Your News Looks Funny

Political cartoons have been around in America since before the founding of the Republic.

Ben Franklin, as owner of the Pennsylvania Gazette, was one of the first and most effective, using his sharp wit to rally the American Colonials (at least the ones who could read) into revolution!

Now comes Dean Opperman, a local resident and former radio personality who is not nearly as old or as credible as Mr. Franklin but he is rallying folks around the absurdity of the world we live in. Dean has created his own series of political cartoons and is posting them at his blimptv.net site.



His breakthrough effort (so far) has been "Vista Sucks" which went viral shortly after being picked up on The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.

The gas bags and geek speakers about all things 2.0 are really talking about the ability of online media to incorporate what Dean is doing now. Or next. Or...
I suggest you link to blimptv.net so you don't miss whatever it is.

Dean Opperman is the new artist newspaper 2.0 will call on when they need a political cartoon.

The Web Is Not Made of Paper

Thanks to Paul Gibler for a link to this page from Editor and Publisher titled: Web Editors Reveal Online Flops or Failures

It's a look at what editors themselves see as challenges in the current webnews format.

Why Is Newspaper 2.0 still mostly 0.2?

Time for a recap on the state of Santa Barbara's historically establishment newspaper, its evolving status in the county, the announced demise of local print and the lauded arrival of newspaper 2.0 as the new local news media to replace newspapers.

Some of the words most often used by Santa Barbara bloggers to describe the state of the News Press are "ongoing collapse", "continuing meltdown", News Mess, and etc. The total demise of the paper is repeatedly predicted.

News Press owner Wendy McCaw has stirred up the kind of emotion usually reserved for Darth Vader and so the hyperbole flies in both directions. The News Press editorial page is consistent in it's delusions of persecution and bias as Craig Smith reports. If Wendy McCaw announces that she's Jerry Roberts' mother the analogy will be complete. Read this sample of local opinion from Blogabarbara.

For a nice long read through the whole tangled story try this article on Wikipedia

Don't worry, you've got time. The lawyers will be billing hours on all of the related legal cases for years.

At present the conventional local news journals have actually increased the total amount of local news coverage. The Daily Sound and the Independent, even the Daily Nexus have staffed up at the expense of their rival. Some content is not up to the professional standard of the old News Press, but recognition of professional traditions in their established forms seems to be negotiable on a lot of levels these days and that could be key to the whole trouble at the NP.

The blogs continue to function well in the capacity of local news and opinion forums and edhat continues to develop a diverse audience as an aggregater and manager of online content.

Santa Barbara's Newsroom, an online print type site run by former NP staff and supported by the Teamsters Union, has come and gone.

Now we have the next serious run at online local news and innovation: Noozhawk

New technology often arrives in the form of the thing it replaces. So it's not surprising that Noozhawk not only looks like a newspaper but also like the Santa Barbara Independent online. The Noozhawk staff includes former News Pressers including head man Bill MacFayden, former owner of the now departed South Coast Beacon.

I've noticed that online media is populated by managers from old media. This causes problems. Just ask Allen Wastler of CNBC and formerly CNN who is currently being barbecued by the blogging public for his handling of an online poll. You know the kind I mean, like, "Whose Naughtier? Hillary or Brittany?

Newspaper 2.0 might be coming soon, but we really won't see what it looks like until 2.0 managers include video and audio as well as web design and graphic animation fully integrated on their pages.

Since the entire concept of Newspaper 2.0 is being and has been pioneered in Santa Barbara, to some degree because of the shift in the value of our own conventional media, it will be interesting to see if someone around here will make it a reality that others can see and advance.

Jerry's Cadavers

Just in time for Halloween!

What happens when a modern day ghoul learns the benefits of web-marketing?
And what happens when you realize the value in owning (or renting) a real corpse?


Check out this clip from dirtbox.tv!

"And - Look at Eckersley - Shocked to his Toes!"

This blog has been circling around the question of value. Where does it come from? What is it? Who creates it? How do you monetize it? How do we deliver it?

Well since it's October and Fall baseball season, I thought I'd share a baseball analogy that might serve to illustrate this discussion.

Television was the technical medium that showed Los Angeles Dodger hitter Kirk Gibson's game winning homer with two out in the 9th inning against the Oakland A's Ace reliever Dennis Eckersly in 1988. But it was the voice of Vin Scully making the call on NBC TV and the image of a crippled Gibson running the bases and pumping his fist that made it memorable.

So what is the value of a broadcaster and image maker to a baseball franchise? Well, the talent who looked at a devastated star pitcher and said, "And, look at Eckersley - shocked to his toes" is now making 3 million dollars a season. The current Dodger manager, Grady Little, is estimated to make about $650,000.

(My Canadian friends could just as easily tell you where they were when Canada beat the Soviet Union for a gold medal in hockey at the Olympics - and they could tell you at the drop of a touque who made the call on the air.)

It's only a matter of time before the web becomes the medium with that kind of power. It will then be up to talent to create the value - the sounds and sights we remember forever.

The big BIG Monetizing Picture

When I worked in radio I used to hear the same old sorry story every month about how the radio station (read: every station I ever worked for) was losing money. The boss would point out that all the value went out the door in paychecks to talent and admin. staff every two weeks. It pained him to a greater extent than I will explain here in polite company.

Then a funny thing happened. They sold their radio stations based on the market value that a larger company (like Clear Channel) was willing to pay and they walked away with a nice cash payout which more than made up for losing a couple grand a month for a few years. Me and the boys and girls in programing and production? We got zip.

Flash forward to the startup of YouTube and a little seminar I was at today.

Lorrie Thomas is a genius. How do I know? I've seen her speak and I've seen her hourly rate. Her genius is inherent in her confidence and her knowledge of internet marketing. I was inspired by what she said today at the SABER breakfast meeting at the University Club in Santa Barbara. It's what she didn't say that is the subject of this post to you.

Flash back to 2005. YouTube went from a bootstrap startup in February, 2005 to a 1.65 BILLION dollar company in November, 2006. How do we know that this is the value of YouTube? Because that's what Google was willing to pay for it. Did YouTube lose money month to month in the interim? Who cares? They cashed out for huge money in a matter of months.

Flash Forward now to your online presence and the value of your business.

I've spent more than a year interviewing and meeting with clients about their online presence and the value of investing in online media content to build the value of their brand. I've often received applause for laying out the case for online development as a means for increasing the value of an online or local business. The applause is followed by deafening silence.

What's the deal?

The deal is, most companies don't realize the value that webmedia creates for them. They are totally hung up on the question of "monetization", as if it were the same as employee paychecks or the month to month cost of electric and telephone service.

Think about it. The goal of venture capital, small business and entrepreneurs the world over is to generate the perception of value that they can use to cash out for big profit when the time comes.

So how do you create value in your business? Ask YouTube.

And you want to know something else? The available time my company has to sell has just been bought out by a media production company. Why? Because they want to create value that they can sell on the web.

Hmmmm.

And there's more. The value of online media translates into new fields for those of us who have been involved in traditional media production for these many years. How will we integrate our services to the new new media presence?

We need to prove our value as professional talent and continue to do what we do best. It's going to take a couple more years, but soon enough, the business world will be calling on media professionals to deliver the goods in an increasingly competitive arena.

It's Technorati Time

Hi there sports fans! And welcome to the future. Or a least a step along the cowpath that leads to it.

Frankly, I feel a bit the guy who has to get out and crank start his Ford in a blizzard. All I want is to get things running. Instead, I'm standing in snow up to my butt turning over an engine with a metal rod.

When is someone going to make this thing as turn key as they say it is?

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