Interesting perspective on the rash of new tech-content hybrids emerging in the media space. Back in the day, companies could be either tech or content, but not both: "What were you going to be really good at? Engineering or “content”? You couldn’t do both, because that would mean that one would be subordinate to the other. And if you were going…

"We don’t write articles. We tell stories and those stories persist over time... Each story is comprised of fragments ... stitched together to create a story. In many ways circa represents the next step in the atomization of news ... allows people to read stories and identify new developments faster ... and makes it possible to dig deeper by lin…

"The way we evolved ... is really not the way we have to operate today ... this attempt at hyperproductivity is making us much less productive.'" A podcast worth every minute. I have a few of these techniques down pat, most days, as long as I can work from home, but the whole mindfulness thing is still over my horizon. - 4 Ways to Make Your …

5 brief points on how leaders can get everyone thinking strategically, and not just reacting. I personally like point 4: "4. Create a philosophy. ... communicate a well-articulated philosophy, a mission statement, and achievable goals throughout your company. Individuals and groups need to understand the broader organizational strategy in orde…

This is worth a read, regularly: "I have spent almost my whole life– 31 years– caring far too much about offending people, worrying if I’m cool enough for them, or asking myself if they are judging me.... It’s stupid, and it’s not good for my well being. ... worse than that, it has made me someone who doesn’t take a stand for anything. It has ma…

worth repeating for everyone who thinks that the path to democracy in the EU is measured in column inches...

The Content Marketing Institute’s Joe Pulizzi took a deeper look at the recent CMI/MarketingProfs B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks study. Of the many interesting points here, this is what resonated with me the most:“Implementing content marketing in larger enterprises can be a political nightmare — not to mention the added complications caused by …

This post started out as a comment to Blogging, content discovery and the European public sphere, Kosmopolito's post marking Bloggingportal's 5th birthday (all posts and more). However Kosmo, one of the old guard of EU bloggers (and currently jobhunting, btw) raised more than a couple of good questions, so my comment needed a larger home…

"“Fished out of the shadows, old news coverage in China’s media can provide clues to the family connections of government officials as reporters investigate their financial dealings.”"

I used to be better at listening. I used to really try, humbly believing (rightly) that the other person's perspective and experience were at least as interesting and useful for me to understand as mine were to project. Something happened a few years ago, I seemed to drop out of that habit. Perhaps because I found myself among people who talk…

Oh dear. "Andreessen mentions the “Chinese wall” that many media entities maintain between the business side and the editorial side. This approach is flawed, he says: “No other non-monopoly industry lets product creators off the hook on how the business works.” Many businesses, Andreessen argues, manage to balance incentives and conflicts and ca…

Nice animation about the uncertainty principle, although it’s not mentioned by name, confirmngi the theory that chemistry is what’s left when the physicists have figured everything interesting out ;)

Original linkTonight I'll be toddling along to Grilling Kippers, a UKIP-focused anti-Eurosceptic campaign from deep within the Brussels Bubble.

Les Echos looks to be doing what I have long dreamed to do for the bloggingportal reboot - deploy semantic analysis to aid content discovery and to underpin a new wave of media and comment. But do we have to call it an 'aggrefilter'? "Les Echos launches its business news aggrefilter ... to gain critical working knowledge of the semantic web." …

“The best explainers are direct, concise and easy to understand. But investigative journalism is rarely any of those things, instead reflecting the messiness of real life… explanation is just the beginning, a gateway into the deep-dive…”

Damn, some of these ideas I implemented 12 years ago for the EC's thematic architecture. Nice to see them in a different context: First, the problem with current news journalism: "The column inches devoted to the new are column inches not given to the important... this stress on novelty is a holdover from when the cost of making and moving paper …

A Storify on 8 possible business models for journalism from Marc Andreessen (Cofounder of Netscape, now VC at a16z). Highlights: (6): "We already see the rise of new kinds of aggregators in the wake of the great unbundling of newspapers & magazines. Signal-to-Noise: "quality can easily coexist with crap. All can thrive in respective markets.... …

Sobering reality check on new journalism ventures which: "...from a business perspective, hardly be worth commenting on, except for the fact that the people doing the commenting — other journalists — believe that perhaps, in a declining profession, this could be a new life. It's journalism-centricity to a particular myopic degree.. an extreme exa…

Beautiful visual online communication example from NYTimes.com - Extra Virgin Suicide

Great idea for explaining EU affairs or just wishful thinking? "A new game called Fantasy Geopolitics (think Fantasy Football meets Model United Nations) is radically changing the way high school students in Minnesota are interacting with the news." - How a High School Teacher Is 'Gamifying' World News

US authorities seem particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias. Anyone remember http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B ? "FBI was already convinced they had their man, so they rationalized away the non-matching elements ... Mayfield being jailed without charge; his home and office burgled by the FBI; his client-attorney privilege violated; his lif…

My brother-in-law’s new Show, “D'Office”, is a work of genius. See it if it comes to a town near you.

"On SlideShare you can upload your presentation and if it gets popular, it can be viewed by millions of people. If you know how to make the presentation, you can not only get traffic to your site, but you can also improve your rankings with Google, expand your followship on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc., attract more s…

Good intro to the maths of virality, and why Upworthy's best friend will kill them eventually: " As a result, there’s a direct feedback loop between C and FBT [Facebook Throttle - the % of friends who will see a user's FB share]: the higher your clickbaitiness (C), the less that Facebook will throttle you, and the more likely that your articles w…

"Ektron does this as well, but with version 9, it has also baked in more native marketing functions like allowing for personas to be created based on attributes in a CRM or marketing automation system. What will a site look like to a current customer versus a partner, or a first time visitor versus someone who's closer to being ready to buy? Build…

"All of these things are using human powered context to organize and curate content in a better way. This is the rise of editors. It used to be bloggers and now it's organizing all of the activity with proper editors and direction... "

"how can you minimize the guilt and stress and maximize the relaxation of your holiday? Here is a roundup of the best tips from around the Internet:"

" encourage everyone in your organization to use their vacation time to step away from the challenges currently on their plate. They will gain a fresh perspective and with it, new ideas about how to most effectively attain these shared goals.”"

"Research has found that multi-cultural experiences and exotic surroundings generate more inspired and creative work. Workations decrease stress, which increases productivity and leads to fewer sick days. Studies show that people with high levels of stress spend nearly 50% more on health expenses. A study published in the Harvard Business Review…

"53 per cent of the Canadian professionals who responded would work one to three hours a day while on holiday... more Canadian nine-to-fivers are using the increased flexibility that technology offers to travel while continuing to work at their full-time jobs from the road" limited Wi-Fi and spotty cellphone coverage. He simply makes do by settin…