Study: Web will be top news source within 5 years

According to a new Harris Interactive study, more people say the Web will be their primary news source than network news or cable news. While today 25% of respondents in the U.S. say they rely on network TV news, the Web comes in at number 2 with 18%. But when asked what source they will turn to in the future, those numbers flip and the Web moves ahead of network TV news by 4%. [Lost Remote]

Time to send in the Branch Dividians

Last week I stumbled across an interesting (and lengthy) 2006 Rolling Stone article by Janet Reitman (“Inside Scientology”) that takes a peek behind the curtain of “America’s most mysterious religion.”

I’m not sure how someone could read this and not be convinced L. Ron Hubbard (the guy that came up with Scientology) was a wacko con man. Try to imagine convincing a new convert of the following:

“…75 million years ago, an evil galactic warlord named Xenu controlled seventy-six planets in this corner of the galaxy, each of which was severely overpopulated. To solve this problem, Xenu rounded up 13.5 trillion beings and then flew them to Earth, where they were dumped into volcanoes around the globe and vaporized with bombs. This scattered their radioactive souls, or thetans, until they were caught in electronic traps set up around the atmosphere and “implanted” with a number of false ideas — including the concepts of God, Christ and organized religion. Scientologists later learn that many of these entities attached themselves to human beings, where they remain to this day, creating not just the root of all of our emotional and physical problems but the root of all problems of the modern world.”

Let me say once again, this sounds like a load of horse shit. But why am I more skeptical of these “teachings” than the miracles of the Christian faith? The Bible is the literal Word of God and Dianetics is science fiction? That works for a lot of people.

Not sure where this post came from, maybe all the killing and dying in the name of religion.

Speaking of Holy Wars, maybe we should send the members of our most fanatical faiths (Scientologists, The Jonestown Brigade, The 101st Branch Davidians, etc) to mix it up with the extremists of other religions. If the other team is playing 12 year old suicide bombers… we send in some grandmothers willing to drink poison Cool-Aide. Let’s out-crazy them.

The First Tech President

The Personal Democracy Forum lists six requirements for the first "tech president": [via Buzz Machine]

  1. Declare the Internet a public good.
  2. Commit to providing affordable high-speed wireless Internet access nationwide, along with protecting and expanding unlicensed spectrum for public use, and make the Internet a reliable part of our infrastructure….
  3. Declare a “Net Neutrality” standard forbidding Internet service providers from discriminating among content based on origin, application or type.
  4. Instead of “No Child Left Behind,” our goal should be “Every Child Connected.”
  5. Commit to building a Connected Democracy where it becomes commonplace for local as well as national government proceedings to be heard by anyone any time and over time.
  6. Create a National Tech Corps….

(George, this is the perfect follow-up post to our three hour chat this morning.) For those of you that weren’t there, this morning’s topic was: "True or False: Sometimes We Are Better Off Not Knowing."

NHL Capitals make news by reporting it

The Washington Capitals, a National Hockey League team, plan to send four reporters to Moscow to cover the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship (underway). The Capitals will partner with Clearspring Technologies to deliver audio, video and text content to their site for Caps fans, as well as to local, national and international media outlets via a specialized widget.

The local medea elected not to cover the event so the Capitals decided the could and would. And share the news with new and traditional media outlets and syndicate it far and wide. [E-Media Tidbits]

My mind reels at the implications of this.

Let’s say the Pooterville Drum and Bugle Corps make it to the national finals in Bangor, Maine. The local radio station can’t afford to send a broadcast crew but the kids could throw up a blog and go crazy posting video, audio, stills, minute-by-minute reports… all brought to you by the Pooterville Sports Boosters Club. Does anyone doubt that a couple of passionate, knowledgeable fans can provide better, more complete coverage than the local radio station? And if the local station wants to air some of their stuff…great.

If I were running the local radio station (or newspaper, or TV station)… I think I might encourage this and provide the tools, training and web-hosting.

What are we going to build?

“A huge portion of our lives (as marketers, as consumers, as voters, as citizens) has been dominated by the fact that there were three or twenty TV networks. That this was a scarce resource. It’s not. Not any more. So, if there’s unlimited real estate, what are we going to build?” – Seth Godin

During my years doing affiliate relations for our news networks, most (all?) of our programming decisions were based on what we thought we could convince radio stations to “clear.” Coming up with an idea that 30 or 40 radio stations (out of 60) might agree was worth putting on the air was daunting. Mr. Godin’s post brought this to mind:

“Why not start the Debate Channel? 20 hours a week of live debate available online. Get a cable network to run three or four hours of highlights every week as an inducement to the candidates, but it will really be about the Net. If a candidate doesn’t show up, the others get more time to talk.”

We still have to program for our affiliates but we are no longer limited by that. So, what are we going to build?

Future of TV? Live video from your cell phone to the world

“At the 2007 National Association of Broadcasters show, ComVu Media demonstrated live video transmitting at 30 fps at 640 x 480 resolution from a mobile phone over a wireless data network.

ComVu used its PocketCaster software to broadcast full screen video from a Nokia N95 multimedia device, transmitting over HSDPA data connection. Anyone using a Nokia N95 device — including field reporters — can now capture and broadcast video directly to air and concurrently stream live video to Web-portals, blogs and 3G-enabled phones. ComVu CEO William Mutual called the end-to-end solution “the future of news gathering worldwide.” — Podcasting News

If I was running a news operation, I think I might invest in one of these and see if it’s as cool as it sounds.

Triblocal.com

Tribune in Chicago just launched a new hyperlocal site today called Triblocal.com that encourages users to submit stories from nine communities, with more to come. Explains the Tribune, “The site, which will be largely unedited and self-policing, is designed to let citizens and organizations publish their own stories and post everything from high school team photos to favorite restaurant menus.” Triblocal.com also employs four of its own staff reporters to cover stories in those regions, and many of the stories from the site will be reverse-published to print. [Lost Remote]

This seems like a really good idea to me. There must be examples of radio stations trying similar things. I’m just not finding them.

Are you eating your own dog food?

Media Guerrilla has advice for companies or organizations trying to choose a ‘partner’ to help produce new media content. He has a series of questions to ask potential partners, including this one:

“How are they using new media in their business? It’s a fairly straight-forward question, right. Is the company or the consultant you’re talking to eating their own dog food? What you want to hear is of course yes, but I think what you also want to see is a degree of variety in how they’re active across the web. Having a personal blog, for example, is great, but at this point in the game, it’s practically a must-have. How else are they immersed?

Radio doing TV News

“At WDEL-AM in Wilmington, Delaware, our reporters produce stories using video cameras instead of cassette recorders,” news director Christopher Carl says in a comment on Poynter.org. “The audio is used on the radio. Reporters then produce video packages for out website – WDEL.com. WDEL.com users can then choose to watch individual video stories or a daily 10-minute video newscast. On weekends, users can watch a recap of the week’s big stories. Wilmington, DE is a a market with NO local commercial television station. [via CyberJournalist.net]