QUESTION: Do you buy the assertion by Jeff Cole at USC-Annenberg in an upcoming paper that many dailies will be OOB in five years? Our privacy lost, no trust in social media? Why or why not? What to do?

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Bill Densmore

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Dec 20, 2011, 11:26:20 AM12/20/11
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This is a pickup of a news release from USC-Annenberg's Center for Digital Future. The PDF version is at their website at the address shown below if you'd rather read clean PDF, but this plain-text version can be excerpted and commented upon more readily.  Cole is opening an important set of debates. The assertion of timing -- five years or something else -- isn't as important as **what to do about it now.**  And do you agree that our privacy is lost? Is that acceptable? Should, or can, legislation restore it?  What opportunity is presented by the finding that a majority of people don't trust social media?

 

-- bill densmore

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Text Box:  USC ANNENBERG /

 CENTER FOR THE DIGITAL FUTURE

From a report to be issued early January 2012

 

 

 

CONTACT: Justin Pierce

310-962-6001

 

Is America at a Digital Turning Point?

Ten years of studies by the Center for the Digital Future finds

extremes of benefits and consequences produced by online technology

THIS REPORT: http://www.digitalcenter.org/pdf/10_year_report_release.pdf

June 2011 report: http://www.digitalcenter.org/pdf/10_year_report_release.pdf

 

Americans love their online technology, but what is the cost to their personal and professional lives?

 

A decade of studies by the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future creates a portrait of the American Internet user reaping the benefits from going online while at the same time paying a tremendous price in the form of time, privacy, and well-being.

 

“After 10 years of studies, we find that the strengths as well as the consequences of technology are more profound than ever,” said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future. “At one extreme, we see users with the ability to have constant social connection, unlimited access to information, and unprecedented buying power. At the other extreme, we find extraordinary demands on our time, major concerns about privacy, and vital questions about the proliferation of technology – including a range of issues that didn’t exist 10 years ago.

 

“We believe that America is at a major digital turning point,” said Cole. “Simply, we find tremendous benefits in online technology, but we also pay a personal price for those benefits. The question is: how high a price are we willing to pay?”

The year-to-year comparisons in the Center’s Digital Future studies involve more than 100 major issues concerning the impact of online technology in the United States. Among the highlights of the findings, along with predictions by Cole for digital directions to come, are these nine major issues:

 

1.       Social media explodes – but most content has no credibility.

 

Millions of Americans engage in social media every day, yet they believe that the vast majority of the information they find there has almost no credibility.

 

“It’s no news that social media is the future of communication, but what is not yet fully appreciated is the lack of faith most Internet users have in the accuracy of information they find on social networking sites,” said Cole.

 

“Our most recent study found that 51 percent of users said that only a small portion or none of the information they see on social networking sites is reliable,” Cole said. “And only 14 percent said that most or all of this information is reliable. This speaks volumes about the credibility of communicating through social networking.”


 

2. The meaning of “E-Nuff Already” continues to expand.

 

Five years ago, the Center for the Digital Future coined the term “E-Nuff Already” to describe concern among Internet users about the impact of e-mail on their lives. “E-Nuff Already” has continued to expand and now includes a growing range of issues.

 

“Back then,” said Cole, “e-mail was the primary concern; now, ‘E-Nuff Already’ has grown to include many services and equipment that has tremendous benefits for users, but is also perceived as encroaching on users’ lives.

 

“Americans are more connected than ever, but the sheer overwhelm of technology may be reaching a breaking point,” said Cole. “We get too many e-mails, the barrage of texts is constant, we carry multiple electronic devices, and new services and gadgets continue to be produced. How long will it be before Americans again say ‘E-Nuff Already?’”

 

3. The desktop PC is dead; long live the tablet.

Over the next three years, according to Cole, the tablet will become the primary tool for personal computing. Use of a desktop PC will dwindle to only 4-6 percent of computer users – writers, gamers, programmers, analysts, scientists, and financial planners – and laptop use will decline as well.

“The tablet is such an inviting gadget,” said Cole. “The desktop PC is a ‘lean forward’ device – a tool that sits on a desk and forces users to come to it. The tablet has a ‘lean-back’ allure -- more convenient and accessible than laptops and much more engaging to use. For the vast majority of Americans, the tablet will be the computer tool of choice by the middle of the decade, while the desktop PC fades away.

 

“We don’t see a negative consequence in the move to tablets,” said Cole, “but the coming dominance of tablets will create major shifts in how, when, and why Americans go online – changes even more significant than the emergence of the laptop.”

 

4. Work is increasingly a 24/7 experience.
 

Personal computers and online technology have created increased efficiency and greater productivity in the workplace. However, for many employees, the price of that efficiency also includes the growing presence of work in their lives away from the office.

“Decades ago, we thought that computers would be labor-saving devices,” Cole said. “It’s true that technology makes us more productive, but with that productivity comes greater expectations about how we work and when we work.

 

“For many workers – blue-collar and white-collar alike -- technology makes them accountable to their work all the time,” said Cole. “Is it reasonable to assume that employment is a 24/7 experience?”


5. Most print newspapers will be gone in five years.

“Circulation of print newspapers continues to plummet, and we believe that the only print newspapers that will survive will be at the extremes of the medium – the largest and the smallest,” said Cole. It’s likely that only four major daily newspapers will continue in print form: The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. At the other extreme, local weekly newspapers may still survive.

 

“The impending death of the American print newspaper continues to raise many questions,”


Cole said. “Will media organizations survive and thrive when they move exclusively to online availability? How will the changing delivery of content affect the quality and depth of journalism?”


6. Our privacy is lost.


Perhaps the biggest price that Americans pay for Internet use is the loss of their personal privacy – in particular, as a result of the growing trend of information-gathering about online behavior.

“The issue of privacy is simple – if you go online for anything at all, your privacy is gone,” said Cole. “Americans love that they can buy online, look for information online, and join social communities online. But the price we pay is that we are monitored constantly; private organizations know everything there is to know about us: our interests, our buying preferences, our behavior, and our beliefs.

 

“Americans are clearly concerned about this,” Cole said. “Our latest Digital Future study found that almost half of users age 16 and older are worried about companies checking what they do online; by comparison, 38 percent said that the government checking on them is a concern.”


7. The Internet’s role in the American political process is still a question.

A decade of Digital Future Studies consistently produced findings that Americans believe the Internet is important in political campaigns and helping people to understand politics, but online technology still has almost no role in affecting political power or giving individuals more say in what their government does.

 

“Even though online outreach to voters continues to expand, and Internet fundraising is a major priority for candidates, the Internet is not yet considered a tool that voters can use to gain more political power or influence,” Cole said. “We believe that this is changing, and over the next two election cycles we see the Internet becoming a major factor in changing the political landscape.”


8. The Internet will continue to create shifts in buying habits, at the expense of traditional brick-and-mortar retail.


The most current Digital Future Study found that 68 percent of Americans buy online, and 70 percent of online buyers said their online purchasing reduces their buying in traditional retail stores.

“We are seeing only the beginning of the shift in American purchasing habits brought by the Internet,” Cole said. “Five years from now, the traditional retail landscape will be completely different than it is today.”


9. What comes next?


The most interesting topic about the impact of online technology on America is the undiscovered trend yet to come, said Cole.

 

“In 2006, YouTube and Twitter had just been born, and Facebook was a toddler,” said Cole. “A half-decade ago, who would have thought that these nascent technologies would become the standard for social communication in 2011? The next major online trend is being developed right now by a new crop of Internet visionaries just waiting to be heard.”

 

The Center for the Digital Future is a unit in the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.  


 

 

ABOUT THE REPORT AUTHOR:

 

Jeffrey Cole

 

Director

Jeffrey Cole has been at the forefront of media and communication technology policy issues in both the United States and internationally for the past 25 years.  In July 2004 Dr. Cole joined the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism as Director of the newly formed Center for the Digital Future and as a Research Professor. Founded on the belief that the best policy arises from the best information, the Center is a research and policy institute committed to work that has a real and beneficial effect on people's lives, while seeking to maximize the positive potential of the mass media and our rapidly evolving communication technologies.

Prior to joining USC, Dr. Cole was a longtime member of the UCLA faculty and served as Director of the UCLA Center for Communication Policy, based in the Anderson Graduate School of Management. At UCLA and now at USC Annenberg, Cole founded and directs the World Internet Project, a long-term longitudinal look at the effects of computer and Internet technology on all aspects of society, which is conducted in over 20 countries. At the announcement of the project in June 1999, Vice President Al Gore praised Cole as a "true visionary providing the public with information on how to understand the impact of media."

Cole was Principal Investigator of the Network Television Violence Monitoring Project which in 1995, 1996 and 1997 issued annual reports to the television networks, Congress and the nation. Upon the release of the 1996 report, Cole held a joint press conference with President Bill Clinton, who referred to the Center for Communication Policy as "the premier educational institution setting trends in entertainment." Nationwide there was unanimous praise for the quality of the reports and their contribution to the television violence debate. 

Cole has testified before Congress on television issues and has spoken as a keynote and panel member at more than 200 conferences on communications issues. He has worked with both the Clinton and George W. Bush White House on media and telecommunications issues, including detailed briefings on the Center's work.

In 1994, 1995 and 1996 the Center co-authored with U.S. News & World Report national surveys examining attitudes and values of decision-makers in the entertainment industry. In 1994 the Center co-sponsored "The Superhighway Summit" in UCLA's Royce Hall with the leaders of most of the nation's major media companies. For the annual Family Reunion Conferences in Nashville, Tennessee, Cole has worked with Vice President Gore to produce films opening the 1995 through 2002 conferences. The annual films were screened before an audience of 1,400 including the Vice President and President Clinton.

Cole has lectured extensively in Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, Australia and throughout the U.S. He regularly consults with top government officials and leaders of the telecommunications industries throughout the world on communications issues. He currently is a member of the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) Forum Programme Committee.  He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) from 1997 to 2001 and was the founding governor of the ATAS Interactive Media Peer Group.

Over the past 31 years, Cole has taught to over 35,000 students. In 1987 he received UCLA's Distinguished Teaching Award.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jane Stevens

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Dec 20, 2011, 2:58:44 PM12/20/11
to Bill Densmore, jtm...@googlegroups.com
Yes, I believe that most print newspapers will be gone in five years. Two other posts underlined that:



I agree that our concept of privacy is changing. Some people will say it's lost; others won't know what those people are talking about.

The issue, as I read it, is that most people don't trust the content on social media, not social media itself. That's a big distinction when you consider how many people use social media.


Cheers, Jane
On Dec 20, 2011, at 8:26 AM, Bill Densmore wrote:

 

This is a pickup of a news release from USC-Annenberg's Center for Digital Future. The PDF version is at their website at the address shown below if you'd rather read clean PDF, but this plain-text version can be excerpted and commented upon more readily.  Cole is opening an important set of debates. The assertion of timing -- five years or something else -- isn't as important as **what to do about it now.**  And do you agree that our privacy is lost? Is that acceptable? Should, or can, legislation restore it?  What opportunity is presented by the finding that a majority of people don't trust social media?

 

-- bill densmore
T

 

<clip_image002.gif>USC ANNENBERG /
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Josh Wilson

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Dec 20, 2011, 3:43:02 PM12/20/11
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Thoughtful and refreshing, and a nice reminder that as far as emerging media go, we are at the "wax cylinder" stage of the Internet, and haven't even made it to the true stereo separation of the hi-fi era. If you buy into my analogy.

I am not worried about the departure of print. Previously, too much has been committed to print that has not been worthy of the effort and expense. If the less valuable material goes straight to the Internet, that can't be a bad thing. Meanwhile, the stuff you DO want in print will be worth the effort and worth the expense. The "market," as limited a construct as it is, will nonetheless adapt.

In particular, on the print front, I think you'll see a spike in "high end" print at the national scale, and a spike in more affordable "boutique" print jobs done locally, as the proverbial cheap-n-easy "xerocracy" meets the handmade/DIY movement to create a bloom in non-digital documents with diverse niche value.

I think privacy in terms of something that can be violated personally will probably matter less -- all the teenagers posting their naked party pix will be grownups some day, running the show after the boomers and post-boomers, and their 20th century folkways and mores, fade into the past.

Simultaneously, "privacy" as something that can be exploited financially and politically will start to matter more.

Trust in social media will depend on the source, not the medium. Thus the role of the journalist as a trusted source will become a bit of a cha-ching, with the scale of the cha-ching pegged to the verifiable trustworthiness of the journalist.

News institutions as we know them will start to go away as their topheavy business models prove uncompetitive, and empowered solo producers and news teams start making waves and establishing their own reputations.

The biggest and most important deal of all, or at least equivalent with the threat of financial and political privacy being exploited, is the glut of information. Too much to keep up with. Just. Too. Much.

Even so, social media provides an interesting set of filters. You're more inclined to read something interesting that someone you trust passes along, than you are to engage with all the blinky bits of of quasi-spam that wash up on the digital shores every day.

josh / independent arts & media


Steffens, Brian L.

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Dec 20, 2011, 3:54:35 PM12/20/11
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I believe there may be fewer paper newspapers in five years … but most gone? Doubtful.

As to the chart … 14% profit margin is nothing sneeze at (unless you're a greedy stockholder). Supermarkets have operated at about 2% for decades, and I don't hear drumbeats that most supermarkets will be gone in 5 (or 10 or 20) years. Similarly, most department stores (Sears, Penneys, Macys, etc.) have survived on about 6% margins the past decade or two. Now Sears might fall away, but I suspect we'll still have WalMart, Sam's Club, Macy's, Kohl's and other department stores.

There used to be a time when it was just fine as long as income exceeded expenses. If you could pay the staff and the bills, and put some away for capital expenditures or repairs, life was good. If you could put away a little more, for expansion, life was great. If you could put away even more, for a villa in Italy, a plane and a lake house, well, then, nirvana.

Expectations have changed markedly in the past half century, along with the types of ownership.

Brian Steffens

From: Jane Stevens <jste...@mmjourno.com<mailto:jste...@mmjourno.com>>
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:58:44 -0800
To: Bill Densmore <wpden...@gmail.com<mailto:wpden...@gmail.com>>
Cc: <jtm...@googlegroups.com<mailto:jtm...@googlegroups.com>>
Subject: Re: {JTM} QUESTION: Do you buy the assertion by Jeff Cole at USC-Annenberg in an upcoming paper that many dailies will be OOB in five years? Our privacy lost, no trust in social media? Why or why not? What to do?

Yes, I believe that most print newspapers will be gone in five years. Two other posts underlined that:
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2011/12/newspaper-job-cuts-surged-30-in-2011.html and this revealing chart:

http://www.poynter.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Earl-EBITDAchart1.jpg


I agree that our concept of privacy is changing. Some people will say it's lost; others won't know what those people are talking about.

The issue, as I read it, is that most people don't trust the content on social media, not social media itself. That's a big distinction when you consider how many people use social media.


Cheers, Jane

Jane E. Stevens
ACEsTooHigh.com<http://acestoohigh.com>
ReJurno.com<http://rejurno.com>
707-495-1112 (cell)

-- bill densmore
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CONTACT: Justin Pierce

310-962-6001

9. What comes next?

ABOUT THE REPORT AUTHOR:

Jeffrey Cole


Director

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Josh Wilson

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Dec 21, 2011, 12:43:35 PM12/21/11
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Seriously. 14%. That's a freakin' handsome margin. Sure, I see the downward trend, but, does it necessarily have to end in oblivion? Can we give up this fantasy that somehow providing public-interest information will be "profitable" for media companies? And for that matter, if they overleveraged themselves and have insane debt burdens, why does this have to be our problem?

How about we shed the stupid, bloated, self-serving business and management model rather than the actual newspapers? For God's sake. This is pathetic. That the fate of our democracy rests on the ability of media-corporation shareholders and executives to have golden dinner plates and engage in Wall Street-style brinksmanship with company finances.

I didn't get into this business to put food on someone's golden dinner plate. I don't think too many other journalists did either. Why, then, are we trapped by the fatalistic economics of this badly broken system?

Enough, enough, ENOUGH already! Occupy the freakin' Media. The time is upon us. How shall we do it?

josh

Tom Stites

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Dec 21, 2011, 1:37:27 PM12/21/11
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Friends -- The charts shows not the profit margin but EBITDA, which stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.  This is an accounting metric that omits many expenses; investors use it in many calculations.

For most newspaper owners, the biggest omitted expense is interest -- that so many have long been overextended with debt accounts for the many bankruptcies that litter the publishing landscape.  Many newspapers remain profitable even if their owners are in the toilet.   But the trend remains disastrous -- the decline in newspaper advertising revenue from all sources, including online, continues in steep decline.  The industry just announced its 22d straight quarter of decline -- that's 5 1/2 years -- with no relief in sight.  The future of newspaper is bleak at best.

Fewer and fewer "dailies" are delivering papers five days a week.  Michigan is particularly hard hit, but California isn't far behind.  This is a desperate move, and the desperation can only get worse.  

Tom


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Josh Wilson

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Dec 21, 2011, 1:50:46 PM12/21/11
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Tom, thank you as always for the clarity in this, and apologies to the group for not quite getting the definition right.

May I propose, however, that this changes nothing. The problem seems squarely to be the business practices of the media companies -- business practices that are themselves unrelated to the actual practice of journalism, but which dominate that practice to the extent that they actual make the news less relevant.

After all, it's not just the magic of the Internet that is making people lay off the print habit. It's that the news-media companies have for decades been driving their product towards greater extremes of triviality or elitism -- reality TV-show reviews on the one hand, and "great man" reportage on the movements of national and business leaders on the other -- and thereby neglecting the vast majority of public-interest storytelling that the Fourth Estate should ideally be engaged in.

Again, there is no shortage of journalists in news institutions that want to do, and indeed do, engage in relevant public-interest reporting. But there are fewer and fewer of them by the day.

That should be the real metric for measuring the health of our news ecology. The story's already over for the media companies themselves. They're zombie mechanisms that will go after ad revenue in ever-more complex and relentless fashion, and play their high-rolling financier games, to the eternal disadvantage of the practice of journalism and our democracy.

josh

Steffens, Brian L.

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Dec 21, 2011, 2:03:09 PM12/21/11
to Tom Stites, Journalism That Matters
Well, if we want to drill down … EBITDA is generally reported by publicly traded companies … or those representing a couple of thousand of the 9,000 newspapers in America. Meaning this stat is irrelevant to a majority of newspapers.

And one might argue that the industry brought this upon themselves (the debt retirement issue), much like the banks bear much of the responsibility for their current woes. Far fewer papers were beholden to shareholders in the 60s and early 70s when newspapers "peaked." Not that independent ownership was good or bad, but they answered to themselves, with a vested interest in their communities.

While advertising is declining, opportunities for revenue are not. Any industry that sticks with just one benefactor will eventually perish. The industry would benefit from vision, leadership and a willingness to embrace change … qualities that seem in short supply the past couple of decades. Putting out a newspapers requires an assembly line approach to maximize efficiencies. But an assembly line mentality tends to stymie innovation.

Brian

From: Tom Stites <t...@tomstites.com<mailto:t...@tomstites.com>>
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:37:27 -0500
To: Journalism That Matters <jtm...@googlegroups.com<mailto:jtm...@googlegroups.com>>
Subject: Re: {JTM} QUESTION: Do you buy the assertion by Jeff Cole at USC-Annenberg in an upcoming paper that many dailies will be OOB in five years? Our privacy lost, no trust in social media? Why or why not? What to do?

Tom

josh

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Tom Stites

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Dec 21, 2011, 2:03:46 PM12/21/11
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Beautifully put.  Now what we need is sustainable new business models -- all different kinds -- that will make it possible to cover the news in ways that are reliable and useful to the broad population.  This is where our energy need to be focused.

Tom

Rob Kall

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Dec 21, 2011, 2:13:49 PM12/21/11
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I like what Josh Wilson has to say about the profit-drive by big corporations-- how that's a big cause of the problem. 
Consider that the same situation exists in health care. For profit insurers eat up way too much of the costs and raise the price. In healthcare, people are forced to pay the escalating bills every year. In media, democracy and public knowledge pay the price. 

I wrote a piece on this a few years ago (Oct 2009)  that's even more relevant now. 

Separating the Journalism Baby From the Newspapers Bathwater


It's also included below. 

A bit about me, since I'm a newbie here. I publish opednews.com, ranked as one of the top 100 blogs overall by technorati. I built the content management system from scratch, architecting it with a coder. We're set up as a non-profit with over 50 volunteer editors, over 55,000 registered users and over 27,000 daily newsletter subscribers. The site reaches 250-800K uniques a month, with 800K to 2.6 million page views a month. 


Rob Kall
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"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -Martin Luther King Jr.

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Separating the Journalism Baby From the Newspapers Bathwater


Newspapers are dying. Let them. There may have been people who wanted to rescue the buggy whip industry. But they were misguided. It was transportation they really cared about. We need to initiate dynamic, bottom up approaches to support the dying field of Journalism, not newspapers. 

The writing is on the web and the smart phone, not the wall, not the paper. Newspapers are dying because new generations with bottom up brains marinated in the internet no longer read newspapers. Under 30s want text message and twitter tweet length reading material and they want video and podcasts, not dead tree long writing.

Congress held hearings on the newspaper industry. There's talk or allusion to the idea that newspapers will be "rescued" by Obama, by Congress... That's a bad idea. They are rescuing the bathwater, not the baby. 

The thing that newspapers do that is important is investigative journalism-- digging up the less than obvious, the secrets that government and corporate officials hide. Journalists make transparent that which has been hidden or made hard to see or find. 

Newspapers have been among the primary sources for funding journalists. But as media ownership has consolidated and become less diverse and more top down, so the number of independent newspapers has dropped, and as revenues have dropped, less and less budgets have been allotted to pay for investigative reporting. And that diversity diminished, consolidated, increasingly top-down trend has hurt journalism, just as consolidation of the banking industry after the economic meltdown has failed to help the average American. 

The new American business model, the one that has proven to be fabulously successful even in these tough times, is based on bottom up approaches. Google, Amazon, Facebook, myspace, twitter, to name a few, are all based on inviting the crowd into the business mix. Transparency is a big part of the new corporation and so is open sourcing of information-- that means giving things away free. 


I'm a firm believer that a strong media, and that means strong investigative journalism, is essential for democracy and efficient operation of both government and corporations. Investigative journalism digs and exposes. That's an incredibly valuable function. It's so valuable, it's worth investing in... with the expectation of solid returns on that investment.

I say, instead of taking a top down approach and giving huge chunks of money to a handful of failing newspapers, the same approach that was not very effective, in the long run, in dealing with the bank liquidity crisis, have government fund journalism and journalists. Take a bottom up approach and give the money to tens of thousands of journalists-- writers and photographers and videographers. That will take huge financial pressure off the newspapers, give them a lot more content they can use and help expand the growing blogosphere, where content is usually free and millions of people are operating small businesses with the potential to grow. Small business is where the most job creation has always flourished and small businesses are NOT too big to die.

Establish a budget based on a reasonable rate of return. The US economy is about $13 trillion dollars. I say, invest a quarter of a tenth of one percent on journalists, whose job it is to investigate politicians, laws, corporations, with the goal to increase transparency, decrease corruption and increase responsibility, honesty, accountability, growth and prosperity. A budget that size is about $ 3.5 billion. With a salary model, we could hire 50,000 journalists at $60,000 a year plus healthcare with that budget. 

Then, those journalists would be responsible for getting their work read. The best journalists would be picked up by the best media. The journalists whose work did not get attention would make less money each year. We have ways to measure interest and readership-- google ranking, technorati, quantcast, alexa.com, amazon all assess the traffic, the number of links and the popularity of things, sites, even ideas. If a writer's reporting is picked up by the TV news, by hundreds or thousands of bloggers, that writer is reaching a lot of people. A bottom up media approach will let we the people decide which journalists are the best. 

Or, going even more bottom up, open journalism to every writer, photographer and videographer. Track their traffic and views, factor in the service they do, in terms of exposing waste, corruption, good work, etc. and reward them based on those factors. 

In the bottom up world, where thousands or millions of people share in decision making, network TV has a limited place. There are exceptions. American Idol taps the wisdom of the crowd to some extent. That approach could be taken much farther. Imagine news shows where a bottom up approach was applied to deciding what news was covered. If you look at digg.com, del.icio.us, fark, reddit, yahoo's buzzup, buzzflash's buzz, and twitter tweet counts, they all enable users to vote on which headlines rise to the top. If a major network or a new network allowed viewers to decide what was covered, this would even allow network news to become bottom up. Would it work? The number of viewers would be a clear indicator. It won't be surprising if certain topics gather a lot of support that may not pull a lot of viewers. For example, if a group like Focus on the Family goes to a site and artificially votes up coverage of an abortion protest, but then, no-one watches the coverage, it will be easy to develop software that discounts votes for certain topics for a certain period of time. 


Not all journalism is mediagenic and sexy. There will have to be some way to give credit to journalists who cover local school board and town council meetings, because they should be covered too. 

If the US government invests directly in journalists, so their writings and reports can be freely used by any media organization or site, that investment will yield big results. Instead of seeing journalists as employees who generate news to sell papers, we can view journalists as sleuths to find waste, corruption, cool ideas and projects that are working. I don't think that government should fund coverage of sports or celebrities. It seems those topics are still doing pretty well. We need to fund investigative journalism, not entertainment journalism. 

Perhaps, by separating the two out, we'll have a clearer differentiation of what is news and what is noise and entertainment. 

Naturally, those on the right will call this socialized journalism or socialist news. These are the same people though who fight to allow corporations to be treated as people, the same people who want to screw up the Internet and end net equality. These are the ones who block efforts to increase transparency in government, because this idea is all about transparency. 

Frankly, I'd like to see even more money invested. Why not fund four times as many-- put 200,000 investigative journalists to work, of all ages? They will scour the nation to find quality stories that make a difference. 

The top 10,000 or 20,000 journalists should get bonuses and the least read, least value producing journalists should get demotions or lose their jobs. 

Crowdsourcing and related bottom up approaches wil be used to assess who are the best and worst achievers as well as measures of money saved or developed, based on discovering waste, corruption, getting out new ideas, etc. If a reporter digs up a corrupt operation that has been bilking the government of $10 billion a year. That reporter should get a big bonus, maybe $100,000, and be secure in her job for at least a few years. If a reporter is the first to really get wide coverage for a new invention that saves people millions, he should get a nice reward. 

Hey, this is a new idea. It's not totally fleshed out. But it's a hell of a lot better than dumping hundreds of millions or billions into a dying, archaic industry. There may have been people who wanted to rescue the buggy whip industry. But they were misguided. It was transportation they really cared about. 

 

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM),

Tracy Record, WSB Editor

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Dec 21, 2011, 2:58:49 PM12/21/11
to Rob Kall, Journalism That Matters
And just for context's sake, outside the newspapers-or-not prism, Rob's first line is why some of us have been so tooth-and-nail against the corporatization/templatization of neighborhood online news (which is my little slice of the pie, fifth year in business now after 30+ in old media) - an ugly trend these past couple years for old-media companies desperate to find any new profit source they can, and squeezing small businesses like turnips, hounding them into spending money they can't afford on ads that are seen by few (not because of the format, but because the sites are so little-read). My ranting about this has been along the lines of "you ruined (much of) old media, don't ruin this too."

I am sorry that the apparently inevitable failure of the most glaring example of this (I shall not speak its name) will throw some good journalists out of work, but I hope they will see the wisdom of what we had evangelized all along - go launch a service (it's more than a "site") for your community, that YOU run, in a way that makes unique sense for YOUR community, working with community members as well as for them.  There are hundreds of communities that do need their own online news services. They just didn't need them to be set up and templatized by a humongous corporation also running a middle-management bureaucracy through a corporate HQ. 

- TR in West Seattle (who also doesn't believe paper publications will be totally gone in five years, but there will be far fewer - the resource usage, transporting the "product" as well as printing it, makes no sense and the "but what will the older people do?" argument falls further and further away as older people join the rest of the world online)




From: Rob Kall <r...@opednews.com>
To:
Cc: Journalism That Matters <jtm...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 11:13 AM

Subject: Re: {JTM} QUESTION: Do you buy the assertion by Jeff Cole at USC-Annenberg in an upcoming paper that many dailies will be OOB in five years? Our privacy lost, no trust in social media? Why or why not? What to do?

Montgomery, Leigh

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Dec 22, 2011, 2:09:01 PM12/22/11
to Steffens, Brian L., Tom Stites, Journalism That Matters
Greetings:

EBITDA aside, newspapers historically enjoyed substantial profits and
continued to have ambitious goals, even though circulation has been
declining since the 1940s and certainly as other media formats
matured. Somewhere I read that across the categories of products, the
average profit margin is something like 6-7%.

Probably because it was thought that they would be around forever,
being involved in a noble effort and a product everyone was connected
with somehow, and subscribing to the newspaper was part of being an
informed citizen. So it was an asset to leverage against.

Plenty of blame to go around here, but it's time to address current
concerns: arguably their most valuable asset is their content. And
for so long, the focus was on the daily 'miracle' and trucking it to
the doorstep and moving on to the next day's production. All of that
'old stuff,' the archives, has a lot of value to researchers,
scholars, genealogies, and anyone who needs fact-checked, edited
content delivered on demand to their desktop (and now increasingly,
mobile device or tablet). Are publishers making the most of these
opportunities?

I'm involved in some conversations(and actual projects) to preserve
born-digital content as well as endangered collections. The concern
among historians, academics, researchers, and really to all of us, is
that we need to do more to save this material. When it is a digital
asset, there are more opportunities for it, and potential revenue.
It's not huge, but it is just one more revenue stream to help sustain
the publishers.

I worry about a lot of the news startups, they are doing important
work to inform their communities. From initial conversations we had
at JTM and in other places, it seemed like there needed to be more
awareness of the information economy(not very well understood by
legacy media, let alone startups). In ensuring that their news is
accessible, and archived, and delivered to aggregators, on their radar
screens?

Leigh

--
Leigh Montgomery
Librarian
The Christian Science Monitor
210 Massachusetts Ave. P02-30
Boston, MA  02115  U.S.A.
617.450.2682
montg...@csmonitor.com

The MONITOR is global: in practice and in spirit
Online @ CSMonitor.com

Ross Williams

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Dec 22, 2011, 4:54:46 PM12/22/11
to Journalism That Matters
Newspapers are in the advertising business. They will survive as long as print advertising continues to have  value. The problem is much of their current audience is moving online. While they can offer online advertising to reach that audience, online advertising isn't as effective or valuable. Moreover, they have a lot of competition offering advertising opportunities to reach that same audience. That means it is unlikely online advertising will ever generate the kind of revenue required to sustain expensive news operations.  

The second challenge they face is finding content that they can attract readers for their print advertisers. With people going online for their news this may be the largest challenge. 

It is possible that the New York Times paywall will generate enough revenue to sustain them as a news organization. But I think they are actually less likely to find a replacement for their print audience than more local newspapers. 

I would remind people of that adage that change often happens slower than we expect, and when it comes it is far more profound than anything we anticipated. I don't think newspapers are going to disappear in 5 years, but they may not look a lot like they do now. 

Ross Williams
Advocacy Technologies
twitter.com/rosscwilliams
www.northerncommunityinternet.org
www.grandrapidscommunityinternet.org

Barry Parr

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Dec 22, 2011, 5:05:55 PM12/22/11
to Ross Williams, Journalism That Matters
I expect most print papers to survive the next five years, but the same cannot be said of their owners.

Most newspaper companies, and maybe even the companies that buy their assets, will not survive the next five years.  The print products their successors produce will no longer be worth mourning when they finally do cease publication.

bp

--
Barry Parr

http://coastsider.com
http://mediasavvy.com
http://twitter.com/barryparr

650.523.4929
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