media trends and training in sri lanka

Sanjana Hattotuwa

Senior Researcher, Centre for Policy AlternativesAshoka News and Knowledge Entrepreneur

Context Opportunities Challenges

HELP WANTEDImmediateOpening!

Sri Lankan newspapers seek individuals who can rescue print media from impending irrelevance. Qualified

applicants must possess new media skills and understand web technologies. Getting people to pay for online

content will be added bonus.

Must be able to work from home, on the road and at office. Mobile phone essential.

Persons resistant to change need not apply.

Context

ECONOMICS TODAY

• Not a happy time. Global recession + local fiscal mismanagement + media repression = fragmented, cash strapped markets

• Cover prices and subscriptions do not cover costs of content production

• Advertisers have a de facto control over print and electronic media

• Readers of alternative press are not purchasers. Same problem with new media!

• Lack of advertising increases costs, decreases market share, volume, distribution and impact

Context

• Montage may have to shut down. Spectrum will struggle without GoSL ads.

• Sunday Leader recently had the worst ad revenues in 13 years

• Morning Leader shut down, never profitable

• Without GoSL ads, any publication finds it hard to survive. GoSL ads only go to State media.

• Vicious cycle of financial crisis

ECONOMICS TODAYContext

Challenges

FOES OF FOEChallenges

SCENARIOS

• War heightens / risk increases / FOE decreases

• Violence continues / print & electronic suffer / web media stronger

• War ends / FOE increases / media freedom flourishes

• Irrespective of war trajectory, web media grows wider and deeper, including diaspora content production

• Terrorism slow burn / status quo continues

• Journalists leave Sri Lanka / continue to write

CONVERGENCE | QUAD PLAY

TV

Internet

Telephony

Wireless

Challenges

CONVERGENCE CREATES CENSORS

• Tamilnet.com blocked since June 2007

• Teleconferencing disallowed on Suntel

• SMS blocked on independence day / Dialog blocks JNW

• Mobile telephony regularly shut off in embattled areas

• Telcos complying with unwritten MoD diktats?

Challenges

Opportunities

6 DRIVING FORCES

1.Increasing media consumption

2.Fragmentation

3.Participation

4.Personalisation

5.New revenue models (?)

6.Broadband availability

Generational

BusinessTechnology

FUTURE TRENDS

• New Media and Citizen Journalism will merge with MSM

• Consumers will become producers

• Citizen will become witnesses who report

• Audiences will fragment, broadcast and distribution will be redefined

• MSM on the web will become places not static products.

• News will be a conversation - reported and then responded to.

• Mobiles will be ubiquitous and everyone will be addressable

Opportunities

GLOBAL TRENDS

WHERE WILL REVENUE COME FROM?

Accenture, 2007

Monetising user generated content

CONTENT CONSUMPTION

Accenture, 2007

YOUTUBE.COM

• 5 billion video streams watched by 91 million viewers in September ’08

• Average duration 2.9 minutes

• 44% of online video on Google / YouTube

• Average of 55 videos a month per user

• In July ’08, Americans watched 11.4 billion videos, a total Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2444

PRINT OR ONLINE?

Accenture, 2007

Moving away from print and terrestrial to online media

PRINT IN ASIA

0

100,000

200,000

300,000

400,000

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Asia Europe North America

Source: Time Magazine, 2 March 2009

PRINT VS ONLINE IN SRI LANKA

PRINT VS ONLINE IN SRI LANKA

HOW THE WEB HAS CHANGED THE MEDIA

INDUSTRY

CNN IREPORT

NOWPUBLIC.COM

DEMOTIX

USTREAM MOBILE

FACEBOOK FOR STRONGER SOCIAL NETWORKING

IFJ campaign to free Tissa

Pissu Poona

TWITTER

Sour

ce: h

ttp:

//apr

aman

a.co

m/w

eb/t

op-1

0-sr

i-lan

kan-

twitt

er-u

sers

/

SRI LANKAN / DEVELOPING WORLD

TRENDS

MOBILE GROWTH IN SRI LANKA

0

2

4

6

8

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Mobiles (in millions)Fixed lines (in millions)

Lirn

easia

OVERALL

• 200,000 broadband users

• Several thousand mobile broadband users

• 3 million fixed lines / 8 million mobiles / 11 million SIMs (Source: Lirneasia)

• Heavy use of SMS

• Most newspapers have websites

• Around 1,000 blogs

• Facebook groups / social networking vibrant particular in Middle East

WEB BASED CITIZEN JOURNALISM IN SRI LANKA

INFORMANTS

VERNACULAR NEW MEDIA

• Vikalpa YouTube videos watched hundreds of thousands of times (~200 from Nokia 93i, ~150 from DV)

• Short video vernacular content more popular than vernacular blogging

• CPA first with tri-lingual UNICODE website.

• 100+ Sinhala and Tamil blogs on Kottu, out of over 300 in just the past two years.

IS SLPI TEACHING ITS STUDENTS TO LEVERAGE

WEB 2.0 AND NEW MEDIA?

MOBILE / SMS NEWS

1,000 SMS messagesRs. 8,053 via http://www.intellisms.co.uk

Rs. 1,000 on Dialog

IMPACT OF NEW MEDIA: LONG TERM

• Emphasis on communicative rights: citizens have a right to produce and access a wide and diverse range of information and views that inform them on the main issues of the day.

• Information treated as a public good

• Freedom of expression not simply the media’s right to publish / produce but the ability and rights to participate in the discussions

IMPACT OF NEW MEDIA: LONG TERM (LONG TAIL)

• Hyper-local, topic specific media now possible

• Niche content attracts consumers over time

• Niche content archives become valuable over time

• E.g. paddy cultivation best practices in Mahaweli C Sector, surf conditions in Arugam Bay, garment sector worker’s mobile blog

GROUNDVIEWS VS. THE ISLAND

EVOLUTION OF MEDIA ETHICS

• Groundviews vs. The Island (PCC useless in 2007) but Editor asks for reprint permission in 2009

• The Sri Lankan blogosphere vs. Lakbima (emergence of a strong new media collective)

• MSM journalists will need to recognise blogs are legitimate sources of information - attributing them correctly

• Media trust models will need to develop to determine bias of crowdsourced journalism

HOW WILL YOU RESPOND

• How will you shape the institution to deal with these trends - political and technological?

• How will you shape the training to address the development in media?

THANK YOU

sanjana@cpalanka.org