To Be Frank

As anyone who has not been living under a rock know, the United States Federal Government has decided to give billions to companies to make them stronger. Some have said “they are too big to fail” and we can’t have it.

If you look at the current Dow, there is only one original company (General Electric) still trading. The others have basically failed, being sold, split up or closed. There is not such thing, in a free market society, as not being able to fail. I’ve heard a local San Francisco radio host say time and time again, if they are too big to fail, they are too big to survive!

Back to the original point… It’s obvious, after several months, the plan to inject money into the system from the top-down with very little for the “working people” except for some small tax cuts isn’t working fast enough. While the economy may be on the upswing a little, I think it may only be a blip on the radar.

My plan? It’s a little late now maybe, but think about this. The plan was to spend about a trillion dollars, but it’s likely to be as large as $2.5 trillion. What if you took that money and split it among the 300,000,000 people of the United States. It’s our money anyway, right? We’re the ones going into debt on a federal level, send it to us.

At $2.5 trillion, it’s about $8,500 per person. I don’t know about you, but as a family of four, an extra $34,000 would sure come in handy. I could do my roof or kitchen or bathroom in my house; or, I could buy a car; or, I could save some. In any case, the money would go back in the “system”, allowing the free market to correct itself.

Would some “waste” it? Sure, but lets examine that. Lets say the go to Las Vegas and blow the whole $8,500. Is it really wasted? The casino has bills they have to pay. They have employees they have to pay. Would it really be wasted?

Just an idea. Nobody asked me, but I thought I would throw it out there.

It’s been a while since I last wrote. I’ve been really busy trying to help the company I work for make the evolution from a print company (albeit weekly newspapers) to a multimedia company. We’ve made some great strides, but there is still much to do.

Yet, all around us, newspapers have closed and failed. Of those that haven’t, some of the biggest are on the brink of disaster. The Seattle P-I has turned to a Web-only format; Denver’s Rocky Mountain News has closed it’s door.

When asked whether he would consider buying more newspapers, Warren Buffett, owner of The Buffalo News, said, “For most newspapers in the United states, we would not buy them at any price. They have the possibility of going to just unending losses.” This, according to the Wall Street Journal (a newspaper… hmmmm).

So, if newspapers go away, what would be left? I have read that “newspaper staffs” generate three quarters of all news we consume. When you look at the local news scene, it’s almost 100 percent of the news. You don’t see the “local” TV stations covering the local San Carlos City Council meeting (actually, there is really nobody who does at this point) unless there is a large issue like the recent grass vs. artificial turf battle. And even then, it’s a quick story about the result.

The plan?

I can tell you it’s not something like Twitter, at least as it’s used now… I just don’t understand the appeal to know everything all the time about everyone. Plus, Facebook offers the same functionality, plus a lot more. For local news, it could work, but the number of “feeds” you’d have to follow could get a little crazy… a little overload!

Revenue is the name of the game. I’ve lost faith and confidence that a newspaper sales staff can build the correct kind of revenue, even if they did have something to sell.

So, doom and gloom all around? Sort of but not entirely. I still believe the local information model has a way to survive. Is it Web-based or text-based is the question? Is there some new device around the corner just waiting to take hold? It’s hard do know.

I’ve always thought a mobile viewing system for information, cheap enough to be able to leave on the train on accident but powerful enough to give you the experience of the full Web was the sweet spot. Maybe smart phones (such as the iPhone and Blackberry Storm) are that sweet spot — while not cheap enough to leave on the train, they are powerful enough to give you the experience while being important enough to be with you all the time.

The Web is news where you want it when you want it. The smart phone could be the delivery method we’ve been looking for. Generate content that preforms well in the small media screen and gain users. Turn the users into evangelists for your product and advertisers should follow.

If traditional newspaper companies are going to ‘survive’ the Internet, there are two things that they are going to have to embrace for their online media: make it ultra-local and interactive. Small(er) local print media are best positioned to deliver this.

However, before they can do this transformation, they have to understand one thing: You are NOT a newspaper company anymore, but rather you are a MEDIA company, like Time Warner or General Electric or even Google (yea, I said Google). Your art is no longer just the printed word on newsprint (or at least it shouldn’t be). While that will be a part of what you do for some time, you need to start to focus on what is next for your company.

When you look at smaller-sized papers, ultra-local should be easy to deliver online since most are already doing this. Far too often local newspapers try to be bigger than they are when they move to the Web, thinking that they need to do this to keep up with the regional media-type sites. It’s not needed and in a lot of ways, not wanted by Web users looking for local news. I know that if there was a local Web site that served my community (or at least my local ‘news’ area), I would be there daily.

But, delivering ultra-local client in a traditional style is not enough. The content needs to be dynamic and interactive. This is a hard thing for ‘print’ media to get because it is very different than anything they are used to. Most print media think that it is their job to inform their ‘users’ – a one-way conversation with the readers/user of a site. I think that new media needs to not only inform but allow for the public to talk among themselves.

Sites that have built in opportunities to allow the public to interact with your site, even as simple as sending calendar items online to a database and more advanced with technology where people can actually post news and questions to your site, are already ahead of the game. There are many types of interactivity that a media company can look at adding to your site. Even doing what you think is small, is probably a lot more than most are doing.

Blogs are part of this, but only a little part, I think. Blogs are more ‘traditional’ in nature, where one person has a voice and pushes information onto the public. Yes, the public can comment and interact with the writer, but it’s one-sided to start.

User submitted video and audio is also something that every newspaper should look at under this heading. There are several thoughts about how to implement: You can either allow the public to post video to your site and then you can remove it later, if you need to, or ‘gate keep’ the site and approve everything. I would vote for the former, and remove with caution and postings that are in the wrong place.

So, how do you tie this all together?

While it is great to have an overall plan for where media companies want to be in a few years, I think it is better to know short term what is to be accomplish and not be afraid to try it. Far to often, it seems, newspaper companies try to find a ‘grand plan’ for where they want to be online and take WAY to long to get there. I am the first person to say that I hate it when I build something and then have to scrap it because it didn’t meet the requirements of what was truly needed, but it is my feeling to try something… if it doesn’t work, try something else.

Technically, you have to look at databases (duh!). This is maybe the biggest challenge for smaller newspapers because the technology is potentially different than what they are doing now. But, using flat HTML files rather than a database will prevent companies from moving forward. Database-afying content not only makes the information more searchable, but allows more flexibility to how it is presented. It allows structure where the site can interlink stories and features and could also help implement interactivity.

One last thing that I thought I would mention is the idea of a ‘community’ online. It’s an idea that has been tossed around a lot. The ‘MySpace’ or ‘Facebook’ models of allowing your members to interact with one another, those with like ideas or similar lifestyles, are huge online right now. The problem with trying to do a ‘local’ version of a site like that is getting the critical mass to make it work. Don’t get me wrong. I think there is a place for them, but I question whether or not they will work on an local platform.

I’ve been working on this for about a year (you really couldn’t tell by the graphics, however). It’s been one of those things that have been on-again-off-again, but I think it’s finally ready to roll out. What is it? It’s the TheTownBlogger.com, a place where you, if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area can go and list your blog or site and people can look them up.
What makes it different from other sites is that it’s organized geographically by either the subject or the author. For instance, since I blog from San Carlos, California, my blog would be listed under San Carlos (which it is).
Anyway, stop by and take a look. It’s needing blogs, so if you blog, please consider putting it in there.

Ok… this is one of the more ‘geekier’ posts I’ve written, but I was trying to convert a Unix epoch (the number of seconds from January 1, 1970) to a standard time using Microsoft Excel. I found a solution online, but it didn’t work completely for me, so I thought I would add my solution here, mostly so that when I need to use it again, I’ll be able to find it!

Searching Google, I had found this site which converted the epoch for me but I kept coming up with the wrong date and time… All the times were about four years in the future. Obviously, that was wrong, which I knew because I converted one of the times using another converter I had. The formula I was using was this:

=((epoch – 25200) / 86400) + 25569

Then I remembered, being on Mac OS, that day 0 is January 1, 1904. When I subtracted the extra four years from the formula, I got the right time. So, on a Mac, the correct formula is this:

=((epoch – 25200) / 86400) + 24106

So, here you go. The next time you are faced with using an epoch time and having to convert it to a standard time, you can use these formulas for whichever OS you are using.