Recovering Journalist

Some Context on Ezra Klein's "News Site/Encyclopedia" Concept

It appears that the big project that led Wonkblog proprietor Ezra Klein to bolt The Washington Post for VoxMedia is to "build the world's first hybrid news site/encyclopedia," according to a job posting on VoxMedia's ProjectX site. The posting says Klein wants to "build and continuously update a comprehensive set of explainers of the topics we cover. We want to create the single best resources for news consumers anywhere."

Interesting idea. But it won't be the first swing at such a concept. In fact, none other than The Washington Post Co. chased a similar idea...15 years ago.

It was called Context4, and the reason you've never heard of it is because it never made it past early planning and prototyping stages, for various reasons. But a group of us, working for the Post, pursued the idea for several months in 1998 in a partnership with Encyclopedia Britannica, search engine Infoseek and a couple of other partners. 

The idea—conceived by then-WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive CEO Marc Teren—was to create an engine that would attach deep contextual and background information to any Post or Newsweek Web story, including story archives, relevant encyclopedia entries, video and other content.
Conversely, Britannica would add live news content to its online encyclopedia entries, so that they would be constantly updated with the latest developments and information on each subject.

Britannica had an impressive team of of data/search experts in La Jolla, Calif., that did some amazing work on the engine behind Context4, which could analyze content, fetch contextual information and attach it in real time—pretty heady stuff back then.

The project made it as far as a detailed product plan, mockups (above) and a proof-of-concept prototype before foundering. I can't recall the exact reasons it was stillborn, but I believe it had to do in large part with Infoseek's acquisition by Disney in mid-project and Britannica's own problems as its core encyclopedia business was ravaged by the Web. (Odd footnote: the corporate holiday present for the Post digital staff that year was a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannicas—yes, old-fashioned books. How ironic.)

One other problem: There wasn't really a firm business model behind the Context4 idea, and I wonder how VoxMedia and Klein will make their version pay.

Of course, it's a very different world now. When Context4 was in development in 1998, there was no Google, no Wikipedia, pretty much none of the digital landscape as we know it now. The idea of adding rich contextual content to news stories was fairly radical then. With aggregation, curation, social media, contextual search and other tools commonplace today, it's not as novel a concept.

It will be interesting to see what Klein and Voxmedia do with their version, which no doubt is far more sophisticated than what we worked on years ago. But given Klein's decision to leave The Washington Post to pursue his vision, it's fascinating that a similar idea kicked around the Post many years ago. 

The Last Great Newspaper Novel?

Like most journalists, I'm a junkie for journalism books. So when The New York Times reviews a new novel about the newspaper business twice in the same week, using words like "splendid," "spectacular," "marvelous" and "hilarious," I pay attention. When one of those raves, on the front of the Sunday Book Review, comes from the terrific Christopher Buckley, I'm on Amazon ordering the book before I even make it to the jump.

The book is "The Imperfectionists," by Tom Rachman, and it lives up to the effusive praise. It's the tale of a newspaper, newsroom and newspeople in decline from a glorious past that reads, as they say, as if it was ripped from today's headlines. Or at least today's Romenesko headlines. It's a hoot, not the least because it gets so many details of the news business and the characters who populate it so right.

The book's unnamed Rome-based English-language daily bears more than a passing resemblance to the International Herald Tribune—in fact, it bears more than a passing resemblance to just about any newsroom you can think of. It's filled with a menagerie of newsroom characters, lovingly lampooned: the swashbuckling foreign correspondent, the pathologically bitter copy-desk lifer, the grammar and style Nazi, the burn-out case, the bloodless corporate "suit," the clueless boy publisher, the slightly too-slick executive editor. And so on.

They're all there, and they cleverly interact in what amounts to a series of short stories about each character, all skillfully interlocked to tell the larger story. Rachman does an amazing job of bringing these people and their travails to life, and he gives each chapter a nifty little twist at the end to make the reader smile, or frown, or raise an eyebrow. 

The "Imperfectionists" ranks up there with Evelyn Waugh's infamous "Scoop" and Calvin Trillin's underrated "Floater" as books that get the workings of the journalism racket just right and nail the oddities and frailties of the news business and the people who inhabit it. Appearing now, as the industry goes through wrenching change, Rachman's wonderful book is perfectly timed. 

"The Imperfectionists" is a loving eulogy for journalism as we thought we knew it. It may be the last great newspaper novel, celebrating a world that—as the book documents in its bittersweet way—is rapidly fading away. Don't miss it.

Apple's Tabula Rasa

As the new year rolls in, the talk of the tech world is Apple's allegedly upcoming tablet computer. The New York Times has even dubbed 2010 as "the year of the tablet."

Sites and publications that cover Apple and the tech industry are abuzz with the usual frenetic levels of speculation that always precede the secretive company's future product releases. Nobody really knows anything, but the guesses have taken on a life of their own, creating a froth of hype that Apple itself probably couldn't achieve if was being forthcoming. 

The consensus of speculation seems to be that the tablet will be called the iSlate, it will be a cross between an iPhone and a laptop, it will have a nine- or 10-inch high-resolution color screen, it will have Wi-Fi and cell network access to the Internet, it will cost somewhere between several hundred dollars and $1,000, and it will be announced later this month and be available in the spring. Or maybe not. Everybody's guessing.

There's a lot of chatter about the tablet in media-industry circles, as well. The idea of a portable device for reading newspapers and magazines has been kicking around for nearly two decades, dating back to concepts promulgated by erstwhile Knight Ridder new media/tablet guru Roger Fidler (who's still chasing his dream). In all those years, the mythical tablet has been a sort of holy grail for publishers, the electronic version of papyrus and newsprint. That dream has been renewed lately by the ability to crudely publish newspapers and magazines on Amazon's Kindle, as well as by a much-hyped demo of an electronic version of Sports Illustrated that frankly doesn't advance much beyond what Fidler and others among us were demo-ing in the early '90s. (Can we get over the electronic page-turning metaphor, replete with sound effects? Please?) 

And now, or very soon, comes Apple's tablet. Publishers look at it and see that text reader they've always dreamed of. TV and movie execs look at it and see a portable video device. Gamers and software developers see it as a new kind of lightweight computer.

But I believe all of these views are way too limited. With a nod toward the parable of the five blind men evaluating an elephant, it's important not to look at the forthcoming tablet through the prism of individual media types. Most of those speculating about Apple's tablet aren't thinking big enough. They're concentrating on narrow possibilities—it could be a book reader! It could play movies!—without seeing the much bigger picture of what Apple may be on the verge of creating. To its users, it will be: All Of The Above. And that's huge.

Indeed, I believe the Apple tablet has the potential to strikingly transform large swaths of the media business, from newspapers to television to movies, pretty much all at once. Reading the tea leaves of all the rumors, and making guesses based on following the company closely for 25 years as a reporter, fan and (full disclosure: very small) shareholder, I think there's a significant chance that Apple may swing for the fences with its new device—and the services that surround it. 

Apple's tablet has the potential to change the way we consume and pay for media—many different types of media—as substantially as the company revolutionized the computing business with the original Macintosh, the music business with the iPod and iTunes and telephony and handheld computing with the iPhone. Probably more so, in fact.

It's also important to think of the Apple tablet as more than just the device. It may be part of a larger technological/media system that will also include a greatly expanded iTunes store and perhaps even a greatly enhanced version of Apple's long-simmering AppleTV product.

With that in mind, let's speculate on how the tablet could impact different types of media:

• Newspapers: Roger Fidler's tablet finally comes to life, with all the attendant multimedia and interactivity possibilities. Big deal—the Web has done that for years. What the tablet will add is location-awareness, giving publishers and advertisers the ability to tune their messages to where the user is. This is the ultimate in personalized news. We've already seen glimpses of this on the iPhone, Android and other smartphones (which are surprisingly good as text-based newsreaders). Imagine the same thing with a big screen. There might even be a subscription model for the best, most unique content, since there are already signs that smartphone users will pay for the convenience of certain kinds of quality niche content or apps. (But hey, newspapers: No simply pasting print content on a tablet screen, OK? Take advantage of the medium.)
• Magazines: The flashy Sports Illustrated demo is frustrating because it's so superficial. A portable magazine reader is important only if it greatly exploits the ability for interactivity that will finally make magazines (if they're smart) tap into the vital special-interest communities that are their subscriber bases. I don't just want to watch video that goes with Sports Illustrated stories—I want to be able to instantly discuss those stories with other SI readers. Incidentally, the Apple tablet will make the magazine's industry's belated efforts to create its own magazine-reading device completely superfluous.
• Books: It's assumed by just about everybody that the Kindle is pretty much roadkill the moment that Apple's tablet hits the market. Instead of a single-function, black-and-white book reader, the iSlate would provide readers with full-color displays, access to an expanded iTunes store for book downloads—and the ability use the device for countless other functions. Sure, it will be more expensive than the Kindle (at first). But it will provide much more value. If you're going to carry a book reader, wouldn't you rather it be one that does tons of other things? (Especially if the reader can provide gorgeous color multimedia and interactivity—portable online book discussion groups?—at the same time.)
• Television: This is where things start to get really interesting. The tablet could finally bring the long-dreamed-of "TV everywhere" concept to life, with a portable device that provides a la carte access to all sorts of video content—from YouTube, TV networks, studios, etc. Apple already is reported to be in talks with broadcast networks to provide access to their content on the tablet on a subscription basis; extend that to cable networks, plus the existing iTunes and Hulu video-on-demand services, and users will be able to watch pretty much whatever they want whenever they want. But wait, there's more: That viewing wouldn't be limited to the small screen of the tablet. Combined with a much-expanded version of the TiVo-like AppleTV platform, the tablet could act as a controller and source for watching that same video on the big screen at home. You could switch seamlessly between large and small screens. And the business models for this—subscription, pay-per-view--could upend the advertising-based model for broadcast TV. The possibilities here are fascinating.
• Movies: Along the same lines, the tablet plus AppleTV could be a marvelous bridge between portable movie-viewing (on a much better screen than watching movies on an iPod or iPhone, which is surprisingly popular) and home viewing. Netflix and others are hurtling toward ubiquitous digital delivery of movies; Apple could beat them to it by providing the devices that are the missing link.
• Communications: The tablet will work on cellphone networks, but who wants to carry a phone that big? Wrong question. Telephony would be merely a sideshow on the tablet. More importantly, always-on access to communications via cell networks and Wi-Fi, plus a user-facing camera, could make the tablet a powerful video-communications tool: Skype in your hands or, to hearken back a few decades, the ultimate PicturePhone. 
• Apps and Gaming: The secret weapon of the iPhone has been its tens of thousands of apps, which give the device countless additional uses—any iPhone user will gladly demonstrate for you the latest app that has made his or her life easier (or at least cooler). Here again, the iTunes store is the enabler, and it's reasonable—especially if the iSlate uses a variant of the iPhone operating system—to expect that the apps ecosystem will transfer to the new device, enhanced by the larger screen size and other enhanced features. The portable gaming possibilities alone are enormous. So are the possibilities for interesting and innovative social applications. (Video Twitter, anyone?)

That's quite a laundry list for a single device, but that's where Apple appears to be headed. Oh, and the tablet will be a computer, too. Why carry a laptop when the iSlate is lighter, has a full-sized virtual keyboard, maybe some sort of video-out capability and the ability to handle Word, Excel and PowerPoint files (plus whatever the apps bring to it)? I just wish they'd add a slide-in dock for an iPhone, so I could carry a single lightweight device.

The scenario I've laid out here is just as speculative as any of the other guessing out there about what Apple's up to. I'm certainly not alone: Daring Fireball's John Gruber makes a similarly sweeping prediction:

If you’re thinking The Tablet is just a big iPhone, or just Apple’s take on the e-reader, or just a media player, or just anything, I say you’re thinking too small—the equivalent of thinking that the iPhone was going to be just a click wheel iPod that made phone calls. I think The Tablet is nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing. 

These are grand expectations. Truth is, nobody really knows what Apple is up to except Steve Jobs and a handful of other insiders. And certainly a handful of naysayers are suggesting that nobody really wants to lug around a tablet computer, and thus it could be a Newton-like bust (although the Newton, in retrospect, seems remarkably prescient). Indeed, Apple, full of hubris and swagger after the enormous success of the iPod and iPhone, could well blow it with an overpriced, unfocused product. 

But like Gruber, I'm betting on Apple to break ground, yet again, with its tablet, and in a big, big way. It could bring together so many threads of innovation that have been developing for the past few years. I truly believe that we could be on the verge of an important turning point for the way we get and use all sorts of media. I can't wait to see what Apple comes up with. It could change everything.

Will News Tablets Finally Come Down from the Mountaintop?

With buzz growing over the Kindle 2 and its potential as a newspaper- and magazine-reading device, as well as a bookreader, it's worth remembering that the idea of an electronic tablet for reading news has a long and so far unsuccessful history.

More than 15 years ago, Knight-Ridder's Roger Fidler was famously advocating the creation of a tablet-like device as a way of distributing newspapers electronically. He's still at it, in fact, even though a lot of his vision of an electronic news future was overtaken, first by the Web and then by increasingly portable devices ranging from laptops to iPhones. (When I started out in new media in 1992, I heard regularly that no one would ever be able to read a newspaper on a computer while sitting on the john. Well, the iPhone has pretty much killed that argument!)

One of the problems with Fidler's vision was the notion that the newspaper-reader device had to come from a newspaper company. Needless to say, publishers aren't exactly technological wizzes (CueCat, anyone? Anyone?), and such development is probably better left to the Apples of the world. And now Amazon, whose Kindle offers a glimpse of what a portable electronic news reader might look like. 

Undaunted by Knight-Ridder and Fidler's experiences, however, Hearst is trying to develop its own electronic reader, in partnership with E Ink, the company that supplies the core screen technology to Kindle. It's better to let somebody else spend the big development bucks on hardware and then take advantage of their success, rather than to try to develop a specialized product that others publishers may (or more likely may not) also choose to adopt. 

While Kindle has gotten good buzz, it's hardly a ubiquitous product; indeed, it seems to be mostly beloved by journalists and a certain class of upscale book readers, and its sales–said to be in the hundreds of thousands–are a fraction of more successful devices like the iPhone.

My guess is that the Kindle is a steppingstone, transitional product, one that points the way toward the portable electronic news reader of the future, but not a big success itself. Apple is rumored to be working on a large-format version of the iPhone that will out-Kindle the Kindle and do many more things; doubtless there are other devices still in the R&D labs–including thin, flexible, roll-up screens–that will provide even better portability and quality. Devices that do much more than just present text on a screen also are likely to be more successful (again, see the Swiss Army knife-like iPhone). 

What Roger Fidler dreamed of two decades ago, and Amazon is dreaming of today, still isn't here yet. But it's probably coming, in one form or another. Just not from a publisher.

Amazon's Cold Feet

Amazingly, Amazon has backed down on implementing the text-to-speech feature of the latest Kindle (the one that Roy Blount Jr. and the Authors Guild were so upset about). Since this feature acts on a copy of the book the customer has already purchased, I really fail to see why the authors (and publishers) had any kind of legitimate beef. Sure, it might cost them the sale of a spoken-word book–but again, the customer had already purchased the book! It really isn't any different than having it read a book read aloud, or sharing it with someone else.

Still, I guess Amazon feels it has to make nice with the people who are its primary suppliers in the book business. So it will let the publishers decide which books support the text-to-speech gimmick. 

As Staci Kramer writes on PaidContent:

The company seems to have realized this isn’t a fight it wants to have—at least, now. Amazon is still building its Kindle library; today’s 240,000-plus titles are a huge leap from the start but not nearly what the company needs to come close to the breadth it offers in print. The automated feature itself is as rudimentary as the experimental web browser, with off-key pronunciation and little discretion. It’s a fun gimmick but not worth a major row.

True, I suppose. But the Blount/Authors Guild argument was silly, and Amazon should have stood its ground.

Not Funny At All

Roy Blount Jr. is one of America's greatest living humorists, and in this New York Times op-ed piece, he shows why. Writing about the latest version of Amazon's Kindle book-reader, in his role as president of the Author's Guild, Blount attacks the device because it can read books out loud in a robotic voice. Brilliant, hilarious stuff. Blount even suggests this "read out loud" feature is some sort of violation of author's rights. It's killer satire, I tell you.

Except...apparently Blount isn't kidding. Good lord. We're being overrun by literary Luddites!

Not One For the Books

Keyed to a report that the Los Angeles Times is about to downsize its book section, the Wall Street Journal has an interesting story about the dwindling state of newspaper book sections. Not counting book review sections that are folded into other sections of Sunday papers, it turns out that with the demise of the Times' section, there will only be five standalone newspaper book sections left in the U.S.

My question is: Why are there that many?

Bibliophiles will throw the book at me, but really, the book section is the classic example of the ways that newspapers cling to a bygone era. I guess the theory is that it's a good thing for newspapers to support literary efforts, being in roughly the same business and all. Or it's the same high-falutin' attitude that keeps classical music news and reviews roughly equal in weight to pop reviews in many papers—even though the audiences aren't even remotely the same size.

But beyond that, why do books get this special treatment? Why not a separate weekly section devoted to movies, or music? Or, to be really radical, a separate section to review video games? You laugh—but video games are a bigger business than movies or music, much less books, and probably would attract far more readers (young ones, no less) and advertisers.

As the Journal story points out, most book sections are starved for advertising—another sign that they're an anachronism. I suspect they're starved for readers, too. One might suggest that they're high-value readers—but clearly advertisers don't see it that way. The Journal says that publishers much prefer to spend their marketing dollars to get their books prominent placement in the big chain bookstores.

The only standalone book section that seems to be a success is the one published by The New York Times, which acts as sort of a trade magazine for the New York-based publishing industry, has plenty of ads—and often has more good writing and reading in it than most Sunday newspapers have in an entire edition. But that's the exception. Newspaper book review sections are yet another thing that newspaper managers should take a cold-blooded look at when they're looking to shift resources into higher-impact products. And while they're at it, take a look at the book section's equally anemic, anachronistic cousin, the Sunday magazine. At most papers, both have long outlived their usefulness.