The ‘new media’ evolution according to a millennial photographer.

Posts Tagged ‘Media’

Dear Bill Keller

Dear Bill Keller,

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I had hope. I’ve been to the new Times newsroom, I’ve seen your awesome web infographics, I’ve talked with your developers, I’ve watched videos of your futurism department. There are many, many, smart people working for you.

When I asked one of your employees, why he had given up a well-paying job to come work for you he told me “…when the Times calls, you answer.”

I was emboldened when I read your byline from Iran. You, a manager, reported from the heart of what continues to be the world’s biggest story.

You sir, are in control of one of the finest journalism producing institutions in the world. Yet, people like you are pissing it away.

I was heart broken when I heard that the New York Times, which I have a deep respect and love for signed it’s intent-to-file-chapter-11 forms.

Nonetheless, I have a deep appreciation for experimentation, and I hope that your endeavors will teach the rest of us a thing or two about how to make money on the web.

Then, I read a Q&A that you did in TIME magazine. Even though the copy had to fit on one page, and your answers are brief, I’ve never seen a journalist sound as much like a politician as you did in that article. (And I use the word 'politician' that in the out-of-touch, slimy, refusing-to-be-held-accountable sort of way.)

Apologize for your mistakes. Transparency is all it’s cracked up to be.

You admitted that journalists in this country had failed as the Fourth Estate. The flat-out bad reporting when ex-President Bush took this country to war against Iraq was in-excusable. The argument for war was based on lies. To this day, the media hasn’t made a resounding statement saying as much.

You didn’t apologize.

You blamed us, the people, for creating “conventional wisdom” for you to ‘float along’ with.

If you want us to trust you, we’ve got to have an honest relationship! Tell us when you get something wrong. We’ll be mad, but we’ll trust you more because you came clean.

The smell of ink doesn’t justify its cost.

You said that print still has “a lot of life left in it.” I’m not sure if that was the diplomatic answer but I think most of us would have been more impressed to hear that you were actively looking for ways to move your operation digital; that print was on its way out as the foundation of your business.

Make a commitment to doing journalism online because the myth that, “the best of online journalism is rooted in mainstream media,”

won’t last long. I’m not sure what you define as “mainstream,” but you ought to consider re-evaluating your premise. The MSM isn’t the only group of people capable of doing journalism. Read the rest of this post →

Jul 11, 2009 | Battle, Journalism, Media Industry | Comments

Paid Content = Paid Wifi

Wi-Fi logo
Image via Wikipedia

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve paid for WiFi access. Like most geeks, I pride myself on being able to find free internet access wherever I go. If I can’t find it, (like some airports) then web access nearly always goes into the “it can wait” column of my todo list.

Taking a step back, a service that I can find for free elsewhere is not one I’m likely to pay for, and I’m willing to sacrifice timeliness to save money.

This will be the a huge problem for newsorgs who want to go the paid content route.

Actually, the phrase Paid Content is flawed. It presumes that you’re paying for a product. Paying customers of the WSJ, aren’t really paying for the content, they pay for access to that content. You aren’t buying a product, you’re buying a service.

Let’s call Paid Content what it really is: Paid Access.

Read the rest of this post →

May 07, 2009 | Media Industry | Comments

LINKS | Down With the AP?

Image representing Associated Press as depicte...
Image via CrunchBase

There's been a growing feeling that the AP is not our friend in the media industry, but this week, that feeling seemed to bubble over. We've got some rough numbers to show that they're not helping us, and with the rise of ESPN local sites, the AP is rapidly loosing it's marketplace.

I don't know if I'm ready to sign their death sentence yet, they do seem to have some smart people working for 'em (I look to the New Model for News study and their iPhone app). Yet, it's painfully obvious (after the youtube fiasco) that the AP is a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.

These are my links for April 14th through April 18th:

The AP is outdated and increasingly irrelevant; so are Printies


AP thinking of future:http://www.ap.org/newmodel.pdf - Interesting 'atomization of news' but still top-down publishing model. –@GregElin on March 23

Numbers

Engagement is high, now we just need to harness it.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="158" caption="Apparently, there's more demand for opinionated news than unbiased news."][/caption]

Lest there be any doubt, the internet is used by all age groups.

Read the rest of this post →

Apr 18, 2009 | tumblr post | Comments

LINKS | Micropayments Don’t Work, but Everyone Has a Better Idea

Somehow, I missed the links from the latter part of last week, and have been bookmarking like crazy this last week. So, ya'll get a ton of links. Apologies for the long, long list, but I've broken it up with some good videos — and I've edited down! These are the cream of the crop from February 10th through February 20th:

Journalism Business Models

Web Journalism

Feb 21, 2009 | tumblr post | Comments

How Newhouse Can Become Relevant Again

 This post is in part a response to Lauren Rabaino’s post on how to change the Cal Poly journalism program in part an answer to the #collegejourn call for posts on how to improve college journalism education.

Lauren’s analysis of the way to overhaul the her journalism program seems to go down the right path. I would take it just a set or two further though and stop the broadcast concentration. I'm looking at:

  • writing track: teaches reporting as any old print/newspaper prof would typically teach it, but with a strong emphasis on writing for the web. This naturally includes social networking, blogging, and audio production.
  • visual-content track These are are photogs, broadcast people, & designers. Teach a little bit of print design, but go 40-60% with web design. Photogs and video folk ought to know most of what each other does. Photogs may get some studio and photoshop time that the video folk won't and the video people ought to focus a little more on how to produce BJ style stories.
  • tech track: We need to be teaching/recruiting coders as journalists. Now that we’re on the web, we need people who are capable of running that infrastructure. We ought to be training people in web site design, database management and display, data-mining, website development, etc

I mostly agree with Lauren’s idea of scrapping the print track, as I’ve said, teaching print design is a bit like teaching someone esperanto. It’s not like print design is going to go away, but it is far less important that teaching web design to those in the journalism field.

Video

I’ll go ahead and cautiously agree with Lauren, video should be taught in some form or another to all the majors. I say again: cautiously.

Newhouse has a the ‘kid in the candy store’ syndrome when it comes to video. Soundslides are taught in beginning writing and photo classes, video/multimedia has become an integral part of nearly every lesson plan. The thinking is, ‘new media’ involves heavy use of multimedia and video, and therefore every student should be indoctrinated into the ways of ‘new media.’

This thinking is just … flawed. Beginning photo students just don’t need to know how to shoot video … it’s advanced skill that just doesn’t need to be taught to beginning students.

Besides, the video that Newhouse emphasizes is short-form, heavily edited video segments that last 1:30. I’m not at all convinced that the ROI is there.

Instead, Newhouse ought to focus on the basics of shooting video (composition, lighting, uploading, etc) for those not in the visual track and long form video (10 min) for the visual folk.

Social Media

Every program should heavily emphasis social media. How to leverage it for reporting, maintaining a personal and professional blog, twitter, podcasting, etc… 

One nice thing about Newhouse is it is home to a lot of up-to-date, high-end equipment. This  makes the job of learning and reporting much easier, but it’s all for nought if we’re not learning applicable information.

An active blog ought to be viewed in the same light as getting an internship – a requirement. 

Old media

Just like the mainstream media industry, journalism academia is run by Baby Boomers and a select few in Generation X. Generally, these folk just

don’t ‘get’ social media in the same way that us Generation Y kids do. How can they be expect to teach the value of something that they don’t value? Read the rest of this post →

Feb 16, 2009 | Uncategorized | Comments

LINKS | Newspapers Don’t Need Micropayments

These are my links for February 6th through February 8th:

MBB SyrAtUconn

Newspaper Business Models

Feb 13, 2009 | tumblr post | Comments

Newspapers Oughta Sell Their New Expertise

 

new-media-gears

Inspired by a small point made by Jeff Jarvis, I left a comment on his blog saying that I thought he had struck gold — a way to supplement ad revenue at local newspapers.

To adapt to the Internet, newspapers have been forced to evolve, some have become experts in ‘new media.’ A term that I hate because, really what is ‘new media?’ When does it stop becoming new, and what will we call the media that comes after it? Is everything just eternally ‘new media?’

The current definition means that a ‘new media’ expert is up-to-speed on blogging, linking, short form video, Facebook, Twitter, other social networks, etc… All of this expertise is a real commodity that many businesses would love to tap into.

Read the rest of this post →

Feb 11, 2009 | Media Industry | Comments

LINKS | Please, Please Don’t Charge for Free Information

These are my links for January 30th through February 5th:

Feb 06, 2009 | tumblr post | Comments

Links | “Journalists Are the Biggest Terrorists”

These are my links for January 19th through January 22nd:

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Jan 24, 2009 | tumblr post | Comments

Iraqis Don’t Credit US for Safer Lives – TIME

Iraqis are finding their lives more hopeful but give the United States little credit for the improvement, an international media poll finds.
Instead, poll respondents credited the Iraqi government, police and army. 

Iraqis Don't Credit US for Safer Lives - TIME

Huh. Appears the surge hasn't worked. Go go Bush! (yet again) 

Mar 17, 2008 | General News | Comments