Two recent Charlie Rose interviews – see below: One with Leon Wieseltier, long-time New Republic editor who resigned in protest last fall, and one with Chris Hughes, the Facebook cofounder and young grandaddy of online political organizing (Obama ’08) who purchased The New Republic in 2012.

It’s fascinating to see them wrestle with topics such as:

Assuming that long-form, in-depth content must be optimized for maximum exposure – to escape obscurity in a mobile/social world – is there any way to avoid destroying its quality and influence?

Where do I stand? I say that it’s possible and necessary. But I’m in no position to pass judgment on how The New Republic is pursuing that. (It would make a great movie, though.)

I was very moved by Leon Wieseltier’s call for a form of media that isn’t detrimentally driven by marketing or metrics.  He’s protecting a long-tail media that counts some of the most influential Americans among its relatively small audience.

But I’m generally a fan and admirer of efforts to breathe Silicon Valley entrepreneurship into old media that’s worth saving.

Side notes: In 2009, I wrote herein about how impressed I was with an appearance Chris Hughes made at NYU. And, of course, I’m a long-time fan of Charlie Rose – even have him in my blogroll (but was too shy to interrupt him as he looked for a cab recently on Lexington and 52nd or so).

On with the videos – presented with Chris second, not only in a defensive posture but with an optimism that I hope proves wise.

In this TED video, Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon introduces Duolingo.com, a free online language tutorial site that (in the background) uses your quiz answers to help translate the web. Massive online collaboration.

Along the way, von Ahn explains reCAPTCHA – those two-word “type the mangled words to prove you’re a human” tests found on forms on Facebook, Ticketmaster, and many major sites.

Amazingly, in those tests, one word is from a digital book that computers couldn’t read – the OCR failed. So, when you fill out those reCAPTCHA forms, you’re helping to digitize books. (The other word is truly a test, to cross-check the digital book word.)

The video description:

After re-purposing CAPTCHA so each human-typed response helps digitize books, Luis von Ahn wondered how else to use small contributions by many on the Internet for greater good. In this talk, he shares how his ambitious new project, Duolingo, will help millions learn a new language while translating the Web quickly and accurately — all for free.

Here’s the video, “Massive-Scale Online Collaboration“:

Medium.com is in beta launch, allowing posts from friends and family and inviting reader reactions via Twitter sign-ins.

The intro page describes it as a new platform for sharing stories and ideas. It’s longer-form than Twitter and organized into collections, by topic. So far, the design is very readable – gray-on-gray and all text (no ads or images).

I’m thinking it sounds like a giant shared blog, categorized by a core of editors … Like a wiki on human experiences?

With the founders’ track records at Blogger, Twitter, and other sites that revolutionized content generation and sharing, Medium is one to watch.

Here’s a snip from the overview:

While it’s great that you can be a one-person media company, it’d be even better if there were more ways you could work with others. And in many ways, the web is still mimicking print concepts, while not even catching up to it in terms of layout, design, and clarity of experience. …

Medium is designed to allow people to choose the level of contribution they prefer. We know that most people, most of the time, will simply read and view content, which is fine. If they choose, they can click to indicate whether they think something is good, giving feedback to the creator and increasing the likelihood others will see it.

Posting on Medium (not yet open to everyone) is elegant and easy, and you can do so without the burden of becoming a blogger or worrying about developing an audience. All posts are organized into ‘collections,’ which are defined by a theme and a template.”

John Battelle muses on the shift from page-based content (magazines, blogs, and similarly grouped content) to streams of aggregated content.

What’s lost is that experience of consuming one publisher’s meal – instead, we stream a mishmash of snacks.

That “page-based content” experience has value – editing and designing a publication is an art – but getting paid for that is more complex than ever. As Battelle enumerates, digital publishing has brought new complexities: Producing content for different screen sizes and content platforms while creating ads that can piggyback on each format and succeed for advertisers.It’s a daunting challenge, but Battelle is hopeful:

So far, we’ve written off magazines as dying, because we can’t figure out how to replicate their core value proposition in the digital world. But I’ve got a strong sense this is changing. Crazy publishing entrepreneurs, and even the big players in media, will sooner rather than later drive solutions that resolve our current dilemma. We’ll develop ads that travel with content, content management systems that allow us to automatically and natively drive our creations into the big platforms, and sensible business rules with the Big Guys that allow independent, groundbreaking publications to flourish again.

I have to agree with the managers quoted in Sue Shellenbarger’s June 19, 2012, Wall Street Journal article, “This Embarrasses You and I*” – practicing good grammar in the back office can help ensure that a company’s external communications are boo-boo free.

Internal proposals and communications – especially when pitching a strategy or explaining a decision – need to be as clearly presented as anything a client can see.

It’s part of building a culture that keeps the customer’s needs in mind.

That said, I’m a fan of satirically ungrammatical yet efficiently terse IMs among team mates (i.e., “R u ok w dat?”), depending on how chummy the team is. A fast, funny note can keep a team together and ultimately save time.

Some peg social media and texting as bad influences on today’s speech and writing. I think those technologies are only amplifying misunderstandings that were already there. The roots of those misunderstandings are vast and deep.

More people are writing – and that’s great – but with increased volume, we should expect more errors. Also, the constraints of the technologies themselves – character limits, expectations for speed – invite shortcuts on what some treat as the self-righteous path of good grammar. And let’s separate true errors from texting syntax – it’s a legitimate language (though rarely appropriate for communicating with customers).

As the article mentions, arguments in the office about grammar can be scary when management endorses errors – especially on a deadline. But having a grammar referee can help, whether it’s a style guide or an outside expert.

Grammarians – do you refuse to use texting syntax, even in jest?  In communications with clients, have you been pressured to ignore or impose errors?

Grammatically challenged folks – have you ever wanted to throw a grammarian out the window? Or offered a grammarian your first-born child as a reward for a critical, last-minute edit?

Today, on Thirteen (TV, not online), I saw Run for Your Life, the documentary on Fred Lebow, the runner who dreamed big, lived what he loved to do, and created one of the most successful start-ups the City has ever seen: The New York City Marathon.

Most years, we head down to 4th Avenue, in Brooklyn, to watch the marathon, but I had never known its history or thought about what a huge task it must have been to get thousands of runners to cut a 26-mile path through all five boroughs – let alone to get permission and sponsors for it!

Try to see the film, if you can, whether or not you’re an entrepreneur … or a runner.  It will replay on Thirteen at 7:30 a.m. and midnight on Sunday, Nov. 6, 2011. (But don’t forget to set your DVR clock to fall back :o)