The thing is, when dealing with companies as a reporter, you have to pass the Marketing & Communication Department in order to get an interview or, basically, any other information that’s not on the company’s website. That being said, most medium-to-huge companies work with PR agencies. PR agencies want money. For that money, they have to work.

The circuit of an e-mail

The first step for PR agencies with smart employees is to market themselves in front of journalists as the primary source of information when it comes to their clients. So to get an interview with some manager from a company, you have to send an e-mail to the PR agency. Because every corporation’s communication department works directly with the agency, if you pass the agency and send an e-mail to the company’s representatives, you’ll usually be sent back to the PR agency. Because, well, the agency usually answers most of the press requests, including writing the answers to reporter’s questions.

Now, here’s the fun stuff. Being a long time reporter, you might know that eventually you’ll be sent back to the PR agency. So you go ahead and send them the request. What happens next? The agency gets the request and goes to the client saying: “We found a huge opportunity for your company’s [insert here department] manager to be featured in an article in Publication X“.

The opportunity

Usually, the agency puts it like this: “We found you the opportunity, We’re good, aren’t we? Now pay us the performance bonus“. Though, that didn’t actually happened. What really happened is that opportunity found you. It’s actually fascinating seeing how stuff works. The relationship between a PR agency and a company’s communication department is really interesting to watch and see how an interview with a manager opportunity for a company is being rewarded though it shouldn’t happen.

I’m not talking about small companies where a PR agency actually does its job and finds opportunities. That’s different. In these cases, opportunities might come through good relations between PR workers and journalists. “Hey, dude, a client of mine could be interesting for your paper, what do you think?”, “Hey, cool, give me the contacts“. But PR opportunities usually come through good press releases if they’re well written, when there’s a news factor involved.

Everyone can write a press release and send it to a mailing list, but you have to give journalists the news, not the info. For some agencies, that’s hard to do. And that’s why most journalists agree that the best PR workers are… well, former journalists.

Post from: Tonify.net

You cannot actually believe that a tweet saying “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot” is actually reffering to a huge respect to a terrorist leader. 140 characters are not enough to make you draw a conclusion. And mistakes were made on both sides.

Octavia Nasr’s mistake is that she didn’t follow-up her tweet explaining why she respected Fadlallah so people understand right away. She has mistaken by misjudging that everyone knows Fadlallah’s philosophy about letting and helping women raise from the Islamic closed circle of prejudice. Well, sorry to disapoint, I had no idea about that and I think to myself as a pretty informed individual, always intrested in what’s new.

Writing an explanation on the CNN blog is actually a bit too much. One more tweet was enough. Still, we have the other problem, the one which conflicts with the liberty of free belief (I guess it’s called like this). To judge a journalist – and more than that, a Senior Editor – for a short 140 characters tweet is stupid and only means people are more superficial than they admit they are.

Yes, Octavia Nasr was wrong to stick to only one tweet instead of following up with the second. But from that to resigning and claiming that she lost her credibility, that’s just stupid. She has the liberty to admire anyone she wants and no one can take that from her. But you cannot accuse her of almost being a terrorist lover only because she admired only some of the good qualities of a… well, not quite a good man. So, please try to sepparate good from bad when you start judging someone.

Post from: Tonify.net

Consumer oriented subjects are audience magnets

One of the best strategies in times of financial crisis is to speculate any opportunity. How are newspapers earning right now? The answer is simple: really hard. What’s there to do? Focus on consumers needs. From experience, I can tell people want to digest any news involving consumer oriented subjects.

Why should we care about consumerism?

Working in the media business is just the same as working in a factory: you get a salary. You probably get a bigger salary than the ordinary factory worker. But both you and the factory worker care about prices and tweaking life to pay less and have more satisfaction. The common thing between you two is that you both want the same thing. You, as a journalist, probably know more. Why not share your knowledge with the others?

People have a real need for consumer oriented articles. Focus on any problem people may have. You had a problem with the banks? Find a way to inform people about what kind of ugly situations they might get in if they’ll do what you did. Try to find some solutions. Did you have any problems in some supermarkets? Inform the people. Help your newspaper to grow its audience and help yourself making sure you’ll keep your job.

Money is the same for everybody: a medium

Write more articles about money. Don’t write about economics, write about personal finances. Find subjects suitable for the newspaper involving the consumer. Tell people how to save money and what they should not do to lose their earnings. This is one way of growing your newspaper’s audience and, as we all know, bigger audience means more advertisment, which is equal to more money. Plus: consumer oriented subjects are most read no matter if there’s a financial crisis or not. Now, they will be even more interested. Especially now. It’s that simple. Why do you think blogs have this huge success? Let me tell you why: because they speak about ordinary problems we all have.

Sometimes, we have to go back to the basics in order to grow our businesses. It happens to everyone. The more experience you have, the more you want to try new strategies. And being preocuppied with the new makes you forget what’s really important, no matter what business you’re in. Try to remember, once in a while, the basics of your services and the basic rules that drive your business. It will definitely help you.

Post from: Tonify.net

The inverted pyramid model - the basic rule to respect when writing news

Now, blogging has passed the times when a blog was synonim to writing about cats, dogs, lost love and funny personal experiences. Nowadays, we’re talking about niched blogs, about professional blogging and how to attract quality visitors. If you want quality visitors, your writing should look professional and respect a few basic rules of journalism. After all, blogging is similar to journalism when talking about bringing the news to our readers or giving them the best articles we can write. So here are a few tips about how to make your articles look professional.

Your title must say “I’m a good article, you have to read me”

Six years ago, when I got my first job (as a reporter), the first thing I was told was: “Your titles suck”. My colleagues explained to me that titles should:

1. be short – This one best applies to printed media, where your titles are limited by layout. To give you an example, for a newspaper, the title of this article should look something like “Basic rules of journalism for blogs”.
2. have impact – Must speak to the reader and invite him to read the article. For example, if I were to put a title like “I don’t like how my articles look like, yuck!”, it would sound really boring and readers aren’t always in the mood to read my lamentations.
3. speak the subject – Titles should say what’s the deal. Maybe it’s not the best example right now, but writing a title like “OMG, that’s so sad” doesn’t compare to “OMG, MJ died today!”. And this is actually an example of an impact title just as well.

When talking about online media or blogs, it’s a bit different. You’re not limited by a layout, your page is not measured in inches, but in lines. So titles aren’t actually required to be short. But it’s good to know that if you can write a good title in few words, you help your readers go faster to the content.

That means you save their time and they’ll be interested in returning to your blog, because they know you combine the best news with the best reading time. That means if people have 30 minutes to read news, they can digest more news in the same ammount of time on your very own blog. And they’ll stick around and won’t go to your competition.

Of course, that wouldn’t necessary apply to “how to” blogs or websites where you publish analysis or interviews. That’s different, because in this case, your readers will stick to how clear you make your point and how accurate and clean is your writing. But don’t forget to respect at least two of the above.

It’s the lead that keeps your readers

The second thing you learn as a reporter is how to start writing your article. The first paragraph is usually called a “lead”. If the title draws attention to your post, it’s the lead that makes your readers click the “read more” link.

And this is where we should introduce the “inverted pyramid” concept. Its first rule, in journalism, is that every news should include and respect the five “W’s”. Actually, that’s the basic rule for writing news. What’s the five “W’s”? It stands for the basic information any news should integrate:

1. “who” – Find out who’s the subject of the story.
2. “what” – Write about the context, what happened, how it happened.
3. “where” – Where did the action took place.
4. “when” – When did it happed?
5. “why” – Find out why and explain to your readers why it had to be like that.

Let’s talk about “the pyramid”

The inverted pyramid means that crucial info should always be at the top and many times, that means a short summary, no longer than one paragraph.

Then comes the body of the article. That means the actual story, where you include once more the 5 “W’s”, but this time you can concentrate on the details. You can actually write about each “W” in different paragraphs. You can add supplemental facts, quotes or any details you might find interesting for your readers.

Still, remember that the body is just as important as the title or the lead. Once more, if the title draws attention and the lead invites the visitor to read your story, the body is usually the place where they give up after learning the news. So it’s really important to keep the reader’s attention to every detail, so he wouldn’t close the browser’s tab/window and stick to your article until it finishes.

The “inverted pyramid” model ends with the conclusion. It’s where you publish the least important information. On the other hand, the best practice is to keep a good line for the conclusion. You can either give the reader a good joke, or give him a subject to meditate on. This is one way to invite your visitor to check out your other articles. It’s the “I’m a bright guy, I write clever stuff” factor.

A few tips

1. Use headings. I’d call them “intertitles”. If you write long articles, headings help you separate the most important ideas.
2. Use paragraphs. No one wants to read a long block of text. They get tired.
3. Use images. They draw attention. Use them on the first page just as well.
4. Use quotes. They make the reading more fluid and it’s easier to follow the ideas.
5. If you’re posting news, try to confirm it from at least two sources. If it’s just a rumour, speak loud: “It’s just a rumour”. Otherwise, your credibility will suffer.
6. Use background information in the conclusion. Some of your readers won’t know who’re you talking about.
7. Name competitors when writing about companies, use figures when talking about economics (sales, profit, etc.)

Post from: Tonify.net

When is there going to be invented a true talk-show concept?

I’m not quite a big fan of politics. I enjoy what’s behind, I find it fascinating when it comes to learn about how a campaign is made (and that’s the reason I hate I wasn’t able to attend this year’s Cannes Lions seminars). I even find fascinating the way politicians build their reputation and credibility. But I hate politics when it comes to sticking fingers and pointing out mistakes. They’re politicians, they lie, why should I believe them? Isn’t lying what they’re payed to do?

People don’t care about politics. They care about what the guys on TV comment on politics.
Anonymous

I’m starting to believe in creative strategies and using opportunities in creating strategies for a better living. OK, I know, I’m an optimist, but shouldn’t this be their real target? While I believe in this ideal world where politicians might actually do something good for the people, they go on TV and point fingers.

Why isn’t TV used for real conversation? Why isn’t it used for coming up with ideas that can be put into practice? Why aren’t talk-shows used to come up with new concepts? Why should we stick to point a finger: “That’s so wrong, ’cause I’m a big bad ass politician and I know better, it shouldn’t have been done this way“?. And here’s something else: you know what they usually respond to a question like “What would you have done?” when asked? They say:

Well, you see, I would have done it in a different manner. As we all know, we live in this beautiful country, God forbid I be wrong, with this wonderful people and… And I believe in this great system called democracy, where the actions are not really taken by politicians, but by the people, who deserve the best and we always want to give them a good life. But you see, there’s this battle of interests, we’re pure, I swear!, but our competition, well, they have this hidden agenda…

I’d really like to see real answers. Those answers could be an inspiration to the goverments. But, hey!, who cares as long as PR agencies get their money? I need constructive ideas, I need to see that “yes, you can”. I need solutions that can be put into practice, not the same PR bullshit. No wonder TV loses audience.

Post from: Tonify.net

Steve Brill, the man who actually think he can put people pay for the news

As I said before, I don’t believe in paying for online news. First of all, it’s the wrong focus. You don’t have to put me pay for news when I can find the news anywhere else. Everywhere, actually. It’s actually simple to find alternatives. If Washington Post wants me to pay to read the news, I’m sure there’s going to be some other news website to pay Washington Post for that news and give me a summary of the article. Why should I bother paying?

Journalism Online. Right.

Steve Brill wants to create a service of news distribution. Basically, he will aggregate news from publications all over the world and will serve me the articles I’m interested in. He hopes to reach 10 percent of web readers, users that are willing to pay Journalism Online – that’s the name of his start-up -, so he could actually share the revenues with the publishers.

The idea is not bad, actually. If you could actually reach your core target, then JO could actually get some good money. Still, it’s hard to believe people are willing to pay for content. Why? Because regular people have lots of news sources. Now let me copy/paste a paragraph from Washington Post’s original article:

Under a hypothetical scenario presented to reporters Wednesday, Journalism Online predicted a large daily newspaper with a print circulation of 1 million and an online audience of 20 million would collect more than $110 million in new revenue during the first two years of its service. No revenue projections were offered for smaller newspapers during Wednesday’s meeting.

That’s hypothetical, OK? 20 million users for one big online news website. Am I stupid or this guy is crazy? Take “crazy” however you want: the good way, the bad way, I don’t care. He actually believes that 2 million people “might” pay for news. OK, now please go back to the first paragraph of this article and click the link, then read my previous post.

It’s actually a stupid idea

In theory, that sounds good. 2 million people that might pay for news. But what about Digg.com? What about StumbleUpon.com? What about HuffingtonPost.com? The first and the second are news aggregators, they serve the news to the reader and send traffic to the news websites. More traffic means more pageviews, more pageviews means more money from advertisments.

In order JO subscriptions to be possible, newspapers should introduce subscriptions just as well. Well now. If you add paid subscriptions to your website, your traffic will grow negative. That means less pageviews and less page views means… less advertising money. Now, which of them do you prefer? Guaranteed money from advertising or, hopefully, revenues from JO subscriptions? And are you sure JO will get at least 2 million subscribers? Are you willing to take that chance?

Let’s make a simple calculation

I don’t know what’s JO’s business model, but I bet Brill’s start-up would like to pay the publishers for each news view. How much could a news view cost? 2 cents? Because if he would like to collect $110 million in two years from 2 million subscribers, that means $55 million a year. For 20 million users a day, OK? Good.

New York Times has somewhere around 4 million visitors a day. That should be somewhere around 50-60 million uniques a month. If you have a daily online audience of 20 million, you should earn about $4,5 million dollars a month. Right? Right. For the New York Times, that means somewhere around $1,1 million. But if payed subscriptions would be introduces on NYTimes.com, the traffic would probably go down with at least 30 percent. That’s like 20 million uniques a month that can generate at least 80 million pageviews/month.

I don’t know the ratecards, but for a single leadboard, at 80 million pageviews a month, considering the CPM at 5 dollars, that means $400.000 a month from one single ad space. I use AdBlock, so I have no idea how many ad spaces NYTimes.com has. But if there are four, that means two million a month.

Is the New York Times ready to lose 0.9 million dollars? I know, the calculation is irrelevant, NYTimes could get it’s own subscribers, but most probably, it would be about the same money. So why pay Journalism Online? Hell, I don’t get it. Oh, and don’t forget: as irrelevant as it might be, the calculation above is really optimistic.
____________________
Image source: The Observer.

Post from: Tonify.net

That's what Twitter does... Hyperconnects you

“We are social” is a “conversation” agency with clients like Skype, Ford or WWE. Recently, they published a blog post in which they say blogging is being killer by Twitter. This hypothesis is actually stupid. I know Twitter registered a 2,681% growth in the last 12 month, as eMarketer reported, but that doesn’t mean blogs are going down.

Don’t be limited!

The heading above should have been “Twitter limits your expression“, which is true. In 140 characters, you can only say one or two ideas. Expressing is limited to that maximum number of characters. Thinking that you can replace 400 to 700 words (the medium length of a blog post) makes you a limited person with a limited thinking.

A couple of years back, there was this trend: “Blogs are killing media“. False. Blogs didn’t kill the media. Because you can’t compare a full team of journalists, a whole team of professionals, with one man writing on a blog. It’s true bloggers addopted some of the basic rules of journalism, but it’s normal. When seeking for credibility, you have to show people that they can trust you. That means the info you publish must be accurate, your articles should be clean and readable, you need sources and confirmations.

The “complementary” concept

One of the trends in classic media, a couple of years ago, was to create blogs. Something like “Fight fire with fire“. The difference between newspapers’ blogs and regular blogs is that usually the first ones are written by experts. Or maybe not experts, but people that really know and understand markets or topics they write about. That transformed the blogs and the “Fight fire with fire” concept was addopted by bloggers just as well. Bloggers learned more about their niche and they became small experts.

Newspapers’ blogs became complementary to the actual newspaper. “We give you the news, the information, why not read our opinions too?“. That’s what Twitter means to bloggers right now: “I have the news, here it is! But be sure you visit my blog to see a full analysis on this subject or to read more details“.

After all, what’s Twitter?

Just like newspapers, TV stations, news websites or blogs, Twitter is a medium. Twitter is where you can find news. The advantage of Twitter is that this medium is really fast. The disadvantage is that your news gets lost just as fast between the other’s news. Someone who doesn’t follow your stream might never find out your info.

Twitter can’t beat blogs just as blogs can’t beat classic media. As long as Twitter limits your expression to 140 characters, it will not beat blogs. As long as blog posts have at least one percent personal opinion, they won’t beat classic media. It’s that simple. People have a need for professionalism. I’m not saying someone on Twitter is not professional. But Twitter can’t afford to sustain professional information, unless a tweet links to an article.

Let’s just stick to using Twitter as a complement to our blogs, OK? Tweets don’t (yet, at least) have the same impact as blog articles. And you just can’t explain a whole concept in 140 characters. If you want a better explanation of what I’m trying to say, here’s one from Chris Brogan:

There’s a difference between making a meal and grabbing a snack. Eating only snacks can lead to us getting flabby. It means we spend less time in deliberate contemplation. It means there aren’t as many places to exercise our larger thoughts.

Read the full article on his blog, it’s pretty short, actually. And here’s another good article by Copyblogger’s Brian Clark – “Blogging is dead (again)“. And there’s this article in The Guardian, signed by Charles Arthur, who says “The long tail of blogging is dying“. I’d add that this is good: blogs are heading to niches, which is actually great. And while the growth tends to go negative, that means will read less crap. Isn’t that cool?

Post from: Tonify.net

Long live the king

That’s the first thing that comes to my mind when you say “Michael Jackson“. The moment I turned the volume to max. It was such a huge joy. And I wasn’t even the biggest fan. But it was that thing about his music that made you want to live. That thing that turns all your feelings inside out and makes you believe you can rule the world. I was 10, you see.

Then there were other albums, remixes and covers. But none of them ever sounded like the original. And that’s one thing that makes Michael Jackson unique. Then there’s this thing about “Thriller”, the 1982 album that still rules the charts of best selling albums all times. In almost 30 years, no one could ever beat that.

The genius

I’m just some guy who has never seen Michael Jackson on stage, never touched him, never talked to him. And I guess that’s what makes me able to write these lines. I never cared about the people, but I cared for their music. That’s what counts in the end. Just like Syd Barrett, just like David Gilmour, just like all the guys of Pink Floyd. And just like Michael Jackson. This is the people you’ll never care what newspapers write about if their music changed your life.

Michael Jackson is one of the few that are synonims to “music revolution”. Basically, he reinvented the music. He’s not just the king of pop, he’s the father of pop music. He represents the moment where music stopped. After Michael Jackson, no other could reinvent music. No one can beat that. Not only he is the father of pop music, he’s the father of hip-hop dancing, breakdancing and the godfather of a lot other dancing styles.

Changing the world has a price

Listening to a few of his tracks earlier today, I learned that being the king has a price. If you care to listen some of his best tunes, you’ll manage to understand his frustrations, his needs, you can feel what he actually means. It’s that 10 years old inside you that can understand the 10 years old Michael, his hopes and expectations.

Some say it was his career that made things go wrong. Starting as a kid, not having a real childhood. I’m not a psychologist, but they may be right. But I don’t really care. For me, Michael Jackson is that black (or white) guy that changed the world. It’s that track that made me want to rule the world. It’s that “Turn it off!” that made me turn it to “Are you nuts?“. That’s what Michael Jackson means to me. The music that changed the world, the music that reinvented the music.

I don’t want to talk about marketing

I was reading the news and I couldn’t stop noticing: “After finding out about MJ’s death, the sales encreased dramatically“. You might have expected that. But I don’t want to write about marketing. I don’t want to talk about sales. I don’t want to talk about his financial problems or about his debts. I want to talk about greatness. And greatness is immortal.

Post from: Tonify.net

A journalist will always get the news. The real news

On Twitter’s trending topics, the top subjects are the following: Iran, something, IranElections, something, Tehran, something, Neda. It seems like nothing else matters but Iran. Which is false. There are tons of subjects media should approach. But Iran elections seems to be “the subject” because of:

1. the “Twitter revolution” – everyone is excited how Twitter is generating the news.  Journalists are keeping their eyes on Twitter, hoping something new is going to appear.
2. the Iraq/Iran confusion – “that’s the same, right?” – a misunderstanding. Most Americans have no idea what’s the difference between Iran and Iraq. For most of them, it’s “that Arabian country with oil and where we send our soldiers”, so most probably everyone is thinking about war.
3. the battle for democracy – Iran is already a democratic country. It’s true, it’s a democracy built on religious bases, but it’s still a democratic state, otherwise there wouldn’t have been any elections. But the general perception is false and that’s mostly because you might think the American democracy model is the best and it should be implemented everywhere. Well, it didn’t work in Afghanistan, it didn’t really worked in Iraq.

Why Iran is news?

The Iranian matter makes the news because every revolution is news. Being a country with oil resources, Iran’s revolution is even bigger news. A revolution in Iran trying to change the democracy model is great news. Literally, great news for newspapers and televisions. Front page news if you want.

Why Iran news shouldn’t be that big news?

The Iranian revolution is an internal state matter. Yes, we are all interested in that, but not that interested. Iran is “good news” (I’ll use quotes from now on) for industrial entities and for politicians, because they don’t have to answer anymore to questions regarding the financial crisis, the crashes or bankrupticies. But it’s not good for the people. One rule of journalism says: “the closer the event, the bigger the news”. For Americans, Iran is in the opposite part of the world.

I live in Bucharest, Romania. That’s 1,462 miles (2,352 km) from Tehran. New York is 6,127 miles (9,860 km) away. That’s four times bigger. Wanna know what Romanians are interested in? Their jobs. Their salaries. Their mortgages. The real estate falling down. That’s what people are interested in. What would Americans be interested in? Most probably, the same thing. And Iran, of course. But why?

The “superior democracy complex”

One of the problems I see is that Americans tend to believe they are the heroes of the Universe. There’s nothing better, there’s no one better, everything is perfect. In the end, it’s just another form of propaganda. Yes, we all want to live in the US, we all want to have a big house and two cars in the garage, but if I’ll move tomorrow in the US (supposing I get a visa), it will take about 10 years to actually get a credit from a bank so I can buy a house.

The health system is down, the economy suffered a serious fall, people lost jobs, have no money to pay the bills, banks crashed, Wall Street is down, newspapers are closing or publish exclusively online. That’s what matters for the Americans, not Iran. Oh, sorry, Iran does matter because Americans still believe the US is strong enough to send troops and implement the perfect democracy model, right? Or is it wrong?

Most people don’t care

You want to know the truth? News about Iran is simple curiosity for the regular people. They’re interested in this topic because they expect the US will send troops and they don’t really want that. They’re interested because those who have some idea where Iran is located believe the US can get some more oil from there. They’re interested because there’s a place on Earth where it’s worse than home.

Otherwise, nobody cares about Iran. People care about what they’ll eat tomorrow, if they have the money to pay the bank, if they have money for gas. That’s what people care. Proximity! That’s where the news is. If a dog bytes a man, that’s not news. But if a man bytes a dog, that’s another story. Well, right now, men byte dogs: CEOs ruining corporations, politicians ruining the economy, etc. Where does that news stand?

And Jeff Jarvis doesn’t get it…

I respect Jeff Jarvis for what he does, for his career, for his opinions. But he doesn’t get one simple thing: when you have a monthly income of some few thousand dollars, you stop carrying about what regular people care. You don’t care about what you’re going to eat tomorrow, you’ll just find a restaurant nearby. You don’t care if you have money to fill up the gas tank, you think about changing your car. You don’t care about your child who didn’t buy a new t-shirt for a year now, you think his mom will take him to the mall this weekend and you already budgeted 400 dollars for his clothes.

I’m not in that situation of not having the money to buy a new t-shirt. I bought one yesterday from the mall. I can afford that. But what I realized a couple of years ago, after moving from being hungry to having a good salary is that the more you have, the more you spend. And, eventually, the more you care less about the ones that don’t have your financial status. Basically, you tend to forget where you’ve been before having your huge monthly salary. And that’s pure psychology, the simple psychology, actually: it’s not that you don’t want to go back the times you didn’t have food, you don’t even want to think about it.

Wanna know what people want?

Just find a recent study about people’s revenues, about firing, about people’s financial status and then you’ll see what news people buy. You, Jeff Jarvis, buy news about Iran. Because you don’t care about the hunger. But they do. And they don’t buy Iran. Sorry, they just won’t. Ever!

Back to the basics

Journalism is losing to online media because after years of experience, reporters tend to forget some of the basic rules of journalism. Some become too full of themselves, others become editors, some become columnists, others move to PR or become consultants. Times change, some don’t speed enough. But the basics remain the same. I don’t care Jeff Jarvis likes HuffingtonPost.com and he might consider it more relevant than a lot of newspapers. HPost.com will never be New York Times. I’ll never trust a website over a good newspaper. And that’s why newspapers won’t die.

Because it’s easier for a newspaper reporter to go back to the basics and serve people. But it’s not the same for a blog like HPost. Because NYT will send a reporter there, while HPost.com will take the news from Twitter. Because you measure HPost.com in terms of traffic, in terms of quantity, but journalism will always be measured in terms of quality. That’s the difference.

Do you want real news about Iran? Let the journalists do the job and stop crying out loud about the news on Twitter.

Post from: Tonify.net

Babylon fall gave the world languages. Knowing too many languages means lower growth for local online advertising

Now let me give you a good example. During the ages, big countries such as Italy, Germany or France used to dub movies or cartoons in their national language. On the other hand, countries such as mine used subtitles. During the communistic age, TV stations were few, and in many countries was only one. After the fall of this “golden era”, subtitling was chose over dubbing for the simple reason it was cheaper. So, in a way, everybody got access to new languages. The point is, this is how I learned English, this is why I can understand languages like Italian, Spanish or French.

Context

Combined with the fact that kids learn in school mostly English and French, like I did, you get to understand and be able to speak and write in other languages in a simpler way than, let’s say, French people or Germans. They don’t use English because they don’t need it that much. Me, on the other hand, I had to learn it because I was too lazy to actually read the subtitles.

And it’s really annoying when you go outside your country (as I did last year, going to Cannes, France, or this year, when I went to Milan, Italy) and see that all TV shows are dubbed in local languages. So despite the fact on TV is playing some American movie, you are unable to understand a word.

So when all TV stations from a country are broadcasting foreign productions not dubbed, it’s easier for its people to learn a new language pretty fast. Especially when they read the subtitles and they associate words in other languages with their local correspondent.

So how this influences the local online advertising markets?

When people already know two other languages – or only one, for instance -, their area of information resources is already larger. So people will not stick to their usual local news resources, but they’ll be trying to find out more directly from the original source. For example, I will not stick to an article from one news website, but I will click the link to the source and read the original just as well. And that usually happens because the local reporter/editor will not translate everything, but just the essential.

For instance, on June 2nd – I think, I’m not really sure -, there was this plane crash over the Atlantic. You might know the story of the Air France charter that was supposed to leave Brazil and arrive in Paris, but never actually did. People will not stick to the local news, they will go instantly for BBC, CNN, Reuters and even Brazilian news websites. Because they might actually understand Portuguese, probably because they watched latin soap operas on TV.

The conclusion is…

Go to France or Italy and try to ask a question in English. Besides the youngsters, lots of people will not be able to give you a straight answer in English that you might actually understand. Because people in France and Italy don’t speak English. They don’t care about English because they don’t need to use it. The TV shows, the movies, they’re all dubbed, so who needs to learn a new language?

This countries will always have a bigger local online advertising market. Because people will stick to what they’re familiar with. In countries such as the one I live in, people will not use local social networks because they know English. They’ll go for Hi5.com, Facebook.com, MySpace.com or LinkedIn.com. It’s easier and everybody already uses them. Because they can understand English and if that’s popular, it’s there where they have to be.

I know it’s a paradox, my friend knows it’s a paradox, but it’s true. Countries where people know other languages will have smaller online advertising markets. Strange, isn’t it? Now, the only thing that’s missing is some education. But how could you educate 8 million stubborn internet users? Well, that’s a really hard question to answer.

____________________
Image taken from here.

Post from: Tonify.net