THE ONLINE CREDIBILITY GAP
NUANCES OF PUBLIC SKEPTICISM
TEN MOST POWERFUL NEWS PEOPLE
FACTOID OF THE WEEK
COCKTAIL CHATTER – SMALLER IS BETTER
ASKING A FAVOR
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE ONLINE CREDIBILITY GAP: That is the title of a survey produced by the Associated Press Managing Editors, but which (as far as I can tell) shows there is no credibility gap. The survey done with the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri compared public opinion with the opinion of newspaper and online editors. For example, on a scale of one to seven, both the editors and the members of the public who are users of online local news (an important distinction) gave a score of six or better to such basics of journalism as verifying information, getting the facts right, correcting mistakes, journalists taking responsibility for accuracy, journalists limiting their roles to independent observers, labeling any commentary and keeping advertising and news clearly separate. Similarly, both the editors (91%) and the public (72%) thought ‘actively seeking viewpoints from people to comment on the news’ would be somewhat or very beneficial to good journalism online; both editors (92%) and the public (73%) thought ‘giving the public ways to provide information for news stories’ would be beneficial; and both editors (88%) and the public (79%) believe ‘enforcing standards on such as crude language and personal attacks’ is important. Interestingly, a slightly higher percentage of the public (74%) than the editors (69%) believed that the same standards should be applied to news produced by citizens as is applied to news written by journalists. Oddly, slightly more of the editors (47%) rated the accuracy of so-called ‘citizen journalism’ as Good compared to the public (37%) which was more likely to rate it Fair (56%) compared to editors (44%). But more of the public rated citizen journalism’s coverage of ‘what is important to the community’ as Excellent (10%), Good (59%) or Fair (31%) compared to editors who rated it Excellent (8%), Good (43%) and Fair (42%). Similarly the public rated citizen journalism higher in terms of ‘coverage of what is of interest to you’ than the editors.
Disclaimers: And they abound. For starters, only three quarters (75%) of the 500 members of the public had Internet access at home and/or at work, although the study authors say this is in line with national figures. Of those who did have access, only a third (32.2% or 161 in actual numbers) qualified as ‘users of local online news.’ Of that number, two thirds (67%) actually sought out the news while a quarter (25%) just happened across it. BUT a whopping third of those surveyed (34.2%) said they did not use local online news ‘AT ALL’ and a somewhat less whopping fifth of the public (22.4%) said they ‘HARDLY EVER’ use online local news. Local TV remained the primary source of local news (47%), followed by newspapers (33%) and with radio (8%) actually beating out the Internet (7%).
NUANCES OF PUBLIC SKEPTICISM: That is how the State of the News Media report describes the public’s view of the news media. (I know, I’m going for the beating a dead horse award in writing yet another story about the report, but really it’s worth it.) The ‘nuance’ comes in the fact that people like what they actually watch, read and know, but they “dislike and distrust the hypothetical monolith – the behemoth called the news media.” The report says the public’s overall view of the news media remains as negative in 2007 as it has been in the past, but the negative view is particularly noticeable in terms of coverage of the presidential campaign, driven in part by the ‘acid’ criticism of mainstream media by bloggers. The report says the political partisanship is creating distinctly different audiences with ideology as strong an indicator of their view of the media as any other basic demographic measure. Most Americans believe journalists are often inaccurate (55%), do not care about the people they report on (53%), are biased (55%), one sided (66%) and try to cover up their mistakes (63%). If it’s any consolation slightly more believe news organizations are moral (46%) than immoral (32%), protect democracy (44%) than hurt it (36%) and are highly professional (66%). The moral percentage is up (although only slightly) in 2007 from when the question was asked in 2005 while the protect democracy percentage is down slightly. But professionalism is up fairly significantly. Further consolation is that substantially more people think well of network news programs (71%) than of Congress (45%), the Democratic Party (55%) or the Republican Party (42%). But again, in keeping with the earlier point, 80% of Americans have a positive view of their LOCAL television news and their LOCAL daily newspaper.
The Internet News Audience: Despite the report above, and just to confuse you further, the Project for Excellence in Journalism report says a quarter of all Americans now get news on a daily basis from the Internet. This audience is also more critical of traditional news sources than other Americans with roughly four out of five having unfavorable opinions of national newspapers, network TV news and cable TV news. Yet the report notes the dichotomy that trust does not necessarily correlate to usage with “some of those most distrustful of media… its heaviest consumers.”
The Kicker: Despite the fact that her program is consistently third in the ratings and despite rumors that she is being ousted, Katie Couric is America’s favorite journalist BUT with only 5% of the survey respondents picking her. Close behind is Bill O’Reilly (4%), Charles Gibson (3%), and Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams and Anderson Cooper all at 2%. What is more significant, says the report, is that none of the on-air journalists have the star power or prominence of their counterparts in the mid-80’s.
TEN MOST POWERFUL NEWS PEOPLE: Topping the TVWeek list is NBC news president Steve Capus who beats out Fox News CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes. Interestingly or oddly, the two simply swapped positions from last year’s ranking. Coming in #3 is ABC news president David Westin, followed by Tim Russert. CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton and CNN/U-S president Jon Klein are lumped together in the fifth position. Then it’s Keith Olbermann, Bill O’Reilly, CBS news and sports president Seam McManus. In ninth place is the N.S. Beinstock agency, with a combination of Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live’s Amy Poehler coming in tenth because “they get it.” It may say something about the validity of the list that everybody on the list this year, except O’Reilly and Poehler, were on the list last year.
FACTOID OF THE WEEK: The latest report from Nielsen Online says the total number of video streams increased in February to 6.3 Billion (from 6 Billion in January) even though the number of unique video viewers dropped in the shorter February month. YouTube accounted for nearly half of all those video streams (2.9 Billion). Even more significant, the average streams per viewer was up (54.7 from 51.3) and the average time per viewer was up (130.7 minutes from 124.4).
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The Polaroid company which recently stopped making its namesake instant camera has started making a digital version which is a mini, hand-size printer that makes 2x3 inch pictures from your cell phone or digital camera using a new kind of paper labeled Zink. In line with smaller is better, New York Times tech guru David Pogue says ‘one of the most significant electronics products of the year’ is a tiny stripped-down video record the size of a digital camera and called The Flip which, he says, looks like a ‘cheesy toy’ but is the ‘purest essence of video capture.’ Despite the drop in consumer confidence and buying, consumer research firm BigResearch says one in ten Americans (10.6%) plan to buy a TV in the next six months, (possibly because of the digital conversion?). And in its monthly report of What’s Hot, the firm says cooking at home ‘Energy Star’ appliances, bike riding and gardening are rated particularly high among consumers. Finally, the U.S. Government’s Homeland Security agency is getting into the business of text messaging on cell phones sending out security alerts.
And in a category not exactly Cocktail Chatter is an online simulation game named Station Manager where you take control of a small, independent TV station about to go bankrupt. You have to decide on the programming offerings, arrange the advertising deals, figure out the promotional schedule, and even produce your own programming if you don’t like the choices. The website is tvstationmanager.com, and the price for downloading it is $19.95. (Thanks to Todd Fantz of Intelligent Media Consultants for this tip.)
ASKING A FAVOR: Okay, folks, this is a blatant request for help from all of my friends, semi-friends, acquaintances and casual readers of my weekly newsletter. The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication is conducting an online survey to evaluate its educational goals and it wants feedback from professionals like you. I promise it will only take a few minutes and you will have my undying gratitude. Okay, that may be a little overboard, but seriously it will be appreciated. The survey is done through Survey Monkey and you can access it by either linking to or copying and pasting the following address:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=WaF_2f1G6F1rrZ55kJ6ATpVw_3d_3d
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
Showing posts with label citizen journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label citizen journalism. Show all posts
Monday, April 14, 2008
Monday, July 23, 2007
Message From Michael -- July 16, 2007
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
DISCLAIMER: This week’s edition of MfM is a little longer than usual, because there were three significant studies that came out and that I am going to attempt to summarize briefly. Which leads to disclaimer number two, they are so brief that they are subject to some distortion of interpretation.
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: And if you remember the line from the old Sam Cook song about teen love, you will remember that Sam also didn’t know much about biology, science, French and algebra. Well, now add to that – News. According to a survey by the Joan Shorenstein on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, teenagers and young adults are paying less attention to news than their counterparts of two or three decades ago. No news there, but the DEGREE OF DISCONNECT is news – not just newspapers, but national and local television, radio and the Internet. One out of four teens (28%) and one out of four young adults (24%) paid almost no attention to news, whatever the source. And another third of the teens (32%) and another quarter of the young adults (24%) paid little or no attention to three of the mediums and made only ‘moderate’ use of the fourth. Simply put, “daily news is not an integral part of the daily lives of most teens and young adults.” The survey showed that while teenagers and young adults may say they watch, read or listen to the news (because it is the ‘socially desirable response’), in actual fact they ‘skim’ the newspaper, watch TV for a ‘short while,’ listen to news on radio when it ‘happens to come on’ and read news on the Internet when they ‘come across’ it.
HARD NEWS VERSUS SOFT NEWS: The Shorenstein report also found that the difference in familiarity between hard news stories (such as the 400-point plunge in the Dow at the time) and soft news stories (such as Anna Nicole Smith’s death) was “nothing short of extraordinary.” Three out of four (75%) of the respondents OF ALL AGES knew about the typical soft news story while less than half (45%) knew about the typical hard news story. And two thirds (68%) correctly identified the factual elements of a soft news story while less than half again (45%) did so for the hard news story. A “puzzling finding”, according to the survey, was that while other research shows older adults are more likely to discuss public affairs, younger adults were three times more likely to say they had heard about a story from another person – although, in most cases it was a soft news story. The report did note that many hard news stories “have a numbing sameness – another act of Congress or another presidential speech – that can block them from memory even when they get heavy coverage.”
THE NEW MEDIA ROLE: Yes, the Internet is an important source for news for teenagers and young adults, according to the report. But it is a matter of degree. Two out of five teens (41%) and young adults (47%) say they became aware of a story through TV while only one in five (18%) say they became aware of a story through the Internet. Interestingly, one in four teenagers (28%) and one in ten young adults (12%) say they found out about a story through ‘another person.’ The report says Radio is actually the most “underrated news medium” because of its large “inadvertent news audience.”
THE NEW NEWS MATRIX. In the “old days,” there was a correlation between news interest and news consumption regardless of the medium, says the report. Mom and Dad read the morning newspaper at the breakfast table and would watch the evening news. By default the kids acquired a news habit of their own, almost because they had no choice. The report says this “forced feeding” of the news habit came to an end in the 1980’s with the spread of cable television. Now the big question mark is whether the Internet will make news consumption greater because of its 24/7 availability or break down news consumption even more because of that same on-demand feature. The problem, say the researchers, is that online news exposure is less fixed by time, place and routine – elements that have a ritual ability to reinforce news habits. Now news consumption becomes more ‘inadvertent.’ And even though young people may say they are interested in news, their behavior says otherwise. It may be a matter of different medium for different needs. Newspapers for public affairs coverage; Television for entertainment programs; the Internet for gaming and social interaction. The report authors say media use today is largely a solitary affair that only reinforces existing preferences and doesn’t create news ones, like news use. They quote Aristotle who wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.” The fact that young people don’t repeatedly ‘do news’ is “a basis for pessimism about the future of daily news and young adults.”
You can access the full report at: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/carnegie_knight/young_news_web.pdf
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: Several recent reports cited a study by Edison Media Research that the Internet is close to beating television as “most essential” medium. In keeping with MfM’s focus on going behind the headlines, we can say -- WRONGO-GONGO. The Internet has beaten Television. At least, for people under the age of 44. Not only that, the Internet beats out television as the “most cool” and “exciting” medium for people under the age of 54 as well. Some consolation for my television brethren, on the flip side of the equation, more people (24%) deemed the Internet the “least essential” medium, compared to television (18%) and radio (18%). No consolation for my newspaper brethren, newspapers were deemed the “least essential” medium by more people (35%) than any other media. All this represents a fairly dramatic change from when the survey was taken five years ago in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the Internet beat out Television by a whopping 15 percentage points (46% to 31%) among the 12-17 crowd when it came to “most essential.” Somewhat surprisingly, the Internet also beat out Television by a substantial 12 percentage points (40% to 28%) among the 35-44 crowd in that arena. The race was much tighter among the 18-24 group (38% to 35%) and the 25-34 group (38% to 33%). It’s only when you get to the 45—plus crowd that Television beats out the Internet but by a mere 6 percentage points, but a substantial 16 percentage points in the 55-plus group and a whop-whopping 34% among the 65-plus.
And when it comes to being “most cool,” the figures for the Internet are even more staggering with the Internet beating Television by 20 percentage points in the 12-17 group; 19 percentage points in the 18-24’s; another 14 points in the 25-34; 17 points in the 35-44 group but a mere one point in the 45-54 group. Once you get to the 55-plus crowd (that Television doesn’t sell), Television beats out the Internet by 12 points and an incredible 35 points in the 65-plus crowd as “most cool.”
WHO’S STALE AND BORING: More consolation for my Television brethren, fewer people (24%) think Television is “stale and boring” in 2007 than thought so in 2002, when it was 36%. No consolation for my Newspaper brethren, more people (35%) now think they have become “stale and boring” than in 2002, when it was 30%. And for those radio readers of MfM, radio dropped 9 percentage points in terms of being “most essential,” increased 4 percentage points in being “least essential”; is flat over the five year period in terms of being “stale and boring”; but dropped dramatically in terms of being “used more.” The Internet (at 34%) beat radio (18%) and barely trailed Television (37%) when people were asked, “Are you using it more lately.”
THE KICKER: But here’s the kicker for you Television folks out there. When asked, “Who would you turn to first in the event of a major breaking news story,” Television dominates with 62% of the respondents picking TV, beating out the Internet (at 18%) by more than a three to one margin. The television figure is down from 2002 when it was 74% and the Internet is up from 2002 when it was a mere 8%. Radio is down, at 10% this year compared to 12% five years ago, and newspapers increased a tad, at 8% this year versus 6% five years ago.
(Okay, let me explain the headline. The Devil is in the Details can be translated a number of ways: you have to watch the details or they will trip you up; things are more difficult to accomplish because of the various details to be taken care of; or, the plan may appear simple but there is a lot of detail work to be done. The flip side of that is “God is in the Details” which some translate as meaning you can find big things in small packages, sort of along the line of ‘less is more’; or that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; details are important.)
You can access the full report at: http://www.edisonresearch.com/home/archives/Q3%20Media%20Perceptions%20-%20large%20slides%20_2_.pdf
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM: A report by the University of Maryland’s J-Lab “Institute for Interactive Journalism” says four out of five “citizen media” websites consider what they do to be journalism and three out of four have pronounced their efforts a “success.” Of course, success has multiple definitions, including watch-dogging local government, providing news that couldn’t otherwise be had, helping their community to solve problems and nudging local media to improve. The Knight Citizen News Network (kcnn.org) has identified more than 450 “citizen media” sites in the United States. Both groups have adopted the term “citizen media” as their preferred definition of these sites, although both groups use the term interchangeably with “citizen journalism.” The J-Lab group identified several variations of the citizen media model – community cooperatives run by volunteers; trained citizen journalist sites using traditional journalism values and training to non-journalists; professional journalists who are operating for profit and not for profit sites; solo enterprise sites created by individuals, few of whom have journalism training; blog aggregators which act as one-stop community repositories; and legacy media sites launched by newspapers or broadcasters as places where the users dominate the content, as opposed to their own websites where journalists dominate the work. The report cites examples of each, and they run the gamut from people like Jonathon Weber, former editor of The Industry Standard (at newwest.net); former Boston Globe editor and now M-I-T Media Lab editor-in-residence Jack Driscoll (ryereflections.org); to “life and business partners” Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage who run a web design business in Brattleboro, Vermont (ibrattleboro.com)
J-Lab Director Jan Schaffer says her group believes citizen media sites “will become an enduring part of the emerging newscape” and urges legacy media groups to partner and support such sites instead of trying to compete with them. The report says ‘old media’ companies have launched such sites for a variety of reasons – to offset loss of editorial staff, to build community and thereby interest in local news coverage, and, candidly, to preserve or maybe expand market share among consumers and advertisers. Meanwhile, many ‘new media’ companies are struggling to harness citizen and advertising contributions to create profitable online revenue models. In short, both are looking for the right ‘business model.’ As a foot note, one of the larger, multiple citizen media sites, backfence.com, has gone out of business since the J-Lab report was issued.
You can access the full report at: http://www.kcnn.org/research/citizen_media_report/ and even have a hard copy sent to you.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
DISCLAIMER: This week’s edition of MfM is a little longer than usual, because there were three significant studies that came out and that I am going to attempt to summarize briefly. Which leads to disclaimer number two, they are so brief that they are subject to some distortion of interpretation.
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: And if you remember the line from the old Sam Cook song about teen love, you will remember that Sam also didn’t know much about biology, science, French and algebra. Well, now add to that – News. According to a survey by the Joan Shorenstein on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, teenagers and young adults are paying less attention to news than their counterparts of two or three decades ago. No news there, but the DEGREE OF DISCONNECT is news – not just newspapers, but national and local television, radio and the Internet. One out of four teens (28%) and one out of four young adults (24%) paid almost no attention to news, whatever the source. And another third of the teens (32%) and another quarter of the young adults (24%) paid little or no attention to three of the mediums and made only ‘moderate’ use of the fourth. Simply put, “daily news is not an integral part of the daily lives of most teens and young adults.” The survey showed that while teenagers and young adults may say they watch, read or listen to the news (because it is the ‘socially desirable response’), in actual fact they ‘skim’ the newspaper, watch TV for a ‘short while,’ listen to news on radio when it ‘happens to come on’ and read news on the Internet when they ‘come across’ it.
HARD NEWS VERSUS SOFT NEWS: The Shorenstein report also found that the difference in familiarity between hard news stories (such as the 400-point plunge in the Dow at the time) and soft news stories (such as Anna Nicole Smith’s death) was “nothing short of extraordinary.” Three out of four (75%) of the respondents OF ALL AGES knew about the typical soft news story while less than half (45%) knew about the typical hard news story. And two thirds (68%) correctly identified the factual elements of a soft news story while less than half again (45%) did so for the hard news story. A “puzzling finding”, according to the survey, was that while other research shows older adults are more likely to discuss public affairs, younger adults were three times more likely to say they had heard about a story from another person – although, in most cases it was a soft news story. The report did note that many hard news stories “have a numbing sameness – another act of Congress or another presidential speech – that can block them from memory even when they get heavy coverage.”
THE NEW MEDIA ROLE: Yes, the Internet is an important source for news for teenagers and young adults, according to the report. But it is a matter of degree. Two out of five teens (41%) and young adults (47%) say they became aware of a story through TV while only one in five (18%) say they became aware of a story through the Internet. Interestingly, one in four teenagers (28%) and one in ten young adults (12%) say they found out about a story through ‘another person.’ The report says Radio is actually the most “underrated news medium” because of its large “inadvertent news audience.”
THE NEW NEWS MATRIX. In the “old days,” there was a correlation between news interest and news consumption regardless of the medium, says the report. Mom and Dad read the morning newspaper at the breakfast table and would watch the evening news. By default the kids acquired a news habit of their own, almost because they had no choice. The report says this “forced feeding” of the news habit came to an end in the 1980’s with the spread of cable television. Now the big question mark is whether the Internet will make news consumption greater because of its 24/7 availability or break down news consumption even more because of that same on-demand feature. The problem, say the researchers, is that online news exposure is less fixed by time, place and routine – elements that have a ritual ability to reinforce news habits. Now news consumption becomes more ‘inadvertent.’ And even though young people may say they are interested in news, their behavior says otherwise. It may be a matter of different medium for different needs. Newspapers for public affairs coverage; Television for entertainment programs; the Internet for gaming and social interaction. The report authors say media use today is largely a solitary affair that only reinforces existing preferences and doesn’t create news ones, like news use. They quote Aristotle who wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.” The fact that young people don’t repeatedly ‘do news’ is “a basis for pessimism about the future of daily news and young adults.”
You can access the full report at: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/carnegie_knight/young_news_web.pdf
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: Several recent reports cited a study by Edison Media Research that the Internet is close to beating television as “most essential” medium. In keeping with MfM’s focus on going behind the headlines, we can say -- WRONGO-GONGO. The Internet has beaten Television. At least, for people under the age of 44. Not only that, the Internet beats out television as the “most cool” and “exciting” medium for people under the age of 54 as well. Some consolation for my television brethren, on the flip side of the equation, more people (24%) deemed the Internet the “least essential” medium, compared to television (18%) and radio (18%). No consolation for my newspaper brethren, newspapers were deemed the “least essential” medium by more people (35%) than any other media. All this represents a fairly dramatic change from when the survey was taken five years ago in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the Internet beat out Television by a whopping 15 percentage points (46% to 31%) among the 12-17 crowd when it came to “most essential.” Somewhat surprisingly, the Internet also beat out Television by a substantial 12 percentage points (40% to 28%) among the 35-44 crowd in that arena. The race was much tighter among the 18-24 group (38% to 35%) and the 25-34 group (38% to 33%). It’s only when you get to the 45—plus crowd that Television beats out the Internet but by a mere 6 percentage points, but a substantial 16 percentage points in the 55-plus group and a whop-whopping 34% among the 65-plus.
And when it comes to being “most cool,” the figures for the Internet are even more staggering with the Internet beating Television by 20 percentage points in the 12-17 group; 19 percentage points in the 18-24’s; another 14 points in the 25-34; 17 points in the 35-44 group but a mere one point in the 45-54 group. Once you get to the 55-plus crowd (that Television doesn’t sell), Television beats out the Internet by 12 points and an incredible 35 points in the 65-plus crowd as “most cool.”
WHO’S STALE AND BORING: More consolation for my Television brethren, fewer people (24%) think Television is “stale and boring” in 2007 than thought so in 2002, when it was 36%. No consolation for my Newspaper brethren, more people (35%) now think they have become “stale and boring” than in 2002, when it was 30%. And for those radio readers of MfM, radio dropped 9 percentage points in terms of being “most essential,” increased 4 percentage points in being “least essential”; is flat over the five year period in terms of being “stale and boring”; but dropped dramatically in terms of being “used more.” The Internet (at 34%) beat radio (18%) and barely trailed Television (37%) when people were asked, “Are you using it more lately.”
THE KICKER: But here’s the kicker for you Television folks out there. When asked, “Who would you turn to first in the event of a major breaking news story,” Television dominates with 62% of the respondents picking TV, beating out the Internet (at 18%) by more than a three to one margin. The television figure is down from 2002 when it was 74% and the Internet is up from 2002 when it was a mere 8%. Radio is down, at 10% this year compared to 12% five years ago, and newspapers increased a tad, at 8% this year versus 6% five years ago.
(Okay, let me explain the headline. The Devil is in the Details can be translated a number of ways: you have to watch the details or they will trip you up; things are more difficult to accomplish because of the various details to be taken care of; or, the plan may appear simple but there is a lot of detail work to be done. The flip side of that is “God is in the Details” which some translate as meaning you can find big things in small packages, sort of along the line of ‘less is more’; or that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; details are important.)
You can access the full report at: http://www.edisonresearch.com/home/archives/Q3%20Media%20Perceptions%20-%20large%20slides%20_2_.pdf
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM: A report by the University of Maryland’s J-Lab “Institute for Interactive Journalism” says four out of five “citizen media” websites consider what they do to be journalism and three out of four have pronounced their efforts a “success.” Of course, success has multiple definitions, including watch-dogging local government, providing news that couldn’t otherwise be had, helping their community to solve problems and nudging local media to improve. The Knight Citizen News Network (kcnn.org) has identified more than 450 “citizen media” sites in the United States. Both groups have adopted the term “citizen media” as their preferred definition of these sites, although both groups use the term interchangeably with “citizen journalism.” The J-Lab group identified several variations of the citizen media model – community cooperatives run by volunteers; trained citizen journalist sites using traditional journalism values and training to non-journalists; professional journalists who are operating for profit and not for profit sites; solo enterprise sites created by individuals, few of whom have journalism training; blog aggregators which act as one-stop community repositories; and legacy media sites launched by newspapers or broadcasters as places where the users dominate the content, as opposed to their own websites where journalists dominate the work. The report cites examples of each, and they run the gamut from people like Jonathon Weber, former editor of The Industry Standard (at newwest.net); former Boston Globe editor and now M-I-T Media Lab editor-in-residence Jack Driscoll (ryereflections.org); to “life and business partners” Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage who run a web design business in Brattleboro, Vermont (ibrattleboro.com)
J-Lab Director Jan Schaffer says her group believes citizen media sites “will become an enduring part of the emerging newscape” and urges legacy media groups to partner and support such sites instead of trying to compete with them. The report says ‘old media’ companies have launched such sites for a variety of reasons – to offset loss of editorial staff, to build community and thereby interest in local news coverage, and, candidly, to preserve or maybe expand market share among consumers and advertisers. Meanwhile, many ‘new media’ companies are struggling to harness citizen and advertising contributions to create profitable online revenue models. In short, both are looking for the right ‘business model.’ As a foot note, one of the larger, multiple citizen media sites, backfence.com, has gone out of business since the J-Lab report was issued.
You can access the full report at: http://www.kcnn.org/research/citizen_media_report/ and even have a hard copy sent to you.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Message From Michael -- May 21, 2007
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
SWEEPS AND WEBSITES
UPFRONT
TELEVISION’S FUTURE – A CQ REPORT
A MECHANICAL LOOK AT TELEVISION
OUTSOURCING JOURNALISM
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
SWEEPS: Theoretically you should be receiving this about 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. That means you have exactly 88 hours left in the May sweeps. Here is an interesting sidebar to the ratings race. According to Nielsen/ Net Ratings the leading network site (in April, so it’s a little old) was Fox with 8.5 Million unique visitors, up 39% from last year. Close behind was ABC with 8.3 Million, up 75% from last year and still close behind was NBC with 8.2 Million unique visitors, up 14% from last year. Trailing in definite last place was CBS with 4.5 Million unique visitors, up only 13% from last year.
UPFRONT: Just as I couldn’t produce this week’s MfM without mentioning sweeps, I couldn’t not mention (yes, I know, a double negative) the Network Upfront presentations for the Fall programming schedule. No comment. Just a mention. Newsletters like Cynopsis and The Programming Insider give better reports.
TELEVISION’S FUTURE – A CQ REPORT: A recently released special report by leading political journalism publication Congressional Quarterly raises the question – Will TV remain the dominant mass medium? Unfortunately, it never actually answers the question, although it provides a nice summary of the various issues. That’s not to say it doesn’t make some interesting points such as audience fragmentation. Then again, you already know about that. But how about the idea that fragmentation has disintegrated the concept of a common culture created by television with its mass audience. Everybody watched I Love Lucy and The Ed Sullivan Show or listened to Top 40 or read the Book-of-the-Month Club selection. No more. What the report does best though is provide some insightful, thought-provoking quotes which are worth repeating. And so I’m going to do just that:
“We’re gonna surround consumers with media. We’re not gonna let them cut us off and move away from our brand.” -- John Skipper, ESPN’s executive vice president for content, making the point that ESPN is no longer a television company, but instead is a ‘sports media company.’
“We’re in a moment in time when media power operates top down from corporate boardrooms and bottom up from teenagers’ bedrooms.” -- Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“The Internet has behaved like a serial killer. First, the print media suffered, and then the music industry suffered. Perhaps television is next.” -- Daniel Franklin, executive editor of The Economist.
“The barrier to entry – the once-formidable cost of shooting and editing footage – has almost disappeared. But what’s still in short supply, and always will rise to the top, is good ideas.” -- Jeffrey Cole, director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future, talking about online video and user generated content.
“In 1991 when a bystander videotaped the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, the incident was almost unbelievable – not the violence but the recording of it. (But now) the distinction between amateur and professional photojournalists (is) wearing away.” -- James Poniewozik, media critic for Time magazine, talking about cell phone videos.
“The TV is actually growing to other devices… because of the programming.” -- Chris Pizzuro, vice president of digital and new media advertising sales and marketing for Turner Entertainment, making the point that computers and iPods are becoming, in effect, TV sets.
“Advertising is suffering because of the sheer amount of it, the lack of innovation within traditional advertising formats and the power that media fragmentation and technology give to consumers to tune out the noise.” -- Tom Himpe, author of Advertising is Dead: Long Live Advertising.
“It’s a case of the rich getting richer. If people are passionate about your programming, they will watch it and find ways of watching it.” -- Mark Loughney, vice president of sales and strategy research for ABC-TV.
“When we see that big box in the living room, we think of channels. There’s no reason for television to be divided by that, other than convention.” -- Andrew Kantor, technology reporter for the Roanoke Times and columnist for USAToday.com.
“The changes of the next five years will dwarf the changes of the last 50.” -- Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal’s television group.
“It’s great to be given the keys to the Library of Congress, but if there’s no card catalog, it’s not much use.” -- Todd Herman, new media strategist for Microsoft, talking about the need for search engines.
“It is now possible – even common – to go about your day in America and consume only what you wish to see and hear.” -- Brian Williams, Anchor, NBC News.
“Ultimately the biggest story of the 21st Century will be the fracturing of the 20th Century audience.” -- Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University.
“The common culture of my youth is gone for good… splintered beyond repair by the emergence of the Web-based technologies that so maximized and facilitated culture choice as to make the broad-based offerings of the old mass media look bland and unchallenging by comparison.” -- Terry Treachout, media critic.
“If I had to describe the future of TV in one word, it would be -- ‘more’.” -- Mike Bloxham, director of research at Ball State University’s Center for Media Design.
A MECHANICAL LOOK AT TELEVISION: Okay, if the exalted Congressional Quarterly won’t tell us about the future of television, who will? Popular Mechanics will. You remember Popular Mechanics. The magazine that showed your Dad how to put together a tube TV in the 50’s. The magazine’s Senior Technology Editor Glenn Derene makes the point that 70% of Americans go online according to the latest research while Televisions are in 98% of American homes. Anywhere from 15% to 30% of the U.S. population still does not use computers even though they’ve been around for 30 years. Televisions were in 70% of the U.S. homes within 10 years of being introduced and DVD players were in 82% of households within 9 years of introduction. And in case you think he’s being a technological Neanderthal, Derene makes no bones about the fact that PC’s are “far more useful” than TV’s. Instead he argues that PC’s have always been an “awkward consumer electronics” device while TV’s have been easier to understand and use. Of course he notes that will change as people grow up with the more complex computer and, ironically, as TV’s are made more complicated.
And as a side note to this, HDNet founder Mark Cuban and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley argued before a Congressional subcommittee looking at new technology that online TV is not a threat to traditional TV. They see it as a complementary service, rather than a primary one. And as a side note to the side note, a study by Forrester Research shows that half of European broadband users (who have been earlier adopters than U.S. users) are watching at least some television on their computers.
OUTSOURCING JOURNALISM: All right, I try to avoid reporting on stories that have already been headlined elsewhere, but this is so weird that it’s worth repeating. A ‘news’ operation in California (I was going to say – where else – but that’s too sarcastic) is outsourcing coverage of its local city council meeting to two journalists in India. As I get it, the city council airs its meetings on the local cable channel. That channel is being sent by the folks at Pasadenanow.com over broadband pipes to India where two ‘journalists’ watch it and report on it. I should note that the two journalists were selected from an online ad, and they are both graduates of the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. BTW, the editor and publisher of the Pasadena Now website used to run a clothing business with manufacturing help from Vietnam and India.
STTYWYAK: It’s time to revive an old MfM feature – Studies That Tell You What You Already Know. (BTW -- Pronounced Stee-Wee-Ak.) The latest is a report by eROI that nearly nine out of 10 email marketers (87%) say relevant content within the e-mail message is --- shock of shocks – “very important.” That stunning news is only matched by the fact that eight out of 10 marketers (81%) say deliverability is “very important.”
On the flip side of the relevance coin, a study by market research and consulting firm Focalyst found that – contrary to popular marketing opinion – older people, most notably Baby Boomers, are not as brand loyal as thought. Less than a quarter were loyal to a particular brand of television (22%) or computers (24%) or clothing (27%). The report which notes that adults over age 42 account for $3 Trillion in consumer spending annually ARE loyal when companies give customized service or more personalized attention.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: An enviromental website called zerofootprint.net has designed an online system that allows you to calculate your “carbon footprint” – as in how much carbon you personally generate. More than 12.8 Million new websites have been added to the net in the last five months, according to Netcraft LTD., an increase from 7.5 million in the same period last year. More than half of Americans (59%) say religion’s influence on life is waning, according to a Pew Research poll. And more than half (55%) of global executives say they use, or plan to use, blogs as a business tool, according to research firm Melcrum.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
SWEEPS AND WEBSITES
UPFRONT
TELEVISION’S FUTURE – A CQ REPORT
A MECHANICAL LOOK AT TELEVISION
OUTSOURCING JOURNALISM
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
SWEEPS: Theoretically you should be receiving this about 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. That means you have exactly 88 hours left in the May sweeps. Here is an interesting sidebar to the ratings race. According to Nielsen/ Net Ratings the leading network site (in April, so it’s a little old) was Fox with 8.5 Million unique visitors, up 39% from last year. Close behind was ABC with 8.3 Million, up 75% from last year and still close behind was NBC with 8.2 Million unique visitors, up 14% from last year. Trailing in definite last place was CBS with 4.5 Million unique visitors, up only 13% from last year.
UPFRONT: Just as I couldn’t produce this week’s MfM without mentioning sweeps, I couldn’t not mention (yes, I know, a double negative) the Network Upfront presentations for the Fall programming schedule. No comment. Just a mention. Newsletters like Cynopsis and The Programming Insider give better reports.
TELEVISION’S FUTURE – A CQ REPORT: A recently released special report by leading political journalism publication Congressional Quarterly raises the question – Will TV remain the dominant mass medium? Unfortunately, it never actually answers the question, although it provides a nice summary of the various issues. That’s not to say it doesn’t make some interesting points such as audience fragmentation. Then again, you already know about that. But how about the idea that fragmentation has disintegrated the concept of a common culture created by television with its mass audience. Everybody watched I Love Lucy and The Ed Sullivan Show or listened to Top 40 or read the Book-of-the-Month Club selection. No more. What the report does best though is provide some insightful, thought-provoking quotes which are worth repeating. And so I’m going to do just that:
“We’re gonna surround consumers with media. We’re not gonna let them cut us off and move away from our brand.” -- John Skipper, ESPN’s executive vice president for content, making the point that ESPN is no longer a television company, but instead is a ‘sports media company.’
“We’re in a moment in time when media power operates top down from corporate boardrooms and bottom up from teenagers’ bedrooms.” -- Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“The Internet has behaved like a serial killer. First, the print media suffered, and then the music industry suffered. Perhaps television is next.” -- Daniel Franklin, executive editor of The Economist.
“The barrier to entry – the once-formidable cost of shooting and editing footage – has almost disappeared. But what’s still in short supply, and always will rise to the top, is good ideas.” -- Jeffrey Cole, director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future, talking about online video and user generated content.
“In 1991 when a bystander videotaped the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, the incident was almost unbelievable – not the violence but the recording of it. (But now) the distinction between amateur and professional photojournalists (is) wearing away.” -- James Poniewozik, media critic for Time magazine, talking about cell phone videos.
“The TV is actually growing to other devices… because of the programming.” -- Chris Pizzuro, vice president of digital and new media advertising sales and marketing for Turner Entertainment, making the point that computers and iPods are becoming, in effect, TV sets.
“Advertising is suffering because of the sheer amount of it, the lack of innovation within traditional advertising formats and the power that media fragmentation and technology give to consumers to tune out the noise.” -- Tom Himpe, author of Advertising is Dead: Long Live Advertising.
“It’s a case of the rich getting richer. If people are passionate about your programming, they will watch it and find ways of watching it.” -- Mark Loughney, vice president of sales and strategy research for ABC-TV.
“When we see that big box in the living room, we think of channels. There’s no reason for television to be divided by that, other than convention.” -- Andrew Kantor, technology reporter for the Roanoke Times and columnist for USAToday.com.
“The changes of the next five years will dwarf the changes of the last 50.” -- Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal’s television group.
“It’s great to be given the keys to the Library of Congress, but if there’s no card catalog, it’s not much use.” -- Todd Herman, new media strategist for Microsoft, talking about the need for search engines.
“It is now possible – even common – to go about your day in America and consume only what you wish to see and hear.” -- Brian Williams, Anchor, NBC News.
“Ultimately the biggest story of the 21st Century will be the fracturing of the 20th Century audience.” -- Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University.
“The common culture of my youth is gone for good… splintered beyond repair by the emergence of the Web-based technologies that so maximized and facilitated culture choice as to make the broad-based offerings of the old mass media look bland and unchallenging by comparison.” -- Terry Treachout, media critic.
“If I had to describe the future of TV in one word, it would be -- ‘more’.” -- Mike Bloxham, director of research at Ball State University’s Center for Media Design.
A MECHANICAL LOOK AT TELEVISION: Okay, if the exalted Congressional Quarterly won’t tell us about the future of television, who will? Popular Mechanics will. You remember Popular Mechanics. The magazine that showed your Dad how to put together a tube TV in the 50’s. The magazine’s Senior Technology Editor Glenn Derene makes the point that 70% of Americans go online according to the latest research while Televisions are in 98% of American homes. Anywhere from 15% to 30% of the U.S. population still does not use computers even though they’ve been around for 30 years. Televisions were in 70% of the U.S. homes within 10 years of being introduced and DVD players were in 82% of households within 9 years of introduction. And in case you think he’s being a technological Neanderthal, Derene makes no bones about the fact that PC’s are “far more useful” than TV’s. Instead he argues that PC’s have always been an “awkward consumer electronics” device while TV’s have been easier to understand and use. Of course he notes that will change as people grow up with the more complex computer and, ironically, as TV’s are made more complicated.
And as a side note to this, HDNet founder Mark Cuban and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley argued before a Congressional subcommittee looking at new technology that online TV is not a threat to traditional TV. They see it as a complementary service, rather than a primary one. And as a side note to the side note, a study by Forrester Research shows that half of European broadband users (who have been earlier adopters than U.S. users) are watching at least some television on their computers.
OUTSOURCING JOURNALISM: All right, I try to avoid reporting on stories that have already been headlined elsewhere, but this is so weird that it’s worth repeating. A ‘news’ operation in California (I was going to say – where else – but that’s too sarcastic) is outsourcing coverage of its local city council meeting to two journalists in India. As I get it, the city council airs its meetings on the local cable channel. That channel is being sent by the folks at Pasadenanow.com over broadband pipes to India where two ‘journalists’ watch it and report on it. I should note that the two journalists were selected from an online ad, and they are both graduates of the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. BTW, the editor and publisher of the Pasadena Now website used to run a clothing business with manufacturing help from Vietnam and India.
STTYWYAK: It’s time to revive an old MfM feature – Studies That Tell You What You Already Know. (BTW -- Pronounced Stee-Wee-Ak.) The latest is a report by eROI that nearly nine out of 10 email marketers (87%) say relevant content within the e-mail message is --- shock of shocks – “very important.” That stunning news is only matched by the fact that eight out of 10 marketers (81%) say deliverability is “very important.”
On the flip side of the relevance coin, a study by market research and consulting firm Focalyst found that – contrary to popular marketing opinion – older people, most notably Baby Boomers, are not as brand loyal as thought. Less than a quarter were loyal to a particular brand of television (22%) or computers (24%) or clothing (27%). The report which notes that adults over age 42 account for $3 Trillion in consumer spending annually ARE loyal when companies give customized service or more personalized attention.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: An enviromental website called zerofootprint.net has designed an online system that allows you to calculate your “carbon footprint” – as in how much carbon you personally generate. More than 12.8 Million new websites have been added to the net in the last five months, according to Netcraft LTD., an increase from 7.5 million in the same period last year. More than half of Americans (59%) say religion’s influence on life is waning, according to a Pew Research poll. And more than half (55%) of global executives say they use, or plan to use, blogs as a business tool, according to research firm Melcrum.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Monday, March 26, 2007
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
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
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.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
WOULD IT SMELL SO SWEET
A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE
THE WAR OF THE ROSES
MICHAEL’S MILESTONES
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
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.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Message From Michael --March 12, 2007
TAKE A BYTE OUT OF TIME
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW
MORE SOCIALIZING AND NICHE NETWORKING
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE
COCKTAIL CHATTER – BIG BYTES
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
TAKE A BYTE OUT OF TIME: The amount of digital information generated in the world last year alone was equal to 3 million times the amount of information in all the books ever written, according to research firm IDC. An article in MIT’s Technology Review says that’s like 12 stack of books that each reach from the Earth to the Sun. In tech talk, that’s 161 exabytes of data. (An Exabyte is a billion gigabytes.) A study three years earlier in 2003 by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley totaled the global information production that year at 5 exabytes. That’s the equivalent of 37,000 libraries of Congress. By the year 2010, three years from now, there will be more data generated than there will be places to put it. Technically speaking. A report by research firm IDC says last year the world had 185 exabytes of storage available and by 2010 it will have 601 exabytes. But the amount of ‘stuff’ generated will jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes in 2010. (And if you want another techie word to throw around in cocktail conversation, 1,000 exabytes equal one zettabyte.) Luckily, the report cited in MIT’s Technology Review notes that much of the data does get deleted and the methods of storage continue to improve. Even so, the article notes that the amount of information being generated will put pressure on developing better technologies to find, sort and secure the material. One last interesting factoid in this age of YouTube and MySpace from the report – by the year 2010, 70% of the world’s digital data will be created by individuals not corporations.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX: Starting this week, several broadcast groups are joining in the citizen journalism movement. Television stations owned by Fisher Communications, Journal Broadcast Group and Granite Broadcasting will invite citizen journalists’ to produce anything from online news footage to complete reports. The groups plan to start airing pieces later this month in the different markets under the umbrella name of YouNewsTV. Regular readers of MfM know that several national and international news organizations, including MSNBC, Reuters and The Weather Channel, have already started similar programs. And although the Broadcasting and Cable magazine article emphasizes that this is a local effort, I should note it is not the first. Pappas Telecasting has its own citizen journalism website called communitycorrespondent.com. The president and CEO of Broadcast Interactive Media which put together the three group plan emphasized that it is a “revenue-driving initiative (and) if the video is not suitable to have advertising or is copyrighted material, it is not going up.”In a very much related note, BusinessWeek’s Jackie Coyle reports that TV networks and advertisers are increasingly adopting the YouTube model of viewer created content for a simple reason – they know a good trend when they see it. She makes the interesting point that those people creating videos for the web want to be on TV because it’s “the big leagues.” On the flip side, with traditional media in something of a free-fall, executives are looking for anything to stop it. Coyle scores the quote of the week, from Current TV co-creator Joel Hyatt who says, “this is not a genie that’s going back in the bottle.”
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW: Remember that old saw? Well, here are some people you should know. It’s PC World’s list of the most important people on the web. Now, some you know, or at least know of – Larry Page, Sergey Brin who founded Google and Eric Schmidt who runs it; Steve Jobs whose name is synonymous with Apple; Bram Cohen, co-founder of BitTorrent; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, co-founders of YouTube; Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, co-founders of Skype and KaZaA. What I liked about the PC World article is the semi debunking note that Time magazine’s Person of the Year – You – would not be making all those viral videos and doing all that social networking without these people. What I found particularly interesting was the people I don’t know but would like to know. People like John Doerr, a Venture Capitalist with the firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, whose investing in tech businesses, the magazine says, puts him at “the center of gravity in the Internet.” Or how about Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris and Jessica Livingston, co-founders of Y-Combinator, which the magazine says doles out smaller amounts of money, instead of huge chunks, to ‘potential mini-Googles.’ Then there’s the people I vaguely know but would like to know. For example, if you want to understand the war in Iraq, Mohammed and Omar Fadhill are Iraqis living in Baghdad whose blog, Iraq the Model, shows you the war from the citizen journalist power of view. If you really want to keep up with the best of the best in news, you have to keep up with Gabe Rivera, who created website Techmeme, which, as the magazine puts it, harnesses the blogosphere’s investigative power. After writing a news story headlined, “Anna Nicole Smith’s condition downgraded to dead,” how could you not want to read about Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com where current news is dissected. And if you want to know if you’re in with the in crowd, then you need to know Tila Tequila. The singer/ model/ actress has redefined the word ‘friend’ with – count them – 1.6 Million MySpace user-friends, 56 million page views and 1,734,374 comments
MORE SOCIALIZING: You may remember a previous MfM talked about the social networking or social media revolution (which is the word all the studies used) coming to the digital and business world. Well, as further proof, add all these companies to the list. – Reuters, Netscape, Cisco, USA Today, Royal Dutch Airlines and Velvet Puffin. Now, if you just went, “huh?” on that last name, I understand. Velvet Puffin is a Singapore-based firm that has joined the long list of companies jumping on the social networking bandwagon, with networking software for use on mobile devices. Reuters is building a social networking site for fund managers and traders; Royal Dutch Airlines is building a social networking site for entrepreneurs with special interests in China and Africa; Cisco which is better known for development of the Internet technical backbone has bought Tribe.net, an also-ran in social networking websites overshadowed by YouTube and MySpace; and USA Today has revamped its website to add in social networking features. All of which seems to confirm the prediction by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen in an article in The New York Times that social networks will be everywhere, becoming more specialized and personalized niche websites. His Ning.com website is designed to provide the interface and bandwidth for people interested in starting their own social networks. Marketing website Marketingprofs.com says social networks are part of a “democratization of content creation.”
NICHE NETWORKING: A sort of variation on the specialized social networking movement noted in the previous article is the announcement that startup webcompany Next New Networks plans to launch 101 ‘micro-networks’ over the next five years. The websites will target small, different communities and brands. For example, the first ones to launch include channelfederator.com which are cartoons sent in by users, pulpsecret.com which focuses on comic book news, and threadbanger.com which looks at fashion designers.
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE: Athens-based band R.E.M. will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight. Now, aside from the fact that I live in Athens, why is this worth noting? The event tonight (March 12th) will be carried Live – not just on television (on VH1) but also on-line (on AOL). Remember the worldwide on-line live presentation of the Live Concert? The move marks another milestone in the merging, converging, diverging digital and analog world.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Presidential candidate John Edwards opened up a campaign headquarters on virtual world Second Life. Okay, that’s weird enough, but what’s even weirder is a group of “anarchist hippies” attacked his virtual world headquarters. On a semi-related note, Sony has announced it is planning to launch virtual worlds as part of its Game 3.0 push. China has launched a successful anti-satellite weapons test, knocking out one of its own weather satellites with a ballistic missile. Okay, that’s bad enough because it raises concerns the Chinese could do the same to an American or other nation’s satellite; but what’s been missed is that this is the largest debris-generating event in earth orbit ever recorded, with 917 pieces of debris recorded – debris which can hit other satellites.
SELF-SERVING PLUG: But a good one nevertheless. We here at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication are offering an all-day Bluejeans Workshop which is “short on philosophy but long on helpful, practical information.” The workshop is actually four concurrent workshops on reporting, shooting and editing but all with one theme – good storytelling. Presenters include Wayne Freedman, storyteller extraordinaire from KGO-TV and author of the book – It Takes More Than Good Looks; WYFF-TV photographer John Hendon who has won more videography awards than just about anybody; former NBC editor and NPPA video editing instructor James ‘Butch” Townsley; and CNN ‘digital news gatherer’ Bryan Pearson. The workshop on Saturday, March 31, costs all of $25, (and that includes lunch) thanks in part to corporate partner, CNN. For more info, go to http://www.grady.uga.edu/Bluejeans/.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW
MORE SOCIALIZING AND NICHE NETWORKING
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE
COCKTAIL CHATTER – BIG BYTES
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
TAKE A BYTE OUT OF TIME: The amount of digital information generated in the world last year alone was equal to 3 million times the amount of information in all the books ever written, according to research firm IDC. An article in MIT’s Technology Review says that’s like 12 stack of books that each reach from the Earth to the Sun. In tech talk, that’s 161 exabytes of data. (An Exabyte is a billion gigabytes.) A study three years earlier in 2003 by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley totaled the global information production that year at 5 exabytes. That’s the equivalent of 37,000 libraries of Congress. By the year 2010, three years from now, there will be more data generated than there will be places to put it. Technically speaking. A report by research firm IDC says last year the world had 185 exabytes of storage available and by 2010 it will have 601 exabytes. But the amount of ‘stuff’ generated will jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes in 2010. (And if you want another techie word to throw around in cocktail conversation, 1,000 exabytes equal one zettabyte.) Luckily, the report cited in MIT’s Technology Review notes that much of the data does get deleted and the methods of storage continue to improve. Even so, the article notes that the amount of information being generated will put pressure on developing better technologies to find, sort and secure the material. One last interesting factoid in this age of YouTube and MySpace from the report – by the year 2010, 70% of the world’s digital data will be created by individuals not corporations.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX: Starting this week, several broadcast groups are joining in the citizen journalism movement. Television stations owned by Fisher Communications, Journal Broadcast Group and Granite Broadcasting will invite citizen journalists’ to produce anything from online news footage to complete reports. The groups plan to start airing pieces later this month in the different markets under the umbrella name of YouNewsTV. Regular readers of MfM know that several national and international news organizations, including MSNBC, Reuters and The Weather Channel, have already started similar programs. And although the Broadcasting and Cable magazine article emphasizes that this is a local effort, I should note it is not the first. Pappas Telecasting has its own citizen journalism website called communitycorrespondent.com. The president and CEO of Broadcast Interactive Media which put together the three group plan emphasized that it is a “revenue-driving initiative (and) if the video is not suitable to have advertising or is copyrighted material, it is not going up.”In a very much related note, BusinessWeek’s Jackie Coyle reports that TV networks and advertisers are increasingly adopting the YouTube model of viewer created content for a simple reason – they know a good trend when they see it. She makes the interesting point that those people creating videos for the web want to be on TV because it’s “the big leagues.” On the flip side, with traditional media in something of a free-fall, executives are looking for anything to stop it. Coyle scores the quote of the week, from Current TV co-creator Joel Hyatt who says, “this is not a genie that’s going back in the bottle.”
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW: Remember that old saw? Well, here are some people you should know. It’s PC World’s list of the most important people on the web. Now, some you know, or at least know of – Larry Page, Sergey Brin who founded Google and Eric Schmidt who runs it; Steve Jobs whose name is synonymous with Apple; Bram Cohen, co-founder of BitTorrent; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, co-founders of YouTube; Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, co-founders of Skype and KaZaA. What I liked about the PC World article is the semi debunking note that Time magazine’s Person of the Year – You – would not be making all those viral videos and doing all that social networking without these people. What I found particularly interesting was the people I don’t know but would like to know. People like John Doerr, a Venture Capitalist with the firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, whose investing in tech businesses, the magazine says, puts him at “the center of gravity in the Internet.” Or how about Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris and Jessica Livingston, co-founders of Y-Combinator, which the magazine says doles out smaller amounts of money, instead of huge chunks, to ‘potential mini-Googles.’ Then there’s the people I vaguely know but would like to know. For example, if you want to understand the war in Iraq, Mohammed and Omar Fadhill are Iraqis living in Baghdad whose blog, Iraq the Model, shows you the war from the citizen journalist power of view. If you really want to keep up with the best of the best in news, you have to keep up with Gabe Rivera, who created website Techmeme, which, as the magazine puts it, harnesses the blogosphere’s investigative power. After writing a news story headlined, “Anna Nicole Smith’s condition downgraded to dead,” how could you not want to read about Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com where current news is dissected. And if you want to know if you’re in with the in crowd, then you need to know Tila Tequila. The singer/ model/ actress has redefined the word ‘friend’ with – count them – 1.6 Million MySpace user-friends, 56 million page views and 1,734,374 comments
MORE SOCIALIZING: You may remember a previous MfM talked about the social networking or social media revolution (which is the word all the studies used) coming to the digital and business world. Well, as further proof, add all these companies to the list. – Reuters, Netscape, Cisco, USA Today, Royal Dutch Airlines and Velvet Puffin. Now, if you just went, “huh?” on that last name, I understand. Velvet Puffin is a Singapore-based firm that has joined the long list of companies jumping on the social networking bandwagon, with networking software for use on mobile devices. Reuters is building a social networking site for fund managers and traders; Royal Dutch Airlines is building a social networking site for entrepreneurs with special interests in China and Africa; Cisco which is better known for development of the Internet technical backbone has bought Tribe.net, an also-ran in social networking websites overshadowed by YouTube and MySpace; and USA Today has revamped its website to add in social networking features. All of which seems to confirm the prediction by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen in an article in The New York Times that social networks will be everywhere, becoming more specialized and personalized niche websites. His Ning.com website is designed to provide the interface and bandwidth for people interested in starting their own social networks. Marketing website Marketingprofs.com says social networks are part of a “democratization of content creation.”
NICHE NETWORKING: A sort of variation on the specialized social networking movement noted in the previous article is the announcement that startup webcompany Next New Networks plans to launch 101 ‘micro-networks’ over the next five years. The websites will target small, different communities and brands. For example, the first ones to launch include channelfederator.com which are cartoons sent in by users, pulpsecret.com which focuses on comic book news, and threadbanger.com which looks at fashion designers.
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE: Athens-based band R.E.M. will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight. Now, aside from the fact that I live in Athens, why is this worth noting? The event tonight (March 12th) will be carried Live – not just on television (on VH1) but also on-line (on AOL). Remember the worldwide on-line live presentation of the Live Concert? The move marks another milestone in the merging, converging, diverging digital and analog world.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Presidential candidate John Edwards opened up a campaign headquarters on virtual world Second Life. Okay, that’s weird enough, but what’s even weirder is a group of “anarchist hippies” attacked his virtual world headquarters. On a semi-related note, Sony has announced it is planning to launch virtual worlds as part of its Game 3.0 push. China has launched a successful anti-satellite weapons test, knocking out one of its own weather satellites with a ballistic missile. Okay, that’s bad enough because it raises concerns the Chinese could do the same to an American or other nation’s satellite; but what’s been missed is that this is the largest debris-generating event in earth orbit ever recorded, with 917 pieces of debris recorded – debris which can hit other satellites.
SELF-SERVING PLUG: But a good one nevertheless. We here at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication are offering an all-day Bluejeans Workshop which is “short on philosophy but long on helpful, practical information.” The workshop is actually four concurrent workshops on reporting, shooting and editing but all with one theme – good storytelling. Presenters include Wayne Freedman, storyteller extraordinaire from KGO-TV and author of the book – It Takes More Than Good Looks; WYFF-TV photographer John Hendon who has won more videography awards than just about anybody; former NBC editor and NPPA video editing instructor James ‘Butch” Townsley; and CNN ‘digital news gatherer’ Bryan Pearson. The workshop on Saturday, March 31, costs all of $25, (and that includes lunch) thanks in part to corporate partner, CNN. For more info, go to http://www.grady.uga.edu/Bluejeans/.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Message From Michael -- February 18, 2007
DO IT YOURSELF JOURNALISM
DO IT YOURSELF TV AND RADIO
TV BEING BEATEN AT THEIR OWN GAME
THE SECRETS OF MARILYN MONROE
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
DO IT YOURSELF JOURNALISM: In the San Francisco Bay area, Clear Channel owned KFTY-TV has fired its news staff and is going to rely primarily on viewer-submitted items for its local coverage. Reading between the lines, this appears more of a cost-cutting move than any kind of social experiment. It is almost humorous to visit their website and find one person listed under the biographies link and every story on the news page appears to have been submitted by one other person. For a more serious local version of citizen journalism, a Danish newspaper (Nyhedsavisen) is merging reader submitted material with its staff material in a sort of competition between the professionals and the amateurs. And on a much more serious, and much broader scope, The Associated Press announced a partnership with website NowPublic.com to bring citizen content under the AP newsgathering umbrella. The news release notes that NowPublic.com is the world’s “largest participatory news network” with more than 60,000 contributors from 140 counties, and the AP is the world’s “largest newsgathering organization” with a staff of more than 4,000 employees in 240 bureaus in 97 countries. The AP move follows earlier, similar announcements by Reuters and the British Broadcasting Corporation.And, of course, they’re not the only ones.
The “grand-daddy” of citizen journalism initiatives may be ohmynews.com which originated in South Korea but which now has an English version. Website cyberjournalist.net lists 79 citizen journalism sites around the world. It lists everything from Al Gore’s Current.tv to WikiNews, Your Hub and down to MyMissourian.com, Ourlittlenet in Atlanta and even Blufton, Georgia’s Bluftontoday.com. Most are, as you would expect, amateurish and most are un-paid. But that is rapidly changing as well. Trend-watching website springwise.com says Generation C (for Content) is fast becoming Generation C (for Cash). Examples cited include CNN’s Exchange, Yahoo/ Reuters’ YouWitnessNews, Scoopt along with ScoopLive and SpyMedia which pay for pictures, Reporter in South Africa, and Ohmynews of course. In previous MfM’s we’ve cited all the various video sites that are now paying for content, forcing giants like YouTube to follow.
DO IT YOURSELF TV AND RADIO: It adds a whole new meaning to the term ‘reality tv,’ according to MIT’s Technology Review. It’s called Splashcast and it lets you create your own shows and broadcast channels, viewable on the web. In a previous MfM, we mentioned the website Brightcove.com which allows you to create your own online TV station. The Splashcast version combines the concepts of video blogging with dynamic syndication using the RSS concept. The article says more than 1,000 “publicity-minded users” have created channels offering a selection of multi-media shows with pictures, video, music and text even though the software was only introduced in January of this year. And if you decide you have a great face for radio, instead, the BBC Worldwide reports the development of a software called Campcaster that allows you to run an entire radio station operation off a laptop. You can store and schedule music, line up news clips and interviews and preview before going to air.On a very much related note about the personalization of the web, Yahoo has announced the release of a tool which it calls Pipes and which lets you pick and choose different feeds from the Internet and create your own online program. The beauty of the program, according to the Technology Review, is its simplicity, with an editor and execution engine that doesn’t require you to know C++ or Java to operate. Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media online publisher, calls it a “milestone in the history of the Internet… (with) enormous potential to turn the Web into a programmable environment for everyone.” And on a related note to the related note, Blip.TV has introduced a do-it-yourself, interactive advertising tool that lets people create ads to go along with their online programming. Company CEO Mike Hudack says it shifts power from the big-time networks to the content creators. Veoh Networks claims it has the most comprehensive platform for Internet video, providing DVD quality content. Video is uploaded to the Veoh website which then syndicates the video to all the other video providers, such as Facebook, YouTube, etc.
TV BEING BEATEN AT THEIR OWN GAME – VIDEO: Newspapers are actually doing a better job of selling LOCAL online video ads than television, according to research and consulting firm Borell Associates. The company says LOCAL (let me emphasize that word) online video advertising will reach $5 Billion in five years. And, as the company says in its news release, “believe it or not” newspapers are outselling television with $81 Million a year versus $32 Million. Frank Barnako who writes a media blog for MarketWatch, cites video classifieds from the San Antonio Express-News as examples of how newspapers are doing a better job than TV. But he also credits Time Warner Cable in North Carolina for doing it right, producing video advertisements for local merchants at GrandStrandNow.com. (Congratulations to friend and MfM reader Alan Mason, who is GM of the operation.)As a side note to this, research firm eMarketer predicts that podcasting will become a $400 Million a year advertising market by the year 2011, quintupling the ‘paltry’ $80 Million spent in 2006. The research says podcasting, which it called “the hot new media darling before YouTube stepped in,” failed to match the sales you would expect when you consider the proliferation of iPods andMP3 players but that is about to change.
THE SECRETS OF MARILYN MONROE: So, who did the blonde bombshell actress become infatuated with in Mexico? And, no, it wasn’t President John F. Kennedy. I don’t know who it was, but it’s all part of the intriguing 100-page dossier the Federal Bureau of Investigation put together on her and it’s one of the many documents you can find on a website http://foia.fbi.gov/alpha.htm. Did you know comedian Bud Abbott showed pornographic films at parties at his house. According to the FBI, he did. He also snuck such subversive words as “kick in the France” into his radio scripts. Olympic medal winner Jesse Owens once sent greetings to the National Negro Conference. There are files on everybody from Desi Arnaz to Andy Warhol, about groups ranging from the Black Panthers to the Ku Klux Klan. It ranges from the entertaining to the strange. For example, there’s a file on Gracie Allen, but none on George Burns. Why’s that? Regardless, there’s hours and hours of entertaining reading.
WORTH NOTING: ABC News with Charlie Gibson has taken over the #1 spot in the evening news race with 9.7 Million viewers, over-taking NBC News with Brian Williams which had 9.52 Million viewers. Now you may have heard that, but a tidbit that was over-shadowed in that news was the fact that the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric scored its best week since the show premiered, with 8 Million viewers. All of the syndicated magazine programs (Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, Extra) saw a “significant” spike in ratings with their coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith.
WEBSITES TO WATCH: The owners of WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C., Allbritton Communications has lanched a website – politico.com, aimed at – just what its name implies – Washington politics. The site is the focus on a recent article on TVNewsday.com, which is another site to watch. ABC has a similar website in which it tracks what’s going on inside the beltway – http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: According to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 64% of Americans support teaching creationism in school. The rock group Queen have won the unofficial title of Greatest British Band of all time, actually beating out the Beatles, according to a poll in Britain. The survey said Queen got a boost in the survey because teen rock group McFly said they had been inspired by the group. The Rolling Stones came in third. The Washington Post asked its readers to come up with alternate meanings for common words. Some of the winning submissions include: Coffee, the person upon whom one coughs; Negligent, a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown; Lymph, to walk with a lisp; Testicle, a humorous question on an exam; Pokemon, a Rastafarian proctologist; and Frisbeetarianism, the belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
DO IT YOURSELF TV AND RADIO
TV BEING BEATEN AT THEIR OWN GAME
THE SECRETS OF MARILYN MONROE
COCKTAIL CHATTER
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DO IT YOURSELF JOURNALISM: In the San Francisco Bay area, Clear Channel owned KFTY-TV has fired its news staff and is going to rely primarily on viewer-submitted items for its local coverage. Reading between the lines, this appears more of a cost-cutting move than any kind of social experiment. It is almost humorous to visit their website and find one person listed under the biographies link and every story on the news page appears to have been submitted by one other person. For a more serious local version of citizen journalism, a Danish newspaper (Nyhedsavisen) is merging reader submitted material with its staff material in a sort of competition between the professionals and the amateurs. And on a much more serious, and much broader scope, The Associated Press announced a partnership with website NowPublic.com to bring citizen content under the AP newsgathering umbrella. The news release notes that NowPublic.com is the world’s “largest participatory news network” with more than 60,000 contributors from 140 counties, and the AP is the world’s “largest newsgathering organization” with a staff of more than 4,000 employees in 240 bureaus in 97 countries. The AP move follows earlier, similar announcements by Reuters and the British Broadcasting Corporation.And, of course, they’re not the only ones.
The “grand-daddy” of citizen journalism initiatives may be ohmynews.com which originated in South Korea but which now has an English version. Website cyberjournalist.net lists 79 citizen journalism sites around the world. It lists everything from Al Gore’s Current.tv to WikiNews, Your Hub and down to MyMissourian.com, Ourlittlenet in Atlanta and even Blufton, Georgia’s Bluftontoday.com. Most are, as you would expect, amateurish and most are un-paid. But that is rapidly changing as well. Trend-watching website springwise.com says Generation C (for Content) is fast becoming Generation C (for Cash). Examples cited include CNN’s Exchange, Yahoo/ Reuters’ YouWitnessNews, Scoopt along with ScoopLive and SpyMedia which pay for pictures, Reporter in South Africa, and Ohmynews of course. In previous MfM’s we’ve cited all the various video sites that are now paying for content, forcing giants like YouTube to follow.
DO IT YOURSELF TV AND RADIO: It adds a whole new meaning to the term ‘reality tv,’ according to MIT’s Technology Review. It’s called Splashcast and it lets you create your own shows and broadcast channels, viewable on the web. In a previous MfM, we mentioned the website Brightcove.com which allows you to create your own online TV station. The Splashcast version combines the concepts of video blogging with dynamic syndication using the RSS concept. The article says more than 1,000 “publicity-minded users” have created channels offering a selection of multi-media shows with pictures, video, music and text even though the software was only introduced in January of this year. And if you decide you have a great face for radio, instead, the BBC Worldwide reports the development of a software called Campcaster that allows you to run an entire radio station operation off a laptop. You can store and schedule music, line up news clips and interviews and preview before going to air.On a very much related note about the personalization of the web, Yahoo has announced the release of a tool which it calls Pipes and which lets you pick and choose different feeds from the Internet and create your own online program. The beauty of the program, according to the Technology Review, is its simplicity, with an editor and execution engine that doesn’t require you to know C++ or Java to operate. Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media online publisher, calls it a “milestone in the history of the Internet… (with) enormous potential to turn the Web into a programmable environment for everyone.” And on a related note to the related note, Blip.TV has introduced a do-it-yourself, interactive advertising tool that lets people create ads to go along with their online programming. Company CEO Mike Hudack says it shifts power from the big-time networks to the content creators. Veoh Networks claims it has the most comprehensive platform for Internet video, providing DVD quality content. Video is uploaded to the Veoh website which then syndicates the video to all the other video providers, such as Facebook, YouTube, etc.
TV BEING BEATEN AT THEIR OWN GAME – VIDEO: Newspapers are actually doing a better job of selling LOCAL online video ads than television, according to research and consulting firm Borell Associates. The company says LOCAL (let me emphasize that word) online video advertising will reach $5 Billion in five years. And, as the company says in its news release, “believe it or not” newspapers are outselling television with $81 Million a year versus $32 Million. Frank Barnako who writes a media blog for MarketWatch, cites video classifieds from the San Antonio Express-News as examples of how newspapers are doing a better job than TV. But he also credits Time Warner Cable in North Carolina for doing it right, producing video advertisements for local merchants at GrandStrandNow.com. (Congratulations to friend and MfM reader Alan Mason, who is GM of the operation.)As a side note to this, research firm eMarketer predicts that podcasting will become a $400 Million a year advertising market by the year 2011, quintupling the ‘paltry’ $80 Million spent in 2006. The research says podcasting, which it called “the hot new media darling before YouTube stepped in,” failed to match the sales you would expect when you consider the proliferation of iPods andMP3 players but that is about to change.
THE SECRETS OF MARILYN MONROE: So, who did the blonde bombshell actress become infatuated with in Mexico? And, no, it wasn’t President John F. Kennedy. I don’t know who it was, but it’s all part of the intriguing 100-page dossier the Federal Bureau of Investigation put together on her and it’s one of the many documents you can find on a website http://foia.fbi.gov/alpha.htm. Did you know comedian Bud Abbott showed pornographic films at parties at his house. According to the FBI, he did. He also snuck such subversive words as “kick in the France” into his radio scripts. Olympic medal winner Jesse Owens once sent greetings to the National Negro Conference. There are files on everybody from Desi Arnaz to Andy Warhol, about groups ranging from the Black Panthers to the Ku Klux Klan. It ranges from the entertaining to the strange. For example, there’s a file on Gracie Allen, but none on George Burns. Why’s that? Regardless, there’s hours and hours of entertaining reading.
WORTH NOTING: ABC News with Charlie Gibson has taken over the #1 spot in the evening news race with 9.7 Million viewers, over-taking NBC News with Brian Williams which had 9.52 Million viewers. Now you may have heard that, but a tidbit that was over-shadowed in that news was the fact that the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric scored its best week since the show premiered, with 8 Million viewers. All of the syndicated magazine programs (Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, Extra) saw a “significant” spike in ratings with their coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith.
WEBSITES TO WATCH: The owners of WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C., Allbritton Communications has lanched a website – politico.com, aimed at – just what its name implies – Washington politics. The site is the focus on a recent article on TVNewsday.com, which is another site to watch. ABC has a similar website in which it tracks what’s going on inside the beltway – http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: According to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 64% of Americans support teaching creationism in school. The rock group Queen have won the unofficial title of Greatest British Band of all time, actually beating out the Beatles, according to a poll in Britain. The survey said Queen got a boost in the survey because teen rock group McFly said they had been inspired by the group. The Rolling Stones came in third. The Washington Post asked its readers to come up with alternate meanings for common words. Some of the winning submissions include: Coffee, the person upon whom one coughs; Negligent, a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown; Lymph, to walk with a lisp; Testicle, a humorous question on an exam; Pokemon, a Rastafarian proctologist; and Frisbeetarianism, the belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
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