Australian web site StartupSmart has ranked the We Media PitchIt! Challenge among the world’s top 10 startup challenges. Wow – and thanks! We’re humbled to be listed among some truly ambitious challenges conducted by IBM, MIT, SXSW and others. Here’s the full list.

One thing the Aussies liked, and we do too, is that the PitchIt prize does not require commercial winners give up any equity. But we do ask for something back from the winners – they’ve got to “pay it forward” by sharing what they learn with founders who follow in their footsteps. We think that’s a fair bargain with real value on both sides.

We’re working on plans for the next PitchIt Challenge. For news and announcements on submission deadlines, join our email list, follow along on Twitter or Like us on Facebook.

Within the shrinking U.S. newspaper industry, tongues wag any time a publisher tries to charge for access to a web site, or a new mobile app; and then they wag again when the effort fizzles.

Techies and newsies greeted last week’s big reveal of the new subscription paywall at The New York Times with explainers on how the paywall works, analysis of what it could mean for profits at the Times, instructions on how to get around the paywall and speculation about privacy-busting evils the Times could unleash to stop cheats.

Canadians got the first taste of the Times paywall last week; the rest of the world will see it March 28.

“Which gives me the chance to say: one great newspaper site will remain free,” Washington Post chairman Don Graham posted on his Facebook wall.

So there’s the line in the sand, to pay here or not pay there, which, for now, only the most loyal and obsessive New York Times readers will be asked to cross. How’s that for a loyalty program?

If, like 85 percent of its web readers, you view fewer than 20 links on the Times site each month, you’ll continue to get in for free. Or if you arrive through a search engine. Or Twitter. Or Facebook.

At TechCrunch, MG Siegler wrote that “The barrier is always met with huge backlash.”

But really, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

When Digg’s users abandoned the link-sharing service in 2010, to protest a new design, that was a backlash.

But when the Times of London limited web access to paying subscribers, and its web traffic fell by 62 percent, that wasn’t a backlash. It was predictable, passive, routine economics. It was a shrug. We’re all used to digital dead ends. It’s no big deal to turn around and find another link to follow instead.

A backlash? The New York Times should be so lucky. Will we see street protests outside of the Times HQ in New York, or a Facebook campaign to persuade Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to change his mind – like we see, routinely, when fans try to revive a canceled television show?

Where’s the passion? Where’s the love?

You could argue that a paywall is the perfect measure of love. Those who love it, pay. Those who don’t, don’t.

The quieter, sadder reality is that most of us don’t and won’t. Pay? For what? Our news is already a strange fog of links from here and there – atomized bits that find us as much as we find them.

The New York Times may be the best newspaper in the U.S. Or it may be the most over-rated. It may be among the handful of English-language, upper-income agenda-setters that still command at least some attention from business, political and cultural leaders. Or it may be an elitist relic of a crumbling empire. It may reach and influence more people online than it ever reached in print. Or it may be neck-and-neck with The Huffington Post, Gawker and dozens of other digital upstarts who each day render the old order ever more obsolete.

It may be all of that. But it ain’t all that. It’s still a click here, a click there.

I haven’t seen anybody speculate on how many new journalists the Times might hire, or how many investigations it might publish, or how much tougher its reporting will be, or how much more daring its writing, photos, videos and story-telling might become, if the paywall “succeeds.” But here’s one number we can crunch: At $15/month – $180/year – it will take 51,000 annual web subscriptions to cover the $9.2 million the company paid its top two business executives last year.

Who wants to subscribe to that?

Until it becomes something else – something worthy of a genuine, heartfelt, passionate backlash – The New York Times, like all the faded newspaper companies that still dream of thriving in its nation-leading shadow, will remain a story that no paywall can re-write, no matter how porous or protective it may be.

I’m rooting for two of the eight companies presenting at a startup pitch event I’ll be attending tomorrow in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Selfishly. We Media has a strong connection to both of them.

The first is NewsIT, a crowd-powered news service, which was one of the winners of the We Media PitchIt seed investment challenge earlier this year in Miami. (Stay tuned everyone – Pitch 2011 details and entry info will be announced soon).

The other is Ringio, a slick virtual PBX service with built-in CRM. Ringio works out of WeSpace, the co-working studio we opened in Reston, Virginia, this past summer. Good luck Melinda and Sam! (aka CNCPundit and @samaparicio.

A lot of people will have a go at TBD.com for its defining joke: the promise of Washington’s highly touted news-and-culture site is to be determined. With its launch today, TBD lives up to its mushy ambition.

Those expecting “God’s work” — a reference that editor Erik Wemple spins in his opening post — will long for divine inspiration. The Lord works in mysterious ways. TBD is, to be kind (TBK), a work in progress. For now, TBD’s founders are content to celebrate getting the sucker up. The celebration goes something like this: “We’re TBD, a site whose development is always uncertain, forever under construction.”

TBD is not your typical, uncertain startup. If you live and work in or around Washington, D.C., as I do, you’ve heard for a year that Robert Albritton, the Washington media magnate, and Jim Brady, a friend who is the former executive editor of washingtonpost,com, planned to revolutionize local news. Everyone wants a piece of The Washington Post, which is under assault on all fronts. With TBD, Albritton and Brady have the beast in their sights.

In its debut TBD shows off an updated version of convergence — that mind-numbing, inward-looking, mid-90s strategy from control freaks who thought they could combine media assets and control a local market. TBD merges Albritton’s two area TV station sites, WJLA-ABC News 7 and News8.net, with an online staff of 50.

Bringing the project into the decade, it adds a network of community blogs and websites. Social media tools — today’s requisite, must-have connections such as Twitter, Facebook, RSS and mobile apps– complete an otherwise familiar formula for news display and access. More shrewd than informative, TBD’s social media are networks for promotion and distribution rather than platforms for compelling news produced by the most talented experts who blog in and around Washington.

Can TBD provide the elusive model for local news in the digital age by competing with The Post’s failed, hyperlocal strategy?

“TBD has all the parts,” Steve Klein, who runs the electronic journalism program at George Mason University, told me at our meetup this weekend with the Online News Association. As such, TBD will likely be the darling of the online news set, the Mainstream Media survivors who are trying to keep outmoded institutions afloat.

But parts is parts, says the huckster who sells chicken pieces. TBD presumes to revolutionize without innovating. There’s nothing that changes your experience, your point of view, your relationship with local news, or the metaphor for storytelling. It doesn’t engage digital audiences in a fresh way or enable them to fully participate in the diverse, exciting flow of content in the nation’s capital.

The revolution is still coming, yet to be determined.

Tech stars, including friends of We Media, get their own video from Terence Kawaja of GC Savvian, who moonlights as a comedian when he’s not brokering companies.

Today we’re announcing Tabula Rasa DC, our second event in just a few weeks at a moment of change for personal computing and communications.

Tabula Rasa

What’s your app?

We’ll help you answer that question. Check out the program. Read our agenda.

We’ve been waiting for this moment since we bought our first Mac II back in the Dark Ages.

A scant four weeks after iApple introduced the iPad, we played in NYC’s Digital Sandbox by staging the first throwdown on tablet computing. First-movers showed a stunning array of mobile applications for connected citizens and consumers. A talented group of innovators, developers, entrepreneurs and visionaries helped us flash-forward to a new marketplace for mobile engagement.

Beyond exuberance, one million iPads have been sold in a month. This is just the beginning, not just for the iPad but for personal computing on a stunning array of high-concept, high-touch devices heading our way.

Advantage goes to those who move first. As with other moments missed, slackers and laggards are left to compete for scraps, then complain.

Suddenly, everyone has an iPad or e-reader conference to show struggling vintners how to pour old wine into new bottles. Which may be fine for winemakers whose vineyards have gone fallow. Learn how to squeeze more juice out of fermented grapes, then charge more for the stuff. Even if it leaves a bad aftertaste.

We’re vintners of another kind. Plant anew. Cultivate. The terroir is rich, bold and complex. Join connoisseurs of creativity for a tasting from 1-4:30 pm on June 14. The vintage may be inexpensive, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption. Drink up.

Online registration here.

At Tabula Rasa NYC we asked a stunning group of innovators, developers and visionaries to consider five questions at a pivotal moment for media and the people who create it:
How does moment of opportunity look?
What has been created in just a few weeks?
What should be created?
What are the challenges?
What problems can we solve?

We saw awe-inspiring work, a renewal of the creative passion that helped launch the Internet and its period of technical, entrepreneurial and societal achievement. Old-school publishers such as Popular Science, Zagat and Thomson Reuters rediscovered their game with sharp-shooting apps aimed at connected audiences. NPR and ESPN enhanced experiences that were already compelling online. There were untethered virtuosos, too, such as Electric Literature, the Ghost in the Machine (under development) collaboration, and soloist Rob Kelley’s BeatPad. We’ll revisit and follow the development of their apps in subsequent posts, examining the qualities that make them successful.

More critically, we saw, heard and felt a renewal of the creative passion that helped launch the Internet, the Web and its culture-bending technical, entrepreneurial and societal achievements. In just four weeks since the launch of Apple’s iPad, a flurry of applications has been released to expand engagement, enhance understanding and extend meaning and utility.

Design-driven innovation from a fresh, creative class of developers has delivered a whole new mind for experiencing a world gone digital — high concept, high touch connections that enable us to cope with our unrelenting craving for transcendence.

Finally, we have devices and a number of very good starts that deliver abundance with an aesthetic imperative, as well as a new and better way of organizing things: the new order or order.

Yet, initial responses to our questions were cautious and meek: It is early. We don’t really know. Where’s the money?

Where’s the money?
As a way out of ingenuity, the last response is the first one cited. “Where’s the money?” is the mantra of the unimaginative. A circular question, it is an excuse for inertia, a business plan for standing still. Again. The question is almost as pathetic as its cousin — the position that we won’t invest in an online or mobile strategy until we are certain it works. Good luck with that one.

We weren’t surprised that some who participated in Tabula Rasa, and some who covered it, could not or would not get their minds around the theme of the event: innovation in the emerging Conceptual Age. Mea culpa, we invited discussion at a where’s-the-money session called Good Apple, Bad Apple / Good Business, Bad Business. Given both the dissension over “paid models” and the noisy discourse surrounding it, the topic is a requirement on the conference circuit. Not even a fresh take could take us out of the weeds.

We thought our friend Merrill Brown, the former Editor-In-Chief of MSNBC who’s been dealing with the issue for a coupla decades and currently promotes a freemium model for publishers (some content free, some paid), summed it up rather well: “Putting up a pay wall does not solve your business problem,” said Brown. “Publishers who think they can put their magazine on an iPad and make a lot of money are making a significant mistake.”

We love surprises … almost as much as provocation. Jeff Jarvis didn’t disappoint. We showed the stunning TIME magazine app — high concept, high touch, and only $4.99 issue. The Buzzmachine turned buzz killer:

“I think the TIME Magazine app is the most sinful piece of shit ever,” said a skeptical Jarvis., “The ego of it was unabashedly awful.” On his blog he writes: “It’s worse than the web: we can’t comment; we can’t remix; we can’t click out; we can’t link in, and they think this is worth $4.99 a week. But the pictures are pretty.”

Josh Quittner, TIME’s editor-at-large and one of the creative forces behind its iPad app, gave it back to Jarvis in a blog post called “And the horse you rode in on.”

“Jarvis, a former Time Inc.-er, can be forgiven for the disgruntled, I-hate-my-ex-wife tone that creeps into his rhetoric, whenever he discusses his former employer. It’s tiresome, dude, and intellectually dishonest given that you’re still stumping for your Google book.” 

Turns out the dispute was not about the money, but a little about the distribution of media bundles, a little about concerns that Apple and its partners are attempting to control the “open” web and kill the link econony (Google), and more than a little about Jarvis and Quittner.

Can we turn the page, please?

The Meaning Model
Enough cautious and meek. We need some bold. Why not look at economic issues with the same creativity and integrity as we do conceptual ones? The current “where’s the money” debate is framed by rules developed for the economies and societies, factories and mass production, of the Industrial Age. Forward-thinking enterprises adapted to the atomization and proliferation of content in the Information Age. Now we enter the Conceptual Age with a universe of creators. The new currency is meaning. Off the top, how many business plans can you conceive for a meaning model? Maybe a hundred for, say, anyone?

From Tabula Rasa, we put that first word on the blank slate: meaning. As we reconsider what it means to be human, we’re discovering new metaphors for storytelling, creating new ways to engage, connecting with a world of friends and information, and designing innovations that will guide our lives and shape our universe on almost any device.

Where’s the money?

We’ll answer the question with a better one: Where’s the love, y’all? We put that one to music (Black-Eyed Peas with Justin Timberlake) and video when we started we this crusade back in ought-three. If you don’t know the answer to “Where’s the Love?” by now, you’ll never get the one that asks “where’s the money.”

This is one of those moments – an important shift in digital culture that will be old news, obvious to everyone, a few years from now. There’s an electrifying crackle in the air as digital creatives, businesses, investors and visionaries collide in a mad dash to define the future around the next big thing. Not even the old masters of the universe can stop it. Their hands are slipping off the controls.

There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I may lead them.

Sorry. Your people are leading the way in this universe.

Journey to the Conceptual Age
It’s not just the iPad, it’s the promise of a more personal, more creative, more fulfilling, more inspiring and more beautiful digital experience. It’s the promise of something more human, more wonderful. It’s bigger than Facebook or Twitter or Apple. It’s the next PC, the next smartphone, the next printing press. It’s all of that – in a simple, mobile shiny-new-thing powered by something entirely new to media: human touch. Gigs and hard drives fade into the cloud, replaced by pictures and words and shapes and sounds we can mold like clay. That’s magic. The result isn’t merely something hard and shiny that resembles a notepad. It’s something old, deep and rare: pure joy.

Over the next weeks we’ll continue our journey to the Conceptual Age. We’ll stop at the guideposts along the way, showcasing innovative examples of work defining the creative moment. We’ll conduct activities that show where the moment is leading. And we’ll identify the qualities of design-driven innovation that will determine who flourishes and who flounders.

To get started, we have five questions ….

Charlton Heston channels Moses. Steve Jobs assumes a higher authority. Crazy guys throw down an iPad at batting practice. All this and more in The Throwdown Video, a preview of Tabula Rasa. Check it out on the program page and on YouTube.

I am excited to announce the launch of a new project that we are calling WeThink.

What is it? WeThink is a conversation about innovation and the future — an effort to explore new ideas and promote solutions to the challenges that our society is facing.

What’s the big deal? If you follow our work here at all, you’ll know that We Media is a movement – a concept – that helps explain how we know what we know, who we trust, and how we learn. It’s about power of the community. We Media is part of the infinite quest to harness the power of media, communication and human ingenuity for common good. And, well, We Media changes everything.  We Media changes the way we innovate.  We Media changes how we create, sustain, and grow successful ventures. We Media enhances the structures, models and economies that support human communication, interaction and achievement.  And through that, We Media challenges us to review our existing ways of operating, break apart our established structures, and re-build our approach to the future.  These changes impact all of us, and they are forcing each of us to find new ways of thinking about… well, everything.

What are you talking about? I have this crazy idea that we need to re-think the way we create, support, and sustain ventures.  We need to re-think how we innovate.  What we are doing isn’t working anymore – not as well as it should – and we need to try something different.  That means re-considering what kinds of companies and organizations are needed today, in response to the massive changes we are seeing in our society as a result of the influence that technology and the internet are having on our culture.  That means re-structuring how ventures, both for-profit and social in nature, are funded and managed.  That means re-assessing what success looks like for new companies and organizations, as well as re-considering how we measure progress of existing organizations against our needs in society.  And that means re-building the whole infrastructure of innovation… from how we teach it, promote it, cover it in the media, what skills we value, who gets to serve as gatekeepers, and more.

How will it work? Over the next year we will collect and share new ideas, highlight different approaches, ask tough questions, and propose solutions. We will lead a new and different kind of discussion about innovation. Everywhere we go we will be looking for new issues to discuss and new ideas to consider.  Everyone we talk to or encounter is invited to contribute their experience or perspective to help power this effort.  And all those ideas and suggestions, approaches and solutions will be shared.  They’ll be posted online.  They’ll be open to feedback.  They’ll be mashed up with other thoughts.  At the end of a year, our plan is to pull together a ‘solutions book’ that helps to support, and sustain, a vibrant and game-changing discussion going forward.  The rest we will figure out as we go.

The first few ideas and questions will be posted in the next several days.  So, stay tuned — the fun is just beginning.

Demand Media is one of the few media companies that has a research-and-development department, Byron Reese, the company’s chief innovation officer, doesn’t hesitate to point out. The reason, he said, “is that we view content production as a manufacturing process, not a creative process.”

That perspective surely challenges the assumptions of a few traditional media companies, which in the olden days considered writing to be a craft, not a widget or “workflow process.” But the companies that focused on hand-crafted narratives are now being rivaled by more disciplined firms that can leverage the scale of the Internet to find efficiencies in every step of the editorial process, from choosing topics to write about to editing to headline writing and compensation.

The company has grown tremendously rapidly using this new model. Four years ago it didn’t exist. Now the company has 500 employees in Santa Monica, Calif.; Austin, Texas; Bellevue, Washington; New York and London. After $355 million in investment, the company has produced more than 1 million text articles and 200,000 videos — mostly in the how-to genre. Last month its 500 employees and 7,000 freelancers generated 101 million users, according to some measures.

Most of what Demand Media does most closely resembles reference materials, not journalism. That’s a wide-open business that few are doing well, Reese said.

“We are really trying to put the world’s information on the Internet in an exhaustive fashion,” he said. “We are trying to fill up every question people ask with an appropriate answer. The Internet overproduces certain kinds of content and underproduces other types. It overproduces Britney Spears. But it doesn’t have so much about how to unclog your toilet. People are kind of left on their own to find the right answers.”

For now, all the content Demand Media produces — on a range of sites including eHow, Livestrong.com and Golflink — is in English. But the company, which has done pilot projects in half a dozen languages, intends to go international in 2011.

Asked what content the company produced has made a difference in readers’ lives, Wadooah Wali, senior director of communications for the company, said most of it was extremely practical. She sent along this tweet as an example: “THANK YOU @EHOW my dog swallowed meds & your ‘How to induce vomiting’ http://tinyurl.com/y8eld9r saved hm.”

The company has come under criticism from some journalists, saying Demand Media cannot possibly produce quality content for the low prices it pays freelance writers. David Carr’s takedown in the New York Times particularly got under the company executives’ skins.

In response to the flurry of critiques, the company has set up an editorial advisory board that includes Kevin Smith, the president of the Society of Professional Journalists. The company also produced a “manifesto” explaining why quality and quantity are not in conflict in what it calls a “disruptive content model.”

“It isn’t as if we’re coming in somehow, and undercutting other people’s work,” Reese said. “What we’re doing is coming in and adding assignments. There’s no one who’s not getting an assignment from GQ. I would like to meet the person who says their rate has fallen because we exist.”

Demand Media has partnered with newspapers, such as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on things like travel writing.

“It’s journalism with a little J, not a big J,” Wali said. “We know we can monetize that. We know that it’s the traditional news that people want but that is hard to support in the current economic conditions.”

A visionary entrepreneur with strong public relations and public affairs expertise, Stone has grown his business from a one-person start-up in 2003 to a team of 19 full-time professionals.  With an emphasis on excellence, Stone is focused on partnering with clients to provide strategic public relations services that achieve the client’s goals and objectives through creative, innovative communications. Because of his novel approach, this young entrepreneur has been named one of the “top 40 achievers under 40.” Here’s are some of the insights he shared with me.

1.  Can you tell us bit about Saxum Public Relations, and how your “strategic and integrated public relations” approach differs from your competitors and early pioneers like Edward Bernays?

What a loaded and complicated question, but a good one! Since we are not writing a book, I’ll answer like any good public relations professional and give you three things to think about:
1.      Good PR is about trust. Government and financial institutions (and I suppose Toyota, now) are saddled with high levels of public distrust. Massive government spending, a much-needed healthcare reform effort mired in politics and bonuses being paid to the recipients of taxpayer benevolence have created a distrusting public.

So, how do you gain trust?

I measure the success of any public relations campaign – the ultimate goal of which is to build trust – by asking three questions. Does this campaign benefit a larger community than ourselves? Is it authentic and unique? What is the worst thing that could happen? If I cannot answer those questions to my satisfaction, then we start over.

2.      Spin is dead (but hasn’t been dead for long). Bernay’s looked at public relations as a drug for the masses. He thought that if you appeal to people’s natural instincts and cravings, you can ultimately persuade the public to action, even if the truth had not been taken into account. Although he may have been right in his day, that assertion is no longer accurate.

The proliferation of the internet has changed communications forever. Network news editors have taken a decidedly partisan stance on politics and business issues because that’s where the audience is. The days of trusting Walter Cronkite for the day’s news is over. Not because Mr. Cronkite was a poor journalist (he was excellent), but because the curious public receives information from many sources and has the ability to decide for themselves what “spin” is or is not. Responsible citizens today form their own opinions with the help of hundreds of thousands of sources. Determining “truth” has never been easier.

3.      Integrated Public Relations Killed Advertising. The advertising financial model, bill creative – buy media, is finished. Advertisers no longer need an agency to do terrific creative. Further, the idea of the 15 percent commission for placing a five or six figure ad buy makes clients sick.

Public relations pros have their work cut out for them, too. The dinosaurs who sit around writing press releases and organizing events are a dying breed. The new PR pro is the right hand for the CEO. When called before Congress, it is our job to say, “lets drive instead of taking the jet.” It is our job to raise our hands when big bonuses are due after layoffs. It is our job to ask how an action affects the community and world around us.

2.  What has been one of the most grueling “crisis communications”  you’ve mitigated?  And what strategies did you employ to alleviate or transform media attention?

In 2007, a crisis at Oral Roberts University became a national story when it was discovered that university president and televangelist, Richard Roberts, had used institution dollars improperly to fund a lavish lifestyle which, in-part, left the university with nearly $70 million in debt, threatening to close the doors of the college. In addition, lawsuits were threatened and filed by students, faculty and others. It was a mess.

Our client, the privately-owned retailer Hobby Lobby and the founding family, the Greens, offered to pay off the debt in its entirety, but only if the university met certain conditions. The conditions were simple. 1. Remove the entire Board of Regents. 2. Ask President Roberts to step down. 3. Adopt a new form of governance.

Our objective was to protect the family and win approval from the public for our conditions. Students, faculty and the general public were outraged by actions of the current administration. We waged a very transparent, public campaign touting the benefits of a new board of trustees (some of who ended up continuing their service under new guidelines), a new president and – most importantly – a new form of governance. We achieved each objective. We knew our conditions were tough, but we also knew it was the right thing to do.

3.  How have you adapted new technologies into your PR strategy and communication planning?  Have you leveraged the power of the semantic web and mobile for your media campaigns?

As I shared earlier, the days of writing press releases as a primary job for the PR pro is over. Leveraging social channels, high definition video, guerilla marketing and old-fashioned creativity is where we impress and get the best results. Authenticity is what breaks through the clutter, and the PR pro figures out how to find hard-to-reach audiences.

4.  What is the future of PR?  Do you think neuroscience will play a prominent role in changing public opinion?

I’m a PR guy, not a neuroscientist. Just kidding. I’m guessing this is a reference to Bernay’s uncle Sigmund Freud. Brain manipulation sounds like a narcissistic thing for Hollywood movie PR professionals, but it is not that sexy and certainly not achievable. The future of my industry is finding unique and creative ways to deliver a message. We have to be the social conscience of CEOs and protector of reputation for the brands we represent.

5.  In your private life, you seem to possess a passion for politics and public service.  How do social issues figure in your work?  Does Saxum take on many cause-marketing related projects?  If so, can you site some examples and the methodology you applied.

In 2009, Saxum won the Beacon Award, which recognizes a local company that helped the nonprofit community, for a $50,000 service grant that we gave to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Giving back to the community is a requirement to work for Saxum. If we do not positively impact the world around us, then we have missed one of the great expectations I believe God has created for our lives.
Politics and public service are a passion, but they are not private endeavors. It all connects, and it is part of what I love about my job and my life.

6.  On a personal level, what is something people would be surprised to know about you?

Saxum means “large stone” in Latin. Get it? I also played in four NCAA basketball tournaments while starting at power forward and center for The University of Oklahoma men’s basketball team.

The decline of local and national US news companies has led to a call for expanding public media news production. But in the UK the BBC is blamed for stifling the news market – and it’s shrinking.

Paula Kerger

Last year, The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities recommended expanded funding for public media, and the Knight Foundation’s vice president of journalism programs, Eric Newton, brought that idea to hearings on the future of news conducted in the fall by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. [Disclosure: iFOCOS, the media think tank and futures lab I founded, receives support and collaborates regularly with Knight].

Later this year PBS, the public television network in the US, will launch a new online news hub and show, and National Public Radio is experimenting with expanded local news programming through a local network of blogger-reporters called Project Argo.

Yet in Britain, the crown jewel of global public broadcasting, the BBC, has been attacked by commercial competitors – most notably News Corp. European and Asian chief and heir-apparent James Murdoch – for damaging the commercial market for news. The BBC, funded by a tax on every television set sold in Britain, is just too big, or too good, the argument goes, for commercial newspapers and broadcasters to compete, especially for online revenue – and relevance – as audiences shift to digital experiences and content distribution choices like iTunes downloads and video streaming.

BBC’s critics appear to have political momentum on their side. The Times of London – a Murdoch paper – reported this week that the BBC plans to shrink its web operations, including a 25 percent staff reduction, and shut down two radio stations and reduce its spending on television.

We’ll explore the differing trajectories of US and UK public media at We Media Miami, March 9-11 (register here). Paula A. Kerger, CEO of PBS, will join me for a conversation with outgoing BBC Global News head Richard Sambrook. Sambrook is leaving the BBC for a new job as vice chairman of Edelman PR.

Our program in Miami also includes a discussion on the most notable innovations and trends in public media, moderated by Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke, co-authors of Beyond the Echo Chamber.

Will corporate media become journalism? Or just resemble it?

Richard Sambrook, head of BBC Global News since 2004, is saying goodbye to one of the world’s most influential jobs in journalism, and hello to, what should I say – the murky, spin-meisterly, lucrative? – world of public relations. Or should that be creative, innovative and transformational?

On the one hand – yes, and yes, all of the above. He’s announced he’s joining Edelman PR as vice chairman, based in London.

On the other hand – regarding what’s behind him and what’s ahead – we’ll see. We’ll also talk about it at We Media Miami next month, when Richard will join me for a one-on-one conversation during our opening reception there. (Register here.)

Ingrid Lunden of PaidContent got it half right when she noted the significance of his new gig: that big journalism institutions like the BBC are shedding talent, and big companies are gaining it. True enough, but nothing new there – although Sambrook’s seniority and prominence make his hiring a real “get” for Richard Edelman, CEO of the privately-held PR firm.

But there’s a second and equally significant sign of the times in Sambrook’s new role. You need to look at what he’ll be doing: CREATING content.

Sambrook understands, as well as anyone I know, the shifting patterns of news and knowledge. He understands that companies, along with governments, NGOs, sports leagues and virtually all institutions, are becoming media entities in their own right. Edelman, like other global PR firms, is trying to recast itself as a creative and strategic consulting agency for the We Media world – one in which spin, crisis management and distribution of a finely-honed message through journalists and their traditional media outlets are among a much broader menu of communication services on offer, with many others rising in prominence and value, like word of mouth marketing, manufacture and monitoring of buzz, and design-and-production of cutting-edge digital content for distribution, sharing and discussion anywhere.

Sambrook will be Edelman’s chief content officer, overseeing creation of multimedia for Edelman clients – for distribution across any and all platforms. He explained the move in his blog:

Some people will be surprised that a journalist who has stuck his neck out on many occasions for the independence of news media has joined a PR company. It misses the point. Edelman are redefining corporate communications and growing fast. As digital media explodes traditional channels, they are exploiting the new opportunities that are opening up.

Readers of PRWeek debated whether hiring a top-notch journalist was good for the PR business, or just window-dressing to impress clients and help them meet more journalists, to which Sambrook’s new boss at Edelman, David Brain, replied, “He’s been hired to help us move into a new area…one of content. The skills required for that are journalistic and editorial.”

Given Sambrook’s background and prominence as a journalist, this leads to some obvious questions, or maybe some unfair burdens for someone who’s simply looking for a new creative challenge with new people. Will those branded content experiences he helps produce for Edelman and its clients be trusted by anyone other than the clients? Will their values and point of view be transparent? Will they inform us – and help us make informed decisions? Will they be journalistic? Or will they simply be, at best, entertaining, slick and well done? We’ll see – and talk about it with Richard in Miami.

Late last year William Dean Singleton, the CEO of MediaNews, announced he had identified the problem behind years of steep decline in the news industry. “It’s a good old fashioned economic recession,” Singleton said. In the absence of motion, sooner or later the problem will be recession.

Download the report (PDF)

There’s a story going around that touts the Internet as a perpetual money machine. It goes something like this: many pieces of old content on the digital-now network have aggregate residual value that, over time, exceed present value of fresh content, which spikes and subsides quickly. The story is called the Long Tail. It is part economic theory, part myth, part common sense, and one good chapter in a popular book.

Download the report (PDF)