The new journalism

There's no doubt that the role of journalists have changed and you would now be hard-pressed to stick to the exact dictionary definition of a journalist in all circumstances:
This was a subject raised a few months ago by the BBC broadcaster / presenter / journailst Andrew Marr in his article about the demise of traditional journalism: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10745720

On reflection I think journalism has changed and will change again as both the media and population as a whole embrac their use of social media tools to communicate and inform each other of what is happening around them.

The intelligent jouralist is one that learns to weild these new tools.....

Politico interview

http://www.politico.com/ is a US-based political news website that shows how to combine old-school journalism with the always-on culture of the Internet.

Started by two ex-Washington Post reporters John Harris and Jimmy Vandehei, its not a lightweight journal, but gets into the serious subject of political reporting. However they have managed to 'own the morning' with their speedy turn-around of stories and understand that the life of a topic is no longer days but hours (or even minutes).

Does it work? Well they are in the top 10 US national newspaper websites according to Nielsen Netratings!

Here's the recent video interview they did for CNN:

Publishing & social media

With the recent announcement that Condé Nast Digital Britain (their UK New Media division) has hired a Social Media strategist to elevate its digital brands online, I've got to conclude that glossy publishing seems to be taking social media more seriously these days.

Now you might say that with online forums and the ability to comment on all manner of articles in different Condé Nast digital titles, that they have been "embracing social media since the beginning" or other such stuff. But this is clearly an obvious step for them towards embracing the conversation online.

Yes other publishing areas have been getting into the benefits of social media for a while back. One obvious approach that takes the two to in a new direction is True/Slant, run by a former news executive at America Online who worked at a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal. It covers a wide range of topics, such as politics, culture, sports, business, health, science and food.

It launched with 65 journalists, or "knowledge experts," assigned to specific topics who are only paid a small amount, but the aim is that they each become a "minipublisher" under the True/Slant brand. However they are also offered a share of advertising and sponsorship revenues generated from their individual pages (and even equity has been mentioned).

The site has been running since April last year, but has been criticised for being boring (by Paul Boutin at The Industry Standard) but it has provided some insight such as when Facebook changes their account privacy settings, therefore exposing the profiles of Facebook's executive team. In itself a great piece of opportunist journalism...

Wake up and smell the coffee journalists

Michael Skoler from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard (who collectively know a thing or two about this subject) has recently written a very interesting article on "Why the News Media Became Irrelevant and How Social Media Can Help"

I'll not go into too much detail, but this paper starts in a tone that many old hacks will be concerned about:

Journalists are truth-tellers. But I think most of us have been lying to ourselves.

He covers the inconvenient fact that journalism has no business model if it cannot provide something that people value or enriched their lives.. and perhaps the discussion should stop there?

Has Internet Journalism finally become mainstream

Iran has been subject to scrutiny, not just from Western Governments but by new media (as well as its mainstream counterpart). Everyone's favourite UK inquisitor asks Arianna Huffington about using unverified news sources versus traditional journalism.

I love this clip because it seems the concept of crowdsourcing news (posting then correcting, not correcting then posting) is lost on Mr Paxman and Ms Elvoy of London's Evening Standard newspaper.

Yes, unverified news should not be knowingly published, but if taking time to verify it would delay this news being distributed (and potentially not keep those most affected updated about things), then as long as the unverified news source is disclosed as this.... then to the reader beware!

MP's Expenses and crowdsourcing

It struck me that a particularly good example of using crowdsourcing techniques in journalism is the publishing and subsequent Questions & Answers of UK MP's expenses claims.

Having published the details of each MP's claims online [you can find yours by postcode, geographic region or political leaning here] , the BBC has subsequently asked the relevant MP to explain their potential mis-use of public money [here].

game set and matchpoint

Ok, we all know that technology (and particularly the disruptive power of the Internet) has changed PR and journalism forever right?

Now PR professionals have access to a powerful new search application that identifies the most appropriate and influential reporters and bloggers for their specific story pitch.
http://www.prmatchpoint.com/matchpoint.html

MatchPoint is offering a 10 Day Free Trial to check out this innovative new way to match your press release or other pitching materials with relevant journalists and bloggers.

The future of journalism

With a new American President, comes the dream of a better future of the World's most powerful country and along with it is a hope that the reporting of that World is also improved.

John Fine from Business Week, who's also a blogger, gives his views on where Journalism is evolving. For him its all about speed of reporting and how the web facilitates that compared to mainstream media. Aspiring journalists or PR people should take note, he advises you to find what you are passionate about and write about that stuff.

Funnily he asks: "Can you do 60 posts a day without your head exploding?" Perhaps not.. (However it might make a fun experiment to try sometime).

New Journalism Fundamentals

Jeff Jarvis, who usually blogs over at http://www.buzzmachine.com/ has some interesting data about Interactive Journalism compiled into a presentation

I like this slide deck from the end of 2008 , because it challenges the idea of newspapers online. Rather than them being filters of information, Mr Jarvis knows that the Internet is all about links and relationships, so suggests newspapers understand this as well....

Intj0808pdf

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cuny journalism)

Stuff journalists like

This site made me smile the other day:
http://www.stuffjournalistslike.com/

My favourite quote is in the posting about Press Releases:

Coincidentally, the majority of press releases are written by former journalists who either quit their journalism jobs in search of a PR job with better pay, or journalists who were laid off and had to sell their souls to the dark side to pay rent.

'nuff said I think

Crowdsourcing & News

Having mentioned previously how retailers (coffee, PC's & high street fashion) are attempting to utilise the knowledge of crowds, I've turned my attention to how The Press 1.0 are using web 2.0 crowdsourcing techniques to solve problems in innovative ways.

Despite the forecasted death of the investigative journalist (or newspapers as a whole)*, there have been examples where the news industry has utilised crowdsourcing methods:

* due to the long tail of publishing and the proposed amateur-isation of the profession thanks to the knowledge of crowds

WECAN
Washington Examiner Community Action Network
http://www.examiner.com/wecan
This site, run by the Washington Examiner in the USA publishes databases of public information for its readers to sift through and report back. So far they have uncovered issues in standards and payments.

USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Gannett, the owner of USA Today announced back in 2006 that it was restructuring its newsdesks around crowdsourcing topics. An 'Information Centre' surrounded by seven descrete areas was set up. Apparently partly and admission that blogs and other social media may have somethign to say and partly to increase the size of the resporting team to incorporate "Pro-Am" (A combination of professional and amateur) workers.

Assignment Zero
http://zero.newassignment.net/
This combination between Wired Magazine and New Assignment is a bold attempt to bring journalists together with people in the public who can help cover a story. Participation in it is entirely volumntary and reporters contribute across the world and its hoped it can cover particular stories with more depth and relevance than before.

Well does this combination of citizen journalism and collaborative investigation work?

Some people think that this isn't a new form of journalism, its just journalism. Assignment Zero could also be seen as failing when they found that the crowd became too difficult to mange.
But to quote Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner:

Call me an ink-stained wretch or a hopeless policy wonk with a techno-geeky obsession, but if the possibilities of such a partnering of traditional media and Internet-age citizens doesn’t get your journalism juices flowing, I suggest a visit to your cardiologist.

Citizen Journalism creates political problems

Having spent 2 weeks in the USA recently, I've been far more aware of the polical race being run there right now. (Note: as well as being intrigued by 2 political parties who use two very similar icons - an elephant and a donkey I understand - explained here),
However, whilst reading the International version of the Financial Times in LA, I was interested in the article on how bloggers are affecting the political universe right now.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f7226954-4707-11dd-876a-0000779fd2ac.html

The article centres around Mayhill Fowler of the Huffington Post and her blogging of inappropriate comments made by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton recently. It does raise the point about whether it is right to post everything a politician says. However if politicians are to have the same qualities we expect from companies these day (truthful and transparent) then surely close scrutiny is not a bad thing and will only eventually highlight inconsistencies and inaccuraties?

There's no doubt that this election in the USA has been the first proper one where bloggers have a significant impact.

"The revolution is happening. Its a good thing and we're all part of it"

says Chuck DeFoe from http://www.townhall.com/ when talking about the the impact of new media and politics.

However are old media and new media that different?

The death of journalism? (not yet dammit)

Time & again I come back to to the work of Paul Gillin, from his 'New Influencers' book, to the work he contributes to other publications.

But his recent blog posting "How New Influencers are Reinventing Journalism" is definately worthy of a read:
http://www.paulgillin.com/2008/04/how-new-influencers-are-reinventing.html

"The secret is to be reader-centric in a fundamental way. The content is driven by the readers and reacted to by the readers. We're really just a curator of consumer-generated content."
Get used to this. It's the online journalism model of the future.

This probably hurt a few of those old dogs out there in "snail (Daily) Mail" land..

Social Networks ARE the news

I've recently been asked by a potential client where the newly-created 'Social Media Manager' role should sit. Like this role and other emerging jobs like it, it will depend somewhat upon the company's existing structure and process (and significantly upon the individuals that work within them).

So.....

1. advertising has news
(banners now have feeds with product updates, branding sites that want to create repeat visits provide regularly-updated content and don't get me started on 'Advertorial')

2. news has adverts
Although news sites on the web find it quite hard to monetise their content (and the newspapers find their business models dying off), many are still supported by paid-for-advertising. On some sites the news and adverts are becoming hard to tell the difference between and even some news feeds come with integrated adverts now.

3. social media has news
News about what your friends: are doing (status), find interesting (notes), are buying (Beacon) or any number of other things they find interesting enough to tell you about.

4. adverts have social media
Even the Doritos advert in the middle of this year's Superbowl was a UGC-sourced production

..... With the lines between news, adverts & social media are so blurred, its become difficult to tell them apart any more. This blended mix of journalism, marketing and networking changes the relationships between companies and consumers/individuals.

It therefore changes the inner working of companies who are getting their heads around this. It consequently makes the question about where the Social Media Manager sits in the organisation that much more difficult!