Message From Michael - Citizen Media - October 12, 2009

Message From Michael                                               

                                                                                                                        October 12, 2009                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

      CITIZEN MEDIA TURNING INTO CORPORATE MEDIA

      YOUR OWN SECRET DECODER RING

      THE EPICENTER OF THE CITIZEN MEDIA EARTHQUAKE

      EVERYBODY’S TRYING TO BE MY BABY

      EVERYBODY’S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT ME AND MY MEDIA

      COCKTAIL CHATTER – PLAYBOY AND JOURNALISM

 

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      CITIZEN MEDIA TURNING INTO CORPORATE MEDIA:  That appears to be the end result of a series of acquisitions.  Media big fish MSNBC.com has swallowed up citizen media little fish Everyblock.com.  Meanwhile, the already whale-sized Examiner.com citizen media group which operates in 109 cities has moved from Beluga whale size to Killer whale size, by swallowing up the NowPublic.com citizen media operation.  As a point of clarification, Examiner is owned by the Clarity Digital Group which in turn is owned by the Anschutz Corporation which is best known for its Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), which is “one of the leading sports and entertainment presenters in the world” with operations in the U.S., England, Germany and Australia, just to name a few.  The two other ‘major’ citizen media sites, as indicated by the Knight Citizen News Network, are YourHub.com and BlognetNews.com.  The Knight site lists nearly 800 citizen media sites.

Not to read too much into things, but it probably says something that the MSNBC news release refers to the “growing hyper-local news industry.”  Except that it isn’t – hyper-local.  Or at least it’s not citizen media, although it appears to be rapidly changing into an industry.  For example, the Everyblock website for Atlanta had three stories on its front page – one from WXIA-TV, one from WSB-TV and one from alternative newsweekly Creative Loafing.  In the same way, when I went to the Examiner.com website for Atlanta, Savannah and Augusta, the lead story was about The Twilight Saga.

SideNote:  As a further addendum, a visit to the revised NBC O&O websites which have been ballyhooed as the latest thing in hyper-local news, shows that they, too are not what they seem to be.  They are, admittedly, pretty cool, but it is hipness based on a formula.  For example, San Francisco is sad… Los Angeles is happy… Chicago is angry… These were the headlines and the different cities were all ‘sad, happy, angry’ about some national news story that had some limited local connection.  I found the same repetitiveness between the sites that I noted in the Everyblock websites.         

Footnote:  What is interesting (to me, at least) is that any time you sign on to one of these websites, it automatically reads your ISP address and directs you to the appropriate city.  For example, when I signed on to Everyblock.com, it automatically pulled up the Atlanta version.  Of course it’s not always right.  When I sign on to yourhub.com, I am almost invariably directed to the Denver home site. 

      YOUR OWN SECRET DECODER RING:  It’s not Ovaltine which is offering this, as happened in the movie Christmas Story, but a former minister and newspaper reporter.  They have created the National Association of Citizen Journalists where you have to complete four ‘comprehensive webinars’ along with homework assignments and you get a certificate “suitable for framing” along with a Press sticker for your car and a NACJ press ID badge.  The backers of this ‘movement’, which citizen media site YourHub.com/ Denver actually advertises as an added benefit, are Ron Ross who has a master of divinity degree and a doctor of theology degree and who published an entertainment weekly in Colorado; and Susan Carson Cormier who worked as a reporter and stringer for various newspapers in Arizona and now runs a business in Denver offering ‘writing, editing and marketing services’ to small businesses.

      THE EPICENTER OF THE CITIZEN MEDIA EARTHQUAKE:  It may well be Seattle where three different citizen media operations will soon be battling for hyper-local hegemony.  First there was seattlepostglobe.com created by reporters and (it seems, mostly) photographers who lost their jobs when the Seattle Post Intelligencer shut down.  Now, Fisher Communications a/k/a KOMO-TV has launched a series of ‘hyper-local’ websites focused on ‘community news.”  There are 28 in Portland and 10 in Eugene “complemented by user-generated content” and supported by a local Real Estate company.  Then, it was announced that the Knight Foundation is funding a one year experiment in ‘hyper-local news’ through its J-Lab project.  And what are the five news organizations joining in? The Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer, the Asheville Citizen-Times, the Tucson-Citizen.com and…. Drum roll, please… The Seattle Times.  The folks at the times say in their announcement that the neighborhood blogs are “staffed by staffed by professionals who share the Times’ journalistic values.”  The idea behind the Networked Journalism Project is to develop a template for future collaborative projects.

On The Flip Side of all this citizen media growth is an announcement that The Washington Post group is shutting down its Loudon Extra website with its ‘hyper-local’ focus.  However, I add this in, noting that I have not been able to verify it.  The initial report was carried by competing news group, Loudon Independent, but when I checked on the Washington Post site, it is still operational.  And I have not been able to get official confirmation from the folks at the Post… who, by the way, (full disclosure) are my long-ago former employers.

      EVERYBODY’S TRYING TO BE MY BABY:  Or so it seems, when a worldwide survey by your semi-good friends at Nielsen shows that nine out of every ten consumers (that’s 90% for those of you statistically inclined) trust recommendations from people they know.  Seven out of ten people trust consumer opinions posted ONLINE (an important difference).  Nielsen says it is now tracking more than 100 Million Consumer Generated Media pieces.  And with that information, they can say semi-unequivocally that consumers’ reliance on Word of Mouth recommendations has increased significantly.

The survey, called Trust in Advertising, was actually done worldwide and found that the Vietnamese were the most trusting of opinions posted online (81%), followed by the Italians (80%), Chinese and French (77%), with the U.S. consumer at #12 (72%).  And in a comment that echoes previous Message reports, Nielsen officials note that online advertising has yet to attract advertising commensurate with online media consumption.

On a semi-related note, the Federal Trade Commission has issued guidelines about blogging that require bloggers doing reviews to indicate clearly when they have received either financial considerations OR been provided free samples of the product being reviewed.  As Public Relations website badpitch so nicely notes, the point is that there is a difference between journalists who do it because they are PAID and bloggers who do it because they are PASSIONATE.

A Side Note:  The same FTC is in the process of examining behavioral targeting advertising.  I don’t know that I can do this in one or two lines, but the point is that behavioral advertising tailors its approach, based on a consumer’s past preferences which raises questions about garnering personal information for advertising use.   

      EVERYBODY’S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT ME AND MY MEDIA:  Seriously, you have to wonder about whether the issue of mainstream media credibility is fueling the growth of citizen media when several surveys have come out recently, raising questions about the public’s view of journalists.  BUT – and it’s a Big But – the same studies raise questions about the role or influence of the Internet as well.  Possibly the most interesting comes from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.  It found, just like the others, that television leads the pack as the primary source of news as well as the most credible source of news.  For example, three quarters (71%) cite television as their primary source for national and international news and two thirds (64%) cite television as their primary source for local news.  BUT (there’s that word again), while the Internet (at 42%) beat out newspapers (at 33%) for second place when it comes to national and international news, newspapers (at 41%) more than doubled the preference numbers of the Internet (at 17%) when it comes to LOCAL news.  Similarly when it comes to “uncovering” local news, television scores with slightly less than half (44%) while newspapers account for a quarter (25%) which is still double ‘local, independent online organizations’ (11%). 

In a very much similar vein, a survey sponsored by ARAnet, which distributes content and advertising to both print and online, found that Online sources came in 4^th place as a source for news and information as well as for credibility.  A third of those surveyed (31%) by Opinion Research Corporation cited television as their news and information source, well ahead of newspapers and radio (both came in at 19.4%) and way, way ahead of  Online (14.6%).  Television also was the leader in terms of credibility (at 6.5 on a scale of one to ten) but only slightly ahead of newspapers and radio (both at 6.3) but fairly well ahead of Online news sources (5.7 on that scale).  BUT (my third time), the survey notes that higher income people are significantly more likely to turn to Online sources (23.1% of those with incomes over $100,000 versus 14.6% for the general population.)  Those same higher income people are also more likely to give Online sources higher marks for credibility (6.3 versus the 5.7 cited by the general population.)  The same survey found college graduates more likely to go Online for news and information (20% versus 14.6% for the general population) and to give Online sources higher marks (6.5 versus 5.7 for the general population.)

Lastly, a third survey by Sacred Heart University which focused on trust and satisfaction factors found that nearly half of its survey pool (45%) agreed (their word, I should point out) that the Internet “is adequately covering for failing newspapers” while a third (35.6%) disagreed.  This same survey found that four-fifths (85.3%) of those surveyed were familiar with the term “mainstream media.”  Then, when asked who were the ‘members’ of the mainstream media, more than a third cited NBC (37.6%); less than a third cited CBS (32.6%); and even less cited ABC (29.5%).  Somewhat humorously (depending on your sense of humor), a quarter (27.8%) cited CNN as mainstream while a fifth (19.9%) cited Fox and a tenth (12.6%) cited MSNBC.   

      IT’S SO EASY, MRS. ALPERT:  Part of the reason for the growth of the alternative citizen media cites (I would argue) are the tools available for any would-be citizen media maven.  The latest example is FWIX which uses a variety of technologies to filter and select local news content which you can then share with people, becoming your own mini-media-mogul.  More on that in a later Message.

      COCKTAIL CHATTER:  The former CEO of Playboy Enterprises, Christie Hefner, was offered but turned down the position as publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, according to an article in the Styles section in the New York Times.  However, Hefner has agreed to help create a for-profit arm for CJR modeled on the Harvard Business Review with Victor S. Navasky, the publisher of CJR, who offered her the publisher position.

      DISCLAIMERS:  I admit it; the above material sounds more like commentary than reportage, but… Well, there is no but.  It does border on commentary.  And, yes, I also need to do more (possibly next week’s Message) on the studies about media credibility.  And, yes, I also need to do more about the various tools that make online news gathering easier and easier for garage geeks.

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