Last week, Amazon pulled several ebooks from their store when they couldn't come to an agreement with 'Independent Publishers Group' about ebook prices. Amazon wanted to lower it to a point that simply wasn't sustainable for the distributer, so when IPG said no, Amazon responded by removing all their books from the store.
Earlier this week, Avinash Kaushik pointed me towards this great video by DK. What's special about it, is how they, in an absolutely ingenious way, tell a story.
I won't tell you how it's done, because should experience it for yourself, so here is the video:
While I think the video itself is brilliantly made I don't agree with the words. Some of them makes a lot of sense, but they polarize something that isn't polarized.
Let me explain. The way many see the world is like this. We have the old world of print, where people sit down and consume content for a longer period of time. We care about it, it often covers big ideas, and it's in-depth and of high quality.
Then we have the digital world, where people have a short attention span, they don't really care about you, and the content is much shallower.
What people from old media fears is that, as the old world dies, the thoughtful old world is replaced by a new world full of crap.
And it's true. The number of cat videos in print magazines is exactly zero. So are the number of short term internet memes or crappy social trends designed to have no purpose other than to be weird.
Print is professional by default, because the limitation of print limited it to only the big publishers.
But the connected world isn't just shallow and full of crap. It's also full of really high quality and in-depth content. It's both. It's everything!
I understand why old media people think the internet is just crap, because they are used to a world where crap weren't allowed. But the internet has opened up this world for everyone.
On one hand, you get crappy cat videos and internet memes. But on the other hand, you get some of greatest content you have ever seen - far exceeding the quality and richness of print.
But the traditionalists will then point to studies showing that people spend a long time reading a print magazine versus only minutes (sometimes seconds) reading online news. And yes, that too is true ...but only if you look at each individual session.
Overall, people spend 750% more time on digital channels than they do on print, but each visit might only last a few minutes. The reason is that our behavior has changed.
In the past, you would get up in the morning and spend 10-15 minutes reading the morning paper, while eating breakfast. Then you would go to work, during which you would not consume any media at all. After work, you would again sit down in your living room and maybe spend an hour or more just reading the latest magazine.
The limitation of distribution forced us into 'consumption periods' and naturally that caused longer sessions.
But today, in the connected world, you consume content wherever you are. While eating breakfast, while going to work, while at work, while shopping for groceries, while being with friends, while watching TV, and while lying in bed.
The result is that, yes, each session is a lot shorter, but overall we consume far more content than ever before, from thousands of different sources.
Does that makes the modern person more shallow? Not really. It's true that content has to change. Instead of one big package, modern content has to be cut into smaller chunks of value, published as a stream. But the point is that we no longer have to wait until after work to read an article.
We no longer have consumption periods.
It's certainly true that the new era of media isn't as pure as in the old days. There is an increasing quantity of crap being published each day. But the connected world isn't the opposite of print. It's everything we used to have mixed with everything else.
The trick is to follow the right people, the right sources, and the right content. And for publishers, the trick is to stop defining your market by the limitations of the past.
The Associated Press is struggling to find a way to fit into the new world of media, and quite frankly they are making more mistakes than what seems possible. First they wanted people to pay them for linking, and in the process forced Google News to not only pay them, but also host their articles (instead of providing a link directly to them and thus forced people away from them). Then they created archaic social media policies, and recently they have sued, again, stop the spread of links.
But now, after several years of hard work, they have finally found the answer to all their problems. They have redesigned their logo! It is such an important event that, today, their entire website is dedicated to just this one thing.
In 2009, AP undertook a strategic initiative to develop a masterbrand strategy that would define what makes us different from other news organizations, serve as a guide for business decisions and clarify the values and traits all AP staff embody. How do we best describe ourselves? As gutsy, resourceful and connected. What do we value? Integrity, action and independence.
The AP visual identity system brings these traits and values to life. It allows us to leverage the great work we do by uniting under a comprehensive look and feel, driving competitive advantage and creating a distinct footprint in the media marketplace.
They also created a video with the CEO presenting their new logo as the definitive answer.
The Logo Fail
We see this every single time a company is in trouble but have no idea why. Not just with AP, but there are countless of logo changes as a result of the 'headless chicken syndrome'.
What happens is that when the market is suddenly ignoring you, these companies forget their heads and run around like headless chickens - until someone comes up with the idea to 'change the visual identity to remind people what we stand for'.
And that is exactly what AP did. In 2009, when the internet started to seriously disrupt their business, they "undertook a strategic initiative to develop a masterbrand strategy".
Forget about changing and embracing the new world. Let's put on some fresh paint and all will be well again...
I'm sorry AP, but that strategy has proven never to work!
AP has become obsolete
The problem for the Associated Press is, of course, that they are no longer needed. They were formed back in the disconnected world, were the primary purpose of newspapers where to be the 'bringer of news'.
What happened was that newspapers where being formed all over the US, and every one of them had to be the definite source of news for the local community.
This meant that each newspaper had to send out reporters to every major city, not just in the US, but also in the world as a whole. That was hideously expensive and quite impractical to do. But since they where living in the disconnected world, defined by the limitations of geographic boundaries, what choice did they have?
A solution had to be found, and the Associated Press was formed. It was a brilliant solution. Instead of forcing each individual newspaper to send out their own reporters, they would all use the Associated Press as a central news provider. The Associated Press would take news from each newspaper, as well as sending out their own reporter, and the newspapers could use stories from anyone in the network.
It was a perfect example of synergy, in which you combine the strength of individual companies to create a larger whole. And a perfect example of the age old saying:
Do what you do best, outsource the rest!
Each newspaper could focus on their own strengths, while at the same time be able to republish the news they needed from elsewhere at a cost-effective price.
In the past, the Associated Press was the perfect solution. And it's success-rate and relevance in the disconnected world is at the very top of the scale.
The Shift
In the connected world, however, none of this makes sense. We no longer have geographic boundaries, limits of distribution, or the need to gather news from around the world. What most newspapers haven't learned yet, is that in the connected world, we no longer need newspapers as 'bringers of news' - because we already have it.
The old saying of 'do what you do best, outsource the rest', has been replaced with a new saying:
Do what you do best, link to the rest!
Unlike in the past, if you are living in Boston and there is a big fire in Los Angeles, you don't read the Boston Globe, you go directly to the LA Times. The Boston Globe will of course cover the news, like any other newspaper, using articles syndicated via AP.
But people don't care. In a connected world we go to the source!
We noticed the same with the Arab Uprising in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. You could read about itin every single newspaper on the planet, but that didn't stop the US public to suddenly demand the Cable TV providers to include Al Jazeera.
Yes, you could watch it on CNN too, but Al Jazeera was better because they where closer to the action - that's what we wanted to see.
And in a connected world, visiting CNN is just as easy as visiting Al Jazeera. Both are just a link away.
The world is no longer separated. Because of the internet, we are now all living in the same city. If something happens, we will read the news source closest to it, and the Associated Press has become obsolete.
Newspapers still need to 'do what you do best', but sadly, most have no idea what that is. They still think they have to be the 'bringer of news'. When something happens in one city, every newspaper believe their role is to copy/paste it, because otherwise people won't know.
The Associated Press no longer has a future, because it was formed to solve the problem of geographic boundaries. Those boundaries no longer exists, and as such the Associated Press no longer has a purpose to fill.
The only way out is to stop being a bringer of news, and instead become the source of news. Meaning that instead of focusing on a business model of republishing news in every local newspaper, they have to be where the reader go to get the news they make - not the newspaper, but the reader.
AP should no longer be the bringer of news to others- They should be the source of news.
I don't want to see the Associated Press disappear. The journalists working there are doing some of the best news coverage on the planet. The Associated Press could be the best all-purpose newspaper of all, and the local newspapers could focus on what they do best - within their respective niches.
But this is unlikely to happen, since AP is owned by the newspapers themselves. AP is forced into the role of being the middleman for a disconnected business strategy. So sadly, the future of AP is to change their logo and sue people when they link to their stories.
In the next five years, everything we know about newspapers will be transformed. More and more will learn that, in a connected world, you can't be the bringer of news. You have to be the source of news - not the copy machine.
The Associated Press is one of the best sources we have, but its entire purpose is to be the copy-machine for others, and that model no longer works.
The article is about how Charles Duhigg, of New York Times, wrote a very long article about "how large companies like Walmart and Target collect data about your individual consumption patters to figure out how to most efficiently make you happy".
Nick then found, quite wrongly, that "the New York Times article has 60 likes and shares on Facebook versus 12,902 which the Forbes article has", and as a result, concluded that writing a good headline is very important.
Let's debunk this myth once and for all.
First of all, the sharing numbers were wrong. The real numbers were 14,000 likes for the New York Times versus 15,000 for the Forbes article. In reality, there wasn't that much difference in sharing.
But the real problem is that Nick is thinking one-way exposure, not two-way sharing. People do not share anything because of a headline.
Here is how it works. In a one-way exposure world, a great headline is very good at getting people to click on a link - that has been proven many times.
But the headline is not the tricker of sharing. The tricker is the impression people get *after* clicking on it. Sharing is what people do *after* the point of exposure - not before or during, but after!
Think of it like this. People are not going to share "this song is great" before they have listened to it, not even if you give it a catchy title.
Sharing is a post-conversion activity. Writing catchy headlines is a pre-conversion activity. One can help facilitate the other, but it doesn't cause it.
The bigger issue here is content theft. I have no problem with journalists 'reflecting' on somebody else's' work (which is what I'm doing here). But when the game is to 'take the work of others and repackage it' we are heading into murky waters.
Statements like this one, from Nick O'Neill, can literally make my blood boil:
I wouldn't say that what Kashmir has done is a bad thing, it's just a result of the current state of online content. I've done the exact thing myself on many instances over the years and in many cases I was able to outperform those people who I summarized. Do I feel bad about it? Not at all, it is what it is: the game we're playing.
I was thrilled back when Twitter announced they would auto-shorten all links using 't.co'. Finally we would be able to correctly track the impact of Twitter, instead of the mess we had before with links being identified as all kinds of strange things.
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Earlier today, Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC, said that his job was not to hire journalists, but to hire smart people who understand the world:
This whole concept of journalist has to be rethought. I'm sorry, I don't care about journalists. I want fair minded, smart people who understand the world, who can interpret it and if they're journalists, great. This notion that somehow you have to have done something to earn so-called journalist credentials? Stop. Stop ...I think it's unfair.
It reminded me of one of the greatest movies I have ever seen: Pixar's Ratatouille. The movie is about how somebody, who isn't part of the traditional establishment, can make something greater than the ones who are.
There are two quotes, in particular, that I think sums up the whole story. The first one is when the Skinner, the Master Chef, finds that this 'boy', who isn't an educated chef, is cooking in his kitchen:
The soup. Where is the soup? Out of my way. Move it, garbage boy! You are COOKING? HOW DARE YOU COOK in my kitchen! Where do you get the gall to even attempt something so monumentally idiotic? I should have you drawn and quartered! I'll do it! I think the law is on my side! Larousse, draw and quarter this man - after you put him in the duck press to squeeze the fat out of his head!
He is outraged by this amateur who dares to do the work of professionals.
The other is when the renowned food critic, Anton Ego, learns that the best meal he ever had was from a person who wasn't educated in the traditional way, nor part of the traditional establishment:
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends.
Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.
This should sound familiar if you are working in the newspaper industry. In fact, let me rephrase those quotes:
Skinner being the traditional newspaper editor, who are outraged by the audacity of 'amateurs' who think they can report the news.
The article. Where is the article? Out of my way. Move it, garbage boy! You are writing? HOW DARE YOU WRITE in my newspaper! Where do you get the gall to even attempt something so monumentally idiotic? I should have you drawn and quartered!
And Anton Ego, the reader, who suddenly realizes that a blog was more valuable to him than his trusty old newspaper.
The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary post from a singularly unexpected blog. To say that both the article and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about great journalism is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Editor Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can write. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great writer, but a great writer can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now writing at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest journalist in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, eager for more.
This is the reality of the connected world. In the past, market limitations restricted journalism to a small group of professionals, but today "Not everyone can become a great writer, but a great writer can come from anywhere".
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