Post Intelligencer, post-print

With news coming this week that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's print version may go the way of the Rocky Mountain News, we may be at the cusp of a new era in local news reporting.

The Post-Intelligencer (P-I) looks like it will shut down it's printing presses and release an online-only version. Aside from printing and delivery, it means the P-I will also cut out reporter travel - national stories will be covered by wire services or by other sister papers in the Hearst network.

(Sidebar: Since it's in the Hearst network, will the last printed word in the P-I have to be "rosebud"?)

There's no dwindling market for local news, as the TV ratings show. But local daily newspapers are dinosaurs - slow-moving and cumbersome. The question is how the old media outlets adjust in a new media world. Will they see the online world as a way to stave off extinction for a few years, or will they find a way to evolve?

Chances are, the P-I - and other similar papers around the country - could do very well writing stories and posting them online. But why stop there? Online, they won't be confined as they were on the printed page. They have multiple forms of media - audio, video, and everything in between - at their fingertips.

The dangerous trap here is thinking in terms of "media buckets" on a local level, as people have thought for decades: the TV stations are in the video bucket, the radio stations in the audio bucket, and the newspapers in the printed word bucket. There are no buckets online, so it doesn't translate.

The end of the P-I's print version isn't necessarily an ending, but a liberation. The P-I can now combine printed stories about Seattle with short video news segments and podcasts. It can exist on its website as well as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Ning, and everywhere else. It can serve the people of Seattle, and be the authority on Seattle to everyone else.

The dinosaurs didn't die out overnight, but eventually time caught up with most of them. Except for the smart ones; they learned to fly.

"I should be able to get some sort of job..."

Our nation's newspaper of record, the New York Post, today chronicled the lifestyle of Christopher Poole. Poole runs 4chan, which is one of the most active web sites, but lives with his Mom and is about $20,000 in debt.

Poole's story is markedly different from other computer wunderkinds - like Bill Gates - who dropped out of college to devote time to digital endeavors, and it's reflexive of different times. Gates, Steve Jobs, and other innovators of the late 1970s and early 1980s used their own creative abilities to invent or build products that were commodities - software, computers, etc. - that could be bought and sold. These commodities became high in demand and served as the cornerstones of a revolution in computing, making the innovators rich.

Poole is successful on today's internet because he built a successful forum that harnessed the creativity and imagination of its users; 4chan originated as a site about Japanese animation and evolved to serve a specific and active niche audience. And unfortunately for Poole, use of his product is free. It is also a bastion of free expression, meaning advertisers are loathe to be associated with the site's often inappropriate content.

That Poole has had trouble parlaying his online success into offline profits speaks to the need for any individual to devote attention to his or her personal brand. Clearly, Poole is an expert at something, or has certain experiences no one else has. He could bill himself as an authority on running a website, creating an open forum, managing a product that takes on a life of its own, or even Japanese animation - or possibly all of the above.

Not to mention his whole situation could be a book in an of itself.

Does this mean my Mom has to read a liberal blog, too?

I can't imagine it actually coming to pass, but rumblings about reviving the inappropriately named "Fairness Doctrine" have sprung up around Capitol Hill. The Fairness Doctrine would be an FCC regulation that would force radio stations to balance their programming - so that station that plays Rush Limbaugh for three hours would have to balance it out with... um... well, whoever it is that liberals and Democrats listen to.

The impetus for the rule change is clear. Senator Debbie Stabenow claims that talk radio "overwhelms people's opinions - and, unfortunately, incorrectly." In other words, she's worried about opinions she disagrees with being more persuasive. It's completely antithetical to everything our country is founded on, but quelling dissent makes sense.

Beyond principle, though, the problems are in the details. For instance, who determines what "balance" entails? If Sean Hannity is in favor of invading Iran, is he effectively balanced by someone who is against invading Iran because they would rather invade North Korea? And how does a fairness doctrine account for "do-it-yourself" media?

The great thing about free speech is, if you disagree with what someone else is saying, you have every right to answer them and attempt to make a compelling case. Sometimes the other side has the advantage of experience and establishment - just ask any conservative reading the New York Times or watching CNN. (And incidentally - if the fairness doctrine is passed, it opens a can of worms for mainstream media.)

More avenues exist now than ever before to get a message out - which makes the fairness obsolete as well as being, well, unfair.

I watch the internet for the Super Bowl ads

Super Bowl ads are as big a tradition as the game itself, but this year the ads that aren't going to be ad seem to be making an even bigger splash.

PETA has famously had an advocacy ad banned because it was deemed too racy. NBC bounced a pro-life ad because they apparently don't allow advocacy ads. And Miller's one-second beer ads will last a second but appear only on local NBC affiliates - not on the national broadcast. Each of these gimmicky ads might have been overlooked with simpler standard commercials; each's unique reason for not being part of the big game broadcast is newsworthy enough to draw attention from internet users. I'd bet their cost-per-viewer is much cheaper now, too.

NBC's Super Bowl ads are going for $3 million for 30 seconds, but as of Wednesday they had not sold all the advertising space available. The idea of a Super Bowl ad means so much more than 30 seconds of highly viewed TV time now though, that even an end-run around the actual game can have viral value for a smart, budget-conscious marketer.

Two projects have launched in the wee small hours of the morning over the past couple of days that have caught my eye.

Patrick Ruffini, whose most fitting title may be "Republican organizational entrepreneur," has announced "Project Battleground" on The Next Right. The project recruits bloggers by state and Congressional district. Aside from keeping out-of-work GOP political operatives engaged and ready for 2010 and 2012, Project Battleground will help build the grassroots communications networks that will be critical to future Republican victories. And it's worth mentioning that grassroots online movements have had big election impacts in the recent past - like Ned Lamont's primary upset of Joe Lieberman.

On the philosophical side, several conservative activists have teamed together to launch TheSupermajority, a site that defies categorization. Essentially, it serves to answer the policies of the Obama Administration and his Congressional allies with "solutions" - an important development. While it's all well and good to criticize liberal and/or Democratic policies, The Supermajority offers positive alternatives. Perhaps even more important, the site offers activists tools to spread those ideas. Plus it looks nice.

Tech revisionism?

This week the Washington Post reported on the frustration of new Obama Administration staffers at the state of technology in their new White House offices. Though the headline suggested the Bush Administration was in the "technological dark ages," a careful reading suggested otherwise: workstations had desktops instead of laptops, and they all ran on Windows XP.

As Patrick Ruffini points out, the Obama online team is not necessarily in the moral authority to talk about tech issues, as updates to the shiny new whitehouse.gov have been slow in coming in the first days of the administration.

But beyond that, Craig Colgan reminds us that the Bush Administration pioneered the use of the internet to create an online White House presence - but the facts aren't always enough:

"This White House was of course the first with a rigorous online presence. The contribution of the Bush administration in this regard will of course not be a part of the official narrative. How this all works is no surprise. The reigning meme out there goes like this: When Republicans get it right online, and/or do it well, then it doesn't matter. Or doesn't matter anymore."

Saving money and living better

The silver lining to tough economic times is creativity. Wal-mart - whose cost-cutting business model makes the company seem like they are in permanent recession mode - has branched out beyond traditional advertising with some creative modern media projects. In doing so (and crowing a little bit about it) they give a pretty good playbook for advancing a cause or issue in online social networks.