Ken Lerer observes the state of media, in 8 Tweets

As an avid consumer of journalism, I am always on the lookout for news about the business of journalism. New ventures are starting all over the place, led by big names or big ideas, and there is money in journalism again.

One of the people behind some of that money is Ken Lerer, known primarily for his role in the controversial origins of the Huffington Post but with a track record of supporting innovative success stories like BuzzFeed, MakerBot and Warby Parker that prove he has an eye for products people want to consume.

Lerer took to Twitter last week, inspired by investor buddy Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, to share what are (so far) 8 observations about the state of the news business and its future. Let's pick them apart a little.

1. @pmarca has moved me to write some ideas down.
— Ken Lerer (@KenLerer) February 26, 2014

The first in the series comes after a Tweet pointing to an inspired post by Andreessen on why he is bullish on the news business. Among some choice quotes:

"Maybe we are entering into a new golden age of journalism, and we just haven’t recognized it yet.  We can have the best of all worlds, with both accuracy rising, and stories that hew closer to truth." 

2. 1981-1985: content became king in cable industry. Distribution was complete, needed content to fill pipes. Enormous value was created.
— Ken Lerer (@KenLerer) February 26, 2014

3. Fast forward: 2014. Web build out is complete. Massive social feeds are the future for now. They all need content. Content is king again.
— Ken Lerer (@KenLerer) February 26, 2014

Lerer starts by comparing the digital news business today to the early stages of cable television. The pipes are laid, the bandwidth is there, now we need content - quality content - to fill it. For Lerer, the future is in social media, the direct line to your audience's pocket, and one of the best ways a news organization can listen to its audience.

It used to be about what people were reading (NY Daily News vs. NY Post). Then it was about what they were clicking on (Huffington Post summary of the New York Times article), and now it's about what people are sharing, what they are talking about. And that conversation is happening on social media.

Now the audience just needs content worth talking about.

4. Digital content cannot succeed without the appropriate tech platform. Content without tech is a waste of time and money.
— Ken Lerer (@KenLerer) February 26, 2014

Favorite this tweet now because you don't want to forget this one: "Content without tech is a waste of time and money."

Implicit in this idea is the increasing sophistication of the information consumer today: they expect quality content and they expect a seamless user experience no matter what device they are using. The right publishing platform must be quick, responsive and integrated with the rest of the Internet, because the reader is.

5. Quality content flourishes in the digital world. Lowest common denominator content is a commodity with fleeting success.
— Ken Lerer (@KenLerer) February 26, 2014

He then turns to how to finance this quality tech and quality content:

6. Future digital content sites will see a massive commerce revenue stream alongside intelligent real-time native ads.
— Ken Lerer (@KenLerer) February 26, 2014

Intelligent ads, yep. Sounds great and I can't wait to see them. I'm assuming this is something beyond just targeted ads.

7. Only Thrillist is doing commerce and content the right way today. They are way ahead of the curve.
— Ken Lerer (@KenLerer) February 26, 2014

Here we have a plug for Thrillist, an e-newsletter and men's interest site that combines clean design, good photography, and editorial content that you can buy. Oh and this company that is way ahead of the curve and the only ones "doing commerce and content the right way"? It's owned by his son. Does it matter? I haven't spent enough time with Thrillist to say, but it bears mentioning for transparency's sake, right?

8. Chasing trending stories isn't good business and isn't good journalism. Editors must create content they believe in.
— Ken Lerer (@KenLerer) February 26, 2014

Lerer brings it back to journalism (what Andreessen calls "Capital-J Journalism") to reiterate that a sophisticated audience demands sophisticated content. Not whatever trending crack like BuzzFeed quizzes happens to be ricocheting around the social Web this week, but quality content.

I could not agree more, and wish more organizations had the courage to invest time into projects that need many iterations to get right. Any organization that does is and will be rewarded.

For my final words, I'll turn to Andreessen's original post that launched Lerer's 8-point burst of inspiration, in which he describes the future of news in what sounds like a bubble but just means a new economic reality that will see many failures for every successful new organization to get in the game.

"The big opportunity for the news industry in the next five to 10 years is to increase its market size 100x AND drop prices 10X. Become larger and much more important in the process."

What Justin Smith, new Bloomberg CEO, gets wrong about digital media

Bloomberg LP is getting a new CEO, and though Justin B. Smith's track record of turning around The Atlantic and creating excellent products like Quartz and the Atlantic Wire are enough to say that Bloomberg got a major score here, what I've read about his vision for the company gives me two reasons for pause.

Smith has the mind of an entrepreneur, and has used that with incredible success in his career. And he clearly values speed as an essential ingredient of innovation, as Digiday quotes from his email of introduction to the staff:

"Moving quickly is paramount: the faster you move, the more you learn, and the sooner you can optimize for success. Fred Wilson, the VC behind Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga and others, argues that ‘speed’ is the quality he seeks out above all others in digital media entrepreneurs. I agree.”

For plenty of products, that's true, but as it relates to Bloomberg's media arm, my Spidey sense tingles whenever I see a hint of velocitatum super omnia. 

Speed is always going to be important, but I've seen brands diminished (TV news is a big offender in this category) because of a devotion to being first that can lead to unverified reporting and the spreading of false information. Speed, sometimes, kills.

My second reaction to Smith's email, though, is one that I think is much more problematic: I see no mention of the user in his vision for the future of digital media. Yes, he is quick (and correct) to assert that the future is not yet written:

“Anyone who tells you they can predict the future state of media and its consumption patterns or business models isn’t being honest. No one knows where things are going and how they’ll play out. To succeed, we must accept this state of confusion and embrace the chaos."

But I think the one thing we DO know about the future of media is that the balance of power is shifting always in favor of the user. Homepages are less relevant as users pick and choose content a-la-carte; the conversation around the news (read: social media) is often even more important than the news itself, and users, not editors, increasingly decide what the top story of the day is.

For me, any media organization that doesn't acknowledge this trend is leaving truth on the table.

Boston bombings: Why Lytro is a game-changer

Major public events like the Boston bombings reinforce the importance of spectators' iPhone photos, GoPro videos and surveillance footage from sidewalk cameras as officials enlist every source they can access in the search for answers.

The many hi-res iPhone photos we have of the scene are great, and better than what came before them, but all of them are grainy and unsatisfying, despite their apparent success in smoking out the Tsarnaev brothers.

There is better photo technology out there though, and my first thought is that THIS is what the Lytro camera was made to do.

If you're not familiar with Lytro, it uses what's called light-field technology that basically uses a 3-d light sensor to capture not a flat image but one with depth, with enough visual information to allow you to focus after the fact on whatever part of the image you like.

I don't have a Lytro, but I played around with one once, and this image from a crowded subway shows a little of how it works. Click on the face in front left, then on the blonde on the right, then at the back of the subway car and you see how the focus changes dynamically.


That means no matter what you were pointing your Lytro camera at when you took the picture, you can decide later on if you want the foreground, background, or middle ground in focus.

It's easy to criticize the apparent trend toward always-on lifecasting, even when you are not the one doing the lifecasting, (Google Glass, anyone?), but in times like these there never seem to be enough selfies, vlogs or surveillance videos with hi-res images that we want to use.

Imagine if iPhones somehow used light-field technology. Or imagine if surveillance cameras used Lytro technology? A few dynamic stills could definitely be more useful than grainy video in investigations like these.

We are still years away, sure, but the technology is here, and could be a game-changer in any situation where you need to scan an image of a crowd and produce usable visual information.

Paradigm shift: Apparently the only way things change anymore

Political discourse about the U.S. economy and the government's role in fixing it seems to have coalesced around the gulf between the party of the wealthy (Republicans) and the party of everyone else (Democrats).

Frustrated by the absolute vehemence of wealthy conservatives to defend any perceived controls on "job creators" (i.e. rich, profit-driven corporations), I made a graphic:

I think a lot of younger people like myself, who don't yet have a bunch of amassed wealth to defend against the clutches of government, believe in fairness and redistribution to some extent, and that a measure of a good society is how well it helps those at the bottom of the economic pile.

The fact that the GOP seems to work so hard to prevent this from happening really makes it seem like the old wealthy conservatives who don't want anyone taxing them more (while still of course demanding that they get all the Medicare in the world, regardless of whether they need help paying for medical expenses or not) are just fundamentally uncaring.

Entrenched beliefs are hard to change, and I'm not in the business of teaching old dogs new tricks, so I came to the frustrating if ultimately satisfying conclusion that, given time, the selfish old people will die out while young and compassionate people will hopefully take those qualities into their golden years.

And maybe when the next generation (my generation) starts running things we'll do so with more of an eye toward making more of our people comfortable instead of protecting the interests of the already wealthy.

Live Continuing Coverage of the Obama/McCain ServiceNation Summit at Columbia University

Go to

Obama and McCain at Columbia

for insightful multimedia coverage of this historic event!

The Race (card) Is On!

So it begins. Almost two years before the actual elections, we already are subjected to the constant coverage of Ms. White Woman and Mr. Black Man competing to see who will be the first minority president of the United States.

And it’s about time. I suppose the only good thing to come out of the Bush presidency is that the country is closer than ever to evolving past the old white man political culture that we have cultivated for so long and elect a minority president. We saw Bush’s political connections in Florida steal him the most important presidential election in recent history. Then we saw his cadre of dinosaurs and their connections to oil companies and big contractors start wars that they could not finish, mismanaging the whole effort the whole time. I think people are finally sick of it.

When it comes down to it, I would love to see an age where the leaders of France, Germany, and the United States are run by women. Angela is proving she can make progress in the quagmire of European bureaucracy, and although Segolene might be a bit of a stretch in France, the experience and married name of Miss Hillary put her within arm’s reach of being the most powerful man in the world. Thanks to Nancy Pelosi blazing the trail by passing successful legislation in Congress, voters are seeing that a woman can indeed govern.

Mr. Black Man, though, offers a similar freshness to the race that has already allowed him to capitalize on the desperation of a country too long led against their will by a jackass from Texas. Obama is a kid, he is a kid who used to smoke grass and snort coke. He is a kid who, wait for it, once learned at an Islamic school. As shocking as these qualities may sound, the man has a card to play in this contest. He is too young to have been corrupted by the oft-cited Good Old Boy network that haunts all senior politicians, which is increasingly attractive when considering Bush’s successor. He also has a younger, more progressive attitude toward the issues currently on the table. At the end of the day, though, he does not have the experience necessary to inspire the most confidence.

Voters do rely a lot on personality, and if he seems to have a competent staff around him, he can indeed go a long way. I think his significance lies most in the fact that he is running at all. Sure, he is hoping that people will take a chance and vote on a fresh face, but the reality of the times, with the threat of terrorism and the need for some nuanced governing to attack issues like climate change and health care, mean that Hillary shows the most potential.

In any case, I raise my glass to a minority candidate with a progressive view of how to fix this country’s devastated foreign policy errors. It is important that the world like us. Bush seems to think that doesn’t matter, as long as we are doing the “right thing” to rid the world of the threat of terrorism. I think we are beginning to realize that this will never happen if we don’t have the support and participation of our peers in the international community. I just hope any democrat can make it happen.

Springtime for Saddam

The end of 2006 saw the dramatic conclusion of the Saddam Hussein story, brought to you by someone with a cellphone who made a YouTube clip to beat all YouTube clips. In the end, this one grainy video nullified all efforts by the “Axis of Good” to paint their ugly version of Saddam Hussein all over the history books.

If it were ever made into a movie, the farcical theater of Saddam Hussein’s last days could only be called “Trial and Error”. Of course, G.I. George Bush and the American government would have loved to see their original script brought to curtain calls of secular throngs of Iraqis dancing in the streets of Baghdad over the death of an evil man, but, sadly, they lost creative control of the project.

The opening act of Saddam’s capture would have made any Hollywood producer proud. Hell, maybe the Weinstein brothers had a hand in military policy at the time, because there could have been no better made-for-tv moment than Saddam being pulled out of a so-called “Spider Hole” covered in garbage with a suitcase of American dollars at his side. Now, anyone who has been to the Middle East, who knows anything about Muslim culture, knows that no self-respecting Arab Muslim, especially not one with an inflated ego such as Mr. Hussein’s, would be caught dead under a pile of garbage, hiding from U.S. Marines with a suitcase of dollars at his side. I mean, give me a break. Has it been so long that we do not see blatant propaganda for what it is any more? The public ate up this story, only too happy to see that this “evil man” was also a coward.

In the war of ideas, the United States tried to take his pride, to take his honor, and in the end allowed history to repeat itself by calling an end to major combat operations in discrediting Saddam Hussein. Unfortunate (depending on how you look at it) though inevitable for the swirling mess of Iraq, it did not turn out as planned.

Fast forward to the last chapter in the saga, where you have a cell phone video broadcast all over the world within hours of his death that shows a dignity to the man enduring the taunts of a violently divided Iraq. As if he knew the world would be watching, he played it masterfully. With a sound bite of “Is this the bravery of Arabs?”, Saddam will be remembered as a victim who died with honor, a martyr to young Sunnis, not an evil psychopath coward.

Just like the producers tried to make a fortune off of a sure flop, the Bush administration naively expected to gain valuable political capital through the death of someone they had gone to great lengths to paint as a worthless, evil man. As it turned out, the show itself was a success. Saddam will live forever in Iraq, the victim of aggression and bias from both his own people and the invading army.

I can’t wait to see what the Bin Laden Show will entail, if only we can get a camera crew to his cave on the Pakistani border...

Gorbachev on Gorbachev

On Thursday, I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by the former leader of the non-free world to hear his perspective on the current state of world affairs.

I must admit, my expectations were high. This was, after all, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr. Glasnost, the birthmark himself. This man presided over the reconciliation of two giants living a Clash of Civilizations that threatened the destruction of the whole world. An architect of the non-proliferation movement that prioritized disarmament as a fundamental protection of global security. A leader who successfully chose diplomacy on a grand scale to avoid war and save countless lives. Yes, my expectations were high.

Perhaps that was my first mistake, because the reality was quite sobering. An old man speaking rather awkwardly in the third person (“They try to stop Gorbachev, but Gorbachev won in the end”), he proved himself quite out of touch with the realities of geopolitics in the twenty-first century.

Taking the opportunity to promote his new book, Gorbachev spoke of his philosophy of “New Thinking,” one that I could succinctly describe as “old thinking.” The core idea, that rational dialogue can solve all conflicts, may have worked when dealing with a rational counterpart like Ronald Reagan, but considering the present context of terrorism and Al-Qaeda, it just looks naive.

Unfortunately, things today are more complex. Terrorist cells working independently of a central leader, warring factions within fundamentalist movements, and pseudo-political organizations like Hamas and Hizbullah that cannot control their own militants make for a radically different set of rules. I am not saying that diplomacy is no longer an option, but when you don’t even know who to sit down and negotiate with, and if that person is not even able to deliver the results of such negotiation, then these efforts are merely a smokescreen that allows violence to continue undeterred.

Talks with North Korea did nothing to prevent Kim Jong-Il from developing a nuclear bomb. Talks with Iran have done nothing to deter Ahmadinejad’s pursuit of the same goal. This old thinking is just not working.

So what is the solution? If diplomacy fails, is conflict the only option? George Bush may operate on that principle, but experience has shown that it is not sustainable. Just like a popular bumper sticker I have seen says, “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” I think there is room for a third option, as unrealistic as it may be, that leaders (states AND heads of state) hold THEMSELVES accountable for irresponsible foreign policy.

Instead of waiting for your opponent to recognize Israel, for example, YOU can end your occupation and unilaterally withdraw from a deteriorating time bomb. Sure, Palestinians continue to fire rockets, but it is only a matter of time before they are forced to look at themselves and find a solution to their inability to govern themselves.

Now, the risks of just running away and leaving nations to solve their own problems are high, and with the amount of oil-rich states to influence how those problems are solved, they are potentially very dangerous. But those risks must in part be passed on to the populations of these crisis areas so that Western countries are not providing such easy targets to fundamentalize at.

The problems of the world are spiraling out of control, and despite what anyone says, nothing has really worked. I was hoping that Gorbachev would have some new insight. Turns out he has nothing but hindsight.

My alternate, published account of Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to Iceland can be found online at: http://www.reykjavik.com

New York Votes Lourdes!

OK, first of all, I never expected a country like Peru, even with its mandatory voting law, to have any system set up for absentee voting. That being said, I am sure that the hundreds of votes cast by expat Peruvians that lined up in Midtown Manhattan to cast their votes for President today will never be counted. Go figure, they all voted for Lourdes.

To give a little background for those who are new to Peruvian politics, Alejandro Toledo, a *relatively* honest politician who doubled foreign investment, doubled Peru’s exports, and brought macroeconomic stability (growing an average of 5% a year since 2001) to a country with a history of severe hyperinflation, is ending his term as president with a lowly 8% approval rating. [All figures from the New York Times]

For a long time, the main challengers for 2006 were Alan Garcia, the former president who single-handedly caused the hyperinflation crisis of the 1980s, Alberto Fujimori, the Japanese man whose violation of human rights during Peru’s fight against terrorism efforts is only overshadowed by the blatant robbery and corruption of his administration, and Lourdes Flores, a woman whose pro-globalization mentality puts her in the increasingly unpopular position of receiving support from the Bush government.

In the vacuum caused by Peruvians’ sexist apprehension about electing a woman to their highest political office, much less one who is in bed with W, a new frontrunner has emerged: Ollanta Humala. Mounting his little horse and talking all sorts of anti-US trash, Ollanta has motivated the nationalist emotions of poor Peruvians, blaming free trade and global capitalism for all of Peru’s shortcomings.

Ollanta says he does not want any US military officers on Peruvian soil. Given the chance, he will surely extend that eviction notice to Peace Corps Volunteers currently spending years of their precious, precious lives hanging out with poor people all over Peru. He says he does not want any trade deals with the United States, and probably thinks that Hugo Chavez will be the Spanish-speaking sugar daddy that Peru so desperately wants. Maybe he is right, maybe it is all a show that will change if he gets elected, and maybe he will commit Peru to four years of real recession.

With 31% of this first round of votes, Ollanta leads the race going into the run-off. What is amazing, though, is that we have no idea WHO he will face. Tied for second place, with around 24% each, are Alan Garcia and Lourdes Flores. Garcia singlehandedly ran the country into the ground, putting Peru in its most acute economic crisis in memory. By any rational standards, he would never have gotten onto the ballot.

Lourdes is a woman, and as popular as she may be among the Peruvian New Yorkers going to the polls, she is a woman. Peruvians are not at all ready for her. Sad, but, apparently true.

So whoever wins second place will determine where the election goes. If it is Garcia, it is hard to imagine Lourdes’ votes passing to Ollanta. In that case, Peru is taking a huge gamble with the worst manager the economy has had in decades. If Lourdes faces Ollanta, it is not hard to see where that will go. Lourdes will not win.

We will see where it all ends up in a few weeks, but it looks like Ollanta. I just hope my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers are ready for him...