Micro Persuasion

Blogger Tries a No-Blog Media Diet

Steve Outing notes that Costa Tsiokos at The Critical 'I' weblog is trying "a no-blog news diet" similar to my "all-blognews diet," which Steve wrote up for Poynter.org. Good luck Costa! Go for it. I will definitely track your progress here.

All Blog Media Diet - The Results

Steve Outing at the Poynter Institute has posted his analysis of my all-blog media diet experiment last week. (Also, note an interesting Q&A with Steve that's posted here.)

Here are my answers to Steve's quiz, which I sent him Sunday once the experiment concluded.

NEWS questions:
1. Suspected terrorist Jose Padilla this week was accused of plotting what?
Steve R: To blow up apartment buildings and hotels.
Steve O: Correct

2. Why did George Tenet resign from the CIA this week?
Steve R: For personal reasons, but some speculate it's because some reports are coming out soon that don't portray the CIA in the most positive light.
Steve O: Correct

3. Why did President Bush hire a criminal lawyer this week?
Steve R: To see counsel in the CIA operative "leak.". It's rumored Bush knew of the leak.
Steve O: Correct

4. What world leader did President Bush meet with Friday? And what message did he hear?
Steve R.: Chirac, but I am unsure what was said.
Steve O: Actually, I was thinking of the Pope, who chastised him on Iraq policy and especially the Abu Ghraib abuses. But he did meet Chirac on Saturday, so you get partial credit for that.

5. George Bush had an umbrella incident this week. What was that all about?
Steve R: As he left his helicopter at AFB, he had difficulty opening it.
Steve O: Correct.

6. Something happened to one of Seattle's famed monorail trains on
Monday. What?
Steve R: No idea.
Steve O: It caught fire.

7. An unusual zoo has opened in Bozeman, Montana. What kind of animals does it house?
Steve R: No idea.
Steve O: Grizzly bears.

BUSINESS questions:
1. What happened to oil prices this week? Did they go up or down?
Steve R: OPEC is increasing output so they went down
Steve O: Correct (mostly). Earlier in the week prices went up because of the attacks on Saudi oil interests.

2. What's happening with Sony's Clie line of personal digital assistants?
Steve R: SONY pulled the plug on the line in the US and Europe, but will keep it going in Japan.
Steve O: Correct. The move had pundits suggesting that the days of the PDA are numbered.

3. Another damning Enron revelation was reported this week. What was it?
Steve R: A video tape of Enron employees during the California rolling blackouts included some quotes about them "stealing money from grandmas"
Steve O: Correct

4. U.S. employment figures were released Friday. What did they show?
Steve R:: 248,000 jobs added
Steve O: Correct

5. John Kerry announced a plan to help employees who pay for health insurance. What is the main component of his plan?
Steve R: No Clue
Steve O: The federal government would reimburse employers 75 percent of medical bills over $50,000 that a worker runs up in a year -- in an effort to alleviate double-digit insurance spikes caused by the relatively few catastrophic-cost cases within a company's health plan.

ENTERTAINMENT questions:
1. The star of Harry Potter, Daniel Ratcliffe, made a startling prediction. What was it?
Steve R: No clue
Steve O: He thinks that ultimately his character, Harry Potter, will die to conclude J.K. Rowlings series of book.

2. A famous rock star revealed this week that he had tried heroin and used cocaine. Who is it?
Steve R: No clue
Steve O: Paul McCartney

3. The estranged husband of what actress is seeking spousal support from her?
Steve R: Halle Berry
Steve O: Correct

4. Hot teenage actress Lindsey Lohan suffered some personal tragedy this week. What happened?
Steve R: Her Dad was arrested
Steve O: Correct

5. The band Creed was in the news this week. Why?
Steve R: They broke up
Steve O: Correct

SPORTS questions:
1. Who won the Indianapolis 500 on Monday?
Steve R: Rice, but I was unable to get his first name.
Steve O: Partial credit

2. How did the Williams sisters do at the French Open?
Steve R: No idea.
Steve O: Surprisingly, they were both ousted in the quarterfinals.

3. Who ultimately won the French Open tennis tournament?
Steve R: Is this a trick question? I believe it did not end yet. I know Capriatti lost.
Steve O: Me bad. I shoulda specified the women's finals. Russian Anastasia Myskina beat countrywoman Elena Dementieva in a 6-1, 6-2 rout.

4. What happened to Kurt Warner on Thursday?
Steve R: Dumped by the Rams, signed by the Giants.
Steve O: Correct

5. What happened to the main Olympic stadium in Athens this week?
Steve R: They had to replace all the seats.
Steve O: Hmmm. I can't find anything about that. My answer was that they finally completed the main glass and steel roof of the stadium.

Steve Outing's Quiz

I have completed my blog-only diet experiment and Steve Outing's quiz. He will post the results tomorrow over at Poynter's E-Media Tidbits, but in the meantime, here's the questions he sent me...

NEWS questions:
1. Suspected terrorist Jose Padilla this week was accused of plotting what?
2. Why did George Tenet resign from the CIA this week?
3. Why did President Bush hire a criminal lawyer this week?
4. What world leader did President Bush meet with Friday? And what
message did he hear?
5. George Bush had an umbrella incident this week. What was that all about?

BUSINESS questions:
1. What happened to oil prices this week? Did they go up or down?
2. What's happening with Sony's Clie line of personal digital assistants?
3. Another damning Enron revelation was reported this week. What was it?
4. U.S. employment figures were released Friday. What did they show?
5. John Kerry announced a plan to help employees who pay for health
insurance. What is the main component of his plan?

ENTERTAINMENT questions:
1. The star of Harry Potter, Daniel Ratcliffe, made a startling
prediction. What was it?
2. A famous rock star revealed this week that he had tried heroin and
used cocaine. Who is it?
3. The estranged husband of what actress is seeking spousal support from her?
4. Hot teenage actress Lindsey Lohan suffered some personal tragedy
this week. What happened?
5. The band Creed was in the news this week. Why?

SPORTS questions:
1. Who won the Indianapolis 500 on Monday?
2. How did the Williams sisters do at the French Open?
3. Who ultimately won the French Open tennis tournament?
4. What happened to Kurt Warner on Thursday?
5. What happened to the main Olympic stadium in Athens this week?

Another Media Dieter

Someone else has elected to give up mainstream media, but for very different reasons.

Michael Kenny writes:

"I read Slashdot, Kuro5hin, (truthout, AlterNet, and Indymedia) and this etp, but my champion of unbiased, uncensored, and totally biased and completely unbelievable information is www.blogdex.org, a homely little site that merely tracks the blogs of the world, noting which websites are most linked-to that day. This is my oracle! It's also my homepage."

100% USDA Grade A Blog Media Diet Update

As I near the end of my week-long media deprivation experiment, I have made a few observations and noted the potential opportunity for new bloggers to come along and launch "category-owners." I call this assessment the "Blog Launch Opportunity Grade," or B.L.O.G. for short. (Original, huh?)

US News
Blogs are terrific when big news breaks. I heard about George Tenet from Dave Winer almost as soon as it was reported elsewhere. Other less meaty news, however, can take a day or so to show up on Blogdex and elsewhere. Political news has been a snap to follow, needless to say.
Blog Launch Opportunity Grade: C-

Business News
Surprisingly, weblogs are pretty poor when it comes to general business news. This might be because there are already thousands of blogs that hone in on niche business topics. I did find, however, a way to get stock quotes via RSS. Still, there is a need for a single blog or two to track a broad swath of general biz and financial news.
Blog Launch Opportunity Grade: A

Sports News
Blogs are so-so for sports news. I have stayed apprised of the NBA and Stanley Cup playoffs, but feel a little light on baseball news, the latest NFL transactions and the French Open. You would think there would be some excellent general sports and team blogs out there, but there aren't.
Blog Launch Opportunity Grade: B+

Entertainment News
Naturally, this one has been pretty easy. And Nick Denton and others have this locked up.
Blog Launch Opportunity Grade: D

Environmental News
Finally, Amy Gahran challenged me to keep abreast of environmental news, a topic I know little about. Well, now I know a tiny bit. For example, did you know cod may be wiped out by 2020? That's one of the gems I found. Hope Amy takes it easy on me.
Blog Launch Opportunity Grade: D

By the way, this week marks my second round of "dieting." As Alan Meckler noted today on his blog, I lost some weight on Weight Watchers a few years ago -- although nowhere near the 100 pounds Alan exaggerated!!

Have I Lost It?

In sticking to my blog-only news diet, I just put in earplugs so I can't hear my fiancée watch the local TV news. Have I gone mad?

Blog Diet Day 3: The Media Is My Medusa

One of my favorite pastimes is what I call "media theft." On the train ride in to work I love to read the newspaper by gazing over the shoulders of my fellow commuters. I can get a good heaping from this simple snooping technique and I save penny or two as well.

Unfortunately, this week I am depriving myself of all traditional media in the interest of blogology. I want to see if I can stay informed by blogs alone. Alas, there can be no news thieving this week.

So far I feel I am doing well. (Steve Outing close your eyes!) I read all about Haliburton, Sadaam's gun, Jose Padilla, Julia Roberts, Mel Karmazin, the mosque bombing and much more. You can sample my news and politics blog diet in this OPML file.

What has been very hard, however, is remembering to turn away from news. It really is everywhere. I constantly have to remind myself to turn my head when I pass by newsstands. Last night I asked my mother to avoid talking about Iraq over the dinner table. I delete any email newsletters as soon as they arrive. I temporarily deleted all media RSS feeds and I have asked my fiancée to place the coupons on top of the newspaper so I don't glance at it by accident.

In short, for this week at least, the media is my Medusa. With one look I worry I will be turned into stone and this experiment will be tainted. Thankfully I only have five more days to go and I am staying on track.

Microsoft's Blog Opportunity is in "The Context of Order"

Now that Bill Gates has said he's got a big eye on blogs, I thought of one way Microsoft can profit here and perhaps get a leg up in the search biz as well. It's in "the context of order." I came to realize this as I near the end of day two of my all-blog "media diet" experiment. Using blogs as my sole news source, I feel that I am staying fairly current. However, what I really crave is the "context of order" that blogs lack. This is where Microsoft can win with smart technology.

When we read a newspaper, many of us know that the top story of the day is often at the top right hand part of the front page above the fold (if it's a broadsheet) or on the front cover (if it's a tabloid). The same holds true for commercial news sites. The most important stories are listed at the top. Even Google News does a fairly good job giving the greatest credence to the most important stories of the day.

The problem with blogs - and even tools like Blodex, Popdex and Daypop that measure relevant citations - is that there is no real "context of order." It's impossible for me to tell which stories are truly more important than others. They're all listed chronologically at the blogger's discretion. If someone is relying solely on blogs for news, it's up to him/her to decide what's most important. There are pros and cons here. On the pro side readers prioritize the news themselves based on their own dispositions and interests. The big downside is that we lose the greater context that journalists can provide...unless Microsoft can help.

Microsoft's opportunity is to make easy-to-use weblog publishing tools that are sophisticated enough to enable a user to assign importance to posts using templates, fonts, headline sizes and, most importantly, order. The next step is then to develop a search tool (perhaps already in the works) that can automatically aggregate blog posts by the importance assigned by their publishers.

If they don't, then maybe Google or Yahoo will.

Where to Draw the Lines?

Gabe points out in an email to me that earlier today I linked to What's Making Blog News. He had originally hesitated pointing out his site, memeorandum, fearing it might bend my all-blog "rules." Once I pointed out What's Making Blog News, however, he felt completely free to do so.

To me, these two sites are weblogs that aggregate links to media news headlines. As long as I don't follow those links, I am within the purpose of this experiment. I do not extend this same latitude to true aggregation sites like Findory News, Topix.net or Google News.

Do you feel I am bending the rules?

The All-Blog Media Diet Begins

Aww, isn't she beautiful; so cute all snuggled up in that little plastic bag. She's just dying to break free and tell me all about what's happening in my world today. Unfortunately, she refuses to talk to me. Why? Because today I begin my all-blog media diet experiment. For seven days, as described here, I am going to attempt to stay knowledgeable about US news, business news, entertainment news and sports only via what I read on Weblogs. At the end of the week I will be quizzed by members of the respected Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of journalists.

I start the day by heading over to Daypop's Top News Bursts. Many of the stories appear to be from yesterday -- the opening of the WWII memorial, Pat Tillman, the attack in Saudi Arabia, etc. -- so I warily keep digging so I don't fall behind. Here's some of what I found so far...

* John Robb provides some analysis on a New York Times story on yesterday's attack in Saudi Arabia that's very informative.

* Taegan Goddard's Political Wire points to a good story on CNN.com on how the major presidential campaigns engage in "media manipulation" every day. In addition, he indicates the Kerry/McCain speculation is rampant.

* What's Making Blog News has a good round up of top news stories that are being discussed.

* Wayne's Movie Blog discusses the tornadoes struck Wichita last night.

* The Post Game has added an ESPN ticker ... just in time for my diet!

* Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check notes that the Boston Herald reports today that Sony is having difficulty adapting to the digital age.

* BlogPulse top links list reveals that Al Gore's speech is still the talk of the nation, but they're a day behind too, alas.

* BlogCritics helped me get an update on the latest figures from this weekend's box office.

More to come later today.

Still Need Some News and Biz News Blogs

I'm still looking for some good general news and business news blogs for my experiment. I'm doing well with sports, entertainment and politics. If you have ideas, please send them my way.

At Least Two Sides to Every Story

The great thing about weblogs, as Jeff Jarvis correctly explained to me in an email today, is that we get to have friendly debate all in the public view. In the spirit of this, I highlight two different perspectives on my planned experiment next week.

SUNY Buffalo professor/"blogologist" Alex Halavais offers one point of view. "I suspect, that if Rubel reads the right blogs, he will find himself far better informed then the average American over his week-long diet," Halavais wrote.

Jeff Jarvis takes another view and even labeled this as a stunt. "I think the apparent hypothesis behind the 'experiment' is flawed because you're assuming that bloggers even try -- even as a whole -- to give you a full news report. They don't," Jarvis wrote.

For the record, this is not a stunt. It's simply an experiment (if for my amusement only) to see if I can know what I need to know by reading blogs only. Nothing more, nothing less.

Contentious Blogger Ups the Ante

Poynter writer and fellow weblogger Amy Gahran has upped the ante for my planned blog gorging experiment next week. Amy is asking if she can quiz me on the major environmental news of the week.

(Hmmm, isn't a blogger giving up printed media for a week considered environmental news in and of itself? After all, I am saving paper.)

Amy writes that environmental issues haven't yet hit the blogosphere in a very big way.

Those (environmental weblogs) that do exist tend to focus narrowly on a small set of environmental issues, or on either a very small or very large geographic region (from a few states to the entire globe, without much in between). Not surprisingly, most also are published by environmental advocacy groups. This tends to make environmental news in the blogosphere rather spotty.

~~snip~~

So, Steve Rubel: Following environment news via the blogosphere is likely to be a special challenge. (And no, reviews of The Day After Tomorrow do NOT count as environment news!) Are you up for it? Can I quiz you on it?

With my normal media dietary habits, I am already completely clueless about environmental issues. This makes Amy's challenge all the more intriguing. If I know nothing about this particular topic, how much knowledge will gain after a week of consuming these blogs (pun intended)?

I accept Amy's challenge, though I ask for some leniency in her Q's…which I sure don't expect from Steve Outing.

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Blogs

As I prep for next week's all-blog media diet experiment I need help in finding good weblogs in the categories listed below. Please comment/trackback here or email me at steverubel (at) gmail.com. As I begin I will publish an OPML file with all the blogs I am reading. I will update this file as I find others on my journey.

Top News: I need some good global news blogs. Ideally one that roll up/comment on important news from multiple countries. I am pretty set with beltway blogs.

Business News: I'd like to find a weblog that features the Dow Jones and Nasdaq closing bell prices and/or intraday charts. Also, since business encompasses a gazillion smaller topics, I would like to identify some more general biz news blogs.

Sports News: Is anyone out there blogging the Stanley Cup or NBA playoffs or the French Open?

Entertainment News: I already have some excellent celebrity/gossip blogs, but could use some pointers to ones that aggregate movie/book reviews.

A couple of blog housekeeping notes… I have added a category that aggregates all postings on this topic. Also TypePad is running some upgrades this weekend so the blog will be down for from 3:00-5:00 a.m. eastern time on Sunday. Hopefully you will be sleeping.

Steve Outing to Quiz Me After Blog-Only "Media Diet"

Steve Outing, senior editor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and an interactive media columnist for Editor and Publisher Online, has agreed to quiz me at the end of next week's all-blog media diet experiment. By the way, be sure to also check out Steve's blog, E Media Tidbits - it's a must read. Hopefully, since it's a blog, I can still read it next week, right?

Going on a Blog-Only News Diet for a Week

Next week, as an experiment, I am going on a "news diet." This information junkie is going to attempt to go cold turkey on most news produced by the pros for seven consecutive days beginning Sunday, May 30. I will not pick up a newspaper, magazine, watch TV news, or visit a news Web site. The only way I will stay up to date on what's going is by reading what's posted on other Weblogs. I will also not click any blog links to journalist-written stories or browse non-blog RSS feeds.

There are only a couple of small exceptions: 1) I will still continue to read essential news published about my clients, their core industries and competitors and 2) as needed, I will read old news stories I need to pull from Factiva for normal work-related research. (Hey, I gotta eat!)

I am doing this to prove to myself that the blogosphere has reached a critical juncture. My theory is that there are enough really smart, influential individuals out there who will essentially filter "all the news that's fit to blog." All I need to know about life I can learn from blogs. (Please don't criticize me for using two hackneyed clichés in one paragraph!)

My self-imposed info-hunger strike, however, does not mean that mass media is going away anytime soon. In fact, it will only become more relevant as blogs act like a media magnifying glass and perform essential "checks and balances" on news reported by the pros.

At the end of the week I would like someone - ideally with authority, like a journalist - to send me some basic current events quiz questions that cover any or all of the following topics: U.S. top stories, business news, entertainment news and sports news. I will also, naturally, blog about my experiences along the way. I think I can score a passing grade or higher (66% or better). Any testing volunteers? Does any one care to join me on my week-long "news diet" and share their experiences? Send me an email or add a comment to this posting.