The Inquisitr » News

The coming world of the multimedia journalist

Steven Hodson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:32:53 +0000

We hear the scare tactics everyday. The news industry is tanking and the only way to save it is by returning to putting everything behind the paywall or instituting some sort of micro-payment schemes. News can’t survive by being given away for free is the mantra of the old school media companies.

News organizations after news organizations are crying the blues and cutting back on staff in order to keep the industry profitable enough for the owners and well placed editors. You would think that the coming news Armageddon will see the end of news as we know it.

The problem is that this is a specious argument that is put forth in order to protect the status quo of the news delivery systems. News will never die. Seriously. News is something that happens around us every day, every minute and nothing we do will ever stop news from happening.

What will change is the way in which we get our news and this is what is scaring the shit out of the old guard of the news industry – because at its root news isn’t an industry, we have just been led to believe it is.

While the boardrooms of the old world media companies are struggling to maintain any control they can over their profits that feed their million dollar lifestyles there are journalists and reporters who are finding a whole new freedom that comes from being exactly that – reporters of the news as it is happening. They are finding new freedom in being able to create content that will outlast even the outmoded methods of our current news delivery systems.

Even as these dinosaurs of newsprint carry on about returning to behind the paywall long time journalists are say no to the idea. Case in point is Saul Friedman who has been writing a column for Newsday since 1996.

Then he found out that Newsday, owned by Cablevision, would be returning its content back behind a paywall. It was a paywall that saw anyone other than a Cablevision and Newsday print subscriber having to pay $5 a week to access the site. This for Friedman was the breaking point and decided the time to quit had come. The idea of losing readership because of this paywall wasn’t acceptable to him.

Just as some journalists and reporters are deciding that the time is coming where they have to consider doing their job outside of the normal confines of a newspaper there are also a growing number of them that are looking to expand the way that they can keep on reporting on the news.

It is people like long time crime and court reporter Ron Sylvester who have seen the future of the business and realized that it is no longer just about the written word as published under some newspaper’s masthead. For Sylvester the role for journalists is going to become one of being a multi-media journalist where things like the written word are included with podcasts and videocasting.

As well it will mean being a part of the social media movement both as a way to promote one’s work as well as a way to find out about new stories that might be of interest. Journalist and reporters are becoming their own editors and ad departments. They are becoming their own sound man and videographers.

In Sylvester’s case he is also lucky enough to be able to draw on the skills of like minded contemporaries for projects that exceed his abilities to properly cover a story. This is almost the beginnings of the independent mobile teams of experts who can react quickly and without having to deal with the bureaucracy of an established newsroom.

While there is plenty of room for the independent journalist maintaining their own blog or being a part of a larger one I think the real power of a new world of news delivery will come from people like Ron Sylvester and other like him who will utilize all the aspects of technology in order to bring the real news to their readers. It will be the news without the preconceived filters that established old media organizations dole out what they think we need to read.

Regardless of what the dinosaurs of news might have us believe with their scare tactics news will never stop being delivered – only the methods of delivery will change.

Giant seagull invades Aussie news broadcast

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:38:18 +0000

Apparently the Mars-like sandstorms aren’t the only sci-fi plagues walloping Australia- a news broadcast appears to show a giant seagull looming over a background of Melbourne.

All News Corp news sites to start charging

Steven Hodson — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:13:44 +0000

Well it looks like Rupert Murdoch didn’t get Chris Anderson’s memo about everything on the Internet being free.

Word is that the News Corp chairman told analysts in a earnings conference call that while the newspaper industry has to change to keep up with the time it doesn’t mean that everything will be free – especially his newspapers.

"The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution," Mr Murdoch said.

"But it has not made content free. Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites," he said.

He said News Corp would use the Wall Street Journal’s online vehicle as a model.

"The extended downturn has only increased the drumbeat for change," he said, arguing that classified advertising for online news would never reach the levels once offered by print.

"Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content, is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting," Mr Murdoch said.

Source: Business Spectator :: News Corp to charge for all news websites

Time to get the comfy chair and popcorn ready because the blogosphere is sure to get going full force pontificating over this news.

Would someone please give the AP the facepalm

Steven Hodson — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:16:50 +0000

Even within archaic systems and services there are some that are even more out of touch with reality and do everything they can to perpetuate old and outdated ways of doing things. The Associated Press (AP) is one of those services and they have proven yet once again just how out of touch both they and management heavy news organizations are.

Rather than finding ways to make their content more useful, and as a result more valuable, they like much of the old media are struggling to find ways to keep everything within the existing status quo of where they control the dissemination of other people’s interpretation of the events happening around us – otherwise known as …. the news. Along those lines Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP Board of Director and vice chairman and CEO of MediaNews Group Inc (wow that’s a mouthful isn’t it), announced today that the AP would be creating a news registry that would allow them to tag and track all their content to make sure that ~~those useless lying sacks of industry destroying bloggers~~ everyone is in compliance of the AP “terms of use”.

The idea of course is that this way given their exclusive microformat the AP can control who can use their content and how much of that content they can use.

"The registry will employ a microformat for news developed by AP and which was endorsed two weeks ago by the Media Standards Trust, a London-based nonprofit research and development organization that has called on news organizations to adopt consistent news formats for online content," the announcement explained. "The microformat will essentially encapsulate AP and member content in an informational ‘wrapper’ that includes a digital permissions framework that lets publishers specify how their content is to be used online and which also supplies the critical information needed to track and monitor its usage."

The registry also will enable content owners and publishers to more effectively manage and control digital use of their content by providing detailed metrics on content consumption, payment services and enforcement support. It will support a variety of payment models, including pay walls.

Source: Editor & Publisher :: AP To Create Registry to ‘Track’ and Protect Online Content

As PaidContent noted on their post this is going to piss off a whole lot of people

This is sure to raise a howl from people who a) don’t like efforts to manage content use, b) don’t like the idea of tracking and c) don’t like anything AP does when it comes to trying to protect content. (We’ll also probably hear a lot about genies and bottles.) AP is trying to position it as not being about Google or bloggers, but about giving news orgs tools to enhance and protect revenue—and as an alternative to going completely behind a pay wall.

The inevitable? New York Times floats $5 per month access

Steven Hodson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:00:52 +0000

Newspapers as they move away from the print world and try to embrace the online distribution of news are being faced with how they are going to make money. Advertising might work for blogs and other small news oriented endeavors but when it comes to the size of operations like The New York Times advertising supported distribution isn’t going to cut it.

Even at the peak of advertising on the web some would argue that there wouldn’t be enough income from ads to keep the newspaper running the same way it has been. Now that we are in an advertising slump it is even harder to pay the bills, let alone make a profit. So the folks at NYT has been floating a survey asking if people would be willing to pay $5.00 a month to access the NYT’s website.

As Hamilton Nolan at Gawker pointed out – if all 650,000 print subscribers paid this $5 a month NYT would see an instant influx of $39 million per year. Now as nice as that kind of money would be the chances of even getting close to that is next to nil. The fact is that as iconic as the New York Times might be in this day and age of news coming at us a mile a minute from more places than you can shake a stick at there is nothing special about NYT that would justify paying a per month fee.

The reality is that very few news organizations will ever be able to get away with charging any kind of subscription fee. Where the news in the past was made available by those with the money to invest in things like printing presses and vast distribution chains that is no longer the case. Today news distribution is a zero sum game where anyone can distribute both broad ranging news and niche news.

Does this mean that organizations like the New York Times can’t survive in a zero cost distribution world? Definitely not. The problem is that they are still trying to mold old world practices into a new world of news instead of using their brand and immense database of news to create a new organization that can live – and profit in the new world of news.

Myth: Reporting the news is what makes it news

Steven Hodson — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:29:39 +0000

If journalists don’t write about it does that mean that news doesn’t happen and if they do does that mean they have some sort of copyright over the reporting of that news?

For as long as there has been a news industry what is considered important enough to take up so-called valuable space on a printed collection of paper or take up valuable airtime has been limited to a select few. It is the people in editorial boardroom or producer’s offices who decide what they think we need to see or read each day. The majority of the time it is the news that is most likely aimed to promote our most visceral responses – hence the popularity of “bad news” being the good news.

It’s good news for the news gatekeepers because it is almost guaranteed to bring in the most readers or viewers. The worst the disaster, the juicier the scandal, or the more heart-wrenching the story, the better. Sure we every once in a while go through our angst ridden worrying that the news is too negative and that there isn’t enough good news. The problem is good news isn’t profitable news and what is important to the news industry is the stuff that keeps the shareholders happy and the management bonuses flowing.

As Jeff Jarvis points out today

The realization of that myth – the myth of necessity – hit me head-on when I read an unselfconsciously narcissistic feature in The New York Times this week about the room where the 4 p.m. news meeting is held. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has likened that meeting to a “religious ceremony.” The Times feature certainly acted as if it were taking us inside the Pope’s chapel: “The table was formidable: oval and elegant, with curves of gleaming wood. The editors no less so: 11 men and 7 women with the power to decide what was important in the world.”

Behold the hubris of that: They decide what is important. Because we can’t. That’s what it says. That’s what they believe.

I was trained to accept that myth: that journalists decide what’s important, that it’s a skill with which they are imbued: news judgment. I worked hard to gain and exercise that judgment. The myth further holds that no judgment of importance is more important than The Times’; that’s why, every night, it sends out to the rest of newspaperdom its choices. News isn’t news until it’s reported and it’s not important until The Times says so.

Our supply of news is dictated to us minute by minute, day by day. That doesn’t mean though that it is the only news out there. An incredible amount of new worthy things are going on everyday – from the bad to the good. Just because the large majority of it doesn’t make it through the editorial “money” filter doesn’t change the fact that those events or information isn’t news.

The news isn’t about the reporting of it. It isn’t about the people writing about it. News is about the event, the happening, the information. It is about the people who were involved with the event. It is about the people who made the happening happen. It is about the people who created the information.

What the new media, blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook (to a lesser degree) did was to allow the people responsible for creating the news to be the ones that distributed the news. Or as Dave Winer put it – “The new world pays the source, indirectly, and obviates the middleman”. No longer is our flow of news being dictated to us by the select few and what they think is important. We are getting to make those decisions now.

However being entrenched as our sole providers of what is important in the world isn’t something that the news industry will give up without a fight. Rather than try and find their way in a new world of news and information distribution that doesn’t flow through their gates, the industry is trying to bend and manipulate this new media into their way of doing business.

The news industry of the past is locked into the believing that if they aren’t the ones reporting the ‘news’ then it doesn’t exist. It is because of this belief that they then turn around and try and claim ownership of the ‘news’. Because they are the ones that paid someone to write about something that happened the industry figures that they have an ownership – a copyright – over it all even right down to barring online linking to that news or information.

In their effort to bend this new media way of getting our news the only thing the news industry is doing is hastening the breaking of their stranglehold on the distribution of the news. They still have all the same abilities to reports the news and the people who are a part of that news. All they are losing is the exclusive rights to distribute it – as they should.

News isn’t distribution and who controls it, news is what is happening in and around our lives except now we are the ones who can distribute it – as it should be.

BREAKING: Shots fired at Apple store in Virgina – one wounded [VIDEO]

Steven Hodson — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:50:15 +0000

The details are still sketchy but an unidentified man has fired at least one shot at the Apple Store in Clarendon, Arlington Virginia, just shortly after the store open this morning. Witness at the scene report hearing a loud bang coming from the back room which was followed by a woman’s screams. A thin-framed, black male believed to be in his twenties and wearing a fake beard was seen fleeing from the rear of the store.

ABC and FOX news are confirming the story and the woman was the victim of a botched robbery.

hat tip to AppleInsider

Twitter, Social Media and the revolution in Iran

Steven Hodson — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:13:50 +0000

Will Sunday June 14, 2009 go down in the history books as when Twitter finally came into its own as the voice of the people. Will it be the date when we realize that there is a power in Social Media that can facilitate real social change in ways that no government can.

Or is all just a case of wishful thinking from a minority of people in the Social Media realm trying to pin the popularity of Social Media to the coattails of an event that was bound to happen.

When it all started

It was the Saturday prior to the 14th of June that the first rumbling began to be heard moving through the Twittersphere. The rumblings of a people who felt that the election for the next Iranian president had been stolen from the people as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected. It was also during this time that it became apparent that if you wanted to find out what was happening in Iran you weren’t going to hear it from the mainstream media.

As Sunday rolled around all kinds of questions were being asked on Twitter as to why organizations like CNN weren’t providing more than just a ticker news bite at the bottom of the screen mentioning who won the election. According to what you heard / read on Twitter or a growing number of blogs, CNN and the other mainstream outlets were totally ignoring the growing Green Revolution that was beginning to roll across the Iranian landscape.

There were those however that tried to point out that while the coverage might not have been perfect CNN did in fact provide more coverage than other news organizations

"This is an incredibly important story that CNN, across all of our platforms, has covered thoroughly every day for a week with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in Tehran, among others," CNN spokesperson Bridget Leininger told the WSJ. "We share people’s expectations of CNN and have delivered far more coverage of the Iranian election and aftermath than any other network."

In fact, CNN had 101 mentions of Iran up until 1pmET on Sunday — then a 70% increase in mentions over the next nine hours. As of 1pmET yesterday, FNC had 75 mentions and MSNBC 53.

Source Mediabistro

Even CNN’s Rick “Mr. Tweeter” Sanchez went to the airwaves to defend CNN

CNN’s Rick Sanchez took the #CNNfail criticism head-on this afternoon, in a segment at the end of his 3pmET hour. "There have been some questions raised on Twitter as to whether we covered any of the events enough over the weekend," said Sanchez. "Frankly, it’s a compliment that you expected us to cover it more than our competitors, and we did."

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Source: Mediabistro

As did apparently Don Lemon

Twitterers expressed early on that CNN wasn’t satiating their news needs, and the CNN failure meme (#cnnfail) became so prevalent that anchor Don Lemon took to Twitter to defend the network. On Sunday, CNN improved its coverage, but a press crackdown in Iran meant that, for all major news outlets, reporting became difficult and dangerous.

Source: Daily Intel

The fact was though that all these news organizations seem to be spending more time talking about Twitter and Iran rather than providing news about Iran itself

Meanwhile, Howard Kurtz had Rick Sanchez and sportswriter Gregg Doyel on Reliable Sources for an utterly useless but incredibly ironic debate over Twitter’s relevance. To his credit Sanchez, a mildly obsessive Twitterer, sort of gets it, mentioning that he interviewed someone in Tehran on his show that he’d met on Twitter, but no one on the show seemed to grasp the fact that the Twitter was in midst of handing CNN its proverbial ass as a news source before, during and after the airing of Reliable Sources.

Source: Valleywag

It’s more than just Twitter in the game

While much of the attention centered around Twitter and how it was being used to get the news in Iran out to the world it wasn’t the only Social Media tool that was being used – or misused. It turns out that Friendfeed was becoming another really popular spot for Iranians to get the news out, and because of the way Friendfeed handles conversations there was a lot of comments being made on the news. Unfortunately this isn’t something that the controlling Iranian government wanted so it blocked all access to Friendfeed from within the country

Interestingly enough just as Twitter and Friendfeed were all about getting the news out to the world it appears that YouTube was doing exactly the opposite. According to some preliminary investigating by Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins YouTube is taking down any and all videos it can of the uprising in Iran

If you do a Twitter search using the terms ‘youtube’ and ‘removed,’ you’ll come up with hundreds of tweets from folks who’ve ostensibly had their videos of the riots in Iran removed. This points to a larger pattern of removal, and based on what I’m reading, it seems to center around description and title keyword matches around words like “beating,” “death,” and “killed.”

There might be other terms, and if this is in fact the case as to why the videos are being so quickly removed, it’s a new tactic to me.

If this is indeed the case and this news gains any real traction YouTube could potentially find itself in a PR nightmare.

From Monday forward

Then Monday came the news that the election results had been leaked, showing that rather than being the winner Ahmadinejad actually came in third. Surprisingly though, the Iranian supreme leaders called for an investigation into the election but this has done very little to quell the growing uprising.

At the same time that Twitterites and other Social Media mavens are slapping #CNNFail to their tweets it is becoming increasingly difficult for mainstream media to even report about what is happening

This morning Iran’s Culture Ministry stripped all foreign media of their press accreditation and warned that any journalists seen filming or photographing in the streets will be arrested. But all is not lost — luckily, they are still allowed to report from their hotel rooms (about the firmness of their mattresses or the softness of their toilet paper, we guess).

Source: Daily Intel

This in turn is making Twitter an even more important vehicle of getting news out – even if it is raw and hard to substantiate. Important enough that apparently the State Department was the one responsible for getting Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance that would have shut the service down for a period of time.

Senior officials say the State Department is working with Twitter and other social networking sites to ensure Iranians are able to continue to communicate to each other and the outside world.

By necessity, the US is staying hands off of the election drama playing out in Iran, and officials say they are not providing messages to Iranians or “quarterbacking” the disputed election process.

But they do want to make sure the technology is able to play its sorely-needed role in the crisis, which is why the State Department is advising social networking sites to make sure their networks stay up and running for Iranians to use them and helping them stay ahead of anyone who would try to shut them down.

Source: CNN :: Anderson Cooper

And help is coming in all forms as the Iranian government continues to try and stem the flow of news making its way out to the world. Whether it be all out attacks against Iranian government sites to people from around the world providing constantly updated lists of web proxies for those in Iran to use the news keeps flowing out to the world.

Even as we hear reports of protesters dying the news doesn’t seem to be stopping. If anything it is growing like a tidal wave. Granted this isn’t the first time that Twitter has been used to get out the news about a country in political upheaval but it is the first time that it has forced mainstream media to focus on the very thing it is supposed to do – that is bring us the news as it is happening.

As much as we might like to believe that technology can be responsible for tearing down the walls of a repressive government the fact is only time will tell if this is indeed the case. Additionally as much as we might like to point out the failings of mainstream media in this case it is interesting that those suggesting that old media has to change are also among the ones calling for that old media to give them even more news. As Louis Gray put it

That CNN did not lead the way in covering the Iran conflict this week, after decades of our relying on them to be there, as they were in Desert Storm, Operation: Iraqi Freedom, Somalia, Bosnia and others, is not up for debate. But the question is – did we really not want them to fail, or are you happy that they did?

Twitter and Social Media as a whole may be on the vanguard of change and letting us all be a part of that change but that doesn’t change the reality that we still expect our news standard bearers to keep us on the frontlines.

Does this mean that organizations like CNN failed in this duty? – most definitely.

Does it mean that we can only expect that Twitter and other Social Media tools are the only way we should be getting the news as it happens? – most definitely not.

It does mean however that the two can work together and when they do we win. Instead of spending so much time knocking old media or making fun of the new social media tools we should be working on ways to get them to work together. Each serves a purpose and in this changing world they can both help effect social and political change.

That is what Iran is teaching us right now.

Twitter gives CNN a smack of reality

Steven Hodson — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:50:20 +0000

At one time I was a big fan of CNN. Walk into our home and you could probably find it playing on one of the two televisions we own, much to my wife’s irritation. If it was happening in the the world you could be sure that you would hear about it on CNN.

Let me rephrase that – you could have heard it on CNN. These days though it seems to be all about some dumb beauty queen having her crown taken way or some other mundane bland repetitive non-news.

A perfect example of this is the recent events in Iran where the people are literally rioting on behalf of Mir Hossein Mousavi because of his unexpected loss to sitting president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, In this case the most current and reliable source of news coming out of the region has been on Twitter. Along with passing along news as it was happening in Iran there was also a growing movement of people calling CNN to task over their coverage of what could be a world changing event.

Remember this is Iran, the country where shortly before the election the country’s complete SMS suddenly went dark. This is the country where being a blogger is a dangerous profession that could land you in jail, if not dead.

Yet for much of Saturday there was no word of these protests on CNN, who instead reported only about the winner of the election.

Yet even as word of the urban strife, seemingly led by those posting to Twitter, spread next around the world on news networks like the BBC, NPR, and the Times, CNN remained mostly mute. Even when the network’s Internet site finally posted a story late Saturday, the network’s first "story highlight" was, "Ahmadinejad plans rally after winning second presidential term.”

Source: cnet News

Even one of our fellow blogs, ReadWriteWeb, noticed this inequity in what was being reported

And it wasn’t long before word of CNN’s theoretical reporting failure began to make its way into more established media. Under the headline, "Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran," the popular blog ReadWriteWeb blasted the network for its failure to cover the clearly massive story in the Middle East.

"Hours after Iranian police began clashing with tens of thousands of people in the street," ReadWriteWeb wrote late Saturday night, "the top story on CNN.com remains peoples’ confusion about the switch from analog TV signals."

Source: cnet News

None of this changed either as Sunday morning rolled around with CNN still focusing on the victory rather than the protests in the streets of Iran. In Twitter thought the reports from the streets are still rolling along with the increasingly popular hashtag of #CNNFail.

In this case it seems that the real reporting of news is coming at us in 140 characters while CNN continues to play it safe. So much for a new network that claims to be all about the news regardless of where it is happening.

[picture: cnet News]

The AP paints itself further into a corner

Steven Hodson — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:47:59 +0000

I might not be the biggest Google fan around but there are some arguments used against the search giant that, even at face value, are ridiculous. Such is the case with the fight between the Associated Press (AP) and Google. On the one side we have a creaking antiquated organization that in of itself wouldn’t exist without the consent of the old media news organization claiming that Google is getting rich by stealing AP’s content. As far as Google is concerned all they are doing is the same thing they have always done – index the world’s information.

This argument that Google is stealing news content isn’t anything new. It is the same argument that is trotted out every time that some news mogul wraps his lips around a microphone. This was the case not long ago when the AP threaten legal, and legislative, action against all news aggregators as the AP attempted to shore up its business model.

Now Forbes is reporting that the Associated Press is back at it again. Why? because they want to develop what they call “news maps” but guess what – they will need Google’s help.

The AP, a 163-year-old cooperative owned by news organizations, won’t discuss its talks with Google, but plans to create landing pages and Web-based "news maps" directing users to original AP stories (and away from secondary sources who post material "borrowed" from the AP). To do this, the AP needs Google’s help. Most likely that means Google creating search protocols similar to those created from the licensing deal the AP inked with Google in 2006.

So what does the AP do during the negotiations with Google over content and compensation?

They threaten that if Google doesn’t strike the right deal with the AP, and soon, “They will not get our copy going forward.” Great way to influence and win friends eh.

The thing is that the AP might have been just the greatest thing to happen to the old med news business but the key word there is – have. Or, should that more appropriately be – has been, because that is what the organization is very quickly becoming. This is because the very news organizations that have filled the AP’s coffers are either having to re-evaluate their own use of the Associated Press or are going out of business.

At this point all the this bluster from the AP is nothing more than trying as hard as they can to keep their life support machines running by whatever method they can. What they don’t realize is that the plug to those machines are getting pulled making their days numbered.

Vernal Equinox 2009: The Start of Spring

JR — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:34:25 +0000

The vernal equinox 2009 happens tomorrow, March 20, bringing in the official start of spring. The spring equinox happens at 7:44 a.m. EDT.

Vernal Equinox 2009: What Is It?

The vernal equinox occurs when the sun passes directly over the equator, diving night and day into equal lengths. It is one of two equinox events during the year: The autumnal equinox, or fall equinox, happens in September and marks the start of the fall season for the northern hemisphere.

Live Science has a great write-up about the science behind the equinox here.

First Day of Spring 2009

The first day of spring 2009, then, is the same day as the equinox: this Friday, March 20. Plenty of cities are marking the occasion with celebrations either Friday or over the weekend. Check your local media outlets to find the specifics for your area.

News is free – packaging it isn’t

Steven Hodson — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 22:04:41 +0000

It’s a simple inescapable fact – news is free.

It will happen at any time of the day and at any point in the world. It use to be that distance is what made it hard for people in one part of the world to know what was going on in another part. With the advent of newspapers it became much easier to keep up with current events – even though the current events might be a couple days old by the time you actually got to read about it. In the process though we became accustom to the idea that newspapers, radio and later television were our eyes to the world of news as it was happening.

This was great for the people who owned those newspapers, radio and television stations because it provide them with a great way to capture people’s attention. Attention that was also used to show them advertisements about all the cool new things that they could buy. Companies with products to sell were more than willing to pay for that ability to get people’s attention – the larger the audience the more they would pay. Fortunes were made in the news business – not on the news itself but on all the packaging that surrounded those little news bites.

Then along comes the big bad Internet and suddenly news was instantaneous and if you knew where to look it was free as well. Sure smart operators would follow the typical business model of including ads with the news; but equally smart surfers either grew blind to them or found ways to remove them. Suddenly the the major providers of the news found themselves with a business model that didn’t work the same way it had in the past.

Scrambling to catch up with the direction the web was heading news providers of the old media hopped on the whole social media train and made their news free but still wrapped in advertising. It was their hope that this hold over from the old days of packaging news would hold true in today’s so-called freenomics markets – the problem was that the economy tanked and along with it so did the ad dollars. For most of the new media bloggers this might mean tightening the belt a little more but this is a situation that they are much better equipped to survive.

Old media on the other hand as it tries desperately to make the transition to a web based world is carrying too much baggage. It is still steeped in a world where they desperately need ad sales to shore up the huge expenses of maintaining a physical world printing and delivery system; and do it while the news is still worth something to the advertisers. This is one reason why we have seen a resurgence in discussions among the old media mavens about bringing back subscriptions; or that new fangled idea of micropayments. In other words return the majority of their content back behind a paywall.

In an excellent post at CenterNetworks one of the questions that Dan Lewis asked was – What broke?

While Dan suggests that it was the arrival of the Web that broke everything I would agree in part; but I would also suggest that people have figured out that you don’t need all the fancy packaging in order to be really up to the minute aware of what is happening in the world. This is the problem that the old news industry hasn’t been willing to grasp as they struggle forward.

The interesting thing is that for all the bitching we read about advertising on the web the biggest complaint is that it is very rarely relevant to what the reader is interested in. It’s not so much that that the packaging of the news has failed it is that it is very rarely packaged in a way that add any value to what we are reading – regardless of what the ad networks would have us believe.

Combine that with operations; and ways of doing business, that no longer match the speed of news delivery that we have become use to and old media news businesses are destine to fail. If they keep believing that it is all about the packaging the way that they have been doing since the first newspaper was published they will disappear.

The thing is that advertising could work but the way it currently behaves whenever we are engaged by it – whether on a blog, the New York Times or an overlay on a video – only serves to push us further away from it. It isn’t that we are struggling with ways to keep the news flowing because that will never stop, the problem is that old media hasn’t figured out yet a new and better way to package something that is inherently free.

Free news isn’t going to kill old media but it’s reliance on the old methods of supporting outdated and expensive methods of packaging the news is what will kill them. After all you can’t kill off something that is free.

The danger of ‘right now’ news

Steven Hodson — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:57:41 +0000

The real time web.

The most current news and information always available at our fingertips.

Thirty minute old news is no longer important – it has to be the news that is happening right now. News coming at you with the speed of a firehose open full. If it happened yesterday it is no longer news but rather events as they have been archived by Google.

Robert Scoble wrote today

But there’s a new expectation that we’re having thanks to Twitter. We want everything now in real time. I want to see everything that was published now and respond to it now and I want to have conversations about all that in real time.

While Robert was mainly talking about the aging protocol of RSS feeds I think he is also pointing to a growing trend of people not wanting to wait for their news – especially the early adopter crowd of the tech blogosphere. Since the arrival of Twitter news is now something that we want to read about immediately as it is happening.

We don’t care if it isn’t in-depth coverage or that it is even correct. We have placed our complete news value system in the hands of people we might know because of some social media association. We like to fool ourselves into believing the hype that real-time news is just the icing and we will come back later for the cake. The problem is that human nature dictates otherwise.

As much as we might like to believe that we will take the time to read the in depth version of what was fed to us via the hyper news network the majority of the time we won’t. It is human nature to take the easy road and having to spend what we like to think of as our valuable time reading the complete news isn’t the easy road. Over the last 20 plus years we have been trained to accept less and less actual news.

This sound bite news might have been mainstreamed with the popular MTV sound bite term but it was happening before that. All Twitter has done today is shorten the size of the sound bite even further and made us feel better about accepting less content as real news because it’s all wrapped in the warm and fuzzy term of social media.

Supporters of this hyper news network like to point out that even when mistakes are made they are just as quickly corrected. As comforting as that might sound one only has to look at how errors; intentional or not, in news are handled by the old media. While they splash the headlines across the main page the corrections and apologies are buried deep in the bowels of newsprint.

When it comes to hyper news the idea that news; right or wrong, reaches you as it is happening is great on the face of it. The important news; factual or otherwise, spreads rapidly across many of the friend networks you might have. By the power of re-tweeting that headline is splashed everywhere but what happens if it is proven wrong?

Hot ticket news items always get attention but it only takes one or two people in your friend networks not treating corrections with the same importance and you’ll never hear about it. You are left with incorrect information but believe it to be correct.

But then that doesn’t really matter because you are already on to the next new item to flash across the hyper news network. You don’t have time to make sure that what you believe to be correct actually is because you are relying of a friend network to keep you informed.and they like you are digesting this minute’s right now news flashes.

Right now news might sound like a great concept but I don’t think it is necessarily a great idea. I think that as we try and speed read our way through 140 character news flashes we are losing the ability to understand what the news means. Sound bites have no context. A 140 characters carry no involvement factor.

Right now news cheapens our news. Even more than it might already be.

The dismantling of CNN

Steven Hodson — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:16:00 +0000

It is one thing to hear about old media slashing budgets and tossing good people to the curb like yesterday’s garbage but it is another to watch as a major news organization seems to be dismantling itself before our eyes. For those of you that don’t really pay attention to the ins and outs of what old media does this probably won’t be of any interest. For those social media mavens who glibly trumpet every failing of old media this is probably old news.

But I have been watching a number of blogs since I first posted here at The Inquisitr about the departure of Miles O’Brien from CNN; and the dismantling of the science technology news section by the company. Since that report there has been a steady stream of news about journalists – excellent and reputable journalists either leaving or being dumped. Sure there has also been the regular staff type departures but when you start seeming names like Jamie McIntyre, Jennifer Eccleston and Kelli Arena to name just a few you have to wonder what the hell is going on.

When you look at any of the bio’s of those leaving and realize the depth of their contacts developed over years of building trust it makes one shake their head in amazement. Journalist’s like these people don’t just happen over night. Kelli Arena spent the better part of her career at CNN building a network of trust at the Justice Department. That isn’t something you can replace overnight. The same with Jamie McIntyre with his stint at the Pentagon or Miles with NASA and other science agencies.

In one brief period CNN has strip itself of its top tier of journalists leaving us with the likes of Nancy Grace; who’d I’d like to take out back and leave her there. Then there is Wolf Blitzer who hasn’t seen a politician yet whose ass he wouldn’t kiss for a story – if you can call his reports that. As Jackie Schechner; an ex-CNN’er, said in a post about Kellie Arena leaving

Put aside the fact there is no better-connected Justice Correspondent on the planet and you can kiss your early access to important national security news goodbye, no woman knows the ins and outs of CNN and the business of TV news like Kelli Arena.

Not one to mince words Greta Van Susteren; who got her TV start on CNN, had this to say on her blog Greta Wire

They did it again! CNN fires people just in time for Christmas! Make you sick?

People often ask why I left CNN…..I didn’t like management. I liked my colleagues in the news gathering but the corporate culture that seized management when AOL came in (Steve Case and Gerry Levin) was disgusting. Everything changed. Don’t get me wrong – I like corporate organization and a corporation should make money – what I don’t like is a mean spirited selfish management that, despite not doing its job of efficiently running the company, lines it pockets. And then the topper? because the management didn’t run the company well, CNN fires loyal people to meet some bottom line the management failed to meet. Blame the little guy not the way the company is run? Go figure! Well….CNN management did not disappoint me yesterday…meaning, it met my low expectations.

All this comes on the heels of Jonathan Klein being quoted in a article at the Observer as saying

"We can afford more people on our air and off our air. So, goddamn it, we’re going to have more people."

One has to ask at what cost though. CNN, while it likes to brand itself as the most reputable voice in news it is in many ways becoming a laughing stock of news. On either side of the political spectrum you will find pundits taking swipes at the organization that seems more interested in faux holograms than in keeping well respected journalists doing their jobs.

Old media across the board is having a harder and harder time staying relevant in the growing Internet and social media world. It doesn’t help itself when organizations like CNN keep allowing over paid incompetent executive like Mr. Klein keep shooting itself in the foot.

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The greater failure of old media

Steven Hodson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 02:03:41 +0000

I am not a big reader of Seth Godin even though he is said to be one of the smartest folks in this realm we call new media. Every once in a while though I’ll catch one of his posts via a link in someone else’s post; or like I did today via Robert Scoble’s Shared Feed. It is this post of his today that has had me thinking for most of the day because what he wrote is in my opinion nothing short of brilliant.

In his post Seth walks us easily through why an old media icon like the Grey Lady has become; or is quickly becoming irrelevant but also why this didn’t have to happen. As a one time thought leader and a social-political influencer the New York Times had all the pieces it needed to survive our shift to a whole new way of interacting with our news and information. In fact; of the few really powerful news organizations the NY Times had the talent and the money that could have made it a formidable powerhouse of a new media giant.

As Seth points it could have easily surpassed anything that Wikipedia has done. It could have easily owned the territory now being held by blog networks like HuffPro or Daily Kos. It could have built a network of customized newsletters and blogs that would have provided them with a huge base of targetable audiences that advertisers drool over. The very fact that all these things could have been built on top of one of the largest archives of news; and some of the best writers in the business, all under the banner of The New York Times would have almost assured its place at the top any media – old or new.

This ignorance and fear of what being a part of any new media adventure was something that didn’t just affected the Grey Lady; but has indeed proven to be the downfall of all the major players in the old media world. It wasn’t as if some of those employed by bastions of old media didn’t see what was coming and grabbed on with both hands for the exciting ride. After all we have seen many in the industry become successful bloggers within their own right – not as employees of an old media company but as an individual with a solid reputation and authority behind them.

While old media giants concerned themselves with shrinking ad sales they failed to see that they were losing far more important things. It isn’t only newsprint either, just about every form of old media that is in the business of providing news, information and opinion is losing the same thing. In this rapidly changing landscape of news and information these once great providers are losing more than advertising dollars – they are losing their reputations and authority.

There are some that would suggest that they have lost those things quite some time ago and maybe so for a small segment of their readers; but for the larger majority I think the turning point has only just been reached.

That doesn’t mean that bloggers out there should be running around rejoicing in the demise of their competition. The fact is that the majority of bloggers still don’t garner the same type of respect and authority that even these dying beasts of the old media have at this point.

This is simply because we don’t have the footprints of time behind us and neither do we have the resources that still are a part of old media. As we go forward though this could very well change but reputation and authority are hard earned, taking time and patience. Whether or not the current crop of new media trailblazers have enough of either of those two things still remains to be seen.

It is safe to say though that without these two cornerstones – reputation and authority – no one will last; new media or old. It is the loss of those two things that I think is the greater failure. A failure that we in the world of new media must always remember or we too shall find ourselves replaced by something newer and better.

SkyGrid Gets Millions, Goes Offline

JR — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:11:23 +0000

In an ironic twist, news aggregation service SkyGrid closed $11 million in funding this morning — then promptly bit the dust.

The service — which offers customizable views of both mainstream and alternative media stories, filtered by reputation and relevance — received the Series B cash from RRE Ventures Wednesday. The site was altogether down as of 10:00 a.m. ET.

SkyGrid’s been around only since February of this year. It seems to be targeted toward financial professionals, offering news organizational tools based on ticker symbols, industry sectors, and personalized portfolios.

Let’s hope the company can take a piece of that $11 million and get back online soon.

Update: As of 10:45 a.m. ET, it’s back! Whew.

SkyGrid

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Allvoices Aims To Become “People’s Media”

JR — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:18:43 +0000

A newly launched Web startup is working to bring the worlds of traditional and citizen-based journalism together. Allvoices — making its formal Internet debut this week — offers a diverse mix of text, image, and video reporting from both major news services and independent visitor submissions. It uses a custom algorithm to aggregate and rank stories from more than 4,000 separate sources and present them in a user-friendly fashion.

Adding Diversity

The idea behind Allvoices is to add diversity to the standard news mix. Its creators aren’t aiming to replace traditional news media for any given audience, but rather to enrich it with often overlooked alternative viewpoints.

“Allvoices gives everyone a voice and uses these various forms of content to create multiple perspectives in order to stimulate global discussions,” Allvoices CEO Amra Tareen told The Inquisitr. “Our site is free from traditional editorial oversight and censorship characteristic of global media organizations,” she said.

Once registered, anyone can submit coverage through the Web interface, via e-mail, or over mobile messaging. The service has dedicated numbers set up to receive SMS and MMS content. Much like the meme concept, the site links related stories together to provide broader perspective into widely covered topics. Readers then validate content both from users and from traditional news sources to determine its placement on the site.

“We use our technology to elevate and leverage the individual voice,” Tareen said.

No Human Touch

While Allvoices does have a filter to catch any obscene submissions, it prides itself on being completely unedited by humans — a concept that sets it apart from competitors such as Associated Content and Global Voices, and one that’s close to its founder’s heart.

It was during a trip to her Pakistan that Tareen — who grew up both there and in Australia — was first struck with the inspiration for a community-driven, democratic news source. She saw the effects of the devastating earthquake that claimed nearly 80,000 lives and destroyed millions of homes — and realized there was no centralized global venue for people to report on their experiences. Instead, a small sampling of professional reporters controlled what most of the world saw.

Business Building

With a business and computer-oriented background — she studied engineering and computer science at Australia’s University of New South Wales, got her MBA from Harvard, then went on to work at Silicon Valley firms such as Sevin Rosen Funds and Ascend Communications — Tareen decided to give the idea a go. She secured $4.5 million in funding, recruited a team of industry experts, and set out to build an organization that — by its very nature — could not be biased.

“We want the emotions of our contributors to come through unfiltered,” she told The Inquisitr. “If somebody has a different perspective on a news event, they are free to post their own story next to other accounts of that same event. That allows readers to be exposed to different perspectives and opinions.”

Tough Topics

Allvoices doesn’t shy away from tough topics, either. The front page rivals any news networks’, jam-packed with content ranging from political issues to financial news and global conflict to medical developments. It all plays into Tareen’s goal of becoming a powerhouse for balanced information worldwide.

“Our model of merging user-generated content and professional news sources into one community will create the first true people’s media,” she predicted.

Only time — and, fittingly enough, the people themselves — will tell.

Newser Adds The New York Times; Needs Timely Aggregation Though

Dominic Rivera — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:09:59 +0000

News aggregator Newser is now providing summaries of stories from The New York Times. With this, Newser searches The Times for what its editors would deem as must-read stories. It is then presented in summary grid, a format that Newser is known for. I like the format, the option of allowing you to choose between ‘hard’ and ’soft’ news preference. I do not like, however, that aggregation is a little late. As of writing this post, it’s top news shows ‘Lehman Axes 2 Top Execs in Effort to Stem Slide’– this was the news yesterday.

Newser also revealed that it is now allowing its readers to create threads of stories, allowing them to become part of assembling news coverage done by Newser editors.

Newser dubs its service as using human and machine-driven aggregation, delivering multi-media summaries. The only downside for me is that because news is distilled by editors, readers are then presented with what they deemed as must-read.