commbasics

No, really, I'm serious.  For those of us on the leading edge of the economy, 2009 looks like it is going to be great.  I'll be posting a bunch of videos on New Tech Press right after the first with the companies I met with in Scotland and there is some AMAZING stuff going on over there.  We are working with a very new and very edgy EDA company that is jumping into the social media approach to marketing, just got a verbal commitment from another one and are in serious talks with two others.   Usually, December is a dead zone for my business, but I can't remember when I've been so overloaded with work.  Heck, the only reason I have time to write this now is that I'm waiting for a video edit to complete processing. If you are a semiconductor company or a mainline EDA company that is still waiting for everything to go back to the way it was, I'm sorry;  2009 is going to suck for you.  But for those who have finally realize...

Brian Solis posted on the Pew Research poll that showed that more and more Americans are getting their national and international news from the internet than from newspapers.  Yeah, yeah, we've all heard that. But numbers are funny things.  I'm a hoarder of information.  Something about the numbers of the Pew poll rang a bell, so I start rummaging through my college papers and found a Gallup poll from 1972.   Let's compare. Pew said that 40 percent of respondents in their American poll (a little more than 1400 people) got their news primarily from the Web, as oppose to 24 percent in 2007.  Big jump.  70 percent said they got their news primarily from broadcast as opposed to 74 percent in 2007.  (Let's not quibble that 40 and 70 add up to 110, these are polls after all.)  And that 35 percent got their news from newspapers primarily (yeah, yeah now we're up to 145 percent, focus here) which is actually up 1 percent from 2...

JL Gray tweeted yesterday about a pet peeve -- ex-journalists who complain about the death of media -- and wondered if they didn't have anything better to do.  Of course, if the verification industry was going under, JL might be wondering what to do with his time, but he has a point.  It's not all bad news.  And in that light, this is for JL and all my homies. Merry Christmas to all. 

(NOTE: I just finished a post that tries to put to an end the bickering over whether blogging is journalism.    The following was written on a plane a couple of weeks ago on the way to Scotland to begin gathering material for a social media experiement.    When I wrote it I had a hard time with the context.    It works much better now that I did the post this morning, so I deleted the previous version and have replaced it with this one. There has been a lot of discussion about where media is going in this country, not just on the B2B space.    Things seem to be changing faster than anyone can keep up and being a journalist just isn't much of a career choice anymore… or some people think. There are some who think print is completely dead, but that's only true in major cities.    If you look between San Francisco and San Jose, you'll find a very lively and profitable bunch of local papers.    They don'...

I've been writing on the issue of the changes in the journalism profession and have tried to apply some definition regarding what a professional journalist is.  After looking at a lot of the discussion regarding blogging and social media, I think it might be helpful to define what a journalist is, regardless of profession.   Here are a few definitions. A journalist (also called a newspaperman) is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist A reporter. A person who makes a living reporting on news and current events; One whose occupation or profession is journalism en.wiktionary.org/wiki/journalist Someone who works in the news gathering business, such as a photographer, editor or reporter. edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/EDTEC670/Cardboard/board/p/pulitzer/pulitzer5.html Someone who writes news reports for newspapers, radio, TV etc. Also know as a correspondent ...

The announcement today that Apple is pulling out of MacWorld as a marketing vehicle should send a chill up the spine of many marketers and companies looking at trade shows to support media.  I mentioned earlier this year that trade shows are no longer as strong as they once were, at least those that rely on major corporations for support. The trade show/tech conference remains valuable for small companies that aren't putting much effort into their marketing, but they also don't contribute much to the bottom line of the events themselves. If you plan to succeed in the marketplace, you really need to start looking at doing some real marketing.

Brian Fuller goes off on the death of media today because of declining advertising.  He is wondering if there is any hope for a free press.  My partner in Austin, Joe Basques, asked the question to me today, what happens to democracy in America when we no longer have a vibrant media? Joe and Brian are rightly concerned because a vibrant objective media is import to the health of a democracy.  But from my perspective, we haven't had a vibrant objective media for 20 years.  Maybe longer. I got into the journalism business before Watergate.  Just before.  By the time I graduated, every young person n the country wanted to be an investigative journalist like Woodward and Bernstein.  There were conspiracies everywhere, they thought, and they were going to root them out.  Those fledgling journalists are today's silverbacks... and Brian is one of them.  All of them seeing the media as the anointed savior of the republic. And we have...

I'm heading to Scotland at the end the week to train a bunch of Scottish entrepreneurs how to talk to VCs (see v commventurefaire.blogspot.com ), as well as interview companies and government official for New Tech Press .  So I'll probably be going dark for  couple of weeks due to workload and not being sure how certain the Internet connections will be. But just to prepare you, there are many things afoot.  New Tech Press will be getting a significant endorsement in the next month and a series of podcasts will start showing up on the site in January.  There is a sea change coming to B2B media that's going to leave a lot of companies in the dust, but those few how figure it out will be well positioned for the coming recovery. See you on the flip side.  Alba go bragh!

Just got an email from Francine Bacchini at SCD Source (not a personal email, but a blast one) stating categorically that the online publication is still alive, even though the content volume is reduced, due to lack of revenue.  She also states that the publication is not a pay-for-play outfit and that it is still supported by advertising revenue.  That revenue comes from fees to publish news releases and collateral material, create online audio panels about your subject matter, produce sponsored special reports and supplier listings. " News coverage is NEVER guaranteed to those who advertise, and the purchase of an ad is NEVER required for news coverage to be provided. Any and all news coverage decisions continue to rest solely with the editor-in-chief to the budget level that monthly ad sales will allow. " So the model is about the same as that of every other publication; supported by advertising and the amount of content is determined by the amount of adve...

Got an email from my homeboy, Ozzie this morning. " So this morning while reading the San Jose Mercury I notice that a large amount of the articles were from the New York Times, Associate Press and the McClatchy Washington Bureau. So much for exclusive material."

Had an interesting exchange with a couple of journalists over the holiday weekend regarding the importance of exclusivity in publications.  Long story short, they still believed it was necessary.  In other words, the idea is that publications are not valid unless the majority of their content is exclusive to the publication. And I still maintain that position is not only stupid but no longer exists. First, the Internet make exclusivity nearly impossible.  As soon as something is published online it starts getting spread all over the earth.  More often then not, the exclusive content is pirated in publications based in other countries wither copyright law isn't that much of a concern.  Now there are some publishing houses, like TechInsights that still seek legal action against people pirating their stuff, even when the other publications specifically give them credit, but TechInsights makes the valid point that if they can read it elsewhere, then why re...