Old Media in a Social World
I might never have known Rupert Murdoch was Australian if I hadn’t studied in Australia myself. As a student of media, he is one man always in my radar but I had assumed he was American or European (it’s the surname, really). Recently, he went to South Korea to take advantage of its media industry’s rapid deregulation and proposed plans with Samsung officials to sell content via broadband TV. Coincidentally, Intel recently declared its faith in a TV-driven future but Internet overtakes TV in advertising for the 1st time in UK. What does this mean for journalists and normal folks? How would the media’s future landscape look like in a social world? How long before Murdoch owns a bit of everything in media?
Newsweek: Murdoch accuses Google of stealing his content.
I’ve been a little wary of Newsweek’s blogs. Some of the bloggers are a little too biased IMO and sometimes do not provide a balanced POV in their writing but this article does it right (even if the tiny font size and skewed layout annoy). He asks a good question. Why doesn’t Murdoch stop Google from stealing content?
Because Murdoch knows he needs Google.
Murdoch understands that traditional media has to evolve in this social world and it needs new media in order to survive. As I had discussed before, the opinion that new media is a threat to traditional media is a mentality that needs to be abolished. It is plain to see that they need each other and their potential will be unleashed to its maximum when paired together. Murdoch knows this and he obviously understands the mentality that people are used to getting free content which is why he is working towards finding new ways of payment for journalism. The article from Mashable.com I cited above has got only one thing right IMO:
… smarter and leaner news organizations can get content out faster and cheaper than some of these old media outfits. They can try to charge people for content, but then they risk the competition swooping in at a new opportunity. The problem is not as clear cut as Rupert Murdoch and Tom Curley believe it to be, and the price for that oversight could be dramatic.
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An interesting tidbit: Google claims that its project to ‘e-book’ everything is about preserving human knowledge. Half of me (the idealistic me) wants to believe that Google wants the best for our future generation but the other part of me (cynical and jaded) is this close to saying something like, “Yeah right.”
Isn’t it the same as stealing content? Where is the line drawn? Copyright? IDK about others but I love the feeling of holding my published work and reading it from my hands, the feeling is incredible. So print media, as selfish as it sounds, please don’t die on me. I mean, does no one care for hard cover books anymore?
Also, another interesting food for thought: 4 things old media can learn from the music industry. I love Mashable for its wide variety of writers and topics. Its layout leaves much to be desired but placement wise, it’s pretty smart and for the massive amount of information it provides, beggars can’t be choosers. Also, it has some of the fastest news breaks and its active Twitter account is one reason why I’m so updated with it.
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Tags: bbc, journalism, mashable.com, media, newsweek, nytimes
Best feature I’ve read all week.
I’ve always preferred reading feature stories over serious news and writing good features, in my opinion, is one of the most difficult things to do in journalism. With waning attention span and lesser people interested in reading, news stories in general have to fight tooth and nail for attention and sometimes features are too long to read, so a lot of us don’t and it’s a great loss. But Newsweek has proven to me that it is possible to publish good feature stories online that keep your eyes glued to screen long enough to finish the entire story and still want more. It helps to have an amazing subject to cover. When I saw this on my feeds, I was drawn to its terribly intriguing description. I never expected to read ‘jewelry’ and ‘diplomacy’ in the same sentence.
Pin diplomacy: A peek inside former diplomat Madeleine Albright’s jewelry box.
Some may say that this is no different from the usual photo galleries online but I felt it was a lot more newsworthy because of its subject and the hook the journalist used. A former diplomat that went about her political career with the aid of her jewelry. It was even more interesting because she was a woman and being able to use her femininity as a strength in the political arena was impressive. I never really thought politics could be ‘fashionably fun’ but I imagine she must have had many interesting encounters with public figures that was left out in this feature. Nevertheless I was very entertained by the descriptions and appropriate images. Short and sweet, it wasted no unnecessary words or pictures. She let her pins do the talking and so did Newsweek.
This works really well as a brief profile piece as well and my complaint is that it was too short. Another thing, more of my personal preference, is that I really dislike auto slide shows. I’ll like to read at my own pace and when I’m online, I’m doing multiple things simultaneously so auto galleries make it difficult to multitask.
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Tags: feature, girlpower, newsweek, photojournalism
Tweet? What am I, a bird?
Can you remember what it was like before social media became the new kid on the block? IDK about you but I would not be able to believe that there was actually a time without the Internet if I hadn’t lived through it. Vaguely I remember the radio, cable TV and newspapers but such traditional media forms have been on shaky ground ever since the Internet boom. And now that Web 2.0 is here to stay, does traditional media have a place in a 21st century, highly digital, extremely social world or is social media a trend that will eventually do itself in?
Social networking and the concept of crowd sourcing (i.e. collective effort, citizen journalism, online collaborations, etc) have risen in popularity with Web 2.0 and platforms like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia and many other micro-blogging, instant messengers, bookmarking websites and forums have facilitated this phenomenon. Facebook has made it easier for people worldwide to communicate with each other. However, there’s a flip side to this immense power of social networking (I discussed earlier). Same goes for Twitter or anything that’s online.
Washington Post slaps on the Twitter handcuffs.
Washington Post implemented a no-Twitter policy (like the Wall Street Journal) that forbids its staff from expressing their opinions online, that the new rule…
… suggests that the newspaper is working hard to make itself as irrelevant as possible.
And that restricting Twitter is as good as
… getting both social media and journalism wrong at the same time.
I have to agree with the first half of his statement but the latter part is difficult to say. The idea that social media is a threat to traditional media is a wrong mentality. Social media is most effective when it is supported by traditional media and vice versa. Traditional media has built for itself credibility and recognition that social media does not have. We trust our traditional media forms more than online sources. What traditional media lacks is in interactivity and audience. Twitter allows normal people to eschew authority and directly connect with media practitioners, political figures and other public personnel. It creates a conversation, buzz and lets undiluted thought come through in the most efficient manner. Social media needs traditional media, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship that should be exploited as best as we can.
However, Twitter, like every other online social network, needs to be monitored. The Internet is like a public library, an open space in which things said cannot be taken back even if it is deleted. The lack of privacy should be an obvious warning for users and even more so for employees in sensitive positions like within the legal, education, politics, medical and media professions. Information that should be kept private needs to stay offline because someone is always watching and you never know who can do what to that personal information. So perhaps the Washington Post is right because opinions are not facts and personal agendas should stay private.
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Random but interesting food for thought!
See if you are too dependent on Facebook (a fascinating article recounting a journalist’s horror of being locked out of FB which reminds me of the Slate.com article where a journalist writes a novel with the help of her FB friends) or learn to build a better reputation online. And if social media (your Twitter feeds, FB’s mafia war and what not) is distracting you from work, learn how to tame your inner digital shrew.
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Tags: facebook, journalism, media, microblogging, news, newsweek, nytimes, sydneymorningherald, thetelegraph, time.com, twitter
I don’t own a Facebook (FB) account but there are at least two accounts out there with my name on it. My full name, the one I use for official purposes and not the Christian name everyone else knows me by. They were created by frustrated friends who have tried time and time again to get me to log in so they could stop doing my dirty work for me. These friends meticulously tag and reply messages in my name and they do this pretty damn well only because they know me like the back of their hands. I’m not bothered, not much (only when I get emails from FB asking me to authenticate my account with my phone number, that’s where I draw the line of TOO PERSONAL) because nobody I really care about is on FB and even if they are, we are connected via other mediums that I check daily. Sometimes I think FB is like a high school popularity contest except a lot more dangerous because the Internet is technically, free for all and as much as you censor and moderate, there are things that will always slip through back doors and loop holes. Identity theft, defamation (libel) and many others.
And in this case, technology can be more of a bane than a boon. As easily as FB accounts are created, they can be hacked and manipulated for criminal activities. Who is to know that your best friend poking you on FB is really your best friend? Because the Internet is so liberal and difficult to police, it is not uncommon to hear of scams on FB (the SMH article’s comments are quite telling. There is a genuine issue of security and public anxiety).
We’ve also seen the power of social media (i.e. Twitter, FB) in our lives – getting rogue companies to respond to problems, better customer service, citizen journalism, transparency and a collective hive mind mentality. But FB bites the hand that feeds it in this case where the power of social media causes you to lose your job because your boss found out about your private comments on a public space (I really like the Telegraph’s layout. After the headline, there is a useful insert detailing the entire story in bullets and usually it’s gives you the skeleton of the story in 5 points, leaving you either curious or searching for the ‘x’ button). Many employers also use FB to track down potential interviewees long before they get their 5 minutes on the hot spot and unless you lock up everything or censor everything you say, employers can judge your professional ability through that very personal space that you consider private. The results are not always accurate and you could be a completely competent person but your friend’s comment about you getting drunk the night before the interview says something else altogether. In the digital age, your FB profile is as good as a first impression (because we all are guilty for judging people by their friends when we have inadequate information and like the article says,
On social networks, information about you isn’t only about you.
As much as it has flaws, FB’s strengths are not to be taken lightly. With Web 2.0 and a constantly advancing technology, FB has served as a hotspot for people looking for other people. And with the concept of six degree separation, FB is perfect for social networking, keeping up with long distance relationships, checking up on enemies and reuniting old flames (loving Times.com’s use of anecdotes and related links that aren’t intrusive to the flow of writing). While some creative users take it a step further by making use of this collective global conscious as a resource to write a novel. But even if you don’t use FB for any constructive prupose, it’s always good to keep one because FB surprises us with an unexpected ability – closure. FB can help loved ones of the dead find comfort in their FB friends (very informative story, packed with useful links for better understanding).
There are always two sides to a coin, the only difference is what we use the coin for. FB, twitter, what’s next? IDK but have something to laugh at, check out Obama’s FB feed. Current news, social satire, parody and more.
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Tags: abcnews.go.com, facebook, media, microblogging, news, slate.com, sydneymorningherald, thetelegraph, time.com, twitter
Viral or virus?
Viral campaigns (or guerrilla marketing) rely on the ‘word of mouth’ capability of opinion leaders and most of all, their social networking skills and wide networks to create subtle advertising or to use an industry term – buzz. But can a non-official website that takes unsolicited pictures of people in various states of embarrassment to post online for the whole Internet world to ridicule behind their backs be considered a viral campaign for Walmart?
Personally I found the site cheap and tasteless. I wonder if Walmart is aware and if so, are they actually letting this slide? Free publicity is good but can this be considered publicity that will not decrease the value of Walmart in the eyes of its publics? We all have our bad days, so what gives these ‘paparazzi’-like photographers to take images of our bad hair days or act as the Walmart fashion police? Where is the line we draw for privacy of private individuals? If I was a celebrity or a public figure, I probably have less rights to complain because it is part of the job description – seek publicity to promote myself but what has a size 14 man shopping at Walmart in a shirt too small for him got to do with public interest? These are ‘news’ that gossip-mongers are interested in, ‘news’ that the restless public use for cocktail conversation, not real hard news that we should be interested in. We all have bad hair days or sometimes go out with mismatched socks, so what? We’re only human. So let’s laugh with each other, not at each other. It’s despicable to point and laugh behind people’s backs anyway.
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I think this article can be bettered if there were more ways for user interactivity. After reading it, I had many thoughts and had no place to express them (which explains why I resorted to blogging and microblogging to vent). The site is appealing enough and it has a controversial topic to bait readers. All it lacks is the capacity for feedback. Even if comments are not welcome, a simple poll is enough to get an idea of what the readers think of the larger issues here – news value, ethics, morality, privacy, consent, etc. There’s much to discuss that could lead to change or generate bigger issues (read: real news). Also, on a side note, I found the related sites, unrelated.
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Tags: F&B, journalism, law, media, time.com, websites
Evolutions
Technology has made it such that everything moves much too quickly. The virtual realm is by far, the fastest tool of mass communication in our time and it comes as no surprise that it is also the medium that has changed the most. Evolving in time with the speed of technological advancement, Web 2.0 has affected the relationship between producers and consumers of the media and resulted in the rise of citizen journalism. We are no longer content with being force fed official information, we now want opinions, in depth analysis and much more (What does it mean for us? How does this affect us? What can we do to change it? How can we check back?)
With the influx of new tools/platforms that enhance dissemination of communication and information (i.e. flickr, twitter, youtube, facebook, IM, google, social bookmarking sites, etc), the face of the online-scape is forcibly changed. Apart from the usual embedding of images and videos to jazz up the news articles online, photo galleries accompanied by audio and visual commentaries have become common on websites.
Slate.com introduces wine tasting online whereby Slate.com readers come together on Twitter to discuss a particular wine that has been slated for tasting. The response has been overwhelming and it goes to show how tech savvy the Slate.com audience is. The idea is novel and this is in every essence, engaging the audience in a real-time discussion where there is no moderation and just pure instantaneous interaction between producer and consumer. One can link, re-tweet, and share opinions and even get private messages regarding the topic of interest. Also, I think this is a fantastic marketing ploy for the wine and the distributors. When you keep in mind Slate.com’s target audience, it is almost synonymous with wine connoisseurs. Slate.com then continues, as a post-event wrap up, to offer readers a treat. Personally I am a fan of this style of reporting and will like to believe that this transparent method continues into the future of journalism, communication and media.
However, I do have an issue with Twitter. It gets really difficult to keep track with the train of thoughts and direction of conversation. It is not uncommon to have no idea what the link is between two tweets and only the people in the conversation know exactly what, which defeats the purpose of transparent communication. Like every media form, there are pros and cons but for now, the pros outweigh the cons.
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Tags: bbc, F&B, journalism, media, slate.com, sydneymorningherald, twitter
J.K Rowling has got her nose in the right place because one element of her fantastical Harry Potter world is coming to life for us, ‘muggles’ (the non-magical people in the HP series). Through the collaboration between CBS and PepsiCo, the first ever video advertisement will be published in a hard copy publication of Entertainment Weekly this coming September. An extremely slim video chip will be embedded (quite literally glued to the pages) in an insert of the magazine.
Moving images in US show business title, Entertainment Weekly magazine.
However, don’t expect to see it in the flesh anytime soon because apparently the video insert will only be sent to select subscribers in the New York and Los Angeles areas while copies without the video chip will be publicly sold in news stands. It is quite an exciting achievement for print media and to be honest, I will pay to lay my hands on a copy of this. I think this breakthrough might be vaguely close to how our forefathers felt when TV was invented.
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The BBC article is scant on details, probably because it was one of the very first networks to break this piece of news on the Internet. But it is amazing how much difference a few hours can do for online media because this article by National Post is a much better source of information on the same issue. It is interesting to note that the National Post article basically expanded on the skeleton that BBC provided and made it their own with a tighter angle, a lot more insider detail, videos and related links for the curious to continue reading from. Instead of the typical wall of text you get from traditional media, the flow of the article is broken down for leisure reading.
Also, it may be shallow or superficial to choose the National Post article over the BBC one just because of appearance but I really much prefer the choice of layout (cleaner) and colour scheme (brighter) of the former.
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Tags: bbc, journalism, media, news
SPF is serious business.
Summer is still far off for the people of down under but it doesn’t hurt to start stocking up your favourite sun block. Protection from the harmful UV rays is serious business, especially in Australia where Summer can go over 40 degrees Celsius and skin cancer remains the sunny nation’s #1 killer. It is no joke but The New Yorker makes it funny and informative, all in one page.
A guide to Summer sun protection.
The article is simple and straight forward. It is a comprehensive guide for sun protection. From SPF 4 to SPF 233, the number game of sun block has hit an all time high. Social satire at its very best. My favourite of the lot is the following:
SPF 175—Ever wanted to have unprotected sex with a prostitute in Haiti? Don’t answer. Doesn’t matter. The point is with SPF 175 that’s now an option.
It is written humorously, in a style and language that is idiot-proof and because of the widgets and options provided, there is a chance that it will be widely shared online and offline. I like how it makes light of a somewhat serious situation with its tongue-in-cheek style. The article takes a boring subject and turns it into a funny piece, effectively showing the journalist’s understanding of its readers’ concerns (the confusing number game of SPF and which SPF is most suitable for whatever purpose or occasion).
However, one of my problems with the article is that it does not state sources or provide adequate evidence for readers to check back on the page itself. As much as I like the clean lines and option of making the font larger to read on the screen, I lament the lack of graphics and colours. It can get a little boring and overtly serious on the New Yorker but this article which is essentially a reprint of the original New Yorker piece makes full use of online tools to provide a more interactive experience for its readers.
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Tags: LOL, news, newyorker
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) is often slated as the reason as to why less and less young people are keeping up to date with news. The publishing industry understands this increasing reduction of attention span and have responded by peppering the streets with tabloids and sensational reporting, diluting the quality of hard news with the flux of ‘infotainment’ (more of entertainment and gossip, less of serious news). Another response to the dwindling attention span is the use of summaries. This is not new to publishing per se but lately, summaries have become a regular feature in many online publications (i.e. BBC 1 minute world news, etc).
Euna and Laura are finally home safe.
I’ll admit that it was negligence on my part that I missed out on the tiny text explicitly stating that the article is a summary of the headlines of major U.S. newspapers. However, anyone could have made the mistake since the highlight of that article was in the header: ‘Journalists free at last’, which was also the HTML text I clicked on for the page. I had been expecting a detailed report on the freeing of American reporters, Laura and Euna, from North Korea and for the first half of the page, Slate.com delivered its trademark insightful commentary but shortly after that, I got terribly confused. Not only did the article abruptly end without proper warning or closure (it jumped into ‘summary’ suddenly), the page was also choked full with related links that made it too easy to jump to other websites and lose track of my original train of thoughts. Granted the links were useful in providing additional information on the news pieces, they were distracting and really, sometimes less is more.
Isn’t that the whole point of a summary?
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Tags: journalism, news, slate.com
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