Associated Press opens news bureau in North Korea | World news | guardian.co.uk.

…As if the news business wasn’t already Kafkaesque. Well, AP is an appropriate choice for this. 

Having done some critical coverage of several boneheaded AP strategies in digital media over the last few years, I think they see eye to eye with NK regarding the dangers of criticism, and how to respond to it.

I’m not kidding: See the response from Paul Colford, AP’s director of media relations, to a 2010 KDMC story I wrote about the controversial AP News Registry program

Here’s a great example of adaptability: How the much reviled flavor-of-the-month web startup Chatroulette has found a way to make money off its inevitable tide of exhibitionists:

Fast Company: Chatroulette Founder Andrey Ternovskiy Raises New Funding: “50,000 Naked Men”

“Chatroulette can’t fully wean itself off nudity yet. “You’ll still see some naked men, about one every hour,” Ternovskiy says. Of the roughly 500,000 visitors Chatroulette receives daily, about 10% are males itching to show their business. So Ternovskiy parlays that business into profit.

“Everyday, about 50,000 new men are trying to get naked,” he says. “What we’re doing is selling the naked men to a couple of websites–it’s an investment for us.”

When users flag someone enough times for indecent behavior (by clicking a button), the offender is automatically transferred to a partner site. Thanks to deals with adult dating services like FriendFinder.com, Chatroulette is earning cash hand over fist from the referral traffic.

“Basically, once we detect a person is naked, he’ll be kicked from our service to another website,” Ternovskiy says. ”So, we’re actually getting revenue from naked men right now.”

This is an early animation by Terry Gilliam, from Christmas 1968. Laughing Squid posted it to Tumblr this morning.

Every since my brother introduced me to Monty Python when I was about eight, I’ve been enamored with highly visual absurdist humor. And I especially adore Terry Gilliam’s ability to upend our assumptions of space, time, place, scale, and intention.

This was also why I loved the original Pink Panther cartoons, Ren & Stimpy, and Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse. And, of course, my all-time favorite film, Brazil (by Terry Gilliam, of course).

We live in an unpredictable world, where meaning shifts drastically as context changes. We’re forever falling into a new picture frame, and parts of other pictures intrude rudely upon ours. Laughter is the best way to stay afloat amidst chaos. And there is always, always chaos.

And with that, happy holidays, all!

It was Memorial Day, I decided to go for a long bike ride to see the beach at Alameda. I needed the exercise, and the weather was perfect. I was enjoying myself greatly — but as I was biking back along Crown Beach in Alameda, I saw police, firefighters, and onlookers gathered. I asked what was happening, and they told me that a man was stranded offshore. A firefighter pointed out into the water, and I could see a head bobbing above the waves, about 150 feet out.

“It’s shallow out there, he’s standing,” said the firefighter. And indeed, the man didn’t seem to be struggling. But he wasn’t waving or shouting for help, either.

More onlookers gathered, and I snapped some pictures. I couldn’t get a good photo of the man in the water, but I photographed the gathering crowd, and tweeted it both on @agahran and @oaklandlocal, a local news/community site where I’m a senior editor.

alameda rescue1

Rescue workers, locals, watch drowning man, Crown Beach, Alameda, CA

I heard locals talking, and asked them if they knew the man. “He was depressed, off his meds, lost his job,” said one neighbor. “He just walked out into the water with all his clothes on. He’s trying to kill himself.”

In that moment, I froze. I couldn’t be a journalist just then. It felt too personal.

Crowd gathers as man drowns, Crown Beach, Alameda, CA

alameda crowd 2

alameda drowning

You can't see him, but the drowning man was about here offshore, Crown Beach, Alameda.

About a year ago, a good friend from Boulder, who’d grown distant, took his own life. Max was a few years younger than me, a doting father, an artist, sociable and often grinning.

But a few years ago, his life fell apart, I’m not sure why. It happened when my own life was in major transition, and I was feeling the stress of that change. While I never considered suicide, I could relate to feeling overwhelmed and rootless.

I’ve been haunted by Max’s death — and really spooked by suicide ever since.

Back on the beach, a kiteboarder zipped out to the drowning man and circled him several times, coming back to report to emergency personnel on the beach. It seemed like it was taking a long time to mount a rescue so close to shore

So yesterday I rationalized: “This isn’t Oakland. I’m off duty. I don’t need to cover this. I don’t want to cover this. I’ve tweeted my pictures, that’s enough for now.”

So I left. I biked across to Bay Farm Island, where I saw an orange emergency helicopter fly in across the water, hover over the man’s location, then leave. And I continued my bike ride, and went home, trying to shake the spooked feeling.

Last night I got a call from the Bay Area ABC station, KGO7, asking for permission to use my photos in their story about the incident. I said yes, as long as their web story linked to Oakland Local. Here is the KGO story. (Getting them to add that link took some further prodding, but they did it — legacy news orgs often overlook/downplay local news startups, and I get tired of that.)

Reading and watching KGO’s story, I realized how I’d messed up yesterday. They got the story right: Why were so many emergency personnel there on the beach, just watching a man drown 150 feet away?

I was grappling with my own complex connection to suicide. When I considered what I’d cover, if I did cover it, I could only envision a typical story focused on the guy who was killing himself. I didn’t want to do that — I’d have felt like that would be gratuitously pimping out his misery. It was yet another reason to turn away.

But KGO got the story right, the story my own pictures told: Where was the rescue?

As it turned out, Alameda police and firefighters are not currently certified to mount a land-based water rescue. They had to cut back on that training due to budget problems. To attempt such a rescue without certification apparently meant the city could get sued. So they just stood there and watched.

Which is horrible. And I should have asked about that.

According to KGO:

The Alameda Fire Department says budget constraints are preventing it from recertifying its firefighters in land-based water rescues. Without it, the city would be open to liability.

“Well, if I was off duty I would know what I would do, but I think you’re asking me my on-duty response and I would have to stay within our policies and procedures because that’s what’s required by our department to do,” Alameda Fire Div. Chief Ricci Zombeck said when asked by ABC7 if he would enter the water to save a drowning child.

Alameda firefighters could not even go into the water to get the body, so they waited until a woman in her 20s volunteered to bring the body back to the beach.

On duty, off duty.

I’d told myself this incident was out of my journalistic jurisdiction, and I was not on the clock for Oakland Local right then. All a rationalization because I was having an emotional response that made me feel helpless, depressed, out of place.

Meanwhile, those Alameda cops and firefighters were on duty — but said that status was precisely why they couldn’t act.

We all failed that day, And Ray Zack, 53, of Alameda, drowned while we stood by.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, my good friends Randy and Kit Cassingham told of a rescue that did happen. Everyone was on duty. But knowing Randy and Kit, if they were off duty, it wouldn’t have mattered. They would have rescued the teenager who fell off a cliff during a post-graduation party in a remote rural mountain area.

I’m not sure what to do with this. But I know now, really know, that a journalist can’t ever truly be off-duty. Certainly not for life-or-death events. I could not have save this Alameda stranger, any more than I could have saved my friend Max. But I should have asked more questions, and not given in to how I was feeling. I don’t blame the Alameda emergency responders for their inaction, but that situation had a dreadful wrongness about it.

I’m trying to figure out what to do with this. Suggestions are welcome, please comment below.

UPDATE: This sad event gave me an idea for the upcoming Code for Oakland event I’m helping to organize. What if emergency response agencies/dispatch could coordinate with qualified local volunteers in all kinds of emergencies? Like, say, people with Red Cross lifeguard certification? Stay tuned…

The question is whether the Daily’s secession from the Web is a matter of convenience or ideology for its creators. Did they put their energy into spiffing things up for the iPad — the hard, fun, innovative part — figuring that they can circle back to beef up their Web offerings later? Or do they feel that it is their calling, their mission, to leave the Web behind?

My prediction: If they’re pragmatists about the Web, they’ve got a chance — they can adapt and evolve their product so it’s a little more up to date, less hermetic and more inclusive of the public that lives online today. But if they’re ideologues — if they really believe that what is essentially a magazine “pasted on a screen” is the future of journalism — then they’re in deep trouble, and the Daily will only be Murdoch’s latest and most spectacular digital money-sink.

via Murdoch’s Daily: post-Web innovation or CD-ROM flashback? — Scott Rosenberg’s Wordyard.

See: News publishers need to reach the 74% of Americans on feature phones

But some of comments from journalists who read that story indicate some pretty common misunderstandings that people in the media business often have concerning feature phones.

I’m not faulting my colleagues for these misunderstandings. It’s understandable — they’re as drenched in smartphone/tablet hype as anyone who gets tech news. So I hope no one takes this post as disrespect.

However, since news orgs ostensibly have a mission to serve their entire communities (not just the people who can afford high-end mobile devices), and since advertising and similar revenue models generally work better when you reach more people., I thought I’d point out and clear up some of these feature phone fallacies…

1. Most US mobile users will own smartphones this year, so feature phones are a dying market.

A lot of media biz people get excited over this Mar. 2010 “bullet” chart from Nielsen, which at first glance appears to project that by Q3 2010 half of all US phones will be smartphones.

Read the fine print: This research refers only to NEW handset sales, not to all mobile phones in use. Plus it’s a guess of what might happen in a fast-changing market over 20 months out — which increases the margin of error.

Currently other research from Nielsen, comScore, Forrester, and elsewhere (including my own humble local mobile market research for Oakland Local) indicates pretty consistently a current national average smartphone penetration of 30%. That’s nothing to sneeze at, and smartphones are indeed an important trend worth watching. But they’re nowhere near the majority of the market yet, and I doubt that will happen for at least a few years, if at all. In the meantime, there’s a huge existing feature phone market waiting to be served NOW.

2. Few feature phone users access mobile apps or mobile-optimized web sites — too few to bother serving

I haven’t found any good national-level research specifically on feature phone web access. (If someone else has seen it, I’d appreciate the pointer.) Also, many web analytics systems (especially Google Analytics) don’t do a good job of reporting feature phone visitors. Which is why it’s pretty important to do your own local mobile market research.

For example, I did a mobile market survey last summer for Oakland Local, and found that although only 30% of Oakland mobile users have smartphones, 80% reported accessing the mobile web daily or most days. So most of that had to be happening from feature phones.

Mobile is all about what works locally, so doing your own research is key. I wouldn’t assume the feature phone mobile web market is too small to serve until you check.

3. Why spend precious resources on a dying format?

Oh, like print? </snark> …OK, the issue here is not feature phones as they have existed to this point, but the big picture of recognizing and serving the huge business potential that lies in the low end of the mobile market. As I noted today in CNN Tech, there will always be a low end to the mobile market. And it will always be huge (for economic reasons, but also general mainstream resistance to change in key consumer products).

It takes a different editorial and business mindset to serve this mass mobile market, vs. affluent people and chronic early adopters. Learning this mindset will serve media companies even as feature phones eventually get smarter, and smartphones evolve into holographic brain implants or something. Why wait to learn how to capitalize on that opportunity? Why stand by, diverting your gaze, as another Craigslist stand-in inevitably walks up to finish eating the rest of the news industry’s lunch?

4. It’s too hard to develop apps for 2500 different kind of devices.

Yes — so it’s a good thing apps are totally not necessary for a viable lean mobile strategy. Once and for all, please stop thinking mobile = apps!

The basis of a lean mobile strategy is a web site that displays and works well on feature phone browsers. Many news orgs already do this, but all they use it for is headline shovelware, and it’s hard to navigate and search these sites via feature phones. Use a little bit of imagination to create a more compelling experience. That’s the challenging part — not the technology.

Also, remember that mobile is about channels and sharing, not just about eyeballs on your site.  Text messages, e-mail, and social media all are (or should be) important parts of your mobile strategy. And guess what? They all work on the vast majority of feature phones.

Give these a listen and you’ll see what I mean:

• Tech Nation interview with Bill Bryson, author of At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
• Radio Lab: What does technology want? “In this conversation recorded as part of the New York Public Library series LIVE from the NYPL, Steven Johnson (author of Where Good Ideas Come From) and Kevin Kelly (author of What Technology Wants) try to convince Robert that the things we make—from spoons to microwaves to computers—are an extension of the same evolutionary processes that made us. And we may need to adapt to the idea that our technology could someday truly have a mind of its own.”

Forrester’s rationale for this, according to VP Josh Bernoff, is that “Forrester is an intellectual property company, and the opinions of our analysts are our product.”

Which IMHO is the equivalent of saying “If you work for us, we reserve the right to own your brain and your social/professional network and reputation.”

Here’s why that’s a bad idea all the way around — not just for research, consulting, and IP companies, but for news organizations and journalists, too…

Recently, PR maven Shel Holz rightly called bullshit on Forrester’s IP argument:

The notion seems to suggest that analysts who write about their work on their own blogs are somehow sapping Forrester of its IP. Maybe I’m just dense, but I don’t see how, particularly if those blogs link back to Forrester, bringing the company to the attention of new prospects.

Other companies with bloggers don’t compare because, Bernoff argues, their products aren’t about IP. I would argue that Microsoft and IBM are entirely about IP. Both companies encourage their employees to blog wherever they like. The companies link to those blogs on a page that links to all of the company’s bloggers. (Here are links to Microsoft’s and IBM’s employee blog directories.)

…I’m not inside the heads of Forrester’s leaders, so I can’t say how much of a factor the fear of losing analysts who build strong personal brands played in the decision. I’d be disappointed if it was a major consideration, since it seems petty and mean-spirited.

…If a cost-benefit analysis had been done, I can’t believe it would have led Forrester to adopt this policy. So why, then? It’s either a provincial and wrong-minded understanding of IP or a knee-jerk reaction to the Altimeter Group situation. Either way, it’s a mistake.

Here’s the comment I left on Shel’s post:

This reminds me of struggles that many journalists currently face with the news organizations that employ them (albeit in fast-shrinking numbers). Many news orgs prohibit or limiting not only employees having their own blogs, but also whether and how they use social media on their own time and accounts.

In the journalism world they claim this is to “preserve objectivity” (as if objectivity ever existed, or as if transparency doesn’t promote credibility more effectively). But it’s pretty obvious when you talk to news managers that they often view their own employees as competition when it comes to online media. And they prefer to keep their employees in a one-down position when it comes to personal branding.

Which is not only sad and shortsighted, but dreadfully counterproductive. Especially since companies that adopt this unfortunate mindset certainly aren’t offering financial compensation (say, a couple of years’ salary, or a guarantee of employment for the next 3 years) in exchange for employees giving up crucial avenues for making their own professional opportunities.

It’s bad business all the way around — but it’s especially unfair to the employees.

…Back in 2008 I explained why building a personal online brand and presence that’s under your control (not your employer’s) is the key to having almost any kind of professional career these days — but especially careers that involve media or communications in any significant way. See: Media Career Insurance: Your Blog

Recently Kellie O’Sullivan, a third-year communication student studying at the University of Newcastle in Australia, asked me some questions about citizen journalism for a class assignment. I get questions like this a lot, so she said it was fine if I answered her in a blog post.

The way she framed her questions made me wonder: Why are folks from news organizations and journalism/communication schools still so hung up on building fences to divide amateur from professional journalism? Does this reflect insecurity about their own status/worth, or simply a lack of understanding of how much these endeavors mostly overlap and complement each other?

Seems to me that we’d all gain more by focusing on the practice of reporting and journalism (especially being transparent and open to discussion, correction, and expansion of news and information). In my opinion, doing journalism is more important than what kind of journalist you consider yourself to be, or how others label you.

With that caveat, here’s what she asked, and how I answered…

1. Do you think that citizen journalists such as Matt Drudge and Perez Hilton put pressure on professional journalists to be more accurate and credible in their reporting?

I don’t follow either Matt Drudge or Perez Hilton, so I can’t really speak to those two examples from experience. And I don’t know that I would call them “citizen journalists” — as far as I know, they’re both entrepreneurial news/information providers, not unpaid amateurs.

I also know they’re both very popular and have developed large, devoted communities online. From what I hear, they interact with their community members regularly and personally. That probably contributes to their popularity.

Reporters who are inclined toward viewing other media players who become popular in the communities that they would like to reach — and who are inclined toward a scarcity mindset of community (“If you get more attention, that means I’ll get less!”) — may indeed view Drudge and Hilton primarily as competition and feel pressure from that.

Personally, I think it’s more constructive to view nearly anyone else in media as a potential ally or collaborator, and look for ways to approach them and their communities that will benefit everyone.

Also, watch what they do and learn from them. If you want the results they get, then look for constructive ways to emulate or adapt how they work.

2. Daily blogger and citizen journalist Matthew Hatton thinks that citizen journalism and professional journalism could work together. Do you believe this is something which could happen?

I not only think this kind of cooperation could happen — it should and does happen, every day, in all kinds of venues.

Sometimes it happens through controlled, hierarchical programs like American Public Media’s Public Insight Network. Sometimes it’s formal or informal crowdsourcing. Sometimes it happens through blogs, or comments to news stories, or social media. It’s more about sharing information than sharing bylines.

3. In 2007 you wrote: “In journalism, the ‘ism’ is more important than the ‘ist.’ ” Therefore, do you believe the general public are simply more interested in news stories, and not necessarily the author of the stories?

Not quite. In my experience people are interested in news, information, perspectives, and context — and most of all, relevance. I also think many people (perhaps most) prefer to choose their own sources for these things, not just blindly turn to a mainstream news outlet as the last or best word on anything. And I also find that the kind of information people want is much broader than traditional packaged “news stories.”

This is why most people rely heavily on people they know and trust to find news and information — both original information and pointers to news and information published online and elsewhere. That’s a big reason why social media has become so popular.

People do care about where and who their information comes from. Who authored or published a news story can be part of that, but it’s definitely not the whole picture.

This is why the traditional practice of mainstream professional journalists hiding their personal views, opinions, or interests can actually undermine credibility, not promote it. Transparency has become more desirable and useful than a veneer of objectivity fostered by concealment.

4. Do you consider yourself a citizen journalist or a professional journalist? Why?

Neither. Both. It doesn’t matter to me. It may matter to other people, but that’s up to them and they’re free to label me and my work as they will.

I do journalism, among many other things. That’s how I think of it. That makes it much easier to get the job done.

Thanks for your questions, Kellie

Last week, GigaOm reported that Nokia is now suing Apple, claiming technology patent infringement. And on Oct. 15 CNET reported on Nokia’s dire slide in the US smartphone market.

According to GigaOm:

“Nokia is looking to collect patent royalties of 1 or 2 percent for each iPhone sold, according to a note from Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, which — given the roughly 34 million iPhone units already in the hands of users — would amount to $200 million-$400 million. That’s not a lot of money to either company, of course. But Nokia is clearly hoping it can be more successful in the courtroom than it’s been in the marketplace.”

Nokia: Really? Is this what you’ve sunk to?

There are far better ways. Here are some options…

Nokia: How about finding ways to get the price of your smartphones phones down to compete with the iPhone?

How about offering smartphone service to your US users on reasonable terms? If my ultra-expensive Nokia phone breaks, don’t make me mail it back to you at my own expense and wait up to a month to get it back. Don’t tell me to drop by one of your flagship stores — because you’ve only got two (count ‘em: two!) US stores.

How about achieving both of those first two goals by finally cutting some deals with some US carriers? I know you don’t like the way they play. No one does. They all suck. But they do rule this market. If you want in on this market, you’ve got to play with them.

If you want to be accessible to most US smartphone consumers, they need to be able to buy, service, and replace their Nokia phones locally. Plus getting a subsidized price break for handsets would help a lot.

Yes, unlocked phones are nice…  IF they’re not outrageously expensive to buy, or exceedingly onerous or risky to repair or replace.

Also, how about releasing Android phones? Symbian and Maemo are OK, but just too geeky for most folks. I really don’t understand why you’re still fighting Android when you’re already losing in this market.

Nokia, if you care about the US smartphone market, then please start acting like you really want to be here. Work with us. Stop digging your heels in and telling us what you think we should want. Rather than snapping at Apple’s heels, why don’t you invest in building a real business here?

You make pretty good smartphones, Nokia. I like them. It’s just the recalcitrant way you do business that turns me — and a lot of other would be Nokia users — off cold.

If you don’t want to be here, then just bow out. You’ve got a strong market presence in the rest of the world. You may not really need to be a player in the US smartphone market.

The biggest challenge in business is deciding which business you’re really in. That’s partly about deciding which business you want to be in, and also not kidding yourself (and others) about what business you’re really in. Nokia, I suspect you need to ask yourself some frank, basic questions about the nature of your US smartphone business