Rocketboom-er Andrew Baron eschews journalism label and talks about expansion of daily video blog in an MGP interview

In web and multimedia
Rocketboom-er Andrew Baron eschews journalism label and talks about expansion of daily video blog in an MGP interview
By Bill Densmore, MGP Staff
May 14, 2006, 10:27

LINK TO AUDIO / MGP PROFILE PAGE / SUMMIT NEWS

Andrew M. Baron was a relatively obscure presidential campaign worker for Democrat John Edwards in 2004, working on Internet streaming video campaign spots when he began to notice a change in how users were reacting. Instead of complaining about dropped connections, stop-and-start pictures and slow downloads, they started commenting on what Edwards was saying.

Baron, 35, realized -- he says now he thinks he was a little ahead of the market -- that Internet broadband adoption in the United States was finally making full-motion video a viable medium for conveying political -- and other messages.

Why not, thought Baron, start a daily, three-minute, edgy, capsule summary of undiscovered news and insight that would be streamed over the Internet? After the 2004 campaign, Rocketboom was born in late 2004, and by April 2006 it claimed 350,000 or more unique daily users.

In an April 9, 2006 with The Media Giraffe Project which focuses on his motivation and prospects for sustainability. The entire interview is available as an MP3 audio download, broken into two segments.

In the first, about 14 minutes, Baron talks about his evolution from Bates College undergraduate to technology worker with IBM and other firms in Texas, to the fusing of interests in technology, theater and art in Brooklyn, to Democratic political worker and Rocketboom founder with now business partner, Amanda Congdon, 24. He talks about how the duo finds and selects stories, Rocketboom as "journalism" (or not) and how the creative process functions as would a musical band.

In the second, about 23 minutes, Baron talks about the Rocketboom business opportunity and plummeting bandwith costs, the five revenue legs of advertising, sponsorship, subscription, merchandising and licensing; how mainstream media companies, shocked by changes in the music industry, are moving fast on Internet video; about who owns Rocketboom and why they don't need a business visionary to grow it; the decision to refuse venture-capital money, and details of how advertising is working.

So far, Rocketboom hasn't spawned any additional shows. But they hope to do so -- both topical niches and perhaps geographic ones. Baron sees hyper-local neighborhood news as the only real geographical news frontier. "We are probably not going to be starting out at that level but whether we end up at that level, I don't know," he says.

Link to MPG audio interviews: http://newshare.typepad.com/mediagiraffe/2006/05/audiofounder_an.html

"Basically, we don't approach anything in terms of journalistic integrity," says Baron. "We're not trained journalists and that's definitely not what we were thinking." Baron is aware that journalism schools are studying their daily three-minute video cast and trying to cast it as journalism of fact or opinion, or something else. He says their focus is not about telling all sides of a story. He says he and Congdon don't believe in a traditional concept of "objectivity."

"We don't know what's right or what's best, we're just showing you what we see and let's leave it open for you to decide yourself," he says. "We're not trying to hide anything and say you should believe in this one side. We're just simply saying here's a side to the story."

POLICE BRUTALITY -- WAS IT JOURNALISM?

For example, in one May 20, 2005 video segment he recalls, Congdon began a traditional news report on a collapsed Brooklyn building, then segued to the nearby apartment of a teen-ager who alleged he had been beaten by police. Viewers blogged comments about why Rocketboom hadn't told the police view of the incident. "We didn't say this kid is right," says Baron. "We just said here's his story." Because of the content, Congdon and Baron went beyond the normal three-minute time and ran the piece for 10 minutes, ending with a stand-up plea by Congdon for any viewers who could help the teen-ager and his family to get in touch with Rocketboom.

Here's a link to the segment:

http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/archives/2005/05/rb_05_may_20.html

In her own blog comment, linked from the video page, Congdon responded to the critics. She wrote:

"Herein lies the problem with main stream media. They portray us (Rocketboom) like we want to overthrow regular journalism. We don't. We are a show. And we are biased. We CAN and WILL show only one side of a story if we so desire. If you are looking for typical "journalism" you won't find it here. PLEASE point to us and tell everyone why we are NOT the future of regular journalism. That is not what we are intending to do here. But, for the record, I approached three or four different police officers from that precinct yesterday. None of them would speak to us. If anyone else would like to pursue them—do so! By all means. But I am not interested in chasing after them."

In one of 70 comments to that single episode -- most of them deeply thoughtful and diverse, a viewer comments in reply:

"Loving the fact that you're wearing your heart and opinions on your sleeve. Who isn't biased? The notion that a person with a camera is unbiased is ridiculous. I prefer to know the opinion of those who are giving me my news."

Other commentators longed for Rocketboom to followup on the story, but most felt the coverage was worth doing in the hope others would pick up the thread. One commentator looked to dictionary definitions of journalism and news and concluded both were satisfied by the Congdon report.

More comments, including perspectives on the challenges police face, are at: http://www.metadaddy.org/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=4789

(There is no indication whether there has been any follow-up on the case. )

The police-brutality story is neither typical nor unusual for a five-day newscast which at the Rocketboom website's "about" page says the duo intends to "cover and create a wide range of information and commentary from top news stories to quirky internet culture . . . With a heavy emphasis on international arts, technology and weblog drama . . . . "

Baron says simply they pick what sparks their interest from their own experiences in Manhattan, and from a growing cadre of video correspondents who send in material from elsewhere. He says the one thing they will not do is misrepresent facts -- even as they say they are resolutely willing to do subjective commentary on those facts.

As for politics, Baron calls himself a "middle-of-the-road Democrat" who was more intent in 2004 on defeating George Bush than electing anyone else in particular.

NEW MEDIA AND BUSINESS

The excitement of Rocketboom for Baron -- aside from triple-digit viewer traffic growth -- is more than just defining a new genre of journalism. It's about the world of new media and business. In the Media Giraffe interview, Baron talks about the sustainability of the Rocketboom approach. The issue is not as much financial as creative, he says, and it is the creative aspect, which challenges the Congdon-Baron duo's ability to expand Rocketboom as a business.

"The hardest part about Rocketboom that makes it hard for us to do is the daily creative stress," Baron says, "It's what I always imagine a cartoonist or the guy that wrote Peanuts. We don't always end up creating the brilliant thing. The creative process makes it hard to pass off [what we do] to somebody else." Baron compares the process to having a small musical band where each member brings something integral to the whole and any other small group would make different music -- or different video without formula. That said, however, the Rocketboom-ers still intend to develop other versions which serve both topic -- and perhaps even geographical -- niches.

"[Web video] is a phenomenal business for anybody," says Baron. "It is like the new hope of the American dream for everybody in the world in a way, at least for now. With Rocketboom . . . we are able to generate our content for next to nothing. It used to cost millions and millions of dollars to do what we're doing now for a few bucks, literally."

PLUMMETING BANDWIDTH ONLY MAJOR COST

And the only large non-staff cost is coming down. When he started in December 2004, Baron says he was paying to Rocketboom's Internet service provider a dollar for every gigabyte of data transferred to viewers -- a significant figure when dealing with streaming video. By April 2006, he says, the competitive market rate was down to 15 cents. Because the major input has been sweat equity, the Rocketboom team -- which includes just a handful of people besides the duo, has been able to hang on financially until this year, when significant advertising deals are starting to kick in. As a result, they have eschewed venture-capital money or bank loans -- not wanting to give up any creative or business control.

For example, earlier this year Rocketboom created a flurry of publicity for itself when it used eBay to auction off a week of pre-program full-motion video ad spots for what ultimately was $40,000. But it wasn't just a one-shot cash infusion, because Baron says that the day after they picked the winning bidder -- Earthlink -- they entered negotiations with 15 also-ran bidders who wanted to advertise too -- having just established a sense of value.

"We called all of the other 15 bidders and said 'Hey let's start a relationship,' and now we don't even have to go out and solicit, everybody just keeps calling, we just answer the phone for ad sales. Each one is taking a long time; because they have to be educated, understand what's going on. We have to justify the high value. It's going perfectly. We have all the stuff on the table that is major... between the ad money that we just made from all that plus the trickling in from all the licensing stuff we kind of made it over the hump."

"So if we're only spending $25 bucks a day and it is only a couple of us and we are making $8,000 or $10,000 a day, that is a huge margin of profitability," he says.

Rocketboom has done no traditional marketing, replying on the web and word of mouth. And so the challenge is how to pick among five possible revenues -- advertising, sponsorship, subscription, merchandising and licensing -- to finance additional shows and forays into other media forms such as videocasts to cell phones, PDAs and even over traditional cable networks for on-demand delivery. While looking at multimedia options, advertising is taking off fastest.

AUDIENCE BIGGER THAN TV?

"We're having numbers of audiences that are staring to exceed the numbers of TV audiences," says Baron. "We also have niche audiences. For example if you have a tennis show, and Wilson tennis racquet advertising that is going to match perfectly with your set of people. There are all these different styles of shows."

Still untapped by Rocketboom is the possibility of launching a premium service for which viewers might conceivably pay. Run the numbers, suggests Baron. "If 10,000 of the site's 350,000 plus viewers are willing to subscribe for $5 a month, that's $50,000 a month," he observes. "Because video technology is now so cheap, and the audience forgiving of production values, "that could take care of a whole entire show and more," says Baron.

Managing the five-stream revenue options is a strategic challenge. And Baron says the duo thought initially they need a professional manager to do that for them. But recently he says they've concluded they may understand the Internet marketplace well enough themselves to make fast, strategic decisions ("It's took risk for traditional capital to operate like that," he says), and what they really needed is operational help with the nuts and bolts like selling ads and negotiating licensing and distribution deals. And it's THEIR decision -- Baron says he and Congdon are the sole equity owners of Rocketboom and they are "pretty much for the most part equal partners."

He continues: "We're trying to figure out who we're looking for and why because neither of us has much business experience at all . . . we haven't met anybody yet that shares the vision. We'd like to find somebody to help."

RETURN TO MGP PROFILE PAGE:

http://www.mediagiraffe.org/profiles/index.php?action=profile&id=355

NOVEMBER 2005 INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL BARON descsribing the production
process for Rocketboom:
http://www.tuaw.com/2005/11/03/interview-with-andrew-baron-from-rocketboom/

NPR INTERVIEW:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5398075

Blog wrapup of Rocketbook interview links:

http://slfuturesalon.blogs.com/second_life_future_salon/2005/06/rocketbooms_ama.html

Video:

http://www.corante.com/events/feedfest/archives/2005/05/06/rocketboom.php

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