Remembering Roger Ebert's Digital Legacy

Famed film critic, Pulitzer-Prize winner and Twitter superstar Roger Ebert died Thursday, after a long battle with cancer.

Ebert is most associated with the movie industry, and for helping make film criticism accessible. But he wasn't just a film critic and acclaimed author — he was also a new-media pioneer.

At 70, Ebert was more in touch with media and how to reach his readers than critics or authors 50 years his junior.

Nearly every article written about Ebert in the last week has included mentions of his prolific Twitter account and his blog, but very few have acknowledged the fact that Ebert was a digital denizen for nearly 30 years.

Microsoft Cinemania and Visions of a Digital Future

While I first came across Ebert's work on television — via the hugely popular Siskel and Ebert show in the mid-1980s, it would be during the next decade that a 12-year old version of myself would really find — and fall in love — with Ebert's digital presence.

The first was via CD-ROM. From 1992 until 1997, Microsoft released a series of CD-ROMs directed at movies fans called Cinemania. Cinemania was IMDb before IMDb was mainstream, and it was a visual database of movies, sound and video clips from films, as well as professional reviews.

Beginning with Cinemania '94, Ebert's Video Companion was included in the CD-ROM material, which featured more than 1,300 of his film reviews in a searchable index.

Cinemania was the first CD-ROM I bought with my own money. For a pre-teen film fanatic with limited Internet access (this was the age of 14.4 modems), it was this CD-ROM that introduced me to a broader world of film and criticism.

I know I'm not alone. In the days since Ebert's passing, more than a few of us have discussed Cinemania and its brilliance on Twitter and Facebook. Although Ebert was already online via CompuServe (see more below), the CD-ROM was the first time that many of us ever had a chance to see Ebert's work outside of the confines of a newspaper or TV show.

Ebert's association with Cinemania would continue years later. In 2003, with the launch of RogerEbert.com, Ebert hired Jim Emerson — who had edited Cinemania for Microsoft — as the editor and general maintainer of his site.

On Friday, Emerson shared his own memories of working with Ebert day-in and day-out for the last decade.

From CompuServe to the Web

Unlike most journalists of his time, Ebert was an early adopter of both technology and new distribution techniques. The January 1996 issue of Wired profiles Ebert's online activities at that time, focusing on his relationship with the CompuServe online service.

According to an interview, Ebert got online in 1983 via CompuServe and a Tandy model 100. In 1990, CompuServe approached Ebert about putting his reviews online. The idea was just to have online access to his reviews, but Ebert was savvy enough to know that wouldn't be enough. He told Wired:

"At that time, I felt that just uploading my reviews and letting people read them would be kind of one-way. So they gave me a section of the Showbiz forum where I could interact with people."

It's important to recognize the significance of that decision. In 1990, the World Wide Web didn't yet exist. Digital and online presences for major media outlets were nascent at best, and online communications took place via message boards and USENET groups.

By that time, Ebert had already been a professional critic for the Chicago Sun-Times for almost 25 years. Many of his colleagues (including Gene Siskel) shied away from technology and new media. Ebert didn't. He embraced CompuServe and the Showbiz forum, frequently writing back to his readers and fans.

Andrew Olson shared his memories of conversing with Ebert on CompuServe in the 1990s, on his blog. A decade later, when Olson learned of Ebert's health problems and the loss of his voice, he commented on the latter's blog. Ebert responded, writing "Compuserve was like a little private club in those days. All of 4 million members."

Even in 1995 (when the Wired interview took place), Ebert was already aware of the impact that the online world had on his final product. He said:

"I am a better critic now, because I am engaged in an ongoing criticism of my work by people who are not in the least impressed by my reputation ... I am just another guy online. Anyone can put a movie review online. And one review seems almost as likely to be accessed as another, especially if nobody else has reviewed the movie."

Juxtapose that with the Today Show anchors of that era who in 1994, struggled to understand the Internet.

When my family got our first computer with an internal modem, I begged to use CompuServe (over the more popular AOL) because CompuServe had Roger Ebert. Thanks to Cinemania, I was an intense Ebert fan, and wanted more.

Not only did CompuServe members have access to Ebert's reviews, they could message the famed film critic. Those early CompuServe forums were my first experience to film content online. It was also my first exposure to a group of like-minded film fans — most many years my senior — that I could learn from and try to emulate.

By the late 1990s, the Chicago Sun-Times gave Ebert his own website and suntimes.com/ebert became a permanent part of my browser bookmarks list.

In 2003, RogerEbert.com launched, alongside a more diverse array of opinions, access to past picks and longer essays, and of course, Ebert's entire extensive archive of reviews.

In 2007, before At the Movies was cancelled, Disney actually had the good sense to put up a huge, searchable online archive of every episode of Siskel and Ebert and then Ebert and Roeper. Sadly, that archive disappeared some time in the middle of 2010.

By 2008, Ebert wasn't just writing essays on his personal site and doing Sun-Times reviews, he was also blogging. When you look at the amount of material Ebert managed to publish digitally — in spite of frequent surgeries and cancer treatments — it's staggering. As I write this post — far past deadline — I'm spurred on to write faster and write more frequently.

Twitter and a New Voice

In 2009, Ebert joined Twitter. This was a bit late for him — a man that as my friend Glenn Fleishman noted, saw the potential of photos on CD-ROM back in 1991 — but Ebert wasn't convinced that Twitter had any real use case.

That wasn't an uncommon perspective for most early adopters. Most of us didn't see the value until we used it, and got hooked. This was also the case for Ebert, who amassed over 31,000 tweets over the years via his @ebertchicago handle.

It also helped give Ebert a voice. In 2006, he lost his ability to speak after a burst artery following cancer surgery nearly killed him. His lower jaw had to be removed, and Ebert lost the ability to speak, eat and drink.

Most of his online followers didn't know the significance of Ebert's medical problems until 2010, when he published the blog entry, "Nil By Mouth."

Esquire published an incredible essay, detailing the last four years of his life without a physical voice, but still with growing influence, thanks to technology.

Increasingly, Twitter was a frequent part of his life and his voice. In June 2010, Ebert wrote about the microblogging network on his blog, noting that "Twitter for me performs the function of a running conversation. For someone who cannot speak, it allows a way to unload my zingers and one-liners."

CNN wrote about the new voice that Ebert gained with Twitter, and what it meant for him and his audience. I was quoted in that article, noting that Ebert didn't just use Twitter to broadcast his thoughts, but also used it as a way to have a two-way conversation with his fans, critics and even antagonists.

And like many of us, Ebert was a Twitter addict. Jim Emerson shared this anecdote in a blog post remembering Ebert that I think many of us in digital media can directly relate with:

"(One Oscar night I got mad at him because Laura and I were waiting for the final version of his Oscar story and I discovered he was tweeting about other things while we were on a tight deadline. That's when I found out he was using a Twitter-scheduling app, so he could load up his tweets in advance and it would post them automatically. Yes, he practically worked round the clock, anyway — but he also got software to help him multitask like a superhuman.)"

Ebert's time on Twitter wasn't without controversy. Whether it was debating the artistic merit of video games — or the actual need for 3D — Ebert was opinionated, and he stuck firmly to his opinions. Still, I doubt he ever expected his tweet about the death of Jackass star Ryan Dunn to generate the kind of controversy that it did back in 2011, including the brief removal of his Facebook page.

And still, it was the fact that Ebert was willing to be more controversial, more political and more human that made him such a joy to follow in the first place. It's rare to find public figures — film critics or not — who are as upfront with their beliefs as Ebert was with his. Seeing a celebrity act like a human being, warts and all, is refreshing. It only made Ebert all the more relatable.

A Newsletter and a New Digital Voice

In March 2010, Ebert unveiled two things. The first was his new digital voice on Oprah. The voice was created by the Scottish company CereProc, using audio commentary tracks recorded for Casablanca and Citizen Kane. While Ebert had been successfully using Alex — the voice built into OS X — for several years, the new voice was his. It sounded like him. It felt like him.

A year later, Ebert would speak at TED, showing off his digital transformation.

At TED, Ebert said:

"For me, the Internet began as a useful tool and now has become something I rely on for my actual daily existence ... [If this had happened before], I'd be isolated as a hermit; I'd be trapped inside my head. Because of the digital revolution, I have a voice, and I do not have to scream."

A day after revealing his voice to the world, Ebert announced that he was starting a newsletter, dubbed the Ebert Club as a way to try and see if he could make his website self-sustaining.

In 2009, Ebert was clearly worried about the impact that a change of ownership of the Chicago Sun-Times — his newspaper for 46 years — would have on his website and ability to maintain its archives. So, the solution was simple: Charge readers $10 a year (early subscribers like myself were grandfathered into a $5 a year plan) to access a members-only newsletter delivered via email each week with lots of links, trailers and discussion, as well as access to a member-only forum and other web goodies.

I have to imagine that most subscribers subscribed for the same reason that I did — I wanted to support Ebert's work, and ensure its online future.

Ebert wrote about his hopes with this kind of experiment, a model that we've seen used by other authors including Andrew Sullivan, as well as comedians such as Louis C.K. In fact, Kickstarter and Indiegogo are taking this sort of crowdfunded/micropayment movement to help finance films themselves.

Ebert obviously wasn't the first author to experiment with micropayments and subscriptions, but he was one of the earliest with a significant existing audience to take proactive measures to ensure future viability.

I'm not sure how profitable the Ebert Club was. I've been a member for the last three years, but have no idea how many members exist or if the club ever made enough money to adequately support RogerEbert.com. In his final blog post announcing his "leave of presence," Ebert wrote that the Ebert Club would continue under his new Ebert Digital shingle, and that it would be expanded to see "bigger and better benefits."

Ebert Digital, which still has a planned relaunch of RogerEbert.com set for this Tuesday, will hopefully be able to encapsulate Ebert's extensive digital legacy.

While he was savvy enough to understand the importance of the Internet and social media, Ebert also understood the importance of preserving work for future generations.

Just as the Library of Congress's National Film Preservation Board ensures that great films aren't lost to history, we must makes sure that Ebert's digital legacy remains intact for future generations. With any luck, Ebert can inspire yet another generation of movie lovers and would-be critics with his prose, tweets and video archives.

Image via Frazer Harrison/Getty Images