title

TitleTechnology and Journalism

A talk by Michael Meyers

OverviewTechnology and Journalism

• A (very) Brief History Of News MediaA (very) Brief History Of News Media• Technology DrivenTechnology Driven

• The Current State and Trends of the News MediaThe Current State and Trends of the News Media

• The Future of the News Media…The Future of the News Media…• Citizen JournalismCitizen Journalism

Overview

History – What’s New?A (very) Brief History of News Media

• One of the Oldest Human Activities• Messengers, Town Criers, Busybodies

• Peer to Peer (WOM)Peer to Peer (WOM)

• In most parts of the pre-literate world the first question asked of travelers was, “What’s New?”

What’s New?

http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article409.html http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article409.html

History - IronyA (very) Brief History of News Media

• Popular Subjects: Sex Gossip and ViolencePopular Subjects: Sex Gossip and Violence

• Probably better informed about events in their Probably better informed about events in their immediate neighborhood than modern Americans.immediate neighborhood than modern Americans.

http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article409.html http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article409.html

History – Technology, Printing Press

A (very) Brief History of News Media

• Gutenberg’s Printing Press (1453)

• Paradigm Shift: P2P/WOM => Written => Printed: the Top Down Mass Media • Mass Media - massive duplication of material at low prices to huge audiences

• Ushers in the Renaissance (1453)

Driven By Technology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media

History – Technology, 19/20th Century

A (very) Brief History of News Media

• 19th Century: Photography (1825), Telegraphs (1830), Telephones (1876), Records (1878)

• 20th Century: Tunable radios (1916), Short-wave (1919), FM Radio (1933)

• KDKA-AM in Pittsburg (1920) the world's first commercial radio station.

• BBC is formed and broadcasting to London (1922)

• Half of the homes in the U.S. have radios (1934)

• First telephone call made around the world (1935)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media

Major Advances in the Last 100 Years

History – Technology, 20th CenturyA (very) Brief History of News Media

• BBC first regular “high definition” (200 lines) television service (1936)• Television broadcasts begin in the U.S. (1939)• 1st Commercial TV station, WNBT (now WNBC-TV)/New York (1940)• Vietnam War becomes first war to be televised (1965)• Darpanet (1970s)• CNN launches (1980)• New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones put news database online (1980)• Cellular phones begin to appear (1983)

• Windows 95 - the internet grows exponentially (1995)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media

The Second Half of the 20th Century

Current – Title SlideThe Current State of the News MediaThe Current State of the News Media

Current – Paradigm Shift – The Internet

• Audiences moving from old media such as television or newsprint to new media online; more timely, easier to access… “always on”

• Another Paradigm Shift: you no longer need to own a printing press, cheaper and easier than ever to mass publish

• Power is moving away from journalists as gatekeepers, to us as individuals in 3 key ways…

The Internet

http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.com/2006/

The Current State of the News MediaThe Current State of the News Media

Current – Blogging

• In 10 minutes you can set up a free Blog with any number of providers (Blogger, MT, WP, etc.)

• Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s “technical evangelist” Top 20 blog uses Word Press.

• Blogging – astronomical growth: a new blog created every second, millions of posts per day…

• Economically Viable - An estimated $100 million worth of blog ads 2005; Weblogs Inc. sold for $25mm to AOL, proving ad driven model

Personal and Group Publishing (Blogging)

http://nymag.com/news/media/15971/index.html


Current – The New Editor is YOU

• With the Internet people aren’t just publishing information they’re also changing how we find and organize this content.

• No longer does the editor of a newspaper decide what we read, but people collectively decide

• Moderated: Slashdot.org (292), Boing Boing (1,695), Drudge Report (266)

• Democratic: Digg.com (386), del.icio.us (477), Rojo.com (8,086)

• Algorithm: Google News (2), Tailrank.com (20,207), Findory.com (11,135)

• Meta: diggdot.us (32,181), popurls.com (26,586)

• MSNBC (1,757), CBS (1,287), NBC (758), WSJ (281), FoxNews (275), NYTimes (49), CNN (23), BBC (20)

The New Editor is YOU

http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.com/2006/http://www.journalism.org/who/pej/about.asp


Current – Audience As Contributor 1

Economics of Scale: Do more w/ less

• "The fact that our site is almost completely self-service and community-moderated allows our tiny staff of 19 to manage the seventh largest Web site in the world," says CEO Jim Buckmaster of craigslist.org

•With more than 3 billion page views each month Craig’s list has cost newspapers in the San Francisco Bay area $50 million to $65 million in help wanted ad revenue

• “The Boing Boing thing is, they have more readers than Wired and yet they have a part-time staff of five. That’s the new math.” Clay Shirky

The Audience As the Contributor/Creator

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12015774/site/newsweek/page/3/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig's_listhttp://nymag.com/news/media/15971/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2004/12/28/technology/craigslist/


Current – Audience As Contributor 2

Yahoo bought flickr for an estimated $35 million.

"With less than 10 people on the payroll, they had millions of users generating content, millions of users organizing that content for them, tens of thousands of users distributing that across the Internet, and thousands of people not on the payroll actually building the thing," says Yahoo exec Bradley Horowitz. "That's a neat trick. If we could do that same thing with Yahoo, and take our half-billion user base and achieve the same kind of effect, we knew we were on to something.“

The Audience As the Contributor/Creator

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12015774/site/newsweek/page/5/


Current – Decline of an Industry

• Newspapers are the biggest newsgathering organizations; 20% profits, but shrinking…

• Knight Ridder’s San Jose Mercury News cut 16%

• Philadelphia Inquirer 15% (after cutting 15% five years earlier).

• New York Times will cut 500 jobs, or 4% of its staff (nearly 60 people from its newsroom)

• Los Angeles Times Cut 85 people

• Newspaper chain, Knight Ridder, put up for sale

The Decline of an Industry: 2005



Current – A Look at One City

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:

• Number of newspaper reporters has fallen from 500 to 220 in 25 years• Philadelphia Inquirer Cut 15% in 2005 (and 15% in 2000)

• The local TV stations, with the exception of Fox, have cut back on traditional news coverage.

• The five AM radio stations that cover news reduced to two.

Not Just Newspapers – A Look At One City



Current – The Creation of an Industry

• Citizen Journalism, Participatory Journalism, Grassroots Journalism, J-Bloggers, etc.

• “citizen witnesses… the whole point, after all, is that we're increasingly dealing with reports and pictures from people who are not journalists.” Mike Holderness, UK National Union of Journalists

• 3 Key events: Asian tsunami, London bombings, Hurricane Katrina

2005: The Beginning of a New Industry


Current – Tsunami

• The people on the scene where the first responder/reporters

• “"The earthquake and tsunamis in South Asia and their aftermath represent a tipping point in so-called "citizen journalism." What September 11, 2001, was to setting off the growth and enhanced reputation of blogs, the December 2004 tsunamis are to the larger notion of citizen journalism (of which blogs are a part).”

• Dan Gillmor, “the 2004 tsunamis represent the point at which a major change takes place in the media world. "I'm pretty sure this is one of those before and after moments”

The Asian Tsunami


Current – The London Bombings

• Over 30 videos, ~1,000 photos images submitted to the BBC alone.

• "This is the first time mobile phone images have been used in such large numbers to cover an event like this," said Evening Standard production editor Richard Oliver. "Last week's events show how this technology can transform the news-gathering process. It provides access to eyewitness images at the touch of a button, speeding up our reaction time to major breaking stories."

The London Bombings

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0711_050711_londoncell.html


Current – Hurricane Katrina

• CNN resources for Katrina: 100 people in the region, 30 satellite phones, 20 videophones, 10 "digital newsgathering kits," 8 satellite trucks and 3 fly-away satellite dishes, and the rebuilt "Hurricane One" filing live reports on the move.

• NowPublic had over 2,000 members join from the affected areas, submit missing person reports, call in and leave audio messages, etc.

Hurricane Katrina

http://www.lostremote.com/archives/006140.htmlhttp://www.nowpublic.com/node/19056


Current – A Rude Awakening 1

• Time Inc., advertising and circulation falling, cut 205 people and promised to transform itself from “magazine publishing” to a “multiplatform media company.”

• Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corp, “Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall”

2006 Rude Awakening, Slow Reaction

http://www.adage.com/paypoints/buyArticle.cms/login?newsId=47676&auth= http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1730382,00.htmlhttp://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=98708


Current – A Rude Awakening 2

• Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters, “the media industry has witnessed a new digital revolution in the last year, as consumers have begun creating, sharing and publishing their own content online in huge numbers”

• Tom Curley, CEO of Associated Press, "The Internet has become our new business environment," he said, "not just another medium for distribution."

2006 Rude Awakening, Slow Reaction

http://www.adage.com/paypoints/buyArticle.cms/login?newsId=47676&auth= http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1730382,00.htmlhttp://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=98708


The Future - Title Slide The Future Of News Media

The Future – Experimentation - Dipping

Send in your eyewitness reports:

• MSNBC is looking for your help, If you are a witness to a big news event send us your video and photos at [email protected]

• CNN highlights citizen journalism content on home page during Katrina; offers Podcasts/RSS

Experimentation – Dipping Their Toes…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6639760/http://www.hypergene.net/blog/weblog.php?id=P291

The Future Of News Media

mailto:[email protected]

The Future – Experimentation - Dipping 2

• WABC-TV News starts asking for user contributions in July 2005: News is happening every minute in the tri-state area. Now if you see it -- you can share it -- and be part of Eyewitness News! Just send your video or still images right here to 7online.com -- or directly from your cell phone by e-mailing them to [email protected]

• WABC hopes that broadcasting images contributed by the public will give it an advantage over its competitors. It "is a way to have something nobody else will have” … "It allows our audience to be true eyewitnesses," said Kenny Plotnik, vice president and news director of WABC

Experimentation – Dipping Their Toes…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6639760/ http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=resources&id=3322394http://www.hypergene.net/blog/weblog.php?id=P291


The Future – Experimentation - Adventurous

• newsbot.msnbc.com – exploring the editorial / aggregation aspect

• Washington Post – incorporating blogs, api’s/mashups

• tag cloud of Post stories that lets you browse stories by keyword

• a daily news quiz created automatically from our headline feeds

• world map interface to Post stories

• a thumbnail quiz of Arts & Entertainment stories.

•

Experimentation – Slightly More Adventurous…

http://pjnet.org/weblogs/pjnettoday/archives/000889.htmlhttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/postremix/


The Future – Experimentation – Promiscuous

• Bluffton, South Carolina: BlufftonToday.com Pilot Project

• Some of the content you post… may find its way into the Bluffton Today newspaper… a colorful free daily that is delivered to homes…

• Bluffton Today is a hyperlocal free daily with a staff of about 18 professional journalists that intends to incorporate citizen contributions and commentary into the publication.

• Everyone gets a blog. Not just staffers, but everyone in the community. • Everyone gets a photo gallery • Everyone can contribute events to a shared public community calendar. • Everyone can contribute recipes to a community cookbook.

Experimentation – Possibly Promiscuous…

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/002302.phphttp://www.blufftontoday.com/about.html


The Future – Oh My News

• 5 years old, Similar to A newspapers, about 70 percent of revenue is from ad sales 20 percent of its revenue from syndication sales, and just 10 percent from paid subscriptions for premium content.

• The 150 or so stories posted on the site each day range from breaking news about huge protests to sophisticated political analysis, from 40,000 citizen reporters

• The professional staff of 54 copy editors, editors and reporters reject 1/3 of submissions. They fact-check and vet everything they post.

• Just four lawsuits have been filed against OhmyNews… None of the disputes has been resolved.

A Hybrid: OhMyNews, South Korea


http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2005_09_19.shtml#051445http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/18/MNG7LEPL151.DTLhttp://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15825&hed=Citizen+Journalism+Gets+%2411M

The Future – Oh My News 2

• The site gets 1.7 million to 2 million page views each day, a number that shot up to 25 million during the December 2002 presidential election - When reformer Roh Moo Hyun won the tight presidential race, he granted his first domestic interview to OhmyNews -- a slap to the conservative corporate daily papers that supported his rival.

• OhmyNews readers can offer instant feedback online and -- if they really like a piece -- monetary tips

•One columnist took in nearly $30,00 (30 million won) in a week as readers paid $10 or less apiece to show approval of a critical article. Most get $2 to $20, although dozens have book deals as a result of their exposure.



http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2005_09_19.shtml#051445http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/18/MNG7LEPL151.DTL

The Future – Oh My News 3

• The privately held Web site has been profitable since September 2003 and is projected to pull in $10 million this year, Min said. By contrast, Salon.com in San Francisco pulled in $6.6 million in fiscal year 2005

• Traded almost 13% of its shares for $11 million from Tokyo-based firm Softbank to launch a Japanese news site and develop video journalism.


http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2005_09_19.shtml#051445http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/18/MNG7LEPL151.DTL


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