Latest News on the Future of News

Maybe you do eat change for breakfast. But let's hope you have a hearty appetite.
Another big helping of change is being served for lunch, and change is the special for dinner, too.
How much change and how fast?



Legacy media companies are challenged to keep pace with the speed of this change.
News audience have been faster to adapt. With more and better choices available, they are no longer passive.

As NYU Digital Media Prof. Jay Rosen so presciently called them in a 2006, they are the People Formerly Known as The Audience.

Against that backdrop of rapidly shifting audience habits, legacy newscasts appear relatively unchanged on format and delivery, making this ONION satire far too close to reality.

Cover It Live - Demo

http://www.kgw.com/mobile-content/ripK9mick-255573231.html?c=n

Coming Feb. 3: Facebook to debut "Paper"

Just when it was becoming trendy to announce the certain demise of Facebook, here comes "Paper."

Facebook was one of the leaders in shifting its focus to Mobile-first, recognizing that their 'customers' consumed their content primarily from a small screen. In this respect, Facebook has been far ahead of many of its legacy media competitors who still lag in their mobile presence.

Now, with "Paper", Facebook looks to take its presentation of content on mobile platforms to an even higher level, in two meaningful ways: Highly visual, and user directed.

Take a look - what do you think?

MSNBC staffer fired over Super Bowl commercial tweet

The latest lesson on social media for legacy news org's comes from MSNBC, where a staffer has been fired over a tweet about a Super Bowl ad that included at shot at the political right.

The initial tweet said: "Maybe the right wing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family."

After predictable backlash, MSNBC removed and apologized for the tweet. 

But here's the lesson. The shot at the "right wing" was entirely unnecessary - a common instance where someone trying to be "clever" strays from the straight news value of the story and strays over the line.

Journalists should heed the lessons shared by the New York Times Social News Desk. This @NiemanLab post details lessons learned from the past year of socializing the news, including this core nugget: Straight posts are more effective at generating engagement than "clever" ones.

So, at the end of the day, playing it straight isn't just good journalism, and a good way to keep your job - it's also more effective at engaging the audience.