A ganar credibilidad

A pesar de las exageradas reacciones que provocó en Chile la revista Time al elegir a las audiencias como el personaje del año, todo lo relacionado a la web 2.0 es tema de conversación hace rato. Lo mismo que el rol de los periodistas en la web. Algunos piensan que es un nuevo formato de profesional, otros -más sensatos- que es una "ampliación del campo de batalla". La revolución no nos exige ser diferente, pero sí nos obliga a sumar habilidades, a prepararnos para sobrevivir en diferentes plataformas y no creer que sólo la noticia es nuestro fin. Según un estudio del Pew Institute, en la década del 90, uno de cada diez personas veía noticias en la red, en lo que va del 2000, la crifra subió a uno de cada tres. Sobre esa base este artículo intenta advertir los riesgos que corren los periodista al entrar en este mundo nuevo, los desafíos y la discusiones que debemos generar. Algunos temas son un tanto atemporales, pero el autor del texto, uno de los catedráticos españoles que más ha analizado la relación del periodismo e internet, intenta sacar conclusiones sobre cómo ganar credibilidad en la red.

Por Alberto Echaluce
El periodismo en Internet se debate, en estos momentos, entre la aceptación del público y los recelos de los medios tradicionales. Después de un período de semieuforia ahora se está pagando el que no se contase con modelos de negocio claros y objetos en los periódicos digitales. Muchos de ellos aparecieron en la red por cuestiones de imagen, con mucha indefinición, y con claras incertidumbre. Como decía un artículo del suplemento Ciberpaís, “al igual que un adolescente duda si es aceptado por los demás compañeros cuando empieza a tomar concierncia de su propia existencia, el periodismo en línea sigue obsesionado por la falta de aceptación”, aunque la realidad es más bien que es su escasa rentabilidad lo que ha afectado al devenir de las empresas digitales.
Su difícil situación económica contribuye a la incertidumbre, pero, además, quienes se dedican a dar noticias por la red sufren al no ser reconocidos por sus colegas de profesión aun cuando lo son por el público. Un estudio realizado por la estadounidense Online News Association (ONA) muestra que los usuarios aceptan las noticias en línea como una fuente más de información. Valoran sobre todo la frescura de las noticias. Un 13% afirma que confía más en ellas. A la inversa, los profesionales no las consideran tan fiables: los periódicos siguen siendo las fuentes de mayor credibilidad (95%).

De ahí que se hable mucho sobre los desafíos que conlleva perseguir modelos de negocio en Internet basados en el cobro de los contenidos. Los altos costes de producción y las bajas posibilidades de monetización, han elevado las dudas sobre su viabilidad en el tiempo, más aún en un entorno hostil para obtener financiación y un retroceso considerable de los ingresos por publicidad.

Modelos para el cobro de contenidos
Sin embargo, no todo son malas noticias. En primer lugar, el cierre de miles de compañías de Internet supondrá una disminución marcada de la competencia en prácticamente todas las categorías. Esto permitirá a las supervivientes comenzar a modificar su estrategia de marketing, antes basada casi exclusivamente en la captación de nuevos lectores (cuota de mercado), para lo cual habían optado por ofrecer servicios de forma gratuita. En la actualidad, dada esta menor competencia, estas compañías han optado por comenzar a cobrar ciertos servicios/contenidos dirigiendo la estrategia de marketing hacia la fijación de precios, benchmarking y fidelización de usuarios.

De la euforia se pasó a la crisis en Internet, pero la situación de los medios de comunicación digitales se encuentran hoy en una situación de “euforia comedida”. No ha habido crisis en el número de usuarios y de lectores de los medios digitales –que de hecho sigue creciendo-, sino en cuanto a la rentabilidad de las empresas que los editan. Si algo está en crisis en cuanto a su relación con los lectores y la sociedad, es el periodismo tradicional.

Lo que sí está claro es que para que los contenidos tengan algún tipo de valor y el usuario piense en pagar por ellos, deberán contar con alguna o varias de las siguientes propiedades:
Calidad contrastada.
Que sea una información escasa en Internet.
Información muy específica (dirigida a sectores profesionales, por ejemplo).
Perecedera. El valor de ese contenido depende de su inmediatez (cotizaciones).
Personalización y segmentación del contenido dependiendo del perfil recogido del usuario.
Protegida por Derechos de Autor.
No obstante, el proceso de transición desde los contenidos gratuitos hacia contenidos pagos no será ni lineal, ni fácil, y todavía encontrará muchos obstáculos en el camino, tales como la piratería, la falta de un ente de evaluación y clasificación independiente o las reticencias del usuario a pagar por un contenido que siempre ha conseguido gratis.
Sin embargo, existen diferentes circunstancias que mejorarán las perspectivas de los negocios online basados en el cobro de contenidos:
El aumento de la conexiones por banda ancha, especialmente en España, hará que se abran nuevas perspectivas para negocios de pago como los juegos online, la música digital, el vídeo bajo demanda, etc.
El surgimiento de nuevas modalidades comerciales (adopción de los sistemas de micropagos para importes muy pequeños).
La menor competencia derivada de la escasez de ingresos que proporciona la publicidad en Internet, que no cubre los costes de producción.
En segundo lugar, las compañías tradicionales que en un primer momento debieron ofrecer sus servicios/contenidos de forma gratuita por la competencia de los nuevos jugadores (las punto com), han impulsado el cobro de los contenidos. A medida que el mercado de capitales se secaba, las empresas tradicionales (brick & mortars) no vieron con tan buenos ojos canibalizar sus canales de distribución off-line de forma gratuita y han sido una de las pioneras en perseguir el cobro de servicios/contenidos.
Existen dos grandes modalidades para monetizar los contenidos:
La primera es mediante el cobro de una suscripción. Las compañías en su mayoría han optado por incluir ciertos contenidos gratuitos y otros de pago. A esta última categoría se la suele llamar "Premium" o "Restringida". Un ejemplo claro han sido los diarios Wall Street Journal (EEUU), Expansion (España), Gazeta Mercantil (Brasil) y Ámbito Financiero (Argentina), entre muchos otros, quienes cobran una suscripción mensual/anual para acceder a las zonas restringidas.
El segundo caso, basado en el nivel de consumo, es la modalidad de pago por uso que relaciona el cobro con el nivel de consumo de los usuarios.


Credibilidad
Un aspecto importante es la credibilidad y el sentido crítico que deberán de adoptar en un futuro los periódicos digitales para sobrevivir. La cuestión, pregunta Bruce Koon, presidente de ONA, 'es saber si hay algo referente a la ética profesional y a las prácticas de los nuevos medios de comunicación que justifica la reserva de quienes trabajan en los medios tradicionales, o si los medios tradicionales se resisten a aceptar la emergencia de esta nueva fuente de noticias'.
Dos elementos juegan a favor del primer punto: la falta de personal suficiente. Entre los 72 sitios investigados por ONA, las tres cuartas partes emplean menos de 10 personas y el resto, una.
Los detalles del estudio fueron discutido durante la quinta conferencia anual sobre nuevos medios de comunicación organizada los pasados 14 y 15 de marzo por la escuela de periodismo de la Universidad de California en Berkeley y por la escuela Anennberg de la Universidad de California del Sur, en Los Ángeles.

La necesaria interactividad
La reticencia de los medios tradicionales frente a la red se mide por la interactividad que Internet permite. Un estudio revela que algunas de las instituciones más prestigiosas, The New York Times, The Washington Post o de CNN no dan la dirección de correo electróncio de sus periodistas. Una participante citó el ejemplo de Jon Katz, conocido analista de la cibercultura, a quien el New York Times le negó el derecho de poner su dirección de email al final de una columna. Katz se negó a publicarla. La distancia del dicho al hecho es grande. El 70% de los dirigentes de los 500 diarios más importantes de EE UU afirmaban en julio pasado que la interactividad era lo más importante de la red según reveló entonces un estudio del Pew Center for Civic Journalism. El 63% de estos editores aseguraban entonces que proporcionaban el correo electrónico de los autores de los artículos publicados en la web.
Un ejemplo interesante de interactividad puede ser el quw habla, Rusty Foster,quien se presenta como 'un programador' al servicio de una comunidad de gente interesada por la tecnología y la cultura. El contenido de su sitio lo aportan los internautas. 'No hay una línea natural que separe a los consumidores de los productores de noticias' estima Foster. 'La red es por naturaleza un medio bi-direccional' en el que se reciben y mandan noticias. Y da un consejo a quién busca aumentar la credibilidad de estos medios: 'La gente juzga sobre la base de los enlaces. Si afirman algo, más vale dar un enlace que corrobore el dato.
Nora Paul, Directora del Instituto de estudios sobre nuevos medios de comunicación, también ofrece una buena fórmula: 'Un sitio no es algo que la gente lee, es algo que hace. Visitar un sitio es una actividad'. Por todo ello, los medios digitales deben encontrar su propia forma de convivencia con una publicidad que, dada la inmadurez del medio y los escasos resultados obtenidos hasta ahora, se ve impulsada a una experimentación que en ocasiones resulta demasiado intrusiva para los usuarios. Internet permitirá avanzar hacia nuevos formatos de publicidad basados en la personalización, la relación de confianza con el receptor y el manejo adecuado de bases de datos.

Condiciones profesionales
La organización del III Congreso Nacional de Periodismo ha constatado, en buena parte de las intervenciones de sus ponentes, la preocupación existente ante las condiciones profesionales en las que trabajan los periodistas del medio Internet, así como por los obstáculos adicionales que los informadores encuentran muchas veces a la hora de realizar su trabajo.
Por ello, este Congreso hizo un llamamiento a las asociaciones y organizaciones de periodistas para que intensifiquen sus esfuerzos en favor de la equiparación plena de los informadores del medio Internet con sus colegas de la prensa escrita, radio, televisión, agencias de prensa y cualquier otro de los medios convencionales, así como para la defensa de sus derechos profesionales.

Derechos de autor
Entre los periodistas digitales hay una creciente preocupación por el desequilibrio en la relación entre las empresas editoras y los profesionales a la hora de negociar la defensa de los derechos de propiedad intelectual, un desequilibrio agudizado con la aparición de los medios digitales. Esto hace que existan dudas sobre la eficacia de la actual legislación sobre propiedad intelectual para defender los derechos del periodista como autor. La proliferación de los resúmenes de prensa sin que paguen derechos de propiedad intelectual es constante y esto supone un desprecio a los medios que han originado las informaciones originales. Igualmente, la irrupción de Internet en el mundo de la comunicación ha difuminado la figura y el papel del periodista y ha empeorado en muchos casos las condiciones laborales, fenómeno que se da igualmente en Estados Unidos.
Finalmente, entre las conclusiones del III Congreso de Periodismo Digital se apuntaba una reflexión importante, “los periodistas digitales deben esforzarse en informar de otra manera, manteniendo la actitud humanista que siempre ha caracterizado el buen periodismo y reflexionando sobre cuáles son los contenidos que interesan de verdad a los lectores. Los medios digitales necesitan ante todo buenos periodistas que sepan, además, aprovechar todas las virtudes de este nuevo medio”.

El golpe noticioso de Yahoo

Hace un buen rato que Yahoo mira con atención los medios tradicionales. Crearon una experiencia de corresponsales audiovisuales para su sitio de noticias y están realizando diversas investigaciones sobre el valor que las audiencias le asignan a cada medio. Pero sin duda, estas intensiones no igualan al acuerdo que acaba de suscribir con los grandes grupos informativos estadounidenses -Belo, Cox Newspapers, Hearst Newspapers, Journal Register, Lee Enterprises, MediaNews Group y E.W. Scripps- que en total suman 170 diarios. La idea del convenio es que los contenidos de los periódicos se incluyan en los sitios web de Yahoo. Por otro lado, Yahoo pondrá a disposición de los periódicos sus mapas, la tecnología de búsqueda, los listados de eventos y otros contenidos, como HotJobs, el sitio de empleo del portal estadounidense. El acuerdo es muy importante -y así fue recibido por Wall Street- porque genera un sistema de cooperación entre dos mundos que hasta ahora no habían convergido de esta manera. Hace unas semanas Google anunció que pondrá avisos en los 50 principales diarios de ese país, pero de ninguna manera esa decisión se acerca al nivel de integración al que apunta Yahoo. Acá tres puntos de vista sobre esta alianza.


www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2006/11/20/the-yahoos-and-yahoo/
Today’s announcement of a big deal between Yahoo and a bunch of midlevel newspaper conglomerates has its benefits for both. But I can’t help but thinking that this is a meeting of old, old-media companies and the new, old-media company, Yahoo.
The benefits: The newspapers will get local functionality they need and new means of selling automated ads they don’t have and they will tame the beast they thought was a competitor. And Yahoo will get more content (can it ever get enough?).
But they’re both trying to maintain old businesses and old models.
Classified hasn’t just moved online; it’s dead as a category. Craig didn’t kill it. He was merely the first and smartest to see that the internet connects buyers and sellers directly. It massacres middlemen. And both newspapers and Yahoo still want to be middlemen. So the real challenge is to figure out how to enable transactions in new ways.
They talk a lot about content but in a linked world, the goal is not just to own more content but to create a new relationship to more of it: ‘We find the good stuff, wherever it is’ which used to be Yahoo’s goal and should be again — and must become the goal of newspapers as well.



www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/technology/20yahoo.html?ex=1321678800&en=22dde890ebf05917&ei=
5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology, another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat.
In the first phase of the deal, the newspaper companies will begin posting their employment classified ads on Yahoo’s classified jobs site, HotJobs, and start using HotJobs technology to run their own online career ads.
But the long-term goal of the alliance with Yahoo, according to one senior executive at a participating newspaper company, is to be able to have the content of these newspapers tagged and optimized for searching and indexing by Yahoo.
In that way, local news — one of the pillars of the newspaper business — would become part of a large information network that would increase usefulness for readers and value to advertisers.
“Now the industry has religion about the Internet, based on what has happened to the business in recent years,” said the executive, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak for his company. “So there is a lot more genuine enthusiasm today.”
The agreement could also come at an opportune time for Yahoo, which is seeking to regain the confidence of investors and the luster it has lost with some marketers.
The deal could also help position the company as a willing partner for traditional media companies, an effective counterpunch to a deal its archrival, Google, signed with 50 papers a few weeks ago, and could help it capture a larger portion of the fragmented local advertising market.


http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=219204
In another step towards creating the most comprehensive advertising network in the online industry, Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced a strategic partnership with more than 150 daily U.S. newspapers to deliver search, graphical and classified advertising to consumers in the communities where they live and work. Beginning with recruitment advertising, the newspapers and Yahoo! HotJobs are bringing one of the largest online audiences, targeting capabilities, local expertise and advertising power to recruiters. In addition, the consortium plans to work together to provide search, content, and local applications across the newspapers' Web sites.
Adding to Yahoo!'s list of high-quality partners across its search, graphical and classified advertising networks, such as eBay and Right Media, members of the newly formed consortium include: Belo Corp.; Cox Newspapers Inc.; Hearst Newspapers; Journal Register Company; Lee Enterprises, Incorporated; MediaNews Group; and, The E.W. Scripps Company. The newspapers in this consortium reach 38 states, and include major market dailies such as the San Francisco Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Houston Chronicle, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, San Jose Mercury-News, New Haven Register and the Commercial Appeal (Memphis).
"This announcement is consistent with our strategy to establish relationships that advance Yahoo!'s objective of securing leading positions where we see the biggest prospects for growth," said Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. "We believe the local segment is largely untapped and provides significant opportunities to expand audience engagement and subsequently grow local advertising. With our powerful reach, content, technology, local tools and advertising capabilities, Yahoo! is uniquely positioned to seize these opportunities, especially as we continue to enhance our search monetization efforts and to extend our leadership position in graphical advertising."

El blog de Arcadi

Arcadi Espada es uno de los intelectuales catalanes más respetados. Más allá de las críticas que recibe por jugar muy cerca de algunas importantes casas editoriales, su blog es uno de los más visitados dentro del mundo cultural y periodístico en España. De hecho, ganó el premio al mejor blog en el Congreso de Periodismo Digital de Huesca -por lejos el más importante de España- en 2005. Sus tópicos son el periodismo, el trabajo de los medios y el mundo cultural que los circunda. Letras Libres, su versión española, publicó esta entrevista en la cual Espada se hace cargo de sus críticas e intenta explicar la importancia de su blog. http://www.letraslibres.com/index.php?art=9956


Por Ramón González Férriz
Con el aire inequívoco de un moralista francés, dispuesto a pelearse con quien haga falta para demostrar que el mal uso de un adjetivo puede ser consecuencia de un desorden moral, Arcadi Espada ha emprendido la creación de una obra literaria que es, desde su génesis, un experimento. Autor de libros memorables como Contra Cataluña, Raval y Diarios —que le valió el premio Espasa de Ensayo en 2002—, Espada está redactando un nuevo tomo de reflexiones diarísticas en forma de blog: una página Web en la que a diario, "casi siempre antes de las once de la mañana", expone en público su particular lectura de los periódicos del día. Así pues, en www.arcadi.espasa.com ajusticia la retórica de un nuevo alto cargo del Estado, se mofa de los ardides objetivistas del periodismo gráfico y pone a parir los tics narcotizantes de la prosa de los periódicos. Nada que no hubiera hecho hasta ahora, pero con una novedad: lo hace desde Internet, a bocajarro, vetándose la tranquilidad que otorga la corrección, en frío, de unas galeradas. Y todavía más: albergando a través del Nickjournal —una exitosa sección de su página Web en la que los lectores de sus textos pueden opinar sobre lo que ha escrito— la contestación inmediata de una media de 150 comentaristas virtuales que glosan, alaban o deploran lo que a Espada se le ha ocurrido durante el desayuno. El resultado de este experimento será publicado en forma de libro el año que viene.

Escribe usted su blog a partir de las fallas que detecta en la prensa.

Sí. Pero en contra de lo que creen algunos, yo no analizo las erratas que se publican en los periódicos. Mis análisis son de carácter semántico, es decir, moral. Me gusta mucho citar a Valéry y decir que la sintaxis es un valor moral, pero lo cierto es que esta frase tiene una confirmación empírica. Casi siempre las quiebras del sentido, de la sintaxis, dejan entrever una quiebra moral.

Pero eso es tanto como afirmar que, moralmente, los diarios son estupidarios.

Los periódicos son un sumidero de idées reçues. Tienen mucho de conjura de los necios. Sus errores están en muchos casos provocados por la inercia y la necedad. Pero también se producen errores deliberados, de raíz ideológica. Hay quien considera que los periódicos se rigen por las conspiraciones de los malos, por sus cálculos...

En cualquier caso, usted ha decidido reflexionar sobre estos errores escribiendo un libro en público, sin otorgarse la posibilidad de corregir, no ya su propia sintaxis, sino sus juicios morales.

Esto es algo que me preocupa poco. Mi blog es un diario que tiene la rareza de que se hace en público, de tal modo que los lectores pueden ir viendo el work in progress. Cuando publique el libro, que será una antología de lo escrito, voy a acompañarlo de un disquete con la versión diaria, porque me parece que es interesante que los lectores puedan analizar cómo ha ido cambiando mi escritura, cómo se ha ido resituando. Escribir un libro en público tiene muchos problemas, pero el de la rectificación no me preocupa. Sí lo hace otro, por ejemplo: yo creo que la descripción de la intimidad, como decía Josep Pla, es el principal problema literario. Yo nunca me he dedicado a la escritura de la intimidad, porque mis trabajos siempre han versado sobre asuntos públicos. Pero a pesar de ello, en los meses que hace que llevo el blog, no he sabido dar con una voz que fuera más cercana a la intimidad, a la cotidianidad... No lo he conseguido hasta ahora y no sé si lo conseguiré. Lo cierto es que no puedo olvidarme de que mi escritura, en este caso, responde a un proceso determinado: yo escribo un documento Word que de alguna manera pertenece a mi intimidad, pero inmediatamente se cuelga en Internet y se convierte en algo público.

Entonces, la frontera entre lo íntimo y lo público se difumina.

Mis diarios son una reflexión sobre lo público. Pero vuelvo a mi opinión sobre la prensa: así como creo que no se puede escribir periodismo sin reflexionar sobre los mecanismos de producción del mensaje periodístico, me parece que se debe explicar quién es uno a la hora de contar lo público. Creo que el yo, en contra de lo que opina el pensamiento reaccionario, no es una muestra de prepotencia. El yo es una muestra de precariedad. Porque es un yo exhibido y por lo tanto sujeto al comentario, a la vulneración. Ese yo, en una aventura como la de mi blog, es importante, y a mí me gustaría encontrar la manera de que circulara con más naturalidad. Que la gente supiera qué cosas hago, cuál es el rastro de mis opiniones. Entre otras cosas porque creo que Proust estaba equivocado en su polémica con Saint-Beuve. Saint-Beuve ha acabado teniendo razón. Por mucho que Proust dijera que la obra no es hija de un ser social... Eso es pura retórica. El proceso mediante el cual la vida de un escritor, aun para impugnarla, se convierte en materia literaria, es uno de los procesos más fascinantes de la literatura, quizá el que más.

Eso recuerda las reflexiones de Pla sobre el periodismo y la autobiografía.

Yo tengo dos cosas muy claras con respecto a mi poética. Una es la absoluta convicción de que cualquier relato periodístico ha de interrogarse sobre los mecanismos que lo producen en el mismo relato. La segunda es que esta deconstrucción debe utilizarse también con respecto al yo.

¿Pero eso no convertiría toda noticia o apunte autobiográfico, por breve que fuera, en una larguísima crónica?

¿Y qué? Uno de los problemas del lenguaje periodístico es su carácter narcotizador. Aunque yo estoy en contra de los injertos entre novela y periodismo, el new journalism surgió en respuesta a este hecho. Y es que cuando escribes "Cuatro magrebíes mueren al volcar la patera..." lo más probable es que el lector se acabe perdiendo en la hipnosis de la frase y olvidándose de los magrebíes. Y la obligación de todo periodista es rescatar el mensaje de la hipnosis.

Volvamos al blog. Una de las cosas que más sorprenden de él es la cantidad de comentarios que suscita entre los lectores. Tiene asiduos que le responden y comentan sus opiniones con una inmensa seriedad.

Sí, muy en serio. Una de las grandes novedades del libro que publicaré el año que viene es que va a incluir muchos fragmentos de los comentarios. En el blog se han producido dos cosas que me parecen muy importantes. En primer lugar, su recepción genérica, que ha superado todas las expectativas. En estos momentos, la Web recibe cada día casi dos mil visitas, aunque el número real tal vez sea superior porque éste es el número de ip que se conectan. Y después la creación de una comunidad virtual de valor extraordinario. Al principio la sección se llamaba Comentarios, pero me he visto obligado a cambiarle el nombre, por coherencia, y ahora se llama Nickjournal, porque se ha convertido en un periódico diario de gente que escribe bajo un nick.

Veo, pues, que le ha cogido gusto a escribir en Internet.

Por supuesto. Cuando tengo uno de mis delirios mañaneros, después de leer los periódicos y ponerme como loco, puedo ir a Internet y colocar, detrás de una palabra, fotos, fragmentos de radio, enlaces. Eso, para un escritor de diarios, es maravilloso Estoy fascinado con las posibilidades que tiene con la escritura. Y luego está la relación con el lector.

Que a mí me parece semejante a la que Montaigne proponía en sus ensayos.

Claro. Montaigne escribe su obra porque se le muere La Boétie, el amigo con el que conversaba. Y a mí me parece que Internet no es más que una gran conversación, la recuperación de la conversación como instrumento de conocimiento. Y tiene la virtud de que todo descubrimiento que se haga en ella está sometido al empirismo inmediato. Además está lo del nick: es cierto que ensalza la libertad de calumnia, pero acaba con un vicio muy pernicioso de la cultura, que es el argumento de autoridad. Internet es lo más importante que le ha sucedido a mi vida intelectual en los últimos años. -

Amazon y el poder de las minorías

Qué Pasa publicó este artículo sobre una de las empresas más interesante en la era digital y fiel reflejo del poder de las audiencias, tanto de las masivas como de las acotadas. Su motor de búsqueda -Amaztype- se ha convertido en un barómetro para medir los gustos y las preferencias de los lectores. Al revés, Amazon usa información sobre ventas previas para sugerir productos potencialmente relevantes para clientes frecuentes. Para los amantes del periodismo participativo Amazon es un instrumento que permite mejorar procedimientos, incorporarse eficientemente a su sistema de afiliados y conseguir donaciones en línea. Como sea, este artículo muestra el nuevo mundo y las nuevas apuestas de la compañía de Jeff Bezos. El texto es de Ángel Jiménez de Luis, columnista del suplemento Ariadn@ del diario El Mundo y de la Qué Pasa.


Por Angel Jiménez de Luis

Dice de sí mismo que su cualidad más distintiva es su risa pero ¿de qué se ríe hoy Jeffrey P. Bezos? Seleccionado hombre del año 1999 por la revista Time, el fundador de Amazon.com fue durante un lustro el espejo en el que se miraban todos los emprendedores de Silicon Valley; la historia de éxito que todos querían repetir. Imposible abrir una revista y no ver su foto, imposible asistir a una conferencia en la que él no hablara de las bondades de la red. A punto de producirse el cambio de siglo, Bezos logró ser más famoso que el mitificado “efecto 2000”, el genio capaz de crear la marca por excelencia del comercio en la red.
Cuatro años antes de obtener este reconocimiento, Bezos se despedía de su trabajo en Shaw & Co, el grupo inversor y tecnológico de Wall Street y se trasladaba a la costa oeste, a Seattle, la ciudad en la que tiene su sede Microsoft. “Voy a hacer una pequeña locura, voy a construir una empresa que venda libros por la red”, dijo a sus familiares y amigos. Así nació Amazon.
Seducido por las historias de otras grandes empresas del valle, Bezos fabricó la firma.com perfecta. Fue creada en un simple garaje -a pesar de tener dinero suficiente para arrendar una oficina convencional-, con un nombre pensado para figurar en los primeros resultados de los buscadores de la época, que ordenaban las páginas de forma alfabética; con el trasfondo de la vieja historia de David contra Goliat, del pequeño librero online de Seattle contra las grandes editoriales y centros comerciales nacionales. Un brillante ejercicio de marketing.
“Construir una compañía duradera” era una de las consignas que Bezos repetía a los empleados de la entonces joven aventura empresarial. Un lugar en internet que amasaba pérdidas trimestre tras trimestre pero que encerraba la promesa de la revolución del comercio electrónico. Las previsiones de Bezos no dejaban lugar a dudas: Amazon sería una máquina de perder dinero durante al menos cinco años, pero el esfuerzo merecería la pena. Funcionó. Hoy, con más de 12.000 empleados y ganancias netas anuales de US$ 359 millones en 2005, Amazon puede estar segura de ser una empresa duradera y no una de las tantas startup que sedujeron a los inversores durante el cambio de siglo, pero que se hundieron al explotar la burbuja tecnológica.

Miles de cajas con una sonrisa, el logotipo de la compañía, se mueven cada día repartiendo todo tipo de artículos por el planeta, desde los libros que vieron nacer a la firma hace más de una década hasta piezas de recambio para automóviles, pasando por artículos de electrónica, joyería y ropa. El gran bazar de internet, el centro comercial definitivo al que se accede con un solo clic.
Su éxito ha permitido a Bezos figurar en la lista de los hombres más ricos del planeta, aunque su posición en ella varía con la velocidad propia de los negocios de la era digital. En 1999 disfrutaba de la decimonovena fortuna más grande del mundo, según la lista oficial de la revista Forbes. Tres años más tarde, y con las acciones de la compañía en mínimos históricos, Bezos se había “hundido” hasta el puesto 293. Hoy ocupa el lugar 70, que comparte con el creador de La Guerra de las Galaxias, George Lucas, gracias a unos recursos personales valorados en US$ 3.600 millones.

Con ese dinero, Bezos se ha permitido algunos caprichos, como la creación de una empresa aeronáutica decidida a hacer asequibles los vuelos espaciales. Blue Origin, nombre de esta nueva aventura, fue una de las compañías que se quedaron ad portas de ganar el premio Ansari X por llevar una aeronave reutilizable y tripulada al espacio dos veces y en menos de dos semanas. El galardón, que finalmente consiguió el SpaceShipOne, atrajo a un nutrido grupo de inversores de empresas tecnológicas, desde el cofundador de Microsoft, Paul Allen -que financió a la aeronave ganadora- hasta John Carmack, gurú de los videojuegos y creador de la popular saga Doom.
A pesar de no quedarse con el premio, los esfuerzos de Bezos en el espacio continúan. Enamorado del cosmos desde su infancia -su discurso al terminar el bachillerato versó sobre la necesidad de la especie humana de colonizar otros planetas-, Bezos ha confesado en varias ocasiones que quiere construir la primera estación espacial privada. Todos los recursos de la nueva compañía están enfocados a mejorar las condiciones de vida de los humanos en el espacio y abaratar la forma de llegar a él.

¿Y qué hago ahora?
Pero cuando baja la mirada de las estrellas, Bezos se encuentra con un mundo que ha cambiado mucho en unos pocos años. Amazon ha conseguido el éxito: es el comercio en internet por excelencia y el rasero por el que se mide el éxito o fracaso de los productos. Hace dos semanas, cuando Microsoft sacó a la venta su nuevo reproductor MP3, el Zune, las listas de ventas en Amazon fueron el dato utilizado por los analistas para certificar la mala salud del nuevo proyecto. Lo mismo puede decirse de los libros. Su posición en las listas de ventas del popular sitio de internet es hoy tan importante para las editoriales, como figurar en el ranking de ventas de los grandes diarios norteamericanos.

Sin embargo, Amazon pasa completamente desapercibida en la era de las web 2.0. En un mundo en el que YouTube, Google, Flickr o Myspace son las niñas bonitas del ciberespacio, ¿puede esta tienda seguir considerándose una empresa “.com”? Los intentos de la firma por ponerse a la altura de los nuevos tiempos han tenido resultados dispares y no han conseguido devolver a la marca el aire fresco y rebelde de las compañías tecnológicas.
Bezos ha tratado de introducirse en el mercado de los buscadores con A9, un servicio que sirve tanto para buscar artículos dentro de la enorme tienda virtual que es Amazon como para llegar a páginas web, imágenes o documentos de la red. Sin embargo, algunas de sus funciones más esperadas, como un avanzado mapa de calles, han cerrado por el escaso interés que consiguieron despertar y producto de la feroz competencia de los servicios de Google y Microsoft. A9 Maps, nombre del proyecto, contaba con una base de datos de más de 35 millones de fotografías tomadas desde la calle para generar imágenes realistas desde el punto de vista del peatón, una idea que ha sido aprovechada por el servicio de páginas amarillas del buscador.
Su otra gran apuesta, Unbox, pretende competir en el complejo mercado de las descargas de video y el arriendo digital de películas, un sector que está en plena revolución en EE.UU. y en el que las grandes productoras se han aliado para asegurar férreas medidas de protección en contra de la piratería. Ha sido criticado desde el principio por la escasa comprensión de las necesidades del usuario, ya que impide ver filmes descargados en otros computadores o grabar un disco DVD para disfrutar el cine en la tele de la casa. Además el servicio no funciona con computadores que no usen el sistema operativo Windows y tiene a gigantes de la talla de Apple y Microsoft como grandes enemigos.

Reinvención de Amazon
A principios de noviembre, Bezos estaba dispuesto a transformar la percepción de su compañía y se presentó como ponente en la cumbre Web 2.0 de San Francisco, una cita joven donde, normalmente, las caras pertenecen a empresas con mucho menos andadura y éxito que Amazon. Ante un público desligado de la primera revolución de la red, Bezos habló de la nueva estrategia para su firma. “Todavía no he encontrado una manera de explicarla muy bien. Espero que ustedes me ayuden”, dijo y acto seguido empezó a hablar de una idea tan simple como sorprendente: Amazon dejará en poco tiempo de ser una firma centrada exclusivamente en la venta de productos y comenzará a ofrecer servicios de almacenamiento de información y arriendo de capacidad de proceso. Pasará a ser, en palabras del propio fundador, una “nube de recursos informáticos” que podrán arrendarse temporalmente y en las dosis necesarias.
Así, Bezos pretende crear la infraestructura online de un negocio, al que se accederá simplemente pulsando el botón de un mando a distancia. Amazon también arrendará sus sistemas de distribución de productos físicos a terceros y el espacio de sus almacenes y sus programas para control de inventario. Se convertirá en una plataforma flexible sobre la que podrán operar compañías de terceros, incluso negocios competidores de la propia Amazon: un cambio de rumbo tan profundo que ha puesto muy nerviosos a los accionistas, pero que parece haber entusiasmado a los tecnófilos más ardientes de Silicon Valley, que ya han podido probar algunas de sus bondades.

Si el primer Amazon consiguió que la distancia de querer y tener un producto se hiciera realidad con un solo clic, esta segunda “revolución” pondrá la misma simplicidad en pasar de una idea de negocio a un negocio real y operativo.
Este servicio estará complementado, además, por otra de las grandes iniciativas que Bezos ha puesto en marcha durante los últimos meses: la del Turco Mecánico, llamada así en honor a la máquina de jugar al ajedrez que logró fascinar a las cortes europeas en el siglo XVIII y que escondía en realidad a un verdadero jugador de ajedrez humano en su interior. Funciona como una inteligencia artificial ficticia a la que se le pueden encargar pequeños trabajos que requieren mucha capacidad de proceso o que los computadores no pueden resolver con precisión -como el reconocimiento de objetos en fotografías- y que luego distribuye a cientos de personas en el planeta, que se reparten el trabajo y cobran pequeñas cantidades de dinero por él.
Una de las primeras tareas de este proyecto fue asegurar que los comercios listados en las páginas amarillas de A9, el buscador antes mencionado, estuvieran representados en las fotos que acompañaban al mapa de calles, un trabajo que ningún computador podría hacer con la eficacia de un ser humano. Hoy es utilizado por las más variadas empresas, desde aquellas que buscan crear etiquetas inteligentes para videos y fotografías -o resúmenes de las escenas más significativas- hasta transcripciones de grandes archivos de audio.

Los riesgos de “una pequeña locura”
El nuevo rumbo de Amazon no está exento de polémica. Ha sido calificado como “maniobra arriesgada” por varios analistas, ya que dicen que el alto gasto en tecnología que ha realizado la compañía durante los últimos años -más de US$ 2 mil millones- va a afectar negativamente los resultados. Se espera que las utilidades del gigante para este año sean de US$_180 millones, menos de la mitad que el pasado ejercicio y muy lejos de los US$ 588 millones de 2004, el año en el que Amazon resucitó de entre los muertos que dejó el estallido de la burbuja “.com”.
Una nueva pequeña locura de Bezos en la que los inversores tendrán que volver a hacer un ejercicio de fe. La primera no salió mal. Amazon es hoy una compañía valorada en _US$ 10 mil millones. Pero aún está por verse si este giro sorprendente de Bezos es capaz de devolver a la empresa a su sitial de antaño, y a él mismo, el sex appeal de la época dorada de la tecnología.

El New Yorker de Remnick

El New Yorker es de las pocas revistas que pocos critican. Los comentarios negativos en general van para los que dicen leerlos sin hacerlo realmente. Más allá de las cursilerias o las ignorancias, mientras muchas revistas se mueren el New Yorker vende más de un millón de ejemplares semanalmente y mantienen un prestigio que ni siquiera se debilitó cuando su director, David Remnick, apoyó la aventura de Bush en Irak. El siguiente texto de The Observer hace un análisis de la revista -que cumplió 87 años- y especialmente de Remnick, quien desde 1998 -año que tomó la dirección del medio- ha mantenido su prestigio y logró que después de mucho tiempo luciera números azules. Un hecho inédito, al menos desde que la editorial Conde Nast la adquiriera en 1985. Remnick ganó el Pultizer y fue durante mucho tiempo cronista deportivo -de hecho publicó una biografía de Mohamed Alí, que en el fondo es la historia de los conflictos raciales en EE.UU.-, pero la aventura del New Yorker es sin duda lo que lo ha consagrado.


Everybody has a cartoon of themselves,' suggests David Remnick, the editor of a magazine famous for them. 'Mine is: I write very fast, and I'm ruthlessly efficient with my time.'
As New Yorker cartoons go, the image wouldn't appear to hold much promise of a punch line, but Remnick doesn't mind it, and it contains, after all, a certain amount of truth. 'I'm not the slowest writer that you know,' he admits, adding with characteristic wryness: 'For better or for worse, by the way. AJ Liebling, one of my heroes, used to say that he could write better than anyone who wrote faster, and faster than anyone who could write better. I'm one nine-hundredth as good as Liebling, but that principle may slightly apply.'
Remnick, who was for many years the New Yorker's star reporter, covering - in the tradition of AJ Liebling - an almost alarming range of subjects with grace and dexterity, has edited the magazine for the past eight years and quietly, seriously, changed its fortunes. He is the fifth editor in the New Yorker's 81-year history and, by reputation - as his thumbnail self-portrait implies - its least eccentric.
So many memoirs have now been written about the distinguished publication that Harold Ross, its founder and first editor, has gone down in history as a maddening, well-connected workaholic who sacrificed three marriages to his literary invention. It is widely known that his successor, William Shawn, was neurotic, nuanced, almost pathologically shy, and that Robert Gottlieb, a gifted interloper, possessed a museum-worthy collection of plastic purses. In more recent memory, Tina Brown hired big-name writers at vast expense, threw celebrity-strewn bashes to promote the magazine (all of which resulted in a rumoured loss of up to $20m annually) and was supposed to have rejected any story that couldn't hold her attention on the StairMaster.
It could be said that Brown's methods were not eccentric but merely attuned to the demands of Eighties and Nineties culture. Equally, Remnick's non-partying ethic and commitment to world affairs might be thought the only appropriate way forward for a post-9/11 magazine. Remnick, who was hired by Brown, has never been critical of her tenure, and is inviolably modest about his own contribution. 'My background is as a reporter and foreign correspondent, but it's hard to separate what one's natural inclinations are from the times,' he tells me. 'My time as editor has been overlapped by a crisis - a prolonged, labyrinthine, tragic, seemingly non-ending crisis - that involves the prehistory of 9/11, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, fraught histories between the United States and almost everyone.' Remnick's colleague Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling books The Tipping Point and Blink, says, similarly, that 'we live in a suddenly serious time, where people have an appetite for intelligent, thoughtful explanations of consequential topics'.
Yet how can Remnick's editorial strategy be considered inevitable when no one else is doing what he does? However frequently Graydon Carter may address the bungles of the Bush administration in his letters from the editor in Vanity Fair, he feels compelled, more often than not, to feature a cover star in a bikini. Meanwhile, on another floor of the Conde Nast building, the New Yorker puts Seymour Hersh's investigations of national security on the cover and has the highest subscription renewal rate of any magazine in the country. It has a circulation of over 1m, and although it is privately owned and such figures are not publicly available, it is thought to be turning a profit of around $10m.
Celebrity culture is far from over; if you wrote a plan for a magazine and said you thought you could make a profit by publishing 8,000-word pieces on the future of various African nations, hefty analyses of the pension system and a three-part series on global warming, hordes of people would laugh in your face. So how has Remnick done it? Before I met him, I asked this of an acclaimed New York journalist, who said: 'If you can work that out, you will have the scoop of the century. No one knows.'

Remnick is well aware of the apparent mystery, which is why no focus group is ever involved in an editorial decision. As he puts it, it doesn't take a genius to work out that one hundred per cent of his readers are not going to get home from work, put their keys down and say: You know, honey, what I need to do now is read 10,000 words on Congo. 'So you throw it out there, and you hope that there are some things that people will immediately read - cartoons, shorter things, Anthony Lane, Talk of the Town. And then, eventually, the next morning on the train, somebody sees this piece, and despite its seeming formidableness, they read it.'
You might say that what looks at first like common sense is David Remnick's most winning eccentricity.

We meet at the New Yorker offices in Times Square on an obscenely hot day in August. Remnick extends a courtly, ironic offer of rehydration: 'Coffee? Water? Drip?' His glass box of an office is decorated with original cover art and scattered photographs - a portrait of AJ Liebling sitting under an apple tree; Dean Rohrer's wonderful image of Monica Lewinsky as the Mona Lisa. On his desk is a rare book about Jean-Luc Godard, in French.

He has just returned from Arkansas, where he met Bill Clinton for a long profile he is writing, and he spent the end of last week editing a cover story on Hizbollah by John Lee Anderson with an exceptionally fast turnaround. Another reporter calls from the Middle East as I arrive. Yet here is Remnick, blithe and witty as anything, behaving more or less as Fred Astaire would, if only a role had been scripted for him by Philip Roth.

Reporting, a new collection of Remnick's writing from the New Yorker, has just been published. It reveals not only the scope of his interests - he is as lucid about the PLO as he is touching about Solzhenitsyn, as excruciatingly accurate about Tony Blair as he is compelling on the subject of Mike Tyson's trainer - but also the deceptive straightforwardness of his style.
Remnick won a Pulitzer Prize for his first book, Lenin's Tomb, in 1994, and the great pleasure of that book, which gives a kaleidoscopic account of the fall of the Soviet Union, was that you felt party to the open mind of a reporter (originally at the Washington Post) who followed his instincts at every turn. He didn't mind telling you, for instance, that his wife's family had been interned in camps in the country to which they were now returning; if he saw someone handing out flyers in the street, he would delve deeply into their purposes; he was not shy of doorstepping ancient members of the KGB. In that first book, as in his others - a follow-up about Russia called Resurrection; a collection of pieces entitled The Devil Problem; a story about Muhammad Ali called King of the World; and Reporting - simply turned sentences open up vistas of complication. Yet the quality that Remnick shows most in conversation is his capacity for self-deprecation. He opens a profile of Katharine Graham, the imperious proprietor of the Washington Post and his sometime boss, with a story about his own involvement in the Post's historic interview with Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in 1988:

'As the junior man in the bureau, I was given the task of finding the hairdresser. I would not insist that Moscow was short on luxury in those days, except to note that I did not so much find a hairdresser as create one. At one of the embassies, I found a young woman who was said to own a blow-dryer and a brush. I rang her up and explained the situation. Gravely, as if we were negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, I gave her an annotated copy of Vogue, a mug shot of Mrs Graham, and a hundred dollars.
"You're on," she said.
'Apparently, the interview went well. It was featured, with a photograph, in the next day's edition of Pravda. Mrs Graham looked quite handsome, I thought. A nice full head of hair, and well combed. I felt close to history.'

In a piece about Tony Blair written just before the last election, Remnick witnesses, behind the scenes, the Prime Minister's utter humiliation at the hands of Little Ant and Little Dec. In a profile of Al Gore he reveals that Gore employs a private chef who still addresses him, years after his presidential defeat, as 'Mr Vice-President'. He gets to hang out with the famously publicity-shy Philip Roth in his most feverishly creative period; he visits Solzhenitsyn and his wife as they prepare to return to Russia. Yet in a preface to the book, Remnick alerts the reader to the fact that most of his subjects are public figures who do their best not to let their guard down. Why offer the warning? To suggest we'll never find out about them?

'No,' he replies, 'so that you'll find out about them in a different way.' With politicians, 'you've got press secretaries, and you've got a very, very self-conscious actor, who's performing in public and the course of whose career is dependent on how he's going to appear to some degree. And he's very experienced at it. And any question you ask him, he's heard, and he has a little tape loop in his head. So when something like Ant and Dec comes along,' - Remnick grins broadly and looks up to the skies in gratitude - 'Happy birthday. The gods of non-fiction have provided an unscripted scripted moment!'
Remnick pauses for a moment to tell a story about the glorious predictability of journalism. 'There was a wonderful thing Slate did years ago, when it was just getting started, called the Hackathlon. It was Michael Specter, Malcolm Gladwell and I forget who else.' (Specter and Gladwell are both old friends of Remnick's from the Washington Post, and both now colleagues at the New Yorker.) 'Each day there would be an event. You had to write a 500-word lede [an American term for an article's opening paragraph] in the Vanity Fair style to a Richard Gere profile: Ready, begin. Then you had to do an Economist situationer on Tanzania - first 400 words. Then maybe a Rolling Stone lede to a ... you know: Mick Jagger is angry. Period. Paragraph. Very Angry. Period. The limo is late. You know, one of those. And then maybe a New Yorker thing on the history of sand. I don't remember the specifics.'
Remnick leans in with a smile of utter glee, and goes on: 'Specter beat Gladwell. He came from behind, but his lede on the Richard Gere, comparing the colour of his hair to his grey cashmere sweater, was just so brilliant that he overwhelmed him in the Hackathlon. I mean, he could do nothing else in his career and his New York Times obituary would read: "Michael Specter, winner of the 1997 Slate Hackathlon, died today of complications of a hernia operation. He was 98."'
David Remnick was born in 1958 and grew up in Hillsdale, New Jersey, where his father was a dentist and his mother an art teacher. The extent of his early gifts, to hear others tell it, borders on the embarrassing. Richard Brody, a close friend Remnick met at Princeton, remembers a story Remnick told him at the time about his activities in high school.
'He was interested in journalism already, and in literature and poetry,' Brody tells me. 'So he interviewed poets, and put together a collection of those interviews for a small literary magazine, and I think some of them were collected in a book. So even in high school he had not only the idea, but let's say the lack of false modesty to go ahead and do something which many people much older would not have dared to do. '
Brody and Remnick found that they shared a love of Bob Dylan, a Jewish upbringing in the suburbs, and 'a literary school of sorts'. As Brody puts it: 'There was a whole generation of Jewish American writers - when Saul Bellow won his Nobel Prize, I guess when we were all freshmen or about to enter school. There were people like Philip Roth and Norman Mailer and Bernard Malamud and Joseph Heller. We sort of had a canon of fathers. I think we weren't postmodernists, temperamentally. We had read our Thomas Pynchon and our John Barth, but that wasn't what excited us. We were excited by the late flowering, among the children of Jewish immigrants, of the late 19th-century novel.'
(Remnick, still an enduring fan of Roth, tells me that he would have published Roth's latest novel, Everyman, in its entirety in the magazine, but Roth's agent wouldn't allow it.)
When he left Princeton with a degree in Comparative Literature, Remnick got a job at the Washington Post, where his early days were occupied by covering the night-cop beat, or doing celebrity interviews for the Style section, or writing about sport. In 1987, the Post decided it needed a second person in Moscow, and, as Remnick now recalls, 'Nobody else wanted to go. It's cold, in those days if you wanted a box of coffee, you had to order it from Denmark. Nowadays there are rich people and stores and all kinds of stuff. (It's still cold - pace global warming.) So I got to go - I was 28, 29 - and it was the best kind of foreign story: really exciting, constantly changing, intellectually fascinating, ethnically various. It was heaven for a reporter.' Before he left he married Esther B Fein, a reporter for the New York Times, who also filed stories from Russia.
'When we were at the Post he was a kind of legendary figure and I was a little underling,' remembers Malcolm Gladwell. 'People have forgotten that - and this is not by any means an exaggeration - David was the great newspaper reporter of his generation. And had he never been anything but a newspaper reporter he would be, right now, the best. At the Washington Post there was one day when he had three stories on the front page, which I don't think has ever been repeated. He was in a league by himself. So the idea that he would have a second act where he would outperform his first act is kind of unbelievable.'
When Remnick was offered the editorship of the New Yorker, he had never edited anything before - with the exception, as he likes to remind people, of his school magazine. The decision to abandon writing - which, for the most part, he has (he now only writes two long pieces a year, plus commentary in the magazine) - was made on the basis of 'a very simple calculation': 'I had about two days - a day - I had seconds to decide, actually. Where could I make the bigger contribution? The ability to affect this magazine and its place in the culture - now, I may cock it up as an editor, I don't know, but the capacity for potential was greater doing this.'
Tina Brown left on a Wednesday in 1998. Remnick, who had written over 100 pieces for the magazine in the six years he'd been there, and who was, as Brown put it, 'a key member of my dream team', consulted on all kinds of editorial matters, was offered the job the following Monday, and took over straightaway, rallied by a five-minute ovation from his colleagues. 'And then Tina was gone and the magazine had to come out the next week - and the week after that, and on and on,' says Remnick now, looking amusingly baffled. 'And I was an absolute novice. And the only saving grace is that there were these people around who were so good.'
It wasn't easy. There have been times, even recently, when his instinct has failed him. He came out in favour of the war in Iraq, for instance, on the grounds of concern about weapons of mass destruction, and says now that 'I was wrong about that, totally wrong, as events proved very quickly.' The job, as Robert Gottlieb once memorably described it, is 'like sticking your head into a pencil sharpener'. To make matters worse, in some quarters Schadenfreude kicked in early; a profile of Remnick in the New York Times took offence at his choice of interview venue - a formica-topped table in a coffee shop, which was seen to suggest that the 'buzz' of the Tina years had fizzled out on the spot.
Michael Specter, Remnick's close friend of 20 years, tells me that a couple of months after Remnick took over, they went to Paris. 'We took a walk and he said, "The worst thing is, everybody comes up to me and says: 'Oh my God! You must be enjoying it so much!' And I just want to say: 'Yeah, it's like enjoying cancer!'" Because it was really scary, and I think it was a lot to take on that job, never having been an editor, when the magazine was financially in trouble. '
In a profile he wrote many years ago of the legendary Post editor Ben Bradlee, Remnick remarked: 'Generalship is not about fighting the battle; it's about inspiring the enlisted.' It's a notion Remnick has clearly kept in mind in his own work as General. Asked to illustrate his editorial methods, Remnick reaches for a baseball analogy: Joe Torre, the manager of the Yankees, 'gives players the confidence they need to play their best, then he gets the hell out'. He adds: 'I don't believe in swagger. I think it's infantile.'
The magazine's editorial director, Henry Finder, says drily that Remnick 'has something very scarce in this city: an aura of sanity. He exudes a sort of calm that most New Yorkers get to experience only with prescription medication. As an editor, I think that aura of equipoise turns out to be very helpful, because you have so many people here who are professional neurotics, always acting out, drama queens, who have one form of craziness or another. And I think he sees it as his job to be... sane.

When I ask Malcolm Gladwell what he thinks the legend of Remnick's tenure will be, he says: 'How exactly things got so effortless.'
Specter says he'd like some sort of atomic clock so he could 'divide 24 by Remnick time' and work out how he fits everything in. (Remnick himself has minted the immortal dictum: 'There are only 30 hours in the day - and that's if you're lucky enough to change time zones.') It's not just the work: he has a family too. Remnick and Esther Fein have two teenage sons and a seven-year-old daughter. He does his fair share of ferrying to music lessons and little league games. Asked to explain how he manages to balance these things, Remnick shrugs and says he doesn't do anything other than spend time with his family and work. 'It's not like I build toy ships, or travel to Tahiti. I don't go surfing. I don't know: what do people do?'
He admits that certain pleasures have largely fallen by the wayside. 'My son said to me - we were reading one night, he his book for school and I a stack of manuscripts - and he said: "You don't read anything with covers any more."' Remnick cringes. 'Dombey and Son immediately came down from the shelf!'

Yet there are other things he seems to make time for, somehow. Specter says the only person he knows who watches more television than Remnick is his own ex-wife, Alessandra Stanley, the TV critic for the New York Times. He remembers calling Remnick when one of their old favourites, the BBC version of John le Carre's Smiley's People, came out on DVD. 'I said, "Are you watching it?" He said, "Yes." He was writing a piece. He said: "I'm giving myself three hours of writing, one hour of Smiley." And I just thought, Jesus Christ. I watch three hours of Smiley, then I have lunch, then I write for a couple of minutes. '
I tell Specter how proudly Remnick told me of his triumph in the Hackathlon, and that I wondered afterwards what he meant by extolling such bare-faced bad writing. 'If you do it to change the world, you can get really bummed out,' replies Specter. 'The Hackathlon was a celebration of the fact that it's a day job.' He thinks for a second and laughs. 'I think he's happy when we do well. But he was much more excited about the Hackathlon than he was about any science writing or global health award I've ever received.'

'The things about him that I wish ...' Specter goes on, a little awkwardly. 'He's an incredibly good friend. I mean, he's a better friend than he is an editor. And he's very funny. My daughter thinks he's hilarious. She said: "You know, David's the coolest of your friends, Dad." Then she said: "Actually, he's not cool, but he's the best of them."'

La TV de la mano de Al Gore

Hace un año y medio Al Gore creó Current TV, una cadena de TV estructurada sobre la base del denominado Viewer Created Content (VC2), contenidos realizados por creadores independientes utilizando cámaras domésticas, móviles con cámara o el propio computador personal. La cadena de el ex vicepresidente de EE.UU. ha generado una serie de artículos sobre los cambios que está viviendo la TV en ese país y el concepto de noticia -o historia- televisiva. A pesar que este blog se identifica con el pensamiento y obsesiones de Gore, este artículo de The Nation recuerda algunas de sus contradicciones, las virtudes y defectos de su cadena de TV y el futuro del negocio. www.thenation.com/doc/20050516/berman/1

Por The Nation
During a town hall meeting on MTV in 2000, Al Gore
dismissed a question about the rapper Mos Def.
Throughout his career, Gore viewed hip-hop music, even
when practiced by a politically conscious artist like
Mos Def, as an undignified form of political
expression. "Gandhi once said you must become the
change you wish to see in the world," Gore said of
hip-hop. "I don't think it's good enough to say,
'Well, we're just reflecting a reality.'"

Five years later, on a spring night in San Francisco,
none other than Mos Def was anchoring the pre-launch
party for Gore's new youth cable channel, Current,
reflecting a reality of a different sort--that of the
television business, where hipness trumps values. Gore
was there too, trying to pump up enthusiasm for what
he claims will be an entirely new approach to news and
culture. Looking bulky but relaxed, Gore asked the
diverse young crowd, "How many of y'all would like to
see an opportunity to talk about what's going on in
your world that you can participate in with
television?"

Current screened three video clips as evidence of what
the network plans to offer: the first a high-speed
montage, created by a team of producers, freelancers
and the audience itself, touching on everything from
poppy fields in Morocco to hacking into Paris Hilton's
cell phone; the second, a twice-hourly news update
spotlighting the top ten queries on Google for any
given subject; and the third, winner of a $10,000
submission prize, a satire of political campaign ads
that came across as an amateurish stab at The Daily
Show With Jon Stewart.

Reactions were lukewarm at best. "It's the same
references you see on any other channel," said
26-year-old activist Julian Davis. "When did Google
become alternative media?" asked 22-year-old filmmaker
Jennie Heinlein.

Comments like these suggest that what Current has
become is quite different from the vision Gore and his
partner, Joel Hyatt, started with. What began as an
effort to challenge Rupert Murdoch and the right-wing
domination of the corporate media has transformed into
a business proposition to lure a youth audience with
lofty rhetoric, new technology and pop-culture
content. Gore and Hyatt didn't have TV experience, so
they ceded creative control to industry people who
did. Along the way, "democratizing" the media--their
buzzword from the get-go, which they described as
giving space to ordinary young people--became more
important than politics or elevating television's
dismal content. What emerges on August 1, Current's
launch date, could re-semble an interactive
grad-school version of MTV. Current may still improve
youth television and usher in a wave of new
technology, but it isn't likely to change the media,
or the world. "Less and less they're trying to run a
company with a social mission," says Orville Schell,
dean of the Berkeley School of Journalism and a member
of Current's board of directors. "They want something
that's new and interesting and economically viable."

After the 2000 election, Gore became increasingly
concerned about the conservative shift in the press.
While teaching at the Columbia School of Journalism,
he invited Rupert Murdoch to discuss the corporate
consolidation of the media. Around the same time, Gore
was helping his old Democratic fundraiser Joel Hyatt,
an influential lawyer and entrepreneur who teaches
business at Stanford University, to try to buy The New
Republic. When the deal fell through, their attention
turned to the concept of starting a high-end political
website for progressives.

"The idea didn't have a business model," Hyatt says.
"Both of us, having spent 2000 fundraising, didn't
feel like once again asking our friends for money."
They explored different media possibilities and hired
Jamie Daves, who ran youth outreach for Bill Clinton
in 1992 and served as a senior official at the Federal
Communications Commission. Cable television, which
Gore dubs "the dominant medium of our time," became
the most appealing avenue, offering two revenue
streams, from advertisers and subscribers. As they
queried friends in the industry for advice, Gore and
Hyatt kept hearing the same refrain: There is no
market on TV for a liberal channel. No one will watch
it. No advertiser wants it. No cable operator will put
it on the air. So they turned to an emerging
demographic that appealed to both advertisers and
visionaries. Twentysomethings were defining their
buying habits, coming into their own politically and
were underserved creatively on television. The
decision was made to launch a youth network. Gore,
through a spokesman, declined to comment for this
article.

Hyatt and Gore knew cable would be a tough market to
crack. The most popular television shows for the
18-to-34 demographic today, according to Brad Adgate
at Horizon Media, are American Idol, Desperate
Housewives, Apprentice 2, CSI, ER and Survivor. The
West Wing ranks ninetieth, two spots ahead of 60
Minutes. The only network to attract and hold young
viewers consistently has been MTV. "Young people trust
what they get from MTV more than any other source,"
says Jehmu Green, president of Rock the Vote. "It's an
opportunity for Current to be the competitor and tap
into those not watching MTV." In fact, the channel
decided to aim at MTV's elder graduates, according to
Annie Zehren, Current's head of marketing.

In fall 2002, Gore and Hyatt summoned leaders in
media, technology and finance to brainstorm
programming ideas at San Francisco's Global Business
Network, an incubator for outside-the-box thinking.
Gore had been influenced by an MTV show in the
mid-1990s called UNfiltered, which consisted of short
personal narratives solicited by MTV and created by
the audience. The subject matter ranged from Christian
rock music to single mothers on heroin, but nearly all
of it was raw, enthralling and new. Yet some
participants at the gathering wondered if Gore's
enthusiasm for grassroots television was authentic.
"They [Gore and Hyatt] said they wanted 'genuinely
bottom-up media,'" recounts Douglas Rushkoff, a
new-media critic. "I kept thinking, Do you wanna do
this or do you wanna do something that looks like
this?" Rushkoff and others envisioned MoveOn.org in
prime time: TV that could make civic affairs cool.
Gore and Hyatt, at Daves's suggestion, recruited
Michael Rosenblum, the father of video journalism, to
execute their plan and agreed to hire a cadre of fifty
digital correspondents who'd form the backbone of the
new network. Shortly thereafter, in May 2004, they
acquired Newsworld International (NWI) from Vivendi
Universal for a reported $70 million, and tentatively
titled it INdTV. The network reached a slim 17 million
US households, but it gave Gore and Hyatt a launching
pad. The twenty investors were exclusively friends of
Gore and Hyatt, including Bradley Whitford, Melvin and
Bren Simon, Albert Dwoskin, Warren Lieberfarb, Rob
Glaser, Bill Joy, Bob Pittman and two California-based
equity capital firms, Yucaipa Companies and Blum
Capital Partners. The investors, many of them
Democratic heavyweights, had various motivations for
investing. Some thought they were getting a good deal
on a network and wanted to be in a position to grab
eyeballs at a cheap price if the venture failed.
Others were doing Al and Joel a favor and thought the
venture had a decent chance of succeeding. A third
group had a larger social or political mission in
mind. "People invested out of the belief we were doing
something that had the potential to be valuable and
important," Hyatt says. Glaser, CEO of the online
multimedia company RealNetworks and a major Democratic
donor, said through a spokesman that he "invested
because he thinks Al Gore is smart and determined and
will create a big success."

The investors will have to play an instrumental role
if Current hopes to succeed in a market where five
conglomerates determine virtually all of youth
culture. Hyatt insists Current has the financial
wherewithal to duke it out with the big boys, but it
won't reveal which cable operators he's met with, how
much money Current has or how they purchased NWI. "We
have outstanding and deep-pocketed investors," is all
he'll say. "We're the last--if not, certainly one of
the last--independent companies to be launched."
Current will start in 19 million households thanks to
distribution agreements (known as "carriage" in
industry lexicon) with DirecTV, Time Warner Cable,
select markets of Comcast and smaller regional
agreements. That's a better position than 95 percent
of start-ups but a far cry from stable. Agreements
with Dish Network, Cox, Cablevision, EchoStar and all
of Comcast will be necessary to grow Current into 50
million households, at which point advertisers begin
paying attention. Before that, it's a concept sell.

Essentially, Current will premier without a
constituency. "Fox News is the only one who's really
gained an audience [recently]," says Tom Wolzien, a
media analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. "It's a
tough go these days. You need to get distribution and
then have enough money to put content on the screen
that people will watch and then hope the advertisers
will come." Time Warner is urging prospective
start-ups to forget about 24/7 channels and move
solely to on-demand programming. "The gale-force winds
of the marketplace is the single most important
dynamic that everyone in this industry has to deal
with," Schell says. "Current is going to be no
exception."

In fall 2004 the decision of whom to hire as the
network's top staff began to refashion INdTV's
identity away from substantive news and commentary and
toward slick, MTV-style youth packaging. The new head
of programming, David Neuman--the former programming
chief for CNN who recruited Paula Zahn, Anderson
Cooper and Soledad O'Brien and started as a fellow in
the Reagan White House--seemed like an old-school
industry insider. The new head of marketing, Annie
Zehren, had launched Teen People magazine. The new
COO, Mark Goldman, had run Latin American operations
for Rupert Murdoch's Sky News. As Gore and Hyatt
relinquished creative control, Daves and Rosenblum
were quickly let go. Social change was out, running a
successful new network was in.

In December 2004, INdTV unveiled a batch of
programming themes, including "That's F*&^#ed Up,"
"Addiction" and, most memorable, "INdTV Paparazzi: Get
someone famous to opine on something substantive.
(Hey, Paris [Hilton]--what did you think of Rumsfeld's
quote on the armored Hum-vee shortage in Iraq?)." One
unsuccessful digital-correspondent applicant, former
TechTV intern Tim Lang, described INdTV's vision as
"Amorphous Revolution. The overthrow of nothing in
specific."

On April 1 INdTV transformed into Current and publicly
resurfaced for a preview press screening at its
stylish two-story headquarters--exposed brick walls
and beams, wood floors, modern and minimalist art.
Flat-screen TVs everywhere glowed with Current's new
logo, four green squares reminiscent of a Josef Albers
painting. Gore, wearing a gray suit, open
black-collared shirt and black cowboy boots, amiably
opened the press conference and reiterated what his
network was not. "We have no intention of being a
Democratic channel, a liberal channel or a TV version
of Air America. That's not what we're all about. We
are about empowering this generation of young people
in the 18-to-34 population to engage in a dialogue of
democracy and to tell their stories of what's going on
in their lives, in the dominant medium of our time."
The programming, Current officials explained, will be
a mix of material produced by David Neuman's in-house
team of young correspondents, queries from freelancers
and submissions from the audience, which Current hopes
will be the network's core. At the beginning, viewers
will provide less than a third of all programming. But
Neuman hopes to ramp up quickly, eventually soliciting
a "tapas bar for young adults."

That night, as Current threw a street party for its
target audience, Gore hosted a swanky, closed-door
wine and hors d'oeuvres shindig at Current's
headquarters, visible from the street through its
large glass windows. Massaging the industry was more
important than meddling with the masses. When Gore
finally stepped out to address the crowd, he was
trailed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Leonardo
DiCaprio and Sean Penn.

Press response to the pre-launch ranged from skeptical
to sarcastic. "Finally a cable network for burned-out
stoners of all ages," joked John Dvorak on
MarketWatch.com. "Launching a cable channel is nearly
impossible," wrote San Francisco Chronicle TV critic
Tim Goodman. "Not even Gore's unquenchable enthusiasm
can change that fact." "This week, I told former vice
president Al Gore why his new cable-television venture
would never work," wrote Newsweek's Brad Stone. The
blogosphere, with its open-source proclivities, seemed
more receptive. "If they can help create a generation
of citizen journalists and indie mediamakers, they
have my full-blooded support," blogged Chuck Olsen, an
unsuccessful Current applicant and documentary
filmmaker.
Current's business model depends on being different
and separating itself from the 400-channel pack. But
is the programming previewed thus far--attractive
hosts in a "club-like atmosphere"; specials on
celebrities, fashion, music, parenting, religion,
technology and travel; fast, jump-cut editing for the
MTV generation--really that distinct from what young
people are already watching? "Politics" is simply
another word in Current's programming lineup, not a
guiding theme. "In the beginning, when the idea was
long-form documentaries--they were perhaps not an
antidote to Fox but an antidote to the soundbite
broadcast media," Schell explains.

If the marketplace drove the network's decision to go
after youth, then youth drove Current toward
short-form content. The network likes to think of
these one- to six-minute narrative segments, what they
call "pods," as the new music video. "It was so
consistent with the fast-paced,
two-screen-consuming-at-the-same-time nature of this
audience," Neuman explains. "This is an audience that
has become 'media grazers,' and we decided to create a
network that didn't fight that but rather facilitated
that." But such a brief window allows for virtually no
context, something that most of TV news already sorely
lacks. "That's the old question," says Schell. "Do you
satisfy what people want or do you try to change their
taste?"

Now the audience--Current hopes--is in a position to
answer that question, uploading videos, ranking what
they see, fusing the choice of the Internet with the
quality of TV. Current's online "assignment
desk"--where would-be contributors can visit for
ideas--contains a few promising suggestions, including
"Current Citizen Journalist" ("Shoot a story that
traditional news media won't touch because it's too
big, too small, or too something") and "Current
Change" ("Who's out there making positive change in
the world?"). On the other hand, a featured
fifty-five-second submission on the website shows
drunken claymation figurines puking.

Gore, a geeky guy with a brilliant mind, maintains
that the intersection of technology and culture will
direct Current in the right direction. "I personally
believe that when this medium is connected to the
grassroots storytellers that are out there, it will
have an impact on the kinds of things that are
discussed and the way they are discussed," he said at
the press conference. It sounds like a nonideological
Dean campaign on television, complete with Current
MeetUps. Yet this vision--like Gore's "People Versus
the Powerful" speech in 2000--may not last any longer
than Gore's earlier forays into populism. Just take
one look at cable TV news, with its recent
wall-to-wall coverage of Michael Jackson, Terri
Schiavo and the Pope. "Networks do studies and
research and put on what people will watch," says
Victoria Clark, a lobbyist for Comcast and a former
spokeswoman for the Pentagon. "It's a business." Such
are the perils of Current's audience-generated model.
If the 18-to-34 crowd really wants to see Paris
Hilton, the Gore gatekeepers may be powerless to stop
it. At the same time, if media savvy right-wingers
test the opportunity that Current provides to air
videos of themselves blocking abortion clinics or
taunting left-wing Columbia professors, Current may
choose to discourage political programming altogether.
Opening the gates won't necessarily trigger more
sophisticated content.

"What are you talking about when you say
'democratizing the media'?" asks Cara Mertes, the
executive producer of the PBS documentary program POV,
which draws a substantially younger audience than
regular PBS programming. "Is it using media to further
democratic ends, to create an environment conducive to
the democratic process through unity, empathy and
civil discourse? Or does it mean handing over the
means of production, which is the logic of public
access. In that case, you get a shouting match, a
bunch of stuff nobody is watching."

Can Current be serious and dignified and appealing and
popular? "On air, you're faced with the tyranny of the
mass media," says Steve Rosenbaum, creator of MTV's
UNfiltered, the inspiration for Current's initial
vision. "Which is: If you do three pieces--one on the
environment in Alaska, one on homeless people in New
York and one on teenage girls getting breast implants,
guess which one will do better than the others?
People, especially those who watch TV, tend to be
attracted to less intelligent, coarser, less
thoughtful programming."

Current has always been a work in progress, and
perhaps never more so than today, only a few months
before its launch. One thing is certain, however.
Whatever Gore and Hyatt create won't be part of a
broader progressive movement reclaiming American
media. The more Gore says Current won't be political,
the more likely he is to turn off the grassroots
activists (and political players) who may have
supported him. "They missed an opportunity to trade on
that hunger for meaningful participation," Rushkoff
says. "They underestimated how far they could've
gotten."

Maybe, in this age of corporate consolidation,
launching a viable, independent media company is
itself an act of political resistance. Yet one can't
help getting the sense that Gore and Hyatt, by buying
a network, lining up bigwig investors, hiring industry
professionals and courting advertisers and cable
operators, ended up doing new media in a decidedly
old-fashioned way. Instead of transforming the media,
the media business may have transformed them.

Avisadores Vs Avisadores

Según el último anuario de The Economist, el 2005 la inversión publicitaria global en internet apenas llegó a un 5%. Sin embargo, esta cifra esconde el nivel de crecimiento de este segmento que tiene de cabeza a las agencias y a muchos centros de investigación para saber si el actual crecimiento se mantendrá y cuáles serán las consecuencias a la hora de alcanzar las cifras que hoy muestra la inversión en el offline. Este artículo se suma a las especulaciones, pero entrega antecedentes que pueden dar una idea de lo que viene. En Chile muchos ejecutivos de agencias de publicidad creen que el "punto de venta" jamás será superado por la web. En muchos casos, los agoreros de internet terminaron rendidos frente a las evidencias. La pregunta es qué pasará con el negocio informativo en el momento que los web periodísticos tenga los recursos para reclutar a los mejores periodistas.


WHAT makes Google so valuable? This week the search engine's share price rose above $500, valuing the company at more than $150 billion. Investors' optimism stems in large part from Google's dominance in the booming field of internet advertising, which is currently worth around $27 billion a year and is expected to grow to $61 billion by 2010. In the longer term the internet is expected to account for at least 20% of global advertising spending—around four times its share now. So there are years of growth still to come. But that rosy future could be in jeopardy unless the big internet companies, including Google, do more to clamp down on some dodgy practices on the web. Concern has been growing in recent months that “click fraud” might undermine the industry.
The problem is that many of the clicks on internet advertisements are bogus. The ability to aim such advertisements so that they pop up, for example, when a user searches for a particular word, is what makes them so valuable—and makes fraud so lucrative. American law firms, for instance, are prepared to pay as much as $30 each time someone clicks on an advertisement after searching for “mesothelioma”—the name of an obscure asbestos-related disease. It is, after all, quite an efficient way to find sufferers who might be interested in launching a money-spinning compensation lawsuit.
Sadly, cheating the system is easy. It is done in two main ways. The first exploits the fact that Google, Yahoo! and other firms place ads on the websites of their affiliates, who receive a small cut of the advertising revenue generated by each resulting click. Unscrupulous affiliates can generate a stream of bogus commissions by repeatedly clicking advertisements on their own websites (or getting other people or machines to do so on their behalf). The second form of click fraud is aimed at the competition: click on a rival company's advertisements, displayed on websites or alongside the results of an internet search, and its advertising budget will swiftly be exhausted.
Estimates of the extent of click fraud vary, but it is generally thought to account for around 10% of clicks on advertisements, though some estimates range as high as 50%. Disgruntled advertisers have launched class-action lawsuits against Google and Yahoo!, and big companies are threatening to hold back spending on internet advertising unless the industry generally becomes more transparent and accountable.
Been there, done that
To some extent, these are the ordinary growing pains of a new industry. A similar problem arose with television. After the first television advertisement was screened in 1941, advertisers wanted to know how many eyeballs they were getting for their money. Television companies were at first reluctant to tell them. However, during the 1950s and 1960s, proper rules, ratings and standards were gradually introduced.
Things are supposed to move more quickly on the internet. But the big internet firms seem to have been worryingly complacent. Small-business owners, to whom click-fraud is most apparent, grumble that Google and Yahoo! have tried to play down the scale of the problem. Eric Schmidt, the boss of Google, caused a storm earlier this year when he seemed to suggest at a conference that one solution to click fraud would be to “let it happen”, since advertisers would not be prepared to pay as much for bad clicks, so reducing commissions and hence the incentive for fraud. He also joked that Google's engineers were having “great fun” trying to keep ahead of the fraudsters. And Yahoo! concedes that click fraud has been a problem for years.
Stung by class-action suits, both Google and Yahoo! now insist they are taking the problem more seriously and have agreed to go along with an industry plan to draw up new standards and set up an independent auditing system to reassure advertisers by the middle of 2007 (see article). Both now provide refunds to advertisers who spot dodgy-looking referrals. Like recalcitrant teenagers, they are grudgingly giving in and doing the homework they should have done ages ago. But as well as shoring up the current system, internet firms must also devote more attention to developing new models that are less vulnerable to fraud, such as pay-per-action, in which advertisers pay up only if visitors referred to their websites actually buy something. Such new models will also require rules and standards to ensure that advertisers get what they pay for.
That will be difficult. But if the internet giants don't deliver what the advertisers want, advertisers will find other ways to market themselves. And if the advertisements evaporate, so will that remarkable $150 billion valuation.