In a recent report by Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC World Service, it is clear that as society becomes more networked, the fortress mentality of the mainstream media is increasingly under siege by the internet.

For so long now, Web 2.0 has been working in the background to subtly but unwittingly undermine the mainstream media, especially in America where, for example, RSS is understood and used far more readily. RSS feeds allow you to say choose the BBC for video news, the New York Times for international news, the Guardian for ecological reports and ESPN for sports — so storming the gates of fortress journalism has become a very easy task.

The main problem for the newspaper industry is that journalists have been very slow in recognising the changes that have been happening under their noses, and whilst the major players have all installed news feeds on their websites, they still continue with the assumption that their news product provides a complete set of news requirements for their readers. However, in the world of the internet, the choices available for a total news information set is not as proprietary as they would like to think.

Jeff Jarvis, Professor of Interactive Journalism at the City University of New York, described it as: “Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.”  As witness to this, one of Thailand’s main national daily newspapers has now cut its print edition to just eight pages and the other provides mainly syndicated news. In the US, the newspaper industry, bloated with profits throughout the ‘80s, finds itself with a recession and the web, leaving newsrooms decimated.

Not only RSS, but the immediacy of Twitter alerts are now what news consumers are tuning in to. In a recent article by the Economist, Twitter 1, CNN 0, on the protests in Iran, 10.5m American TV-viewers turned to CNN, but instead of protests many of them saw a repeat of Larry King interviewing “burly motorcycle-builders”. The article went on to illustrate a typical post: ‘Iran went to hell. Media went to bed’.”

This realisation is already transforming the face of journalism, which means building public participation in generating user content and making a paradigm shift from a “manufacturing industry” to a service industry. But this too has its drawbacks as, without moderation, blog commenting can often descend into a low common denominator that is sometimes determined by tasteless or hateful comments. In one such instance, a group of aboriginal leaders from Canada requested that hate charges be laid against CBC because of some poorly-moderated user comments which escaped into the public domain.

The other worrying descent of traditional media is to outsource their headlines and copy overseas. According to Business Week, a company 15 miles from New Delhi, Mindworks, has many overseas clients and is “mounting a big effort to go after more US publications”. This is a company to which media groups in the US, Europe and Asia — including the Miami Herald and South China Morning Post — outsource work that journalists and copyeditors used to do. And Thomson Reuters (TRI), moved basic Wall Street reporting on US, European and Gulf equities to a new bureau in Bangalore.

However, it is all too easy to sit back and mock these fortresses but they “protected good journalism and have sheltered brave and risky journalists”. They also gave legal protection and resources to journalists and their organisations, so simply replacing these fortresses is not the right path to take.

As modern society becomes even more highly networked, these fortresses, that are being seen to be abandoned, are opening up and have lowered the drawbridge to allow the public inside their walls, such as the BBC.

The BBC’s Peter Horrocks: “Reducing effort in any journalistic section is anathema to the old fortress mindset. Even more disturbingly, it might also mean co-operating explicitly. If the BBC is best in news video and the Telegraph best in text sports reports, why shouldn’t they syndicate that content to each other and save effort?

“That linked approach requires a new kind of journalism, the opposite of fortress journalism. It is well described as “networked journalism”, a coinage popularised by Charlie Beckett at the LSE/Polis. And it requires organisations to be much better connected, both internally and externally. That kind of networking can be unnatural for the journalist or executive brought up in the fortress mentality.”

By better understanding the medium of this change, journalists have their role to play: whilst the public still demand diversity, they also want “the editing, filtering and packaging functions that journalism performs”. We cannot do away with investigative reporting and analysis that journalists facilitate. Alongside that, journalism must move into social networks such as Facebook.

Today, nearly a quarter of the world’s population use the internet. According to Google, the internet is the fastest growing communications medium in history. When the internet went public in 1983 there were 400 servers. Today there are well over 600 million. So, news organisations need to invest their talent intelligently in web platforms, or they risk being ignored by an ever-growing number of young people for whom television is an irrelevant medium.

Peter Horrocks continues; “But the cultural impact on what the audience wants from journalism is as big a factor as the economics. In the fortress world the consumption of journalism was through clearly defined products and platforms – a TV or radio programme, a magazine or a newspaper. But in the blended world of internet journalism all those products are available within a single platform and mental space. The user can now click and flit between each set of news. Or they can use an aggregator to pull together all the information they require. The reader may never be aware from which fortress (or brand) the information has come.”

So journalism is changing: it is now permeable, interactive, 24/7, multi-platform, disaggregated and converged. And in my business of web design and website promotions, we have all had to adapt to this changing world and become, ourselves, amateur journalists. Of a sort.

Fortress journalism under siege by the web

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TechCrunch recently published an article “The Time Has Come To Regulate Search Engine Marketing And SEO”. The essence of the article is that Google (and now Bing, of course, naturally) is the opaque “governor” of our online business world and should be regulated, with its “Chinese walls” rent asunder.

The article concludes that: “Due to Google’s dominance — and the fact that it controls such an enormous amount of consumer behavior through paid and organic search listings – the company in essence governs commerce on the web. And any company that falls out of favor with Google, whether for reasons of bad practice or simple disagreement, can find itself at risk of going out of business.”

The author draws an imaginary parallel with the physical world. In this world the internet is but a single continent and that continent is filled with countries, states and cities, with each “jurisdiction” autonomous, relying on visitors to “cross on to their turf to engage in commerce”.

The premise so far is that there is in this make-believe continent — the internet — small, autonomous  regions rule. But surely in the real world of the internet it is the entire system that abides by Google’s laws, not individual zones. And by “autonomous jurisdiction” do they mean Google’s datacenters somehow operate individually? Surely not, but let’s continue…

The article then goes on to extend the premise with a sub-premise that: “the only way to get into this continent involves just two methods: SEO and SEM” where the “borders to this continent are controlled by a single company”. Here, they refer to Google as the sole proprietor and controller of the gates to international online commerce. They may have a point, if Bing doesn’t mind too much.

However, dissatisfied with one parallel, they offer an alternative: the busy streets of Los Angeles where there is but “a single gate”. Once through that gate “the streets you were or were not allowed to go down — and thus the businesses you were or were not allowed to visit — could be randomly blocked from your access”. But surely, armed with a street map and knowledge of the federal laws of those of Los Angeles, there is no need to be excluded from any of the streets. The article argues you are.

So, where are they going with this? The argument is that all online commerce is determined by Google search alone and that you have to walk, untrammelled and alone, down its streets without knowing where you’re going and where the shops are out of sight.

The reason? “It’s now conventional wisdom that search engine optimization, representing the organic result sets on any search query, is more voodoo than science,” meaning that an opaque set of rules determine which businesses succeed and which don’t at the controller’s “whim”. But surely, with a little research, the laws are plain to see even if they are modified from time to time. They change in order to deter the ghoulish “thieves” of cyberspace who circumvent these laws so as to gain unfair advantage. So, from time to time, every loophole is identified and blocked. This is transparent enough if you keep up to date with these “new laws”. And it’s true, if any website breaks Google golden rules, they punish you the same as a court would sentence you for theft. Ask Bernie Madoff.

These two analogies almost remind me of the country I’m living in right now: Thailand. It too has borders that it controls with something called a visa, and that visa is issued under rules that constantly change. Once inside its “streets” one has another set of business rules that must be abided by in order to operate here, but they are published in a language we cannot read. It also has general laws that are unknown to us. However, we only have to ask our Thai lawyer what to do and we survive. Similarly, Google’s “laws” can be understood by seeking out a competent SEO expert.

Their conclusion: “There are no perfect paradigms looking at free trade and import/export laws that exactly define or address this challenge. Neither would a secret relationship between the government and the search engines solve the problem. The only real solution is disclosure. Transparency.”

Do they really mean that the world’s judicial systems are wholly transparent and the internet not, with case law, court interpretations, judges rulings and the like on the one hand and a hidden agenda on the other? It’s certainly not so in Britain or America, or Thailand for that matter.

And what of Bing? The article doesn’t mention Microsoft. Bing’s search results are commonly similar to this omnipresent “controller of the gate”, so we have two rulers of the domain that pack a similar punch when it comes to disclosure and results. They too don’t like “thieves” who disrupt the smooth running of the “state”. Is the article seriously suggesting that this “state” or “autonomous jurisdiction” within each “state” needs openness as protection? If so, it would give the thieves ever more ammunition to deceive the “state” and deprive the people.

Leave regulation for the banks, that have been so lax as to allow these thieves of civvy street to run off with our billions, and allow search engines self-determination for a system that works; it certainly won’t get any better with quangos interfering with them.

Google, as master of our other-worldly landscape, is surely the best judge of how search results, from billions of web searches, are organised. All you need to be reminded of is to update the map from time to time.

Like banks, should Google, master to the gates of our online world, be regulated?

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It didn’t look too promising at the launch but Bing has been constantly in the news ever since. Some say the results are better than Google, even going as far as suggesting Google is all but finished. I don’t agree.

On one of the search engine forums I often comment on, one of the moderators had this to say on the subject: “But overall this confirms my sense that Google, having abandoned the business model that got it to the top, viz. fast no frills search, in favour of added features and buying up other companies, is becoming increasingly fat and complacent, and along the way their search results are becoming less relevant.”

Now, I have to say that I had a small run-in with this guy as he supports everything Microsoft does, from its browser to its operating system and now to its new “decision engine”. So when he writes, “I’ve been using Bing lately and I’m finding a lot of advantages over Google. These are early days yet but this is the first emerging search engine that may provide a real threat to Google’s dominance - something I for one welcome,” I’m a little suspicious.

There’s plenty of supporters out there giving online commentaries on its progress. TechCrunch.com, for example, analyses its early success by saying: “Microsoft sites’ average daily penetration among US searchers reached 16.7 percent during the work week of June 8-12, up 3 percentage points from the May 25-29 period (which was prior to Bing’s introduction) and up over 1 percentage point from its first week.”

However, on webpronews.com following its launch, Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesman and soothsayer, was reported, rather scathingly I thought, to have tweeted: “Matt Cutts: Congrats to @bing on the launch! Sad to see this not-so-relevant result at #4 for [matt cutts] though.” And then: “The #5 Bing result for [matt cutts] is spammy too.” Interesting that one should search one’s own name to find out if the results were “spammy”, but never mind.

So, I did a little research on the subject of my own and tested my web turf to find on “web design bangkok” Bing returned very poor results, spammy even, with “Luxor Bangkok the Egyptian Design Hotel” and “Bangkok Metropolitan Administration” being placed in the top ten.

However, there is a site that offers users the opportunity for us to choose for ourselves. Just go to bingdevelop.com/bingcompete/compare-your-search-bing-vs-google-vs-yahoo and type in any search term you are unfamiliar with and see which search engine results you would choose. Select say ten of them. You are presented with randomised results from Bing, Google, and Yahoo placed in a three-column set. You don’t know which one is which at this stage until you make your choice. As a test, take a look and select the one you think delivers the best results.

I tried 10 searches for terms I’m not at all familiar with and Google came out on top in all but one. It did surprise me after my original test on my own search terms that Bing was very close on all of them.

For Matt Cutts to comment as he did in the wake of Bing’s launch, I don’t think Google are too comfortable with Microsoft’s re-emergence into the search engine marketplace. For me, though, I am  much happier to accept Google’s results as the test bore out. Others may be switching to Bing already but I am not.

I then looked for commentary - they’re ubiquitous these days - and found money.cnn.com had run the headline: “Bing vs. Google: Consumers Can’t Tell a Difference”. Oh, but I think they can, I thought. While it’s true that on wider, more unfamiliar search terms the two are very close indeed (my own findings were “seo consultant” - Google, but Bing very close; “manchester city t-shirt” - Google because it returned MCFC official site; “polar ice caps melting” - Google again but Bing almost identical; “bank bonuses uk” - Google, as it had reports from BBC, Guardian, etc. but Bing again very close), Bing still has its teething problems.

So as I read the plethora of reports and opinions being spun as to whether Bing is better than Google, I wonder what drove them to that conclusion. Like that of the forum moderator, perhaps? But I’m sure he was being honest with himself about his choices. It’s just a matter of why he would choose a different set of listings to me. It can’t be just because he’s a closet fan of Microsoft; the three engines are hidden until one is selected and I can vouch for his integrity.

However, Bing’s campaign, or spin, however you look at it, seems to me to be communicating that in order to get “relevant” information, they should choose Bing over Google, with its grandiose promise of being a “decision engine”. Which is what, exactly? Another one of Microsoft’s tricks to decide matters for me? As if Word wasn’t frustrating enough at doing that already.

Maybe the differences are far too subtle for me to notice. Or just maybe the Luxor Bangkok the Egyptian Design Hotel is not the place I would go to find a web designer in Bangkok. But the moderator, of course, had the final say: “I was a big Google fan for a long time, but increasingly I find myself going to Bing first and only to Google if Bing doesn’t deliver the goods. There’s no question that Google still has more web pages indexed than anyone else. But if they can’t find better ways of sorting through them they are going to crash. They can’t count on brand loyalty forever. For those of you old enough to remember Alta Vista, I am reminded of their rapid and total fall from grace when Google launched. Nothing is forever on the net.”

My findings are that they are very similar and certainly not enough to make “Google crash” just yet. Personally, I don’t believe this is yet Bing’s time until they tighten up their results. I agree with Mr Cutts that just now Bing is just too, how do you say again, “spammy”.