Dear anonymous

Just as webinars are not quite the same as a face-to-face workshop, online conversations are less satisfying than diner chats and backyard fence conversations. Aside from the lag time between comment and reply, and the absence of facial expression and body language, a lot of people neglect to introduce themselves. That would be you, dear Anonymous. On NCPR blogs and at other visitor comment locations, fully 45% of the conversation is posted by you.

While creating a certain air of mystery has its appeal, and some people have legitimate reason to conceal their identity, I can't believe that nearly half the people who comment need to do so anonymously. Or is it one person typing maniacally through the night? Who can tell if Anon 9:14 pm is the same as Anon 3:27 am"

Why does it matter? Folks who follow the conversation need to be able to tell one voice from another--even if they don't know who it actually belongs to--so they can reply specifically and intelligibly. So please, unless you want to be not only unidentifiable, but indistinguishable from all the other unidentified, don't click "Anonymous" on the comment form. Instead select "Name/URL." Name can be anything you like, from "G" to "greatsatan2012," and the URL (web address) can be nothing--it's optional. Just as with "Anonymous," you don't need to register anywhere or log in to use this option. And for those of you comfortable with using your real name, please do so. I always do; it makes things more friendly.

Almost like being there

I just got off my second Go-to-Meeting webinar of the week--the first as a presenter, the second as an attendee. For those of you who have never had the pleasure, a webinar is a conference held via computer. The presenter's computer screen shows up on everyone's screen, and you call in for the audio on your phone, or use a headset and microphone connected to your computer. You can text in questions, and you can kibbitz with your virtual neighbors via chat. It has, in short, all the disadvantages of in-person business meetings, combined with all the disadvantages of not seeing who you are talking to, and having no doughnuts to pass around the table.

But the upside is substantial, too--you get together with colleagues more often than you would if you had the expense and time committment of travel, plus nobody can tell if you are asleep, in your underwear, neglected to shave, or are playing trash-can basketball with your crumpled up handouts. As a presenter, you hope to keep everyone's attention; as an attendee, you know better.

The gold standard for human interaction is--and will always be, I hope--being in the same room, breathing the same air. To my loss, I am finding that I am scoring less gold--talking more on the phone instead, chatting online, sending email, posting on Facebook, writing on blogs. In a way, it is a step back from the mobility revolution of the 20th Century, when the confluence of cheap high-speed travel and increased leisure time brought out the nomad in people in a way that hadn't been seen since the Neolithic era. This feels more like the 19th Century in some ways, when travel was arduous and expensive. In those days, we sent our words to one another via post, instead of getting together. The lag time is a lot less in modern communication, but it is isolating in the same way, even though I suspect many letters were also written by unshaven people in their underwear. But the literary charm of the writing is no longer as high as it once was, and it is not almost like being there.

Big Web Pow-Wow, part 2

Thanks for weighing in last week about where NCPR should be going in exploring new online platforms and future online strategy. The main takeaways so far from listeners encourage us to go slow, to think more deeply about our real strategic needs, and to not lose sight of our core mission as broadcasters. You can read all the conversation so far at this address:
http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/blogs/brainclouds/2010/02/big-web-pow-wow.html
Last week's post was pretty "top-level" in its approach. I'd like to ask you to weigh in now on some specific areas we are talking about exploring.

First is a new approach to the front page at ncpr.org. We propose to make page one more "newsy." Right now, news is available only in headline form there. We'd like to move the news one click closer--putting at least one story onto page one in full, with photos and direct audio links. We'd like to include more timely content about network programs, rotate new features through the home page more often, and make page one run deeper--including some NPR blogs, as well as NPR and other national features. The numbers driving this decision tell us that the average NCPR visitor is coming to the site only twice a month. A more news-heavy approach, starting at the home page, we hope, will encourage more people to put ncpr.org onto their daily news beat.

Second is a different approach to social media such as Twitter and Facebook. To date, our presence there is primarily driven by feeds that automatically put archive NCPR news and blog content into the social media space. We propose to move the clock ahead a little, giving more info about what's coming up instead of what's gone by. And we hope to use these platforms to engage the audience in story and program incubation, and to build such features as our winter and summer reading lists. And we hope to get more of the NCPR staff engaged with these platforms to post about what's happening in their areas.

Third, we hope to reorganize our approach to the music and arts of the region online, creating a more lively and two-way conversation about local music, regional arts, and cultural life--using new blogs, social media, and listener-submitted media in a more interactive way.

There are more areas where we are looking for change, but these three ought to be plenty for today. Give us your thinking in a comment below.

Big web pow-wow

Sorry for being a day late with the Listening Post this week. Yesterday NCPR had an all-day retreat to have a big think about our future in online media. This is the first time since ncpr.org was launched almost ten years ago that we have all gathered together around these issues. A lot has changed in the intervening years. The most important top-level changes have occured in three areas:

1. The notion of a single web site as a destination toward which the audience is directed is outmoded. An online media operation must now be able to function across multiple sites and platforms--to go to where the audience goes--as well as to bring the audience to where the media operation lives.

2. The notion that an online media operation is one that "talks" while others "listen" is outmoded. People have the expectation of two-way communication and active participation. Instead of being the folks that own the microphone, we are members of a social network comprised of NCPR and "the group formerly known as the audience."

3. The notion that the online media operation creates the content and the audience talks about the content is outmoded. Part of a public service mission online is to put tools in the hands of citizens to create media directly, or to collaborate in the process by which online media is created.

There is a lot of tactical thinking involved in addressing these new realities. We are hoping that Listening Post readers can help us with that thinking. Where do you expect to find an active NCPR presence? What kinds of interaction do you want to have with the NCPR community? What is missing from our service that you think should be within our "wheelhouse?" What are we wasting time on that doesn't well serve the community? What questions are we forgetting to ask? Let us knows what's working or not working for you in what we offer on various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and mobile devices, as well as at ncpr.org.

More at Big web pow-wow, part 2

All a-Twitter

As newspapers groan and collapse under the twin pressures posed by the financial meltdown and the challenge of making new media pay, we have to wonder if we're next. Already there have been layoffs at NPR and member stations; a few stations have disappeared altogether. Our public radio neighbors are reporting budget shortfalls as underwriters cut back in the face of a dismal retail environment. So far, NCPR is in pretty good shape, but like everyone else, we are sweating about the future.

At the same time, there is an explosion of new tools and platforms for distributing public radio, for knitting its members into an interactive whole, for collaborating with colleagues, and in general doing a bigger and potentially better job of serving as the public square. The pace of development and rollout has accelerated to the point where it drags all the blood to the back of the brain.

Which is all I can offer as an explanation for the rise of Twitter, a communication vehicle so ephemeral, so limited in scope, so throwaway it staggers the imagination. If a newspaper is a rag, Twitter is Kleenex. Its motto would be "All the news that fits into 140 characters." While it might have great potential as a new poetic form, Twitter, and much else that is new in new media, offers little to media companies, public and private, that are struggling for survival. It is this conversation, going on behind the scenes in newsrooms and boardrooms around the country and the world, that has us all a-twitter.

Cartoonist Marquil weighed in on the subject today with this offering.

No Comments

Given the overall popularity of sites like FaceBook and MySpace, and the tools of online social networking in general--blogs, comment threads, social bookmarking, video, music and photo sharing platforms, citizen journalism, and on and on--it surprises me how little direct interaction there is between ncpr.org and its visitors. The two bright spots are our Photo of the Day feature, which has attracted since its inception more quality submissions than we can ever use, and the Community Calendar, where a substantial number of each day's events are contributed by visitors online.

Our general listener comment page has, on the other hand, attracted three comments in June, and one each in the months of July, August, and September. Brian Mann, in his new blog Ballot Box, has posted thoughtful and timely essays on North Country politics and the rural divide 19 times in the last ten days. He has received three comments total from the hundreds who have read the posts. Actually he has received five, including two abusive comments from the same writer trying to look like one person responding to another. Those didn't get posted. If the rude and nasty tenor of many political sites is keeping you away, we moderate comments--each is read before posting and will be rejected if it transgresses the bounds of civil public conversation.

We plan to go ahead with such features as the ability to comment on individual NCPR news stories, and to participate on NPR's soon-to-be-released social media platform. But it may be that our audience still does its networking the old-fashioned way: talking in the supermarket aisle and the ice cream stand queue and the at the pancake breakfast. Or perhaps it's just our laconic nature as rural folk. If you have anything to say about that, you can post a comment here.

Where we breathe

Before there was the Worldwide Web, there was the WELL, the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, an online community that served the technophiles of the Bay Area through a network of text bulletin boards and other services delivered over slow phone modems. It was a little slow, a little clunky, and highly geeky, but it had one advantage that has been lost in the online explosion since--it "mapped" onto a terrestrial community--it created an analog of where its participants lived, and was deeply involved with its issues and objectives.

I was an early fan of the WELL, reading about it in CoEvolution Quarterly. Ever since I first became involved in creating websites, I wanted to work in countertrend to the fragmentation and placelessness that characterized the new online world. In particular, I wanted to build a place within the web that corresponded to where I actually lived. I saw the traditional infrastructure that maintained my community falling apart, the informal network of churches and social clubs, local news in print and broadcast in decline, the increased busy-ness of workers and the corresponding decrease of community volunteers. If my work online served only to further distract people from the places where they made their lives, I would be part of the problem.

In the decade or more since, that fragmentation has only grown, and communities-- particularly small ones--struggle ever harder to keep together civic life. While the new online social tools dubbed "Web 2.0" have done amazing things in creating communities of affinity, I still look forward to a "Web 3.0" to serve our communities of residence. That's the place where we breathe the air.

New connections

Sometimes the clock just sits there, slowly grinding gravel into sand, and sometimes everything seems to happen at once. We're heading into one of the latter times now. Stuff from the back burner, things we have been chipping away at month by month, all come to a head. A lot of the action is being driven by new projects and initiatives from our network partner, NPR.

The big news of the last few days was NPR's acquisition of Public Interactive, the platform host of many public radio websites, and a service provider to many more, NCPR among them. The merger may save us some change in the long run, but it will help most in facilitating our use of content from public radio programs that originate with PI's former parent, Public Radio International, and with other media services PI has under contract. It will beef up NPR's digital shop and will help PI stations play more effectively on the national stage.

NPR is making a big investment in social networking for the public radio community and is set to roll out a platform on which stations can foster their own communities within NPR.org. Look for lots more on this in late September.

NPR has also jump-started stations into the arcanely-labeled field of mobilecasting, making a mix of station and network features available via cell phones and other mobile devices. NCPR expects to join them by November. For those of you who wish your cell phones had a cord and a dial, there will be a regular phone number you can call from any type of phone to get the latest NCPR and NPR news and features. This will make NCPR available for the first time in remoter parts of the region that don't have broadband internet, or cell service, or even radio reception.

Speaking of mergers, I have saved the best for last. NCPR station manager Ellen Rocco is tying the knot this weekend with Adirondack potter Bill Noble. We wish them all the best.

Rain of soup: the NPR API

For a longtime advocate of emphasizing the "public" in public broadcasting, this is an exciting moment. My online colleagues at National Public Radio have made it the first major media company to hand what amounts to the "keys to the kingdom" over to the public. They have done this via the introduction of an open API, or application programming interface--a mouthful of buzzwords describing a feature that allows the public to access the entire archive of 250,000 NPR stories, and to use them as they see fit within their own sites, pages, and blogs. Included are tools to organize collections of stories by topic, program, series, reporter, and/or search term, and to receive those stories in a wide variety of formats and at varying levels of detail.

Within a few months, NPR stations such as North Country Public Radio will also be able to make their own stories available to the public using NPR's API. So, for example, if you had a blog dealing with environmental issues in the Northeast, you would be able to create a collection of stories on the environment from NPR mixed with local stories from NPR stations in the Northeast. Or a bluegrass fan might collect all the performances by and interviews with bluegrass artists at NPR and mix in performers from the UpNorth Music project. Or you could just grab every story since 1995 about James Brown, the hardest working man in show business. Sweet.



Even better, outside developers are already building new tools to use the API in novel ways. John Tynan at KJZZ has worked out a widget that takes NPR stories by topic and drops them onto a timeline, so you can see how coverage of a given issue develops. Here is a sample of the work in progress. Geoff Gaudreault of Reverbiage has built a widget that combines a 3D globe mapping out the latest NPR stories with an embedded player to listen to the stories. See it work and get the code. At NCPR, we are in the process of switching to the API for all the NPR features syndicated within the site. You can play with the API yourself, and should. Use the "Query Generator" to select and view different slices of the NPR pie. Register to use the NPR API.

Barbed reply

If the internet is--as Sen. Ted Stevens maintains--a bunch of tubes, it could sure use a dose of Liquid Plumber. The most persistent rap against the web has been that it's almost impossible to tell whether you are getting good information or not. In a time of reputation management, viral marketing, buzz doctors and spin control--not to mention the assortment of more pedestrian rumormongers, outright liars, and smear artists--who can you believe? Then there are the soreheads, the crackpots, the professionally paranoid, and the wearers of tinfoil hats. It boggles the mind (if the mind is not already boggled).

I assumed that somewhere in the jungle of social networking tools that is burying traditional media like a collapsed barn under grapevine, there would be a service that allowed the surfing community to tag specious content as crap. Something like :
428 readers reported (link to offending content) to SepticTank.org.
Tags: bogus (412), twaddle (15), how do i log in? (1)
Veracity score: 00.23%
But there's no such thing. I should know because I checked it out… on the internet.

Community self-policing works pretty well on individual sites like Wikipedia, but we lack a scheme that will apply to the whole ball of bits. Long before the days of cyberspace my friend Allen proposed the following, which can be taken as a model. Repeal all traffic laws and give every driver a dart gun. Each time a driver jumps the light, cuts someone off, straddles both lanes, or drives while shaving, a vigilant motorist fires a barbed dart with a red flag into the body of the offending vehicle. Collect enough flags and police wave the idiot over and ask him to step out. Then a big electromagnet lifts his car into the maw of a portable crusher. Harsh perhaps, but then Allen is a bit of a sorehead himself.

"Friend me" not

While I have been fascinated to follow the development of social networks on the web, I have never warmed up to them in practice. The very name sounds oxymoronic--social sounds, well--sociable--and network sounds like work. So I might visit a FaceBook page for information, but I have not built one of my own, and rarely interact with the pages of others. My cell phone is not web connected and sits mostly idle--a text message has never passed its tiny little keypad. For a while I tracked old running buddies via Classmates, but with both ends needing to be paying customers to actually communicate, my skinflint genes kicked in and I let it lapse. The alternate reality site Second Life now moves on without me. I tried to create an avatar there that looked like me, but everything came out way more young and buff than sad reality, and I had no desire to present myself as a blue punk vampire with a face full of steel, or to build a zero-gravity domicile constructed entirely of virtual cornflakes.

So my social life operates in a way a cave man would recognize. I go to where people live and sit within earshot of quiet conversation. I share food, news, blarney and opinion in kitchens and coffeeshops. I like my music live and will pay for the privilege. I embrace my inner throwback. There is no end to the axes I enjoy the grinding of, and I guess social networking is one. Don't friend me, I'll friend you.

Not a good look

I was walking one day in the crowded esplanade of the Danbury Fair Mall. A women in front of me turned to her companion and said, "I didn’t know we were in Connecticut." I have had that feeling over and over the last few days as I have surveyed scores of websites looking for inspiration to fuel the redesign of the NCPR website. Everything seems to look just like everything else--and I gotta tell you--it isn’t a good look. Crowded, chaotic, hard to navigate, hard to read, and little to make you want to stick around. If the media sites on the web comprised a metropolis, they would be the shantytowns of Rio. This is bad news for me; I was hoping for something to rip off--I mean emulate. NCPR's design, now more than six years old, belongs to the hamster-dance era of website fashion, and I am under the gun to roll out something new and fabulous for our 40th anniversary year, 2008.

Since my eyeballs are bleeding from the strain and my progress to date can be measured in microns, I thought I would get with the 21st Century program and tap into "the wisdom of crowds." Send me your candidates for websites that do what they do well and with a little style. And tell me a little about why you think they work. I'll compile a list of favorites and put it back out on the site, and maybe I'll find a few features that I can file the serial numbers off. Email dale@ncpr.org.

Getting a second life

People are always telling me I need to get around more. “There’s a whole other world out there,” they tell me. Anyone who attends a church or belongs to a service organization knows that social networking can be strange, but you need to go online to find out just how strange. The other world out there is called “Second Life,” a 3D virtual world built pixel by pixel by its residents. There you can pick a name, design a body, select a wardrobe and walk (or fly) around, touring whole neighborhoods of virtual homes and businesses built by fellow travelers. It has its own economy, denominated in Linden dollars. There are construction companies who can design and build your virtual second residence, fashion designers who will clothe your avatar in bleeding-edge style. You can talk to people, hold meetings, create and display artwork and multimedia. There are red-light districts and war zones, radio stations and even branch offices for presidential candidates. You can do almost anything in Second Life that you can in this one, except eat a really good grilled cheese sandwich.

At the moment, Second Life has a population of four million, at least 20,000 of whom are in residence at any given time. For such an out-of-body experience in a world of illusions, I have chosen four items for my personal inventory, two sandals, a monk’s robe, and (since I didn’t sign up for the premium account) a begging bowl. Before you come to the conclusion (correct but irrelevant) that a lot of people have too much time on their hands, consider this story: Democracy advocates in China are unable to assemble for mass demonstrations in so-called “first life.” But recently over 10,000 Second Life avatars marched through a virtual Tiananmen Square to protest human rights issues in China. The place clearly presents some features of interest. Once I learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time there (just consider controlling your body with arrow keys and keyboard shorcuts) I’ll scout the place out and send back some Letters Home. Or my avatar will post to my blog, whichever world that is in.

Postcard of doom

Writing in haste again, taking a break between sessions at my annual geekfest, the Integrated Media Associates Conference, this year in Boston. Nice for me, because I get to bunk with friends in Medford and hang out a little with my daughter in her adopted town. Yesterday was the hard-core techie sessions, with a higher concentration of bluetooth ear phones and bitty foldout keyboards than anywhere outside freshman orientation at MIT. Once again, it's the end of the world as we know it, according to keynoter Michael Rosenblum, video journalism guru. The explosion of services like You Tube represent the tipping point from old media to new. That is, from centralized, cash-fat and exclusive media, to lean, inclusive, democratic media. "Adapt or Die!" is the cry. The difference this year is that CEOs and senior producers are joining the ranks of the believers and the terrified. The message is received, but what will be done with it is totally up for grabs.

Somewhere the mix of social networking, blogging, visitor submitted video, audio and text will intersect with professional curation, the necessary resources, and the deep storytelling expertise of old media to create a synthesis that doesn't have a name yet. At least that is the hope. The alternative looks like holding stock in buggy whips and Betamax. That expressionless psuedo-personality The Market, as always, shrugs and says "Tough noogies." Next up, a day of sessions at MIT, with the title (ominous to many in the room) of "Beyond Broadcasting."

You too

Much has been made of Time magazine’s person of the year selection for 2006—You—as in you, the citizen journalist, blogger, YouTuber, myspacer, etc. The accompanying article describes the selection as helping to deconstruct the “Great Man” theory of history, and to recognize the increasing democratization of media. Never mind that Time has been dining out on the “Great Man” theory since 1927 with this very feature, and that the ownership and control of mass media continues to consolidate toward the fortunate and unaccountable few, despite the explosion of new media. As one of Time’s “yous,” I appreciate the value of the growing capability to communicate to audiences without mediation. Old wisdom said “Freedom of the press belongs to them that own one.” In the new paradigm we all—potentially—own one. And that is big news.

What we don’t each own, however, is an audience. My home video—yawn; Osama’s home video—above-the-fold news. The large impact made in 2006 by citizen journalism, the “macaca” video and similar bits, comes when they are echoed in the larger media that has a mass following of eyes and ears. And that media world is an exclusive and ever-shrinking club. For them, new media is a new source of sources. While that has value in itself, it is not the Revolution. New media looks to me more like the Gold Rush, where everybody and his brother set out to stake a claim and started panning streams in the wilderness. A few got rich, most went home, and the big mining companies bought up everything in sight. The $1.6 billion Google gobble of YouTube is a case in point.