ONA 2008: Repurposing

Here is some stream of consciousness from the ONA 2008:
Former BBA reporter-turned-academic Alfred Hermida lamented a stat that came out of the Online News Association 2008: all tv and print newsrooms are repurposing content from their traditional media for the Web. He asks if it is "time to end repurposing?" Obviously shoveling content in reality continues, but what about its usefulness?
I am not sure that we are considering this repurposing anymore. I am sitting in the LaTimes.com session where the organization is discussing how they streamlined their newsrooms. "We are trying to culturally change how we are doing things," said one member of their "Innovation Team." "There are no Web reporters. There are no print reporters. There are only reporters."
But there are different audience considerations here with different information channels, right? For example, at this Chicago Tribune multimedia editor I was talking to told me she writes four different headlines for every story: 1) for the home page; 2) for the inside page; 3) one for Google and 4) one for Digg. Can one reporter consider all these different kinds of audiences? Certainly it's not a ton more work to write different headlines for one story, but what about changing the format of your story (whatever media platform you choose)?

More notes from ONA 2008: BLOGGING

Thoughts on Blogging:

• Be specific, have a point
• Reference what others are saying about your topic (ie if you are writing about a speech, refer to what others said on their blogs or Twitter. Which means you need to know those venues and go to them.)
• Embed photos, video, LINKS
• Don't forget to have something to say.
• "A blog is a process for reporting, which might become a story."
• “A blog is not a noun. It is a verb”
• Don't just write the entry and forget about it. Go back and engage in the conversation.
  
• "It is a publishing format, not just a tool."
• KEEP IT SHORT.
  
• Linking is KEY to blogging.
• Blogging is not just about posting. It is about engaging as a writer, with audiences.
  
• And oh yeah, have a point.

Am Back! Let's just jump in with New Ad Models

I am in Washington D.C. at the 2008 Online News Association's annual conference listening to a panel on optimizing and monetizing news sites. The panelists are collectively calling for completely new ad models that are based on the audience, rather than the page views and content.

Online ad sales are way down this year so far, according to the panel manned by Joe Apprendi, the CEO of Collective Media, Ken Doctor, a News Industry Analyst of Outsell, Mark Rose, the director for Sales Strategy at the Tribune Company, and Bob Benz, a partner at Maroon Ventures:

• The entire industry in first half of 2008 is at $38 billion in rev. and that is the lowest it's been at since 1996.
• Ad reps need to cut the cord from traditional legacy ad models.
• Instead, they should be looking at INTERACTIVE ad sales and AUDIENCE-CENTRIC SALE as well as newsroom partnerships and niche content (as opposed to "commodity content," which I am guessing is basic breaking news material).
  
• Also, the newsroom should get over itself AND the Wall, and start looking at ad staff as allies rather than enemies.
  
• Finally, specialized, niche packages that so many newspapers are doing on the web these days are two-three clicks deep from home pages, and tend to be forgotten by ad reps. New ad models need to "monetize" those opportunities. Such opps can give ad revenue an "8 time lift in performance" compared to general news.
  

So have we now destroyed the Wall in order to save journalism? Seems kind of ironic.

On Hiatus

This blog is on hiatus until August 2008. See you then!!

Gossip Girl Online from Shira

This is from New York Magazine's April 28 issue. The cast of Gossip Girl is on the cover. The article is called "The Genius of Gossip Girl" and lists 6 reasons. Reason #3 is "Because Gossip Girl is changing the very model of a successful TV show."

Here is what the article says:

"Before it even aired, Gossip Girl was armed with two great advantages. One was the fan base of Josh Schwartz, which was giddily waiting to see how he'd follow up The O.C. The other was the legion of young girls who had read the tawdry book series but addictive Gossip Girl book series by Nightingale-Bamford graduate Cecily von Ziegesar. And yet, the numbers were bad. Really bad. New episodes pulled in an average of 2.5 million viewers, just over half of what the O.C. had the season it was cancelled. Teenagers just weren't gathering around the family tube to catch the show during the 9 pm slot. But that didn't mean they weren't watching.

"New episodes routinely arrived at the No. 1 most-downloaded spot on iTunes, and then there were the hundreds of thousands who were downloading free week-old episodes on the CW's site. Even executives at Nielson threw up their hands and admitted that Gossip Girl appeared to be speaking to an audience so young and tech-savvy they hadn't really figured it out yet

"This isn't the first show to find the Internet success - Lost and The Office are big download hits, too. But this is the first show that seems to have succeeded primarily on the Internet. There's something about the combination of the show's premise, the viewer's age, and the available technology that has given Gossip Girl a life of its own online. Not only do fans watch the show on their computers, but they post sightings of the actors on gossip blogs and exchange rumors (about both the show and its stars) on fan sites. You can even play Gossip Girl's Upper East Side on Second Life. It's not appointment television; it's a 24-hour conversation. We are all Gossip Girl! And the whole experience can happen sans television."

Okay so the few last lines of that is what is super interesting. The idea that the show is a 24-hour conversation. What does this really mean? Also, we talk so much about how print is dying, what about TV? Could the internet be destroying TV as well. Additionally, CW was forced to announce that the last 5 episodes of the season will NOT be available to download on their site of iTunes because they are losing so much money from advertisers. The only way CW knows how to fix this problem is through product placement, so in terms of advertising and television, are we looking at a drastic change in the future, as well?

So you say you're graduating?

For all those J561ers, let me know:
1) what are your plans after graduation, and
2) how do you think you might use media theory in your personal/professional life? (errr... and tell me if you don't think you ever would, but I am really curious to know if any particular theorists appealed to you and whether an idea or two struck you as being particularly relevant for your media habits or your career plans).

Remembering

I've been thinking a lot about memory and media these days, in part because of a series of articles about memory of past election campaigns in various publications and in part because of some conversations with friends. In one conversation, a friend posed philosophically, "who are we without our memories? Don't our memories in some way create our particular identities?" To this I would add: If our memories are suddenly gone, what foundation for values can we draw from to live?
In another talk, a friend lamented the loss of photos from a family trip and then proposed redoing that family trip just to retake the photos. "How are we going to remember otherwise," she asked.
Meanwhile, news stories are constantly revisiting past events, politicizing them for current situations. In this article from yesterday's NYT,

Sometimes, as Senator Barack Obama seemed to argue earlier this year, a flag pin is just a flag pin. But it can never be that simple for anyone with direct experience of the 1988 presidential campaign. That year, the Republicans used the symbols of nationhood (notably, whether schoolchildren should be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance) to bludgeon the Democrats, challenge their patriotism and utterly redefine their nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts. The memory of that campaign — reinforced, for many, by the attacks on Senator John Kerry’s Vietnam war record in the 2004 election — haunts Democrats of a certain generation.

By drawing this contrast, the author simultaneously contextualizes the current campaign by re-historicizing (i.e. re-remembering) the 1988 one.
If we are our memories and those memories are now at least in part perpetuated within media (to be used indiscriminately and called upon going forward), then can we then suggest that our identities are now mediated? Or at least dependent on media? I throw this out there just for fun.

Bidding wars, huh? FROM DANA IN 561

If newspapers are dying then why is there a bidding war going on for one?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/chi-2-phil-rosenthal-tribunemay02,0,7491131.column

Recreating consumerism

Ad agencies are now using cyberspace to recreate consumer culture so that they can launch and test marketing campaigns without the real-world dangers of failure. This excerpt is from an Austin American-Statesman piece:

"In the same way you can create 'SimCity,' you can create a
virtual marketplace," said Maury Giles, the head of GSD&M's
accountability and analytics department.

"Instead of spending $30 million on a campaign you're not sure is
going to work, you can try it and run it ... It's like a simulation of
what would happen if we spend this amount of money on this
message with this group of people."

Giles said Icosystem's software allows GSD&M to simulate a
population of thousands of consumers.

The space can simulate all kinds of market conditions, from a downturn to the latest scandal, and then let the virtual consumers interact. My question: are we that predictable?

No Internet

Check out this South Park clip about the town waking waking up to no Internet.
Pretty hilarious. Talk about the burning need to resolve ambiguity being taken to an extreme.
This reminds me of a story not too long ago about a sudden blackout for Blackberries. Here is a snippet from that NYT article on Aug. 19, 2007:

Stuart Gold was in Phoenix on a business trip when the service went down. Mr. Gold, the marketing director for Omniture, a software firm, noticed ominous red X’s next to his outgoing e-mails.

He is not proud of what happened next.

“I started freaking out,” he said. “I started taking it apart. Turning it off. Turning it on. I took the battery out and cleaned it on my shirt. I was running around my hotel like a freak. It’s very sad. I love this thing.”

At some point we need to heed the cautions of Mumford, Winner and other medium theorists to heart: Do we wield technology or does it wield us?

From Dana: News as Business

I found this NYT article today and I think it brings up some interesting points about news being a business. As it seems imminent that Brauchli will resign from his post as Editor at the Wall Street Journal because of the involvement of Rupert Murdoch's involvement in the daily operations of the paper it raises the question: how much should the business side of a company be involved in a paper's operations? Is this affecting the quality of the news we, as consumers, receive from these papers? Do you think Murdoch allows any bad press about himself to be published in one of the nation's most trusted newspapers?

One more point: A plea to trained journalists

I wanted to raise an issue for everyone to noodle over a bit, if you would indulge me. I am going to the Cap Times a bit later and a reporter asked me to bring up something that has caused some consternation in the newsroom: online pressures causing reporters to repackage press releases and old news as new stuff. This is a trend that has been going on for sometime -- way before online worlds, I might add (VNRs anyone?) But the technological ability to publish 24/7 combined with the ease of resurrecting archived material for new packaging (see a recent post on the Observer for a case in point), leads me to plea to all you budding journalists out there: STICK TO THE PRINCIPLES OF JOURNALISM, no matter the pressure to do otherwise. A woman in my newsroom got fired a couple years ago for publishing press releases as her own work. And this was a Gannett newsroom. My point? People still care about original reporting. If the trained journalists start taking liberties because we want to beat citizen journalists, where does that leave democracy?

Blogger or Journalist or Who Cares?

Another blogger vs journalist incident has created more debate about how we should be thinking about citizens who write about 'news' via their blogs. Mayhill Fowler, who writes for the OffTheBus.net blog (founded by Jay Rosen and Arianna Huffington), attended (and paid for) an Obama fundraiser and then wrote about the small-town comments he made there four days later. This NYT article details her inner turmoil as an Obama supporter vs her inner journalist. She came under fire from many in the blogosphere for even considering not posting the comments because of her admiration for Obama.

Can we please stop debating this? I like to think a new CyberNewsroom is developing here where citizens who want to 'be' journalists mingle with sources and reporters and audiences in a new layer of the public sphere. Their work is needed -- more so now than ever. But let's not confuse the expectations of these bloggers with what we want from journalists. In the end, Fowler posted Obama's comments -- as any good citizen should.

Mash-ups for Social Movements

Anyone who doubted that new technology could help us help ourselves and make real change in the bad stuff going on in the world should take a look at this latest news to come out of Google. Google is working in partnership with the United Nations and a bunch of non-profits to construct mash-ups of maps and networks that reveal connections and disclose happenings around the world.

This is from a CNN report today:

The maps will aid humanitarian operations as well as help inform the public about the millions who have fled their homes because of violence or hardship, according to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working with Google on the project.

"All of the things that we do for refugees in the refugee camps around the world will become more visible," U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees L. Craig Johnstone said at the launch in Geneva.

Users can download Google Earth software to see satellite images of refugee hot spots such as Darfur, Iraq and Colombia. Information provided by the U.N. refugee agency explains where the refugees have come from and what problems they face.

The attribute I like best about these is the feature that allows people to drill down into each point on the map, to get more specific information about that refugee camp or this politician, and then donate money or find ways to help. Talk about "shifting audiences." With such in-your-face altruistic opportunity, it's kind of hard to affect that narcotizing that sometimes occurs with news consumers, who feel that simply by reading the news one has participated in democracy.

From Melissa: Citizen Journalism

I wanted to post this to go along with the citizen journalism discussion on the blog. It is a survey about citizen journalism that I thought was interesting and relevant to the previous blog posts.

(The survey reports how journalists and audiences are responding to and considering citizen journalism.)

Walmartizing the news?

Apparently CBS is thinking about "outsourcing" its news to CNN. The NYT article on the topic linked the announcement to the latest State of the Media report on broadcast:

“In the end,” according to the report, “if the problems of network news can be mostly attributed to the decline in the overall audience of broadcast network television generally rather than something having to do with the newscasts in particular, then the survival of the networks’ news divisions in some ways may well depend on their liberating themselves from the broadcast television platform on which they were founded — and even perhaps from the networks themselves.”

This could mean that citizen journalism is going to be more important than ever. One of the other panelists during my session at the 2008 International Symposium for Online Journalism reported her findings about source diversity in newspapers versus citizen journalism sites. (See Serena Carpenter's paper on the site.). She discovered that citizens tend to source their stories with nonofficials and more women, among other findings. She also found that contrary to other studies, citizen journalists in her sample had original reporting the majority of the time (as opposed to merely aggregating information from other news articles).

We need to continue efforts to train and encourage such citizen journalism, lest our country's journalism becomes a one-stop super store.

Blogging to death? From Dana in 561

This is an article I found that may be of interest for the blog since it ties in well with the conference you just attended.

"There are growing legions of online chroniclers, reporting on and reflecting about sports, politics, business, celebrities and every other conceivable niche. Some write for fun, but thousands write for Web publishers — as employees or as contractors — or have started their own online media outlets with profit in mind.

One of the most competitive categories is blogs about technology developments and news. They are in a vicious 24-hour competition to break company news, reveal new products and expose corporate gaffes."

I just thought this was interesting given our blog discussion of online addiction and labeling it a disease.

"Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet."

Local or comprehension?

Yesterday at the 2008 International Symposium for Online Journalism we heard from the CEO of Dallas Morning News tell us that his company is cutting back on anything that is international and national in scope, re. newsroom resources, and beefing up all local, all the time.
Today we are listening to research by a UT professor George Sylvie, and he says the better idea is to deliver convenience, comprehensiveness and timeliness.

“Rather than try to build it and they will come, why not give them something they want when they want it, and why not also offer timeliness and comprehensiveness in the same breath… How unique is what you do? Jim said local is inimitable, but I think you can become too local."

Who’s right? What do you want from your news? Is it all about niche niche niche, location, location location? What happens to a sense of nationalism if all the big newspapers start concentrating only on New York, or only on Dallas? Is a sense of nationalism even still relevant and important?
The second point I'd like to make: Why can't we do both? I think a newspaper can respond to and match its demographics while also providing timeliness, comprehension and convenience. Often I believe that the professed market strategy of "local" is really code for "cutting back."

Subtleties

I am still blogging from the Austin, TX, 2008 International Symposium for Online Journalism, and today we are listening to all the academics tell the journalists what they have been researching. Well... some of the journalists... there are about half as many people here today as there were yesterday. A shame since I think this is a great opportunity for professionals to take back to their newsrooms some audience and production research for free.
One thing that has struck me in these presentations is the desire to move from the obvious to the subtle:

Are newsrooms advocating cross platform content or cross media content?
Are they practicing convergence or integration of their print and online products?

I like that are starting to think about the emergent phenomenon of online news in such nuanced ways right now, but I worry that as academics we get caught up in labeling and categorizing at the expense of really exploring what it all means on a conceptual level.

Other points to come out of 2008 International Symposium for Online Journalism

Local newspapers should be thinking of their business in terms of:

-- web "browsing," not web printing
-- "community hosting" not community news producing
-- an organizer instead of a gatekeeper
-- giving unfiltered access to sites, creating stakeholders of everyone who visits
-- think of new ways to offer content (streaming video of events, partner with other organizations such as satellite radio, merchandising, special added value such as highlights each day to your inbox, customized mash-ups, cell-phone content such as live-game action with announcer of your choice)

And furthermore:
-- Local ad revenue spending was up to $7.6 billion in 2007, an 181 percent growth in marketplace, though newspapers have lost 18 percent of that pie.
-- The Washingtonpost.com has about 70 blogs; NYTimes.com has about 55.
-- Discussion groups, sort of like play dates (err... my analogy, not theirs), are hot right now.
-- Blogging is 10 percent about writing and 90 percent about community building, said one Gannett executive.
-- People feel "safe" blogging on their community newspaper sites because of the brand.
-- The Simpsons' launch garnered 20,000 comments on one USA Today article.
-- Editors are "trying to tap into online audiences to power new, relevant content channels," said one executive of the social media software site, Pluck.

New Newsrooms: Notes from 2008 International Symposium for Online Journalism

-- The head of the Dallas Morning News believes in "live" journalism models that are local centric and exclusive of international or national news. Indeed, the company is eliminating or downsizing mose of its foreign and national bureaus outside of Texas.
-- This last point did not go over well with the academics in the audience, who suggested that the Dallas Morning News was doing Americans a disservice.
-- Newspapers need to move from the mentality that they are in the newspaper business and towards the fact that they are in the "information" business.
-- The Daily Telegraph in the UK just re-trained 350 of its print journalists for online considerations. Yet it will "continue to invest in its newspaper assets." Their revenues to the website are growing 18 percent every year.
-- Nytimes.com employees are sitting with print reporters in a new newsroom. So are the Wall Street Journal reporters. And the Miami Herald.
-- Everyone is getting trained in video, which has become "viral." (Viral situations emerge when the item -- ie videos -- instills itself into an industry/culture/etc, where its very existence and operation reproduces over and over, until it is an epidemic.) But there is some mocking. Check out this video in which a professor makes fun of the Journal's foray into video etc. The point here? Just because you CAN make video doesn't mean you should.
-- The Wall Street Journal has videos on pumpkin boats and football-throwing lessons. What's up with that?
-- The diffusion of online technologies into these newsrooms involve: physical, technological and cultural integrations and transformations. This also means new seating plans. By far the biggest challenge is cultural, say these editors (24/7 news cycle, content providing, "audience"-to-"people" considerations).
-- Gannett is experimenting with videos that are 1:20 minutes long, and that is IT.

You can find the conference information etc here: http://online.journalism.utexas.edu/

State of the Media

The 2008 State of the Media report was published recently and any student of journalism should be taking a look. According to the Pew Center Foundation, which puts out the report, the major trends are:

News is shifting from being a product — today’s newspaper, Web site or newscast — to becoming a service — how can you help me, even empower me?

A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations.

The prospects for user-created content, once thought possibly central to the next era of journalism, for now appear more limited, even among “citizen” sites and blogs.

Increasingly, the newsroom is perceived as the more innovative and experimental part of the news industry.

The agenda of the American news media continues to narrow, not broaden.

Madison Avenue, rather than pushing change, appears to be having trouble keeping up with it.

These trends, and the fascinating data that support them (check it out), have real implications for the way press theorists examine political/social/economic/cultural/personal life here in America.

We have entered a new "Answer Culture," the report states, and in response, newsrooms much adapt: "journalism may have to move in the direction of making its work more transparent and more expert, and of widening the scope of its searchlight."

I've been hearing this call for more transparency ever since I got into journalism nearly two decades ago. And lately I've seen lots of attempts to comply (I am thinking particularly of work being done at The Spokesman-Review, for example, with their posted reportage interviews and their broadcast newsrooms). But I do not see a lot more reality represented here, in the sense that by hearing the interview I have a better sense of what is going on in my society. Rather, I get a lot of information I am not really sure what to do with. Journalists are supposed to transform into "authenticators," according to the report. That's a good word, and a fascinating concept, but how can this be done while staying within the parameters of institutional, cultural and economic constraints (i.e. realities?) and still making meaning for people?

Electronic addiction? From Katie

This is from Katie in 561:

Doctors are deciding whether or not an addiction to the internet and messaging can be considered a "textbook illness" and whether it should be included or not in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Supposedly, 10 people have died in internet cafes in South Korea and at least 7 of them were due to online gaming. I personally find this a little crazy.

Here's the top of the story from the Ottawa Citizen:

Compulsive e-mailing and text messaging could soon become classified as an official brain illness.

An editorial in this month's issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry says Internet addiction -- including "excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging" -- is a common compulsive-impulsive disorder that should be added to psychiatry's official guidebook of mental disorders.

Like other addicts, users experience cravings, urges, withdrawal and tolerance, requiring more and better equipment and software, or more and more hours online, according to Dr. Jerald Block, a psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Dr. Block says people can lose all track of time or neglect "basic drives," like eating or sleeping. Relapse rates are high, he writes, and some people may need psychoactive medications or hospitalization.

What do you think? Real or no? What's going on here? The implication is that people are substituting online gratifications for real-world, physical needs.

"Inappropriate" time on Facebook, indicative of a new culture, or both?

A recent study (reported in Computer Weekly) revealed that kids in junior high and high school spend time on Facebook when they should be listening to their teacher.

More than half of children in school will be studying Facebook rather than lessons, says a new study of more than 1,000 UK pupils. Global Secure Systems (GSS), an IT security consultancy, found 52% of the 1,000 children aged between 13 and 17 who participated in the study confessed that they looked at social networking sites during lessons. The survey, conducted through Facebook, aimed to discover just how widespread children's use of such sites at inappropriate times was. More than a quarter said they were Facebooking in class for more than 30 minutes a day.

I've watched as more and more of my students bring their laptops into my classroom. I am well aware that even as they are taking digital notes, some of them are also switching between windows to check email, Facebook, ESPN etc. I alternate between feeling indignant, resigned, and kind of hurt. I am cognizant that those who focus deeply on the discussion in the present will not only be able to contribute in a more meaningful manner, but also will retain and understand the concepts so that they might actually put them to use outside of class, in their lives, (and also, I might add, in their papers). Paying attention with only half the brain has consequences, no doubt. I have some options: Ban the laptops. Patrol the aisles. Appeal to their sense of etiquette and learned Midwestern manners.

But to be truthful, I am also becoming somewhat ambivalent. I am increasingly of the mindset that students today are wired to digitally multitask, and wonder if there is a benefit to forcing them to operate in a manner contrary to their natural state of being. I take this trend as another indication that we are moving from a linear way of cerebral processing, and towards spurts of energy and chunked production methods. Another option that I find myself employing: Changing the way I teach. Keeping sections short. Making class much more interactive. Having more exercises. But when a teacher does this, some more complex concepts get short-changed.

So what's the answer? Any thoughts of what this might mean for knowledge? I don't have much optimism about it, frankly. But maybe I am missing some of the pros? Love to hear from the students about all of this.

Reality TV and Political Discourse

Check out this call for academic papers that came across my desk this week:

We are inviting scholars from all over the world to submit your completed
manuscripts or abstracts that discuss whether/how reality
programs serve as a platform for a political discussion in different
cultural or national contexts. These issues include but are not
limited to race, nationality, religion, gender inequality, privacy,
copyrights... Possible topics include:
· Whether and why reality television should or should not be any
different from other genres as a platform for discussion of issues
related to politics.
· Whether/how television viewers use reality television to form
opinions about politics, race, etc.
· Whether fans of reality television find these discussions as
central or peripheral to their enjoyment of the genre.
· How participants of reality programs feel about being a part of
controversies about issues related to daily politics.

I find it interesting that the emphasis here seems to be on politics, rather than on community. I don't hear a lot of political talk surrounding the discussions of Dancing with the Stars or some of the other reality shows out there. On the other hand, there is a lot to look at in these programs regarding cultural and community issues. I hope the papers do not divorce what is going on in these shows and with the audiences from the production realities (or illusions) of the shows. And once you think about whether there are racial or gendered differences or hegemonic statements, you have to consider whether these are in fact real or manufactured because of the nature of "reality" television.

Stars are Just Like Us!! From Shira

The April 2008 issue of The Atlantic has a picture of Britney Spears on the cover. The cover reads: "The Britney Show Days and Night With the New Paparazzi". I thought this was different because you see Britney Spears on the cover of EVERY single magazine but one of the last would be The Atlantic, because they usually talk about politics and global issues. Anyway, so I read the article and while it focused on Britney it didn't really focus on her at all, instead it discussed this new type of celebrity coverage such as pictures take by the paparazzi. So the article is super long but below is a specific clip from it that made me immediately think of class and our discussions about who in media has the power.

The evolution of Hollywood paparazzi from a marginal nuisance to one of the most powerful and lucrative forces driving the American news-gathering industry is a phenomenon that dates back to March 2002, when a women's magazine editor names Bonnie Fuller took over a Wenner Media property called Us Weekly, which had drifted along since its founding in 1977 as a rival to the fantastically successful People magazine franchise. What Fuller brought to Us was a keen understanding of her audience. "Every day, we'd look at tons of pictures that came in and lay them all out on a conference table," Fuller remembers. "And what was interesting to me was a look at celebrities going to dry cleaners and pumping gas. I loved looking at these pictures of celebrities who were just like us."

(* I'm starring this because I'm going to discuss it later below.)

Fuller's trademark front-of-the-book photo-feature, "Stars-They're Just Like US," created a lucrative new market for Hollywood paparazzi, whose output had formally been limited to tabloids like the National Enquirer and the Star. It was not unusual in the Fuller years for a set of high-quality snapshots to rake in $100,000 or more in secretive bidding wars that began on Thursday night and ended Monday evening, when Us and People were put to bed. Insiders could keep score by looking at the small print photo credits in Us, People, In Touch, InStyle, and half a dozen or so newly minted competitors to see which of the paps hit the jackpot that week. (*)

Okay so then the article continues with all these photographer names being like could it be this person could it be that person? etc. Then it says:

The genius of Bonnie Fuller's new approach was that almost any picture of a celebrity doing something ordinary would do, with a little help from an inventive caption writer who could come up with a snappy one-liner like "Who Wore It Best?" (three happy stars wearing the same outfit) or "Can-Do Couples" (three couples smiling) for a quickie photo-feature to accompany a newsier far like "Angelina's Web of Lies." It was easy to imagine legion of Internet-era Andrew Marvells staying up late in fluorescent-lit cubicles appending metaphysical exclamation points to celebrity photo captions that would rocket readers ever closer to the celestial object of their desire:
They buy bottled water!
They pick up presents! They love to buy new handbags!
They fix their tires!
They can't get their straws in cans!

The article continues to say how these front-of-the-book snapshots in People and Us cost $50,000 to $75,000 per issue and when the spending became to high for publications, photo agencies such as X17 and Bauer-Griffin realized that instead of selling exclusives they could sell the same photo 15-20 times to different magazines, TV shows and Web sites. And so, the article writes, "the industrial phase of paparazzi production was formed." Tying back to Britney Spears, X17 estimates it made $3 million last year on Britney-related images alone.

Okay last part, article goes on:

The result of this happy convergence, the 24/7 BritneyParisNicoleLindsayLohan

MaybeDidCokeBradandAngelinaSavetheWorldOneChildataTimeBradandJenBenandJenPoorKatieHolmesMarriedTomCruiseWhoIsanAlien Celebrity Reality Show, was a distinctive new kind of participatory media experience resulting from the cold fusion of the old-school paparazzi business with the new wave of celebrity magazines and Internet sites.

(Later in that paragraph) The online communities that formed around news-driven celebrity dramas fed the buzz that drove the sales of the magazines and the ratings of the television programs that paid the paparazzi.

OKAY so there is a ton of information here. First I want to address this idea of power in the media: is it the corporate companies, in this case was is Bonnie Fuller, is it the photographers, and as always, is it the audience who buys the magazines and wants to see these pictures so that's what the magazines give us?

Also, the first place I starred, this idea that Fuller was fascinated about how stars are just like us totally reminds me of the Gamson article we read for this week (and this week's topic is celebrity's - ties right in). The article talked about this idea of celebrities being ordinary - how ordinariness promotes a connection between the famous and their audiences. So is this why we like this section? Because it makes these people seem "real" - like the real person behind the "reel" image (That's another thing Gamson said, sadly not my genius)?

The second place I starred I thought was interesting in terms of Media Ownership and also just personally now I know why all the pictures are the same - this idea that all the photos come from the SAME place which makes sense because if you pick them all up the same week you really are getting the exact same image of Brad and Angelina in every magazine.

And again, as we always tie back to, in terms of society, what does this mean about us that this is what we crave to see? How has this changed since the beginning of photography in media which was used just to help readers associate an image with something? I'm sure you can come up with tons more questions because you are really good at it, but I thought since this week's topic is celebrity's, this article fits right in and also addresses a lot of other things we have previously discussed in class.

Evolution of a Conversation

I was reading a piece in the NYT from Sunday about the Flophouse, a house in D.C. where a bunch of bloggers live and work. This quote caught my attention: “We’ll all be in the same room having meta-conversations online about conversations going on in the room, a running commentary on the other conversations.” At one point the notion of conversation had to do with exchanging thoughts, feelings and ideas with other people, usually one on one, or a very small group. The purpose of this was to connect, to inform, to entertain, to establish identity and social/professional/political/personal ties. You ended one; you began another. It was rare and difficult to have more than one conversation going on at any one time.

Conversation moved online where it became digital and entered a quasi public/private hybrid realm. Now we have conversations about conversations within conversations, within a larger discourse, which sparks new conversations that are all somewhat public and somewhat private. Following? It's all happening simultaneously, interdependent on each other. Concentric conversations. I am curious about what this emergent phenomenon indicates about the nature of human discourse, and ultimately, the melding of public and private spheres and the relationships that were once fairly loyal to one or the other.

Spoofing the spoofs

Thanks to Traci from 561, we have a heads-up for a new show on E called "Pop Fiction," which premiered this weekend. From Traci, "In the show, celebrities attempt to punk the paparazzi. Because the paparazzi make up so many stories on their own, producers Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg thought it would be a good idea to spoof the paparazzi. This is a clip about the show featuring Paris Hilton in a discussion about our media-obsessed culture." I find this an interesting layering of reality construction, with none of it actually being real.

Direct to Consumers

This is from Traci:

I just read your latest blog entry about the Nine Inch Nails and remembered that a few months ago there was an article I read about how Trent Reznor and other artists are outraged with the music industry. Reznor said he wants his music to be more fan-friendly and encourages fans to download songs illegally if they feel his newest album is too expensive. I wanted to send you the link because I think his fury with the music industry goes hand-in-hand with the decision to put "Hand That Feeds" on Garageband.

Indeed, Traci! RadioHead went on to offer their cd for free online, requesting that people pay what they deemed appropriate for the album. This is one way to get around the conglomerated music industry. The new interactions between artist and consumer, though, might merely be creating another form of an institution.

You and your Mac Remixing Culture

Nine Inch Nails is allowing people to break down their songs by musical tracks, using Garageband. From a MacMinute story:

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has made available the band's new single, "The Hand That Feeds," as a free download for Apple's GarageBand application. The song, which weighs in at a hefty 70MB, features multiple tracks that you can easily tweak. "For quite some time I've been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks -- to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what's there," Reznor says.

Once you start messing with an artist's song, is it still the artist's song? Does the answer even matter? In addition, this makes GarageBand (the Mac program you need to remix these songs) an avenue for pop cultural production. So let us not discount the implications this has for MacIntosh and corporatist culture.

Alburquerque Journal

A friend sent me this link about another newspaper biting the dust. The last day of the Albuquerque Journal is documented here in this SoundSlides presentation. Isn't this sad? And also interesting that the demise of an old medium is reported in the new medium.

News Producing: From Quinn

Quinn pointed out that a well known blogger, Josh Marshall, has just won a George Polk award (which is just under the Pulitzer in terms of esteem), indicating a change in how the powers that be are viewing journalism production. This guy, who writes Talking Points Memo, is smart, no doubt, and he thinks of himself as a journalist. But, as the New York Times writes:

His work differs, though, from big newspaper or network political reporters. It often involves synthesizing the work of other news outlets with his staff’s original reporting and tips from a highly involved readership. In the case of the United States attorneys, Talking Points Memo linked to many local articles about federal prosecutors being forced from office and drew a national picture for readers. The site “connected the dots and found a pattern of federal prosecutors being forced from office for failing to do the Bush administration’s bidding,” the Polk citation said.

Is this then journalism now? Aggregating and synthesis? I think one could argue that it has always been one of the goals of journalism, but the point could be debated. In addition, should Marshall and bloggers like him be considered part of the journalistic community, and thus held to the same standards as mainstream members of the press? Should he be? What does all this mean for how news production practices are shifting?

Geocoded News

The notion of hyperlocal has advanced into "geocoding." We are seeing it in Adrian Holovaty's EveryBlock. And now Google News is offering users to receive local headlines etc from anywhere.
Now that we can drill down to news relational only to me and my neighborhood, the opportunity for the old micro communities might enhance geographic connections.
Some other questions I have:
Is this the way around media conglomeration? (I say this because it allows people with a one-paper town to see news from other, unexpected, sources. But who's doing the journalism? Most likely the same stories by the same reporter are being repackaged with a wire service byline, but I could be wrong.)
Will this exacerbate the mass audience fragmentation? And is that a bad thing?
How will such channeling considerations ultimately affect news routines and practices?
These are just some things I am thinking about.

Facebook and Privacy

Every college senior looking for a job should read this piece about privacy and Facebook in today's New York Times. Quoting Erving Goffman, Adam Cohen makes the point that the information we present to the public creates the sense of self taken in by the rest of society. But Facebook and other companies are implementing features that distribute information not necessarily authorized by people. They are going on the assumption that people have an expanded tolerance for shared private information, whether or not they give their consent for its publication.
Here's my question: once our own presentation of self is taken away from us, what does that mean for our relationships with others, the notion of truth in self, and control over identity creation? The answers in there will indicate shifts in how we decide (collectively and individually) who we befriend, employ, converse with, remember, relate to, network, etc etc.

"The Cap Times is dying"

Shortly after the announcement that the Capital Times was moving to a twice-weekly topical edition and augmented online product, one of my colleagues asked me in the hallway "hey, did you hear that the Cap Times is dying?" I found this to be an interesting way of thinking about what is happening (you can find reaction and the video here). Other comments peppering Madison's forums have echoed this thought, with the Cap Times' people assuring people that it will simply be "an old message in a new medium."

I've long argued that newspapers print products must eventually give way to the online world, which allows new ways of mass dissemination with expanded content without the overhead of a printing and delivery system. I suspect we are going to start seeing a trickle of such announcements in the industry. Eventually, this will be a common occurence.

I find thinking about what's happening here as a death to be limiting (not to mention cynical). The Cap Times is particularly well suited to make this transition, given its partnership with the Wisconsin State Journal and the madison.com online forum. They have an opportunity to dedicate energies to all kinds of journalism projects made possible by online technologies, multimedia and interactivity. I was distressed, though, to hear about the job cuts (more than a dozen expected). Good journalism -- no matter its medium -- takes resources. And I hope the Cap Times management recognizes that right now, their news organization could be a pioneer, blazing new trails and proving all their detractors wrong.

We are at a critical juncture in journalism. I think this announcement is a mark of an evolution. We'll see if the Cap Times can evolve in the right ways to survive.

Spokesman-Review Ethics

The Spokesman Review (one of my favorite news organizations) has just revamped its ethics policy for its employees. I find it interesting how standard and traditional the new code is, with very little discussion of the new interactive exchanges happening online. I could only find this paragraph, relating to libel:

Web journalism that is interactive – that allows third parties to post information or commentary to spokesmanreview.com – differs from the newspaper in terms of the laws of defamation and privacy. As of this code’s last revision, Congress allows providers of interactive Web sites immunity from publishing or distributing obscene or defamatory material written by others in order to encourage free speech. This principle, however, does not override our ethics and values as a news-gathering operation. Questions about third-party information on the site or being offered to the site should be raised with a supervisor or editor. The Spokesman-Review has the discretion to refuse or pull material based on issues of obscenity, defamatory content or personal attacks.

From my perspective, this new code -- revamped because of the Internet's attributes -- firmly establishes interaction going on within the site as being something separate from Spokesman-Review journalism. There is no discussion (and perhaps this particular ethics document was not the place for such a topic) of new responsibilities and ethics for online contributions, including Q/As with reporters, for example. Kovach & Rosenstiel in their latest edition of Elements of Journalism suggested that a key dynamic of good journalism today lies with citizens. The responsibility for an informed public sphere is as much on 'regular' people as it is on journalists, even within private media organizations, Kovach & Rosenstiel wrote.

In some ways the Spokesman-Review is protecting its brand. The ethics document clearly works to normalize new features such as reporter blogs into the normative standards and practices of the industry. And that's a good thing because it starts to put some boundaries up around these web features that had the potential to run amok with rumor and irresponsible information dissemination.
On the other hand, one wonders whether normative practices should become more flexible in consideration of new ways to produce information. (I am not saying I believe this blasphemous statement, but am throwing it out there to hear reaction.)
Either way, I am not sure completely divorcing the newsroom product from the co-production by readers online, ethically, is really acknowledging how journalism practices are changing in a significant manner.

Would love to hear others' perspectives.

Database Structuring

I was at a conference for online journalists not too long ago and the focus of the event was on database structuring, using numbers organized in searchable manners to tell a story. Tech guru Adrian Holovaty spoke. At that event as well as in a Q/A with him by the Online Journalism Review, Holovaty placed the emphasis on "journalism through computer programming," saying that it's preferable to automate as much of the journalistic process as possible. He breaks down journalism into three steps: Gathering, distilling and presenting information.

I am of two minds regarding this most recent trend in journalism, and I would love to hear what people think about this. I am wondering about what gets lost in thinking about journalism in this technical, machinist manner. This article reminded me of a conversation I had last night with a computer programmer at the SuperBowl regarding the nature of "fact" and presentation in journalism as news. This individual was lamenting his disdain for the purposeful manipulation of information on the part of journalists to obscure the "truth" for political or other motivations. Adrian here seems to suggest that such intentional presentation might give way to automated fact sifting. Where is the notion of story here though? How do we reconcile narrative understandings of news and the cultural and sociological roles for the press
with this notion of journalism as computer programming?

But I think there is much to gain as well, of course. In this Q/A Holovaty goes over some of it, particularly the new call for such structuring of data in this information-rich (nay, overrun) society.

What do people think? How do these ways of looking at journalism today mesh with our traditional understandings of the press' function in society?

Predicting Tomorrow

The Wall Street Journal came out with a special section predicting the future of media use. The reporters interviewed media execs. techies, futurists and the like to figure out what's going to be new, and how we're going to use whatever it is. The story is a good read. They predict that digital technology will revolutionize everything from the way we shop to our favorite television shows to what kinds of information we want. The section also delves into what all of these changes will mean for our daily rituals. Here's a snippet:

But technology will continue to transform the rituals of everyday life -- sometimes in startling ways. Imagine televisions that project 3-D images into the middle of the living room, for a theater-in-the-round experience. And while we won't get those robot maids, our appliances might start "talking" to us through email alerts, letting us know when a part is getting worn down and needs to be replaced. Many other changes will be more subtle, as technology finds new ways into our daily routine. Commuters will still carry newspapers to work but will likely download them to a pocket-size computer that can also show TV news broadcasts. Shoppers will still be greeted at Wal-Mart, but a computer may be the one saying hello -- and reminding them of what they bought on their last visit. Friends will still send each other birth and wedding announcements, but the process will be virtually automated, thanks to alerts on social-networking sites.

Some of there predictions entail: More computers replacing employees (such as that Wal-Mart greeter), personalized everything (including retail clerks knowing not only what you bought last week but what your good friend bought last week), declining brand loyalty, and the publicizing of all things private. The seeds of a lot of these predictions are already well in place -- from the new Kindle book downloading at Amazon to the Facebook software that reports what our friends are buying online.

However, I'd like to point out one caveat: Humanity can be difficult to predict sometimes. A companion article has this quote from the 1998 predictions of the WSJ:

To their credit, some of 1998's forecasters correctly anticipated that social dynamics would be the hardest part of the puzzle to get right. As Ambuj Goyal, then vice president for systems and software at International Business Machines Corp., remarked a decade ago: "We have predicted the hardware speeds and feeds very well. We haven't done nearly as well in predicting how these machines will be used."

For example, I'm not sure that Tom Rosenstiel's prediction that people will no longer have primary news sources is so accurate. I think that human nature tends to like being loyal. What do people think? Do you have any predictions of your own, and more interestingly, what said prediction will mean for our lives?

Jay Rosen went off on the media (again), this time for the horse-race campaign coverage. He separates his points into nice, succinct criticisms of why the media "has" no brain (and note here how he uses the singular verb for plural media, denoting its singular mentality in working as a pack). His lead reads:

Just so you know, "the media" has no mind. It cannot make decisions. Which means it does not "get behind" candidates. It does not decide to oppose your guy... or gal. Nor does it "buy" this line or "swallow" that one. It is a beast without a brain. Most of the time, it doesn't know what it's doing.

And he continues by delineating the problem into: The herd of independent minds, convergence of judgement, special insight, removed from experience, and under the influence of each other and insiders. Indeed, much of the problem rests with issues of humanity -- the tendency to rely on who we know and our backgrounds and our instincts as social beings.

It is the beast without a brain, he writes. (I love how media watchers constantly refer to the press as a "beast." When I was a reporter, I always wondered, what did this make me? Was an eye of the beast? A paw? What a surreal experience to report and write, since I apparently did so not only as part of a sort of nebulous 'pack' but also without thinking about it.)

Frankly, I agree with all of Rosen's statements, and especially appreciated the nuanced description of the problem that broke down the notion of 'pack' journalism into characteristics of individual journalistic motivation.

But I get frustrated when we constantly see the problems of the press so well articulated in such a methodical manner without as much careful thought given to a blueprint for change. Rosen dedicates a couple paragraphs at the end of two pages of diatribe to any solution:

Here, the job of the campaign press is not to preempt the voters' decision by asking endlessly, and predicting constantly, who's going to win. The job is to make certain that what needs to be discussed will be discussed in time to make a difference - and then report on that.

He wants more "politics," without really laying out how journalists can rise above the human nature that often creates the situational dynamics of such reporting. Let's think a minute about some realistic avenues for journalists to tread, beyond the idea that we need more "issues" reporting. What does that mean specifically? How does a reporter quell the fear that causes them to 'pack' up?