Today’s NYTimes features a story about a gathering of Boxee enthusiasts that was actually posted to the paper’s blog a few days ago. Apparently 600 people showed up for a free discussion about the service at Webster Hall (better known as a concert venue or incredibly cheesy club for those of you outside of NYC).

For those who aren’t familiar with Boxee, it’s an open-source software service that allows for easy organization of video and media files from both your computer and the Internet. However, the real kicker comes from the fact that most of its users connect the computer to the TV screen, allowing for what is apparently a pretty user-friendly and high-quality viewing experience that pipes in content directly from the Internet, bypassing cable systems and other traditional gate-keepers. Boxee has found itself in some high-profile battles recently, including a much-publicized spat with Hulu, who blocked Boxee from accessing its site and content (why, I have no earthly idea).

What’s intriguing about the piece in the Times is the fact that even its enthusiasts couldn’t quite put a finger on why they’re so passionate about it. Some feedback from the Webster Hall event included:

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After more than enough posts about Hulu, I thought I’d turn my attention to another company that “gets it”: NetFlix. When I say they get it, I’m speaking specifically about new media and delivering content over the Internet. Certainly by now you’re more than familiar with the concept of “Watch Instantly,” the NetFlix service that allows you to access thousands of movie and TV titles online and stream an unlimited amount as part of your monthly subscriber fee.

But it’s HOW they rolled out this service, and continue to perfect, enhance and broaden its reach that’s the real story. It was today’s news about NetFlix launching its Facebook Connect integration that reminded me just how savvy this company is. It took some foresight to see that the Internet was ultimately an existential threat to NetFlix’s basic DVD-by-mail model and NetFlix wisely got on board the train before anyone else could threaten their dominance. As such, they have protected their subscriber base now and into the future. Step one in this process was identifying their business…

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A smart post by Josh Benton over at the Nieman Journalism Lab critiquing a young journalist (also named Josh) who wondered when the Baby Boomers would relinquish control of the news industry so the next generation can take over:

Josh’s problem is that he still thinks the news business is like baseball, when it’s a lot more like the tech world now. The barriers to entry have tumbled; some of the most popular news sources online didn’t exist two years ago. Things that used to be an advantage — like huge investments sunk in things like printing presses and buildings and circulation departments — are now an albatross. Three smart guys can draw a bigger and more engaged audience than a newsroom of hundreds.

I agree with Benton — as I’ve said previously, I think the most important thing young journalists should be learning right now is how to apply their journalistic skills in areas other than traditional journalism. But this recommendation is not exclusive to journalists.

I’m currently reading Liar’s Poker, and I was struck by a passage early in the book where Michael Lewis describes his logic as he decided on a career after college:

Nevertheless, Wall Street seemed very much like the place to be at the time. The world didn’t need another lawyer, I hadn’t the ability to become a doctor, and my idea for starting a business making little satchels to hang off the rear ends of dogs to prevent them from crapping on the streets of Manhattan (advertising jingle: “We Stop the Plot”) never found funding.

The twin ironies are that Lewis apparently wasn’t even considering the career he eventually pursued, and that career ended up being journalism. Still, the belief that there are a limited number of career choices is a common one among young people (and a lot of older people, too).  But it wasn’t true when Lewis graduated back in the ’80s, and it’s even less true now. That fact is driven home to me nearly every day when I show up to work at a job that didn’t even exist when I graduated college.

Or, to think of it another way, there are many jobs, but they all revolve around some combination of a few core skills: Sales. Analysis. Communications. Managing projects. Managing people. When I say that j-schools should be training their grads to be something other than journalists, I mean that they should be helping them to develop core skills and then showing them how to apply those skills to lots of different professions. A good journalist can communicate effectively, manage complex projects (putting out a paper on deadline) as well as people (interviewing difficult subjects).  Those are valuable skills; why should someone who possess them limit herself to writing for newspapers or editing magazines?

Then:

Now:

As in the previous example, the current incarnation has much more of a focus on the practical (not to mention less of a focus on porn). From the home page:

You’re not alone if you got canned. In fact, there are millions of us. TheCanned.com can help you:

• File for Unemployment
• Get Health Insurance
• Find a Job

Clay Shirky:

Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.”

I had a similar thought a few weeks ago when I read this: Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of people go to grad school for the wrong reasons. My brother, who has a JD but no longer practices, has made it his mission in life to dissuade as many aspiring law-school applicants as he can. And rightly so.  Far too many liberal-arts grads assume law school is the only answer to the question, “What do you do with a BA in English?”

Meanwhile, New York magazine is reporting on journalism schools, specifically Columbia, experiencing yet another “existential crisis.” (For those keeping score, this is the 54,978th such crisis in the last 30 years.) And, of course, business schools are grappling with the fact that the main industry to which they have funneled most of their graduates has suddenly imploded.

I think the fundamental problem these programs are facing is that, as professional schools, they were set up to train graduates in a profession. Lawyer. Journalist. Banker. Marketer. The problem is, the definitions of those jobs are not only changing, they’re blurring together. It’s not just that journalists need to know how to use Twitter or Flash, it’s that they need to stop thinking of themselves only as reporters or editors and start thinking of themselves as businesspeople, marketers and publicists. (Or, as a TV news exec at a conference I attended last week said, “We’re looking for human Swiss Army knives.”)

I have a somewhat similar goal as my brother whenever I interview potential interns or recent grads who hope to one day become a magazine editor. It’s not so much that I try to talk them out of that career as I encourage them to broaden their horizons a little and realize there are job descriptions beyond the traditional ones that they may have never considered. Furthermore, the days when they could happily spend their days writing and let others worry about business considerations are long gone. To be strictly a journalist is, almost by definition, to be a cost center, and to be a cost center is to put your career prospects at the mercy of others.

If Columbia really wants to help its j-school grads, the best thing it could do is teach them how not to be journalists.

Perhaps I’m a bit obsessed, but as you can tell from some previous postings, I’m quite fascinated by all things Hulu. Which is why today’s news was impossible to overlook:

One year after coming out of private beta, Hulu crossed a significant milestone: By one measure it’s now the No. 2 video site in the U.S. behind YouTube, and the biggest purveyor of professional video on the web.

So Hulu is number two behind YouTube, but when it comes to video isn’t there YouTube and then everybody else? In terms of sheer eyeballs yes. But from a business perspective, Hulu has cracked the formula of monetization much more quickly. Certainly it helps that they have branded TV content, and their CPMs most likely are leaving Google/YouTube sales folks green with envy:

TV shows can garner ad rates as high as $40 to $50 per thousand viewers online.

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