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Author Archives: Steve Mays
Online future of journalism?
Here's what Mindy McAdams foresees:
- Breaking news will be online before it’s on television.
- Breaking news — especially disasters and attacks in the middle of a city — will be covered first by non-journalists.
- The non-journalists will continue providing new information even after the trained journalists arrive on the scene.
- Cell phones will be the primary reporting tool at first, and possibly for hours.
- Cell phones that can use a wireless Internet connection in addition to a cellular phone network are a more versatile reporting tool than a phone alone.
- Still photos, transmitted by citizens on the ground, will tell more than most videos.
- The right video will get so many views, your servers might crash (I’m not aware of this happening with any videos from Mumbai).
- Live streaming video becomes a user magnet during a crisis. (CNN.com Live: 1.4 million views as of 11:30 a.m. EST today, according to Beet.tv.)
- Your print reporters need to know how to dictate over the phone. If they can get a line to the newsroom, it might be necessary.
- Your Web team must be prepared for this kind of crisis reporting.
She concludes by wondering "…whether the mainstream media are superfluous in these situations — or can they perform a useful service to the public by sifting and filtering the incoming reports from the center of the events?"
I hope Ms. McAdams will forgive my reposting here. She, like Seth Godin, is a blogger who deserves not to be edited or excerpted.
Bruce Sterling’s Distraction
If you’re looking for an interesting read over the long weekend, may I suggest Distraction, by Bruce Sterling. I read this book in October of 2004, long before my political awakening. Here’s a short review on Boing Boing:
Distraction is the story of an America on the skids: economy in tatters, dollar collapsed, unemployment spiked, population on the move in great, restless herds bound together with networks and bootleg phones. The action revolves around Oscar Valparaiso, a one-of-a-kind political operator who has just put his man — a billionaire sustainable architecture freak — into the Senate and is looking for some downtime. But a funny thing happens on the way to the R&R: Oscar and his “krewe” (the feudal entourage who trail after him, looking after his clothes, research, security, systems and so on) end up embroiled in a complex piece of political theater, a media war between the rogue governor of the drowned state of Louisiana, the Air Force, the newly elected president, and a weird, pork-barrel science park in its own glassed-in dome.
I’d love to know how many books and screenplays about the 2008 campaign are in the works.
People with news, and people who want news
Those are two points of view examined in a recent post by Dave Winer.
“If the people with the news can publish it themselves, and they can; what’s to stop the people who want the news from reading it directly.”
Which puts me in mind of High Street Beat, a blog written by the mayor of Jefferson City. Ultimately, his readers get to decide if what he writes is “fair and honest,” but he can speak directly to them, as well as through MSM.
“When professional news people consider the Internet they think of it replacing them. Not so. It reduces their role to a bare minimum, makes them less necessary. I still want soundbites from the sources, but I want them to link to the full blog post behind the quote.”
“If reporters are to remain relevant they have to recast themselves, more humbly. Don’t think about “deputizing” us to do what you do. Instead think of the value of your rolodex, your sources. Cultivate and develop that rolodex. To the extent that you know who to call when a bit of news breaks, that’s the extent of your value in the new world, the one we live in now.”
Most of the reporters I’ve known and worked with work very hard. For not much money. But more than a few of them have viewed the companies they work for a the necessary infrastructure that makes it possible for them to report the news.
While the people running those companies viewed the newsrooms as a cog –a BIG cog, but a cog– in a machine whose purpose was to turn a profit. A classic dog and tail situation.
I’m reminded of that classic scene in Network where Arthur Jensen explains things to Howard Beale:
Jensen: The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children, Mr.Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, oppression and brutality –one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.
Howard: (humble whisper) Why me?
Jensen: Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
One thing, not the only thing, but one important thing that has distinguished reporters from their readers/viewers/listeners is the reporters had a platform or medium from which to report. That distinction has blurred, if not disappeared.
Scott Adams: Recession
“No one wants the economy to crumble. But having a reason to love your neighbor a little better doesn’t suck. If we can feed everyone – and I think we can – things will be fine. And as I have said here before, some kid in a garage has already figured a way out of this.”
–Scott Adams Blog
The first Web President
I’m working my way through a stack stories and columns examining how the Obama campaign used the web, social networks, email and other online tools. They went so far beyond just “click here to send us some money.” Somebody on the team (some bodies) really understands this space where so many of us choose to live and work.
Here’s a couple of snippets to get started and I’ll update as we go under the category: Obama Online
Washington Post: “The nucleus of that (campaign) effort is an e-mail database of more than 10 million supporters. The list is considered so valuable that the Obama camp briefly offered it as collateral during a cash-flow crunch late in the campaign, though it wound up never needing the loan, senior aides said. At least 3.1 million people on the list donated money to Obama.”
New York Times: “The juxtaposition of a networked, open-source campaign and a historically imperial office will have profound implications and raise significant questions. Special-interest groups and lobbyists will now contend with an environment of transparency and a president who owes them nothing. The news media will now contend with an administration that can take its case directly to its base without even booking time on the networks.
More profoundly, while many people think that President-elect Obama is a gift to the Democratic Party, he could actually hasten its demise. Political parties supply brand, ground troops, money and relationships, all things that Mr. Obama already owns.”
I’ve felt since I first got hooked on Obama’s campaign that my affinity is to this particular man (and his ideas), not the Democratic Party.
An excellent source for this kind of info is techPresident.
NYT/Bits: “Mr. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. (Joe) Trippi argued that those videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted.
“The campaign’s official stuff they created for YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours,” Mr. Trippi said. “To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million.”
There has also been a sea change in fact-checking, with citizens using the Internet to find past speeches that prove a politician wrong and then using the Web to alert their fellow citizens.”
Google searches to track spread of flu.
“Google Flu Trends is based on the simple idea that people who are feeling sick will probably turn to the Web for information, typing things like “flu symptoms” or “muscle aches” into Google. The service tracks such queries and charts their ebb and flow, broken down by regions and states.
Early tests suggest that the service may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some public health experts say that could help accelerate the response of doctors, hospitals and public health officials to a nasty flu season, reducing the spread of the disease and, potentially, saving lives.”
[New York Times via K]
Recession: Not necessarily a bad thing
Michael S. Hyatt has compiled a list of ten benefits of the current recession:
1. It causes you to get more creative.
2. It forces you to make the tough decisions.
3. It thins out the competition.
4. It makes you realize you can’t take anything for granted.
5. It reminds you that real wealth isn’t about the stuff you own.
6. It fosters out-of-the-box thinking.
7. It makes it easier to abandon business-as-usual.
8. It brings you back to the basics.
9. It accelerates change.
10. It causes you to be less wasteful.
"While you may not be able to control what happens with the economy, you can control your own mental focus. Usually, this determines whether you feel anxiety and fear or peace and hope."
Tribes by Seth Godin
I’ve read most of Seth Godin’s books and I’m a daily reader of his blog. But his latest book, Tribes, really spoke to me. When I read, I highlight or underline, make notes in the margins and, in recent years, post my favorite parts here.
I struggled to find one pull that captures the idea behind Tribes and decided on this one. Lots more after the jump. Continue reading
Learning “New Media” tools
I’ll be in our Dallas office for a few days next week. The agenda is kind of loose and open-ended. Our sports division (HQ in Dallas) is exploring ways to use more “new media” tools and I’ll try to help them find ways to do this. I think. My point is, what a great job.
And here’s what I’ve learned. Just about every online tool you need is out there. Cheap or free and easy to use. The hard part is finding people who… I wish I could come up with a better word… people who “get” this whole Internet thing. Sure, everybody uses email and Google and all that, but for most the net is where you go to find something rather than create something.
Posting photos to flickr, writing a blog, even something as simple as Twitter involves sharing something of your self. Expressing who you are. It’s walking out on that high school stage and singing Killing Me Softly. A lot of people just can’t do it.
But when I meet (discover?) such a kindred spirit, someone who has something to say and a passion for saying it, it’s great fun showing them things I’ve discovered on my endless surfing safaris.