nickmumm

The times, they are a changin’.

The media industry is in the midst of a revolution.  In the past decade readership of traditional newspapers and other periodicals has faded precipitously as society moves online in search of its news.  According to Eric Alterman “since 1990 nearly a quarter of American newspapers have disappeared, only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim to look at a daily newspaper, and the average age of a newspaper reader is fifty five and rising”.   Traditional media outlets must innovate and embrace technology or face extinction, but many are skeptical of what the future holds.

The future of media and its monetization through advertising is one the most controversial and difficult issues the industry is facing.  In the past, media outlets could defray the cost of reporting on the minutiae by bundling the minutes of last week’s city hall meeting with the front page headlines and last night’s sports scores.  Readers bought the entire newspaper and felt inclined to read it in its entirety.  Online news has changed the rules of the game.  Readers only read according to their interest and advertisers only want to pay for ads that target the stories generating the most interest.  In essence, the most popular stories make money and the rest go unreported because they lack both popularity and profitability.  It also appears that media outlets must become more accountable to their subscribers to survive.  Only 10% of their consumers will pay, but consume 40% of the news and account for 50% of revenue.  This model only works well for large well-established periodicals with great reputations for content like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.  Other news sources must continue to think outside the box to maintain their relevance.  Incorporating new technology is one way to increase efficiency.  Recently a group of scientists created Narrative Science a robot that collects data and reports the news.  Instead of employing an expensive army of staff writers that collected sports scores, financial data, or minutes from the local city council meetings, editors could use robots to handle the routine reporting and focus the efforts of a few journalists to create stories for profit.

The future of ethics, integrity, and neutrality in media is disconcerting.  Large profits in advertising, low publishing and production costs, and immediate access to everyone allows for the emergence of polarizing news outlets and corporate sponsored ‘news’.   For example, Billionaire Mark Cuban aggregates reports compiled by investigative journalists in his employ for his own personal financial gain on a site named Sharesleuth.  Although it is legal, his actions call into question the basic ethics of journalism, one of America’s oldest institutions.  Wiki-Leaks, Julian Assange’s controversial site, is another example of questionable ethical behavior.  Although his desire to hold governments accountable through transparency was noble, his actions crossed both legal and ethical boundaries, disrupted international diplomatic activity, and endangered the lives of many.

As Clay Shirky suggests, we are in the middle of this revolution and it may be many years before we reach a new equilibrium.  Until then, it is going to be a fascinating journey.

Review of Wikipedia’s article on U.S. Army Rangers

I chose the Wikipedia article on the United States Army Rangers.  Prior to my acceptance to the Harvard Kennedy School, I served for four years as an Army Ranger commanding one of its rifle companies on two combat deployments to Iraq.  I care deeply for the organization and want to ensure that its history is preserved through proper documentation of its achievements.

Comprehensiveness:  The article is not comprehensively written.  There is a significant, detailed account of the origins of the Rangers beginning in the 17^th and 18^th century but the quality and quantity of information decreases significantly from there.  The historical accounts of a few of the most famous Rangers from the Revolutionary War era are absent including Dan Morgan’s eight companies of expert rifleman formed by the Continental Congress and Francis Marion, “The Swamp Fox”, who organized and led guerrilla style attacks on the British Regulars.  (The Swamp Fox was made famous in the movie The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson.)   The article does highlight the history of the Rangers from the Civil War through Vietnam without inaccuracies or omissions but all accounts are brief and unsubstantial.  Additionally, the article fails to outline the Rangers most recent and ongoing contributions to the Global War on Terror.  It describes but fails to name Objective Rhino, the first insertion of ground troops during the Afghanistan campaign, and Objective Serpent, the first insertion of ground troops during Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Completely omitted is the current structure or mention of the sweeping organizational changes that have taken place during the last four years.  Both should be added to give the reader a broader understanding of the modern Army Rangers.

Sourcing: The quality of the sourcing is very good, specifically when it chronicles the early history of the Rangers.  The list of sources includes reputable, published books and scholarly journals.  It derives some of its most technical information from U.S. Army field manuals and Department of Defense produced military histories.  However, the sections on the Civil War and the Pacific Theatre lack any sourcing at all. Despite this shortfall, this article is supported by high quality documents.

Neutrality: The article is written from a neutral point of view except for the last section that lists notable U.S. Army Rangers.  There is no objective metric or standard used to determine who makes the list.  For example, Greg Plitt-a contemporary of mine-graduated from Ranger school and served a few years in the Army, but does his success as a fitness model outside of the Army make him as notable as recent Medal of Honor winner Leroy Petry?  Also, other Rangers received the Medal of Honor, but weren’t mentioned and most of the inductees to the ‘Ranger Hall of Fame’-a group chosen by other Rangers and alumni-didn’t make the list.

Readability: In general, the article is poorly written.  The Executive summary is filled with grammar errors and difficult sentences.  The section detailing the early history of the Rangers is the best written and resourced section, but the rest is in need of some work.  In fact, Wikipedia identifies this article as needing clean up.

Formatting: The article generally adheres to the Manual of Style.  The layout of the page is in in line with the Wikipedia guidelines, but there are some serious misuses of sentence structure, passive voice, incomplete sentences and punctuation errors.

Illustrations: Although the article has illustrations, few have direct connections to what is written in the text.  For example, the Ranger scroll is an illustration placed in the margin, but never mentioned in the article.  A reader seeing this for the first time would not have a clear understanding of what it is or where it came from.

Unfortunately, this article is not a great representation of one of the most elite organizations in the U.S. Army.  The history of the U.S. Army Ranger is replete with extraordinary stories of valor, personal courage and great achievement.  This article falls desperately short of conveying that message.

You can find my Wikipedia user page here.

Essay 2 (Review of Steven Levy’s “In the Plex”)

In his book In the Plex, Steven Levy chronicles the history of Google from its creation in 1995 by two aspiring Stanford graduate students to a highly successful, multi-billion dollar international entity. Google’s origins stem from the post-graduate research of Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford.  Page and Brin divided search into three major components: crawl, index, and query and built their enterprise around this framework.  The foundation of Google’s search is Page Rank.  Page Rank crawls (searches) every site on the internet and assigns it a rank (legitimacy) based upon a complex mathematical algorithm that counts the number and quality of inbound links that reference it (as well as nearly a thousand other variables)-a system similar to the H-index rankings of scholarly journals. Once Page Rank collects the data, it is indexed on Google’s servers providing a reference of comparison for its query processors.  The quality of Google’s search lays in its data sets, search logs, and most importantly, prolific use of the internet.  The more data it collects and the more the internet is used, the better it becomes at providing its customers with the most relevant information they seek.

Google developed a way to monetize internet search through the creation of Ad Words and Ad Sense. Ad Words capitalized on the long tail of advertising through auction.  Using its indexes and search logs, Google determines the relevance or popularity of words, assigns a price to each in terms of cost per click, and auctions them to any perspective customers
for use in advertising.  This process significantly reduces a smaller firm’s barrier to entry allowing them to compete on an even playing field for access to millions of customers.  Ad Sense affords any web site the opportunity to advertise. Using its search logs and indices, Google is able to deliver web-sites content customized advertising.

Google placed a premium on human capital and has significantly benefited from its contributions. Using an extremely selective recruitment and hiring process and a unique management and administration style, Page and Brin attracted the brightest minds in the fields of mathematics, computer science, and business.  Focusing on foresight and innovation, Google connected itself with its own fiber-optic infrastructure and became an industry leader in reliable, energy-efficient data storage. And savvy business decisions and value-added acquisitions (Blogger, You-Tube, Android) kept the company legitimate and profitable.

Levy also explores Google’s growing and unprecedented power and responsibility as the keeper of the database of human intentions.  From its inception, both Brin and Page have
been adamant that Google and its data are for the benefit of mankind and “Don’t be Evil” is its governing principle. They argue that the indexes and logs are the sole determinants of search and its results are not affected by censorship, money, or appeals from Presidential candidates-sorry Mr.Santorum.   However, Google finds itself under increasing scrutiny from the United States Justice Department as its opposition and competitors rally for increased regulation and anti-trust litigation.

I believe that we should be increasingly wary of the power Google yields, especially when one considers how much we trust them.  In general, I believe society’s blind trust and confidence in Google can best be explained by David Brook’s definition of the complexity gap-a key criticism of globalization.  A complexity gap is “the disconnect between individuals’ ability to fully understand global system effects and the nature and scope of action required to sustain the best elements of those systems in the long-term.”  Brooks also believes that our society has come to rely on increasingly complex systems whose evolution outpaces society’s ability to comprehend the risks and limitations.  Google is one of those systems.  We don’t really understand how Google works and they are unwilling to tell us-ask Rep. Al Franken. We must trust that Google will continue to honor its promise of ‘not being evil’.  China’s alleged
state-sponsored hack of Google’s database highlights the potential catastrophic effect of a system failure.  Truly nefarious characters (or governments) armed with the ability to direct public opinion through distribution of information and the ability to easily identify, locate and silence their dissidents should be ours and Google’s worst nightmare.

Essay 1 (Review of Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody”)

In his book Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky analyzes the societal changes resulting from the rise of internet technology.   Applying Coase’s Theory, Shirky maintains
that technology has drastically reduced the transaction costs of organization.  Now, an organization enabled with today’s technology can form quickly, establish an informal hierarchy, and communicate cheaply and instantaneously. Although the method and ease of group formation has changed, group dynamics remain constant-the larger the group, the larger its complexity.  The emergence of technology that creates small world networks has revolutionized group dynamics. It establishes structure within a large organization by creating multiple, densely connected small groups-large groups seem smaller and more personal.  “With them everyone is connected to everyone else in six degrees of separation.” Although, all members of the group have the “tools to contribute equally”, participation within the group can be modeled using the power law of distribution.  In general, the top twenty percent contribute over eighty percent of the work.  Interesting, however, is the significance of the work of the rest (the long tail) with unfettered ability to participate.

The equitable inclusion of ‘everyone’ has led to the redefinition of a few traditional industries and allowed for the emergence of niche business and unprecedented, productive group collaboration.  The publication of printed news media is an industry significantly affected by this phenomenon.  Previously, an elite group within a well-defined hierarchy provided the public its news. Publication of printed news was expensive and coverage was limited to what happened yesterday.  The internet has changed the rules.  Publication is free, the pool of ‘reporters’ is unlimited (often amateur), and reporting is instantaneous.  Newspapers and other media outlets are forced to adapt or go out of business.  Conversely, businesses like Amazon have found ways to profit from the desires of ‘everyone’. For example, traditional book stores rely on the sale of the same, popular book many times.  On the other hand, Amazon generates its profit by selling a large number of books a small amount of times.  They are so successful that Amazon and other online retailers are quickly driving the traditional bookstore out of business.  Finally, the inclusion of ‘everyone’ is leading to very productive online, collaborative products like Linux and Wikipedia.   As a rule, traditional software development
companies attempt to employ the top twenty percent of the developers in a particular field and assume their contributions will follow the power law of distribution.  Now, online, ollaborative development includes all willing to participate.  Theoretically, the inclusion of ‘everyone’ captures every contribution resulting in a superior product.

It is important to note that not all organizations formed online are successful and sometimes the output of a successful organization is unexpected.  The success any organization formed with the aid of technology must demonstrate the fusion of “a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain.”   In other words, members must have an incentive to join, group organizers must find the right tool to deliver on its promise and the terms of the relationship, or bargain must be acceptable to its members. Despite its overwhelming success at “convening power”, Meetup failed to meet founder Scott Heiferman’s expectations of reinvigorating America’s interests in civic organizations.  Instead it allowed for the emergence of a unique and unexpected set of groups including: Atheists, Witches, and Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Recently, the Obama Administration launched an online tool called “We the People.”  According to White House director of digital strategy Macon Philips, “individuals will be able to create or sign a petition that calls for action by the federal government on a range of issues. If a petition gathers enough support (i.e.,signatures) it will be reviewed by a standing group of White House staff, routed to any other appropriate offices and generate an official, on-the-record response.”  Philips goes on to explain that once an issues gathers 150 signatures it will be searchable on whitehouse.gov and if it gathers more than 5000 signatures in 30 days it will be reviewed and answered.

At the surface this program seems to pass Clay Shirky’s litmus test.  The promise of individual participation in government is appealing.  Organizing and collecting petitions online is significantly aided by effective online tools.  And, the terms of the bargain, collect 5000 signatures and your issue will be officially answered by the White House, are acceptable.  However, will the issues presented by the ‘general’ public be substantive?  According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, in 2010, Mike McGinn, the newly elected mayor of Seattle, launched ideasforseatlle.org to poll his constituency on their most pressing needs.  The site was an overwhelming success, but its top three responses-expansions of the light rail (public transportation), legalization of marijuana, and the installation of a nude beach- failed to meet Mayor McGinn’s expectations.   In Shirky’s words, his program enabled
organizations “with a latent desire to meet but had faced previously insuperable hurdles.”   Unfortunately, “We the People” should expect the same results.   Savvy
organizers of previously unheard of organizations now have the ability to easily bring their issues to the forefront, no matter the significance.  It is democracy in its purest form, but with
many unintended consequences.