One man’s treat, another man’s twaddle

12/9/2010 3:02 PM EST

I see 4 factors converging to create a "perfect storm" for news media.

First, the 24 hour instant messaging news cycle demands a continuous flow of "information". This is not conducive to production of deeply thought out investigative reporting.

Secondly, the Internet and (especially) Twitter allow everyone a platform to publish their opinions. Credentials and insights are easily displaced by the loudest most photogenic person spouting memorable sound bites. These statements may not be true, but they are more entertaining than a thoughtful talking head. Unfortunately, many citizens are not well enough versed in critical thinking and the scientific method to distinguish storytelling from fact.

Third, multiple competing “channels” of information prevent any of them from achieving critical mass to support the overhead of long term investigative reporting and analysis. Targeting content to the known audience also tends to encourage a bias in the reporting to meet audience preferences.

Finally, as society recognizes entertainment and sports figures as media "stars" (multitasking attention deficit disorder requires continuous action to maintain audience attention), glitz displaces the news focus on scientific accuracy and significant intellectual accomplishments. Following a scientist for 10 years leading up to a Nobel Prize is less entertaining than watching superstars self destruct.

The opportunity that I see, and that EE Times is pushing, is to create engaging sites of authoritative information on specific topics. While the Internet does not have a means to certify accuracy of content by web site, subject matter experts do discover the reliable sources. Ideally there would be a means to ensure that the mass media links to these sources for interested readers. I'm encouraged that Google News does have links to EE Times stories on technical topics (e.g. http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4211355/SpaceX-s-Dragon-reaches-orbit today).

12/9/2010 3:43 PM EST

I think the headline says it all. Hopefully the majority of EE Times readers have, overall, found more treats than twaddle in the new format.

12/9/2010 11:26 PM EST

I myself have found lots of treats. I wonder if eetimes has a fan page on Facebook yet :-)?

12/10/2010 12:13 AM EST

We wonder about EETimes confidential and its techno commercial coverage. Is it possible to provide us with glimpses of it? We may also like to read and commnet on EETimes Confidential and become part it. Can we get limited login to do this?

12/10/2010 12:57 AM EST

Darn it! I guess I am in the middle.

I like the "community" aspect of the new EETimes (and not just because I am part of it) because you can learn from other people vis a vis their specialties...and sometimes EE stories bring (ferret?) that info out.

But I also liked the old EETimes with really good journalism on subjects near and dear to EE's.

I agree with DrQuine about the news cycle and its affect on quality journalism. But how will taking EETimes to a paid subscription version fix the need to have timely info as well as in depth accurate, no BS, and no bias, coverage on a more frequent basis? How often would the paid version "publish"?

I think the community aspect of any site runs the risk of too many comments/opinions because of the pressure to participate in order to be relevant or an active member, which leads many times to what I call "net transfer of information = zero" type comments. Twaddle as it is referred to in Junko's writing. Some people just have more time than I do.

As a former colleague of mine put at the end of each of his emails - "Just because you can does not mean you should", and this should translate into very relevant input or none at all. Of course, this is a utopian view, but better than garbage in = garbage out.

hm's request to look at EETimes Confidential in on target. A look before you leap deal. After all, to pay for it has to such that you cannot get it anywhere else. A very tall order in today's information age regardless of how hard you try.

Just my 2 cents worth....which I hope is more than zero :)

12/10/2010 3:27 AM EST

@hm: You can take EE Times-Confidential for a test run by getting a free trial issue at http://www.eetimes.com/confidential

Read it and let us know what you think. We love feedback!

12/10/2010 11:23 AM EST

Having been in the Internet world now for more than a decade, my experience has shown that it's very difficult for a website, especially one dealing with technology, to not fall into the world of:

"PCs are bad. You should buy a mac."
"No, Macs are bad. You should buy a PC."

I may be biased because I'm one of the regular commentators here, but from what I've seen to date, EE-Times does a good job of not falling down that spiral. There will always be folks that speak empty words, myself included at times. But by and large, I find the comments to be thoughtful, thought provoking and well said.

Part of the theory behind social media is that the community will self-police itself to keep the treat to twaddle ratio high. Few communities seem to do that well, but I suspect that the fact that this is an engineering audience keeps so many of the threads on target.

From the debates, here on EE-Times, about the value of social media to engineers, it's pretty clear that we folk don't like to waste time. Further, so many of the social media twaddlers might come to this site and find most of the dialog to be so spiced with technical verse as to be virtually unintelligible to them. I think those two factors go a long way toward keeping the commentary on topic.

When I originally started my involvement with this community, my supposition was that I would be able to contribute and have my thoughts heard. An unexpected benefit (and something I've now newly learned about social media) is that, by participating in the debates, I find myself considerably more informed on a lot of subjects than I otherwise would.

I guess that's a long way of stating that I disagree with the opinion that this has become a twaddle site.

12/10/2010 4:42 PM EST

Very good article. I really like the new look of the eetimes especially an urge to make it "The site" where all discussions realted to electronics or technology happen. I feel it can be promoted on facebook and twiter also. Like " I like EETIMES.COM" It will generate awareness.

12/10/2010 7:30 PM EST

I think that EE times is doing the right thing by adding a social aspect to this high tech site. Technology needs to co-exist with humans. Some of the best technologies came about due to synthesis with other fields and more importantly with a deep understanding of how humans work. Not just the tech in isolation. So, keep going EE. It's a good experiment!

12/13/2010 4:57 PM EST

@JunkoYoshida: I think the EE Times (open) site is fine the way it is now. I too disagree with the opinion that this has become a twaddle site.

I realize the overall intent of any media company is to generate revenue. But I would also like to mention that it has benefits to the readers who express their opinions as well. I have already received multiple requests for consulting gigs based on my comments in the forum.

I also agree that engineers in general don't like to waste time on other social media that do not add much value to technology. For that reason alone, I don't exist on Facebook nor do I fritter away my time twitter!

Keep up the site, it has been great so far at EE Times.

Dr. MP Divakar

12/14/2010 7:35 PM EST

It used to be that the news was distributed by The Authority (think Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather). This was a very comforting paternal model, but it oversimplifies the real world, which tends to be a teeming mass of differing knowledge and opinions. The dirty little secret of the old paternal model is that the reporter rarely is the expert on what they are reporting. It's quite common for them to say things that are simply wrong. The old model was mostly unidirectional, so corrections took a long time if they ever happened. The trick is to get real discussion of the issues in a forum rather than 'You're a boogerhead!'. Right now we are mostly getting very good discussion, but if eetimes.com takes off and draws a larger audience then the noise level will almost inevitably rise.

Larry M.

12/17/2010 8:17 PM EST

There is a place for both deep research reporting and one for discussion type dialog. But when I think of twitter, what comes to mind is the chatter of little birds. If you are looking for industry news, The Microwave Journal does a good job at that, although it may not interest those not involved, and the is a "controls" publication that provides deep insight into control system projects and just how they were executed. That publication also included detailed evaluations of new rules and regulations and their impact on control systems designs. Unfortunately the format of the publication (online) made it very tedious to read, so much so that I cancelled my subscription.
Right now, it appears that EE Times is aimed both at those who design those huge custom chips, and those of us who design products and systems that might use them. My own area is constrained to use available standard components, since, for me, a huge production run would be 50 units. The result being that my design priorities may be different from those who consider a run of 100,000 units to be a pilot run.
The problem is that we only have a limited amount of time to spend on publications, and so we must select whose we will spend it with.

12/19/2010 3:13 AM EST

I've been reading EE Times since the 1970's. Long may it publish!! Formats inevitably change, but the core mission - that of communicating new technology to its practitioners, us engineers - that mission has never faltered or flagged.

Thank you EE Times for 40 years of excellent communication.

12/20/2010 1:10 PM EST

I am very disappointed that the times has chosen to go with the fee for service model with "EE Times Confidential". I have been an EE times subscriber for over 30 years now, and I have found ee times to be a valued sourced of useful information. In my opinion, the paid by advertisement model has worked just fine.

It really grinds my gears when I google for information and I get a bunch of useless teaser links to paid information services like IEE explore, elsevier, springerlink....ad nauseum... Does this mean that I will soon need to also exclude EEtimes from my google search strings?

It would be a pity if they chose to move all of the good content over to the paid side of the house, but that is exactly what they will need to do if they expect to get paid for it.

12/21/2010 2:35 PM EST

The ability to provide valuable content in a medium that expects everything free is a real dilemma. The paying audience will be smaller than the free audience. Perhaps a combination of subscription fee, advertising, and good content will provide sufficient support for EE Times Confidential. Building a reputation for content that justifies the subscription fee is critical. Perhaps making EE Times Confidential archives (articles older than 1 year?) available for free would help build a reputation that the content is worth a fee.

Dewitt

12/22/2010 2:00 PM EST

Publishers always saw journos as a necessary evil (who else would fill their pages?) and now, Web publishers think they can attract advertising spend without themselves having to provide any content. Hence user-provided copy, hence social media.

The old media were funded by advertizers, and while they are currently not convinced that magazine spend would be justified, they will go anywhere, anytime they could see a return. If they saw results from (say) adverts placed under peoples' shoes, then they would flock to use that medium (there's your 'sole', Junko! :-)

So the real problem is, 'Why would a publisher pay for (good quality) content, when a web mag can be filled by people who are happy to sound off for free?'

That understood, the next question is 'Who cares?'

I say I care! I for one am willing to subscribe to mags that contain something other than ads and infomercials (as I did to Byte, Wireless World and .EXE). Not only that, I suspect that the subscription income to such mags would be dwarfed by the advertising spend by companies wanting to target a committed group of subscribers.

So what's the problem? Answer: engineers who won't spend a few bucks per year to enrich their own minds with some decent reading?

12/24/2010 6:48 AM EST

As a regular commentator on EEtimes, what I would say is that this on line edition of EEtimes has renewed my interest in reading the technical magazines again. The interactive nature constantly prompts me to look for the interesting technical stories, inventions, tutorials which I had stopped reading from the hard copy magazines many years back because with those hard copy magazines I had started to feel out of place as I had nobody to discuss. Now this large online community lets me interact with my peers, sometimes take guidance from the more experienced and allows me to voice my concerns , and fantasies to the whole world.

12/24/2010 8:12 PM EST

I read "Do we have a soul" EET December 13, 2010

[w]ith EETimes Confidential, we are targeting our intelligence report exclusively to those who pay for it.

No review of EETimes Confidential invites making money by distributing information paid for those who profit from distribution possibly false information.

Check out what Jerry Krasner is up to.

http://embeddedforecast.com/analystprofile.php

From what we read C/assembler is the only way to go.

http://www.prosefights.org/cs/c/c.htm#start4

1/1/2011 4:45 PM EST

The key is adding value.

In the old days you could add value by owning a media segment and charging to providing access to people wanting stuff published.

Access to media is no longer an issue. Blogging etc makes everyone a publisher.

What you still have is a brand and credibility. Jack Gansell (I'm sure I spelled that wrong!) et al have far more credibility than Random J Blogger. That is value but may be challenging to convert into revenue.

If you just throw things too wide open and "go Facebook" you'll end up losing that credibility and eroding the brand and will be left with nothing.

12/27/2011 3:14 PM EST

I agree with jenelson above. I, for one, refuse to pay for information that is in the public domain. If I am forced to pay for industry info and articles, then I will go elsewhere.