Things I hope we can talk about now [Setting myself up for disappointment]

It's far from Christmas and it's not my birthday but I'm going to ahead and make a wish anyway. Here are the thing about which I'm really excited to see intelligent analysis following the drama of #amazonfail

1. The massive gaps/fails (loooove NiemanLab's use of #mediafail in reference to this debacle) that came to light. Author Craig Seymour says that his book was de-ranked back in February, and media outlets weren't interested. Will they only be interested now because it's had a day of internet madspin? How much of it has to do with the Easter holiday? How much to do with less reporters reporting? How much to do with the subject at hand?

2. Amazon is consistently pointed to as one of the kings of predictive search, behavioral targeting and general keyword mastery. What does this massive fail say about that? Does it make us question who, if anyone (besides Google), really is a leader in this area? Is it scary that someone who supposedly uses it so well screwed it up so royally, making it clear that the knowledge gap in this arena is even wider than a casual glance makes clear? Are we all even on the same page about how important this type of technology is to the next phase of making $$ on the web?

3. Twitter as a news-breaking entity. I know. I don't really want to talk about it either. But here we are. Not talking about it is silly. There will likely be a lot of whining and complaining and disagreeing and "but how will the monetize-ing," but it would be nice to see discussion on how the power of Twitter (I can't believe I just typed that) can be harnessed and used by traditional outlets on a regular basis - if at all.

And what remains to be seen, is what Amazon will do. While a Publisher's Weekly report that a representative called is a "glitch" crashed their site, an LA Times blog reports that indeed, they're trying to play this off as a mistake.

Best of luck with that, Amazon.

(And ps, I found the link to the LA Times through following the trend topic "glitch" on Twitter.)

And then I put a band-aid on his severed neck [The press is falling]

A friend posted a link on Facebook tonight to the Reuters article about the senate bill introduced today that would allow newspapers to restructure as nonprofits.

Pause.

Now, I clearly work for a nonprofit news source, so I believe in the concept.

But riddle me this: says the article "Cardin's office said his bill was aimed at preserving local and community newspapers, not conglomerates which may also own radio and TV stations."

Oh, really?

The Reuters report later lists the papers that have ceased or reduced publication -

Seattle P-I - owned by Hearst (28 TV stations)

Rocky Mountain News - E.W. Scripps (10 TV stations)

Baltimore Examiner - part of a media group of newspapers, but the owner also owns stakes in a number of professional sports teams, movie theatres, radio stations

SF Chronicle - see Hearst

He then mentions Gannett, Advance and Tribune.

Seriously?

Community newspapers, according to the National Newspaper Association's 4th quarter 2008 results, are outperforming the industry at large by 14%. Larger metros were down 20%, the industry 21% and community papers - 6.6% (Full NNA report >).

Forest, meet trees, trees, meet kettle, kettle, meet - oh, nevermind.

That's sooooo nine days ago [Questionable allocation of resources]

Over a week ago (Saturday, February 21st, to be exact) Michael Ian Black declared the first ever Twitter war on none other than LeVar Burton. Hilarity and odds on BetUS.com ensued. Many tweets later, it was all over by Wednesday, February 25th (truce was called, everyone won).

Today, I repeat TODAY Michael Ian Black tweets that he "just got off the phone with the AP who [is] doing a story on LeWar."

There are two possibilities here:

1. AP is doing (yet another) story about Twitter in general (because OMG there aren't enough of these ill-informed missives clogging up our news day already) and referring to LeWar as an illustration of something or other.

2. AP is doing an actual story on the actual LeWar a full NINE DAYS (and counting) LATER proving that it isn't that journalism is dead, but that, well, I don't even know what to say.

Perhaps some questions will help me verbalize:

- Given the immediate and viral nature of Twitter, is there a point to a traditional one-to-many story covering something that you kind of have to experience to get and a full NINE DAYS (and counting) LATER at that?

- Would not a shorter story, during the event be more relevant? Maybe even some sort of app that tracks progress, or a mock-serious blow by blow (in the same spirit as the BetUS post)?

- In the midst of, oh, I dunno, lots of real drama going on in the world, is LeWar truly worthy of an actual thought out story NINE DAYS (and counting) LATER?

I hope I'm wrong and jumping on my soapbox too quickly. I hope that the AP is working on a story about actual effective uses of Twitter, and using LeWar as an example.

I hope. Because, really.

Michael Ian Black on Twitter
LeVar Burton on Twitter

Which part of "not the WSJ" is confusing to you? [Grasping at straws]

*Sigh*

Newsday thinks is can charge for its web content.

I truly don't understand how people make these decisions. Because, really.

Ken Doctor has the energy to verbalize why this is a bad idea here.

On KDHX [The press is falling]

Margaret and I on KDHX >.

The link goes directly to the stream.