Building the stacks for a mutualised newspaper

Building the
stacks for
a mutualised
newspaper
Dr Chris Thorpe

BUILDING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER

For those of you who were at FOWA last year you’ll remember that Kevin Rose of Digg gave a talk on
the future of online news, today I’m going to be talking about the future of online news as seen from
within another “startup” in this space, The Guardian. We are kind of like a startup at the moment as the
structural pressure and disruption in this space is making us reinvent things. But we have to think a lot
about our audience and our legacy.

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/
JAGGEREE/


In our building at Kings Cross which we’re reminded of the past and tradition everywhere with
historical objects and this wonderful facsimile of the ﬁrst edition of The Manchester Guardian.

JAGGEREE/


And in many ways this looks like a newspaper of today. It has articles that remind us of previous
difficult ﬁnancial times

JAGGEREE/


It has adverts, although I’m not sure we run many truss adverts these days

JAGGEREE/


and it has a cover price


printing
FOURWALKS/

press to
clouds and
wires
but what’s
changed?
and what
needs to
change


and although clouds and wires are how the majority of our readership gets their news from us rather
than the print edition, what’s changed from the days of the printing press


printing
FOURWALKS/

press to
clouds and
wires
but what’s
changed?
and what
needs to
change


and in many ways in times of massive structural change in the industry, what needs to change

LWR/

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


the newspaper as we know it is a product of the industrial age, an age in which the majority of mass
produced goods of which newspapers and other mass media are examples could be described by these
four words

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation

HTTP://FPC.DOS.STATE.FL.US/
GENERAL/N035050.JPG

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


ﬁrstly let’s talk about physical printed newspapers
this is the Miami Herald newsroom in the 1950s

BENTERRETT/

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


and although our new printing presses are bigger and more automated they’re still a direct line
descendent from the Stanhope press that printed the ﬁrst edition

PICTURING_IT/

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


and we still distribute to outlets

SLIMJIM/

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


and out from those outlets to street corners and homes in a distribution network we can sometimes
brand and claim

JAYCOXFILM/

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


in some cultures there are local drop off points

JAYCOXFILM/

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


and hyperlocal drop off points on the drive, in the mailbox or by the front door,

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


and clearly there is monetisation on the print edition in the cover price, adverts and paid supplements

so how does it change in the digital era, the newpaper made of bits, what are its current metaphors for
creation, fabrication and distribution

JAGGEREE/

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


actually our current digital newsroom looks a lot like the 1950 Miami Herald’s, there are more Macs
obviously

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


we have a wonderful offset printing press, it’s R2 our Content Management System, it’s a faster than a
physical printing press and allows us to create in theory an inﬁnite number of printings every day, but
it does the same task

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


And we have our own distribution network with our collection of sites

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


we have local delivery through “full fat” RSS feeds

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


and we have hyperlocal on mobile

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


and we’re part of digital versions of newsagents, news aggregators

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


and there is monetisation through adverts

disruption


but we are living in a time of mass disruption of the mass media industry, a disruption borne of the
economic climate, the reduction of advertising efficacy and spend and also due to changes in user
behaviours and intents

HTTP://WWW.INTERNET-
MANIFESTO.ORG/


people are writing well thought out manifestos that many people are reading

HTTP://WWW.TNR.COM/ARTICLE/
GOODBYE-THE-AGE-NEWSPAPERS-
HELLO-NEW-ERA-CORRUPTION
Published on The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com)

Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers
(Hello to a New Era of Corruption)
Why American politics and society are about to be changed for the worse.
Paul Starr March 4, 2009 | 12:00 am

I.

We take newspapers for granted. They have been so integral a part of daily life
in America, so central to politics and culture and business, and so powerful and
profitable in their own right, that it is easy to forget what a remarkable historical
invention they are. Public goods are notoriously under-produced in the
marketplace, and news is a public good--and yet, since the mid-nineteenth
century, newspapers have produced news in abundance at a cheap price to readers
and without need of direct subsidy. More than any other medium, newspapers
have been our eyes on the state, our check on private abuses, our civic alarm
systems. It is true that they have often failed to perform those functions as well as
they should have done. But whether they can continue to perform them at all is
now in doubt.

Even before the recession hit, the newspaper industry was facing a mortal threat
from the rise of the Internet, falling circulation and advertising revenue, and a
long-term decline in readership, as the habit of buying a daily paper dwindled
from one generation to the next. The recession has intensified these difficulties,
plunging newspapers into a tailspin from which some may not recover and others
will emerge only as a shadow of their former selves. The devastation is already
substantial. At the Los Angeles Times, the cumulative effect of cutbacks has been to
reduce its newsroom by one-half--and that was before its parent company, Page 1 of 27
http://www.tnr.com/print/article/goodbye-the-age-newspapers-hello-new-era-corruption

Some people are suggesting that there is a dystopian future for newspapers and people are talking
about the political and societal consequences of that happening

The challenges facing mass media go far deeper in many ways than the current ﬁnancial climate and
difficulties in the advertising industry,

HTTP://TWITTER.COM/MCCOMB/
STATUS/3837637942


and mass media bolt on solutions to the problem will possibly not be the solution

in 1991 the very missed Douglas Adams wrote very presciently about the cause of the disruption we’re
seeing

TPHOLLAND/

“During [the twentieth] century we have
for the first time been dominated by non-
interactive forms of entertainment:
cinema, radio, recorded music and
television. Before they came along all
entertainment was interactive: theatre,
music, sport—the performers and
audience were there together, and even a
respectfully silent audience exerted a
powerful shaping presence on the
unfolding of whatever drama they were
there for. We didn’t need a special word
for interactivity in the same way that we
don’t (yet) need a special word for people
with only one head.”
Douglas Adams


“During [the twentieth] century we have for the ﬁrst time been dominated by non-interactive
forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along
all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport—the performers and audience were
there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence
on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for. We didn’t need a special word for
interactivity in the same way that we don’t (yet) need a special word for people with only one
head.”

mass media could well be a 20th century abberation

--STROMBERG--/

bi-directionality


The root cause of the disruption is bi-directionality

People are themselves creating, curating, linking, sharing and it has profound implications for centrally
controlled mass media

BABYCREATIVE/

be part of
disruption


There are three ways of reacting to this sort of disruption,

one is to ignore it,
another to try and control it,
the third is to embrace it and to try and ﬁnd ways to enable it or be a part of it

that’s the route we’re going down

mutualisation


This word is core to a lot of our thinking on how to “be” as a relevant 21st century newspaper or news
organisation.

Alan Rushbridger, our editor, talks a lot about the “mutualised newspaper” from my title


We’re fortunate to have cartoonists at The Guardian who can illustrate points so clearly

Andrzej Krauze has described Alan’s vision of a 20th century newspaper in this cartoon with the
journalists within the solid walls of the newspaper throwing out content to the audience, hitting some


and has also drawn what we think newspapers should be more like, where there is “reach throughable
space” between reader and journalism.

Alan talks a lot about lowering walls between journalists and readers

HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/
MUTUALISM_(ECONOMIC_THEORY)

Mutualism is an anarchist school of
thought which can be traced to the
writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
who envisioned a society where
each person might possess a means
of production, either individually or
collectively, with trade representing
equivalent amounts of labor in the
free market.


there are many deﬁnitions of mutual, mutuality and mutualism, many of which concern building
societies, but this is my personal favourite from Wikipedia

“anarchist” the right feel for the internet and

“a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively”
sounds a lot like Web2.0 to me so I think we’re on the right track with mutual

creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


so let’s deconstruct these four industrial actions in this new mutual future and see what we’re doing to
each of them

co-creation
fabrication
distribution
monetisation


clearly creation should be co-creation and I’ve got a great example of it to show

g20


It’s the G20 protests and their rather tragic outcome

The G20 was one of the most photographed events in history, certainly in the density of cameras


from the professional photographers


to the cameras from within the protestors


to bystanders who are photobloggers like Roo Reynolds from the BBC who was “kettled” when he went
to see what was going on between meetings


The story obviously took a sad turn with the death of Ian Tomlinson which one of our journalists Paul
Lewis felt was both tragic and suspicious.

He felt strongly that the official version of events didn’t quite match.


and through Twitter and his news pieces started to ask for any photos and footage about the event


which lead to this now famous piece of video camera phone footage emerging and being presented on
our site

this story needed involvement from a partnership between journalists and an active readership to
emerge

co-creation
co-fabrication
distribution
monetisation


the next thing to mutualize is clearly fabrication and actually we think it goes hand in hand with

co-creation
co-fabrication
co-distribution
monetisation


distribution and we think the only way to really do this part is to open up and open out to developers


and that’s why in March we launched The Open Platform is our thinking and efforts to make it possible
for developers to build applications with The Guardian, there are currently two parts to this strategy
with more emerging early next year to add to our ecosystem

Content API
DataStore


the Content API, which contains XML, JSON and ATOM representations of all The Guardian articles we
have rights for dating back to 1991, approximately 1 million articles for you to make applications out
of

Content API
DataStore


DataStore beautifully curated datasets to use in applications and visualisations. there is obviously a lot
of data freely available on the internet, but some of it may be of unknown provenance. The Data Store
is our response to that, just as the newspaper is curated news.

PIGSAW/

Weaving The Guardian
into the fabric of the
internet.

Matt McAlister


Matt McAlister, head of the project set out this premise for the Open Platform at the launch

PSD/

“into not on,
cool”

Gavin Bell


Gavin Bell from Nature was sitting next to me and said “into not on, cool” and this is such a key and
important distinction.

It relates totally to the mutuality of the interaction, if we were simply standing on the shoulders of
others we would have less relevance to the internet over a longer trajectory than we can generate
where Guardian articles, data and code are avaialble for developers to build on and build with.

JAMIN2/

I’m not bowled over much these days.
But Guardian Open Platform is a
chasmic leap into the future. It is a
work of simplistic beauty that I’m sure
will have a dramatic impact in the news
market. The Guardian is already a
market leader in the online space but
Open Platform is revolutionary. It
makes all of their major competitors
look timid.
Governments should be doing this.
Governments will be doing it. The
question is how long will it take us to
catch up.
Tom Watson MP


This quote from Tom Watson MP was also a memorable one from our day of launch. For those of you
who don’t know Tom he is basically the ﬁrst minister of geek and is dearly missed since he left the
cabinet earlier in the year.

I’m not bowled over much these days. But Guardian Open Platform is a chasmic leap into the future. It
is a work of simplistic beauty that I’m sure will have a dramatic impact in the news market. The
Guardian is already a market leader in the online space but Open Platform is revolutionary. It makes all
of their major competitors look timid.

Governments should be doing this. Governments will be doing it. The question is how long will it take
us to catch up.

Tom Watson MP

over 1000 datasets
data.hmg.gov.uk for developers
uk-government-data-developers
to code a better
on Google Groups country


Well that day came yesterday and the answer is about 6 months from our launch in March.

I encourage you to sign up to uk-government-data-developers on Google Groups.

They’re in a preview phase at the moment and they want your help to make the service better.

There are over 1000 datasets there, several of them as full RDFa linked data.

They’re doing it for the same reasons we are, wonderful and unexpected things happen when you open
up. No matter how many amazingly smart people you can amass within your building, statistically there
will always be more on the outside.

Content API
DataStore


So what have people been making

HTTP://WWW.SCULPTURE.ORG.UK/


so let’s have a quick look at some of those applications and you can see immediately what we mean
about co-distribution

this is one of the applications from our launch. this is a small art foundation in Sussex which has
always tried to punch above its weight online

in fact this is the artist page for Antony Gormley whose work is currently gracing the plinth in Trafalgar
Square.

they’ve wanted to have news on their site for many years, but news is hard to do well. it was added to
their site in about 3 hours

JOHN ATKIN this page | share this page
email

HTTP://WWW.SCULPTURE.ORG.UK/ NICK BARBERTON
OLIVER BARRATT
BEN BARRELL
GLENYS BARTON Recent News Mentioning Antony Gormley
ZADOK BEN-DAVID Search

RODNEY BENDER
home news about current work programme MATHIAS visit us
boutique BENGTSSON contact us
HAMISH BLACK Plinth consorts
Antony Gormley IVAN BLACK published 9 days ago
HELAINE BLUMENFELD this artist
Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950. After more information about
commissioning
schooling at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire,MATT on
he went BODIMEADE
since its establishment in 1992,
the charity has annually
to complete a degree in Archaeology, Anthropology and
History of Art at Trinity College, Cambridge, between the BOEPPLE
WILLARD
I've got my hour on the plinth, but what should I do up there?
commissioned 20 exemplary
monumental sculptures from
years of 1968-71. Following his graduation, Gormley
travelled to India and Sri Lanka to study Buddhism for BROWN
KEITH The first winners of the draw to spend an hour as sculptor Antony Gormley's
emerging and established three years. On his return to London, in 1974, he other works from this artist
contemporary sculptors. RALPH BROWN
attended Central School of Art and Goldsmith's College
before completing a postgraduate course in sculpture at BROWN
fourth statue in Trafalgar Square have been revealed. Our arts correspondent
SANDY
Slade School of Art between 1977 and 1979.
JON BUCK Vanessa Thorpe is among them
lending Gormley's work has revivified the way in which the
our resource of 80 monumental PETER BURKE
human form is appropriated. Frequently using his own body as the subject of his published 9 days ago
sculptures are now available on work, Gormley's innovative use of the body, as a vessel for memory and Bollards (Oval, Snowman,
short and long term loan for a ANDREW BURTON
transformation, explores the collective body and the relationship between self and Peg, Penis)
other. His investigation into the human condition has been realised in highly 2001
monthly fee.
SAM BUXTON
acclaimed large-scale installations such as Critical Mass (1995), Allotment (1997), Antony Gormley's coastline, Crosby, Merseyside: Walk ID 256
Inside Australia (2002), Domain Field (2003), Another Place (2005), and his most
recent exhibition, Blind Light (2007). TESSA CAMPBELL FRASER
selling ANTHONY CARO published 17 days ago
Celebrated internationally, Gormley has had solo and group exhibitions in Europe,
all of the sculptures on the
Scandinavia, America, Japan and Australia. His sculptures have been acquired byCHADWICK from the Cass
LYNN publications
foundation's grounds are available many public and private collections around the world. In 1994 he was awarded the Sculpture Foundation
for sale, profits from these sales
are split equally between the artist
Turner Prize and in 1999 he won the South Bank Prize for Visual Art. In 1997
Gormley was made an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to
MICHAEL CHALLENGER Set in stone
ANN CHRISTOPHER
and the foundation, and directly
enable future commissions.
sculpture and in 2003 he became a Royal Academician. In 2007 he was awarded
the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture. He continues to fulfil his roles as an
ROBIN CONNELLY
'Somebody will be exhibiting a bunch of bananas in a gallery, and they'll get
Honorary Fellow at the Royal Institute of British Architects; Trinity College,

More Information
Cambridge and Jesus College, Cambridge, and his trustee positions at the British
Museum and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. TERRENCE COVENTRY me on the radio to talk dirty about it'
Photograph by Lars Gundersen
STEPHEN COX for Twenty-First
A Vision published 17 days ago
TONY CRAGG Sculpture
Century

More Resources on Antony Gormley BILL CULBERT
ANTHONY ABRAHAMS
IVOR ABRAHAMS BETH CULLEN
How these men will honour the 7 July dead in this royal corner of London
JANE ACKROYD
EDWARD ALLINGTON
DAVID ANNESLEY www.antonygormley.com MAGGIE CULLEN Designing a memorial to the 7 July bomb victims was never going to be easy,
KENNETH ARMITAGE Wikipedia entry for Antony Gormley
JOHN ATKIN
NICK BARBERTON
EUAN CUNNINGHAM but Kevin Carmody and Andrew Groarke's Hyde Park project is a fine balance
OLIVER BARRATT GEORGE CUTTS Goodwood |
Sculpture at
BEN BARRELL
GLENYS BARTON
ZADOK BEN-DAVID
Recent News Mentioning Antony Gormley
GRENVILLE DAVEY
British Contemporary
Sculpture 02/03
of simplicity and power
RODNEY BENDER
MATHIAS BENGTSSON JOHN DAVIES published 23 days ago
HAMISH BLACK Plinth consorts
IVAN BLACK
HELAINE BLUMENFELD
published 9 days ago IAN DAWSON
MATT BODIMEADE
WILLARD BOEPPLE
I've got my hour on the plinth, but what should I do up there? PAUL DAY publications from amazon.co.uk Kurt Schwitters, the great dadaist of Cumbria
The first winners of the draw to spend an hour as sculptor Antony Gormley's
KEITH BROWN
RALPH BROWN RICHARD DEACON
fourth statue in Trafalgar Square have been revealed. Our arts correspondent
SANDY BROWN
JON BUCK Vanessa Thorpe is among them PIERRE DIAMANTOPOULO Kurt Schwitters, a star of the dada movement, wanted to turn this barn into
PETER BURKE published 9 days ago
ANDREW BURTON
SAM BUXTON Antony Gormley's coastline, Crosby, Merseyside: Walk ID 256
STEVE DILWORTH 'the ultimate artwork'. Now Damien Hirst is campaigning to get it restored. By
TESSA CAMPBELL FRASER
CRAIG DOWNIE
ANTHONY CARO
LYNN CHADWICK
MICHAEL CHALLENGER
published 17 days ago

Set in stone EVA DREWETT
Philip Oltermann
ANN CHRISTOPHER
ROBIN CONNELLY
'Somebody will be exhibiting a bunch of bananas in a gallery, and they'll get
EDWARD DUTKIEWICZ
Anthony Gormley published 1 month, 26 days ago
TERRENCE COVENTRY me on the radio to talk dirty about it'
STEPHEN COX
TONY CRAGG
published 17 days ago
IAIN EDWARDS
Antony Gormley invites applicants to stand on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth
BILL CULBERT
BETH CULLEN
How these men will honour the 7 July dead in this royal corner of London NIGEL ELLIS
MAGGIE CULLEN Designing a memorial to the 7 July bomb victims was never going to be easy,
EUAN CUNNINGHAM but Kevin Carmody and Andrew Groarke's Hyde Park project is a fine balance EVANS
GARTH
GEORGE CUTTS
of simplicity and power published 2 months, 2 days ago
GRENVILLE DAVEY
JOHN DAVIES published 23 days ago ABIGAIL FALLIS
IAN DAWSON
PAUL DAY Kurt Schwitters, the great dadaist of Cumbria IAN HAMILTON FINLAY
RICHARD DEACON
PIERRE DIAMANTOPOULO
STEVE DILWORTH
Kurt Schwitters, a star of the dada movement, wanted to turn this barn into
'the ultimate artwork'. Now Damien Hirst is campaigning to get it restored. By
Inside Australia
ROSE FINN-KELCEY Life as monumental art
CRAIG DOWNIE
EVA DREWETT
Philip Oltermann
published 1 month, 26 days ago
MARK FIRTH Antony Gormley is inviting 2,400 people to stand on the fourth plinth in
EDWARD DUTKIEWICZ
LAURA FORD
IAIN EDWARDS
NIGEL ELLIS
GARTH EVANS
Antony Gormley invites applicants to stand on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth
published 2 months, 2 days ago SUE FREEBOROUGH Trafalgar Square for an hour – what would you do?
ABIGAIL FALLIS
IAN HAMILTON FINLAY
ROSE FINN-KELCEY Life as monumental art ELISABETH FRINK published 2 months, 2 days ago
MARK FIRTH
LAURA FORD
Antony Gormley is inviting 2,400 people to stand on the fourth plinth in WILLIAM FURLONGMaking an Angel
SUE FREEBOROUGH Trafalgar Square for an hour – what would you do?
ELISABETH FRINK published 2 months, 2 days ago STEVE GELIOT Different class, the pair of them
WILLIAM FURLONG
STEVE GELIOT Different class, the pair of them BRUCE GERNAND
BRUCE GERNAND
JOHN GIBBONS
ANDY GOLDSWORTHY
The relationship between pop stars and artists can be famously intense. So
what, asks Miranda Sawyer, can they take from each other? JOHN GIBBONS The relationship between pop stars and artists can be famously intense. So
ANTONY GORMLEY
LEE GRANDJEAN
JOHN GREED
published 2 months, 4 days ago
ANDY GOLDSWORTHY what, asks Miranda Sawyer, can they take from each other?
STEVEN GREGORY Every picture tells a story ANTONY GORMLEY published 2 months, 4 days ago
MARTIN GRIFFITHS Eight pop stars reveal the art that has most inspired them, from 60s legends
CHARLES HADCOCK
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and surrealist dolls to outrageous manga sculpture LEE GRANDJEAN
published 2 months, 4 days ago
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STEVEN GREGORY Every picture tells a story
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BUILDINGKING THE STACKS FOR A MUTUALISED NEWSPAPER
MANFRED KIELNHOFER
DAVID KING
PHILLIP
BRYAN KNEALE
DAVID HARVEY
JASON HARVEY
so now they have news from The Guardian, their content is enriched, and The Guardian gets reach and
DANNY LANE
LANGLANDS AND BELL
WILLIAM LASDUN
LAYTON AND MOSS THOMAS HEATHERWICK
BILLY LEE

show 10 more SEAN HENRY
new audiences, these guys have a large following in the USA and Japan who are now exposed to our
LILIANE LIJN
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content
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we think empowering niche markets which are very monetisable is a key way for the Open Platform to
BARRY MASON
SALLY MATTHEWS
CHARLOTTE MAYER
ALLEN JONES
JULIAN MAYOR
BRIDGET MCCRUM ANISH KAPOOR

be used
BERNARD MEADOWS
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GAVIN TURK
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Find a Random Artist DHRUVA MISTRY
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HTTP://WWW.MYECODNA.COM


This is a really great integration from MyEcoDNA who are building practical tailored guides for what
you can do to reduce your environmental impact and they’re enhancing their content with content from
The Guardian.

HTTP://WWW.GUARDIAN.CO.UK/
GREEN-AD-NETWORK


We also have a green ad network which focusses on sustainability and ethical leadership. The two
become a strong and mutual ﬁt with co-monetisation opportunities.

Content and accompanying ad networks is a powerful combination for niches like the environment


Another great and topical integration involves these two gentlemen, the one on the right is Alberto
Nardelli who runs Tweetminster


Tweetminster is a service which collates the messages of MPs, Parliamentary Candidates and official
sources into a real-time newswire


and they can then use the dataset for time-series analytics, showing the trending of keywords, which
can in turn be annotated with content from The Guardian showing what the news stories were at that
time. Clearly here it was other people having expenses scrutinised.

These are just a couple of sample applications and today we’re rolling live a way you can browse them
and see what’s being made and also be inspired to join in yourselves


Today we’ve just launched an App Gallery as a showcase for everything being built with the Open
Platform, using the Content API and the second part of the offering, the Data Store

Content API
DataStore


DataStore beautifully curated datasets to use in applications and visualisations


One great example is this dataset which powers the visualisation of UK government spending. Until
yesterday this was a totally unique dataset, so much so that Number 10 requested a copy of this
image.


And behind each of this form of infographic there is data, and often more data than in the infographic.
The DataBlog and DataStore are our way of surfacing and disseminating this data.


And within each datablog entry there is a link to the data


Each entry has a link to a Google Spreadsheet for the data for you to use and visualise and people like
Tony Hirst have been showing us how to do amazing things with Google Spreadsheet. There is often
more data in here than in the infographic


as David McCandless has playfully done here where he’s taken our data on Illegal Drug use, combined
it with data on happiness index rating from another source to show the overlaps, althought as he says
“Just for fun, correlation is not cause”


and there is a lovely ﬂickr community building around visualisations of DataStore data


and we try to add in topical datasets such as these ones about Gordon Brown’s and Peter Mandelson’s
speeches as the Labour Party Conference


and the data on word counts is there for you to make things

co-creation
co-fabrication
co-distribution
monetisation


needs to be a whole stack, not just software, not just creation, everything needs to be mutual...

co-creation
co-fabrication
co-distribution
co-monetisation


we think we know what it mutual monetisation looks like


these are the top 25 ad networks in the US, they’re huge

even the lesser known ones are enormous. as one part of our monetisation strategy we’re working with
some of our partners who are taking full text content for them to take adverts accompanying that
content and sharing in the revenue.

there are of course other monetisation strategies possible and some which will be thought up by our
partners with whom we’re crowdsourcing new business models

co-creation
co-fabrication
co-distribution
co-monetisation


We’re interested in co-fabrication internally as well as what other people can do with our APIs. We’re
interested in how we can use toolkits, APIs and cloud solutions to help us when we need to build
things. And we aim to give back through open sourcing where we can.

PDCAWLEY/

You can now build
working software in less
time than it takes to
have the meeting to
describe it.

Simon Willison


The other comment I remember clearly from our launch day is this one from Simon Willison.

DRDUL/

not all
things
have equal
speeds


But I don’t think Simon is misunderstanding the problems of engineering vast pieces of software which
have to scale... not at all, its just that as all software development has it’s own velocity, sometimes
pieces of software need a long gestation period sometimes a short one

It also relates totally to scale as well, scaling is something which is very commonly on our minds at The
Guardian

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11
7/7
G20
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

Some events happen which have drammatic effects on us as a newspaper

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11
7/7
G20
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

Sporting events

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11
7/7
G20
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11
7/7
G20
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

World events we have no warning of

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11
7/7
G20
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

some have a periodicity and we can plan for them

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11
7/7
G20
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

and some are cultural

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11
7/7
G20
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

they all share similar patterns though

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11
7/7 High load
G20
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

there are some events where we need to handle high load

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11
7/7 High
G20 interactivity
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

interestingly these are also often high interactivity

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11 Temporary
7/7 (but need
G20 archiving)
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

they’re also often temporary

Olympics
World Cup
Wimbledon
9/11
7/7 Social
G20
Elections
Budget
Glastonbury
Edinburgh Festival

social sharing is becoming a huge factor in this as well, it’s mutual distribution, earlier Cat from
Facebook talked about some of our experimetation with Facebook Connect

social apps are also important and have impact on scalability as they reduce cacheability

Adding features
Traditionally to platform
this would Buying many more
be solved servers to cope
by: with peak load
Complex caching
layers


there are ways people have always tried to deal with this, this adds unnecessary code to support within
the codebase and ties the schedule to external events

Adding features
by: with peak load
Complex caching
layers


this is wasteful, both ﬁscally and for the environment

Adding features
by: with peak load
Complex caching
layers


and this is often just very complicated to do

MIKEBAIRD/

picking the
right tool
for the
right job


content management systems have a lot in common with container ships. they do one thing very very
well, they scalably hold and deliver speciﬁc things, and speciﬁc size and shape things, reliably,
reproducibly, securely

however, they’re not designed to be nimble and carry small odd shaped parcels which are very timely,
for that you need

ROBWALLACE/

picking the
right tool
for the
right job


a speedboat, what you actually need is many different types of vessels

What I’m deﬁnitely not saying is that CMS’s are wrong, it’s just that for speciﬁc tasks they may not be
entirely the right thing.


what you really need is a spread of things, this is why International Rescue is so successful, it has a
variety of tools large and small to do a variety of jobs, yet most publishing systems are either
completely ﬁxed on doing one thing in particular or are kludged to do many things not so well


what you really need is a spread of things, this is why International Rescue is so successful, it has a
variety of tools large and small to do a variety of jobs, yet most publishing systems are either
completely ﬁxed on doing one thing in particular or are kludged to do many things not so well

Much of our thinking as well has to do with the speed you sometimes have to do things and how long
these systems are used for. Sporting events have a reasonable lead time and so the large scale systems
for them can be built over the same process length that you would build a CMS, other things have a
short lead time and a high missed-opportunity cost.

sometimes
you have
to exceed
the speed
limit


sometimes opportunities arise which mean that you have to react quickly and in a nimble or agile way
and you know that what you make will have a high impact but a short lifespan but the missed
opportunity cost is huge

MP’s expenses


and one of those is of course MP’s expenses


where a large collection of redacted documents were made available, about 450,000 of them.

this is a huge number of documents and a huge number of line items within them, if we were to try
and analyse them we’d need help


which is what we got. Simon wrote a piece of software which allowed us and our readers to
“crowdsource” a large proportion of the data. It’s an endeavour which is still ongoing

11th June: proof of
concept
15th June: go ahead in
principle
Timeline
16th June: designer gets
involved
17th June: sysadmin added
18th June: launched and
then performance tuned


what is fascinating about this for me is the velocity with which this was done. It is one of the ﬁrst
examples of our strategy of


ﬁrst things ﬁrst, how to pull apart awful PDFs, ended up being Photoshop and AppleScript

HTTP://WWW.NIEMANLAB.ORG/2009/06/FOUR-
CROWDSOURCING-LESSONS-FROM-THE-
GUARDIANS-SPECTACULAR-EXPENSES-
SCANDAL-EXPERIMENT/

Django Framework
1 developer/1 week
1 designer/2 days
How was 1 sysadmin/1 day
this built? Amazon EC2/(cost £50)

Deployed 1 week after
work started


what is fascinating about this for me is the velocity with which this was done. It is one of the ﬁrst
examples of our strategy of moving fast where the missed opportunity cost is very high

HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ HTTP://WWW.NIEMANLAB.ORG/2009/06/FOUR-
PDCAWLEY/ CROWDSOURCING-LESSONS-FROM-THE-
SCANDAL-EXPERIMENT/

“The Guardian has lead time
of several weeks to get new
hardware bought,” Willison
said. “The project was only
approved to go ahead less
than a week before it
launched.”


so as well as the cost element the speed element comes out again, we’re actually pretty quick at
deploying hardware, but when you’re being reactive to a news story in an interactive and dynamic way,
immediate is how quick you have to be.

SCANDAL-EXPERIMENT/

Django Framework
1 developer/1 week
1 designer/2 days
this built? Amazon EC2/S3
(cost £50)
work started


so we used EC2 and S3 and learnt a lot about it and also didn’t spend a huge amount to host it

SCANDAL-EXPERIMENT/

Django Framework
1 developer/1 week
1 designer/2 days
this built? Amazon EC2/S3
(cost £50)
work started


for a sophisticated piece of software which has built into it a social game, a data store, 450,000
images, an API onto the data and making it match the house style this seems pretty unheard of in
many ways but it’s proving to be an interesting lead case

NIHONBUNKA/

nothing
lasts for
ever
remake
remodel


some bits of functionality aren’t meant to last forever, but need to handle high temporary activity and
load, and you may want to deploy them again and again for different uses

Collecting
conversations


this is something I’ve been working on of late, we’re really interested in Twitter, not just as social
distribution, but as a mechanism that lowers the wall again between journalists and readers

collecting
conversations


and it’s important that the conversations we collect are from the authentic accounts of the journalists
and sit within the publicly used hashtag streams

the solution we came up with was to create a simple app which contained a whitelist of who could
tweet on which subject

very simple app, we had a list of journalists, the tags which they could append to their messages on
Twitter and a cache for the twitter messages so we were only having to do the hard work of polling and
parsing once and so we’d stay within the Twitter API limits

the hackday version of the app took about 5 hours in total including analysing how best to get clean
reproducible data out of the various Twitter APIs and we then spent about half a day adding features
and deploying it for Edinburgh

Because it caches content, apart from errors in polling the Twitter API it sailed through a day long
Twitter outage without showing errors to the public when all our other Twitter feed boxes showed
nothing

It uses the task queue on AppEngine to smooth out the load of interrogating a lot of streams of
journalists


It was always designed with extensibility in mind... there are other uses planned, but ﬁrst of all it’s
currently Party conference season. So it’s now seen use at the Liberal Democrat conference


and the Labour conference this week where actually it got a reasonable amount of load

Django Framework
Google AppEngine
Twitter API
How was 1 developer/2 days
this built? 1 designer/0.5 days
Cost of AppEngine £0
Needs maintainence
time allowance


on really key thing is the last point here.

writing code now is simple and easy, maintaining it is relatively simple, but the moment something is
out there people want it supported and to be extended.

also occasionally third parties go down or change their APIs so you need to plan in support and this
approach needs to be melded into the schedule never sit totally outside of it

MICHAELPATRICK/

where next?


We’re on a journey at the moment, we ﬁrst showed close friends and partners our API just a year ago
and we launched it in March.

Much of what we’re doing is thinking and travelling with those partners and friends along new paths
which none of us had maybe thought of or considered before.

Today we showed the App Gallery and in Q1 next year we’ll be launching some more important parts of
our ecosystem and our initiative which we believe strengthen the commercial and the integration
elements of the ecosystem.

PAULCARVILL/

The significant
thing is to think
about The Guardian
as a platform, and
not just a
publisher.
Mike Bracken


This is as close to a daily mantra and a mission statement as we can come.

We owe a lot of the thinking here to this man, Mike Bracken our Director of Technology who I’m proud
to work for on this project

When the project started this was an opening gambit, I think although we’re only six months into the
public facing part of the project I think it’s more appropriate for it to be how we close, our ambitions
are summed up in this phrase really and the strategy that Mike has masterminded is already beginning
to bear fruit in the efforts developers are making with our APIs and with the quick build and deploy
solutions like Simon’s MPs Expenses app.

what would
you do?


Since we’re being mutual, actually I think this is the only fair way to end...

What would you do...

but I’m happy to answer questions

Thank you
Chris Thorpe
chris.thorpe@guardian.co.uk
Twitter: @jaggeree

http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform
Twitter: openplatform


Building the stacks for a mutualised newspaper

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