thecyberbrains.com

One of the greatest challenges facing news organizations today as they shift their operations to the Web is figuring out how to make it pay. What's most frustrating for me, as an Internet researcher and a proponent of online innovation, is that some of the best online presentations aren't automatically those that make the most money. In fact, some of the most interesting online news sites, those that seem to embrace the three principals I think are the most vital online - interactivity, connecting with the audience and understanding a medium's strengths - almost always fail. And it usually occurs just after I have written about them or showed them to one of my classes. In fact, I may be an online innovation jinx!

It just happened at Yahoo! News. I had Robert Padavick, one of the site's senior producers, speak to my class remotely. I wrote about him on this site. I used Yahoo!'s People of the Web series during BOTH of the teaching presentations I gave while I interviewed for jobs. From Robert's Facebook page last week, I learned he had been a victim of ]Yahoo's most recent layoffs. I'm not sure about the rest of the news division, including Kevin Sites, but I'm not hopeful if they laid off someone as talented as Robert. Out of all the references I found on Yahoo's layoffs, there was no specific mention of what happened to the news division.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Roanoke.com used to feature TimesCast, a funny and inventive online news broadcast, created by their Web staff. I really liked it, not because it was the most professional piece of work ever, but because it wasn't as uppity as everything else you see on TV or even the Web. It seemed to really be speaking to its audience instead of over them. But that show hasn't been online for more than a year. It has been replaced with a sports and entertainment broadcast, which while innovative, isn't quite as fun.

The most glaring example from the Cyberbrains standpoint has to be Backfence.com. While we didn't always agree with their no-holds barred approach to citizen journalism because they did not actively edit or solicit contributions, we appreciated them for investing money in communities and offering a much more democratic news product. I also appreciated their loving embrace of hyper-local news. They had no pretenses about not running cute kitty pictures, local restaurant reviews, or dead deer pictures. This is rare in professional journalism.

But Backfence, as a citizen journalism forum, lasted only about a year. Now it's trying to be a local, online marketplace. According to this post from one of its co-founders, I think Backfence still has a lot to teach online news professionals.

The question remains what can Yahoo's cuts teach us about making online news profitable, and more importantly, why is no one else, at least that I can see, writing about this. Yahoo! published some high profile features and signed some even higher profile partnerships that should have given it some leverage as an online news provider. I sure the 60 Minutes clips and extras remain, but what about the elements of People of the Web or Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone? What about the revolutionary ways Yahoo decided to cover the 2008 presidential election with annotated interviews of each candidate and instant opportunities to comment? What about the news blog that didn't talk down to the audience? What about the site's entire philosophy not just to aggregate news as Google does, but to give it perspective and analysis?

I'm sad not just for a friend who is on the market in a difficult time. I'm sure Robert will land on his feet. I think he join me at his alma mater and get his Ph.D. Students need to learn the skills he has, and I don't think many of us can teach them. But more I'm sad that it seems Yahoo! had turned its back on an ambitious journalistic mission to "focus on the bottom line." That's not what journalism, but especially online journalism, should be about. What happened to allowing a site like Amazon.com run a deficit for more than five years in order to build it into the powerhouse it is today?

Sorry it has been a while once again, but it took another TV show to get me fired up enough to write. This time, however, it wasn't ER, which I've almost completely written off, by the way. One more ER employee's kid almost dying on the table will do that. No, this time it's one of my favorite shows, The Amazing Race, and this time, my peeves coincide pretty well with the goal of this blog. While a once thought CBS did a good job providing additional content and reader discussion boards online, it wasn't until I turned to them for some vital information that I realized how behind CBS really is. And maybe if anyone is listening, it can teach them what maintaining an online presence really means, because simply, it's like I tell my students in beginning newswriting: You never want to leave your readers with any questions, especially if you can easily provide the answers.

Tonight was the Amazing Race's season finale, and to no one's surprise, Nick and Star won. It would have been a much better final leg if Dallas (of Dallas and Toni) hadn't committed a fatal mistake by leaving his passport and money in a cab. This mistake put them seemingly so far behind that at the end of the last episode, the show's host Phil Keoghan met them on the street to tell them they had been eliminated. Even if they had made it to the end, they wouldn't have been allowed to continue without a passport.

Amazingly, that's where CBS left it. The end of the episode featured no scrolling text saying whether they ever made it home. I was especially appalled that at the end of the finale, when Dallas and Toni were conspicuously absent, the show's producers again failed to explain anything.

Aha, I thought, they must want people to go to the new, improved CBS Web site. I'm betting they have an interview with Dallas and Toni at the Elimination Station. No dice there either, just an insipid blurb about how sad it was for teams to leave sunny Acapulco. Wait, why were they in Acapulco again? Did I miss that stage?

Well, if the videos section didn't have the info, surely the CBS sponsored discussion boards did, right? Wrong! CBS hadn't even bothered to put up an "official" episode 10 thread yet, and the unofficial fan one wasn't any help, either. In fact, I thought a saw a tumbleweed blow by on the CBS discussion board because it hadn't really been used in a week.

I did finally find my answer, and I should have suspected it would be outside CBS' kingdom all along. Reality TV World published an interview with the Mother and Son team two days after the episode aired that featured such compelling information as how they got back and why Dallas put his bag with the passport down in the first place. Turns out he had to adjust his microphone at the insistence of the camera crew traveling along with him. Oh, and he got home after someone in Russia turned his passport in at the U.S. Embassy.

So why didn't CBS bother to tell its fans this? Why leave a loose end? If all the space you had was the 60-minute program, I could understand, but you're promoting the heck out of your improved Web presence, and you can't even pay someone to create or even monitor the threads? What's the point of the Elimination Station too - seeing Marisa and Brooke, the "Southern Belles," in bikinis?

The reason I think I'm so upset is that I've seen this all before. CBS' supposedly great Web site reminds me of newspapers' early Web forays. The thinking behind those efforts basically is like it or lump it. Don't consider what fans really want. Just copy what everyone else is doing. Discussion boards are big now. Let's do that. Maybe we should have our contestants blog? I hear that's all the rage. Oh, and because we have the fancy cameras, let's slap together a couple of videos and throw them up too.

It frustrates me even more because Amazing Race always seemed like a show that thought of its fans as more than Joe Sixpacks. One of the reasons I've always loved the show, and why I've heard it wins the reality show Emmy every year, is its crews follow the documentary style of film making. They show what truly happens and not manufacture drama. Now I'm starting to think maybe the producers just do this a little less on The Amazing Race than other shows.

When will the networks get it? Probably when other media organizations start, which will be sometime in 2016, or when their fans really start demanding it. If thousands of pounds of peanuts can save Jericho, maybe a couple hundred angry e-mails can bring some resolution to Dallas and Toni's real story on Amazing Race. If you're as fired up as I am, send them here. If you really want to improve your Web site, give me a call. I've almost got a fancy Ph.D.

P.S. I'm not the only one upset. Check out this great post by Jessi K. on RealityTVCalendar.com

A quick update to explain why I was misting up in the Reynolds Journalism Institute open conference room earlier this afternoon. My class introduced me to a a new blog which I've added to the blogroll on the right. NerdWorld, from Time magazine online, is co-writer by a Simpsons' executive producer. Give me one good reason why I wouldn't like it.

But that wasn't what had tears leaking from my eyes, and I'm really not exaggerating here. If you don't believe me, watch this video.

I found it scrolling through Time's Top 10 lists for 2008. This was No. 1 on the Top 10 viral videos, and the wellspring of emotion it elicited in me explains why. It also represents to me the power the Internet has in bringing people of different cultures together. We all just want to dance together, don't we?

Anyway, the rest of this and the other lists provide a good excuse not to work on your last class paper EVER! Ha ha ha ha!

Wednesday was a hectic workday and today a juggling day.

I launched a survey of the faculty and staff of MU yesterday afternoon. It was created by a class, but I'm constantly online tweaking it and working with respondents.

And I'm doing that while trying to pay attention at the Information Valet conference. Poorly paying attention, that is.

That said, it's nice to be sitting in a crowd that has more working journalists than academics. So I should get my attention back to them ...

It's amazing how being busy can clear your mind. You'd think that a landslide of expectations and obligations would smother your sense of direction. But somehow it acts like that morning cup of coffee -- it focuses me on the task at hand.

Tuesday is a non-teaching day for me. Which really means it is a bust-your-bottom day. As this was the penultimate Tuesday before the term ends, it came with an extra level of urgency.

My research class -- cleverly called "Solving Practical Problems" -- is supposed to have its final survey in the field this week. Thanksgiving, procrastination and technical foibles got in the way, however. I spent the morning and much of the afternoon reformatting their questions so the online survey would actually work

During "breathers," I processed the 61 email messages that had arrived since midnight. That meant I had to answer sets of questions from two student researchers -- one from California and the other from New York -- who solicited me as an "expert." And field a half dozen questions about a GPS project I'm toying with. And find the revised dissertation I was supposed to read and approve.

But I took time to have lunch with Associate Dean Brian Brooks, my mentor and guide in the academic world. He wanted me to explain how I was working with Missouri community newspapers for my editorial writing class and to explore how we might expand the idea. He is always a great sounding board.

So now I'm hammering away at this blog before I have to leave for a meal with a church "Dinners for 8" group. Wednesday I teach, then jump into the RJI "Information Valet" conference.

I've never been excited about diary blogs. I like to write about my experiences, but not about the play-by-play.

But if you have read the notes to the left, you know I have discovered Twitter. I'm fascinated by how much one can express in a mere 140 characters. That fascination led me to revisit my view on diaries.

The actual driver was the blue mood I found myself in after assigning a group of students to write a "This I believe" essay. I realized that I had never made that type of statement myself and should put my ego where my mouth is.

Twitter is fun, but I've too long stayed away from more traditional writing. So I'll give it a try for the next few weeks. Perhaps documenting my daily thoughts will give me insight to what I believe -- or don't believe.