11 Ideas for the Fortune 500

When I saw that Fortune.com was looking for an editor to oversee its franchise projects (Fortune 500 and the like), it got me thinking about what I would do to reimagine content like this for the digital age.

There is a lot of excellent data here, but the online presentation really appears to be an afterthought to the static version that appears in the magazine. The feature up right now is "100 Best Companies to Work For", so I made that one the subject of this exercise.

In thinking about how to package such lists I am guided by my fundamental belief about the power of multimedia journalism to allow a reader to go as deeply as he or she wants to into the content. I believe in layering information on the web - causal visitors should be able get all the top-level data they want at a glance, then one click takes the reader into the next level of analysis and another click gives people the raw numbers and customization they want to personalize the experience.

For me the overall concept should not be of making a bunch of digital lists, but rather of creating a deep and rich database of American corporations, and comparing them to each other in meaningful ways. With that kind of structure I think Fortune could bring in new readers, draw them in to more content, and not alienate the power users who want everything. 

Here is what I would do:

Organization

1. I would put the overall top 10 companies on the splash page. A row of clickable thumbnails with the logos of the top 10 would give readers the most important data without any extra clicks, and they are already able to get into the list wherever they want to depending on which company interests them most, without having to click in order.

2. The main articles and galleries ("They're hiring!" "25 top-paying companies" ...) are fantastic and I would do more to highlight them, like to make this a section of "Top Stories About the 100 Best Companies" populated with thumbnails for each story.

3. Instead of the nav bar at the top ("Full List | Near You | etc.") I would consolidate these sections and place them lower on the page. They could even go in expandable menus for "View list by TOP COMPANIES | BEST PERKS | Etc."

4. Instead of the video thumbnails (repeated in the video box on the right) I would add a video player right at the top, either with those four thumbnails that load a video in the box or with one on autoplay. 

Content

1. Create a Twitter list (@FortuneMagazine/100Best) populated with accounts from these companies (those that have them at least) and Fortune/CNNMoney's accounts, and embed the stream on the page. 

2. The more video, the better. While creating a video profile for each company is not realistic, if there is a video component for one out of every 10 companies (meaning 10 total) I bet the pre-roll ads will bring in significant revenue. Some could surely be pulled from past interviews with certain company or industry leaders that Fortune/CNN have run before as well. A great way to repurpose content.

3. I think it's important to relate this list to the other franchise lists. I would love to see a box on the right or lower on the page with a prompt like "Companies on this list also show up in:" and add linked icons for the other lists, whether they be lists of companies or of people who work for those companies. 

4. I like the idea of a "create your own list" feature across all of the franchise lists where a logged-in user can create their own database of companies. It would be like the "Perk Finder" but with a few more options and the ability to save it not as a custom URL but as a section on their "my account" page.

Obviously this one is a little bigger or long-term than the other ideas, but I think it would have the added effect of allowing journalists or news organizations anywhere to create their own mini-lists or galleries using FORTUNE's data, with all the links back and visibility that would entail.

Design

1. Persistent navigation is essential here. People should be able to jump around to some extent rather than going through each list linearly. Each page/entry should have the full list in a set of scrollable thumbnails along the bottom so that wherever in the list one is, one can decide where they want to go next in the list.

2. I think a set of logos for each list would be a great way to have some continuity across the features and would be a good visual cue that can be used elsewhere. Google appears on many lists, so its page on any of them could display the icons of the other lists the company is mentioned in, and a simple click goes to that new list.

3. Generally the ads are where all the color is on the page so they are what draws the reader's eye, a problem I would address by spicing up the title banner to look more like the main banner that has an integrated FORTUNE logo (rather than one in a box) and a minimal arrow for the dropdown menu. Doing that in a contrasting color like a silver could make it pop nicely. 

New content

I also see the potential to vet these lists a bit more for readers, always with an eye on the topics that are of most interest to readers in this changing business climate. Entrepreneurship and innovation, for example, does not have a very prominent role on these franchise projects. Some ideas:
Most innovative companies

Most-improved companies (turnaround stories are always appealing)
Rising stars (sort of a preview of next year's list)
Most charitable corporations
Most influential people in media
Most influential people on social media
Leading entrepreneurs

Who knows how these lists will evolve once the right person is hired, but Fortune needs to prepare for a day when the printed version may not even exist, and a Web-first mentality would vastly improve the interactive experience with the projects on Fortune.com.

This, I think, could help achieve that.

** Read part 2 of this exercise: 5 thoughts on what Fortune can do on social media

$5 million of grants for crazy digital media ideas...

Today I heard all about the Knight Foundation's News Challenge, "a contest awarding as much as $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news and information exchange."

Susan Mernit of the Knight Foundation made it clear that the contest is for INNOVATIVE ideas. As she said, "if all of the projects we fund succeed, then we are being too safe. We want 50% of them to fail. We want to fund experiments, not businesses."

That being said, anything goes. Here are some possible pitches:

1. Some way to enable major media organizations to make money while providing free content to users.

2. Node-based multimedia news aggregator: ever notices how aggregators are purely text? This doesn't work in print, so why should it work on the net? This site would allow users to flag photos, videos, slideshows and all multimedia bits they come across on the net, linking them to each other and to a central "node" which is a story or issue area (Hurricane Katrina, for instance).

4. A GPS-based tracking service that you sign up with your GPS-enabled cell phone. It will alert you to news stories and community-based blogs wherever you are.

5. Fairtrade online marketplace: a register of fair-trade online stores by country, so that anyone who cares to can shop in a way that will benefit projects in a certain country.

I am also considering some partnerships. My colleagues have some fantastic ideas as well. I know none of these are too revolutionary, but hey - the brainstorm is just getting started...

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

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for insightful multimedia coverage of this historic event!

Subjective objectivity

Objectivity, many in the business will tell you, is a cornerstone of journalism. Reporters report, they do not analyze. Their mission is to dig up the facts of a story, without analyzing or passing judgment on what those may reveal. Judgment, in theory, is up to the reader.

True objectivity, especially in today's media culture, is an illusion that stands in the way of the media's role as a watchdog acting on the part of the people to root out hypocrisy and hold the right people accountable for injustices that occur in every city on earth every day. Journalists and news organizations seem to adhere to the idea that to be objective is merely to report, not to analyze, the news, leading them to often relay anything the Bush administration spins their way without pointing out the ways in which government spokespeople contradict themselves all the time.

Watch Fox News and you will see a clear conservative Republican bias through the thin smokescreen of its ridiculous motto of "We report. You decide.", or Bill O'Reilly's laughable "No-Spin Zone". It is not a problem that certain stations and their funders have agendas and views that they want to express, but they could at least be honest about it! At least Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is up front about his disapproval of the lies and manipulations of the Bush government.

Subjectivity is OK. Propaganda is not. Subjectivity does not mean covering only one side of an issue, but rather investigating both sides of an issue with the ability to acknowledge which side the evidence favors. Just because there are many sides to a given issue does not mean that each one makes as strong an argument as the others.

An easy example that bothers me concerns global warming and climate change, a hot hot topic (pun intended) that has gotten tons of media attention thanks to Al Gore. The truth of the matter is that scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the idea that human activity is creating pressures on the ecosystem at rates never before seen on the planet. And this is, after all, a question whose answer lies in the realm of science and research, not politics and opinion.

So, as news programs and magazines grab onto the issue of the day, they do so in a way that they hope shows a balanced treatment of the issue, giving equal weight to alarmists and doubters. The end result is a grossly skewed coverage of climate change that treats global-warming skeptics as the other side of the coin, giving unwarranted attention - and, consequently, credibility - to loud, aggressive non-scientists with no expertise and pockets full of oil-company money to produce fancy-looking rebuttals to "An Inconvenient Truth".

Objectivity is rather impossible. Subjectivity is rather unavoidable. The happy medium is for news agencies to report based on a principle of Subjective Objectivity. Objectively presenting the arguments on any side of a contentious or newsworthy issue, while subjectively pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each. The judgment comes in the reader/viewer's determination of how much value to give each of these strengths and weaknesses.

Responsible reporting means taking a stand and having an opinion, to speak on behalf of your audience. Mainstream media have lost it, but I must believe a solution is still out there somewhere.

What am I and why am I here?

The amazing thing about the evolution of the internet is the blurring of the line between private and public, between individual and society, between access and accessibility. It is an organism that reaches everyone collectively by being constantly available to anyone with a browser, but that reaches everyone personally by interacting with one screen, one pair of eyes at a time.

I am here to take part in the revolution, to help figure out what to do with it in a way that is not just passive and self-serving. If people want to read anything I write, that is great, and if you want to comment and debate, that is even better. I believe that the only way to go about solving our society's problems is to TALK ABOUT IT. To exchange ideas and informed opinions about the things going on around us every day that are making the world worse for our children.

This is a reason why I am a writer, and beginning a program at the Columbia University Journalism school. Even in the completely open-source free internet, there is a need for professional journalism, with fact-checked claims and real sources that go beyond the simple ranting and raving of some active web personalities.

So this blog, this forum, is about politics and the media. Or is it about the media and politics. Each subject is a blog in itself, and the areas in which they interact could fill so many more gigabytes. I am interested in all three, so depending on my mood, I will speak about politics, the news media, and the relationship between the two (starring Karl Rove as master puppeteer).

I think it's interesting, but maybe I am a nerd. If you want to know my thoughts on the more mundane, go to myspace.

Welcome, and bear with me as I try to keep to a schedule of regular posting...