Dangerous Ignorance: Report from Tribune’s “Innovation Officer”

A friend sent along this “Think Piece” report from Tribune Co.’s “Innovation Officer” Lee Abrams. It’s based on his recent visit to the struggling, shrunken, limp-on-the pole “flagship” Florida Sentinel papers in Orlando and South Florida.

I don’t know Abrams and do not wish him ill personally. Hell, he’s known as the “inventor” of the album-oriented rock radio format, the ’70s answer to Top 40 pablum and, later, the vital cultural firewall against disco. Many of his contemporaries [he's in his mid-50s] smoked some fine dope while listening to Steely Dan and Pink Floyd, for which we should all be grateful.

But Abrams’ report on his autumn trip to Florida is so delusional [or dishonest], so dated and mundane, so vapid and cliche-riddled, so dangerous and desperate that he needs to be called out on it for the good of the profession.

Following is the top of the Think Piece: [Add your own "sic"s where appropriate]

Spend several days in Florida at the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel. They reinvented themselves first so this trip was a re- invent of the re-invent. Great meetings that involved a wide range of people from all areas to discuss what works, what doesn’t and what we can do better. A lot came to table…including the things that are traditionally not discussed for fear of offending someone, or simply failing to be honest about ourselves.

The attitudes of the Florida papers amaze me. Professional, focused, zero drama, no baggage, no games. They are all about delivering quality and being in position to GROW. Now…and when the economy improves, they will be in perfect position to reach new levels. It’s all about re-gearing the product AND the culture to compete in the new world. They get it.

Especially positive was something we’ll be doing more of–people from Ft. Lauderdale coming to Orlando and vice versa. Cross pollination of ideas. I presented a series of things that are being done or discussed at other papers. Slightly lowering the target age without disturbing the core and increasing the number of days the paper is read were two topics we dove into. A few of the things we discussed are below— Things to think about…as components in re-inventing ourselves”

The ideas that follow will be numbingly familiar to anyone who was part of a newsroom retreat or re-launch since 1998. Make the paper easier to navigate with icons and lists! Interview local people! Don’t write in “newspaper-speak”! More photos! Cover sex and religion, “THE MOST IMPORTANT TOPICS IN THE WORLD!” Synergize with the web!

Set aside the whole “dumbing-down” theme, which is both self-evident and unselfconscious. More important is how the list carries the tone of a simpleton cheerleader who hasn’t been around very long and is driving people “forward” into a discussion that’s at least a decade old. That these ideas come from an “innovation officer” is funny-sad.

Between the Think Piece’s repeated uses of “gotta” and “wanna,” the superannuated thinking presented as the work of a “maverick,” and the desperate claims that the tide of public opinion can be reversed, Abrams eerily embodies the worst of the McCain/Palin ticket. This is not “the change we can count on.” This is more of the same failed policies of the past.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Every synaptic twitch, every erg, every creative spark, every focused thought devoted to such doomed efforts to stall the inevitable squanders a company’s most important resource: the brainpower of people committed to the survival of journalism rather than newspapers as they are currently known.

The way out, if there is one, is to create journalism optimized for digital platforms, take advantage of news consumers’ transforming habits, put edgy new technologies in play, develop new business models–and destroy the current paper product and replace it with a smaller, radically reshaped one. The way out does not involve this nervous, ignorant doodling.

Phew. I’m done. I publish the rest of the memo below.

*WEEKLY THEMES to encourage 7 day readership. Start on Sunday with a highly visible presence. The idea is to drive readership by super-focusing on a “hot” theme. It’s an old radio trick. Want to force listening? Do a “Beatles Week”–even though a station already plays them, FOCUSING and packaging/aggregating a core hot artist creates a must listen buzz. For papers, it could be:

Restaurant Week: Monday Celebrity Chefs; Tuesday Florida’s Killer Steak Houses; Wednesday 4 Star restaurant recipes that a home cook can handle…. etc…

Sex: SEX AND RELIGION ARE THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT TOPICS ION THE

WORLD! A weekly theme of Sex/relationships. Monday Gay Florida Tuesday Does E-Harmony work? Weds Teens & Sex exposed… etc…

Religion: Monday: Can Jews and Muslims co exist; Tuesday The religious ultra right; Wednesday Catholics in America…. etc…

The idea here is to take a wide appeal topic and DRIVE readership, OWN it…and present this topic in a ‘weekly themes’ format. Where every day the topic is superserved. And of course there’ll be revenue off opportunities with many of these

*STAR EVERYTHING. Are you a “listing service” or experts? Listing events for Kids? Star them. So Mom can say “Oh–The Sentinel gives the science fair three stars, lets take the kids”. Give events and places a ‘reason’…be the expert not just the lister. Same goes for restaurants of course, and well, just about everything you ‘list’.

*24 HOURS IN PHOTOS. We “own” photos…so why not act like we do and give them a HIGHER profile via this compelling feature? A good example of importing FROM the web as picture galleries certainly do well. Te Baltimore Sun has been doing this well, and selling adjacencies to camera stores.

*LOGOIZING. Creating logos for features makes them noticeable. I love the boxing gloves and the I-think logos that Allentown. (These are logos for a point/counterpoint and a high school student editorial) Those logos take these features to a higher level. It’s “competitive” thinking vs. ‘assuming people know these features exist’. Some do…most don’t unless we force it. A logo is a tasteful way to do just that.

*HEADLINES OF THE WORLD. A celebration of newspapers. What does the Teheran Times say about Obama? What does Pravda say about our economy? These are compelling and amazing headlines that shouldn’t be hidden on Newseum for other journalists to see. There may be no better way to illustrate global opinion than to use headlines from around the globe.

*WORDING. At the Sentinel there was a story about exotic Asian restaurants, and the reefer was “Learn about Tasty Treats”. Tasty Treats??? OK for Campbell’s in 1955 or for a candy article, but other than that, it’s old world newspaperspeak!

*SCAM PATROL. Identity theft…Infomercials that are questionable…Nigerian 419 scams…they’re everywhere. We need to inform and BUST these 21st century menaces. It’s REAL…It’s NOW.

*POKER. I know the Sun Sentinel does this. It’s HOT. Poker is the 21st Century Bridge.

*10 QUESTIONS WITH. Daily. A local icon. Ask him/her ten questions. Favorite restaurant…favorite vacation spot. PERSONAL questions, so you experience the “real” side of people you usually only read news about.
Fascinating insight into the ‘real’ side of politicians, celebrity chefs, sports figures, business leaders etc…

*GREEN ICON for environment stories. Are we engaged with green? Probably not in a noticeable way. A green icon is a classic example of thinking competitively. Green is important to many. STEP OUT AND TELL PEOPLE we are engaged!(and deliver)

*ARCHIVES. PRINT (NOT ON WEB) a classic front page from the past. We OWN this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Liveblog Health 2.0: Health-Management Tools for Consumers

What sort of digital tools are available to health consumers to help them manage the healthinfosphere–and [not to put too fine a point on it]–their health?

Kevin Noland, CEO, ADAM

iPhone app: the Adam Health Navigator. Puts personalized health content on iPhone–click a body part on an image of the body, or search for information. Essentially it puts commodity-level health information on the small screen. Cool features, some geomobile-related some leveraging multi-function nature of iPhone: Find nearest ER; prompt to call 911; educational videos for conditions; connect to doctors in your neighborhood.

David Clymer, CEO, MyMedLab

Web-based tool lets you choose a lab test online. A physician approves order instead of a doctor’s visit in real life. You can find a lab in your area. The tools help you choose tests based on gender, age and disease profile. Results interpreted by an MML doctor and put in your PHR. Key detail: Results can be completely confidential.

Linda Avey, co-CEO, 23andMe

A user provides a saliva sample, and can get information about genetic risks. The idea: Add genetic information into the healthcare system at a consumer level. An analysis is sent to a personal dashboard page, which provides a simple analysis of risk. Click on an indicated risk, you can read hyperlinked research reports. The science team reviews research papers based on the “confidence” level of potential clinical application. Key detail: You can also provide ancestry information to add information to your risk profile.

Mari Baker, CEO, Navigenics

Also processes saliva samples and creates a dashboard of potential risks, including approximate mathematical risks compared to the population and total estimated risk. Also it indicates what percentage of your total risk is based on genetics, as opposed to controllable factors. The service also provides information that helps you reduce risks for those conditions for which you [may] have a genetic predisposition. Key detail: Added information provided to help people manage risks responds to the but-what-can-I-do-about-it-if-I-learn-I-have-elevated-personal-risk objection.

Adam Bosworth, CEO, Keas

A preview of a health management service not yet debuted. It links to HealthVault and Google Health personal health records. A lab archive shows you how your data changes over time, with some visualizations of progress vs. targets. Creates a “to-do” list to identify the behaviors you need to change, including food, exercise, lab tests, etc. Also takes into account of what foods you currently eat, your ethnicity, etc. Suggests food preferences with visuals, reporting calories and what the effect will be on your weight over time. Minor feature: Video education and feedback based on progress and needs.

Ray Schoenberg, CEO, American Well

Virtual office visits via online tools–its first market is Hawaii [only place it's currently available]. Carries you from “Talk Now” with an available online physician to your credit card information to authorize a co-pay and “talk” with a physician. He has your information and can decide whether to engage with you. He talks to you on screen and you can do live chat. Information is audited, summarized and sent [if you like] to your primary care physician. Key fact: It’s a 10-minute session. If you are not insured, you can go onto the system with a credit card or ATM and have a virtual visit.

Stan Nowak, CEO, Silverlink

A phone-based reminder/coaching/feedback system. An automated voice, drawing on your personal profile, reminds you that [for instance] your prescriptions need refilling. This presumably happens automatically. The voice offers the idea of switching to the generic alternative, with an offer to contact your physician to see if the change is approved. Observation: For an automated phone program, the voice is very. . .human-ish.

Michael Cho, DestinationRx

A tool for comparison shopping of Rx meds, offering alternatives– but [first] also warning you about potential drug interactions and safety. Once safety and interactions are screened, you get data on therapeutic alternatives and cost savings for drugs you currently take, including generics and drugs on lower co-pay tiers on your healthcare plan. It will also allow you to contact the drugstore and place the order. Additional feature: The platform helps navigate the complexities of choosing a Medicare Part D plan, including the potential savings, comparing premiums vs. out-of-pocket costs.

Erick VonSchweber, CEO, PharmaSurveyor

Premise: It’s not just interactions, but toxicities involved with each drug that can affect patients. This tool reveals a much broader assessment of med risks. By integrating with partners like DestinationRx, this tool provides an additional layer of safety and vetting using powerful math and analytics. Risk is shown for each drug, plus the cumulative risk of an entire multi-drug regimen. By adding personal information about the side-effects the patient is showing, it can link side-effects to the current drugs. Then it can do a diagnosis showing where the risk is coming from, with an option to show potentially safer options that still deliver the needed therapeutic benefits. Observation: Very powerful data-analysis tool that, while a bit cumbersome to use and hard to navigate, appears to raise the bar for drug-regimen-analysis tools. Rx: Usability treatment regimen.

Marlene Beggelmann, CEO, Enhanced Medical Decisions, DoubleCheckMD

This tool reviews a patient’s recent treatments and personal health records, providing an analysis of the treatments and user directives. This information can go back to the doctor for review, potentially driving better treatment decisions. Can also be used proactively as a way to recommend future treatments. Able to continue to monitor treatments over time, providing update of recent information for treating physicians. Observation: Appears to deliver consumer value, but will be interesting to see how doctors welcome these suggestions and reviews of their treatment decisions.

Stefanie Fenton, Director of Market Development, Intuit’s Quicken Health Group

Helps you manage your bills–as Quicken itself does for taxes and business expenses. You can have bills put in Health Expense Tracker [with insurers who cooperate] to see what’s due, status of deductibles, “special circumstances,” etc. Permits you to analyze and pay bills. You can see whether you’ve refilled prescriptions. This all becomes a financially-based personal health record. Thinking aloud: How valuable is this compared to the information and services you get from your insurer? And does it fully replicate the personal health record? Or is this just a layer on top of those services that provide visibility and clarity?

Health 2.0 Liveblog: Consumer Information Aggregators

Five companies that are leaders in making consumer data, including personal health records, available.

Web MD: Just did a deal with Wal-Mart, making WebMD personal health records and tools available to employees. Proof that health technology adoption is moving “from the salaried workers to the hourly workers.”

Comment: Includes a PHR for members to use.

HealthVault, Microsoft: Now has developed 90-plus partners making products for the platform. Seeking to make it easier for doctors and patients to share information. HealthVault launch is part of a “long journey” in integrating information for consumers and with healthcare system. Have created an “industry” around making these connections happen. New partnership with Kaiser, integrating its own PHR service with the HV platform. Process to copy Kaiser health record to HealthVault is multi-step and multi-click box/policy agreement process–not a smooth demo. Multiple sign-outs and sign-ins.

Comments: The demo failed–yikes. The conference gives him a “do-over”. . .and that fails too. Dude: Smooth it or lose it.

Aetna: Launch of personal health record across their patient population. Data from docs, labs, patients. integrated. Made it portable, allowing access to PHR via print or online. Aetna members can use HealthVault, with mutual back-and-forth of data between platforms.

Comments: Do patients trust their insurance company with the full details of their health? Another log-in issue! Crowd applauds when he’s able to actually get into the personal health record. Like many such service, “health coaching” is available.

Google: Last 12 months encouraging and humbling. Encourage: Google Health has launched–portable, controllable patient information. Learning has begun, but Google iterates to improve. Humbling: “This is incredibly hard.” They want it to be easy, and they want it to be useful. We’re good with easy. Useful: Still working.

Comments: Has launched program with pharmacy chains, to integrate med use data with personal health records. Data go from pharmacy directly to Google Health in real time. This demo fails too…and exposes a really UGLY, DOS-era pharmacist data input tool.

Yahoo Health: “How much demand there is for health content. Two new partnerships: Waterfront Media [operator of Everyday Health, a big, successful health content company which has gobbled up the scraps of Revolution Health*] will distribute health content; and HealthGrades, provider of physician data information. [Conflict of interest: I am a former employee of Revolution Health.]

Comments: HealthGrades will provide some basic individual doctor information [with an opportunity to dig into deeper content, some of it paid content] and mashup it up with Yahoo Groups, ratings and recommendations, plus Yahoo Answers. Unlike other groups on the stage, Yahoo is not offering a PHR–it’s all about the consumer-centric information.

Health 2.0 Liveblog: Clay Shirky

Author of “Here Comes Everybody,” NYU Interactive technology/culture prof: Health 2.0 keynote address.

“More is Different”: As groups aggregate, they create not just more knowledge, but a different, more valuable kind of knowledge….this affects healthcare innovation in three ways:

Information: Most valuable aspect of the Internet: “people.” Those who think about health information think of individual transactions–but the value is when people share this information. Yahoo Groups, “the first social software,” illustrates tremendous public demand for collaboration with others. “Wherever people trust each other, the information will flow.”

Coordination: Example of how institutions are losing centralized control: Vatican 2, 1970s:, premised on “The People are the Church.” But in the 70s, people couldn’t do anything about it. . .until 2001. Then the abuse scandal broke–and by then, technology enabled “word of mouth at the speed of light.” The church was powerless to control the information–incidents were transparent, individual episodes became aggregated.

Parallel: In healthcare, the standing command-and-control structure sees “healthcare” as the sum total of providers, payers, etc.–the established institutions. But the patients are healthcare too–and they outnumber professionals by 100 to 1. Once they collaborate, the central institutions lose power–and have to change.

We’ve always had informal conversations in healthcare, among each other–but now they are visible, global and immediate. Doctor-patient relationships, by contrast, are very few.

Collaboration: A doctor finds a problem with a knee joint; the company says it’s a practitioner problem, not a device problem. They will deal with doctors one by one to solve it. The doctor posts an open letter on the web about the device’s problems, which immediately gets distributed within weeks to patients and doctors. Within weeks the company has a PR disaster, and class-action lawsuits.

So: Some medical institutions are trying to prevent health 2.0 from occurring. Doctors can now get patients to sign a contract which prohibits them from discussing their care. They are trying to regain power, prevent the transparent conversation among patients.

Ending quote:

“Things get really weird when you give people access to tools of collaboration.

“Things are getting really weird in healthcare.”

Health 2.0 Liveblog: Kick-Off

[I'll be live-blogging the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco; I'll be cross-posting to The Health Care Blog.]

Matthew and Indu S.’s intro: Increasing adoption of user-generated content in health sector. There are increasing data to back it up.

7 of 10 adults “demand engagement” with the healthcare experience

22 percent of the population are [coinage alert!] Health Info-entials

Most frequently accessed channels of health information

Conversations with family/friends–69 percent; conversations with health care providers–65 percent

Yes, but what about social media and “credible”?

Health expert blogs: 86 percent “credible”

Others: Personal blogs, social networking sites, video-sharing sites, Wikipedia [!?!?#]

Odd note: a new Health 2.0 Social Network. . .had to be built with proprietary software. Apparently none of the social network software providers in the health space could provide what was needed.

Ahem.

How to Kill a Social Media Campaign

David Armano, author of the Logic+Emotion marketing blog and VP for experience design at Critical Mass, presents this image of the life-and-death cycle of a social media campaign:

The first things we do, is kill all the social media campaigns….

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