NEWS IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
COMMERCIAL FREE DOESN'T MEAN PROMO FREE
CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL
NEWS IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. And the beholders in this case are university students from around the world who apparently have a dramatically different definition of what is "news." Yes, note the quotation marks. According to a study led by the University of Maryland's International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, the students believe that the "everyday thoughts" of their friends count as news just as much as worldwide events. Not only that but the nearly 1,000 students surveyed don't "discriminate" between news provided by The New York Times, the BBC, or Al Jazeera and what they find on a friend's Facebook status update. News to them simply means 'something that just happened.' The study is based on an experiment, similar to one done in the U.S. a year ago, in which students go "unplugged" from all media for one whole day. Then they write about their experiences. Just as other studies have found, this one found that the students are virtually addicted to the media. The authors say that while it may not be a clinical diagnosis, the cravings, anxiety and depression "sure seem real" to the students. In fact most of the students in the ten countries failed to go unplugged for a whole day (which may raise questions about the study validity), sometimes because of "moments of weakness," sometimes because of work demands but sometimes just because the media is so pervasive. The study authors, who include researchers from nearly a dozen universities, noted semi-facetiously that if cartoonist Charles Schultz were drawing the character Linus today, he would be clinging to a mobile phone instead of a blanket.
The report notes what many other studies have noted, and that is that the young people are platform agnostic. However, it says that the students have different groups of 'friends' for different types of devices, with their Facebook friends being slightly different from those they text, who are in turn slightly different from those they call and so on. In effect they create different 'brand' identities based on the different communication tools.
For broadcasters, the report is a mixed message. The students say TV is still a favorite way to relax "without thinking too much," but that it is mainly "white noise." Very few of them said anything about TiVo or other DVR systems, and while some of them talked about favorite shows, almost none of them talked in terms of "destination TV." The students see music, regardless of its delivery system, as both critical to how they feel, using it to regulate their moods, but yet completely unnoticed at the same time. It both enhances and shuts out the world they live in and then becomes "background news."
For the news media, the report is an even more mixed message. There is so much news flooding them 24/7 that, the report authors say, "They inhale, almost unconsciously, the news." It's news served up on the sidebar of their email accounts, on their friends' Facebook walls, or through Twitter. They've become mostly headline readers who are happy getting their news in chunks of 140 characters. Unless they are personally engaged, the students don't have the time nor the interest to follow up the news, no matter how momentous that news appears to be. It's gotten to the point, the authors say, that "students no longer search for news (if they ever did), the news finds them." Yet at the same time, the authors say students today have a much broader range of interest, but again because "the flood of information is so continuous, and the bandwidth already is so great that there isn't a hole of curiosity that needs to be filled."
The report is not without hope for the news media. For example, the authors argue that "news" about friends and family can be a "Trojan horse" for media wanting to deliver local, national and world "news." Yes, there are those quotation marks again. They argue that journalists should "stop arguing there is a moral high ground to news" and just figure out how to meet their information needs. And remember how I made the point in a previous Message that you would be hearing a lot about 'news curation.' Well, guess what the report also argues – that there is tremendous need for news curation, "people and tools to make sense of the 24/7 influx of information." Somebody needs to separate the dreck and dross and turn it into something digestible. They argue that media literacy needs to be part of the core curriculum in universities around the world and that news curation, in particular, needs to be taught to journalism students.
COMMERCIAL FREE DOESN'T MEAN PROMOTION FREE. Okay, is it just me, or has anybody else noticed that there has been an enormous increase in the number of self promotional spots (aka branding and image spots) on National Public Radio. Everybody from their top journalists to Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers are extolling the virtues of the service. Do you think it has anything to do with the effort to cut off federal funding? Newsletter RBR/TVBR recently noted a campaign by a group calling itself Americans for Limited Government which is specifically targeting funding for public broadcasting with an online petition drive. They've even asked, somewhat humorously, for equal time on NPR to make their case. On top of that, a service called America's Radio News Network is offering itself as a commercial alternative to NPR. And that may be the real reason for the image spots. ARNN, as the service refers to itself, makes no bones about the fact that NPR's "implosion" is an opportunity for them, because they offer the only long form alternative without what they call NPR's "perceived bias." I don't know what it says about the service, but ARNN's catch phrase or slogan is "making, breaking and driving the news." As a footnote and a reminder from previous Messages on the State of the News Media, NPR averages a weekly audience of more than 27 Million listeners, which is significantly bigger than the combined audiences of either the network news, and dramatically bigger than the combined audiences of cable news. Also from the State of the News Media report, last year there were 3,446 radio stations which identified themselves news/talk/information – up from 2,634 the year before. Yet only 30 are all news. There were 268 NPR "member stations" last year, and 764 stations that carried some NPR programming, many of which (I didn't know) are religious broadcasters.
CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL. I am not a Diane Sawyer fan. Never have been. So, when she took over the anchor chair at ABC News, I was not expecting much. I was wrong. Thanks to former Atlanta ABC Bureau chief and fellow lecturer Steve Smith, I watched. And, folks, there is a dramatic difference in the quality of the programming. I meant to write about this some time ago when I watched their coverage out of China. It managed to achieve the hard to achieve standard of being both interesting and informative. Now, in the interest of equal time and so I can say you heard it here first, look for some significant changes in the CBS Evening News. And I am not just talking about the anchor change. 60 Minutes Correspondent Scott Pelley who is considered the leading contender for the position visited the Grady College of Journalism. According to him, the new chairman of news (isn't that a weird title?), Jeff Fager wants to see the evening newscast reflect the same quality as the critically and ratings acclaimed 60 Minutes. Pelley says they are talking context and perspective, although he prefers the word 'insight.' More importantly, he says, he wants to give the audience a sense of "wow, I didn't know that."
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