Posts Tagged ‘Journalism’
Journalism is filled with ideas. Many of them ‘bold’. Some of them ‘great’. A few might even be ‘good’. But rarely are any ‘innovative’. There is a preconceived idea in many media companies that the future is what you follow, i.e. ‘we will do that when our competitor does that as well’.
Just over two weeks ago, on the 25th November we presented our very first media140 Futures event at the Caixa Forum de Barcelona to a local Catalan audience of journalists, media makers, technologists, social media advocates and broadcasters.
We are by no means in the same league as Picasso, Gaudi or Miro but like all of them, media140 is hoping to make an impression in Barcelona on the 25th November at the Caxia Forum de Barcelona. With an eclectic gathering of journalists, writers, technologists and innovators from Madrid, London and Barcelona, we will be exploring the opportunities and challenges presented by the intersection of journalism, social technologies and innovation.
Just over a week ago, on the 21st October we presented dataconomy, the first in a series of media140 evening events at the HUB in London, focusing on the increasing use of open data in journalism, economics, visualisation and commerce.
Photo by Ian Lamont.
Kristofor Lawson is a young, Melbourne-based freelance journalist who is trying to change the way people think about media.
During 2010, Kristofor has been researching ways to try and re-invent the journalism industry using current technology. He is vocal about the need for media companies to evolve through the use of innovation and is interested in ensuring that journalism has a stable and profitable future. Previously, he has been published as a journalist, worked as a web master, and even been trained as an animator.
You can find out more about Kristofor Lawson by visiting his blog www.kristoforlawson.com, or following him on Twitter.
Many have called it the saviour of journalism. It’s creator, Steve Jobs, has often called it “magical“. Rupert Murdoch just called it a “game-changer“. But even with all these positive reviews, the iPad is not the future of news media.
Don’t get the wrong idea, the world’s media has come a very long way in a short space of time. Just 12 months ago it was hard to see a future for traditional media companies who were struggling to make any substantial money. Many companies folded, others were on the edge of an inevitable collapse, and it appeared like there was no way for the world’s media to recover. Innovation was lacklustre at best. Companies were far too interested in trying to revive their print offerings then to worry about where the market might head in a few years time. Public broadcasters, like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, were the only news organisations unphased by the global news market. In fact they were eagerly waiting like vultures for the others to fall so that they could easily use their position to dominate the dwindling marketplace.
Come August, 2010, and a lot has changed. Apple’s announcement of the iPad in January this year almost instantly sparked a wave of new innovation in media companies. Wired, Sports Illustrated, and Time Magazine, lead the charge with new interactive digital versions of their print publications. News Corporation made successful iPad versions of many popular mastheads including The Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Australian. Other popular papers such as The New York Times have seen their free iPad application downloaded over 400,000 times. There has been a lot to celebrate in 2010 for traditional media companies.
Murdoch’s iPad publications have seen so much success that recent reports even indicate that he is planning on producing an iPad and mobile phone specific publication. The publication would focus on providing short, snappy, news content to portable devices for a regular monthly fee. There is no doubt that News Corporation now sees the iPad as a potential saviour for journalism. Murdoch is clearly placing a lot of faith into the iPad to provide much needed revenue. Such a move towards a platform specific publication is a smart, albeit misguided, move.
However not everyone is so optimistic. Leading technology blog, Techcrunch, have said that such a publication will never make any serious money, and that Murdoch is a “crazy old lunatic“. While it is easy to agree with that statement, if these rumours are true, the move to an iPad centric publication is uncharacteristically forward thinking for News Corporation. It is hard to remember the last time they really made the first move into an industry, let alone a move into a market which doesn’t even exist yet. Currently there is no major news organisation which offers news specifically for portable devices even though they should.
While Murdoch is clearly trying to think about the future, the iPad itself is no “game-changer”. The real revolution will need to be a truly mobile phone centric one. The iPad is in reality just a small device in the global mobile device network. Mobile phones need to be the focus of every news companies efforts because globally mobile phone usage far outweighs personal computers. There are over 5 billion mobile phones in global circulation, but there is not even 2 billion computers. That is a massive market which continues to be untaped by media companies.
While many organisations would argue that they already provide ‘mobile’ versions of their news offerings, the big issue is that these don’t provide specialised content optimised for delivery on portable devices. All the current content is merely a rehash of what is offered online. Take The New York Times as an example. Their iPhone application provides much of the same content as their online website. If you read the news on your phone then you have no reason to go to Nytimes.com and read the same content you have already read on your phone. To make it worse, the iPhone version is a rather dull table layout which doesn’t even make use of many of the cool features on the device which could make news incredibly interactive. No serious effort went into making the application interactive, engaging, and different. If news companies want to make serious money from portable devices then they need to start utilising the full capabilities of the device. Sometimes the easiest way of creating an application is not always the best way.
Murdoch’s move into the portable device space is really just one of the first in what will be a truly Mobile News Revolution. Clearly someone at News Corporation can see the value in providing platform specific news content, even if the focus of such a publication is on the wrong device. If other organisations are to make money, and substantial money at that, they also need to differentiate their portable offerings from their online offerings. By differentiating content they re-create a viable market for using your mobile phone, iPad, and your computer. The idea that people might want to read the same story online as they have just read on their phones, or on their iPad’s is a poor one. However, if the content is different and engaging then there is a reason to access news in more than one format.
Soon enough, news organisations around the world will realise the need to provide platform specific, optimised, and globally accessible, news publications. Mobile news is where the journalism industry will need to head, so watch out, a revolution in news production and delivery is about to begin.
Over the past six weeks media140 has been fortunate to have access to Valerio Veo, Head of SBS News and Current Affairs Online as he covered the World Cup in South Africa.
Filing a number of posts with media140, Valerio has captured some of his thoughts from the games as he reported on the ground with a plethora of real time technology, gadgets and applications.
However, as the World Cup comes to a close we take a different look behind the smiles, the characters, the noise of the vuvuzela’s and spirit of the first World Cup as Valerio leaves us with a brief piece looking at it’s impact and lasting legacy
After a couple of weeks of balmy winter sunshine, the rain has set back in over Cape Town, just like it did when I first arrived almost six weeks ago.
It seems a perfect book-end to my time here in South Africa … the crowds are disappearing, the barriers coming down and the ‘sad cow’ cry of the vuvuzela is waning from the streets.
So what will remain after the World Cup party packs up for another four years? FIFA President Sepp Blatter visited the SBS studios for a chat two days ago and expressed vindication at the apparent risky decision to award Africa it’s first World Cup.
He pointed to education and health programs being instigated across Africa as one of the lasting legacies of this tournament – but speaking to normal Capetonians, there is a far deeper legacy and paramount shift in the way this country perceives itself.
South Africans feel this event is vindication that this fledgling democracy can mix it with the world’s best and host the biggest sporting event without fear.
Speaking to some of our crew at a wrap dinner a couple of nights ago – they say the World Cup has proven to the government and the authorities that they can tackle the issues holding them back, that crime and poverty can be overcome, that they alone have the power to continue building this nation in a positive way.
Locals admit its far safer to travel around South Africa now than before the World Cup, (‘where did all these police come from’, one told me) but that its proof that the streets can be safe, and that the police should lock up criminal elements regardless of their skin colour.
The same goes for infrastructure – Capetonians are amazed at how smoothly everything has run and how easily the city coped with the hordes of tourists and football fans that descended on the city over the course of the last month.
Poverty and employment continue to be the greatest challenge, but with the South African economy weathering the global economic crisis and investments booming here, small yet significant steps are being taken to continue the rise of South Africa.
Most important is the titanic shift in thinking from the very soul of this country, that the World Cup is not so much an end point, but a starting point for South Africa to prove itself as a dynamic, significant and relatively safe nation that deserved its starring role on this global stage.
Ke nako – can you feel it? It is here…
With a little ‘know how’ and the right tools, the democratisation of journalism is now enabling citizens to create their own content from sporting events with ease, whether these are photographs, videos or audio interviews, the tools are readily available.
So when an organisations such as the FIFA who hold the exclusive rights for the World Cup, are confronted with social tools that permit the individuals to broadcast material across the internet, what happens? How do these large organisations go about trying to protect their ‘investments’ and what mechanisms are in place to ensure ‘rights managed’ content doesn’t become social?
Continuing his look behind the scenes of the World Cup, Valerio Veo discovers that being a multimedia journalist at a World Cup involves negotiating a ‘rights’ mine field where literally millions of dollars are at stake.
While covering the World Cup here in South Africa, I’m in the fortunate position of working under the umbrella of TV rights-holder, giving me World Cup access that would make a football fan weep.
My last World Cup experience was in Germany 2006 with ninemsn, where I followed the Socceroos campaign as an electronic non-rights holder. I went to all Socceroos matches and an England one among others – with great seats in the media tribune so I could report back for my web-only employer.
At the time it appeared FIFA was embracing the burgeoning online media and I was impressed at the tiny teams of two covering the World Cup – am cameraman/editor and a writer/photographer crammed into a camper van was all that was needed to cover the world’s biggest sporting event.
But fast forward to 2010 and there appeared to be a significant shift in opinion. Almost all electronic non-rights holders were denied accreditation, leaving other Australian online, TV non-rights holders & radio largely out in the cold – with only a few agencies and newspapers afforded the right to officially report at the World Cup. Australia’s ABC successfully appealed for an online reporter to cover the tournament – but that appears to be the exception rather than the rule.
But while SBS has paid for the rights to broadcast the World Cup, access remains tightly controlled by FIFA, with my media accreditation getting me to the media centre and media centre only. All other access – seats at the game, press conferences, mixed zone (where you get one-on-one with the players) and field positions are all considered on a match-by-match basis. There’s no guarantee that our on-air presenters and analysts will even get a seat to every match in Cape Town for example.
That access also remains tightly controlled by FIFA by virtue of the official French broadcaster HBS – an infringement will have you listed on the match report and your broadcaster will be issued with a please explain. Repeated infringements can get your accreditation revoked, or in a worst-case scenario your employer could lose the right to broadcast the event. There’s literally millions of dollars at stake.
So it’s no surprise I got a little nervous when I was approached by an official at half-time of the England vs Algeria match, when I was taking photos of the crowd while wearing my TV rights-holder cameraman bib. I was asked whether I was a photographer (I’m not accredited as one or I’d be in a different bib & placed in a different position), and quizzed about the overall ‘too professional’ looking nature of my equipment.
All plans to shoot some intimate field shots for our website were shelved and I quickly put my gear away before I caused any further problem. Strangely my colleague sitting in the stands in a purchased seat also got a sign-language ‘I’m watching you’ warning from the same official for shooting photos on his $600 DSLR.
But it all got me thinking – can huge sporting organisations afford to ignore the rise and rise of multimedia journalism? Frankly if anyone can it’s FIFA – I’m sure in 2014 SBS will simply need to apply for a photographers accreditation as part of its mix, but is that ignoring the groundswell of technology and near-impossible task of preventing copyright infringements?
After all journalists are increasingly multi-platform producers – the SBS World Cup Facebook page has exploded to 15,000 fans off the back of a few dozen behind the scenes pics from our crews on the road and some clever crowd-sourcing from the online guys back in Sydney.
Our SBS website is going gangbusters and thousands of people are watching the matches on their laptops instead of their TV. We’re broadcasting matches in multiple languages on the radio too. We’ve scrambled to broadcast 15 matches in 3D too. The days of just speaking to your audience via the one platform are long gone.
And then what happens in four years time when someone with an HD, phone-sized video camera sports the crucial, match-winning off-the-ball infringement and posts it on Twitter for the whole world to see? Unlikely as more and more official cameras monitor every match, but how does a rights-holder like SBS protect its valuable investment.
The focus for FIFA appears to be largely limited selling the rights to their broadcast their footage across TV, radio & online. The quality of the broadcast is excellent – we regularly gasp at the incredible close-ups that somehow manage to capture the most intimate details of a match.
But are big sports organisations such as FIFA, the Olympic Movement, Australia’s AFL or the British Premier League, ready for the next challenge of managing control the very eyes of its audiences as they bring increasingly sophisticated technology to the games in their pockets??
Sky News prides itself on being ‘first with breaking news’, with over 500 journalists reporting and broadcasting from all corners of the globe.
Recently Sky took the bold step of embedding social media into every journalist’s desktop, and mandating the use of Tweetdeck across the news floor. The BBC has also made a similar move.
media140 founder Ande Gregson spent an afternoon with Julian March, Executive Producer for SkyNews.com to find out about the organisation’s recent experiences with social media in Britain’s May 6 general election.
Being fairly fond of these topics, Ande couldn’t help but slip in a few questions about Sky’s views on citizen journalism, paywalls and the future of social news.
Duration 8 minutes 26 seconds. More media140 video at www.vimeo/media140
Despite all the odds stacked against media140 last week with an Icelandic volcano belching ash into European airspace, the majority of our UK and US media140 speakers grounded and the media140 team limited to a handful of those who managed to find flights, we stayed resilient and still managed to produce two events in Italy: Journalism and Food & Wine.
From the splendid Umbrian countryside the small team of hardy media140 journalists (@GemmaUrgell, @_cric_ and @lxzilber) made their presence known at the International Journalism Festival together with a handful of International and UK speakers.
Whilst a team in the Midlands, UK (@documentally, @katepickering, @cward1e, @the_drums, @exsanguinator and @AquilaTV) produced and recorded a webcast especially for media140 Perugia with a few of the UK media140 speakers who weren’t able to make it across to Italy.
Undoubtedly the week had it’s moments ranging from the technology challenges of sourcing adequate WiFi in Italy, the sometimes entertaining and stressful efforts communicating with local Italian AV technicians and of course re-planning an entire media140 event agenda in less than 24 hours.
All this made for one of the most challenging media140 events.
Reflecting back on the week, the support, enthusiasm and commitment from the media140 speakers, Italian and London teams was really amazing. With a tremendous amount of effort going into the project and I would like to thank everyone involved in helping to make media140 Perugia happen.
Thank you
Ande, media140
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