More than a few lazy journalists in Philadelphia have committed attempted punditry this morning. Not unusual for the day after an election, but remarkable for the way these folks have tossed aside easy facts in favor of simple biases. It’s a different kind of expectations game.

In markets and politics we often judge winners and losers against expectations, and brands and politicians often seek to temper  expectations in the weeks before judgment day. It’s not the number you post — funds raised, profit earned, endorsements garnered — but whether it was higher or lower than expected.

Who’s expecting? Analysts. In the marketplace, those are the folks at brokerage houses who recommend what to buy and sell. In politics, it’s journalists themselves. Keep reading…

Tags: Journalist, Percentage, Philadelphia, Twitter, Voter turnout

One of Philly’s public radio stations, WHYY, has launched a crowd-sourced website newsroom to CPR an otherwise moribund pool of local journalism. It’s called Newsworks ~ a Joomla install with a new template and Community Builder.

As an effort in community journalism, I wish them well.

Their site, though, flies in the face of their mission. Everything about the site is built on community effort, yet they don’t acknowledge open source anywhere. their ToS contains language that probably violates the GPL (the license on which their site is built).

And if one truly wanted to crowdsource journalism, isn’t using a Creative Commons license a natch? Between the ToS and the Discussion Agreement, I don’t see much potential for growing community engagement.

I don’t have a problem with community conduct; I’ve signed the Ubuntu code of conduct. But I have a nagging feeling that the folks that put Newsworks together — the back-end and the content — are newbies to online communities.

Tip to my friends at WHYY: It’s not that hard to reach out to Lessig or Bacon, and they’d be happy to share what they know (being community-oriented and all).

Tags: creative commons, jono bacon, joomla, lessig, newsworks, npr, whyy

Philadelphia embraced the “why can’t us” motto in the fall of 2008 as the Phillies headed to their second World Championship. The prospective new owners of the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer may have picked up that rallying cry in announcing Gregory J. Osberg as their incoming publisher.

He grew up in the region, got his publishing start at Chilton and advanced to run Newsweek, and spent the last several years running Buzzwire. Prior to his stint at Newsweek, he headed the sales and marketing operation at CNET. If your mission is to drag two dailies and a handful of weeklies into an age where people do everything with their phone, he’d be on your short list of hires.

“Someone has to be the first regional media company to figure out the successful model,” he told the Inquirer. “Why can’t it be us in Philadelphia?”

Both papers seem to think that’s the mission. It’ll be fascinating to watch. As last month’s J-Lab analysis points out, there are plenty of opportunities for collaboration here.

Keep an eye on the concessions the new owners want from the unions. Lots of work rule changes point to innovation; staff cuts, not so much. If they understand what it is that they just bought—a content factory—then they know they can’t continue cutting people who create quality content.

Tags: content factory, inquirer, osberg, Philadelphia, philadelphia daily news

In the great bidding war between a hack who gives public relations a bad name and a bunch of bankers hoodwinked by said hack, the bankers won.

I think it was a fair fight.

What’s left to ponder is why bother? Does anybody in Philly care whether what they know is based in reality? Or biased by corporate interest? Or swayed by a good talk from a deputy-managing-so-and-so?

I mean, if we’re living in a world where a mayor and cop-in-chief can say, “Hey, they were twittering, how were we supposed to know?” then who needs a newspaper?

There’s no need to bow down to our new insect overlords; they’re just a passing swarm.

But when they leave, we have significant questions to ponder: Do we want a paper? Is that paper Metro? What, if anything, do we want to survive?

This week brought an interesting and unmarked anniversary. It’s been a
year since Metro newspapers dropped Associated Press content from their
publications, opting instead for the occasional Reuters item and
expanded local reports and commentary.

I don’t know anyone who’s noticed.

So when big media start threatening to pull their content away from
Google, or throw up a pay wall or require a subscription for their
content, remember the Metro. No one noticed.

Tags: anniversary, Google, metro newspapers, reuters