commbasics

We see rumors and conspiracy theories popping up every day and some people believe them because they fit in a particular world view. Just because it sounds true doesn't mean it is true. There is a phrase that pops up in a lot of blogs, social media posts and general conversation that really annoys me. "The media is not covering this." It doesn't matter what the socio-religio-political position of the person making the statement because it is a universal belief among all stripes that something they consider crucial is being ignored by the news media. This article is to describe why your crucial information is being ignored. You don't actually read general news media so you have no idea if it is being covered or how it is being covered if it is.   Few people actually read legitimate news sources anymore.  More people get their news from click-bait sites or gossip shows like TMZ ; partisan blogs and news commentaries; and social media posts than they do actual...

The answer these four sites have determined is not business as usual. They have to do something about the lack of integrity and conscience in their work. People are less entertained by the salacious and are hungering for believable information. We are interrupting our series about Linkedin to day to take a look at a new trend in journalism that’s arisen in the past few weeks: A concern about journalistic integrity. Yeah, yeah, I know. Everyone talks about that in the field, but where it’s come up as a trend is what is fascinating. In the past month, four popular click-bait sites that claim some sort of journalistic value have pulled back a bit and said, “maybe we are going too far with this content thing.” First,  Upworthy  made an announcement that they are moving away from curating content and focusing on original material. This is more of a business decision than an editorial one. Upworthy became the fastest growing media company on the internet by merely grabbing ...

When I started this blog it was dedicated to following the movements of journalists from one publication to another in the electronics world. That was over a decade ago. Now I cover a lot more than that but I think it is fascinating that the movement of journalists is noteworthy not because they are moving to a new publication, not that they are moving to an corporate job, but that they are now moving from one corporation to another. At the 52nd DAC (where exhibitors appear to be down 15 percent from last year) the news of the acquisition of Atrenta by Synopsys was eclipsed by word that Brian Fuller, editor in chief at Cadence Design was moving to take over content strategy at ARM ltd , and Richard Goering, dean of EDA journalism, was officially retiring. When I started this blog it was dedicated to following the movements of journalists from one publication to another in the electronics world. That was over a decade ago. Now I cover a lot more than that but I think it is fascinating...

Don Tuite formally announced his retirement on April 17 in Electronic Design magazine and it is a bitter sweet moment. Don and I converse regularly on social media and we both live in Redwood City so he's not leaving my life at the moment, but I remember when he first came to Electronic Design after many years as a working engineer.  We had a couple of phone conversations about clients and stories he was working on when we both discovered that we were in the same town. From then on, Don had an open invitation to come down, have coffee, walk in our nearby park, and even take one of our team on a flight in his private plane (which she called the thrill of a lifetime since she had always wanted to become a private pilot). The conversations about technology, politics and social change is what I really enjoyed about Don's visits and calls. We never stayed on the subject very long. Once we got the business done it was on to other topics. It was the discussion of how media was ...

Yesterday came the news that UBM is shuttering the venerable Dr. Dobb's Journal as the Brit-based corporation continues its inexorable exit from technology journalism. I know it shouldn't be surprising but this one hits close to home... literally. I was out of J-school for about a year, working part time for a local daily newspaper and desperate for a full time gig.  I heard about this new publication started by some Stanford geeks that was just a short walk from my parents house, so I decided to go down and put my resume in. Of course, I had no idea what computer programming wa so there wasn't a chance in hell of getting a job there, but I walked my resume through the door anyway.  I never did get a call. But through the years, DDJ grew up with me in the world.  I learned alot about technology through its pages, both in print until 2009 and then only online.  When they were acquired by UBM, though, I knew it was only a matter of time. As Andrew B...

Media houses assume they are still trusted and that their move to “communities” filled with sponsor-developed content has not hurt that position. That assumption is misplaced. It’s time to wrap up this series on truth and trust in content.  Over the past few posts I’ve talked about how truth appears differently to people, based on their personal perspective, and to report truth you need to view it from multiple angles.  I’ve also showed how modern media lacks the resources to gather that information adequately and how corporations, once dedicated to limiting that access through their marketing, now find it in their best interest to increase the flow of trusted information.   Let me set the table. Content marketing is not SEO . Tara Meehan’s post in iMedia Connection demonstrated how companies measure social on SEO metrics of clicks and unique visitors in the form of likes and followers, neither of which has the value they did 5 years ago.  This decreased value ...

Been up to my eyeballs developing content and conversation over at the new launched ARM Connected Community (check it out, lots of cool stuff) so I've been negligent on posting the past couple of weeks.  Then UBM Tech goes and starts blowing up the PR Agency industry earlier this week and it's probably time to do a spot analysis.  As reported in BtoB Media this week , UBM Tech's Create unit is designed to cut out the middle man in marketing services (meaning agencies and third party creative services) and provide soup-to-nuts communication chains between the companies that pay them and the customers of those companies.  In other words, you want to guarantee you will show up in a UBM Tech publication news story? Then talk to one of their sales agents.  And be prepared to pay through the nose because you will be buying event services, graphic and video services, content creation services and a bunch of other stuff.  “Historically our customers t...

Cadence Design 's Brian Fuller dusted off his personal blog on Journalism last week and asked a question he's asked before: Are journalists/editors necessary? The question comes on word of two major personnel losses at EE Times -- Dylan McGrath and Peter Clarke -- and is one that I answered in the affirmative several months ago.  But as I read his piece I was struck by one particular graf. "But there’s a sense of unhappiness in our ranks. We can crank out that content all day long, but if there’s no one to validate it or call B.S., then we become an industry of echo chambers." If that's the way veteran journalists respond to the changes in the industry, then we should despair.  But I think, now, that Brian's asking the wrong question.  Are independent publications necessary?  My answer is, not as much as in the past. This is something I've said in other ways in the past, but I think journalists have lost a bit of spine in the past ...

An article today in Forbes on ethics in sponsored content  brought back memories of our recent discussions regarding UBM Tech's methodology changes and the larger discussion about whether corporations can be expected to deliver ethical content. The article points out that Edelman has posted their own set of ethics regarding sponsored content that remarkably mirrors Footwasher Media's position:  That it isn't PR or advertising.  It's something different from what most corporate advocates practice and it must be, by nature, ethical or it loses all value. Many people in the news business have taken ethical standards for granted.  They seem to believe that they are intertwined with the genesis of journalism itself.  It isn't true.  The news business, supported by advertising began in the 1700s with Benjamin Franklin's founding of the Pennsylvania Gazette , but the separation of advertising from editorial did not appear until th...

Wow.  I've been getting an earful for several weeks about the changes in B2B media,especially in the embedded, semi and electronics industry.  One might think it's Armegeddon. One PR maven just came out and said that the efforts of companies like Cadence, Intel and Altera to produced independent content is a smoke screen and that they are "clearly" not objective.  And yet when I've heard the same thing from others, no one can produce any CLEAR evidence that the content is anything but objective... at least as objective as a human being can be. Like climate change, humans have had a significant hand in creating the current environment and, like climate change scientists, there are those who say it needs to be reversed and those (like me) who say we need to adapt.  Why do I take that position?  Because no one knows how to reverse it. Let me be very clear, here: unless advertisers decide to quadruple their ad buys, like, tomorrow, noth...

This post is likely to piss off  a lot of people, but here goes.  The discussion regarding credibility and ethics related to sponsored-content as been civil and illuminating, and has generally reaffirmed my belief that there are now many forms of valid B2B communication, even if one believes one is morally superior to all others.  The one uncomfortable part of the discussion has been the veiled accusations of moral failure for certain individuals and organizations.  So last night I did a quick content snapshot of several publications. On one side I looked at sponsored-content sites, including New Tech Press in that category.  On the other side I looked at three sites that identify themselves as independent journalism . This is what I found.  On the independent sites, there were 40 to 50 pieces of content.  On one site, eight pieces were original and the other 42 were press releases , articles paid for by sponsors, and ads.  On the second s...

My posts on the changes at UBM  Tech have been the most popular on this blog since I started it.  Lots of people have weighed in on whether it is good or bad (most say bad) but I've tried to remain neutral.  I'm maintaining that neutrality, especially after talking to UBM Tech CEO Paul Miller last week. Miller has said to me several times in the past couple of years that UBM is a marketing company, not a media company.  In last week's chat he took it to another level.  "UBM Tech is, effectively, out of the magazine business.  We are now running online communities." There have been several comments from people still in the media business expressing doubt that UBM properties can be considered ethical, reliable, trustworthy "real journalism ," etc.  But the answer to all of those concerns is... it's not a media company anymore.  Trying to measure the UBM business model against traditional journalism is like...

Don't get me wrong. The UBM sites produce good content ... right now. But you need people who know what good content is to produce it. I don't know, maybe that's the plan: force the content creators to go to the advertisers and then make them pay to put it on your titles. But what's to stop the advertisers from starting their own titles. Why should they pay? We've been following a string of thought regarding the changes at UBM properties. I've personally avoided making any judgement on the philosophical approach the company has taken.  It is what it is.  However, the recent round of layoffs really cut into the bone of their content development .  Calling Nic Mokhoff, Barbara Jorgenson and Bolaji Ojo redundant... even when you have all stars like Alex Wolfe, Patrick Mannion and Brian Fuller still on the team... is mindboggling to me. UBM has had a habit of cutting back far too much and then having to rehire too fast.  (I remember when Dave Burskey was...

You are not going to attract customers to your in-house media by stuffing your marketing content into a new bag. You are going to have to invest in content producers that have a perspective outside of your marcom. We've had some interesting interaction on this site the past couple of weeks about the future of b2b media. There is an old guard that publically espouses absolute separation of editorial and advertising but the reality is very much different.  And today comes news that Open Systems Publishing is taking the leap into custom electronic publishing. Not print, electronic. From the press release: ST. CLAIR SHORES, MI, April 19, 2013 - OpenSystems Media has announced the next generation in digital publishing - an all new, dynamic E-mag marketing program, giving clients the chance to create their own branded, lead-generating digital magazine - the Custom E-mag Initiative. The Custom E-mag Initiative, which launches today, is an interactive digital publication, featu...

Last week we started a lively discussion about how media is evolving, what is right about it and what is wrong about it.  We also touched on the issue of reliability and ethics. Today an article from emediavitals.com crossed my screen and deals with the issue of ethics and content head on.  You may not agree with it, but it's a statement of what reality is for media today. Let me say this about the issue of ethics: there is no organizational structure that can absolutely ensure content follows a particular ethical standard .  In fact, the reliance on traditional business models in media, rather than actually knowing what the professional standard is has helped hasten the demise of traditional journalism in the 21st Century.  Ethics is a personal construct. You either are or are not ethical.  No one knows for sure where you stand or what you are doing.  Only you do.  Everyone else is just assuming where you stand.  Your organizational ...