Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On Sun, 29 Mar 2009, Tim Dobson wrote: I suspect that specialist areas of journalism will remain - sailing magazines for instance won't stop employing people to write about new yachts and dinghies, but I suspect some of the more general publications will need to adapt their business model or suffer consequences... I think that niche journalism is one of the first places to suffer. The most common blog type that I see (after the random daily diary) is the niche blog, with people writing about the small areas that they know a lot about - the barrier to entry has lowered and as such those who are experts in their field now no longer need to submit to the editorial process of the special interest magazines but can just publish their own material online whenever they want. The more general print magazines should do a bit better, if anything, because they remove the effort of the individual having to look around and find 'high quality' pieces of writing from a variety of sources, doing that collation and selection for them. --billy -- http://billyabbott.co.uk Transvestite ninjas - how did I not see that coming? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
European Newspapers Find Creative Ways to Thrive in the Internet Age PARIS — As the death toll in the American newspaper industry mounted this month, the German publisher Axel Springer, which owns Bild, the biggest newspaper in Europe, reported the highest profit in its 62-year history. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/business/media/30paper.html?_r=1 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Billy Abbott wrote: I think that niche journalism is one of the first places to suffer. That's a good point. :) I'll have to go back on myself and say we'll just have to see... I guess it somewhat depends what you call a blog. Basically a blog can be pretty much any sequential line of posts by one entity on the internet. -- www.tdobson.net If each of us have one object, and we exchange them, then each of us still has one object. If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them, then each of us now has two ideas. - George Bernard Shaw - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
2009/3/18 John O'Donovan john.odono...@bbc.co.uk: A blog reader does not replace all the things people buy a newspaper for in my criteria. If it did, Newspapers would be dead already, This strikes me as fallicious. Just because it hasn't collapsed yet doesn't mean that it won't peter out. McLuhan said early on that a new medium doesn't replace all the things the old medium has, but it has new things which the old medium doesn't, that make it preferable. Reading through a blog-reader and through a printed newspaper are as good an example of this as any. but there is more to it than this. If anything, reach and growth of newspapers on the internet is growing That's because newspaper websites are becoming blogs, such as the replacement of subscription paywalls with public full-texts and ads, and no longer detering deeplinks in their URLs. News International spent £650M on new presses last year... ...clearly they are idiots. If only someone had told them about the internet. NI is totally subsidised by its parent. How many other news corporations have made similar purchases? To hazard a guess, NI's nearest competitor, DMGT, makes £15 million a year. I expect they'll be able to save their pennies sooner than get a loan. It is obviously a time of great change for Journalism. By newsroom colleagues I didn't mean to imply just the BBC, I meant friends and contacts in newsrooms across the globe who all have interesting stories to tell and face various challenges. The BBC is funded differently to many of these, but I can assure you UK, US and other newspapers all have plans. They are not packing up all the desks and switching off the lights; they are looking at how they adapt and stay relevant. But they have not found what they are looking for. You did actually predict gleefully the demise of the middleman, the aggregator, the editor, whatever you like to think of the Newspaper infrastructure as, and I think this is something that is not certain. If you don't want this then no one will force you to have it, but others do want it. I would say the recession is having a more acute effect than the internet. Without ad revenues, there are funding issues. If the money isn't there to support it, it will stop, even if people want it to continue. The recession is an acute effect, the internet is a chronic effect; the net causes the money to not be there because ad revenues are being redirected from professional media to unprofessional media, following the redirection of mass attention from professional content to amateur content. In short: Google wins, because they don't have to pay people to make the stuff they sell ads off. Perhaps a couple of newspapers will continue as 'vanity press' but those are not exactly known for quality unbiased journalism. Striving for independence is not new to this field either. There is a long tradition of independent journalists, freelance reporters and photographers and it's nothing new that people have been trying independent models: Working as a big corporate news contractor isn't really different to being an employee, because as the corporations go bust, they'll be doing just the same amount of journalism: None. In a more direct move to deliver to the audience, an independent group such as the workers cooperative behind City Limits might be another interesting model of relevance, and it was not the internet that brought about it's existence or demise ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Limits_(London_magazine). a more direct move to deliver to the audience sounds awful like learn up about internet marketing to me. And isn't MediaLens a contemporary for City Limits? Of course with these models there is still organisation and infrastructure. Someone pays the bills. Someone is exerting editorial control. If you want a (quality) picture of an event, someone has to be there and some poor pictures from a phone camera are not a replacement. This type of content is used where relevant. Phone camera quality is getting better faster and more widely distributed year on year. How many years until it is a replacement, and the script is flipped so professional photos are used where relevant? If you feel that the Journalistic community is full of people trying to subvert the truth, espousing mis-information, I dread the day that a billion unaccountable blogs replace them. I'd pay for something in between and that might likely be the Newspapers in a different form. I don't think I will be alone. Why do you think that the journalist profession is NOT full of people trying to subvert the truth and espouse mis-information? I think that blogs can be as accountable as newspapers, if not more so. For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime--intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on--and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can't last. Soon enough, we're going
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
I think this is a false dilemma. Guys in my office have phones with 8MP cameras. My 18-month old phone has a 5MP camera. I suspect a good lens and skill with photoshop is vastly more important than the photographer being professional. Sure, some kid with a 10MP phone can take a 300dpi front-page-sized picture of a UFO crashing down into the village green – but when the alien crawls out and asks to speak to Gordon Brown for the first time, do you, as a news editor, send the kid with the phone, or perhaps someone who has a bagfull of experience, a ladder, good elbows, and a record of never ever fg up? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
2009/3/29 James Ockenden james.ocken...@gmail.com: I think this is a false dilemma. Guys in my office have phones with 8MP cameras. My 18-month old phone has a 5MP camera. I suspect a good lens and skill with photoshop is vastly more important than the photographer being professional. Sure, some kid with a 10MP phone can take a 300dpi front-page-sized picture of a UFO crashing down into the village green – but when the alien crawls out and asks to speak to Gordon Brown for the first time, do you, as a news editor, send the kid with the phone, or perhaps someone who has a bagfull of experience, a ladder, good elbows, and a record of never ever fg up? This also seems like a false dilemma, since there won't be any professional news editors, nor any money to send anyone anywhere, and the kid is there already, and his photos and videos got published instantly on the net for everyone to link to. There will be plenty of bloggers commenting on the UFO technology, the alien's politics and Gordon Brown's tie, and some of them might be paid for their efforts, and grasp at the pretense of calling themselves journalists, but it will look more like blogging than journalism, and be better than churning press releases that currently passes for much of journalism's editorial comment. Photography did in portrait painters. Same story, different century. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
As ever, the answer, and the future lies somewhere inbetween. While 'bloggers can, and do pass opinion, and produce stories based on primary news stories, they don't have the resources to become those primary news sources. The BBC, The Times, Reuters etc do have the resources. There have been a couple of articles in the press recently which raise the question of trust: Who do you trust more, an unaccountable 'blogger, or the BBC? Dave C will have you believe that a 'blogger is more trustworthy because he's free - but he's unaccountable to anyone. The whole concept of unbiased reporting doesn't apply to 'bloggers. The rise of Citizen journalists is probably unstoppable, but the decline of real, accountable journalists has been massively overstated. Cheers, Rich. On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 7:33 PM, James Ockenden james.ocken...@gmail.comwrote: I think this is a false dilemma. Guys in my office have phones with 8MP cameras. My 18-month old phone has a 5MP camera. I suspect a good lens and skill with photoshop is vastly more important than the photographer being professional. Sure, some kid with a 10MP phone can take a 300dpi front-page-sized picture of a UFO crashing down into the village green – but when the alien crawls out and asks to speak to Gordon Brown for the first time, do you, as a news editor, send the kid with the phone, or perhaps someone who has a bagfull of experience, a ladder, good elbows, and a record of never ever fg up? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Dave Crossland wrote: 2009/3/29 James Ockenden james.ocken...@gmail.com: I think this is a false dilemma. Guys in my office have phones with 8MP cameras. My 18-month old phone has a 5MP camera. I suspect a good lens and skill with photoshop is vastly more important than the photographer being professional. Sure, some kid with a 10MP phone can take a 300dpi front-page-sized picture of a UFO crashing down into the village green – but when the alien crawls out and asks to speak to Gordon Brown for the first time, do you, as a news editor, send the kid with the phone, or perhaps someone who has a bagfull of experience, a ladder, good elbows, and a record of never ever fg up? This also seems like a false dilemma, Or a good example of a scarcity that can be exploited economically. - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
2009/3/29 Richard Lockwood richard.lockw...@gmail.com: Dave C will have you believe that a 'blogger is more trustworthy because he's free - but he's unaccountable to anyone. That's not what I am saying. I don't say that any random blogger is more trustworthy than a random journalist. I say they are both untrustworthy - for different reasons - and deciding who is trusthworthy will no longer be delegated to editoral staff at companies who sell ads. Instead it will be done by the people, of the people, for the people. I earlier quoted this guy: political reporters no longer get to decide what's news - http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/Daniel_Hannan/blog/2009/03/25/my_speech_to_gordon_brown_goes_viral Someone with another job to pay the bills (and more, hah), blogging and (probably) being paid a little bit for it, under the pretense of a old newspaper brand. For each unemployed professional journalist there'll be a dozen like him. That's the future of journalism IMO. The whole concept of unbiased reporting doesn't apply to 'bloggers. The whole concept of unbiased reporting is a joke at best. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On 29 Mar 2009, at 19:48, Dave Crossland wrote: Photography did in portrait painters. Same story, different century. It did ? There really are no portrait painters left? I think the effect of photography was that portraiture as a market increased, the affluent could still ( and did ) get a painter but the masses could either take their own or get a professional in who only needed 10 mins in the shopping centre temporary studio. f - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Fearghas McKay wrote: On 29 Mar 2009, at 19:48, Dave Crossland wrote: Photography did in portrait painters. Same story, different century. It did ? There really are no portrait painters left? I think the effect of photography was that portraiture as a market increased, the affluent could still ( and did ) get a painter but the masses could either take their own or get a professional in who only needed 10 mins in the shopping centre temporary studio. Yes the history of publication in the livejournal era is a good parallel to the history of portraiture in the box brownie era. What is true in the case of both portraiture and publishing is that the barriers to entry were greatly lowered. The market *expands* rather than being wiped out. What is destroyed is the *exclusivity* of the profession, not the value of the professionals. I think that professional investigative journalism and professional news photography will continue to command a premium because they represent scarce, valuable, differentiating skills. If I want to really have something exponentially different to wrap adverts around I want Edison Carter or Magnum, not some random happy slapper. ;-) - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
RE: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Hi Phil - yes I think we are heading into that middle ground. On pictures I agree of course that consumer technology is making the equipment better and more accessible, but I would say this has been happening for years and so maybe you underestimate the value of the professional photographer or photo journalist. Most of us can't take photos as well as a talented or trained photographer and there are places I would not go, or be able to go, to get the photograph. Personally I think the technology is making it faster and easier for those who do this work to deliver it to wider audiences while the value of their role continues with a lower barrier to entry. Cheers, jod From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk on behalf of Phil Wilson Sent: Sat 28/03/2009 13:39 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable Hi, There's just two bits in John's last message I'd like to pick up: If you want a (quality) picture of an event, someone has to be there and some poor pictures from a phone camera are not a replacement. I think this is a false dilemma. Guys in my office have phones with 8MP cameras. My 18-month old phone has a 5MP camera. I suspect a good lens and skill with photoshop is vastly more important than the photographer being professional. If you feel that the Journalistic community is full of people trying to subvert the truth, espousing mis-information, I dread the day that a billion unaccountable blogs replace them. This is also a false dilemma. Some in the journalistic community do espouse mis-information. Some blogs are accountable. We are already, to a certain extent, in that middle ground. Isn't that the point of Clay's essay? Cheers, Phil - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On pictures I agree of course that consumer technology is making the equipment better and more accessible, but I would say this has been happening for years and so maybe you underestimate the value of the professional photographer or photo journalist. Most of us can't take photos as well as a talented or trained photographer and there are places I would not go, or be able to go, to get the photograph. Yes, and I think there's a differences between a photographer and a photo journalist - in particular, as you say, ones sent to dangerous areas to record events. On the other hand, although I recognise that there absolutely is a great deal of skill in professional photography there is also a great deal of luck. You only have to look at proof sheets to see this. There may be a hundred photos for the one print. Maybe I'm optimistic, but I think amateur photographers can make this hit rate, in particular, as I said earlier, with basic photo editing knowledge (certainly phones already have the necessary functionality). This is, of course, assuming that you don't have just the one person taking pictures on their phone but, as with most events even now, more than half of the crowd. Personally I think the technology is making it faster and easier for those who do this work to deliver it to wider audiences while the value of their role continues with a lower barrier to entry. I think there is value in the role, and perhaps what hasn't really come up, a value in the newsroom itself (or more specifically in a network of experienced, well-connected reporters and journalists) that is hard to replace. I do think there is an almost guaranteed role for visible, well-known political and financial correspondents (and possibly others) with whom politicians and companies can actually strike up a relationship. I also think newspapers have done themselves a severe disservice over the past decade in particular by becoming longer ([citation needed]) whilst lowering relative price to increase perceived value, whilst actually demeaning the good journalism that they actually do, and I think it's resulted in the opposite of what they intended by lowering the perceived value since their content now seems to massively overlap with that of the Metro. I think there's a quote from Andrew Neil here about John Witherow's achievements with The Sunday Times about this, if someone can remember it for me :) Obviously this has peaked recently with Flat Earth News, and I don't really know what can be done about it without someone willing to try actually cutting the length of the paper. With the recent bankruptcies in the US, how many newspapers do you think we'll have in twelve months' time? If the Kindle makes it to the UK should one of the papers just buy us all one? http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/printing-the-nyt-costs-twice-as-much-as-sending-every-subscriber-a-free-kindle Anyway, this all just rambling from me now, so I'll end :) Cheers, Phil - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Hi, There's just two bits in John's last message I'd like to pick up: If you want a (quality) picture of an event, someone has to be there and some poor pictures from a phone camera are not a replacement. I think this is a false dilemma. Guys in my office have phones with 8MP cameras. My 18-month old phone has a 5MP camera. I suspect a good lens and skill with photoshop is vastly more important than the photographer being professional. If you feel that the Journalistic community is full of people trying to subvert the truth, espousing mis-information, I dread the day that a billion unaccountable blogs replace them. This is also a false dilemma. Some in the journalistic community do espouse mis-information. Some blogs are accountable. We are already, to a certain extent, in that middle ground. Isn't that the point of Clay's essay? Cheers, Phil - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
2009/3/17 John O'Donovan john.odono...@bbc.co.uk: [those] in the newsroom should go get another job to pay the bills so that they can support their journalism in their spare time, sort themselves out and learn up about internet marketing and the brave new world. Seriously? Yes. Professional bloggers have been moving out of other institutions and in to that model for a few years now. So why not? I'll pass those thoughts on to my journalistic colleagues, but I don't think that is the future. As I said, I think those who resist will have another job and will not continue to do journalism, unless they either already work in a resilient model - which would be your journalistic colleagues at the BBC, who can tell me I'm mistaken all they like because they won't be out of work this/next year. For example, thinking about printed Newspapers, people like to read the news on the way to work. When a digital model effectively replaces the simplicity of accessing Journalism in a printed form, in a varied and moving environment like travelling to work then these people will stop buying newspapers. It's a wasteful and expensive way to get the news anyway. This effective replacement will happen when all the new phones available are iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, or Android - that is, they have screens and webbrowsers to read with. Will this mean that the Guardian or other newspapers stop printing their content on paper? Maybe. It doesn't mean they cease to exist though. I'm not saying that the Guardian brand will totally cease to exist. I'm saying that most of their journalists will be laid off in the depression, and won't be hired again. Of course, though people may stop wanting to pay for Newspapers, Metro has proved you can distribute the physical newspaper for free. On my commute it is quite hard to get to work without reading Metro... Does the Metro hires lots of journalists? :-) There is a new exciting model out there that will deliver content of interest and preference to me, my favourite journalists packaged, what my social network likes and reinforce my own biased viewpoints. And works on the train. And challenges my thinking on a Sunday afternoon with a mass of thought provoking features and ideas carefully brought together. Not found it yet. It is a program called a blog reader. Cheers, Dave - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:15, Rob Myers r...@robmyers.org wrote: That would be disastrous. In the UK this would preclude investigating anyone who has anything to do with the state in order to avoid endangering the university's funding. And in general it would turn journalism from the investigation of truth (or at least matters of popular interest) into just another academic postmodern solipsism. Say what you like about academia, but one of the things I most enjoy about reading academic journals is that there are absolutely no mentions of booze-addled Premier League footballers, Pete Doherty or Amy Winehouse's crackwhore antics, endless speculation about what the government will announce or coverage any of these seemingly surname-deprived people I see on the front of magazines (Cheryl, Paris, Britney, Nicole, Kerry, Katie, Peter etc.). I've never seen an academic journal attempt to incite the barely literate into attacking paediatricians. They also don't spend much time arguing about whether mediocre comedians should be fired because stupid people were offended by a phonecall. They don't spend much time bidding for ghoulish 'death rights' on a talentless Big Brother star. Nor do they print churnalism produced by PR flacks and endorsed by shady quacks and pseudoscientists. If someone claiming that gravity is just a scam by aliens, they don't put on the pretense of balance. In all the academic journals I peruse, I've yet to see Barley-esque blog posts about finding oneself by jet-setting of to India printed there for reasons only of nepotism. None of the academic journals I tend to read are managed by marketing arseholes who spend their days reading shitty blogs filled with dumbed-down, Digg-friendly top ten lists about SEO and viral social media. They don't find the need to get Gravity theorists and Intelligent Falling theorists in equal measure for 'fairness' or 'balance'. They also rarely ever need to uncritically print Number 10 or White House press releases for fear of losing access. Academic papers which don't clearly define what they are talking about tend to get rejected, while the media are free to use moronic generalisations like the public sphere (a term so broad that it covers absolutely everything except hiding under a duvet all day) or political correctness gone mad!. They don't waste tremendous amounts of money sending outside broadcast units out to stand around outside, say, a school to illustrate a report about that school. The difference between academia and the media is that while academia publishes the odd postmodernist screed every so often, the media actively practice the philosophy. Who gives a shit about the truth when you can print lazy churnalism and get page views? Who gives a shit about the scientific types who will get their panties in a knot about it? That just gets us more page views, and who are they to say they have the Absolute Truth (scoff!)? Who gives a monkeys about living up to our old-fashioned belief in getting the most important issues of the day summarised for the consumption of readers when we can fill our pages with Jade Goody, endless Diana speculation and articles about how social networking sites cause cancer. There's a reason why journalists are generally considered to be on the same level of trustworthiness as those no-win-no-fee lawyers with TV adverts, PR gurus and investment bankers. And academic journals tend to cover the things I'm interested in at a depth much greater than that of even the intelligent media - the number of times I've cringed as someone on Radio 4 has tried to summarise the history of Western philosophy... you've got about thirty seconds! on otherwise excellent programmes like In Our Time. There are things you can't fit into a 500 word column or a half-hour slot. As for actually getting academics to become journalists, it's impractical, but not because of the state funding issue. The state already funds the BBC and Channel 4, who produce reports critical of the government. And those in universities have published research that is critical of the government. So long as you set the system up right, with checks and balances, I'm not sure why there would be a problem. Of course, those trained up to be professional researchers might have no special knack for doing what journalists do. Certainly, more niche beats like science, technology, religious affairs, reviews of literature, maybe international relations will be supplemented and maybe replaced by academic bloggers. And a good thing too: almost everything I read in the newspaper about anything I know about turns out to be wrong in some way. The same is no doubt true for things I read in the newspaper about things I don't know about. The other thing that will probably happen is that there will be less redundancy in reporting. In terms of radio, I listen to a few BBC podcasts, and supplement them with a few NPR shows from the US, and even a show from Australia. I'm not sure why
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Brian Butterworth wrote: And then there's that gizmo, the one that can deliver the Sun to white van man cheaply and reliably. The radio? S - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
That was quick of them... http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/12/thetimes.bskyb 2009/3/17 John O'Donovan john.odono...@bbc.co.uk I like Brian's suggestion of Times TV and Sky News in a newsroom mash-up. The thought has not passed them by entirely, though they offer different types of journalism and are also governed differently in their public accountability... http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/12/thetimes.bskyb --- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
A key characteristic of a newspaper is that you can fold it up. Foldable or rollable screens may yet arrive in the next few years, I vaguely recall Samsung and Sony showing proof-of-concept and prototypes the last year. The Touch Book by Always Innovating is creating buzz, you leave the keyboard in your bag and pull out the creen to read with. Or stick it on your refrigerator (this is not a joke). I like e-reading on the OLPC XO-1 which is small, light, and ruggedized (it's for kids), twists and folds flat screen out, and in direct sunlight switches to very high resolution black and white (you have to read on it outside to believe it). Navigation is by the joystick buttons although it does take a little getting used to. I own an EeePC and an Aspire One and they are clunky in comparison (I don't even consider classic laptops). Disclaimer: I am a participant in the Sugar Labs project which creates the software for the XO-1, so I am very biased. Sean. On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Brian Butterworth briant...@freeview.tv wrote: It is very noticeable that WVM is not a DAB user... I was actually thinking of cross between a Kindle and an etch-a-sketch that can be dropped onto a road, get covered in cement dust and will still allow page 3 to be read. Something with an interface so simple that it can be operated by anyone in the pub and cheap enough to be given away with a few litres of petrol - or on the cover newspaper. This device would be good news for sales of toilet paper... 2009/3/17 Steve Jolly st...@jollys.org Brian Butterworth wrote: And then there's that gizmo, the one that can deliver the Sun to white van man cheaply and reliably. The radio? S - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Brian Butterworth wrote: It is very noticeable that WVM is not a DAB user... I was actually thinking of cross between a Kindle and an etch-a-sketch that can be dropped onto a road, get covered in cement dust and will still allow page 3 to be read.Something with an interface so simple that it can be operated by anyone in the pub and cheap enough to be given away with a few litres of petrol - or on the cover newspaper. I guess radio is inadequate for conveying page three content, but in the same way as a Times/Sky mash-up, I reckon a Sun/talk-radio mash-up might have potential - people in the trades tend to listen to a lot of radio. S - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: A key characteristic of a newspaper is that you can fold it up. Foldable or rollable screens may yet arrive in the next few years, I vaguely recall Samsung and Sony showing proof-of-concept and prototypes the last year. If I get my fish chips wrapped in a Kindle I will be really annoyed. ;-) I like e-reading on the OLPC XO-1 which is small, light, and ruggedized (it's for kids), twists and folds flat screen out, and in direct sunlight switches to very high resolution black and white (you have to read on it outside to believe it). Navigation is by the joystick buttons although it does take a little getting used to. I own an EeePC and an Aspire One and they are clunky in comparison (I don't even consider classic laptops). I'd gladly buy one as an ebook reader to help get those economics of scale working for OLPC, but... - Rob. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
It is very noticeable that WVM is not a DAB user... I was actually thinking of cross between a Kindle and an etch-a-sketch that can be dropped onto a road, get covered in cement dust and will still allow page 3 to be read.Something with an interface so simple that it can be operated by anyone in the pub and cheap enough to be given away with a few litres of petrol - or on the cover newspaper. This device would be good news for sales of toilet paper... 2009/3/17 Steve Jolly st...@jollys.org Brian Butterworth wrote: And then there's that gizmo, the one that can deliver the Sun to white van man cheaply and reliably. The radio? S - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
2009/3/17 Brian Butterworth briant...@freeview.tv: That was quick of them... Monday 12 May? Looks like you've been stealing others' intellectual property, Brian! :) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
It would be a fascinating thing to see how a Times / Sky TV News would work together on a single proposition and which brand considered themselves stronger and most relevant. ::: John O'Donovan ::: Chief Architect, BBC FMT Journalism ::: BBC Broadcast Centre ::: 201 Wood Lane, London W12 7TS ::: john.odono...@bbc.co.uk ::: http://www.bbc.co.uk http://www.bbc.co.uk/ From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 17 March 2009 10:08 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable That was quick of them... http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/12/thetimes.bskyb 2009/3/17 John O'Donovan john.odono...@bbc.co.uk I like Brian's suggestion of Times TV and Sky News in a newsroom mash-up. The thought has not passed them by entirely, though they offer different types of journalism and are also governed differently in their public accountability... http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/12/thetimes.bskyb --- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Sorry, I had a Brianstorm... 2009/3/17 Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com 2009/3/17 Brian Butterworth briant...@freeview.tv: That was quick of them... Monday 12 May? Looks like you've been stealing others' intellectual property, Brian! :) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Yes, it is indeed a pity that OLPC doesn't make XO-1s easily available outside of the annual G1G1 programme. However, that could change as they have recently decided to deploy widely in the USA and not just developing countries. I have two XO-1s from the previous G1G1s and a third I picked up on eBay. It's rather magical the way they look for and find each other in the mesh network. I've actually traveled with a pair instead of my usual laptop (the 2 XO-1s together aren't larger or heavier). The rabbit ear antennae pick up networks my other machines didn't know existed (although the EeePC was a contender). I have a Zoltan Zowii USB Ethernet adaptor (http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/2233561457/), works great it's supposed to be Wii-compatible too. Sean On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Rob Myers r...@robmyers.org wrote: On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: A key characteristic of a newspaper is that you can fold it up. Foldable or rollable screens may yet arrive in the next few years, I vaguely recall Samsung and Sony showing proof-of-concept and prototypes the last year. If I get my fish chips wrapped in a Kindle I will be really annoyed. ;-) I like e-reading on the OLPC XO-1 which is small, light, and ruggedized (it's for kids), twists and folds flat screen out, and in direct sunlight switches to very high resolution black and white (you have to read on it outside to believe it). Navigation is by the joystick buttons although it does take a little getting used to. I own an EeePC and an Aspire One and they are clunky in comparison (I don't even consider classic laptops). I'd gladly buy one as an ebook reader to help get those economics of scale working for OLPC, but... - Rob. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Network bridge when traveling with the kids... I have patched into the hotel Internet with the Ethernet adapter on one of the XO-1s then meshed them; I surfed on one while the kids surfed on the other (in the next room over), and when it was bedtime I knocked on the wall one minute before cutting the connnection. Parental control system! Unless of course there is an open wifi network in the neighborhood :-/ but since the Sugar Journal records the student's activity, they wouldn't get away with it for long :-) I heartily dislike using airport wifi with my usual laptop stuffed full of compromising documents (such as the next netbook I want to buy), while I surf without fear with the XO-1. Its range is fabulous. It's also easy to turn off the radio now before boarding a plane, the very first production version required a CLI command since most kids in African and South American villages don't have that problem often. Ruggedized: Having suffered a broken screen years ago by an overzealous security person (an ancestor of the netbook - the Compaq Contura Aero - on the left in this photo from last October: http://www.canalpda.com/files/images/2967213682_90a7ccf751_o.preview.jpg), I like that the XO-1 is waterproofed and tough. Small footprint (though larger than the recent netbooks because of the carrying handle) means it can coexist with a food tray. Also, security people tend to think you are less of a threat when toting a kid computer, especially with kids in tow. Although I have met lots of parents in airports as their kids join mine to see what games are on... Fast charging, and 2 XO-1s = double the battery time! XO-1s draw 5 watts and have between 2 and 4 hours of autonomy depending on the task. I recently picked up an external iPod-sized battery which is supposed to last 12 hours or so (I have to locate a connector). And a solar panel I got as a BP petrol station freebie which might work too. What I really want is the Freeplay hand crank (http://www.olpcnews.com/hardware/power_supply/olpc_power_xocto_plug_freeplay.html), that would keep the kids busy all right, an hour's autonomy per 10 minutes of cranking. But it has only been deployed in Peru I think. Sean On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Steve Jolly st...@jollys.org wrote: Sean DALY wrote: I have two XO-1s from the previous G1G1s and a third I picked up on eBay. It's rather magical the way they look for and find each other in the mesh network. I've actually traveled with a pair instead of my usual laptop (the 2 XO-1s together aren't larger or heavier). Do you get any interesting benefits from having 2 XOs instead of a single conventional laptop? It sounds like there ought to be some nifty possibilities... S - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
I would tend to agree with you Tom. The fun side of this discussion is that most of the opinions are factual, yet as with the press, many of them will not be true once these changes have passed, especially those with a spoonful of fear factor. I can remember the uproar in the Docklands when the newspapers moved from Fleet Street. I am still looking forward to the day when a collection of great journalists decide to work together, putting their skills online beyond the grasp of publishers and big business. I think we can all agree that the old model of organised news prompted via vested interest is becoming stale in what I hope is a better educated and intelligent world. That is the beauty of sharing online. with or without compensation. Not to stir up a huge nest, but I must also point out that for over a decade now the business community has watched the internet with a mixture of greed and confusion. At the same time, the speed of evolution has taken most by surprise. The BBC still suffers from this, in many areas. The current Banking crisis is a great example. The velocity within the market has allowed those with the knowledge to do some incredible things, whilst the majority of Boardrooms/Governments have sat back in wonder. Very soon, the generation at the top will be actually net literate, which will save us all! Meanwhile I am certain that quality will win eventually. In my sphere of the music industry, there are actually many more Artists now making money from performing and selling their music and they are mostly becoming enlightened by the fact that it can be done without interest from the major record labels. No amount of economic structure or business models can stop someone who is prepared to generate an audience through hard work. Although the antique system does try its hardest. I think it is a very exciting time for journalists. I get my reports delivered by email from all over the world. they mostly turn up on the TV news about a month later. I no longer have to buy a week's fish and chips paper covered in adverts to read some anonymous twaddle, a very British past-time, to find some interest still it is also true that the journalists who I read do not ask me to contribute to them as yet. I will be happy to in future. but I won't be paying the middle man again if I can help it. Regards Rich On 17 Mar 2009, at 09:58, Tom Morris wrote: On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:15, Rob Myers r...@robmyers.org wrote: That would be disastrous. In the UK this would preclude investigating anyone who has anything to do with the state in order to avoid endangering the university's funding. And in general it would turn journalism from the investigation of truth (or at least matters of popular interest) into just another academic postmodern solipsism. Say what you like about academia, but one of the things I most enjoy about reading academic journals is that there are absolutely no mentions of booze-addled Premier League footballers, Pete Doherty or Amy Winehouse's crackwhore antics, endless speculation about what the government will announce or coverage any of these seemingly surname-deprived people I see on the front of magazines (Cheryl, Paris, Britney, Nicole, Kerry, Katie, Peter etc.). I've never seen an academic journal attempt to incite the barely literate into attacking paediatricians. They also don't spend much time arguing about whether mediocre comedians should be fired because stupid people were offended by a phonecall. They don't spend much time bidding for ghoulish 'death rights' on a talentless Big Brother star. Nor do they print churnalism produced by PR flacks and endorsed by shady quacks and pseudoscientists. If someone claiming that gravity is just a scam by aliens, they don't put on the pretense of balance. In all the academic journals I peruse, I've yet to see Barley-esque blog posts about finding oneself by jet-setting of to India printed there for reasons only of nepotism. None of the academic journals I tend to read are managed by marketing arseholes who spend their days reading shitty blogs filled with dumbed-down, Digg-friendly top ten lists about SEO and viral social media. They don't find the need to get Gravity theorists and Intelligent Falling theorists in equal measure for 'fairness' or 'balance'. They also rarely ever need to uncritically print Number 10 or White House press releases for fear of losing access. Academic papers which don't clearly define what they are talking about tend to get rejected, while the media are free to use moronic generalisations like the public sphere (a term so broad that it covers absolutely everything except hiding under a duvet all day) or political correctness gone mad!. They don't waste tremendous amounts of money sending outside broadcast units out to stand around outside, say, a school to illustrate a report about that school. The difference
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Kevin Anderson wrote: funding - the licence fee. Commercial newspapers are finding their readership and advertising decline. Unless the licence fee were extended to a public service newspaper (highly unlikely), the BBC doesn't provide that much of a model that could easily be transferred to newspapers. I think that news.bbc.co.uk is already a public service newspaper - albeit one without a print edition. Robert (Jamie) Munro signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Bingo :) Regards, Dave On 16 Mar 2009, 11:45 AM, Robert (Jamie) Munro rjmu...@arjam.net wrote: Kevin Anderson wrote: funding - the licence fee. Commercial newspapers are finding their reade... I think that news.bbc.co.uk is already a public service newspaper - albeit one without a print edition. Robert (Jamie) Munro
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On 16 Mar 2009, 11:45 AM, Robert (Jamie) Munro rjmu...@arjam.net wrote: Kevin Anderson wrote: funding - the licence fee. Commercial newspapers are finding their reade... I think that news.bbc.co.uk is already a public service newspaper - albeit one without a print edition. Robert (Jamie) Munro There are an increasing number of newspapers in the US that are going paperless. The Christian Science Monitor was one of the first, a 'paper' in Kansas City Missouri. It looks like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will go that route. The PI in going that route is talking about reducing the newsroom staff from 170 to 22. I'm not going to argue that the old model needs to be preserved. It can't be. The economics don't work, and there is no alternative funding scheme public or private that can sustain several large newspaper newsrooms that existed. That's the fact that Clay highlighted, which is why it's valuable. Going back to some of the previous comments though, the resistance to the change wasn't just in the boardrooms, it was also in the newsrooms. Many print journalists resisted for a long time going digital so painting this as simply the plucky working stiffs versus the bastards in the boardroom with their 'profiteering' schemes to maximise returns for their shareholders really isn't accurate. There were a few digital pioneers, and some of the fiercest resistance we met wasn't from management but from fellow journalists who heaped scorn on us. I guess this is what irritates me slightly about this discussion. It's not a profit versus non-profit issue but rather about challenging a culture within journalism that always saw digital as inferior and resisted the shift to digital fiercely. Lisa Williams, the driving force behind placeblogger in the US, has drawn comparisons with the changes in the news industry to the changes in the software industry in the 1980s and early 1990s when large firms like IBM, Digital and others cast off lots of full time staff. And I agree with her that journalism will surive the death of its institutions: http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/04/journalism-will-survive-the-death-of-its-institutions005.html I like Clay's post, but he's also highlighting the uncertain position we're at in the middle of this revolution. Apart from the BBC provides a model, I haven't heard many other solutions offered up in this thread. And it must be said that even amongst public broadcasters, the BBC's model is unique and under threat. Yes, other countries have licence fees, but the level of funding that the BBC enjoys is the envy of public service broadcasters the world over. The BBC model isn't one that can be generalised. Yes, we're in a post-industrial era for journalism. That's been pretty clear to most of us who weren't wed to the old model. We don't really know what comes next. That's not a bad thing, and I've lived with this exciting uncertainty for all but two years of my 17 year career in journalism. But saying the BBC has a model that works doesn't really answer some of the challenges that news organisations and individual journalists are facing right now. best, k On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com wrote: Bingo :) Regards, Dave
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On 16/03/2009 11:39, Robert (Jamie) Munro rjmu...@arjam.net wrote: Kevin Anderson wrote: funding - the licence fee. Commercial newspapers are finding their readership and advertising decline. Unless the licence fee were extended to a public service newspaper (highly unlikely), the BBC doesn't provide that much of a model that could easily be transferred to newspapers. I think that news.bbc.co.uk is already a public service newspaper - albeit one without a print edition. Which made me think back to last November when the BBC Trust said: ³Our decision today to refuse permission for local video means that local newspapers and other commercial media can invest in their online services² .. and wonder what Mr Shirky would make of that. Gavin - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 12:45, Kevin Anderson global...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, we're in a post-industrial era for journalism. That's been pretty clear to most of us who weren't wed to the old model. We don't really know what comes next. There was a speech at SxSW on that - http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/2009/03/the-following-is-a-speech-i-gave-yesterday-at-the-south-by-southwest-interactive-festival-in-austiniif-you-happened-to-being.html To sum it up, you can look at what's happened to tech and (US) political news coverage over the last 20 years to get an idea of what's going to happen to all news coverage.
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
2009/3/16 Kevin Anderson global...@gmail.com: Going back to some of the previous comments though, the resistance to the change wasn't just in the boardrooms, it was also in the newsrooms. It strikes me as exceedingly likely that the bastards in the boardroom will be joined in the dole queue by the bastards in the newsroom who have been recycling press releases and heaping scorn on people who tried to keep up, instead of keeping up. I haven't heard many other solutions offered up in this thread. ... saying the BBC has a model that works doesn't really answer some of the challenges that news organisations and individual journalists are facing right now. The BBC model might well become more widespread when the other large beehive organisations collapse in the depression, and popular support for this communist evil ;-) emerges. For individuals, the solution is, they get another job to keep the bills paid, learn how internet marketing really works (which ought not to be too hard for those already expert at writing), continue to do journalism about what they love, and work hard at being worth it. They'll have to accept that everyone else will call them a blogger podcaster or video podcaster or something else that fails to see past the media form to the actual activity, and will fail to pay the social dividend of I work at Acme Media Corp. As you said, plenty won't like that social adjustment, but those who resist will be stuck with another job and not contunuing to do journalism. There have been _plenty_ of professional bloggers during the last few years, and some were not lone individuals but small groups. Of all the ones I've paid for, my favourite was Gruber, who offered for money a full-text RSS feed with a T shirt. My hope is that we'll get more stuff like MediaLens but outwards facing (who are also not traditionally funded, but who are indeed funded.) My hope with the change is that we'll get an answer to the questions MediaLens raise about the integrity of the profession. Cheers, Dave (personal opinon only) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com wrote: My hope with the change is that we'll get an answer to the questions MediaLens raise about the integrity of the profession. My hope is that with the change MediaLens will find something better to do. ;-P - Rob. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
All, I've been reading this thread with great interest and it seems to sum the whole current situation up rather well and I would add stuff but I've buggered my rotator cuff (apparently). The BBC being a public service newspaper - it is certainly a long way from the days of Ceefax and three-TV-bulletins-a-day. If you were an alien and looked at the internet news sites you would need to dig very deep to understand that the BBC was somehow different, especially from outside the UK. One thing I am wondering, will News International realise that The Times brand needs a TV channel more than BSkyB does? There could be such a cost-saving my merging Sky News with The Times, giving historic paper brand an instant global news TV presence. And then there's that gizmo, the one that can deliver the Sun to white van man cheaply and reliably. 2009/3/16 Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com Bingo :) Regards, Dave On 16 Mar 2009, 11:45 AM, Robert (Jamie) Munro rjmu...@arjam.net wrote: Kevin Anderson wrote: funding - the licence fee. Commercial newspapers are finding their reade... I think that news.bbc.co.uk is already a public service newspaper - albeit one without a print edition. Robert (Jamie) Munro -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
If you look at what The Sun does on mobile, it seems very geared up to getting 'white van man' to spend the odd £1 or £2 when he is sitting in his van bored. It certainly isn't what you'd call traditional public service broadcasting news, but it seems very cleverly targeted at their market. all the best, martin 2009/3/16 Brian Butterworth briant...@freeview.tv: All, I've been reading this thread with great interest and it seems to sum the whole current situation up rather well and I would add stuff but I've buggered my rotator cuff (apparently). The BBC being a public service newspaper - it is certainly a long way from the days of Ceefax and three-TV-bulletins-a-day. If you were an alien and looked at the internet news sites you would need to dig very deep to understand that the BBC was somehow different, especially from outside the UK. One thing I am wondering, will News International realise that The Times brand needs a TV channel more than BSkyB does? There could be such a cost-saving my merging Sky News with The Times, giving historic paper brand an instant global news TV presence. And then there's that gizmo, the one that can deliver the Sun to white van man cheaply and reliably. 2009/3/16 Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com Bingo :) Regards, Dave On 16 Mar 2009, 11:45 AM, Robert (Jamie) Munro rjmu...@arjam.net wrote: Kevin Anderson wrote: funding - the licence fee. Commercial newspapers are finding their reade... I think that news.bbc.co.uk is already a public service newspaper - albeit one without a print edition. Robert (Jamie) Munro -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 -- Martin Belam - http://www.currybet.net - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
2009/3/16 Brian Butterworth briant...@freeview.tv: One thing I am wondering, will News International realise that The Times brand needs a TV channel more than BSkyB does? Hopefully not, because that would be an excellent idea for them to do so :) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
I can't leave that comment unchallenged, Dave. To summarise then, the bastards in the newsroom should go get another job to pay the bills so that they can support their journalism in their spare time, sort themselves out and learn up about internet marketing and the brave new world. Seriously? I'll pass those thoughts on to my journalistic colleagues, but I don't think that is the future. What will emerge will be based on many factors that are tricky to predict, but the process of change is a bit clearer. What people like about Newspapers will govern the positive moves, the forward thinking changes, and technology will accentuate those thoughts. For example, thinking about printed Newspapers, people like to read the news on the way to work. When a digital model effectively replaces the simplicity of accessing Journalism in a printed form, in a varied and moving environment like travelling to work then these people will stop buying newspapers. It's a wasteful and expensive way to get the news anyway. Will this mean that the Guardian or other newspapers stop printing their content on paper? Maybe. It doesn't mean they cease to exist though. Some people just want the facts. Some enjoy the editorial stance of a paper and the detailed opinion and featured editorial viewpoints. Some just want Page 3. Some just want the crossword. There are many reasons why people buy a Newspaper and there is no doubt Newspapers will need to adapt, but their death is not a certainty. Think about who buys a Newspaper and why. Maybe many of us here are not the target audience anyway, even before the internet provided an alternative distribution model. I like Brian's suggestion of Times TV and Sky News in a newsroom mash-up. The thought has not passed them by entirely, though they offer different types of journalism and are also governed differently in their public accountability... http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/12/thetimes.bskyb The pressure of change is immense, but the inertia is also a powerful force and it's always useful to remember that TV did not (yet) kill Cinema and Video did not kill the Radio Star. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWtHEmVjVw8 Enjoy before YouTube takes it down as the old and new models collide elsewhere...( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7942045.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7942045.stm ) Of course, though people may stop wanting to pay for Newspapers, Metro has proved you can distribute the physical newspaper for free. On my commute it is quite hard to get to work without reading Metro... There is a new exciting model out there that will deliver content of interest and preference to me, my favourite journalists packaged, what my social network likes and reinforce my own biased viewpoints. And works on the train. And challenges my thinking on a Sunday afternoon with a mass of thought provoking features and ideas carefully brought together. Not found it yet. Well played Mr Shirky. Promoting Journalism through the discussion of it's death... Cheers, jod From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk on behalf of Dave Crossland Sent: Mon 16/03/2009 14:41 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable 2009/3/16 Kevin Anderson global...@gmail.com: Going back to some of the previous comments though, the resistance to the change wasn't just in the boardrooms, it was also in the newsrooms. It strikes me as exceedingly likely that the bastards in the boardroom will be joined in the dole queue by the bastards in the newsroom who have been recycling press releases and heaping scorn on people who tried to keep up, instead of keeping up. I haven't heard many other solutions offered up in this thread. ... saying the BBC has a model that works doesn't really answer some of the challenges that news organisations and individual journalists are facing right now. The BBC model might well become more widespread when the other large beehive organisations collapse in the depression, and popular support for this communist evil ;-) emerges. For individuals, the solution is, they get another job to keep the bills paid, learn how internet marketing really works (which ought not to be too hard for those already expert at writing), continue to do journalism about what they love, and work hard at being worth it. They'll have to accept that everyone else will call them a blogger podcaster or video podcaster or something else that fails to see past the media form to the actual activity, and will fail to pay the social dividend of I work at Acme Media Corp. As you said, plenty won't like that social adjustment, but those who resist will be stuck with another job and not contunuing to do journalism. There have been _plenty_ of professional bloggers during the last few years, and some were not lone individuals but small groups
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On 15/3/09 02:32, Andy Halsall wrote: I concur with his viewpoint that business models are being broken faster than new ones can be invented. Business models and distribution methods, the demand for high quality content however remains constant Really? Do we have metrics...? I'd love to see evidence for this intuition. I suppose whatever numbers one had, a chart over time could be made to look constant by making sure the definition of high quality was relative to some notion of current context. cheers, Dan -- http://danbri.org/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On 15/3/09 02:12, Sean DALY wrote: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/ I was fascinated by this piece. Example: Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. Related theme in Juan Cole's blog recently, http://www.juancole.com/2009/03/end-of-newspapers-or-is-there.html ... suggesting journalism as a professional practice might find a home within universities. cheers, Dan -- http://danbri.org/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
As an American who worked for the BBC for eight years, it's interesting to see some of the comments here and say that they aren't entirely accurate. It's not correct to conflate PBS and NPR. Although both public, they are funded with slightly different mechanisms and are different organisationally because Republicans felt that TV was more threatening than radio when the two organisations were being established. NPR has its own central production operations. PBS does not. PBS grew out of educational television, and it shows. As for NPR being too 'worthy', it really depends. Unlike the BBC with national stations, NPR member stations are pretty diverse. The typical NPR station used to be classical music and news, but that format is losing traction. If you listen to KCRW out of Santa Monica, some of their programming makes Radio 1 look pretty staid. This American Life, one of my personal favouriate programmes, is excellent, laid-back and doesn't have equivalent on British radio. Apart from the classical stations, NPR stations are edgy and indie compared to Radio 4.This is all to say. The US is a big country, and NPR stations are very diverse. The BBC and NPR are products of their own cultures. As for Clay's piece, it's one of the best of a kind. I would say that much of the discussion here is confusing public funding with a business model. Comparing newspapers, which I've worked for the in the past and work for now, to a publicly funded radio and TV network is comparing apples and oranges. The BBC has had a relatively stable source of funding - the licence fee. Commercial newspapers are finding their readership and advertising decline. Unless the licence fee were extended to a public service newspaper (highly unlikely), the BBC doesn't provide that much of a model that could easily be transferred to newspapers. best, k* Kevin Anderson * standard disclaimer about these views being my own and not my employer's applies. On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Rob Myers r...@robmyers.org wrote: Dan Brickley wrote: journalism as a professional practice might find a home within universities. That would be disastrous. In the UK this would preclude investigating anyone who has anything to do with the state in order to avoid endangering the university's funding. And in general it would turn journalism from the investigation of truth (or at least matters of popular interest) into just another academic postmodern solipsism. - Rob.
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On Sunday 15 March 2009 07:45:27 Dan Brickley wrote: On 15/3/09 02:32, Andy Halsall wrote: I concur with his viewpoint that business models are being broken faster than new ones can be invented. Business models and distribution methods, the demand for high quality content however remains constant Really? Do we have metrics...? I'd love to see evidence for this intuition. I suppose whatever numbers one had, a chart over time could be made to look constant by making sure the definition of high quality was relative to some notion of current context. Ha, no. I think it is something that would be rather difficult to determine statistically in any case. So it would seem that I have made the claim based on a mixture of intuition and hope... That being said, I have found, when reading certain social networking sites, that mixture of decent journalism and sensationalism seem to ensure that others read and positively comment on any given article. Of course in those cases decent journalism has to compete with things like cute pictures of kittens, but still, it might indicate that people are still prefer to read things that are well written and researched rather, even if they do on occasion lack the substance and importance one would hope for. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
2009/3/15 Kevin Anderson global...@gmail.com: As for Clay's piece, it's one of the best of a kind. I would say that much of the discussion here is confusing public funding with a business model. I think the phrase business model is colloquially used as funding model for people for whom the Internet is dissolving the funding model they previously relied upon rather than profiteering scheme for shareholders :-) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On Sunday 15 March 2009 14:55:43 Dave Crossland wrote: 2009/3/15 Kevin Anderson global...@gmail.com: As for Clay's piece, it's one of the best of a kind. I would say that much of the discussion here is confusing public funding with a business model. I think the phrase business model is colloquially used as funding model for people for whom the Internet is dissolving the funding model they previously relied upon rather than profiteering scheme for shareholders I think business model is the right term when talking about how something is going to make money, to me it seems to include distribution, revenue generation, and operations in general. What people seem to miss is that when they want to take advantage of a new method of distribution, they need to make allowances for it in other areas. The classic example of this is the Music business, when moving from a physical distribution model (CD's) to an online one (downloads) they, initially at least, assumed that they could continue to do what they were doing in the physical sphere, charge £9.99 for a singe, £20+ for an album, only allow one copy (utilising whatever DRM scheme was flavour of the week) and pass on the same money to the artists (less breakages...) and no one would care. They were clearly wrong, people didn't want to pay inflated prices for something that only worked under certain conditions, especially not when they could rip their existing music collection (which hadn't really been easily possible in previous changes, from Record to tape, or tape to CD). So rather than being able to charge everyone to gain access to their existing record collections again (as they had essentially been able to do previously) they were faced with a decline in sales, and a model that was being challenged by the fact many people were happy to swap copies of music without restriction. They failed to adjust their business model along with everything else, and failed to deal with the threat they faced from outside. It is the same with almost anything that can be distributed electronically, and, I fear it will be along time until businesses realise just how different the world is when a perfect digital copy can be provided to thousands if not millions of people, with little or no investment. Of course in the music industry's case, the solution they sought was one of legislation, not something that endeared them to their previous and potential customer bases. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
2009/3/15 Andy Halsall andyhals...@ictsc.com: On Sunday 15 March 2009 14:55:43 Dave Crossland wrote: 2009/3/15 Kevin Anderson global...@gmail.com: As for Clay's piece, it's one of the best of a kind. I would say that much of the discussion here is confusing public funding with a business model. I think the phrase business model is colloquially used as funding model for people for whom the Internet is dissolving the funding model they previously relied upon rather than profiteering scheme for shareholders I think business model is the right term when talking about how something is going to make money, But make money for whom? Those doing the activity at the core of the profession - in the case of newspapers, the reporters; in the case of music, the artists - or for those involved in the profession in roles peripheral to it's core, and shareholders? We should be talking about new models for employing reporters rather than resuscitating old models for employing publishers; the more time we waste fantasizing about magic solutions for the latter problem, the less time we have to figure out real solutions to the former one. - http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont-save-publishers/ to me it seems to include distribution, revenue generation, and operations in general. What people seem to miss is that when they want to take advantage of a new method of distribution, they need to make allowances for it in other areas. The internet takes care of distribution and operations in general because, the people formerly known as the audience do the bulk of distribution for you and software takes the labour out of general operations. I fear it will be along time until businesses realise just how different the world is when a perfect digital copy can be provided to thousands if not millions of people, with little or no investment. The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone? - Eben Moglen, 2001 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2263095526020953463 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On Sun, 2009-03-15 at 16:36 +, Dave Crossland wrote: But make money for whom? Those doing the activity at the core of the profession - in the case of newspapers, the reporters; in the case of music, the artists - or for those involved in the profession in roles peripheral to it's core, and shareholders? We should be talking about new models for employing reporters rather than resuscitating old models for employing publishers; the more time we waste fantasizing about magic solutions for the latter problem, the less time we have to figure out real solutions to the former one. - http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont-save-publishers/ I've been working as an online journalist since 1996, and I think all of us (in journalism) are trying to figure out one thing: How do we support journalism (and by extension the journalists who do it)? We're not talking about keeping the publishers in a state in which they have become accustomed. Everyone in my patch is talking about how to keep the lights on and keep the bills paid - mostly our own. I've been operating on the assumption for the last few years that we're entering a post-industrial era for journalism. Mass media has been fragmenting for decades now, and the internet is only part of that fragmentation. I actually don't worry about journalism. It will get done, but as someone who is a journalist and has many friends in the business, I do worry about how the journalists make the transition. We will have a lot fewer professional journalists. That much is obvious. That doesn't necessarily mean we'll have less journalism. But I think Clay was pretty accurate in that we're in the middle of this revolution and the answers aren't all clear. But Dave, taking a swing from the barricades at the profiteering publishers sounds lovely but it comes close to ignoring the pain and economic dislocation that journalists are going through at the moment. We're not the only ones hurting in this recession, but reporters are going to have difficulty replacing their income in this recession from their previously full-time jobs with a totally digital model that is still in the making. best, k - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Kevin Charman-Anderson wrote: But Dave, taking a swing from the barricades at the profiteering publishers sounds lovely but it comes close to ignoring the pain and economic dislocation that journalists are going through at the moment. We're not the only ones hurting in this recession, but reporters are going to have difficulty replacing their income in this recession from their previously full-time jobs with a totally digital model that is still in the making. Stockholm syndrome for the people who didn't pay journalists on time or for the submitted word count under the old model won't help with these facts. If we have to live in capitalist society then we have to listen to the market. And the market says that some writers can make a living from a dedicated readership, advertising, sponsorship, merchandise and subscriptions. Pretty much the same as for the newspapers that town criers and local gossips couldn't compete with... - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
I would venture to add it's even worse for print journalists, who generally speaking in the past had a stressful day to make deadline then time off was time off. Nowadays, print journalists covering a beat are often expected to file online from wherever they are if there is breaking news in their sector. I myself am less worried about the number and volume of newspapers (after all, New York supported over twenty penny dailies in the 19th century), and more concerned with how journalists will make a living. There is a great advantage to open space newsrooms: cub reporters learn from the grizzlies. On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Kevin Charman-Anderson global...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, 2009-03-15 at 16:36 +, Dave Crossland wrote: But make money for whom? Those doing the activity at the core of the profession - in the case of newspapers, the reporters; in the case of music, the artists - or for those involved in the profession in roles peripheral to it's core, and shareholders? We should be talking about new models for employing reporters rather than resuscitating old models for employing publishers; the more time we waste fantasizing about magic solutions for the latter problem, the less time we have to figure out real solutions to the former one. - http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont-save-publishers/ I've been working as an online journalist since 1996, and I think all of us (in journalism) are trying to figure out one thing: How do we support journalism (and by extension the journalists who do it)? We're not talking about keeping the publishers in a state in which they have become accustomed. Everyone in my patch is talking about how to keep the lights on and keep the bills paid - mostly our own. I've been operating on the assumption for the last few years that we're entering a post-industrial era for journalism. Mass media has been fragmenting for decades now, and the internet is only part of that fragmentation. I actually don't worry about journalism. It will get done, but as someone who is a journalist and has many friends in the business, I do worry about how the journalists make the transition. We will have a lot fewer professional journalists. That much is obvious. That doesn't necessarily mean we'll have less journalism. But I think Clay was pretty accurate in that we're in the middle of this revolution and the answers aren't all clear. But Dave, taking a swing from the barricades at the profiteering publishers sounds lovely but it comes close to ignoring the pain and economic dislocation that journalists are going through at the moment. We're not the only ones hurting in this recession, but reporters are going to have difficulty replacing their income in this recession from their previously full-time jobs with a totally digital model that is still in the making. best, k - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
I concur with his viewpoint that business models are being broken faster than new ones can be invented. Business models and distribution methods, the demand for high quality content however remains constant, as long as that doesn't change there will always be a need for journalists, writers, photographers and all the people who support them. However problem with generating revenue from this work, beyond recognition at least, will only get harder. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
I waited for him to cite the example of the BBC as a model that could survive the Internet revolution... but he didn't, surely because in the USA there is no equivalent. To be fair he does mention NPR as a successful model (or at least a less unsuccessful one). National Public Radio is a radio network funded by donations and voluntary subscriptions (with some government funding as well). PBS TV has the same funding model, and both services are regarded as the main source of highbrow content in the US. Americans routinely think of the BBC as the PBS/NPR of the UK, which is both gratifying (they are associated with high quality media) and frustrating (PBS/NPR content can often be seen as too worthy or righteous, and equating the two doesn't convey the sheer scale and scope of the BBC) Brendan. Sean DALY wrote: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/ I was fascinated by this piece. Example: Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. I waited for him to cite the example of the BBC as a model that could survive the Internet revolution... but he didn't, surely because in the USA there is no equivalent. I concur with his viewpoint that business models are being broken faster than new ones can be invented. Sean. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
2009/3/15 Andy Halsall andyhals...@ictsc.com: I concur with his viewpoint that business models are being broken faster than new ones can be invented. Business models and distribution methods, the demand for high quality content however remains constant, as long as that doesn't change there will always be a need for journalists, writers, photographers and all the people who support them. However problem with generating revenue from this work, beyond recognition at least, will only get harder. There will always be a need for people doing journalism, writing well-informed opinions, taking the right photos at the right time in the right place. But we don't need other people to support us do these things any more. So as it gets harder to generate revenue from these activities, the people who support the activities and turn them into 'work' - which directly means, the organisations who support and employ the activity-participants - are collapsing in the vacuum. And this also means the demand for high quality content is changing; because what defined 'high quality' is changing. Sharable and modifiable are now crucial parts of what make up high quality, and HD quality broadcast footage is facing stiff competition from HD quality off-my-pocket-camera. Cheers, Dave - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Yes, quite, when I said no equivalent I was precisely thinking of the gargantuan scale of the BBC (with correspondents worldwide!) compared to PBS which has to pitifully beg viewers for contributions all the time... Sean On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 2:54 AM, Brendan Quinn brendan.qu...@bbc.co.uk wrote: I waited for him to cite the example of the BBC as a model that could survive the Internet revolution... but he didn't, surely because in the USA there is no equivalent. To be fair he does mention NPR as a successful model (or at least a less unsuccessful one). National Public Radio is a radio network funded by donations and voluntary subscriptions (with some government funding as well). PBS TV has the same funding model, and both services are regarded as the main source of highbrow content in the US. Americans routinely think of the BBC as the PBS/NPR of the UK, which is both gratifying (they are associated with high quality media) and frustrating (PBS/NPR content can often be seen as too worthy or righteous, and equating the two doesn't convey the sheer scale and scope of the BBC) Brendan. Sean DALY wrote: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/ I was fascinated by this piece. Example: Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. I waited for him to cite the example of the BBC as a model that could survive the Internet revolution... but he didn't, surely because in the USA there is no equivalent. I concur with his viewpoint that business models are being broken faster than new ones can be invented. Sean. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
This is purely my personal opinion. The BBC has a huge influence in the global society. We all know that.Next question? Sam Mbale Mpelembe Network http://www.mpelembe.net Follow me on http://twitter.com/mpelembe On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com wrote: 2009/3/15 Andy Halsall andyhals...@ictsc.com: I concur with his viewpoint that business models are being broken faster than new ones can be invented. Business models and distribution methods, the demand for high quality content however remains constant, as long as that doesn't change there will always be a need for journalists, writers, photographers and all the people who support them. However problem with generating revenue from this work, beyond recognition at least, will only get harder. There will always be a need for people doing journalism, writing well-informed opinions, taking the right photos at the right time in the right place. But we don't need other people to support us do these things any more. So as it gets harder to generate revenue from these activities, the people who support the activities and turn them into 'work' - which directly means, the organisations who support and employ the activity-participants - are collapsing in the vacuum. And this also means the demand for high quality content is changing; because what defined 'high quality' is changing. Sharable and modifiable are now crucial parts of what make up high quality, and HD quality broadcast footage is facing stiff competition from HD quality off-my-pocket-camera. Cheers, Dave - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
