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KMD Digital Journalism 2010
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June 13 Seminar
Go back to: General discussion
Here's a link to the UStream recording of today's seminar including Dan Gillmor's talk.
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7648159
Lets post the IRC log here as well and maybe follow up with any thoughts people had after the seminar.
One thing that we ended on was the future business models for journalists and journalism.
Hi,
My initial though after having watched the seminar is that the model Dan suggests we may be moving toward is very different to the way it is perceived in popular consciousness.
We often talk about how journalism has become faster than ever before. After watching this talk, I am not sure that is true. Yes, the cold, hard facts do come out more quickly, but Dan suggested that the conversations that take place after news is released are as valuable, if not more so, than the initial publication or release.
Maybe it is at the point of conversation that news attains more (and a new sort of) value in the digital era.
Yes. Totally agree. This requires a different kind of literacy and engagement however. As always, there will be people who will manage to "stay on top of things" but it may end up being a different group of people than those who are "media literate" today.
Also, it's interesting to see how the influence is also moving from the boardrooms and governments to the startups and the NGOs. Things are moving to the edges and this new model of "Pull" vs "Push" is mirrored in innovation, international relations, media, technology, activism and many other things.
Obviously, those who are tracking the traditional models will see a diminishing of value, but for people like Dan who are tracking new things, it's quite exciting and there is a lot of depth.
There were a few key points that Dan mentioned that I thought were pretty awesome.
Lets put business models aside for a moment, because maybe the problem is not in the strategy but in the execution. A lot of media companies I've seen have editors running the show who do not understand all the possibilities of presenting information on the web (as a programmer does). Media orgs need to know how to best repurpose their aging content, and very often that can only be done well with some knowledge of databases, sorting, filtering, etc.
It baffles me when I speak to somebody from a struggling news company complaining about how they can't increase revenue. But when you try to raise new ideas, they talk about how they're reluctant to 'risk the brand'. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Experiment. Can't sell ads? Sell them against certain tags like StackOverflow. Sell them against geo-specific content. Offer services on the side like Sacramento Press and their social media consulting (*gulp*), or do event coverage like NewsPepper. Anyone else have any ideas?
I was a little disappointed to hear that both Dan and Joi expect things to get worse before they get better. I agree with them but I was kinda hoping that at least somebody could be optimistic in my stead. I like to think that journalism is Darwinian and that the ones doing it wrong will just die off eventually to be replaced by a more deserving, more digitally competent lot.
The reboot won't be easy though.
For No. 2:
"Nothing will work, but everything might." From Clay Shirky originally, in March 2009. I'd link, but it's triggering a spam filter and won't let me file this comment. Google it.
To me, that date is significant, because it is now June 2010. During that period, I've been on both the outside and inside of a traditional news organization. Lots of new experiments have begun; some have failed and some have languished.
But inside news organizations in the U.S.? The general response I've seen is cost cutting, and little investment in new experiments unless they immediately produce revenue, besides the experiments at The New York Times.
I fear that causes brain drain that can't be stopped.
Hi Richard,
Good Point, I agree
The passive reader does not exist more. The new journalist must know that its text in the Internet, and off line, does not finish in the end point, continues in the box of commentaries (people talk). Then appear quarrels between journalist x reader, reader x reader, that raise new guidelines to journalist work it. The reader collaborates.
The good journalist as well as the writer wants, over all, to be read. The journalist in Internet times wants the box of commentaries full. To take off of this material for its next news articles.
Haven't had a chance to watch this yet, I will hopefully get to watch it tomorrow, I've spent the last couple days preparing for an interview I am conducting tomorrow morning, It's my first one and I want it to go smoothly.
I thought the most salient point was that digital journalism, more than ever before, now has the ability to correct mistakes and engage in discourse on a continuous timeline. There is nothing "static" about the news we read but that largely is a paradigm shift lost on current news outlets (his example about the times was telling).
As an aside, I'm a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell [http://malcolmgladwell.com/] who writes often for the New Yorker. Though the New Yorker remains neutral (after publishing his articles) Malcolm often will publish comments and reviews about his own work to his blog and add his own commentary. Instead of ignoring the criticism or not letting his audience know about it, he engages it directly (often in more than one post) to refute critical reviews, but more so I think to reflect other opinions. To me, that's a sign of a change in journalism online.
I have now listened to this lecture twice and have gleened so much from it. I really like how Dan keeps bringing up how to build trust with readers with accuracy, fairness, and transparency. I will be doing a presenation next Saturday about using Social Media in network marketing, and I am coming to see how much this class is going to help me. (I feel a project idea coming on). It is more than selling a product or a business model; it is writing and educating, and filling in a pot hole. I am excited now.... got to go and draft up a project proposal and outline so I have a map of where I am going.
Calista