The Article of the Future

Scientific publishers Elsevier and Cell Press have released a long-in-development prototype of what they call the “Article of the Future.”

It represents a thorough re-thinking of what an “article” is.

The press release details key features:

• A hierarchical presentation of text and figures - readers can elect to drill down through the layers based on their current task in the scientific workflow and their level of expertise and interest.
• Bulleted article highlights and graphical abstract - readers can quickly gain an understanding of the paper’s main message and navigate directly to specific sub-sections of the results and figures.
• The graphical abstract encourages browsing, promotes interdisciplinary scholarship and helps readers identify more quickly which papers are most relevant to their research interests.

What’s significant here is the way the developers essentially started from scratch, with the needs of an online user in mind.

Yes, the core is essentially an old-school journal article.

But from the bulleted list of key findings on top, to the multiple points of entry based on different use cases and learning styles, to the hyperlinks galore, the developers have identified ways to make it work better in the form a vast majority of readers now encounter journal articles–online.

An irresistible question for students of mainstream media’s reluctant, stumbling transition to the web: [Please forgive my intemperate language and use of capital letters]

WHY IN HOT SCREAMING HELL HAVE MAINSTREAM NEWS PUBLISHERS NOT DEVELOPED AN “ARTICLE OF THE FUTURE” BASED ON USE WEB CASES LIKE THIS OVER, OH, I DON’T KNOW, THE LAST 15 YEARS OR SO?

Ahem. Thank you. I feel better now.

A video walkthrough of the Article of the Future, voiced in a wonderfully British manner, can be found on the press release page.

Health Journalists on Twitter: Not Entirely Well, Thank You

I’m going to be hosting a webinar on how health journalists use social media soon.

So I thought I’d check out the health reporters on Muckrack.com, a website that aggregates Tweets of our nation’s journalistic corps.

It can be fascinating to see what sort of brain-lint the media produce minute-by-minute on the world’s tiniest news platform.

As I began writing this entry, for instance, there were dozens of Tweets not so much reporting, but wondering aloud what was up with, the “fact” that Gov. Sarah Palin seemed to be resigning, or at least not running for re-election, or something.

It was an enlightening moment in journalistic pop anthropology. You could see the complex thoughts of inside-the-Beltway sophisticates taking shape right before your  eyes.

Tweeted Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post: “Something must be up, I guess. Kind of weird.“

Talk about your first rough draft of history.

The Health Journalist Twitterers

But anyway, I was there to check out the Health niche. The health reporting corps has not for the most part discovered Muckrack yet: Only 10 health reporters’ Tweetstreams were aggregated on the Muckrack’s Health page.

They comprised three Baltimore Sun reporters, two from the Chicago Tribune, and one from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. [All Tribune Co. properties]. Then there is one each from CNBC, CBS News, the Montreal Gazette, and the New York Times.

And how were they using social media? The mixed bag you might expect.

Journalists on Twitter: Seeking Sources, Thinking Out Loud, Promoting Self, Getting Personal

Julie Deardorff of the Chicago Tribune, for instance, used Twitter to conduct some of source-fishing, cogitate about topics in her notebook, promote her own articles and, like all public-spirited Tweeters, reveal some personal information.

In Deardorff’s case, at least, the personal was professional.

• On Thursday June 25 she reported that she “injured my intercostal muscles by coughing for a week straight.”
• Two days later she reported she’d been diagnosed with pneumonia.
• And two days later she was back on the beat, trolling for sources to discuss the Nuval nutrition rating system.

Best-of-Class: Mike Huckman of CNBC

The most prolific health Twitterer on Muckrack–and, with over 3,000 followers, the most watched–is Mike Huckman, the pharma reporter for CNBC. Anybody interested in the bloodsport in the drug trade should follow Huckman’s sluice of reports, rulings, research and rumors about the companies that make America’s meds.

There is also insight into the life of a business journalist, such as this ripe observation about dealing with flacks. [Note the #prfail hashtag]:

mhuckman #prfail Just got call from PR person.I pick up phone,as always,”This is Mike.”They say,”Mike Huffman?”Pitching pvte co anyway,so 0 interest
a day ago by Mike Huckman, Pharmaceuticals Reporter, CNBC

Doctor!!!! Doctor!!!!!

CBS medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton Tweets about her comings and goings conducting interviews. Fairly routine stuff for journalistic Tweetle.

But for someone who is both a journalist and an M.D., she can be unusually enthusiastic. Within the stretch of 5 Tweets she managed to use 10 exclamation points. That may be a record of some sort.

New York Times and Twitter: Not a Healthy Situation

The smart set says that it’s poor form to use Twitter simply as a “push” device, as a tool to inflict yourself on the world. Everybody who participates in Twitter [it is said], even journalists, should expect to give more than they take, share tidbits with people who may appreciate them, develop relationships, etc. This is the spirit of the social web, it is said.

The biggest violator of this principle among the health reporting set on Muckrack is the estimable Tara Parker Pope, author of the New York Times’ Well health blog.

Her Tweetery consists almost entirely of two things: Links to her own blog entries and acolytic admirations of the fine work of her fellow Timesfolk. [i.e., "Interesting slide show on NyTimes Lens blog of homeless transgendered teens. http://bit.ly/14POwF"]

It’s true that Pope also gets personal; she Tweets about her preparation for the New York City Marathon.

taraparkerpope My 5.4 mi run tonight spent 630 calories according to http://www.gmap-pedometer.com . But now I’m 800 calories worth of hungry.
Tara Parker Pope, Well Columnist, New York Times

But that’s professional self-promotion too: Pope is the proprietor of RunWell, an online community for distance runners the Times launched recently.

Clearly Pope hasn’t gotten the Tweet about social media ethos. Another Twitter profile bears Pope’s name and likeness. nytimeswell is nothing but a botstream that’s triggered every time her blog updates.

Actually it’s triggered more often than that. Check out the series of simuTweets on celiac disease.

I found it peculiar that the New York Times was using Twitter is such a graceless manner compared to its peers.

The Times, after all, recently hired Jen Preston as its first Social Media Editor. Her task, presumably, would be to help staff make enlightened use of social web tools like Twitter.

So I clicked over to Preston’s feed in Muckrack to see how she is faring.

Not all that well, it turns out.

The Times’ social media doyenne hadn’t updated in about 3 weeks, and only three times since this one:

Working on response to 1,000 replies to last week’s question, how can @nytimes better use Twitter. MediaBistro conference later.
12:15 PM Jun 3rd from web

Digital News Innovation from. . .the Washington Post!

Enthusiasts of innovative ways to present news in web-native formats should check out the Innovations in News blog from…The Washington Post.

Regular readers of this blog [both of you!] may be surprised to hear this. I’m a regular reader myself, and nobody is more surprised than I.

Having issued a blistering broadside against the Post‘s [my former employer's] inept lunge at web-native storytelling last week, I had no idea that the Post was quietly accumulating some good digital news projects and aggregating them in a blog. It’s been published since mid-April.

Here’s the most news-oriented project of the items of the bunch, a wonderful D.C. Budget Game. It’s an interactive response to the old “You don’t like the budget cuts? You give it a try” dare.

In truth, aside from this, there’s little groundbreaking work here yet–most of the five features on the blog are soft efforts, of the cool-stuff-apropos-of-nothing variety, not journalistic responses to the news. The Post still badly trails the New York Times in innovative use of digital media to commit acts of journalism.

Still, it’s a sign of digital  life. And worth keeping an eye on.

n.b. Nobody at the Post turned me on to this. It’s not a “make-good” blog entry to try to curry favor with my former employer. It’s safe to say that that favor is beyond curry.

“Make Google Pay” and Other Hallucinations

The news industry has generated much sympathetic publicity lately about the woes of the news industry.

First, let’s say this: It’s easy to get positive coverage for an issue when you control so many ways to getting the message out. Pity the poor clowns who need to grovel to get major media attention for groundwater pesticide contamination.

Anyway, as the news industry continues to fight the inevitable, one phrase keeps coming up again and again:

Make Google Pay

The idea is that Google’s search results pages link to news content that costs a great deal of money to produce. Google makes money by placing ads around those search results. The content producers should get some of that money, the content producers argue.

I am bewildered–and a bit ashamed–that anyone who has achieved even middling professional status in a line of work that attracts a lot of really smart people can even say the words “Make Google Pay” and believe they have validity.

“Make Google Pay” is not a strategy, it’s a consensual hallucination of desperate minds. It is cognitive spatter that results from overwhelming stress. It is HAL’s final, dirge-like notes of “Daisy.”

I don’t want to get into a full-blown discussion about changing news ecology, user behavior, content abundance, link journalism, anti-trust law, etc.

I will make just three points. They seem so obvious to me that they don’t even need to be said. But as demonstrated at last week’s Congressional hearings about the future of journalism, people in the news industry, their lackeys and retainers appear not to have heard them. So:

1. Google is linking to content, not publishing it. I am amazed at how often Google is said to be “publishing” others’ news. Google points people to content that its algorithms determine to be high-value. Linking is not republishing. It is not a copyright violation. It is a way to direct people to high-value content that appears on the creators’ sites. The fact that Google is shrewd enough to extract value from its sift-and-direct service does not constitute unfair trade or thievery.

2. Publishers can block Google any time they want. If they think Google is extracting value from their content unfairly, they may choose to make their results invisible immediately. Any junior member of a news site’s web team can do this by 2 p.m. today.

3. Publishers instead are trying to make Google function as their utility. This is an astonishing act of delusional bravado. To wit: “Our content is so valuable that you must direct people to us and pay for the privilege.” Plus: “We need an anti-trust exemption to make this work, but our work is so important we deserve it.” This is not a business proposition, it is confiscatory collusion. I am stunned that various personages at the recent hearings entertained this proposal as if it were a serious idea worth consideration.

For god’s sake: “Make Google Pay” is a dead-end, an intellectually bankrupt proposition from a group of businesses that blew their big chance and continue to blow it every time they gather.

Trying to re-shape Google’s business to the demands of a failing method of distribution is a fool’s errand. If not precisely evil, it is at least destructively self-interested.

Every intercranial electrical firing, every synaptic twitch that news leaders devote to Make Google Pay represents a withdrawal from the central challenge they face: Creating bankable value that will fund the portion of  their journalistic work that truly matters to democracy.

===================

nb: Do a Google search using the words

Congressional hearings on future of newspapers

The pages that appear include no advertising. I mean, what are the chances?

My “Future of Newspapers” Hearing Testimony

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, fellow Americans:

I want to thank you for inviting me to testify before the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet to discuss The Future of Newspapers.

I have no idea why you invited me, since I am just a former newsroom toiler who fled for the digital world about three years ago and never looked back, except to use my blog to roll stinkbombs into American newsrooms in order to smoke out the cowards, fools and sentimentalists who are holding back the very innovations that can not only save journalism but allow it to thrive in spectacular and mind-bending ways none of us can imagine yet.

Note how I said “save journalism,” not “save newspapers.”

These are very different things. Journalism–let’s define that, just to be quick, as independent, energetic reporting on significant matters of public importance–can reach the public any number of ways.

It just so happens that for a long time it was economically feasible, indeed very rewarding, to distribute journalism via a process involving forest products, petroleum distillates, rail cars, really big energy-hog printing presses that are a hoot to watch, various conveyances powered by internal combustion engines, plastic bags, union labor, etc.

There are many ways, nearly all more time-, labor- and resource-efficient, to distribute this journalism. The Internet comes immediately to mind, but we’ll get to that in a second. By suggesting it’s important to “save” newspapers you are essentially saying you want to preserve the stunningly inefficient distribution process described above.

This is a bit like saying you want to feed America’s hungry by saving the tin-can industry.

Dudes [can I call you that?]: Focus on delivering the food, not on the container it comes in.

As a way to help committee members stay focused on this, I have asked my supporters–which is to say, both regular readers of my blog–to attend today’s hearing and shout the word JOURNALISM whenever a panelist or witness uses the word “newspapers.” I understand this may be disruptive to the proceedings, but please know that they are doing this as patriotic Americans who believe deeply, as I do, that without independent journalism America would be an even scarier place than it is now.

For instance, all that hoo-ha about “government transparency” wouldn’t mean squat without smart, skeptical, literate people of no obvious political affiliation who can help explain what it means to the public. I’d say that’s a good job for journalists right now, regardless of whether their work is delivered via the Internet, Kindle, iPhone, NPR podcast, god-help-usTwitter, e-mail or — hey, it’s still sort of a free country — ink on paper.

The problem is, the very well-intentioned, hard-working and absolutely bug-eyed terrified newspaper executives of today, some of whom are sitting so close to me I can smell their deodorant, are so determined to protect the cash flow derived from newspapers that they are stifling the innovations that can transform journalism so it serves members of today’s public, who consume and use information in very different ways.

It sounds crazy, but I’d much rather see a news organization quit publishing in print today–this afternoon is one idea–while it still has a positive balance sheet, a line of credit and some well-trained professional journalists on the payroll, than to see them ride the revenue curve all the way into the basement.

If they keep doing what they’re doing until they’re bankrupt, seized by creditors or overtaken by rogue board members who want to sell for scrap, all that invaluable human capital–journalistic talent, passion, experience–will be lost, scattered, squandered. They’d have nothing left to invest in creating the journalism of the future. And then look at who will be left to carry the values of journalism forward.

I’m guessing that a pull-the-paper-plug-today plan would lead to several possible outcomes for newspaper companies:

• They’d whither and die due to inability to adapt. It’s not clear whether they’d survive for a longer or shorter time than if they kept putting out a printed newspaper every day. I’d like a look at the numbers, though.
• They’d get bought by newer, nimbler companies that understand that original journalism has economic value and are furiously committed to capturing that value in a new media environment. At least some of the journalism DNA would convey
• They’d try a bunch of dramatic new things with content, delivery and businesses arrangements, most of which would fail but some of which could be small or even breakthrough journalistic successes or–who knows?–money makers

Frankly I don’t see a downside to any of those. The worst case is imminent death, which is pretty likely either way. The best case is finding a way to sustain at least some journalism in today’s media environment.

The middle ground is to go out in a blaze of creative glory, hoping at least to be remembered as a company that did its best when it mattered most and contributed to the body of work that helps others invent the future of journalism.

The alternative is continuing to publish in the most expensive way available, cutting all other costs–including journalism! and journalists! the most precious national resources on the table!–in order to sustain a distribution model that is being rejected by the public and advertisers with stunning speed and certainty. I am not a criminal lawyer, but isn’t that against the law or something?

Lately some government officials have talked about needing to save companies that are “too big to fail.”

I submit that companies that continue to devote their most valuable resources to print-based products are “too foolish to succeed.”

Members of the committee, fellow Americans, I implore you: Save journalism by letting the free market take its course. Some newspapers must die so journalism can live.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts.

Is there a back exit to this room?

Addendum, Thursday, April 23: Before I wrote the above item, I read a Tweet of Jeff Jarvis’s, saying that he’d written his fake testimony to the committee. This annoyed the hell out of me, since I was sure my idea was so clever that nobody else would think of it. Ha. But I went ahead and wrote mine anyway–without reading his. Honest. I just did read it. While his approach is characteristically more refined and coherent, and probably less insulting to those who disagree with him [he makes no references to stinkbombs or deodorant, for example], the ideas we share are eerily similar.  Actually, the similarity isn’t eerie, since I’ve been reading Jarvis for a long time and think he’s brilliant, at least on a good day with the wind at his back. Anyhow: Just wanted to say.

New Media Rorschach Test for Journalists

Test Instructions

Take a few moments to stare at these inkblots:

The New York Times eliminates sections, reorganizes newsroom

The Washington Post eliminates sections, reorganizes newsroom

Diagnosis:

If these images produce feelings of doom, despair and anger, you are sentimental, nostalgic, resistant to change and are poorly engaged with reality. Rx: Retirement or an editing job for a government agency.

If these images produce feelings of excitement, curiosity and hope, you are clear-headed, forward-looking, adaptable and culturally aware. Rx: Double down on the blog, learn to use that Flip cam, and prepare for a thrill ride.

If you see a ducky being disemboweled by witch, seek medical help immediately.

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