AOL's dynamic vision of the future: Flood the web with content designed to pop up high in Google search results, with editorial ideas generated by an algorithm based on what stupid people are looking for, on the internet. In our business we call this "stealing post ideas from Google Trends." Getcher Tiger Woods Mistress Pictures here! Tell us, WSJ, how will AOL improve the life of me, an average Park Slope Parent?

AOL says its new system determined that the most popular topic on the Web last Tuesday was "crib recalls," following news of a massive recall by Stork Craft Manufacturing of Canada. AOL had only one story on its sites on the recall. But, if the new system had been live, editors would have geared up to supply stories on the subject from a number of angles, the company says.

So not only is AOL basing its entire dismal future on the most base sort of styrofoam traffic-whoring; it's not even whoring in a new way. Demand Media, for one, has long been doing the exact same thing, with an algorithm-plus-sweatshop editorial production line that makes Gawker Media look like Aristotle's School of Taking Your Sweet Time Thinking About Things.

Ah well. Neither useless crap on the internet nor AOL sucking is anything new.

For years, newspapers and other media companies have complained about Google reaping profits by indexing media content for free. Google has responded that media companies are free to remove themselves from Google's search engines if they wish. But media companies never actually did it, because the hit to their traffic would be too big. They'd prefer to just get paid by the search engines. Which is what Rupert Murdoch may now do.

Business Insider estimates that the Wall Street Journal, News Corp's most prized media property, would lose about $15 million by pulling out of Google—meaning that Bing could theoretically secure exclusive search engine rights for that price. The money is almost too small to matter. But this could be a trigger for much bigger things. Namely, the Great Search Engine Wars for media content.

Brian Lam argues that this move would hurt consumers. Instead of being able to go to Google to find everything, consumers would have to know which specific media outlets had exclusive deals with which search engines in order to track down their content.

And that's absolutely true! This trend, if it becomes widespread—every big media company hunting for the richest deal it can get from a search engine—would make life more inconvenient for media consumers like you and me. Which doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. The fact is that the current situation cannot stand. Have you read our #layoffs tag lately? Rupert Murdoch—and other media owners—are tired of Google making money off their content, for free. The original idea was that the traffic driven to media sites by Google would provide enough revenue, through ads, to make everyone happy. That hasn't turned out to be the case. Online ad revenue is not doing the trick.

So media companies will need new revenue streams to survive. A big one will be paid content; i.e., if you want to read the New York Times online, you will have to pay some sort of subscription fee. But search engine deals like this—in which media companies make search engines pay for exclusive rights to access their content—are another online revenue stream that could become significant. News Corp's deal isn't big money, yet. But presumably if Google and its competitors realize they will have to engage in bidding wars to lock in rights to good media content, the value of those deals would increase considerably.

The bigger picture is this: Yes, the "journalism" industry will shrink. That's part of the future. Fine. But even with the wondrous world of blogs and nonprofit journalism foundations and every other new permutation of creating content, the fact remains that if people want to enjoy a fundamental baseline of serious news media in this country, they will have to pay for it, somehow. Yes, it's more inconvenient to have search engines with exclusive content deals. It's also inconvenient to have to pay to read online news. But these and other new revenue streams will have to come into place if we don't want to keep griping forever about journalists being laid off and news quality getting shittier. Everything cannot always be free and delivered directly to us on a platter when it costs money to make, okay! So try not to fear the portentous coming of the Search Engine Bidding Wars. We're just going through the bumpy phase of things now. You'll get used to it. And the annoying kid you sent to J-school might actually be able to land a job one day, too.

[My colleagues do not necessarily agree with me!]

• The new medium could rot people's brains and erode cultural standards: "What you'll be seeing: [Ventriloquist dummy] Charlie McCarthy or the [intellectual radio broadcast] Chicago Roundtable?"
  
• The government is making huge new media decisions with far-reaching implications for the future: "Battle in the spectrum... Uncle Sam Looks at Television."
  
• The new medium will impact this old medium: Title: "Movies and Television" Article: "Film companies are watching television development with a careful eye."
  
• The elite first adopters will be overrun by the masses: Title: "Is Television Ready for the Public?" Article "Before the war about 7,000 television sets had been sold... the purcahses were all in or near a handful of cities. among them New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Schenectady, and Los Angeles" Those big-city bastards of Schenectady were liberal elitists even back in the day!
  
• The new medium will usher in a new crop of media lords: "Who Are the Leaders in the Fight?"
  
• The new medium means fun new gadgets (which could get us loads of advertising): Title: "What Kind of Television? War improvements cut costs / Look before you buy / Network possibilities / Buy wisely / Color television"
  
  
  
  Article (emphasis added): "Before you start looking for a receiver, check up on the television station in your area and find out whether its programs interest you...Don't let the salesman double talk you into buying one before it is demonstrated in your home. Who knows, you may be living in a "dead spot" where it is not possible to pick up television pictures. [AT&T has apparently been in the wireless business a long time.]

Somehow we still have movie theaters, radio, books and newspapers decades later. And every one of those sectors is still fabulously profitable and growing. (*Cough*)

[via Brendan Koerner]

At some point while we weren't looking, Ad Age reports, Mountain Dew apparently let you, the consumer, come up with three new flavors for it? "Distortion, Whiteout and Typhoon?" Which are undoubtedly terrible? Anyhow, now they're also letting you, the con-Dew-mer, go online and pick the ad agency to make the campaign for these terrifying "flavors," all in the name of connecting the consumer public with the brand image interactivity category extension dialogue Twitter Facebook engagement crowd-sourcing.

And here it is, the future of advertising: 12-second user-generated brand worship clips, at no cost to PepsiCo. You finally got what you asked for, America. YOU'RE A STAR.
[Pic via]

NYT editor Bill Keller told Clark Hoyt that the paper is "within weeks of a decision" on the long-discussed question of whether, and how, to charge for its online news.

So here is what their decision will be: You will have to pay for their online news. One way or another! Maybe you will pay a $5 per month subscription fee, or maybe you will pay micropayments for every story, or maybe they will roll out tiered membership packages with fancy extras designed to get hardcore fans to pay more in exchange for more access. Probably a certain level of news will be free, and a better level of news will not be free. Or maybe someone there has actually come up with an elegant solution to this mess! Though we doubt it.

But somehow we will all have to pay something, because if we don't, the New York Times is totally going to go broke, bit by bit, by giving its product away for free. Which is something that it and every other newspaper have now come to realize. A more interesting question: Will any of the NYT's star columnists flee the paper if they're shoved behind a pay wall, like Newsday's Saul Friedman just did?

They might! These same NYT columnists sat through the Times Select fiasco and watched their readership drop precipitously. Things are different now though! Because somebody like, say, Thomas Friedman, or David Pogue, or Maureen Dowd, could legitimately decide that their own BRAND would gain more by going off on their own than by sitting behind a paywall at the NYT. Thanks for the help with everything, Times, but we're off to be A Brand Called Me-s! Fewer readers could hurt their speaking fees. Can't have that.

This result would bring in some much-needed fresh blood and get rid of Thomas Fucking Friedman, so let's all pray it goes down exactly like that. We have our (employer's) credit card ready, Bill Keller.

With the December issue of Esquire, all you do is fire up your computer, turn on the webcam, turn to the part of the magazine with those strange little black-and-white box-looking things, in ads or whatever, and point it at the webcam, and you will witness, right there on your screen, an uninteresting video. Says the WSJ:

A fashion spread about dressing in layers, for example, shows actor Jeremy Renner shedding a coat and sweater as the weather turns from rainy to sunny. Turning the magazine triggers a snow flurry, and Mr. Renner puts on more clothes and throws snowballs. Esquire says there are several minutes of video footage in the magazine

The ability to watch a moving-picture on your computer? The future is now. George Lois would be proud.

In John Koblin's weekly Conde Nast feature, company execs reveal a curious mindset (assuming it's not just spin): McKinsey's job was not to reshape the monolithic company with an eye towards a radically different digital-centric future; instead, its only assignment was to tidy up the balance sheet for 2010. After which, Conde presumes, everything will get back to normal.

"We have what we believe is a short-term problem with advertising revenue," [Conde Nast editorial director Tom Wallace said]. "That problem seems to be improving. How long will there be print magazines? I don't know. But for as long as there will be, Condé Nast is well positioned."

Really! And what if they turn out to be well positioned only if time begins running backwards?

"The advertising revenue until proven otherwise is cyclical," said Mr. Wallace. "And if it is proven otherwise, we've already adjusted for it."

So: The world's most famous magazine company is betting that the current print magazine ad downturn is cyclical, meaning temporary. And if it's not cyclical—meaning (as is likely!) it stays this bad, well, the cuts they've already made mean they'll be just fine.

And what if magazine advertising continues getting worse? Then they're fucked. Good luck, Nasties.
[Pic: Rafael Chamorro]

Yesterday it seemed logical to assume that the Wasserstein family trust that owns New York would want to sell it off after dad's death. After all, money-losing media vanity ownership is usually the exclusive preserve of the mature rich, not their progeny.

But! Today it was revealed that Wasserstein's death means a $188 million payout from Lazard. "Two of Mr. Wasserstein's eldest children, Pamela and Ben, are expected to play a pivotal role overseeing the trust," the WSJ reports. Coincidentally, those are the same two Wasserstein children with backgrounds in journalism—Ben, the NYO noted yesterday, even worked as a New York editor.

Ad Age says the family would probably want "a minimum of $75 million to $100 million" for the magazine—but that they're just as likely to keep it, at least for the foreseeable future. And writing at Newser, former New York editor Caroline Miller rhapsodizes about the greatness of rich guys willing to pour money into good, money-losing magazines, and beseeches Ben Wasserstein to step up and take over his dad's role.

Considering the debacle that young Jared Kushners' ownership of the Observer has been, it's odd that media types would fall over themselves once again to support a young, rich, and (all due respect to Ben) ignorant owner to take over one of the city's most prestigious media properties with nothing but ambition on his side. But as Miller points out, even that is usually preferable to owners who are very concerned with making a profit. The main quality a media mogul needs today: the willingness to lose money.

New York is controlled by a Wasserstein family trust, and nobody knows what the trust will decide to do now that Wasserstein's gone. Which is not to say it's too early to speculate. The Observer points out that at least two of Wasserstein's kids are former or current journalists, and wonders whether they might have an interest in taking over for dad.

But New York is not a moneymaking enterprise. It was one thing for the hyper-ambitious Wasserstein to snatch control of the mag for himself, beating out a consortium of similar bidders, Including Mort Zuckerman, Jeffrey Epstein, Michael Wolff, and Harvey Weinstein. It's quite another thing for his family to decide to continue pouring money into the publication. Keith Kelly today floats a few possible buyers for New York. Let's handicap them!

Mort Zuckerman, mogul and NY Daily News Owner: 3-1. Zuckerman has a big enough ego that he surely must covet New York, which is quite a step of respectability above the Daily News. He owned US News & World Report—now a shell of its former self—and New York could satisfy his glossy magazine jones again. Plus, he's not seriously broke.
Harvey Weinstein, Weinstein Co.: 6-1. Weinstein might want to own New York more than anyone. But his financial struggles at his main business make branching out into a money-losing magazine not the smartest move.
Jason Binn, Niche Media CEO: 8-1. Could be deadly to New York's inherent classiness (of a sort). Let's hope not.
Nick Denton, Gawker overlord: 50-1. You never know with this guy!

Perhaps a more realistic guess: Some sort of coalition of financiers and insiders from Wasserstein's personal empire, who'd have both the money and the knowledge to take over with little disruption. Personally, we're pulling for Wasserstein's kids to keep it in the family, though. This city (and this blog) needs all the sprightly young media moguls it can get.

One of the internet's most important legacies is its absolute destruction of credentialism. So who better to explain it to the world than New York Times TV-watcher-and-internet-looker-and-writer-about Virginia Heffernan, the one person that every American too old to figure out how to get onto the internet turns to to tell them about said internet, in a magazine column? And tell us, Leon Neyfakh, could the book have a name and theme commensurate to the preposterousness of its ambition?

In the proposal [for the book, tentatively titled The Pleasures of the Internet: How to Live in the New Online Civilization], a copy of which was obtained by the Transom, Ms. Heffernan's book is described as "a complete aesthetics of the Internet" that will treat the Web as a complex work of representational art, complete with "a poetics, a scale, a palette, a rhythm, a sensibility, a set of rituals and spectacles, a system of metaphors and an emotional range."

Haha yes. Very good. A good book to give to, say, your grandmother who retired as a college literature professor a long, long time ago. Explaining the entire internet in a book: Actually a very internetty type of thing to do!
[NYO]

According to Paul Caine, president of the Time Inc. magazine group that includes Entertainment Weekly, the ballpark dollar cost for one of these video units is in the "low teens," although he said the cost may come down before the issue comes out.

Jesus Fucking Christ. I mean...wow. The Future!
[Vid via Boing Boing]

This is the very first question from a Q&A with Anderson in the German mag Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let's talk about the future of journalism.
Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don't use the word journalism.

Uhh...

SPIEGEL: Okay, how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States and worldwide.
Anderson: Sorry, I don't use the word media. I don't use the word news. I don't think that those words mean anything anymore...

SPIEGEL: Which other words would you use?
Anderson: There are no other words. We're in one of those strange eras where the words of the last century don't have meaning. What does news mean to you, when the vast majority of news is created by amateurs? Is news coming from a newspaper, or a news group or a friend? I just cannot come up with a definition for those words. Here at Wired, we stopped using them.

Uh huh. Then he goes on to talk his new age "Free" shit about how news just "comes to me," but media outlets themselves aren't important. Hey Chris Anderson, I haven't read your new book, but I hear from the internet or whatever that you plagiarized it, and that it sucks. That's that new journalism!
[Spiegel via Media Decoder. Pic: Getty]

A major focus of planning for the fall, officials say, is to avoid being swamped by a similar, possibly bigger, demand for emergency room services. Some hospital officials are advocating putting out daily swine flu bulletins - modeled after announcements on alternate-side parking or lottery numbers - about issues like when to seek treatment.

The future of New York City's health is in Pat Kiernan's able hands. Or maybe the hands of whoever's on at midnight, if the government decides to put you on a mandatory night shift at your job:

The city is considering, in a worst case, measures like canceling big gatherings and staggering work hours, said Dr. Isaac B. Weisfuse, the city's deputy health commissioner for disease control, who has been studying the flu pandemic of 1918.

You first, Dr. Isaac B. Weisfuse.
[NYT. Pic: Getty]

Morgan Stanley has this 15 year-old intern in London, so while all these dudes were sitting around miserably trying to do analyst reports about youth media habits and shit, they realized they didn't know shit about youth media habits, because they spend all their time in the office writing analyst reports, so they asked this intern kid, "Hey kid, why don't you write a thing about your friend and how they use media and shit?"

Then they promptly forgot about it, because, I mean, kids, right? But then this kid comes back with this report and the analysts are like, "Holy fuck, we could totally sell this shit to other old people!" So now Morgan Stanley has published this kid's note as a research report, and it is of course way more popular than whatever these pro guys have written this year:

The response was enormous. "We've had dozens and dozens of fund managers, and several CEOs, e-mailing and calling all day," said Mr Hill-Wood, 35, estimating that the note had generated five or six times more feedback than the team's usual reports.

Ha, losers! The kid's report is very nice and all but it's basically full of common sense shit like teens loving cell phones, and Wiis, and big TVs, and not wanting to pay for music, and it really says more about the fund managers and CEOs who went wild for it than it does about teens. And what it says about them is: They are old, and you can hustle them, kids. Tell em about 'Sexting!'
[FT. Full report here. Pic via]

Bloomberg reports that the NYT is floating the idea of charging $5 a month to access its website in a survey of readers. (It also asked if subscribers would be willing to pay $2.50 per month).

Unless anybody has any other bright ideas, this is inevitable, and necessary. There's no way the NYT—or most other papers—can continue to allow their own free website to cannibalize their revenue forever. Print subscription levels will probably never rise again in a meaningful way. Online news is the future. Online ads bring in only a fraction of the revenue of print ads. Therefore, the website has to find another way to generate cash. And that way is charging for content.

If all 650,000 print subscribers paid $5 a month for the website, that would be an instant $39 million per year. More likely, many people would choose either only the print subscription (old people) or only the online subscription (non-old people). That means that the NYT could potentially sell many more online subscriptions than it sells print subscriptions. Its website is orders of magnitudes more popular than its print product already. Five bucks a month is not an outrageous fee for the premium newspaper site on the internet. Yes, the Times would lose some online readers, and therefore some online ad revenue. But they should be able to make up much more than that by charging a reasonable fee—particularly as this practice spreads and becomes more accepted. Bitch now, pay later. The paper will still have to face some pretty severe staff cutbacks. But this is the future. If you like to read the NYT, pay up.

Lindsey Hoshaw is a graduate of the Stanford J-school, and she wants to take a boat out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean to report on the massive floating garbage patch out there that will soon overtake us all. A worthy project! So Lindsey turned to Spot.us, where journalists pitch story ideas to the public and solicit donations for the reporting costs. (She needs $10K):

My enthusiasm for this project is only surpassed by the amazing opportunity I've been offered by The New York Times to publish an article and accompanying photos of my journey.

Qua? NYT science editor Laura Chang tells us:

We did not assign an article to Lindsey Hoshaw but we have indeed agreed to consider a freelance submission from her on the Pacific garbage patch. We have talked with Spot.us about their offer to raise support for her travel expenses, and this is O.K. with us.

So, the paper of record is happy to pay, I dunno, a few grand for this story, as long as Hoshaw can independently get the ten grand it'll cost to report it. Uh. Sounds like a good story, but yall better hope this method doesn't get too popular, cause then you'll really have to be rich to get into the lucrative field of journalism.