That was the provocative question raised today by students in a Masters Journalism program at the University of Oregon.
It turns out the procession of guest experts who'd preceded me to the classroom had left the students with the impression that 'new media' was killing journalism.
While there can be no doubt that competition from new media outlets and new media formats (online, mobile) are eroding the audience share of 'old media', it does not follow that new media is harming journalism. It may only be that it is harming the job security of traditional journalists.
In fact, it is possible that new media tools can significantly forward the principles of journalism for anyone willing to embrace these tools and technologies. Here are a few examples:
Aggregation
TheMoneyMeltdown.com is a great example of the use of aggregation to create a central location for information on a subject. The web site's creator didn't need to be the expert that wrote every article about our current economic meltdown - the value he performed was to go out and locate the best information about each aspect of the current economic crisis and aggregate all that content together in one well-organized web site. That a new-media application of one of journalism's oldest tenets: start with good research, then organize the information in a way that's useful to the audience.
Mash-ups
Data is everywhere, but data alone has no meaning. It once took reporting teams months to pour over data to give it meaning and then report the results. Mash-ups are a new-media tool for taking vast quantities of data, and empowering the public to be able to access the data easily to find out information they need. Chicagocrime.org pioneered this work way back in 2005, taking huge piles of crime data and making it searchable by location. The folks behind that initial project have since expanded their application to include location-based news stories, and also expanded to about a dozen cities with their application EveryBlock.com.
Audience Engagement
For too long, journalism has been a one-way conversation with the audience. Reporters report, readers read, and that's the way it's been.
New media tools make it possible for journalists to engage in a dialogue with the audience, which can make stories better from beginning to end. ReadWriteWeb has a great article detailing four ways they use Twitter to improve story-telling: Discovering breaking news; soliciting suggestions for interview questions for upcoming stories; quality assurance (readers catching/reporting errors), and even (gasp) promoting their stories so that their journalism reaches the largest possible audience.
Multi-Media storytelling
Perhaps the most exciting of all the advances offered by new media tools is the opportunity to provide a richer, more in depth and more compelling rendering of the most important stories of the day. The ability to richly interweave text, images, video, mapping and other media elements transforms yesterday's print or TV report into a powerful multimedia experience.
My favorite example of this is the excellent online multimedia report on the Minneapolis bridge collapse put together by a team at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, called 13 seconds in August. This is the 'New Media' equivalent of a long-form TV documentary, or a newspaper 'special section' - but frankly, is far more compelling. The ST team spent four months creating this compelling mix of mapping, images, text, video and audio.
We should all be encouraged by the possibilities of what journalism can become if we look at the new media tools as just that - new tools to continue the tradition of journalistic excellence.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
State of the Mediasphere
Imagine if we had studied the adoption and development of the medium of Television from its very inception. What would we have learned if we could have tracked and interviewed those who used the nascent medium as it evolved?
That idea is behind an extraordary study underway at USC's Annenberg School for Communication.
That idea is behind an extraordary study underway at USC's Annenberg School for Communication.
Dr. Jeff Cole, Director of the school's Center for the Digital Future, has led a study begun in the year 2000 that includes panels of 2000 participants in 30 different countries - a global 'focus group' of 60,000 people tracking the evolution of the internet and mobile.
He gave a fascinating keynote at the Monaco Media Summit, posted on YouTube and embedded here.
Among his insights:
- Newspapers spend only 30% on their content creators - writers, editors, photographers. Most of the expenses of a newspaper are related to production and distribution, costs which could be virtually eliminated in a digital distribution model, for papers courageous enough to jump the curve.
- TV, by contrast, has a great future, according to Cole. He believes that mobile technology will "allow Television to escape from the home." TV content will be ubiquitous in a mobile broadband world: "It's going to be our constant companion."
- Paying for content on the web is a dead model. Users are willing to accept advertising on the web to get free content...and thanks to Google the marriage of contextually relevant ads to content will unlock real advertiser value in new media.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The Future of News - SPJ video now online
Last month, the University of Oregon hosted the fall conference of the Society of Professional Journalists. Along with a number of workshops on specialized topics, there was a lunch panel where I joined two newspaper managing editors for a spirited discussion (argument?) over the future of media and journalism.
Not long afterwards, the Portland Business Journal followed up on one comment by panelist Steve Smith with a page one story predicting an impending plunge in local TV news revenues, and potential layoffs that could mirror those that have plagued newspapers in recent years.
Now you can enjoy the entire luncheon chat online. SPJ has posted the video on the SPJ web site.
Moderated by Rob Smith, editor of the Portland Business Journal, the discussion featured Steve Engelberg, managing editor of ProPublica (and former managing editor of The Oregonian), Steve Smith, former editor of the Spokesman-Review, and myself, online editor at KGW
Not long afterwards, the Portland Business Journal followed up on one comment by panelist Steve Smith with a page one story predicting an impending plunge in local TV news revenues, and potential layoffs that could mirror those that have plagued newspapers in recent years.
Now you can enjoy the entire luncheon chat online. SPJ has posted the video on the SPJ web site.
Moderated by Rob Smith, editor of the Portland Business Journal, the discussion featured Steve Engelberg, managing editor of ProPublica (and former managing editor of The Oregonian), Steve Smith, former editor of the Spokesman-Review, and myself, online editor at KGW
Friday, November 7, 2008
Election Night 08: Tipping point for New Media?
On the surface, it would seem like great news for a beleaguered industry: Wednesday's "Obama Wins" newspaper editions sold out their runs. Here in Portland, The Oregonian sold every copy and could have sold more. Likewise for the Washington Post. Copies of the New York Times edition are already on eBay earning $150 bids. But, as Ken Sands opines on Poynter, it's quite likely that "the print edition is more of a souvenir than ever before in a presidential election."
More than ever before, public turned to newer media. Mediaweek reported record tune-in across the major networks for TV and Cable coverage of the election.
The online story was even more dramatic. According to Akami, Internet News use reached its highest one-day total ever. CNN.com was among the many online networks setting one-day records. Lost Remote captured the web site home pages of a number of major online news sources, and the diversity of content and links helps explain why audiences flocked to the internet for continuing coverage and user-directed depth. Twitter also reported a 43% bump in traffic.
Perhaps the most interesting development was the anecdotal but undeniable increase in importance of mobile as an information delivery platform. At party headquarters here in Oregon, many in attendance had their faces glued to their phone screen.
In an era where the audience can read the New York Times in their hand, moments after a new President is elected, while attending an election celebration, the traditional newspaper seems like a souvenir. That's only bad news if your image as a journalist is tied to a specific 'platform', like 'print'. After all, someone has to write those stories that appear minutes later on the internet and mobile phones.
More than ever before, public turned to newer media. Mediaweek reported record tune-in across the major networks for TV and Cable coverage of the election.
The online story was even more dramatic. According to Akami, Internet News use reached its highest one-day total ever. CNN.com was among the many online networks setting one-day records. Lost Remote captured the web site home pages of a number of major online news sources, and the diversity of content and links helps explain why audiences flocked to the internet for continuing coverage and user-directed depth. Twitter also reported a 43% bump in traffic.
Perhaps the most interesting development was the anecdotal but undeniable increase in importance of mobile as an information delivery platform. At party headquarters here in Oregon, many in attendance had their faces glued to their phone screen.
In an era where the audience can read the New York Times in their hand, moments after a new President is elected, while attending an election celebration, the traditional newspaper seems like a souvenir. That's only bad news if your image as a journalist is tied to a specific 'platform', like 'print'. After all, someone has to write those stories that appear minutes later on the internet and mobile phones.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Covering the election in a digital age
It wasn't that many years ago when election coverage was pretty straightforward.
We would go to the polls, and hurry home by 8 p.m. to gather around the TV to watch the national networks collect and report the results. It might be several more hours before the winner was sure. The next morning, we would dive into the newspaper to read all about it.
That was election coverage.
Fast forward to November 4th, 2008. At KGW-TV here in Portland, NBC called the presidential race for Obama the second the west-coast polls closed, at 8:00 pm on the dot. But the speed of reporting wasn't the biggest change.
Our election coverage included an unprecedented depth and diversity of content made available on every conceivable platform:
We would go to the polls, and hurry home by 8 p.m. to gather around the TV to watch the national networks collect and report the results. It might be several more hours before the winner was sure. The next morning, we would dive into the newspaper to read all about it.
That was election coverage.
Fast forward to November 4th, 2008. At KGW-TV here in Portland, NBC called the presidential race for Obama the second the west-coast polls closed, at 8:00 pm on the dot. But the speed of reporting wasn't the biggest change.
Our election coverage included an unprecedented depth and diversity of content made available on every conceivable platform:
- 'Mainstream' new media content, like constantly updated text stories and videos, and real-time election results on kgw.com
- Breaking news emails pushed to subcribers alerting them to the results
- Continuous "tweets" on the KGW Twitter feed, reporting local race results as they came in
- Stories and election results updated in real time and available on the go on mobile phones via kgw.com/mobile
- Live blogging analysis from Portland's top political blogger, Jack Bogdanski of Jack Bog's Blog.
- Interactive polls, both yes/no and open-ended, with viewer and user questions posed to studio political analysts
- Continuous live video streaming coverage of the local election while NBC network coverage kept us off local TV
The 2008 election truly represented a new level of multi-platform journalism, and the winner was an informed electorate!
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Widgets bring National election home
Here is the MSNBC widget for Election Night coverage...a great example of how 'widgets' make it easy for local and smaller news outlets and blogger/journalists to enrich the quality and content of their own coverage, without added staff or even technical coding skills.
Widgets: Add rich content without being a coder
For news reporters and bloggers whose focus is on content, HTML and RSS and Javascript can be scary words. "Widgets" are a great way for content creators and publishers to enrich their own stories and blogs with content from other sources, without needing to be an expert in code-writing.
My favorite tool for this is the web site widgetbox.com, where easy tutorials guide the user in how to create a widget and generate the necessary code that can then be simply pasted into a web site or story for easy embedding. On Widgetbox, you can either search for a widget application you'd like (say, a countdown clock), or create a widget.
Here in Portland, the big news is the return of #1 Trail Blazers draft pick Greg Oden from season ending injury, so I found a widget that enables me to embed Greg Oden's blog onto my web site. I clicked on the widget, clicked on "Blogger" as my publishing platform and the widget placed it in the right column of my blog. Take a peek in the right-hand column to check it out.
Alternatively, you can simply go to a web site that has content you're interested in and see if they already offer it in widget form.
Want to embed automatically updated gas price information onto your web site? GasBuddy.com has a localizable gas prices widget. You can see an example here, on the web site I manage, the "Portland Gas Prices" page of kgw.com.
How about the Presidential election? Downloadable widgets are available from both CNN and MSNBC that enable local media and bloggers to pull the content & resources of these large national networks into localized web pages. I've added the CNN widget here, and the NBC widget in a separate blog post above this one.
A poster to the New Media Blog, JMK, recommends another great web site for getting and building wigdgets: http://www.go2web20.net/
The journalistic power of utilizing widgets is two-fold: non-programmers can now add complex multimedia content to their story pages without needing to know or even understand the underlying coding (it's all done by the widget); and, local news outlets and even bloggers can take advantage of the resources and expertise of larger or distance content creators to enrich and add substance to their local coverage. So, go forth and embed!
My favorite tool for this is the web site widgetbox.com, where easy tutorials guide the user in how to create a widget and generate the necessary code that can then be simply pasted into a web site or story for easy embedding. On Widgetbox, you can either search for a widget application you'd like (say, a countdown clock), or create a widget.
Here in Portland, the big news is the return of #1 Trail Blazers draft pick Greg Oden from season ending injury, so I found a widget that enables me to embed Greg Oden's blog onto my web site. I clicked on the widget, clicked on "Blogger" as my publishing platform and the widget placed it in the right column of my blog. Take a peek in the right-hand column to check it out.
Alternatively, you can simply go to a web site that has content you're interested in and see if they already offer it in widget form.
Want to embed automatically updated gas price information onto your web site? GasBuddy.com has a localizable gas prices widget. You can see an example here, on the web site I manage, the "Portland Gas Prices" page of kgw.com.
How about the Presidential election? Downloadable widgets are available from both CNN and MSNBC that enable local media and bloggers to pull the content & resources of these large national networks into localized web pages. I've added the CNN widget here, and the NBC widget in a separate blog post above this one.
A poster to the New Media Blog, JMK, recommends another great web site for getting and building wigdgets: http://www.go2web20.net/
The journalistic power of utilizing widgets is two-fold: non-programmers can now add complex multimedia content to their story pages without needing to know or even understand the underlying coding (it's all done by the widget); and, local news outlets and even bloggers can take advantage of the resources and expertise of larger or distance content creators to enrich and add substance to their local coverage. So, go forth and embed!
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