Once upon a time I wanted to be a journalist. I was given a chance in college and the discovery I made was that most journalists were hard-working stiffs like anyone, except their hours stunk (too many nights and weekends). They weren’t the experts I expected them to be, either. Mostly they were cynics, tired of the endless droning of school board officials and city managers and wishing along with the rest of us that the retired gentleman with a question about item 4.1 (a), on the 27th page of the proposed town budget, would sit down so everyone could go home. I left the business uninspired – and so I could meet my friends at 10:00 p.m. for drinks.

I sold the industry short and obviously there are many journalists that have emerged as supremely knowledgeable in the fields they cover, but I’ve remained immune to arguments that the Internet can’t be relied upon for the same levels of  journalistic care and accuracy that exist offline.  

All of which comes to mind thanks to Craig Silverman’s 2009 collection of media errors and corrections that he has posted at the Huffington Post and his own site, “Regret the Error”. It’s an affable and entertaining look at media fallibility, and a good check against presumptions, old versus new.

CBS Interactive will reportedly announce that it is dispensing with most ad networks today according to a report in Ad Age. Excellent. If they stick with it, it means another blow struck in favor of selling value online.

The formula used with such success by many ad networks over the last few years has been selling discounted space on the top 100 – 200 web sites, like those owned by CBS Interactive. The sales pretense has been rescuing excess inventory and leveraging data, which is balderdash. For buyers, it’s been about price. The importance of where the advertising runs has existed alongside the importance of who the audience reaches, unabated, and networks have provided plentiful access to those preferred places. If it were otherwise, the tension between networks and large publishers would not exist as, indeed, it does not exist in the mid- and long-tail of the market where ad networks and representative firms succeed in creating value, not discounting it.

For help understanding the not-so-hidden forces at work it will be interesting to see what happens with CBS Interactive’s replacement strategy, which is its internal ad platform, Madison (a very cool name). If the same discounted opportunities continue to exist through Madison then CBS Interactive will start fighting with itself instead of third-party networks. In the final analysis it doesn’t matter who sells it; it matters only what it sells for. So they should proceed carefully, because internal fights are far more destructive to a host than fights with third-parties.

We should expect a surging fourth quarter to embolden others besides CBS Interactive to see the glass half full again. Then what? Whither all the business plans that have been counting on ad network models to pig out at the buffet?

After 125 years as the “bible” of the newspaper business, Editor & Publisher magazine announced yesterday that it would shut its doors at the end of the year.

One hundred and twenty five years and pffft. E&P goes down with the newspaper ship.

Where will Google be in 125 years? What will Google mean in 125 years to media students and consumers? I heard Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, say once that after careful figuring the company estimates it will take approximately 300 years for them to catalogue all the world’s information, which they aim to do. He had a good chuckle about that along with everyone else in the audience.

What will information even look like in 300 years?  

Truly when you’re young you expect to live forever.

One hundred and twenty five years is a pretty good run. The best thing I can think of saying to everyone at Editor & Publisher is congratulations. It is an extraordinary record of accomplishment, and we salute you.

Veteran OnlineSpin(er) Cory Treffiletti proves he is no Internet lap dog with his column today about demand-side networks, asking important questions about the ad network model that is emerging in-house at ad agenices.

I think he’s right of course: it’s about the money, not the media. And, as it’s been said in this space before, who can blame agencies for identifying with a financial formula that has paid huge dividends to some third-party networks while agencies have tried to stay warm, huddled over an ember fire.

Fix agency comp. Preserve media planning transparency.

Carol Bartz is making a pretty quick study of the Internet’s past (and future?). In quotes that appeared in Ad Age and Paid Content, no-nonsense Bartz acknowledged that the Internet had over-sold itself to advertisers at the outset.

Ad Age captured it this way:

Ms. Bartz told analysts the challenge ahead for the iconic web portal is not to compete with Google or Microsoft but to compete for the biggest pot of ad dollars, which is currently in broadcast and cable TV. Ad dollars have not flowed online as audiences have, she said, in part because the promise of online advertising was oversold to marketers at the outset “and did not deliver.”

In Paid Content, Bartz was quoted as follows:

Asked about the disparity between online media usage and internet ad spending at UBS Media Week, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz said that the gap was in part because internet advertising had initially over-sold itself: “I think internet advertising oversold itself at the beginning, over-promised preciseness.” That, however, she said, was beginning to change. “Things are looking up. We’re seeing marketers engage.”

It is a simple statement that is true. The Internet over-promised “preciseness,” which really means it over-promised what might result from preciseness.

Preciseness surely exists online. It is a world of niches. By itself, however, we’ve demonstrated that preciseness does not equate to one-to-one. One-to-one is a trust thing, not one of our strong suits online. As a result, consumers have not altered how they respond to advertising, or been abundant in praise of its value.

But, Bartz seems to be working on that problem, cleaning up the Yahoo! environment and communicating her respect for the audience. May that sort of leadership continue, and may the medium start to matter as much as the message.

There is a story that gets told to would be journalists about the editor that commissions a young reporter to cover a notable wedding taking place in town that weekend. The day after the wedding, the editor is surprised when a story about the wedding fails to appear in the newspaper and he goes looking for the young reporter.

“Where’s the story about the wedding?!” he demands of the reporter.

“There was no wedding,” the reporter stammers back. “The groom never showed.”

The real story, as this lesson prompts us to recognize, can hide in plain sight. Failure to recognize it when it happens is not the problem of journalists alone, however. To miss the point is something that afflicts us all.

In the case of the Internet, missing the point haunts everything to do with online video.

Nielsen has just released its latest A2/M2™ Three Screen Report and this is what it says: consumers spend 99% of their video time with television. In all, consumers are in front of the tube over 4.5 hours a day. In contrast, they are in front of the Internet four hours a week, of which only 22 minutes are devoted to watching videos. On mobile devices consumers spent an average of three minutes per week watching video.

Nic Covey, Director of Cross-Platform Insights at Nielsen, trumpeted “Americans today have an insatiable appetite for not only content, but also choice. Across all age groups, we see consumers adding the Internet and mobile devices to their media diet — consuming media anytime and anywhere possible.”

One suspects that “media” is being used as a euphemism for TV in the context of online video: as in, more and more we see consumers adding the Internet and mobile to their “TV” diet.

I’m not sure about that.

Over the past year, time spent per week looking at online video grew 35% to 22 minutes, and mobile video grew 53% to three minutes. TV video remained flat at over 31 hours, not including 31 minutes of DVR. From this data, Nielsen notes that consumers are not replacing one platform for the other; they are adding (their emphasis) platforms to their schedule.

MediaPost covered the story with this happy headline: “Nielsen: TV Continues Going ‘Everywhere’

I’m not sure about that. The evidence suggests, in fact, that TV isn’t going anywhere, which strikes me as the real story.

Why is this important? Because, as usual, the Internet seems uncomfortable with itself; it keeps looking for approval from older media siblings, principally, TV. I think this is because too many of the Internet’s primary care givers are TV people and they want this child to grow up just like the last one. “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” is the sense you get from the time-keeping and yearning over Internet video.

The Internet is not TV. Hulu is not TV. I watch video online for different reasons than I watch TV. For starters, I watch TV to relax and tune-out. Online I’m engaged, video included. Conversely, I can watch 60 seconds of someone do something absurd on YouTube. I could not sit through 30 minutes of Funniest Home Videos.

The real story (and value) of online video gets buried by comparisons to television, beginning with time spent. Online video is new media. What’s that story?

Burst Media is active with a number of industry organizations in an effort to make sure the debate over online privacy has the benefit of all points of view and that, in particular, it keeps in mind the welfare of the countless independent web publishers who are the very basis of the Internet’s rich tapestry.

Dave Stein, co-founder and CTO of Burst, and author of one of the Internet’s first ad serving platforms, offers thoughts on the impact of potential privacy laws to publishers at Sitepoint.

As one commenter on the article says:

“Great article, my legislators will be hearing about this. Repeatedly.”

Be heard.

The Pulitzer Prize Board decided at its November Board meeting to expand again the eligibility for journalism awards making it possible for online reporters and commentators to be recognized. According to a report in MediaBistro’s NY Fishbowl, it sounds like the change means that writers producing original work or commentary can be eligible for consideration regardless of the news publication – print or digital – in which their work appears.

MediaBistro explains:

“Now “entries for journalism awards must be based on material coming from a text-based United States newspaper or news site that publishes at least weekly during the calendar year,” according to the revised Pulitzer rules. This change is a baby step from last year’s eligibility requirements, which read that nominees from online organizations could be considered, but they, like their print counterparts, had to be “primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing events.”

Considering the varied and sometimes esoteric nature of online publications, the rules for this year consider the writer and their piece over the publication they work for, according to Sig Gissler of the Pulitzer Prize Committee. This is definitely a boon to all those investigative bloggers out there who don’t yet write for pubs like The Huffington Post.”

Joseph Pulitzer should be pleased that the award bearing his name is steadily finding its way into new media. It seems certain that if he were here, he’d be blogging.

Quick …who was quoted recently in the Wall Street Journal saying the following?

“Hopefully, we will spark a revolution of people doing content at a different scale.”

a. Tim Berners-Lee

b. Johannes Gutenberg

c. Tim Armstrong

The answer is C, Tim Armstrong, who was making further reference to Aol.’s emerging strategy to re-make the brand online for advertisers and consumers. Said Tim to the Journal,

“Content is the one area on the Web that hasn’t seen the full potential. Hopefully, we will spark a revolution of people doing content at a different scale.”

I’m sorry, what potential is missing from content online and exactly how much more revolutionary does Aol. expect that content development is going to get? The FTC is holding a workshop in Washington right now to assess the damage to news organizations that has been caused already by the content revolution online. That indicates to me that further spark is not necessary. There appears, in fact, to be an enormous fire raging that is toppling content structures that have stood for 100 years.

Permit me this outburst: If it suddenly dawns on anyone in response to Aol.’s “content revolution” that “Gee that seems like a nifty idea; why hasn’t it been done before?” then I am going to change the title of my book about the history of Internet advertising (which is currently, “What I saw on the way to the content revolution”) to – with apologies to A.A. Milne – “In which Pooh and Piglet go hunting and nearly catch a Woozle,” because Milne’s title conjures a better image of what happens when one walks, head down, following one’s footprints in the snow.

If Aol’s strategy of relying on an army of a few thousand free-lance writers to produce reams of content tied to popular web-searches represents progress in our minds concerning the “full potential” of Internet content, then we must question our roles as stewards of “new” media. The potential has been obvious for years thanks to countless writers and web publishers already working on a shared revenue basis to generate reams of Internet content. The potential is and has been the chance to reach highly targeted audiences at the very moment when they are pre-disposed to what advertisers are trying to sell, such as to the solution to defective baby cribs. It exceeds the potential of all other media, to date, to do the same.

What matters to content’s (i.e., media’s) potential is denial. “Hopefully we will spark a revolution of people doing content at a different scale” is denial. It says that the content revolution that came along and was responsible – in all respects – for lighting the fire that burned down the walls that Steve Case built (and many other walls since) didn’t happen. It insists something else happened, which we are now to believe was a chronic underachievement of content online. The Internet was weak and Aol. – and others – suffered because of it.

We are wasting valuable time here.

Aol. does not need to re-invent the Internet to restore its position. It needs to embrace it – finally, and for all time. Why does this matter? Why get exercised about what Aol. is up to? Because Aol. is a great Internet brand, whether it deserves the mantle or not. Leadership matters, but with this proposal, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, Aol., like the OPA before it, turns its back on the very content revolution that has Rupert Murdoch and others in Washington D.C. this week pleading for mercy.

Magazine publishers may now be looking at the iTunes model, which has been so successful at connecting with consumers on a paying basis, for help with the digital future. Thanks to the MediaBistro.com Daily Media News Feed, we are alerted to stories in the New York Observer and The Wrap (which has a nice summary of a few notable paid content initiatives out there right now) about the efforts of former Time Inc-er, John Squires, to rally magazine publishing companies to a new, sustainable, digital model.  iTunes is discussed in both places as the progenitor of what may result from such a collaboration. Whatever evolves, John Squires is quoted as saying in The New York Observer, “With magazines, the form has to change.” It appears he is out to re-design magazines for a digital world.

The iTunes model will not do that for him on its own. iTunes has been wonderfully liberating to consumers not because songs only cost 99 cents, but because once upon a time in order to own a song it cost $14.00 for the CD or album. It wasn’t that consumers were unwilling to pay $14.00 for the one song they craved on an album, it was that it came with so many other songs for which they had no craving at all. CDs took a convenient step forward vs. albums by introducing advanced programmability – specifically, the ability to search for and play a desired song, skipping over the rest without having to get up and move the needle forward or back on a spinning turntable.  iTunes took it to the next level, making it possible to buy songs one at a time, with even more programmability.

This is not a remedy offering much hope to magazines. Fortunately, John Squires may understand that, at least per The Observer piece where he says, “Unlike books and music, I think [for magazines] it involves designing a new product in order for it to be something that consumers really love.”

What do consumers really love about magazines? They love discovery. Magazines delight readers with the unexpected things, which may be why it is so hard to translate the business opportunity into a cost-per-pleasing-new-fact-or-insight. The very thing that makes magazines innately desirable is the thing that is hard to put a price on. It is, in fact, all the “other stuff”, in contrast to what users sought on albums and CDs.

What is the price of this sort of serendipity? How does one bottle it in a digital world where there is so little peripheral vision – where it is all sharp angles and edges, and pointless searches down one rabbit hole after another?

People don’t pay for content. Perhaps this is why: it is not content they are buying. It is experience. It is the pleasing discovery of things they did not know they wanted to know, connected usually to their interests at heart. We will pay for personal enrichment. No wonder it appears the interest-based magazines that come into our house are thriving, but the general-interest based magazines we see elsewhere are not. Where our interests lie, so does our desire to be led (and our willingness to pay).

This means a struggle for all those magazines and – especially – newspapers that would charge for content online. And for magazines, John Squires says, “the form has to change.”

That should be interesting.