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...

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...

Wow.  The past few weeks have been pretty intense as I complete a white paper on Media in the 21st Century (gotta get it done because lots of people are aksing for it.) But in the past week, the conversation, from my audio interview with Kevin Morris of EE Journal has started to get a little heated.  It sort of reminds me of a scene from the movie " The Man Who Would Be King ."  As Michael Caine and Sean Connery are recruiting followers, every tribe has the same thing to say about the tribe that harrasses them. ""We don't like the people who live upstream; they keep pissing down the river on us." Nobody likes their closest competitor and it seems to be required that you blame them for serious moral turpitude .  Only the guy on top has the requirement to be magnanimous. I'm not really a competitive guy.  I have a basic moral code that makes me try to see the good in everyone and everything.  Most of the time it works...

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...

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...

Been having some interesting discussions with web managers for b2b companies.  All of them start talking about their web traffic and SEO results.  I always step into the discussion with a series of questions that ends up stumping all of them. "So.  Who are all of those people visiting your site?" They stare at me blankly for a few seconds and then respond, "Why they're our customers, of course." "Like who?" "Well, we don't know who they are specifically..." "Then how do you know they are your customers?  Maybe they're your competitors." "They might be..." Then the stumper:  "So if you really don't know who it is visiting your site, why does it matter how many there are?" It is possible to determine if the right people are visiting your site, but the problem is that most marketing managers never ask that question and so most web site managers never take the time to dig deep...

I'm going to be a panelist at the IMTC 2025 virtual conference  next week talking about the future of marketing.  This is a new organization launching new conferencing technology that is pretty interesting.  Not all the bugs are worked out (like getting stuff to work on Macs correctly but I think it has a future for many applications.  All the speakers and panelists will be broadcast, live, from multiple remote locations.  Those with the proper tools can jump in to ask questions, even on camera, or at minimum can comment and ask questions on the chat screen. My panel is at the end of the first day (Wednesday, April 7) at 12:40 EASTERN Time (9:40 PDT) For my part, I'm talking specifically about the future of media and will probably take some contrarian positions in conventional wisdom (now that's a surprise).  I look forward to "seeing" many of you there.  Let's make it lively.

options="{'widgetName':'SOTM','widgetStyle':'thumbsUp' } "> This week I started noticing something related to entertainment programming.  First, there is a new series called " Who do you think you are? " produced by Lisa Kudrow and underwritten primarily by Ancestry.com.  Second, there is predominant product placement and advertising on Dirty Jobs.  Third, Bertolli is advertising a web program featuring Marisa Tomei traveling around the culinary world of Ital y. These are just few examples of a definite trend of corporations creating concepts for media content.  This is nothing new, of course, but it's at a level not seen in decades, going back to radio programs (Remember Ovaltine and Little Orphan Annie?  Of course you don't.  Neither do I).  It's akin to the concept Brian Fuller calls Vendor as Publisher . There are those that are going to freak out about this, saying the corporate takeover of media is the death of j...

I spent sometime chatting with Jim Price and Dan Holden who are managing the social media program at Cadence Design.  Cadence has  been involved in social media and networking longer than any other EDA company, starting with the online version of CDNLive, and one of the more experimental, including their relationship with Xuropa .  I have to give them kudos for their willingness to explore as well as make a place for traditional journalists in their efforts.  I'll let you listen to this edited version of the conversation (it was 30 minutes long) and will be making some comments in a few days. Cadence social media

Last week, I closed with a mention to the invention of moveable type as a devastating technology.  And it was.  It was the beginning of true mass media.  Quoting from Wikipedia: "Compared to woodblock printing , movable type pagesetting was quicker and more durable for alphabetic scripts. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts . The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type, and printing presses rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance , and later all around the world . Today, practically all movable type printing ultimately derives from Gutenberg's movable type printing, which is often regarded as the most important invention of the second millennium. [2] " So I'm not the only one who thinks so.   Moveable type made it possible for the middle class to afford to own a library.  In f...

Brian Fuller came out of the blocks today with what I consider devastatingly good news.  Apparently the Federal Trade Commission has taken a look at the state of the media and decided that both bloggers and companies are going to be libel for claims made in blogs and websites when they are not covered in traditional media.   In the past, companies could use the "buyer beware" defense because it was possible, in the days of a vibrant media, to do enough research to know when companies were ringing the BS bell.  But now, companies and bloggers will have to prove their statements unless they can show that there was objective coverage available to the market.  If they can't and the product doesn't work as stated, the customer can sue. Can you imagine what this is going to do to news releases?  

We're all dealing with the changing paradigm of mass communication forced on us by economic forces and the potential of the Internet.  No one has an answer to the question:  "What the heck to we do now."  Correction: Lots of people have answers, but none of them actually work yet. What gives me comfort is my knowledge of history.  I sit back and see what is going on and know that we have gone through it before.  To prove it, I'm going to take us on a walk over the next few weeks on the history of mass communication.  Let's look at ... Cave Drawings This might be the first form of mass media that we know.  It predates effective language and was used to record what small communities considered to be historic events and preserve some sense of progress among primitive man.  During this time, individual artists rose up within family groups, not unlike leaders that Seth Godin speaks of, who developed their skills for the be...

Just when you think that the paradigm has shifted, you find out that it has fallen flat on its face. Today, a report comes out of the Associated Press about how a Irish sociology student tested the journalistic integrity of traditional journalism, the blogosphere, and Wikipedia.  Guess what?  Journalism and blogger failed and Wikipedia passed. Shane Fitzgerald posted phony quote on Wikipedia, attributed the the recently departed French composer Maurice Jarre on March 28.  The fiction went almost directly to blogs around the world and several newspaper websites. The quote had no form of verification on Wikipedia, which is always a red flag, but the bloggers leaned on their belief that if it is on the web it must be true and lifted the "quote" directly.  In fact, it is still floating around the world as being true, even after being expunged from Wikipedia. Only The Guardian in the UK has owned up to the research error, while others are blaming Fitzg...

About three years ago I attended a financial conference where a big VC stated, categorically, that the reason they were not investing in semiconductor or EDA startups was because there was a lack of informational coverage to validate research.  In other words, because media coverage of the industries had significantly degraded, they couldn't afford to pull the trigger on investment. This same VC firm has invested heavily in Web 2.0 and green technology over the past three years and you can see why.  There is lots of coverage on those areas.  There is pretty much nothing but coverage on those areas.  The only coverage on semi and EDA is negative. You might say that that is the media's fault because, after all, the semiconductor coverage is all about the economics of the industry, not the technology so it's naturally going to be bad.  But I would like to point out that the the green Web 2.0 industries has yet to turn a profit, yet the media contin...

There is a common belief among the tech industries that the most important person to talk to is the engineer.   Magazines like EDN , EE Times , Electronic Design and Electronic Products are traditionally dedicated to the electronics engineer and providing "solutions" to the engineer's problems.   They are right, of course, that the engineer has to be convinced before a product can be sold, but the problem is that in today's economy, the engineer isn’t the final decision maker.   That decision rests with the CFO.   And they aren't buying anything right now because no one is telling them what they want to hear. The CFO asks only one important question and, invariably, the head of engineering answers that question wrong.   And the reason they answer the question wrong is because the vendor's marketing efforts are geared only to answer the questions the engineers ask, so the engineers are not prepared to answer the CFO correctly. Wha...

The cornerstone of the VComm program was the understanding that most companies looking for VC financing really have no idea what a VC wants to hear.   Two years ago I sat with a group of investors at a major conference and listened to them complain about the quality of the material and, in the end, how useless it was. Understand this:   There are, at any given time according to Dow Jones, 5000 tech startups in the US alone that are seeking funding.   But less than half of those companies have any credible research into their technology market.   The press covering those markets has shrunk almost to the point of non-existence.   The VC's are flying blind nowadays, which explains why so many are having poor returns.   What they need is real information about market potential. But most companies pitching VC's spend 90 percent of their time in front of them explaining how great their technology is.   Get a clue!   They know you are do...

One of the companies that presented at VComm last week was ICEPhone, who bill themselves with the unimaginative descriptor of "the Swiss Army Knife" of mobile phones.  It is really a neat gadget--a cross between a microlaptop, mobile phone, and portable game console.  I want this phone even though it runs Microsoft CE (and anyone who knows me knows that is a BIG admission). Among the benefits of being in VComm was getting a New Tech Press video interview and ICEPhone was the big winner in views on the New Tech Press site--more than 200 in the first couple of days after posting. "Only 200?!?" I hear you exclaim.  Ah, but who was among that 200?  The answer demonstrates the power of the internet, sponsored content, and highly targeted audiences. The guy running PR for ICEPhone in the UK is a young college student who has been playing around with viral internet applications.  He took that NTP video and sent it to a few key media people. ...

It's been a while since I did a podcast ... at least on this site.  Been doing a ton of video for New Tech Press the past couple of months.  But this is one I've been waiting to get done for some time. Paul Miller at TechInsights sat down with me just before the Christmas break and talked frankly about the state of B2B media, where it's going, how it's going to affect his own company and EE Times specifically, and endorsing the use of content from sponsored-media sites like New Tech Press in its website and maybe even pages.  For those wondering when media was going to come back to the way it used to be, get ready for disappointment.   But according to Paul, the future is getting clearer and brighter. 

Back in my salad days, journalism students were required to read Marshall McLuhan's the Medium is the Message, and understand the difference between hot and cold media. Today, I can't find a single communicator under the age of 50 who knows what I am talking about.   I find that mildly amusing because that understanding is crucial to being able to "get" social media.   Especially if you are between the age of 30 and 50 and are trying to figure out what social media is "for." Let me explain:   A cool medium is something that requires an action on your part.   Print is a cool medium because you have to physically pick it up and put your brain into gear to absorb the information.   A hot medium is something that allows you to sit, disengage your brain and let the medium fill your head.   Movies are hot.   TV is hot.   Radio is kinda lukewarm because at least you have to imagine what is going on.   Podcasting,...

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.