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It’s been a quieter week from me than I had planned, and that’s not just because I’ve been planning the menu for my Super Bowl party. My laptop hard drive, about 3 years old, bit the bullet last week, and I only had about a 90% backup of my data. There’s a variety of reasons for this– some laziness, some reluctance to buy a big new external hard drive for Time Machine to run on, when i have so many other NAS’s and Drobos and externals laying around, doing various chores on the home network– I was sure I would scare up a couple hundred gigs of free space somewhere on the network in time to do a comprehensive backup. But I didn’t.

What was fascinating to me is HOW MUCH of my data lives on the Google cloud. My email, address book, web bookmarks, some work documents and other bits are all stored in various places on Google’s fast and free backups. While I don’t love my data being out on the net, I do love that it saved my bacon this time. I’m not having to reassemble my rolodex or write people telling them I’ve lost their email. That’s pretty sweet.

The biggest hit was my music. My most recent iTunes backup was several months ago. So while I have my entire back catalog, some new additions have been lost. That said, iTunes has a once-in-a-lifetime get out of jail card, where if you ask nicely, they just might let you re-download all your content, for free, ONCE. I did, and they restored some 600+ items to my Library. That was HUGE.

I also happened to burn a disc of photos from my recent trip to the national parks in southern Utah for my friend and traveling companion Boris, which makes up for my lack of a recent Aperture backup, and the fact that I never got around to uploading them on Twitter. All in all, things could’ve been WAY worse. I was a web developer for a small nonprofit in DC before entering journalism, and being a jack of all trades, I also helped out some with IT, designing the backup system, etc. I’m pretty sure my geek decoder ring has been permanently revoked after this embarassing episode.

And that’s really the only reason I’m sharing it. Data loss: it can happen to you, too, no matter your geek cred. I share my shame in the hopes of helping you avert yours. If you’re looking for something to do today, buy yourself a big external hard drive like the one I just bought, and set up Time Machine (simple) or a Windows backup program. Or, at the minimum, set up a Free CrashPlan account for your documents folder. Trust me, the time and little money you spend on it will be well worth it someday. I’m sure many of you out there are tut-tutting me now, but I KNOW there’s a few of you reading this, thinking, ‘yeah, I should get around to that already….’

TRUST me. Do it right now.

Felix Salmon’s post about New York Times executives hoping the new paywall will be revenue neutral at best is very good info. In short, he explains, the paywall is a free lottery ticket for the Times:

It probably won’t pay out, but it might, and if it doesn’t, at least the paper won’t have lost much if any money.

What’s sad here, of course, is that the NYT has given up its dream of winning the other lottery: becoming such a popular and high-value global news source that it will be able to make a very large amount of money from a free website. And it’s also sad that the NYT is happy to risk losing its paper-of-record status online for the sake of making this bet.

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That is sad, and I’m not sure why the Times is taking this recidivist approach towards their most loyal readers. They should be rewarding their most loyal readers, increasing traffic and advertising. But how might they do that? I’ve thought of five things I’d like to see on nytimes.com tomorrow, and I’d eat my hat if they didn’t increase traffic immediately and “durably,” thus increasing ad inventory, engagement and time on site metrics, and therefore increasing revenue and providing a higher quality user experience. Without ado:

1. No more article pagination. The only reason to do this is because you think you’ll earn marginal ad revenue on ads served on page 2, 3, etc. But the tradeoff is decreasing the amount of time readers have to browse the other good stories on your site, or annoying them by making them click the “single page” button at the top of every article, as I do now. The number of clicks a reader gives your site is scarce. Don’t waste them on stupid things like pagination. Give them links to more articles to click and read, as WSJ, Reuters, and many of your competitors do.
2. Make the Times Skimmer the default home page. It’s a brilliant way to browse the paper; the most akin to the printed newspaper experience I’ve ever seen on the web. (Also, I’ve noticed it presents all articles in single-page format, proving your own usability wonks hate pagination too.) That said, it needs enhancements. It needs to be lighter loading, and it should present multimedia content as well as it presents stories, or even better, in exploding windows. It should also, like Amazon and Netflix, learn from your reading habits to present  you with articles you’d be most interested in reading, right on the front page.
3. Give away the Times Reader Adobe Air App for free. I haven’t really used the app as intended, as I’m not a subscriber, and thus would have to pay to see all the features. But from the demo, I get that it’s an amped up and super fast version of the Times Skimmer, and its status as an stand alone app would make it a persistent background presence for most hard core news junkies. The News in Video and News in Pictures features are particularly stunning. You would never withhold the benefits of a new printing press from your customers, so why are you holding back your most advanced technology from them? I bet most of your readers don’t even know about the Times Reader app. And if you insist on charging for it, don’t tie the product to your print customer dinosaurs. Learn from Bloomberg here–once the company provided something of value– the terminal– to their customers, they could build on it to deliver all sorts of important content and information, and grow their business. Give your readers something better than the website. Give them the Times terminal, and grow the value. Serve ads that appear when a reader clicks back to the app after being away from it for a while. But compel them into leaving it open all day, perhaps by promising pop-up alerts on breaking news when the app is running.
4. Give us a real blog landing page. Because that’s not it. that’s an RSS feed page, which is handy, but not what I mean. Where can I go to find out what’s the latest on all of the Times blog network, in one place, and dive in? I can’t go anywhere right now. This is so simple I’d be happy to code if for the Times if they promise to use it.
5. Integrate Twitter feeds onto author, story and section pages. When I’m reading an author with a Twitter account, I want to see the feed in the sidebar. When I’m reading Dealbook, I want to see what @Dealbook is up to. Likewise David Carr’s Monday column. You made your writers clean up their Twitter presence; don’t hide them from us now. Connect us. That’s your job, it always has been. Show us what your writers and editors are really thinking about. People love your product because they develop attachments to the writers creating it. Don’t hide their other output just because it’s conversational and gasp, at times, irreverent or funny.

There. Five simple things. These could all easily be up in a week’s time. I bet traffic would go up 10% over the expected norm in a month. If that bump continued apace for a year, that would more than obviate the need for some revenue-neutral paywall. So why not do these things immediately, until the paywall geniuses have their Doomsday machine ready, and then decide what route the future of the Times’ online experience should take?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Thank goodness that when Steve Jobs took the stage to sit in his Le Corbusier chair and show off the iPhone Maxi, er iPad, he didn’t roll out some cockamanie plan to have a digital magazine and newspaper stand with some kind of special pricing program and application store, and trot out, say, Arthur Sulzburger or, well, who else really, would it be but Arthur Sulzburger, to talk about how great the iPad was going to be for the future of news? Thank goodness, and here’s why:

There’s no need. Everything that newspapers and magazines want to be able to do with per-issue pricing, subscriptions, video, automatic delivery, etc., is already enabled by the iPhone app store, which is the same place iPad users will turn to for programs and content. As Apple’s demo employees were telling the geekerati assembled at the play-table after Jobs’ address, ‘if you use an iPhone, you already know how to use this.” There have been a number of disappointed ruminations by media types, and Ryan Tate summarizes the angst ably in Gawker:

But what their demo — the sole non-website newspaper content — lacked in actual pizazz it failed to make up for in hype, either. Nothing from Jobs on a dedicated newspaper (or magazine) store or reader application. Hardly any waxing poetic by Apple on the possibilities and content development path for newspapers and magazines. Which, as we said before, is absolutely Apple’s prerogative — these guys are in the business of making money, not rescuing other industries — but has to give print media execs heartburn.

Exactly, Ryan. It’s ridiculous to think that Jobs is going to hitch his wagon to a bunch of old-time media companies and do their R&D for them. There’s been nothing stopping them from programming subscription-ready value-added content apps for the iPhone ever since OS 3.0 came out in March 2009. Is it Apple’s fault if the content is not compelling enough for readers to want to purchase? Or if the magazines or newspapers can’t figure out how to rework their content to make it compelling? Or build an app that is on a ‘must-have’ level? Right this minute the most successful paid app in the App Store from a media company is ranked #45: CNN Mobile, for $1.99. It has 3 stars, because most of the reviewers complain it’s full of advertising and has a crappy layout. How is that Apple’s fault when so many small developers have figured out to how provide awesome experiences on the platform, and big developers, like Facebook, have singlehandedly redefined what an App can be?

What Jobs has done with the iPad is exactly what made the iPhone successful: he created a pretty spectacular space for app developers to compete over eyeballs for. Some iPad users will only play games or watch video; others will read books and news; a third group may just want to email from the road. A fourth group will inevitably hack into the thing and find ways to multi-task and run background apps and whatever else Apple is banning in its sandbox.

In other words, Apple is not interested in throwing a lifeline to industries that can’t figure out this new world we’re living in. Maybe there’s some karmic reason OS X and the iPhone/iPad OS are based on a core called Darwin. There is a Darwinism at play here; figure out a way to get users to put your app on their device. Then figure out a way to keep them clicking on it, and making you money. If you can’t, you’re toast.

The book publishing industry is not exactly going to be mistaken for a futurists convention any time soon, but when I wrote about e-readers for a couple of publications recently, I talked to some executives who specifically said they don’t care what platform their content is available on, as long as it’s out there and revenue can be collected on it. That’s not just desperation, that’s faith in your product. (I know some publishers are playing cat and mouse with ebook release schedules, but that’s not going to last as more of the audience moves to e-reader platforms. In fact it’s mostly a negotiation tactic with Amazon. Since Apple’s letting publishers set prices, unlike Amazon, they have no reason to deny readers the electronic version of their books on the same day the print copy rolls out, or possibly even earlier.)

In short, the tools are already there for the iPad to become the ’savior’ the print media is looking for. But Steve Jobs is not your new bicycle. He will be happy whether the top paid app on the iPad is the ‘New York Times Daily Subscription’ or ‘Rock Band.’ And to be fair, some media companies are investing heavily in creating online content that finally gives users what they want. Sports Illustrated rolled out a tablet demo in December that looked ridiculously beyond the reach of any extant device–until the iPad came out yesterday. Now, truthfully, for SI or any old-school magazine to produce issues on a weekly frequency that contain anything like the content and multimedia seen in that demo is going to take A LOT of manpower. Far more than those places are staffing right now. The good news is that their are oodles of journalists already trained to use these tools and produce this kind of content. The bad news is they require salaries and expensive equipment and hardware. The better news is that these big magazine companies still have the money to place a bet on multimedia editions of their magazines. The great news is a whole new generation of publishers can start working in this medium today, without all the legacy costs of a print publication.

The race to develop a machine like this has already been lost. It’s over. Not that Apple’s first gen iPad is the end of the road; but no magazine consortium is going to beat Apple at this game down the line. The best thing the magazine companies can do is stop kvetching, stop wasting money on hardware, and give content consumers all they’ve ever wanted all along: an amazing content experience that they’re willing to pay for.

Apple has just created the ultimate sandbox. The newspapers and magazines are the rich kids who can afford the coolest Tyco toys. The question is, can they get over the fact that the sandbox is in Steve Jobs’ backyard? Readers aren’t going to wait around for the print media to get over their sulking; they’ll be happy to play with whoever shows up first at Jobs’ iPad sandbox with their dumptruck or steamshovel, even if it’s made out of plastic and the windshield’s popped out, as long as it’s fun and worthwhile. Readers will grow with those apps as they evolve and build audiences and revenue. If old media doesn’t get its act together, they’ll be playing with their shiny metal front-loaders in their crappy cardboard sandboxes, that wilt in the rain, all by themselves, right around the time Stevie and his friends are graduating to the jungle gym.

Bennett Zier in better days

Why else would they have sent along this photo of Zier asleep at the wheel, er microphone, I mean, at his desk? The image was sent to me through a third party, but the metadata says it was taken on November 18th. For anyone who thinks Zier might be burning the midnight oil, the timestamp, from the iPhone photo, was 6:18pm. Hey, maybe Zier had just gotten back from the road– the carry on suitcase near his desk seems to indicate he’s a frequent road warrior, or at least was on this day. Maybe the poor guy’s body was on California time?

It’s gotta suck when the company you’re CEO of, Air America Radio, goes out of business. It’s gotta suck when the entire company is shut down literally in a matter of hours. But it’s gotta suck worse when someone in your building is unhappy enough with you to send out pictures of you drooling and snoring to the media. What, no magic marker on the forehead? No bowl of warm water to rest his hand in?

Anyone have any thoughts on Zier’s relationship with his staff? I’d really like to know what he did to deserve this, and what Air America’s last days were like. So far all of the reporting has been pretty boilerplate:

Air America’s chief executive is Bennett Zier, who previously founded and headed Redskins owner Daniel Snyder’s broadcasting company, Red Zebra, and was the top executive of Clear Channel Broadcasting’s cluster of eight major stations in the Washington area. The company’s programming director, Bill Hess, is also a longtime Washington radio executive.

Air America CEO Bennett Zier asleep at his desk

Though the Post did get a feisty (is she ever not) Ana Marie Cox to comment:

Ana Marie Cox, who has hosted a one-hour program on Air America on Saturday and Sundays for the past year, said on Thursday that news of the network’s demise took her by surprise. She said that the programming, as well as Air America’s Web site, had begun to improve of late but that people hadn’t caught up to it.

“I’d gotten used to people saying: ‘Oh, Air America. Is that still around?’” Cox said. “One of my standard jokey responses was, ‘Well, my paycheck still clears.’ I guess that will stop.”

So, what was the Bennett Zier era like at AAM? Besides, you know, the fact that the company is gone and everyone is out of jobs now at least partially because of his, uh, management style? Feel free to comment below. This concludes this special Deadspin edition of Living Through 1500.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I’ve been thinking all day about how and what to write about the New York Times’ announcement that, in a year’s time, it’s going to start charging readers who exceed a certain quota of articles per month on its website. The Times hasn’t said what that number will be yet, but most people who’ve written on it– David Carr, Felix Salmon, John Gapper, etc., seem to think it’s going to be in the neighborhood 15-30 articles. That is, high enough to make sure casual readers aren’t dissuaded, but low enough to make sure hardcore users pay for the product. (By the way, I’m not really feeling my hyperlink icon tonight– for the full range of URLs on today’s announcement and reactions, including his own, visit Felix Salmon’s blog.) I have to say, upon reflection, this strikes me as a plan that’s not going to work. Part of it is what Jack Shafer of Slate says is the Times’ wrong-headed focus: by not concentrating on improving advertising metrics, the paper is going to get into a war of attrition with its tech savvy users.

By the very nature of the web, that group (tech savvy users) is just going to get bigger and bigger. Today I defeated the Financial Times paywall to read John Gapper’s story using the browser extension Jack Shafer plugged in his article. Am I particularly happy with that? No, not really. Do I find Gapper’s story valuable? Yes, I do. Do I find it worth buying a $186 annual subscription to the newspaper? No, I don’t. I might feel bad about this, writing about media and business, but then, the Times’ David Carr just tweeted about the same problem, so apparently the Gray Lady feels the same way about paying for newspaper subscriptions that I do. If journalists won’t support each others’ competitors’ economic models when they involve payment, do they really think the average reader will?

I have to again agree with Shafer that the idea that the Times is going to spend a year constructing a pay wall rather than building up an advertising system that works seems shortsighted. I have a feeling there’s a zero-sum psychology happening in the Times’ executive suite, and it’s a fallacy. Their idea is, that ‘if we put up this wall at least SOME users will pay, right? And that’s better than no users paying, right?’ The reality, as the numbers have been run before, is that the amount of users and money needed to make the Times’ pay wall a viable and major part of the business model is ridiculously high. What the Internet has proven is that the Times has no special claim to its readers’ time on the web. If The Huffington Post can surpass the Times’ traffic in a matter of years, and if Twitter can surpass the Times’ traffic in a matter of months, then THOSE are the competitors the Times needs to be worrying about. In fact, the Times won the newsstand war, generations ago, which is why we’re having this conversation today. And it won it by treating its readers with respect and encouraging them to turn to it every day, not by eyeing them with suspicion when they do.

The Times is not a product on a news stand, competing against other broadsheets who also charge for their physical copy. The Times, for most people, and certainly to survive going forward, is a product on the Internet, competing against other websites. And those websites, by and large, are free. And though some of them may lean on the Times’ reporting now, make no mistake, when that reporting begins to decline due to economic pressures or simple stagnation, other sources will rise in the Times’ place. No amount of flagship reporting from the Baghdad bureau is going to replace the simple fact that in 99.9% of the world, there are alternative sources of information to the New York Times.

I say all this as a big believer in the Times’ mission and importance to our society. The economics of the media are brutal right now. I know. But putting up a pay wall with a bunch of big holes in it just seems like a massive waste of resources, energy and karma for the paper of record. And rewarding print subscribers with free access seems perverse. Yeah, sure, you have to, because they are your core business, and they’d never pay twice for the same product. But why would you, as the Times, then go ahead and GIVE them the same product, twice, for one payment? The web is a fundamentally different more robust experience than the paper. Why reward the readers who buy your dead-tree editions and make you invest more money in labor contracts, printing plants, paper mills, ink, shipping, delivery, etc? Is it crazy to think that the Times should be incentivizing readers to get out of that cycle, and turn to the web, instead? Or turn to an e-reader, where the fundamentally different experience and means of delivery might be worth a small subscription fee?

The bottom line for me is, there’s a bunch of wildly competent journalists manning the desks at the Times, whose work I want to read and whose jobs I want to support. But the executives are stuck in some kind of perverse time warp when making business decisions about the paper’s future. TimesSelect didn’t work, so this time, let’s lock the entire paper down, instead? But we’ll leave these gaping holes (sorry to repeat myself) in the wall, so that anyone with half a brain can get around them?

I wish I felt like being productive here and suggesting an alternative way for the paper to make money, but I’m not quite finished feeling insulted by the CEO and publisher, who seem to think if they simply stick out their palms, they’ll catch some coins in them. That may in fact be true, but that’s no guarantee they’re going to be able to buy a cup of coffee, much less run a newspaper, with the amount of money they make. What they’re creating, in the end, is a galling Catch-22 which punishes their most frequent customers and rewards passers-by. In time, that strategy will turn loyal readers into passers by, so that even if the Times survives, it will have sacrificed the importance of its own voice to do so, making it just another clamoring shrill noise fighting for a sliver of our attentions in a world already full of such hideous sounds.