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Re: Hello world!

Cody Brown — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:57:11 -0000

Test.

Re: Hello world!

Cody Brown — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:03:27 -0000

well..

Re: Catch that term "poly-partisan?” It's new. (New for Big Media.) Few years ago that's non-partisan, objective. But "we have no views" is a non-starter today. You sell ...

Cody Brown — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:52:01 -0000

AOL is bankrolling a few other half-way terrible media endeavors. Lily is working for their version of a fashion blog. It's called the Fetching and is not yet launched.

Re: Conferences

Cody Brown — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:24:49 -0000

ha. nice flip.

Re: The most comprehensive student media online journalism contest evah - 2.0: Submissions begin March 15

Cody Brown — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:32:45 -0000

Why is there a $30 fee?

Do the winners get cash?

Re: Open Platforms and Innovation

Cody Brown — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:04:31 -0000

http://Outside.in being one of them.

: )

Re: What Drives Consumer Adoption Of New Technologies?

Cody Brown — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:07:47 -0000

It might be odd to think of you as a product but to add to your list of recent mass adaptations:

avc.com - A VC who responds to every comment

Re: Visiting Building 43

Cody Brown — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:15:57 -0000

Former MIT Prof Henry Jenkins delivered an excellent speech that mentioned the role of gaming in civic media.

http://www.ethanzuckerman.c...

This is an element that is about to become a big piece of the way interfaces are designed and thought about. It is ripe for a big integration into online journalism.

Re: Batch vs. Real Time Processing, Print vs. Online Journalism: Why the Best Web News Brands Will Never Look Like The New York Times

Cody Brown — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:01:21 -0000

@avallonne

Yes - I was at the same panel with Jill Abramson - I know she was in a tough position but my god was that a trainwrek. Remember when she spent 3 minutes projecting screenshots of the NYT's on the wall set to Coldplay? Her ending quote, if I'm not mistaken was, "Some may call us dinosaurs, but remember, dinosaurs roamed the earth for millions of years." Yeah... that pretty much sums it up.

Re: Batch vs. Real Time Processing, Print vs. Online Journalism: Why the Best Web News Brands Will Never Look Like The New York Times

Cody Brown — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:14:42 -0000

@Charles

It is either/or insofar as you will need to make a decision on when to publish rumors or information that is coming in Real Time. If you're saying that a news brand can do that - then add a batch like summery of this info later - then I agree. If you're saying that the NYTs brand can publish all this info RT - I'd say they'd have a lot of trouble.

The business model is, of course, a problem for print newspapers going online and there is no way the NYT would be able to have so much traffic-getting-content on its website if it wasn't for all the ad revenue it's still makes from its print product.

What's a big plus about a news brand going RT is that if you can figure out a way to use your beat to contribute/curate/monitor it becomes significantly cheaper. Unless you really think a micropayment model is at all feasible or online advertising will suddenly surge in value, then the only thing you can really do for the 'business model' is reduce costs. Tech Crunch finds ways to do this and, in my opinion, it's really only hitting the surface level of what users can contribute (crunch base is a good start). Because of the brand's inherent caution, it would be much more difficult for the NYTs to pull this off. It's vulnerable to a competitor that applies an RT method of dealing with the news to everything the site does. The NYT's would probably have it's best luck in more agile RT spinoffs rooted in specific beats.

Re: Batch vs. Real Time Processing, Print vs. Online Journalism: Why the Best Web News Brands Will Never Look Like The New York Times

Cody Brown — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:26:43 -0000

@Mark

I am not saying that mainstream news brands only report verified facts, of course they do. They engage rumor, speculation, gossip, and conjecture (especially broadcast news). The difference between Batch and RT processing is about when you publish information (instantly), who you allow to publish (everyone), and where you make sense of it (on the site). RT tactics are at times used by brands like CNN when there is a hurricane or a school shooting, but there are still understandable verification steps that go on behind their 'magic journalism box'. When you open your newsroom to your entire beat labeling and effectively organizing this information on the fly is the challenge of RT. I've yet to see a news brand do this well.

Re: Batch vs. Real Time Processing, Print vs. Online Journalism: Why the Best Web News Brands Will Never Look Like The New York Times

Cody Brown — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 02:10:17 -0000

@Adrian Monck

It would look like an organized version of this: http://twitter.com/#search?...

Re: Batch vs. Real Time Processing, Print vs. Online Journalism: Why the Best Web News Brands Will Never Look Like The New York Times

Cody Brown — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:43:59 -0000

@Tom

Your paper is striking. How on earth did you convince them to let you install keystroke logging software?

Re: Batch vs. Real Time Processing, Print vs. Online Journalism: Why the Best Web News Brands Will Never Look Like The New York Times

Cody Brown — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:55:31 -0000

@Blake

I think the NYT's Lede blog is a good step toward RT but I don't think it's even close to fulfilling its potential. Same is true for NYU Local's coverage during the Kimmel Occupation - we pushed what we could with our posting and our brand, we got serious traffic, but there was a lot we couldn't publish or even sort because there was just so much coming to us. My email alone was getting around 200 messages an hour.

RT Journalism is about when you publish information (instantly) but it's also about who gets to publish in the first place. Even in a set-up like the Lede, sure, they are publishing unverified information from a lot of different sources but they are not giving sources the access to publish themselves. Additionally, they don't explain who they aren't publishing. So there is still a magic journalism box here that curates without explanation, just as there was during the Kimmel Occupation for NYU Local. Both brands are showing a little more of their process but they still define themselves by their output.

Also, yes. Don't get me wrong, packaged, or 'batch' content has a place and will never go away. No one is a total nerd on EVERY subject, sometimes you just need to sit down and have someone explain Darfur or why Michael Phelps is good at swimming. I'd say though that getting the news first is what's strategically important. It's much more effective to amass news on a story and do batch sounding pieces on top then to try and go vice-versa.

Keep in mind, in the same breath, I'd also say that Twitter is a poor platform for RT Journalism. Everyone who uses it right now for RT-J is bootstrapping, the reason it's gotten so much attention is because it's the best and biggest we have at the moment. This can change.

Re: Aggregate, Curate, Publish To Create Local Media

Cody Brown — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:32:03 -0000

Facebook, Twitter, and yes, Outside.in are good accessories to an online news brand, but adopting them and bringing a few smart writers to a wordpress theme will most likely never develop sustainable attention or revenue. Paying even 2-3 full-time writers is too expensive and advertising revenue is just too low for a local beat. If you want to talk to someone who has been working on this for about 5 years, talk to Jake of Gothamist. His 'ist' brand has expanded into many cities and he's done a lot to develop what's possible on an absolute shoestring but a great deal of his site is aggregation and as others have pointed out in the comments, he's not even breaking 12 million hits across his entire network.

You have the right insight, 'everyone is a publisher,' but a modern news brand will only survive if it takes a much longer leap to execute what this really means.

Re: Spying On Myself (continued)

Cody Brown — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:33:13 -0000

It's available as a wordpress plugin now (http://codybrown.name/lifes... but I wonder how a company could scale this idea.

Can it still be called Big Brother if its self-surveillance?

Re: Dear Bill Keller

Cody Brown — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 11:19:19 -0000

The window for The Times to re-invent themselves closes a little more everyday.

I've been invited into their offices a few times as well and while it is clear that they have a lot of smart people working for them and that they are trying, they just do not sense the urgency. Its hard to when you are working from a palace.

I disagree that The Times is ruining the business for the rest of us. What they are actually doing is opening it for those who have the drive and insight to replace it.

Re: Monetize The Audience, Not The Content

Cody Brown — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:54:21 -0000

This is a more elegant solution to getting users to cough up but it doesn't address the larger implications of charging for news.

1.) Views will hit the floor. The NYT makes 1/5 of its revenue from selling online advertisements.

2.) Values of the news organization erode. The NYT's brand is rooted as a public trust and national watchdog. Imagine some big story breaking in NYC like a subway crash that the NYT has the scoop on. Your blood is pumping, you have family in NYC. You catch a link off twitter and hit a friendly reminder from The Times that your 10 visits are up. What are you going to do? This is analogous to requiring a toll payment at the ER. You'll most likely respond by writing an irate message about the NYT on twitter, than scour the internet for a competitor to praise.

3.) Undercut user contributions. I would have not spent the past 15 minutes writing this comment if I knew others had to pay to see it.

Re: Search and the social graph

Cody Brown — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:51:35 -0000

I think for most people Google Search is a solid last resort.

Given a choice I think most would rather have links/products recommended to them by people in their network as this comes with an extra layer of security. For example, If I buy a digital camera off a friends rec, I have someone to call if something goes wrong. If I buy it because it was on the first page of Google and it turns out to be crap, I don't think I'd get a response from Larry Page if I sent him an email.

When it comes down to it Social Recommendations are the most powerful but they will always be limited by your individual network, everyone will have holes.

This is why I think the most interesting company to come out in this space is Vark. They go after your 2nd 3rd degree connections, exactly the people you aren't aware of but are in a close enough social sphere -- very difficult to game.

Re: Addendum to "Kids Who Would Be King" | The Harvard Crimson

Cody Brown — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:46:29 -0000

My response to this is best expressed in the first paragraph of The Journalist and The Murder.

"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse… Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and “the public’s right to know”; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living."

I'm not sure what your temperament is here. You seem pulled by some quaint notion of what a 'journalist' is, but you don't seem to be sure what that really means. What this looks like is a botched consistent attempt to dress someone up as someone they don't publicly want to be. The photoshopped campaign button couldn't be more revealing.

Re: Collective knowledge systems

Cody Brown — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:27:47 -0000

Hey Chris - Have you read Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler?

Along with Clay Shirky and Duncan Watts - he is a pioneer in this field. The Wealth of Networks is the closest thing I have to a bible.

http://www.amazon.com/Wealt...

Re: http://codybrown.tumblr.com/post/419106809

Cody Brown — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:48:01 -0000

Hey Jay.

Would love to talk to Allen. Want to do an introduction? My email is codyvbrown@gmail.com

Re: http://codybrown.tumblr.com/post/419106809

Cody Brown — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:18:24 -0000

Hey Shane,

I posted an update re NYC 3.0. It was my impression that it was a class project.

Re: - This is going to be BIG! - Five common misconceptions about building a startup in New York City

Cody Brown — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:52:05 -0000

I think there is a major distinction between using your environment as a scape goat and brutally critiquing your environment as a way to make it better.

I'm not sure if this is a response to my post last night, I saw your comment on Matt's response to it, but I think this conversation is getting unnecessarily polarizing.

I agree with a great deal of what you said in this post. I've, personally, been blown away by the generosity of many in this city and some of the truly innovative people who are working here. I've also been to a number of atrocious events and have no good way of learning about NYC tech news and discussion. (The fact that you keep hearing about these misconceptions is a testament to the latter)

What I don't get is when tough criticism is leveled at the community it often becomes a NYC vs. Valley thing. I want to critique NYC, brutally. I don't want this because I want to leave NYC, I'm doing it because I want to live here and develop an incredible company.

I like that TechCrunch and Venture Beat cover NYC startups but I don't think it's anywhere near sufficient. That's why I posted about a need for NYC Tech Blog. http://bit.ly/bZNrOg

There are a lot of reasons to be in NYC. I see wild potential, but the only way we are going to get there is if we ease up on the defense and hype. I'm more interested in hearing what you think are the 5 biggest challenges to a startup in NYC. We can do something about them.

Re: http://codybrown.tumblr.com/post/419106809

Cody Brown — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:57:33 -0000

Hey Fred,

Thanks for the response. I posted a followup: http://bit.ly/b8WHrl

BI does good work but they don't focus that much on NYC startups. And yeah, I think an aggregator can help but I think we are going to need much more. Coverage from a source that doesn't have a lot of financial entanglements is most important.