Alex Gamela - Digital Media & Journalism » news

Re-conceptualizing the news product – Guest post @ Innovative Interactivity

Alex Gamela — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:11:12 +0000

I wrote a post for Tracy Boyer’s awesome Innovative Interactivity blog. It is a bit different from the stuff that usually is posted there – it’s mainly about multimedia, and you should follow it – because I discuss the new characteristics that should be taken into account when creating digital news products. I’ll be writing an in depth series over each item soon, but meanwhile you can get the gist of it.

It’s not about just informing people anymore, it’s about creating a product that lets people do something with that information, creating richer and more immersive content, making it more valuable and with a longer lifespan.

The goal is to combine these features to create an integrated product, going beyond placing them along the content. Multimedia, interactive packages are a great example of integration of these items, but many tend to forget some that could make the information more useful and improve user’s experience.

These are just the main ideas for this concept, so I’ll highlight the most important characteristics for each element.”

Read the full post here

Honeycomb: News vs UX | Notícias vs Experiência do utilizador

Alex Gamela — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:15:12 +0000

UX Honeycomb

I’ve been really interested in Information Architecture (IA) and how to work on visual presentations. And accidentally i ended up looking at a post from 2004 that presented the Experience Honeycomb, that goes beyond IA and into User Experience (UX).

And when i looked at the Honeycomb i thought this is how news contents should be planned.

How are news planned now then? Well, credibility, desirability, value, accessibility, are all important factors, just like actuality is (not on the honeycomb). But with blogs, Twitter and social networks news became “usable”: redistributable and recycled to create new, derived contents. And being “findable” adds value to those contents, SEO right? (and S stands not only for the Search Engine type but also forthe Social drive).

What i’m thinking is that news are experiences, and we should shape news contents so they meet a similar model like the Honeycomb.

This is just a initial rant about it, but i think it’s worth investigating. The way journalistic contents are presented right now are not fulfilling all the potential presented by the characteristics of the online. So my proposal (not original) is to think about news as experiences.

How can we adapt the Honeycomb as a UX model to create news products? And what do you make of this?

Eu tenho andado interessado em Arquitectura da Informação (IA) e como trabalhar em representações visuais. E acidentalmente descobri um post de 2004 que mostra a Experience Honeycomb (=favo) que vai para lá da IA e para a Experiência do Utilizador (UX).

E quando olhei para o Honeycomb pensei que deveria ser assim que os conteúdos noticiosos deviam ser planeados.

Como são planeadas as noticias agora? Bem, credibilidade, necessidade, valor, acessibilidade, são todos factores importantes, assim como a actualidade (não faz parte do modelo). Mas com os blogs, Twitter e redes sociais as noticias passaram a ser “utilizáveis”, redistribuívies, e recicladas para criar conteúdos novos ou derivados. E serem “encontráveis” adiciona valor a esses conteúdos, é SEO certo? (e o S não é só de Search mas também de Social).

A minha ideia é de que as notícias são experiências, e que deveríamos moldar os conteúdos noticiosos de forma a que se enquadrem num modelo semelhante a este.

Esta é apenas uma divagação inicial, mas acho que vale a pena desenvolver. A forma como os conteúdos jornalísticos são criados agora não cumpre com todo o potencial que o online permite. Por isso a minha proposta (não original) é olhar para as notícias como experiências.

Como podemos adaptar a Honeycomb como um modelo de UX para criar produtos informativos? E o que pensam disso?

#fonwa: first meetup and how porn and news have the same problems

Alex Gamela — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:30:34 +0000

Last Monday I went to the Future of News meetup, West Midlands branch, organized by Philip John. It was a fun bit, and a chance to meet new people. I’m all for discussing and debating, come up with new ideas and go a bit crazy with them, or else it will be just like homework. Fortunately we were a relaxed group, and not even the classroom environment (gently provided by BCU) got in the way. Being too serious about anything is what keeps some good ideas in the dark, especially when we all have the same basic perspective on the subject.

Philip John posted a description of the meetup, and i won’t repeat it here, so go there and read it. Except for this:

Then, without further ado, we split into three separate groups for a challenge. The brief that I gave to the groups was this; they are managing a start-up news operation with six month’s worth of funding. Their funders will not back them again after the six months is up so they need to find a viable business model within that timeframe. The funding will get them an office with all the necessities, two people (these could be journalists, or not) and kit (laptops, smartphones) for 3 people (i.e. you and your staff of two). There were no limits on what kind of news operation, what area (geographic or otherwise) to report or anything else – it was a very open brief.

(…)

The second group seemed to be obsessed with porn, interestingly, though there were some good suggestions. They came up with News Butler, a tailored news service which will take your preferences and then phone you each day to tell you the news that’s important to you. We were promised that Jon Hickman would be the guy on the other end of the phone – watch this space. There was also the news booth where you go and submit your own news. The most serious suggestion though, and one that really caught my attention was event journalism – providing reporting services for events. It was then that I filled everyone in on the last UK Future of News Group meetup where Not On The Wires launched their service after covering the G20 and Berlin Project.

I have to clarify one thing, since this was my group: we weren’t obsessed with porn, it just came up, and the group is not to blame, but me. The rest were respectable, wholesome, decent people, (well, most of them). Since I find that a bit boring I tend to stray a bit and, besides, news and porn are not that different:

The news business isn’t the only industry being upended by aggregators and amateurs online. Pornographers are suffering too — and newspapers could learn a thing or two from them. Here’s why:

Amateur content and “tube sites” (that’s industry-speak for free porn portals) have been eroding revenues in the porn industry, according to a story from Monday’s Los Angeles Times. But at least one porn company is embracing something every online news editor has grappled with quite a bit: Aggregation.

Frustratingly for porn producers and distributors in the Valley, none of these [aggregation] sites appears to be making much money. Suzann Knudsen, a marketing director for PornoTube, said the site’s parent, Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network, uses it to attract customers for paid video on demand.

“PornoTube isn’t a piggy bank,” she said. “Its true value is in traffic.”

in What Online Porn Can Teach Journalism (and Vice Versa), The Atlantic, Aug 13 2009

Yes, they both have similar problems, being the rise of the amateurs (so to speak…) the biggest one. Since news people take themselves too seriously, they usually forget to think out of the box. But that’s alright, more fun for me. Anyway, and so you know that the group had good ideas, me, Caroline Beavon and Dan Davies – who were also in the group – recorded a small podcast for the Online Journalism module about business models, that has most of the ideas we discussed in between the porn conversation.

The main idea is that there is not a single business model, but different ways to generate revenue. Small structures must find any means in their reach to add value to their content so that it can be bought by users or major news outlets, and provide services useful for their local markets. If you have a news website you have copy and design expertise, that can be financially more accessible for local businesses than the average offer available in the market. I’ve gone through this in my other blog, there are lots of things a local news website can do to make money. And the news is not the biggest part of it, and it never was, most of the time.

Here’s the audio:

Other accounts on the meetup:

The Future of News?, by Kate Hughes

My notes from last night, Paul Hadley

Building a hyperlocal website: final thoughts

Alex Gamela — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:02:33 +0000

Keywords for hyperlocal

This is the final post about hyperlocal websites, that started with my own experience with HashBrum, as described in one, two, three posts, and with the special contribution of five sapient minds that work on hyperlocal endeavors. I learned a lot from my own efforts – mine and the rest of the team’s – and also from this reflection. It was interesting to analyze the list of characteristics presented by different people for hyperlocal websites and find common terms, common ideas, a common ground, even in the choice of words. Here’s what i learned, organized around a few main concepts. To understand them better, you should have read the previous posts of this series, but i think this will be quite clear and straight to the point.

Relevance

Why are hyperlocal news websites important? Why do people feel inclined to “backyard news”? Precisely. Proximity is the keyword here, and it’s not only a geographical concept, it’s also about the relationships that a hyperlocal blogger/journalist must have with the community (s)he covers. You have to live there, be a part of it, like Will Perrin said. You’ll beat any other local newspaper because of your knowledge, you know the ground better than them, the real problems, because they are your problems too. And since you are there, you can get to the news faster, and stay on them for a longer period of time, without deadline constraints: you have availability. And will the local media send a reporter for every story you find interesting? Not really, no. Your broken streetlight is not an issue for the general audience, but it is for the people who live in that street: granularity, or , it’s the small stuff that counts.

Another good thing that hyperlocal websites are good at is by providing a better user experience. Innovation and experimentation in storytelling, using maps, multimedia, different ways to look at and navigate through the news. And without the need for a huge investment, because most of the tools to create a website like this are free and open source, so only a small financial investment is required, the real expense here is time. But to be effective, the hyperlocal website’s technology must promote participation, allow people to offer their input, and the users should be able to conform their experience through customization, getting the information they want, the way they want.

Attitude

At the core of hyperlocal behavior is passion. It’s your reality, or at least a reality that is right outside your front door. The level of engagement and commitment hyperlocal news websites have are huge, compared to the average reporter, who is assigned for a story and educated to be detached. Hyperlocal reporters are involved in the story and they can afford to be critical and assertive close to the local authorities, and use their work to improve their community’s living standards and environment. It’s what matters to a few, that becomes really important.

Another relevant characteristic is adaptability. A good hyperlocal website is aware of it’s shortcomings and is constantly looking for new ways to do their work, something quite impossible to do in the bigger, slower structures of traditional media, and their sluggish procedures and bureaucracies. They can be built and developed fast, and still bring added value.

A new market is open for these projects: since it’s about and for the local community, it is also an advertising opportunity for local businesses, who can’t afford ads in the pages of a newspaper. If instructed to develop interaction and user experience like the hyperlocal website should do, there is a lot to get out of this, for local businesses.

The bottom line is, your neighborhood news matter, whether it’s a poorly made manhole, or a broken streetlight, or crime. It’s these bits of information that become important when you are living – or wanting to live – in a neighborhood. And if there’s a way to connect us back to our neighbors, whom we usually don’t know, and join efforts to improve our real, every day life experience, it was well worth it. And if you want to do it, there isn’t much stopping you. All you have to do is to talk to people who live next to you, see what is already being discussed online, and build a space to host the information that matters. All it takes is time, and quick thinking.

When we first thought about HashBrum, we believed we could create a small network of street level information, and let the different communities take part in the process. In the end we leaned towards reporting specific issues neglected by the local media, who didn’t have room in their agendas or the resources to cover them, or do comprehensive follow ups on the developments. It’s the idea that a brief article in local media can be a huge story for a community/hyperlocal website. And do you know what?, sometimes they’re huge for other communities too, that have the same problems, and what seemed to be an isolated event might be a more general issue within society.

With the fragmentation brought by the internet, the rule is no longer defined by the majority. It”s the individual’s rules and needs that matter, and we can customize them in size, subject and location. With all this power, citizens can start improving the world, starting at their doorsteps. Or just have their garbage collected more often. If you have your own ideas on this, please, do share them in the comment box below. If you aren’t already starting to build your own hyperlocal news thing…

‘Semantic news’ and the rise of the robots: Mario Tascón’s full interview

Alex Gamela — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:51:46 +0000

La Informacion's bizarre process triangle

Journalism.co.uk asked me to write an article about interesting online projects in the Portuguese, Spanish and Brazilian publishing markets, and I decided to start with LaInformacion.com, a spanish online news website that has some special characteristics. I interviewed Mario Tascón, head of Diximedia, the company that runs the project, for the article, that you can read here. Below is the full interview, in the English version. Tascón also writes in 233grados, his blog about media. If you understand Spanish, check it out.

If you know other interesting and groundbreaking online news projects in any of these countries, let me know. Thanks.

Mario Tascón’s interview

-At first sight, La informacion seems like an ordinary news website. What makes it different?

The fact that it looks like a regular website when a big part of it is made by machines is already a difference. From 12.am until 6.30 in the morning, the editor in chief is an algorithm that selects and organizes the news that we get. It analyzes trends in real time in social networks and search engines. It’s a less expensive way to maintain a website during certain periods, and if you can’t notice it, it’s because it doesn’t work that bad

Another difference is the amount of information. More than 5.000 stories get into the system every day, among videos, texts and infographics. A website like elpais.com doesn’t have more than 1.000 stories like those each day.

I believe that usability and the design of the website make also a difference, that has been recognized by users and professionals (in such a short amount of time we had lots of international awards in both of those areas.)

The way the newsroom is designed is another difference. It’s a networked newsroom, as it is a network of partnerships with other players. As an example, a great deal of information about football is made with resultados-futbol.com, which is a social network with thousands of youngsters.

The international affairs are also covered mostly through the partnership with the Global Post, and the Technology news are covered with Microsiervos, which is the most well known blog about the subject in Spain.

The way we deal with the different channels (Twitter, Facebook, etc…) is different too. Most of the media treat them all the in same way, but for us, the language itself is quite specific.

-How does La Informacion work? It’s not a traditional process of journalistic newsgathering, but it’s not just aggregation. Where does the concept of “semantic news” fit in?

Lainformacion has a great technological frame that lists thousands of news in real time, so we use fewer resources regarding the “breaking news” traditional concept, to which the digital media dedicate so much effort. Breaking news are analyzed by the machines, using that “semantic intelligence”. Having that part of the job in the hands of the algorithms most of the journalistic resources are dedicated to search or elaborate stories and provide them added value when published, and also to try new narratives and experiment with different technologies:

a.- Panoramical Megafotos panorámicas of landscapes, monuments, events or exhibitions
http://blogs.lainformacion.com/megafotos/2010/01/12/el-palacio-de-cristal-bajo-la-nieve/
b.- tag clouds of political speeches

http://graficos.lainformacion.com/2010/01/bush-hablaba-de-guerra-obama-habla-de-economia/

c.-F1 drivers comparisons
http://graficos.lainformacion.com/2010/01/comparativa-de-pilotos-favoritos-para-el-mundial-de-formula-1/
d.- own production vídeos http://videos.lainformacion.com/
e.- special packages
http://graficos.lainformacion.com/2010/01/haiti-siete-dias-y-la-nada/
http://especiales.lainformacion.com/ciencia/hombre-en-la-luna-40-aniversario/

The semantic listing systems allow us to treat more than 100.00 pages in real time with information about 100.00 concepts from companies to people.
http://tags.lainformacion.com/steve-jobs_P_MyGx3iZlNvxaKogkbIOtb3/

Here you have collected the most important news about Apple, eliminating the noise and listing the news immediately. You have to remember that we don’t reproduce full texts, so the analysis work is complex but with an accuracy rate of 95%.

We eliminate the noise (most of the news come from the wire and get repeated) and we select from each subject group within a category the best, the most interesting or complete. It’s impossible to do that work manually.

-Is user generated content a part of your sources? Why? What is the real value that UGC brings?

It’s one of the areas that we still haven’t developed in lainformacion and we have examples of what we want to do in that field with Praticopedia.com ,where we even share the ad revenue with the users.

-What has been the biggest investment in La informacion? I don’t have the idea you have much of your own multimedia content production, for example.

Technology and newsroom. There’s a lot of content that we create and buy.

-La informacion is just one year old, and it is freshly out of the beta phase. How has it been so far? I know it has been having a steady, fast growth in audience.

We have grown a lot in terms of audience (in December we had 1.6 million users in Nielsen’s ratings whereas elmundo.es had 6 million). Considering that we only launched officially in September (after a few months in beta) it’s a good number. We need to establish an audience, that visit us regularly and transfer the success we have on twitter and facebook to create a larger virtual community.

-What is your business model? Is it just based in advertising? What do you think about the pay wall proposals, can it happen with La Informacion?

It is mostly supported by publicity. [Pay walls] are not going to work for those who want to develop the business. If the main goal is to protect print let them shut down their websites but they will kill their brands by doing so. I ran elpais.com in the time where we set up a wall like that…

-What is the importance of social media in your strategy?

Paramount. It’s one of the keys to our success right now. We differentiate the channels, and apply to each one of them a specific language that we learn from our users every day.

Lainformacion.com is the only medium in the world that has its “status” in the header. It’s a declaration of principles.

-The market and the technology are developing faster than any model has time to establish itself. What are the next steps for La informacion?

To be fast and focus on what we know how to do best. And in the rest associate with those who do it well [...]. Invest more in new contents and apps for news contents.

Building a hyperlocal news website: a short story on #Brum – part 3

Alex Gamela — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:00:09 +0000

This is the third part of a series about the development of Hashbrum, the hyperlocal news project that me and some of my colleagues at the MA Online Journalism worked on for the last few months. If you haven’t already, read Part 1 and Part 2.

The HashBrum Stories

We tried to find stories that mattered to Birmingham’s communities. We had two successful running feature stories, one about Birmingham’s swimming pools, and another project still developing about cycling in the city, too many concert reviews, and a few one time stories using multimedia. Another interesting project was Marathon Guy, but it has been discontinued.

The most promising story for me in the beginning was the Swimming Pools investigation, conducted by Andrew Brightwell. The goal was to assess the state and conditions of the public pools of Birmingham, how they were fit to serve the local communities. It had a lot of multimedia and community potential: i thought about creating a map with Andrew with the location and history of each facility, create a space for the swimmers to have a say, and after the Moseley Road Baths tour, create a multimedia package. It didn’t happen, and it’s a shame the story got lost along the way.

Dan Davies has recently put a great effort in a investigation about the existing conditions for cyclists in Birmingham. If you know cyclists, you know they’re a good crowd to work a story with, and Dan has invested in a lot of video and map mashups, which he has been testing and developing, and that seem to be working quite well for the story.

The odd project, but one that took a lot of my time in production was Marathon Guy, a fun idea by Mikel Plana, that was a mix between a reality online show, a crowdsourced/crowdfunding enterprise, and a journalistic account about the communities of runners in the city. Unfortunately, Mikel is not taking the project further, but i think you can tell from the videos i had some fun with this project.

Other notable items in the HashBrum archive are Caroline Beavon’s liveblogging experiments, and a crowdsourced map, that she put together quite quickly.

And if in perspective it looks like a lot of work, i personally feel that we could have done much more, especially when it comes to interactive and multimedia narratives. Like i said before, HashBrum was supposed to be a canvas for total experimentation but then we got a lot of pics and text. But the moments i like the best are the ones when we go beyond that, and present information in a more relevant and compelling way. The traditional formats are traditional because they work, but if can break the rules and do something different just for the heck of it, why shouldn’t we?

This is where small hyperlocal websites are taking the lead from traditional media: they invest in new ways to tell the stories, in a cheap, fast way, without having to wait for slow IT departments to implement a damn widget on the front page, after having to wait for budget clearance; they rely in the power of the community, that they consider as their peers; they value the stories that mainstream media doesn’t care about, and can’t care about, because of the relevance for their reader’s universe and lack of staff; and they don’t have any problems in confronting the established powers, because the community’s problem are their problems too.

Hyperlocal is here to stay, and if you doubt that, just take a look at the map of hyperlocal websites in the UK, and see what others are doing. There’s a lot to be learned from there. I know I learned a lot from ours.

soitu.es: the end | o fim

Alex Gamela — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:06:25 +0000

Soitu.es Newsroom | Redacção do Soitu.es

One of the most interesting news projects going on the web is now closed. The spanish based Soitu.es is gone, after only 22 months after its launch. In between they won two Online News Association awards, a place in the News Museum in Washington, and saw their design distinguished by the Society for News Design. It was interesting, intense, risky, but it failed.

Juan Antonio Giner shares in his view on the closing of Soitu the opinion of AFP’s Eric Scherer in Rue89:

He says “that there are three lessons to be learned from the death of soitu.es:

1. Don’t depend only from one shareholder (specially if it is a bank)

2. Start small.

3. Don’t depend only from advertising.”

For Giner, “soitu.es made all these three mistakes.” I wish the Soitu team the best of luck for the future.

Um dos projectos informativos mais interessantes na web acabou. O site espanhol Soitu.es fechou apenas 22 meses depois do seu lançamento. Pelo meio ganharam dois prémios da Online News Association, um lugar no News Museum em Washington,e viram o seu design ser reconhecido pela Society of News Design. Foi interessante, intenso, arriscado, mas falhou.

Juan Antonio Giner partilha na sua visão do encerramento do Soitu a opinião de Eric Scherer da AFP, no Rue89:

Ele diz que “há três lições a retirar da morte do Soitu.es:

1. Não dependam de um uníco accionista (especialmente se for um banco)

2. Comecem pequeno.

3. Não dependam apenas de publicidade”.

Para Giner “soitu.es cometeu todos estes erros.” Desejo à equipa do soitu a melhor sorte para o futuro.

We don’t steal, we share! | Nós não roubamos. Partilhamos!

Alex Gamela — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:27:57 +0000

You need us to | Vocês precisam que o façamos

This post by Kevin Anderson really got my attention. He shows how what seemed to be a brave new world became a nightmare. For a few, at least.

AP’s Tom Curley and the inevitable Mr.Murdoch have changed their minds in just a matter of years about news content in the web. Don’t get me wrong, change is good, unless if it is a step back. The restriction philosophy that these gentlemen uphold goes against what the internet is, and how its users relate to it. But they once ruled the news information world, and it is hard to give up all that power.

Anderson confronts their previous and actual views on the subject, and what i take from their current perspective is that they are afraid, scared to lose control over their domain. Don’t fret about it, you already have. But you still hold resources none of us has, and instead of destroying them, you should think of a way to turn the odds in your favour, and let us work with you. For you.

Finally you got to the conclusion that your problem is not Google, or any other company. It’s me. It’s us, the people who get the news via RSS feeds, Twitter, news aggregators, on Facebook, from quotes in blogs. The same people who would never read an article from your companies unless someone shared a link with us, and it got our attention. The link economy is not about stealing, but sharing. It sends people to your websites, it doesn’t steal readers from you. Hell, some of us might start buying your print versions. But you want none of this.

What you want is to sit on top of pile of information that people will get elsewhere, if you lock it behind your dogma. News companies will survive and prosper if their content is allowed to flow, secret societies will remain like that, secret, unknown. Invisible. And being invisible is not what you want. You need us to make your contents visible, important, valuable. You need us to comment it in our blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook profiles. We are the ones who should be paid for doing the work you have been unable to do online. And since you already invested in producing the content, lets make it quid pro quo, alright?

We are not destroying your business, you are. We do not carry the weight of thousands of jobs lost because the industry didn’t know how to respond to the new paradigm. We are not the enemy.

As a microscopic online publisher (aka blogger), i can tell you how i get more visitors: by sharing. I share what others shared, and hope that my readers share it too. And comment and get involved, discuss it, create from it. My followers and readers are my allies. They make my work more valuable than if i wrote it down in a notebook, locked it inside a drawer, and asked money to people just to read it or use part of my words. And to be considered as an author i must publish, and people must read me. My author rights are important, it’s true. But you can’t copyright facts. Give us what no one else has and we’ll reward you for it. We’ll show what you’ve done to everybody we know.

So, you’re losing money? Whose money is that? Your employees? Your shareholders? Yours? You’ll never end up in poverty, that’s for sure. It’s not easy to make a profit, but it can be done, because we need the good people you’ve hired and that were so dedicated to their work. It’s like going to war and cut on soldiers and equipment because it’s too expensive for you. Well, if you need the troops, the wage will be defeat.

Look for profitable models, invest, invent. But do not cast the blame on the ones who have been doing an important part of your job better than you do. The rules have changed, and this time you are not able to change them to suit your will. Get used to it. We don’t steal from you, we kept you in business this far.

Este post do Kevin Anderson chamou-me a atenção. Ele mostra como o que parecia ser um admirável mundo novo se transformou num pesadelo. Para alguns, pelo menos.

Tom Curley da AP e o inevitável sr.Murdoch mudaram de ideias em poucos anos sobre os conteúdos informativos na web. Não me interpretem mal, mudar é bom, a não ser que seja um passo atrás. A filosofia restritiva que estes senhores defendem vai contra o que a internet é, e como os utilizadores se relacionam com ela. Mas eles já dominaram o mundo da informação, e é difícil abrir mão desse poder.

Anderson confronta as suas visões anteriores e actuais sobre o assunto, e o que me parece da sua perspectiva actual é que eles têm receio, estão assustados em perder o controlo do seu reino. Não se preocupem, isso já aconteceu. Mas vocês ainda têm recursos que nenhum de nós tem, e em vez de os destruirem, deviam pensar numa maneira de virar o jogo em vosso favor, e deixar-nos trabalhar com vocês. Para vocês.

Finalmente chegaram à conclusão que o problema não é o Google ou nenhuma outra companhia. Sou eu. Somos nós, os que recebemos as notícias via RSS, Twitter, agregadores, no Facebook, citações em blogs. As mesmas pessoas que nunca leriam um artigo vosso se alguém não partilhasse um link connosco e tivesse captado a nossa atenção. A economia de links não é baseada em roubar mas partilhar. Envia gente para os vossos sites, não vos rouba leitores. Até alguns de nós poderão começar a comprar as versões impressas. Mas não é isto que vocês querem.

O que querem é ficar sentados em cima de um monte de informação que as pessoas irão buscar a outro lado, se os mantiverem fechados atrás do vosso dogma. As empresas de informação podem sobreviver e prosperar se os seus conteúdos fluirem, as sociedades secretas tendem a manter-se assim, secretas, desconhecidas. Invisíveis. E vocês não querem ser invisíveis. Vocês precisam que nós demos visibilidade aos vossos conteúdos, importância, valor. Vocês precisam que os comentemos nos nossos blogs, no Twitter, nos perfis do Facebook. Nós é que devíamos ser pagos por fazer o trabalho que vocês não têm sabido fazer online. Mas como já investiram na produção do conteúdo, fica toma lá, dá cá, está bem?

Nós não estamos a destruir o vosso negócio, vocês estão. Nós não carregamos o peso de milhares de empregos perdidos nos últimos anos porque a indústria não soube responder ao novo paradigma. Nós não somos o inimigo.

Como um autor online minúsculo (blogger), posso vos dizer como consigo mais visitas: partilhando. Partilho o que outros partilharam, e espero que os meus leitores o partilhem também. E comentem, envolvam-se, discutam, criem a partir daí. Os meus seguidores e leitores são os meus aliados. Eles fazem com que o meu trabalho seja mais valioso do que se escrevesse tudo num caderno, o trancasse numa gaveta e pedisse dinheiro a quem o quisesse ler ou usar parte das minhas palavras. E para ser considerado um autor tenho que publicar, e ser lido. Os meus direitos como autor são importantes, é certo. Mas não se pode colocar uma marca de copyright nos factos. Dêem-nos o que mais ninguém tem e nós os recompensaremos por isso. Nós mostraremos o que fizeram a toda a gente que conhecemos.

Então estão a perder dinheiro? De quem é esse dinheiro? Dos vossos empregados? Dos accionistas? Vosso? Vocês nunca irão acabar na miséria, isso é certo. Não é fácil ter lucros mas pode ser feito, porque precisamos das boas pessoas que contrataram e que eram tão dedicadas ao seu trabalho. É como ir para a guerra e cortar nos soldados e no equipamento porque sai demasiado caro para vocês. Se for assim, o preço é a derrota.

Procurem modelos rentáveis, invistam, inventem. Mas não lancem as culpas em quem tem feito uma parte importante do vosso trabalho melhor do que vocês têm feito. As regras mudaram e desta vez não podem mudá-las à vossa vontade. Habituem-se. Nós não roubamos de vocês, nós temos mantido o vosso negócio de pé.