Category: new media

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Can Anyone be a Journalist?

By now you may have heard the term “citizen journalist.” The idea is that as newspapers and news magazine fold, professional journalists will go the way of the dinosaur. In their place will rise up a league of citizen journalists who will report, write and publish the new news. Because the barrier to entry is so low, anyone with a computer and some rudimentary computer skills can own and operate the “press.” Thanks to the internet they can also reach a global audience.

We already have citizens doing the jobs of professionals. Typically they do the job for less, often for free, and the final product often reflects that. We have citizen barbers. You can recognize their kids by their trendy, non-symmetrical haircuts. We have citizen graphic artists…who feature their work on the sides of railroad cars and vacant buildings. And we have citizen pharmacists…sometimes we refer to them as drug dealers. Okay, I’m being just a bit facetious and completely unfair, but you get my point. If everyone could do it, and do a good job, there would be no need for professionals. So my question is: can anyone be a news reporter…and if so, why have we had professional journalists all these years?

Personal note to Dr. Ross…just playing devil’s advocate for a moment. 😀

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Doritos Ads Win Viewer and Recall Metrics

If you watched the Superbowl last weekend you probably saw a few ads for Doritos. According to Nielsen, the most watched TV ad of all time, (with 116.2 million viewers),  featured a Samurai attack with a Dorito chip.  Doritos ads also took the top three slots for most-recalled spots and four spots in the top-ten most-liked category.

What you may also have heard is that the Doritos ads were consumer-generated spots. CGM (Consumer Generated Media) has been generating buzz for several years…all the while the Media Emperor’s cloths have begun to look a little thread-bare. The idea behind CGM is that individual consumers often possess great talent and expertise, and if you can just give them an opening, they may deliver the goods. Now, mind you, TV spot production is a big-budget undertaking requiring exceptional creative and technical expertise and should not be attempted by amateurs. In the case of the Doritos ads, the ideas, not the execution, were consumer-generated.

But according to MIT’s Ad Lab blog, the proverbial “average Joe” behind the winning spots is not as average as we might first believe. According to Ad Lab, this year’s winners, and winners from previous years, have come from the ranks of creative professions very near to the TV advertising business. Some of them have been film makers, producers, musicians, and even creative directors. For now, at least, the storybook ending where the little guy finally bests the Madison Avenue advertising machine remains, well, a fairytale.

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Avatar Sinks Titanic and Moviegoers Turn Blue

A blockbuster is, by definition, either a large bomb (as in explosive) or a huge media sensation.  The sci-fi movie Avatar fits comfortably in that second category where it has been making news by racking up some impressive numbers….over $600 million domestically and more than $2 billion world-wide to be precise. As of late January, director James Cameron is now the proud owner of the top TWO spots on the all-time, world-wide, box office receipt ledger board with Avatar at #1 and Titanic at #2. The exceptional performance of Avatar is not only accounted for by strong ticket sales, but also reflects the additional revenue generated by the 3-D screens. Because the film continues to attract movie-goers the final total may be much higher.

But there is another story here that may be more interesting than the record receipts. According to news reports, the stars of Avatar are not the only creatures feeling a little blue. CNN and Huffington Post reported that fans of Avatar are experiencing a let-down (“Avatar-induced depression”) when they leave Pandora…er, I mean, when they exit the theater. It seems that the film is such a powerful experience for many fans that they are having difficulty readjusting to the boring reality that defines their humdrum existence on planet Earth. Wow…sounds like somebody needs to get a life!

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Social Networking Contest Contains Lessons for News Media

Last week the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the folks responsible for bringing us the Internet, sponsored a contest that may result in some interesting data about how we use social media to gather and disseminate information. The goal of the contest was to provide the location (longitude and latitude) of 10 red, eight-foot-wide weather balloons that had been placed at various locations within the continental US. It took the team from MIT just 9 hours to win the contest, and the $40K prize, using a diverse strategy combining social media collaboration with reward programs. But some of the teams also took a walk on the dark side when they employed deception intended to sidetrack competing teams.

So, what does this have to do with media and journalism? Think of every breaking news story as a contest. The first journalistic team to crack the story and file the report is rewarded with ratings/readership/reputation, etc., all of which translates into monetary rewards for the winning team. How does NBC,  CNN, the BBC, or People Magazine “scoop” the competition when they’re working a breaking story? They may try to buy an “exclusive” interview with a key player. When President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX, Dan Rather, a reporter for CBS, became aware of Zapruder’s 8mm film of the assassination. He asked for permission from the top CBS brass to buy the film for $10,ooo, but that turned out to be too little, too late. Zapruder had already sold the film and rights to Life magazine for $150,000! And if you think that’s a lot of money, the 6-foot long strip of celluloid with 494 frames, lasting 26 seconds, was later purchased by the US government for $16 million!

Today, news organizations may use social media networking to mobilize reporters and stringers who work for the news organization and perhaps even try to recruit “citizen journalists” who may have inside information. Twitter and other social media tools can be used to disseminate information and to recruit collaborators.

The DARPA contest may actually provide some insight into the process of collaboration and even intentional deception using social media. Hopefully the news media are above floating fake balloons to try to fool the competition. But sadly, whenever money is at stake there are people willing to bend the rules.

Read more, or listen to the story, at the NPR website.

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Tiger’s Public Transgressions

Many of us wish this story would just go away, but it won’t…so here are a few lessons for students of the media.

#1: ALL celebrity endorsement deals come with some risk. If you had asked executives at Nike, Gatorade, etc. whether there was risk associated with hiring Tiger Woods as a celebrity spokesperson, they likely would have replied that the risk was minimal. But if they thought it was zero, they were wrong. Will it do long-term damage to their brands and to the Tiger Woods brand? It is too soon to tell, but there will be fall out for Tiger and every other celebrity that has a “squeaky clean” image.

#2: Crisis Management PR has changed dramatically in the age of cable news, the blogosphere, and the twitterverse. PR agents have got to get ahead of the story and be much more transparent than in the past. Remember, the media (both traditional and new media) exist to uncover and distribute “dirt” and attempts to stonewall will only compound the problem.

#3: As we’ve been reminded recently by the parents of balloon boy and the White House party crashing Salahi’s, reality TV culture makes people do crazy things for their 15 minutes of fame/notoriety. Anyone remotely “connected” to the Tiger Woods drama will see opportunity to cash in by playing the tabloid media. Releasing cell phone messages and scheduling press conferences strings along the media and extends their window of opportunity.

#4: <editorial warning>There is no such thing as a private “transgression.”</editorial warning>

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One more about Accuracy…for now

apOkay, I don’t want to beat a dead horse or overstay my time on this particular soapbox, but here’s one more article (this one from the AP) that raises serious concerns about recent misfires in major media coverage. The following quote, from the end of the linked article, captures the essence of the change that is sweeping the news business…pushed largely by the 24-hour news cycle of cable TV and the minute-by-minute updating possible on the web.

Nowhere was the new landscape more vividly illustrated than this month when Nick Denton, chief of the irreverent Web site Gawker.com, issued a memo scolding his staff for a few cases “where we’ve thought WAY too much before publishing” a story.

Get something out fast with what we know, Denton wrote. We can always update.

“At some media organizations, you might get rapped for running a premature story,” he wrote. “At Gawker Media, you’ll lose way more points for being scooped on a story you had in your hands.”

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Accuracy of News Media

One of the most sacred tenets of journalism is under fire. Recent surveys point to disturbing trends with regard to perceived accuracy and demand for accuracy from our news media.

According to recent findings by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the public’s assessment of the accuracy of news is at its lowest level in more than two decades. Less than 30% of Americans surveyed believe that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. That is a dramatic reversal from 1985 when 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate.

What may be more disturbing is the view, held by some, that consumers of web news prefer speed over accuracy.  According to consultants to The Columbus Dispatch, readers prefer getting the information sooner rather than later, even if it means that there is a greater chance that the information is inaccurate. These ideas–that readers want to be “part of the reporting process” and “over time, the truth will come out”–are at odd with one of the sacred cows of journalism.  The mantra has been repeated over and over…you’ve got to get it fast, but you’ve got to get it right. Does that mean that you wait to publish until you’re 99.9% sure of the accuracy of your story? That may depend on whether you want to be known for scoops or for consistently reliable information. If you’re an old-school journalist it may be that your commitment to accuracy is what sets you apart from the bloggers, citizen journalists, and advocates who are willing to take more risks.

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$6 Billion for Broadband in Obama’s Stimulus Package

BroadbandOne of the first tasks for the new administration is to propose and pass a stimulus package to kick-start the ailing economy. One small part of the package currently being proposed is about $6,000,000,000 for broadband internet service, particularly for the 7-8% of Americans living in rural and underserved areas where broadband is unavailable and dial-up connections provide only 56 kbps. The US has already fallen behind the developed world and stands at 15th in terms of number of broadband subscribers per 100 residents. According to a recent report, this is critically important because broadband creates jobs. According to the Brookings Institution, for every percentage point increase in broadband adoption, approximately 293,000 jobs are added.

Not only are we lagging behind in the global race for connectivity, our broadband connections are often much slower than what is available in other countries. According to one report, the median download speed in the U.S. is 2.35 Mbps. Compare that to Japan whose median speed is an amazing 63.60 Mbps. And while fiber optic to the home (FTTH) is one approach to increasing bandwidth, new technologies in the works for cable modems offer great promise at much lower cost. Using a technology called Docsis 3, several cable TV channels can be combined to offer Internet service approaching 1 gigabit per second. At that speed you could download a two hour Hollywood movie in well under a minute. But while entertainment media is the driving force behind broadband adoption, the stakes are high for less exciting, but more important tasks. Telemedicine,  better access to online education and telecommuting are clear benefits that stimulate the economy when high-speed connectivity is universally available.

One last related issue is the battle over network neutrality. This is the idea that digital data delivered over public and private networks should not be restricted, regulated or controlled except those controls that address legal issues such as copyright infringement and other illegal actions. It is very possible that this $6 billion infusion will come with requirements that the major telecommunications businesses that own the fiber optic networks, and ISPs, practice net neutrality.

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Suicide on the Small Screen

In recent days two events have focused our attention on the sometimes volatile combination of teen angst and social media websites. The first was the “broadcast” suicide of a 19-year-old man who took an overdose of prescription medications while a chat room of onlookers watched his live web cam stream. Some of the viewers urged Abraham Biggs on–either indifferent to his threats to take his life or willing to take the chance that he was bluffing. Perhaps it is not much different from sidewalk gawkers calling out to a would-be suicide victim to “jump” and “get it over with,” but it still suggests a calloused indifference and sense of alienation that comes from a failed sense of community.

The second event was the jury trial of the woman accused of cyber-bullying in the Megan Meier case. The internet hoax resulted in 13-year-old Megan taking her life after being dumped by a fictitious male character created by the 49-year-old defendant Lori Drew. While found not-guilty of violating the more severe Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Drew was found guilty of three minor offenses including the violation of MySpace’s terms-of-service agreement which prohibits the use of phony names and the harassment of other users. Still, Drew could face up to three years in prison for the conviction. The trial highlighted the fact that we currently have few law-enforcement tools designed to address these new forms of computer crimes, and we’re likely to see new cyber-bulling legislation enacted in response.

These sad episodes of teen suicide raise serious questions about the porous nature of the LCD screen that separates our online and off-line lives. Megan’s response to a make-believe “boyfriend” and forum members’ collective failure to respond to Abraham’s calls for help have this in common–both speak volumes about how we relate to others in virtual space and how those virtual relationships have life-changing, real-world consequences.

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Where’s my paper?

A student came by my office the other day to talk about the CSU Today newspaper. He wasn’t too happy that the newspaper was missing, in his opinion, a key ingredient…namely paper. If you’re new to campus you should know that the newspaper published by the Mass Communication department has evolved over the years from a weekly newspaper (printed on real paper) to an online paper that is updated on a more timely basis. In addition to the online news website, the department publishes a supplemental quarterly magazine (on glossy paper) in which feature stories are published.

This decision was made in response to two trends…1) increasing costs associated with printing and delivery of a traditional paper-based product, and 2), the movement by mainstream newspapers away from paper and towards electronic delivery. There will always be people who want to hold a “real” paper in their hands as they have their coffee each morning…but more and more that model is failing the sustainability test. Ink squirted on dead trees is a legacy medium that has greater environmental costs, greater production costs, a diminishing economic structure, and an aging user base. In short, the paper is dying.

Many of us who grew up reading a “paper” are sad to see this era come to an end…but the writing is on the wall, or perhaps I should say, the writing is on the screen.

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