The Sam Whitmore Sampler

The Digital Future... is Comin' On, It's Comin' On...

A little homage to Gorillaz in the headline there...

Anyway, Christy did some web research yesterday and came up with an assortment of noteworthy links:

* NBC News and the New York Film Academy are collaborating to turn out "digital journalist" graduates who understand how to gather news with all the toys in their knapsack. Smart of the behemoth to outsource the development of their craft to people who understand the medium but not the messages.

* A USC professor whose students seek work in "digital media" built a tag cloud derived from job postings at JournalismJobs.com. Notice how small the word "multimedia" is, compared with "Flash" or "blog".

* Video clearinghouses such as Newscom are now offering TV-quality broadcast video for download, as well as the web-quality stuff. Reuters is the first supplier -- the first of many, no doubt.

"Stalker Research"

We were speaking with a subscriber of ours recently, discussing how PR folks can get an edge with busy reporters. "We do the usual stalker research," she said, referring to Bacon's profiles, Google, whether the reporters have their own blog, etc.

I got a kick out of the "stalking" part. Reporters have no idea just how much their work is scrutinized by PR people. In my experience, PR people never let on how much they know about you. They don't want you to know how important you are to them, lest you play hard to get -- or harder to get, as the case may be.

Clear Channel Goes Private

Well, it finally happened. Clear Channel went private. Take a good look at the company's latest 10-Q -- you may never see such detail again. Its most recent 10-K is even meatier.

Tech in Ubiquity

An SWMS subscriber recently advised us that the National Journal Group's Technology Daily will fold, effective at the end of January.

According to an e-mail that appears to come from the National Journal Group President Suzanne C. Clark, "we will be expanding our technology coverage across our publications in 2008, in recognition that technology issues infuse nearly every area we cover: health care, energy and the environment, national security, education, and even campaigns and elections."

While there might be some corporate derriere-covering spin in there, it's true that tech is everywhere: in cars, in the walls, in our bodies, in space... the future is dim for editorial that tracks "tech," broadly defined.

FCC and Media Ownership

On Dec. 18 the FCC allowed newspaper publishers serving America's 20 largest cities to also own TV stations in those cities -- as long as at least eight other TV stations also compete in that market.

Here's what Republican FCC chair Kevin J. Martin had to say. He spent more time criticizing his fellow FCC members than explaining the new law.

Here's what Democratic FCC member Michael J. Copps had to say. Copps cited George Orwell in his first sentence.

Saul Hansell

Saul Hansell is the guy who runs Bits, the New York Times tech blog. SWMS researched Bits this week and found that Hansell carries this blog around on his back, writing the majority of the posts, while ten other NYT reporters -- who also are supposed to be contributing -- do next to nothing. Yes, Saul is Bits "editor" so he should have a strong presence. But what are his colleagues doing that's so precious as to leave no time to help him?

Something we left unmentioned in SWMS was the nature of the comments on Bits. Eighty-nine people commented on Hansell's post on how PayPal pushed him around when he tried charging his kid's school lunches on MasterCard. Brad Stone drew 100 comments on Comcast's bullshit denials about the obvious torpedoing of BitTorrent.

Many in the tech media business love to focus on products, technologies and vendors. But as the industry's focus moves to social media, the biggest edit opportunity will lie in defending the consumer at the hands of brutish corporations. Imagine if Consumer Reports wrote only about tech and had a web presence equivalent to Facebook. Someday someone's going to build a business like this, and the world will be a better place for it.

Media Bullseye

Media Bullseye is a newly launched destination for media industry folks like me, and maybe you. Media Bullseye is the creation of Chip Griffin, the guy who runs the CustomScoop news alert service. Here's Chip's blog. Check out Media Bullseye's five-column newspaper layout -- how retro! I suspect Media Bullseye is a content play meant to drive CustomScoop trial subs. In any case, there's some good reading in there -- enjoy.

David Strom on Tech Journalist Migration

Legendary tech journalist David Strom this week filed a two-part series for SWMS on well-known tech journalists who have migrated either to publish for vendors or for industry analyst firms. Why did they do it? Are they happy? The content is subscriber-only. But here on the Sampler we offer David's analysis on what this migration means for tech PR pros.

Says David:

Well, for one thing, it is going to be harder to keep track of where to pitch stories, and also harder to get these pitches across the transom. You should first hone your skills at tracking the blogging community: use a blog search tool, start posting comments on the more influential ones, and go meet them at the conferences that the bloggers who are working in your market niche attend. In China Martens' case, she has had to find a whole new set of AR contacts: "the analyst relations and public relations folks at the companies I cover are completely different, so it feels almost like I am starting over, establishing fresh relationships with companies that I've tracked for many years."

Web Community Forum

The Web Community Forum enters Day 2 here in Seattle. Yesterday's sessions were OK. Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang said that, in the end, the world's biggest companies will have:

* a branded social network of their own
* strong presence in the broad commercial ones, e.g. Facebook, MySpace
* a bridge between all their social networks and their web site

Smaller companies may not be able to afford to participate across the board, with full sincerity. Take one look at any commercial island in Second Life and in the emptiness you'll see what I mean.

Conde Nast Portfolio and Sex

Conde Nast Portfolio promised to be a different sort of business magazine. This feature, published in the November issue, backs up the claim. The topic: how free porn sites are devastating the DVD sales of "legitimate" sex video businesses such as Vivid Entertainment. The big idea: as Hollywood wrestles with its own plummeting DVD sales, whatever the porn industry comes up with may help the Universals and Paramounts as well.