Some media stories of note for Wednesday, May 15, 2013:

The Guardian is reporting that China is attempting to curtail the blogging activities of writers and intellectuals by closing their social media accounts. In recent weeks notable social justice critics have been silenced in social media. There were other recent efforts to curtail mainstream media's use of western-based content.

The U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, has defended the seizure of telephone records of The Associated Press. The New York Times reports he says the article that prompted the seizure arose from a serious leak of information with serious national security implications that put Americans at risk. The Times' public editor, Margaret Sullivan, weighs in with a critique of the Obama Administration as one of the most secretive and threatening to the press, with implications for readers and democracy. The Times' media writer, David Carr, looks at how it's not only government snooping on us, but all of us snooping on all of us. 

The New Yorker is releasing the technical specs on Strongbox, software that permits reporters to cover their tracks as they reach out to the magazine. It uses a particular network and masks your IP address, information about your computer and browser, and won't plant cookies or third-party content. AllThingsDigital surmises that the release of the program, created by the late Aaron Swartz, is aimed at letting other organizations create their own versions. 
 
 
Media stories for Friday:

Earlier this week Huffington Post featured a piece on videogame arcades from The Verge, snipping its opening passage (more than 200 words, a clip it later reduced) and sending traffic to that site through its own. The move prompted a complaint from The Verge that the procedure sapped some of the search engine recognition from its story and sent it to Huffington Post. Andrew Beaujon writes for The Poynter Institute that this dispute has important implications for publishers in an era of linked journalism and traffic-based metrics of success.

There have been two significant developments involving successful social media platforms that are aiming to broaden their appeal.  Twitter has introduced a six-second video application, Vine, that Reuters suggests is an indication that video is a large part of Twitter's future. And Tumblr has unfurled changes that TechCrunch asserts render it more like a fully-featured Twitter than a blogging platform. Each development also has implications for journalism.
 
 

Seth Godin has advice for underemployed real-estate agents: Start a newspaper. That's right.

His formula: Assuming six people are in your office, have them each do two interviews a day. Get 20 households to subscribe to your free paper (which is actually an online newsletter). Twice a week send it to them. Within a week it ought to have two dozen articles and 500 subscribers and very soon, if it's any good, it'll have the entire area subscribing. It'll own its zip (postal) code, which Godin asserts is an important achievement.

Godin doesn't take it any further. I presume there's the capacity to sustain it, to fetch some advertising to pay for the effort, and no one else able to do it. Otherwise the "gift" he suggests is yours to give is exactly that.

 
 

Marketing and brand guru Seth Godin obviously had had enough when he saw Jennifer Aniston on today's Sunday New York Times Magazine cover (note: it was its annual screens edition).
He took to blogging about the wasted currency and equity of the Times and how it might have positioned itself for a vastly stronger future.
In short, his points:
1. Use the influence and brand to let others spread their content.
2. Leverage the op-ed page and spread important ideas.
3. Build a permission asset.
4. Keep score (with lists).
5. Stringers.
6. New platforms for advertisers.
He concludes: "I guess it's about the difference between: senior management playing defense, supporting and protecting the status quo and avoiding offending the elders upstairs vs.
using existing momentum and clout to build assets for the next business."


 
 

The British newspaper, The Guardian, is among the most sophisticated of all news media in the digital space, so any contemplation or decision on its part deserves attention.
The news organization is now evaluating how its journalists should participate in comment threads. This shouldn't surprise anyone --- once journalists were expected to blog, it was not unexpected they'd have to engage ---- but not many outlets are that far down the road. So the Guardian's deliberations on this front will be worth studying.
The Guardian will soon unveil a new Pluck-based platform to widen the interactivity between creators and audience, and there are still many questions from the newsroom's journalists on how plucky they can be in participating, how to use those threads for news, and largely how to ensure the venerable brand is preserved.

 
 

If you're looking for a new understanding of media consumption and distribution, here's a quick primer. Loic Le Meur's video blog outlines his "social map" and the critical connections he makes to his friends and acquaintances to push content and pull content. If the news wants me, it will find me, he suggests. It's a fascinating YouTube addition and worth studying --- and, perhaps, implementing.

 

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