During a recent keynote address, Steve Jobs spoke about the marriage of technology with the humanities. (image Apple.com)

During a recent keynote address, Apple CEO Steve Jobs displayed a slide depicting the road signs of technology intersecting liberal arts, saying one of the keys to Apple’s success in creating beautiful yet innovative products was the idea that design was just as important as the technology.

When watching this, I couldn’t help but feel how far from this “intersection” we are in the journalism industry. We are an industry of content creators (reporters) and technologists (graphic artists, Web producers). But both sides seem to be miles apart. Reporters are enwrapped with the idea of stories and content. Technologists are into, well, technology.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen lots of impressive journalism online. But more often than not it is an either/or situation. We talk about the powerful stories. We talk about impressive informational graphics. But very few times do these types of projects actually intersect.

I spend lots of time with journalists from across the country through the Knight Digital Media Center training program. One of the more common issues I hear about is the separation of newsrooms between content gatherers and the producers. I hear people tell me, ‘yeah, we’re doing really cool stuff online, but I don’t have anything to do with it. It’s being done by those web guys.’

In my job I work with lots of technologists and I work with lots of content creators. At times if feels like I’m speaking to people from different worlds. They know what the other side is capable of, but rarely do they collaborate. The technologists are obsessed with innovation, design and communication. The content gatherers are obsessed with stories. Both are valid parts of the complete puzzle.

How did Jobs do it? How did he marry the content creators with the technologists?

I find this area especially interesting because let’s face it, lack of online advertising dollars seems to be one of the chief issues affecting most print news publications.

While no one has a definitive solution to this quandary, there were lots of fascinating perspectives from some of the panels, and I thought I would share two of the better ones here.

1) The modality of online ad experiences

I attended a panel discussion on monetization of the real-time Web (referring to sites that have streams of content like Twitter). The discussion mostly centered around how to display advertisements in a stream of content without disrupting the user’s experience.

Ads tend to pull people out of the experience of consuming content and unless people are accustom to being pulled out of an experience, like TV commercials or movie previews, they usually don’t appreciate it. There was a lot of emphasis on creating “good ad experiences” and gaining the trust of users.

I thought, ‘yeah, that makes sense.’ Create valuable ads experiences so they don’t hamper the overall experience of the site. This is especially difficult to do with display advertising, because ads essentially compete with the attention of the main content. TV doesn’t suffer from this problem as much, because it is a more linear experience, and people are used to it. I made a few graphics to illustrate these concepts:

TV advertising is a linear experience.

Physical newspapers and magazines are quasi-linear because people will generally flip through them, and there is (usually) a starting and ending point. There is a premium on full-page ads because users will often see them. You can’t ignore ignore a full-page ad without getting to the next page.

Attention is more scattered with print publications.

Attention on the Web is all over the place. In an attempt to mimic the full page ad, there are some tricks to getting people to look at an advertisement before they come into the main content of a webpage, but these ads are mostly annoying and create a bad user experiences.

Web ads compete with a user's attention (and often lose.)

But even if one is successful with ad placement, there are so many other factors to creating a good ad experience.

One of the factors the panel spoke about regarded the content that the ad is married to. The moderator of the panel was Brad Stone from the New York Times and at one point he did allude to the news industry. One of the panelists said point blank that news is incredibly difficult to monetize. Its content is unpredictable from day to day. Toyota doesn’t want an ad running next to an article about its cars failing. And let’s face it, content in our industry is usually bad news.

2) All of this is moot, it’s about how you sell the ad

Another session I attended was how to build an ad-supported network around a community, hosted by Chris Tolles of Topix. This was a great session because Chris actually worked in ad sales and he knows a thing or two about what goes on inside an advertiser’s mind.

Without explicitly saying it, Tolles said all of this stuff – the metrics, the click-throughs, placement – is really nothing compared to how you sell the ad to the advertiser. One figure he showed was that 20 percent of Topix’s ad staff sold 80 percent of its ads. It had more to do with who had connections at the big ad agencies and if they could sell them on the idea that companies would get a good return by advertising on their site.

“Get your story straight. Tell them a story of who you are going after, and why… Sell to people you know and repeat…”

Advertisers, he said, don’t  just want lots of volume. A million eyeballs is meaningless if it is not the right million. Advertisers want niche products and verticals with really specific demographics. Rolex only wants to advertise in places where it knows its customer’s will see it. So does Lexus, Ford trucks, Wal-Mart, and Gap. Can you think of an audience for each of these products? Advertisers sure can, and they have data to support it.

Tolles was also against the idea of CPMs, or at least in when you’re a small publication. Sponsorships or selling monthly ad plans are much more valuable, unless you’re Google and have billions of people going through your site.

Some sites go after volume with no focus – and some succeed – but they have to have a very large audience. If you have focus, it is much more valuable in the long run.

I’m not sure why this might come as any surprise to anyone who produces content that could end up on the Web. We have been reformatting media for different mediums for decades. A newspaper story is structured differently than a radio story – than a broadcast story – than a magazine story. Why shouldn’t we format stories specifically for the Internet?

One article by Nielsen that I think tends to often get overlooked is when he coined used the terms lean-forward and lean-back mediums.

The idea behind lean-forward mediums is that people are engaged when they use the Web. They are in scanning mode, actively looking for content – and their attention span is much shorter. People use the Internet with purpose. Articles should be shorter and get to the point sooner, videos should be snippets or separated into clips of only a few minutes long.

Lean-back mediums on the other hand are the times we sit down and veg out watching TV, read a book or flip through a magazine. Our attention span is much longer because these are passive mediums and we are in a consumption mode. This is why most long-form doesn’t work on the Web.

The iPad is a particularly interesting device, because it aims to bring the Web into the living room where it could become a lean-back media device. I think this is why so many magazines are excited about delivering their content to the iPad. With tablets, people might actually spend time consuming media rather than frantically searching.

At the recent Apple presentation for the next iPhone software, Steve Jobs spoke about the future of mobile advertising and introduced a new product called iAd. At one point Jobs said that the average user spends an average of 30 minutes using apps on the iPhone, and they rarely use search tools like Google. It’s not about search, but about consumption of content. This really plays into the idea that mobile devices are in fact lean-back mediums. Apple is really smart in positioning itself as a leader in advertising innovation in the mobile space, because ad dollars tend to gravitate to lean-back mediums.

On the storytelling side, the news industry should start taking these ideas of lean-forward and lean-back mediums into consideration when creating content. Unfortunately, I don’t have answers on how that can be done logistically with the state of the industry and all of the cut backs. But, it’s interesting to think about.

Edit: As Rich Gordon points out, Nielsen didn’t coin these terms, he just wrote about them. Thanks Rich.

The best part is when Barry said people should stop selling ads by cost per thousand impressions, or CPM. No one clicks on ads online, and its hurting the industry to sell ads this way. If newspapers or magazines actually sold ads by the number of people who looked at and touched an ad in the physical product, they would get almost no money! Instead, Barry says, sell ads on a monthly basis or by exposure. Makes complete sense.

Although, new consumption technologies (read: mobile devices) may change people’s distaste for online advertising. Finally, some reputable companies are starting to produce beautiful attractive ads that actually enhance websites, rather than annoy users. But I’ll save that for a future blog post.

Here’s a video of Barry’s talk. It is almost an hour long; the part where Barry talks about the CPM idea is at 19 minutes in.

Is a seven inch iPod coming to market?

David Carr of the New York Times wrote an article about how journalism doesn’t need the Web, and – in so many words – he said he thought that free news found on the Web is bad news for print publications.

As prestigious and prolific as David Carr is, I can’t help but feel like he’s another “one of those.” The curmudgeon kind, that steadfastly holds on to print – not so much for practical reasons as much as nostalgic ones.

But his latest blog post really got me thinking. He suggested – in so many words – that the news industry should build its own iTunes. He compares the way the music industry struggled with Napster and free downloads to the way the news industry struggles with free information on the Web and declining subscription rates.

Now David likes this idea entirely for different reasons than I do. He wants a way people will pay subscriptions for news. I’m wholly against that frame of mind. Why pay for news when you can get it free in so many other places? The day a news organizations charges for its content is the day I go elsewhere for that content.

But, I do use iTunes, and I do pay for music. I never thought I would, but at some point I finally succumbed. I think the reason was more for convenience than anything. When I buy a 99 cent song, I don’t feel like I’m buying music, I feel like I’m buying the convenience of being able to listen to it on my own time, and having the ease of Apple’s integrated software to get it on to my iPod. I can get music for free. It’s on the radio, Pandora, or you can stream it live from many Web sites, but it’s a hassle.

This is why I think David Carr is on to something.

According to TechCrunch and several other rumor sites, Apple (or other companies) could be working on a tablet computer. It’s been described in some articles as a 7 or 9 inch iPod. This could enable some type of business model for the news industry.

I still don’t think I would pay money to read the newspaper, but I might pay nominal amounts for convenience.

The reason why I bring up this show, is because they have an incredibly gifted way of telling stories. They have perfected the narrative of a story unlike anything else I’ve seen. Each of their stories enraptures the mind and single-handedly turns my commute to one of experiencing a riveting feature film.

Just take this one story called Life After Death about people dealing with a death they inadvertently caused. Or for something a little less tragic, try The Break-Up. A story about what it’s like to go through the one event that most people have gone through at one time or another. The second story in that show is even more incredible. Listen to either of these, or some of the other more compelling shows on their site, and any person can see the power of storytelling.

I guess what I’ve learned from This American Life is that the narrative is not dead. We’ve just forgotten about it. With the glitz and glamor of multimedia, we often lose sight of the part that matters most; the content. And this is coming from a Flash Instructor who advocates the need for stronger design and user-interface principles in most news packages. Sure, those things are important too, but we need to think more about the narrative arc, and weaving a person through a linear story.

Now, I know what most people think when I say this — ‘we DO think about the story, it’s ALL we think about.’ But I think we become so infatuated with what the story is, we lose sight of how we tell that story.

Okay, maybe that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but to give an example, some of the best qualities of stories involve words like like “texture” that part of the story that allows me to feel through senses other than my eyes. Or how about “surprise;” giving me a sense of suspense or tension and surprising me with something I could never have expected. Or how about “dimension” or “perspective;” there is nothing better than a story that completely turns my naive perceptions and assumptions completely upside down and opens my eyes to a larger world.

These are the qualities that screen writers or novelists take a person through. Why shouldn’t they apply more to journalism? In fact, we have a distinct advantage because our stories are real. And even more so, we’re dealing with a brand new medium. One that is incredibly flexible and capable to do things storytellers  could never do before. Novelists can’t get immediate feedback from their readers, and screenwriters can’t give their viewers choices about how they want to navigate a feature film. Multimedia, I believe, can tell stories unlike anyone has ever experienced. Check out The Oregonian’s Living to the End and tell me that story could have the same effect as only a print piece, a TV piece or even a radio piece. It’s everything that makes it so riveting. Seeing the comments, the photos, the stories… the whole package. And that’s just one example

The possibilities are endless.

But, what fascinated me the most when reading about Felker’s life, was his persistence during the 60s to reinvent this medium of journalism in the face of the burgeoning TV broadcast news industry. I think the New York Times put it best in this paragraph:

“New York [Magazine's] mission was to compete for consumer attention at a time when television threatened to overwhelm print publications. To do that, Mr. Felker came up with a distinctive format: a combination of long narrative articles and short witty ones on consumer services. He embraced the New Journalism of the late ’60s — the use of novelistic techniques to give reporting new layers of emotional depth.” – NY Times Felker (July 1, 2008)

I couldn’t help but realize the connotations to what is happening today with digital media. As the cacophony of Internet publishers, bloggers, PR firms, social networks and everyone else (and their brothers) overwhelm the traditional print format, no one seems to really be stepping up and saying: Let’s reinvent storytelling to fit this new medium and establish it in the best way we know how.

As we have proselytized during every Knight workshop, the Internet should not be just another distribution platform for news; it’s a brand new medium fully capable of its own merit. It’s almost disheartening to see newspapers simply shoveling the same exact print stories that run in the newspaper straight to their Web site — and then ask why they can’t compete for attention.

It’s unusual because every other medium of news has adjusted the craft of storytelling to fit the medium its told in. Radio news isn’t some print story read over the air. Radio news reporters molded the craft of journalism for the spoken word. TV especially had to adjust their format to fit the medium of communication. But it seems like every industry these days simply shovels their stories online; whether they work for the medium or not.

In the same fashion that Felker defined the glossy pages of the magazine, the long-form narrative, the beautiful full-page advertisements, we need a pioneer to come along and truly define the Web for what it’s capable of producing. We need a news organization to serve as an example of what journalism can be on the Web. There are lots of great multimedia projects out there, but that’s just what they are: single pieces of great work. I would like to see an entire organization serve as a shining light to the rest of the industry; one that says, ‘Hey, we’re taking this thing seriously.’

I used to listen to the radio when I had a driving commute at a previous job, but this time I get to choose exactly which casts I want to listen to and in which order.

Lately I’ve been listening to Slate, NPR and a few others. Just so many of the segments are incredible. I actually feel rejuvinated when hearing a great piece that opens my eyes to larger world we live in. Most of the time I’m left intrigued.

So why is podcasting still a small niche in the total number of audio listeners? Well, logistics plays a big part. You need an mp3 player and, software to aggregate the casts. But more importantly you need time. Time to listen. No one actively turns on a radio to listens to news. Its a passive form of news consumption. You listen to it while doing something else, like driving or doing the dishes.

This question came up recently during a Knight multimedia workshop we were teaching at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Someone described podcasts as “radio without listeners” and my heart sank. How could this precious piece of daily enlightenment simply not exist in the lives of so many people. I suspect once cars become further integrated with iPod, this form of news consumption will become more and more widely used.

If you still don’t believe me, I challenge you to listen to the following cast and not be fully intrigued. It’s a piece from NPR’s Driveway Moments about a man trying to come to terms with a lobotomy he had when he was 12. I know, the topic sounds a bit weird, but this bit of audio is one of the most incredible pieces I’ve heard. The quick cross edits, the haunting voices, everything about it is so riveting I forget I’m listening to a news story. It’s 20 minutes long. You might not have the patience to listen to the whole thing sitting here on this blog (the reason why radio doesn’t work online), so remember you can always download the podcast.

Howard Dully\’s My Lobotomy piece from NPR\’s Driveway Moment

The iPlayer is simple enough. Stream all of the BBC content on the Web. Everyone is pretty much already doing this, except, the BBC is actually looking ahead to the future. They are trying to make their content available in as many venues as they can. Very soon everyone who owns an iPhone in Europe will know they can watch BBC content on their iPhones, and the BBC will undoubtedly see a jump in traffic. If they play their cards right, they will start offering other services to iPhone users like movie times, weather, stocks, etc. all through widgets or programs.

Now I use Apple’s iPhone as a reference, but I’m really speaking of mobile devices in general. I like to use the iPhone because I think it does serve as a rather interesting barometer given its popularity and capabilities (not to mention Google recently announced that iPhone searches on the internet are 50 times more than any other cell phone).

Pretty soon, the mobile computing platform will become ubiquitous. Some say in five years, others in two years. But no matter who you talk to, they all agree that mobile devices are the future. I’ve said it before, people today are in love with their cell phones. It’s their lifeline to the world, their method of personal communication. Now, it’ll be used as a platform for mass communication. The only question unanswered is who will be leading the charge? A Silicon Valley startup, or a news company?

Think about it: In the 80s and earlier, if you wanted to advertise your business, what were your options, really? Well, there were billboards and store signage, but the reality is you probably would have gone with newspapers, magazines or TV.

These days you can advertise just about anywhere. They are selling ads on airplanes, at the gas pump, and pretty soon your cell phone. (more on that later) The truth is the news media was too slow to adopt the Internet, so other companies sailed that ship first.

Really, it should have been a news organization that became the next eBay, craigslist, youTube or FaceBook. Now they are scrambling to catch up. But there is hope, and it’s emerging sooner than people think.

In two weeks a major cell phone manufacture will release a Software Development Kit (SDK) that will teach developers how to write programs for its handheld device. I speak of course about the iPhone. Not that software for cellphones is anything new. But this time the world is paying attention. Very soon the handheld market will explode. Already cellphones are a huge part of the lives of young people, and the capability of these devices to view Web sites is proliferating. For once, the journalism industry can look to the horizon and see the next big thing.

I once heard a talk at a journalism conference where a professor said the main advantage the newspaper has over the Internet was that he can fold it up, take it on the train, or take it to the bathroom. Well, it appears that issue is about to be solved. Will news companies sit idly by and watch this new technology emerge without their participation?

Already, the iPhone has a Web SDK and very few news organization are taking advantage of it. In fact, CBS news is the only news site that has offered an iPhone-specific version. And I can tell you this much: Just about every iPhone user knows about it because they are the only ones doing it. So far there are 5 million iPhone users — not a relatively large number. But the idea is right on. Be an early adopter and people will come to you first.

The NY Times could be building an iPhone news reader. Or maybe a program that would allow you to buy books from their best seller list. Already Apple has given advanced copies of its SDK to a photo company which will automatically print photos you take with your iPhone and send them to you. There are possibilities out there for this one. Is the news industry going to let this one pass by?