Best (and Worst) of Online Media in 2002
Mark Glaser
posted: 2002-12-23
I have a love/hate relationship with year-end roundups and awards. My
cynical side can't help but curl an upper lip at the overused, cliched
idea, and its reliance on the calendar year as a framework. But my more
nostalgic side can't help but appreciate the look back over the year's
happenings. Plus, I cut my teeth as a music journalist writing year-end
articles for classes at the University of Missouri (and dubbed 1986 as the
"Year of Yuppie Music").
So what the heck, let's see what we learned from 2002 as online
journalists, and give out some kudos and Bronx cheers for the best and
worst the medium had to offer. I invite you to use the forum next to my
column to voice your own favorites and pet peeves from the past year.
Monetarily Correct Prediction of the Year: Leslie Walker of the Washington
Post predicted in early March that "this may go down in Internet history as
the year millions of people started paying for online content." We all
scoffed at the time, but eMarketer reports that 15.7 million U.S. consumers
will pay for online content in '02, with that number rising to 21 million
by '03. We say hell no, we won't pay. But when they take away our
convenient free e-greeting cards and fantasy sports games, we open our wallets.
The Super-Size It Award or the "Where Did the Editorial Go?" Award: The
Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), whose new "Universal Ad Package"
pushes for larger online advertising sizes. Even though he admitted that
banner ads do work, the IAB's executive director Greg Stuart told AdAge
that "we are effectively de-emphasizing the banner." Why? "Larger ad sizes
work better."
The Mad as Hell Award: Complaining readers, who spurred on a successful
campaign to kill pop-up advertising on many sites and services, including
iVillage, Google, AOL, MSN, Netscape, Earthlink, and even
YachtingUniverse.com. Of course, the major newspaper sites continue to use
them for now, ignoring the complaints of many readers.
Best Job Move to Get Back at the Boss: Merrill Brown, leaving MSNBC.com as
editor-in-chief to work for Microsoft rival Real Networks as senior VP for
content. Of course Brown pooh-poohs the notion of trying to get Microsoft's
goat, telling the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "I don't find it particularly
funky at all." At least he didn't take a job for Fox News or CNN.
Worst Dot-Com Crash Generalization: John Motavalli, author of "Bamboozled
at the Revolution," wrote that "Web content is dead," "digital dreams have
been deferred for broadband," and "AOL Time Warner will dominate." Nope,
nope and triple-nope. Salon's Scott Rosenberg scoffed that "the same people
who got the Internet business so wrong got the Internet story wrong, too...
New galaxies of communication coalesced, far off the familiar big-media
grid." In other words, the Net didn't put all the old media folks out of
business, or make everyone rich; it created a new way of communicating that
was more personal than the mass media.
Best Moment for Weblogs, Politics Dept.: Trent Lott steps down as Senate
Majority Leader to-be. His off-color comments at Strom Thurmond's 100th
birthday are picked up by ABCNew.com's The Note and TalkingPointsMemo.com's
Josh Marshall, along with various webloggers, who finally webloggered the
guy right out of his leadership position.
Worst Moment for Weblogs, Sports Dept.: San Francisco 49er Garrison Hearst
makes a slur against gays in the Sacramento Bee, few weblogs pick up on it,
and the San Francisco media takes 20 days to even notice. The San Francisco
Chronicle's Ray Ratto couldn't understand what took so long. Notably, Ratto
doesn't blame his colleagues at the Chronicle, but calls the incident a
"paradox of the Internet age: If someone makes a patently inflammatory
remark and nobody finds out for three weeks, what does this say about the
Information Superhighway?" Or about the way sports reporters use it?
Biggest Scare of the Year (which became) Best New Friend of the Year:
Google News, which scared the bejesus out of paid editors and news
regurgitators everywhere (yours truly included) with its editor-free news
page. Then, after kicking it around for a few days, we realized just how
much time it saved us, how it could potentially democratize the scoop
process, and how we couldn't live without it.
Dumbest Idea for a Merger by a Company That Already Had a Dumb Merger: AOL
Time Warner's CNN planned to merge with ABC News, though the idea got
shelved after AOL realized just how bad its own problems were from its last
merger. AOL, of course, had the opposite of a banner year, with an SEC
investigation, dot-com ad deals coming to an end, subscriber numbers
slowing, predictions of huge drops in revenues for '03, and a kooky idea to
try to charge for access to Time, People and other magazines online. But,
hey, on the bright side, they released AOL 8.0!
Strangest Bedfellows in Congress: Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) blocks a royalty
arrangement between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
and small Webcasters, who feared the royalties would bankrupt them. In the
end, Helms pushed for even better terms for the Webcasters, at the behest
of some religious Webcasters in his constituency.
And finally, a hearty thanks to all the reporters and editors and coders
and execs and janitors who helped me get my media fix online in 2002,
especially the great pointers from OnlineJournalism.com and IWantMedia.com.
Note: We're on the slimmed-down holiday schedule the next couple weeks, so
you won't see another new Glaser Online column until next Tuesday, December
31 -- with fearless predictions for '03. Hope you have a jolly holiday season!
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Mark Glaser currently writes technology features for The New York Times,
travel stories for the San Jose Mercury News, and a bi-weekly e-mail
newsletter for the Online Publishers Association, whose membership includes
most major media companies online. That won't stop him from taking cheap
potshots at these outlets, when necessary. You can contact him with any
juicy tidbits about online journalism at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1040713491.php
