Can bloggers be journalists?

There's been an interesting story surrounding gadget blog Gizmodo this week. To get caught up on the situation, I highly recommend reading this article by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Andy Ihnatko and this piece by tech blogger John Gruber. I completely agree with their assessments, and they both explain the situation better than I ever could.

Gizmodo purchased an iPhone prototype that was "found" at a bar 20 miles from Apple's headquarters. Gizmodo purchased the prototype from the unnamed finder for $5,000. According to California law, it's quite possible that Gizmodo broke the law. The person who "found" the phone may have committed theft. No matter how you slice it, the whole thing is shady.

The big story here isn't that Apple has a new iPhone on the way. They've launched a new phone every summer since 2007. The here is the cavalier, unprofessional, snarky, and flippant attitude Gizmodo takes. Their responses are shady, contradictory, self-serving, and do nothing but harm their credibility.

Worst of all? They outed the 27-year-old engineer who lost the phone. He was out celebrating his birthday, field testing the new iPhone, and it fell from his pocket. Then, an opportunistic finder and gadget blog with deep pockets took advantage, and apparently in an illegal way.

Gizmodo had no reason to out the engineer's name and photos of him from Facebook. It created no value for their readers, and probably tarnished this young engineer's career.

Clearly, this blog is not abiding by journalistic standards. Some (including me) could argue they weren't even abiding by moral standards.

I am in no way trying to protect Apple. They're a huge company with billions of dollars and don't need me to stick up for them. What I'm angry about is the way in which Gizmodo have conducted themselves for self-serving ends at the expense of an engineer's career. Yet they claim to want to protect their source by not revealing the name of the person who sold them the prototype phone. It doesn't work that way, fellas. You can't selectively hide behind the journalistic guidelines you find convenient and ignore the rest.

To Gizmodo, the whole situation is a joke. They continue to post jokes about it on their site. It's despicable.

However, there are fantastic bloggers like the above-mentioned John Gruber and Andy Ihnatko. Ihnatko is a "real" independent journalist who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times. As a blogger, he adheres to the same journalistic guidelines of fact-checking, fair reporting, and staying within the confines of the law. John Gruber adheres to the same standards, though he doesn't work for a newspaper. Both writers are highly respected for their reporting and opinion pieces.

So that got me to thinking. Are the lines between "journalist" and "blogger" getting blurred? Can a blogger become as credible and respected as a "real" journalist? In an age where the future of newspapers is a mystery, will we see more bloggers stepping up to do research, get quotes, and do reporting on websites? How will the casual reader be able to tell the difference between genuine reporting and gossip blogs like Gizmodo and its parent blog Gawker?

I don't have answers, but I think we might start finding this area continue to develop rapidly in the next few years.

Magazines exhibit bipolar behavior over digital editions

Five leading magazine publishers—Time Inc., Hearst, Condé Nast, Wenner Media, and Meredith—are about to spend $90 million on a "power of print" campaign, according to the Wall Street Journal.

One ad will say, "The Internet is fleeting. Magazines are immersive," while another will feature Michael Phelps alongside the cringe-worthy headline, "We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines." The ads will start running in May.

Meanwhile, a completely different and disconnected department of Condé Nast has revealed the first five magazines that will be available as digital editions on the Apple iPad. From all accounts, they're pretty excited about it.

Confused? Me too. One half of the magazine publishing industry is scared witless about the future of traditional print. The other half is excitedly prepping new technology that will recreate the immersive print experience on e-readers and delivered by the "fleeting" Internet.

It appears that the traditional print camps are actually attacking their digital counterparts—not to mention their own websites—with this "power of print" campaign.

As a consumer, I'd like to say something to the traditional print factions inside these publishers. Listen up, you guys. I've been a huge supporter of magazines for, well, my whole life. I've had subscriptions to more magazines than I can remember. I get what you mean when you say that magazines are "immersive". They certainly can be, but that's not a result of the paper they're printed on. I've read some horribly-designed magazines that couldn't be less immersive if they tried. The method of printing on paper has little to do with how engaging a magazine is; It's all in the layout, design, and concept execution.

Digital publishing isn't going away. It's not "fleeting", and it's probably in your best interest to stop throwing money at a complaint campaign. Instead, spend some of that time, energy, and money learning about the new tools you have at your disposal. They're really quite amazing.

This is your chance to revolutionize the magazine industry! The rules are about to be written for a whole new generation of publishing, and you're in a unique position to help shape the future of electronic periodicals. Of course print can be immersive. But digital publishing is catching up quickly, especially as e-book readers become cheaper and equipped with higher-resolution, color displays.

When did this become an internal competition? Nobody thinks print publishing is going extinct overnight. But you need to be realistic and look at the entire entertainment spectrum. Movies, music, television, and books are all going digital. The magazine industry is not immune to the trend.

If you don't believe me, check out this Newsweek article from 1995. Clifford Stoll seemed to think the Internet wasn't going to catch on, and essentially laughed it off. Do any of his arguments sound familiar?

So here's a little advice. Walk over to the offices where the iPad and e-book developers work. Introduce yourself. Make nice. Right now, they're the ones taking your magazine into the future, no matter how deep you bury your heads in the sand. Running some weird luddite-sounding campaign that slams your own company's digital business model smacks of desperation. Fifteen years from now, how do you honestly think we'll look back on this anti-digital "power of print" campaign?

Just sayin'.

Update 1: I added the campaign's logo at the top of this post. I'm still searching for the ads themselves.

ProBlogger's tips on your first week of blogging

ProBlogger has been running a series of insightful posts on the basics of getting a blog up and running. Though it's targeted at writers who hope to make money from their blogs, there are some great general tips for anyone interested in keeping a blog fresh.

One of the recent posts I found helpful was on capturing ideas and planning future posts. Darren Rowse shares his personal technique for mapping out ideas and scheduling blog posts, and many of his tricks can be adopted or tailored to any blogger's workflow. It essentially boils down to this: Capture all of your ideas, plan your schedule, and try to have a couple weeks' worth of posts written and ready to go.

The idea of applying an editorial calendar may seem silly to a casual or new blogger, but it's a sure-fire way to make sure your site stays current and new. Whether or not you intend to build an audience, it's a good writing exercise.

Of course, if you have a great idea for a blog and want to turn it into a source of income, posting regular content right out of the gate is a must. If you feel like you're getting stuck, or just want to hear how professional bloggers build careers from their writing, ProBlogger is a great resource for inspiration and advice.

Five possible indie e-pub revolutions

It's pretty clear we're about to see a new wave of innovative electronic publishing. Most of the buzz has been about mainstream books and magazines. But what about specialty or small publications? Is it possible we're about to see a new generation of indie press?

For the most part, digital publishing throws risk out the window and opens up a world of possibilities to smaller publishers. Here are some publications that could explode as e-publishing tools continue to improve and e-audiences continue to grow.

1. Literary journals

Usually published by schools or small companies, literary journals typically have a much small reach. Specialty bookstores will carry them, and some of the larger book chains might carry the more popular journals. Generally, readers of literary journals know where to look for them.

As e-journals, the potential to be discovered by new, "accidental" readers could increase. It's one thing to hear about a quarterly with content you find intriguing, and another to read that quarterly within seconds of learning about it.

Publication costs would no longer be tied to issue length in a digital journal. Full-color artwork wouldn't make publication more expensive, either. Many of the constraints placed upon small literary journals could be lifted. The potential for new or small journals to build audiences and prestige would be limited only by the quality of content.

2. Zines

The new rules of publishing that apply to the "big" magazines could apply to the smallest homemade publications. A handful of people with some great ideas could generate compelling, off-beat content and build a global audience as easily as paper zines build local followings.

Some of the simplest zines are essentially photocopied paper stapled together and sold (or given away for free) at local shops. They can carry bolder, more subversive content than their "professional" counterparts because, with the minimal setup and publication costs, there's relatively little to lose.

Building and distributing digital zines could quickly become cheaper and easier than their analog versions, without much change to the form. Imagine a photocopied zine with hand-drawn illustrations simply scanned in and packaged as a PDF or e-book friendly format. What's to keep a well-produced zine from finding a loyal, world-wide audience?

3. Pulp novels

It's probably romantic of me to imagine a world where people read serialized detective stories on their e-book readers, complete with brightly colored covers and sensational plot lines. But it could happen, or something like it. The iPhone created a hugely lucrative market for casual games, many purchased by people who never before considered themselves "gamers".

What's to keep a market of "casual readers" from adopting a series of new-school, e-pulp novels? Judging from the number of romance and thriller novels at the checkout counter of every grocery store I've ever visited, it's not a lack of interest.

4. Genre publications

Genre magazines, like those that specialize science fiction and horror, have fallen sharply in popularity over the past few decades, in their physical, printed form. However, a few sci-fi magazines have reinvented themselves online or in digital forms. It helps that a lot of sci-fi fans are also fans of new technology, but this might serve as a barometer for how mainstream fiction readers could adopt e-book tools in the future.

The same could easily apply to romance, speculative fiction, or humor. Why not showcase writers of a particular genre? The audience is already there. If e-reader technology becomes more widespread, publishers would be able to sell subscriptions with little to no publishing cost. Again, the risk is mostly removed, so very little would keep well-edited genre collectiosn from finding their audiences.

5. Comic books

This is a vast un-tapped market. Part of the problem could stem from how awkward it is to read a vertically-oriented comic book on a widescreen monitor. Also, e-book technology has barely gotten to the point where color and resolution come close to matching what's on the printed page. But it's getting close.

The first company to offer electronic subscriptions on a full-color, high-resolution e-reader would be a massive success. Sure, there will always be a market for collectors who fill long boxes with bagged and boarded comics, but for most comic book readers, staying up-to-date with their favorite characters and plot lines would be enough. The technology isn't quite there yet, but in a post-iPad world, it feels like it's just around the corner.

The future of magazines

[Photo: nicolasnova]

Over the weekend, I gave my apartment a long-overdue cleaning. I was a bit shocked to discover that I had three full trashbags' worth of useless clutter scattered around the place. There was a lot of junk mail that, for some reason, never made it into the recycling. There were empty boxes left over from when I moved in August. And there were magazines, some that moved with my from my old place.

I took stock of the magazine stacks. I currently subscribe to four different periodicals—two weeklies and two monthlies. I rarely read all the articles, and generally don't mean to hang on to the back issues. Somehow, they sort of stick around and pile up.

There was a time when I'd keep a library of old Wired or National Geographic issues on my shelf, but then I began to worry I was headed down the path to hoarder land. These days, for the sake cutting down on clutter, I toss them in the recycling when the new issues arrive. (Except for The Believer. That magazine is simply too gorgeous to part with.)

I wondered about the future of periodicals. The Kindle offers text-only subscription options for many popular magazines and newspapers. Sadly, I've tried it, and it's not nearly as fun an experience you get from reading printed pages.

The iPad is just around the corner, scheduled for release in March, and will include a full-fledged bookstore at launch. It's full-color screen seems perfect for periodicals, but there has been no mention of a magazine counterpart to the iBookstore.

The New York Times unveiled its iPad app at Apple's event last month, and it looks like a fantastic marriage between the functionality of its website and elegance of the dead tree edition. If the Baltimore Sun were to create a digital version that slick, I'd subscribe to it for the first time in my life.

I'm not suggesting that the iPad will single-handedly save the newspaper industry, but I know that I'm not the only one willing to pay for a high-quality digital newspaper that recreates the print aesthetic.

Sports Illustrated does exactly that with a mockup of its magazine, and it looks amazing. If they are able to deliver the same look and feel of the printed version with the interactivity of a website, I would subscribe in a heartbeat.

Still, there's a pretty sizable technology barrier to overcome. The big publishers with more money to toss around, like Condé Nast, will build digital versions first. They'll figure out how to distribute issues. They can afford to make mistakes the rest of the industry will learn from. All the publishers will start experimenting.

Will Apple open up a magazine section to their bookstore, or will the big publishers create their own digital newsstands? How will the magazine reach multiple devices and a wider audience? Will the advent of digital magazines save niche publications from going under, the way Gourmet did last year?

Personally, if I could switch all my magazines to digital subscriptions, I'd be delighted. There would be far less clutter in my apartment, and I'd be able to keep a library of back issues. That's my dream scenario. I wonder how long it will take technology and the publishing world to get there.

Will publishers take chances on new novelists again?

After writing yesterday's post on indie publishers and electronic bookstores, I began to think of the situation from a different angle.

In the analog world, publishers have all but given up on buying books from new or untested authors. The costs associated with printing, in combination with the low sales over the past few years, make it a very risky decision. Unless it's clear that a book is going to sell like crazy, or that movie rights could be sold, publishers are likely to pass. This is bad news for mid-market literary fiction authors hoping to get their first break.

Enter digital publishing. If Apple's iPad takes off the way the iPod and iPhone did, will publishers be willing to take chances on new novelists again? Digital editions reduce the risk to almost zero.

It would seem to make sense. Publishers could create digital-only editions of debut novels from new writers. If sales really started to pick up, the publisher could choose to print physical editions to sell in retailers, too. The waters could be tested and sales could be generated, simultaneously.

If played just right, I this new generation of electronic publishing could be as revolutionary as the movable type and Gutenberg press. The next few years are likely to be a really wonderful time for writers, publishers, and book lovers.

But that's only if it's played just right. This all assumes that publishers and electronic retailers are interested in fostering new talent and widening the variety of books available. It also assumes that consumers, specifically the ones that stopped purchasing physical books, will start paying for digital editions.

I think a lot of these questions will begin to find answers in the next twelve months as the technology arrives and publishers find their footing on this unfamiliar terrain. Whatever happens, it's going to be exciting.

Apple's iBookstore and indie publishers

There are a lot of unknowns about Apple's new tablet device, the iPad. Essentially, they announced the product with a vague release timeframe, but not many more details.

The major publishers have deals with the forthcoming iBookstore, which, if executed properly, is poised to be Apple's next big killer technology. But that's a big "if".

Right now, Apple's two big success stories are the iTunes Store and the App Store. The App Store makes it very easy for independent developers to design and submit apps to sell through the store. The iTunes Store is much, much more difficult for musicians to break into, and it's pretty much impossible for independent television producers or filmmakers to sell things there.

It's unclear how Apple plans to run the iBookstore, but early deals with major publishers imply it will resemble the iTunes Store with no mechanism for indie publishers to sell books in the store.

As a writer, I would love nothing more than for Apple to open up the doors to small publishers and new authors. They would, and I don't believe I'm exaggerating here, run the future of the publishing world. It would be nothing short of a revolution, and the Kindles and Sony Readers of the world wouldn't be able to compete.

I could see why Apple would want to keep tight control over the books sold in the store would help keep general quality high. Even in the App Store, in which each new app is reviewed and approved by Apple, there is no shortage of low-quality, low-brow, buggy apps. Opening up the doors to all publishers and writers invites a tidal wave of poorly-written, under-edited, sub-par books.

However, if the same five-star rating system used in iTunes and the App Store is applied to the iBookstore (and I see no reason it wouldn't be), new authors and small publishers with high-quality, innovative writers and content would be afforded the opportunity to rise to the top. It's happened again and again on the App Store. Through all the clutter, the gems rise to the tops of the charts. Small developers (or sometimes individuals) create successful businesses for themselves, and Apple revolutionized the way people program apps.

Here's my prediction: Apple will only sell books from the major publishers at first. What happens next is entirely up to the level of demand and interest from writers and indie publishers.

When Apple first launched the iPhone, there was no such thing as the App Store. Apple saw no need to open the platform to independent developers. Web-based apps, in the company's estimation, would be enough.

They certainly underestimated the enthusiasm from the developer community, which was extremely vocal about creating native applications on Apple's new phone. Many developers wrote apps that ran on hacked iPhones, and more and more users would "jailbreak" their iPhones to install some of those fantastic homebrew apps. A year later, based purely on the growing number of jailbroken iPhones and developer outcry, the App Store was introduced.

What happens after Apple launches the iBookstore is completely up to the indie publishers and self-publishing authors. If we're loud enough, and if we independently generate (and sell) enough high-quality books on the iPad through the App Store or other channels, Apple will let us in.

The last thing they want to do is open the iBookstore to indie publishers on the first day and have it turn into a wasteland of a few dismal titles. That won't look good on their new flagship product. They'll make us work for it, fight for it, and clamor for it.

Of course, it's easy to speculate about a product and service that haven't been released yet, and which we know very little about. But no matter what happens, the next year is going to be a very interesting and exciting one for the publishing world, electronic and print alike.