Robert Paterson's Weblog

Will education follow the same path as media? I think so!

 

After many years of thinking and talking, here Sir Ken I think nails the problem and gets the direction for the right new path correct. Helped a lot by the guys at RSA.

So what can we do with this insight?

My experience in public radio and TV - which also is at a crossroads from one culture to another - is that we must not under estimate the power of the entrenched culture. Most people inside pub radio/TV and in education are so invested in the old that they can only fight an alternative.  This is not because they are bad or stupid - it is because they are human and their identity is the system as it is. So to change it means that they have no place. So they cannot go to the new. 

If you long for a better education system - you are also worried about how to breakthrough all these barriers. You don't know how to change the system. I think that we can look at what is happening in media and find a way. 

So where is the change happening in media that we might use to help us in education. As I write them I can see how these factors apply to education - can't you?

• The long term effects of the poor economy is pressing the system
  • The school system is under huge funding pressure too
  • In higher ed - the degree also costs too much now and drives loans that canot be repaid
  • Kids will seek out new ways - they have to
  • In the next 10 years the pressure to find a new way for the money will become unbearable - thus creating the same kind of context for change that we see in media

• There are organizations like Craigslist that are killing the economics of the old and forcing economic pressure - the old way leads to economic starvation and sets a context for change
  • There are new online schools such as the Khan Academy that offer kids a wonderful alternative to school
  • Great Schools like MIT have put a lot of superlative content online
  • Kids are voting with their feet - better content will be available online for next to free as with Craigslist and personals that will ad to the economic pressure

• The web has a bunch of new tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, Apple TV etc that are empowering new sources and new ways of finding, producing and using content
  • Same for Ed - iTunes, YouTube are already there
  • Why take Math with Miss Jones when you can get the world's best math teachers on your time at your pace?
  • Parents will buy into this too

• There are entirely new organizations - Huffington Post, Daily Beast, Politico - Greenfield that go through no transition but start with the new model - they are forcing competitive pressure
• There are a few old leaders who get it and have enough critical mass inside to go for it now - The Guardian in the UK and NPR - they are forcing change on their system
  • Athabaska and Phoenix come to mind in higher ed - they are moving to the mainstream
  • Soon there will be Grade Schools that have the same features

• There are  few local small organizations that have the leadership to go for it too and are making enough progress to show the rest - KETC is the one I know the best.

So what to do?

Don't think about changing the whole system!!!!! It's too big and powerful.

Instead take advantage of these powerful forces.

If you are a learner - Explore the new world of resources - do not feel trapped in school as it is or feel that you have to wait - enough change is here for you to take full advantage now

If you are a parent - see the whole picture for you child - help line them up into that is now available that is more fitted to them and at a cost you can all afford. Vote with your feet.

If you are a school board - Learn how to make the shift from the old to the new - Do a KETC - pick a school with the right leadership and try the new in ONE place - learn from this - use this test bed to expose others to the new from their peers.

If you are a teacher - Learn how to be the new - participate in the new world - be a citizen teacher - offer content or coaching - learn how to be an entrepreneurial teacher who can hang up their shingle on the web or locally. Be the math coach or the history coach in your place or globally!

If you are a social entrepreneur - Build the new a place together so that you are the convener of the a place where kids can be together and yet be part of the a larger universe of resources that fits them! 

It's coming folks - you can win now if you play now.

News & Media - The Technical/Social Connection = Trust = Success

NPR showed us that how you connect to content is key to audience growth - so far they and I have focused on the the connection as being web and social media based.

But there is an even more important "Connection". That is Trust.

Do we trust the source of the content? What is the Social Relationship between the News Source and the Public? What are the Power issues? What is the motivation of the new organization? Whom do they serve and why? All these relational issues affect Trust.

So what is the central connection between the news source and you?

Here is how Craig Newmark thinks that this issue will play out.

 

HT to John Bracken for the clip.

At KETC we have made this issue of the relationship with our members and the wider public in St Louis our central concern.

We keep asking ourselves the question of how can a local public TV station establish the Trust that we need to become vital to our community? While this is our own question - it is also the broder question that will affect all news sources.

We agree with Mr Newmark that we have a start based on our non-commercial model. But what do we have to do to make this more real?

No station on their own is smart enough to come up with the answers. For this demands a revolution in mindset.

Fortunately for us, 3 Wise Men turned up with gifts. Gifts of wisdom about this issue of Trust and Relationship. They showed up because they care deeply that the answers are found. 

Euan Semple, Doc Searls and Jay Rosen have kindly agreed to be interviewed and we start a series next week on their advice for

• Why the current model for news is not helping the nation solve our problems
• What would be a model that would
• What KETC - or in fact any public station can do to enact this better model

More soon

Albums to iTunes - Schedule's to iTunes?

One thing we know about the new media is that we don't buy the Whole Album any more.

Our old normal was that we had to buy the whole album. We also had to go down to the store to get it.

Now if I want a Beatles song, I download it when I want. I buy song by song, on my time.

So what! You know all of this - this is not new! No it isn't but isn't this a pattern that will apply to everything.

As NPR is finding out by its research - content remains vitally important but what makes it valuable to day is how we get it.

This pattern of the connection being as important as the content will soon apply to all radio and to all TV.

Currently KETC, my great client, offer as wide a choice as possible conventionally - they have 4 channels and they have something for most of us most of the time as a result. This is surely a "good thing" and a lot better than most.

But then I don't have a TV and more and more and more people don't either. Like my music I want good content but it is how I get it that is the point. I look for an easy and legal connection. I don't mind paying for good content either. 

 
This is how I get my TV content the same way I get my Music. For instance, last night after Tony  Curtis' death I rented Some Like it Hot too.

This is where I watch it too - much better than my TV

Now I am not everyone. I am not even part of a large group yet. But as new web streaming devices get better, then most of us will get our TV and Radio content the same way that most of us now get our music.

How long does TV and Radio have before Wifi and the Web are pervasive?

The new NPR research is clear to me. If you create a beach head with the webby folks now - you will be ready. NPR not only grew their audience by expanded into the 35 year old cohort who loved the content but did not listen to appointment radio.

Public TV has an audience that is in their 60's! But they do have a ton of great content. Time surely to make it very easy for me to get it when I want to. Maybe a Netflix kind of deal - so much a month gets me so much content?

But where does this leave the local station? That is what KETC and other stations that accept that this is coming are working on right now. 

This is not easy. Frankly we know the direction to take but the unknowns are in the why, the what and the how. I help them think about this - but I am not that smart so we have asked for some help. 

Next week 3 wise men offer their advice. You know them. I am stunned by their insight. I know you will be too. Stay tuned!

This Is How It Starts « Rosenblum TV

Hitler arrives at Nuremberg for rally 1933 – another very popular orator

Normally I don’t write about politics here.

But not today.

I recently posted a note to Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. She had an item on her Facebook page asking what she should cover in her show.

Most of the answers posted related to shoes or clothing or divorces.  I told her she should speak out about the growing trend to publicly accepted racism in our culture, with Muslims paying the role of the Jews this time.

So far, she is sticking to shoes. Kotb, by the way, is Arabic for book.

The Failings of Public Education

When I went to school in the 1960s, almost all of my teachers were women.

They were women because in those days, the only jobs women could get were teacher, nurse or secretary. And so the smartest went into teaching.

And they were good. Very good.

When new opportunities opened for women in the 70s, (and I am old enough to remember when a woman going to Harvard Business School was still a big story), the smartest flocked to careers as lawyers or MDs or CEOs.  They followed the money.

In the days when women had no choice, schools could get away with paying teachers $23,000 a year, or less for women, and no one said a word – and they were able to attract the best talent in the country.

When other opportunities became available, the schools should have responded by making teaching as competitive as law, and paying as much.  But they didn’t. Instead, we debased the public educational system in America.  Oh, there are still those who teach out of pure dedication, but that’s like asking people to go to medical school and then head off to work for Medcin sans Frontiers. There are those who do, but not many.

I taught for many years at both Columbia University and NYU, and over the course of time, I watched as the level of basic education that my students came in with dropped and dropped and dropped. They were not stupid. Far from it, they were just uneducated – increasingly so. And interestingly, they didn’t care.  Most did not know the difference between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, and if they had to find out, they could always go to the web and Google it.

What we eroded was a basic foundation of fundamental knowledge, which by now, I think, is pretty much gone.

And the price we pay is that we have created a society without the ability to process information through any kind of historical wisdom.

So when Glenn Beck goes to the Lincoln Memorial and proclaims that he is the true heir to the Civil Rights Movement; when he and his Tea Party follower proclaim that the President is the racist here; when he fundamentally rewrites the history of this country to suit his own ends, one would think that an educated nation would laugh him off the stage.

But they don’t.

They don’t because we no longer have an educated nation that can process what he says through a lens of intelligence.

We have a nation of people who get their information superficially, and lacking in any kind of grounding of basic education, can be easily swayed by demagoguery of the worst kind.

For two generations we have ignored the infrastructure of this country.

Our bridges rust out and collapse.

That makes news.

Well our schools are rusted out and collapsing. And when the education of our nation rots and collapses, its is a whole lot more serious than when a bridge collapses, or deciding which shoes to buy.

What is happening today at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream Speech is nothing short of pornography. Public pornography based on a collection of lies.

But we have a public that has lost the ability to discern the truth for itself.

This is how it starts.

And if you know anything about history, you already know how it finishes.

But alas, most people don’t even know that.

But they will. Sadly.

via rosenblumtv.com

I quote Michael Rosenblum in full today. For he touches on the peril that confronts America today.

Can America get its Mojo back?

In Jane Jacobs great book Dark Age Ahead - she makes the point that the signifier for a great states's decline is growing xenophobia. Leading to a retreat into a fortress culture. This is what happened to China and what happened to the Muslim world. Both were many steps ahead of Europe but bothy retreated into themselves.

In the "fortress" thinking is not allowed or welcome. As Michael notes - many do not care that they know nothing. There is a pride in ignorance.

Such a society will look to the simple and to demagogues. Such a society will set up the the preconditions of "Collapse" - a structural inability to respond to challenges.

Don't we see signs of this inability today? As I see it we do.

This is why I am passionate in my support for public TV and radio's efforts to expand their role from providing good content to providing a safe place where the community can have a discourse about issues that are important to them.

At KETC in St Louis this effort began with creating such a safe place to help each other cope with the mortgage crisis. Now we are trying to find a way of facilitating the kind of discourse that will enable America to have a better approach to Immigration - an issue that will surely determine America's future as much as any other.

WGTE in Toledo will be doing the same soon on local agriculture.

My hope is that such an approach - of having a local in depth discourse on challenging topics such as who is an American? How we get our food? Jobs and the economy? Health? Education? Is our only chance of breaking out of the polarization of our politices and the over influence of the corporate will.

I don't see any other opportunity? Do you?

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

The Media - Want trust & traction - Get a tribe or offer a Spicy Soup

Terry Heaton wrote a cool post about this slide:

Trust in the media is shrinking rapidly. Something is not working and it is getting worse just as the issues that confront us all need to be reported better.

Terry of course asked the big question of Why? Why is trust in the media falling? He thinks that Jay Rosen's concern about the "Voice from Nowhere" is part of this and adds a strong additional argument that a media source that only has one point of view - its own - feels more and more like a shill. Who trusts a shill?

I would like to add a bit more to both Jay and Terry's arguments. I think that if we go deeper into how culture shapes us and how Tribal culture is we can see more clearly how to react to this situation.

I have been looking at the issue of Cultural Cognition - or the filters that we use to make meaning of the world. Dan Kahan's thesis is that most Americans fit into a set of cultural tribes that determine how they process information. Walter Russell Mead also thinks a great deal about this form of filtering by culture and has defined a set of easy to understand labels to capture the biases of the larger groupings.

Let's jump to the real world of the media to illustrate what this cultural filter means in practice.

In spite of the overall decline in the trust in the media - there are some paradoxes

• NPR is surging - with huge increases in listeners - they say it is because of the demand for sound news - NPR is highly trusted but.....
• Fox is surging too and it too is highly trusted
• CNN is sinking and is not trusted

Why is NPR and Fox rising in numbers and trust while most of the media is falling?

I think that the answer is that both play to the cultural bias of two very important cultural tribes in America

• Fox to the Jacksonians
• NPR to the Jeffersonians
• Rachel Maddow plays to the more liberal wing of the Jeffersonians. Rush Limbaugh to the more extreme wing of the Jacksonians.

If you play to no tribe such as I think is the case for CNN - you get no traction. If you are the voice from nowhere - you will not have people attach strongly to you. 

Dan Kahan's research shows how the cultural fit works.

First of all - The Tribes exist - they can only see what is going on through their filters. They are waiting to attach or to attack what fits or does not fit. If you think that people are not tribal and are not culturally filtered then you miss it all.

Second - no matter what the content! They can sense if the messenger is one of them. No matter what he or she says - the cultural fit of the messenger is the starting point of acceptance or rejection. So at the extreme ends - Rachel is the ideal messenger as is Limbaugh. If you offer no cultural fit for the messenger, then you have missed it all. No one is neutral. Neutral has no power.

Thirdly - how the issue is Framed increases the attachment or the rejection. The lead, the POV, the context all mean that the content - that can be the same in the 2 camps is perceived and reacted to entirely differently. So how you frame is another pivotal issue. You must frame with a tribe in mind.

But suppose you want to bring the tribes closer together? What could you do if you choose not to either Fox or NPR?

• You can tune into several tribes - Terry is going there and I know that Jay is too - Have a big pond with fish that all like swimming in it. Dan Kahan's research has shown that you can get the tribes closer by mixing the messengers up - have messengers that are tuned into a tribe tell the other story
• Create a rich and spice soup with lots of different chunks - in the good old days PBS had William F Buckley as well as Bill Moyers - mix it up but have strong cultural positions and messengers. 
• The closing of gap comes from the mix

The choice is porridge or curry.

If you want to know more about Dan Kahan's thinking here is a neat video series

Public Media Joins Forces for One Big Platform - Finally!

Image courtesy of PMP Partners

NEW YORK — The country’s five silos of public radio and television are spilling into each other with a joint program that will allow them – and eventually the public itself — to build apps, stations, websites and other media services combining audio, text and video content from every public radio and television outlet in the country.

NPR president and CEO Vivian Schiller appeared at Wired’s Disruptive by Design conference Monday morning to announce the new Public Media Platform, a partnership between American Public Media, National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting Services (PBS), Public Radio International and the Public Radio Exchange distribution network.

Over the next six months, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will spend about $1 million to develop a working prototype of the platform, with NPR leading the charge

The Public Media Platform is “a series of platforms that will allow all of the content from all of those entities — whether news or cultural products — to flow freely among the partners and member stations, and ultimately, also to other publishers, other not-for-profits and software developers who will invent wonderful new products that we can’t even imagine,” said Schiller.

The Public Media Platform will cross-pollinate news across those five networks, and will provide data analysis to help reporters inside and outside those organizations present complex information more effectively. Both will be subject to various licensing rules, but the idea is to allow member stations and eventually third parties to distribute this information however they see fit.

“We’re going to spend the next six months figuring out exactly [the] rights [and metadata] issues, but the ultimate goal of this is to make this content available,” said Schiller. “Say there’s a blogger who is particularly focused on the BP crisis in the Gulf — they will be able to pull out still photographs, national and international reporting, reporting from local stations, video from PBS, data, and mash that all up together.

via wired.com

This is THE project I think. Many of us who participated in New Realities saw this move. We looked back to the common satellite platform and wondered if a common web platform would be the new common platform. Well here it comes.

Maybe I am naive about how time works. That was back in 2005/6. The level of trust was not high enough and the certainty that the web would be utterly dominant was not all there yet either.

I also applaud the inclusion of TV into this. After all it's all digital.

But the harder work is ahead - changing the culture from Broadcast to Participation. This is brutal work. Even when you know you have to go there.

It is like giving up smoking or carbs or even drink. It means leaving what you know for something that you don't.

This kind of work cannot be done alone either.

Just as the work to build the platform goes ahead, I urge stations to experiment as a group so that they can support each other with what a participatory POV would be like.

At KETC during the Facing the Mortgage Crisis project we found out the hard way what some good rules for this might be. Please see the follow on for our lessons.

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

NPR - On the Tipping Point?

With the launch this weekend of the new NPR Mobile App, I can look back over the last 4 years and see a pattern emerge that tells me that NPR is poised to be the first major new organization to break through into the new Media Reality.

That's a bold statement so let me try and back it up.

First of all, NPR and the public radio system have got something that no other media has in America - Growth in audience.

 

Why? I suspect that a large part of the answer is to be found in one word - "Trust". As our world becomes more uncertain, it is also clear that much of the media was either complicit in hiding the truth about what was going on or that they just missed it. The non profit aspect of NPR and its system, I suspect helps keep it more trusted. The second point is just good journalism. As all other sources of media have retrenched on their staff, NPR and its stations have continued to invest in great staff.

But there is more going on here than the core journalism - NPR - like no other organizations except the BBC - is there a pattern here too? - Has made a decisive push to make the web work for it, for the stations and for the audience.

Here is the "Story" as revealed in a "Power Curve".

This suggests that NPR is at the Tipping Point. Why? Because we can see both the acceleration and also the growth of the supporting system that will facilitate the growth.

We see a long gestation period from 2005 - 2007. Podcasting began then - greatly facilitated by iTunes.

It is in 2008 that we see progress begin to accelerate. In 2009, NPR is positively rocking.

How did this happen when so many other media organizations are merely hiding behind the castle walls?

I think the answer is in the New Realities Process that NPR undertook at the end of 2005 - May 2006. Over 800 people were involved in "Exploring" what the web might mean to NPR and the system of stations.

This was the basic problem presented to all.

Please let me explain. Remember this was done in early 2006. The core assumption was that by 2009, the web would be ubiquitous. NPR's relative position versus the web at the time was that tiny black line.

The question was this - How did we get to scale on the web in time AND still not piss off the audience AND the Stations?

Looking back, the time line we posed was correct and it seems that we have solved the key question.

So how did this process of mutual exploration help NPR and the stations do this? My answer is this - It gave everyone a real voice. ALL the issues were on the table. A real common view emerged.

In every meeting, groups came up with the same big idea. That we had to be able to offer the audience what we did "Their Way". This appears to have been an underlying idea that has been realized by the Mobile App - many groups even envisaged a device like the iPhone that would enable this.

Surely this is no small thing? Most media organizations still insist controlling everything.

The underlying constraint was what would be the role of NPR and of each station? At the time, many believed that NPR had a "secret plan" to go it alone. In truth many at NPR also did not know what to do. They talked about working with the stations but were uncertain.

A major result of the process is that the senior NPR folks realized that they HAD to work with the stations. It has taken years for much of the fear that NPR would go it alone to dissipate but it is. NPR have proved by their actions that they are in this together.

For another common theme that kept coming up again and again was this. That the end game would look like this - a REAL NETWORK based on Natural Systems. This was the systems' great hidden strength.

This idea of a large natural system is now even bigger than anyone envisaged in 2006. For the CPB has been making major investments in creating a Public Radio AND TV system. The Facing the Mortgage Crisis project is one of these investments where radio and Tv stations in 32 markets are working together. NPR and the NewsHour are working together to offer the best news service in the nation. Key local stations are creating local news hubs.

All this is going to come together in late 2009 early 2010.

2010 will be I think THE year. The product will be unparalleled. The Web approach will be ideal. The resources will be all that such a network can supply.

With the audience, with the engagement and with the web fully supporting the air all that is left is this..

I think that with the underlying audience, engagement and a network - it should be possible to make the money and the system work - don't you?

So in closing I return to the question of our time. How do large organizations make the changes that they have to? How do they do this when the New is often the opposite of what they are and what they do today?

I think that the answer for NPR and Public radio is that they overcame the huge natural resistance by investing in a shared and deep exploration of what confronted them. What they have done since has come from the genuine emergence of ideas and of a language that they created for themselves.

It has not been easy. I admit to being in despair in 2007 when I could see no visible progress. But in retrospect I was naive. The laws of nature demand a period of gestation. 2007 was that time.

What is remarkable now is that NPR and the system has fully met the challenge set out in the starting question of the process. They have kept their audience, kept the system together AND become a leader in the web.

Now they have to turn this into revenue. I think that they are up to this.

What Next for the CBC? What next for us? What about Public Radio and TV on the Border?

The financial crunch is in full force at the CBC and next week staff and the public will hear the new plan.

My bet is that it will look like this:

• CBC will cut costs by further centralization and consolidation - Such as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI will be served by one main office with at best stringers. All production will be focused in Toronto and Vancouver

• While cuts to the front line will be extensive - the bloated head office will be less affected

• Ads maybe on radio

• CBC will be on a death spiral

I think that death is inevitable for the CBC because the real challenge for the CBC is not the government. It is not the economy alone but it is in fact its culture and hence its unresponsive structure. Being a top down, one city focused bureaucracy, it cannot be saved. There is no one to talk too who can make changes who wont hold onto power in the old way.

Here follows a quick rant and then two paths that I think may offer a future - for the audience that is!

It is already run by fiat from its Toronto bureaucracy. The local stations have no local control at all.

It is a Broadcaster - it pushes out - it sets the agenda - it is the sole taste-maker - it prohibits any kind of local innovation - it is hardly open at all to participation in a real way by the Canadian public.

It's approach to News is very conventional - No Planet Money kind of offering of real context - No Bill Moyers - No All things Considered.

It's approach Magazines (10 - 4pm) is beyond sad and low brow - failed Oprah.

It's approach to music is authoritarian - Here is the Canadian Content that we choose.

It has alienated its loyal audience in search of a youth segment at does not exist and that laughs at what is on offer.

So what is to be done? I don't see how the CBC as a central bureaucracy can be saved or redeemed. The bureaucracy will defend itself to the death.

But there are two related ways forward that would offer Canadians a really excellent local and national public service. But this idea is based on a paradox as you will see.

The 30 million plus people that live in Canada live close to the US Border. Along that border just a few miles south is the best public radio and TV system in the world. Already in some markets such as Buffalo, Canadians are the largest audience and WNED TV has an office in Toronto!

I think that the border pub radio stations offer a platform that we can build on in Canada.

If the border stations were to have a web based Canadian strategy, my bet is that they could do the following - let's look at one undeserved Canadian city and one US border station to se what might be done.

Kingston has a population of about 100,000 plus maybe another 50,000 in the hinterland. CBC does not serve them. The most local they get is Ottawa. Kingston is a university town with one of Canada's leading universities, Queens and Canada's "Westpoint" RMC. NCPR serves upstate New York and has a very special team in place at the station. NCPR already has some strong support in Kingston.

What if NCPR set up a web based hub in Kingston that acted as an attractor for the local bloggers and neo citizen journalists? By Hub, I mean it offers its brand, NPR and its local content (The API will enable this anyway) And support services to a local Canadian Kingston Pub Media COOP. Like Visa and a local bank. The two are separate. The local group is LOCAL. But Visa offers the access to a larger system.

I think that local groups will spring up anyway. But on their own - it would be very hard. But with the NCPR Brand and the staff and the programming behind NCPR, (A Kind of Visa Deal) I think a very good local Kingston "station" could emerge.

For NCPR, it could mean a doubling of audience in a couple of years. For NPR, if this happened along the border, it could mean going form 30 million to 40 million in 2-3 years.

Brandon Manitoba is the epicentre of this struggle to maintain a local news centre. Prairie Public Radio is juts a few miles away south. No Canadian wants to play.

The CRTC of course currently blocks conventional radio and TV. It also does its best to block web radio and TV from outside Canada. But if there is no local service, I wonder how long this position can hold?

In the interim I think that there is a work around that is good for all of us. In the next 5 years conventional "ait" is going to diminish anyway. All content will use the web. Radio and TV will converge and will converge I think locally.

For the border stations and NPR, PBS and CPB to experiment with an all web idea in Canada might offer up a beta that may work well back in the US and then offer a global solution to how best to keep the news, democracy and local local alive for the world.

I know that this is just a germ of an idea but what do you think?

I can see how for instance Maine Public Radio could offer "services" to PEI Public Media.

I can see how a group of us could set up a truly local system here on PEI if we had some help for MPR. I can see how some of the current staff of CBC could fit in. I can see that when the Guardian, our local paper, dies, that this local "station" could really thrive.

I would like to try this - would you?

The Truth shall set you free - NPR Planet Money

I think that one of the problems that we are all having as the epic scale of the financial crisis starts to come into general view - is that most journalists have reported a business as usual context. They have lulled us into sleep so this is both a surprise and a mystery.

"The market is down but markets always go down and it will be up soon". "It's just a correction and soon the good times will be back". - That kind of reporting is the norm.

It's a bit like how they play music on the plane or when the band played on the Titanic.

This kind of journalism is not helpful. It's just noise. It does not help me understand. So in the end I cannot make sound decisions.

Earlier this year, a new journalistic voice was heard for the first time. For the first time there was an attempt to get to the bottom of a real mystery.

"The Giant Pool of Money" is I think the "Silent Spring" of our time. It goes way beneath the headlines and the simple re-quoting of other sources and digs deep into the story.

Here NPR and This American Life paired Adam Davidson and Alex Bumberg and set them off on a real voyage of discovery. The Giant Pool of Money is like a great detective story but a real one.

Adam told me last week that he and Alex did not know what they would find. They did not fit the facts to the headline - they found out from the stories what the story was. They even used Craigslist to ask for help - they asked people for their stories. People came back with the goods.

If you want to know how we got ourselves into this mess - there is no better source. It's also very entertaining and self-deprecating. No preaching. No judging from on high. Very human. Funny even.

The Giant Pool of Money has reset the bar. In a time when journalism is under fire. This team has I think gone to the next level in what I think great journalism could and should be.

For is not the entire fabric of our society under threat. To heal, we have to get beyond headlines and simple blame. We have to discover the context.

Well my friends - we are in luck!

NPR are quietly launching a new economics site called Planet Money. Guess who is behind this?

The Giant Pool of Money Team.

The objective is to widen the context set by the Giant Pool of Money.

To go beneath the headlines and to find the meaning of why we are in the pickle we are. To find out what is REALLY going on. To give you the context in which you can make decisions in a time of great complexity.

The intent is to find not only an audience but to find a community who can add to the story. To help in that, my best friend whom I have never met - Laura Conaway from BPP has joined the team.

If I was a horse breeder I could describe this as as show out of This American Life and Morning Edition by The Giant Pool of Money and The Bryant Park Project.

Watch this space - I have a good feeling that this yearling could become the Seabiscuit of our time.

NPR and PI?

I have been thinking all week about the NPR and PI deal - it's taken me this long to process it all.

Implicit in the press release is the idea that technology, the back end, training and standards will drive the transition in public radio to public media.

The existing service will evolve to further help public media strengthen and grow its digital distribution capabilities. It will manage the utility and support functions for distribution on diverse media platforms; support the infrastructure; reinforce digital cooperation across public media; help define technical and operating standards; provide increased station support and staff development, including training on digital tools; and develop new products and services to enrich stations' and content producers' digital activities. As a result, stations will have the resources to introduce greater functionality, engage in new community partnerships, and generate more value in the digital space while leveraging limited resources.

In my 2 years of work with stations it is now clear to me that technology is not the barrier to the New Media Reality that we have to reach. There are a number of barriers - none of which are mentioned in the release.

A very high barrier is cultural - a 2.0 world cannot be trained for - it has to be lived. There has to be enough people on staff who are digital natives. It is people that will make the difference not technology.

The goal is not "digital distribution" - these words imply that the web is only another channel. The web is a place and it is the only future for the system. It is not a nice to have - it is life or death.

What is left out entirely in the release is the most important issue of all - it is the business model.

The new business model for the web is the goal here.

The current business model, based on a local monopoly and "on air" being the primary activity is no longer valid. If we all hope that it is, then seeing it as being the central truth will will kill everyone.

Look at how this idea of the old one-way physical delivery model is killing newspapers. It is the attachment to the paper that keeps the costs so high that the new cannot live. It is the attachment to the old one way relationship with the reader that holds back progress. It is the attachment to the paper that forces the owners who become desperate for cash flow, to cut the best people and the best content.

I think that public radio and TV is on the same path now as newspapers. The attachment to the one way on air model is strangling the new and carries death with it as the only outcome. Soon the drop in revenue and the need to pay for the legacy will squeeze the life out of public radio and TV as it is doing to newspapers.

When this point is reached they will be forced to cut staff to the bone and then to cut content. With even fewer staff, of course they cannot make the transition. The future will be lost to them. The ship is bound to sink: it is only a matter of time. They can only keep bailing until the boat sinks.

What content will they cut? Their first choice has to be ATC. Newspapers cut the afternoon edition. Of course their listener base shrinks even further - but they can only focus on cash flow now - they are in bailing mode. Cash flow and surviving another day has to pre-empt a future view. The future become meeting next month's payroll.

As stations diet to death, what happens to NPR? They themselves also implode as their market shrinks, costs mount and underwriting and revenues shrink. They too go into bailing/survival mode. All now depends on ME. What about the new building? Anything that does not pay today's bill, has to get cut. That includes the future!

But as Ford has found - you can't cut your way to the future.

“Everybody says cut and cut some more, but how are we going to sustain this company?” Mr. Mulally said in one meeting in his office on the 12th floor of Ford headquarters, according to people in attendance. “What does a sustainable Ford look like, gentlemen?”

Like the papers, many stations and NPR are locked into a legacy infrastructure that has to be paid for. This traps the system into paying for survival  The legacy and the main business traps the system into never changing.

So death is certain. The New York times can only survive if it stops the presses - but culturally this is all but impossible - it is a form of identity death. This is why all of this is so hard.

This is the decision that Admiral Jackie Fisher had to make in 1906. If he launched Dreadnought, every ship in the Royal Navy would be obsolete. His only chance was to grow the new faster than the rest. But if he did not make this decisive move to the new, he could be sure that other nations would and that Britain would then have to lose.

This is the same moment for public radio and TV. We decide that the new is THE FUTURE and that the legacy is the past that we will have to deal with or we decide to die. I am not saying that we all drop the traditional tomorrow. I am saying that we have to see that if we hang onto to it too hard it will have to take us down. We have to see that developing the new model is our only hope. It is not part of our future. It is not a new distribution system. It is the future as direct is the past.

As newspapers and now network TV is being gutted by new model outsiders, so will we.

The PI deal is a great catalyst to have the conversation that may get us to this point.

Just as the newspapers have to give up the paper, the presses and the union arrangements, just as Ford has to give up Trucks and the US production system to live, so Public Radio and TV have to give up their legacy as well. The legacy costs of air have to go away.

For the revenues from air will soon not be enough to support the organizations. So long as all depends on air, there will never be the focus required to shift to the web and a costs structure that can allow for survival. So long as the organizational power in NPR and your station resides with the traditional and the new is a minor league piece, we are stuck.

To make all of this more pressing, we are going into a depression. Underwriting is and will shrink dramatically. It's a perfect storm. What is left will shift to the web where it is easier to know who you are reaching.

It is clear that this is no ordinary economic downturn. What we are seeing is the end of top down - high control - highly centralized systems that relied on a very expensive infrastructure as the competitive barrier. All enterprises that have used this model are failing. Also are enterprises that merely treat the consumer as a idiot such as financial services and ultimately politics!

Here are a few words from Dave Snowden that explain the predicament:

I find it fascinating that some people just can't get away from the top down paradigm.  I'm not sure why people need it?  It could be control, the conventional issue of authority.  Equally there is a strong patronising theme to many of these approaches, a sort of mother(or rather father, this is patriarchal)  knows best. Maybe its much simpler, people just don't have the imagination to do things differently?  Shifting from hierarchical management, the tyranny of experts and stodgidity (yes I made that word up but I rather like it) of committees is hard for people who have spent most of their adult lives in those environments. 

They need a mindset change fast not only for their own sake, but more so for those they govern.

The consequences of failing to realise that we are moving into a networked, distributed model of management in which control is an emergent property of interactions will be disastrous for society. 

Network models use distributed cognition (a much better phrase than the wisdom of crowds) and reward original contributions and thinking, plus the ability to make a difference now rather than at some imagined point in the future. 

Current models, and the proposal for centralisation that I referenced yesterday will instead reward those adept at manipulating the system.

Come to think of it, maybe that is the motivation?

What are seeing is the rise of enterprises that put the person and the community first.

This is where we are. The purchase of PI has to be seen in this context.

PRI and NPR will work together and with other industry leaders on several significant, immediate steps to further PI's growth and services, including conducting a station consultation process, supporting editorial collaboration, and establishing common standards and interoperability across public media.

Is this really the best agenda for these meetings? I implore NPR to think about the real reality facing the system and make this predicament their agenda. Can we find the new business model?

Can NPR be freed to go direct. If it does, it may well have a brilliant future. Millions of people all over the world want to have access to the NPR product but only on the terms of the New Reality of anytime, anywhere. How can they do this and enable the stations to transition?

What about the stations? Can they give up the fantasy that they have a local monopoly of NPR content? If they do give this up then what? Can they share in the direct model?

How do they make it in their local market? How do they use the network effect to generate and to curate content that they can afford and that has large appeal?

How can they become the trusted convener as KETC in TV is becoming in St Louis where it is acknowledged that the station is the keystone in the local community getting through their complex problems such as the credit crisis, the energy crisis etc?

This is what I would put on the agenda for the proposed consultation process that is attached to the deal.

New Realities told us that all would go to the web. We can see that as being true now. New Realities told us that the value in the web would be community attachment to things and issues that were important. We can see from others that this is true now. New Realities told us that what we did had to be available at any time and at any place. New Realities told us that we had to make room for the people to use our megaphone. All this has become a reality for others but not for us.

We have to do the hardest work of all - we have to die to be born again.

NPR has to be set free - NPR's content has to have a new relationship with the stations.

The stations have to come to terms that there is no future merely being a local on air repeater. They have to find their web 2.0 relationship with their community and they have to learn how to become the trusted local convener.

The word "Public" has to be redefined. It can no longer mean that a system is supported by the public because it brings a rare thing to its community - quality shows and news - for these things are no longer rare as Public TV found out. It brings a new rare thing to its community - it brings the very voice of that community to itself and it does something even more rare - it brings this community together to tackle their own intractable problems.

NPR in this context opens up its audience to the entire world and becomes a beacon of truth to all who seek freedom and to all who wish to inquire about what is really going on.

In this context - let all ask how can PI help. Let's use this deal to find out how we can all do this work.

There is no work that is harder. Who knows how to do this? No one! But we can find out - don't we have to.

Please use this deal as the catalyst to do what is needed.