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I believe the democratization of just about everything is a good thing, but practically every conflict we read about centers in some ways on institutions desperately trying to hang onto control. Politics, business, education and media are being transformed against their will.
Our work at the Pew Internet Project and the University of Toronto’s NetLab (especially research for the Connected Lives Project) does not support the fear that the digital technologies are killing society. Our evidence is that these technologies are not isolated — or isolating — systems. They are being incorporated into people’s social lives much like their predecessors were.<br /><br />
We won’t be discussing offline and online as categories as almost everything will be consumed digitally. Any discussion of mobile advertising will vanish because most everything by then will be mobile. There also won’t be a large distinction between “national” and “local” because targeting has become audience-based and, when you look at the data, everything becomes local.
Niche publishers with venerable brands, captive audiences or business-critical content such as the Financial Times can afford to go behind a paywall and still make money. But what of those publishers whose products might be classy and attractive, but not unique or special enough? Mail Online’s success raises an awkward question for publishers of general-interest content going down the paywall route: is it really such a smart thing to do?
Eric Newton, senior adviser to the President at Knight Foundation, gave the keynote address this morning a national conference of journalism educators, “Journalism Education in the Digital Age,” at Middle Tennessee State University. The talk was delivered from this text:
Changes in publishing and journalism in the digital transition...
Charlie Beckett on Kony2012
How young people in the UK connect with the world - International Broadcasting Trust paper
Jay Rosen and Ethan Zuckerman discuss journalism
"perhaps eventually the "Guardian reader" is going to turn into a
"Guardian
member". Call it what you like – a community, club or network.
Not
only will they sign up for the paper or the app, they could contribute
directly to content creation"
"This week’s most stunning statistic: In February, Facebook drove more
traffic to the Guardian web site than Google did."
"We wanted to make a news service that answered the question: “What would
news be like if we had networked digital media (and digital cameras and phones
and laptops) but there had never been newspapers or broadcast TV news
programmes?”.
Live-stream, video-based, multiple sources, filtered by story
We saw a big part of the answer in the coverage of the Arab Spring on
aljazeera.com and by the Egyptian peoples’ own stories on Youtube and Twitter:
this was what news online should be like. When we first began talking to Michael
Jermey (Head of News and Sport) and Julian March (Head of Online News) at ITV in
Spring 2011 we quickly hit on a simple design strategy that played into ITV
News’ strengths: lead on a stream of real time content that includes lots of
short-form video playing directly in the stream - so that whenever I come back I
know there’ll be something new. But the stream would have some particular
characteristics: we’d push lots of big photographs through and tell stories with
words and pictures, learning a lesson from Picture Post and Life; we’d have
editors curate the stream using multiple sources and content types, aggregating
the best of the web and not just ITV/ITN-generated material; and we would also
filter the stream to make it possible to follow individual stories. This last
was the big idea and - certainly in this context - an original one.
Keep it simple
We also had a design mantra, ‘keep it simple’. We hope we’ve stuck to it.
We hate the visual and conceptual complexity of many news websites and we know
users do too because we’ve found it so in testing. Our quest for simplicity was
sharpened by focusing on two basic and related use cases: “As a user, I want to
know what the world’s talking about today”, and: “As a user, I want to follow
the big stories through the day across devices wherever I am”. This was why
filtering was so important: “just show me updates on
Phonehacking...Syria...Soapstar murder...Cup Final - whichever stories I’m
interested in.
We ignored two other use cases served by most news sites, the ones that
result in multiple layers of navigation, being: “As a user, I want to find the
latest news about a topic that’s a very particular and unique interest of my
own”; and, “As an editor I’ve got lots and lots of stories that I want you to
discover, but they’re all getting in each other’s way.”
This is why principle navigation is by story, not topic.
Transforming the newsroom
The bare bones of this product strategy were first formulated in a
successful pitch in February. Kick off day was in May 2011 at the London
Television Center on the South Bank with 50 national and regional news editors.
Broad participation was a key to the project’s success throughout, but this was
only a small part of a 300-strong award winning broadcast news team dedicated to
producing polished video packages three times a day at lunchtime, evening and
News at Ten. Raw news delivered as it happened across 24 hours in copy, tweets,
weblinks and pictures - not just video - would be a massive culture shock. There
was nervousness, especially about time and resources, offset by enthusiasm for
change and a leadership determined to exploit the potential of real-time news
delivered across multiple devices. We also had a strong conviction that opening
up the news gathering process - rather than adding new work - would give us the
content we needed for the stream.
Built with the freedom of no print or digital legacy
It’s possible that we wouldn’t have been able to achieve such a simple and
radical outcome if working with a news organisation with an underlying culture
of print: we would most likely have trod on too many toes, threatened the
privilege of old skills, been seen to be tearing down a valuable legacy.
At almost every step of the way ITV encouraged us to be bold. After all,
there was no legacy online service of significance and we were released from
many commercial constraints. In fact when we had the inevitable moments of
self-doubt they pushed us forwards. Towards the end of the concept phase we
presented a homepage that led on conventional articles and Robin Pembrooke,
managing director of online and on demand, who was always a steadfast supporter
of the stream-first approach, upbraided us for losing our nerve.
The power of rapid prototyping
Our next task was to prove the concept in action: to lead on a live stream
of all the news, filter the stream by story and head up each story stream with a
catch-up article or analysis. We needed answers to three urgent questions: could
a live stream of all the news - not just a big unfolding event - be turned into
a desirable product? What kind of effort would be involved in producing it? And
was this a feasible option for the ITN and regional ITV news teams?
We built the first of three prototypes in node.js and joined Jason Mills,
the ITN online news editor, and his team in the newsroom. We learnt that
curating the stream was a job for at least three editors/producers; that it had
the potential to be a great editorial product so long as the editor had a feel
for storytelling, which meant knowing what to leave out as well as what to put
in; that a fast and simple admin tool with very rapid throughput would be a
vital component of the product (our prototype editor was woefully inadequate).
We also found out that we would be able use the by-products of the journalistic
process to give us sufficient content. In fact, a second round of tests on the
national day of action against public service cuts demonstrated that not only
would we have enough content from ITN, but the sum of the ITV regions was a
fantastic news gathering resource for national stories with a local
dimension.
Customer testing drives editorial and design
We continued testing with a larger group and discarded marginal ideas and
focused on what people really liked. We wanted to get to launch with a minimum
viable product and then continue to build and adapt the service with the benefit
of mass audience feedback.
A third throwaway prototype with a much slicker admin tool was introduced
in September and this was used by national and regional news teams to practice
delivering real time news two days a week, gradually building up to four or
five. Julian March made weekly tours of the regions, encouraging and guiding the
news teams, giving feedback from the test group and sharing experience. By
January, when we switched to an Alpha version of the production site (built by
Made by Many in Ruby on Rails), most of the newsrooms were producing streams of
high quality content and - excitingly - beating Sky and BBC news online to
breaking stories.
We had debates along the way. What was the life cycle of a story in the
stream? (Variable, but not normally greater than 24 hours). Could a story filter
name change to fit the latest news (Yes). What was the optimum number of filters
(between 9 and 12). Will users object to advertising in the stream? (most of our
test group didn’t). Are horizontal galleries better than vertical picture
stories (No, people are happier scrolling). Should comments be included in the
first release? (No, but we have some interesting plans) and, vitally, is a
mobile optimised version necessary for first release (resounding Yes!).
This is a minimum viable product, what’s next?
We've launched after just six two-week iterations of build. There will be
further releases of the product as we watch how it grows and is
received.
Lean product development requires focus on value and discarding
anything that isn’t absolutely necessary for launch.
Robin and Julian
understood very clearly the value of agile, integrated development and what that
involves on both sides: give and take on functionality and going for a minimum
viable product that doesn’t deliver everything now; trust that not everything
has to be designed or signed off upfront, accepting responsibility and clear
roles in delivery, and, above all, working together as a team. We were
incredibly fortunate to have an ITV product manager, Jason Mercer, working with
our team in our studio. Likewise, we were accepted into the newsroom by Jason
Mills and ITV News Editor Deborah Turness.
This is just the start of a project, building a platform for next
generation news at ITV. Next steps?
Local participation is a very
interesting prospect, so is finer-grained filtering by different facets
(including location, topics, popularity, people) and of course, comments and
sentiment tracking and connected TV. What we know is that its already had an
impact on the news team by turning it into a 24 hour news operation that’s no
longer constrained by TV. Irrespective of the running order set by broadcast, if
a reporter has a story, now he or she has an outlet.
This isn’t the definitive account of the story either. There’s a
fascinating technology story to be told by Stuart Eccles; James Higgs will lift
the lid on an editorial admin tool that can turn news around in seconds; Cath
Richardson will be blogging about the way customer testing influenced our
decisions and changed our audience focus; and Robin Pembrooke will be blogging
tomorrow about the experience from ITV’s point of view.
We’d really appreciate any comments or opinions on the service. It’s very
different, we won’t have got it all right, but we’re confident that a big chunk
of the ITV News audience - and beyond - will really get it.
With huge thanks to all at Made by Many, ITV and ITN involved in the
concept, design, development and delivery of the project
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"Journalism schools are becoming a larger part of local digital news.
A number of college journalism programs have launched hyperlocal sites
as a way to give real-world training to their students and to serve neighboring
communities"
Frederic Filloux makes important points about managing digital transition from legacy media. It's harder than the pundits pretend.
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