Entries Tagged 'Internet' ↓

Recorded at the U.S. State Department, Clay Shirky talks in this TED Talk about how technology becomes phenomenal, or its uses become broader and more important (or more socially interesting), once that particular technology becomes technically boring and “everybody takes them for granted.” He used the example of the monitoring of elections via SMS in Nigeria in 2007, followed by the 2008 U.S. election and how we monitored our votes using cameras and phones. In other words, a first world country followed the example of a third world country not because the technology was new or revolutionary, but because the technology had become so common that it was part of the social landscape and therefore seen purely as a tool for everyday use.

Shirky goes on to explain how the media landscape has changed forever. Some of this is new, most of it isn’t, but Shirky’s analysis and explanation of the current and future state of media is well worth the time to watch. In particular, how we create environments for discussion and shape that conversation, has become the ONLY effective way of delivering a message and defining that message as “news” or anything else is getting harder and harder to do. I think one of the most important changes that has occurred is that today, we learn more from the discussion of the news than we do from the initial delivery of that news. ‘Twitter, Facebook, and cellphones can now make history.’

The following is a guest post from a veteran journalist, who also happens to be a reader of this blog:

OK – have we all gotten over the homely Scottish woman who can sing well? How about the brouhaha over Miss California and Donald Trump and whatever it was that she said that riveted a spellbound nation?

Good. I figured as much. These media creations flamed out about as quickly as they flamed on here in ADD Nation.

Now can we move onto something really important — such as what’s going to supplant Twitter as the NBT (that’s Next Best Thing, for all you folks who actually like to see words spelled out to maximize clarity and avoid confusion. And that was Attention Deficit Disorder Nation in the previous paragraph, as if you didn’t know.).

I mean, c’mon, Twitter is so half-hour ago, for crying out loud. For one thing, the name is just too long. For another, how the hell are users expected to use all 140 characters per Tweet? Do the Twitter-meisters think we’re a nation of Faulkners, Mailers and Joyces?

You can expect to see the NBT coming to a cell phone or other wireless driver- and pedestrian-distracting electronic device faster than you can say Susan Boyle. And I already have a name for it: Blip.

That’s right, Blip. It’s faster than Twitter. For example, it has only one syllable, which is an important consideration in ADDN. Each dispatch is called a Bleep, with the sender – or Bleeper – Bleeping, which gives the technology an edgier feeling than Tweet, Tweeter or Tweeting, which, face it, sound so ornithologically cartoonish (you know, “I taught I taw …”). And, Blip has only 70 characters, to maximize speed and minimize meaning, which seems to be the whole point of modern telecommunications.

But hold on. Blip isn’t even out yet, but it’s already so … last paragraph. Which brings us to the NBT faster than you can say SB. It’s It, which has that great “information technology” connotation, plus it’s It, too. Get It? With a name half as long as Blip, it (or is that It?) has only 35 characters, and its (or is that It’s?) dispatches are called, simply and appropriately, I. After all, that’s where all this fabulous technology is apparently leading: sating our nonstop, 24/7 compulsion to tell the world about, as George Harrison put it so succinctly 40(!) years ago, “I, Me, Mine.”

BTW, 35 characters are enough to sa

The bumper sticker I read on every Volvo I saw during my childhood in Vermont read, “Act Globally, Shop Locally.” A worthy message indeed and more relevant than ever with the growing concern about over-processed food (i.e. peanut butter, spinach, etc.), as well as the various chemicals that can be found in our food containers these days, but unfortunately this message cannot apply to the news we receive. The growing trend seems to be that local is better when it comes to news coverage. Independent sites, as well as those backed by mainstream media, are popping up all over the country. Mark Glaser, of PBS’ MediaShift, just posted the following on Twitter: “Putting together guide to local watchdog news sites for MediaShift, including VoiceOfSanDiego, MinnPost, StL Beacon, others.” I couldn’t help but think of David Simon’s comment on how newspapers must be the counterweight to bullshit and without them, local corruption will run rampant. Simon has often stated how it would be nice to be in local politics over the next decade, as the unchecked opportunities will be numerous while a new model for local news coverage is discovered. Watch a great interview that Bill Moyers conducted with Simon here.

I’m looking forward to the collection Glaser comes up with to see if there are any sources that I’m missing, but I couldn’t help but think about what we’re all missing with this increasing “local centric” mentality of news coverage. I have written before about the growing trend of hyper-local sites, but the void in our collective knowledge of the world is of far greater concern as news organizations continue to whittle away at their foreign news bureaus. This leaves us with a collection of independent journalists filing the void, often valiantly doing great work, but I worry how effective they are all the time and how safe? Start-ups such as Global Post have put together some great, experienced foreign correspondents, but while still in its infancy, there are bound to be gaps in coverage.

On Tuesday, Andrew Stroehlein, journalist and Communications Director for the International Crisis Group, expressed his worries about “a world without foreign correspondents.” He isn’t the first person to express concern about this growing trend to cut costs by bringing the bureaus home, but his post is worth a read for its unique perspective. Stroehlein gives two examples, in Somalia and Sri Lanka, of how news coverage is lacking. His logic is a bit flawed (which he seems to recognize and acknowledge), in that he discusses the cost-cutting measures being taken and that this has had an effect on the diminished coverage. However, in both scenarios the almost complete press blackout is due to security on the ground or government interference with the press.

“The first is Somalia, where the utter inanity of foreign news coverage in the West, particularly in the US, knows no bounds. Amid deafening hero-worship and chest-thumping, the US media machine was so proud that a new president with the world’s largest military at his disposal can kill a couple lightly armed thugs that few seemed even able to grasp the most basic fact of the situation: piracy is symptom, not the disease (NOTE: I wrote about this yesterday in urging people to focus on the solution, rather than just trumpeting the problem), and lawlessness off the coast of Somalia will continue as long as anarchy is allowed to continue on land. If only a tiny fraction of the Western media ruckus of recent weeks could be dedicated to Somalia itself, then international political attention might start focusing on the roots of the problem.”

Stroehlein continues,

“The other example of a crisis unfolding mostly not before our eyes is Sri Lanka, where over the past few months the situation in the north east has become incredibly desperate for some 150,000 civilians trapped in an ever-shrinking “safe zone” between their government that is shelling them and the cult-like LTTE rebels who shoot them if they try to escape. Today, as my colleague writes, “A mass slaughter of civilians will take place Tuesday at noon. And everyone knows it.” Once again, foreign correspondents are unable to cover the story, this time because the government is not allowing them in to the region.”

I would have included the genocide in Darfur along with these two examples as well, but Stroehlein has done a valiant job of describing the press’ failure to properly report as he has written it. The comments are also well worth reading.

Alisa Miller, the head of Public Radio International (PRI), explained in a TED Talk in 2008 why, although we (Americans) want to know more about the world now than ever before, the US media is actually showing us less. She walks us through the graphs and stats in great detail below and I have also included the map she references in her talk about news coverage in February of 2007.

A print journalist I know recently brought up the following argument, in response to the ongoing debate about the future of news. He said he is still unclear as to why newspapers are the only businesses in the world that are expected to provide their content for free… I thought to myself, you know? This is actually a very good point. Why are our expectations of newspapers different from any other content-providing industry? He continued with his argument:

“Perhaps they need to adopt the television business model on their Web sites. You click on a link to a news article, but before the article appears, a well-produced, high-resolution, high-quality commercial appears that DOESN’T have a little “X” in the corner to click on to get rid of it. These commercials can be sold for big bucks (or at least bigger bucks than newspapers currently can get from advertisers). If it’s a long story, another commercial appears before you can continue reading.

This model works for TV — otherwise, how else could CBS pay trillions for the so-called “March Madness” rights, etc., etc., etc. Why would this model not work for newspaper Web sites? Because other Web sites would just pirate (i.e. steal) the content and post it without the commercials?

Why is it that Web sites can steal newspaper articles but have to pay for songs? Does the latest unintellible hip-hop diatribe by L’il Whoever have more intrinsic social value than an investigative series that uncovers public corruption, grisly conditions for wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the like? I guess so, because that’s what society has decided should be paid for and what should be free.”

What do you think? Would readers accept ads on their screens before they are able to read the contents of an article? Would this be a profitable business model for newspapers? How would this type of setup work with news aggregators such as Newser or Google News? Would it put them on the street or force them to rewrite the news?

Who? What? Why? When? Where? These are the five governing principles of any news story and the basic tools of the journalism trade. Anyone who has ever worked in the industry knows this and most readers do to as these facts make up the foundation of any good story. Unfortunately, these days (look at me, sounding all old and shit) not everyone remembers the rules. I’ve just spent more time than I would have liked searching through a clumsy video replay of yet another round-table discussion on the future of news (or in this case, “traditional media”), looking for the names of the participants as well as the date this occurred. I was able to piece together the names, although the date was found only through a trusty “new-media” tool I like to call Google: June 4th, 2008. The original broadcast was on GroundReport.com, but it contained no information next to the video as to who the participants were and when this discussion took place. Both IWantMedia.com and GroundReport.com have included this information elsewhere on their sites (found it too late), but it was easier for me to Google the information, ending up back on the original sites I started from, than to search through the mass of nothingness accompanying the video. Perhaps new-media has something to learn here? I’m not sure if that lesson is to be learned from Google or perhaps a legacy company like the New York Times… More on that later.

Anyway, I’ve included below the discussion that took place at NYU’s J-school about the future of traditional media. The discussion was hosted by I Want Media and Ground Report, one a media industry general information website, the other a citizen journalist/news platform (still in its infancy, as I discussed earlier). Both are worthy ideas and worth a look. The discussion was fairly interesting and featured Michael Wolff (Vanity Fair and Newser.com), Kenneth Li (Reuters), David Carr (New York Times), Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch.com), Keith J. Kelly (New York Post) and Johnnie L. Roberts (Newsweek).

What did they have in common? They are all men, all happened to be in the same television studio in New York at the same time and for the most part, they all are media commentators and journalists with something at stake (although some of them are obviously less complacent than others about their careers). Other than that, as you’ll see, the line is pretty clear as to who “gets” it and who doesn’t. Schonfeld and Wolff were on their own it seemed simply because of the way they approached the discussion where as the other panelists spent half their time defending old media and the other half of the time blaming new media and news aggregators for “stealing” their content. More on that to come… My favorite part of the discussion was the last question of the night: “What are you all doing to secure your future in this industry?” Not one of them was able to provide a viable response although clearly Scholfeld and Wolff have a head start on the others.

At least I thought Wolff had a head start until I saw this news about the AP looking to shut out news aggregators (like newser.com) from publishing its content (and that of its affiliated newspapers). We’ll see how far that one goes, especially considering the New York Times Company is guilty of doing the same thing (see the lawsuit here brought by Gatehouse Media), although the lawsuit against their Boston.com subsidiary was settled out of court. Seriously, now the AP is resorting to suing instead of embracing to stop this change? For one, it explains why The New York Times Company settled out of court…

But the real kick in the teeth on this one is the following quote from the AP’s William Dean Singleton, “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.” I know Dean Singelton. I met him during my childhood right before he bought my father’s paper, fired and then re-hired the entire news staff so as to do away with seniority and by doing so drove away the best talent that paper had known. To say the least, I’ve never been a fan of his…