2013 reassessment - news 2.0
DESCRIPTION
An update of the 2012 presentation, not that different, but the podcast adds new detailTRANSCRIPT
News 2.0can journalism
survive the internet?
A re-assessment
A/Prof Martin HirstJuly 2013
News 2.0: what next?Two years after publication of News 2.0 what’s
changed?
A reassessment of the seven theses of the book
A look at recent developments
What are the new questions
Are there any new answers
News as conversation Journalists no longer control the distribution of
the content they produce.
This is a very scary thought for many journalists, but the reality is that once something is published (usually on Web sites), it belongs to the audience of readers and becomes part of a conversation about the news.
News 2.0the news industry is seen to be failing our
democratic ideals
journalists are low on international surveys of people we trust
the professional ethos of journalism is under threat from UGC
the commodity form of news is no longer providing the profits it once did
Phone-hacking says it all?The phone-hacking scandal demonstrates the
basic thrust of News 2.0 A crisis of trust and credibility Journalists stuffed up badly
But it is also an economic crisis caused by a failure of management Journalists were encouraged into hacking in
pursuit of profits Ethics goes out the window in favour of money-
grubbing and base motives
Murdoch makes it worse
June 2013:
Exposed by staff saying that the police inquiry was incompetent and excessive
Admits that paying officials for stories is endemic in the British press
Promises to take care of staff
Issues a pathetic half-apology when discovered
CNN) -- News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is apologizing for secretly recorded criticism of police investigations into his newspapers, but he says he's still frustrated by the extent and length of the probes.
Thesis 1: news is a universal human need
news has been around for thousands of years
because of market forces the mainstream media has let down the public
pursuit of profits has led the MSM down market
we are living in a sick celebrity culture that distorts our self-perception and slowly drives us all insane
We are consuming as much as we did, if not more news today, but not in the same way we used to.News is coming to us from a variety of sources and we are consuming in more mobile ways.
Thesis 2: digital technologies are changing
how we consume newsglobally, television is still the dominant news and
entertainment media, but for how much longer?
news is going mobile and it's being condensed
the 140 character text message and “tweet” could be the future of news
The curating of news – what Axel Bruns calls ‘gate-watching – is now much easier and more widespread.
Apps like storify, pintrest, paper.li and instapaper make it much easier to collate ‘bricolage’ and curate MSM and other materials to re-publish to friends and networks.
Thesis 3: the singularity of convergence has
changed news forever professionalism has become a trap for journalists - they
are tied into a corporate culture that is losing its shine
perhaps, as Robert McChesney suggests, journalists have to become "unprofessional" in order to reconnect with audiences
D-I-Y & UGC news via social networking is on the rise
we are no longer reliant only on MSM for news.
Thesis 4: the crisis in the news business is not the
same as the crisis in journalism
they are related, but different
a crisis of trust and credibility and a crisis of profitability
we are now in a critical juncture and the global financial crisis is a further threat to the political economy of the news business
Thesis 5: new online business models are not yet
provenadvertising – most likely in market economy
user pays – subscription model
public service broadcasting – not politically supported
online only publishing – unknown quantity
public trust model – expensive to establish
philanthropy – peanuts really
Who pays the piper?
Thesis 6: there are positives in social
networking and Web 2.0some parts of the world are more connected than
they’ve every been
the collective nature of trust and verification is a key element of peer-to-peer sharing of information and can apply to news
we need to position journalism as the collective wisdom of the public interest and speaking truth to power
Thesis 7: Can journalism survive the Internet?
what happens to “journalism" when the economics of the news business are no longer working?
if news is a universal trait of human society (thesis 1) then a method needs to be developed of continuing to provide reliable and common news-like information from trusted public sources
What happens next?
The slow decline of newspapers will continue
Time-shifting and on-demand will continue to grow for video content
Daily news will be largely web and broadcast based
Newspapers will need to become more like magazines to survive