A Note to Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine

I tried to leave a comment on this excellent post from Jeff Jarvis on Buzz Machine. For some reason I got an error message the first time I posted, and then got a duplicate comment warning when I tried again.

Jeff had taken issue with Brian Williams’ approach to interactivity on the NBC Nightly News broadcast. Here’ my comment for Jeff:

I agree completely with your comments. I’m glad NBC is offering its content as a podcast (at least placing its wares in a place that’s more convenient for me, so I can watch on the bus in the morning), but when I saw this mailbag segment Friday I, too, struggled with dyspepsia.

Reading kudos from viewers, utopian “We are the World” suggestions and one lame complaint about choice of tie color and pattern isn’t media glasnost.

At least Bill O’Reilly, whatever you think of him, usually reads a sampling of hate mail and plaudits, to show that “if everyone is mad at you, you must be doing something right.” That’s not great either, but at least it’s a step above this.

Have you checked out Brian Williams’ blog? I haven’t yet (will probably head over there now), but I wonder if that’s interactive to the point that it lets people leave comments.

If it is, maybe you could post a link to your post on his blog.

The big networks aren’t going to turn the keys over to what still is an audience of 8-9 million for their over-the-air program that still commands tens of thousands of dollars per second for ad revenue.

I know you’re saying it formerly was an audience and it used to be content, but if there is going to be real interactivity it’s going to come in a related blog, not in the broadcast.

So maybe I overstated a bit when I started by saying “I agree completely.” I do agree this kind of “pick a few notes from the mailbag” is a waste, but I don’t think we’ll see what you’re advocating in the broadcast program.

The good news is people like us have ways of talking back (as you did). Five years ago we wouldn’t have had a chance.

Are you going to post this on YouTube? I’m wondering why you use embedded QuickTime instead of YouTube. It would seem the BuzzMachine could get even more buzz if people could include your video in their blogs.

This comment has gotten a lot longer than I had intended…so I’m going to post on my blog, too. 😉

Thanks for all you do.

Maybe this will work in Jeff’s blog as a trackback.

Meanwhile, Jeff, if you’re seeing this, I did just go over to Brian Williams’ blog, and he does have a place for comments. Maybe you could leave a comment there with a link to your post.

I don’t know whether it will get past comment moderation. They post this disclaimer:

All comments must be approved before appearing in the thread; time and space constraints prevent all comments from appearing. We will only approve comments that are directly related to this post, use appropriate language and are not attacking the comments of others.

It’s worth a shot, don’t you think? I can see that they would have heartburn about putting criticism of their program on their high-priced broadcast platform, but if they are interested at all in any kind of real conversation, it would seem a comment from you, and a link to what you said on your blog, would be a minimum level of engagement.

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Dr. Max Gomez out at WNBC?

Broadcasting & Cable reported this week that Dr. Max Gomez, the Health and Science reporter for NBC’s flagship station in New York, will be among those losing jobs as part of the network’s cost-cutting.

If this is true, it is perhaps the ultimate expression of a trend we’ve seen in local TV news for some time. Many TV stations formerly had physician journalists who would provide news and medically informed commentary, while others would have reporters regularly assigned to the health care beat. The Association of Health Care Journalists and others (PDF of journal article) have produced reports highlighting concerns about medical news coverage on local TV stations. One of those concerns is that many if not most stations treat medical news as a general assignment beat, which doesn’t allow reporters to develop the savvy and expertise they need to cover this highly technical subject matter.

The trend is toward the networks producing more health and medical news and features, and feeding it to the local affiliates. That’s been happening for a long time, but when a major network station in the biggest market no longer has a physician reporter, apparently for budgetary reasons, how many stations can or will continue to afford a regular on-air physician?

From my reading of Jeff Jarvis, I’m pretty sure he would say this is a good thing…or at least it is a reality TV stations should embrace. He’s big on local stations and newspapers getting more local in their news focus in terms of what their reporters (aided by the community) produce, and leave a few bigger organizations (networks and wire services) to do the truly national stories. He sees it as vanity, for instance, that compels local media to send reporters to the Super Bowl or to national political conventions. There really isn’t a local angle to these national events, at least one that needs to be covered on site, but the local media feel more important by having a correspondent there.

I think Jeff would say, for example, that this week’s FDA approval of Herceptin for a type of early-stage breast cancer is a national story that can be very well covered by the networks and the wires, and that for the most part local outlets should mainly be conduits.

What do you think?

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NBC Nightly News Tops iTunes Podcast List

Apparently I’m not alone in my high opinion of the NBC Nightly News podcast. It’s number one on the iTunes Store’s list of most-subscribed podcasts. I think that means it has the most subscriptions in the last 24 hours.

When you think of it, if programs are good enough to have high ratings on broadcast TV, they should be really strong in the download market too. Given that lots of people are paying for TV programs like Lost, getting broadcast-quality content for free should be even more appealing.

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My Favorite Volleyball Player

Last night I got to attend the Austin High School volleyball banquet, where my daughter Rebekah received the Packer Award, voted by her teammates, for being an all-around positive contributor to the team. She’s only a sophomore. Here’s a photo of her in action earlier this year.

Rebekah Aase

Please forgive the personal digression from the usual content of this blog. I’m a proud Daddy.

GTD: Halfway There

For the last couple of weeks I have been strolling my GTD memory lane, reminiscing about what I’ve learned in the last 367 days since I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done on a plane ride home from Jacksonville.

In listening to Merlin Mann’s Productive Talk podcasts with David this week, I heard some heartening news: I’m probably halfway to “getting” GTD. In Productive Talk #7: Implementing GTD, David says for most people it takes about two years “to really re-groove the neural patterns.” This podcast series also is available on the DavidCo site. It’s well worth a listen.

Here’s a list of links to my top ten reflections so far, based on having my brain half-wired through only a year of GTD:

GTD: A Year Later
GTD: Taking the Plunge
GTD and Entourage

My First-Time Experience with Inbox Zero
GTD Success in Two Minutes or Less

Why excuses for not taking time to implement GTD are sick

Why GTD beats other books on personal organization.

Why even mediocrity in GTD pays big dividends.

How the Roadmap seminar is like Neo being introduced to Morpheus

And finally, a conceptual connection I have personally observed between the GTD methodology and a world-famous medical facility’s pioneering work in developing systems for seeing lots of patients while giving each the individual attention they need.

I expect I will continue to have observations over the coming months, such as this one which is not exactly about GTD, but connects blogging to a key GTD concept, the general reference filing system. So, if through the magic of search and the Long Tail you have come across this post sometime well beyond November 2006, you can click here to read my continuing saga.