Earlier this summer, Washington Post Co. sold Newsweek, once one of their flagship media publications, to tycoon Sidney Harman. The price: $1. To sweeten the deal Washington Post Co. even agreed to cover $10 million in the failing mag’s bills. Newsweek has, or had, one of the largest print circulations of any weekly magazine in the US, likely only second to Time. In the last few years it has hemorrhaged readers and its revenue has plummeted. Now the title is a liability. A big one. Forbes estimates the outstanding prepaid subscriptions around $40 million – a cost Harman will have to cover as he moves forward with the publication. Rumors are circulating that he may sell Newsweek to The Daily Beast, one of the most aggressively expanding and thriving of the new online news agencies. No matter where the Newsweek title ends up its pitiful sale is a clear sign that old media is having chest pains while new media is surging ahead.

In many ways, Newsweek has already died, and it’s unclear if and how it will be revived. Harmon, or the Daily Beast if that sale is more than a rumor, could simply continue the magazine under new editorial leadership – Jon Meacham has stated he is likely to step down after the reins have passed to new hands. But I doubt this could fix the drastic decline in circulation and revenue that Newsweek has faced in the past decade. No, Newsweek needs new interest, new readers, and new money. Where can they get that? New media. Focusing on online revenue is probably the only viable long term strategy to keep the brand alive.

We recently discussed the NY Times’ joking confession that they will eventually have to stop printing their newspaper and move completely online. It’s no laughing matter. Old media has to transition into new media, and find new revenue, or face the danger of collapse. Publications like the NY Times and Wall Street Journal are throwing up pay walls to mirror the subscription process they had with physical publications. That may or may not be a winning strategy, but at least they’re thinking about staying alive.

The Washington Post recently lost one of its more prominent columnists, Howard Kutz, to The Daily Beast. Kutz is to become head of the online publication’s Washington bureau. The Daily Beast has a Washington Bureau? Yep, and like other thriving new media outlets, its taking on the burden of primary source journalism with a vengeance. Many people lament the decline in journalism that seems to accompany the rise of blogs, aggregate news sites, and other low budget branches of the new media tree. Yet the trunk of that growing organism is taking on the duties of traditional media sources, and now has the financial strength needed to provide higher quality news. The journalism ecosystem isn’t getting poorer, it’s just changing – and becoming more diverse.

Everyday we see signs that old media titles are either losing ground to new media, or are fine tuning their strategies to become new media themselves. Newsweek’s too cheap sale is just one of many indicators that print titles need to evolve or die. On their remains we’ll build a new world of journalism that relies more on crowdsourcing, but that still seeks to find the quality high budget news we need. Old media is dead, long live new media.

[image credit:modified from Newsweek]
[sources: AP, Forbes]

Is Ray Kurzweil a visionary...or a man desparate for computer-based immortality?

For those of you just joining the debate, let me say that it centers around two key issues: how fast the technology of intelligence (computers, biotechnology, etc) is growing, and whether or not Ray Kurzweil is a nut. A large part of Lyons’ Newsweek article, and Kurzweil’s response, focused on whether or not Kurzweil’s earlier predictions about technology were accurate. Lyons posits that most of Kurzweil’s predictions were easily forseeable (like the success of the Internet) or wrong. Kurzweil defends the originality of his insights and their accuracy.

These predictions, from Kurzweil’s books and speeches, ranged from the Internet to the Human Genome project. In the mid to late 80s, Kurzweil predicted that the Internet would grow exponentially and enjoy widespread use. Lyons says this was an easy prediction. Kurzweil also predicted, a decade later, that most computers used wouldn’t have keyboards, and would be part of someone’s apparel. Lyons claims this hasn’t happened, while Kurzweil points to iPhones, mp3 players, and computerized hearing aids. Kurzweil predicted the success of the Human Genome project in 15 years (predicting exponential growth in the rate of return). Lyons concedes that prediction but points to Kurzweil’s belief that the economy would keep growing between 1999 and 2009. The list goes on and on.

Figuring out who’s right isn’t easy. What kind of metric do we apply to futurists? How often do they have to be right, and how right do they have to be? If Kurzweil was wrong about everything else, but is correct in predicting that artificial intelligence will be indistinguishable from human intelligence in 20 years, that alone would make him a visionary. In the end, it’s up to each reader to evaluate the predictions Kurzweil made and decide whether they collectively prove he’s a technological seer, or just another dreamer.

One area in which Kurzweil certainly won is his preparedness. While Lyons might have you think that Kurzweil is a pie-eyed optimist, too certain in his beliefs to even consider other possibilities, the truth is far from it. As was evident in the panel-discussion after the Transcendent Man premier, Kurzweil is actively working on projects designed to prevent some of the worst case scenarios new technologies present. He is part of the national security team working on bio-terrorism response in the United States. His books warn against technological perils as well as predicting benefits. Whether or not he is wrong about the Singularity, Kurzweil is preparing for all outcomes.

If Lyons had just focused on Kurzweil’s predictions and left it at that, I may not be writing my own article. However, Lyons brings up several sensationalist themes prominent in the movie about Kurzweil’s life, Transcendent Man. As Singularity Hub mentioned before, Kurzweil wants to live forever, and takes a wide-range of dietary supplements to keep him going. Eventually he wants to download, or upgrade himself, into an immortal intelligence (most likely in the form of a computer). Using a similar process, Kurzweil wants to reanimate the intelligence of his dead father, remaking him from data collected in journal’s and Ray’s own memories. He proposes that the rest of us could do the same for ourselves and our loved ones.

It’s a story ripe for pity, horror, or disdain depending on your outlook. Lyons explores all three emotions. Even when attacking Kurzweil’s predictions on their own merit, Lyons is constantly returning to the futurist’s motivations. The optimism Kurzweil feels is really just a fear of death. His predictions are really just hopes to bring back his dead daddy. His continuous speaking tour around the world is just a public display of a mid-life crisis. Am I the only one who finds the focus on these suppositions offensive to my intelligence?

Maybe I’m just tired of someone’s “story” getting more press coverage than their work. You notice it most during the Olympics, but it’s pretty ubiquitous in the media as a whole. No matter who is discussed — politician, scientist, or athlete — the story of their life, the motivations for their actions, are taking up more of the discussion than the actual meaning of the actions themselves. We’re big on narrative but short on analysis, and that’s just silly.

I can’t speak much for politicians or athletes, but I know scientists. Sir Isaac Newton was into alchemy. Einstein wrote his miraculous 1905 papers while slaving away in a dead-end job. Many top scientists have been racists, sexists, drug-addicts, or just general pricks. Many have also been loving, caring men and women who’ve overcome great obstacles in life. Great. I’m enough of a post-modernist to understand that someone’s character and work are not two separate entities, but intertwining states that support one another. Still, I’m tired of being sold the story of someone’s life, when it’s their work that will impact mine.

Ray Kurzweil may be a nut, he may be going through the biggest mid-life crisis ever. I don’t know. I honestly don’t care much. I want to evaluate his predictions, and his actions, on their own merit. It would be nice if the major media outlets focused on the same.

Will we have AI that passes the Turing test in 20 years? Is the Singularity a pipe-dream or an upcoming reality? Can the average person affect the outcome (through voting, buying, or protesting)? These questions need answers, or at least, discussion. As interesting as Kurzweil may be, it’s the what, when, and how, not the who or why, that I’m dying to know about. If Newsweek really wants to focus on whether or not someone wants to become a robot, they should interview seven years olds outside the Transformer’s movie premier. For compelling science articles, I want something that’s more than meets the eye.