NewspaperAlum

Former Executive Editor George Blake Working to Create Zones of Privacy on the Web

George Blake with his daughter Carlin at Pebble Beach

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George Blake, former editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, Fort Myers News-Press and Pacific Daily News, popped in to say hello and inform me, since leaving the newspaper business, he has launched two websites to address the growing concern over privacy issues on the Internet.

A little background. 73 percent of respondents in a survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, published in March, 2012 [See PDF Report] indicated they object to the invasion of privacy methods practiced by search engines; especially the way they track your searches and use that information to personalize your future search results. Another 68 percent in the survey objected to targeted advertising, because they don’t like having their online activity tracked and analyzed.

Responding  to these privacy issues, and fully aware that thousands of companies make billions of dollars selling data about consumers without their consent or compensation, beginning in 2007, Blake became chairman and CEO  of Pridatco Inc., which has launched two parent companies: Do Not Track US  and Money For My Data.

Do Not Track US, a free service, allows users a method for removing tracking activity, including other surveillance and behavioral tracking by companies, websites, ISPs, (Internet Service Providers) ad networks and advertisers.

As explained on the company website, if consumers don’t want to be tracked or kept under surveillance over the Internet through their cell phone location data, users can opt-out of tracking and cell phone ads by joining the Do Not Track Registry, which operates much like the National Do Not Call Registry managed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation’s consumer protection agency to limit the telemarketing calls you receive. All that’s required for enrollment is an IP (Internet Provider) Address.

Pridatco’s efforts to limit tracking surveillance, according to Blake, is not without strong legal protection in the Bill of Rights to the Constitution with the 4th amendment (which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures) as well as  a number of other amendments, including the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, 10th and 14th.

Blake’s other website, Money for My Data, another free service, collects consumer data and profiles through surveys and various data collection practices. It then keeps this data safe under the stewardship of the consumer-members, which acts as the member’s authorized agent to package and sell the data for advertising while sharing the net profits with the member.

Blake was editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer from 1980 through 1992. He then served as the paper’s vice president for community affairs until December, 2000. From 1995 through 2000 he was president of the Ohio Newspaper Association; and from 2001 through 2007 served as Chairman and President of Brandwatch Technologies, a company which develops devices for product and document security and counterfeit detection.

Prior to being named editor at the Enquirer, Blake was executive editor at the Fort Myers News-Press and Pacific Daily News in Guam, while serving as vice president of the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors from 1977 through 1980.

In addition to his pioneering efforts with privacy websites, from 2008 through 2012, Blake served as chief news officer of  OurTown.com  , a searchable and trackable hyper-local news and community information gateway from more than 70,000 locations and neighborhoods.  Our Town provides community members with a one-stop-shop for news, content and information focused on their local community. The site offers articles on a variety of topics, along with calendars, message forums, and an updated business directory.  It has additionally licensed more than 1,000 local editors, who provide local news and sell advertising.

When asked about the current financial crisis impacting the newspaper industry, especially the way employees are being thrown overboard at alarming rates, this former executive editor with over 20 years of experience in the news business, told me: ``I assume newspapers will reach a point at which news staffing is stable and editors may allocate personnel in a manner that allows the best coverage within those limits. It won't ever go back to the pre-internet days, but coverage still will be meaningful. I'd even like to think people will be willing to pay for online news sites, and even think there might be a market for hyperlocal paywalls -- but that's a big step that might not be taken for a few years.’’

Despite forecasting calmer waters amid the choppy seas of the newspaper industry, Blake’s heart nonetheless aches seeing the loss of so many talented journalists. `` I always thought our news staffs were the best and brightest: committed, hard-working, caring folks who will find new successes.  I wish them well.’’

A Wheeling (West Virginia) Jesuit University graduate, where he earned a degree in economics, Blake has lived the past 10 years in Atlanta with his wife Christine and daughter Carlin.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
August 6, 2012

There is Life after Journalism, ``Recovering Journalist'' Mark Potts Says

Recovery, in a clinical sense, takes different shapes and sizes: there are recovering alcoholics, recovering gamblers, recovering food addicts, recovering smokers; and yes, even recovering journalists.

Mark Potts not only calls himself a recovering journalist, but uses the description as the title of his blog , a site considered one of the leading sources of analysis of involving the merging of technology and media. He is frequently quoted in industry publications.

Potts spent 15 years of his journalism career, working as a reporter and editor at The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Examiner and the Associated Press before reinventing himself in the digital media in the early 1990’s, just when the Internet was taking off like a rocket into the dark sky.

Addressing exactly why he calls himself a ``recovering journalist’’, Potts writes on his Website, ``I think a lot of journalists—and traditional media executives—are caught up in old ways of thinking about the industry that are being wiped clean by the digital revolution. Without radical new approaches, the old journalistic institutions are suffering through horrible death spirals.’’

So, rather than write his own obituary and get left behind in the mass migration to the Web, Potts not only embraced the digital revolution, but went a step further and began developing new habits for the audience to receive, create and interact with news, information and advertising with a keen eye toward finding business models that would help pay for this new platform.

In 1992, while working as a business journalist at The Washington Post, Potts created one of the first electronic newspaper prototypes. That led to the cofounding of Digital Ink, the Washington Post Co.’s initial efforts to explore the digital world, which later evolved into WashingtonPost.com. Potts served the Post’s new-media editor and then as Digital Ink’s director of product development and chief creative officer until 1995, when he moved to Silicon Valley as a member of the founding team and editorial director of pioneering broadband startup @Home.

Potts also was co-founder of Backfence, an early hyperlocal user-generated citizens media company, and of GrowthSpur, a company that helped hyperlocal websites develop advertising tools and networks. Today, in addition to consulting for a variety of media and digital clients, he is developing a new social-news startup, Newspeg, which aims to be a “Pinterest for news,” allowing users to easily save, share and comment on news stories that interest them. Newspeg is currently in alpha-test stage.

Though he met with much success in his new role as media consultant and entrepreneur, with the moniker ``recovering journalist’’ serving him well, Potts jokingly admits he once fell off the wagon. In 2007, he went back into the traditional print business, though only briefly, when he accepted a six-month assignment as Acting Vice President-Editorial at Philly.com, the Web site for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, where he oversaw a major redesign and relaunch of the site.

Potts assumed a similar role in 2000-2001, when he served as Chief Product Officer for Cahners Business Information (now Reed Business Information), the nation’s largest trade publisher, where he managed Cahners Digital and oversaw the development of 120 trade magazine Web sites, including  Variety.com and PublishersWeekly.com.

Taken together, Potts has developed strategies and products not only for The Washington Post Co., Philly.com, and Variety.com, but also for the Los Angeles Times, Cox Communications, HealthCentral Network, Allvoices.com, the Connecticut Mirror, Classified Ventures, Tribe Networks and others.

What advice, then, does one of the leading digital strategy and product development consultants have for media companies struggling with plummeting circulation figures with its print editions, while trying to remain relevant in the digital age? ``The sooner media companies embrace things like user-generated content’’, Potts writes on his Website, ``new kinds of storytelling, Web 2.0 tools, new forms of advertising and revenue generation, and wide-open interaction with their audience, the sooner they'll halt their slide into oblivion.’’

And what if they don’t take his advice? ``They’re toast’’, Potts writes.

Potts serves on the advisory boards of Internet startups PaperG and MixedInk, and teaches Media Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland. He tells me he strongly believes that journalists must prepare for their own “recoveries” by becoming more savvy about the business of journalism and exploring opportunities to start their own media startups—but with a sharp eye on ensuring that their ideas are underpinned by a sustainable business model.

Is there life after journalism? Most definitely,” Potts assured me. “Journalists making the transition need to understand that their skills for writing, storytelling, fact-finding and analysis are readily transferrable to other professions. But journalists who want to stay in the modern world of journalism will also need to augment their natural expertise with solid understanding of business and digital skills.”

Potts was the Business and Technology editor of the San Francisco Examiner from 1985 through 1986, a reporter and editor at the Washington Post from 1982 through 1992, and a reporter for the Chicago Tribune from 1980 through 1982. He also reported for the Associated Press from 1977 through 1979. In addition, he has written two books: ``The Leading Edge’’ and ``Dirty Money’’. 

Potts graduated with a degree in journalism from George Washington University.

-Bill Lucey
July 5, 2012
[email protected]

Thomas Crampton, former N.Y. Times & International Herald Tribune Correspondent, Now a Social Media Specialist

Award-winning journalist Thomas Crampton who spent 18 years spanning the globe for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, in which he reported from five continents and dozens of countries, dropped me a quick email to let me know he now runs a social media in Asia-Pacific for Ogilvy & Mather where he heads a team encompassing 23 cities in 15 Asian territories that help companies conceive, develop and execute strategies in social media.

Crampton covered the 2004 presidential election for The New York Times; at the International Herald Tribune, he launched the paper’s first blog. Other major reporting assignments covered by this well traveled correspondent include: reporting on the 1997 Asian financial crisis from Thailand, the SARS outbreak from Hong Kong, the civil war in Sudan, rebel fighting in Sri Lanka, Taiwan’s largest earthquake, major hurricanes on U.S. soil, the Cannes Film Festival, including a tour of duty as a Paris-based feature writer on media and technology.

He is co-founder of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club Charity Fund that has raised more than $4 million to support the higher education of disadvantaged children from the Po Leung Kuk.

Crampton earned degrees from the University of Virginia, Trinity College in  Dublin, Ireland and from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris in France.  Among his many talents, this digital media specialist  speaks French, Thai and is currently learning Mandarin Chinese.

Armed with indispensible knowledge and experience to share on the latest in digital technology, Crampton is frequently on the lecture circuit at a number of universities around the world, including Stanford University, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, Keio University in Japan and the National University of Singapore.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
June 27, 2012