http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/ en Copyright 2008 Tue, 13 May 2008 00:43:14 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss annual report issued by the Deloitte consultancy, called “Media Predictions: TMT Trends 2008” (“TMT” stands for Technology, Media and Telecommunications). I’ve got versions of this report going back to 2006; I’m not certain if that was the year when the report was first issued. The 2008 version covers a range of topics, from music to offshoring to piracy issues. What caught my attention tonight was the section covering online advertising. It starts off with a brief history of the growth of online advertising, but halfway through the article comes the showstopper: a key barrier to the continued ascendancy of online advertising “may be growing antipathy to the online advertisement itself. One 2007 survey of US consumers found that over three-quarters of respondents considered Internet advertisements more intrusive than those in print. Nearly two-thirds claimed that they paid more attention to print advertising than to that on the Web. Over a quarter stated that they would pay for advertisement-free online content.” That data, we learn from the footnotes, derives from a “Survey of 2200 US consumers undertaken in 2007, commissioned by Deloitte Development LLC.” Over the last month we’ve seen that the voracious ongoing interest focused by all sectors of the Internet marketplace is based on the assumption that online advertising is the key factor (if not the only factor) that will determine the level of success of the most successful websites in the years to come (c.f. Microsoft vs. Yahoo). Over the last few months I’ve been asking friends and colleagues whether or not they pay attention to ads on the Web, and/or click through to them. Without exception their response is that they’ve trained themselves not to even see the ads, be they banner ads or Google-style ads. They skim the content; the ads are just noise. Obviously Google’s recent financial results indicate that my friends and colleagues may currently not be representative of the public at large. But I wonder how long it will take the general public to see Web ads as adding noise rather than value.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/05/online_advertising_burnout.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/05/online_advertising_burnout.php Advertising Tue, 13 May 2008 00:43:14 -0500 An article appeared on May 5th in the New York Times called “Publisher Tested the Waters Online, Then Dove In.” In glowing terms, it recounts the apparently amazing transformation of media giant IDG from primarily a print-based magazine publisher to an online publisher. The article moved quickly onto the Times’ most-read and most-blogged list (today it’s still #5 on the most-blogged list), and I figured that I’d just let that one go, particularly as my blog has been focusing quite a bit on magazines for the last week. But I couldn’t resist getting a comment on the record, and so posted a remark on Jeff Jarvis’ excellent Buzz Machine blog. I wrote: “I read this article with some incredulity. It reads more like a corporate brochure than a carefully-researched piece of journalism. First of all, IDG is privately held, so there’s no way to check into what’s been happening to the overall sales and profitability of the company in its transition to digital. “Mr. McGovern states ‘The excellent thing, and good news, for publishers is that there is life after print — in fact, a better life after print,’ and the major evidence offered is that ‘today, I.D.G. says, the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.’ “OK on that…but what about before the dotcom bust? I’d be surprised if the profitability of the publication was not significantly higher. “I applaud IDG on its bold moves, but wonder if Mr. McGovern doesn’t sometimes wish for the good old days before the Web.” I’d have let it go at that if I’d not today stumbled upon an entry on Rex Hammock’s also excellent rexblog.com. The blog entry, titled, “Print is not a burden. Useless drivel is the burden. So ignore this post,” is for me the final word on the affair, although it’s really more about content than the IDG story, per se. Just one quote: “Unfortunately, saying “print is a burden” implies that there are other options out there that are not burdens. Frankly, the web is a burden. Traveling to events IDG puts on is a burden. Trying to synch my phone and computer is a burden.…If you publish a beautiful magazine with articles that really matter to me — that instruct, inform or celebrate something I feel strongly about, it is no burden on me. If you help me get to the information and insight I need to live a fuller life or conduct business in a more flexible and productive way, your blogging and tweeting and bookmarking does not burden me. Useless, redundant, meaningless, re-shuffled drivel is the burden. It can be delivered via print or on a weblog or a mobile device. Crap is a burden no matter what the medium used to deliver it.” A powerful reminder that the medium is not necessarily the message.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/05/print_is_not_a_burden_useless.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/05/print_is_not_a_burden_useless.php Magazines Writing Wed, 07 May 2008 21:28:48 -0500 my last entry on magazines (May 2nd). The information came to me by a circuitous route. Bob Sacks, aka “BoSacks” “a veteran of the printing/publishing industry since 1970” (primarily the magazine industry), issues an iconoclastic email newsletter, and does so thrice daily (!), most of which focuses on the magazine industry, some of which reaches out to the broader publishing business. (You can subscribe and read back issues here.) In his first issue today he quotes an entry by Michael Truro from his “[in plain sight]” blog. That entry, also posted today, says in part: “While I hate to sound like chicken little – and though the print is dead meme is way overplayed – I had to post this quote from Steve Frye [a publishing and printing industry consultant]. In a sidebar in the current issue of Publishing Executive titled “The State of the Printing Industry,” Frye drops this bomb: “‘I think we need to change our philosophy of what a magazine is. We are no longer a cheap means of dispensing information, and that’s what we were until the Internet came along. Now we are an inefficient and expensive means of distributing information.…We need to reinvent ourselves as a luxury item that people want and are willing to pay for. And until we change our own image of who we are, we’re going to find out that our vendors are going to change it for us. Because, right now, postage is a premium. Paper is a premium. Soon printing will be a premium. How long can we buy at a premium and sell at a discount? We can’t.’” Frye’s is the strongest statement I’ve yet encountered on the future of magazines. I’m not sure I agree – it doesn’t really matter if I do. I think it’s a well-thought-out comment, worthy of consideration and debate.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/05/are_magazines_now_a_luxury_ite.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/05/are_magazines_now_a_luxury_ite.php Magazines Mon, 05 May 2008 21:16:03 -0500 stated on the Magazine Publishers Association (MPA) site promoting the conference: “Our theme this year is ‘The MagaBrand Revolution: How Media Brands are Finding Success on the Printed Page—And Beyond.’ What is a MagaBrand? It’s a magazine that’s found a way to extend the power of its brand beyond the printed periodical—into realms like ‘old’ media (books, newsstand specials, television, radio); ‘new’ media (podcasts, webcasts, cellcasts, e-newsletters); even non-media (nightclubs, restaurants, tour operations, fashion lines, retail products, conventions, big-cause crusades, hotels and casinos). “The MagaBrand Revolution will detail how magazines can—and must—expand their brands into all corners of the target audience’s consciousness, and how your magazine will live or die on the inventiveness and daring you bring to your brand. From bricks and mortar to burgeoning new technologies, you’ll learn what works (and what doesn’t) in the new media environment.” Jason Fell, in a February 2008 Folio blog called “Print No Longer ‘Heart and Soul’ of Magazine Brands,” adds a commentary to the topic. “Here’s an idea that has been kicked around ad nauseum (see: ‘MagaBrands,’ Dave Zinczenko et al.) but perhaps never expressed so bluntly. According to Computerworld and Infoworld editorial director Don Tenant, the print magazine no longer should be the “heart and soul” of a brand. Instead, as his team did at IDG, publishers should think of their brand as an online media company with ancillary print and event products,” Fell wrote. “‘Advertising is shifting from print to online in droves. So, what do you do?’ Tenant said this morning during a session at the FOLIO: Publishing Summit. ‘Content should be going online first. Our strategy is to think of print as being a compilation of the content online.’ “Like a growing number of companies, Tenant’s group merged its print and online editorial teams four months ago. On the surface, at least, this seems to be an easy, efficient content management strategy. “‘I can’t tell you how much this was a morale boost for everyone,’ he said. ‘ We should have had a plan in place all along to unite the two teams.’” End of blog entry. While Mr. Fell may think the idea has been kicked around ad nauseum, I’d argue that while getting kicked around, the concept has failed to be put into practice by most print publishers (book publishers being the #1 offender, followed by newspaper and then magazine publishers). The time to stop kicking and start acting is overdue.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/05/magabrands_and_online_content.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/05/magabrands_and_online_content.php Magazines Fri, 02 May 2008 22:01:17 -0500 revolutionary wireless reading device [emphasis mine]). We’re told incessantly how “visionary,” “exceptional,” and, yes, “revolutionary” this little device is, but we’re not told why (with regard to features that differentiate it meaningfully from its nine competitors). The Amazon site states: “Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.” But all of its competitors use ePaper. We’re told that it sold out 5-½ hours after release, but have never been told how many units had been produced. And now, when you go to Amazon’s home page, you’re greeted not by the usual smorgasbord of new product releases in various genres, but by a somber yet upbeat letter from C.E.O. Bezos himself, advising that this magical Kindle is once more in stock. Hallelujah! The letter goes on to invite us to read president Bezos’ “just released” (April 14th) annual Letter to Shareholders. He goes on to explain that he doesn’t ordinarily link to this sort of communication from the Amazon home page (I’d hate to think what would happen to Amazon’s sales if he got in the habit of doing so), but, Bezos explains, “this letter is all about the Kindle,” as if that would help us form some sort of logical connection in our minds about the appearance of this missive. On behalf of my readers, and in the interest of Kindle-lovers everywhere, I clicked on the link and a 5-page PDF file slowly overwhelmed my browser window. The last three pages are the shareholder letter; the first page-and-a-half contain Bezos’ verbose paean to the Kindle. It takes until page 2, paragraph 2 to get a sense of why the Kindle has turned Bezos into a born again eBooker. Here are his insights: 1. “We change our tools, and then our tools change us.” (A widely-accepted view of the impact of technology.) 2. Writing “changed us dramatically.” (Well, yes…) 3. Gutenberg made books cheaper, and “physical books ushered in a new way of collaborating and learning.” (Amongst many, many other things, Jeff. See Elizabeth Eisenstein’s The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, available on Amazon at an 11% discount – or for 25 cents less at Barnes and Noble.) 4. “Lately, networked tools such as desktop computers, laptops, cell phones and PDAs have changed us too.” (No problem there.) 5. “(Networked tools have) shifted us more toward information snacking (sic), and I would argue toward shorter attention spans.” (I recommend reading Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s famous and prescient 1997 column “How Users Read on the Web,” which begins with the memorable line: “They don’t.” Nielsen continues: “People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences.” So is the issue really shorter attention spans, or new techniques for coping with the vastly increased amount of textual information we’re asked to consume each day?) 6. “Kindle is purpose-built for long-form reading. We hope Kindle and its successors may gradually and incrementally move us over years into a world with longer spans of attention, providing a counterbalance to the recent proliferation of info-snacking tools.” OK, I’ve got it. Without quoting any evidence, Bezos warns that new digital tools are inducing a form of ADD in the public at large. I’ll look into the research for you, Mr. Bezos, and report my findings shortly on this site in the Literacy section. In the meantime please peruse my updated section on eBooks: I am not without bias towards the supposed wonders of eBook technology. Though the letter is evangelical in tone, Bezos forgets the apocryphal preacher’s advice on a successful sermon: “First, I tell them what I’m going to tell them, then I tell them, then I tell them what I just told them.” Perhaps he was information snacking when he wrote the letter.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/i_dont_know_about_you.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/i_dont_know_about_you.php Literacy eBooks/eContent ePaper Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:48:07 -0500 The Economist, and its stuffy image as a turgid journal featuring dry analysis of economics and politics, I find this publication a remarkable source of data for many of the entries on this site. Being The Economist it is generally authoritative without being windy. Economist writers (never identified with a byline to an article) are the cream of the crop, and it soon becomes obvious that they combine the right balance of education, knowledge and judgment with well-researched facts and figures to produce timely articles often as short as a page, and sometimes as long as several. (I should mention that they can also surprise the reader with a very dry wit.) Part of what makes The Economist seem standoffish is the price: the cheapest online-only one-year subscription is $80; print and online jumps the price past $100/year. Apparently an excellent magazine, one that knows its audience and delivers consistently, can still be a roaring success. The latest figures I can find are for the six months ended September 30, 2007. Circulation increased 11% to over 1.2 million copies (and remember, this is a weekly!). Electronic advertising revenue increased 15%, as monthly users increased 39% (reaching 2.6 million), contributing to a 25% increase in operating profits. How do you like them apples, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report (each hit recently by troubling circulation and/or financial news)? Today I stumbled on an online-only article (available to non-subscribers) called “Finding the right picture: Engineers are making progress with the old problem of getting computers to recognize what they are looking at.” In the lede the problem is explained: “To a microprocessor, a photograph of James Bond might as well depict a cat in a tree.” The article goes on to explain recent research underway designed to overcome this challenge. Why I love The Economist is made clear in part from the accompanying illustration and caption: Image and caption copyright 2008, The Economist.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/not_a_cat.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/not_a_cat.php Magazines Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:28:39 -0500 New York Times report, the book will be published in September in German only, based on the German version of Wikipedia, with a list price of 19.95 euros. While the online German Wikipedia has nearly three-quarters of a million entries, the book will contain only 20,000 of these, each verified by Bertelsmann’s editors. Meanwhile, over at another encyclopedia company, Encyclopedia Britannica, a very different kind of announcement was making the rounds this week (although actually first announced on April 13): free access to the online version of Encyclopedia Britannica through a new program called Britannica Webshare. The Wired Campus blog in The Chronicle of Higher Education suggests that “Encyclopaedia Britannica…apparently fears being nudged into irrelevance by the proliferation of free online reference sources… “Comscore analysis, also reported on TechCrunch, found that '[f]or every page viewed on Brittanica.com, 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia,' or 3.8 billion v. 21 million page views per month… “Under a new program entitled Britannica WebShare, the encyclopedia publisher is allowing ‘people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers,’ to read and link to the encyclopedia’s online articles. The company seems to hope that by offering its services free to Web publishers, links to Britannica articles will proliferate across the Internet and will persuade regular Web surfers to cough up $1,400 for the encyclopedia’s 32-volume set, or perhaps $70 for an annual online subscription.” Hurry: Get your application in here.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/a_tale_of_two_pedias.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/a_tale_of_two_pedias.php Book Publishing Education Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:37:29 -0500 The New York Review of Books. That would be understandable, as the current issue features reviews of the first volume of a biography of Ezra Pound, then of a 615 page book that examines just the last year of the war in Japan (1944-1945), and also a review of a book called “Ten Tortured Words: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America...and What’s Happened Since” by author Stephen Mansfield. The February 14, 2008 issue, still online, has a wonderful feature just called “Blogs”, written by Sarah Mansfield, who confesses in the first sentence of her piece: “Two years ago, I was given a dreadful idea for a book: create an anthology of blogs.” As is often the case in The New York Review of Books, the reviewer covers multiple titles, in this case ten different books concerned with blogs and what they signify. I’ve never read a more eloquent or revealing article about blogs: where they originated, what they signify, how they impact other media, and where they’re headed. Her concluding paragraph gives a sense of the tone of the review: “Blog writing is id writing—grandiose, dreamy, private, free-associative, infantile, sexy, petty, dirty. Whether bloggers tell the truth or really are who they claim to be is another matter, but WTF. They are what they write. And you can’t fake that. ;-)” A must read!]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/the_beauty_of_blogs.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/the_beauty_of_blogs.php Blogs Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:06:32 -0500 Wall Street Journal, in its own Buzzwatch blog, offered a report and a background interview on what’s really going on when people read blogs, and what keeps them doing so. (The Wall Street Journal online is offered by subscription only, but the blogs don’t require a subscription, so the URL attached above should work -- I'm having some trouble with it, but it will at least take you nearby.) This blog was inspired by a learned journal article called “Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging,” authored by three learned men at the University of California in Irvine, and presented the previous week “at a conference on human factors in computing.” The intro to the WSJ blog states the author’s proposition on the importance of this research: “The question of what drives people to read blogs is a big one for traditional media losing time with their audiences to the Internet and companies looking to tap the Web for marketing,” author Tom Weber writes. Fair enough, although perhaps not very deep. The three authors of the article offer no more profound an explanation of the significance of their study. “Despite the medium’s interactive nature, most research on blogs focuses on either the blog itself or the blogger, rarely if at all focusing on the reader’s impact. In order to gain a better understanding of the social practice of blogging, we must take into account the role, contributions, and significance of the reader,” they write. A quick proviso is in order: the study involved only fifteen participants, all under the age of 40, by all accounts a statistically-insignificant sample. At the same time Bill Tomlinson, one of the report’s authors, does not shy away from this question, and defends the decision. “In the early stages of research into a topic,” he states, “it’s often helpful to begin with small qualitative studies such as this one in order to figure out the key issues. Quantitative studies with larger sample sizes are then useful for refining the understanding of these issues and developing statistical analyses of specific phenomena,” he tells Tom Weber. I don’t disagree with the essential argument, but, come on, surely fifteen respondents falls far short of science. Oh well, let it be. What was discovered? When I read a scientific paper as part of my research for this site, I often just skip to the conclusion, looking for the meat. I leave it to the reader of this blog to see if she or he can find any meat there. The Wall Street Journal interview is more pithy and direct. The main points: 1. Blog reading is (or can be) habitual, somewhat akin to watching a TV series. However bloggers don’t seem to care if they miss an episode, and just move on to the next entry. 2. Nonetheless, the personal nature of blogs encourages a higher degree of interaction by the reader than does television. 3. The audience for a blog is highly varied (unlike television?), and this has some implications the bloggers should keep in mind. 4. The first comment to the Wall Street Journal blog is from someone named “Nicolas” who runs a site called “Managing IO: Ideas and Trends to Tackle Information Overload.” His site appears to offer both more ideas and better links than the whole WSJ blog and the referenced study. Let scientists continue to study this thorny subject, perhaps applying a little more rigor than has been found here.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/the_science_of_blogs.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/the_science_of_blogs.php Blogs blogs blogging Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:10:43 -0500 New Yorker checked in late last month with a long analysis on the fate of the newspaper industry. Entitled “Out of Print: The death and life of the American newspaper,” author Eric Alterman sounds no more cheerful than the rest of us as to where newspapers are headed. Early in the article he states: “Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago.” He continues: “Few corporations have been punished on Wall Street the way those who dare to invest in the newspaper business have.” Alterman, notes, as many have, to the changing newspaper readership demographic. He highlights the “ironic injustice…that when a reader surfs the Web in search of political news he frequently ends up at a site that is merely aggregating journalistic work that originated in a newspaper, but that fact is not likely to save any newspaper jobs or increase papers’ stock valuation.” At the same time, he also notes that “no Web site spends anything remotely like what the best newspapers do on reporting. Even after the latest round of new cutbacks and buyouts are carried out, the Times will retain a core of more than twelve hundred newsroom employees, or approximately fifty times as many as the Huffington Post. The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times maintain between eight hundred and nine hundred editorial employees each. The Times’ Baghdad bureau alone costs around three million dollars a year to maintain. And while the Huffington Post shares the benefit of these investments, it shoulders none of the costs.” And now Alterman’s true thesis begins to emerge, when he writes that “it is impossible not to wonder what will become of not just news but democracy itself, in a world in which we can no longer depend on newspapers to invest their unmatched resources and professional pride in helping the rest of us to learn, however imperfectly, what we need to know…And so we are about to enter a fractured, chaotic world of news, characterized by superior community conversation but a decidedly diminished level of first-rate journalism.” He continues: “In ‘Imagined Communities’ (1983), an influential book on the origins of nationalism, the political scientist Benedict Anderson recalls Hegel’s comparison of the ritual of the morning paper to that of morning prayer: ‘Each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion.’ It is at least partially through the ‘imagined community’ of the daily newspaper, Anderson writes, that nations are forged. Alterman’s conclusion: “Finally, we need to consider what will become of those people, both at home and abroad, who depend on such journalistic enterprises to keep them safe from various forms of torture, oppression, and injustice. ‘People do awful things to each other,’ the veteran war photographer George Guthrie says in ‘Night and Day,’ Tom Stoppard’s 1978 play about foreign correspondents. ‘But it’s worse in places where everybody is kept in the dark.’ Ever since James Franklin’s New England Courant started coming off the presses[in 1721], the daily newspaper, more than any other medium, has provided the information that the nation needed if it was to be kept out of ‘the dark.’ Just how an Internet-based news culture can spread the kind of ‘light’ that is necessary to prevent terrible things, without the armies of reporters and photographers that newspapers have traditionally employed, is a question that even the most ardent democrat in John Dewey’s tradition may not wish to see answered.” Eric Alterman’s view of the role of the daily newspaper is a traditional one, certainly not much in vogue amongst today’s Web enthusiasts. Bloggers are now hailed for providing “the kind of ‘light’ that is necessary to prevent terrible things” and again the Web enthusiasts take great pride in pointing to important stories that were uncovered first in blogs, stories that the conventional news media had overlooked. Are blogs and news aggregation Web sites truly going to supplant the role filled by newspapers for several centuries? The question may remain unanswered until the last newspaper shuts its doors.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/out_of_print.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/04/out_of_print.php Newspapers Newspapers Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:35:16 -0500 appearing in today’s New York Times. In an article titled “Newspapers’ New Owners Turn Grim,” journalist David Carr focuses in particular on the wealthy (and dare I say egotistical?) individuals and/or their private equity firms who convinced themselves in the last several years that newspapers looked like a good bet for the future. Opinions are apparently rapidly changing. According to an article quoted from The Baltimore Sun, Sam Zell, “the motorcycle-riding real estate mogul who took control of Tribune in an $8.2 billion sale in December” said “The news business is something worse than horrible. If that’s the future, we don’t have much of a future.” Brian P. Tierney, who bought The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News in 2006, is quoted in The Times article saying “I’m an optimist, but it is very hard to be positive about what’s going on.” David Carr notes that the newspaper industry has not yet hit the bottom of the rocky shoals. Last year overall newspaper revenues dropped by about 7 percent, he notes, but meanwhile publishing, like so many other industries, is only now confronting the second whammy: the U.S. recession. He quotes one (anonymous) analyst predicting a 15% revenue drop in 2008. Further, newspapers are undercutting their own chances of bouncing back after the recession because in order to weather the current downturn they’re cutting staff, undermining the quality of their product, and any likelihood of readers (and advertisers) rushing back in the future. It’s a terribly grim picture of this once-grand industry.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/03/pity_the_newspaper.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/03/pity_the_newspaper.php Newspapers Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:01:04 -0500 Wired Campus blog entry on the The Chronicle of Higher Education website called “Putting Humanity Back Into Technology” describes how this concept is being transmuted to the Web, at least one attempt to do so. Last weekend the University of Central Florida’s digital-media department Interactive Performance Conference “to show what this new discipline is about.” According to Jeff Wirth, the director of the Interactive Performance Lab, much of the research works in an “emotion-based framework.” The article continues, attempting to clarify the meaning of “interactive performance”: “For example, while traditional video games are goal oriented (‘get to the next level’), research in interactive performance focuses on creating games where the success is in human interaction.” So far so good. What startled me were Mr. Wirth’s own illustrations of the new discipline. “When you go to see a movie,” Mr. With explained, “and you see a character evolve in an understanding of his or herself, or a relationship to their world, it’s not about if the character survives,” he says. “It’s about whether the evolution during the course of interactions in that character is engaging…” Apparently Mr. Wirth views only a certain type of film, and appears to have missed the entire oeuvres of Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, Steven Segal and Bruce Willis. By way of example Mr. Wirth said that one of “the exhibitions” at the conference would be an unscripted role-playing session that simulates a prison. That is just the beginning. The article points out that there are larger ambitions afoot: “For example, a class could re-enact parts of World War II.” They seem to have a pretty good grasp on moving gaming away from traditional competitive role playing, but I think that may have some work to do on the scenarios.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/03/putting_humanity_back_into_tec.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/03/putting_humanity_back_into_tec.php Computer Games Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:14:48 -0500 The New York Times stated it tastefully: “Ziff Davis Media Seeks Bankruptcy; Ad Revenue Down”; The Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal a little more directly: “Billionaire Brand Joins the 2008 Bankruptcy Bonanza.” As the Deal Journal points out, Ziff-Davis is a company with a proud history that only in the last decade-and-a-half fell prey to the birds of prey that have unceremoniously gobbled up so many different media companies hoping for…convergence? Power? A quick flip? Who really knows? Ziff-Davis Publishing Company was founded in 1927 by William Ziff and Bernard George Davis. With two subsequent generations of the Ziff family at the helm (Davis was bought out in 1958), in 1994 the company was finally sold in a series of transactions for a total of more than $2 billion. Alan Meckler, who runs JupiterMedia, was not shy in his commentary on the sad story. “The history on this mess is profound. Lots of mistakes were made. None of the mistakes were made by the Ziff family that sold the business in 1994 for a ton of money to the private equity firm of Forstmann-Little. A year or so later Forstmann sold the company for about a $1 billion profit to Softbank. Softbank then went about methodically destroying a great company.” His analysis continues in some detail. The finale is contained in The New York Times account: “Ziff Davis…said in a court filing that it had total debt of $500 million to $1 billion and total assets of $100 million to $500 million.”]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/03/the_slow_and_ugly_demise_of_zi.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/03/the_slow_and_ugly_demise_of_zi.php Magazines Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:26:11 -0500 Quark Web site on what they're calling the "Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution." Dynamic Publishing is something altogether new for Quark, and reflects, I think, the relatively recent infusion of a host of senior staff from the old Arbortext (now owned by PTC). Arbortext offered what was called an "enterprise-class" high-end XML-based publishing system. It cost plenty, and was strictly directed at the largest publishing organizations that could consider spending $1 million to get "mission-critical" information into print (and on the Web). Great technology, but very limited because of price and complexity. How do you take the best of the concepts from a high-end system like Arbortext's and bring those into the world of mere mortals? When you mix the culture of a group from Arbortext with a consumer-oriented off-the-shelf software company like Quark interesting things are bound to emerge. They could be calamitous; they could be fascinating. Quark's Dynamic Publishing is fascinating to me for several reasons. First, it recognizes (finally) that print is no longer the sheriff in this town -- the Web shot the sheriff. Second, it fully embraces that publishing is a content-centric endeavor, and the particular output medium is secondary to the content (for traditional publishers -- Facebook is another story!). Of great importance in this announcement is that Quark has become the first big-time software publisher that appears to appreciate that the XML in Office 2007 can and should be fully exploited in contemporary publishing workflows. Finally the technology acknowledges that the future of authoring is the assembly of what I call RCOs (reusable content objects -- Quark calls them "content components"). I define RCOs as "the smallest content blocks which have discernible meaning." These blocks have to be assembled in very different ways depending on the output medium, and few cross-media publishing systems appear to have a clue about how important this has become to authoring. OK, Quark Dynamic Publishing is just an announcement so far, but it's got more good ideas built into it than anything I've heard about in months.]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/03/a_major_announcment_from_quark.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/03/a_major_announcment_from_quark.php Software Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:36:57 -0500 To Read or Not To Read, "the most complete and up-to-date report of the nation's reading trends and — perhaps most important — their considerable consequences." This is a follow-up report to Reading at Risk, a ground-breaking study from the NEA issued in 2004. I cover this report extensively in my section on book publishing. Quoting from the new report, "The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming. Although there has been measurable progress in recent years in reading ability at the elementary school level, all progress appears to halt as children enter their teenage years. There is a general decline in reading among teenage and adult Americans. Most alarming, both reading ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates." The two reports taken together will change your view of the future of publishing generally, and more specifically of the future of book publishing. A few key data points: • Nearly half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasure. • The percentage of 18- to 44-year-olds who read a book fell 7 points from 1992 to 2002. • The percentage of 17-year-olds who read nothing at all for pleasure has doubled over a 20-year period. • 20% of the reading time of middle and high school students is shared by TV-watching, video/computer game playing, instant messaging, e-mailing or Web surfing. • Although nominal spending on books grew from 1985 to 2005, average annual household spending on books dropped 14% when adjusted for inflation. The report is 100-pages long, too long to properly summarize here. It is however available to download without charge. Much of the report covers what the NEA views as the consequences in the decline in reading, including lower levels of academic achievement, decreased performance in the job market and the reduced likelihood to become active in civic and cultural life, most notably in volunteerism and voting. This is outside the direct scope of the future of publishing, although nonetheless provocative. When the most positive expression contained within a report is a prayer that officials will be moved to take action because they're so upset by the completely bleak implications of the data, you've got some troubling information within. Essential reading, assuming you still can!]]> http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2007/11/to_read_or_not_to_read.php http://thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2007/11/to_read_or_not_to_read.php Book Publishing Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:15:08 -0500