From LifeHacker: “The latest entry into news-based iPhone apps, ABC News offers top stories, location-specific news alerts, and videos from shows like Good Morning America and 20/20.”
What does this mean for local ABC affiliates? Why won’t every news organization offer an app like this? Will I still turn on the ABC World News when I get home in the evening, or will I already have seen the news?
“The American Society of Newspaper Editors is planning to remove “paper” from its name and expand its membership to include editors of online-only news Web sites and journalism educators.” — CyberJournalist.net.
I’ve scratched my head on this one –as it pertains to radio– in numerous posts. What is radio? Gotta have a tower and transmitter? An FCC license? Is an Internet station with 100,000 listeners not “radio,” while a small-town AM station with 10,000 listeners is “radio?”
Please take out your Blue Books and write a 500 page essay on: Defining Radio in the 21st Century. Begin.
Jeff Jarvis recalls "the golden age" of newspapers when "cities had many papers, many voices, many views, and papers still spoke for and with the people." And that's where we're headed again with the internet but "now it's the people talking."
"I have no doubt that there is a sustainable business in local news. The problem is that, at least for the present, the current and former owners of local news ruined it. Thanks to them, news has cooties."
“The Tribune Company owns businesses (which) make money by placing ads in between (broadcast) or alongside (print) scarce content. That model, I’m afraid, is dying for two reasons. One, content isn’t scarce anymore. Two, advertisers have other, cheaper ways of reaching the people formerly known as the audience. I’m not sure there’s any form of government help that can protect traditional media from that.”
— Terry Heaton on Tribune bankruptcy
“This change has been more like seeing oncoming glaciers ten miles off, and then deciding not to move.”
— Clay Shirky
Here's what Mindy McAdams foresees:
She concludes by wondering "…whether the mainstream media are superfluous in these situations — or can they perform a useful service to the public by sifting and filtering the incoming reports from the center of the events?"
I hope Ms. McAdams will forgive my reposting here. She, like Seth Godin, is a blogger who deserves not to be edited or excerpted.
Those are two points of view examined in a recent post by Dave Winer.
“If the people with the news can publish it themselves, and they can; what’s to stop the people who want the news from reading it directly.”
Which puts me in mind of High Street Beat, a blog written by the mayor of Jefferson City. Ultimately, his readers get to decide if what he writes is “fair and honest,” but he can speak directly to them, as well as through MSM.
“When professional news people consider the Internet they think of it replacing them. Not so. It reduces their role to a bare minimum, makes them less necessary. I still want soundbites from the sources, but I want them to link to the full blog post behind the quote.”
“If reporters are to remain relevant they have to recast themselves, more humbly. Don’t think about “deputizing” us to do what you do. Instead think of the value of your rolodex, your sources. Cultivate and develop that rolodex. To the extent that you know who to call when a bit of news breaks, that’s the extent of your value in the new world, the one we live in now.”
Most of the reporters I’ve known and worked with work very hard. For not much money. But more than a few of them have viewed the companies they work for a the necessary infrastructure that makes it possible for them to report the news.
While the people running those companies viewed the newsrooms as a cog –a BIG cog, but a cog– in a machine whose purpose was to turn a profit. A classic dog and tail situation.
I’m reminded of that classic scene in Network where Arthur Jensen explains things to Howard Beale:
Jensen: The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children, Mr.Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, oppression and brutality –one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.
Howard: (humble whisper) Why me?
Jensen: Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
One thing, not the only thing, but one important thing that has distinguished reporters from their readers/viewers/listeners is the reporters had a platform or medium from which to report. That distinction has blurred, if not disappeared.
I only snapped one photo of Bob Priddy in action on election night. Through studio glass (you can see my reflection in this larger image) with producer John Simms in the background. MacBook Pro and video camera are streaming live video to Ustream. Big screen TV’s on the walls, high-speed connection to the Secretary of State’s website with up-to-the-minute returns.
When I joined the company in 1984, Bob was still writing stories on this manual Royal typewriter (below). Audio was captured on reel-to-reel tape recorders and “dubbed” to analog carts. We had a UPI printer spewing out the news (on long rolls of paper), and election returns were phoned in by a reporter sitting in the Secretary of State’s office.
Can’t imagine what we’ll have in four years. Bob Priddy’s memory of those days is better than mine:
“Actually, we were using cassettes, not R2R in ’84. We relied on UPI for election returns with reporters at various gatherings of candidates. We didn’t put anybody in the SOS office until the Presidential primary of ’88, after studying what AP and UPI did in the 86 general election.”
Ana Marie Cox was covering the McCain campaign for Radar Magazine until it shut it’s doors on Friday. AMC tweeted us to her blog for the story:
“It will cost about $1500 to cover just the last day of the campaign, and over $1000 a day for each day leading up to it. While I still blog for TIME’s “Swampland” * — and I will for as long as they let me! — I am without a source for travel funds. So, you know, anyone interested in sponsoring a foul-mouthed blogger, slightly used?”
Like a public radio fund drive, she offered premiums for different levels of giving.
“Over $100: My instant message screen name, regular personal updates via email and/or instant messages on election night.”
I kicked in$150 because I’m a fan and liked the idea of helping a blogger. Seems like I wasn’t alone.
“At the moment, donations come to about $2500 — a thousand past my goal of simply seeing the McCain campaign off into the gentle night come Nov. 4 (literally! sort of!), and just about enough to cover spending election eve out on the trail as well.”
Ana Marie is hardly the first blogger to ask her readers to support her work. But I think I would have been willing to pay $5 or $10 a month for a year to fund her efforts. Is this some kind of model for the future?
Update: 10/28/08
Had a chat with an acquaintance who now lives and works in another part of the country. He’s a long-time radio news guy and he called to get my advice on how his newsroom can better take advantage of “new media” (which ain’t that new anymore). As he talked about his newsroom and the company he works for (a good one), it became clear there was no clear direction for making the transition from Old Media to New Media. And unlikely to be one. So what can he do?
First, what he cannot do. He probably cannot change (or provide) the larger online strategy his company needs. But he can begin learning the skills he needs to survive. In no particular order:
To an old radio dog, all of this sounds like a lot more work than it really is. But here’s the question I posed to my friend: If your current job went away overnight, what would you do? Try to get a job at another radio station? A newspaper? TV station?
What kind of skills to you think they’re looking for these days? Will it be enough to give them a cassette tape of your best work? Maybe a list of the RTNDA awards you’ve won?
The skills he learned in J-school are important. His many years of “radio” experience are valuable. But it’s a new game, that demands new skills. You got ’em or you don’t.
The always-plugged-in Amy Gahran insists your blog is “Media Career Insurance” for journalists.
“Because in a professional environment where staying findable equals sustained opportunity and flexibility, search engines are a key arbiter of your career. The more findable and linkable you are, the more search engines will reward you. … And search engines really, really love blogs.”
“Having your own blog is media career insurance. It will serve as your “home base” where you establish your personal reputation, track record, abilities, interests, and aspirations.”
Ms. Gahran offer some tips for starting a blog. Read her post where she explains each:
I particularly liked: “Consider blogging a basic right of being in the media business.”
Most of the journalists I know and work with do not have a personal blog. I think most of them would insist they don’t have time to blog. A few don’t think it’s “appropriate” for a journalist to blog.