Today, I've made public the social network my students and I used in my MBA-level digital marketing class at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch. (I first gave the students multiple chances and notices to delete any material they did not want the world to see -- during the class, whose grading period formally ended yesterday, I wanted all to be in a "safe" environment free from possible embarrassment, employment risks, etc.). It's here, including dozens of links to articles, etc, from the students and me.
This was an experiment. I tried to at least stick our toes in the water with the kinds of openness so many of our readings and lessons touted; as for politicians, so too for companies. Eventually, it seems, dissonance between public persona and private reality will eventually come out -- whether Wall Street analysts recommending one way publicly and another in private, political misdeeds or, even, the ever-secretive world of private equity.
I admit some misgivings about making all this public. After all, if I let anyone see the syllabus and my responses to assignments and readings, what’s to stop anyone from just taking that material and using it as their own (I created this course and it’s MY intellectual property, no?). On the other hand, I have to acknowledge that I reached out to a network on Linked In and got a dozen or so helpful responses from others who shared their thoughts and expertise when I was constructing the course. I found the textbook we used through an Amazon.com recommendation on another book someone had recommended. And I hope any embarrassment I might face over revealing my comments and so on will more than be made up for by insights from others who weigh in. I am, in a sense, forcing myself to improve, to keep learning, to make the class be better next time I teach it.
My department chair, too, has experimented with a Ning network for the marketing department, but others in the university guard their syllabi like Faberge eggs, and demand that students neither record nor post nor mention what’s happened in class, on a test and so on. As we see pressure for openness from digital technologies in other fields, we see it too, in the world of academe. A number of business schools have started posting material openly online.
As for the students, I found it intriguing how some took to the network avidly -- one even helped reconstruct the network to make it more useful -- while others shied from it and continually sent me private notes I encouraged them to make public. The students' weekly assignments were posted publicly, as were discussions, videos and more. Many enhanced and commented ib each others' material (some of course, tried to shirk assignments by simply commenting on what colleagues said.) I can say that I learned from the students' public sharing in a way I might not have had they not shared and discussed with each other, and the level of discussion improved both on the network and in class, as well. It's been a learning experience for me, and I believe the next classes I teach will be enhanced. I also hope the experience for students will continually get better.
One point that didn't work: I had started the class hoping the reading list would change and meld over time as we shared and enhanced each others’ readings and discussion. That part of the experiment didn’t completely work, in part because many of the students are very busy -- with other courses, full-time jobs, families -- and preferred to have a more pre-set structure telling them exactly what to expect throughout the term. I’d be grateful for suggestions here.
Does NY Mag Understand Newsweek's Business?
In New York Magazine's "numerical summary" of our economic times, they list the decline in the number of cars and light trucks sold, the proposed rise in the price of a transit farecard ... And the decline in guaranteed circulation for Newsweek magazine from 3.1 million in 2007 to a proposed 1.6 million in 2009.
But there's something the writers miss. Not only do they for some reason neglect 2008 (reported base of 2.6 million), but they also leave out a reasonable argument for the newsweekly to be cutting its circ: cutting costs, and the ability to raise ad rates for a more choice audience. As Ad Age reports:
So, while one could look at the move by Newsweek as an act of desperation brought on by declining economic times, we should also note that the company's rate base cut -- something Time did a couple years ago -- has been rumored since well before the current economic decline . It can get a smaller more valuable audience in print, leaving the less valuable but higher numerical audience, a lower-priced commodity for advertisers, to its digital side.
It's safe to say, too, that Newsweek isn't the only magazine thinking along these lines.
But there's something the writers miss. Not only do they for some reason neglect 2008 (reported base of 2.6 million), but they also leave out a reasonable argument for the newsweekly to be cutting its circ: cutting costs, and the ability to raise ad rates for a more choice audience. As Ad Age reports:
Newsweek will likely take the opportunity to simultaneously steer toward a more a elite readership -- by eliminating the least-valuable, most-discounted subscriptions on its books.Times are tough for print pubs, and magazines in recent months have started suffering some of the same steep declines newspapers have gotten used to. But it's also no secret that to get subscriptions, general interest weeklies and monthlies have practically given away the "book" for subscription prices that don't pay for the editions and thrown in premiums (such as umbrellas or tote bags) that can cost a good chunk of the subscription price.
So, while one could look at the move by Newsweek as an act of desperation brought on by declining economic times, we should also note that the company's rate base cut -- something Time did a couple years ago -- has been rumored since well before the current economic decline . It can get a smaller more valuable audience in print, leaving the less valuable but higher numerical audience, a lower-priced commodity for advertisers, to its digital side.
It's safe to say, too, that Newsweek isn't the only magazine thinking along these lines.
Five Things to Change Your (Digital) Life
Today (Tuesday). Noon, ET. Ask questions about Geospatial Webb, Visual Search, Semantic Web and more.
Guest: Amy Webb.
Off the Media: Media Arrrgh!
Infrequent and horribly irregular musings about WNYC radio's "On the Media."
This week, the show explores whether photographers are within their ethical rights to shoot subjects, especially for magazine covers, in a way that serves to influence the perceptions of the audience seeing them. Making Ann Coulter look longer and leggier with use of a wide-angle lens shot from below, shooting someone with certain kinds of lighting or camera filters to make them look darker or more evil, and so on.
One of the reasons photos get so much notice is because the manipulations are so much easier to see, and even feel at a visceral level than in other media. Any distortions or filters can even be quantified (this kind of fisheye lens, that gradient of filter...), while the filters through which we record and write are less obvious if just as important.
My Fulbright project in Japan in the early '90s was about Japanese vs. American coverage of specific news events. Neither side saw its coverage as biased, and the journalists for top-notch organizations on both sides worked very hard to be objective and fair. But they also were coming at the stories -- whether about weighty business and policy issues or more frothy sports matter -- from their own points of view, often culture-bound and even politically influenced. Many seemed to not realize they were coming at a story from a specific angle that was not the only possible angle, did not see that their points of view colored the ways they wrote and talked, that they were strongly steered by sources, and by the editors they filed to who came with their own preconceptions. The classic example of distortion on TV is the protests in Iran after hostages were taken during the Carter administration. The cameraman used a tight shot to make it look as if Tehran was in full protest mode; in fact, a group of about 300 people were dwarfed in a largely empty plaza.
My Fulbright project in Japan in the early '90s was about Japanese vs. American coverage of specific news events. Neither side saw its coverage as biased, and the journalists for top-notch organizations on both sides worked very hard to be objective and fair. But they also were coming at the stories -- whether about weighty business and policy issues or more frothy sports matter -- from their own points of view, often culture-bound and even politically influenced. Many seemed to not realize they were coming at a story from a specific angle that was not the only possible angle, did not see that their points of view colored the ways they wrote and talked, that they were strongly steered by sources, and by the editors they filed to who came with their own preconceptions. The classic example of distortion on TV is the protests in Iran after hostages were taken during the Carter administration. The cameraman used a tight shot to make it look as if Tehran was in full protest mode; in fact, a group of about 300 people were dwarfed in a largely empty plaza.
So, while it's reasonable to ask whether photojournalists have an obligation to be more fair. But the question is equally valid for all forms of journalism. There is really no such thing as objectivity. Every time a choice is made about how to portray something -- point a camera, frame a subject, take a quote, ask a question -- the person committing the act of journalism is injecting themselves into the process.
Oh, and why the "arrgh" in the headline? OTM brings on one of their faves, Jeff Jarvis, to talk about whether media "is" or "are" -- Jarvis appears to be talking about platforms, and how there's no longer a distinction between the different forms of media, since anyone can now contribute in multiple ways (photos, text, audio, video). Show hosts Garfield and Gladstone, though, are talking about a multiplicity of voices, and agree, as Garfield says, that it's "are," which sounds when he says it like a pirate exclaiming.
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Some Things I’m Thankful For:
- My daughters’ smiles and laughs. The laughter of all children.
- Love from my family.
- Having a wonderful, intelligent life partner I find very attractive.
- Having gotten through the year whole, and intact, suffering only a few slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but also the kindness of honest business people willing to deal in a straightforward, upright way.
- The business opportunities that came my way when I least expected. The other opportunities I was able to create from whole cloth. The help of others in creating them.
- Being in a wonderfully exciting industry at a fabulously rich time, and an industry at one of the fundamental aspects of what makes us human -- communication -- while serving to change that very thing.
Other-Worldly at the New York Stock Exchange
The WF360 event at the New York Stock Exchange was other-worldly for reasons described in the video: steak and wine and luxurious desert amid the unseen carnage of two days of stock market evisceration.
At the event, we -- thinkers, leaders and others in such discussed such "What If"questions posed by host Susan Bird as What if the food chain, whose customers are overwhelmingly women, were controlled by women -- from agriculture to packaging to retail? What if our health care system provided real choice? What if Americans started living within their means (what would that mean for your business)? Award honoree Helen Alexander, former CEO of The Economist Group talked of leadership's three "i's": intelligence, internationalism and integrity.
And NYSE EVP Larry Leibowitz bemoaned the financial illiteracy of so many Americans.
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