Monday, November 29, 2004
TRACKING THE CHANGEThe Miami Herald carries a report on how the world is changing, part of which reads:
We may notice that more and more music, radio and TV are poking onto the Internet. But we don't really get it, not the big picture. In fact, the entire media landscape is undergoing basic, fundamental, change. A decade from now, much of what we take for granted will be morphed beyond recognition. What's vanishing is technical scarcity, and media franchises built on scarcity -- as most are -- will either remake themselves or die. The opinion piece, by Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, notes that if TV networks are to survive, they'll turn to the internet and broadband distribution in a big way, doing away with the need for local affiliate stations. Wasserman writes:
...surviving TV ex-affiliates will be local-content specialists, with intensely local-news and current-affairs programming the heart of their operations: From micro-coverage via C-SPAN-style narrowcasts of local government, to real-time traffic updates, to aggressive development of all manner of nonfiction programming, including weather, talk, sports, schools, condo and civic association politics, consumer affairs, even local music and arts. They would partner with other information providers -- the local business paper, alternative weekly, student press, community rags -- and become an online portal that links to coverage from parts of their communities that are now voiceless. This strategy would put affiliates on a collision course with metro newspapers, which are way ahead in becoming premier online local-news sources. But TV stations have the local franchise for pictures and sound. And that's where the online informational world is heading.
Wasserman may have the big picture right. It's likely those with the big bucks will continue to be big. But it seems to me, his analysis overlooks the possibility of other forces emerging, particularly those that can take advantage of the distributive nature of the net. |
PHONE TRICKSDrop a cellphone into the Samsung AnyCall Theatre (above), and it becomes a stereo and a (really small) TV. Yikes.
SOURCE: UNMEDIATED.ORG |
ALL THE NEWS......that's fit to recap. That seems to be the case so far with WikiNews, which has gone live. I randomly clicked through some stories on the front page today and found the listed sources were primarily either very familiar, like the New York Times, or mainstream, like Brazilian Radiobras. A couple of pieces listed bloggers as sources.
It's early days, but so far there's little sign of original journalism or, in fact, of anything I can't find at sites like Google News, or the front page of CNN or BBC. Whether it can develop as a platform for citizen journalism is still very much an open question. |
MULTIMEDIA CRITICALI point to a lot of multimedia content from this site, because I agree with Gary Robbins that it is essential to doing journalism.
The use of multimedia elements is crucial to successful online journalism, said Gary Robbins, print and online science editor of the Orange County Register. "The Web has profoundly changed our ability to tell stories and convey information," Robbins said. "We can blend sound, video, photos, animation and graphics, creating a seamless interactive package that gives readers many looks at their world."
A brief report on Robbins' thoughts about multimedia is at onlineJournalism.org. |
A CHILLING STORYThe New York Times published the chilling multimedia report A Hollowed City Sunday, one of the most effective multimedia pieces I've seen in some time. With narration by Michael Wines, the NYT bureau chief in Johannesberg, and writer Sharon LaFraniere, and photos by Jeffrey Barbee, the report tracks the devastation of AIDS in the Swaziland city of Lavumisa. A Hollowed City is a the companion piece to the article Hut by hut, AIDS steals life in a southern Africa town, which reports that two in five residents of Swaziland are HIV positive and the life expectancy in the country has plunged to 34.4 years. With reports like A Hollowed City, the NY TImes continues to write the standard for what makes effective multimedia reporting. (Note: registration required.)
SOURCE: JOE WEISS AT MULTIMEDIA STORYTELLING |
MSNBC GOES CITIZENMSNBC is turning to citizen journalism in a big way. Joe Trippi, the guy who started the reinvention of politics with his stint as Howard Dean's campaign manager, is driving the initiative. At MSNBC's web site, he writes:
This week we are going to make Citizen Journalist a regular part of MSNBC's coverage of events large and small. We will put most of the stories you file up on our Citizen Journalist Blog, and take the best reports and talk about them on the air. MSNBC used citizen journalists as part of its U.S. election coverage. In Trippi's Nov. 23 post, he suggested some "assignments" for the new reporting force including the war in Iraq and travel safety and security. Trippi:
We are all experts at something, so if you see a story you know something about or can add something in terms of helping people better understand the story or better understand why something is happening. Send us your insight. The Internet is empowering individuals to share information, news, and insight in a way that no other medium has empowered the individual in the past. At MSNBC we want to continue an experiment in Citizen Journalism that we started a few weeks ago and embrace the change the Internet can bring to the way we report things — and that experiment starts with you. MSNBC comes one of the biggest North American platforms yet to adopt citizen journalism on a continuing basis, and without the pitch for help being linked to a specific event.
SOURCE: UNMEDIATED.ORG |
GO CANADAThe CBC was the only organization to receive two awards at the recently announced Online Journalism Awards. Cyberjournalist.net reports:
CBC.ca's online newsroom won in the "specialty journalism" category for Canada Votes, its coverage of the federal election, and in the service journalism category for the Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) Database, a tri-medial project from the CBC News investigative unit. CBC.ca was also a finalist in the online commentary category for Blair Shewchuk's column "Words: Woes and Wonder." Judges called the Canada Votes project "breathtaking in its comprehensiveness" and noted that the ADR Database "performed an outstanding public service in bringing this information to the public."
The awards are one more indication that CBC has recognized the power of the internet and is using it exceedingly well. |
Last update: 12/1/04; 9:39:23 AM .
