It's All Journalism

I had the pleasure of speaking Saturday, Sept. 12, at the Mid-Atlantic Podcast Conference in Westville, New Jersey. It was a great opportunity to meet a bunch of podcasters from the East Coast and learn about the great work they're doing. One of the people I met was Joe Pardo of the inspirational Dreamers Podcast. I can attest that Joe is a real-life dreamer and a pretty cool dude. He organized the conference and runs a network that hosts four other podcasts. How cool is he? He took 10 minutes out of running a podcasting conference to talk to me about what inspires him. Enjoy this mini, mid-week episode featuring my conversation with Joe. -- Michael O'Connell

Some journalists consider marketing to be the work of the Devil. Eric Bright, vice president of e-commerce at Deseret Digital Media (http://deseretdigital.com) might actually agree with them. "Marketers ruin everything," Bright said, during his presentation last July at the Association of Alternative News Media's annual conference in Salt Lake City. With a background in direct marketing, retail and e-commerce, Bright knows of what he speaks. For the past five years, he's helped provide leadership on DDM's revenue products, including developing a regional classifieds site larger than Craigslist. The challenge facing media websites today is finding viable revenue streams that can support good journalism. This is becoming increasingly difficult as companies like Google and Apple introduce technology to empower readers to block website advertising. This week's It's All Journalism podcast is a follow-up phone interview to a recent podcast (http://itsalljournalism.com/161-time-to-find-some-new-revenue/) we ran featuring audio from Bright's AAN presentation on finding new revenue.

Some journalists consider marketing to be the work of the Devil. Eric Bright, vice president of e-commerce at Deseret Digital Media (http://deseretdigital.com) might actually agree with them. "Marketers ruin everything," Bright said, during his presentation last July at the Association of Alternative News Media's annual conference in Salt Lake City. With a background in direct marketing, retail and e-commerce, Bright knows of what he speaks. For the past five years, he's helped provide leadership on DDM's revenue products, including developing a regional classifieds site larger than Craigslist. The challenge facing media websites today is finding viable revenue streams that can support good journalism. This is becoming increasingly difficult as companies like Google and Apple introduce technology to empower readers to block website advertising. This week's It's All Journalism podcast is a follow-up phone interview to a recent podcast (http://itsalljournalism.com/161-time-to-find-some-new-revenue/) we ran featuring audio from Bright's AAN presentation on finding new revenue.

Just about everything about Vox.com (http://www.vox.com) is probably different from your news organization. When it launched a little more than a year ago, a group of journalists and developers built the site, hired a staff and developed its signature “card stacks” in nine weeks. Stories on Vox.com focus not only on who, what, where and when, but also emphasize “how” and “why.” Each story should answer the question, “WTF happened?” And it has free beer on Thursdays. Yuri Victor, a senior user experience developer, noticed the differences on his first day at Vox, when he got several emails from his co-workers that asked, “Do you have five minutes?” “We got into Google Hangouts, every single one was the same thing,” he said during a presentation at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia conference in Salt Lake City. “How’re you doing? How was your first day? Do you need anything? How can I help you?” It doesn’t stop there. At just over a year old, Vox has published more than 8,000 articles and averages about 24 million unique visitors a month. Victor said the site has developed at least 115 card stacks, which account for 23 percent of Vox’s total traffic — 63 percent of card stack readers come back to the site to read another one. Vox places a premium on the C's — communication, collaboration, culture, context, caring and community — instead of the Ps, projects, process, products and plans, Victor said. “When we look at the organizations that are succeeding, they’re really the ones who are putting the C's before the P's every time,” he said. “Those are the newsrooms you want to work for; people who actually care about you.” This week's It's All Journalism podcast features audio from a presentation by Yuri Victor, senior user experience developer at digital startup Vox.com. Speaking at the 2015 Association of Alternative Newsmedia's conference in Salt Lake City, Victor discusses the highlight's Vox first year, from launching its popular card stacks feature to interviewing President Barack Obama. He also talks about some of the challenges and pitfalls Vox faced in building a truly digital-focused newsroom.

Just about everything about Vox.com (http://www.vox.com) is probably different from your news organization. When it launched a little more than a year ago, a group of journalists and developers built the site, hired a staff and developed its signature “card stacks” in nine weeks. Stories on Vox.com focus not only on who, what, where and when, but also emphasize “how” and “why.” Each story should answer the question, “WTF happened?” And it has free beer on Thursdays. Yuri Victor, a senior user experience developer, noticed the differences on his first day at Vox, when he got several emails from his co-workers that asked, “Do you have five minutes?” “We got into Google Hangouts, every single one was the same thing,” he said during a presentation at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia conference in Salt Lake City. “How’re you doing? How was your first day? Do you need anything? How can I help you?” It doesn’t stop there. At just over a year old, Vox has published more than 8,000 articles and averages about 24 million unique visitors a month. Victor said the site has developed at least 115 card stacks, which account for 23 percent of Vox’s total traffic — 63 percent of card stack readers come back to the site to read another one. Vox places a premium on the C's — communication, collaboration, culture, context, caring and community — instead of the Ps, projects, process, products and plans, Victor said. “When we look at the organizations that are succeeding, they’re really the ones who are putting the C's before the P's every time,” he said. “Those are the newsrooms you want to work for; people who actually care about you.” This week's It's All Journalism podcast features audio from a presentation by Yuri Victor, senior user experience developer at digital startup Vox.com. Speaking at the 2015 Association of Alternative Newsmedia's conference in Salt Lake City, Victor discusses the highlight's Vox first year, from launching its popular card stacks feature to interviewing President Barack Obama. He also talks about some of the challenges and pitfalls Vox faced in building a truly digital-focused newsroom.

The good news is the murky world of online journalism is gaining some clarity. The bad news is journalistic outlets haven’t yet embraced the collaborative spirit that has helped other industries thrive in the 21st century. During a wide-ranging presentation at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s annual conference, Elizabeth Osder, a 25-plus-year digital media professional and consultant, advised journalists and newsrooms to learn from companies like Uber and Airbnb. Their business models didn’t exist a decade ago, but they’re thriving now by not being held back by what used to work. “All of a sudden we’re in a world where there are on-demand services,” she said. “The value of Uber is the number of people that participate,” while the value of Airbnb is determined by the value created by people who rent out their houses to people looking for a place to stay without limiting their searches to hotels. “We just haven’t been talking about it as it relates to journalism,” and that’s an opportunity that can and should be considered—quickly. It’s time to consider what an on-demand journalism experience would look like, or what journalism would be like if newsrooms considered themselves part of a network, much like computer systems hooked up together to form a system for sharing information. “You’ve been doing these things over the years in this room, in this conference,” Osder said. “Everybody comes here to share ideas, to talk about what they’re doing, to talk about best practices. ... What would it be like to keep those conversations going throughout the year?” After recounting a few of the presentations she’d heard, Osder issued some strong suggestions about the importance of knowing and reflecting your audience. She pointed to a project undertaken by a weekly newspaper in Boulder, Colorado, focusing on “reinvigorating Latino history, talking about the Latinos in the community, where they came from, how they got there.” The Latino readership of the publication, as a result of that work, increased from 2 percent to 15 percent. The reporting “resulted in a more engaged and involved audience,” Osder said. It also changed the conversation in the newsroom: “Who and how do we do our work? What does it mean to our staff?” she asked. Are newspapers simply “the last bastion for everybody who has a liberal arts education and wanted to be a writer? Are we actually doing something that actually has an impact on a community?” There’s a bigger lesson to be learned here, she stressed. “Fundamentally, there’s something going on right now: The doors of your offices have been blown out by the collaborative economy," she said. "The people that used to not have a voice who relied to get into your channels through your newspaper have established their own. If you do not invite them in, they will find their own audiences and serve themselves and they will be entrepreneurs who service those audiences.” Those entrepreneurs will have one big advantage over more traditional publications and platforms, she added. They will be more pragmatic from Day 1, “because they will be small business people who understand that the chicken-and-egg game of what came first, the ad or the editorial, that you better have some money in order to do something," Osder said

The good news is the murky world of online journalism is gaining some clarity. The bad news is journalistic outlets haven’t yet embraced the collaborative spirit that has helped other industries thrive in the 21st century. During a wide-ranging presentation at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s annual conference, Elizabeth Osder, a 25-plus-year digital media professional and consultant, advised journalists and newsrooms to learn from companies like Uber and Airbnb. Their business models didn’t exist a decade ago, but they’re thriving now by not being held back by what used to work. “All of a sudden we’re in a world where there are on-demand services,” she said. “The value of Uber is the number of people that participate,” while the value of Airbnb is determined by the value created by people who rent out their houses to people looking for a place to stay without limiting their searches to hotels. “We just haven’t been talking about it as it relates to journalism,” and that’s an opportunity that can and should be considered—quickly. It’s time to consider what an on-demand journalism experience would look like, or what journalism would be like if newsrooms considered themselves part of a network, much like computer systems hooked up together to form a system for sharing information. “You’ve been doing these things over the years in this room, in this conference,” Osder said. “Everybody comes here to share ideas, to talk about what they’re doing, to talk about best practices. ... What would it be like to keep those conversations going throughout the year?” After recounting a few of the presentations she’d heard, Osder issued some strong suggestions about the importance of knowing and reflecting your audience. She pointed to a project undertaken by a weekly newspaper in Boulder, Colorado, focusing on “reinvigorating Latino history, talking about the Latinos in the community, where they came from, how they got there.” The Latino readership of the publication, as a result of that work, increased from 2 percent to 15 percent. The reporting “resulted in a more engaged and involved audience,” Osder said. It also changed the conversation in the newsroom: “Who and how do we do our work? What does it mean to our staff?” she asked. Are newspapers simply “the last bastion for everybody who has a liberal arts education and wanted to be a writer? Are we actually doing something that actually has an impact on a community?” There’s a bigger lesson to be learned here, she stressed. “Fundamentally, there’s something going on right now: The doors of your offices have been blown out by the collaborative economy," she said. "The people that used to not have a voice who relied to get into your channels through your newspaper have established their own. If you do not invite them in, they will find their own audiences and serve themselves and they will be entrepreneurs who service those audiences.” Those entrepreneurs will have one big advantage over more traditional publications and platforms, she added. They will be more pragmatic from Day 1, “because they will be small business people who understand that the chicken-and-egg game of what came first, the ad or the editorial, that you better have some money in order to do something," Osder said

Journalism has a revenue problem. In an industry that's still being disrupted daily by digital technology and mobile distribution, it's critical for news outlets to evolve their business model in order to survive. "You have got to figure out a way to let journalism stand on its own and do what it does well, which is represent the community and shed a light on issues in the community," said Eric Bright, vice president of e-commerce at Deseret Digital Media (http://deseretdigital.com). "Journalism does not make money. You have to figure out a way to make money so you can subsidize the really important need of journalism." Bright was speaking this past July to an audience of journalists and marketers at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia's annual convention in Salt Lake City. "Content is not a business model," Bright said. "The reason being is it's really difficult to monetize content. You can do it, but we all spend all of our time monetizing around the content." Bright is not a journalist, though he works for an online media company. He has more than 14 years of experience in e-commerce, marketing and business management. So, when he talks about media disruption, he's talking about shifting the focus away from advertising to new forms of revenue. "It's really the difference between an advertising paradigm and an e-commerce paradigm," Bright said. "In advertising, you're focusing on the advertiser. What does our advertiser client want to say to our audience?" E-commerce, on the other hand, is focused on the end-user. "Create a really great experience for your customer and you'll get results," Bright said. "Optimize the funnel. Get people to your site and all the way through as fast as you can. Traditional media is get people to my site and then have them dilly-dally around, send them to as many page views as you can, cause I'm monetized around page views." The goal is to determine what your customer wants and then give them what they want. "Listen to your customers," Bright said. "That's you're only asset. That's your golden goose, your customers. Listen to them. Solve for their needs, protect yourself from all those other people out there that are trying to chip away at your business and then evolve. Disrupt yourself." This week's It's All Journalism podcast features audio from Eric Bright's presentation at the 2015 AAN Conference in Salt Lake City: "Best be finding some new revenue, son." Bright is the vice president of e-commerce at Deseret Digital Media, which focuses on on marketplace commerce products such as Classifieds, Deals, Shops, Local and Utah.com. has more than 14 years of experience in e-commerce, online and offline marketing, and business management.

Journalism has a revenue problem. In an industry that's still being disrupted daily by digital technology and mobile distribution, it's critical for news outlets to evolve their business model in order to survive. "You have got to figure out a way to let journalism stand on its own and do what it does well, which is represent the community and shed a light on issues in the community," said Eric Bright, vice president of e-commerce at Deseret Digital Media (http://deseretdigital.com). "Journalism does not make money. You have to figure out a way to make money so you can subsidize the really important need of journalism." Bright was speaking this past July to an audience of journalists and marketers at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia's annual convention in Salt Lake City. "Content is not a business model," Bright said. "The reason being is it's really difficult to monetize content. You can do it, but we all spend all of our time monetizing around the content." Bright is not a journalist, though he works for an online media company. He has more than 14 years of experience in e-commerce, marketing and business management. So, when he talks about media disruption, he's talking about shifting the focus away from advertising to new forms of revenue. "It's really the difference between an advertising paradigm and an e-commerce paradigm," Bright said. "In advertising, you're focusing on the advertiser. What does our advertiser client want to say to our audience?" E-commerce, on the other hand, is focused on the end-user. "Create a really great experience for your customer and you'll get results," Bright said. "Optimize the funnel. Get people to your site and all the way through as fast as you can. Traditional media is get people to my site and then have them dilly-dally around, send them to as many page views as you can, cause I'm monetized around page views." The goal is to determine what your customer wants and then give them what they want. "Listen to your customers," Bright said. "That's you're only asset. That's your golden goose, your customers. Listen to them. Solve for their needs, protect yourself from all those other people out there that are trying to chip away at your business and then evolve. Disrupt yourself." This week's It's All Journalism podcast features audio from Eric Bright's presentation at the 2015 AAN Conference in Salt Lake City: "Best be finding some new revenue, son." Bright is the vice president of e-commerce at Deseret Digital Media, which focuses on on marketplace commerce products such as Classifieds, Deals, Shops, Local and Utah.com. has more than 14 years of experience in e-commerce, online and offline marketing, and business management.

To remain viable and important parts of their community, public media stations need to stop seeing people only as contributors of cash and start embracing donations of time, service and talent. Melody Kramer is a data journalist, who writes a weekly column for Poynter. Nieman Lab recently published a paper (ttp://www.niemanlab.org/2015/07/putting-the-public-into-public-media-membership/)she wrote on putting the "public" back in public media membership. Kramer isn’t trying to downplay the importance of donations obtained during pledge drives. Instead, she’s encouraging NPR affiliates, in addition to PBS stations and other public media outlets, to allow people the opportunity to make a different kind of investment in exchange for a one-year membership. That way, those who might be interested in public media can feel involved and personally connected to the media outlet from the start, which could encourage them to give financially in the future when they’re able. Membership donations are critically important for public media outlets, obtaining 36 percent of their annual budgets from membership donations, “The highest amount of any kind of funding public media receives from donors,” Kramer said. Most of those donations come from people listening to NPR or other noncommercial broadcasts in their vehicles. “What concerns me is that 50 percent of cars within five years will have Internet-enabled radio in the car, and by 2025, that will be 100 percent of cars," she said. "People who typically went to their NPR member station as their default for good, high-quality radio will suddenly have 10,000 choices in the car and that won’t necessarily be the default.” If public radio can’t articulate why it matters to its listeners, it’s a losing battle, Kramer warns. It’s time to get creative. She mentioned the #MakeAlCare campaign (http://itsalljournalism.com/141-kpcc-makes-one-voter-care/) from Southern California Public Radio, station KPCC in Los Angeles, a multi-part series in which one man who started out convinced he wouldn’t vote in an upcoming municipal election attended events, met the candidates and otherwise became involved in the process. Listeners became invested in whether Al Gordon, a chef in Los Feliz, voted in the election and likely felt a sense of accomplishment when he did. Similarly, station WILL in Southern Illinois has an ongoing project in which seventh and eighth-grade students are invited to make a PBS documentary each year. “It’s really neat,” Kramer said. “They pick a topic, they report on the story, they edit the story, they produce the story. The story airs on their local PBS station. Not only are they introducing these 12- and 13-year-olds to what public media is at a very young age, a lot of them have chosen to go into media as a result. A lot of them are more invested in their local community as a result, and their parents are more invested in the future of the station as a result.”

To remain viable and important parts of their community, public media stations need to stop seeing people only as contributors of cash and start embracing donations of time, service and talent. Melody Kramer is a data journalist, who writes a weekly column for Poynter. Nieman Lab recently published a paper (ttp://www.niemanlab.org/2015/07/putting-the-public-into-public-media-membership/)she wrote on putting the "public" back in public media membership. Kramer isn’t trying to downplay the importance of donations obtained during pledge drives. Instead, she’s encouraging NPR affiliates, in addition to PBS stations and other public media outlets, to allow people the opportunity to make a different kind of investment in exchange for a one-year membership. That way, those who might be interested in public media can feel involved and personally connected to the media outlet from the start, which could encourage them to give financially in the future when they’re able. Membership donations are critically important for public media outlets, obtaining 36 percent of their annual budgets from membership donations, “The highest amount of any kind of funding public media receives from donors,” Kramer said. Most of those donations come from people listening to NPR or other noncommercial broadcasts in their vehicles. “What concerns me is that 50 percent of cars within five years will have Internet-enabled radio in the car, and by 2025, that will be 100 percent of cars," she said. "People who typically went to their NPR member station as their default for good, high-quality radio will suddenly have 10,000 choices in the car and that won’t necessarily be the default.” If public radio can’t articulate why it matters to its listeners, it’s a losing battle, Kramer warns. It’s time to get creative. She mentioned the #MakeAlCare campaign (http://itsalljournalism.com/141-kpcc-makes-one-voter-care/) from Southern California Public Radio, station KPCC in Los Angeles, a multi-part series in which one man who started out convinced he wouldn’t vote in an upcoming municipal election attended events, met the candidates and otherwise became involved in the process. Listeners became invested in whether Al Gordon, a chef in Los Feliz, voted in the election and likely felt a sense of accomplishment when he did. Similarly, station WILL in Southern Illinois has an ongoing project in which seventh and eighth-grade students are invited to make a PBS documentary each year. “It’s really neat,” Kramer said. “They pick a topic, they report on the story, they edit the story, they produce the story. The story airs on their local PBS station. Not only are they introducing these 12- and 13-year-olds to what public media is at a very young age, a lot of them have chosen to go into media as a result. A lot of them are more invested in their local community as a result, and their parents are more invested in the future of the station as a result.”

Jesse Holcomb doesn't get the opportunity to travel out in the field much. As the associate director of research at the Pew Research Center, he spends much of his time staring out a computer screen, pouring over datasets. But, Holcomb was in Sioux City, Iowa, a few months ago, doing field work for a project on local news. "I stopped at a little steakhouse on the Nebraska side of the river, down last the Tyson plant, because I was told to get a steak in Nebraska or Iowa," he said. Holcomb struck up a conversation with the bartender, who asked what he was up to in town. "I tried not to come across as creepy anthropologist," he said. "But there was one thing she said that got my attention. She said this, 'Why should I bother with the local TV station when I've got Lock Up buzzing in my back pocket all day long?'" It turns out that Lock Up was a Facebook page the posted the latest information about locals who were arrested in the Sioux City area. The page has since been taken down. "In its heyday, the thing was this seething stream of mugshots and gossip, updates, police blotters," Holcomb said. "And it was a primary source of news for my bartender and a way for her to connect to her community via mobile and social media." Holcomb sees this anecdote as a commentary on where local news is today. "It's not just that the pathways to local news are changing or that the form is changing, but also that these changes are not necessarily happening all at once in the same town," he said. "There are layers and there are surprises." This week's episode of the It's all Journalism podcast features an interview with Holcomb and his presentation at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia's 2015 Convention in Salt Lake City. He discusses the findings of a recent Pew project comparing how local news was consumed in three cities — Denver, Macon, Georgia, and Sioux City, Iowa. "If you spend too much time with national survey data like I do, you'd be forgiven thinking that local news trends in Jackson (Missouri) are the same as they are in Minneapolis or that what's happening in New York is also what's happening in New Orleans," he said. "In certain ways, these trends they do hold. But in other ways, the idea of Any Town, USA, is just a little bit too simple."

Jesse Holcomb doesn't get the opportunity to travel out in the field much. As the associate director of research at the Pew Research Center, he spends much of his time staring out a computer screen, pouring over datasets. But, Holcomb was in Sioux City, Iowa, a few months ago, doing field work for a project on local news. "I stopped at a little steakhouse on the Nebraska side of the river, down last the Tyson plant, because I was told to get a steak in Nebraska or Iowa," he said. Holcomb struck up a conversation with the bartender, who asked what he was up to in town. "I tried not to come across as creepy anthropologist," he said. "But there was one thing she said that got my attention. She said this, 'Why should I bother with the local TV station when I've got Lock Up buzzing in my back pocket all day long?'" It turns out that Lock Up was a Facebook page the posted the latest information about locals who were arrested in the Sioux City area. The page has since been taken down. "In its heyday, the thing was this seething stream of mugshots and gossip, updates, police blotters," Holcomb said. "And it was a primary source of news for my bartender and a way for her to connect to her community via mobile and social media." Holcomb sees this anecdote as a commentary on where local news is today. "It's not just that the pathways to local news are changing or that the form is changing, but also that these changes are not necessarily happening all at once in the same town," he said. "There are layers and there are surprises." This week's episode of the It's all Journalism podcast features an interview with Holcomb and his presentation at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia's 2015 Convention in Salt Lake City. He discusses the findings of a recent Pew project comparing how local news was consumed in three cities — Denver, Macon, Georgia, and Sioux City, Iowa. "If you spend too much time with national survey data like I do, you'd be forgiven thinking that local news trends in Jackson (Missouri) are the same as they are in Minneapolis or that what's happening in New York is also what's happening in New Orleans," he said. "In certain ways, these trends they do hold. But in other ways, the idea of Any Town, USA, is just a little bit too simple."

The phone in your hand is not just a tool for staying connected and taking care of errands on the go. It’s also a big welcome mat to the “age of mass surveillance.” David Greene, senior staff attorney and civil liberties director with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://www.eff.org), addressed the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (http://www.altweeklies.com)’s conference in Salt Lake City recently, shedding some light on the covert and not-so-covert-anymore ways in which a person’s information and private habits can be uncovered, tracked and recorded with a few clicks. His group, based in San Francisco, works to protect civil liberties in the digital world. Mass surveillance -- which Greene defines as “when the government just collects information about people’s communications in bulk” -- has been going on for a long time, well before Edward Snowden fed documents to The Guardian, hesaid. It’s easy to see the difference between mass surveillance and targeted surveillance, which is when someone’s habits and communications are specifically monitored because they’re suspected of wrongdoing. The reason there’s more attention paid to mass surveillance now, especially following the Snowden releases, is that it’s easier to do. “Technology has really made it much more efficient for the government to collect, to store and to analyze massive amounts of data,” Greene said. “The storage thing is one of the more recent technological developments. In this state, in Utah, the NSA has built a very large storage facility for the purpose of storing massive amounts of communications data it’s collected. A few months ago, we flew a blimp over it … with a big sign saying ‘Mass Surveillance Below,’ with a big arrow pointing to it.” People might think they control their data, and to some extent that remains true. But mobile phones perform so many other functions and have so many other capabilities than in the past that the amount of persona; information they contain is almost overwhelming. “We use our telephones to do all sorts of things,” Greene said. “We communicate with our doctors, we make travel arrangements, we do banking, shopping,” and all this with a company that might have an agreement to provide that information to the government, no questions asked. “It’s more efficient for the government to go to one entity and say ‘Give me all the information you have’” than trying to collect that same amount of data from a variety of sources. And while Greene praised Congress for passing the USA Freedom Act in June, he stressed that it did not end bulk phone record collection entirely. Now, instead of collecting all incoming and outgoing call information from all phones on certain providers— the government admitted it had been gathering all such data from users on the Verizon Business Network Service and that other companies had been involved, but has not identified other participants — the government has to specify when it wants incoming and outgoing call information from a particular number.

The phone in your hand is not just a tool for staying connected and taking care of errands on the go. It’s also a big welcome mat to the “age of mass surveillance.” David Greene, senior staff attorney and civil liberties director with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://www.eff.org), addressed the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (http://www.altweeklies.com)’s conference in Salt Lake City recently, shedding some light on the covert and not-so-covert-anymore ways in which a person’s information and private habits can be uncovered, tracked and recorded with a few clicks. His group, based in San Francisco, works to protect civil liberties in the digital world. Mass surveillance -- which Greene defines as “when the government just collects information about people’s communications in bulk” -- has been going on for a long time, well before Edward Snowden fed documents to The Guardian, hesaid. It’s easy to see the difference between mass surveillance and targeted surveillance, which is when someone’s habits and communications are specifically monitored because they’re suspected of wrongdoing. The reason there’s more attention paid to mass surveillance now, especially following the Snowden releases, is that it’s easier to do. “Technology has really made it much more efficient for the government to collect, to store and to analyze massive amounts of data,” Greene said. “The storage thing is one of the more recent technological developments. In this state, in Utah, the NSA has built a very large storage facility for the purpose of storing massive amounts of communications data it’s collected. A few months ago, we flew a blimp over it … with a big sign saying ‘Mass Surveillance Below,’ with a big arrow pointing to it.” People might think they control their data, and to some extent that remains true. But mobile phones perform so many other functions and have so many other capabilities than in the past that the amount of persona; information they contain is almost overwhelming. “We use our telephones to do all sorts of things,” Greene said. “We communicate with our doctors, we make travel arrangements, we do banking, shopping,” and all this with a company that might have an agreement to provide that information to the government, no questions asked. “It’s more efficient for the government to go to one entity and say ‘Give me all the information you have’” than trying to collect that same amount of data from a variety of sources. And while Greene praised Congress for passing the USA Freedom Act in June, he stressed that it did not end bulk phone record collection entirely. Now, instead of collecting all incoming and outgoing call information from all phones on certain providers— the government admitted it had been gathering all such data from users on the Verizon Business Network Service and that other companies had been involved, but has not identified other participants — the government has to specify when it wants incoming and outgoing call information from a particular number.