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The Wayback Machine - http://web.archive.org/web/20110826045133/http://www.buzzmachine.com/
What’s at work here is the myth of legacy media, that every reader sees every ad thus every advertiser pays for every reader … thus every reader is equally valuable and it’s worth losing money holding onto any reader.
Those aren’t the economics of online, where advertisers pay only for the readers who see (or click on) their ads, and where abundance robs publishers of pricing power over their once-scarce inventory.
My favorite illustration of this is the Star Ledger killing its stock tables in 2001, shaving $1 million of costs and losting only 12 subscribers.That means that prior to this, the paper was spending $83,000 per reader to hold onto them. Papers had been scared of losing one reader because, in their economics, every reader was equally valuable. But no longer. I keep urging papers to calculate the net future value of readers and decide who’s worth keeping and serving and who’s not, economically speaking.
The Tribune is losing much money on every one of those Groupon readers — not only the lost retail value of every discounted sale but also the fact that the paper no doubt was already published at a lost — that is, it costs more to produce a copy than its sold for because each reader is valuable to advertisers. But is she?
What the Tribune is also trying to do here is hold onto its critical mass. When its Sunday circulation falls below a certain level, certain lucrative advertisers — coupon and circular advertisers — will stop using papers as their means of distribution. That will be a kick in the kidneys almost equal to the creation of craigslist and it’s coming any day. In fact, it’s already starting … that, surely, is why the Tribune is so desperately trying to hold onto every reader.
But those economics will quickly disintegrate. Watch it happen….
There’s a hubbub brewing over privacy and Facebook in Germany — and, not for the first time, there’s misinformation involved. So I got on the phone to Facebook to get technical facts.
First, the news: Thilo Weichert, head of the office for data protection in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, issued a press release (conveniently translated into English) attacking and essentially outlawing the Facebook “Like” button on sites, telling them to take down the button — and, oddly, their fan pages — and threatening them with 50,000? fines. He declared that “Like” violates German and European law because it sends data about users back to Facebook in the U.S. He went so far as to advise German users not to click on “Like” and even not to set up Facebook accounts.
I contacted Facebook and just spoke with the head of the platform, Carl Sjogreen, and the chief European spokesman, Stefano Hesse, to understand what really happens. This is what Sjogreen said:
Obviously, when you click on a “Like” button, you are telling the world you like something and so, of course, your identity and your affection are recorded and published at Facebook. If you are signed into Facebook when you visit a site with the “Like” button, obviously, Facebook’s servers will act on knowing who you are because it will tell you which of your friends also publicly liked this site.
In the case Weichert seems to be aiming at, If you are not signed into Facebook, your IP address will be sent back to Facebook but then your IP address is sent back to the servers of Google+ buttons, comment systems, and ads of all types. “That’s how browsers work,” Sjogreen said. “We don’t use that information in any way to create a profile for the user, as has been alleged here.”
Facebook send sites data in aggregate so they can see, for example, click-through rates for the “Like” button in various pages. Facebook erases IP data after 90 days. It does something else to further anonymize I hope to tell you about later.
“The only time ‘Like’ button information is associated with a particular person is when you are signed into Facebook and click,” Sjogreen said.
I see no violation of privacy, no sneaky stealing of user information worthy of this action and press release – which, by the way, Weichert issued without taking to Facebook. Indeed, Hesse told me that Facebook has been working with Weichert’s counterpart in Hamburg and that that office, he says, is pleased with what Facebook is doing.
But Weichert is a grandstander. I saw that first-hand when I debated him in a panel set up by the Green party in Berlin, where he attacked not only Google but his constituents — the people he is supposedly trying to protect — who use it: “As long as Germans are stupid enough to use this search engine,” he spat, “they don’t deserve any better.” He went farther, comparing Google with China and Iran. “Google’s only interest is to earn money,” he said, as if shocked. That theme continues in his Facebook attack, where he complains that the company is worth more than $50 billion. No, he’s not from the Communist part.
Earlier today, I went to search GoogleNews for “Facebook” and “Schleswig-Holstein” to find news on the event but found something else interesting, which I discussed — to considerable controversy — in a Google+ post: A politician from Schleswig-Holstein just resigned in shame after confessing to an affair via Facebook with a 16-year-old girl. To me, there’s an obvious paradox there: Aren’t government officials trying first to protect the privacy and thus safety of our young people? Yet here is a government official exploiting a young girl via Facebook. Facebook is not the threat here; the government official is. In my earlier post, I said that in some states in the U.S., this would be statutory rape. Much upset ensued. But I still don’t get it. Who’s protecting whom from whom?
This is why I focused so much on Germany in my book, Public Parts, because it is grappling with privacy and technology in ways that are similar to other cultures, only amplified and skewed.
In any case, I wanted to get to the facts here and that’s why I’m posting this.
The Google/Motorola deal is lawyer repellent. Or rat poison, if you prefer. It is a tragic and wasteful by product of our screwed-up patent system. Just this year, $18 billion is being spent not on innovation and invested not in entrepreneurship and growth but instead in fending off lawsuits. Damn straight, we need patent reform.
Having said that, this is good for Google and Android and its ecosystem. That’s why HTC, LG, and Sony all released statements praising the deal. Google isn’t going into competition with them. Google is buying them protection to defend against Apple, Nokia, and other patent holders and legal thugs.
The net result is that Android can now explode even more than it has already. I imagine — I hope — there were other companies in other fields — cars, appliances, TV, devices of all sorts — that were waiting for some security so they could add connectivity to their devices, using Android.
Google wins because, as I’ve been saying, the real war here is over signal generation: Google, Facebook, and to an extent Apple and telcos and others want us to generate signals about ourselves — who we are, where we are, what we want, who we know, what we’re looking for, where we’re going — so they can better target their content, services, and advertising. Mobile is a great signal generator.
But I’ve also been saying that mobile will become a meaningless word as we become connected everywhere, all the time. Who’s to say or care whether we’re connected with a phone as we walk, through our car, on our couch via the TV, in the kitchen via the iFridge, or at the desk (remember that?). Mobile=local=me.
I disagree with those who say that Google had hardware envy vis a vis Apple. Google went into the hardware business and was smart enough to get out. I imagine that Google will operate Motorola as an independent entity; it won’t become Googley. Indeed, I can imagine Google spinning off the product arm, keeping the rat poison.
So this is a good if unfortunate deal to have to be done. That’s my take.
The UK government is contemplating tactics against the UK riots that set dangerous precedents.
In Parliament today, PM David Cameron said authorities and the industry were looking at “whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.” Well, at least he did post it as a question of right and wrong.
It would be wrong, sir. Who is to say what communication and content should be banned from whom on what platform? On my Blackberry? My computer? My telephone? My streetcorner?
Cameron also said, according to a Guardian tweet, that he would look at asking online services to take down offending photos. Again, who decides that content is offending? If you give authority to government and telco and social companies to censor that, what else can and will they censor?
Beware, sir. If you take these steps, what separates you from the Saudi government demanding the ability to listen to and restrict its BBM networks? What separates you from Arab tyrannies cutting off social communication via Twitter or from China banning it?
This regulatory reflex further exposes the danger of British government thinking it can and should regulate media. Beware, my friends. When anyone’s speech is not free, no one’s speech is free. I refer the honorable gentleman to this. Censorship is not the path to civility. Only speech is.
There is also debate about tactics to restrict anonymity in public. Cameron wants police to have the authority — in certain circumstances — to require face masks to be removed: instead of a burka ban, a hoodie ban. One MP in the current debate also suggested rioters be sprayed with indelible ink. In addition, Cameron said that CCTV pictures — and, one assumes, pictures on social networks and the afore-derided BBM — would be used to identity and arrest rioters. I understand the motive and goal to control crime. I don’t necessarily oppose the moves, for I argue in Public Parts that what one does in public is public.
But again, be aware of the precedents these actions would set. Be aware how they could be used under other circumstances. In Public Parts, I compare the use of social media to identity Egyptian secret police from ID photos taken from their liberated headquarters with the use of social media to identity protestors in Iran. A tool used for good can be used for bad.
The bottom line of these debated tactics would be this: Anonymity would be banned in public. It would require that one be public in public.
Right now, online, we are having many debates about anonymity and identity.
So now we need to look at how the public street in London compares with the public street on the internet, on Facebook, Twitter, BBM, blogs, and newspapers. What government does on the streets it could do on the internet, and vice versa. Each is a form of a public.
I was just writing a post defending the need for anonymity and pseudonymity online for the use of protestors and whistleblowers and the oppressed and vulnerable. I was also writing to defend social services that try to require real identity as their prerogative to set the tone of their services (rather than discussing that in the context of Facebook or Google+, look at it in the context of, say, LinkedIn, where pseudonymity would rob it of its essential utility and value). I was going to suggest that services such as Google+ find a middle ground where real identity is encouraged — even with verification of true identity as an optional service — but pseudonymity is permitted, with more power given not to the service but to the user to filter people and media and comments on that basis (allow me as a user to, for example, read the comments of people who have the courage to stand behind their words with their names). There is much nuance to be grappled with in these issues and in these new circumstances.
But now come the UK riots and the debate over what to do about them, raising these same issues in a new context — the street — with a new player: the government. The proper debate, I argue in Public Parts, should be held not in the specifics of these matters but instead as principles.
Restricting speech cannot be done except in the context of free speech.
When debating public identity, one must decide what a public is.
These are not easy issues, any of them, in any of these contexts. So I would urge my British friends to be careful about enabling their government to impose restrictions on the public.
UPDATE: This is now the topic of my South by Southwest proposal. Please go vote for and comment on it here.
We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future.
Holding out blind hope for the magical appearance of new jobs and the reappearance of growth in the economy is a fool’s faith. Politicians who think that merely chanting the incantation “jobs, jobs, jobs” will bring them and the economy back are fooling us if not themselves. When at least a tenth of Americans are out of work, for Wall Street to get momentarily giddy at the creation of 117k jobs is cognitive dissonance at its best. No one can make jobs out of thin air. Jobs will not come back. A few new jobs reappearing won’t fix anything.
Our new economy is shrinking because technology leads to efficiency over growth. That is the notion I want to explore now.
Pick an industry: newspapers, say. Untold thousands of jobs have been destroyed and they will not come back. Yes, new jobs will be created by entrepreneurs — that is precisely why I teach entrepreneurial journalism. But in the net, the news industry — make that the news ecosystem — will employ fewer people in companies. There will still be news but it will be far more efficient, thanks to the internet.
Take retail. Borders. Circuit City. Sharper Image. KB Toys. CompUSA. Dead. Every main street and every mall has empty stores that are not going to be filled. Buying things locally for immediate gratification will be a premium service because it is far more efficient — in terms of inventory cost, real estate, staffing — to consolidate and fulfill merchandise at a distance. Wal-Mart isn’t killing retailing. Amazon is. Transparent pricing online will reduce prices and profitability yet more. Retail will be more efficient.
The housing market has imploded and is not likely to reinflate for a long time to come. So the market for new homes will not recover and construction jobs will not come back.
I can and will keep going, but later. Technology and related trends, including globalization, lead to efficiency in companies and sectors. Transparent markets lead to lower prices. Digital abundance leads to both.
All this has profound implications on both business strategy and policy, but we’re not facing these issues as, instead, our leaders keep trying to resuscitate old markets and old ways. Bailing out banks only transferred debt from them to governments (read: citizens), leading to Europe’s mess. Bailing out GM gave life support to an industry that deserves disruption. Fighting over debt in Congress — and reducing the markets’ faith in the markets, leading to this week’s mess — isn’t the issue. The question is, what should government be doing — where it should be investing — to improve our lot in the future as the size of government with the taxes available will inevitably shrink with the economy.
Don’t fill potholes — or rather. don’t think that will fix the economy. Instead, we should be investing in the entrepreneurs who will create jobs — if fewer — and wealth — greater, thanks to platforms and efficiencies. Invest in education of our youth and our unemployed. Invest in efficiency — energy efficiency, for example.
As I say, these are ideas I want to explore now and I hope you’ll help me by sharing yours.
: MORE DISCUSSION: There is an amazing discussion going on not only in the comments here but also at Google+ here.
Paul Graham of Y Combinator led off another amazing debate at HackerNews here.
Thanks to all this amazing discussion, I just substituted my South by Southwest talk from publicness to this topic. Thank you all for the inspiration and for pushing the ideas here.
This is the next topic I want to work on, as I said. So this discussion is invaluable to me as I explore these notions. Again, thank you.
: Here is the text I resubmitted to SXSW under the title, “Honey, we shrunk the economy.”
: See also Rob Paterson’s post on the end of the job and corporation as we knew them. And another thoughtful post from Ben Casnocha.
: Jason Calacanis riffs on the idea of creating a retraining program that would give people the opportunity to move to new jobs.
: Eric Reasons, who really kept me going on this topic when I first raised it on my blog a few years ago, answers the questions in my SXSW talk proposal.
The beauty of a hashtag is that no one can control it.
A hashtag is not like a marketing, media, or political message, whose creator thinks it can be created and controlled. It is not like the namespace in domains, on Facebook and Google+, or in trademarks, for anyone can use a hashtag without permission or payment. It’s not like a dictionary with one definition. It’s not like a word on an FCC list that prohibits or chills its use.
A hashtag is open and profoundly democratic. People gather around a hashtag. They salute it and spread it or ignore it and let it wither. They imbue it with their own meaning. The creator quickly and inevitably loses control of it.
That is what the #fuckyouwashington escapade has taught me: the power and importance of the hashtag as a platform. Hashtags allow us to gather around topics, events, and actions across platforms. Hashtags are in our control.
It’s quaint that some folks lobbied to get me to change the hashtag, as if I controlled it. Some scolded me for not scolding Congress or the GOP or the Democrats or the White House. But what was fascinating about the #fuckyouwashington is how it brought out users’ opinions — rather than mine — on why Washington is fucked up and by whom. Soon after the hashtag got out there, people starting tweeting “#fuckyouwashington for…”, filling in their grievances.
Humorless Washingtonians got pissed at me for supposedly maligning their fair if stifling city. How inane.
Some wanted me to clean up the hashtag because it offended them. But as I tweeted in response, #dagnabbitwashington would not have had the same impact. It was the profanity about profane politics that made it take off, I believe.
No less than John Perry Barlow (@jpbarlow) and @anonyops tried to change the hashtag to better assure it could get past filters some suspect Twitter puts on its trending topics list. “The hashtag is now #FYW,” they and others decreed. But they made the mistake of thinking they could control this any more than I could. I didn’t much want the discussion to become forked, but I didn’t have anything to say about it either.
By the way, some Twitter folks told Jeff Howe (@crowdsourcing) that Twitter doesn’t filter the Trending list for naughty words. But then, as he points out, their protests don’t explain this and why #fuckyouwashington didn’t make the list.
I don’t much care about the trending list in any case. It is a product of mass-media-think: Only the biggest win, goes that thinking. But online, even the biggest topics are small. Though I think Twitter should be transparent with its statistics, we don’t need it to be, as Topsy, Trendsmap, and Trendistic can count for us. According to Topsy.com, by latest count, #fuckyouwashington produced 84k tweets. In mass-media audience terms, that’s tiny. But then again, how many of those opinions would ever have made it into a letters-to-the-editor column in a newspaper? 84k opinions got expressed and seen by some untold community thanks to the coalescing power of the hashtag.
We don’t want an institution to hold our conversation hostage — not media, not Twitter. Hashtags can free us from that fence. Through discussion around hashtags, we can hear the voice of the people, unmediated.
#fuckyouwashington got some attention in media — but after the fact. Media are no longer needed to create critical mass. Indeed, appearances on CBS and NBC network news and on the sites of the Washington Post, Reuters, and even German papers didn’t cause spikes in the usage of the hashtag, which is now pretty much petered-out.
Note that well: media now follow the public conversation. That’s as it should be, according to scholar James Carey, via Jay Rosen, who explained his view: “The press does not ‘inform’ the public. It is ‘the public’ that ought to inform the press. The true subject matter of journalism is the conversation the public is having with itself.” That natural state of the relationship of media-to-public is made possible by the hashtag.
The hashtag was invented by Chris Messina only three years ago. So far, its power has been limited to Twitter. But I see an opportunity to expand its use and its empowerment the more it is supported on other platforms. When Google+ finally gets search and when it releases its API, it would be wonderful to see it enable users to easily enter tags and cluster conversations around them. There’s an opportunity to use tag data to learn more about the topicality of conversations and content all around the net, on Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, blogs, Flickr, YouTube, maybe Facebook. There’s our chance to limit the power of these silos.
All that from the humble hashtag.
: SEE ALSO: Adrian Holovaty’s and Chris Messina’s discussion about hashtags and Google+.
This morning in an otherwise carefully bleeped-and-blurred segment, the CBS Early Show reported on the #fuckyouwashington hashtag. At the end, on my Mac screen, they showed the Trendsmap display of the hashtag popping up, like Howard Beale’s windows, across America:
For a flash, you can see the word “fuck” Indeed, you can see it often. This is the very definition of a fleeting expletive.
Will the FCC and its henchmen dare to file a complaint? Do they have a sufficient sense of irony to stop them?
I have fought against the FCC and its unconstitutional efforts to restrict free speech. Here is a report on a FOIA I filed that showed that the FCC levied its then-largest fine ever on the basis of only three complaints (nevermind the damned spam links in the archive). When I testified at the FCC about the future of news, I began with the word “Bababooey” as a reminder that the FCC had chilled Howard Stern’s speech — his political speech — with its harassment and fines. I defend the word “bullshit” as political speech — and here will defend “fuck” as political speech as well.
Even as the Supreme Court reviews the FCC’s fleeting expletives doctrine, will it have the balls to go prosecute one more?
Rupert Murdoch is the last of a breed, a breed he and his company will be responsible for killing in an act of mogulcide.
The Economist agrees that he is the last mogul and says it is time for him to go. It also says that media need a strong News Corp. There we certainly disagree. Autos don’t need a strong GM. What media needs — and is getting — is disruption of its overly strong institutions. The death of the mogul in news is something to celebrate, and eulogize.
I’ve worked for many moguls: latter-day Hearsts (San Francisco Examiner); Robert Maxwell (New York Daily News); Murdoch (TV Guide and Delphi Internet); and the Newhouses (though I’ll argue they’re not very mogully because they don’t fit most of these criteria). What makes a media mogul?
1. He controls his (sorry, but there are no hers here) company.
2. His company controls much of a market.
3. He hungers for influence in politics and society.
4. He lusts for attention.
5. He is narcissistic but also un-self-aware; the combination inspires endless anecdotes about his ego.
Murdoch, Maxwell, and the Hearsts, when they still managed, fit those criteria. This is not to say that nonmoguls are necessarily better. At the vaunted Time Inc., for example, an insidious culture of task forces, insider politics, and indecision led to more corporate interference than I have seen at any company I’ve worked in (I’ll tell those stories another day). And there’s an advantage to moguls: You know who’s in charge; you get decisions.
No matter. They are soon to be extinct, for many reasons. Media institutions’ lock on content creation and distribution is over. The risk and cost of starting new, large-scale media properties is too great. Control of scarcity in closed markets led to moguls’ and conglomerates’ consolidation; now, in an abundant economy, what used to be their assets are now their liabilities. When consolidation does occur, it’ll be through private equity and hedge funds, not wealthy individuals. And, as we are seeing today, genes dilute.
Who could our post-modern news moguls be? Nick Denton? Perhaps, on a smaller scale, but he can’t control his market. Arianna Huffington? Only in the desire for influence. Michael Arrington? Like Huffington, his boss, he no longer controls his company. Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al aren’t media companies; they’re platforms (which is what media companies should be, but aren’t). No Rupert is our dodo.
Some lament their passing. Ryan Chittum admirably assembles the mourners. The Wall Street Journal’s apologia will be a classic of the form. There’s this absurd defense of moguls in the [cough] Washington Times, arguing that without them, who’ll pay newspapers’ bills? Conrad Black, inmate, argued that prosecuting Murdoch for foreign crimes in the U.S. would be “the end of the rule of law in the United States” and be tantamount to homicide.
I say there are many reasons to dance on the moguls’ grave. First is the corruption exposed in London, the institutional incest between news media and government, and the pernicious, unfair, and unbalanced influence on public policy. Next is the breaking up of the mogul’s monopoly control of the means of distribution, now that we all have a Gutenberg press in our pockets. We may at last recapture our public sphere.
* * *
Ah, but how can we attend the moguls’ wake without hoisting a glass and telling a tale or two? Here are a few of mine…
At the San Francisco Examiner (and Chronicle), I was Sunday news editor, producing the Ex’s share of a widely vilified weekend paper. It was our burden to run weekly editorial by William Randolph Hearst, Jr. We were to refer to him at WHR. Part of my job was to edit his tomes. Problem was, they made no fucking sense. I didn’t know it, but I was witnessing the twilight of the family’s control. WRH was tolerated but soon professional managers ran the company for the family.
When I walked out of Entertainment Weekly in a huff and went to the New York Daily News as Sunday editor, a wag on the city desk said, “man, you just jumped from the frying to the microwave.” How right he was. We suffered through a brutal strike and a change of ownership to Robert Maxwell. It may not speak well for my character that he liked me.
Oh, do I have stories about him. I’ll share this: One day, Maxwell called me and my boss, Jim Willse, into his suite (the “Married to the Mob Suite,” Willse called it) at the Waldorf Astoria. Too bad this blog doesn’t have a soundtrack, so you’ll have to read his lines in your head with an overlarge, acquired British accent. “JAH-VIS,” Maxwell bellowed, “We must take charge of the color GREEN! I tell you, GREEN is sweeping Europe.” The thing about moguls, is that they’re often right; that’s how they got to be moguls. He decreed that I was in charge of marketing — which would have come as a big surprise to the head of marketing — so he could order me to paint all the Daily News trucks and newsboxes green. I nodded. This is how one is ensnared into moguls’ plots. Then I called the head of circulation and gave him the proprietor’s (that’s what Maxwell wanted us to call him) order. “He’s nuts,” the circ boss said. “The paint would be worth more than the trucks!” Your problem, I said, delegating my briefly held authority. I’ll give it to them: They solved the problem by painting only the newsboxes and trucks on the route between the Daily News Building and the Waldorf green. Maxwell was satisfied, soon having much bigger problems to worry about (not enough green on his ledgers). For years afterwards, those boxes stood north of 42nd as a memorial to the mogul.
When Maxwell went overboard, in more ways than one, I escaped to TV Guide, then owned by Murdoch, and became TV critic. The closest thing I saw to editorial interference from the mogul was when the Fox sitcom Moesha premiered. My editor told me that Rupert liked it — which itself is amusing (one imagines the mighty man sitting on his chesterfield guffawing at the antics of an African-American teenager). The boss said I shouldn’t let that affect my opinion, only that I should argue my opinion well if I didn’t like it. That’s the same advice I got as a critic in general when I became one.
Otherwise, I was left alone. When Murdoch bought Dow Jones, I told this anecdote to journalists to say that I’d seen far less interference from Murdoch than I saw from executives at Time Inc. I use this anecdote today to demonstrate that I have not been a reflexive Murdoch basher; I am more recently appalled.
There we see Murdoch’s advantage and disadvantage: He let his trusted managers do as they pleased …. but they tried to please him. That’s the argument in favor of his direct culpability in the hacking scandal: He fostered a seat-of-the-pants culture where people didn’t have to be told to go too far, where — as he demonstrated before Parliament — the Murdochs themselves do not take responsibility.
But that’s over now. Murdoch has lost the influence his newspapers gave him. He and may lose control of his company. His heirs will not take it over. The mogul is extinct. The kind of big media institution he built will follow him. Lovely chaos will follow. It’s called democracy.
So I was angry. Watching TV news over dinner — turning my attention from scandals in the UK to those here and frankly welcoming the distraction from the tragedies in Norway — I listened to the latest from Washington about negotiations over the debt ceiling. It pissed me off. I’d had enough. After dinner, I tweeted: “Hey, Washington assholes, it’s our country, our economy, our money. Stop fucking with it.” It was the pinot talking (sounding more like a zinfandel).
That’s all I was going to say. I had no grand design on a revolution. I just wanted to get that off my chest. That’s what Twitter is for: offloading chests. Some people responded and retweeted, which pushed me to keep going, suggesting a chant: “FUCK YOU WASHINGTON.” Then the mellifluously monikered tweeter @boogerpussy suggested: “.@jeffjarvis Hashtag it: #FUCKYOUWASHINGTON.” Damn, I was ashamed I hadn’t done that. So I did.
And then it exploded as I never could have predicted. I egged it on for awhile, suggesting that our goal should be to make #fuckyouwashington a trending topic, though as some tweeters quickly pointed out, Twitter censors moderates topics. Soon enough, though, Trendistic showed us gaining in Twitter share and Trendsmap showed us trending in cities and then in the nation.
Jeff Howe tweeted: “Holy shit, @JeffJarvis has gone all Howard Beale on us. I love it. And I feel it. Give us our future back, fuckers. #FUCKYOUWASHINGTON.” He likes crowded things. He’s @crowdsourcing. He became my wingman, analyzing the phenom as it grew: “Why this is smart. Web=nuance. Terrible in politics. Twitter=loud and simple. Like a bumper sticker. #FuckYouWashington.” He vowed: “If this trends all weekend, you think it won’t make news? It will. And a statement. #FuckYouWashington.”
And then I got bumped off Twitter for tweeting too much. Who do the think they are, my phone company? Now I could only watch from afar. But that was appropriate, for I no longer owned this trend. As Howe tweeted in the night: “Still gaining velocity. Almost no tweets containing @crowdsourcing or @jeffjarvis anymore. It’s past the tipping point. #FuckYouWashington.”
Right. Some folks are coming into Twitter today trying to tell me how to manage this, how I should change the hashtag so there’s no cussin’ or to target their favorite bad man, or how I should organize marches instead. Whatever. #fuckyouwashington not mine anymore. That is the magic moment for a platform, when its users take it over and make it theirs, doing with it what the creator never imagined.
Now as I read the tweets — numbering in the tens of thousands by the next morning — I am astonished how people are using this Bealesque moment to open their windows and tell the world their reason for shouting #fuckyouwashington. It’s amazing reading. As @ericverlo declared, “The #fuckyouwashington party platform is literally writing itself.” True, they didn’t all agree with each other, but in their shouts, behind their anger, they betrayed their hopes and wishes for America.
@partygnome said: “#fuckyouwashington for valuing corporations more than people.”
@spsenski, on a major role, cried: “#fuckyouwashington for never challenging us to become more noble, but prodding us to become selfish and hateful…. #fuckyouwashington for not allowing me to marry the one I love…. #fuckyouwashington for driving me to tweet blue.”
@jellencollins: “#fuckyouwashington for making ‘debt’ a four letter word and ‘fuck’ an appropriate response.”
@tamadou: “#fuckyouwashington for giving yourselves special benefits and telling the American people they have to suck it up or they’re selfish.”
@psychnurseinwi: “#fuckyouwashington for having the compromising skills of a 3 year old.”
I was amazed and inspired. I was also trepidatious. I didn’t know what I’d started and didn’t want it to turn ugly. After all, we had just witnessed the ungodly horror of anger — and psychosis — unleashed in Norway. I’ve come to believe that our enemy today isn’t terrorism but fascism of any flavor, hiding behind anger as supposed cause.
But at moments such as this, I always need to remind myself of my essential faith in my fellow man — that is why I believe in democracy, free markets, education, journalism. It’s the extremists who fuck up the world and it is our mistake to manage our society and our lives to their worst, to the extreme. That, tragically, is how our political system and government are being managed today: to please the extremes. Or rather, that is why they are not managed today. And that is why I’m shouting, to remind Washington that its *job* is to *manage* the *business* of government.
The tweets that keep streaming in — hundreds an hour still — restore my faith not in government but in society, in us. Oh, yes, there are idiots, extremists, and angry conspiracy theorists and just plain jerks among them. But here, that noise was being drowned out by the voices of disappointed Americans — disappointed because they do indeed give a shit.
Their messages, their reasons for shouting #fuckyouwashington and holding our alleged leaders to higher expectations, sparks a glimmer of hope that perhaps we can recapture our public sphere. No, no, Twitter won’t do that here any more than it did it in Egypt and Libya. Shouting #fuckyouwashington is hardly a revolution. Believe me, I’m not overblowing the significance of this weekend’s entertainment. All I’m saying is that when I get to hear the true voice of the people — not the voice of government, not the voice of media, not a voice distilled to a number following a stupid question in a poll — I see cause for hope.
I didn’t intend this to be anything more than spouting off in 140 profane characters. It turns out that the people of Twitter taught me a lesson that I thought I was teaching myself in Public Parts, about the potential of a public armed with a Gutenberg press in every pocket, with its tools of publicness.
* * *
For an excellent summary of the saga as it unfolded on Twitter, see Maryann Batlle’s excellent compilation in Storify, as well as Gavin Sheridan’s Storyful. CBS News Online’s What’s Trending was the first in media to listen to what was happening here. David Weigel used this as a jumping off point for his own critique of Washington and the debt “crisis” at Slate. Says Michael Duff on his blog:
Everybody knows you guys are running the clock out, waiting for the next election. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t go on TV to scare the shit out of us every day and then expect us to wait patiently for 2012.
You can’t use words like “urgent” and “crisis” and then waste our time with Kabuki theater.
Either the situation is urgent and needs to be solved now, or it’s all just an act that can wait for 2012. This isn’t 1954, gentlemen. The voters are on to you now. We know you’re playing a game and we know you’re using us as chess pieces.
That’s why #fuckyouwashington is trending on Twitter. We’re tired of being pawns.
Every politician in Washington needs to pay attention to this outrage, and remember who they’re working for.
And then there’s this reaction from no less than Anonymous: “@jeffJarvis you’ve started a shit storm. Nice going.”
: MORE: Handelsblatt writes about the Twitter movement.
More CBS: It’s online show What’s Trending also reported on the event. Stupidly, they disable embedding of videos. That won’t help them trend, will it? But here’s an old-fashioned link.
Here’s NBC’s wimp-out presentation of #fuckyouwashington.
Today was about public relations — but not about the public.
What was exposed in Parliament during the Murdochs’ testimony wasn’t necessarily News Corp. — we shall see what happens to it — but instead the cozy, closed ties between institutional journalism and institutional government. The corruption of their close links was what was most shocking about today: news executives and politicians at lunch and spas and sporting events; news executives hired by politicians and police to give advice and spin their ex-colleagues; news reporters paying police; news executives sneaking through the back door to the seat of power; government officials being protected from hearing too much about the dirty work of news…..
Can this institutional incest survive the Murdoch affair? We’d better not allow it — we, the public.
Today was all about theater and manipulation, of course. The only question was, who wrote the scripts? Was Rupert Murdoch’s dottiness a strategy handed down from Edelman or was that him abandoning his libretto to declare himself suddenly humble (if that’s humility…)? Was James coached to be a parody of a droning MBA? Was it in the crisis-management script for Rupert to decline responsibility for the scandal in his company and to blame those below him and those below them? Was it in his PR script to lash out at his competitors to for causing him to lose BSkyB, and not at himself?
Among the day’s many ironies was Rupert Murdoch extolling transparency. The reason I pulled Public Parts from his publisher, HarperCollins, was because I use his company as the best example I could find of opacity as strategy: the company behind walls. The problem through his entire scandal is one of hiding the truth from the authorities and the public.
Transparency would be true public relations. Transparency would have cured News Corp.’s crimes years ago. But it didn’t.
Jay Rosen was trying to figure out the News Corp. PR strategy — and Edelman’s strategy for taking it on. Raju Narisetti, managing editor of the Washington Post and a fine tweeter, argued that “good crisis management can lead to good, not just spin.” Richard Sambrook, former BBC News exec now at Edelman, concurred.
I don’t buy the strategy, not anymore. David Weinberger, a friend of Edelman, says the secret is aligned interests. I argued in What Would Google Do? that two trades — PR and the law — could not be googlified because they depend on clients. They cannot be transparent. They cannot be honest.
True public relations — like marketing — must represent the public — the customer — and not the company. True government must work for and not rule the public. True journalism will not exploit its community. I was struck today by the class structure still evident in British news: poshish Rebekah Brooks pandering to the Cockney masses. No, true journalism will act as a platform for the public.
There’s no telling how the News Corp. saga will turn out, but I’ll try. Here’s a scenario that leads to the breakup of News Corp., the Murdochs out of power, the deflation of institutional journalism, a break in the too-cozy media-government complex, an unfortunate rise in regulation of media, and a fortunate opening for newcomers. This story of legality and morality will quickly shift to one driven by business.
A week ago in HuffPo, I speculated that News Corp. would need to get out of the news business. Not so crazy. Since then, the FT’s John Gapper speculated similarly, as did John Cassidy at The New Yorker.
And since then, News International head Rebekah Brooks resigned and was arrested; Dow Jones head Les Hinton resigned; Murdoch gave up on BSkyB; the Murdochs agreed to testify before Parliament; and the revelations of corruption between News Corp. and police and government get only worse, leading to the resignation of the head of the police. What looked so far out doesn’t look so far out now. So how could this progress?
* Start with the end of a Murdoch succession plan. Rupert’s defense aside, James Murdoch’s handling of the scandal has been irresponsible, short-sighted, cocky, and dangerous. The trail of scandal is lapping at James’ feet. Whether or not he is investigated or arrested for crimes, there can be no confidence in his leadership. None of his siblings is in any better position and they are feuding anyway. Rupert Murdoch is looking more lost and his testimony Tuesday at what will appear (to Americans, at least) like an impeachment hearing will only implode his stature yet further.
Meanwhile, more importantly, News Corp. lost more than $7 billion in market cap over four scandal-filled days. That number may go up or down but it’s ominous in any case. Shareholders are suing. There will be a call for professional and independent management of the corporation, sooner than later. If I were an “independent” director of News Corp., I’d be scared to death right now.
Buh-bye Murdochs? As unthinkable as that may have been only two weeks ago, it’s now quite conceivable.
* Off with the headlines! That professional management will quickly conclude that the news divisions of News Corp. are a costly drag and will try to divest them, starting with the UK properties and then spreading elsewhere. News Corp. is an entertainment company. Professional management will focus on that and get rid of Rupert’s bully pulpits. If they previously did bring clout and regulatory convenience to the Murdoch’s business strategies, now all they bring is grief and the attention of lawmakers, prosecutors, competitors, and detractors. News is clearly not a growth business; it is, as a friend in the trade said, profit-challenged. So stop the presses already.
I said in my post last Monday it may be difficult to find a market for the properties. But they become costlier to News Corp. by the day, so the desire to unload them will only grow as their value declines. In the UK, the Sun has been eclipsed online by the Daily Mail. Murdoch gave up on strategies of growth and advertising when he put The Times behind a paywall, its audience shrinking from millions to a reported 100,000. An egotistical oligarch might buy either.
* In the U.S., the right-wing depends on Fox News and is surely getting nervous about its fate. It is becoming — if one can imagine this — even more of a laughingstock than it already was as it ignores or defends Murdoch in the scandal. I could imagine Roger Ailes assembling rich Republicans to engineer a leveraged buyout and keep it safe for them in time for the election. Then there could be no doubt of its role as a propaganda arm of the right.
The New York Post loses tens of millions a year and lives only to give Murdoch his toy and pulpit. Professional management cannot justify that. It will die or find its egotistical oligarch (its Conrad Black or Robert Maxwell … I cannot imagine even the Murdoch heirs allowing their patriarch to hold onto it and eat into their fortune yet further).
The Wall Street Journal is in quite the pickle. Again, professional management will want to get rid of it because it is not a good business; its ROI, if any, is worse than The Simpson’s. But who would buy it? Recall that no one else but Murdoch would buy it for the price he offered, an overeager amount he soon had to write-down. Last week, I suggested that if Murdoch wants to rescue the last shred of his legacy, he should put the Journal into a trust, a la the Guardian and its Scott Trust. Past that, it’s hard to imagine its fate. Would Bloomberg or Reuters buy its financial data businesses? Is there a fire-sale buyer for the paper and its web site? They’d better hurry before it is ruined by delusional editorial such as this one defending Murdoch.
News Corp. is also in the business of coupons and circulars distributed in newspapers. That business, too, will shrink as those transactions go digital and mobile. I’ve been told by major marketers that their need for FSIs (free-standing inserts) will disappear within two years — another blow to newspapers’ kidneys. Someone will buy that business to consolidate the trade. Though it, too, has News Corp. cooties. David Carr says this division has paid out $655 million to get rid of charges of espionage and anticompetitive behavior.
In publishing, that leaves HarperCollins. Murdoch tried to sell it sometime ago; no such luck. Who’d buy it now? I couldn’t imagine. (Disclosure: My last book, What Would Google Do?, was published by HarperCollins. My next book, Public Parts, was set to be but I pulled it when I found myself being highly critical of News Corp. as the antithesis to a company that operates openly.)
There’s been much speculation that illegalities abroad — or, if they are found, in the U.S. — could lead to News Corp losing its domestic TV licenses. I don’t think that would happen. If professional management replaces the Murdochs and the scandal-ridden news divisions are ejected, then it’s hard to imagine the FCC — which basically never revokes licenses and would take a decade to try — pushing News Corp. out of the local TV business. Besides that, there is nothing I’d call news on Fox stations. They are entertainment distribution outlets.
* The only thing left in the publishing arm is Australia. Various politicians of lesser or greater power are calling for reconsideration of the incredible newspaper holdings Murdoch has there. I could see the company holding onto this for old time’s sake if there isn’t too much political pressure. Or I could see it being spun off to family, again for old time’s sake.
* So then News Corp. would be an entertainment company and a successful one.
* The next big impact will be regulating journalism in the UK. As I said here, I would lament that. The regulators didn’t bring Murdoch to the bar; journalists did — namely Nick Davies of the Guardian. We don’t need more controls on journalism. We need more journalism.
In the US, you can bet we’ll hear more about regulating media consolidation. But that’s not the issue. Morality is.
* I believe the biggest long-term impact of l’affaire Murdoch will be the diminution of institutional journalism and its cozy relationship with institutional government. That is good news. It opens opportunities for independents: for us.
* None of this could happen. Murdoch will hold on as long as he can — witness Murdoch’s “interview” with the Wall Street Journal claiming that the company has handled all this well and also the denial in the Wall Street Journal editorial just published, which tries to shift the blame for shoddy journalism to Murdoch’s competitors and critics. The longer Murdoch holds on, the less his empire will be worth. Just how stubborn is he?
: LATER: Bloomberg says News Corp is worth 50% more without Murdoch.
By valuing each of News Corp.’s businesses separately, the New York-based media conglomerate would be worth $62 billion to $79 billion, estimates from Barclays Plc and Gabelli & Co. show, indicating News Corp. trades at an almost 50 percent discount to its units. . . .
“There’s just sort of this generic Murdoch discount, which encompasses the concern that he will make decisions that are not consistent with other shareholder interests,” said Michael Morris, an analyst at Davenport & Co. in Richmond, Virginia. “The sum of the parts on News Corp. is huge compared with where the stock trades.”
The beauty of a hashtag is that no one can control it. 
Rupert Murdoch is the last of a breed, a breed he and his company will be responsible for killing in an act of mogulcide. 
