Nathan Lustig

Why Does the British Media Cover News Better than American Media?

Category : Personal Thoughts
Posted on January 13, 2010 by Nathan Lustig

Over the past year, I’ve found myself paying attention to British media and have just about completely tuned out the American media. The only news show I watch is BBC World News America. I read the Economist, look at BBC.com, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times and The Guardian. I probably watch BBC America 2-3 times per week and check the other papers daily.

I can’t remember that last time I watched any American tv news program or read an American newspaper (for anything other than a sports story) on my own. The only times I’ve read the American press is when someone sends me a link to a story. Most of the time, the stories in the American press are simplistic, boring and cliche. There is little analysis and the writer doesn’t seem to understand the story himself. The only interesting stories are the investigative reports.

TV news is arguably worse. Network news is ok, but generally focuses on celebrity or partisan bickering, rather than actual issues. Cable “news” is an affront to the word news and most of the time local news isn’t all that interesting.

It seems to me that the British press is better at covering just about everything than the American media. From American politics to climate change, from sport to finance and international affairs, all of the mainstream British media seems to do a better job the their American counterparts. BBC World News America recently featured a 10 minute segment on the US military strategy in Afghanistan, including a 5 minute segment with a journalist going out on patrol with an American unit. I learned more in 10 minutes than in the previous three months listening to politicians and commentators yammer on or reading American news articles.

I read an article in the Telegraph today about the economy and the potential for a further deterioration in 2010. I actually learned something from it. I rarely get anything out of the NY Times or Wall St. Journal when I read it. Both publications slant one way or the other and have a specific viewpoint they want to get across. They rarely focus on stories that do not fit the narrative. I’ve found the British press to be less beholden to their narrative than the American press.

This problem extends all the way to NPR programming, too. Although NPR stories are more in depth, they do not present nearly as much information as a BBC radio story. I think the British media believes that its readers actually are intelligent, whereas the American media believes that it has to tell a narrative and present to the lowest common denominator.

This phenomenon extends past the media and manifests itself for anyone to see in TV programming. British soccer commentators talk 50% as much as their American counterparts in any sport. British versions of Ramasy’s Kitchen Nightmares, Life on Mars, Dragon’s Den (Shark Tank in the US) and American Idol give the viewer the ability to think for themselves. In the American version, there are always sounds and music playing in the background, trying to hit the viewers over the head with the point the producers want to get across. If you get a chance, check out any show on BBC America and listen to how little background noise/music there is.

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is the best example. The original British version shows Gordon Ramsay helping turn a struggling restaurant around. He dines, talks with the chef, owner and waitstaff and then revamps the menu, teaches the chef some business skills and relaunches the restaurant. It is interesting because he focuses on the business side of running a restaurant. From buying cheap ingredients to when to be open to how to hire waitstaff, Ramsay teaches you how to run a successful restaurant.

In the American version, the kitchen is usually incredibly dirty, the restaurant owner does not want to listen to any advice and Ramsay’s team ends up completely redesigning the restaurant from scratch. They probably spent 20k making it happen. There is music in the background and always personality conflicts. It’s nowhere as interesting as the British version.

It seems like producers have decided that Americans have no attention span and cannot figure anything out for themselves, whereas the British are allowed to think for themselves and can pay attention for a full 10 minutes. I’m thankful for cable and the Internet so that I have a choice to watch foreign programming and read international news. I’m not sure what I would do otherwise.

What do you think? Do you pay attention to the American media? Do you pay attention to British media or none at all? Have you watched any British TV and noticed a similar phenomenon?

Entrepreneur Profile: Justin Beck, PerBlue

Category : Entrepreneurship
Posted on January 5, 2010 by Nathan Lustig

Note: This post is the third in a new series called “Entrepreneur Profiles.” These posts focus on an interesting entrepreneur who I’ve gotten to know and hopefully provide a window into their business that you might not otherwise find in a newspaper or magazine.

Justin Beck is the co-founder and CEO of PerBlue, a software startup in Madison. PerBlue’s flagship product, Parallel Kingdom, is the first location based game built for the iPhone and Android and has over 80,000 players worldwide. Founded in January 2008 while he was still in school, Beck and his team have worked to create a successful game and an interesting business model. Beck graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin.

Nathan Lustig: Hi Justin, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Can you give me a brief overview of your company?

Justin Beck: Sure. PerBlue was created when we started developing our flagship game, Parallel Kingdom, in January 2008. The first version was released in October 2008 and we’ve been steadily gaining players and improving the game ever since. The game is on its 3rd major version and we currently have over 80,000 players.

We have 7 more or less full-time people working for us and are growing nicely. We have also developed several other applications for the iPhone and Android platforms but our most successful app remains Parallel Kingdom. As we’ve grown we have found our business to be building great multiplayer games for mobile platforms.

NL: What kind of background did you have to be able to start a mobile gaming company?

JB: I have been programming since I was 12 years old and love to do it. I graduated from UW-Madison with a Computer Engineering and Computer Science Degree and I interned as a software engineer at Google and as a program manager at Microsoft on their ASP.NET team.

NL: Many founders of startups have some sort of an “ah-ha moment” when they first got the idea for their company. Did you have one and what was it?

JB: I’m thinking that could be true for us.

I was working on a different startup with some friends from Google. We were going to build a community bar and real-time chat for webpages as a script mashup, which was going great. But when Andrew Hanson (my partner) and I were doing homework one night, we starting thinking about the next game we should make. I was like, we should build something mobile, something people actually would play, simple, and we should throw GPS into it somehow to make it interesting.

From that conversation, we started with Parallel Kingdom. It was about a month later when I realized the mobile space was really growing and I should invest myself into build a company around that space. This was before the iPhone Appstore even existed. I would say that was my “ah-ha” moment. I just knew it. It wasn’t a tough choice.

NL: What is the biggest reason you founded your startup?

JB: I love adventure. I saw building a company as the next challenge in my life. Two of my life goals were to work at Google and Microsoft. I had been there and gotten offers from them, but this opportunity came up and the timing couldn’t get much better. Many people assume lots of things about people who run their own business, many of these are explicitly not true with me.

I actually really like working for someone else and trying to make them as successful as possible. I also really have no interest in the money. I took a 2 year pay cut to do PerBlue. So for me, it’s the adventure and challenge.

NL: What is the biggest unexpected challenge you had to overcome?

JB: I would say my biggest unexpected challenge was how hard it is to be a really good manager of a creative team. I am still working on it, but doing it well is very hard.

NL: What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about starting a startup?

JB:

1. Play to win, commit yourself to playing the game and be willing to be very flexible in how you navigate the pathway. Watch and model people who have built successful companies and learn from them. (Watching failure doesn’t teach you how to succeed)

2. Have a specific goal: we are going to do “this.” Drive yourself and your team to this goal.

3. Have a schedule, (roadmap) that is a reasonable plan of getting to that goal.

4. Commitment and talent are the 2 most important traits of your teammates.

5. Stay focused. You can only build one business at a time. Choose your business and stick to it till its done.

6. It’s a marathon not a sprint, pace yourself emotionally, mentally, physically

NL: What are three websites you check everyday?

JB: Not many. Pandora, Facebook, Google Analytics, PKStats, Bug Tracking is my honest list. But websites I check weekly bi-weekly when I am thinking about strategy or competitive research.

http://techcrunch.com
http://news.ycombinator.com/

I have my executives I try to watch. Marc Pincus (Zynga), Eric Schmidt (Google), Jason Fried (37signals)

I like watching talks, Google Tech Talks are amazing.

NL: Do you have any funny stories or amusing anecdotes about starting or running the company? Do people ask you “when are you going to get a real job?”

JB: There are lots of funny stories. One of the easiest ones to explain is DB Death Day and yes it is a PerBlue holiday. We had some problems with the database and issued a statement that: “There was a massive forest fire in PK, resulting in every tree in the western hemisphere being burnt to the ground.” Along with the loss of every GeoBuzz post. It was a sad day, but somewhat comical looking back.

I have actually never heard that statement about getting a real job. Most people are very encouraging. Most people don’t understand what it takes to build a business. So that makes their empathy hard. I think the most negative person towards PerBlue was my recruiter at Microsoft when I turned down their offer and counter offer, but that was her job.

NL: What/who has been the biggest help to you and your company?

JB: My mentors have been amazing. During PerBlue’s life I have now had about 7 mentors, as the life stage of the company changes the mentors I use and depend on also changes. But I can’t imagine doing this without mentors. My partner Andrew has also been an amazing asset, starting a company with a partner is an extremely wise idea. Team is what makes the company, without the PerBlue team, we would have never gotten off the launch pad.

NL: What is the most fun part of running your company? The least?

JB: I would say the most enjoyable parts of running PerBlue, are working with the team, building and solving big problems, having things work, and seeing players love the game and play it so much and actually see our business become successful. I personally get a lot of gratification when I see my co-workers growing and become excellent at what they do. I think the least enjoyable part of my job are the days when it seems like everything “breaks” or when things just don’t go like you need them to.

NL: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, you had some great advice. Good luck in the future.

A Look Back at 2009 and A Look Ahead to 2010

Category : Personal Thoughts
Posted on January 4, 2010 by Nathan Lustig

I know it’s a little late for a year end review, but I thought I finally have time to finish this post. I wanted to take a look at some of my favorite things from 2009 and take a look ahead to some interesting thing for 2010.

2009 was a fun year. I graduated with a degree in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin, made great progress on Entrustet, made some good friends and traveled to Europe with one of my best friends to visit another. I was in another great friend’s wedding, got my consulting company off the ground, saw some amazing sporting events and got more involved in Madison. I even stuck with my blog.

My Best Posts (in no order)

The Business School Way of Life

Is the Dollar America’s Achilles Heel?

America Doesn’t Plan for the Future

The Entrepreneurial Push

Every Startup Needs a Mentor Team

My Decade in Review

My Favorite Books (read, not written in 2009)

I’m looking forward to going to South Africa for the World Cup this summer, attending South By Southwest and continuing to work on Entrustet. I think 2010 will be another fun and interesting year for me. I hope your 2010 is too!

Predictions for 2010s

I know it’s just about impossible to look forward a few months, much less a year or even a decade, but here’s some guesses as to where we are headed.

2010

Gold will continue its rise in response to more US government debt creation
Developing countries continue to grow more quickly than developed countries.
Unemployment will become the biggest political problem next year, but entrepreneurs will be somewhat sheltered

Longer Term

The Reserve Status of US dollar will be called into question. Look for China and the rest of the world to continue to diversify away from US government debt. I don’t know when this will happen, but I can’t see any other solution to the US’s massive debt and unfunded liabilities.
At some point, bubbles in China, US debt and others may pop. This could lead to lower stock values and a resumption of the bear market.
China will move from manufacturer to the world toward one of the leading innovators. China will continue to assert itself on the political and economic stages. Look for their dominance in rare earth metals.
Entrepreneurs around the world will be successful, as large companies do not want to invest in new technologies and talent is cheap.

Will Millennials Put an End to “Gotcha Journalism” or Perpetuate It?

Category : Political Science & Economics, Technology
Posted on January 2, 2010 by Nathan Lustig

I think one of the most interesting stories of the 2010s will be whether my generation puts an end to “gotcha journalism” or makes the problem even worse than it is today.

The classic definition of gotcha journalism usually refers to an interview style where the interviewer tries to trap the interviewee into saying something that would be damaging to themselves or their cause. It has been around since the early 80s and became firmly rooted into our political and popular culture since then.

With the rise of the Internet, journalists, bloggers and citizens have taken gotcha journalism to new levels. The barrier to entry is much lower: instead of having to secure an interview with someone in order to trap the interviewee, the new breed of gotcha journalism uses the Internet to sift through all of the statements that a person has made in their entire life to try to paint them in a bad light.

Now, bloggers go through politicians’ every public statement for any misspeak or inaccuracy and then try to crucify them. It started with John Kerry being labeled a “flip-flopper,” moved to George Bush‘s butchering of the English language and more recently, led President Obama’s Green Energy Czar to quit because of statements he made almost ten years ago. When President Obama misspoke on the campaign trail, saying that he had visited all 57 states, right wing bloggers tried to make it seem like Obama was stupid. When Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene, left wing bloggers and some in the media sifted through her previous public statements to search for any inaccuracy.

It seems like 75% of the news stories I read about each day have to do with some politician getting raked over the coals for some statement he just made that is different from a statement he made a long time ago. Many times, the person leveling the charge is a fellow politician, along with the media and the blogosphere.

My generation is the first generation to be online from an early age. We first interacted with email, then instant messaging, then social networks and now blogs. We created (and are still creating) vast amounts of data about ourselves, much of which is stored online. We have archived AIM conversations from when we were in 6th grade, digital pictures from high school and college that are online and we all have our dumb Facebook wall posts that we made throughout our college years.

Many of us have blogs on wordpress or blogger and many more have microblogging accounts on services like Twitter where we make observations and pithy comments about our daily lives. I know I’ve changed alot since I was in 6th grade and I assume I will change almost as much between now and the end of the 2010s. During the next decade, as people in my generation get older and become leaders in business, politics and culture, will we still be subjected to gotcha journalism like our public figures are today?

One argument is that since everyone has all of this content online, we will become desensitized to people’s dumb or incorrect statements from when they were young. Everyone has pictures of themselves on Facebook that they wished never made it online. Everyone is going to have a poorly thought out wall post that could be taken out of context, or a pithy remark on Twitter that does not stand the test of time. Anyone who blogs about anything interesting will be majorly wrong about something. Will millennials become bored by the new gotcha journalism because everyone has something online that could make them look bad?

On the other hand, millennials may just make gotcha journalism even worse than it is today. Since everyone has created gigabytes of online content, bloggers and the media will have an easier time digging up dirt on anyone who enters the public eye. Imagine being able to see the new candidate for Governor at a boozy college party or getting a transcript of his AIM conversations with his best friend or girlfriend from high school. The media, bloggers and most of all, the citizens will eat this stuff up. Ratings will go up and everyone will be happy, execpt for the public feature.

I hope that my generation helps start the shift away from gotcha journalism. I can’t imagine being shocked by the vast majority of the dirt that someone would dig up about a public figure online. I hope that millennials are willing to allow people to change their opinion and not be called a flip-flopper. I hope we will cut public figures some slack when their college photos get published to the major blogs and their old blog posts come back to haunt them. I’m not optimistic, but I am hopeful. If not, we will have some really boring politicians, business leaders and public figures!

Do you think millenials will help stop gotcha journalism or do you think the problem will get worse?