I always feel it’s a tad cheap to get an entire blog post out of picking through someone else’s, but the cool kids gave it a name a while ago. "Fisking", I’m told, is all the rage. Who am I to fly in the face of that?

Especially so when you get a list like this one. Called "New truths in new media", published on the Lost Remote TV blog yesterday, a few points seem so terribly wrong - yet so terribly, terribly fashionable, and indicative of broader myths spread by cool kids and others - that it’s crying out for an answer back.

Which doubtless the author, Steve Safran, intended, so we’re both happy. Right? Here we go. Brace yourself. This one’s long (these damned blogs don’t have an editor to tell you to keep it brief).

"NEW TRUTH NUMBER ONE: File sharing does not hurt companies. It helps them. File sharing is the ad - the band/movie/TV show is the product. Encourage file sharing. Seed your own BitTorrents. Your sales will go up."

Umm… no.  Well, maybe, if you’re an amateur artist with a great song/movie/TV show to get out there, with no expectation of immediate financial reward. But for professionally produced, copyright work? Well, I’m no fan of record companies, which often appear appallingly badly run by utter Luddites. And there were suggestions back in the day that file sharing didn’t cause people to spend less on music, maybe slightly more.

But they were hardly conclusive - and there were plenty of other reports claiming to show sharing’s impact on music sales. So, unless there’s some devastatingly conclusive study somewhere that I haven’t seen yet, I’ll continue to believe that filesharing of copyright material tends to harm the producers or, at best, have a neutral overall impact. Thus, any company that starts giving away its stuff without also creating alternative, new revenue streams, like advertising or online sales or subscriptions, will lose money by doing so.

Filesharing could help content companies, mind you, like a vaccine causing a defensive reaction. Businesses scared by the filesharing virus could adopt new distribution models that kill demand for filesharing, by making it easier for honest customers to get their hands on their stuff. That’s what the music industry did via iTunes music store, and as the TV and movie industry will need to do through more rapid distribution of its work around the world if they’re to overcome BitTorrent and the rest.

"NEW TRUTH NUMBER TWO: Posting a story online before it airs will help your ratings. You can’t ’scoop yourself.’ You can’t even get hurt by the competition, even if they pick up on the story. If it’s an investigation, they won’t have time to catch up anyway. As soon as the story is ready to go, set it free."

This, I think, is a very good point. Guardian Unlimited and Channel 4 news did it a few weeks ago with the leak of advice given to Tony Blair in the run up to war by the Attorney General. It undoubtedly helped the two organisations lay claim to their exclusive, especially useful when the BBC later got… umm… "confused" about who ran it first.

"NEW TRUTH NUMBER THREE: A blog is just a webpage with a better PR agent. Having a blog doesn’t make you a ‘blogger’ any more than having a pencil makes you an artist."

Hmm… but a pencil’s a start, right? And if a web page has permalinks, comments, categories and a syndication feed, I suspect it’s a blog, and it’s author is a blogger. Whether it holds up to the Ancient and Honourable Creed of Blogging - non commercial, genuine unfiltered voice, yadda yadda - is another argument. The values of blogging are changing; the tools and technical characteristics are not.

"NEW TRUTH NUMBER FOUR: First is better than best. This is actually something of an old truth, but it has a new context. Get the images up first, and viewers won’t care if they’re the much-vaunted ‘broadcast quality.’"

Were this true, raw wire feeds would be more popular than written through stories. They’re not, because people still like to have their news digested at least partially. And, in these days of Rathergate and Fisking and fact checking yo ass, it might be wiser to suggest being right is more important than first - just ask Newsweek, CBS or - again - the BBC. That’s probably why they held back on that leak story, mentioned above. Technology, higher expectations and competition mean the battle is to be first and best.

"NEW TRUTH NUMBER FIVE: ‘Breaking News’ is dead. ‘My News’ is next. Reclaim ‘Breaking News’ by telling me news that’s important to me."

Nah. This is a retread of "news you can use" and "the daily me" and countless other good-in-planning news initiatives, few of which have ever done particularly well in real life. Fact is, big breaking news is alive, and thriving in these uncertain times. It remains where the big audience is at because the big audience still feels that’s what matters to them. Ask any news organisation about 9/11, or the start of Gulf War II, or the US elections, or the UK elections. Or any big sporting event. Or a decent weather story. I could go on…

And just in case I’ve misunderstood, and this is a "new truth" actually in favour of customised news: maybe, but the case for filtered, edited news remains very strong. Few news readers have the time or inclination to customise their news experience beyond picking which title they read. They also don’t have the confidence in their choices or the technology not to miss something important to them. They really do trust editors more, still. And even if they don’t, few have the time or technology to do much about it. That’s not cause for complacency, mind - but the barrier to switching is high.

"NEW TRUTH NUMBER SIX: Construct then deconstruct. Put the story together, tell it conventionally, then rip it apart. Let the audience add their thoughts. Let the story breathe, change and evolve. Then tell it again."

Here be the truth. We’re trying a little of this with GU’s blogs. Early days, but journalists could do a lot more to let their stories "breathe, change and evolve". This is a neat summary of "news as a conversation".

"NEW TRUTH NUMBER SEVEN: The 55+ audience is a desirable demographic. You don’t want them? I’ll take them."

Quite. Look at Saga. Question is, can you combine 55+ with 18-30? Probably not - but in this world of niches big and small, there should be room to do lots of things for both. Some media organisations will say: "Fine. Have ‘em".

"NEW TRUTH NUMBER EIGHT: Deciding not to distribute your news product on phones will be a bigger mistake than keeping it off cable."

I have no knowledge of the US cable biz, but know for sure that news on mobile phones isn’t a great business to be in. The news from this side of the pond is that news products on mobile phones - specifically, news products on 3G phones - do very badly indeed. That’s why pioneering 3G service 3 buries news low down on its menus. Entertainment and funnies do much, much better.

"NEW TRUTH NUMBER NINE: 1,000 targeted email subscribers are worth more than 100,000 random viewers."

In brief, I suspect that rather has to do with the nature of the subscribers. But I’d also question - in this age of slicing and dicing of audience demographics - that any body of viewers is seen as being truly random. And the hard cost of acquiring and satisfying that list of 1000 "targeted email subscribers" may exceed the cost of those random viewers - the profitable business may still be with the bigger audience. Even more so if you consider the potential opportunity costs of serving those 1000
subscribers, instead of trying to hit more through a mass market
strategy.
In short, it seems very unlikely there is any universal truth to be extracted here.

"NEW TRUTH NUMBER TEN: Web writers make up a lot of silly, self-aggrandizing lists."

Amen to that. Although we could also add: "And other web writers can get whole posts refuting those silly, self-aggrandizing lists - even using the same cheap tricks to pad a list of nine things into the obligatory ten"…

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