TechCrunch terminated an intern who accepted compensation from an outside company in exchange for coverage. The announcement strikes an appropriate tone, but it also includes a passage that ties into a much bigger issue: when a writer goes rogue, what do you do with their published work? Here's how TechCrunch responded:

This was not one of our full time writers, and so the frequency of posts was light. Nevertheless, we've also deleted all content created by this person on our blogs. We are fairly certain that most of the posts weren't tainted in any way, but to be sure we've removed every word written by this person on the TechCrunch network.

One big caveat: the intern in question is a minor, so that certainly takes precedence in any reaction. But the intern posted his own follow up. Privacy implications are moot at this point.

And that brings me back to the bigger issue ...

In situations like these, if we assume the wayward writer is an adult, and we assume there are no broader legal issues at play, should the writer's past work be stricken from the record? Is that the right response?

I don't think so. An enterprising snoop could mine caches and old RSS feeds for past copies, so deletion isn't really the Draconian measure it's intended to be. Beyond that, the cat's already out of the bag. The writer screwed up. The publishing outlet looks bad. And any move to wipe the slate clean will leave lasting residue. So why wipe it clean at all?

In situations where the wrongdoing is already public -- whether announced by the publisher or dug up by someone else -- what I'd prefer to see is a prominent editor's note placed at the very top of every piece the writer ever posted on the publisher's site. It could be a simple link to the termination announcement. It doesn't have to be dramatic. The New York Times used a similar tactic with Jayson Blair's articles.

Advertising should be stripped from these pages and comments closed. That's appropriate -- this isn't a revenue or publicity opportunity. But it's important to keep the original material in place. The mistake happened in the public sphere. You can't take that back, but you can be up front about it both in the near-term and down the road.

From The New York Times:

The average iPhone or iPod Touch owner uses 5 to 10 apps regularly, according to Flurry, a research firm that studies mobile trends. This despite the surfeit of available apps: some 140,000 and counting.

I've seen the same stat mentioned before. Heck, I referenced that stat in a piece I wrote. But what I find surprising is that anyone is surprised by this. It's the behavioral equivalent of the Long Tail: a few apps get frequent use -- the blockbusters -- while the others wane after post-installation popularity or, even worse, don't get downloaded at all.

Instead of this broad-based stuff, what I'd really like to see is data that links up people's interests/professions with their most-used apps.

This piece looking at results from YouTube's rental experiment illustrates the short-sighted thinking that handcuffs content companies:

Ouch! We're talking about 1,422 total views, or $5,673.78 for all of the rentals at $3.99 apiece. If Google is giving the filmmakers roughly two-thirds of the take -- and I'm going by other digital-media standards, since the site isn't publicly spelling out the royalty payouts -- each of the five productions will walk away with just hundreds of dollars for their role as video-sharing pioneers over the weekend.

I put this paragraph in the "trading analog dollars for digital pennies" genre. It's catchy. Reasonable on first glance. But when you dig deeper, it's ultimately ridiculous.

That $5,673.78 figure isn't the key. The big deal -- and the hope -- lies in the 1,422 views. That's 1,422 chances for filmmakers to have their work seen. That's 1,422 more chances than they had before. The value of those views lies not in financial rewards (although that would be nice), but as a counter to an artist's great enemy: obscurity. Isn't that why film festivals exist? To show off work? To create the possibility of engagement? To create the possibility of landing theatrical distribution? How is YouTube's effort any different?

Here's the broader problem with this type of bottom-line analysis: digital income will almost always be lower than traditional income because digital audiences are smaller and empowered. They don't have to blindly accept what's given to them. They can pick and choose. They can sample. That's a powerful set of tools. It means control rests solely in consumers' hands.

Consumer control is the essential truth of digital content. Until that's acknowledged -- and until businesses are built to work in conjunction with this truth -- content companies will spin their wheels, lose money, and whine incessantly.

A phenomenal post from Jason Fry at the National Sports Journalism Center:

When I started Faith and Fear in Flushing with my friend Greg Prince in the winter of 2005, I'd been at The Wall Street Journal Online for nearly 10 years. But despite all that time as a Web guy, I'd adopted some rather unhealthy attitudes. I was studiously uninterested in knowing how many readers read my columns, and only took a passing interest in their reactions to them. I thought that my job was to be a thinker and a writer. Worrying about traffic numbers? That was somebody else's job - and a lesser calling.

This was arrogant and dumb, and a few weeks of writing Faith and Fear showed me that. On my own blog, the numbers were of immense interest to me. I pored over them every day in an effort to figure out what posts were connecting with readers and what posts weren't. I was singing for my supper, and it made me a better columnist. If a column was well written but didn't seem to connect, I wasn't happy with it. I no longer dismissed Web traffic as not my job, complained about writing promos for my stuff, or gave reader comments and emails short shrift. And I realized those folks on the business side were critical to our collective success, and could teach me things. [Emphasis added.]

I'll add this: journalism's biggest mistake was allowing business apathy/hatred among the editorial ranks. That's a far more egregious "sin" than publishing free Web content.

An ongoing list of journalism habits that get stuck in my craw.

Audience hatred -- You are not better than your readers. You are not smarter than your readers. You can hate readers all you want in your off time, but while you're on the clock you need to serve them with everything you've got. Find value. Create value. Seek viewpoints. Respond to comments. Give a shit. Without an audience, you've got nothing.

Killing (tech) -- Technologies do not kill other technologies. One might supplant another. The market might choose another. But gadgets do not have homicidal urges (yet).

Lists of pet peeves -- That's right. I'm violating my own pet peeve. No one cares! (And yet, I continue ...)

Non-linking -- Please. Seriously. Please. If you include a URL in a story, and that story is posted on the Web, you must take the three extra seconds required to link it in.

Stand-in opinions -- Squeezing a quote out of a source that just happens to dovetail with the exact point you sought to make does not make you objective. At best, you're being opaque. At worst, lame. Just say it. Put it out there. I'd appreciate the honesty. Maybe all the time you've spent researching and talking with folks has given you -- hold on, this is gonna hurt -- an opinion of your own.

Stealing and/or non-acknowledgement -- I realize journalists are supposed to live for the exclusive. That's fine. Competition is a good thing. But when you get scooped, give credit where it's due. Cite the original source and link to the story, even if it's a hated competitor. They won this battle, maybe you'll get the next one.

Got others? Please share them below.

Anil Dash follows up his great post on Twitter's suggested user list with an equally great piece that politely challenges Twitter follower counts. As he notes, analytics and inflated self-importance are nothing new:

It's a bit like when I worked at a newspaper: Every reporter thought "Well, our circulation is a million copies, that must mean a million people read my column." Facing the reality that only 10,000 of those people read the column, or that perhaps only 1,000 of them were reading the advertisement on the opposite page, forced a useful and important reckoning into some false assumptions that were underpinning that industry's workings.

The key here -- and Dash mentions this in his post -- is to dispel overblown notions so analytics become useful. Follower counts have value, just as page views, uniques, user-session times, circulation figures and subscription numbers do. But all those numbers have to be filtered through the realities of passivity and engagement.

Attendees at the LeWeb conference held earlier this month had an extra organizational tool at their disposal: a custom iPhone app.

I cannot believe how much sense this makes. As app frameworks become more common, and development costs come down, I can see a point in the next two years when conference apps move from novelty to must-have. Sort of like Wi-Fi (but hopefully more reliable).

And let's not forget the sponsorship opportunities here, either. A smart sponsor could use the app to send a hyper-targeted message to a hyper-targeted audience. Toss in some sort of booth contest, and you've got the marketing equivalent of the Death Star's tractor beam.

Paramount is out with a new online service that lets customers purchase clips from films. As this New York Times article notes, it's initially aimed at advertisers and marketers who want to use the clips in campaigns. Consumers will be let in on the action later.

I have a couple thoughts on this:

1. Kudos to Paramount for giving this a shot. It certainly can't hurt, and we need all the experimentation we can get.

2. I think this is a fantastic opportunity to test good-better-best quality levels. I've long thought there's a way to service different segments of the audience through resolution, features and convenience.

For example, writers, bloggers and others who simply want to reference a clip could grab a lower-resolution version for free (as many already do through YouTube). This boosts awareness and creates branding opportunities for the content provider.

One sidenote: The Times piece suggests folks on the low end -- consumers, mostly -- may have to pay a low per-clip fee. That's the wrong move. These aren't ringtones. Ringtones are a public expression of personality linked to an always-on, always-available device. Embeddable movie clips require placement within media forms, be it a website or a DVD. The all-important personality element is muted. I'm not going to shell out cash if that so-bad-it's-good movie clip only broadcasts my ironic sense of humor to a limited audience. I need exposure, dammit!

But I digress ...

Moving up the scale, companies that want to aggregate clips or make them available as part of another content product could pay a reasonable amount (likely a flat rate for a certain number of clips) and gain access to DVD-quality content. I can see utility here for the education world. A one-stop shop for clips could take a lot of the pain out of the copyright quagmire law-abiding teachers currently face.

On the high end, marketers and advertisers who need full-resolution (1080p, if available) and the absence of co-branding would pay a premium.

What won't work is an "everyone must pay" declaration. I'm assuming that since this got written up in the Times, and given that a consumer option is part of the longer-term gameplan, Paramount wants this to be more than a back-channel marketers' tool. Otherwise, why publicize it? This is clearly a public-facing product. As such, it needs to properly service the unique needs of all audience segments.

Perhaps it's a function of the intricate tracking the Web provides, but I'm still amazed at media's inability to grasp the secondary (and often, tertiary) value of community efforts.

So let's make this as clear as clear can be: Twitter, Facebook, forums and other social media functions rarely make money directly. Their value comes from the attention they gather and the opportunities that attention creates. If you have a mass of people who have willingly opted-in to your messaging, you damn well better put useful, for-pay products in front of them. Otherwise, all you've got is a social club.

This recent piece from Forbes does a nice job tearing down the direct-revenue mindset.

I was fortunate to have my ill-conceived notions about editorial/advertising segregation blown to bits early in my career. It hurt. No doubt about that. I came out of journalism school with all the requisite ethical boundaries and red flags intact. So it was tough to let that go.

But it was so useful to let that go. It made me see that most journalism organizations are businesses. That's it. All that stuff about objectivity and watchdog roles and the Fourth Estate sounds good, and it feels good, but news companies must ultimately adhere to the same criteria as every other business: does it make money or does it lose money?

That's why it's interesting for me to watch others go through the same gyrations now that the Dallas Morning News is moving editorial and sales closer together. I get it. This is hard to swallow. It goes against everything journalists know, everything we're taught in the vacuum of j-school. It seems dangerous.

But having lived through my own transition, and having traversed some tricky edit/ad terrain along the way, I can tell you the danger is minimal. Perhaps even non-existent.

First off, consumers don't care. If the content is informative and entertaining and useful, if readers can justify the time and money spent, they're good. Second, a smart news business understands that it cannot undermine the trust it's established with the community. This has nothing to do with public interest or greater good. It's about money. Trustworthy content builds an audience, and audience attracts advertisers. Kill the trust and you kill the audience; advertisers will take their business elsewhere. That's all there is to it.

Blurring the edit/ad line within a newsroom isn't a big deal. It's what happens after the blurring that matters. If the Dallas Morning News cranks out great stuff and serves/educates/helps people, this can work for everyone involved. If they do something stupid -- like violating trust by kowtowing to clients -- they're screwed. That's just business, and bad businesses die.

"Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is "closed" to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out." -- Scott Rosenberg, former managing editor of Salon.com

The New York Times examines sentiment analysis:

An emerging field known as sentiment analysis is taking shape around one of the computer world's unexplored frontiers: translating the vagaries of human emotion into hard data.

This is more than just an interesting programming exercise. For many businesses, online opinion has turned into a kind of virtual currency that can make or break a product in the marketplace.

Amy Martin briefly mentioned sentiment during her presentation at Twitter Boot Camp in June (the sentiment stuff is in slide No. 9). The concept caught my attention because it strays from typical number-centric measurements like page views, user-session times or velocity. For someone like me, who believes numbers and non-numerical "soft" analysis must exist in harmony, it injects a much-needed psychological component into the audience dynamic. This commingling of data and feelings is why NBC Local's mood tool is so interesting.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves with the touchy feely business. Sentiment's power as a data point is limited because it's a loaded concept with infinite variations. If my "positive" could be your "neutral," how can a measurement tool adequately capture sentiment on a broad, numerical level? It can't. Not reliably, anyway. Wild swings and spikes will appear in graphs, but small percentage shifts between open-ended terms are too ambiguous to rely upon. That's why sentiment needs to function as a general data point for online engagement. It's a single tool on a big analytics workbench.

1-800-Flowers.com has opened the first retail store within Facebook, according to the Associated Press (don't worry AP, I won't quote you).

This is what the Facebook shopping experience looks like:

Seems like you're shopping in a widget, right? You are. And that's awesome.

Shopping within a widget or ad is nothing new. The 1-800-Flowers.com move is notable because a major retailer offering its products through a massive audience platform is evidence the big companies are starting to get it: They need to sell their goods where audiences already gather.

Creating a retail experience within a popular social networking service is an important acknowledgement that online audiences are empowered to go where they want, when they want. Companies need to work with audience behavior, not bend it to their will.

Hand-Picked Related Links

• When It Comes to Community Building, Go Where They're Already At (MacSlocum.com)
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• Politico expands content-sharing deal (Editors Weblog)

Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek just landed a future customer (me) with this comment in the New York Times:

"Piracy is essentially the consumer's wish to have everything on demand. It's not like people want to necessarily have it for free," Mr. Ek said. The problem is that there have not been commercial services "that allowed people to discover new music and easily share music with friends," he said.

Well put.

ReadWriteWeb looks at the increasing popularity of Breaking News Online, a news aggregator that's harnessing the power of Twitter and other Web platforms (and it just happens to be run by a 19-year-old). Within the piece, ReadWriteWeb hits on the central issue of aggregators: can they use original content created by other outlets to turn popularity into profit?

All of this is fascinating, but isn't BNO still just an aggregator? In traditional media outlets "aggregator" is a dirty word (unless they are the ones doing the aggregation). In fact, Breaking News Online does very little original reporting. The company is going to monetize its research flow, editorial judgment, distribution channels...and links to other peoples' content. If BNO is successful, there is a real risk of original content publishers objecting to the fact that someone else has found a way to make money off of (links sending traffic to) their content.

This aggregator antagonism needs to end. Like it or not, content creators ultimately benefit from the increased exposure and traffic aggregators supply. Creators are generally lousy at Web distribution because they can't shake the allure of lock in (you need to read my content on my site), but aggregators -- unencumbered by oldthink -- know the value of broad and diffuse distribution. Compare Breaking News Online's Twitter presence with that of most mainstream outlets and you can see the stark difference: BNO understands you have to serve the audience through the platforms where it's already congregating. Repurposing RSS feeds as tweets isn't enough.

What kills me about all this content creator chest pounding is that these organizations are missing the central point: As long as aggregators point traffic back to source sites, both sides benefit in this relationship.

In a mild reprimand of New York Times social media editor Jennifer Preston's inactivity on Twitter, Mashable's Stan Schroeder hits on a key difference between the beat coverage of traditional journalism and the passion coverage seen on the Web:

... you can't write for a gadget blog if the thought of a new iPhone doesn't send shivers down your spine, you can't write about cars if you couldn't care less what hunk of metal you're driving, and you cannot be a social media editor if you're not interested in sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

There are no pre-requisites of passion or even interest for traditional reporters assigned to beats, but on the Web, where opinion and energy are the norm, a half-hearted attempt simply won't do. You've got to want it.

I learned this a long time ago when I dabbled in coverage I only found mildly interesting. I executed on the assignments and I cared in a basic sense, but the creativity and desire were absent. I eventually concluded that, in situations where I have a choice and extenuating circumstances aren't paramount, dispassionate work isn't worth the effort. That's why I could never bring myself to cash in with an SEO-friendly blog about mortgages or finance. Higher CPC revenue couldn't eclipse my indifference.

Never underestimate financial motivation:

The Netflix Prize contest has been hailed as prime example of "prize economics" and the crowdsourcing of innovation. Prize economics refers to running a contest to generate a new innovation at less cost than an in-house research and development effort, and crowd-sourcing refers to using the proverbial wisdom of crowds to accomplish a task. Netflix has said that $1 million would be a bargain price for an improved recommendation engine, which would increase customer satisfaction and generate more movie rental business. [Link included in original post.]

The Netflix Prize -- and similar contests -- take a much-needed, practical approach to crowdsourcing by injecting clear motivation into the process. A big fat check is bound to attract a committed corps, but other rewards, such as esteem within a specific community or job opportunities, may also work (may ... successful crowdsourcing and community creation often requires a lightning-in-a-bottle moment). What I appreciate most about the Netflix Prize is that, unlike most forms of citizen journalism and community building, it clearly answered the question: "Why would anyone do this?".

In a refreshing break from the wailing and moaning from the business side of content, Bill Mitchell offers an in-depth look at a dynamic storytelling form he calls "Next Step Journalism":

It's a process -- call it Next Step Journalism -- that will shape more and more of the news we need from around the block and around the globe.

Journalists have relied on a process approach to writing for years. The Next Step Journalism process practiced on the Neda story began with an event and is characterized by the collective sharing and enhancing of information ...

... Deconstructing the Neda story reveals seven elements of this kind of storytelling -- some more in need of professional journalism skills and values than others. In describing what's involved in each elements, I'm struck by a common thread: the importance of collaboration. [Link included in original post.]

As Mitchell illustrates later in the column, journalists can use social media tools as a starting point for deeper research and reporting. Sources are everywhere, you just have to be willing to look.

The New York Times' most recent piece on Twitter touches upon a favorite topic of mine: the vast difference between the built-in network effects of Web content and the non-interactive silos of print:

In the process, Mr. [Steven] Johnson said, he has been able to witness the rising importance of new-media outlets and the lessening influence of traditional media outlets like Time magazine, which recently printed his essay on (surprise!) the transformative power of Twitter.

That essay was featured on the cover with a sample tweet of Mr. Johnson's. "It's funny, everybody has been asking me, you got your Twitter ID on the cover of Time magazine, you must be getting an insane amount of followers," he said. "And I say it's nothing compared to the steady influx you get from being on the suggested user list." [Emphasis added; link included in original article.]

Expanding on Johnson's point: The simplicity of the hyperlink obscures its power. Magazine covers, TV ads and billboards may boost brand awareness -- and you certainly wouldn't want to reject these things -- but the hyperlink's direct ability to create context and expand knowledge, reputation and attention is unparalleled.

Richard Millington offers an excellent primer for current and prospective community managers. Point No. 9 should be tattooed on every moderator's forearm:

9. ... Don't ignore the basic motivations and desires of people. Plan ways for members to find fame, money and power amongst the people whom they consider peers.

I'm going to say it until the day I die (or quit the Web ... death seems more likely): work with not against. Take the organic energy generated by basic needs and desires and convert that into momentum for your community / online efforts.

Via Tish Grier