Lunch: Prosciutto and a cheese that was like mozzarella, but a little different. And a Pig Floyd ale from Castelli Romani brewery. (at Dionisio Ristorante e Gastronomia)
Why Owners Should Let the Experts Run the Team, Part 472
I thought I'd post a long-overdue update here by sharing an anecdote from my current obsession: Loose Balls, an oral history of the American Basketball Association, by Terry Pluto.
Here's how Max Williams, the first GM of the Dallas Chaparrals, describes the team's preparation and execution of the league's inaugural draft in 1967:
The draft was coming up and I made some calls to coaches I knew, did some checking around, got all the basketball magazines I could and put together a draft list. I gave it to [owner Roland] Speth and figured we’d talk about it in a few days.
One day, Speth said to me, “Well, we had our draft.”
I said, “What are you talking about?”
He said, “It happened so quickly. They just said the draft was tomorrow. I couldn’t find you so I went to New York and I took your list along and I did the draft.”
Of course, the reason he went to the draft by himself was that Speth didn’t want to spend the money to take me, too.
I said, “You should have taken me. You don’t know anything about players.”
He said, “I got the first five guys on your list.”
I said, “That wasn’t a talent list. That was a list of players in alphabetical order.”
He said, “Oh.”
That was it — “oh.”
So the first draft pick in the history of the Dallas franchise was Matt Aitch from Michigan State, because his last name began with “A.”
Look at our draft:
1. Matt Aitch.
2. Jim Burns.
3. Gary Gray.
4. Pat Riley.
5. Jim Thompson.
Then in the supplemental rounds it went:
1. Paul Brateris.
2. Jeff Fitch.
3. Ted Manning.
4. Duane Heckman.
5. Gilbert McDowell.
6. Jerry Southwood.
7. Tom Storm.
The only guy out of alphabetical order was Heckman, and my guess is that Speth probably just looked at the list wrong.
Ranking the 5 Biggest Jerks in Game of Thrones This Week
It's not smart marketing, but I'm leading with the disclaimers:
- I am not a TV critic
- I started watching Game of Thrones on HBO Go in January. January 2013. Just over two months ago.
- I don't plan to put too much time into this.
On the plus side, I will also link to recaps written by people who do this for a living (or at least put more time into it than I do) at the bottom of the post.
So here are my rankings of the characters who were the biggest jerks (or tools, louts, cretins, bounders, sleazeballs, etc.) in Episode 1 of Season 3 of Game of Thrones ("Valar Dohaeris"). Your mileage may vary:
5. Melisandre: Taunting Davos over his dead son. Not cool.
4. Joffrey Baratheon: This is a good ranking for this perennial Top-2 contender.
3. Stannis Baratheon: Not exactly a warm welcome-back for his presumed-dead pal Davos, eh? It doesn't help that, as Andy Greenwald says in the Grantland recap, he is "knee-deep in his Plastic Ono Band phase with Melisandre."
2. Kraznys mo Nakloz: He's the slave trader, the bald guy who said nasty things about Danaerys in a foreign language and cut off a soldier's nipple. I guess I could have stopped at "slave trader" and you would have gotten the point.
1. Tywin Lannister: I'd say his dressing-down of Tyrion lacked self-awareness. We've established what a Lannister is; they're just disagreeing about which purchases are appropriate at this point.
Also Receiving Votes:
- Robb Stark: As I see it, putting your mother in a jail cell is bad. Unless you're Joffrey.
- That Fish the Dragon Roasted and Ate: Was asking for it.
- Theon Greyjoy: Did not appear in this episode. Undoubtedly remains a tool.
Recaps:
The Queen of Dragons Goes Window Shopping for Eunuch Soldiers (Grantland)
Margaery Tyrell is the Princess Di of Westeros (Slate)
This is Three Clicks -- a post about (approximately) three stories I read today.
1. Should Sports Reporters Be Permitted to Tweet Every Play? (GeekWire)
GeekWire's Taylor Soper wrote this story as a follow-up to the mini-controversy surrounding the University of Washington's decision to reprimand a reporter for tweeting too much at a college basketball game last week.
The GeekWire headline asks a pertinent question, I guess, but here are two better questions:
1. Why would a sports reporter think this is a good way to use Twitter?
2. Why does the University of Washington athletic department care?
Monday's GeekWire story on this spat said:
By my count, [reporter Todd] Dybas sent out 53 individual Tweets from tipoff until the final buzzer. A lot of those were simple Tweets like 'Wilcox 3,' or 'What touch!'
College basketball games last about two hours. So Dybas was tweeting approximately every 2 minutes 15 seconds. That's a lot -- and I think you can make a case that tweets like the two mentioned above add little value.
Here's my unsolicited advice for sports reporters who use Twitter at games:
- Skip the play-by-play. In almost every case, your followers are watching the game with you. And even if they're not, play-by-play tweeting isn't a great way for fans to follow the game, nor a good use of your time.
- Use your access. You're at the game; most of your followers are not. And you probably have a good seat. Tweet about things that that allows you to see and hear.
- Big picture. At opportune times (television timeouts in college basketball games, for instance), take a step back and analyze what's going on.
- Quotes. Tweet a couple good quotes from your postgame interviews. These often are the newsiest tweets from a game.
- Photos. A good Instagram or TwitPic is a nice supplement to your tweets, helping your followers feel a little closer to the action (or the work life of a sports reporter). Of course, make sure the team's social media policy allows you to post pics (usually this is only an issue with game action, and your phone probably can't take good action photos anyway).
- Remember your audience. Most of your followers are fans of the team you're covering. Be objective, of course, but show some sympathy when the team struggles. At some point, say after your first two tweets about the team's field-goal shooting slump, the fans don't want or need to be reminded any more how bad things are going.
Okay, now here's unsolicited advice for the University of Washington: You don't need to limit Twitter play-by-play to protect your broadcast rights.
No one is following a sports reporter's Twitter account because it's a good substitute for watching a game on TV. They follow because it's a good way to supplement the action on their television screens. We live in a two-screen world. Get used to it.
Also worth noting, UW folks: This quote from Doug Tammaro, the director of media relations at Arizona State -- which has no limit on reporters' tweets from a game:
I don’t know how you monitor that kind of thing, and we are just investing our energy elsewhere.
2. Hank Stuever's Popular Culture Journalism Class: Weingarten week! (Tonsil)
The Washington Post's excellent pop culture writer, Hank Stuever, is teaching at the University of Montana's journalism school this fall. His blog, Tonsil, features recaps of the classes, and the latest goes over Gene Weingarten's recent appearance via Skype. Read it for some insight on how one of the nation's best longform writers does what he does.
Bonus: Have you read Weingarten's piece on the Great Zucchini? If not, do so ASAP.
3. Growing Up Observed (Slate)
Michael Apted's transcendent "Up" series has refreshed with another film -- out in Britain already, but debuting in the States in January. If you haven't watched any of these, you must: Started in 1964, the series tracks the lives of 20 Brits who were seven at the time of the first filming.
The New York Times and YouTube have trailers for the new one, 56 Up: here and here. But I'm recommending this Slate piece from 2007, written in the wake of 49 Up, which takes an existential look the series: Why do the subjects and the filmmaker keep doing it? (It also grapples with Up's similarities with reality television.)
The clip at the top of the post is mentioned in the Slate piece.
Oh, and all the previous episodes (7 through 49) are available on Netflix streaming. My advice: watch one early one and "49 Up" before going to see 56.
Three Clicks: Mark Cuban Blasts Facebook, Considers MySpace
Welcome back to Three Clicks, a roundup of items that caught my eye on the World Wide Web today.
Hi there. Even when I'm not posting regular Three Clicks updates, I am clicking and reading a lot of stories. I thought I'd lead off today by telling you one way I find a *lot* of good ones: Jason Hirschhorn's "Media ReDEFined" email newsletter (screenshot above).
If you like the sort of stuff I share here, you'll like this. He picks great content, and lots of it.
You can get a feel for it by looking at his FeedBurner feed, and the signup page is here.
Anyway, here are three quick-and-dirty clicks. Well, actually four, since one is a two-parter.
1. Mark Cuban: Facebook Is Driving Away Brands - Starting With Mine (readwrite)
"We are moving far more aggressively into Twitter and reducing any and all emphasis on Facebook," Cuban says, via email. "We won't abandon Facebook, we will still use it, but our priority is to add followers that our brands can reach on non-Facebook platforms first."
2. Mobile Ads Are the Future. They're Also Lousy (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)
Here are two of the problems mobile advertising faces: There's very little screen real estate on a phone, and it's hard to produce an ad that's not annoying. Good quote from web ad designer Al Rotches:
When I see an ad pop up on my phone, I get scared. When I’m on my phone, this is my thing. I don’t want to be tracked, I don’t want to be interrupted.
3a. Postgaming with Axelrod, Part 1 (Politico)
3b. Postgaming with Axelrod, Part 2 (Politico)
I read a ton of post-election analysis, but my favorite read was this two-part Q&A Politico's Mike Allen did with chief Obama strategist David Axelrod. Both originated in Allen's legendary "Playbook" email.
You know why I think I liked it so much? A Q&A is raw journalism, straight from the source's mouth. Here's what this key player saw and thought (or what he said he saw and thought), and that's that. Simple and effective.
Bonus Click: ESPN Camera Catches Rick Reilly Ordering Stu Scott To Credit His Twitter Feed (Deadspin)
Seeing this lame request accidentally caught on air -- and Steve Young's reaction -- is priceless.
That's all for today. If I get a comment, retweet or share -- or if Stuart Scott credits me on SportsCenter -- I'll do one tomorrow, too. I promise.
If you steer clear of quality, you're all right, you know? ... This afternoon, John and I were listening to a stereo LP of the Beatles in which the voices come out of one side and the backing track comes out of the other. And when you actually hear the backing track of the Beatles without their voices, they're flippin' lousy.
Pete Townshend in this 1966 interview (go to 3:15). My copy of Townshend's new autobiography should arrive today ...
Three Clicks: The Bleacher Report Takedown and Much More
This has not been a good morning for my productivity. Why? Link after link of interesting content has been streaming toward me via Twitter. And I can't get out of the way.
So, in a slight twist on the usual Three Clicks format, here's all the stuff I have read so far, with very little commentary from me:
1. Top 5 Ways Bleacher Report Rules the World! (SF Weekly)
A look inside the massively popular user-driven sports site. Here's the subhed on the Weekly's cover: "Unpaid Writers Churn Out Terrible Articles and the Owners Get a $200 Million Payday. It's a Web Success Story."
Important to note that B/R lead NFL writer Michael Schottey told me on Twitter:
not my place to speak for company, but know that my editorial experience for 2+ years doesn't jive w/ picture [SF Weekly author Joe Eskenazi] paints.
(If you want Deadspin's quick take -- I'll bet you do -- here it is:
"Bleacher Report Is The Worst Thing In The History Of Journalism" Is The Headline Bleacher Report Would Write For This Story
2. Nate Silver: What I Read (Atlantic Wire)
The smart guy behind the data-driven NYT blog FiveThirtyEight tells us what he reads.
Former colleague Greg Sandoval has this fascinating Q&A with Gina Keating, who has written a history of Netflix. The book focuses on the Blockbuster vs. Netflix fight, a classic new school-old school battle.
4. Push to Ban Football at a New Hampshire High School (MyFoxDC)
To be honest, there's not much meat here. One guy on the Dover, N.H. school board (a retired physician) thinks football is unsafe and wants to ban it. Doesn't sound like it will happen there, now.
However, it doesn't take a genius to predict we'll see more and more calls like this at the youth and high school level. And one will eventually succeed.
5. A Backlash to 'Digital First?' Or a Zig While Everyone Else Zags? (Charles Apple/ACES)
An Orange County Register "deals" blogger writes that the paper's new owners have invested a lot in print and, "As a result, they have decided that most of us should devote our time to the print newspaper, and either reduce or eliminate the effort we are making to work on blogs like this one."
Okay.
6. Michael Wilbon Trashes D.C. as a Sports Town (D.C. Sports Bog)
I echo Dan's sentiments here. As he writes:
Wilbon was never anything but a prince to me, and was always far kinder than he had reason to be. But I’ll never understand why he seems to go out of his way to antagonize the fans and readers who helped turn him into a national star.
Seeing the words "antagonize the fans" reminded me of Wilbon's, um, lively chats I used to help produce (briefly) at The Post. Here's a sample from a Wilbon chat in May 2010 -- found it on my second click after Googling "michael wilbon chat washington post."
Q: Wilbon, On PTI I saw that you took another shot at Ovie. What's up with that? Comparing him to Lebron? Are you kidding me? James is older and has yet to get a Ring. Ovie is 24 and still has his best years ahead!
Michael Wilbon: LeBron is 25, Ovie is 24 ... You tell me the difference. I see you're just another apologist who would try to convince me (yourself?) that Ovechkin's career is in the same place as Sidney Crosby's ... Go somewhere else to try that. Any discussion of sports led by a sportswriter includes critical looks at people and their careers. Sorry that offends you.
Three Quick Clicks: Mobile Ads That Work (Really? Some Do?)
Welcome back to Three Clicks, a regular(ish) roundup of items that caught my eye on the World Wide Web today(ish).
Here, quickly, are three links to items I read today (or recently).
1. Mobile Ads: Here's What Works and What Doesn't (Wall Street Journal)
(I was able to read it without a subscription; hopefully those of you who also don't subscribe can see it too.)
Banner ads--the boxes or rectangular ads on many mobile websites or apps--are known as the "spray and pray" approach. Marketers, consumers and companies all said these ads are cheap, crude and annoy mobile users. Still, banner ads account for nearly $2 of every $10 spent on U.S. mobile ads, according to eMarketer.
Al Jazeera is de-emphasizing news and spending lots on sports.
I first read about this on TVNewser, thanks to a tweet from author James Andrew Miller, a k a @ESPNBook. The TVNewser post also links to a Guardian report that says Al-Jazeera's news director "stepped in to ensure a speech made by Qatar's emir to the UN led its English channel's coverage of the debate on Syrian intervention."
3. Cheers: 'The Best TV Show That's Ever Been' (GQ)
Soon, we will run out of pop culture landmarks about which to write oral histories. But we have not hit that point yet, thankfully, and here's a good one on legendary sitcom "Cheers."
Plenty of good stuff in this read -- inside stories from the creation and development of the show, frank talk about tensions between some actors, and lots of funny reminiscences.
I also quite liked this quote from David Lee, a Cheers writer and executive producer:
On some shows, [the producers] say, "Oh, you gotta have 10 jokes per page." Glen and Les would go, "You know, it's better to get rid of the 'Fifty percenters,'—the jokes that are just chuckles—and be satisfied with the hundred percenters." If you have enough lesser jokes in the way, you actually start diminishing the value of the really good ones.
(Apologies if you have seen some of these already -- I am catching up after a busy weekend. But these still seemed worth sharing ...)
Non-Click of the Day: This ad for A Google a Day rolled before a soccer highlight video I wanted to watch, and guess what? I didn't click "Skip This Ad."
I may be behind the curve here -- A Google A Day is more than a year old, and this promo is more than three months old. But still -- how many ads are good enough to keep you from clicking "skip?"
Three Clicks: 'Readers Will Visit Because of Other Readers'
It's been an active week for Three Clicks. Inspiration from ONA? Boredom? You make the call.
1. How Journalists Can Turn Their Stories Into Conversations (Poynter)
Put simply: I spent some time managing comments at The Washington Post, and I agree just about every word of this post. This is great stuff from Tyler Borchers, a junior at Ohio University.
Here's my ranking of Borchers' top five observations:
2. "Commenting policy is an ongoing experiment within and between news organizations. Whether participation in that experiment happens on the company-wide or individual level, it requires meaningful interaction with readers. "
3. "Readers will visit your website because of other readers. But you need to set an example for them first."
4. "Being a 21st century journalist means curating news. It should also mean curating comments."
5. "Any kind of commitment [to interact in the comments] is better than laissez-faire disregard."
Borchers has a blog and is on Twitter, btw.
2. Hiring in the Digital Age (The Atlantic)
The most-tweeted quote from Bob Cohn's piece may end up being, "Today, everyone is an editor in chief." And I agree.
But I also really liked this:
We look for what Gabriel Snyder, editor of The Atlantic Wire, calls "keyboard presence." Just as actors can have stage presence and athletes can have field presence, a good web writer is a natural in front of the screen.
3. Fab Furore: Is It Time to Re-evaluate the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour? (The Guardian)
The Beatles followed up their masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, in 1967 with "Magical Mystery Tour," a pretty darn good album and an, um, puzzling film.
(This Guardian piece sums up public reaction to the film's BBC1 broadcast on Boxing day, 1967, by simply writing, "Most were not best pleased.")
As Paul, Ringo and the others who make Fab Four decisions these days prepare to release a "spruced up" Magical Mystery Tour DVD, BBC arts program "Arena" is set to debut another look at the film in Magical Mystery Tour Revisited.
Anthony Wall, Arena's longtime editor, watched MMT on BBC1 in 1967, and he says:
I am that textbook 16-year-old who sat there in the front room, with the indoor aerial in one hand, thinking I was watching something completely wondrous. I can remember looking back at my mother and the neighbours, who were saying, 'Absolutely shocking – outrageous.'
I'm all for counter-intuitive revisionism, especially when it comes to the Beatles. Although I should add these bits of text from the Guardian's piece:
The film remains a challenging viewing experience. ...
Within about five minutes, the film begins leaping around with no regard for narrative sense. ...
The editing is often awful. ...
Some scenes aren't just inexplicable, but arm-chewingly tedious. ...
The Arena film and the DVD rerelease might be seen as proof of the revisionism regularly perpetrated by the two surviving Beatles and Apple Records (see also 2003's "Let It Be ... Naked," the stripped-down recasting of the Beatles' worst album).
Still, I will watch both if possible in the U.S. (I have never seen the original film).
And Let It Be is not the Beatles' worst album: Beatles For Sale is.
Bonus Click: Oreo Gets Dunked by One of the Best Twitter Replies Ever (AdWeek)
Who knew AMC Theatres had such good social media presence?
Your turn: I think I'm tired of this Tumblr theme. Anyone have suggestions for a new one?
Another day, three more clicks. Click here for the archives, and note that I have finally enabled comments.
1. What Does It Take To Be a Good President? Four Things, Mainly. (Slate)
Slate's John Dickerson kicked off a series on how Americans should pick our president today, making a point that may be obvious but is enjoyable to echo nonetheless: Modern campaigns are lousy at telling us which candidate will be better once in office.
Instead, Dickerson writes, wouldn't it be great if we approached presidential campaigns like big companies run job searches? They identify the skills and attributes needed to succeed in a position and then ask questions of the job candidates aimed at finding out if they meet the criteria.
The four qualities we should judge a president by, according to Dickerson:
Political skill: Campaigns give us a good idea of a candidate’s priorities, but can they read the political landscape they’ll face when they get to office? Are they honest enough to win voters’ trust but ruthless enough cut a deal with their enemies when necessary? Are they comfortable with the schmoozing, backslapping, and ego-massaging that comes with the job?
Management ability: Is the candidate focused enough to follow an overarching vision, but nimble enough to tweak that vision when real-world events intervene? Can they admit mistakes and learn from them? Can they sift through complex ideas? Can they recognize baloney when it comes from their staff or supporters? Do they know how to hire a good team?
Persuasiveness: Do they know how to deliver a good speech? Do they know when to stay quiet? Do they know how to read public opinion? Is it possible for a president to short circuit Congress by taking an issue directly to the people?
Temperament: Has the candidate ever faced a true crisis? Do they have the equanimity to handle the erratic and unpredictable pressures of the office? How are they with uncertainty?
(That's a poster for James K. Polk and running mate George M. Dallas above. But you knew that already, right?)
Minor Quibble: Dickerson writes:
When voters evaluate a candidate’s character, they tend to be Manichean: Candidates are only one thing or its opposite. A candidate is either a leader or a ponderous professor, a man of the people or an elitist, the real deal or a phony.
I would amend that, to something like "Campaigns and the media think that when voters evaluate a candidate’s character ... " or "When dumb voters evaluate a candidate’s character ..." Most people I know are sophisticated enough to see shades of gray.
Pet Peeve: Dickerson ends the piece with a call to action, as they say in the user engagement game, asking for reader input via email. There's a comment thread a quarter-scroll down -- why not use that, John?
2. Pivoting a City: Can Startups Help More Than Themselves? (The Atlantic)
Using Pittsburgh (a personal favorite) as a case study, Alexis Madrigal asks whether a thriving startup culture can help lift a city out of economic doldrums. Your tl;dr answer: We don't know yet.
But it will be interesting to watch this play out in Pittsburgh. Madrigal takes us to a co-working space inhabited by Carnegie Mellon-educated brainiacs and other promising innovators, as well as Google's Steel City offices, which are in a building that used to be a Nabisco factory.
Nearby, however, is this:
Like I said, there are no answers here. But it's a good read. If nothing else, just read the lede, which describes Madrigal's trick for finding cool neighborhoods in Rust Belt cities.
3. Five Reasons Why Live Video News Will Never Be the Same (paidContent)
Jeff John Roberts runs down five takeaways from a panel on video news held Tuesday in New York. In Takeaway 3, Roberts describes a problem traditional print outlets face when trying to create more video content:
[Former CBS News president Andrew] Heyward noted that many of the videos simply amount to a print reporter regurgitating a story. “There’s a glut of video but not enough quality video. ... This is better consumed as print – give me something new."
This sounded familiar to me. Just five days ago at the Online News Association's annual conference, I heard Amy Webb give this advice to journalists who are trying to capitalize on the growing trend of online video:
Content cannot be your video strategy. There's way too many people in the content game who have far fewer restrictions than you do. You're not going to win at content.
So don't try to dream up another "program," especially one with journalists sitting around a table talking, Webb says. Instead, create a platform that offers an immersive video experience that takes advanatge of the web's stregnths, like Pepsi's home page or HuffPost Live. Concentrate on content after all that is in place.
(The complete audio of Webb's ONA talk can be found here, and I put a comment in to mark the start of her discussion of video.)
Welcome back to Three Clicks, my sorta-regular post running down the first three links that catch my eye and seem sharable.
This is a trailer for Paul Lockhart's new book, which aims to introduce us to
"mathematics as an artful way of thinking and living," Measurement ). See Item 3 for more.
1. With Technology, Bringing the ACL Tear to its Knees (Smart Planet)
As sports fans know, there aren't many good stories out there containing the words "anterior cruciate ligament tear." Here's a pleasant exception:
Some in the medical community believe they have found a way to reduce the number of ACL tears athletes suffer. How? By teaching them to move differently.
Others have followed suit, such as Lt. Col. Anthony Beutler, an Air Force sports medicine doctor who helps lead a prevention program for Airmen. Said Buetler:
Our evidence so far suggests that people can be taught to move differently, and that these programs do work, for ACL and a wide variety of other injuries — knee sprains, shin splits, stress fractures. The concept is simple. Teaching people to land softly, toe to heel, not heel to toe. Use your body as God intended you to use it — keep your knees over your toes and use your knees as hinges. We like things to bend straight, not like corkscrews.
Soccer note: Among the others espousing an ACL prevention program is 1990s U.S. national team goalkeeper Tony Meola. Meola, who tore his ACL in 1999, now coaches girls' soccer in New Jersey, and says his players have not had a knee injury in two years:
You can do the exercises on the sideline as part of the warm-up. It really is a minimal effort for a huge reward.
2. Cisco Wants to Drive Your Car … Onto the Internet (Wired)
Microsoft has long offered a version of its Windows operating system for overseeing all the services inside your car, Google has its self-driving cars. And apparently, Steve Jobs saw the automobile as the next great frontier for Apple. But Cisco is a little different. It doesn’t want to build an OS for your car — or automatically drive your car. It wants to network it.
The payoff would be a more connected car — one that can switch from 4G to wireless networks while simultaneously streaming a YouTube video to kids in the back without so much as a hiccup. It would be a car that could get firmware updates over the air, and it would also be a lighter vehicle — one that used wireless connections and lighter Ethernet cables.
An interesting concept, with what seems like an uphill climb ahead: making deals to get into the automotive supply chain.
Also: If you're worried about the possibility of networked cars being hacked, you're not alone -- check out the comments.
3. Measurement: Exploring the Whimsy of Math through Playful Patterns, Shape and Motion (Brain Pickings)
In Maria Popova's engaging post about Paul Lockhart's new book on the art of math, Measurement, I was taken by the video above and the following excerpt. The appeal of math's reality is not unlike the appeal of sports and its defined rules and clear winners and losers, I'd say.
Physical reality is a disaster. It’s way too complicated, and nothing is at all what it appears to be. Objects expand and contract with temperature, atoms fly on and off. In particular, nothing can truly be measured. A blade of grass has no actual length. Any measurement made in the universe is necessarily a rough approximation. It’s not bad; it’s just the nature of the place. The smallest speck is not a point, and the thinnest wire is not a line.
Mathematical reality, on the other hand, is imaginary. It can be as simple and pretty as I want it to be. I get to have all those perfect things I can’t have in real life. I can never hold a circle in my hand, but I can hold one in my mind. ...
The point is I get to have them both — physical reality and mathematical reality. Both are beautiful and interesting. ... The former is important to me because I am in it, the latter because it is in me.
Three Clicks: The Scary Facebook Developments Edition
After a weekend at the Online News Association's annual conference in San Francisco, I felt I needed to get Three Clicks clicking again. So, via the miracle of in-flight WiFi, here are the first three (non-Steelers-disaster-in-Oakland) stories that grabbed me today.
1. Facebook Now Knows What You're Buying at Drug Stores (CNN)
I rarely get concerned by the privacy-scare headlines about Facebook that seem to bubble up every two months (or less), and this one is no exception. But it strikes me as the kind of news that will bother a lot of other people. Facebook has partnered with Datalogix to help its advertisters know if their ads are working:
Datalogix has purchasing data from about 70m American households largely drawn from loyalty cards and programmes at more than 1,000 retailers, including grocers and drug stores. By matching email addresses or other identifying information associated with those cards against emails or information used to establish Facebook accounts, Datalogix can track whether people bought a product in a store after seeing an ad on Facebook.
(Note: I found this first on the Atlantic Wire, which wrote the better headline. And it originated on the Financial Times, which of course is a pay site.)
2. 50 Percent of Consumers Value a Brand’s Facebook Page More Than its Website (Lab42)
The item Mashable highlighted in this marketing research infographic indeed caught my eye: "About 50 percent of consumers think a brand’s Facebook page is more useful than a brand’s website," according to a survey of 1,000 social media users. Is this a statement about Facebook's ubiquity, the fact it's easier to use than most brand websites, both, other?
Also interesting in this infographic: Respondents often "like" brand pages to get deals, sometimes "like" a brand only in an effort to get free stuff, and "unlike" brands that post too often. So it's "give me cheap or free stuff ande leave me alone," eh? I guess I should not be suprised.
(Another where-I-saw-this note: Mashable's Twitter feed pointed me to their recap of the infographic first. And again, the aggregator wrote the better headline.)
3. The Newsonomics of All-Access Delight (Newsonomics)
More and more, companies that deliver digital entertainment are making sure (and/or charging you so) you can access their content on every device you own, seamlessly. You know, start a movie on Netflix on your iPad, and pick up where you left off on your PS3.
News sites don't really do this yet. But it's coming -- maybe not quickly enough, but it is, Ken Doctor writes.
In truth, news — and its steady, unending stream — is harder to tame than finite movies, songs, and TV programs. Yet consumer appetite — and now that pesky expectation — has been whetted by those near-miraculous entertainment plays. Tell readers that all-access is the new name of their subscription, as many hundreds of publishers are doing, and they’ll soon think it should be as smooth as their entertainment device switching. Get it right, if you are a news publisher, and you’ll reap the dividends.
Doctor lists seven in-the-works or hypothetical advances all-access news could bring, and the most intriguing to me is "personal news." Not a front page based on preferences you designate (or the site learns from your clicks), but a front page that knows what you've read and pushed that news down/off the page, highlights important updates to the stories you've read and adds more stories you likely will want or need to know about.
It’s tricky technically, but beyond that there are a new raft of editorial questions, including concerns about representing the news record of the day and dealing with stories partly read or significantly updated. Expect to see, though, greater personalization tested next year.
Bring it on. The developments that bring the user to the fore are the ones I'm most excited to see, and I'll bet they are the future ...
I don't like to get overenthusiastic in praising the NFL. Yes, I really enjoy the product the league puts on my tv screen (and my PCs and iPad) each fall Sunday. That doesn't mean I'm completely comfortable with the immense commerce and violence that goes with it.
With that reader-stopping introduction out of the way, I will say this (in bold, in attempt to overcome that paragraph above):
The NFL's new Game Rewind package is amazing.
I'm in the middle of a week-long free trial, but I am pretty sure Roger Goodell & Co. will get my $69.99 for a full season subscription next week.
Game Rewind gives you every game -- not live, but a day or so after the game ends, it should be noted -- on PC or tablet in three formats: the full broadcast, the "condensed" version with only the plays and penalty explanations, and "coaches' film," which is a high, "all-22" shot from the side and a high shot from the end zone on every play.
As someone who has spent good portions of his professional life trying to be innovative in sports coverage and encouraging user participation, I repeat: this is amazing. From the NFL, of all leagues.
Here are two ways I'd hope many, many fans use the Game Rewind telestrator:
1. Becoming amateur analysts a la ESPN's superb "NFL Matchup" show (shouldn't this show have its own web page, btw?). You can see my first experiment in this vein above, on a play in which Steelers linebacker Jason Worilds (No. 93) beat the Broncos' pass protection and sacked Peyton Manning.
2. Marking up embarrassing plays made by teams you root against to send/post for friends who like that team. This may be the higher-level use, in fact.
I took a crack at No. 1 this afternoon, taking apart Mark Sanchez's touchdown throw to Stephen Hill in the Jets' 48-28 win over the Bills last Sunday. Setting the stage, this was the first play of the second quarter, with the Jets leading 7-0 and facing second and 7 from Buffalo's 33 yard line.
1. Sanchez drops back, with Hill (in white circle) covered by Bills cornerback Aaron Williams (blue X). Sanchez seems to be looking at backup tight end Jeff Cumberland in the left-middle of the field (see how I have the arrow pointing there?).
2. Sanchez pump-fakes in Cumberland's general direction, and Williams (blue X) hesitates, squaring toward the middle of the field. Hill (white circle) keeps on running.
3. Sanchez throws the ball as Hill separates from Williams. It doesn't hurt that Williams seems to have stumbled as he realizes the pump fake was indeed fake.
4. Hill scores. Even the replacement ref in the lower right knows it.
That was pretty easy for me to put together. I know at least one major outlet has done something similar (actually, it's a lot better): CBS's Will Brinson, dissecting the performance by Cowboys WR Kevin Ogletree in Week 1. Have you seen anyone else doing this sort of thing? Hoping to see fans and journalists take advantage of this cool new tool this fall ...
[A postscript: The Apple app store is full of one-star reviews for the app because you can't stream it to your television via Apple TV. This is not an issue for me, but obviously for many out there, it is.]
Catching up on a 12- to 18-hour old developing news story shouldn't be too hard. Yet, it often is.
Take today's story on the U.S. political reaction to the fatal embassy attack in Egypt. Here's how I, Joe Reader, experienced it over the last hour and a half:
- I saw via Twitter that Mitt Romney had said something controversial about the Obama administration's reaction to the attack. My curiosity was piqued. It was about 11 a.m. ET.
- I decided to see how Politico was covering it. And sure enough, they were leading their site with the headline "Romney blasts Obama 'apology.'" I've come to the right place, I thought.
- I felt frustration: Tell me when the protests started, when the first U.S. statement came, who reacted first (and how), and how counter-reactions unfolded. I wanted to know how it played out, but piecing it together from this account actually felt labor-intensive.
- The idea for a blog post like this was born. I spent at least 10 minutes trying to map the timeline of the story, which was time-stamped 9:14 a.m. As I wrote down the key points of the story and their time references, the story updated. The Bill-and-Ted journey through time in the story didn't change much, however.
- I realized that what would really help me understand this situation was the U.S. embassy statement that Romney had blasted as "disgraceful." I looked -- it was not linked out of the story.
- How about the video that seems to have provoked the protests? I looked -- not linked in the story. (The New York Times says this is the "amateurish" video: Muhammad Movie Trailer.
- I noticed that this sentence
"Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” according to another statement from [U.S. Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton on Tuesday.
has the word "statement" hyperlinked, as above. Does the link lead to the full text of Clinton's remarks? Nope. It leads to another Politco story:
Obama administration disavows Cairo apology
(As I type, the full text from three Clinton statements sit atop this page on the State Department's web site.)
Hopefully you get the point. I'll stop.
It's important to note that just about every mainstream news outlet -- certainly not just Politico -- writes stories this way. It's inverted-pyramid journalism -- putting the facts deemed "most important" at the top and spilling out more facts in descending order of importance. And I see a lot more linking to related stories on the same site than linking to outside sources.
And I admire many of Politico's strengths -- there's a reason I decided to go there first to learn about the U.S. political reaction.
But I am convinced that I am not the only reader who wants quick and easy access to the raw material of big stories: a chronology of events as they occurred, links to the actual things people said/wrote, charts with data and stats when applicable.
Give me that, and don't over-prioritize the writing (and editing) of a traditionally-structured "news story."
As a reader, I will make my own judgment on events like this based on the best information I can get, and "raw" info is better. The news outlet that consistently makes it easiest for me to understand what's going on -- quickly -- is the one that will get my repeat business.
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