The Future of Journalism Dec 23, 2008
Posted by magnostic in Editorial, Journalism, Journalists, Magazines, Media, New Media, Publishing, User Generated content, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Great piece from Nieman Reports by BusinessWeek editor John Byrne titled “The changing truths of journalism.” He talks about how context is as important as the content itself and explains why publishers need to become “editorial curators” – sifting through and organizing articles (regardless of the source) and serving them back to communities of readers. Skip the first few grafs and get into the meat of how magazines and newspapers need to evolve in order to survive – as evidenced by BusinessWeek’s recent launch of Business Exchange, a series of online microcommunities organized (by readers) around vertical topics. Worth the read.
Thanks … I Think Jan 21, 2008
Posted by magnostic in Blogs, Journalism, Marketing, New Media.Tags: Blogs, content marketing
6 comments
First sentence in an email I just received: “Hi Rob…I wanted to let you know that your blog ranked as the #52 overall blog in the Junta42 Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs premiere listing.”
Number 52 in a Top-42 listing? Wow, that’s great. No, really.
Random Stuff That Caught My Eye Last Week Dec 9, 2007
Posted by magnostic in Customer service, Data privacy, Internet, Marketing, Media, New Media, Online Advertising.2 comments
Facebook flip-flops on social ad platform. A firestorm of protest over the social networking site’s Beacon opt-out ad system resulted in a major mea culpa from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and changes that will allow users to turn off the feature. Ah, the perils of pioneering new online advertising models.
Coke launches island in virtual world There.com. Just what the real world needs – another Second Life competitor. I’m thinking of launching my own virtual world, called NotThere.com. You register, create an avatar and then … nothing.
Airlines, coming and going. I’m reading about JetBlue planning to add Internet access to their flights while I’m flying United, whose customer-facing employees are collectively joyless. Talk about going through the motions.
Newspaper filler. The New York Times had a story in its Travel section on Friday about people who name their vacation cottages. The Web won’t kill newspapers – bad content will.
Ode to a Trade Pub that Gave Me Many Sleepless Nights Mar 27, 2007
Posted by magnostic in Journalism, Magazines, New Media, Print publishing, Publishing, Technology, Trade publishing.3 comments
The news that IT trade pub InfoWorld is ending its nearly 30-year-old print publication (while continuing its online and events properties) is not a wet blanket over the entire print publishing world. It’s more of a long-overdue nod to the bloated state of the tech publishing industry. When dozens of IT publications – three within IDG alone targeting senior IT execs – are competing for ad dollars in an industry that has gone through massive vendor consolidation (meaning the ad pie is shrinking), you have a problem even before what’s left of your print revenues start flying over to the Web.
I haven’t read the print version of InfoWorld for years, but I have fond memories of the publication from my days at PC Week – InfoWorld’s bitter rival during the ’80s and ’90s, aka the tech journalism boom times. We competed fiercely for every piece of breaking news. Outside my office in the newsroom of PC Week (now eWeek), we kept a “Scoop Scoreboard” to track our wins vs. the competition. Our receptionist, the legendary Betty Edwards, would call me every Tuesday morning to let me know when the stack of InfoWorlds had arrived, and reporters held their breath as they scanned the front page to see if they’d been scooped (and would soon be answering questions from cranky editors as to why).
Both publications would both send massive news teams to Comdex – I once had an $11,000 bill from the Vegas hotel where we housed our newsroom – and, after we launched our respective Web sites (PC Week’s crude 1994 implementation, built by our lab rats, was one of the first news websites) our goal at PC Week was twofold: to post every bit of breaking news from the show ahead of InfoWorld, and to beat them with exclusives from the event in the following week’s print mag.
Jim Forbes, a former colleague of mine who worked for both publications, has a great look back at InfoWorld’s storied run. I will never have as much fun as I did in the PC Week newsroom during the late ’80s and early ’90s. It’s too bad that the leaders of great publications like PC Week and InfoWorld let new competition (CNet), new media (the Web) and a paryalyzing unwillingness to embrace new publishing models pull the rug out from underneath them. The writing was on the wall for print rags like InfoWorld long ago; look for others to follow.
Journalism ‘Pro Am’ Mar 20, 2007
Posted by magnostic in Consumer Generated Media, Journalism, Journalists, New Media, Publishing, User Generated content.add a comment
Cool experiment taking place at Assignment Zero, in which professional journalists are teaming up with the “crowd” (aka everyone else) to report and write articles on popular topics. The founders call it an open-source approach to journalism. One of the assignments is “crowdsourced journalism” – a look at the trend on which Assignment Zero itself is based. From Executive Editor Jay Rosen:
The investigation takes place in the open, not behind newsroom walls. Participation is voluntary; contributors are welcomed from across the Web. The people getting, telling and vetting the story are a mix of professional journalists and members of the public — also known as citizen journalists. This is a model I describe as “pro-am.”
The “ams” are simply people getting together on their own time to contribute to a project in journalism that for their own reasons they support. The “pros” are journalists guiding and editing the story, setting standards, overseeing fact-checking, and publishing a final version.
In this project, we’re trying to crowdsource a single story, and debut a site that makes other such reports possible down the road. But we don’t know yet how well our site and our methods work. Our ideas are crude because they are untested. By participating, you can help us figure this puzzle out.
Seems like a worthy exploration of next-generation journalism. I think I’ll sign up.
The Future of Web Video Mar 14, 2007
Posted by magnostic in Internet, New Media, Video, Vuguru, Web 2.0, Webisodes.1 comment so far
Nice juxtaposition yesterday: Viacom sues GooTube for a cool $1 billion the day after Michael Eisner launches his new online studio, called Vuguru, and unveils its first programming, an 80-webisode series called Prom Queen. Other than its name, which sounds like something I used to mutter around last call, Vuguru may be the best example yet of the future of Web video.
On the surface at least, the Prom Queen site offers provides a nice blend of high-end production quality and modern Web packaging. The target audience (the YouTube generation), the format (90-second episodes), the viral enablers (“embed,” “send” and “download” buttons at the end of the teaser video), a handful of sponsors (including Ellegirl.com and Fiji Water), and the backing of a Hollywood heavyweight like Eisner all bode well for the venture. Of course, the content could suck, which would make the buzz moot (“Snakes on a Plane” syndrome). But this could be a milestone in the evolution of broadband video.
The Branded Journalist Jan 8, 2007
Posted by magnostic in Journalism, Journalists, Media, New Media, Personal branding, Publishing.7 comments
Once upon a time, the only celebrity journalists were network news anchors and the 60 Minutes gang. Newspaper and magazine editors would bludgeon any reporter who tried to become bigger than the story he was reporting, or to somehow personally benefit from it. As a cub reporter in the 1980s, I certainly learned my place from a variety of hardscrabble editors who wanted their news staffs hunting down stories, not building their personal brands (which at the time would have been a laughable concept). I was an impartial observer, a chronicler of events and a storyteller, not a participant.
In the mid-1990s, when PC Week launched one of the first technology news websites, the editors struggled with the line that was beginning to blur between news reporter and columnist. Reporters wrote facts; columnists wrote opinions, and never the twain shall meet. We wanted the Microsoft beat reporter to talk to sources, interview users, and write painfully balanced stories about Windows and Office and IE, but we prohibited him to share his own informed opinions in print or online about the company – that would be a conflict of interest. (God knows many of our reader thought we were biased enough in our coverage without fueling their conspiracy theories by letting reporters write opinion pieces.)
Even then, however, the Web was forcing change. We needed personality on the site, so reporters were asked to start contributing weekly commentaries. Some refused. Others embraced the concept. And the lines between impartial news and opinion became blurrier.
Now, every journalist is encouraged to develop his or her own brand. If you’re not promoting yourself through TV appearances or your own blog, you’re a dinosaur. I’m reminded of this after reading today’s New York Times story about a Web-based political news startup called The Politico. Part of the article focuses on how a few mainstream journalists are making the jump to the new Web venture. The publication’s editor in chief, John Harris, is the former political editor at The Washington Post, and he posits about the unrelenting transition toward self-promotion:
“The most successful journalists these days have a promotional ethic that would be uncomfortable for a traditional journalist. I admire those people who say, ‘I don’t want to go on TV; my work speaks for itself.’ But I don’t think that’s realistic for people who want to have an impact.”
Jim VandeHei, the Politico’s executive editor and former national political correspondent for The Post, puts it even more succinctly:
“Reporters here will transcend the organization.”
So there you have it. We have reached the journalist’s equivalent of the NFL or the NBA, where players pound their chests after even the most basic plays and preen endlessly for the cameras. The team becomes secondary to the individual brand and the SportsCenter highlight.
I think that’s a shame. Does that make me a dinosaur?
