Greensboro experiment
On Friday, Dec. 17, the News & Record, daily newspaper in Greensboro, NC, owned by Landmark Communications, announced that it was looking to overhaul its website (www.news-record.com) and enter a period of invention, including rapid evolution away from the standard newspaper site– into more of an online community, a public square, or something equally “transformative” in nature.
The newspaper is actively looking for input, and comments are due by Dec. 24 — Friday.
Newspapers have been very slow to do anything online that's different from…what they do offline. The brand is so important, and the editor's role is so important, that papers can't imagine changing the “product” (and loosening the editorial reins) but branding it as their own.
Here's an idea: how about (in addition to replicating the paper online, which is a valuable resource) having an entirely different community site that is branded separately but relatedly. That might help management relax. Then aggregate blogs, hold forums, have polls, have very-local-weather reports, review movies, have the best possible community events calendar, create (simple, low-barrier-to-entry) virtual worlds, assign stories collectively, have photo contests, whatever. But in a slightly different voice.
One model I like is the Time Out New York offline setup. It's got the voice of an informal blog, with regular columnists, plus all possible information about all possible events. It's overwhelming, but I can imagine that the online Greensboro version might have a more manageable amount of information. Time Out Greensboro plus The Aggregated Voice of Greensboro – with revenue coming only from large concerns placing listings. No subscriber fees or “premium” content that's hard to get to — the friendly craigslist model.
Why Internet Governance Is (or Isn't) Like Climate Change
Milton Mueller (together with a large distinguished team of academics) has put together a very short paper [pdf] suggesting that a framework of norms and principles be established for internet governance.
The team's paper should be taken seriously. They make the provocative suggestion that “The [internet governance] situation is very similar to that which was faced in dealing with climate change in the 1980's,” and so therefore innovative institutional ideas are needed — for climate change, the UN established a “framework convention” that set some key groundrules, and some similar effort (the team intimates) should be started here by the UN.
Hmm. Climate change. According to the UN,
“The average temperature of the earth's surface has risen by 0.6 degrees C since the late 1800s. It is expected to increase by another 1.4 to 5.8 degrees C by the year 2100 — a rapid and profound change. Even if the minimum predicted increase takes place, it will be larger than any century-long trend in the last 10,000 years. . . .
The current warming trend is expected to cause extinctions. Numerous plant and animal species, already weakened by pollution and loss of habitat, are not expected to survive the next 100 years. Human beings, while not threatened in this way, are likely to face mounting difficulties. Recent severe storms, floods and droughts, for example, appear to show that computer models predicting more frequent “extreme weather events” are on target.”
The internet is like the climate in that it affects everyone and doesn't obey geographical boundaries. There's a problem with the climate — it's getting hotter because of industrialization. So we have to cooperate to figure out how to turn the heat down. That's a hard problem.
But what's the “problem” with the internet? Doesn't suggesting a hybrid institutional approach modeled on climate change assume that there's a problem? And doesn't suggesting a “framework” suggest in turn that someone should be in charge — and that someone is the UN?
So — just asking questions here, guys – okay, the internet is a dynamic biosphere, fine. But I'm not convinced the internet biosphere is in trouble other than from well-meaning efforts to “govern” it. And I'm worried that the internet is more susceptible to international “governance” (closing-down) efforts — all in the name of security and protection against IP infringement — than the climate is.
We need World Net Day.