Open The Dialogue

• Say what you will about Gizmodo’s “prank” at CES, creating an ad for a manilla case for the new Macbook Air is pretty darn funny. (CT)
• This year’s Super Bowl advertisers are not building on last year’s increase in the number of consumer-generated spots. Only one or two are doing anything in this area, whereas last year’s game was packed with spots that came in via contests and other programs. (CT)
• If you’re interested in participating in the sequel to the blogger-generated Age of Conversation book, Greg Verdino has the details on how you can get your contribution in. (CT)
• Joseph Jaffe is in full deadly sarcasm mode in congratulating a random Facebook user for becoming the face of Blockbuster’s ad shown to him on the site. (CT)
• To the surprise of only those handful that didn’t catch the rumors circulating last month, Robert Scoble has left PodTech for Fast Company, where he will help build out FastCompany.tv. (CT)
• And in what has to be one of the more debatable uses of social media to improve society, we find Chickipedia (it’s in Beta!), which promises to do for women what Digg does for your blog posts. Except in a slightly more misogynistic manner. [via Thrillist] (TB)

Last week a report was released showing the extent to which reporters and traditional journalists felt their field was being impacted by bloggers, citizen journalists and other new media creators.

According to the survey that formed the report, 74 percent of journalists say new media outlets have “very” or “somewhat” effect on the speed of the reporting they do. So we can conclude from that, it seems, that journalists are feeling the eyeballs being trained on them and are speeding up their processes in order to make sure they get the story first.

But only 43 percent (and I say “only” lightly since that’s a pretty good-sized chunk of respondents) say that new media has had similar levels of impact on the quality of news coverage. 56 percent say little to no impact on quality has been felt.

The story ends with the author of the study saying journalists are at the very least turning to blogs for context and new ideas or angles for their own coverage, a topic I opined on before, bemoaning the fact that while they may get ideas and information on blogs, they rarely link out to or otherwise credit the bloggers.

Whatever impact journalists might feel blogs and new media in general is having, the tea leaves are aligning in such a way that it’s impossible to not see the tidal wave rolling around the bend.

(Mixed metaphor skillz: I haz dem)

Consider that political blogger James Pindell is leaving the Boston Globe for ThePoliticker, a new national network of such blogs. At the site a series of state-specific blogs will be brought together to form national coverage of the political arena.

Or that The New York Times of all papers is now openly soliciting for user-submitted photos of polling places during the primaries.

Or that magazine publishers are increasing the number of online features like social networking, games, and videos they roll out each year that not only make the sites more sticky but also allow for some creation of content by the visitor.

Or that this election cycle is featuring an incredible amount of new-media/old-media partnerships as each outlet looks to tap the other’s audience.

In an interview with New York Times “Bits” blogger Saul Hansell, he makes the case that blogging is not so very different from traditional journalism, at least not in the tools themselves. It’s the person wielding the tools and how they’re used that make some blogs – or even individual posts on a blog – what they are. Hansell acknowledges that the journalism world has changed to some extent because of the ubiquity of online publishing tools but that the worth of the outlet is determined more by the content than it is by the platform that content is published through.

Former Newsweek CEO Rick Smith, on the other hand, isn’t thrilled with how so many people with such easy access to publishing tools has devalued the news his magazine and others traffic in. Smith says that so much of the media people are now consuming is made up of opinion and not facts that the reporting is losing importance to readers – and the advertisers who want to be attached to breaking news.

I find more agreement with Hansell’s comments then I do with anything else. It’s always the content and the intent of the writer that trumps everything else. If someone puts out good stuff – be it audio, video or text – it will gain an audience and be taken seriously. If the content they’re producing is found to provide better context, be more relevant or in some other way more deeply and meaningfully connect with the audience then it will win the battle for eyeballs.

Instead of complaining over the injustice of consumer-generated content taking readers away from the reporting an established outlet does, it would be better for those editors to look at what they might not be providing to the audience and seek to address that shortcoming. Change. Adapt. Improve.

But still let your readers and other experts participate in the conversation. Allow comments on story and look to see who’s linking to you. Despite all the resources a newspaper or magazine might have (at least those resources that have survived the most recent round of budget cuts) there’s still going to be someone out there with a different take on any given story. They might live in the neighborhood you’re covering and know what their Alderman has just said on an issue. They might work in the industry and know that X was a direct result of W.

Traditional media no longer exists in a vacuum. They have to compete harder than ever for readers and advertisers. But there’s too much “Well we’re better” being proclaimed and not enough “Well we’re better” being practiced. The determination of your quality – whether it be media, consumer-packaged goods or anything else – comes from the number of people who shell out their money for what it is you’re producing.

(Afterward: I had this all written when I saw this pop-up – “How to get a job in journalism.” Lots of good stuff in there for the aspirational.)

“Relevancy” is a word that’s thrown around a lot these days. Ads online are “contextually relevant” to the content they appear next to. Brands strive to remain relevant to customers who have many (a plethora?) of choices in whatever category that brand operates in.

Relevance to the mind of the consumer is, like trust, something that needs to be earned. And like trust it needs to be earned time and time again, at every touchpoint through which the brand interacts with its audience.

All of that is especially true when we’re talking about media choices. Established players need to work harder than ever to remain relevant to an audience that sees more of what they’re looking for in blogs and other outlets created by people who they feel a connection to.

So what is a media company to do?

1. Start your own blog: Seems like every media outlet is going bloggy. Inc. just launched four new ones to add to their existing roster of blogs that cover a variety of business niches. The Chicago Tribune, like other papers, has a ton that roughly replicate parts of the paper. Creating journalist-produced blogs is great since it can add depth and personality to news coverage. But it’s also important for these writers to join the larger community writing about their beat (whatever it is there will be one). That’s the kind of practice that brings about more readership, more engagement and ultimately leads to trust and relevance. Blogs do not exist in a vacuum and so their writers need to be commenting elsewhere, linking out generously and otherwise acting like a part of a village.
2. Pay attention to what others are doing: Entertainment news brands like Entertainment Tonight have found themselves flanked online by TMZ and others and are only now looking for ways to catch up. I’m sorry to say but it’s probably too late. The online audience is now turning to sites like TMZ and others for their celebrity gossip and not ET. Established players have a finite window of opportunity to mimic developments by upstarts before the audience decides those established brands apparently aren’t interested in servicing this particular need and move their attention elsewhere. They’ve essentially broken the trust and it’s harder to earn BACK then it is to earn in the first place.
3. Recognize that online is its own entity: If you’re looking at your website simply as a way to gain print subscribers (or TV viewers or anything else) then the online strategy you have is probably not going to work out. There’s no halfway here. If you’re faking it and don’t seem to be fully committed to being an online outlet the audience will be able to sense that a mile away. That sort of thinking also likely means you’re not interested in playing in the larger sandbox, resulting in no one sending traffic your way, no one interacting on the site (what’s the point?) and just getting little to no traction in general. The web needs to be more than simply a means to an end, it needs to be the end itself.
4. Don’t mess with the trust of others: Whether you’re CBS looking to utilize Digg to expand online content, a newspaper who adds Sphere links to stories or anyone else, don’t mess with the success of an existing brand in order to bend it to your control. If you’re really interested in harnessing the power of something the audience is using and trusting then the best approach to meshing it into your business is to do so in a hands-off manner. Don’t try to game the system, don’t try to utilize control over how its used and don’t – and this is the most important part – honk off the existing user base. That’s a good way to make sure that powerful tool you’re integrating loses almost all its power, defeating the purpose of the purchase or partnership.
5. Go where people already are: You can hope and pray and strategize all you want, but the simple truth is that the Internet is now simply too big for one outlet to try and become the sole outlet for whatever content it might be we’re talking about. That’s why networks are sending their shows to Fancast, Joost, Hulu, Veoh and a multitude of other sites. The old network model simply doesn’t hold water any longer and so, if you want to reach eyeballs, you need to go where those eyeballs are. Everyone has their own favorite online video site so there’s little to be gained by signing “exclusive” deals or deciding your homepage MUST be where video is viewed.
6. Make it easy for people to take it with them: The distribution of content is not restricted to officially partnered with sites. Make it easy for people to grab video widgets, graphics or any other materials they want so they can put it on their own blogs, Facebook pages or any other site they wish. They’ve just increased the reach of your content and you didn’t have to sit in 50 hours of meetings with lawyers to make it happen. They’re site is better and your stuff reaches more eyeballs. Isn’t that the very definition of a win/win?
7. Let people play: We live in a creative society online. People are either creating their own stuff or mashing up existing works and you know what? That’s really OK. Seriously, settle down and realize that someone likes your TV show clip, movie trailer (natch) or other video enough to mess around with it a bit. Even if they’re poking fun at it a little bit, that’s simply because they’re trying to add a bit of humanity to content they considered too self-important or stuffy to be relevant to them. They’ve adjusted the content and adjusted the relevance. That’s a good thing – you should be thanking them for that, not filing C&Ds.

Based on how I’m seeing my online friends who work in and cover the tech space react, it looks like public relations folks are hitting them up left and right about anything and everything in advance of CES next week.

• Eliot has taken a novel approach in CES coverage, posting his Gmail bucket for this stuff on Flickr
• Andru Edwards is wondering what the heck is up with his email box.
• Jeremy Pepper, who’s not going to CES, is asking people to not use last year’s list.

I know we all want to do a great job for our clients at events like this, but working off canned lists these days isn’t exactly the smartest move, no?

Add Shel Holtz to the list of bloggers writing industry opinion pieces for Brandweek. His first contribution is on using social media as a customer relations contact system and is, unsurprisingly, well worth reading.