Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the deep layoffs that are planned at AOL, the AP and BusinessWeek. In the case of AOL, the company plans to shed one-third of its workforce, or 2,500 staffers. eBay founder Pierre Omidyar announced plans to launch a news startup in Hawaii that will combine citizen journalism with professional reporting to cover local civic issues. I asked Just One Question to Bayosphere founder Dan Gillmor about Omidyar's venture.

Check it out:

4mrbareaudio112009.mp3

Background music is "What the World Needs" by the The Ukelele Hipster Kings via PodSafe Music Network.

Here are some links to related sites and stories mentioned in the podcast:

Google Makes AOL's Turnaround Task Even Harder at AllThingsD

AOL Slashing A Third Of Staff; Armstrong Will Forego '09 Bonus at PaidContent

AOL shows worst not over for media job cuts at Reuters

Layoffs begin at BusinessWeek at Talking Biz News

With Latest Layoffs, AP Hits Goal Of Reducing Payroll By 10 Percent at PaidContent

Aloha at Peer News blog

Omidyar to the Rescue of Professional News? at BusinessWeek

eBay Founder Starting Online News Site at InformationWeek

Ebay Founder Omidyar Shuttering His Twitter Project Ginx, To Launch Online News Site at ReadWriteWeb

Why it Matters that Pierre Omidyar is Launching a News Startup at MediaShift Idea Lab

Here's the whole interview with Dan Gillmor:

Here's a graphical view of last week's MediaShift survey results. The question was: "What if Rupert Murdoch takes all News Corp. content out of Google?"

Also, be sure to vote in our poll about what will happen due to all the media company layoffs.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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There's a new series of demands being made in company meetings everywhere: "What is our social media strategy? What are we doing on Facebook and Twitter? I want followers and fans, and I want them now!"

But before companies large and small -- as well as non-profits and charities -- jump into social media, they need to take a deep breath and think about it. What are their goals? What kind of return on investment will they get? Even though it's free to set up fan pages and feeds, there's a time investment that may or may not pay off.

On this episode of 5Across, I convened a group of social media marketers and publicists who've had success (and mishaps) in creating campaigns on these platforms. They've worked with non-profits, helped street food vendors, gotten authors on Twitter, and spread viral videos on YouTube. Hear their advice on doing social media marketing right, learn how to avoid common pitfalls, and find out how to manage the expectations of clients who want popular social media channels, but don't know why.

5Across: Social Media Marketing

Guest Biographies

Cheryl Contee is a partner and co-founder of the social media consultancy Fission Strategy, where she specializes in online advocacy, engagement, and communications. Prior to Fission Strategy, Cheryl was vice president at Fleishman-Hillard San Francisco and acted as lead digital strategist for the West Coast. She also helped launch 40 multi-lingual websites for Discovery Communications. Cheryl serves on the board of Netroots Nation and chairs the board for CommonGoods.net. She writes as Jill Tubman for the award-winning black political blog JackAndJillPolitics.com, which she founded in 2006.

Jeff Pester is the founder of Text Capital, a developer of custom content delivery applications for social media platforms. He is also the creator and curator of @socialmedia411, with over 60,000 followers. He has substantial experience with broadcast-oriented Twitter accounts in the media/entertainment vertical. Jeff also provides strategic advice to other corporate and non-profit organizations interested in identifying best uses of the Twitter platform.

Laura Pexton is the publicist for Peachpit. She manages public relations and social media for the Berkeley-based publisher of books and videos on graphic and web design, photography, digital video, all things Mac-related, and more. She has developed multiple strategies for increasing visibility, brand loyalty, and warm fuzzy feelings among readers. Prior to Peachpit, Laura's background includes communications and marketing experience for a range of industries, including professional sports (L.A. Dodgers), non-profit, and education.

Brian Solis is recognized as a thought leader in social media. Solis has influenced the effects of new media on the convergence of marketing, communications, and traditional media. He is principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning new media PR agency in Silicon Valley, and has led interactive and social programs for Fortune 500 companies, notable celebrities, and Web 2.0 startups. Brian's blog, PR 2.0, can be found here.

Caleb Zigas is director of operations at La Cocina, a non-profit that helps female food entrepreneurs. Zigas runs the popular @StreetFoodSF Twitter feed covering street food vendors in San Francisco. He began working in kitchens in his hometown of Wash­ington, D.C. and has been working with the food industry ever since. With a degree in glob­alization, Caleb interned at Pro Mujer, in El Alto, Bolivia, working with microentrepreneurs in the country's fastest growing city.

If you'd prefer to watch sections of the show rather than the entire show, I've broken them down by topic below.

Social Media Marketing 101

Celebrity High Jinks

Non-Profits and The Little Guy

Digital Divide?

Beyond Twitter

Fallacies of Social Media

Credits

Mark Glaser, executive producer and host
Charlotte Buchen, camera

Julie Caine, audio

Location: Vega Project & Kennerly Architecture office space in San Francisco

Special thanks to: PBS and The Knight Foundation

Music by AJ the DJ

*****

What do you think? What has worked for you in marketing using social media? What lessons have you learned? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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During a recent trip to see an editor I work with at The Globe and Mail, a national newspaper in Canada, I passed by the newspaper's cafeteria. My editor looked in and pointed at a man who was sitting with his back to us.

"There's Mathew Ingram, doing his office hours," he told me.

Ingram is the Globe and Mail's communities editor, a job he took on after being a technology reporter, columnist and blogger for the paper. My editor explained that Ingram's "office hours" consist of him making himself available in the cafeteria so that anyone can come see him and talk about Twitter, user comments, blogging, or anything thing else that falls under the social media/community banner.

Five years ago, there was no such thing as a community manager or social media editor at large media organizations. Today, this role exists at places such as the New York Times and NPR, among others. To get a sense of the role of these new social media editors at big media organizations, I spoke with four people currently filling these positions.

Mathew Ingram

Name: Mathew Ingram

Title: Communities editor, The Globe and Mail.

Time in the Position: Close to a year.

Previously: Technology reporter, columnist, blogger for the paper.

What the Job Entails: "There was never really a job description so we have been making it up as we go along," he said. "The general idea was to have someone who was thinking about how we interact with readers online, and all the ways of doing it and ways we could be doing it."

Biggest Challenge: "To be blunt, complacency is the biggest danger, the biggest risk," he said. "The biggest challenge is raising awareness of these tools, and convincing people that they are worthwhile. That's something that has been easier with certain people than with others. There's a wide spectrum of awareness and openness to trying new things. Let's face it: being a newspaper reporter hasn't really changed in a huge amount [over the last few decades]. You use a computer rather than a typewriter. So the change taking place right now is maybe harder to deal with if you've been doing that for a long time."

Best Initiative So Far: Using CoverItLive for discussions and liveblogging. "For certain things, like our swine flu discussion, we have gotten 10,000 or 15,000 people, and hundreds and hundreds of comments, along with interaction between editors and writers and readers," he said. "To me, that is a magical thing that never would have happened if we hadn't used that tool. We can also wind up making what we do better. In the swine flu discussion, we were feeding news into the live discussion and we had a Google Map that an epidemiologist had created. Someone said in the discussion that the map was not up to date. Our editor asked if anybody knew of a better map, and three minutes later a guy posted a link to a better map that we never would have found."

Lesson He's Learned About the Globe Community: "We get surprised daily by the things that people are interested in, and the things they want to read about or talk about," he said. "...For me, the big benefit of using these tools is getting a better idea of what readers want. Before, we kind of just had hunch and found out long after the fact. Now we can watch in real time."

Biggest Mistake: "I'd love to say we haven't made any, but I wish we had gotten involved in Facebook earlier on, and built an audience there or made better use of it."

Final Words: "Focus on the small victories. It's quite easy to get overcome and disillusioned when people are not interested in what you think is valuable, or when the things you try don't work."

Shirley Brady

Name: Shirley Brady

Title: Community editor, BusinessWeek.

Time in the Position: Close to 18 months.

Previously: Editor of the Cable360.net website, and a reporter at CableWorld magazine. Previously held editorial positions with Time Inc., among other media organizations.

What the Job Entails: "I spend a lot of time in the comments observing the trends, featuring people across the site, and trying to connect with our writers and say, 'Hey, there's this really interesting conversation going on, you may want to chime in.'" She also works on their blog, "What's Your Story Idea?": http://www.businessweek.com/blogs/whatsyourstoryidea/, and was brought on to help manage the magazine's Business Exchange community.

On Interacting With the BusinessWeek Community: "We've done things that feature our readers on the site by using their comments or contributed articles," she said. "Our audience is business professionals and they are on the front lines of all the stuff we're writing about. They are doing what we're just observing."

Best Initiative So Far: "We had a reader dinner and invited 10 really avid readers to come in and tell us what they like and don't like," she said. "The big takeaway was that our comment system, which is pretty basic, needs to get better... We got to sit face-to-face with these people, some of whom we only knew from their user names."

Biggest Lesson Learned: The need to manage expectations for new initiatives. "It's been interesting watching our Business Exchange platform launch because there were very aggressive expectations for it internally," she said. "As a user, I know the demands on people's time are really intense, and to expect people to adopt another social network is a lot to ask."

Next Big Challenge: Integrating with the magazine's new owner, Bloomberg. "We've been acquired by Bloomberg and are waiting to find out what their strategy is," she said. As this article was being finalized, Brady announced on Twitter that her "role isn't continuing with Bloomberg," and her last day at BusinessWeek will be December 1.

Andy Carvin

Name: Andy Carvin

Title: Senior strategist for NPR's social media desk.

Time in the Position: He's been the social media/community guy at NPR since September 2006.

Previously: Ran the non-profit Digital Divide Network.

What the Job Entails: "I work with a team called the social media desk, which is an editorial unit that focuses on ways for our reporters to interact with the public," he said. "The way I look at it is NPR has this large, loyal community of more than 26 million listeners around the country who tend to see us as more than just a content producer. In some ways, being involved with NPR is almost a lifestyle choice for them. We've had a long history of reaching out to the public and having hem contribute ideas and content. But there's never been a platform before social media that enabled us to interact with the public and give them tools to interact among themselves."

Biggest Lesson Learned: "The key thing is to come up with a variety of ways that people can interact and work with you," he said. "On one end you might have people contribute long stories and put together thoughtful narratives, whether in text or video or audio. At the other end, you may have some who are just wiling to share a quick snippet and move on."

Best Initiative So Far: HurricaneWiki.org. "Last fall when Hurricane Gustav was approaching, we asked for volunteers on Twitter to come together and list hurricane-related resources. Over 48 hours we had over 500 people signed up to build a wiki called HurricaneWiki.org," he said. "They built Google Maps with evacuation routes and shelter information, and some people listened to ham radio and scanner traffic for information and transcribed that." He also notes that Scott Simon and the team at NPR's Weekend Edition have done a good job using Twitter.

What He's Learned About the NPR Community: "These are communities that love us and our mission and what we do, they want to help us succeed and prosper -- and we ignore them at our peril," he said. "Thankfully, we are not ignoring them. It's about understanding that people who use social media and are fans of NPR are our most powerful supporters. They can be advocates, soldiers, messengers. They can assist in editorial matters as well."

Final Words: "There's no edict here saying that every person has to be on Twitter or Facebook. We do it somewhat organically because we want to make sure the staff that are using social media understand why they are using it, and have editorial goals in mind."

Jennifer Preston

Name: Jennifer Preston

Title: Social media editor, New York Times.

Time in the Position: Close to six months.

Previously: Edited the Sunday suburban section of the paper. Has also held other editing and reporting roles at the paper, along with jobs at other media organizations.

What the Job Entails: "I don't really have a typical day. I would say one of the challenges is not doing things on a piecemeal basis, and I'm sure my colleagues would share that concern. We know we have to put effort into getting more people to begin using these tools."

What She's Learned About the Times Community: "Surprise, surprise they like us. I tell anybody who is having a bad day around here just to go to the Twitter search field and look at what people are saying about our work," she said. "People are sharing and recommending the work... One of the really cool, fun, powerful things about social media is that, through the power of recommendations, your loyalists can share the stuff they like. We produce a lot of great stuff, and it's been heartening just to see people share that with enthusiasm."

Best Initiative So Far: New York Times Twitter Lists. "One initiative that helped us move forward quickly, and in an area where there is tremendous potential, is Twitter Lists," she said. "It was an opportunity to go across the newsroom desk-to-desk and talk with different editors and reporters and explain how the feature works and say, 'Hey, how about giving me a list?' I'm mindful that the landscape changes rapidly, and we will change with it. But I do think the Twitter Lists project for the newsroom has helped us get more people interested in Twitter." Preston noted that the paper built new Twitter Lists as reports rolled in about the Fort Hood shootings. "I sit in the middle of the newsroom with the continuous news desk, and so we were all jumping on the story and trying to figure out what was going on," she said. "I walked over to Jenny 8 Lee and said, 'Jenny can you help me put together a Fort Hood list?'"

Biggest Lesson Learned: "One of the most important lessons learned is that much of the best ideas, and the really creative approaches and innovations, come from the developers, many of whom work here in newsroom," she said. "This job is also a public role, and I was unprepared for that. Some people were very kind and helpful and welcoming, but there was a group who were not. I had to figure out what my role is on Twitter because every broken link I sent out was seen as a crime. In any event, you have to be resilient and have a sense of humor."

Final Words: "The New York Times did not discover social media with my appointment, and vice versa," she said. "For the last two years we have had more than a couple hundred accounts on Twitter, and we now have 2 million followers on our main feed. We have half a million fans on Facebook...We're going to be doing something interesting very soon with Tumblr. The really fun part of this whole moment is that you can really play in the space and have fun and figure out what works. And if it doesn't work, that's okay, you can try something else."

Craig Silverman is an award-winning journalist and author and an associate editor at MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is the founder and editor of Regret The Error, the author of Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech, and a weekly columnist for Columbia Journalism Review. Follow him on Twitter at @CraigSilverman.

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Last month, UWIRE.com, an edited college media newswire, mysteriously vanished from the Internet.

"UWIRE, a popular service that aggregated articles from student newspapers across the country, promoting student journalism both within higher education and to the outside world, has disappeared," wrote Simmi Aujla for the Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this month.

Today, visitors to the site receive an error message, and the people running the service have had little to say publicly. As a result, there has been intense speculation about the site, along with complaints from student editors who say they are owed money by the service. (To read some of the online discussions taking place about UWIRE, check out this post and this one.)

As the director for innovation at the Center for Innovation in College Media, I've followed the UWIRE saga for quite a while. I interviewed Joe Weasel of Palestra.net after they purchased UWIRE from CBS. For the past two years, I also helped raise awareness about the UWIRE 100 program by blogging about it (see my 2008 and 2009 posts). While looking into this story, I contacted Weasel for an interview, but he declined to comment on the record.

A Flawed Business Model?

In some ways, the shuttering of UWIRE should come as no surprise. The service did not have a workable business model as a stand-alone entity. Its previous incarnation as part of CBS seemed to make more sense, as a major media corporation would have the resources to leverage UWIRE content for other distribution channels. That said, public comments from UWIRE general manager Tom Orr suggest that the company hopes to resurrect the service.

"UWIRE has temporarily suspended its print wire operations," Orr told the Seattle Spectator. "The company is in the process of trying to get the wire relaunched as quickly as possible and when more information is available it will be made public."

The Spectator called UWIRE "student media's AP." That's overstating the case. As near as I've been able to gather, UWIRE was a curator of material gleaned from college news outlets throughout the country.

Unlike the Associated Press, which collects fees from member news outlets, UWIRE "affiliates" (meaning college news outlets) never paid to republish the content distributed through the service. UWIRE did sell some content to other media outlets, but that was hardly a major source of revenue.

The reality is that a college media wire service would not be able to charge a substantial sum to college media outlets. More importantly for college media (and college journalists), there was no revenue returning to the people who created the UWIRE content.

Unless and until a wire service like UWIRE is able to figure out a way to return some revenue to the college media outlets that generate content, active participation is always going to be a challenge.

Who was using the content?

A number of college news outlets used the UWIRE material, but solid numbers are hard to come by. UWIRE's "About Us" page claimed that its "...14-year-old Student Media Affiliate Program allows 800+ student media outlets to share content and facilitates inter-school collaboration. This entirely student powered wire service generates more than 500 stories a day, including first rate news, opinion, sports, and entertainment coverage."

Although more than 800 outlets shared their content with UWIRE, there's no accurate count of how many news outlets actually used the content.

Mark Witherspoon, adviser to the Iowa State Daily college paper, said, "Our students used a lot of UWIRE columns for their editorial pages, and those pages have suffered because of UWIRE leaving the scene."

"The UWIRE columns were always nice as good backups when the creative well ran dry locally," said Robert Bortel, adviser to the BG News at Bowling Green State University. "They have historically used some of the straight news, too, but we were able to replace that with AP. Lately, our news hole has shrunk because of fewer ads, so many days we are almost all local with AP world and state digests to complement the content. And as for the goal of being more hyper-local, which we all like to banter around as a catchphrase, that is a good thing, too."

The Daily Eastern News, the college media outlet I help advise, also occasionally used UWIRE content. Yet the disappearance of the site hasn't caused any problems in our newsroom. That's probably the case for many college media outlets.

College News Network

While the particulars of the UWIRE situation get sorted out, what's a college news outlet to do? Certainly, wire services like the AP are available, although the cost of AP content is prohibitive for many in this economic climate. Previous efforts like CSUWire (see my interview with its founders here) have come and gone. There is a need for college media to have access to the college-related content generated on other campuses, so other options might be viable.

The latest option to emerge is College News Network. Ryan Dunn and Dave Hendricks of Ohio University (both of whom are editors at the Post), have so far signed up 14 college news outlets. Hendricks said the inspiration for the site came from a summer internship.

"I'd interned at the Columbus Dispatch this summer, which spearheaded a content-sharing agreement among Ohio's newspapers," he said. "We figured a content-sharing network would help fill space on the Post's opinion page and allow college papers to share big stories, like the out-of-control street parties at Kent State and Ohio University last spring."

He said they are looking to recruit as many sharing partners as possible. "The arrangement should benefit student reporters, who gain access to a wider audience, [as well as] readers at colleges across the country, who will gain access to perspectives and news from other student-run media," he said.

College News Network does not edit the copy it receives. It relies on student editors at the various member news organizations to do that.

UPDATE 5:21 PM CST: Via the comments, University of Tennessee Professor Jim Stovall points out an effort that was started a couple years ago: The Intercollegiate Online News Network. Be sure to check out his comments for further details.

Other Options

There are also a couple of other content-sharing options for college media. One is to start using Publish2.

Publish2 allows individual journalists to bookmark specific stories and share those links with the wider Publish2 community, or create smaller groups of people to share those links with. (You can see my Publish2 links here.) Other news organizations can then create widgets on their web pages that link to content they found via Publish2.

There's already been an early example of local newspapers collaborating on a big story through Publish2. My concept is to take that idea a step further and allow college media outlets to publish the linked articles in their newspapers.

It would be relatively easy for college media outlets within a state, or an athletic conference, to agree to share their content via Publish2. Once the content was published, they could use Publish2 to point to their best stories, and allow other newspapers in the "co-op" to use the content.

The main downside to this approach is that there is no centralized editing process, which was UWIRE's bailiwick. The pool of articles available would also be relatively small compared to UWIRE's output, unless a large number of college news outlets signed up.

College media outlets would need to get together to communicate and set up the service with licensing agreements (a headache in itself), and maintain the service by actually linking to the articles -- a dicey proposition come exam time.

The other option would be for college media outlets to do something that might seem radical: use Creative Commons to license their content for non-commercial use, and thereby let other college news outlets have access to their work. At this point, I'm not aware of any college media outlet that has taken the Creative Commons route, although I've had listserv discussions with fellow advisers about the concept. The usual argument against a CC license is one that's been heard before: The content is too valuable for this approach.

The "value" of articles in a college newspaper is a topic for another day, but the idea of licensing content for non-commercial use so that other college newspapers could access it and use it to supplement their own coverage is worth considering in the Internet age.

*****

Are there other options for college media to share content? Let us know your ideas in the comments.

Bryan Murley is assistant professor of new and emerging media at Eastern Illinois University, where he advises DENnews.com, the Pacemaker-winning online site for the student newspaper. He is also the director for innovation at the Center for Innovation in College Media, where he leads the weblog Innovation in College Media. He is the college media correspondent for MediaShift.

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Last spring Emanuel Pleitez, 26, ran for California's 32nd Congressional seat in a special election to replace Hilda Solis, the new secretary of labor.

During the campaign, one of Pleitez's opponents, California State Sen. Gil Cedillo, discovered photos from Pleitez's Facebook profile that showed Pleitez hanging around with various women at parties. The Cedillo campaign used the photos as the basis for a mailer that was sent to homes in the district. The mailer presented Pleitez as a partier, drinker and womanizer, among other smears.

Pleitez admits the negative attack probably cost him some votes. However, instead of shying away from the photos, Pleitez said in a phone interview that he used the incident to reinforce the transparency of his campaign.

"I didn't take any pictures down," Pleitez said. "Everything is up on Facebook. If anyone questioned me after, I invited them to my Facebook page so we could go one by one through all my pictures and I could explain where I was and what I was doing. I have nothing to hide."

Social Media's Influence on Politics

Pleitez didn't win the election, and neither did Cedillo. But their race, and its use of Facebook photos, is yet another example of how social media profiles are increasingly becoming a major part of the political process.

Political candidates used to hide embarrassing photos in a shoebox in the closet. But many of today's younger candidates came of age with social media technologies. As a result, their large online footprint -- replete with status updates, videos and photographs -- often becomes a political football.

"It is astounding and sort of scary the amount of information that is out there now," Claire Viall, president of the Cal Berkeley Democrats at UC Berkeley, said in a phone interview. "But it doesn't prohibit anybody from using social media. It's become a part of our lives."

Viall, 21, joined Facebook when she was in high school as a way to interact with friends before heading off to college. She said that while there are some privacy controls on who can see her profile, it's really a false sense of control because anybody can post just about anything they want about people on the Internet.

Social media technologies have made it very easy to publish -- and find -- embarrassing photos online. C.J. Pascoe of the Digital Youth Research project at Berkeley suggested that young people are more willing to put personal information online because they are exposed to social media at a very early age. This can have big implications for those who aspire to political office.

The Election of Audra Shay

In July, Audra Shay ran for chairman of the Young Republicans, a Republican Party organization for 18- to 40-year olds. During her campaign Shay, 38, was accused of endorsing racism as a result of a reply she posted on her Facebook wall. When the story went viral in the blogosphere, Shay immediately scrubbed her Facebook page clean of other potentially damaging items. (She ended up winning the chairmanship.)

Tommy Jardon, executive director of the College Republican National Committee, called the incident a perfect example of how anything posted online can get picked up and sent around the Internet.

"Someone took a screen shot and even though you take it down or delete it, it now lives forever," Jardon said in a phone interview.

Running for a national organization seat is certainly different than running for Congress, because the Young Republicans, like any similar group, is governed by internal politics. The public at-large does not have a say. Overall, Jardon, 25, suggested that what young people post online should be considered in context.

"What you did in college or what you did five years ago or even five minutes ago, all has some context and an explanation and merits one interpretation or another," Jardon said. "The glory of it is that it is still up to the voters to decide."

Becoming a Public Figure

At age 19, Jason Overman was elected to the city of Berkeley, Calif.'s Rent Stabilization Board in 2004, and in 2006 led an unsuccessful campaign for a city council seat. He said that young people considering a life in politics need to recognize that running for office is a choice to become a public figure. They should therefore be cognizant that what they post online is public.

"I think there is a fear of what is going to pop up, but I think it is sort of akin to a fear that anyone has in an elected office," Overman said. "It's the same sort of fear that older politicians would have had every morning opening the newspaper. I think that's just sort of a part of public life."

It may be just a matter of time until social media is widely understood and accepted outside of young generations who consider being online as second nature. Emanuel Pleitez, now a special assistant to President Obama's economic advisory board at the U.S. Treasury Department, said that, despite the way his Facebook photos were exploited in his last campaign, he would still like to run again. For him, the attack was akin to being baptized by fire -- and that people running for office have always been targeted.

"If I were to advise future political candidates, I would say don't be afraid of what's on Facebook, and don't be so paranoid," Pleitez said. "Just be aware and be ready. It's better to be transparent, open and humble about whatever your past is than it is to hide things."

Steven Davy is a freelance journalist, and freelance radio reporter/producer. He regularly covers the defense industry and security related issues for UPI. Additionally he hosts a current affairs news magazine radio show called the Nonchalant Café Hour which broadcasts live in Kalamazoo, Mich. Steven is a second year graduate student at Michigan State University in the School of Journalism. His research has covered news media bias and framing issues, censorship during war, urban revitalization, renewable energy and climate change.

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Apocalyptic visions and alien invasions descended upon Hollywood earlier this month, to the collective delight of the digital media industry. At the American Film Institute's DigiFest, which was produced by the AFI Digital Content Lab, attendees experienced two days of presentations and screenings focused on new media platforms and creative storytelling using digital innovations. The event spotlighted advanced productions from digital artists, as well as groundbreaking efforts from unknown content creators that are pushing the boundaries of what we perceive as big-budget effects.

The Purchase Brothers and DIY Filmmaking

On day two of the event, Suzanne Stefanac, director of the AFI Digital Content Lab, introduced two of the most talked-about innovators in do-it-yourself filmmaking: Ian and David Purchase, a.k.a. the Purchase Brothers. They created the low budget, but visually rich, short, "Escape from City 17." This film combined existing digital assets (videogame backgrounds from Half-Life and photos from Wikipedia) with guerilla filmmaking (on-the-fly dialogue and trespassing on a local train depot), and three months of post-production work.

Watch the Purchase Brothers' "Escape from City 17."

"We thought they were among the most important new filmmakers to hit the scene this year," said Stefanac. "What they did that set them apart was to teach themselves to meld live action cinema with a robust 3D game world. The resulting footage looks as though it cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps even millions. But, in truth, they spent less than $500. Totally self-taught, they are among the new stars emerging from a moribund landscape."

If the Purchase Brothers represent what's possible on little or no budget, Digital Domain's visual effects work on Sony Pictures' "2012" represents the deep-pocketed end of the digital creative process. This is where large teams of specialized animators spend years creating jaw-dropping footage. Marten Larsson, CG effects animation lead at Digital Domain, demonstrated how they used a combination of open source tools and experimentation to layer, simulate and construct the apocalyptic scenes where buildings smash into each other, and cities fall into the ocean.

While Larsson wouldn't reveal how much the two-minute scene he previewed cost to create, he did mention that 100 people spent a full year to develop it. That kind of expense would be truly apocalyptic to DIY filmmakers and indie film producers.

DigiFest presenters emphasized the myriad opportunities to create content and tell stories in ways that haven't previously been done before, mainly due to technology or budget limitations. "The most exciting development on the digital tool front has to be the fact that all of the tools for conceptualizing, shooting, editing, distributing and promoting are becoming so democratized," said Stefanac. "All of these tools can reside on one modest laptop."

For Humans Only: The World of District 9

Laptops represent just one of many screens on which filmmakers and marketers are trying to engage and excite potential ticket buyers. Trigger, an entertainment and brand marketing agency, built the iPhone game and website for "2012," and they also spearheaded the digital marketing initiatives for Sony Pictures' "District 9."

At DigiFest, Jason Yim, president and executive creative director of Trigger, walked attendees through the integrated marketing campaign for the movie. This included an augmented reality component and online game, as well as blogs and Twitter profiles from different perspectives (MNU: Multi-National United and @MultiNationalU | MNU Spreads Lies and @MNU_Lies) that were written in English and in an alien language. The campaign also included a MNU mobile marketing vehicle, and the ubiquitous bus bench sign that declared, "Bus Bench For Humans Only."

"We started this campaign 18 months before the movie came out [and worked] based on the initial treatment, and before they started shooting," said Yim. "So keeping the content updated and still on message even as the actual film evolved was a challenge. I think this speaks highly of the Sony team for creating a strategy that started within the confines of Comic-Con, but could grow and broaden over the next 14 months into an international campaign."

Film Discovery and Anywhere Engagement

Discovering the next great film from self-starters like The Purchase Brothers or developing integrated, global marketing campaigns such as the one for "District 9," are ongoing challenges for digital innovators.

"With the explosion of new content hitting every size screen, we need new filters, new ways of discovering stories that make us smarter, happier, better humans," said Stefanac.

Yim draws inspiration from social media platforms and location-driven opportunities. "The iPhone, social media, GPS and augmented reality represent an evolutionary leap for digital marketing," he said. "Combined, these innovations multiply the effectiveness of marketing by providing relevancy."

He said the rapidly evolving nature of technology and online networks means marketers have to constantly adapt.

"Digital marketing has become exponentially more challenging and interesting because the tools are changing so quickly," he said. "We are constantly asked to develop on new social networks around the world, and while our mobile programmers were busy delivering six iPhone apps this year we still had to staff and start prototyping on Blackberry and Android devices."

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What do you think are the most compelling digital opportunities for filmmakers or marketers? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Nick Mendoza is the director of digital communications at Zeno Group. He advises consumer, entertainment and web companies on digital strategy, distribution and engagement. He blogs at The Social 7 and is the film correspondent for MediaShift. Follow him on Twitter @NickMendoza.

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Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at recent comments by News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch about taking his content out of Google searches, and how many people reacted to it. Plus, many news organizations made Twitter Lists to cover the Ft. Hood shooting, but the Austin American-Statesman had an excellent Twitter feed of original and aggregated information. And Salon CEO Richard Gingras talks about how his site will be funding investigative journalism with soft-news features.

Check it out:

4mrbareaudio111309.mp3

Background music is "What the World Needs" by the The Ukelele Hipster Kings via PodSafe Music Network.

Here are some links to related sites and stories mentioned in the podcast:

Interview with Rupert Murdoch at Sky News

Murdoch's Google Gambit at the NY Times' Opinionator

What Lies Behind Murdoch's Move to Block Google? at The Atlantic

Google - Rupert Murdoch can block us if he wants to at the Telegraph

Your readers are paying you -- with attention at Mathewingram.com/work

Rupert Murdoch to Block Google = Smart = Twitter has changed it all at Blog Maverick

Fort Hood Shooting Shows How Twitter, Lists Can be Used for Breaking News at Poynter

Huffington Post's Fort Hood Locals Twitter List

Dallas Morning News' Fort Hood Updates Twitter List

Austin American Statesman's @FtHoodShootings Twitter feed

I Wouldn't Want to Belong to Any Twitter List That Would Have Me as a Member at Idea Lab

Twitter Filters and Fonters: Static Lists and Dynamic Agents at /message

Can Salon's Revamp Help It Stop Bleeding Money? at MediaShift

Here's a graphical view of last week's MediaShift survey results. The question was: "What do you think will happen to newsweekly magazines?"

Also, be sure to vote in our poll about what would happen if News Corp. content is taken out of Google.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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Over 300 people gathered under the Media140 banner in a concert hall at Australia's national public broadcaster ABC in Sydney last week to consider the future of journalism in the social media age.

Media140 is a newly formed global collaboration of journalists, academics and social media practitioners that is staging conferences around the world. The goal is to examine the impact of the real-time web on news and media industries. It was founded in the UK last February by media worker Andrew Gregson. (Disclosure: I was the editorial director for Media140 Australia. Profits from the event will be donated to The Big Issue, a magazine designed to empower the homeless.)

Our conference at the bottom of the world rose to No. 4 on Twitter's trending topics after just a few hours. Issues on the agenda included the role of Twitter in reporting the Iran uprising; professional and ethical guidelines for journalists using social media; and how political reporting is being changed by journalists' adoption of social media platforms.

The gathering tested some professional journalists' assertions about the threat to quality reporting allegedly posed by Twitter. It also challenged claims on the territory made by social media experts. In the end, we established that Twitter is the platform propelling Australian journalists into the social media age, while also broadening the base of the movement to reinvent journalism.

The line-up featured some of Australia's most respected and prolific journalists, academics and bloggers. Tensions arose on stage and online during the conference between old rivals, over newly contested territory, and in pursuit of redefinitions of journalism. While hundreds mingled at the ABC, hundreds more participated online via Twitter, a live ABC webcast, a Ustream video feed, and live blogging.

The ABC of Social Media Guidelines

The ABC's managing director, Mark Scott, was the first keynote speaker. He used the event to launch the most progressive social media policy that I've seen from a large media organization.

"I wanted to title my talk 'Making This Up as We Go Along'... because to a degree that's what we're doing," he said.

Essentially, the simple guidelines empower ABC employees to freely use social networking sites and tools for professional and personal purposes, with the rider that they be careful not to undermine their professional practice, nor their employer's reputation. The policy outlined four key rules:

* Do not mix the professional and the personal in ways likely to bring the ABC into disrepute.
* Do not undermine your effectiveness at work.

* Do not imply ABC endorsement of your personal views.

* Do not disclose confidential information obtained through work.

"We need to experiment and we need to give our staff the space to experiment," Scott said.

The new ABC guidelines strongly contrast with the position adopted by the Australian Financial Review, which recently banned its staff from using Twitter professionally. (In a forthcoming MediaShift post, I'll analyze Australian media outlets' attempts to negotiate ethics and professionalism in this new territory).

Scott has dragged his staff -- some kicking and screaming -- into the social media age. He acknowledges that these new platforms are part of the public broadcaster's future. In his Media140 address, he pointed out that Twitter is just another "t" in a progression from telegraph to telephone to telex, and so on. He also showed how Twitter could easily fit within the realm of breaking news by offering tweet-length posts for some of the major stories of the past century.

Nevertheless, skepticism remains. The ABC's most senior political reporter, Chris Uhlmann (christened by the ABC chief the "Harpo Marx of Twitter" for his virtually mute state in the sphere), said, "I just don't see how I could verify sources from Twitter."

There were pockets of internal resistance to the ABC's involvement in Media140. But as the conference progressed, I heard that many journalists at the public broadcaster were watching the feed from their desks. Some of them eventually ventured onto the conference floor, while others contacted me after the conference was over.

The challenge now for progressive industry leaders like Mark Scott is to adequately support journalists so they can use social media as an integral part of their beat. As the ABC radio's chief political correspondent Lyndal Curtis blogged during the conference, many already over-laden journalists are simply "too tired to tweet!"

Tweeting Politics and the Clash of the Titans

As I reported earlier this year, there has been a veritable explosion of Australian journalists in the Twittersphere. Today, Twitter is changing the way political reporters interact, and has broken a century-long tradition that prohibited live reporting from the Australian parliamentary chambers.

As the Sydney Morning Herald's Annabel Crabb told the conference, reporters are tweeting the daily Question Time sessions. Journalists are using Twitter to interact with each another and a broadening base of engaged civic tweeters. People are even challenging politicians via tweets as debates play out on the floor of the House.

While some journalists and organizations move forward, working on building new audiences by engaging through social media, conflict is emerging between publishers like Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and public broadcasters such as the ABC and the BBC. Mark Scott recently compared Murdoch's last grasps at control -- re-erecting pay walls and, as of this week, musing about blocking content from Google -- with the desperation of an emperor experiencing the fall of Rome.

On stage at Media140, the award-winning author and journalist, Caroline Overington expressed genuine alarm at the rising, monopolistic power of public broadcasters like the ABC in the new media landscape. She launched into a strident defense of Murdoch (whom she described as "benevolent") and his vision for newspapers.

She also revealed a hint of company strategy by indicating News Corp.'s plans were also linked to the development of a media consumption device, which is now facetiously being referred to in Australia as the iRupert or the Ru-pod. Overington also challenged rival, Annabel Crabb, with assertion that the Sydney Morning Herald, a Murdoch competitor, was in very dire financial straits.

That drew the retort from Crabb: "I think it is wonderful that your survival strategy depends on the robust genes of a 78-year-old... We are not in as much trouble as you will be once your great leader drops off the twig." Cue peals of laughter. (You can view the entire panel on Social Media and Political Reporting here.)

The Mass Media as the Masses' Media

One academic speaker told the conference that "the hoards are at the castle gates." I took this analogy further in my closing remarks at Media140. From my perspective, the masses aren't just threatening to storm the castle -- they've overrun it. Mass media has become the masses' media. Unless the mainstream media wants to be left behind to starve, it needs to join the revolution and figure out new ways of funding, filtering and curating stories to ensure the hard work of journalism -- shining a light in dark places -- can continue to be done.

"For the first time in human evolution we are co-creating the human narrative, never again will our histories be held hostage to the victors, our stories forgotten, unwritten, unscribed," said social media activist Laurel Papworth.

This point was driven home in the question-and-answer session that followed a presentation delivered via Skype by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen. During his talk, Rosen outlined a clarion vision for journalism in the social media age via 10 key points. Then a journalist in attendance got up and expressed fear about giving the "audience" the reins.

"If you don't have a democratic heart, you don't belong in journalism in the first place," Rosen said.

Media140 Sydney was an attempt to bridge the gap between the mainstream and the fringes, to negotiate change, and to provide a platform for the collaborative reinvention of journalism. Thousands of tweets, many new connections, and a few minor brawls later, the global conversation -- in newsrooms, on Twitter and blogs -- continues to reap dividends for journalism's reinvention.

In the coming weeks I'll outline more of the lessons learned and the progress being made in the wake of Media140. But, for now, the last word should go to SBS online news and current affairs editor, Valerio Veo, who told Media140 "I am the bastard child of old and new media... like a child of a broken home -- [I] care deeply for both my divorced parents, despite their temporary differences."

Images by neeravbhatt via Flickr

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Salon.com was a pioneering website launched in 1995 by former editors of the San Francisco Examiner, mixing opinion and investigative reporting with a sharply progressive slant. Although the company went public at the height of the dot-com boom in 1999, it had lost more than $80 million by 2003, and lost $4.6 million in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009. Its stock trades at just 12 cents a share on the over-the-counter stock market.

(Note: Some commenters point out below that Salon started with a more centrist take on news, but has moved toward a left/progressive slant more recently.)

This year, Salon hired a new CEO, Richard Gingras, who previously worked as a media advisor to Google and at startups such as @Home. Gingras had his work cut out for him. The recession hit the site's bread-and-butter ad revenues hard, it cut staff by 20 percent, and paid memberships have declined.

Salon recently unveiled a redesign to provide more context to stories, include related material from around the web, and give advertisers a more creative platform. It's also planning a new store that will sell third-party products (and provide Salon with a cut of e-commerce sales), as well as a new food section.

I visited the Salon headquarters in Rincon Center in downtown San Francisco, and spoke to Gingras about the redesign, the future of investigative journalism, and his thoughts on competing with Huffington Post. He greeted me by saying "welcome to the oldest new media company." The following is an edited transcript, along with video clips of our discussion.

Q&A

What is Salon's greatest asset?

Richard Gingras: Salon has been around now 15 years and I think its greatest asset is the quality of its writing. I think it's particularly true today, when there's more information than ever, but there's also more bad information than ever. We have these ongoing arguments about where Obama was born, so I think separating the wheat from the chaff is more important than ever; figuring out what really matters is more important than ever. And that's what Salon is about, so that's its key asset. And it's doing it with a friendly, witty personality that a lot of folks find appealing.

Gingras explains what Salon will be offering advertisers with the redesign.

On a lot of publishers' sites, there's a balance between short and long content. To me, Salon is known for giving more depth. But online you're almost punished for doing longer stories versus lots of shorter ones. How do you balance those?

Gingras: It's an interesting point. I don't think the web punishes you for depth. I think it suggests there might be new ways of going deep that doesn't necessarily mean a 3,000 word article. Salon does both. We do long pieces and short pieces, and the short ones might end up having depth, they're just done with a different periodicity. I'm reminded about something [Marshall] McLuhan said about "every new medium starts as a container for the old."

That's as true for the web as any medium. Radio started out with people reading the newspaper, and they figured out that didn't work. So the narrative form will evolve on the web. It's true that short stuff works really well, blogging works really well. It doesn't mean it's any less thoughtful. It doesn't mean it's any less comprehensive.

Gingras talks about how he sees Huffington Post differing from Salon by succeeding with SEO and traffic, but not with original in-depth reporting.

With all the talk around Web 2.0, people think of Salon as being part of the first wave. Do you feel like Salon needs to be reinvented for Web 2.0?

Gingras: Interestingly, Salon was named for the notion of engaging in discussion. Salon has always been very much about engaging in discussions with its audience. Our comments and letters sections are both extremely prolific and interesting. The WELL, the pioneering discussion site, is part of Salon Media. In one dimension, it's in our bones; in another, technology is changing. We didn't talk about social media three years ago because Twitter and Facebook were barely there. Now it's a key part of the landscape.

Part of our redesigning and re-architecting of Salon was to put us in a better position to use those technological enhancements as they're rolling out. But the theme is the same. Let's pursue interesting subjects. Let's try to approach it from angles that mainstream media does not, and let's engage our audience and let them engage us as much as we possibly can.

I ask Gingras why Salon has lost so much money, and he says he is confident that will change.

Tell me more about your take on paid content. Salon tried out subscriptions early on, but those have faded somewhat. Now many mainstream media outlets are considering paid content. What do you think about that?

Gingras: I refer to business models not model because online you have to be open to different approaches. We do have a premium subscription for $45 a year that people pay to access Salon without advertising. Others subscribe for $35 a year because they want to support what we do. That's one component of it. But advertising is a very big component of it, and I expect it to be that way as we go forward.

But we're also looking at other possibilities. Around Thanksgiving we're going to launch a Salon Store, we're going to go into e-commerce. Salon as an independent voice represents a set of values, a way of looking at the world. In business-speak, it's not just a content brand, it's a lifestyle brand. Just as we carefully select what to write about and discuss in the content space, [we are examining] what we can do in the product space. The web has allowed so many artisans and merchants to mount businesses virtually on the web. It's an opportunity for us to select products and share in that transaction with the merchants.

And we'll be extending Salon's content into new vertical areas. We'll be launching a food section as well in the next month or so.

I've noticed that your paid subscription numbers have gone down. Is that something you're not going to be emphasizing as much moving forward?

Gingras: I'd like to see the premium subscriptions increase. But keep in mind the way we approach it. We're not gating content, we're not saying you have to pay us to see the content of Salon. I don't think that really can work for us or most mainstream publications. It can work for the Wall Street Journal because that's perceived to be high-value business content that people can subscribe to and write off the expense. We don't play in that world.

Gingras walked me through the redesign of Salon and how stories now live within topic pages.

How has your community blogging area Open Salon gone, and what's the business model for that?

Gingras: Open Salon has been a great success for us, and it's something we're very pleased with. And it's an important component of how we're going to have a successful strategy moving forward. It launched a year ago, and has 35,000 bloggers, an audience of about 1 million unique visitors per month, several million page views. But to me the most interesting thing is, given the nature of the Salon audience, which is probably the most intelligent audience on the web, with many writers among that audience, the participation in Open Salon is of very high quality.

We have novelists, former journalists, New Yorker cartoonists who put up cartoons the New Yorker hasn't used. So there's a lot of very high quality content there, and it's a vibrant community. It's a way for Salon to expand its content depth and range with those that love Salon. We target ads into those pages, and the bloggers can also get some money from Google Ads that run on those pages. Open Salon to us is less about getting more revenues, and more about expanding our philosophical view that the web isn't just about speaking at people -- it's about speaking with people.

Have you considered crowdsourcing, because you have this big community at Open Salon, and you have reporters doing work over here. There's been a lot of talk about combining the two, and using the power of the audience.

Gingras: Absolutely. I don't quite use the term crowdsourcing. I've been spending a lot of time over the past few years trying to figure out how journalism will evolve. I think journalism of the future will be great, and frankly better than the journalism of the past, because so many people can participate. I spent a lot of time working at Google and studying how the web works, and how that might impact journalism moving forward. One conclusion I had was that future successful news organizations, part of their success will be based on their ability to effectively and qualitatively leverage what I call 'the trusted crowd.'

This goes beyond citizen journalists submitting cell phone photos of a tractor-trailer crash. That's fine, I'm not saying that shouldn't be done. But we want to go beyond that. So when we look out at Open Salon and others out there, we do think about how to leverage the efforts of those that want to participate with us [with] their writing, research or their assistance curating what we do. Wikipedia has shown the high quality of what you can get by leveraging the help of folks, done carefully. We don't need 1 million contributors, but can we bring in a couple hundred folks into the editorial process of Salon? Absolutely.

Gingras explains how Salon will fund investigative reporting by increasing soft features including a new Food section.

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What do you think about Salon's revamp and its prospects for becoming a profitable online media publisher? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Videography and photo by Charlotte Buchen.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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It probably seemed like a fun idea at the time.

Last year, Eric Dane, known as "McSteamy" from the show "Grey's Anatomy," his wife Rebecca Gayheart, and former beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche decided to make a home movie. Yes, that type of home movie. The threesome recorded themselves nakedly fumbling around in bed, slurring words, and splashing in a hot tub.

Given Dane's popularity on the show, it was almost a forgone conclusion that the tape would somehow make its way onto the Internet, and Gawker was happy to make it happen. It published the video in August, and has since racked up over 3.25 million page views.

Before posting the video, Gawker whittled it down from 12 minutes to just under four and added some special effects to cover McSteamy's, well, steamy. (Its sister site, Fleshbot, used an uncensored version.) The tape, as edited by Gawker, does not actually show the threesome having sex -- it's not a porno. In fact, if the video didn't show Gayheart and Peniche without their shirts, and bleeped out the swear words, it might be suitable for daytime TV.


Hollywood sex tapes making their way to the Internet are nothing new. It has happened to Paris Hilton, Tonya Harding, and, of course, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.

While lawsuits almost always follow leaked sex tapes, few cases ever go to trial. (Paris Hilton's suit, for example, ended in a settlement that reportedly made the heiress $400,000.) Dane and Gayheart's suit, which was filed three weeks ago in a California federal court, is surprisingly not about invasion of privacy or defamation of character, as is common when a sex tape goes public. Instead, the couple claim that Gawker's publication of the video violates their copyright. This makes it a unique situation.

I recently described for a friend what the video did and didn't show, and explained that as long as Gawker didn't help steal the tape, it does not matter how they got it. After my 15-minute soliloquy, she asked, "So, who will win?"

"I give Gawker a three-point spread," I said.

Here's how the case of McSteamy V. Gawker breaks down, along with a look at the larger legal issues at play.

Does a Sex Tape Fall Under Fair Use?

In 1976, Congress enacted the Copyright Act, which states that a copyright holder has the exclusive right to distribute or reproduce copyrighted material. However, the law includes one big exception, which is called "fair use." Section 107 of the Copyright Act states that a person or business can publish portions of copyrighted material so long as it is for the purposes of criticism, comment, or news reporting.

Gaby Darbyshire, a barrister and the vice president for Gawker Media, told me that the company published the video because it was "newsworthy." But simply labeling something as news doesn't automatically constitute "fair use." In order to determine whether Gawker deserves the law's exception, a court will look at four factors listed in Section 107.

First, a court will look at whether Gawker used the video for commercial purposes. Obviously, Gawker is a for-profit business, but that alone doesn't prevent it from publishing the video.

Instead, a court will consider the purpose and character of Gawker's use of the video. The question here is whether the website posted Dane and Gayheart's video for news or commercial purposes. If Gawker edited the tape to suit a newsworthy purpose, the website would have given the video a meaning different than that of the original, thus making "fair use" appropriate.

Here's the argument that Gawker will likely make: Dane, Gayheart, and Peniche made the tape because they wanted to record sexual acts. According to Darbyshire, however, Gawker posted the tape because they found some news value in the recording. Darbyshire said that seeing "Dane, his wife, and a former beauty queen who went on a reality show to be treated for sex addiction, and reportedly is a Hollywood madam," together is newsworthy. Thus, Gawker will claim that its use of the video added a news element to a home movie.

David Ludwig, an intellectual property attorney for the law firm Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, agrees with Darbyshire. "Newsworthiness does not limit itself to hard news, it can involve celebrities as well," he said.

As a result you can probably score a point for Gawker on this issue.

Second, a court will examine whether Dane's tape was published or unpublished at the time of Gawker's use. In terms of "fair use," the law states that "the fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use." However, "scooping" a copyright holder on their work does make the "fair use" exception less likely. In a 1985 decision, the Supreme Court stated that a copyright holder has the "right to control the first public appearance" of copyrighted material. Gawker's post was the first time the public had ever seen the video, meaning that Gawker does not have much of an argument here. Call it McSteamy 1, Gawker 1.

Third, a court will look at the "amount and substantiality" of Gawker's posting in relation to the video as a whole. Gawker posted just under four minutes of the 12-minute tape. As far as the law is concerned, the posting's length may critically compromise Gawker's claim to "fair use."

In 1987, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held, for a variety of reasons, that appropriating one-third of 17 letters written by author J.D. Salinger did not constitute "fair use" because it was more than "necessary to disseminate the facts." Ludwig suggested that Gawker could have legally posted a screen-shot or a snippet of the video to prove that their story was true. Instead, they excerpted a third of the video. Dane 2, Gawker 1.

Fourth, a court will ask whether Gawker's publication of the video supplanted the need for an individual to purchase a legitimate copy of the couple's tape. This depends on what material Gawker left on the cutting room floor.

If the whole video consists only of the threesome hanging around a house naked, then perhaps, after viewing the Gawker excerpt, no one would be interested in purchasing the full version. Thus, "fair use" would be off the table. "No one is going to buy a work if it's freely available on the Internet," Ludwig said.

However, if Gawker edited out some really juicy material -- sex scenes, for example -- then people could still be interested in a bona fide copy of the recording. Though Darbyshire declined to offer any specifics, you can probably assume the McSteamy threesome gets more interesting than what is currently available on Gawker. Dane 2, Gawker 2.

Fair Use Versus Infringement

To recap, Dane and Gayheart appear to have a valid claim against Gawker for copyright infringement. However, Gawker has a formidable defense by way of the "fair use" exception. It's important to note that the four factors outlined above are not examined in isolation of one another. Instead, courts try to balance them against each other.

In the end, if this case goes to trial, the outcome will likely depend on what Gawker chose to cut from the video. It's a strange reality that, in the case of sex tapes, what a news organization doesn't publish is sometimes more important that what it does.

Rob Arcamona is a second-year law student at The George Washington University Law School. Prior to attending law school, Rob worked at the Student Press Law Center and also helped establish ComRadio, the Pennsylvania State University's student-run Internet-based radio station. He writes the Protecting the Source blog.

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In China, Google is forced to censor its search engine, Facebook and Twitter are blocked, U.S. news agencies are barred from selling their services freely, and foreign investment in the media industry is closely watched. Yet when President Obama visits the country in a few days, it's unknown if he will publicly pressure the Chinese government on issues of censorship or free expression.

The president yesterday defended his position on these issues, saying, "We believe in the values of freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, that are not just core American values but we believe are universal values."

This is a critical time for him to speak up because China appears to be increasing its efforts to censor Internet content, while also cracking down on journalists and bloggers. At the same time, the Obama administration has been sending mixed signals on democracy and human rights to China. For example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted the 20th anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown, and called on the Chinese government to "provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal." But she also celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China by congratulating the Party for its "truly historic accomplishment" of "lifting millions of people out of poverty."

Meanwhile, Yang Zili, a young engineer who spent eight years in prison, recently urged President Obama to intercede on behalf of two colleagues still being held in custody. Their offense? Creating a website.

It's true that gratuitous criticism towards China rarely produces results; but excessive restraint is also ineffective. Human right issues cannot be raised only in private, which is why it's important to review some of China's recent abuses of freedom of expression, and its renewed efforts at online censorship.

Cyber-Dissidents in Jail

Beginning around 2003, the Internet started emerging as a major tool for exposing corruption and abuse of power, and for putting pressure on China's central and provincial governments. Today, China has the largest population of Internet users on the planet. It also has 58 cyber-dissidents in jail. In terms of press freedom, China is ranked 168th in Reporters Without Borders' 2009 World Press Freedom Index, out of 175 countries.

In Xinjiang, Chinese authorities launched a crackdown that includes blocking many forms of Internet communication. The region's Internet has been reduced to an intranet that prevents Uyghurs from providing the outside world with detailed information about their situation.

In October, Reporters Without Borders surveyed the level of access provided to websites dedicated to the Uyghur community. These sites, operated by Uyghurs for Uyghurs, are for the most part inaccessible to Internet users based in Xinjiang, and those abroad. More than 85 percent of the surveyed sites were blocked, censored or otherwise unreachable.

On Oct. 1, 2009, Hailaite Niyazi, an Uyghur journalist and the former editor of the Uighurbiz website, was arrested. His family was told three days later that he was suspected of "endangering national security." His arrest appears to have been prompted by an interview he gave about the Xinjiang regional government's attitude towards recent riots. (In the past, authorities have accused Uighurbiz of "encouraging violence" in Xinjiang.)

In Tibet, there have been ongoing arrests and trials of journalists, bloggers and Internet users since March 2008. Three young Tibetans from the village of Dara have been held in jail since early October, when they were arrested for allegedly sending information about Tibet to contacts outside of the country.

Erecting Dams on the Internet

Silencing dissidents is only one part of China's censorship strategy. Last summer, the Chinese government introduced "Green Dam," new piece of filtering software. Chinese officials claim it's designed to protect children from pornographic content online. However, a study of Green Dam by the OpenNet Initiative showed that its key-word filtering was not very effective for porn, yet it was very good at blocking political, cultural and news websites, among other targets.

More recently, Internet service providers in the southern province of Guangdong have been installing a new type of filtering software called Landun (which translates to "Blue Shield" or "Blue Dam"). It's even more powerful than its problematic predecessor. According to an article in the Hong-Kong based Apple Daily, Chinese network providers were given until September 13 to install Blue Shield and avoid being sanctioned. Blue Shield is said to be more powerful than Green Dam and its installation is obligatory, not optional, as the authorities had reportedly promised. It is intended to provide stronger protection against porn sites and to increase the monitoring and filtering capabilities of Internet connections.

Congress has taken notice of China's stepped-up efforts to control the web. In June, Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) introduced a resolution "expressing grave concerns about the sweeping censorship, privacy, and cyber-security implications of China's Green Dam filtering software, and urging U.S. high-tech companies to promote the Internet as a tool for transparency, freedom of expression, and citizen empowerment around the world."

Chinese Censorship: Made in the USA?

American firms are also involved in Chinese censorship. Cisco Systems helped build the entire Chinese Internet infrastructure, including the mechanisms to censor the web. Yahoo aided the Chinese government in jailing four dissidents by giving their personal data to Chinese authorities. Speaking to shareholders at the Yahoo annual meeting in June, CEO Carol Bartz was questioned about the company's policies in China in light of Green Dam and other controversies.

"We made a mistake, and you can't hold us up as the bad boy forever," she said, referring to the release of information that led to the arrest of the journalists. "It's not our job to fix the Chinese government. It's that simple."

Maybe it's not Yahoo's job. But President Obama has a responsibility to advocate for freedom and democracy, and he should do so publicly when he visits China on November 15.

Clothilde Le Coz has been working for Reporters Without Borders in Paris since 2007. She is now the Washington director for this organization, helping to promote press freedom and free speech around the world. In Paris, she was in charge of the Internet Freedom desk and worked especially on China, Iran, Egypt and Thailand. During the time she spent in Paris, she was also updating the "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents," published in 2005. Her role is now to get the message out for readers and politicians to be aware of the constant threat journalists are submitted to in many countries.

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Over the years, many authors have tried versions of the online donation model, with mixed results. But one specific genre of writers, speculative fiction, seems to be experiencing a moderate level of success.

Back in 2000, Stephen King became one of the first major authors to offer a book online using an "honor system" to solicit donations. The book was called "The Plant," and was based on a series of chapbooks King had sent around to his friends in the '80s. He placed the first chapter in various downloadable formats on his website, and downloaders were expected to donate $1 by mail or credit card. King said that as long as 75 percent of readers donated, he would continue to post new chapters.

According to news reports, the first few chapters either reached or nearly reached that 75 percent threshold, though the second chapter fell as low as 70 percent. Eventually, King raised the price to $2 per chapter. To compensate for this increase, he published more pages at a time. I was among the King fans who dutifully mailed in money each time I downloaded a new chapter.

But King's system was flawed in several ways. First, 75 percent is a fairly high threshold to meet. Plus, he counted every single download, so if someone downloaded the PDF but then had to switch to the plain text version, King counted these as two separate downloads. He wanted his $2 (or $4 for later chapters.)

Eventually, the donation rate fell below 50 percent and King abandoned the project, promising to return to it at a later date. He hasn't. Compared to the sales of most mid-list authors, the experiment was a huge success -- at one point King wrote on his site that it had generated several hundred thousand dollars -- but a piece in the New York Times inferred that it was a failure. Still, it garnered huge press attention because of its novelty. The question remains: could this be a viable business model for future works?

Success With Speculative Fiction

In early 1999, author John Scalzi (of the popular Whatever blog) released his book, "Agent to the Stars," as a "shareware novel."

"People could read it, and if they liked it, they could send me a dollar, or whatever sum they liked (even if that sum was zero)," Scalzi wrote of the experiment. "If they didn't like it, well, clearly, they wouldn't have to send me anything. It was a no-risk proposition for the reader. I didn't expect to see a dime from it, but as it turns out, over five years I made about $4,000."

Author Tim Pratt recently turned to the donation model after unsuccessfully shopping around a novella to small press publishers. The large publisher Bantam Spectra publishes his Marla Mason series, and Pratt developed an idea for a smaller work set within that same universe. The work wasn't a full novel, yet it was also too long for short fiction magazines. After the small presses passed, Pratt put off the project -- until his wife was laid off from her job.

"When I saw that [author Catherynne Valente] was trying [the donation model], I thought that I would, and the obvious thing was to write this thing that I already had," he said. "If I knew what the story was going to be, I knew functionally it was just a piping exercise really."

Pratt began publishing the chapters on his blog without any preconditions as to how much money had to be donated before subsequent chapters would be released.

"I would say that most the people reading it are fans of my series," he explained. "But, certainly, some of the donors in the first couple of weeks were people who just felt for my situation, people who saw an opportunity to help us out. It's sort of a good excuse to let people give you charity."

Pratt didn't provide exact figures for how many people have donated, but said he's made more than he would have if one of the small publishers had picked it up. Some of the people gave one large donation, while others donated in small bits as new chapters were released. For the first few weeks, he had four or five new donors a day. Now, several chapters into it, he gets perhaps four or five new donors a week. I asked him if he viewed this as a sustainable business model for established authors who have built-in fan bases.

"It's hard for me to say because I don't know how much of the response to this has been based solely on its novelty," Pratt replied. "It's usually not that common of a thing, especially with books in existing universes that have come out from other publishers...I think going directly to your fans is something that writers should be open to -- an increasing number of musicians are doing it -- but with this particular project, I don't know if it's something I'd necessarily repeat."

'I Can't Do Without My Chapter'

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller went a slightly different -- and perhaps more business savvy -- route when they began releasing one of their works in late 2006. The writing team has been collaborating on projects for years, and in December of that year they began having difficulties with one of their publishers.

"We announced ... that we were going to write this side book, and put it out on the Internet," said Lee. "And the rules were that the first chapter went up for free, anyone could read it. The second chapter would depend on it earning $300, and people could donate as much or as little as they wanted. They could donate 50 cents, or the sky is the limit. And when it got to $300, we'd turn it out into the wild and anyone could read it again. By the time we started releasing the book on the Internet, it was January 2007 and we had five chapters already written. The book was well paid for before we were halfway through [publishing] the book."

Donors who gave a minimum of $25 were guaranteed a free print edition of the book, if one was ever released. They said approximately 1,066 donors reached this threshold.

"About the fifth week, we had an occasion to be a little late [in releasing a chapter], and people began to worry that we weren't going to post," said Miller. "And pretty soon people were setting their clocks in Australia at the right time to get it when the chapter was supposed to come out, and we were getting notes from people saying 'I can't do without my chapter this week.' "

As former newspaper reporters, the duo said that this is the kind of project for someone who is adept at writing on deadlines; otherwise, the author risks falling behind or becoming disheartened by a lack of results. Though Lee felt this could be a good business model for authors with established fan bases, she said it probably wouldn't be viable for amateur authors trying to build a following.

Cory Doctorow's Experiment

Though many writers are just starting to experiment with this new format, there's at least one notable author who's ready to compare its effectiveness to traditional publishing. Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author and co-editor of the popular Boing Boing blog, has released several books under Creative Commons licenses. He believed that the free publicity resulting from this strategy would lead to higher print sales. Recently, he announced plans to bypass traditional publishing completely, and then publish his results for all to see.

"Here's the pitch: the book is called 'With a Little Help,'" he wrote in Publisher's Weekly. "It's a short story collection, and like my last two collections, it's a book of reprints from various magazines and other places (with one exception, more about which later). Like my other collections, it will be available for free on the day it is released. And like my last collection, 'Overclocked,' it won't have a traditional publisher."

The book will be put out through a variety of self-published formats -- ranging from e-book, to audiobook, to print -- and Doctorow will record all the income that it generates, whether it's from donations, speaking gigs, or even the money paid for his Publisher's Weekly column on the experiment.

"There's plenty more details, of course -- how I'm going to use Twitter, what I'm going to do to get this into bookstores, the marketing and publicity plan," Doctorow wrote. "But I'm out of space for this month -- and many of those details will fill a column on their own. One thing I need to mention, though: I'm seriously considering writing a book about the experiment, no matter how it turns out, selling it to a traditional publisher and adding the advance to the balance sheet."

Simon Owens is a social media consultant and associate editor for MediaShift. For more about him read his blog or contact him at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com

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It's been over a year now since the arrest of Hossein Derakhshan, popularly known as Hoder. Ever since he wrote the first Persian-language blogging guide in November 2001, he has helped pioneer the Iranian blogging community while living in his adopted home of Toronto. (Derakhshan is a dual citizen of Iran and Canada.)

However, beginning in 2006, Derakhshan's views started changing. He called for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and engaged in personal attacks against people that he disagreed with politically. He was even sued for libel by another Iranian in September 2007.

A year later, he returned to his homeland for the second time in nearly ten years. While there, he continued to espouse very nationalistic views. His family had advised against his return, but Derakhshan went anyway, and was arrested on November 1, 2008.

This is the story of how he got to this point, and an examination of the lack of information his family has received from Iranian and Canadian authorities up until this point.

This original audio report for MediaShift is based on interviews with people who knew Derakhshan in Iran, and archival tape of interviews conducted with Derakhshan:

You can read Derakhshan's blog, which is now offline, via the Internet Archive.

Addendum

Earlier this week, MetaFilter, users discovered that Hoder.com was set to expire at the end of this month. They wanted to make sure it stayed in Derakhshan's name. Some users suggested that the registrar wouldn't allow the domain to be renewed unless Derakhshan did it himself, which was of course impossible. However, later in the day, the domain's whois records showed that it had been renewed it for a year, though it was unclear how or why it had happened. It ends up that GoDaddy stepped in to renew the domain for him. Read my report on what happened.

Cyrus Farivar is an Iranian-American freelance technology journalist, a freelance radio reporter/producer, and is a wanderlust geek who lives in the city of Oakland, California. He regularly reports for National Public Radio, The World (WGBH/PRI/BBC), and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He also freelances for The Economist, Foreign Policy, Slate, The New York Times, Popular Mechanics, and Wired. He is currently working on a book, "The Internet of Elsewhere," about the history and effects of the Internet on different countries around the world, including Senegal, Iran, Estonia and South Korea. It is due out from Rutgers University Press in 2010.

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What determines a successful community? The number of unique visitors or page views? The number of comments?

Those metrics can be important, but there are also qualitative aspects to consider. Are the discussions on your site respectful and insightful? Are members deriving value from the community? Or are you hosting flame wars that lack intelligence and decorum?

In order to create a community of quality, perhaps it makes sense to cut down on quantity, and create an exclusive members-only structure. Few media companies have done a better job of building this kind of exclusive community than the Financial Times. Its Long Room was created as part of the paper's FT Alphaville blog. The Long Room is an "exclusive comment and analysis arena, where finance professionals are invited to share their research and offer thoughts on the work of others."

In order to learn more about how the Long Room has created an exclusive community of value, I spoke with New York-based Alphaville editor Paul Murphy.

Some Background and Context

It's important to first understand that Alphaville and the Financial Times are unique properties. The newspaper's website, FT.com, has a frequency-based pay wall. This means you can read a set number of articles for free, but have to subscribe if you exceed that number.

However, Alphaville is a free daily news and commentary service. Its mission is to give "financial market professionals the information they need, when they need it." On a typical day, the blog gets between 40,000 and 50,000 unique visitors. It generates roughly 500,000 uniques per month.

Alphaville was launched roughly three years ago. Murphy said the goal is to serve a community of "deep specialists in their respective areas. They know more than we journalists know."

In addition to the blog, Alphaville offers email newsletters, news alerts, and Markets Live, a kind of chat session where two journalists instant message each other about the financial markets. (The community can also add comments in real time.) Alphaville also regularly links to news and reporting generated by other media outlets.

"We are a blog and we acknowledge that people are promiscuous," Murphy said. "So we tell them what to read elsewhere if they have half an hour of spare time, and we tell them what they should read in the FT. Being financial professionals, it's a navigational service. We allow them to sample."

The Long Room

The Long Room exists as an extension of Alphaville. It is "an exclusive comment and analysis arena, where finance professionals are invited to share their research and offer thoughts on the work of others." It is free to join, if you can get through the vetting process to be accepted.

The Long Room was inspired by a famous restaurant in the City of London that was a favorite haunt of financial pundits and market movers during the 1980s. The online version of the Long Room aims to be as exclusive as the real-world place. The site says it clearly: "The Long Room is reserved for financial professionals and for people with a clear understanding of how financial markets and products work. Our members-only policy and application vetting process allow us to ensure that these criteria are met."

Indeed, when a colleague of mine applied for membership, he received a call from London informing him that he had been accepted. But they also told him that he could not report the discussions taking place in the Long Room. "What happens in the Long Room stays in the Long Room," he was told.

Murphy confirms the application process is taken seriously. In fact, he handles many applications personally. He said the Long Room's exclusivity and careful vetting process have helped it reach the target group of financial experts and decision-makers: "I'm really impressed by the seniority of the people applying for the Long Room," he said.

Listening to the Community

The Long Room is an example of how intimate knowledge of a community can lead to a compelling service. The Alphaville team discovered that there was a willingness among financial specialists to share ideas and research, and so they created a safe place that encouraged them to do so.

"We simulated the way groups of financial professionals operate in the real world: in small email communities of 20 to 30 people," Murphy said. "They are trading research and commentary, and we wanted this functionality [as part of the Long Room]."

Murphy said the sharing of research and insight had to be done "in a walled garden in order to give them a certain comfort level."

The discussions inside the Long Room are organized using topic-specific "tables," such as those dedicated to market strategy or finance 2.0. Members can apply to host a table. So far, Murphy said, everyone is getting along well. (He mentioned one case when a person was kicked out because they engaged in constant self-promotion.)

Why it Works

Alphaville has been profitable since its earliest days. "It's a very light structure, especially compared to a newspaper, which typically requires a massive industrial process," Murphy said. The Long Room also enables the Financial Times to gather important insight about its readers. This information helps the paper sell itself -- and its special community -- to advertisers.

Alphaville also helps the Financial Times enhance its position as a hub for the financial community in London and beyond. This unique focus is a big factor in the structure and success of the Long Room. Financial professionals need timely and correct information, and so they can't ignore the Financial Times (or the Wall Street Journal).

But the question remains whether or not this kind of exclusive community could work at other newspapers and news organizations.

For his part, Murphy has no doubt.

"The model is applicable elsewhere, whether we talk about cycling or tennis communities," he said.

*****

What's your take on this "exclusive" strategy? Do you think it's elitist, or that it introduces an element of civility in online interactions? Could this strategy be used by other media organizations? Finally, a last question for the MediaShift community: could this approach help media to survive financially?

Roland Legrand is in charge of Internet and new media at Mediafin, the publisher of leading Belgian business newspapers De Tijd and L'Echo. He studied applied economics and philosophy. After a brief teaching experience, he became a financial journalist working for the Belgian wire service Belga and subsequently for Mediafin. He works in Brussels, and lives in Antwerp with his wife Liesbeth.

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For anyone who has suffered through reading the entire AP Stylebook for a journalism class, there's a cathartic release when reading the dry wit of the @FakeAPStylebook feed on Twitter. It combines parody of the journalism usage bible with funny repartee and the absurd. That mix has brought amazing success to the people behind the feed: more than 40,000 followers in 15 days, plus they've scored a literary agent for a book deal.

Here are some of my favorite recent tweets from @FakeAPStylebook:

> STAR WARS Episodes IV-VI are to be referred to as "The Original Trilogy." Episodes I-III are not to be referred to at all.

> When there's no more room in Hell, omit the final paragraphs to save space.

> When composing a story about strange murders, always refuse to believe the kids until it's too late.

> It is poor newsroom etiquette to throw yourself out of the window to prove that your co-worker is Superman.

While Callie Kimball was touting her sleuthing prowess in uncovering the identities of the folks behind the feed for Wired Epicenter, I simply emailed them and asked them to tell me their story. The two main guys behind @FakeAPStylebook are Ken Lowery, a copy editor at United Methodist Reporter in Dallas, and Mark Hale, an unemployed friend of Lowery's in Louisville, Ky. They work with a motley crew of contributors online called "The Bureau Chiefs." Here's a rundown of who they are:

David Campbell, 40, Seattle, Wash. -- copywriter, ArenaNet
Andrew Otis Weiss, 37, Woburn, Mass. -- communications specialist

David Lartigue, 41, Springfield, Mass. -- database whatzit (not technically a DBA)

Kevin Church, 35, Somerville, Mass. -- online marketing specialist

Dorian Wright, 34, Santa Barbara, Calif. -- currently unemployed

Mike Sterling, 40, Oxnard, Calif. -- manager, Ralph's Comic Corner

Chris Sims, 27, Columbia, S.C. -- freelance writer

Benjamin Birdie, 33, Astoria, NY -- graphic designer

Josh Krach, 35, Las Vegas, Nev. -- freelance designer

John DiBello, New York City -- national Internet account manager, W.W. Norton

Dr. Andrew Kunka, 39, Florence, S.C. -- associate professor of English, USC-Sumter

R.J. White, 34, Philadelphia -- manager of media relations

Matt Wilson, 26, Chattanooga, Tenn. -- reporter

Anna Neatrour, 34, Salt Lake City -- librarian

Eugene Ahn, Washington DC, 29 -- attorney

Shane Michael Bailey, 32, Jacksonville, Fla. -- web designer/developer

Here's an edited transcript of my phone conference call with Lowery and Hale. We spoke about how the feed became an overnight sensation, what a potential book will be like, and their fears of legal trouble with the Associated Press.

How did the idea come about for @FakeAPStylebook?

Ken Lowery: I just became aware of the real @APStylebook Twitter feed, and sent the link to Mark because he was a journalism student at one time, and I thought it might interest him. He had said, "I don't know if I'm sad or relieved that this is not a fake account" because there are so many joke accounts for celebrities. That's when the inspiration struck. We passed back and forth a few jokes, and put them on out Twitter feeds and asked our own followers if they thought it was a good idea. We got a "yes" so we went ahead with it.

Tell me more about the group working on the Twitter joke feeds?

Mark Hale: A lot of us have joke Twitter feeds: Ken has two or three, one of our other contributors has at least three, and I had one I abandoned a couple months ago because I couldn't sustain it. This was in that same vein, but it hit a nerve with more people than anything we had done.

Ken Lowery: I've done some before... with some success. @Zombiehorde has about 600 followers, and is the articulate thoughts of a bunch of zombies. Then there is @ThisReallyHurts, which has 200 followers and is just a guy describing extreme pain, which is a dumb gag but it seems to work for some people. The same group latching onto this new joke [of @FakeAPStylebook] really took off.

How do you guys operate as a group? Do you use instant messaging?

Hale: It's basically an email list through Google Groups. It's funny to me how popular email lists have become again. They were pretty popular in the mid-'90s and tapered off, but they serve us quite well. We always have our instant messaging windows open, so people are always saying, 'how about this?' or 'how about that?'

Lowery: We have the Google Group going and we have a few threads established. [There's] one for the open submissions thread, one for open questions when people ask the Fake AP questions. We link to the question and all throw out answers, and we're able to suggest responses, tweak them, and fine-tune them. Mark and I are basically the editors but as far as the actual creative part goes, it's a roundtable.

What happened after you launched the feed, and how fast did you get a big following?

Lowery: The first day we got upwards of 1,000 followers, which was explosive and way more than we expected. Then, Wednesday morning, the next day, Newsweek's Twitter feed mentioned it, and it just boomed completely out of control after that. A few blogs like the Chicago Tribune's [Eric Zorn] have basically been quoting stuff because it makes them laugh. That's how it's gone since then. By Saturday, four days in, we had about 9,000 followers.

Hale: By that Sunday, after being live for about a week, we passed the real @APStylebook feed. We don't want to be egomaniacal, but...

Lowery: We were just looking for a metric at that point because it seemed so crazy and out of control. 'How do we measure our success here?' And that was it. Late last week, we hit a terminal velocity and it slowed down a little bit. But got a fresh round of [sign-ups] after the Wired article and a couple other articles. It's begun anew.

Hale: We've officially passed the population of my small hometown, New Albany, Ind., according to the 2000 census figures. It's across the river from Louisville.

When did you first hear from literary agents?

Lowery: I think it was day two. It was Thursday, which is when we heard from the first one, who we eventually went with. Then we heard from another on Friday, and since then, we've heard from five or six more. Kate McKean at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency was the one we chose.

Hear them talk about their excitement when they heard that comedian Michael McKean liked their feed:

Why do you think out of all the things you've done that this one has resonated with so many people

Lowery: Initially, the first popularity came from journalists who said, "I needed this" or "this made my week" or "this is very cathartic." My own highfalutin theory is that journalists have taken a pretty bad beating the past few years in public perception and job security, and this is a way to goof off without being mean or cynical. It's been journalists, salespeople, marketing people, English teachers, students, and fans of word humor [following us].

Did all the contributors meet online?

Hale: I think some of us know each other in real life. I've never met any of them in person.

Lowery: Same here. We're pretty well scattered all over the country. We initially hooked up because we're all big nerds. At one point we all ran comic book blogs just goofing on comic books. We did all our own blogs, but commented on each other's blogs over the years. Through that we developed a friendship, a writer's workshop, whatever you want to call it.

How will the book be formatted? Will it contain tweets and some original material as well? Will it look like the actual AP Stylebook?

Hale: It won't look so much like the official book. It will take a subject, say entertainment, and then it will tell you how to cover obituaries of celebrities, how to approach closeted gay celebrities, how to review a fine art piece, and a glossary, which will be more like the actual guide.

Lowery: The way we have it mapped out now is there will be a sections like sports, entertainment, medicine, etc., with tips on writing up front, and then a glossary of terms that looks more like the Stylebook and the Twitter feed. The stuff we've put together so far for the entertainment chapter is about 75 percent or 85 percent original material that hasn't gone live.

Hear Lowery talk about the tone of the @FakeAPStylebook feed as a faceless voice of authority:

Have you heard from people at the AP about what you're doing, and do you have a fear that they might come after you?

Lowery: We have fans who are AP reporters. We were approached early on by an AP reporter to do a story about us, but nothing came of it. We are talking about changing the name if and when the book becomes a reality. Part of the bind is that this is how people know us now. If we change it too much, then we could potentially lose everyone... We're already thinking about it and tossing around ideas, but some of this might be up to the agent or publisher.

*****

What do you think about @FakeAPStylebook? What are your favorite tweets from them? Share your thoughts and favorites in the comments below.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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