Building the stacks for a mutualised newspaper

Building the stacks for a mutualised newspaper Dr Chris Thorpe BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER For those of you who were at FOWA last year you’ll remember that Kevin Rose of Digg gave a talk on the future of online news, today I’m going to be talking about the future of online news as seen from within another “startup” in this space, The Guardian. We are kind of like a startup at the moment as the structural pressure and disruption in this space is making us reinvent things. But we have to think a lot about our audience and our legacy.

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ JAGGEREE/ BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER In our building at Kings Cross which we’re reminded of the past and tradition everywhere with historical objects and this wonderful facsimile of the ﬁrst edition of The Manchester Guardian.

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ JAGGEREE/ BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER And in many ways this looks like a newspaper of today. It has articles that remind us of previous difficult ﬁnancial times

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ JAGGEREE/ BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER It has adverts, although I’m not sure we run many truss adverts these days

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ JAGGEREE/ BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and it has a cover price

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ printing FOURWALKS/ press to clouds and wires but what’s changed? and what needs to change BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and although clouds and wires are how the majority of our readership gets their news from us rather than the print edition, what’s changed from the days of the printing press

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ printing FOURWALKS/ press to clouds and wires but what’s changed? and what needs to change BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and in many ways in times of massive structural change in the industry, what needs to change

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ LWR/ creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER the newspaper as we know it is a product of the industrial age, an age in which the majority of mass produced goods of which newspapers and other mass media are examples could be described by these four words creation fabrication distribution monetisation

HTTP://FPC.DOS.STATE.FL.US/ GENERAL/N035050.JPG creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER ﬁrstly let’s talk about physical printed newspapers this is the Miami Herald newsroom in the 1950s

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ BENTERRETT/ creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and although our new printing presses are bigger and more automated they’re still a direct line descendent from the Stanhope press that printed the ﬁrst edition

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ PICTURING_IT/ creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and we still distribute to outlets

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ SLIMJIM/ creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and out from those outlets to street corners and homes in a distribution network we can sometimes brand and claim

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ JAYCOXFILM/ creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER in some cultures there are local drop off points

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ JAYCOXFILM/ creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and hyperlocal drop off points on the drive, in the mailbox or by the front door,

creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and clearly there is monetisation on the print edition in the cover price, adverts and paid supplements so how does it change in the digital era, the newpaper made of bits, what are its current metaphors for creation, fabrication and distribution

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ JAGGEREE/ creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER actually our current digital newsroom looks a lot like the 1950 Miami Herald’s, there are more Macs obviously

creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER we have a wonderful offset printing press, it’s R2 our Content Management System, it’s a faster than a physical printing press and allows us to create in theory an inﬁnite number of printings every day, but it does the same task

creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER And we have our own distribution network with our collection of sites

creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER we have local delivery through “full fat” RSS feeds

creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and we have hyperlocal on mobile

creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and we’re part of digital versions of newsagents, news aggregators

creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and there is monetisation through adverts

disruption BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER but we are living in a time of mass disruption of the mass media industry, a disruption borne of the economic climate, the reduction of advertising efficacy and spend and also due to changes in user behaviours and intents

HTTP://WWW.INTERNET- MANIFESTO.ORG/ BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER people are writing well thought out manifestos that many people are reading

HTTP://WWW.TNR.COM/ARTICLE/ GOODBYE-THE-AGE-NEWSPAPERS- HELLO-NEW-ERA-CORRUPTION Published on The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com) Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption) Why American politics and society are about to be changed for the worse. Paul Starr March 4, 2009 | 12:00 am I. We take newspapers for granted. They have been so integral a part of daily life in America, so central to politics and culture and business, and so powerful and profitable in their own right, that it is easy to forget what a remarkable historical invention they are. Public goods are notoriously under-produced in the marketplace, and news is a public good--and yet, since the mid-nineteenth century, newspapers have produced news in abundance at a cheap price to readers and without need of direct subsidy. More than any other medium, newspapers have been our eyes on the state, our check on private abuses, our civic alarm systems. It is true that they have often failed to perform those functions as well as they should have done. But whether they can continue to perform them at all is now in doubt. Even before the recession hit, the newspaper industry was facing a mortal threat from the rise of the Internet, falling circulation and advertising revenue, and a long-term decline in readership, as the habit of buying a daily paper dwindled from one generation to the next. The recession has intensified these difficulties, plunging newspapers into a tailspin from which some may not recover and others will emerge only as a shadow of their former selves. The devastation is already substantial. At the Los Angeles Times, the cumulative effect of cutbacks has been to reduce its newsroom by one-half--and that was before its parent company, Page 1 of 27 BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER http://www.tnr.com/print/article/goodbye-the-age-newspapers-hello-new-era-corruption Some people are suggesting that there is a dystopian future for newspapers and people are talking about the political and societal consequences of that happening The challenges facing mass media go far deeper in many ways than the current ﬁnancial climate and difficulties in the advertising industry,

HTTP://TWITTER.COM/MCCOMB/ STATUS/3837637942 BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and mass media bolt on solutions to the problem will possibly not be the solution in 1991 the very missed Douglas Adams wrote very presciently about the cause of the disruption we’re seeing

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ TPHOLLAND/ “During [the twentieth] century we have for the first time been dominated by non- interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport—the performers and audience were there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for. We didn’t need a special word for interactivity in the same way that we don’t (yet) need a special word for people with only one head.” Douglas Adams BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER “During [the twentieth] century we have for the ﬁrst time been dominated by non-interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport—the performers and audience were there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for. We didn’t need a special word for interactivity in the same way that we don’t (yet) need a special word for people with only one head.” mass media could well be a 20th century abberation

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ --STROMBERG--/ bi-directionality BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER The root cause of the disruption is bi-directionality People are themselves creating, curating, linking, sharing and it has profound implications for centrally controlled mass media

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ BABYCREATIVE/ be part of disruption BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER There are three ways of reacting to this sort of disruption, one is to ignore it, another to try and control it, the third is to embrace it and to try and ﬁnd ways to enable it or be a part of it that’s the route we’re going down

mutualisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER This word is core to a lot of our thinking on how to “be” as a relevant 21st century newspaper or news organisation. Alan Rushbridger, our editor, talks a lot about the “mutualised newspaper” from my title

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER We’re fortunate to have cartoonists at The Guardian who can illustrate points so clearly Andrzej Krauze has described Alan’s vision of a 20th century newspaper in this cartoon with the journalists within the solid walls of the newspaper throwing out content to the audience, hitting some

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and has also drawn what we think newspapers should be more like, where there is “reach throughable space” between reader and journalism. Alan talks a lot about lowering walls between journalists and readers

HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/ MUTUALISM_(ECONOMIC_THEORY) Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought which can be traced to the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market. BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER there are many deﬁnitions of mutual, mutuality and mutualism, many of which concern building societies, but this is my personal favourite from Wikipedia “anarchist” the right feel for the internet and “a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively” sounds a lot like Web2.0 to me so I think we’re on the right track with mutual

creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER so let’s deconstruct these four industrial actions in this new mutual future and see what we’re doing to each of them

co-creation fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER clearly creation should be co-creation and I’ve got a great example of it to show

g20 BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER It’s the G20 protests and their rather tragic outcome The G20 was one of the most photographed events in history, certainly in the density of cameras

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER from the professional photographers

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER to the cameras from within the protestors

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER to bystanders who are photobloggers like Roo Reynolds from the BBC who was “kettled” when he went to see what was going on between meetings

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER The story obviously took a sad turn with the death of Ian Tomlinson which one of our journalists Paul Lewis felt was both tragic and suspicious. He felt strongly that the official version of events didn’t quite match.

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and through Twitter and his news pieces started to ask for any photos and footage about the event

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER which lead to this now famous piece of video camera phone footage emerging and being presented on our site this story needed involvement from a partnership between journalists and an active readership to emerge

co-creation co-fabrication distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER the next thing to mutualize is clearly fabrication and actually we think it goes hand in hand with

co-creation co-fabrication co-distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER distribution and we think the only way to really do this part is to open up and open out to developers

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and that’s why in March we launched The Open Platform is our thinking and efforts to make it possible for developers to build applications with The Guardian, there are currently two parts to this strategy with more emerging early next year to add to our ecosystem

Content API DataStore BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER the Content API, which contains XML, JSON and ATOM representations of all The Guardian articles we have rights for dating back to 1991, approximately 1 million articles for you to make applications out of

Content API DataStore BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER DataStore beautifully curated datasets to use in applications and visualisations. there is obviously a lot of data freely available on the internet, but some of it may be of unknown provenance. The Data Store is our response to that, just as the newspaper is curated news.

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ PIGSAW/ Weaving The Guardian into the fabric of the internet. Matt McAlister BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER Matt McAlister, head of the project set out this premise for the Open Platform at the launch

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ PSD/ “into not on, cool” Gavin Bell BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER Gavin Bell from Nature was sitting next to me and said “into not on, cool” and this is such a key and important distinction. It relates totally to the mutuality of the interaction, if we were simply standing on the shoulders of others we would have less relevance to the internet over a longer trajectory than we can generate where Guardian articles, data and code are avaialble for developers to build on and build with.

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ JAMIN2/ I’m not bowled over much these days. But Guardian Open Platform is a chasmic leap into the future. It is a work of simplistic beauty that I’m sure will have a dramatic impact in the news market. The Guardian is already a market leader in the online space but Open Platform is revolutionary. It makes all of their major competitors look timid. Governments should be doing this. Governments will be doing it. The question is how long will it take us to catch up. Tom Watson MP BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER This quote from Tom Watson MP was also a memorable one from our day of launch. For those of you who don’t know Tom he is basically the ﬁrst minister of geek and is dearly missed since he left the cabinet earlier in the year. I’m not bowled over much these days. But Guardian Open Platform is a chasmic leap into the future. It is a work of simplistic beauty that I’m sure will have a dramatic impact in the news market. The Guardian is already a market leader in the online space but Open Platform is revolutionary. It makes all of their major competitors look timid. Governments should be doing this. Governments will be doing it. The question is how long will it take us to catch up. Tom Watson MP

over 1000 datasets data.hmg.gov.uk for developers uk-government-data-developers to code a better on Google Groups country BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER Well that day came yesterday and the answer is about 6 months from our launch in March. I encourage you to sign up to uk-government-data-developers on Google Groups. They’re in a preview phase at the moment and they want your help to make the service better. There are over 1000 datasets there, several of them as full RDFa linked data. They’re doing it for the same reasons we are, wonderful and unexpected things happen when you open up. No matter how many amazingly smart people you can amass within your building, statistically there will always be more on the outside.

Content API DataStore BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER So what have people been making

HTTP://WWW.SCULPTURE.ORG.UK/ BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER so let’s have a quick look at some of those applications and you can see immediately what we mean about co-distribution this is one of the applications from our launch. this is a small art foundation in Sussex which has always tried to punch above its weight online in fact this is the artist page for Antony Gormley whose work is currently gracing the plinth in Trafalgar Square. they’ve wanted to have news on their site for many years, but news is hard to do well. it was added to their site in about 3 hours

JOHN ATKIN this page | share this page email HTTP://WWW.SCULPTURE.ORG.UK/ NICK BARBERTON OLIVER BARRATT BEN BARRELL GLENYS BARTON Recent News Mentioning Antony Gormley ZADOK BEN-DAVID Search RODNEY BENDER home news about current work programme MATHIAS visit us boutique BENGTSSON contact us HAMISH BLACK Plinth consorts Antony Gormley IVAN BLACK published 9 days ago HELAINE BLUMENFELD this artist Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950. After more information about commissioning schooling at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire,MATT on he went BODIMEADE since its establishment in 1992, the charity has annually to complete a degree in Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Art at Trinity College, Cambridge, between the BOEPPLE WILLARD I've got my hour on the plinth, but what should I do up there? commissioned 20 exemplary monumental sculptures from years of 1968-71. Following his graduation, Gormley travelled to India and Sri Lanka to study Buddhism for BROWN KEITH The first winners of the draw to spend an hour as sculptor Antony Gormley's emerging and established three years. On his return to London, in 1974, he other works from this artist contemporary sculptors. RALPH BROWN attended Central School of Art and Goldsmith's College before completing a postgraduate course in sculpture at BROWN fourth statue in Trafalgar Square have been revealed. Our arts correspondent SANDY Slade School of Art between 1977 and 1979. JON BUCK Vanessa Thorpe is among them lending Gormley's work has revivified the way in which the our resource of 80 monumental PETER BURKE human form is appropriated. Frequently using his own body as the subject of his published 9 days ago sculptures are now available on work, Gormley's innovative use of the body, as a vessel for memory and Bollards (Oval, Snowman, short and long term loan for a ANDREW BURTON transformation, explores the collective body and the relationship between self and Peg, Penis) other. His investigation into the human condition has been realised in highly 2001 monthly fee. SAM BUXTON acclaimed large-scale installations such as Critical Mass (1995), Allotment (1997), Antony Gormley's coastline, Crosby, Merseyside: Walk ID 256 Inside Australia (2002), Domain Field (2003), Another Place (2005), and his most recent exhibition, Blind Light (2007). TESSA CAMPBELL FRASER selling ANTHONY CARO published 17 days ago Celebrated internationally, Gormley has had solo and group exhibitions in Europe, all of the sculptures on the Scandinavia, America, Japan and Australia. His sculptures have been acquired byCHADWICK from the Cass LYNN publications foundation's grounds are available many public and private collections around the world. In 1994 he was awarded the Sculpture Foundation for sale, profits from these sales are split equally between the artist Turner Prize and in 1999 he won the South Bank Prize for Visual Art. In 1997 Gormley was made an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to MICHAEL CHALLENGER Set in stone ANN CHRISTOPHER and the foundation, and directly enable future commissions. sculpture and in 2003 he became a Royal Academician. In 2007 he was awarded the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture. He continues to fulfil his roles as an ROBIN CONNELLY 'Somebody will be exhibiting a bunch of bananas in a gallery, and they'll get Honorary Fellow at the Royal Institute of British Architects; Trinity College, More Information Cambridge and Jesus College, Cambridge, and his trustee positions at the British Museum and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. TERRENCE COVENTRY me on the radio to talk dirty about it' Photograph by Lars Gundersen STEPHEN COX for Twenty-First A Vision published 17 days ago TONY CRAGG Sculpture Century More Resources on Antony Gormley BILL CULBERT ANTHONY ABRAHAMS IVOR ABRAHAMS BETH CULLEN How these men will honour the 7 July dead in this royal corner of London JANE ACKROYD EDWARD ALLINGTON DAVID ANNESLEY www.antonygormley.com MAGGIE CULLEN Designing a memorial to the 7 July bomb victims was never going to be easy, KENNETH ARMITAGE Wikipedia entry for Antony Gormley JOHN ATKIN NICK BARBERTON EUAN CUNNINGHAM but Kevin Carmody and Andrew Groarke's Hyde Park project is a fine balance OLIVER BARRATT GEORGE CUTTS Goodwood | Sculpture at BEN BARRELL GLENYS BARTON ZADOK BEN-DAVID Recent News Mentioning Antony Gormley GRENVILLE DAVEY British Contemporary Sculpture 02/03 of simplicity and power RODNEY BENDER MATHIAS BENGTSSON JOHN DAVIES published 23 days ago HAMISH BLACK Plinth consorts IVAN BLACK HELAINE BLUMENFELD published 9 days ago IAN DAWSON MATT BODIMEADE WILLARD BOEPPLE I've got my hour on the plinth, but what should I do up there? PAUL DAY publications from amazon.co.uk Kurt Schwitters, the great dadaist of Cumbria The first winners of the draw to spend an hour as sculptor Antony Gormley's KEITH BROWN RALPH BROWN RICHARD DEACON fourth statue in Trafalgar Square have been revealed. Our arts correspondent SANDY BROWN JON BUCK Vanessa Thorpe is among them PIERRE DIAMANTOPOULO Kurt Schwitters, a star of the dada movement, wanted to turn this barn into PETER BURKE published 9 days ago ANDREW BURTON SAM BUXTON Antony Gormley's coastline, Crosby, Merseyside: Walk ID 256 STEVE DILWORTH 'the ultimate artwork'. Now Damien Hirst is campaigning to get it restored. By TESSA CAMPBELL FRASER CRAIG DOWNIE ANTHONY CARO LYNN CHADWICK MICHAEL CHALLENGER published 17 days ago Set in stone EVA DREWETT Philip Oltermann ANN CHRISTOPHER ROBIN CONNELLY 'Somebody will be exhibiting a bunch of bananas in a gallery, and they'll get EDWARD DUTKIEWICZ Anthony Gormley published 1 month, 26 days ago TERRENCE COVENTRY me on the radio to talk dirty about it' STEPHEN COX TONY CRAGG published 17 days ago IAIN EDWARDS Antony Gormley invites applicants to stand on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth BILL CULBERT BETH CULLEN How these men will honour the 7 July dead in this royal corner of London NIGEL ELLIS MAGGIE CULLEN Designing a memorial to the 7 July bomb victims was never going to be easy, EUAN CUNNINGHAM but Kevin Carmody and Andrew Groarke's Hyde Park project is a fine balance EVANS GARTH GEORGE CUTTS of simplicity and power published 2 months, 2 days ago GRENVILLE DAVEY JOHN DAVIES published 23 days ago ABIGAIL FALLIS IAN DAWSON PAUL DAY Kurt Schwitters, the great dadaist of Cumbria IAN HAMILTON FINLAY RICHARD DEACON PIERRE DIAMANTOPOULO STEVE DILWORTH Kurt Schwitters, a star of the dada movement, wanted to turn this barn into 'the ultimate artwork'. Now Damien Hirst is campaigning to get it restored. By Inside Australia ROSE FINN-KELCEY Life as monumental art CRAIG DOWNIE EVA DREWETT Philip Oltermann published 1 month, 26 days ago MARK FIRTH Antony Gormley is inviting 2,400 people to stand on the fourth plinth in EDWARD DUTKIEWICZ LAURA FORD IAIN EDWARDS NIGEL ELLIS GARTH EVANS Antony Gormley invites applicants to stand on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth published 2 months, 2 days ago SUE FREEBOROUGH Trafalgar Square for an hour – what would you do? ABIGAIL FALLIS IAN HAMILTON FINLAY ROSE FINN-KELCEY Life as monumental art ELISABETH FRINK published 2 months, 2 days ago MARK FIRTH LAURA FORD Antony Gormley is inviting 2,400 people to stand on the fourth plinth in WILLIAM FURLONGMaking an Angel SUE FREEBOROUGH Trafalgar Square for an hour – what would you do? ELISABETH FRINK published 2 months, 2 days ago STEVE GELIOT Different class, the pair of them WILLIAM FURLONG STEVE GELIOT Different class, the pair of them BRUCE GERNAND BRUCE GERNAND JOHN GIBBONS ANDY GOLDSWORTHY The relationship between pop stars and artists can be famously intense. So what, asks Miranda Sawyer, can they take from each other? JOHN GIBBONS The relationship between pop stars and artists can be famously intense. So ANTONY GORMLEY LEE GRANDJEAN JOHN GREED published 2 months, 4 days ago ANDY GOLDSWORTHY what, asks Miranda Sawyer, can they take from each other? STEVEN GREGORY Every picture tells a story ANTONY GORMLEY published 2 months, 4 days ago MARTIN GRIFFITHS Eight pop stars reveal the art that has most inspired them, from 60s legends CHARLES HADCOCK NIGEL HALL and surrealist dolls to outrageous manga sculpture LEE GRANDJEAN published 2 months, 4 days ago RICHARD HARRIS TIM HARRISSON JOHN GREED ALEX HARTLEY DAVID HARVEY JASON HARVEY STEVEN GREGORY Every picture tells a story THOMAS HEATHERWICK SEAN HENRY show 10 more MARTIN GRIFFITHS Eight pop stars reveal the art that has most inspired them, from 60s legends NICOLA HICKS CHARLES HADCOCK PETER HIDE SIMON HITCHENS SHIRAZEH HOUSHIARY NIGEL HALL and surrealist dolls to outrageous manga sculpture ANDERSON INGE JON ISHERWOOD RICHARD HARRIS published 2 months, 4 days ago ALLEN JONES ANISH KAPOOR MICHAEL KENNY TIM HARRISSON MICHAEL KIDNER ALEX HARTLEY BUILDINGKING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER MANFRED KIELNHOFER DAVID KING PHILLIP BRYAN KNEALE DAVID HARVEY JASON HARVEY so now they have news from The Guardian, their content is enriched, and The Guardian gets reach and DANNY LANE LANGLANDS AND BELL WILLIAM LASDUN LAYTON AND MOSS THOMAS HEATHERWICK BILLY LEE show 10 more SEAN HENRY new audiences, these guys have a large following in the USA and Japan who are now exposed to our LILIANE LIJN KIM LIM PETER LOGAN ELEANOR LONG NICOLA HICKS RICHARD LONG PETER HIDE content JEFF LOWE JONATHAN LOXLEY MICHAEL LYONS DAVID MACH SIMON HITCHENS ALASTAIR MACKIE DIANE MACLEAN SHIRAZEH HOUSHIARY JOHN MAINE JOANNA MALLIN-DAVIES ANDERSON INGE VERONIQUE MARIA MARTIN AND DOWLING JON ISHERWOOD we think empowering niche markets which are very monetisable is a key way for the Open Platform to BARRY MASON SALLY MATTHEWS CHARLOTTE MAYER ALLEN JONES JULIAN MAYOR BRIDGET MCCRUM ANISH KAPOOR be used BERNARD MEADOWS JACK MILROY MICHAEL KENNY DHRUVA MISTRY CATHY DE MONCHAUX TIM MORGAN MICHAEL KIDNER KEIKO MUKAIDE TATYANA MURRAY MANFRED KIELNHOFER DAVID NASH WILL NASH DAVID KING PAUL NEAGU SIMEON NELSON PETER NEWMAN PHILLIP KING ALASTAIR NOBLE EILÍS O'CONNELL BRYAN KNEALE THOMAS OSTENBERG ANA MARIA PACHECO DANNY LANE JAMES PAGET ZORA PALOVA LANGLANDS AND BELL EDUARDO PAOLOZZI JIM PARTRIDGE TRUPTI PATEL WILLIAM LASDUN VONG PHAOPHANIT TOM PHILLIPS LAYTON AND MOSS ROLAND PICHE DAVID PRATT BILLY LEE WILLIAM PYE STEPHANIE QUAYLE MARC QUINN LILIANE LIJN WENDY RAMSHAW VICTORIA RANCE KIM LIM KEITH RAND PETER RANDALL-PAGE PETER LOGAN KOBUS RETIEF COLIN ROSE CAROLINE ROTHWELL ELEANOR LONG RUTTER AND BENNETT SOPHIE RYDER RICHARD LONG ANDREW SABIN MICHAEL SANDLE JEFF LOWE LUCIEN SIMON RICHARD SLEE SOPHIE SMALLHORN JONATHAN LOXLEY WELLS SMALL KEIR SMITH MICHAEL LYONS KIKI SMITH SARAH STATON DAVID MACH JILLY SUTTON MARIALUISA TADEI ALASTAIR MACKIE WENDY TAYLOR ALMUTH TEBBENHOFF RICHARD TRUPP DIANE MACLEAN KAORU TSUNODA WILLIAM TUCKER JOHN MAINE GAVIN TURK WILLIAM TURNBULL JOANNA MALLIN-DAVIES JIM UNSWORTH PAUL VANSTONE MARCUS VERGETTE VERONIQUE MARIA SHEILA VOLLMER JOHANNES VON STUMM MARTIN AND DOWLING ANDRE WALLACE ROB WARD BARRY MASON ALEX WELCH RICHARD WENTWORTH DOUGLAS WHITE SALLY MATTHEWS GILLIAN WHITE RACHEL WHITEREAD CHARLOTTE MAYER ALISON WILDING JULIAN WILD JULIAN MAYOR GLYNN WILLIAMS AVRIL WILSON BRIDGET MCCRUM CONOR WILSON RICHARD WILSON BILL WOODROW BERNARD MEADOWS DAVID WORTHINGTON JACK MILROY Find a Random Artist DHRUVA MISTRY CATHY DE MONCHAUX

HTTP://WWW.MYECODNA.COM BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER This is a really great integration from MyEcoDNA who are building practical tailored guides for what you can do to reduce your environmental impact and they’re enhancing their content with content from The Guardian.

HTTP://WWW.GUARDIAN.CO.UK/ GREEN-AD-NETWORK BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER We also have a green ad network which focusses on sustainability and ethical leadership. The two become a strong and mutual ﬁt with co-monetisation opportunities. Content and accompanying ad networks is a powerful combination for niches like the environment

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER Another great and topical integration involves these two gentlemen, the one on the right is Alberto Nardelli who runs Tweetminster

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER Tweetminster is a service which collates the messages of MPs, Parliamentary Candidates and official sources into a real-time newswire

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and they can then use the dataset for time-series analytics, showing the trending of keywords, which can in turn be annotated with content from The Guardian showing what the news stories were at that time. Clearly here it was other people having expenses scrutinised. These are just a couple of sample applications and today we’re rolling live a way you can browse them and see what’s being made and also be inspired to join in yourselves

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER Today we’ve just launched an App Gallery as a showcase for everything being built with the Open Platform, using the Content API and the second part of the offering, the Data Store

Content API DataStore BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER DataStore beautifully curated datasets to use in applications and visualisations

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER One great example is this dataset which powers the visualisation of UK government spending. Until yesterday this was a totally unique dataset, so much so that Number 10 requested a copy of this image.

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER And behind each of this form of infographic there is data, and often more data than in the infographic. The DataBlog and DataStore are our way of surfacing and disseminating this data.

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER And within each datablog entry there is a link to the data

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER Each entry has a link to a Google Spreadsheet for the data for you to use and visualise and people like Tony Hirst have been showing us how to do amazing things with Google Spreadsheet. There is often more data in here than in the infographic

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER as David McCandless has playfully done here where he’s taken our data on Illegal Drug use, combined it with data on happiness index rating from another source to show the overlaps, althought as he says “Just for fun, correlation is not cause”

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and there is a lovely ﬂickr community building around visualisations of DataStore data

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and we try to add in topical datasets such as these ones about Gordon Brown’s and Peter Mandelson’s speeches as the Labour Party Conference

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and the data on word counts is there for you to make things

co-creation co-fabrication co-distribution monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER needs to be a whole stack, not just software, not just creation, everything needs to be mutual...

co-creation co-fabrication co-distribution co-monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER we think we know what it mutual monetisation looks like

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER these are the top 25 ad networks in the US, they’re huge even the lesser known ones are enormous. as one part of our monetisation strategy we’re working with some of our partners who are taking full text content for them to take adverts accompanying that content and sharing in the revenue. there are of course other monetisation strategies possible and some which will be thought up by our partners with whom we’re crowdsourcing new business models

co-creation co-fabrication co-distribution co-monetisation BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER We’re interested in co-fabrication internally as well as what other people can do with our APIs. We’re interested in how we can use toolkits, APIs and cloud solutions to help us when we need to build things. And we aim to give back through open sourcing where we can.

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ PDCAWLEY/ You can now build working software in less time than it takes to have the meeting to describe it. Simon Willison BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER The other comment I remember clearly from our launch day is this one from Simon Willison.

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ DRDUL/ not all things have equal speeds BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER But I don’t think Simon is misunderstanding the problems of engineering vast pieces of software which have to scale... not at all, its just that as all software development has it’s own velocity, sometimes pieces of software need a long gestation period sometimes a short one It also relates totally to scale as well, scaling is something which is very commonly on our minds at The Guardian

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 7/7 G20 Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER Some events happen which have drammatic effects on us as a newspaper

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 7/7 G20 Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER Sporting events

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 7/7 G20 Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 7/7 G20 Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER World events we have no warning of

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 7/7 G20 Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER some have a periodicity and we can plan for them

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 7/7 G20 Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and some are cultural

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 7/7 G20 Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER they all share similar patterns though

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 7/7 High load G20 Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER there are some events where we need to handle high load

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 7/7 High G20 interactivity Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER interestingly these are also often high interactivity

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 Temporary 7/7 (but need G20 archiving) Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER they’re also often temporary

Olympics World Cup Wimbledon 9/11 7/7 Social G20 Elections Budget Glastonbury Edinburgh Festival BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER social sharing is becoming a huge factor in this as well, it’s mutual distribution, earlier Cat from Facebook talked about some of our experimetation with Facebook Connect social apps are also important and have impact on scalability as they reduce cacheability

Adding features Traditionally to platform this would Buying many more be solved servers to cope by: with peak load Complex caching layers BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER there are ways people have always tried to deal with this, this adds unnecessary code to support within the codebase and ties the schedule to external events

Adding features Traditionally to platform this would Buying many more be solved servers to cope by: with peak load Complex caching layers BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER this is wasteful, both ﬁscally and for the environment

Adding features Traditionally to platform this would Buying many more be solved servers to cope by: with peak load Complex caching layers BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and this is often just very complicated to do

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ MIKEBAIRD/ picking the right tool for the right job BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER content management systems have a lot in common with container ships. they do one thing very very well, they scalably hold and deliver speciﬁc things, and speciﬁc size and shape things, reliably, reproducibly, securely however, they’re not designed to be nimble and carry small odd shaped parcels which are very timely, for that you need

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ ROBWALLACE/ picking the right tool for the right job BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER a speedboat, what you actually need is many different types of vessels What I’m deﬁnitely not saying is that CMS’s are wrong, it’s just that for speciﬁc tasks they may not be entirely the right thing.

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER what you really need is a spread of things, this is why International Rescue is so successful, it has a variety of tools large and small to do a variety of jobs, yet most publishing systems are either completely ﬁxed on doing one thing in particular or are kludged to do many things not so well

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER what you really need is a spread of things, this is why International Rescue is so successful, it has a variety of tools large and small to do a variety of jobs, yet most publishing systems are either completely ﬁxed on doing one thing in particular or are kludged to do many things not so well Much of our thinking as well has to do with the speed you sometimes have to do things and how long these systems are used for. Sporting events have a reasonable lead time and so the large scale systems for them can be built over the same process length that you would build a CMS, other things have a short lead time and a high missed-opportunity cost.

sometimes you have to exceed the speed limit BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER sometimes opportunities arise which mean that you have to react quickly and in a nimble or agile way and you know that what you make will have a high impact but a short lifespan but the missed opportunity cost is huge

MP’s expenses BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and one of those is of course MP’s expenses

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER where a large collection of redacted documents were made available, about 450,000 of them. this is a huge number of documents and a huge number of line items within them, if we were to try and analyse them we’d need help

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER which is what we got. Simon wrote a piece of software which allowed us and our readers to “crowdsource” a large proportion of the data. It’s an endeavour which is still ongoing

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER

11th June: proof of concept 15th June: go ahead in principle Timeline 16th June: designer gets involved 17th June: sysadmin added 18th June: launched and then performance tuned BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER what is fascinating about this for me is the velocity with which this was done. It is one of the ﬁrst examples of our strategy of

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER ﬁrst things ﬁrst, how to pull apart awful PDFs, ended up being Photoshop and AppleScript

HTTP://WWW.NIEMANLAB.ORG/2009/06/FOUR- CROWDSOURCING-LESSONS-FROM-THE- GUARDIANS-SPECTACULAR-EXPENSES- SCANDAL-EXPERIMENT/ Django Framework 1 developer/1 week 1 designer/2 days How was 1 sysadmin/1 day this built? Amazon EC2/(cost £50) Deployed 1 week after work started BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER what is fascinating about this for me is the velocity with which this was done. It is one of the ﬁrst examples of our strategy of moving fast where the missed opportunity cost is very high

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ HTTP://WWW.NIEMANLAB.ORG/2009/06/FOUR- PDCAWLEY/ CROWDSOURCING-LESSONS-FROM-THE- GUARDIANS-SPECTACULAR-EXPENSES- SCANDAL-EXPERIMENT/ “The Guardian has lead time of several weeks to get new hardware bought,” Willison said. “The project was only approved to go ahead less than a week before it launched.” BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER so as well as the cost element the speed element comes out again, we’re actually pretty quick at deploying hardware, but when you’re being reactive to a news story in an interactive and dynamic way, immediate is how quick you have to be.

HTTP://WWW.NIEMANLAB.ORG/2009/06/FOUR- CROWDSOURCING-LESSONS-FROM-THE- GUARDIANS-SPECTACULAR-EXPENSES- SCANDAL-EXPERIMENT/ Django Framework 1 developer/1 week 1 designer/2 days How was 1 sysadmin/1 day this built? Amazon EC2/S3 (cost £50) Deployed 1 week after work started BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER so we used EC2 and S3 and learnt a lot about it and also didn’t spend a huge amount to host it

HTTP://WWW.NIEMANLAB.ORG/2009/06/FOUR- CROWDSOURCING-LESSONS-FROM-THE- GUARDIANS-SPECTACULAR-EXPENSES- SCANDAL-EXPERIMENT/ Django Framework 1 developer/1 week 1 designer/2 days How was 1 sysadmin/1 day this built? Amazon EC2/S3 (cost £50) Deployed 1 week after work started BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER for a sophisticated piece of software which has built into it a social game, a data store, 450,000 images, an API onto the data and making it match the house style this seems pretty unheard of in many ways but it’s proving to be an interesting lead case

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ NIHONBUNKA/ nothing lasts for ever remake remodel BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER some bits of functionality aren’t meant to last forever, but need to handle high temporary activity and load, and you may want to deploy them again and again for different uses

Collecting conversations BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER this is something I’ve been working on of late, we’re really interested in Twitter, not just as social distribution, but as a mechanism that lowers the wall again between journalists and readers

collecting conversations BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and it’s important that the conversations we collect are from the authentic accounts of the journalists and sit within the publicly used hashtag streams the solution we came up with was to create a simple app which contained a whitelist of who could tweet on which subject very simple app, we had a list of journalists, the tags which they could append to their messages on Twitter and a cache for the twitter messages so we were only having to do the hard work of polling and parsing once and so we’d stay within the Twitter API limits the hackday version of the app took about 5 hours in total including analysing how best to get clean reproducible data out of the various Twitter APIs and we then spent about half a day adding features and deploying it for Edinburgh Because it caches content, apart from errors in polling the Twitter API it sailed through a day long Twitter outage without showing errors to the public when all our other Twitter feed boxes showed nothing It uses the task queue on AppEngine to smooth out the load of interrogating a lot of streams of journalists

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER It was always designed with extensibility in mind... there are other uses planned, but ﬁrst of all it’s currently Party conference season. So it’s now seen use at the Liberal Democrat conference

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER and the Labour conference this week where actually it got a reasonable amount of load

Django Framework Google AppEngine Twitter API How was 1 developer/2 days this built? 1 designer/0.5 days Cost of AppEngine £0 Needs maintainence time allowance BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER on really key thing is the last point here. writing code now is simple and easy, maintaining it is relatively simple, but the moment something is out there people want it supported and to be extended. also occasionally third parties go down or change their APIs so you need to plan in support and this approach needs to be melded into the schedule never sit totally outside of it

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ MICHAELPATRICK/ where next? BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER We’re on a journey at the moment, we ﬁrst showed close friends and partners our API just a year ago and we launched it in March. Much of what we’re doing is thinking and travelling with those partners and friends along new paths which none of us had maybe thought of or considered before. Today we showed the App Gallery and in Q1 next year we’ll be launching some more important parts of our ecosystem and our initiative which we believe strengthen the commercial and the integration elements of the ecosystem.

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ PAULCARVILL/ The significant thing is to think about The Guardian as a platform, and not just a publisher. Mike Bracken BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER This is as close to a daily mantra and a mission statement as we can come. We owe a lot of the thinking here to this man, Mike Bracken our Director of Technology who I’m proud to work for on this project When the project started this was an opening gambit, I think although we’re only six months into the public facing part of the project I think it’s more appropriate for it to be how we close, our ambitions are summed up in this phrase really and the strategy that Mike has masterminded is already beginning to bear fruit in the efforts developers are making with our APIs and with the quick build and deploy solutions like Simon’s MPs Expenses app.

what would you do? BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER Since we’re being mutual, actually I think this is the only fair way to end... What would you do... but I’m happy to answer questions

Thank you Chris Thorpe chris.thorpe@guardian.co.uk Twitter: @jaggeree http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform Twitter: openplatform BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER

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Building the stacks for a mutualised newspaper

by The Guardian Open Platform on Oct 01, 2009

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Building the stacks for a mutualised newspaper — Document Transcript