From Paper to Persona: Rethinking newsrooms as

personal services organizations; Interest Matching

August 26, 2013

Bill Densmore, consulting fellowDonald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, Missouri School of Journalism

President, CircLabs Inc.http://www.newshare.com/vail

What we’ll cover • News-industry key challenge • Why it is surmountable • Paper to Persona – news personality • The challenge of data overload • The Next Newsroom• Trust, identity, privacy • Making the market for digital info• Solution case study – CircLabs prototype

The Information Valet Project

From Paper to Persona:Managing Privacy and Information Overload; Sustaining Journalism in the Attention Age

Published: August 4, 2011

papertopersona.org

What’s next?

THE END OF GATEKEEPING:

The hour glass and the cylinder

(On side)

Assertions

Consumer/creators same level

Result: Content abundance

Information Age to Attention Age

The Post-Scarcity The Post-Scarcity Economy* -- Economy* --

Information is abundant.Information is abundant.But . . . attention isn’t.But . . . attention isn’t.

Biggest democracy challenge?

Assertions

RESULT: Media moves from Gatekeeper to InfoValet

Attention Age results • Mass market ads, journalism unglued

• Advertising is old – now “advisor-tising”

• Aggregation, content atomization

• Consumers in charge (copyright?)

• They go anywhere for information

• Social networks success / end of silos

http://datawillhelp.us/ by Jonathan Harris, commissioned by The New York Times

The choices we make about data

Likely resulting trends

• Privacy now front-burner issue (NSA, National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace)

• Privacy emerges as regulatory issue • Publisher / gatekeeper as one-to-many fading• News orgs need to be at core of social stream

• OPPORTUNITY: Big data custodian

• Identity, trust new building blocks

Landscape

Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Digital-Set-Surpass-TV-Time-Spent-with-US-Media/1010096

Newspaper small engagement

The surmountable challenge?

• News as a leisure-time activity – Google’s Varian

• Research: The surge in tablet use

From paper to persona • Publishing, broadcasting anachronistic

• Now automated, customized, one-to-one

• Must share payments for content, custom info, sponsorships

• Advisor, agent, concierge, “valet”?

Assertion

But who are identity valets now? • Facebook

• Google and Google+

• Amazon

• Apple Store

• Yahoo?

• Telcoms?

Identity

Digital ad revenue elsewhere

The CPM squeeze

Identity consequence

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/tkawaja/luma-display-ad-tech-landscape-2010-1231

Today’s “identity” ecosystem

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/tkawaja/luma-display-ad-tech-landscape-2010-1231

‘THE DAY’ VS. THIS – VRM vs. CRM?

Participation: End of advertising? • Is advertising now one-to-one advertising?

• Vendor-delivered direct: Publisher bylass?

• Who controls your privacy, persona?

• What is your attention worth? To whom?

• NEEDED: Replace strategy for mass-market ads

Assertions

Rachel Davis MerseyMedill / Northwestern:

• Abandon mass-market approach• Meet individual info needs• By identified user • “Identity-based” journalism • Trust in personalization, accept “vegetables”

Needed: A new approach

The new approach • Algorithms and curators working together• Expanding the concept of news • Offering you a “news personality” • Focus on experience • Creating conversations, community, networks

From overload to curation, identity PUBLIC SECTOR

• NSA has the same problem

• Government seeks identity

PRIVATE

• Netflix – suggests movies

• Amazon products

• Pandora – suggests music

• Who is suggesting news?

“So why can’t I have a portable stream of news that I can take with me everywhere? Why can’t it take into

account my preferences, my location, the veggies so to speak of news that I should know? I call this the hyper-

personalized news stream. What form it takes is unclear.”

-- Marissa Mayer, Google (now Yahoo), Dec.2009. . . in congressional testimony

But what do users really want?

The next newsroom • Curation and algorithms

• A personal-service organization

• Still finding, sharing, trustworthy info

• But to a market of one; no longer mass

• Personalized interest matching

• A surmountable challenge

The missing link the Internet lacks• Trust and identity

• Missing when web went commercial

• Multiple logins/passwords a big hassle

• A “fast pass for news / information

• One account, universal identity control

• But not controlled by one company, or government

Making the market for digital info• One account at a home base (newspaper?)

• Build a “news personality”

• Enable one-ID, one-bill access

• Build info garden from atomized bits

• One subscription works many places

• Who can create?

Information Trust Association

"A non-profit collaboration to share technology, users and content could help news organizations find new revenues and become better at serving the public, according to a report from the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.”

http://www.papertopersona.org

A long-term solution? • Non-profit, diverse board• Privacy, trust, identity standards • Test technologies, sanction protocols • Enable web-wide microaccounting• No single registrar or user owner • But what about RIGHT NOW!

• Leap Media / “The Day” approach

• “The Day” as Information Valet

• Local control, long-term relationship, service based

• User-focused customer relationship management

• Replace hundreds of unseen, unaccountable databases

• Build comprehensive “news personality”

The necessary first step

• Newshare Circulate Discovery Service prototype

• Prototype UI funded by Reynolds Journalism Institute

• Taxonometrics technology for “profile” suggestions

• A leisure experience for news?

• Graf Mouen will explain concept . . .

Next step – personalization