Q&A Interview with David Berlind

David Berlind, Executive Editor of ZDNet, visited us on Tuesday as part of the Berkman luncheon series.  Here's a Q&A we did with him following his Tuesdsay talk.  To read more from David Berlind, check out his blog and ZDNet.

Question: Do you think that the MA state government is going to go for the OpenDocument Format?

David Berlind: I think the Commonwealth will continue to pursue the usage of the OpenDocument Format. But I don't know that it will do so to the exclusion of other file formats.  PDF is already in and it's entirely possible that Microsoft's formats will end up on the approved list as well on the basis that they too will pass some test for openness.  But the real test will be in what gets supported by developers.  If they're forced to support multiple file formats, it's more trouble for them and it's more trouble for end users who may be forced into doing conversions which will invariably result in the routine loss of certain document fidelity. Personally, I wish the two camps would reconcile the two and move on. I think that's the right thing to do for customers.

Question: Do you think other state governments will follow its lead?

David Berlind: It's possible. MA's blueprint for technology -- known as the Enterprise Technical Reference Model -- has some of its roots in a larger consortium of government technologists known as the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.  I've been to events and meetings where government birds of feather stick together. The people that attend these events and join these organizations have a very tight bond with each other. It's inconceivable to be that there aren't other states thinking about the exact same thing. More importantly though, the world is a very big place with governments that are not nearly as subject to the influences of American technology companies as those here in the US are (at the federal, state, and municipal levels).  There, such decisions will be much less clouded by politics and more rooted in the merits of the technology. It will be interesting to watch.

Question: Do you think your style of journalism - blog-centric, realtime (as much as is possible) - is something that all journalists, regardless of their area of coverage, could and should adopt?

David Berlind: I don't think they'll have a choice.  When I was a print journalist, I could count the number of competitors to the media properties I worked for on one or two hands.  I was writing once a month. Eventually once per week for a weekly.  When the Web came along, the barrier to entry fell through the floor. You didn't need big printing presses and armies of editors to start distributing information.  Web servers were cool.

But Web hosting basically put the equivalent of a printing press in the hands of anybody that was willing to learn HTML. Some people took the time and suddenly, we had a whole bunch of new competitors.  More than we could count or keep track of. Even worse, it became very economical to narrowcast to millions of people.  Experts in one specific area could go far deeper into that area than the broader media properties ever could.  And now, nothing stood in the way of those experts reaching the same size audience.  To keep up, any journalist that survived the shift had to start writing more frequently. Monthlies and weeklies had to be come dailies because the Web is daily (at the very least).  Then came blogging.  Whereas good Web site design was a barrier to capturing audience, blogging fixed that.  Now, millions of expert narrowcasters are showing up under the same basic and very tolerable page design.  New information comes out by the second instead of the day, week or month and the established media has no choice but to keep up.  They can keep their heads in the sand if they want to and argue that their faster much more nimble competition has a credibility issue. But the truth is available from the blogosphere. We're seeing it time and time again.  It may be hard to find, but it's there.  And it's a problem for the established media and the journalists who work for them.  Sooner or later, something has to give and it's going to be headcount at the established media.  They'll cut into non-essential staff and work hard to preserve their editorial forces. But it's only a matter of time until they start cutting into bone.  It's already happening and so, journalist have to ask themselves what it's going to take to survive.  Well, you have to be as good as or better than your competition.

Question: So established media will need to embrace blogging to survive?

David Berlind: The last time I checked, the idea behind owning a business was to grow it.  You have to ask, what does "grow" mean.  My father spent his entire career in the publishing business and when I exited an IT manager job to take my first job in journalism, he reminded me that, with a few exceptions, most all media properties are three legged stools.  One leg is content.  One leg is audience. The last is advertising.  And, in true ecosystem fashion, editorial begets audience, audience begets advertising, and advertising begets (funds) editorial.  If you pull one leg out, the stool falls over.   At best, most established media properties are standing still and recently, there was news that audienceship receded overall by 6 percent. There are plenty of studies that have been done showing that TV watching (the other big media) has dropped as a result of the Internet. No surprises there.  Time is a zero sum game.  So, audienceship is dropping.  A leg is being pulled out.

Many established media are shrinking not growing and at the end of the day, they have to figure out how to reverse that trend.  With today's media saturation, it is relatively impossible for an established media property to organically grow audience in any significant way.  From time to time, music radio stations shift their formats in hopes of causing a growth spurt (after attrition is taken into consideration).  The technique doesn't work very well for newspapers.  And, it's not like a million new audience members are suddenly going to show up and rescue downward slide.  The only answer is audience acquisition.  If you ask me, this is again, why it makes sense for journalists to blog.  Again, with a few exceptions (really strong brands), audiences generally don't form bonds with media properties.  They form bonds with journalists. The billboards around town don't advertise the local station as a brand. They advertise the trustworthiness (using a picture) of the weather guy, the anchorman, and often, the entire newsteam.  I like Paul Krugman. He's why I go to the NYTimes Web site.  If Barbara Walters changed employers, her audience would move with her. 

I think the same thing can be true for other journalists and blogging represents an opportunity for journalists to be free agents. If you're a blogger, and you have a strong following, and the established media want to grow (not just survive), their desire to acquire audience will unquestionably lead them to bloggers with an established following.  It's the easiest and probably cheapest way to acquire audience (and it's certainly new age). This is good for journalists but they need to be careful about infrastructure choices. If I had my druthers, I would rather host my content on my own infrastructure and let the media property that "acquires me" put its branding on my blog.  That way, if they get rid of me or someone else ups the ante, I get to keep my RSS feed, I rebrand my blog, and my readers don't lose track of me because the RSS feed gets turned off.  Whether or not certain media properties will put up with that idea is a different question, especially as they look to put their personalities behind gated online communities.

Question: What operating system do you use?

David Berlind: Windows. It's a corporate standard where I work and, although I can be self-sufficient in terms of support (being an ex-IT guy), there are times where I just defer to our internal IT department for help. So, I go with the flow.  

Question: What are your favorite communications tools and platforms?

David Berlind: I love where Microsoft has gone with SmartPhone technology.  I use one now (an AudioVox XV6600 that's provisioned by Verizon) and it does phone calls, videos of my kids, MP3's etc.  It's not perfect, but it's evidence of how Microsoft can stay the course constantly improving until they get it right (or good enough).  So, that's what they're doing.  Microsoft had a vision of a smartphone OS that could be all things to all people. Palm said it couldn't be done because the resources (processor, memory, display) weren't there and stuck to a more modest formula.  Isn't it interesting that the latest Palm Treos are running Microsoft's Smartphone OS. Also, I think the problems with thin client computing are close to being resolved.  The APIs that are turning up all over the Internet are collectively becoming the new operating system that developers will write to.  The resulting applications -- known as mashups -- will become the new breed of software and they'll so outnumber the number of applications running on Windows, Mac, and Linux that it will look like the way PCs once compared to mainframes.  That's because it's a piece of cake to develop these apps.  Heck, the API providers (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.) are dying to give you the code that makes use of their APIs.  We're going to see some innovation in the next three years on the application front that's going to blow our minds.  I love it and can't wait and I want to see it sooner rather than later.  That's why I'm doing Mashup Camp.  I want to see the innovation happening first hand.  It's such a turn on.

Question: You mentioned in today's luncheon series that you had an idea for a transparent workflow for journalists, but that the software sucked. What would that look like?

David Berlind: Just make it easier to encode raw material and transmit it to people who might want to take a look.  The technologies exist.  They're just not glued together in a way that takes the friction out. For example, a typical blogging system has all the RSS you'd ever need. But, if one source of your material as journalist is e-mail, just try moving your e-mails into the blogging system so "watchdogs" can get at that source material via RSS.  It's doable.  But it's so burdensome that you give up trying (especially when you think about how journalists have to work harder faster, etc.. going back to what we have to do to survive in the first question).  The last thing we need is something else that takes our precious time.  With the press of two or three buttons, you could record a phone interview and publish it into an RSS feed.  But someone has to design the software to make it that simple.

Today, it takes about 100 button presses and too much baby sitting.  I have a specification for this software.  I know some of your fellows at the Berkman Center are working on worthy software projects. Maybe we should talk. I have a vision here and even if those RSS feeds stay behind the firewalls where only editorial management can get at them, a system like what I have in mind would probably have prevented the Jayson Blair affair at the New York Times and at the very least, limited the damage.  A lot of careers were destroyed by that event as well as others like it that were well publicized.  As a journalist, it makes me ill to know that there are other journalists out there who have to go home and start their lives over after such a debacle. Good journalists. I can't imagine it.  I get sick to my stomach just thinking about it and I think I have a presecription that can help make it better.

Question: Other than making interview transcripts and lists of resources available to those who read your article, what other steps can journalists take toward full transparency? 

David Berlind: Disclose everything. If you get a Christmas card from a public relations firm, disclose it.

Question: You attributed a great deal of your success as a journalist to your ability to adapt.  For those just entering the field of journalism, what three things (be specific) would you tell them they would need to adapt to?

David Berlind: Speed, a 24/7 schedule, and criticism of the worst kind.  The first two were OK for me. Much to the chagrin of my loved ones, I'm a type triple-a personality. I'm on all the time and tethered electronically, wirelessly, etc.  I realize that it's not a great way to live but this is the life I picked for myself and I realized that the swimming isn't so bad, even though it is the Niagara Falls.  But when everyone can reach you via e-mail, they will.  And some people are mean spirited and nasty. I remember when I got the first email that got personal.  It was back in the 90's when I worked for PC Week and hardly anybody was on email.  The letter was like a knife in my heart.  I was working hard to get to the truth and with a few words, I'd been cut down to size.  I wanted to cry. I wanted to quit.  Today, those letters show up every day and in the comments section under my blog.  And speed (of blogging) works against the truth so the odds that they're right goes up.  You have to believe in yourself and get a little thick skinned in the process. It takes some getting used to. But I still get letters that take my breath away and make me ask myself why I'm doing this when I could be doing something else. Then I realize there's not much else I can do and I go back to work.

Click here to read David's writeup of his visit to Berkman on his ZDNet blog, Between the Lines.