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19 May 09

From 'why?' to 'why not?', the internet revolution | Media | The Guardian

Great article by Clay Shirky on the changed status of media production, who owns it, who controls it, with an astute take on abundance. ("That era, when media were shaped by the scarcity of production and by the judgment of professionals, has ended.")

www.guardian.co.uk/...internet-future - Preview

clay_shirky newspapers journalism business_model online_media the_guardian

Prior to the internet, the costs of reproduction and distribution created an asymmetry of access: every time someone bought a radio or a television, the number of media consumers increased by one, but the number of producers didn't budge. The internet, on the other hand, moves the basic mechanism of reproduction and distribution into a lattice of shared infrastructure, paid for by all and accessible to all.
The computers connected to the edges of this network are not imbalanced as in the old model, where it cost a great deal to own a TV station but little to own a TV. Instead, they are balanced like the telephone - if you can listen, you can talk; if you can read, you can publish; if you can watch, you can record. This does not mean the average user can write a compelling novel or create a good film, but being able to produce anything at all is a huge change, relative to the consumer's previous silence.
- - bingo. - on 2009-05-19
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- Even more dramatically, users who have one good thing in them - one recipe, one video, one political rant - can now produce that one thing and be heard by millions, without needing a contract and without securing any long-term audience. The 15th-century rationale came, at base, from the economic risk of spending time and effort producing bad material. Those economic limitations are gone; the question every amateur creator asks themselves every day isn't "Why publish this?" but "Why not?"
- This shift means we are in the middle of the greatest increase in expressive capability in human history: more people can communicate more things to more people than at any time. It's possible to lament a media culture with this many new participants - average quality falls, august businesses are destroyed - but this also happened with the spread of printing. The question isn't whether we want a medium that lets everyone produce content; we've got it. The question now is how we use it.

09 Mar 09

Bring on the techies: How Silicon Valley can help save newspapers | Media | guardian.co.uk

A Silicon Valley CEO addresses the newspaper business model. While not written in response to David Carr's NYT piece, it's a great riposte and refutation of same. Favorite bit:
QUOTE
Companies in Silicon Valley depend on having a fast-paced culture of innovation where no ideas are bad ideas, all voices are heard, technology is embraced not feared, and you are irrelevant if you aren't open to change. To achieve aggressive goals in competitive environments, teams have to work together without hidden agendas or obsessive attention to where in the chain of command a new idea originates.
UNQUOTE
I especially like the last clause in the last sentence. That "obsessive attention to where in the chain of command a new idea originate(d)" has dragged many a good idea into the Kingdom of the Cynical.

www.guardian.co.uk/...web20-web20 - Preview

the_guardian nathan_richardson newspapers business_model media

One day I was invited to a meeting to brainstorm about, of all things, the width of the Wall Street Journal. After I made a suggestion that was somewhere between novel and off the wall, the then-publisher leaned on the table, looked at me and said: "How old are you, young man?" The suggestion was clear: If you're under 40, you can't possibly understand the newspaper business. I still wish my response, though impolitic, had been: "How old is your thinking?"
While I don't have a quick fix for the newspaper industry's problems, I know one thing: The very companies that are ensuring newspapers' online traffic/existence should be leading the dialogue on their survival. Yahoo, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and AOL (NYSE: TWX) - not the editors, journalists and cadre of analysts who have led the newspapers to the brink - should be put in charge of identifying ways to keep a select number of news outlets viable.
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- There are three reasons why the tech leaders should be driving this bus: their culture of innovation; their dependence on newspapers; and their track record of creating and growing sources of online revenue.
- Companies in Silicon Valley depend on having a fast-paced culture of innovation where no ideas are bad ideas, all voices are heard, technology is embraced not feared, and you are irrelevant if you aren't open to change. To achieve aggressive goals in competitive environments, teams have to work together without hidden agendas or obsessive attention to where in the chain of command a new idea originates.
- Top news sites such as WashingtonPost.com, NYTimes.com and Marketwatch.com derive an average of 50% to 65% of their traffic from the big portals. Consumers have spoken, and they prefer going to the portals to be directed to their news sources.

18 Aug 08

New breed of 'net newsers' shape US media habits, says Pew report | Media | guardian.co.uk

Jemima Kiss writes about the recent Pew report that describes how "well-educated, technically-savvy young web users are shaping the media habits of the US, with one in 20 Americans saying they do not watch TV on a typical day and a sharp decline in newspaper readership, according to new research."

Interesting findings on education levels and TV-watching *and* interest (lack thereof) in science and technology, too.

www.guardian.co.uk/...digitalmedia.usa - Preview

newspapers television media news the_guardian jemima_kiss reference aggregators pew trends

A new generation of well-educated, technically-savvy young web users are shaping the media habits of the US, with one in 20 Americans saying they do not watch TV on a typical day and a sharp decline in newspaper readership, according to new research.
"net newsers" - web users under 35 who read more political blogs than watch national news coverage, rely heavily on web-based news during the day and have a strong interest in technology and technology news.
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- Net newsers are typically affluent and 80% are graduates, making them a highly desirable demographic for advertisers.
- They do favour some traditional media brands, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the BBC, the Pew survey of 3,600 adults found. But only 47% watch TV news on an average day.
- The research paints a picture of steady decline in the US newspaper industry, with the percentage of Americans who regularly read print titles falling from 58% in 1993 to 34% in 2008.
  According to the long-running survey, respondents saying they listened to radio news fell from 47% to 35% over the same period. As for network TV, the national news dropped from 60% to 29% and local news from 77% to 52%.
- However, TV is still the most popular medium for the US, with 46% of the public classified as "traditionalists" who watch throughout the day, but are likely to be older and less well educated than net newsers.
- More than 40% of this traditionalist group are unemployed, and were found to prefer visual news stories to audio and have little interest in science or technology news.
  A further 14% are described as "disengaged", a poorly-educated group with little interest in current affairs.
- The research also found that the proportion of young people in the US getting no daily news has increased from 25% in 1998 to 34%, with only 10% of people using social networking sites for their news.

03 May 08

How do we fund journalism in future? | Greenslade | Guardian Unlimited

Roy Greenslade reporting from a "future of journalism" conference in Australia, asking after 'the business model' for newspapers / journalism of the future. He mentions Jay Rosen, who joined the conference via satellite hook-up, and this in turn sparks some interesting conversation on the comments board (particularly by Rosen himself).

blogs.guardian.co.uk/...o_we_fund_journalism_in_f.html - Preview

greenslade the_guardian journalism business_model newspapers jay_rosen

The key question that cropped up throughout was about whether journalism can be funded if newspapers - or broadcasters - collapse due to the loss of advertising revenue.
"I can't see a funding model for serious journalism in future, not one that will pay for large staffs with specialists, and foreign correspondents and stringers, everywhere. I can't see ads paying for big operations that costs tens of millions of dollars. Websites can attract millions but not the necessary tens of millions."
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- John Cokley, a journalism lecturer at the University of Queensland, in accepting that situation, urged journalists to do much more to market their work, to understand the demand and then discover a business model to fund it.
- Jay Rosen
- said, more than once: "I have no commercial aspirations whatsoever". Instead, his concern is to uncover the social value, rather than the financial value, of participatory journalism.
  - - see Rosen's rebuttal/ clarification in comments - on 2008-05-03
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- takes us back to the main question: who will fund them? I don't buy Cokley's entrepreneurial idea. I like the idea of philanthropy but I know it's idealist. I think advertising will still raise a lot of money, enough to fund small staffs. It still may not be enough.
- Having studied the press and the history of the public sphere over a 300 year stretch, I know how critical marketplace success has been in securing a free, independent and powerful press. Those who went into the business of providing information have been pushing the development of the press along for hundreds of years. It was true in the eighteenth century; it's true today.
- However, I knew going in that "open source" reporting projects aren't--realistically--going to be money-makers because we are still at the stage of trying to figure out whether it's even viable to do this kind of pro-am journalism. We need to know what the puzzles and problems and practical challenges are. It's far better for our developing knowledge if we do not burden the experiment with commercial goals and targets that may not apply.
- Furthermore, I haven't noticed that the people who jump up and down, shouting, "where's the business model? where's the bloody business model?" are moving any closer to a working business model. Have you? Realistically, it seems to me we are at a place when there is no business model for news right now. Too often, "where's the business model?" isn't really a discerning question, but a club with which to beat the Internet.
- To me it's the wrong question if you want to find a way to pay reporters. We have to start further back in the inquiry: how do we create editorial value online, using the strengths of the Web?