IDG CEO: 'We Have to Create Something Entirely New for the Web' (Fishbowl)

Tuesday, Oct 14

Last week, we heard Bob Carrigan speak at the 2008 American Magazine Conference about making money in the online world. The CEO of IDG Communications worldwide had some interesting ideas, so earlier today we spoke with him by phone.
Carrigan, whose company publishes GamePro, Mac World, PC World and a host of others, said that since IDG's publications are in the technology sector, the company "jumped in early and has been experimenting aggressively" on the Web. On the b-to-b side of the business, they are using their vast databases to develop lead generations that are then sold to marketers. This practice has been increasingly successful and lucrative.
Carrigan also spoke about his vision for magazine Web sites. "The industry talks a lot about the transition from print to online ... We have to create something entirely new for the Web," he said. "It's about creating something that's pure for the Web."
But how does one do that? Well, having your own global news service is a great start.
The IDG News Service is a "global new service" that "only syndicates news to internal IDG sites," he said. Although its been around for upwards of 20 years — pre-Internet, it was used primarily to send news around the world for inclusion in the international editions of various magazines — the service has been instrumental in providing sites with interesting, constantly refreshed and original content. "[Our] brands will take the stories and make them their own," Carrigan said. "Most technology stories are relevant to their Web site."
IDG Web sites also rely on their users to create content. "We have very active communities that contribute content and insight," the CEO explained, while remarking that features from the print magazines make up less than one percent of the content on each site. The result is a "standalone" site that can "compete against pure play competitors."
In the near future, IDG — like so many other companies — will look to expand into the mobile realm. Having a presence in 85 countries helps this venture. "In the area of mobile, the U.S. is way behind," Carrigan said, noting that many developments in the mobile arena have come from IDG's outposts across the Atlantic.

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More on Link and Citizen Journalism

More on citizen journalism which I've posted on before, most recently here.

As to Link Journalismm, I personally find it annoying that on IHT.com referenced websites are not linked. The link below for www.newstrust.net comes from me.

The rumor mill that won't stop running
By Noam Cohen
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
NEW YORK: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." - attributed to Mark Twain
In 1864, back when rumor still traveled by foot, a young messenger walked into the newsrooms of press row in New York City with an Associated Press bulletin that President Abraham Lincoln had ordered the conscription of 400,000 additional troops for the Union.
The news arrived at a precarious time for the newspapers - about 2 a.m. Even the night editors had left, forcing a skeleton crew to decide whether to rush something into the paper, or risk being scooped. Two papers took the bait on what soon was exposed as a hoax.
But the news also came at a precarious time for the country: A conscription would have meant the Union army was in trouble, and the price of gold soon shot up. Two journalists from Brooklyn had hatched the plan, knowing how best to sneak bogus news into print, and remembering to buy gold beforehand. (They were soon caught.)
Markets exist to convert good information into profitable investments. And, in their deep agnosticism, they also exist to allow false information to create quick profits. During that brief window, false information may in fact be easier to exploit - it shows up just in time, and purports to answer the questions on everyone's mind.
And while the Civil War-era hoax had to use crude tools (war is going badly, gold rises in the face of bad news), Internet-fueled falsehoods and day-trading sites allow for highly tailored rumors to be quickly amplified and exploited.
In recent days there has been a range of false reports that have managed to gain great purchase across the globe while the truth is still logging on.
Early in the month, Apple stock fell as much as 5 percent after a CNN-sponsored citizen-journalism site, ireport.com, published a false item from a user reporting that Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive whose health has been a public preoccupation, had been rushed to the emergency room. The poster is still a mystery, though the Securities and Exchange Committee is investigating and CNN is cooperating.
In September, United Airlines lost more than $1 billion in market capitalization when traders treated a six-year-old announcement of a bankruptcy as a new development.
With its oodles of information, the Internet is laden with falsehoods, but, in fact, these recent cases show how critical amplifying sites like Drudge Report or Google News or Digg are to getting reports from the backwoods before the public.
Wander over to ireport.com, which CNN created in February 2008, and it can appear overwhelming. It was meant to be a clearing house for user submissions - as many 10,000 a month - that in the past were only culled by CNN staff, and it looks like one. It is not the first place to go for stock tips. But the Steve Jobs item benefited from promotion on collaborative news-rating sites like Digg.
While disavowing responsibility for the spread of the Steve Jobs item, saying that it had never reached the coveted spot of being on Digg's home page, the site's chief executive, Jay Adelson, readily conceded that Digg had promoted other items that turned out to be false.
"There is almost a short-seller mentality in the blogosphere," he said. "We allow anyone to submit on a level playing field. We allow the digital democracy to be the fact checkers. There is definitely some risk to that."
But he argued that transparency would be one way to counteract rumor-mongering on the Internet. The person who submitted the ireport item to Digg had the impersonal login "joshua's iphone." And Adelson mentioned the various red flags: The user first posted in July; none of his or her earlier stories had made it to the home page; and the first story to gain any traction was the one about Jobs's health. "These things matter to the digital citizen," he said.
Relying on the community and transparency is one method. Adelson says Google News tries to ensure reliability by vetting what news sources it draws from. And experimental sites like www.newstrust.net hope to create ratings systems from the authorities who evaluate news articles on a range of criteria, and are themselves rated by the raters. (One of my articles was vetted by four reviewers and received a 4 out of 5 in terms of accuracy from its four reviewers.)
Fabrice Florin, the founder of News Trust, said sites like his would be crucial to flagging inaccuracy, though he added, "we probably wouldn't be as effective in less than an hour," a time span when most of the damage is done in these false reports. He said three reviewers would be enough to warn readers, "if the reviewers are trustworthy."
The only long-term hope, he said, was news literacy training for the public, one of New Trust's missions. "Our little brains were never in a position to handle that much information," he said.

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Problems with Citizen Journalism (CSM)

I have been talking about the number of foreign bureaus newspapers have versus the wires, but I hadn't realised until I checked out the article below, that the CSM has 19. Which isn't too shabby.

But having just got involved in TimesPeople, that allows me to recommend content, not add it, this article caught my eye.






New media feels heat after Apple misstep
CNN's citizen reporters sent Apple stocks plunging Friday with a false report on Steve Jobs.
By Ben Arnoldy Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the October 8, 2008 edition
Oakland, Calif. - A promo for CNN's citizen journalism site, iReport.com, reads: "You won't believe what people are uploading." Maybe readers should take that literally.
An anonymous writer posted a false story to the site claiming that Apple Inc.'s CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, sending the company's stock tumbling Friday. The Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed Henry Blodget Monday that it was investigating the circumstances surrounding the article.
Unlike stories on CNN's main site, most content on iReport.com can be uploaded by anyone, without editing. The erroneous piece stayed up for more than three hours – long enough to bounce around the blogosphere – before an Apple spokesperson quashed the rumor.
Citizen journalism, or user-generated content, has proved successful enough to argue against abandoning it over snafus like this, say new media experts. Rather, the episode serves as a public reminder that "news" now includes both traditional journalism and a crowd-sourced model that treats verification as a public process, not a prerequisite for publishing.
Both models have their place, says David Ardia, head of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, but users must give the crowd-sourced model time to work. "If you are consuming this news when it first comes out, you have to recognize that the fact-checking function hasn't happened yet."
That process took a few hours in this case but clearly some investors didn't wait. Apple's share price lost nearly $12 before rebounding when the truth emerged.
The incident is a cautionary note for readers but has lessons for those involved in guiding user content, too.
One lesson may be that community policing of content can help bury bogus reports. The Steve Jobs report was submitted to other websites including Digg, says Arnold Kim of MacRumors.com. Digg relies on user input to raise or lower the prominence of stories, and it was users who kept this story off the front page, writes Mr. Kim on his blog.
By contrast, CNN's iReport is less mediated by human input. The most recently uploaded stories show up on the home page, as well as the "newsiest" stories as determined by an algorithm that factors in user opinions. CNN spokesperson Jennifer Martin says the Jobs story never appeared under "newsiest."
The filter of peer ratings works well for Helium, another site that publishes user-submitted writings. Submissions go through an automated plagiarism check and are then reviewed by the site's community of nonstaff writers. The top-rated articles rise to highest visibility.
"What it tends to do is discourage the bad actors over time because they get vetted out," says Peter Newton, vice president of business development.
Another way to minimize potential misinformation, says new media guru Jeff Jarvis, is for websites to nurture relationships with trusted news gatherers and give readers clearer caveats. "We thought we were in the business of saying what we know in the news. But we're more in the business of saying what we don't know," writes Mr. Jarvis at buzzmachine.com.
That's the approach taken by tech website Silicon Alley Insider. Editor Henry Blodget flagged the Jobs iReport, said he didn't know if it was true, and published the post before hearing back from Apple.
That decision sparked complaints. Even Jarvis – who expresses exasperation with professional reporters wanting to pounce on citizen journalism – says this particular story should have been relayed with more sensitivity than usual.
Defending his decision, Mr. Blodget wrote that the site doesn't view its role as a gatekeeper but takes advantage of the "immediate feedback loop" of its readers. In this case, the crucial feedback came from Apple's spokesperson, whose denial Blodget claimed as a scoop.
Silicon Alley Insider can plausibly distance itself from traditional reporting expectations, but can CNN?
The iReport site has its own URL and the tag line, "Unedited. Unfiltered. News." It also has a disclaimer that "CNN makes no guarantees" about its content. CNN producers pluck some of the material, vet it, and use it on cnn.com or CNN TV. The Jobs article was not picked up.
The iReporter could face charges under securities laws if he or she knowingly published false information in connection with buying or selling Apple stock, Mr. Ardia says, while CNN and Silicon Valley Insider probably are safe under the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
CNN is not changing policies after Friday's incident, says Ms. Martin.

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