Joomla! site syndication http://www.thefutureofjournalism.org.au Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:41:23 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.thefutureofjournalism.org.au/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://www.thefutureofjournalism.org.au Joomla! site syndication http://www.thefutureofjournalism.org.au/the-news/latest-news/the-future-is-out-there/ Internet evangelist. Jay Rosen (http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/05/19/2249000.htm%20) raised a smile early on in the Future of Journalism summit last month when he likened the news industry to migrants, setting out across an unknown sea to an unknown shore who will need to work out how to live in a new way when we get there. But it was probably Chris Warren who got the biggest laugh of the two days in his closing remarks when he compared the US and Australian experiences of the digital revolution that is changing all our lives. America, Warren said, had been settled by oppressed free thinkers who travelled to the far continent in order to be able to find a new and free way of life; the Australian experience, by contrast, was of a bunch of crooks who were chained and dragged kicking and screaming into a hostile new environment, where they didn’t want to be and didn’t possess the tools for surviving in. He got a laugh, but the federal secretary of the Media Alliance made a strong point and one that underpinned the very reason for launching a Future of Journalism initiative in Australia, viz: we need to talk. And talk we did. Over two days some of the biggest names in the Australian news media gathered, plus a sprinkling of prestigious overseas guests - such as veteran editor, Phil Meyer (http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/05/19/2248970.htm%20), author of The Vanishing newspaper, who came in by satellite from North Carolina - to nut out the scope and speed of change in the industry. Most major media organisations took part: the ABC hosted the event at its Ultimo headquarters and provided a strong contingent of broadcasters to act as interviewers and moderators, News Ltd was a sponsor as was Time Inc, whose international editor Michael Elliott (http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/05/19/2249031.htm%20) flew in from New York to talk about the problems and opportunities created by turning the revered weekly news magazine into a 24/7 online news business. Sky came on board as a sponsor and its director of news, Ian Ferguson, took part in the discussion. Google, the “are they, aren’t they?” media giant sent Australian managing director, Karim Temsamani, to talk about the flow of advertising to search engines like his and the importance of partnerships in the new media landscape. Broadcasters Nine, Ten and SBS all sent representatives to join the conversation.Several senior Fairfax staff were able to participate, most prominently Cinnamon Pollard, the senior product manager for youth with Fairfax Digital who – with Rebekah Horne from MySpace and Kath Hart from Yahoo7 gave us some fascinating insights into Generation Y’s media consumption habits, notably continuous partial attention, the faculty that allows anyone under 25 to watch TV, read newspapers and text message their 20 closest friends simultaneously. However the main point that emerged was that we are plunging headlong into a Rumsfeldian world, where there are things we know we know and things we know we don’t know, not to mention the “unknown unknowns”. It is in this last point that the former US defense secretary could have been talking about, say, the rise and rise of Google which in the past few years has turned from a search engine, one of many available as a tool to journalists (and the outside world) to a colossus which sits astride the media world governing the flow of traffic to and from news websites and – last year, according to Temsamani – generating US$17 billion in advertising revenue. Other things we knew we knew, but somehow hoped would not come to pass, has been the flight of classified advertising to online sites not necessarily directly connected with newspapers. Michael Elliott recalled that in the 1990s the managing editor of the Washington Post held up 96 pages of classifieds and saying that they were all going to disappear, “every last line”. What we know we don’t know, at the risk of over-egging the Rumsfeldery, is what is going to replace the rivers of gold that have traditionally help up quality journalism. As you will see if you click this link, Roy Greenslade (http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/05/21/2251083.htm%20) believes this unbundling of advertising from the journalism that traditionally surrounded it, will be the death of newspapers, or at least of newsprint - there might be room for one or two “qualities” such as The Australian which would continue, under Greenslade’s model, as newspapers of record. Debate raged as to what models might rise to support journalism and whether quality could survive. Eric Beecher has written here before that Crikey, the news and comment website he bought from Stephen Mayne in 2005 for $1 million, is making money from a mix of subscription with a small amount of advertising revenue, but he stressed that his team of reporters and editors could not possibly begin to replace what is done by the large newsrooms controlled by our metropolitan newspapers. Academic John Cokley sees it as a challenge. Journalists have to think smarter and more laterally in order to market their skills – he pointed to a successful venture that produced news for cruise liners and another by a former motoring editor of The Australian which sells automotive information. What we do know is that journalists are finding themselves faced with an ever increasing workload, for two reasons: one is the gaping maw that is the internet which has the potential to expand as rapidly – more- than the physical universe presenting more and more space to fill. The other, which was perhaps not pursued enough, is the seemingly endless staff freeze in most newsrooms which has left fewer people doing more work. The question of “work intensification” was rather adroitly defused by News Ltd editorial director, Campbell Reid, who amiably wondered whether an aggressive questioner from the Sydney Morning Herald wasn’t rather afraid of “working harder”. This raised a laugh but avoided the other big elephant in the room. With less journalists doing more work and being required to multi-skill – attending a story weighed down by video camera and tape recorder and being obliged to file immediate grabs for the web, a written piece for the paper, a piece to camera, a podcast and continuous rolling updates during the day – where are the safeguards, that extra phone call that so often defines or qualifies a scoop? The beauty of filing for the internet, opined our panel of bosses (Reid for News Ltd, Max Uechtritz from NineMSN, ABC managing director Mark Scott and Greenslade, who had clearly decided to channel a proprietor for the session) was that if you make a mistake initially, you’ve got plenty of chances to put it right. You are, as they say in cyberspace, never wrong for long. (This flawed mantra irresistibly brings to mind the sad tale of Theseus who forgot to honour the promise he made to his father that he would change his ship’s sails from black to white if he ere successful in killing the Minotaur. On seeing the black sails, the grieving father threw himself into the sea which was renamed the Aegean.) Bosses used to bollock you for getting things wrong – especially if you hadn’t checked your facts properly. To accommodate sloppiness by saying that time – or your readership – will give you the opportunity to put things right might just be the first paragraph of quality journalism’s obituary in this country. News - Latest Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:25:57 +0100