Four today

1. Typical elitism. The New York Times has a social media strategy: "Don't be stupid." Business Insider

2. Wired and Planet Money visualize what the (sputtering) economic recovery will look like. Wired

3. MIT has a lab that matches television and ad content to what is being said about them online. AdAge

4. You don't have that many friends: The 150 rule for social media. NPR

Do "news" and "analysis" need couple's therapy?

Are news and analysis a boring couple who would do much better if they went their separate ways? Jonathan Glick makes the argument in today's Business Insider. I agree with the premise that analysis will remain valuable - and possibly gain value - as more breaking news consumption is done in bite-size, mobile chunks. And I agree with the premise that breaking news will increasingly be consumed in bite-size, mobile chunks.

But Glick's argument relies on a theory that news and analysis are distinct entities that can exist separately, even happily so. They can't. News and analysis are different expressions of the same newsroom-consumer relationship. Breaking news is the flirtation and analysis is commitment. Newsrooms need to do both well if they want to keep the fire burning.

"The AOL Way" is to get hits

AOL has a feverish case of hit-count lust. After creating Patch and investing in content creators, as it likes to call journalists, AOL has developed an aggressive plan for profitability that seems sure to grind the hell out of its editorial employees. The Business Insider got a copy of memo (really an excessively jargon-filled power point presentation) that outlines ways to boost traffic. Here's part of BI's summary (the "he" refers to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong):

By April, he wants AOL editorial to increase its stories per month from 33,000 to 55,000.
He wants pageviews per story to jump from 1,500 to 7,000.
He wants video stories to go from being 4% of all stories produced to 70%.
He wants the percentage of stories optimized for search engines to reach 95%.

All of which means many more "stories" from AOL staffers (five to 10 a day is the goal), with a keen eye on money metrics. The plan includes almost nothing about editorial goals, quality, or better coverage. It's machine journalism at its rawest - or what AOL management would call "The AOL Way," a name that rightly deserves to be ridiculed.

One journalist who joined AOL offered this response to Business Insider:

"AOL is the most f-----up, b------t company on earth," says one, who joined AOL in what he calls, "the worst career move I've ever made." 

An October 2010 study argues against turning online editorial into a content farm, saying better stories generate better ad revenue. But the insane valuation of Demand Media, said to be worth more than $1 billion, is certain to change minds.

****

Speaking of AOL's Patch network, I received a message from a Patch contributor who told me AOL plans to cut 30-50 percent out of freelance budgets. I'm not sure whether "The AOL Way" applies to Patch writers, but a smaller freelance budget means community editors will have fewer resources to create more content. Doesn't that sound familiar?

Lonely (maybe) , but not alone

The Economist photoshopped a picture of President Obama to make him look like a lonely man on an oil-tainted beach.

Police search Gizmodo editor's home*

In the ongoing investigation into how Gawker Media's Gizmodo blog got hold of a prototype of Apple's next generation iPhone, police in Fremont, California, raided the home of editor Jason Chen and seized computers, cellphones, digital cameras, an iPad and other gadgets.

Business Insider has Chen's firsthand account of the raid here.

*Updated: New York Times gets a response from Gawker:

Gawker’s chief operating officer, Gaby Darbyshire, said it expected the immediate return of the computers and servers.

“Under both state and federal law, a search warrant may not be validly issued to confiscate the property of a journalist,” she wrote in a letter to San Mateo County authorities on Saturday. “Jason is a journalist who works full time for our company,” she continued, adding that he works from home, his “de facto newsroom.”

Four today

1. Former LA Times reporter Bill Boyarsky lauds USC's online news site, Neon Tommy, as the future of IF Stoneian journalism (although I thought the name referred to something completely different). Truthdig

2. CNN's website expands - becomes even less relevant to me. Business Insider

3. Former Boston Globe reporter comes up with an unfortunate name to describe gripping stories. JLocal

4. Voice of San Diego wants to turn people into civic activists. Nieman Lab