Archive for the ‘Media’ Category
The Times, They Are A-Changing…
The 1960 televised debate between Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy was a turning point. It forever changed politics. The power of the visual image to emphasize sizzle over steak was initially a surprise to political scientists. Kennedy’s win, attributable to his superior performance in the debate, wasn’t supposed to happen.
And TV also changed the way Americans experienced the world. Suddenly, TV was the medium of social cohesion.
We watched as Walter Cronkite wiped a tear and announced to a stunned nation that President Kennedy had died.
We watched as Cronkite provided live commentary on the moon landing. And we watched as he pronounced the war in Vietnam unwinable. Vietnam became the first “living room war,” playing out on our TVs.
I believe that history will look back at the 2008 election and declare that it too represents a turning point. (more…)
When Blogs and Journalism Collide
The New York Times reported yesterday that a blogger, editor and writer, Joshua Micah Marshall from the Talking Points Memo, has been named the recipient of the 2007 George Polk Award for Legal Reporting. The award honors his reporting of the firings of eight United States attorneys, and, according to the announcement, his “tenancious investigative reporting sparked interest by the traditional news media and led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.” Quoted in the article, Marshal says, “I think of us as journalists; the medium we work in is blogging.”
The NYTimes article illustrates a few key trends:
- Further democratization of news. This is the “first Internet-only news operation to receive the Polk.” With today’s online media, journalism is further democratized, and people are reading, listening, sharing and following the news, no matter where it’s originating.
- No barriers. Internet-only news sites have the relative freedom of time and space to write continuing stories that build as the research and investigation builds, not just stories that start and end in one edition.
- We’re all in this together. This type of reporting combines three elements, pulling them together into one big picture: original reporting, reports from other news sites, and reports from readers. More on this in a minute.
- Influence goes both ways. And finally, blogs and online-only news sites are increasingly influencing the reporting of mainstream media publications. (See Brodeur’s survey summary from January 2008 on the influence of blogs on journalists.)
More on point 3: this style of journalism has been dubbed “link journalism” by blogger Scott Karp of the Publishing 2.0 blog, defined as “linking to other reporting on the web to enhance, complement, source, or add more context to a journalist’s original reporting.”
Karp’s discussion stems from the NYTimes ethics article on John McCain last week. JigSaw (via Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine) highlights how this kind of journalism makes reporting better, even for mainstream publications (and maybe especially when they get things wrong). In the context of a discussion that focused more on the reports and tips from readers aspect, Jarvis had previously described something like this as “networked journalism.”
This idea of networked journalism or link journalism goes beyond the “citizen journalist” phrase used to describe early bloggers, an idea that still puts the burden of production on a single individual or small group of individuals. Now, the new in news is as likely to come from the audience/readers of those blogs as from the bloggers themselves.
Photo credit: network by dsevilla
Something in the Media Air
There have been a number of developments in the media sphere this past week, some more high profile than others. What the following three do have in common is that mainstream media and social media are converging in ever increasing ways.
1. Yahoo! is feeling no love for Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid, and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. stepped forward to see if they could become the white knight to save Yahoo! In addition to the usual sources, I’ve been following the coverage over at All Things Digital. I particularly like the running coverage of the internal communications surrounding the deal, which is always a precarious balance during times like this. (And also illustrates that “internal communications” is increasingly an oxymoron.)
As a side note, I’m including this item for the week even though there’s been some debate whether Yahoo! is a media company, or something else. But that’s another discussion for another day…
2. For several years, we’ve heard that anyone and everyone can be a journalist. Now, we’re hearing that from journalists, which is a game-changing proposition. CNN launched a new, all user-generated news site called iReport.com this week. While CNN had been using user-generated submissions for a while (also under the iReport name), they only use items on CNN that have been selected and verified by an editor. The new site is all user-generated, all the time (with some minimal oversight for inappropriate content):
“Welcome to a brand new beta site for uncensored, user-powered news. CNN built the tools, you take it from there. All the stories here are user-generated and instant: CNN does not vet or verify their authenticity or accuracy before they post. The ones with the “On CNN” stamp have been vetted and used in CNN news coverage.”
As reported on Mediaweek.com, there are two competing angles to this development. On the one hand, using the CNN brand with unfiltered news risks damaging the credibility of the parent brand, which is “The Most Trusted Name in News,” (at least according to their tag line). On the other hand, as Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide, says in the article, “It starts with the audience…. Audiences are more and more comfortable participating in news. It’s a natural extension for us.” The question to be seen is if the balance between credibility and creativity will be possible.