In Wired magazine two years ago, Nicholas Carr said he believes relying on a data cloud that doesn’t need the anchor of a particular desktop, but can operate from any PC or laptop, has terrifying implications for us as human beings. This idea is controversial, given the great convenience afforded us by having personal information ranging from hotmail to Flickr and Facebook existing primarily online and not in our hard drives. We can go to virtually any computer with online access and, using passwords, get into these accounts.

So, what’s the worry? Privacy. PCs, Carr says, are turning into network terminals.

His fears that the online world will not remain heterogeneous, however, are misplaced. Companies still provide remote access to work email and the like, but it requires a special URL, password, and so forth. The work itself, whether it is newspapers or pharmaceuticals, remains on private servers in proprietary, protected programs.

The questions to ask as we gravitate toward relying in many but not all ways on the online cloud are how to enhance security and how to encourage public discourse at its highest intellectual levels online.

Carr and his interviewer invoke the computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” But remember what HAL said after the supposed failure of a parabolic antenna on the ship, which HAL had actually falsified? HAL said: “It can only be attributable to human error.”

Of course that’s false, since the computer manipulated data, right? Wrong. Humans programmed the computer to begin with. Of course, the idea that HAL took on a “life of his own” so to speak is central to the debate over this role of a data cloud usurping private computing.

It seems fitting to wind up NewsLive blogs with these observations. Yes, of course, the Internet has taken on a life of its own but it was conceived of and created by (not Al Gore but) the human race. It is like language. Invented by people. Perpetuated by people, it takes on a life of its own, or it dies. It has the capacity to do damage, or be someone’s salvation.

NewsLive’s final project proposal would put lasting online obituaries and the legacy digests created to contribute to them in the online data cloud. Personal information, stored in perpetuity online. In the oh so public world that is the World Wide Web. There would be safeguards, passwords, registration. But the public sharing of personal data could become a kind of right, certainly an accessible asset. The data cloud has the capacity to widen the public sphere of discourse and delineated databases. Bring it on.

This is a pitch for a proposed final project on a Web site for online obituaries crafted over the course of subject’s lives in real time, and lasting into perpetuity in online repositories.

References

www.tributes.com

Tim Aidlin: How We Work (and sometimes skip some steps). MIX ONLINE_. Aug., 4, 2009.

www.virtual-memorials.com

www.whois.net

www.legacy.com

USAfuneralhomes

Many articles throughout the semester’s coursework on Editor & Publisher informed my opinion about the conflict between online and print media.

“Be part of the conversation.”

That’s the message from The New York Times’ television ad for its Weekender subscription, which costs about $5 a week. Nowhere in that ad does it reference its mobile platform, available free on cell phones that are Web-enabled.

Invoking the nostalgia of lounging around the house reading Times book reviews and the Weekend in Review might be what the publishing giant is after, but it seems likely that as more things compete for Americans’ time, fewer people are subscribing, literally, to that type of intellectual interaction. In fact, the Times itself reported in April that circulation was down 7 percent at all major newspapers in the country except the Wall Street Journal, while online readership of news Web sites was up 10.5 percent.

More likely, busy readers are accessing Times stories on mobile phones at their leisure. On the simplest LG (for those who can’t afford the iPhone yet, like yours truly), simply punching NYT into the Yahoo! browser pulls up the stories, this day with news of the Dow topping 10,000 and the company deciding not to sell The Boston Globe. A blurb announces the user has to register to use the site, but do that once and you’re good to go. In fact, you don’t even need to type in the URL, as the Times itself asks you to do; as usual,  your phone’s browser does all the work.

In his lecture, “The Future Is Now,” Dr. Alex Halavais points to a wide variety of technology trends that promise to revolutionize the way we live and interact. One of these, he says, is the movement away from the PC and toward mobile devices. When it comes to newspapers, the NYT has its own app for the iPhone and a NYT Reader, and the industry is embracing the mobile presentation of news on smart phones, the Kindle and new devices like it that are emerging.

But what does it mean to continue to extend “the conversation” between newspapers and readers on a mobile platform? Part of the answer lies in what the mobile reach has done for social interaction in the form of texting from Japan to Finland, as described by Howard Rheingold, author of the 2002 book Smart Mobs. Through texting, Finnish teens express themselves where other communication channels for hate, longing or gossip are inappropriate. In such cases, Rheingold writes, “the text message is the backdoor of communication.”

Backdooring the news conversation to readers through mobile Web sites is what newspaper publishers from the Times to The Washington Post to your mini-metro daily are doing, too — not out of adolescent angst, but indeed out of angst over dwindling circulation and ad revenue. And newspapers’ breaking news alerts are very much like the texting young people do around the globe to stay on top of one another’s whereabouts and daily activities. Newspapers are using smart phones to “check in” with the public and society at large.

Rheingold hits on another insight in his chapter, “Shibuya Epiphany” — namely, that cities are the centrifugal force for change, and therefore, for continued expansion of mobile apps of all kinds.

Enter The Washington Post, which in July dove into the mobile Web world with some pretty high expectations, according to the Wall Street Journal blog, Digits.

Besides extending the Post’s core areas of coverage onto a new platform, the new mobile site is designed for maximum utility for locals, with customized information on things like public transportation, weather and entertainment. Post executives say “in the very near future” the mobile site will let readers make restaurant reservations, buy movie tickets and get real-time traffic routes.

The Post is getting a late start. The New York Times’ current mobile site launched nearly three years ago, reached 10 million page views by the end of 2007 and 41 million page views in June of this year, a Times Co. spokeswoman said.

That blog, “Washington Post Revamps Mobile Strategy,” highlights the Post’s embracing of its mission: to cover the city with all the intensity of old, however new the platform:

The Post is more focused than ever on being Washington’s paper, which means covering the city both as the axis of political power and as the home of Metro Washington’s more than five million residents.

It’s that socio-political “conversation” that newspapers large and small must continue to cultivate with readers so that their coverage remains geographically and stylistically unique.

As newspapers become more mobile, readers are likely to forget more and more of what they read once it has vanished from the smartphone screen. Pretty soon, they won’t be saving hard copies of print editions, because newspapers are, again as Halavais has said in past lectures, going the way of other outdated modes of communication. But in an interview in “The Persistence of Memory,” with Gordon Bell, who is logging his life minute to minute on the computer, Brooke Gladstone interviews journalist and technology expert Clive Thompson, who shares the following insights: In the future,

people will make decisions about what type of memory they want to have … Making sense of your life is as much about forgetting the vast majority of it as it is perfectly remembering it.

If newspapers are, as it seems justifiable to say, a culture’s collective memory, archiving that memory will have to continue to take place, probably on the Web, because there will likely be a demand for that. But the processing of information for readers is going to continue to speed up, on smartphones and who knows where else. And that, as Thompson indicates, is OK. Instead of a pile of torn and faded clippings, the world will access newspapers’ Internet archives to retrieve specific bits of information, and otherwise just digest it wherever one happens to be — in transit, at the airport, far from the cozy confines of one’s living room — and then move on. The decision to read news in its latest incarnations will be made faster, and with less loyalty, perhaps, if, in the Attention Economy, it is made at all.

And as interaction between readers and newspapers shifts, the platforms may shift even further, beyond smartphones and Kindles. In a TED production dubbed “The beckoning promise of personal fabrication,” Neil Gershenfeld describes futuristic developments already under way that are changing the way “bits” and “atoms” interact. Products are being developed for “a market of one.”

Does that mean, though he doesn’t suggest it, that someone will come up with a “killer app”  for fabricating a news conduit that rivals the newspaper but has the audience of one? It’s hard to imagine, but in an age when mobile platforms are what WSJ calls “a rare area of promise” for the Post and other large metro dailies, journalists and their publishers would do well to remember, as Halavais says, that even the keyboard as we know it may be supplanted by speech recognition technologies. Will newspapers companies adapt? And if so, how? Staying abreast of trends and changes is the best way to answer those questions.

This final project is a Web repository for biographical information, media, and links that together reflect a person’s ongoing life and lasting legacy. This post covers legal issues, privacy, commerce, ethics and effects on users.

First Things First

Terms of Use will govern rules and restrictions, prevent abuses and protect the user and the Web site owner, developer and administrator, and the public at large.

A business plan will be required as there would have to be a commercial subscription required to track membership, pay for site features and site supervision and fact-checking.

Access

Access to this site will need to be strictly managed with reliable identifiers of authenticity, to prevent misuse, abuse, and fraud.

Chris Wilson of Slate makes a compelling argument that using social security numbers is not as reliable a way to provide secure access as previously thought. Nor, apparently, are driver’s licenses. However, combined identifiers like both of these items together may work if it is feasible. Regardless, this topic will have to be thoroughly researched to provide the most secure access available.

Why? The site needs secure access that goes beyond a basic username and password because the online legacy obituaries that evolve will be very personal, with standard, basic and in some cases elaborate credentials from birth-dates and alma mater to work history and Nobel Peace Prize (Obama are you listening?) claims that will have to be fact-checked in public databases where possible and in other ways as necessary. Without secure access and fact-checked content the site would be ripe for abuse and misrepresentation. In other words, all information would have to be verifiable, but that starts with the authenticity of each individual user.

Privacy

This site would be public, except where users stipulated that their particular repository be private.

By keeping most data in the public domain, the users are protected from fraud naturally, albeit not inevitably, entirely or perfectly. Fraudsters could potentially and quickly be outed by their peers as well as site administrators.

Private use would be offered as an option and a privilege. It may be associated with more cost. It would have to be monitored by site administrators to prevent abuse just like the repositories in the public domain. It would prevent users from participating in the public features of the site, which would likely include a regular highlight of the most interesting or unusual profiles, or certain aspects of them, like a dynamic video of a musician, for instance. Or perhaps there would not be much demand for privacy. This could benefit from a market study.

The legality of some site rules

Age would have to be restricted to 16 or older, because the nature of the site, while fun, is also for mature audiences, or young people with adult supervision.

Content, in addition to being governed by TOU or TOS to prevent obscene or inappropriate data, will have to be copy-righted by the user, owned by the user, or provided to the user with explicit permission from the owner. Research is required on how best to regulate this.

Lifetime designees will have to be named at the outset, at sign-up, and they and the users will have to be reachable by phone or cell-phone, in the event a user dies or becomes incapacitated. These designees would be charged with overseeing the site in the user’s absence, incapacitation, or death.

This feature will require the site to be managed by a staff, however large or small, of great integrity and reliability. This could make the site costly to run and without care, put the site at risk of abuse as well.

Software, plug-ins and the like that would make media uploads simple and straightforward and enable efficient internal site searches would be critical. Tools that allowed contributors to add content with the users’ permission would also be sought. Obtaining the best software at the least cost would have to fit into a viable business plan and legal requirements would have to be observed. This also includes overall site bandwidth, which would have to be substantial to support the varied types of uses, and site reliability, which would have to be both sustainable and not hackable. A tall order!

Linking the site as a whole to established sites like university Web sites, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, and so on would help improve site visibility. Legal and ethical guidelines would have to be followed with all links to the site or to individual public or private repositories. Links to newspaper and funeral home Web sites would also be valuable if they can be negotiated.

Niceties like a place to comment on or rank repositories might well be desirable but, given the challenges and expense accruing already just in the conceptual stage it is not clear that these things could be undertaken. What’s more, they introduce ethical challenges and a potential need for moderating or monitoring that could be prohibitive from both a cost and workload standpoint. That said, “Notable Passings” and “Best of” features could attract attention and competition and promote interactivity.

Ethics

Envisioned is a series of formats for an individual user’s repository of media, textual and data-rich profiles based on personality types: the student, teacher, genius, scientist, Renaissance woman, player, professional, caregiver, therapist, doctor, artist, philosopher, tradesman. The list is long but could be narrowed to a few key prototypes.

Envisioned also is a nondenominational site, with tools available to cater to different religions, Buddhist, Lutheran, Catholic, etc., etc.

Envisioned also is a catchy domain name, which would be as lofty as EverAfter, sober as The Resting Place, or macabre like the DeadZone. This would help set the tone, which if the developer isn’t careful, could be offputting or insulting or worse, unethical.

Each of these three issues above has to be handled with care, and any lighthearted touch, if selected, will have to be even-handed throughout.

Overall appropriateness will also need some discretion but boundaries could be set in TOU.

“The Resting Place” (www.therestingplace.com) is someone else’s domain name at the moment (in fact, until next September, when it expires). In the off chance, and it’s a real one, that I will not be able to acquire that name, here are some backups.

These have not been tested on Google for viability, but I like #s 2, 14, 15, 21, 23 and 24. Please tell me which ones you think would be catchy and workable, or make a suggestion I haven’t thought of.

1. RestingPlaceInteractive

2. RIIP — restinteractivelyinpeace

3. FamilyPlot

4. Legobits

5. LegacyObits

6. LastStopB4UDrop

7. Biobits

8. LifeLegacy

9. LiveInteractive

10. HeavensGate

11. EternalObits

12. RestQuest

13. PatchOfSky

14. YourRestingPlace

15. HereAfter

16. HomeEverAfter

17. TombStone

18. TombPortrait

19. HeadStone

20. ObitMarker

21. EverAfter

22. RealRestingPlace

23. DeadZone

24. ObitCity

25. TheVillagePlot

26. LivingDead

27. MothballYrLife

28. RestStop

29. Tomorrobits

30. If you got this far, thanks; please add to the list!

The Internet is making people masters of their own content, as legal expert Yochai Benkler states in the 45-minute video, “Steal This Film II.” For journalists, it’s good news.

Say what? Yes, ironically, and unexpectedly, this simple fact puts the contemporary journalist in a unique position to lead the pack as a content provider with a mission: to make news that matters to consumers and producers. To keep on keepin’ on.

Well, alright: I hear you. That assertion is almost laughable in the face of the assertions the film makes, and yet never has it been more critical to the industry we have come to know as journalism.

Consider:

The fundamental urge to copy had nothing to do with technology. It’s about how culture is created.

– Felix Stadler, media theorist

Consider:

‘Death of the author’ … (Consumers becoming producers) suggests a new economic model for society … The shift is in the way we think of ourselves as creators.

– Sebastian Lutgert, Pirate Cinema

Consider:

The control in the making of the artifacts is up for grabs.

– from Steal This Film II

What these statements have in common is the way they re-define “media” as we have known it to date, music, film and yes, without actually saying so, newspapers, long the province of corporate power-brokers and family lineages that ran communities large and small.

The Internet has split open the world of copyright and by its sheer ubiquity forced upon the world practices that threaten intellectual property rights long enjoyed by news media power brokers, as well as music and film producers. Print journalists have already seen the effects of this. As information proliferates,  online sources, TV and radio pick up news broken by print media as if they first reported it, without giving credit. Or the story changes so fast that a print version is outdated in many cases by the reporter’s own reporting online within 24 hours.

But rights of ownership (which belong to the media companies, not the authors or reporters) should not preoccupy the 21st-century journalist. Increasing speed while maintaining accuracy in getting the word out should. Journalists may well continue to be auteurs in the sense that their names are associated with the content they provide. They remain producers and consumers, and as they share that identity, they can be more a part of the world they report on than the traditional distanced observer.

Secondly, in this new world, the journalist’s role remains critical, but broadened, in the context of an interactive communications professional. The original definition provided by the Society for Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics is that journalists should be engaged in “seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.”

Nowhere in that statement of purpose does it mention newspapers, the format of newspapers, or the publishing mechanism for newspapers. Which is good, because it leaves room for interactivity, what Dr. Alex Halavais calls the capability of things affecting one another. That is the very essence of a journalist’s job.

Now, blend this universal code and definition of interactivity with Halavais’ description from a recent lecture:

Interactive communications professionals — and I mean this across the board, from people who create interactive graphics and interactive systems for news organizations to people who create video games — all of these people have a particular responsibility to connect people with information, with new kinds of knowledge.

Halavais goes on to posit that this may preclude journalists who don’t have the responsibility of connecting people together, but it can be argued that journalists are already connecting people together all the time by reporting on or editorializing about matters of shared importance. Until now, the connections have been distanced by the separation of the journalist from the words printed on paper that got delivered to newstands or front stoops. But now the journalist can communicate directly with her or his audience in blogs, in live Internet chats, or via email. At some publications, she or he can link directly within stories or blogs to other blogs or stories.

So the role Halavais describes in his book, Search Engine Society, of the journalist historically as “organic intellectual” — “translating discourse between communities” and, in his lecture, connecting everyday people to ideas — remains a critical and pivotal role for contemporary journalists (p. 112). Interaction is more and more a means of extending that verbal translation. And as the role of the Internet continues to grow, new means of doing that — through video and slide shows as well as text — will enable journalists to flourish and connect with audiences that are increasingly global in nature.

With this new practical, day-to-day responsibility comes an ethical duty, one that the SPJ Code of Ethics would do well to elaborate on. Journalists will have to guard against conflicts of interest more assiduously than ever as advertising continues to feed the beast. One’s identity as a journalist and the integrity associated with it must be protected in an age where we all have Facebook connections, Linked-In associations and Twitter habits.

Ethical rules that use universality, reason, and treating people as ends in themselves, as Sara Baase says in Gift of fire: Social, legal, and ethical issues in computing, are especially important to today’s journalist. The ideal of “treating people as intrinsically valuable ‘ends’ ” and of utilitarianism’s “standard of increasing achievement of people’s happiness” can’t help but further the public good, which is largely the journalist’s aim.

Finally, in a world where, as Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn reveal in “Humanity Lobotomy — Second Draft,” anyone can create a Web site in an open platform and network neutrality is threatened by control of the few who own the fiber, the individual journalist has the opportunity to thrive. How? By being the watchdog and bridge to people who need information and cannot get past the stakeholder and powerbrokers and controllers. By keeping abreast of competing media that outflank journalists’ efforts. By rising to the challenge.

Journalists have always worked on behalf of the everyday woman or man. They shouldn’t stop now, when increased connectivity and interactivity promise to strengthen and even ennoble those ties. And they shouldn’t be intimidated by the Internet, which has yet to be tamed by rules, but in the hands of human beings, has a vast potential for good.

Here is a screenshot of an image I found when I searched for “resting place.” Wondering if I could get permission to use this.

Here is a short-hand account to complement the previous post. What must come next are ideas and applications to meet these needs.

1. Findability — a unique and catchy domain name; a great internal search engine.

2. Linkability — to personal web pages, Linked-In or Facebook pages; RSS feeds

3. Ease of use — simple interface; tutorials where needed.

4. Permanence — reliability, sufficient bandwidth.

5. Flexibility — enough options without overloading the user; the ability to expand or contract elements like photo, video, music, text

6. Affordability — market research needed here

7. The ability to share content — safe mechanisms for designees of the user; ability for people the user allows to add content

8. A classy look — simple yet stylish, without overloading the user

9. Credibility — Fact-checking of standard autobiographical information

10. Playfulness — Ways to customize a variety of formats to keep the user engaged and coming back

11. Status — a way of continually highlighting the most creatively developed compilations and allowing them to be made public

12. Privacy — as an option, including log-in requirements and terms of use

13. A theme — Playful mix of dark humor and reverence; elements of nature

14. Religious elements — non-denominational with the ability to choose icons or add-ons based on the user’s religion

In theory, The Resting Place could be used by anyone. But who are the most likely users and why would they want to use this site?

First, a refresher about the proposed Web site. Its mission is to be an online repository for people’s ultimate customized obituaries, compiled over a lifetime, not just when they die, and lasting online as a permanent legacy. It would include multimedia of all types, could be private or public, and would be commercial in nature: there would be a charge for use. A fee is required because of the oversight necessary, though much of it would be automated. A subscription would likely attract serious online autobiographers and deter people who didn’t take it seriously.

Second, in determining who users would be, it is important to note how the need for an obituary and a lasting legacy are satisfied today.

Newspapers are the primary carriers of obituaries, with funeral homes also posting them online in many cases. Obituaries are written when a person dies, usually by loved ones, and combine a single head-shot photo with biographical data like birth and death dates, work and educational history, milestones, important relationships, and unique personal details. People have access to this information, but it if they want a lasting personal tribute they typically have to compile the obit, pictures, video, and other memorabilia off line. What makes my site unique is that the standard obituary data and original memorabilia could be combined and intertwined in one spot online permanently by the living before they die. Content could be arranged in a custom-made site within the site by the user and a representative they designate to be in charge once they’ve passed on. If possible, commercial content that was informational and important to the user, like a person’s favorite Beatles tune, could be incorporated in some way; this would have to be researched.

For Egos Both Monstrous and Modest

The site online I’ve found that comes closest to doing this is www.tributes.com. But its “tribute wizard” has a single format for pictures and slide shows or video, and can only be erected by loved ones once a person has died. My site would have, if not truly customizable format, then a range of formats from which to choose for the arrangement of pix, video, slide shows, mementos, links to sites that matter to the user, obituary, eulogy, resume, or other types of autobiographical information. My site would be added to continuously over time, refined and enhanced and edited by the user and his or her designees.

Another site that allows the erection of public or private remembrances of the dead is www.ChristianMemorials.com.

Once again, the people memorialized are already dead. More importantly, the site is specifically for Christians. My site would be nondenominational and open to all faiths.

Third, it is important to outline some defining characteristics of the user. Who would want such a site and why?

A strong ego is one such trait. Users do not have to be prominent or accomplished, but common sense dictates it is just these types of people who would be inclined to 1) develop the computer skills necessary to build slide shows, videos etc. 2) be “out there” already on Facebook and other social networking sites and 3) have enough accomplishments under their belt to want to acknowledge them in a lasting way, whether publicly or privately.

At the same time, people who are modest but accomplished in more ordinary ways, a firefighter, a teacher, a nurse, might likewise be inclined to commemorate their lives as a way of honoring friends and family who share them. Writers and photographers and videographers might be inclined to use such a site, or help others craft one.

Consequently, this site will have broad appeal to the masses, not just politicians or artists or professionals with lengthy resumes.

After the Wake or Scattering of Ashes

The Resting Place clearly could not supplant graveyards, urns, commemorative gatherings and funeral services for the dead. But after the scattering of ashes and wakes and receptions are long gone, it would be a relied-upon destination for tributes that the person himself as well as friends and family would want to keep and share.

Other traits likely to characterize the user: computer savvy; middle-aged or older with the time and means to gather memorabilia for posting; literate; and stable. It stands to reason when it comes to stability that the most active and engaged user of this site would be someone who not only was inclined to track the milestones and proud or happy moments in his or her life, but someone who has the income, work history and family history that would support such an effort. In other words, the site may well be elitest in the sense that the poor, the uneducated, and those without sufficient resources and leisure time would be unable to take advantage of the benefits the site offers. I would like to find a way around that, but at this stage am not sure how.

As broadly as this profile of users is, it appears that they are hardly served at all today in the context described at the outset.

Funeral Home Web sites like Byles-MacDougall Funeral Service in New London erect newspaper obituaries, guestbooks and even a transitory live funeral service broadcast, but these are to commemorate the dead, not celebrate the living before death.

A prominent site called www.legacy.com hosts forums and discussion groups for those grieving recent, major or traumatic losses such as the death of a parent or child or suicide, and provides grief counseling. Again these services, though for the living, are mainly for those already experiencing loss.

Again, Tributes.com comes closest to providing what The Resting Place would. Its “Tribute Wizard” walks the user through steps to post photos, YouTube or other video, music, and links, as well as settings where the user can review and approve or disapprove condolences. Here is a screen shot of a slide show tribute to Carl Arthur Peterson of Portland, Oregon, set to piano music.

However the only way to post a tribute is to first locate the person who has died through the site’s search engine. One cannot build an evolving tribute to a living person or oneself on this site.

Tributes.com also gives a user 14 days of free “tribute services,” but then charges. The Resting Place would probably have to charge upfront, but for the cost, the user would get ongoing services and site supervision. Ideally, the cost for The Resting Place would be minimal, but in the form of a subscription that could be for a “lifetime” or regularly renewed. It is possible the site could partner with funeral homes and newspapers to be promoted through them, though word of mouth would be a better way to gain users.

The young would not be as likely to seek out this type of Web site but as word of mouth grew, older family members and friends would likely pass down to youth the practice of compiling one’s own legacy and getting an early start.

It goes without saying the site would have to be user friendly, affordable, reliable and credible. But the only criteria for users would be to be motivated to keep the site updated and as complete as they desired.

If you’re reading this and have a passing interest in The Resting Place, tell me: would you want a memorial site of your own making for your eventual obituary? Is there anything that would entice you or turn you off about it?

Whoever thought that printing sheets of paper filled with stories and ads, rolling them up inside elastic bands, and flinging them on residents’ front stoops in the late afternoon or the wee morning hours was a good idea? Did one person wake up one morning having plotted out the whole scenario, thinking, “This is the way people would like to get their daily local and world news?”

Whoever thought that creating display and classified ads to be printed on those sheets of paper and paying huge sums for the privilege would be the way businesses chose to sell their goods and services?

No Brainstorm Here

No, the evolution of the printing press and the rise of the daily newspaper as a news and advertising source wasn’t the brainstorm of a single individual. It happened over decades, centuries even, but apparently, as the business model evolved, the last ones to be consulted were the readers or the advertisers.

Now, in the Internet Age, with circulation and revenue plummeting, people are getting their news in online outlets, on blogs and via social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Businesses are selling their products and services on their own Web sites, or on Craig’s List, or elsewhere on the Web. And mere weeks ago, Google announced that it is testing “Fast Flip,” a new online format for presenting news and linking back to the original publishers — an innovation that could drive readership to news sites — or not.

Author Bill Tancer sums up the dilemma in his 2008 book, “Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters,” this way:

What’s an industry to do when all of its value is in the process of being replaced by a resource that is virtually free to the consumer? As most newspapers have found, the answer lies in embracing that model, offering as much timely content as possible on the Net, and changing their business model to rely increasingly on Internet ad revenue versus subscription fees and print advertising.

There’s no question newspapers are in need of fundamental redesign as both product and business model. If newspaper publishers and their staff don’t involve their readers and advertisers in that conversation — in what D. Saffer calls user-centered design — then newspapers will not survive. Involving readers and advertisers in this approach at every stage of road-testing new developments is key to building a more interactive roster of readers and advertisers.

Ironically, newspapers as a product and as a business have always exemplified the primary principle of Interaction Design as described by Saffer in 2007 in “Designing for Interaction.” That principle holds that interaction design is about “making connections between people through products.” From the most august national daily down to the weekly alternative paper and the penny saver, newspapers have served as a conduit for that type of exchange: providing information about products, services and sales as well as news about politics, crime, government, and life in America’s cities and towns. Newspapers were the space created where people could interact, sharing information and promoting business. In his “City and Web” lecture, Dr. Alex Halavais defines this creation of a space for other people to interact as the goal of Interaction Design.

How is it, then, that so many newspapers are foundering, and few long-term solutions are on the horizon?

Remaking Newspapers

Perhaps it is because newspaper publishers and their staff have yet to whole-heartedly embrace interaction design as a tool for remaking the product and business model.

I am a reporter and a blogger, but also a reader of my local daily, as well as a statewide newspaper and staples like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Companies all around me are potential advertisers for these publications. If we were consulted about newspapers redesigning and redefining themselves for the 21st century, what would we say? How should we be approached?

The important thing is not simply how, but that we are approached before other platforms and business models permanently redirect our attention.

And losing audience as well as redefining it is already occurring. Marketing experts like Seth Godin are advising authors and businesses of all stripes to invest in their own platforms on the Web from which to launch their work. In “The Platform v. The Eyeballs,” he writes:

Compared to the cost of renting eyeballs, buying a platform is cheap. Filling it with people eager to hear from you… that’s the expensive part. But if you don’t invest in the platform, you’ll be at a disadvantage, now and forever.

As more news and product sources build their own platforms, that is only going to drive more and more readers and advertisers away from newspapers, unless online versions give them a reason to stay loyal to that platform instead. But if daily newspaper owners are to retain their geographical clout by providing news and advertising that spans their urban areas, they must do the two things Saffer calls for in advocating interaction design: reduce the annoyances and improve the interaction in their online outlets. Who better to advise on such things than readers and advertisers?

Including Newspaper Users in Redesign

This can be done by including newspaper users in planning of redesigned online Web sites and mobile apps, by inviting citizens to regularly blog, by hosting live chats with stakeholders and newsmakers, by editorializing about the publication’s strengths and shortcomings, by inviting, no, soliciting feedback and then actively using it to tailor the product to the consumers’ needs. And some of those needs are the very characteristics of good interaction design that Safer espouses. Traits the industry is getting poor grades on at the moment.

1. Trustworthy

The Pew Research Center reports a two-decade low in accuracy ratings across the industry.

2. Appropriate

Newspaper publishers who cling to their print editions while publishing the same content for free online are straddling two separate business models like someone with one foot on the bank of a river and the other on the edge of a boat that has lost its mooring. Readers are abandoning the print editions in droves, and if the publishers continue to hold on, they may well drown in the widening gulf that is lost revenue. Last year, according to BrandRepublic.com, the Christian Science Monitor jettisoned its print edition, retaining a once-weekly publication, for that very reason.

Christian Science Publishing, the owner of the Monitor, argues that the switch to web-only journalism is in keeping with Eddy’s edict that the paper must “keep abreast of the times” and that the cost savings will help it maintain its journalistic standards.

PoynterOnline reported in August that that move has not yet paid off in circulation or revenue, but the resultant reorganization of staff helped make reporting “more responsive” to its readers, something that makes CSM more

3. Pleasureable to use

The opposite of pleasure is annoyance and Slashdot highlights Google’s April lecturing of the newspaper industry as fair warning that the Internet giants will not tolerate newspapers’ clinging to old ways of doing business:

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has hit back at newspaper bosses, warning them that they risk alienating readers in their war against news aggregators such as Google News. ‘I would encourage everybody to think in terms of what your reader wants,’ Schmidt said at a conference for the Newspaper Association of America. ‘These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them, you will not have any more.’

4. Playful (Ludic)

On the up side, according to BeatBlogging.org, The New York Times is experimenting with the Times Reader, not unlike the Kindle, and other electronic forms that could make today’s reader more comfortable and eager to embrace and stay with the news portal.

5, 6, & 7. Responsive, Clever, Smart

Newspapers that simply reproduce their print content online are stodgy and hard to navigate, full of “bloatware,” a word coined by Alan Cooper describing superfluous features in “The Inmates Are Running The Asylum.”

Newspapers that reinvent themselves online with the help of the reader have the potential to be responsive, clever & smart.

How might a newspaper redesign team be constituted? In “How We Work (and Sometime Skip Some Steps),” author Tim Aidlin describes workflow for projects that use whiteboards, regular meetings and structured wireframes in a collaborative environment to ensure functionality and aesthetics are in sync. Some of those same guidelines could be used by a team of newspaper professionals, consultants, readers and advertisers to brainstorm and devise journalistic and marketing solutions to the quandary newspapers find themselves in today.

Things To Try

Another approach for newspapers is to market themselves on mobile phones and for that, readers who could experiment with the actual prototype would contribute the most constructive feedback. As Eeva Kangas et al write in “Applying User Centered Design to Mobile Application Development,”

The most important aspect of the design
process is to provide the user with the real usage context.
For mobile phones this means users need to be able to touch the
buttons and see software that feels like it is actually working.

These are the sorts of things that should be tried.

As newspapers pursue innovation, will the results be as dramatic as the wild “magic mirrors” and touch screen LDC displays like the ones David Kelly says Prada used to incorporate customer behavior into products in that store?

Doubtful, but really, who knows?

One thing is certain: Newspapers have to reach out now to the new breed of users they are already encountering online: youth on the go and adept at deploying gadgets and software and seeking out exactly what they need, not just what editors in newsrooms selectively decide they may need.

This is a response to Dogfish’s response paper on objectivity, entitled, “Objectivity Doesn’t Exist.”

The wonderfully rational, nuanced argument of this post belies the catchy but incorrect premise of its title, “Objectivity Doesn’t Exist.”

Objectivity most certainly does exist, and it is not just relative, in the eye of the beholder. Truth is defined by Merriam Webster’s Deluxe Dictionary, 10th Collegiate Edition (1998), as both “fact” and what is “faithful.” A news reporter is dedicated to reporting facts in a faithful way, and that faithfulness includes the historical standard of objectivity. Again, Webster’s defines objectivity as “expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortions by personal feelings, prejudices or interpretations.”

Ah, you say, “as perceived” is the kicker, the out, the loophole. It enables what comedian and political commentator Stephen Colbert calls “truthiness.”

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Colbert’s definition — “truth that comes from the gut, not books” — is a send-up of the entire print industry, not just newspapers and mainstream media and highly slanted talking heads of all stripes, so it’s important to point out the obvious: Colbert is kidding.

He’s making the point that printed media are often not as objective as they claim to be. But some ARE. Take the most basic obituary, report of a fire or police log. Basic facts, no spin. Take those factual reports to the next logical level, news items from any newspaper, printed or online, and you get reports INTENDED as factual. Will there be spin, based on editors’ rankings, what is left in or out, the scope of the story? Yes. But that is human nature and that’s inextricable from who we are as thinking, sentient beings.

So when analyzing Atel Bruns’  rant on Wikinews’ attempts at objectivity and neutrality (not taking sides) as “outdated,” it is critical to remember that one reason Wikinews has not enjoyed popularity is because it does not include opinion alongside neutral stories. Newspapers do: they all carry opinion columns and editorials that are blatantly viewpoints slanted one way or another. Had Wikinews chosen to keep its stories neutral and objective but included links to opinion-related articles, it might have attracted more of a following.

But newspapers are failing, right? Well, that’s not because they’re no longer sources of both objective information and opinion. It’s for other reasons, setting aside the economics of the outdated business model and the recession. People today find newspapers superfluous and redundant, since so much is available online through multiple outlets; outdated, so that print editions are yesterday’s news; and slanted in editorial and publishers’ biases. But most community and specialized beat reporters I know — and this includes those from weeklies to the nation’s flagship enterprises like the Washington Post and New York Times — write with the lofty but attainable goal of objectivity and fairness, trying to reflect all sides of an issue, given the day’s space and time constraints.

So I have to disagree with Bruns when he writes, “Any belief in being free of personal bias is ultimately flawed.”

If we didn’t have the standard of objectivity to strive for, truthiness would reign.