Two things happened simultaneously

The crumbling of the newspaper business model (Cragislist supplanted the classifieds, etc.)
and the end of the acceptance of a hierarchical news model.

Now there are all kinds of experiments that involve getting people to pay for news online. Here's one from Slovakia.

Closer to home, the Times's paywall is coming.

Part of the problem is that the 'Net as an advertising meeting has never quite clicked, even though clicking is something you can track really well. 35 percent of media us = 14 percent of ad dollars, a trend which is leveling off. 8 percent of web users account for 85 percent of click-throughs. Example.

One of the first things to get ditched was explanatory journalism:

Technology is further shifting power to newsmakers, and the newest way is through their ability to control the initial accounts of events. For now at least, digital technology is shifting more emphasis and resources toward breaking news. Shrinking newsrooms are asking their remaining ranks to produce first accounts more quickly and feed multiple platforms. This is focusing more time on disseminating information and somewhat less on gathering it, making news people more reactive and less proactive. It is also leading to a phenomenon in which the first account from newsmakers — their press conferences and press releases — make their way to the public often in a less vetted form, sometimes close to verbatim. Those first accounts, sculpted by official sources, then can rapidly spread more widely now through the power of the Web to disseminate, gaining a velocity they once lacked. That is followed quickly by commentary. What is squeezed is the supplemental reporting that would unearth more facts and context about events. We saw this clearly in a study of news in Baltimore, but it is reinforced in discussions with news people. While technology makes it easier for citizens to participate, it is also giving newsmakers more influence over the first impression the public receives.

We should probably talk a bit about the Courant.

Try to remember

Early newspapers were, essentially, blogs.
And in their history, they have been many things.

The New/Old Echo Chamber

What does the news look like right this minute?

What is that a product of?

From Pew:

Reportorial journalism is getting smaller, but the commentary and discussion aspect of media, which adds analysis, passion and agenda shaping, is growing — in cable, radio, social media, blogs and elsewhere. For all the robust activity there, however, the numbers still suggest that these new media are largely filled with debate dependent on the shrinking base of reporting that began in the old media. Our ongoing analysis of more than a million blogs and social media sites, for instance, finds that 80% of the links are to U.S. legacy media.

Some of the tension between those two sources has led people to expect newspapers to be more open. And this is as good a place as any to talk about the comment function issue. (Remember the Coasean law.)

The bad news

Um, newspaper deaths.
Patch.
Fumbling efforts with paywalls.

The good news

The incredible role played by YouTube and citizen-generated video.

And perhaps an understanding that "news" can be presented a lot of different ways.
Patch.
Well maybe not Patch but hyperlocal sites.
When they work.
And here's one close to home.
At a statewide level, we have an unbundled site for government and politics.
Here's a slightly jazzier version. (remember Rapaille and codes.)

And a cool-looking semi-paywall version.
About $150 million in nonprofit money has flowed into news projects since 2006.

This is one of the more famous examples.

In many ways, the home feed of Facebook has become -- or can become -- a multivitamin news source.
Some FB users use their pages as, essentially blogs.

Twitter and Tumblr are elastic, searchable news sources.

Week 2 -- Let's start with a little perspective on the press.

Here's Jay Rosen.

A few general principles

Web. vs. Net

The notion of Code -- Clotaire Rapaille.

Short stays, the lack of brand identification, the Code of the Wild West.

The car vs. the bridge. (Hidden elements of Wikipedia and Google)

The Coasean notion of transaction cost. (apply to FB)

Focus-grouping reality on FB.

Crowd-sourcing.

The tool shapes the user.

Not every tool is right for every job.

Nothing is private.

Hot vs. cool environments, using Obama's candidacy and the notion of "not a finished product."

Also, two years later, the Tea Party as cool.

Second orality and Walter Ong.

(By lowering the Coasean cost, does the internet make us more oral?)

The Nicholas Carr critique.

(Keep in mind that most of these criticisms echo back to, for example, what Plato said about writing. And what scribes said about printing. And so on.)

Tribalism.

The history of information, searchability, the 17th century, the impenetrability of the book.

How the world surfs

The population trends.
The trends in use.
The shift from searching to sharing.
The Tunisia example.
What's the relationship to old-line media?

Eminem

Note to self -- pick this up around 2:30

Let's Get It Started

So why do this at all?

We're living through, I would argue, THE BIGGEST information revolution in the history of humankind.

In many ways, the shift returns us to our pasts, when we relied more on ourselves to circulate information and less on professionals.

That, in a nutshell, is what should make this more attractive to farmers. (There's a dark side to all this, which we'll discuss.)

But let's also make a list of what you want to accomplish.

Let's make a list of your needs.

Whom do you need to reach?

What do you need them to know?

What kinds problem involving communication and information-sharing are you struggling to solve?

What -- in the area of getting the word out and sharing a general sense of your operation -- would make you happier a year from now?

What kind of communicator are you right now? What do you think you do well?

Case study

So here's a very nice-looking website for a farm whose Provincetown farmer's market presence I recently visited.

Let's talk about what it does and doesn't do well.

Should it have an update-able blog?

Video.

Buttons for FB and Twitter?

A personality?

Different information on its home page?

A physical presence that points to its digital presence?

Techno-literacy

The New York Times magazine, conveniently, offered this set of guidelines yesterday for techno-literacy.

• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.

• Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete.

• Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it.

• Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a good sign.

• The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.

• Every technology is biased by its embedded defaults: what does it assume?

• Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one?

• The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful.

• Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.

To those, I would add: Have Fun and Don't Be Intimidated.

Assimilate or else

Most of what I'm going to teach you today will be less relevant than your actual performance in Google.
Whoever handles your website should at least glance at Google's copious advice about SEO.
It's also a good idea, probably to have an actual Google account that links to your website. It's all about making their 'bots happy.

Further reading on websites

I don't especially agree with their example of a good farm website.
But I don't know much about the goat business.

But let's just pick a website and talk about it.

Always ask yourself, what's the unit of exchange in the platform I'm in?
In FB, it's the post (and the friend).
On a website, it's the link.

The Social Network

One of the best ways to think about social media is in terms of the energy expended to get a result.
Facebook is the king of low energy expenditure.
And let's talk about event pages.
And the art of the FB post.
And getting OTHER people to post about you.
(But don't completely forget about good old-fashioned email blasts.)

Coordination of activities like this one.

The joys of crowdsourcing

Wikipedia is crowdsourcing.

Let's crowdsource the idea of crowdsourcing for farmers and their friends.

Sites that aggregate

You probably know most of these:

buyctgrown.
CtFarmMap.
localharvest.
shared harvest.
farmfresh.

For PYO, this is a very effective site.

Here are some great-looking sites that, I think, do the social media thing very well.
This one in Chicago.
And this one in Fairfield County.

We should talk, in connection with those, about the idea of parnterships.
(Which goes to the issue of simplicity.)

Let's talk Twitter

So here's Twitter.
Some things you could use Twitter for:
-- real time updates to your customers about the condition of crops, i.e. "this is the last week for blueberries at Piotrowicz Farm!"
-- real time updates from a farm stand or farmer's market. "I've got five heads of bronze arrow lettuce left at the West End Market."
-- talking to (and about) legislators if there's a bill coming up that affects you.
-- to give and receive real time information about weather
If you do Twitter, it makes sense to learn more about hashtags.

One general thing to remember: the news media now troll Twitter and other forms of unpaid social media for news ideas.

The Commandments

Just to review, this is roughly the order in which you should worry about things.
1. Have a website.
2. Get your website listed with all the farm aggregators.
3. Be Google-friendly. It's probably a good idea to have a Google account with a profile that links to your website.
4. Join Facebook. Recruit friends.
5. (Maybe) Create a Twitter account.
6. If you do something that requires fresh content -- a website blow, Facebook or Twitter -- update a lot. A LOT!
7. make a little sign -- with your website and FB and Twitter info, if relevant --for your farmstand and especially for farmers markets.