been a much more fruitful discussion forum for me than my blog and I know I’m not the only one experiencing this.

Once the centre of social media, blogs have slowly been appropriated by mainstream media and marketers looking to produce more of the quality, expert, regulated content they charge people for as a means to boost their SEO rankings and improve website stickiness by pumping their online presence full of content. Of the amateur writers who once made up the bulk of the blogosphere over the past four years, many have either been picked up by MSM outlets in print, online or a/v or retired gracefully. Beit through Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter viral content is being spread faster with less effort by more people. As newspapers integrate comments further into their content, debate can centre on the epicentre of a report, not a secondhand account or profanity-laced analysis.

Given the sophistication of CMSs like WordPress and its multitutde of themes blogging currently boils down to three categories: unregulated personal blogs, commercially sensitive blogs belonging to a business or MSM outlet and fanzines seeking to mix the irreverence of the former with the cache of the latter. When I started writing, personal blogs made up the bulk of my reading matter. They were punky, irascible and generally entertaining but wearing over time.

Of the writers I came across on my first spin around the block, the good ones are developing in the direction of fully fledged magazines, improving their writing and even dabbling in commercial partnerships. Those that were bad, or just badly kept, fell away without recrimination or regret. Magazine websites like Slugger O’Toole, Nialler9 and group blogs like Culch.ie and No Added Sugar are pretty good examples where the Irish blogosphere is going: either into authoritive resources or group blogs with an easy-to-access (kind of) circle of writers. In contrast, the personal bloggers that once made up the mainstream is in decline as the novelty of having an open online presence with limited readership fades.

My own first crack at blogging came to a semi-graceful end when a full-time writing job arrived. This is as it should be. For any professional writer there is a sweet spot between not being able to charge and not caring about having to charge where making a living from one’s readers becomes a necessity. When I reached that stage it was time to up sticks and hit delete once and for all. Now I have two blogs to maintain, one for work to enhance the company profile, website CEO and my position as a technology pundit and this one, wherein I write about topics like comics and movies where I am published elsewhere and don’t have to play fair. The difference between incarnations of myself as a blogger is that now the views I write are recognisably mine and that leaves me open to a particular kind of personal scrutiny I can really do without.

My blog isn’t commercially sensitive, I am under no state of necessity to write, my articles on my other spheres of interest are internationally published and my media profile is sufficient that radio/TV knows who I am and what I bring to the table. In short, I’m happy noodling around with WordPress and furthering my interest in design. The world does not need to see that.

So here is the plan: I’m going to apply the same rigour to allowing access to my blog as I do the other elements of my online presence. WordPress comes with a feature to make blogs private and viewable on an invitation-only basis, a function I am seriously considering activating. Access will be by invite only, limited to people I actually think would read and engage in the kind of debate I would like to engage in without undue vitriol.

As for SEO…I’ll save my opinions on that con for another day.

Thanks for reading. Now here’s some porn…