2.0 + 1.0 = none point O


This is from the site for the Web2.0 conferenece which is in San Francisco next week. I'd love to attend because 1) there's a lot of cool people talking about a lot of cool stuff and 2) I miss the Bay Area.

However, I'm pretty sure they got this quote ass backwards. Web 2.0 (blogging, social netowrink, tagging, Flickr, etc., etc.) is all about people, right?

"I'm a (Yahoo! e-mail) Cowboy, Baby!"

I love Yahoo Mail, but what is this Kid Rock-wannabe doing on the home page throwing this Yo Homey! pose? This would have been a curious move even seven years ago when people were actually listening to KR. I thought the previous "art" of some woman sitting on a big blue ball while she pecked away on her laptop was silly, but at least there was some computer theme there. This guy doesn't seem to have e-mailing in mind. Maybe I should just sign in to My Yahoo and get to mail from there if this bugs me so much? Maybe later. For now, it's still worth a chuckle.

Newspapers: Inspiring the Next Generation of Journalists

Romenesko has this NPR piece on the latest round of newspaper job cuts to hit the industry, including The New York Times and Knight Ridder's Philly papers. I particularly liked what Zack Stalberg, ex-Philadelphia Daily News editor had to say: "The youngest people in particular are thinking whether the newspaper industry is the right place for them."

Also recently, the SF Chronicle put out a call for voluntary buy outs to cut staff and got way more people raising their hands than they needed. People are rushing for the exits and those who remain are wondering if they should be celebrating or cursing that they get to keep their jobs. A similar thing happened a few years ago when I worked at the Contra Costa Times, just across the bay from San Francisco. Also a KR paper, the Times wanted to cut costs to boost profits. First it trimmed the size of the paper and told us to tell readers that it was a desire to make the paper easier to handle, not cost savings, that motivated the change. Lying to your readers is always a great way to burnish the brand of a business that relies more than almost any other on reader trust.

As I recall, they also removed the water coolers. When that didn't generate enough dough, they of course moved on to jettisoning people. They asked for "volunteers" who would accept a buyout and the response was like that of passengers on a sinking ship. And the bosses were sincerely shocked that so many people wanted to jump on the lifeboats. The most telling thing for the health, or lack thereof, of the newspaper biz was that every single person I knew who took the buyout or got so stressed out waiting to see if they'd get to take it and quit, left journalism all together, so disgusted were they with what they'd seen. There were some really talented people in the bunch. A real shame.

My List is Cooler than Your List

The New York Times had a short piece Monday on Blender's answer to the Rolling Stone's 500 greatest songs list and it caught my eye for two reasons: 1) I often listen to the RS500 channel on Rhapsody and find myself alternatelty shaking my head in disbelief ("The Kinks' Waterloo Sunset"?)or in rockin'-along satisfaction (Cheap Trick's Surrender) 2) I don't get Blender but realize I may be missing something because clearly somebody does (about 620,000 people according to circ. numbers).

The RS/Blender inter-generational pissing match aside, Blender's response seems to be a sorry solution to the baby boomer bias it sees in the RS list. I haven't seen the issue, don't even know if it's out, but apparently it will focus on the 500 greatest songs since "you" were born. Clearly they aren't talking about "me" because The Sex Pistols aren't eligible for the list, but "Best of" lists, gimmicky as the are, mean most when they draw from a deeper pool, not the shallower one Blender's swimming in. How about the 500 Best Songs since the release of Doggy Style? Of course the RS list tilts to older songs. The definition of classic is something that stands the test of time and the longer it's endured, the more of a classic it is. Twenty years from now, some of the songs from the 60's will fall away and be replaced by more New Wave and Hip Hop (and kids will wonder "Why is all this lame old hip hop on the list?"). That's the nature of the thing more than it is a generational bias.

In aiming to give its 20-something readers just what they want, Blender is forgetting that people like to argue and disagree with lists just as much as they want their particular taste affirmed. In the blog world, of course, there's been lots of discussion lately about the value or lack thereof of lists. I think one of the central points applies here as well. That is, who cares if a magazine thinks Gwen Stefani ranks higher than Coldplay? They both make music, but the similarities end there.

Jeff Jarvis asks the critical question: "This is the mass of niches. Why do we keep trying to turn it back into a mass?"