Message from Michael - April 22, 2009

Message From Michael                                 

                                                                                                                        April 22, 2009                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

      THE U VERSUS I BATTLE

      THE CITIZEN JOURNALIST BATTLE

      THINK LOCALLY

      MORE ON MEDIA CORPORATIONS ANNUAL REPORTS

      A CORPORATE CONSCIENCE

      CONSTANT, CONTINUOUS CONNECTIONS

      DISNEY DAIRY PRODUCTS AND TIME WARNER CHOCOLATE

 

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      THE U VERSUS I BATTLE:  The battle between the media titans is on, and the cannon fodder are citizen journalists.  All right, that’s a little bit of an esoteric statement, but the announcement that Fox News is enlisting the aid of its sister media site, MySpace, to recruit more “citizen journalist” material does raise the bar by pitting it against CNN’s well-established franchise.   At Fox News, they’re called uReporters producing uReports; at CNN they’re called iReporters producing iReports.  According to the CNN iReport site, more than 300,000 iReports have been filed worldwide with 1,240 of them making it to air last month.  The rest are posted on the website which proclaims itself as “unedited, unfiltered news.”  Even though MySpace has been overtaken by Facebook in terms of total unique visitors worldwide, MySpace still holds the lead (albeit marginally) in the U.S. where virtually all of the iReports and uReports originate.  That should give Fox’s uReports a boost, although a visit to the MySpace ureport website showed practically nothing except a pitch by Fox’s Shepard Smith to join. Of course, it is in beta at this point.  So, watch for the battle for the minds and meanderings of citizen journalists to grow in intensity. As Adam Ostrow notes on the social media monitoring site, Mashable, the citizen media efforts produce “more news tips and more content that can be obtained quickly.”

      THE CITIZEN JOURNALIST BATTLE:  According to the Knight Citizen News Network website, there are nearly 800 what it calls “citizen media” sites in the United States.  I don’t know what it says about the respective states, but, for example, there are only 10 citizen media sites listed in Georgia, but double that in South Carolina and five times that number in Florida.  Heck, tiny (population-wise) Montana has four such sites.  The Knight site is a how-to guide for would be ‘citizen journalists’ to use digital media “to enrich community, enhance public discourse and enliven democracy as we know it.”  Many of the sites are created by former mainstream journalists.  For example, the laid off reporters from the Seattle Post Intelligencer have started their own site.  In Atlanta, former Atlanta Journal Constitution reporters have launched a struggling news website GONSO (no relation to Hunter Thompson – it stands for Georgia Online News Service).  Meanwhile, many traditional journalism organizations (like CNN and Fox) have started adding citizen reports to their reporting – most notably The New York Times and The Washington Times.  A recent New York Times article about ‘hyperlocal’ news websites noted that many of the sites have a dual challenge – generating revenue and generating quality content.  The latter would be especially difficult, the article notes, if the heavily relied upon local newspapers shut down. 

One of the more interesting examples of what the Wall Street Journal calls “web journalism” is True/Slant (trueslant.com) which is trying to overcome that dual challenge.  It blends journalism and social networking, by using 65 “knowledge experts” who have their own home page dealing with specific topics which are supposed to generate followers.  And (this is where it gets tricky) it also allows advertisers to create home pages.  Columnist Walt Mossberg notes the blend of journalism and advertising could “prove problematic” but he says it’s another example of how the web is changing traditional journalism.  I should also note another variation of this – Spot.us which has been given seed money by the Knight Foundation to see if it can create “crowd funded” or community funded journalism.  A recent article focused on recycling, with the authors raising $192 to fund the report, but with another $208 needed to fully cover the cost.

       THINK LOCALLY; ACT GLOBALLY:  Or, at least nationally.  That’s what many of the so-called citizen media sites are doing.  There are at least half a dozen organizations launching local citizen media websites, but with some sophisticated national support.  The latest operation is Outside.in which received $7.5 Million in venture capital to further its blend of aggregated content from traditional news sites and blogs.  The website lists 50-plus cities in which it has operations, covering what it says are 11,860 towns and neighborhoods.  But it’s far from alone.  Metroblogging (metblogs.com) just announced that it has added its 57^th city (San Diego) to what it calls its worldwide network.  Okay, it’s pretty much mainly the U.S., with half a dozen sites in Europe and Asia.  (Somehow, a posting about Earth Day on the Islamabad site seemed odd to me.)  Add to that Placeblogger.com founded by former MIT Media Lab contributor Lisa Williams.  It lists out what are really not so much news sites as general blogs, but it is an extensive list.  Website Everyblock.com is only in 11 cities so far, but it has an extensive database of material from local government agencies, newspapers, weeklies and TV websites as using Flickr, Yelp and Craigslist.  In the end, all of them contributing to what the Knight Citizen News Network calls “a more richly informed” 21^st Century.     

      MORE ON MEDIA CORPORATIONS ANNUAL REPORTS:  As promised in last week’s message, there is more to the dozen or so annual reports we reviewed.  What follows are the other ‘key’ words that popped up in the reports, along with insights into the corporate thinking and the corporate reach.

      CONSTANT, CONTINUOUS, CONNECTIONS:  Virtually every media group hit the point in their annual report that the customer expects to be able to connect to the rest of his or her world at their convenience.  But probably none of the groups put it so succinctly as the writers of the News Corporation’s annual report who make the point that, “today you can connect with any one, any time, anywhere, using any device.”  That’s why, they say, the company must continue to create content that consumers want across the “whole spectrum of media.”  Bertelsmann put it even more elegantly, noting that with digitization, “the world is spinning faster.”  That’s why they say (using very similar language) they must be there, “at all times at any place.”  Similarly Media General notes that the consumer has already “embraced a digital future” so the company has to “be there for them” because “the customer is in charge.”  Gannett hits on the media device issue as well, noting that customers expect to get “real time news and information delivered to any device” and adds that it must be “wherever and whenever the customer wants it.”  Disney also uses almost the same exact words, saying they must provide entertainment “when and where” the customer wants it.  Morris Communication puts it very simply when they note that media must become vital, “like a utility.”     

      A CORPORATE CONSCIENCE:  Yes, I can hear the cynics out there saying, ‘yeah, right, that’s a contradiction in terms,’ but take a look at some of the evidence from their annual reports.  German-based Bertelsmann cites citizenship as one of its four core principles and is a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact which promotes the principles of human rights.  Disney understandably cites the “well being of children” as one of its principles along with environmental stewardship.  But the company promises in its annual report to go much further, publishing soon “our first comprehensive, corporate responsibility report.”  On its board of directors is John E.Pepper, co-chair of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center which obviously draws its name from the underground railroad used to free slaves during the Civil War but which has a broader agenda now of freedom in all its aspects.  Gannett in several parts of its annual report talks about the company’s “First Amendment responsibilities” which it calls, “always our highest calling.”  Even the often maligned News Corporation promises in its annual report to be the world’s first carbon neutral global media company by 2010.  Its annual report says, “we can’t solve all of the world’s problems, but we continue to focus on areas where we can bring our experience, our reach and our talents to bear.” 

      DISNEY DAIRY PRODUCTS AND TIME WARNER CHOCOLATE:  It was odd but not surprising that Gannett owns Army Times Publishing or that the New York Times which sold off its television stations still holds on to a 7,000-subscriber weekly, the Petaluma Argus, in California; or even that News Corp is one of the leading newspaper insert companies with a group called NAM.  And, somewhere in the corrupted hard drive known as my brain, I remember that Disney owns cruise ships, but the statement in the company’s annual report that it is planning to launch two new cruise ships in the next two years still came as somewhat of a surprise.  But that’s the least of it when it comes to odd businesses that major corporations are involved in.  Disney also is big into Disney branded fruits, vegetables, dairy products and pasta for “families in dozens of countries.”  It has its own signature brand of home furnishings.  And not too surprisingly, but somewhat strange to see in writing, Disney corporate says in its annual report that “the pre-school segment continues to grow.”  Think about that. Media giant Bertelsmann also sees dollars in toddlers with its investment in Scoyo, an online learning platform for children.  The oddest of all though may be Time Warner’s interest in QSP, which provides school and youth group fundraising activities such as the sale of chocolate and cookie dough. Hmmm. Picture that.    

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