Adobe: Saying and doing are two different things

Recently, Adobe executives were quoted saying that the company will not put any additional effort into its Flash-to-iPhone cross-compiler, and that its focus will be on providing the best possible experience on Android and other mobile platforms. I'd suggested that approach in a blog post several weeks ago. Today, however, Adobe has launched an advertising campaign and published a full-page ad in the Washington Post with an open letter from the company's founders chastising Apple for its actions.

It seems clear that Adobe doesn't really know what it wants to do. If the company is truly focusing all its efforts on Android and other platforms, why is it launching an anti-Apple advertising campaign? The ad in the Washington Post certainly wasn't intended to influence Apple--the last time I checked, Apple's headquarters were still in Cupertino. Adobe's ad is intended to influence the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department in their preliminary investigations of Apple.

If Adobe can't get Flash working on other platforms and is therefore desperate to get onto the iPhone and iPad, that's a problem with Adobe's own engineering team, not an issue for the U.S. Government. Adobe has missed a series of self-announced release dates for Flash 10 on a variety of mobile platforms. Apple's actions haven't helped things for them, of course, but Adobe has painted itself into this particular corner. Also, we don't know the details of the discussions between Apple and Adobe; the companies have been talking about porting Flash to the iPhone OS since the release of the original iPhone, and we don't know how much of the current situation is the result of bad blood that arose in those negotiations.

Adobe has lobbyists who can try to convince the FTC and Justice Department to take action against Apple (if there are any legal grounds for them to do so.) However, according to NPD Group, Android is now beating the iPhone in new U.S. consumer sales, and Verizon has confirmed that an Android tablet is right around the corner. That's where Adobe should be focusing its attention, and it should be sending consistent messages, both externally and internally.

Is Jason Chen a journalist? Not according to Nick Denton

The home of Jason Chen, editor-in-chief of Gizmodo, was raided by police from the San Mateo (California) Sheriff's Office last Sunday night to find evidence related to the theft by an as-yet unnamed individual, and purchase and subsequent publication of information by Gizmodo about a prototype Apple iPhone. A search warrant was issued by a San Mateo County judge at the request of a County prosecutor. According to CNET, police seized "three Apple laptops, a Samsung digital camera, a Seagate 500 GB external hard drive, USB flash drives, a HP MediaSmart server, a 32GB Apple iPad, an 16GB iPhone, and an IBM ThinkPad."

Once the raid was publicized, many parties (including Gawker Media, publisher of the Gizmodo website) claimed that the search warrant was improper and the raid illegal under both California and U.S. journalist shield laws. Gawker Media has demanded that police return Chen's (and presumably its own) property.

The question is whether or not Jason Chen is actually a journalist and is entitled to protection under shield laws. Nick Denton, the owner and publisher of the Gawker Media properties, was quoted less than a year ago in the Washington Post, saying the following: "We don't seek to do good," says Denton, wearing a purplish shirt, jeans and a beard that resembles a three-day growth. "We may inadvertently do good. We may inadvertently commit journalism. That is not the institutional intention."

In that quote, Denton is essentially saying "We're not journalists, so don't hold us to journalistic standards." However, when one of his editors got caught purchasing stolen property and committing extortion (refusing to return the phone to Apple unless the company sent him a written document that Gizmodo could publish to prove the authenticity of the phone), Denton's managers and attorneys claimed journalistic protection. You can't have it both ways.

It's up to state and Federal courts to decide whether or not Chen and Gizmodo are entitled to protection under journalist shield laws, and whether or not any of the evidence collected by police will be admissible in court. We're also going to hear a lot about persecution of journalists and the ever-popular "slippery slope" over the next few weeks. However, Chen and Gizmodo brought this on themselves. As he and his writers have repeatedly stated on the Gizmodo blog, they did it to get back at Apple for that company's policies on protecting information about unreleased products. They weren't revealing any illegal activity or acting in the public interest; their motivations for their actions were money and revenge. That's not journalism.

Update: According to posts on both CNET and the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital, Jason Chen and Gizmodo can't use the California or U.S. journalistic shield laws to protect themselves if the police are investigating them for committing a crime (or crimes). That would make any discussion of whether or not Chen is a journalist irrelevant. As I pointed out above, there's no argument that Gizmodo purchased the iPhone prototype and should have known that the person selling it didn't own and had no right to sell it, meaning that Gizmodo purchased stolen property. Gizmodo itself reported that it demanded a written request from Apple before it would agree to return the prototype; it subsequently published Apple's written request as proof of the phone's authenticity. That's extortion.

The Christian Science Monitor to cease daily publication

In what's likely to be the first of a wave of fundamental restructurings in the newspaper industry, The Christian Science Monitor announced today that it will cease publication of its daily newspaper by April of next year. According to Online Media Daily, the newspaper will shift to a weekly print edition, along with a continuously updated version of its website, CSMonitor.com, and a daily electronic subscription product. There's been an ongoing debate within the Christian Science church over whether or not to keep the newspaper alive, and this strategy appears to be a compromise that will keep the Christian Science Monitor in business by shifting daily coverage to the web and dramatically decreasing costs.

Weekly newspapers are about the only bright spot in the newspaper industry, and moving from a daily to a weekly will help the Christian Science Monitor capitalize on this trend. I think that this is likely the model that many newspapers will follow--daily coverage on the web and a weekly print version. Whether that will save enough money to keep hundreds of newspapers from failing is anyone's guess, however, especially with advertisers pulling back across the board, including online.

It seems likely to me that in many markets, the job of providing daily local coverage will fall to the websites of television stations, not newspapers. The local newspapers in those markets will either have to survive as weekly lifestyle-oriented publications, or not survive at all. The strategy pursued by The Christian Science Monitor will work best for the national or quasi-national newspapers, such as The Wall Street Journal, New York Times or Washington Post.

In any case, we're witnessing the start of the final transition of print newspapers to electronic distribution, or to history.

Update: According to Advertising Age, only two of the top 25 U.S. newspapers gained circulation in statistics from the Audit Bureau of Circulation for a year-to-year six month period ending September 30th. Those two are USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, and the gains were 0.01% in both cases. Some of the other changes were The New York Times down 3.6%, the Los Angeles Times down 5.2%, The New York Post down 6.3%, the New York Daily News down 7.2%, the Chicago Tribune down 7.8% and the Houston Chronicle down 11.7%. Overall, daily circulation declined 4.64%, and Sunday circulation dropped 4.85%. In both cases, the overall rate of decline increased from the year-ago rate, which was 2.6% for dailies and 3.5% for Sunday. Not an encouraging trend.