Chatting with the "indefatigable" Howard Owens
I spent some online time chatting with journalist/blogger/Web developer Howard Owens about journalism, blogging and the Web (surprise). He has some really interesting perspectives and ideas about the Web. Watch this guy, he's going places. (May 31, 2003)

BIO: Howard Owens began his journalism career in 1987 as managing editor and co-publisher of a community weekly in San Diego County. He's worked as a daily newspaper reporter and editor, and published one of the first weekly online news sites (East County Online). He is currently Internet Operations Coordinator for the Ventura County Star, where he's been since 1999. He's won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and San Diego Press Club for deadline stories, feature reporting and opinion writing. Besides journalism, Owens has been a cop in the Air Force and spent two years as a political aide. He is an alum of Point Loma Nazarene College. His personal Web site is howardowens.com.

webraw: You wanna chat?
Howard Owens: Hey, sure.
webraw: Cool — let's get chatty

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webraw: How do you keep the Web raw?

Howard Owens: The way I see the Web is that it is still such a new medium. We don't know where it's going really, where it will take us as a culture, as a society, as a democratic people. It will change commerce and civic affairs, and already has. I'm not about keeping the Web raw; I'm about helping to define it's future. Granted, I'm a pretty small player in all that, but both at work and at home, I want to make contributions that make the Web more viable and more useful.

Journalism, Employers and Blogs
webraw: The Dennis Horgan incident caused a lot of journalists to re-evaluate their blogs (or at least think about them a bit) and you've been very clear about your position on this issue so my question is which direction do you predict the corporate environment to head in relation to blogs? More towards censorship or more towards openness? This is based on your personal experience, observations and interacting with colleagues and other professionals.

Howard Owens: I'm not too worried about corporations stifling personal expression on the Web too much. It's a mighty big task, and there will always be big companies that don't concern themselves with private expression. Our society, anyway, is heading toward more openness, more personal autonomy, not less.

This historical trend, I think, will continue. And the companies that try to fight against personal autonomy will find it hard to retain the best talent.

So market forces, in the end, will protect the average person's ability to blog or do just about anything else.

webraw: What happens when an autonomous blog/site begins to negatively impact a specific corporation that employs the author of that blog/site? Does that corporation not have a duty to its shareholders or whatever to end that publication by firing or threat of firing?

Howard Owens: Well, I believe in personal loyalty to your employer. If a company is so screwed up that you need to publish dirty laundry all over the Web, you shouldn't be working there.

As for a company protecting itself ...
If an employee is unethically exposing the company to public disrepute, then the company has an obligation to act. Short of that, however, the company has no business telling an employee what he can do with his own time and own resources.

In other words, the company can't act against an employee until the employee abuses his position in the company.

webraw: You started up the Inside VC War Blog right?

Howard Owens: Yes.

webraw: That Blog was a living, breathing blog. It had all the elements. Links, comments, a dash of opinion, blogrolls, etc. There really was nothing corporate about it. How did you get that approved and if it was a simple process can you elaborate (or speculate) on why the climate at The Star is different than many other places and what is the "secret" to blending the corporate identity with a real, live blog?

Howard Owens:I've been working on getting blogs going at the Star for a long time, so a lot of the ground work was already laid.

The discussions about libel, comments, what blogs are and aren't was already well hashed out.

So, when the war came, I just sort of said, "I'm going to do this." It helps that we have very progressive management at the Star.

webraw: And those are the sticking points for many other media outlets when contemplating blogs.

Howard Owens: But they shouldn't be. The issues related to libel and comments are no different than discussion boards, and just about all newspaper sites have those.

webraw: Would you say that a possible template has been created or is what happened at The Star unique to that specific environment?

Howard Owens: The issue of what employees might publish — bosses should trust their employees, or get new employees. There are other checks and balances besides just saying no.

Every newspaper will find its own way of handling the blog issue. The Star is not necessarily unique in the broader issue, maybe only in the specific implementation.

webraw: Those issues shouldn't be sticking points but they are... a fear of allowing the masses an unedited voice seems to pervade many (not all) media entities.

Howard Owens: It's all just swimming up stream, though. Blogs are becoming too big a part of the media mix to ignore, and if newspapers don't develop effective blog-related strategies, they'll lose credibility and market share.

Blog Ideas
webraw: An idea I've had is to allow reporters to have a blog as a companion to a specific story and then allow that reporter to post updates when new info is discovered that may not be compelling enough for 20 inches of print or 10 seconds of air time but would be great for a quick blog post.

Howard Owens: That might be hard to manage, but it has possibilities. I like the idea of beat reporters having blogs to stick in all of the stuff and minor updates that don't fit in print stories.

Blogs work better for story telling than traditional news style on the Web. News stories on the Web tend to be overly dense, require more time commitment to get the most interesting nuggets, and they surround those nuggets with a lot of superfluous filler — all that stuff that is supposed to provide context and balance. It makes for boring reading — ok on a Sunday morning when you have time to fully absorb a story, but doesn't work on the Web where you have such a glut of information resources that you need to provide readers with the best and most interesting and important information quickly and in a manner that is easy and entertaining to read.

Ask any blogger and they'll tell you — they get more real news from blogs than any five major, traditional news outlets combined. Why is that — because blogs boil down everything to its essence.

So, to bring this back to the question at hand ...
If I were a newspaper publisher, I would stop publishing my print stories on the Web. I would have every reporter have a blog, make the home page a group site, and then tell reporters — write your print story, but then write a blog entry on the same subject.

The blog entry would be a real blog entry, not just a rehash of the news story — complete with snarky comments, bits of insight that wouldn't fit in a traditional "objective" news story, and devoid of the fluff context... bringing the little vignettes that usually get buried in a traditional story to the top.

This will be more lively, better read and build trust between reader and writer.

webraw: That would also mirror the "spirit" of the Web which is much more irreverent than other mediums.

Howard Owens: Right. And it would help newspapers answer one of the most perplexing issues of the last 30 or 40 years — how to stop the slide of irrelevance to younger readers.

Subscriptions
webraw: How do you feel about subscriptions to News sites. Dave Winer lamented the fact that some of his links to NY Times stuff got moved behind their Archives and others have noted that when a News site goes to subscription then sites like Google don't index them.... so anyway, what is your take on subscriptions (including fee or free)

Howard Owens: Site registration was once considered taboo, now it's inevitable. In a couple of years, after all of the newspaper sites have gone to registration, we'll be talking about how all of those sites are starting to line up for paid-subscription models.

Online revenue, even for the most profitable online news sites is pretty pathetic when compared to the revenue of newspapers. That has got to change. And it's not going to happen without registration. Sites need to get a better hold on who is visiting their site and how often. The idea that people won't register is a myth. Belo and Tribune Co. are leading the way in showing it's a myth. We can do a better job than any other media.

webraw: As a blogger does it bother you at all that many of the stories you may link to will only be accessible after the visitor fills out a subscription that they'll never use again

Howard Owens: Yes. It's not good news for bloggers, but bloggers don't have enough power to stop it. But one thing you see more bloggers doing is linking to the "print me" version of the story... these usually don't require registration and are devoid of ads. It will be interesting to see if newspaper sites plug that hole, or decide it's a small price to pay for getting some exposure for individual stories.

webraw: Subscription sites aren't indexed by Google. Is this bad for those sites?

Howard Owens: For newspaper sites, I don't think Google is all that important in driving traffic. For searchers, of course it's bad, bad, bad. It's more of a concern for Google than the registration sites. But there's always lots that isn't indexed ... and all search engines pretty much suck right now anyway.

The Important Questions
webraw: Elvis or The Beatles?

Howard Owens: Elvis and The Beatles. There are so many possible ways to go with it. And both are icons, culturally and musically. You just can't really pick between the two.

webraw: Perkins or Cash?

Howard Owens: I'll go with Cash, as much as I hate to dis Perkins. Perkins is a highly underrated guitar pioneer, great song writer, but Cash is the man.

webraw: The Clash or Sex Pistols?

Howard Owens: Easy. The Clash. In hindsight, the Sex Pistols were just a comic book band. The Clash were solid and real.

From Journalist to Uber-Web Journalist
webraw: How did you make the transition from pure journalist to ColdFusion guru/blogger/Web-o-phyte/journalist?

Howard Owens: I was a free-lance writer in San Diego in 1995. Ron James at SanDiego-Online offered me server space to start publishing East County Online, a weekly news site. That's when I learned HTML.

Later, I went to work for Affinity Group (Good Sam Club) as online editor. That got me into the RV industry and into Ventura. When they laid me off, I started the RVClub. At the time, I knew nothing about Web programming. A friend built my initial site in Lasso/Filemaker on Mac servers.

Later I learned Lasso. Then I sold the RVClub and the new owners wanted to switch to NT servers, so I settled on CF as my new programming language and fell in love with it. Then I was hired by The Star as an online producer in October 1999.

And as horrible as the code was on that first site, it's still up ... www.rvcare.com.

webraw: What's your "dream job"

Howard Owens: Blogging full time. Actually, I don't honestly have a dream job any longer. I have so many various interests. In my dream world, I'd be able to indulge them all ... tour as a rockabilly guitarist, be a GM of a baseball team, publish a newspaper, write a novel, be a reporter again ... lots of things I like to do ... but I also really love building Web sites.

webraw: So you've embraced blogging. Tell us about your meeting with another blogger — Glenn Reynolds

Howard Owens: Glenn's a nice guy. I was really surprised he would take the time to meet with me. He's so busy. And I know he doesn't read my site regularly. I wanted to talk with him more intelligently and ask more questions about his process, work habits, philosophy, but I was terribly hung over that afternoon.

We met at a place called Charly Pepper's. We were supposed to meet for "beer," but I was in no mood for beer at that point.

So I drank about a dozen classes of water and munched on chips and salsa — good salsa there.

The Web at Large
webraw: What frustrates you most about the Web and conversely... what excites you most about the Web?

Howard Owens: As I said before ... search engines suck. None of them do a really good job of helping you find the information you're really looking for. If you have some sort of general subject, you will probably find some useful sites, but I know there is all kinds of detailed, scholarly, credible information out there — but if you try fashioning search terms that will dig down and find that specific information you want, you'll usually wind up frustrated.

What excites me most about the Web is how it subverts centralized power. It is too hard — and I think will remain hard — for centralized power to completely control the flow of information and communication among people.

I see us heading toward greater freedom, not less, the world over, and the Internet is a big part of that trend.

webraw: What are your concerns (if any) about the direction the Internet is headed with regards to government regulation and corporate control? The DMCA, state sponsored "Super-DMCAs," "Policeware" bills, copyright extensions, relaxing regulation for Broadband providers, anti-SPAM laws, the RIAA, etc. are all working to essentially chang the Internet (for better or worse) and I just want to know how you feel about all this. Are you, like Lawrence Lessig and fear for the Worst or are you more like Doc Searls who believes that the Internet will always remain free-free-free

Howard Owens: I'm with Doc. Little of that is likely to work. Though I hope that something can be done about spam — spam is probably the biggest threat to the future of the internet.

It is the one thing that can and does drive people away. It sucks resources and makes it hard for legitimate companies to do the things they need to do to stay in business. I don't want to lock spammers up. I want to shoot them. Summary executions. I'm voting for that legislation.

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