Old Growth Media And The Future Of News
The following is a speech Steven Berlin Johnson gave yesterday at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin.Can we expect the general public to navigate the new ecosystem with the same skill and discretion?
Let’s say for the sake of argument that we can’t. Let’s say it’s just too overwhelming for the average consumer to sort through all the new voices available online, to separate fact from fiction, reporting from rumor-mongering. Let’s say they need some kind of authoritative guide, to help them find all the useful information that’s proliferating out there in the wild.
If only there were some institution that had a reputation for journalistic integrity that had a staff of trained editors and a growing audience arriving at its web site every day seeking quality information. If only…
Of course, we have thousands of these institutions. They’re called newspapers. continue at link above
Here is the Qik video of his talk. You can read along at the link above. The recording starts in section 2, paragraph 3, line 4 here:
or the print newspaper business: the future of news itself. Because there are really two worst case scenarios that we’re concerned about right now, and it’s important to distinguish between them. There is panic that newspapers are going to disappear as businesses. And then there’s panic that crucial information is going to disappear with them, that we’re going to suffer as culture because newspapers will no long be able to afford to generate the information we’ve relied on for so many years.
Steven is bullish on news and I like his take on the situation because it raises some new points and turns newspapers role into that of a filter. Is he right? Who knows but hey, at least he’s thinking it through giving people ideas to knock down, manipulate or affirm. He did give me one great idea so I fired off the email below to my local police and fire departments. I look forward to their response.
To my township officials,
My name is Robert Ivan, I am an aberdeen-matawan local and run news media blog metaprinter.com. I am writing to request a meeting with someone at your offices to set up an RSS feed for fire and police information. I feel this would be a great service to our community and serve as a yardstick by which all other public service announcements will be measured.
The idea came about when I drove past the train station today to find a building had partially burned down. Had I not driven past the building I would have known nothing about it. It made me wonder what other crimes or disasters were occurring in my town, around my home, that I did not know about.
I hold an MA in Graphic Communications management and technology from NYU, have over 9 years experience in online media and web design, and am a member of the local chamber of commerce. I would love to speak to someone about this. I am not looking to profit from this enterprise, just get our community better connected as traditional media becomes increasingly less relevant. My contact info is below.
Best,
Robert Ivan
Related posts:
Web 2.0 Accelerating Print Newspapers’ “Near-Death Spiral”
According to Forrester, 43 percent of US online consumers say they have viewed personalized content on a portal home page or RSS reader in the past 12 months, with Gen Y (ages 18-27) and Gen X (ages 28-41) consumers leading the trend.
http://www.researchrecap.com/index.php/2008/06/17/web-20-accelerating-print-newspapers-near-death-spiral/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)
RSS (abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,[3] or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, mobile device or any computerized Internet-connected device. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s URI (often referred to informally as a “URL” (uniform resource locater), although technically, those two terms are not exactly synonymous) into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.
RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved since March 1999,[4] the RSS icon (“”) first gained widespread use between 2005 and 2006.[5]
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it” Upton Sinclair published in his 1935 book I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
Good luck turning that oceanliner!