Newsecosystem

[The Information Valet Project]

PRIVACY . . . IDENTITY . . . ADVERTISING . . . COMMERCE

INFOVALET AT REYNOLDS JOURNALISM INSTITUTE . . . ABOUT THE NEW(S)SOCIAL NETWORK . . . OTHER LINKS/COMMENT . . .VIDEO RESOURCES

---

RJI PICTURED

THE RJI VISION

Event Page: "From Paper to Persona to Payment:

Considering a New(s) Ecosystem for News, Information and Privacy."

This is the temporary landing page for a May 7, 2015 gathering organized by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and held at the Chicago O'Hare Hilton. It kicked off a series of four meetings of the Information Trust Exchange project. If you are interested in participating, please email Bill Densmore, or call Bill at 617-448-6600.

CRITICAL LINKS

• Emily Bell, Columbia-Tow Center, on Why news organizations should be building their own platform (READ last paragraph) (posted 05-02-15) RELATED LINK
• Alexander Klopping, the co-founder of Blendle, reports what the Dutch micropayment startup has learned in its first year (posted 05-01-15)
• Bruce Schneier: [{http://newshare.com/ohare/schneier-inevitable.pdf "The Hidden Battle to Collect Your Data"] (posted 04-28-15)
• Jeff Jarvis on the need for open standards for identity-data transfer: "It's the relationship, stupid!"
• BACKGROUND: Google's Digital News Initiative with eight European publishers. SPEECH / Stories on the BBC,, the New York Times, at the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.
• Buzz Wurzer and Bill Densmore on "the four-party model."
• Tom Grubisich writing at SreetFightMag: Can an exchange help solve the problem of monetizing digital content?
• PRIVACY/IDENTITY / Drummond Reed and Ann Cavoukian: A primer on personal clouds, XDI, link contracts, accountable pseudonyms, and contractual anonymity
• STRUCTURE / Bill Densmore: A "stalking horse" for ITE governance

FRESH LINKS

• COLLABORATION: RJI-O'Hare participant Jo Ellen Green Kaiser's report on the need for collaboration and new funding approaches for independent news.
• CONTENT: Washington Post breaks new ground in dramatically visual formatting its desktop experience (SEE EXAMPLE)
• GOVERNANCE: Could Europe create common rules for digital commerce? An effort is underway
• IDENTITY: IBM asserts partnership with Facebook to use IBM's analytics capabilities to deliver better personalized ad targetting
• REVENUE: Some publishers are the content-creation costs of "native advertising" in for free to maintain competitive rates
• PRICING: Bundling comes to the web

THE DRAFT REPORT:

• PDF DOWNLOAD: Draft report "From Persona to Payment."
• Bill Densmore's Nov. 2014 slide deck for the Vermont Journalism Trust
• RJI blog posts about the report substance.
• Editor & Publisher: "Imagining the 21st Century Personal News Experience." (PDF version)

Idea catalysts

• What is advisortising? (Bill Densmore)
• Robert Picard explains how a wholesale-retail market could function with digital information
• What can the ITE do to give news organizations a "persona" competitor to Google and Facebook (see ADWEEK on Google effort)
• NYU Prof. Clay Shirky, summarized by the NYT Public Editor and commenting on our O'Hare gathering: "This looks amazing . . . we're in Shanghai this year, so I won't be able to join you, but I'm so glad you all are doing this." READ ALSO: Shirky's 2009 post: "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable" and Mathew Ingram's comments on same, with chart.
• Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron on journalism's transition from print to digital.
• THE NEW NEWS SERVICE? "The Eternal Return of BuzzFeed"
• Paul Gillin: "Can Densmore's vision work? It has to."
• Andy Oram: "Why a new proposal for making the news business sustainable deserves attention."
• BACKGROUND: The Information Valet project
  
  

Links to new FTC tech/privacy initiative

• http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/23/ftc-office-of-technology-research/
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/03/23/the-ftc-beefs-up-technology-investigations-with-new-office/
• https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/techftc/2015/03/booting-new-research-office-ftc

Extended thoughts

• These comments were appended to a New York Times Public Editor blog post of April 10, 2015: "A Darker Narrative of Print's Future from Clay Shirky"

Marc Edge -- journalism educator, media critic, and blogger from Vancouver/Richmond, BC -- wrote: "Shirky’s hypothesis is indeed speculative. This discussion reminds me of most of the uninformed speculation regarding the future of newspapers that has been going on for the past seven years, since the Rocky Mountain News folded and the Seattle P-I went online-only. I have done quite a bit of research into the business model of newspapers and I have concluded in my recent book, Greatly Exaggerated: The Myth of the Death of Newspapers, that it actually quite robust and should allow the venerable newspaper to survive in print form for the foreseeable future. There’s one very good reason -- they are all still profitable. Here’s a review of my research: "Why are American Newspapers Still Profitable." ... Here’s a review of my book ... Here’s an excerpt: http://www.marcedge.com/GEintro.pdf "

Les Gapay -- Palm Desert, CA -- wrote: "I'm a retired newspaper reporter who worked at both the national and local levels. I don't subscribe to a paper anymore. They're not worth the money and I can read all the news I want for free online at Google or Yahoo from publications all around the U.S. and the world. Less than once a month I pick up a hard copy of a paper if I want to just sit down and relax with a newspaper for a while. I spend a lot of time during each day reading news online and get my fill, so why bother with a print edition. The hey-day of print journalism is over. We're in the middle of the move to digital. How quickly print papers disappear is irrelevant to me and is mostly relevant to executives of newspapers. Their digital form will survive and maybe a weekly paper edition full of features and analyses for reading on the weekend. Reporting is done mainly by newspapers and that will continue. Readers want journalism. News has to be covered. When there are breaking stories I watch them live on TV or read about them on my cell phone. Print editions have one foot in the grave, but are resurrecting online. Focus on making the transition. As for subscribing to news web sites, I don't have to right now; can read most of what I want for free paid for by advertising. But I wouldn't mind paying if I had to or if the content was especially good. Times web site too cluttered and stories too long and too wordy. If I had to, I would prefer to pay for a site that gives me stories from many news providers.