Reading back over a stack of old Fast Company magazines I came across this graphic of the criteria Maria Popova uses to select her Brain Pickings.
Every day we face the firehose of information we've directed at ourselves and every day we seek to find the answers we're looking for in that mass of data. Wherever we are in that torrent of stories, we all need a little help. One of the jobs of a journalist is to offer that help, to curate. As Journalists we do what we've done since journalism began. We filter information down and offer up what we think is the most important, for whoever chooses to read it.
What's interesting about the Popova graphic is it recognizes the importance of knowing what your beat is. No one can follow everything, and no one wants you to. You pick your beat, your subject, and so long as you remain the best source of information on that topic, your followers will keep reading.
Popova reads broadly, and then filters by what's important in her beat, and by what fits well in her feeds. She then puts out what she's found and reported in her blog or on twitter, depending on how much time and effort she's put into it. This thoughtful use of the appropriate platform for the content isn't anything new, but it's worth repeating.
Reporters are curating all the time. Curating may be a job in it's own right, but it's also part of what all journalists do, and whether they choose to share that work or not, and where they choose to share it, is a decision for them and their editors.
We're already curating either consciously or unconsciously in our twitter feeds and personal blogs. The question facing editors is whether one of these feeds crosses the threshold of being worthy of its own page in a publication. And perhaps the challenge for journalists is to create a feed that catches their editors' attention.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Flickr Groups Get A Makeover
Flickr has launched it's newly designed Group pages, bringing them up to speed with the dramatic changes they made in other parts of the site back in May. But is this enough to bring people flocking back to Flickr?
"The new Groups is easier to use, better showcases group photos and discussions" and is easier to navigate and more flexible for admins, says Flickr. And I don't doubt that anyone who's in Flickr and paying their annual fee will love these changes.
But what about people who've moved to Facebook to store their photos? It's hard to imagine them coming back for the Groups function.
So what is the best tool for creating a discussion around photos?
"The new Groups is easier to use, better showcases group photos and discussions" and is easier to navigate and more flexible for admins, says Flickr. And I don't doubt that anyone who's in Flickr and paying their annual fee will love these changes.
But what about people who've moved to Facebook to store their photos? It's hard to imagine them coming back for the Groups function.
So what is the best tool for creating a discussion around photos?
Monday, January 9, 2012
Goodbye Radio's Local Monopoly
NPR posted a video this evening of host Audio Cornish driving a Ford around town listening to audio from the NPR iPhone app. run through the car's dashboard using voice commands.
With a few well chosen words she can select live radio from any NPR station in the country which is in the app. She can also select any archived audio that's available in the app.
When these dashboards become commonplace in our vehicles, the local control of the audio on the radio in your vehicle will be over. Instead of radio stations competing with any other radio station within range of an FM radio signal, companies that produce live and archived audio will be competing with any company that can can stream audio through a mobile device.
This will scare some and fill others with excitement at the opportunities technology offers.
The next question is: how do I make my friends' suggestions in social media influence what's avialable in the dashboard?
Let the best audio win!
With a few well chosen words she can select live radio from any NPR station in the country which is in the app. She can also select any archived audio that's available in the app.
When these dashboards become commonplace in our vehicles, the local control of the audio on the radio in your vehicle will be over. Instead of radio stations competing with any other radio station within range of an FM radio signal, companies that produce live and archived audio will be competing with any company that can can stream audio through a mobile device.
This will scare some and fill others with excitement at the opportunities technology offers.
The next question is: how do I make my friends' suggestions in social media influence what's avialable in the dashboard?
Let the best audio win!
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Making Most Popular Even More Popular
Each week I look at the most popular stories WBUR has produced in the week. This week I wondered if I could use Storify to make them even more popular.
Here's what I did:
a) I went through the top stories of the week for all the shows produced at the station. I collected the top ten.
b) I then went and found the most interesting tweets I could find about those stories. It was a great experience to go through the tweets about the shows. Some I'd seen during the week, some I hadn't. Some were very funny, some were poignant; all were interesting to review.
(This step wasn't as easy as it might have been. Some of the tweets were beyond the reach of the week of tweets in Twitter's search, and by extension Storify's search too. As a quick work around for this I used Google to search for terms and I narrowed the search with site:twitter.com. This got me what I wanted, but there must be a better way to do this. Please comment below if you have a better idea.)
d) To complete the circle I tweeted thanks to the Tweeple whose tweets I'd put in the Storify.
In review I'd say this was a fun experiment to carry out. I could have done a better job of putting the Storify page together. Perhaps stacking the links at the top, or writing a clearer explanation of what the page is about.
I'd be a very grateful for any thoughts you might have on this. How do you think I could have done a better job?
Monday, January 4, 2010
Platforms and Tollbooths
Everything in the media world seems to be in flux as we move into 2010.
News organizations don't know how or where they should be delivering news. Cable companies face a significant challenge from the Internet. Users are trying to decided where they want their media to appear. On their phone, on a TV, in an e-book?
I want everything on every tool. Why not? My iPhone gives me a lot on a single small screen. Photos, news, video, books, podcasts and even phone calls.
But users can't have that because the companies that own the means of communication don't want them to have that. They want tethered tools. Amazon only wants the Kindle to buy from the Amazon store. Ditto for the iPhone and the Nook.
Daniel Lyons in Newsweek says he only keeps paying his cable bill out of force of habit. That's what's keeping old media organizations in business. But as 2010 gets under way all that ground seems to be beginning to shift dramatically. Well, that's my feeling.
The Times reports there's a tablet from Apple on the horizon. Perhaps due for unveiling on Jan. 26. Google's phone is here and will attempt to break into what has been an iPhone business.
It's a struggle of platforms, channels and tools, and it could be a turbulent and exciting year.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Barn Door View
The question of the moment is how to get people to pay for news. But everyone in the news business is looking at this from the barn door. The horse is out in the field, happily eating the grass, and we're leaning in the large airy doorway looking out and talking about ways to make this thing work.
There are still some people talking about getting the horse back in the barn. But the general conclusion is that the ways that will work leave the horse in the field. And the freemium idea, as described on Techcrunch by Erick Schonfeld, or Doc Searl's Emancipay, is the idea that seems to have caught the most attention.
The idea has been around for centuries, but it suits an environment where mass production and delivery cost are cheap. Think of your own use of a tool like the iPhone. When you first get one you swear you'll only use the free apps. But once you've got into the idea of using them you start buying. The same with software, or cloud applications like Flickr or Wordpress. If you like them, before you know it, you're paying for them.
Going back to the barn analogy for media: Forget all the trouble of making hay and hauling it into the barn for the horse. Grow the grass, let the horse eat it in the field and come into the barn of his own accord.
The barn still has value, because the horse likes to be there. You keep a bucket of oats for him to eat in the barn and focus on keeping the grass growing in the field and it'll be a healthy happy horse that walks into the barn, making it all worthwhile.
There are still some people talking about getting the horse back in the barn. But the general conclusion is that the ways that will work leave the horse in the field. And the freemium idea, as described on Techcrunch by Erick Schonfeld, or Doc Searl's Emancipay, is the idea that seems to have caught the most attention.
The idea has been around for centuries, but it suits an environment where mass production and delivery cost are cheap. Think of your own use of a tool like the iPhone. When you first get one you swear you'll only use the free apps. But once you've got into the idea of using them you start buying. The same with software, or cloud applications like Flickr or Wordpress. If you like them, before you know it, you're paying for them.
Going back to the barn analogy for media: Forget all the trouble of making hay and hauling it into the barn for the horse. Grow the grass, let the horse eat it in the field and come into the barn of his own accord.
The barn still has value, because the horse likes to be there. You keep a bucket of oats for him to eat in the barn and focus on keeping the grass growing in the field and it'll be a healthy happy horse that walks into the barn, making it all worthwhile.
Ten barn door articles:
- Saving the Globe from a World of Hurt, by Doc Searls.
- Still at Newspapers I.x, also by Doc Searls.
- Chris Anderson talking about his book "The Future of a Radical Price."
- Freemium model for newspapers and other survival ideas, by Don Dodge.
- Jeff Jarvis, talking for 23 minutes: $10. Jeff writing 70,000 words: $13 by Josh Benton.
- Radio: The End is Near – Unless you heed Bob Garfield, by Mark Ramsey.
- Five tips on charging for content from Alan Murray of WSJ.com, by Zachary Seward.
- Ad Revenue on the Web? No Sure Bet, By Claire Cain Miller.
- 25 ideas: Creating An Open-Source Business Model For Newspapers, by Tom Foremski
- Out of Print, by Eric Alterman
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Journalism Schools
Brian Stelter writes in the New York Times on the changes in attitudes and course work at journalism schools in the United States as they come to terms with a changing media environment, and realize that they should be leading the change, not following it.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
News: No Funding Model Yet
There's an interesting article in the NY Times about crowdfunding, written by Sarah Kershaw.
She reports that Spot Us in the San Francisco Bay Area is asking its users for story ideas and the funding to cover those stories. It's an interesting idea, which like all ideas, has its weaknesses. Such as, lobbyists could buy the news they want covered. And how could you fund investigative journalism?
I find it interesting that in 2008 there's still no definitive model for a new way to fund news emerging.
There's a new reality. A huge amount of very cheap publishing is going on. Funding is migrating away from expensive methods of publishing. Consumers are using their feed readers to create their own newspapers. They've become publishers creating self built "newspapers" each with a run of one copy. The feed reader melds the publisher and the consumer into the same person. Podcasting does the same for radio. YouTube, Netflix and all the other sources of online video eliminate the need for television.
That new reality has some funding components. Newspapers and smaller online publications sell online advertising. Sponsorship and grants offer another source of revenue. Membership is a third, crowdfunding, according to Kershaw's article, is a fourth and there are more. Kershaw's article mentions Pro Publica and Jay Rosen's Assignment Zero.
The article ends quoting Rosen saying "My own feeling is that we need to try lots of things. ... we need to launch lots of boats."
This has to be true. To continue the analogy, it's as if the ocean got shallower. It's now covered in little boats crossing the water that once only the big liners could sail. And the liners are having their bottoms ripped open. They have to draw less water or run aground. They have to evolve into fleets of little boats. And little boats can be funded in many different ways.
She reports that Spot Us in the San Francisco Bay Area is asking its users for story ideas and the funding to cover those stories. It's an interesting idea, which like all ideas, has its weaknesses. Such as, lobbyists could buy the news they want covered. And how could you fund investigative journalism?
I find it interesting that in 2008 there's still no definitive model for a new way to fund news emerging.
There's a new reality. A huge amount of very cheap publishing is going on. Funding is migrating away from expensive methods of publishing. Consumers are using their feed readers to create their own newspapers. They've become publishers creating self built "newspapers" each with a run of one copy. The feed reader melds the publisher and the consumer into the same person. Podcasting does the same for radio. YouTube, Netflix and all the other sources of online video eliminate the need for television.
That new reality has some funding components. Newspapers and smaller online publications sell online advertising. Sponsorship and grants offer another source of revenue. Membership is a third, crowdfunding, according to Kershaw's article, is a fourth and there are more. Kershaw's article mentions Pro Publica and Jay Rosen's Assignment Zero.
The article ends quoting Rosen saying "My own feeling is that we need to try lots of things. ... we need to launch lots of boats."
This has to be true. To continue the analogy, it's as if the ocean got shallower. It's now covered in little boats crossing the water that once only the big liners could sail. And the liners are having their bottoms ripped open. They have to draw less water or run aground. They have to evolve into fleets of little boats. And little boats can be funded in many different ways.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Radio in the Amphitheatre
Not long ago many public radio stations in the United States had what amounted to a monopoly in their markets. In many markets there was only one public radio station on the FM dial, and the audience had little or no choice if they wanted to hear Morning Edition.
Hybrid Digital radio has eroded that monopoly a little. But since very few of the audience have HD radios it's had very little impact.
But the Internet is a different story. On the Internet a public radio station in any market is just a tiny whisper in a huge cacophony of noise.
Searching for an analogy to describe this to a group of j-school students the other day, it struck me that the old days were like standing in an ancient amphitheatre. In the days of FM radio, it was as if the listener was standing on the stage and her public radio station was like a person standing half way up the auditorium, in very middle of row L, shouting down to the listener on the stage. Since the public radio station was the only person in the auditorium the listener, though a little way off, had no trouble locating the station, or listening to it.
But on the Web the public radio station is not alone. Every seat in the audiorium is filled with stations, newspapers and blogs trying to get the listener's attention. And in all that noise it's almost impossible for her to hear the public radio station.
In this situation, there's no point telling the same story as everyone else. Then it just becomes unidentifyable in the noise the listener, still standing on the stage, now hears.
The only way to stand out is to be different. To be distinct. To be original. The only way to be heard in all that noise is to tell a different story. To cover something that only public radio's special reporting skills and relationship with its audience allows it to cover.
It will still be hard to find, but the listener will at least have a reason to keep looking.
Hybrid Digital radio has eroded that monopoly a little. But since very few of the audience have HD radios it's had very little impact.
But the Internet is a different story. On the Internet a public radio station in any market is just a tiny whisper in a huge cacophony of noise.
Searching for an analogy to describe this to a group of j-school students the other day, it struck me that the old days were like standing in an ancient amphitheatre. In the days of FM radio, it was as if the listener was standing on the stage and her public radio station was like a person standing half way up the auditorium, in very middle of row L, shouting down to the listener on the stage. Since the public radio station was the only person in the auditorium the listener, though a little way off, had no trouble locating the station, or listening to it.
But on the Web the public radio station is not alone. Every seat in the audiorium is filled with stations, newspapers and blogs trying to get the listener's attention. And in all that noise it's almost impossible for her to hear the public radio station.
In this situation, there's no point telling the same story as everyone else. Then it just becomes unidentifyable in the noise the listener, still standing on the stage, now hears.
The only way to stand out is to be different. To be distinct. To be original. The only way to be heard in all that noise is to tell a different story. To cover something that only public radio's special reporting skills and relationship with its audience allows it to cover.
It will still be hard to find, but the listener will at least have a reason to keep looking.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Oh dude. Not news...
Dan Kennedy, a professor and Northeastern, who writes the MediaNation blog, has an article in the Commonwealth magazine entitled "Plugged in, tuned out".
He quotes research that says though young people are saturated in media, they shy away from news. "16 percent of young adults (ages 18 to 30) read a newspaper every day, compared with 35 percent of those older than 30."
Kennedy says young people's lack of interest in news and resulting shallow knowledge of current affairs represents a threat both to news media and to civic life.
The article explores the reasons for this phenomenon: a) because Americans are marrying, having children and buying homes later in life, and b) because they are used to well designed and easy to use cell phones and other media tools that make newspapers look positively nineteenth century. (Kennedy was on a panel in Boston to discuss this article shortly after it was published. During the discussion one of the panel members raised the additional idea that Americans today see themselves primarily as consumers. A change from a time when Americans saw themselves firstly as citizens.)
Kennedy looks at efforts regional media have made to fight this trend: a) addressing subjects that interest young people, b) looking for local angles on foreign stories, c) making absorbing online interactive content, and d) creating Web 2.0 news products.
Kennedy suggests the Blue Mass. Group, BostonNow, Digg, Reddit and NewsTrust could be hints of what the future of news might look like in a Web 2.0 world, pointing out that young people who've grown up with MySpace and Facebook are accustomed to participating and creating content.
In social media, says Kennedy, the members are accustomed to setting the agenda and its possible they will do this increasingly as they interact with news organizations. "A type of participatory news that could evolve into an example of civic engagement in and of itself."
(Link: Click here to read the article.)
He quotes research that says though young people are saturated in media, they shy away from news. "16 percent of young adults (ages 18 to 30) read a newspaper every day, compared with 35 percent of those older than 30."
Kennedy says young people's lack of interest in news and resulting shallow knowledge of current affairs represents a threat both to news media and to civic life.
The article explores the reasons for this phenomenon: a) because Americans are marrying, having children and buying homes later in life, and b) because they are used to well designed and easy to use cell phones and other media tools that make newspapers look positively nineteenth century. (Kennedy was on a panel in Boston to discuss this article shortly after it was published. During the discussion one of the panel members raised the additional idea that Americans today see themselves primarily as consumers. A change from a time when Americans saw themselves firstly as citizens.)
Kennedy looks at efforts regional media have made to fight this trend: a) addressing subjects that interest young people, b) looking for local angles on foreign stories, c) making absorbing online interactive content, and d) creating Web 2.0 news products.
Kennedy suggests the Blue Mass. Group, BostonNow, Digg, Reddit and NewsTrust could be hints of what the future of news might look like in a Web 2.0 world, pointing out that young people who've grown up with MySpace and Facebook are accustomed to participating and creating content.
In social media, says Kennedy, the members are accustomed to setting the agenda and its possible they will do this increasingly as they interact with news organizations. "A type of participatory news that could evolve into an example of civic engagement in and of itself."
(Link: Click here to read the article.)
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Gatekeepers, Broadcasters, Bloggers
We've all been to conference sessions and sat around coffee tables talking about whether bloggers are journalists, and if so are they the new "gatekeepers" of journalism.
Asking whether bloggers are journalists is of course like asking whether writers are authors, or whether singers are divas. The act of creating something doesn't define the author, the intention does.
Can a journalist be a blogger, or blogger be a journalist? Yes, of course. That's not the question. Who decides who is a journalist? Perhaps that is what people mean when they ask whether journalists are bloggers.
Many bloggers behave more like publishers or broadcasters, than journalists. They gather interesting information from different sources and publish it. Just as a television station or a newspaper does.
So that answers the question "are bloggers gatekeepers?"
Of course the question is hardly relevant these days. The idea of a gatekeeper was that there was huge amount of information out there, and a huge number of users who wanted to consume it, but only a small number of organizations that could get the information to the users. They assigned themselves the role of gatekeepers; the organizations that controlled what bits of the huge heap of information made it through the gate to the consumer.
But now that anyone can publish anything by spending a couple minutes signing up here at Blogger or another of the many available free publishing systems, the idea of gates is somewhat out of date. There are big gates and little gates in the barrier between information and users, but anyone who sits by one is a gatekeeper. They are all gatekeepers for their audience however big or small that audience might be.
Does anyone apart from journalists care?
Asking whether bloggers are journalists is of course like asking whether writers are authors, or whether singers are divas. The act of creating something doesn't define the author, the intention does.
Can a journalist be a blogger, or blogger be a journalist? Yes, of course. That's not the question. Who decides who is a journalist? Perhaps that is what people mean when they ask whether journalists are bloggers.
Many bloggers behave more like publishers or broadcasters, than journalists. They gather interesting information from different sources and publish it. Just as a television station or a newspaper does.
So that answers the question "are bloggers gatekeepers?"
Of course the question is hardly relevant these days. The idea of a gatekeeper was that there was huge amount of information out there, and a huge number of users who wanted to consume it, but only a small number of organizations that could get the information to the users. They assigned themselves the role of gatekeepers; the organizations that controlled what bits of the huge heap of information made it through the gate to the consumer.
But now that anyone can publish anything by spending a couple minutes signing up here at Blogger or another of the many available free publishing systems, the idea of gates is somewhat out of date. There are big gates and little gates in the barrier between information and users, but anyone who sits by one is a gatekeeper. They are all gatekeepers for their audience however big or small that audience might be.
Does anyone apart from journalists care?
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Android
On Monday Google announced that it would be working with 30 mobile phone makes on Android, an open mobile phone platform, free to developers. The FT describes it at "a package of Linux-based software designed to make it cheaper and easier to build the next generation of smartphone and mobile phone services."
According to the FT Android "would let any software application or internet service run on the devices, reducing the power of the mobile operators to extract a toll as gatekeepers."
According to the FT Android "would let any software application or internet service run on the devices, reducing the power of the mobile operators to extract a toll as gatekeepers."
Sunday, July 1, 2007
About this blog
Robin Lubbock is the Director of New Media at WBUR in Boston. He started this blog as a presentation for a conference and has continued posting since then with thoughts and ideas about the future of news in the United States.
This blog is written in his own time and is in no way endorsed by the station or meant to reflect its opinion.
This blog is written in his own time and is in no way endorsed by the station or meant to reflect its opinion.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Growth in Visitors to Newspaper Blogs
According to a story in the New York Times in January 2007, Nielsen/Netratings estimated the number of visitors to newspaper blogs had "skyrocketed", and in December 2006 was:
USAToday.com blogs: 1,239,000
The New York Times' blogs: 1,173,000
SFGate blogs: 515,000
Washingtonpost.com blogs: 433,000
Boston.com blogs: 388,000
These were early days for newpaper blogs, and if this is skyrocketing, it's on a planet with a thin atmophere. Compared with the visitor numbers these papers overall are racking up, these totals are small, although not insignificant. To compare them to daily traffic, here are some numbers from Editor and Publisher for February 2007:
New York Times: 12,960,000 uniques - 455,527,000 page views
USAToday.com: 9,050,000 uniques - 169,517,000 page views
Washington Post: 8,030,000 uniques - 154,836,000 page views
SFGate.com: 3,236,000 uniques - 51,617,000 page views
Boston.com: 3,197,000 uniques - 57,154,000 page views
Alexa (for whatever it's worth) says that in May 2007 only 2% of the Times' traffic went to its blogs. (Nielsen along with the estimates above suggested that blogs accounted for 13% of parent sites' total traffic.)
(There's a huge amount of additional information in the Editor and Publisher story mentioned above - check it out.)
USAToday.com blogs: 1,239,000
The New York Times' blogs: 1,173,000
SFGate blogs: 515,000
Washingtonpost.com blogs: 433,000
Boston.com blogs: 388,000
These were early days for newpaper blogs, and if this is skyrocketing, it's on a planet with a thin atmophere. Compared with the visitor numbers these papers overall are racking up, these totals are small, although not insignificant. To compare them to daily traffic, here are some numbers from Editor and Publisher for February 2007:
New York Times: 12,960,000 uniques - 455,527,000 page views
USAToday.com: 9,050,000 uniques - 169,517,000 page views
Washington Post: 8,030,000 uniques - 154,836,000 page views
SFGate.com: 3,236,000 uniques - 51,617,000 page views
Boston.com: 3,197,000 uniques - 57,154,000 page views
Alexa (for whatever it's worth) says that in May 2007 only 2% of the Times' traffic went to its blogs. (Nielsen along with the estimates above suggested that blogs accounted for 13% of parent sites' total traffic.)
(There's a huge amount of additional information in the Editor and Publisher story mentioned above - check it out.)
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