I’ve been a believer for a long time that the magazine business is best-suited amongst the “old” media markets to embrace and extend the online media world successfully. They understand communities. They understand niche content. And they get targeted advertising. They intuitively understand some of the hardest things to get right.

But watching eWeek handle the recent IntelliTXT controversy (more here from Paul Conley and here from Jason Calacanis) reminds me why there are newcomers in every market nearly every day displacing the magazine incumbant in that space.

RollingStone is kicking itself while MySpace displaces everything they once were. It continues to pain ZiffDavis and IDG every day that CNet and Slashdot control more and more of their once-dominant market positions. Everyone who was working at Time Inc. while Yahoo! rose to power is embarrassed every time they check their email.

Instead of embracing the Internet, the magazine businesses, particularly niche publications, choose to hide under their old business models. Then each time a Digg or a BoingBoing or the next new media site screams across the network, the internal fingerpointing and backroom politics escalate. And while everyone plots the next move, key thought leaders inside the company head elsewhere for employment.

There was a collective ‘ouch’ when InfoWorld lost Jon Udell to Microsoft.

I’m surprised that the trade associations are only just now picking up on things like this and the damage they cause. Martha Spizziri of the ASPBE takes a first pass at what IntelliTXT means:

“…at best the IntelliTXT model is annoying–in the same way that even editorial links can be annoying when the text is vague. In both cases, you aren’t really sure what kind of information you’ll get if you click.”

The American Business Media, on the other hand, has chosen not to take a side. In fact, they’ve chosen eWeek as a Neal Award finalist instead. B2B media watchdog Paul Conley explains why that’s a bad idea:

“it’s beyond me why the screening judges at ABM would think that a site that embarrasses the entire world of B2B journalism should be considered a symbol of what is best in B2B journalism.”

And Bill Mickey at Folio faults eWeek for being desperate:

“I’ve written about this before, as has Conley, who this time suggests that pressures stemming from owner Willis Stein’s efforts to sell Ziff Davis have resulted in a revenue-at-all-costs Web site strategy.”

Its obvious to everyone that print is struggling. And the stories of a market in turmoil only get more critical when a leader like eWeek sells out its last asset…the words on its pages.

Look, relevant advertising is great. It works for everyone in the media ecosystem. But when credibility is the elephant in the room, you can’t disrespect your customers. It’s as if your own content is getting in the way of what you want from people.

Do you want my clicks or my attention? If you capture my click, you’ll have a dollar today. If you capture my attention, you’ll have a customer tomorrow.

I have to echo Fred Wilson’s view that Valleywag has suddenly become a must-read for me. Despite the incessant Yahoo! bashing recently, Nick Denton has finally created an insightful Silicon Valley gossip rag that’s worth the time put into it. Fred states,

“Under the old regime, I never read Valleywag. Now I read it every day. Sure its still snarky. Sure its still evil. But its relevant. Nick is reporting on real stuff, with classic Gawker attitude.”

For example, he covered today’s Glam.com hype by exposing the story behind the high traffic numbers. First, he colors the piece with the appropriate human elements that make the story tangible and interesting:

“Samir Arora looks so beatifically happy in that photo, and it’s no wonder why: Glam Media, the fashion site headed by the smiling web guru has just raised an astonishing amount of money, $18m…7m [women] visit each month, an achievement of which Glam is so proud that it places the claim in the logo. Unfortunately, as claims go, it’s a stretch, and here’s why:”

Then he goes on to explain how a network of smaller blogs make up the total traffic and that Glam is not as big as you might think.

Denton’s next post is a reaction to Seth Goldstein’s incomprehensible Root Markets business. It’s short, menacing and basically spot on.

“I never understood Seth Goldstein’s most recent company, Root Markets…Root’s website, a blank page with a mysterious log-in box, doesn’t help. And nor does the advertising guru’s personal website, which leads off with the following gobbledygook headline: API: In the middle of the middle, about Poverty & Wealth in the Gesture Economy.”

This kind of journalism, though not for everybody, clearly, and no doubt difficult to get right, is exactly the kind of commentary that creates a center of gravity in a market. He’s creating cocktail party quotable stuff here for the whole industry and maybe even influencing the way people think about what’s going on in the Internet business.

He publishes stories very quickly, often first. Every post is always about people. He may get frivolous, but his viewpoint is always colored by experience in the market rather than some removed personal opinion. His opinion is a filter on the story, not the story itself.

This is exactly how John Battelle initially conceived the editorial voice of The Industry Standard in the early phases of defining the business. He wanted to create Silicon Valley’s Variety. I’d say Nick is well on his way to making that vision happen here.

And as Fred pointed out, the numbers prove that it’s working whether you like what he has to say or not:

Quality editorial is not a growth position for a media company. It may be a competitive advantage. And it will surely be a brand differentiator. But it won’t by nature expand audience or increase revenues. It’s not necessarily even a loyalty control.

Of the many great things the Internet has done for media, it has failed to value trustworthiness enough. Instead, it values speed, plasticity, and access. Information is rewarded when it is first to appear, maleable and distributable in numerous ways, and available through multiple channels — links, feeds, indeces — and through other people.

How is a niche publisher to compete? First, catalyze relationships with and amongst people. Second, leverage the value chain as it is to your advantage. Paying more per word for content that is slow, static and hard to get to is a recipe for failure online.

This is the strategic play that makes the MySpace acquisition seem even smarter than I think Fox was aware of at the time. YouTube has adopted a few of the social aspects that make MySpace successful, but I wonder if it will be able to catalyze those relationships into something more meaningful than a one-upsmanship JackAss competition.

What publishers do understand well is the role a media brand can play in facilitating meaningful activity in a community. The nature of the relationships with and amongst the community members have clearly changed. And high quality editorial is a piece of that relationship, one that reinforces trust and understanding, particularly in niche publishing where it’s harder to find good information.

The easy mistake to make is believing that because you have good information people will come. They might, and they’ll just as quickly leave if you don’t give them a reason to create a relationship with you or other members of your community.

Jay Rosen’s recent attack on Fortune columnist Justin Fox reminded me that changing old media’s role in this new world is not going to happen by telling them that they stink.

Photo: carradine65

He accused Justin of failing to say anything meaningful in the ‘private vs public ownership of media’ debate. Underneath it all, however, was the more acidic accusation that Justin doesn’t get the Internet:

Justin then responded in depth to Jay, defending the accusations point by point on his new blog:

I’m as guilty as the next new media nerd of pressing old media to change their ways based on my own small view of the present and future challenges. I’m equal parts idealist and pragmatist, almost always the former when blogging.

But I also know that there are many editors and executives alike who wish very much to apply the mental shift they may have adopted perhaps years ago and turn it into practical change without losing their jobs in the process. We need those people employed and making change happen in their organizations in order to accomplish the new media goals, no matter how slowly.

As Justin points out, even Time Warner has adopted a multi-threaded approach to journalism where columnists are required to post weekly online in addition to their print columns which require significantly more dedication. If that’s not enough, Justin has recently begun blogging on topic and wrote a book on one of his beats to boot.

Time Warner may not be collaborating with customers as much as it needs to, but clearly that door is opening some. And that’s a good thing.

Jay is not wrong to press old media to change more dramatically and to do it faster. It’s not just the methods that need to change. The way that they think about the world around them and the value of their perspective both need to accomodate a new and different way of communicating.

In this case, it’s a matter of picking which battles to fight. Attacking those who are influencing positive change at the companies you wish to influence is probably going to turn off those who may be listening to you.

Don’t invite other kids to play in the sand box and then throw sand at them, Jay.

It’s hard to resist adding my $0.02 in a debate about blogging like the one Nick Carr started this week with his post on The Great Unread, the story of the royal hierarchy in the blogosphere:

“As the blogophere has become more rigidly hierarchical, not by design but as a natural consequence of hyperlinking patterns, filtering algorithms, aggregation engines, and subscription and syndication technologies, not to mention human nature, it has turned into a grand system of patronage operated - with the best of intentions, mind you - by a tiny, self-perpetuating elite.”

It’s definitely worth a read if you blog. If you don’t, it’s more echo chamber music, as is this post.

I suspect that the idea of the blogosphere and the blog elite is a temporary one. The blogger hierarchy does not make the substance of a post any more or less valuable. Ultimately, that value is completely up to me, not some shallow power structure.

I’m hoping that instead of reinforcing global hiearchical power structures that things like recommendation engines, personalization services, syndication and filtering algorithms will weed out the crap and bubble up what matters to me, empowering me to own my media experience.

Popular blogs, podcasts and videos will become just a sidebar to my daily intake when their relevance to my world is only tangential.

I respect what Jay Rosen says (and Nick, for that matter), but his posts are too long for me. I need the blogs I read regularly to filter out which of Jay’s posts are worth spending the time to read. I’m impressed not just by the quality of the posts Jeff Jarvis generates but also the volume. Again, I need an interestingness filter on Jeff’s posts to surface the ones that matter to me.

Yet all of Jay’s and Jeff’s influence on my thinking about journalism and media has no bearing whatsoever on the music I listen to, the basketball teams I follow or the technologies I find interesting.

What Nick rightly points out is that there will be an increasing tendency for people to publish for the sake of fame and fortune which will dilute the pool of interesting things out there. This is the popularity problem.

Perhaps I’m just optimistic. But it seems reasonable to expect that we’ll find technology answers to this issue, automatic ways to subvert wasteful power structures that may be forming in the world of personal media.