It's rare when you see such a clear example of the Internet's disruption: OK Go, the band best known for its clever music videos, has severed ties with its record label, EMI. The reason? The label is caught in old-think and wants to disable the embed function on the group's web-based videos.

OK Go ... God bless 'em ... told EMI to politely bugger off. The band knows embedding is an absolute must-have if you want to harness the web's power.

Speaking of which, here's the group's latest masterpiece:

A beautiful illustration of all that's wrong with television news ...

Thanks to Jim for the link!

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.

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.

Alan Mutter looks at the face-palm-inducing results from a recent newspaper publisher survey. Apparently, execs have high hopes for 2010. Very, very high hopes.

Ridiculousness aside (and these results are truly ridiculous), I found the end of Mutter's piece quite interesting. I think most survey data is crap because it has no way of incorporating the qualitative, subconscious motivations of respondents. People are emotional creatures with wacky ideas. Yet, survey companies and analysts throw projections out there under the billowy banner of Truth.

That's why I was heartened to see the underlying explanations/motivations laid out by one of the guys behind this newspaper survey. This is the type of honesty surveys need:

• "Wishful thinking."
• "Print people over-estimating the potential of online (which is the sole factor contributing positive gain)."
• "Corporate insistence to make the online look better."
• "If I don't show better numbers, they'll cut my budget.
• "Optimism is better than slitting your wrists."

Yes! A thousand times yes! This is the meaty, emotionally-honest stuff I want to see. It forces people to take surveys with a grain of salt. Surveys have some value, I'll give you that, but they're only a reference point. That's it. The end-all-be-all, we're-sure-this-will-happen authoritarian perspective is useless.

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.

John A. Byrne is leaving BusinessWeek to start a new business (not exactly a newsflash, I know). I generally don't care much if a bigwig leaves a position to venture out on his or her own. That happens all the time. But Byrne is different. BusinessWeek, for all its financial trouble, has a phenomenal web presence, and much of that was built under Byrne's watch. He's also a guy who inherently understands the power of direct communication with the audience. Just take a look at his Twitter feed. How many editors engage like that?

And then there's this ...

In a blog post announcing his new venture, he articulates the beliefs that guide his thinking about digital content:

I have three fundamental beliefs that inform my thinking: 1) Print advertising will never come back. There are just too many options for advertisers today and too much pressure on rates. Sadly, success in print will be measured in single-digit declines, forever. 2) Online advertising will never offset those declines nor save print. There's far too much competition online and far too much available inventory; and 3) Users will not pay for content, unless they're convinced it has immediate and tangible value. Very little journalism meets that standard today. Do we really need 57 versions of a story on Bernie Madoff pleading guilty?

That's a beautiful paragraph. Here's why:

1. He's dead on.
2. It illustrates the type of structural thinking that turns vague ideas into real businesses. We need more editors and publishers who work this way. Big ideas and grand plans cannot stand on their own. They have to be crammed into a structure -- a mental furnace that burns away assumptions. Otherwise, all you've got is brain-based vaporware. That useless, fluffy business school nonsense that gets retweeted, and buzzed, and expanded into book form. We've got enough of that.

I speak from experience with this structure stuff. I used to wander aimlessly through the "future of content" world, distracted by shiny new things and influenced by flavor-of-the-week thinking (I once thought micropayments were totally going to happen ... ugh.) But six months ago I decided to map out my own structure for all this digital disruption business. The result is this. I have no idea if it has any value as an actual business model, but the writing process forced me to hone and articulate the thousands of rants and opinions brewing in my head. Now, when I'm confronted with a new idea or perspective, I can feed it into this structure and quickly examine the various angles. It's helped me tremendously. I've got my footing now.

Reports suggest Microsoft is courting European publishers for some sort of Bing-based news thing. Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch continues to shake his fist at Google. Cory Doctorow connects the potential dots at Boing Boing:

So here's what I think it going on. Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his sites, but he's still having lurid fantasies inspired by the momentary insanity that caused Google to pay him for the exclusive right to index MySpace (thus momentarily rendering MySpace a visionary business-move instead of a ten-minutes-behind-the-curve cash-dump).

So what he's hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you've never heard of that just got $50MM in venture capital) will give him half a year's operating budget in exchange for a competitive advantage over Google.

Toss in the growing idea that Twitter, Facebook and other recommendation-based results are now more important than Google traffic and we've got a very interesting set of signals.

In an interview with CNBC, Gary Hoenig, general manager for ESPN The Magazine, says the economic downturn put advertising in the hot seat:

... the overdependence on advertising is a real crutch for media and this is an opportunity for us to actually get to the consumer and say, "Hey, what are you willing to pay for"?

The advertising conundrum is something I've run up against throughout my career. In an odd way, my focus on Web content forced me to confront the detriments of advertising earlier than my print and broadcast comrades because Web ad rates have always been low. The rest of the industry is learning what Web folks already know: ad revenue kinda sucks.

When I started to conceptualize a sustainable model for online content businesses -- a project I've been working on for quite a while -- I pushed advertising to the back burner. It's still present, and money can certainly be made in the online ad realm, but it's a rickety foundation for a content business. That's why I diversified the revenue streams across naturally scarce products (education, consulting, research, in-person events), sponsorships, and advertising. The aggregate is far more stable than advertising alone.

And speaking of that sustainable model for online content businesses project: each section includes a comments area, and I welcome all suggestions and criticisms. The model's fundamental concepts aren't original, and I'm certainly not positioning this as anything revolutionary. Rather, it's a collection of ideas, theories and guidelines that I collected over the years and arranged into a structure. What it becomes and where it goes are up in the air, but I found the organization and writing process quite useful. The framework helps me parse the vast number of perspectives and innovations I run across.

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.

The Associated Press is the gawky teen of the digital content world: it just can't get its act together. The organization's latest bit of nonsense comes from its Draconian new social networking policy. This is a doozy:

But the most contentious element in the new policy, which the union also decried as "vague," gives this instruction to employees using Facebook: "Monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn't violate AP standards: any such material should be deleted."

So, AP staffers are supposed to apply AP guidelines to Facebook's collection of quips, responses and miscellaneous monosyllabic snark. Right. Perfect. All APers need to do is memorize said guidelines then decode every commenter's intent, perspective and contextual relevance. Or, if they're feeling anti-establishment, they could spend an evening filtering and unfriending colleagues and bosses.

Martin Langeveld lays out a 10-point plan for resurrecting the Boston Globe ... and it actually might work.

The interesting part -- and something I've harped on -- is that this same gameplan could be implemented by a completely new organization that isn't burdened by current staff and infrastructure needs. Building a business is always tough, but I'd rather create something new than remake an established company.

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.

Jeff Bercovici ponders the surprising job-finding success of recent journalism grads:

My guess is at least some of it is a direct result of the massive staff cutbacks just about every media organization has enacted in the past couple years. It's a corporate cliche to lay people off and euphemize it as "restructuring," but you can be sure that some of the companies that are letting go well-paid editors and writers in their 40s and 50s are quietly stocking up on fresh j-school grads whose lack of real-word experience is at least partly made up for by their effortless fluency in the ways of the web -- and their willingness to work for $35,000 a year.

Callous, no doubt, but there's a natural ebb and flow to every industry -- journalism's most recent ebb is just more violent than past shifts.

Something I've been considering lately: Journalism's new guard may also expedite the industry's necessary transformation from stodgy top-down editorial delivered through antiquated containers (newspapers, 22-minute broadcasts) to reliable information sources that contribute to and engage with the audience via multiple formats. New journalists -- unencumbered by inefficient past methods -- could energize (not "save" ... energize) the content industries.

Block out the cacophony of whines and moans and you can see something big is about to happen to journalism.

Via Editor & Publisher and Tom Oates' Twitter stream.

Didn't think it was possible, but the NYT vs. Globe battle just got worse:

Both the Guild and the Times Co. would embark on a risky path by moving from the bargaining table to the legal process, according to labor law specialists. Unfair labor practice cases hinge on questions of whether negotiations were conducted in "good faith," a term with a definition that is murky at best, said Thomas Kohler, a Boston College law professor.

According to the article, legal action doesn't protect Globe staffers from a heavy pay cut, and the Times could always follow through on its threat to shut the Globe down. So what gives? Much of the coverage leading up to today's union vote included barbed comments from Globe employees unhappy with Times management, but was this vote really decided by emotion? Is this the "I quit!" fantasy on a grand scale?

Regardless of the No. 1 vs. No. 2 debates, it's heartening to see TechCrunch and Mashable mature into robust and valuable news sources. They're both excellent.

According to the New York Times, the Associated Press is once again rattling its saber over use of its content by Web sites. A similar soap opera played out last summer:

newspaper revenue tanks > AP shakes fist at pesky Interweb > bloggers get pissed > nothing happens

But read deeper into the Times piece and you'll see this latest flare up is different because the AP actually has a point: sites with SEO mojo that grab AP content and pass it off in their own wrappers do undermine the AP's core mission of providing fast, trustworthy information. The AP relies on reputation to justify its existence, so it wants credit where credit is due. I can't argue with that.

This reasonable complaint is, unfortunately, buried beneath the AP's history of misguided lawsuits, wacky licensing, and its penchant for tough-guy posturing. What the organization needs is an even-tempered communicator (the anti-Beale). Someone who can quell Internet angst by drawing a straight line between the AP's original content and the ever-expanding legion of aggregators, bloggers and Tweeters. The organization needs to note -- consistently and with great fervor -- that it's not hunting bloggers; that its beef isn't with excerpting; and that it encourages fair use of its content. Only then will the AP's real message get through.

Hand-Picked Related Links

• Some questions related to Google News and the Associated Press (Official Google Blog)
• AP launches campaign against Internet "misappropriation" (Ars Technica)
• Some Suggestions For The AP, Care Of The Music Industry (paidContent.org)
• Some Papers in Financial Trouble Are Leaving the A.P. to Cut Costs (New York Times)

The only thing keeping me from full-on Hulu evangelism is the television experience. I want to access Hulu's content through my flat panel without resorting to patch sticks and expensive work arounds.

According to VentureBeat, I'm in for a long wait:

The company [Hulu] has been receiving some criticism of late for blocking the popular content player startup Boxee from accessing its content. Hulu's content partners, it seems, do not want their content on Boxee even though Boxee isn't doing something like blocking advertisements. It seems likely the content partners are afraid of the fact that Boxee users are hooking up devices to their televisions capable of playing content just as if they were watching normal TV. [Emphasis added; links included in original post.]

There's two reasons why the "normal TV" issue is moot:

1. Technologically, screen size and resolution are the only legitimate differences between televisions and computer monitors. If you port a video feed from your laptop or you own an Apple Cinema Display, those difference start to evaporate.
2. I can use TiVo's well-documented 30-second-skip code to blow by all the ads in my recorded programs, but Hulu forces me to watch ads in three short, innocuous blocks. If I have to endure advertising -- a reality I fully accept -- Hulu offers the most elegant option. Industry execs concerned about Hulu cannibalizing TV advertising aren't acknowledging the realities of DVRs: I'm not watching your ads.

The content providers' myopia (the eternal return of media) obscures a huge opportunity. A Hulu set-top box could be the Wii of DVRs -- a scaled-down product that opens new markets by focusing on a core experience. All those folks who don't own DVRs could get DVR-like utility through an ad-supported model, and people (like me) who don't need a full DVR experience on a second or third television could use Hulu as a "good enough" solution.

And while I'm on the topic of TV-Web convergence, I think the days of Apple selling one-off TV episodes for $1.99 or $2.99 a pop are numbered. There's no reason to pay a premium for access when access is free elsewhere. Apple should take a note from the DVD world and position its TV offerings as high-resolution collector editions packaged with commentary, deleted scenes, podcasts, etc. (i.e. "Battlestar Galactica, the Complete HD Series With Every Extra We Could Find").

Hand-Picked Related Links

• Content Owners and Consumers Need Digital Quid Pro Quo (TOC)
• Hulu Withdraws its Content from TV.com, Boxee (Wall Street Journal)
• Doing hard things (Hulu Blog)
• The Real Format War Has Yet to Begin (The Indiepub Blog)