Michael Misretta’s weblog redesign is live, and it looks great. The photo page is particularly nice.

This must be the week for redesigns, because Sean Sperte’s redesigned Geek & Mild went live earlier this week as well.

Sean Sperte’s Geek & Mild redesign just went live. Looks great.

If you’ve ever wanted to look at Twitter HQ, here it is. It’s an Apple-produced business profile of Twitter.

Beautiful building.

Michael Mistretta on Fusion Ads:

I enjoy the ads in Tweetie. I’m continually wishing there were more of them. I’m biased, so that may not count, but when people say that our ads are more relevant than half their tweets, I start to wonder if we’re really advertising after all (at least, in the traditional sense of the word).

I feel that my job has changed from simply filling x number of ad spots every month, to finding great new products that are worthy of your attention, and presenting them to you in the best way possible.

This is the future of advertising — advertising as a service.

Newspapers are dying. Print subscribers are down, print advertising revenue has declined precipitously, and there is no reason to think either of these trends will change.

The newspaper’s current model — focus on print, provide general news, and monetize it through an ever-increasing number of mass-market, obtrusive ads — may as well be labeled dead.

Newspapers themselves are not important. Newspapers are a medium, but their value is in the reporting and analysis. Newspapers provide an important balance to cable news and news web sites, which provide immediate, but shallow, coverage of events happening right now. Newspapers move slower, gather more information, and provide more depth to stories.

Cable news does not do this. They thrive on breaking news, on shock, on blustering commentators who like to stir the pot without adding anything substantive. No in-depth reporting on subjects, or well-reasoned thoughts — just noise.

Newspapers are a creation of an entirely different time period, where cable TV, the Internet, the phone, even electricity, did not exist. People then had no way of knowing what was happening in the world around them. People needed to know general news — what big events were happening, and newspapers were an incredibly effective way to deliver it.

This is no longer the case. When you can find general news on the phone in your pocket or the television across the room, printing tens of thousands of newspapers each day which, once read, will be thrown away, is monumentally wasteful.

Not only is it wasteful, but the content is a commodity. Because we can get general news from almost anywhere for free, there is little reason to subscribe to a newspaper.

So newspapers are providing an important function packaged in a dead business model. But we need newspapers’ primary value, in-depth reporting — so how can they survive?

Eliminate the Newspaper

It pains my heart to say, as I have a special love for reading a newspaper every morning, but the first thing newspaper organizations need to do is eliminate the newspaper. The newspaper is, simply, an inferior medium compared to the Internet. It is incredibly costly, wasteful, and perhaps worse, much more rigid than the web in what can be displayed.

Eliminating the newspaper is the first step. The second is to streamline the organization. Reorganize the company so it does not depend upon people working in cubicles — work primarily over the web. Sell the buildings made unnecessary by this reorganization. This eliminates costs, and makes the company more agile and effective, because the company can easily hire new writers and journalists who live thousands of miles away from company headquarters, or even on a different continent. The company can quickly pull in new talent as necessary.

The last part is important. Although newspapers will move slower than others in doing reporting, they must be an organization that can shift goals and focus quickly.

It is in the Details

Newspapers will survive by re-focusing on what they do best: extensive reporting on very specific subjects. Newspapers should drastically reduce current event reporting, and immerse themselves in the details.

Do not just report on the re-emergence of piracy in the Gulf of Aden; report on its root causes in lawless-Somalia, what groups are involved, and how they operate. Provide an extensive narrative for the reader, so they can understand why piracy is happening now, what is causing it, and what can be done to stop it. Give the reader a nuanced and substantive understanding of the topic.

Do not just report on Pixar’s new film and quarterly earnings; report on Pixar’s production process, how they promote creativity through building layout and giving ownership to directors. Allow the reader to understand why Pixar is so successful.

They should leave breaking news and shallow journalism to the cable news networks and other news organizations, because there is little competitive advantage to be gained in it. It is a race to the bottom to see who can provide the quickest and cheapest reporting, and while integral, it is impossible to build a business around being cheaper than everyone else when the commodity is already free.

Newspapers must re-invent themselves as the authoritative source on very specific subjects, because this utilizes their biggest advantage: quality and detailed journalism. If a current newspaper organization does not have gifted journalists who love diving into stories and finding every detail, then they better remedy that fast. If they do not, they will not survive very much longer.

Quality and depth of reporting, rather than speed of reporting; insight and understanding of a topic, rather than shock. These should be the new points of emphasis: quality, depth, insight, understanding.

They should select a few narrowly-defined subjects, and create the absolute best writing on the subject. If I am trying to save a news organization, I would want to be the only place people go to when they want reporting and analysis on the technology industry, or local news in Chicago, or politics, or whatever else.

The reason is because people are, less and less, interested in the general and more interested in the specific. People certainly fell into their niches in the past, but the economics of targeting a niche were wrong. It was difficult to justify employing reporters and writers, and paying rent on a building and printing newspapers or magazines when your target market was in the hundreds of thousands at best rather than the millions. There was no way to turn a profit.

So these very niche publications did not exist in a large way, and we were left with general news coverage. But the Internet makes targeting niches not only possible, but profitable, too. Printing, delivery and overhead costs are almost non-existant compared to costs associated with print, and finding those people is infinitely easier.

Because it is now easier, and more publications exist to serve specific niche subjects, people have shifted their focus to them. And here is an important part for newspaper organizations: serving niches can more easily be monetized.

Advertising and Monetizing

Online advertising is broken. Web sites place ads to the side of content, and readers learn to ignore it; so web sites put ads in the header, and readers learn to ignore it; so web sites put ads in-line with content, and readers learn to scroll past it; so web sites use video ads and create ones that overflow into the content, so readers stop reading.

Web sites using advertising have been attacking the wrong problem. The problem is not that readers do not see the ads. The problem is that the ads are absolute shit, and for absolute shit-products, so readers ignore them.

By devising ever-newer and even more intrusive ads, web sites are driving readers even farther away. Either they will adapt and begin ignoring the new technique, too, or they will stop reading the web site’s content.

Here is where focusing on very specific subjects creates another advantage. By targeting specific subjects, and thus very defined readership, the re-invented newspaper will be able to do something incredible: use ads that are relevant and interesting to the reader.

It is pretty simple. If your readers are creative professionals, then you should place ads for creative software and related products. If your readership is politically-active, then you should place ads for well-written books and other web sites like FiveThirtyEight.com.

The key is to respect the reader, and see ads as an additional service rather than just a means of revenue. The reinvented newspaper must work feverishly to insure the quality of these ads. Unless the ads are for products and services that are genuinely good and interesting, then they may as well use the punch-the-monkey ads used now. They must really believe in the products and services being advertised.

No flashing ads, no video, no ads which overflow into the content — just well-designed, subtle ads for good products.

The Deck and Fusion Ads have pioneered this for creative professionals. From their work, we know this works; I never click on ads on major news websites, but I routinely click on ads on Daring Fireball. Even more powerfully, when Tweetie for Mac was released with ads supplies by Fusion, many users sung their praises for the ads on Twitter. They love both the subtleness of the ads, and the products advertised. Some have bought Tweetie for Mac (which removes the ads) and enabled the ads anyway, because they enjoy them so much.

This proves that when ads are well-designed, subtle and for good products, people will not only click on them, but will like them.

Most companies may not be willing to put so much effort into vetting ads for their web site, and for good reason; their core focus is reporting and analysis, not finding good advertisers. But this opens the door for more ad networks similar to the Deck and Fusion Ads, which will provide quality ads for specific niches.

Imagine a world where advertising companies are not to be despised, but loved, because their model is no longer to serve up as many ads as possible for terrible products, but rather to identify good products and services in their niche, and place them on good web sites. It would be a much better world than what we have now.

I see other means of generating revenue, too. Eliminating the newspaper and magazine as the primary medium for their content does not mean they cannot offer a print edition — but it should be positioned as a premium service for their readers, finely-designed with only the best content from the time period, and likely not printed more than once a quarter.

I do not think all newspaper companies can (or should) follow this route. Some will survive, because they are already really good at what they do — the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, for example.

But for many other smaller newspaper companies, and for future news organizations, re-focusing on specific subjects, and dedicating themselves to providing the best reporting and analysis on those subjects available, will be an excellent way to succeed.

Selling a commodity is an excellent way to fail, but creating a high-quality product is a great way to succeed. They should choose the latter.

Jack Cheng on drinking tea:

Over time, I found myself consuming more tea in both quantity and variety. I started reading books about tea, taking classes on tea and even doing little projects with tea. The more I immersed myself in all things tea, the more I saw it as a way of thinking about the pressures of the daily grind.

Jack is precisely right: the entire process of making tea — from heating the water, to steeping the tea leaves just the right amount of time, and to finally drinking it — is incredibly calming and conducive to thought and reflection.

The time I spend drinking a cup of tea is a break in the torrent of due dates, emails, to-dos, phone calls, and other mind-numbing noise that any day entails.

I am not sure why making tea creates this relaxation; maybe it is the feeling of performing a ritual each day that is thousands of years old, tapping into something timelessly human. But I am sure that it is something special in a time when almost every where we go, we are pounded by the noise of modern life. It is a moment of clarity.

The Fusion Twitter bot has favorited some tweets today regarding Fusion Ads in Tweetie, and the response is amazing (if not surprising) — people love the ads. Here’s a typical tweet:

Just did the first purchase motivated by an online ad in my life. So advertising in Tweetie works.

This is why I use Fusion Ads on TightWind: they are not just a way for me to make money, but an added service for the reader. It’s a way of finding out about wonderful products in an elegant and subtle manner.

Ever wanted a shirt with a tweet on it? Well here’s Twitshirt. The service allows you to order a shirt with any tweet on it by clicking a bookmarklet, and it pays the person who wrote the tweet royalties.

Cool idea.

The New York Times reported today that many newspapers are going to begin charging.

In their current form, most newspapers (ones which report generally, rather than on specific topics) will find it difficult to charge for online subscriptions. General news is a commodity — you can get it almost anywhere.

Some argue that this can change, but I don’t think so. We don’t value general news very much because of its ubiquity.

So how can newspapers survive?

“The question now is whether that common denominator approach can work online,” Mr. Honack said. He says he thinks it will require treating the audience and the products as a series of niches, and tailoring the offering to the customer. “You have to find out what part of your product you can get them to come back for.”

That is the key. Newspapers will not survive by charging subscriptions for access to the day’s current events. Not enough people will pay for it.¹

Good newspapers will survive by diving into the details, and becoming really good at reporting and providing analysis on certain topics. Technology, business, politics, international affairs, and every imaginable sub-topic. Papers should pick one and become authorities on it, the authority to read on a topic. People will pay for that.

1. If you are thinking: Well, people pay for subscriptions to newspapers, why wouldn’t they online? Well, first, newspaper circulation is declining, but more importantly I think they’re fundamentally different. People read newspapers as a form of ritual and enjoyment — it is quite nice to sit down each morning and read the newspaper, in a way that reading on a computer isn’t. People (from my experience) tend to read news online to get the headlines, rather than get the details. People don’t want to pay for headlines. [↩]

John Gruber:

There is an easy formula for doing it wrong: publish attention-getting bullshit and pull stunts to generate mindless traffic. The entire quote-unquote “pro blogging” industry — which exists as the sort of pimply teenage brother to the shirt-and-tie SEO industry — is predicated on the notion that blogging is a meaningful verb. It is not. The verb is writing. The format and medium are new, but the craft is ancient.

That’s why I refuse to say that I “blog.” I do not. I am a writer, and it happens to be on a weblog. “Blogging” is a euphemism for worthless writing.

Doug Bowman on why he is leaving Google:

When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.

She walked on. She stopped at the window of a bookstore. The window displayed a pyramid of slabs in brownish-purple jackets, inscribed: The Vulture is Molting. “The novel of our century,” said a placard. “The penetrating study of a businessman’s greed. A fearless revelation of man’s depravity.”

She walked past a movie theater. Its light wiped out half a block, leaving only a huge photograph and some letters suspended in blazing mid-air. The photograph was of a smiling young woman; looking at her face, one felt the weariness of having seen it for years, even while seeing it for the first time. The letter said: “… in a momentous drama giving the answer to the great problem: Should a woman tell?”

…

What had she hoped to find?–she thought, walking on. These were the things men lived by, the forms of their spirit, of their culture, of their enjoyment. She had seen nothing else anywhere, not for many years.

— Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Although it may be superficial to define yourself by the clothes you wear and the music you listen to, the fact is that these things are indicative of the person you are.

Music, clothing, films, books — these are all elements of culture. They each, to varying degrees, represent what the individual values. For example, if they love TV shows like Desperate Housewives, that might say that quality and meaning are not things they value.

This does not mean, of course, that people should be judged solely by what music they listen to and what they like to read. Humans are much too complex to be reduced to such simplistic analysis. But what it does mean is that culture can be used as signs of what certain individuals value.

Unfortunately, American popular culture is, on the whole, absolute junk. This is a large field, but there is a certain trend I have noticed that I would like to focus on: the celebration of the lazy.

Idolizing the Lazy

Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton are famous for… being attractive daughters of other famous people. Whether it is real or not, they have created personalities for themselves in which they do as little as they possibly can, and revel in their comfortable and lavish lifestyles. Glory here comes from how much they can consume and how much time they can waste on meaningless things, not on what and how much they can produce.

People follow them and the minutia of their lives, reading about their new car, what they are wearing, and even their false life problems.

I am not sure what has caused this, but I see it all over the place. It appears that as a society, we celebrate consumption — buying, watching, eating, wearing — but not production.

Consumption, even on the Internet, is passive. There is no thinking involved, no positive creation happening. There is no value created, only used.

That scares me. I know I lapse into this; it is much easier, and more immediately gratifying, to watch an episode of The Office than write something. But this shuts down our minds.

It scares me, because producing something takes work and thought. Writing a story requires a person to find some insight that they did not see before, and to write something which illustrates this insight to the reader.

Creating things requires an active mind, one that is constantly looking, evaluating, thinking. It is through this that we discover new things about the world, and push ourselves forward, step by step.

Idolizing the lazy is to idolize the unthinking.

Creator’s Culture

I am attracted to the Mac and web developer community.¹ Something about it is incredibly exciting — and until today, I was not sure precisely what it is.

This morning, I read that passage from Atlas Shrugged, and it clicked. The reason I love this community is this: hard work, passion, and creation are valued more than anything else.

Think about it. Like all good communities, the Mac community has a mythology which exemplifies what members believe in. This community’s mythology is simple: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer in a garage, and through a genuine belief in the power of computers, and by working their asses off, they defined a new industry.

This mythology still guides the community. The heroes of the Mac community are mostly independent developers who, either on their own or with a small team, wrote great software and became really successful. And they did it through hard work.

Brent Simmons. Daniel Jalkut. Cabel Sasser. Wil Shipley.

There are a few characteristics they all have in common.

The first is they really believe in what they are doing. They are not developing Mac (and iPhone) applications because there is a fortune to be made — they are developing their applications because they believe they are really, really good. “Passionate” does not really capture it; this is their life’s work.

The second is hard work. Developing an application, and running a business on top of it, is incredibly difficult. But by working their asses off, even when sometimes it is tempting to give up, they have each created something great.

Brent Simmons gave this advice:

There are distractions every day and night. It’s worse if you live in a city like San Francisco: there are opportunities to hang out with your tribe every minute of every day. It’s easy to talk big about your big app.

But you have to actually build it. You have to work every day. You have to sit in the chair and stay seated. And sleep and come back to the chair. You need to wear out that chair and then buy a new one and then wear out that one.

The third is creation. In this community, production is valued. Members celebrate other individual’s hard work, congratulating them when they release their new products. And this is not some half-hearted congratulations; people mention it to others, review it on their weblog — they use their time to promote other people’s work because they believe in it, and they believe hard work by passionate people deserves to be discussed. In some cases, they do this with competing products.

That is incredible. Hard work, creativity, passion, production — that is what is rewarded and celebrated.

This community is something special, a bit of a haven of productive culture in a storm of laziness. This aspect of the community, I think, should be celebrated.

1. I mean, generally, the creative professional community, which tends to center around the Mac and web development. It is difficult to explain precisely what its bounds are, but I think you all know what I mean by it. [↩]

Chris Bowler just published an interview with Sam Brown, and as usual, it’s well done. Chris does some of the best interviews on the web.

David Pogue on Google Voice, the successor to GrandCentral.

280 North, maker of Cappuccino, has released Atlas, which is quite literally Interface Builder for web applications.

Watch the intro video. In five minutes, they build a working RSS feed reader. Not just the UI — which is incredible in and of itself — but a functioning feed reader.

Absolutely incredible.

I’ve heard complaints about Cappuccino’s performance, but they’re doing some absolutely amazing work.