• 14% of teens 12-17 blog; that number is down by half

• +6% the gain in blogging among people 34-45, to around 16%
• -2% the decline in Blogger’s U.S. usage; it’s still growing globally, though
• no a lot of kids say they don’t consider Tumblr “blogging” source

• » Old people blog, young people tweet: It’s becoming clear that, while blogging is definitely here to stay, it’s not exactly the hip new thing for kids to do anymore. Why’s that? Well … basically, all their friends are already on other social networks, meaning that their friends don’t have to come to them. Facebook is the new blog site du jour. But even considering that, sites like WordPress say they aren’t facing much decline because, well, serious bloggers blog on WordPress and they use social networking to promote their content.

• If the FTC truly wanted to reinvent journalism, the agency would instead align itself with journalism’s disruptors. But there’s none of that here.
• Journo-expert Jeff Jarvis • Regarding a recent Federal Trade Commission report on how to save journalism. He notes as sort of a  key fact that the entire document only mentions the word “blog” once, despite the fact that many blogs are as “real content” as you’re going to get. And the document, overall, seems skewed in favor of establishment journalism, with suggestions that could seriously damage innovation in the industry. “Here, the internet is not the salvation of news, journalism, and democracy. It’s the other side,” he writes. source

• We’ve been following the Newser/the wrap tiff with great interest. Because we find the whole thing silly. Today, the conflict took a turn for the insane, with poor Howard Kurtz right in the middle. As fellow ShortFormers, we agree with Michael Wolff’s ideals, but the problem lies with his execution. There’s no respect for the content. (Although we feel Sharon Waxman’s rules of the road are a bit extreme.)

• 
  the conflict First off, we want to encourage everyone to go to Mediaite for more context. (Their clips are great. Their embeds, not so much. Please fix this, guys. We love you!) Anyway, it’s clear what’s happening here. Waxman asks for something reasonable (fair attribution that encourages further reading on her site). Wolff bites her head off. Ouch!
• 
  Newser‘s Goals Recently, Wolff was trying to make his arguments about the shortening of content on GRITtv, and on their face, we totally agree with them. Problem is, it seems like he’s done this in a self-serving way. Look, Michael, we like short, too, but respect the sites you’re pulling from. In the long term, this lack of respect only hurts you.
• 
  The Wrap‘s goals This promotional video made near the time of The Wrap’s launch shows similarly lofty goals for Waxman’s brand of entertainment journalism. Seems to us there’s room for both Waxman’s ideas and Wolff’s. The problem, it seems to us, is that Newser seems to lack respect for Waxman’s work. Yo, Michael – make deals, not enemies.

• long Sharon Waxman of The Wrap complains about Newser summarizing her articles with scant credit (804 words).
• short Michael Wolff’s Newser then summarizes her complaints in a much more concise format (133 words).
• shorter We see the two of
  them whining about attribution and decide
  to one-up both of them (59 words). source

• We like the meme machines that Ben Huh’s “I Can Has Cheezburger” network provides. They’re goofy, they’re funny at times, and they often drive some pretty interesting trends online. What we don’t like, however, are his wages. What’s essentially a job in a profitable niche media industry is treated as if it’s a struggling startup. Gawker has been all over this the last few days, after Huh himself backed his company into a corner thanks to a frank admission.

What “Cheezburger” makes in revenue

• $4 million in yearly revenue off
  of user-submitted content source

The “Cheezburger” employee picture

• 30 employees work for Ben Huh’s
  cat-loving empire source

• $8.55 the starting rate (40 hr./week, no benefits) at one of Huh’s sites for an office admin or a junior designer – that’s minimum wage in Washington
• $17,784 the amount that brings home for potential employees each year, before taxes of any sort – that’s just $7,000 above the poverty line source

• » A notable wrinkle: These jobs are contract jobs without benefits starting out. Contract jobs that don’t take out taxes, just an FYI, are the ones that Joe Stack railed against when he crashed that plane into the IRS building. And while Huh claims that people move up in the company, the fact of the matter is that this is a near-poverty level job starting out.

How that compares

• $30k starting rate for an entry-level office administrator source
• $29k starting rate for a Web-based graphic designer source
• $20k starting rate for a “blogger” – so Huh is even low for that source

Can you live off that? No

• $17,784the entry-level pay (before taxes) at Cheezburger Network, with the possibility of wage increases
• $18,337the living wage (after taxes) in the Seattle area, where the network is located source

The justification for low wages

• We advertise lower wages for entry-level positions because the worst candidates focus on money the most. Believe it or not, advertising lower-than-market wages actually helped us yield better candidates.
• Cheezburger Network CEO Ben Huh • In an article discussing how a recent ad drew candidates who were upset that he was offering so little for what are in reality jobs that require a college education. While passion is one thing, it’s another thing entirely to force low wages on college-educated people. He lists three reasons why he feels employees who ask about compensation aren’t desirable. The first? “The candidate’s inability to control their personal expenses, which inevitably leads to drama and demands at work.” He goes further, noting: “If you have high financial requirements in order to absolutely survive, I don’t really know what to say than go get a job at a bank (you know what I mean).” Know what would help them control personal expenses, Ben? A living wage. Well, maybe they could get one (and health insurance!) if they worked at a Starbucks instead. source

But wait, they’re not alone

• Look, it’s easy to focus on them. But the real problem we’re starting to see with user-generated content is that nobody’s really paying enough, and preying on passion. Lots of companies are guilty of this. Examiner.com is a great example. Journalists have for years been able to make a decent, if not great, wage by working at newspapers and other print publications. Will this go away? Will we even be able to buy cheezburgers? Just a thought.

• Because we are a technology site, we have a very large base of ad blockers. Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn’t pay. In a way, that’s what ad blocking is doing to us.
• ArsTechnica writer Ken Fisher • About an experiment that his site tried with ad-blocking that appears to have backfired to some degree. Fisher says that while some people white-listed the site, many more complained about it. Apparently, most of their readers are heavy tech users, the very type of people who will turn off ads despite the fact that they pay for the content people read. It’s all the more stark considering it’s something most non-technology companies can’t stop thinking about. source

• After hearing from Rich Pearson of Attributor, we think it’s at least fair to articulate what we think a content-licensing agreement should be like for bloggers. Because it seems like, while Attributor has a good point (and is apparently following a don’t-be-evil pathos), their business model comes across almost as a debt-collector role regarding the copyright of content. As far as content-charging goes, what we’d like to see is a storefront approach as a way to add value to the proposition. A bit of explanation:

How newspapers get wire content:

• This is AP Exchange. We have access to this resource due to the fact that we have a day job. We don’t use it (or link to any AP content, preferably) on ShortFormBlog because recent statements from the wire service have raised a lot of red flags for us about the usage of its content on blogs. Anyway, your mom-and-pop bloggers don’t have (and may not need) access to something this elaborate, but there are things that many bloggers could really use – budgets of upcoming stories (allowing for planning, not reaction), high-resolution photos, and graphics in vector format which can be easily reworked. Unfortunately, it requires a huge contract and newspapers have to give years-in-advance notices if they choose to quit the wire service. Most blogs aren’t that big – unless you’re HuffPo, you can’t afford it.

Business model points of comparison:

• » Photoshop Elements: Not everyone needs the full version of Photoshop, an incredibly complex product with a lot of knobs to twiddle. So Adobe created Photoshop Elements, which offers many of the features at a cheaper price. Simpler, cheaper – that’s what we’d suggest.
• » Lala/Spotify: iTunes isn’t exactly the model we’d suggest for this. An all-you-can-eat model like Spotify is nice, while an ultra-cheap micropayment distribution model like Lala might be ideal. Many news stories don’t have a ton of currency beyond the first day.
• » Typekit: Typekit, which is trying to do something similar for typography, has a very polished interface on the developer’s end which makes it incredibly easy to find the right font to use. Their use of javascript is a little annoying, but ultimately, it strikes a good balance between making rights-holders happy and giving Web site owners more options.

What we’d like to see:

• one We think bloggers need an interface for content-gathering on a wire service, something that they could use as a resource just like Google News and Twitter.
• two We think Automattic or Six Apart (or Publish2, even), which already have significant ties to the blogging community, would be great choices to run a site like this.
• three And – this is the important part – it needs to be done well, in a way that doesn’t talk down to them, that emphasizes quality, not assuming the worst of its users.

Why we think Reuters will come up with this:

• I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting.
• Thomson Reuters President of Media Chris Ahearn • From an article he wrote back in August. We wrote about it then, too, and we think it suggests that Reuters will figure this out before the Associated Press. The AP is more beholden to its newspaper partners, and companies like News Corp. and Tribune Corp. have too many interests in their own products. We think offering diverse options would be great for bloggers and would help take much of the stigma away from what they do. But not everyone’s there, sadly. Fingers crossed that the concept behind Attributor is a good first step, not a bad last one. source

• Well, he took the wind out of our sails. Jon Stewart’s brilliant approach to the way that the blogosphere makes things seem crazier than they actually are is pretty brilliant. Moreso, even, than his multi-part steel-cage match between him and Bill O’Reilly earlier this week. (Both of them are so good at what they do that they pretty much cancel each other out.) We hope MSNBC host Rachel Maddow doesn’t eviscerate us for this post.

• 73% of teens use social networking, a number that keeps going up
• 18% of teens blogged in 2009, down from 28% in 2006
• 70% of teens own a computer, most of those being laptops

• The most popular site for teens? MySpace still, surprisingly. Facebook is generally more popular among adults, and just 8 percent of teens tweet, even though 19 percent of adults do. The average teenager is the modern equivalent of a ’90s AOL user. source

• Is this innovation, or is it overly complicated? SeededBuzz, which is in super-early beta, promises bloggers an opportunity to do mutual promotion of blog articles with other sites, all in the hopes of stirring up some viral traffic for your site. Oh, and it costs money outside of beta, but if it works, it should give your revenue model a shot in the arm. We smell something cooking here, but none of the articles we saw on the site looked like they were really worth blogging about. In this case, the early adopters have nothing to grab onto. If we were them, we’d cut some deals with notable bloggers (blogs-about-blogging CopyBlogger and ProBlogger come to mind) and get them to use the service. Then it might be worthwhile. source