Message from Michael -- March 26, 2007

A ROSE BY ANOTHER OTHER NAME
WOULD IT SMELL SO SWEET
A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE
THE WAR OF THE ROSES
MICHAEL’S MILESTONES
COCKTAIL CHATTER

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A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME: Call it citizen journalism… consumer generated media… user generated content… customer made… open-source culture… curated consumerism… pro-am (as in professional-amateur) production… or crowdsourcing. The point is the day of top down journalism, like top down management, is being transformed into bottom up journalism. In the past two weeks, I’ve seen numerous articles about the growing partnership between viewers/readers/listeners/consumers/citizens – the volunteers, as one put it – and the professionals. The latest venture Assignment Zero comes from Wired Magazine, working with NewAssignment.net created by New York University professor Jay Rosen. He, by the way, gets the quote of the week, if not the month, award when he talks about “the people formerly known as the audience.” Crowdsourcing, as defined by Wikipedia, is a neologism for a business model in which the work of an employee is outsourced to a large group of people through an open call on the Internet. Or put more simply, you enlist the aid of your viewers/readers/listeners to provide ideas, act as resources, help with research on news stories. In the case of Assignment Zero (zero.newassignment.net), the idea is to use crowdsourcing aka “the wisdom of the crowd” to define the crowdsourcing journalistic model. In case you think this is another soon-to-pass fad, you may recall a previous MfM in which we noted that the Gannett group is re-fashioning its 90 newsrooms into ‘information centers’ using this model.

WOULD IT SMELL SO SWEET: Not according to a poll by Zogby International which showed that three-quarters (72%) of Americans said they were dissatisfied with the state of Journalism today. And almost the same number (74%) said citizen journalism will play a vital role in the future of American journalism. Almost the same number (76%) said the Internet has had a positive influence on the overall quality of journalism. The poll also showed that more than half (55%) said bloggers are important to the future of American journalism, and an equal number (53%) said the rise of Internet-based media posed the biggest opportunity for future journalism. Tell that to Dan Rather. In a speech to the interactive group South by Southwest and an accompanying interview, Rather talked about the potential of the blogosphere and opined (you don’t get to use that word very often) that bloggers who ask questions and do interviews qualify as journalists. Just to put it all in some perspective, back to the Zogby poll, three quarters (72%) of those surveyed said journalism is important to their community and while four out of five (81%) said the Internet was an important source of news, but only 30% said blogs were an important source.

A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE: Let me give you some variations on the theme of consumer generated media (CGM), along with some related and semi-related trends. Website Trendwatching.com notes a couple of examples, including book publisher Penguin crowdsourcing a new novel, Peugeot inviting designs for concept cars, and Kraft inviting people to ‘innovate with us’ with new products. Current TV has launched in Britain on BskyB and Virgin Media. VH1 has launched an Internet-TV hybrid which is also a hybrid of professional and amateur (CGM) content called acceptable.tv. A Los Angeles based start-up, MeatTeam.tv has launched an alternative to the company newsletter by helping corporations launch their own internal TV network using employee-generated content.

THE WAR OF THE ROSES: Okay, I know I’m beating a dead horse with this theme, but it’s actually true in this case. The 15th Century war pitted the two major houses, Lancaster and York, to see who would rule England. This latest war pits the major Internet players, Yahoo and MySpace against Google, to see who will rule the video world. And just like in Medieval England, people are drawing sides. NBC is joining forces with some-time rival News Corp., and News Corp-owned MySpace to do battle with Google and YouTube for control of the online video world. NBC and News Corp have enlisted Time Warner’s AOL and Yahoo as allies in its battle to create “the largest Internet video distribution network ever assembled.” Aside from the obvious, the other big difference is that the new site will be advertiser supported and will, the corporations emphasize, respect copyright laws. All of the news stories about the new online video service also note that Viacom, owners of CBS, has sued YouTube although, oddly enough, you will recall that CBS (a subsidiary of Viacom) has paired with Google and YouTube in the past. But there is no indication whether CBS or ABC will join in the venture. The New York Times article on the proposal noted this as a key question, which limits the new online video site’s offerings and draws comparisons to other earlier such Web ventures that failed. The Los Angeles Times article on the joint venture also noted Hollywood’s “dismal track record” in creating joint ventures, but says the players in this case have little choice but to band together against the Google behemoth. Industry magazine Broadcasting and Cable noted that both networks will continue to stream episodes of their own shows on their own websites but the two networks have not figured out which content will be most prominently displayed on the joint website. TV Week notes in its article that YouTube is well regarded for its ease of use and that YouTube receives more web traffic than the combined sites for 56 networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

Sub-developments: Yahoo has announced a partnership with MTV to launch a co-branded website using User Generated Media (another variation of the buzz phrases) tied to the MTV movie awards. MySpace is expected to join the aggregator business collecting news from various news sites and blogs, and then having users comment and rate them. YouTube has announced its own Academy Awards of user-created videos with categories – most creative, most inspirational, most adorable along with best comedy, best music and best commentary. The winners will be announced today (Monday) at youtube/ytawards.com. Copyright-challenged YouTube has spawned a knock-off site, Delutube, which shows the videos which YouTube takes off its site.

MICHAEL’S MILESTONES: This is a new addition to MfM. An occasional segment on something that I think will mark a milestone, a tipping point, in the media world. We kick it off with a note about the movie 300. Not just because it made more money in its first weekend ($71 Million) than it cost to make ($65 Million); not just because it was the third highest rated R movie release ever; not just because it is based on an ancient Greek story; not just because critics hated it and movie-goers loved it. But because it is predominantly a digital creation (ergo, its low cost of production) that is not a digitally created cartoon.A Semi-Milestone: Actually I thought this belonged higher up when we were talking about the various news permutations, but it qualifies here, too, as a semi-milestone. CBS has launched a new form of programming/slash/journalism called “webumentaries” which combine reporting and interviews with dramatic staging to re-create important events. The melding of journalism and entertainment in low budget online productions is an “unconventional pairing of fiction and news,” as the Los Angeles Times put it. And before you dismiss it entirely, the producer of the new projects called Countdown is Susan Zirinsky, the woman who was the real-life, hard-nosed inspiration for the movie character Holly Hunter in Broadcast News.


COCKTAIL CHATTER: Just days after Pope Bendedict XVI criticized the media for its “destructive” influence, the Vatican announced it will launch its own TV network titled H2O which will air in seven languages. Six years ago in 2007, more people (74%) owned traditional cameras than digital cameras (24%). By 2005 more households had digital cameras (60%) than traditional cameras (51%). By the end of last year (2006), Jupiter Research reports that 65% of online households had digital cameras compared to 48% for traditional cameras. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Gen Nexters – Americans in the 18 to 15 age group – told a recent Pew Research survey that they received financial help from their parents during the past 12 months and nearly half (46%) said they depend on their parents or other family members for assistance.

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