The future is tough to predict, whether it’s who will dominate the senate in 2012 or what Obama will have for lunch tomorrow (whole grains are probably a good bet). At the turn of the century, I don’t think anyone expected “Friendster” to fall off the face of the planet, and Facebook was hardly a glimmer in Mark Zuckerberg’s adolescent eyes. So asking the question: “What does the future hold for Politics and the New Media” may seem like an exercise in futility. And it is, if you try to define a set of scenarios, replete with brand names and entrepreneuers. What makes a lot more sense is looking at what the internet needs, what the trends have been, and filling in the blanks.
Let’s look at this whole exercise through the lens of the oldest trend in the world: If given a choice, people will take the path of least resistance. Business Corollary: if you want someone to do something that doesn’t have a readily accessible and intrinsically positive value equation, make it EASY for them.
Let’s start with shopping.
SCENARIO 1: You’re window shopping with your friends (stick with me, my trusty 51%…) and see a pair of nice looking jeans. Under them is printed a website address (URL) promising a coupon for half off on the spot.
SCENARIO 2: You’re window shopping with you friends (just a bit more…) and see a pair of nice looking jeans. Under them is printed a two-dimensional bar code (QR code) promising a coupon for half off on the spot.
In scenario 1, the probability of you whipping out the Blackberry and pecking it in on the go is zilch, and you know it, unless those jeans were really something else. In scenario 2, you pull out the phone, sweep over the code with your handset’s native QR code reader, and BAM! You have a coupon. I’ll bet a nice pair of jeans you’d be a heck of a lot more likely to buy those jeans with that coupon literally sitting in your hand.
Welcome to the power of using technology to, paradoxically, simplify reality. Welcome to the power of EASY.
The QR code is just a recent case study. A host of new components, from multi-platform compatibility to the age of the “dedicated app” are coming together to form web 3.0′s magnificent 7. That’s right, web 3.0. You heard it here first. Web 3.0 is the web as an integrated part of reality. A reality that includes the understanding that when people put time and sweat equity into work, they are due payment if they request it. A reality that protects the rights of businesses whose currency is information to conduct their business without being undermined by Creative Commons Licenses, aggregators, and college kids who think that the ability to subvert the NYT paywall indicates the right to do so.
Web 3.0 needs a solid business plan and a lawyer, because it’s going to require of shakeup of all of the misleading status quo we’ve established over the past two-plus decades of feature-rich surfing.
Let’s focus on the obvious. WHY CAN’T ADVERTISING PAY FOR MY CONTENT? The answer is a simple two part equation. (You’re not really interested)+(internet impressions are cheaper than “real” impressions) = The DEATH of online advertising as a suitable sole revenue source for any publication of substance.
The rest of the answer gets more complicated. If a news source caters to clicks rather than “hard news,” a la gawker vs reuters, you’re going to get dichotomous results. If you want well digested, thoughtfully reported content, get used to paying for it. The niche papers, like the journal and financial times went with a hard paywall years ago. Then came the London Times, followed most recently by the NY Times. AOL/Huff Po/Celebrity gossip has preserved the Wa Po for us, but we’ll see how long that “piggybacking” solution will work for.
Oh, and if you want upgrade-driven advertisement a la Plenty O’Fish, you’d best look 5 years ago. Plenty worked by creating a crappy free service (in this case, a dating site) that catered to advertisers from higher-end like-market businesses (Match.com, Chemistry, eHarmony, Jdate, etc.). Well, Facebook and the rest of the social network has killed this model. Because of the user profile information available to marketers, the Plenty O’Fish middleman is largely cut out, and the big sites just advertise on social media or using sponsored links and SEO in google.
In this new internet ad world, the key to success is to NOT RELY ON AD REVENUE. Use micropayments, like iTunes. Make it easy for folks to buy with quick registrations, multiple address-saving accounts, payPhrases (Amazon), and useful product suggestions. Dominate a niche market with a paywall, let your people talk to their people with regulated reviews and testimonials, or give your customers more than they’re paying for with exclusive Medium-Tied services.
In closing, I offer a simple list of folks I think are doing it right. Enjoy, have a great summer, and take it easy.
In the last two years, real-time bidding (RTB) through online advertising exchanges has secured a place in the future of digital advertising. Some of the major technology companies have acquired ad tech start-ups to create their own solutions for the various players in the online advertising market. Yahoo bought Right Media, Google bought DoubleClick, and Microsoft bought AdECN. Examples of ad exchanges that have not been acquired include AppNexus, PubMatic and adBrite. According to Brian O’Kelley, CEO and co-founder of AppNexus, RTB on ad exchanges began in early 2009 and went from selling a few million ads online to a billion by the end of 2009 and 8 billion by the end of 2010. The advantage of RTB on ad exchanges is that it provides ad networks with a way to target each individual user (user-based targeting) to take advantage of the rich user data collected by different ad networks, publishers and others. And, because RTB means a live auction for each ad from a participating publisher/ad network, these players in the ad market only pay what they are willing to for each ad served to an individual user.
I got to interview a friend who works at one of the above mentioned online ad exchanges about the actual process that occurs behind the scenes of these exchanges. He asked that he remain anonymous and that I don’t directly identify the company. So then, Joe-Bob works for Addition ad exchange (names made up). The following will hopefully give you a rough idea of how an ad exchange works in real life:
The process begins with a company (such as IKEA) hiring an ad network (like Collective) to create an online advertising campaign for them. Together they craft a strategy for whom to target–like new college students, people looking for a new apartment, or people browsing on other furniture stores’ websites–and how much to pay for each of these targets (per impression and per click). This strategy is used to create an algorithm for bidding on ads. Then the ad network comes to the ad exchange. Joe-Bob’s ad exchange simply hosts the auction for each ad served online. In the milliseconds between the time you hit enter after typing in a URL or click on a link and the loading of the website, any publisher whose own ad network uses the ad exchange will auction off each of its banner-ad spaces. If a user (me) who lives in New Haven, CT is looking at apartments online in New York City, then IKEA might want to bid on the ad-space on whatever website that user goes to next. But the user (me) might also have recently read an article on the effectiveness of zinc lozenges in fighting colds (GUYS, this stuff works SO well! I got rid of my last two colds in three days!). Cold-EEZE might want to compete against IKEA for an ad served up to the user (still me). Each bidder has an algorithm that battles all the other bidders’ algorithms in a competition for the ad space (without algorithms doing the bidding, the auction would take far too long). The highest paying bidder with an ad that the publisher accepts wins the auction and gets their ad served.
All ads and ad-spaces are coded/tagged to ensure that an ad doesn’t end up in the wrong place. For example, Disney does not want violent, sexual, etc. ads on its website no matter how much the ad network wants to pay for the space. Any ad that does not follow the guidelines for advertising on Disney’s websites will be disqualified from the auction. Users are also tagged. Each user is identified only by a long (20 digit?) number (your true identity is not sought after by the more “ethical” user data collectors). Joe-Bob showed me my own online profile. Much like the “issue publics” discussed in Phillip Howard’s book New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen, each user is coded into as many different categories that he/she fits into. In the earlier example, I discuss the ads I might get served from being coded for moving to NYC and for reading about cold remedies. These categories that I fell into in the example give advertisers the power to target ads that I might actually find relevant.
The issue of data privacy is a legitimate one. Joe-Bob explained to me that his ad network does not collect this data itself, but allows the participants in the auction to use their own data (however they obtained it). Most user data is obtained by using cookies (the kind in your web browser, not the kind you eat). According to Joe-Bob, standard cookies expire after two weeks, and users’ online IDs change frequently. This means that data about you is not usually being compiled over years of browsing/buying history to hone in on what will make you freak-out and immediately buy anything you see in an ad. Instead, if they track a batch of user IDs over a period of time, after about two weeks the user data for those online IDs will no longer be accumulating and the batch will be useless.
After only two years, the results of real-time bidding (RTB) on online ad exchanges is phenomenal for everyone in the online advertising business. Publishers on ad networks using RTB ad exchanges have seen ad prices jump. Google claims that publishers sold ads for 130% more ON AVERAGE using DoubleClick ad exchange than the ads sold using older methods. Other ad exchanges have also recorded significantly higher prices for ads. Duh! Targeted ads are obviously worth more, and the same data collection gives advertisers the ability to track user activity long after an ad-impression or click (if I buy IKEA online next week, they can give credit to the ad I saw today).
With newspapers and other online content creators struggling to make money, the growing use of RTB ad exchanges powered by user-data targeting is part of the bright light at the end of the tunnel. With more money flowing through the online advertising system, everyone wins (well, except for people freaked out by targeted ads and user data collection).
Over the past two decades, the news has experienced several seismic technological shifts. Traditional news sources and organizations have been forced to reckon with these shifts in order to remain relevant as news sources, and in order to remain afloat as corporations. Some have failed; others have prevailed through adaptation to the current news climate. The successful news organizations of tomorrow will continue to be dynamic and flexible in their approaches toward consumers, business models, and their effects on democracy. Although it is a futile effort to simply guess at what tomorrow may or may not hold for the future of news organizations, the following are some guiding principles for successful news organizations, better democracy, and more informed consumers of information. In this sense, the following should not be seen as predictions of future events, but rather as prescriptions for tomorrow’s news organizations.
I. We Should Remain ‘Standing On The Shoulders of Giants’
Isaac Newton once wrote. “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” The “Giants” of print news, namely The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc., created the print news industry, as we know it. Media conglomerates such as ABC, NBC, and CBS laid the foundations for television news dissemination. Without these organizations, the news industry would be vastly different. Even more importantly, these news organizations must remain afloat in order to ensure the best news possible. While news outlets such as Google News or even the Huffington Post may be drawing consumers away from the sites of their traditional news counterparts, the “Giants” are often the first to break the most important stories. Moreover, the “Giants” have the global infrastructure to quickly, safely, and effectively disseminate news to consumers all around the world. They often also boast prize-winning editorialists who provide key insight and analysis on breaking news. While some believe that the “News Giants” are merely a relic of the past, the truth is that organizations like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ABC, NBC, CBS, and the Associated Press not only created the modern news industry, but will also continue to shape the news industry of the future.
II. We Must Use Technology to Enhance Democracy, Not Profiteering
While the Internet has been used to market products and advertise goods to millions of consumers around the world, it should also be used as a means for responsible citizens to engage in public dialogue. We have seen the results of giving disenfranchised peoples a voice on the Internet in Egypt, Libya. Syria, and Bahrain. The Internet, especially it social media sites, offers great potential for information delivery and response. The Internet facilitates the delivery of important information and allows its users to respond with opinions, counterarguments, and critique. Successful media in the future must remain true to democratic ideals such as free speech in order to enjoy fully the benefits of the Internet as a mode of communication. Although it may be easy for news companies to use the Internet as a new forum for sales and profiteering, news organizations should always be mindful of their online actions (business or otherwise) and how those actions may enhance or hinder democracy.
III. Leave It To The Experts!
Amidst the cacophony of facts, opinions, and lies perpetually being disseminated via the Internet, there will arise a new niche of news organization: the subscription aggregators. These new news organizations will be charged with the task of distilling the “word vomit” of the Internet into clear, cohesive, and coherent news for consumption. The Huffington Post and the Drudge Report have already begun to experiment with this niche. I believe that as time goes on, consumers will increasingly rely on aggregators for reliable news. The consumer of the future may even have to pay for a third party to sift through the muck of information on the Internet and re-package his/her news in a clearer form. Leaving the selection of news to subscription aggregators or “the experts” may the most viable way for consumers to stay informed as the Internet, its resources, and its users increase in size, quality, and numbers, respectively.
No one can accurately describe what the news industry will look like in twenty or thirty years forward. The future of the news, media, and journalism will be spelled out over time. The principles described above can, and should, be used in order to maintain a free press that not only delivers a relevant product, but also respects consumers and enhances democracy.
As we have learned over the course of this semester, the new media has altered political discourse in our society in a variety of important ways. The new media’s power in helping political candidates fund-raise for their campaigns has been made crystal clear in recent years – Barack Obama’s incredible fundraising success in 2008, and the role that social media sites played in it, illustrates this point well. In many ways, the new media has also helped democratize not only the dissemination of political news but the process of political discourse itself in our society.
The question of where the new media’s role in politics will go next is one that has no clear answers and which instead leads to an endless array of valid possibilities. However, at least one expert thinks that the new media might soon bring about something that most have long thought of as unthinkable: the end of America’s two-party political system and the dawn of a political age in which third-party candidates can consistently be viable candidates.
Joe Trippi, a Democratic Party political strategist and former consultant for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, is the latest political expert who believes that social media may soon fundamentally transform America’s political landscape from one that supports a two-party political system to one that supports a multi-party political system. As his recent interview with Politico reporter Mike Zapler reveals, Trippi believes this transformation will occur perhaps as soon as 2012 or 2016, when he believes that social media technology may well facilitate the rise of previously-unknown political parties and candidates. Specifically, Trippi predicts that a previously unknown independent candidate will “seize on social media tools in ways that no one has even thought of” and will also utilize such social media tools to “just come out of nowhere and raise a billion dollars on the Internet,” which will according to Trippi, could lead to the end of the two-party system as we know it.
Joe Trippi, Democratic Party Strategist
If Trippi is correct, and new media technology is able to bring about a new multi-party era in American politics in which third-party candidates or even non-aligned candidates can be consistently viable, it will have major implications for politics in America, where the two-party system has long been an unchanging political constant throughout much of America’s history, as this really cool interactive timeline demonstrates.
Evidence from today’s world does in some ways suggest that new media technology has played a critical role in helping third-party candidates and parties to organize. Though it is a fractured and flawed movement in some ways, the Tea Party Movement has certainly become a political force to be reckoned with in the U.S., thanks in large part to the power of social media technology. Moreover, voter dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party led to their worst night at the ballot box in decades last November, and voters are increasingly unhappy with the Republicans these days as well. Indeed, at least in some ways, it is understandable why Trippi and others might conclude that the rise of a multi-party political system with new candidates and parties could occur soon with social media technology leading the charge.
However, the evidence also seems to strongly suggest that social media may actually be further bolstering the existing two-party political system in America, rather than having the effect of radically changing it in favor of more parties and newer, previously-unknown candidates.
For one thing, the pervasiveness of new media technology in politics may actually be contributing to the rising cost of political campaigns, which only stands to hurt third-party candidates and parties. The ease with which fundraising can now occur on a massive scale, in part due to the use of social media technology, means that candidates must continue to raise ever-higher amounts of funds in order to be politically viable. President Obama’s unprecedented, potentially billion-dollar 2012 re-election campaign illustrates this point. But more precisely, the ease with which President Obama will likely meet this goal by utilizing mybarackobama.com, mass-scale fundraising emails from the DNC, and/or any other innovative ideas yet to be tried by his internet-savvy yet politically mainstream re-election team, best illustrate the point that social media technology may actually best serve America’s existing two major political parties, likely at the expense of third-party candidates lacking the vast resources currently at the disposal of both the RNC and the DNC.
The GOP-Dem Fight Goes Digital
What’s more, it also hardly seems to be the case, at least as of this writing, that either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party have become internet-complacent. Both the major parties utilize Twitter and Facebook extensively to communicate with constituents and promote their candidates to voters. YouTube has also become a veritable hammer in the political toolbox for both parties as well: Democrats and Republicans alike and their supporters post videos about candidates or the issues of the day that go viral with increasing frequency. Moreover, both parties have invested enormous capital into revamping their websites to make them more interactive and user-friendly for partisans and curious voters alike. Indeed, it seems that both Democrats and Republicans have been taking full advantage of the fundraising and political communications opportunities that the new media revolution has provided them, which means that the advent of the new media may actually only further bolster America’s two-party system.
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube: Game-Changers for America's Two-Party System?
So, is Joe Trippi right about the game-changing impact that new media will have on America’s two-party political system in the future? Or, will the new media’s influence in politics only serve to sew the two major political parties even further into the fabric of our nation’s political system for many years to come? Ultimately, Trippi’s argument to me is interesting but not entirely convincing. But, especially after this semester, I can certainly see why he believes in the revolutionary power of the new media, and so I hope that others might be able to convince me that the new media’s influence may well yield a robust multi-party political system in the future as Trippi seems to believe.
As citizens of the new media, we may be obsessively content with our personalized Facebook profiles and consumed in the the thought of our potential tweet, but I think it is safe to say that we are all curious and frightful for what the future holds for our news. While the public expresses concern, so do the journalists. Tim McGuire, former editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune lamented, “We’ve got to tell people stuff they don’t know.” And amidst the increased competition of different kinds of news gatherers, we are increasingly trying to uncover something we don’t know–and from credible and trusted sources. What’s in store for the future of news, or rather what’s original that’s in store for the future of news.
The new media community is witnessing the rebirth of the original content destroyer– Google. So now the search engine that has effectively helped ruin the news business industry is trying to recreate it. The Google family has teamed up with prestigious news organizations to help save the news business online. There are ideological and business problems embedded in the birth of the new media and the technological braniacs in Silicon Valley have an array of strategies to help save the day, or rather, the future days of the news. Hal Varian, Google chief economist, cited very accurately that people gravitate towards the online news because there is more interactivity. In print media, there is no space for commentary, opinion pieces–no room for another voice. Or if there is, letters to the editor are often screened before they are printed in respective publications. All voices may be heard via digital media, and there’s no guarantee that all voices are heard like that in print. Google wants to promote the voices of citizens, without letting citizen commentary be depicted as “news.” The search engine understands that they cannot revamp the news business without the help of esteemed newspaper institutions. After all these news business organizations know more about the news business than the company’s does. It is unlikely that Team Google can solve the problems better than they can.
Google Solutions: The general basis of their digital news resolutions involves making news sustainable. As expected, the team of engineers is dogmatically advising the international community to ignore print. Their strategy dictates that it is much more efficient to assess or gloss through stories on a broadcast newspaper page than it is to click through to see full text on a screen. And this is now available on computers and portable info streams that will flow to whatever devices evolve from today’s smart phones, iPads and iPods.
Business Solution: Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist and a team of other business affiliates have created three pillars of the new business model for online news. Distribution which means getting news to more people and more people to news oriented sites. Engagement which involves making the presentation of news more interesting, varied and involving. And last but not least, monetization, which will convert larger more strongly committed audiences into revenue through subscription fees and ads.
These three strategic bullet point of the “new business model” for news has helped Google create innovative projects. It might be too soon to detail its miniature successes and failures, but as of now such projects are up and running. Each of these projects is a step in a new direction, a direction which values and rewards original content.
Fast Flip Experiment:This online experiment wants to encourage readers to look at many articles and, for the ones that catch their interest, fast flip wants the reader to click through to the story publishers’ websites. In this journalistic venture, Google utilizes and emphasizes the engagement part of their new business model. Google sees spending time with an article (print or online) as the definition of engagement. What Fast Flip does is sends magazines tens of thousands of clicks, and this, in turn, increase site’s ad revenue.
Living Stories Experiment: This experiment is a part of Google’s initiative to team up with renowned news organization in efforts to help bolster the journalism industry. For Living Stories, Google collaborated with the Washington Post and the New York Times to ameliorate online news. The one of the perks of the experiment is that articles are all in one place. There is complete coverage of an on-going story, and it is all gathered together and prioritized on one URL. You can now quickly navigate between news articles, opinion pieces and features without long waits for pages to load. And if one does want to search for an article, it relatively easy to explore. Each story has an evolving summary of current developments as a well as an interactive timeline of critical events. News reporting is incremental. In the case of Afghanistan, some thing may happen there today and it can be related to some thing that happened yesterday or 20 years ago. All of these events have bearing on what might happen in the future as well and the Living stories experiment plays upon this very idea.
Stories can be explored by themes, significant participants or multimedia. Washington Post administrator says “great feature because no longer about working with just technologists who view content creators as raw-material suppliers. While all of these features are impressive and allow the user easy online news navigation tools, there might already be some problems. The general manager of ProPublica Richard Toefel told a Google manager (that had been working with news companies) that Google news/web featured the paper that ran the story but not ProPublica.
Speculations of Google Projects: The underlying question regarding any of Googl’es projects to “reinvent the news business” is, why trust the unbundling king to “save” journalism when it took a great deal of its functions were spent obliterating it? Google sees that there are an array of self-interests involved. The company considers journalisms or rather the survival of original content as crucial to its own prospects. A Google executive remarks that at some point, the “search engine will no longer have interesting content to link to.” In addition, the solutions the company has proposed are only partial remedies. Temporary remedies that may only buy time for transitional news businesses not save the industry. In addition, the mega-company is being coy about their future plans and refuse to speak publicly even about vague possibilities for the future of journalism.
In my opinion, Google has a lot to work with and the projects that have come out of the company are innovative and are easy to use. The CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt seems to think that future of journalism lay in the hands of the portable device. He suggests that with a lot of color in display advertising, a GPS network to search what’s going on (immediately) around you and a feature that let’s the device you know who your friends are–that is the future of news. This device oriented medium is the most immediate way of getting news and the citizens of the world are impatient. In addition, this sort of device will include subscription and ads which solves the continuing business model problem. But ultimately the man behind it all stresses that the “solution is that there can be a solution.” As long as you have immediate thinking, immediate solutions must at some point come out of it, right? Let’s put it this way, no answers will come out of your Google search box.
At Goldman Sachs’ annual media conference in early 2009, News Corp chairman, Rupert Murdoch, told investors “I do certainly see the day when more people will be buying their newspapers on portable reading panels than on crushed trees.” A few months later Murodch, in conjunction with Apple’s Steve Jobs, introduced The Daily, a periodical produced exclusively for the iPad. Murdoch’s idea was just one in a long series of decisions made by news executives to invest heavily in the mobile and pad devices. This trend has been looked at by skeptics as both premature and a waste of resources, given that the future marketability and longevity of mobile devices is still not known. Will all news be provided on devices in 20 years? Traditional news media companies certainly think so and are banking on mobile devices’ ability to provide personalized and multi-dimensional news to consumers.
Within the past couple of years, traditional news outlets have made large strides in developing products for mobile services or expanding their businesses to incorporate already existing services. Vadim Lavrusik, as a part of the Nieman Lab’s “Predictions for Journalism 2011” outlines several signs that are validating the rising economic and public influence of new media devices. At the end of 2010, there were many mergers and acquisitions by traditional news companies of online aggregators and mobile device app developers. The acquisition of TechCrunch by AOL and the Newsweek merger with the popular aggregation site The Daily Beast created impactful waves across the media industry and showed that traditional bigger businesses were willing and even eager to invest and get involved with new media outlets. Why do these mergers tell us anything about the future of mobile and pad devices? The stated intention of these traditional media corporations who are looking to expand and acquire already well-functioning device products is to ensure that, moving forward, they have strong market-shares in the device news industry.
Traditional news businesses understand the powerful potential for mobile device products to provide consumers with news that is parallel to their preferences and specific substantive interests. Unlike a newspaper, where consumers have no choice in deciding what topic areas warrant the most column space, mobile device users can decide which articles cover the front page of their mobile app. The personalization of the news has been the focus of news companies as they continue to produce mobile device apps in fairly quick succession. Last week, the Washington Post announced the introduction of their personalized news and information service, Trove. In their first foray into the personalized news sector, the Washington Post has created a service that will allow readers to serve as their own editors and select their specific sources for each different subject area. The technical aspects of mobile devices such as the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab allow for an interactive news experience, which new products like the Washington Post’s Trove are utilizing to its maximum potential.
The Washington Post is not the only traditional news company developing a product for mobile devices and pads. The New York Times is currently developing News.me. News.me is an application designed exclusively for the iPad that will allow the consumer’s experience to be much more based on his or her interests and their social media accounts. Trove and News.me are only a few of the examples of mobile personalized news apps out on the market competing with non-traditional media products like Flipboard. Yet, it is important to note the level of investment, in terms of both energy and money, into developing mobile device applications is increasing as executives realize the profitability of the expanding device market.
But does the investment being made by news executives into devices match the future sustainability of the device market? All signs point to a resounding yes. Studies have shown that by 2015, given the current rate of change and adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet use. Furthermore, mobile e-commerce is ramping up faster than online e-commerce, which gives news executives confidence that their device products will find a safe and profitable market.
What does the future hold for new media? I don’t know, but you can probably read an article about it in 10 years on a portable 5 by 8 inch screen.
After spending a semester studying the ins and outs of the new media, I think we can all come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of cleaning up to do in the news business. Underneath the blogosphere and comment muck alike there is real work and original reporting that can be brought to fruition. But the underlying question is via what medium? Paul Sagan and Tom Leighton state in The Internet & the future of news that “news is now personalized and interactive; the audience is taking charge.” If the news is becoming increasingly personalized, what keeps it (the news) from becoming accessed prevalently on the most personalized and portable devices out there?
The answer is, it doesn’t. As an adolescent product of the new media age, immediacy is a crucial components to the new news business. Though in recent years it has tended to be more about impulsive “immediacy” in general versus “immediacy” of original content, people want their news fast and they want to be able to access it with facility. In the internet ultimate takeover of news, the aesthetics of the reading experience is gone–we gravitate towards the screen to obtain our news. If the aesthetic and pleasurable experience of “reading the paper” is gone, who is to say that the future generations to come will want to spend time in front of a computer?
Living in a culture which celebrates and prides itself on Gordon Gecko sentiments of “greed is good,” American citizens tend to become greedy for efficient and yet aesthetically pleasing “all in one” features. On the novel cell phones of today’s age, phone’s are not merely for calling people. They now provide email services, instant messenger services, cameras, videocameras and maybe a telephone feature if you’re lucky. In Pew’s study of news platforms people use on a typical day, they reported that 26% of Americans get their news from time to time on their handheld device. However, when we isolate the segment of people who access the internet via their phones, we find that 88% of this group gets news at least occasionally on their mobile device.
In addition, the cellular news revolution is spreading. CNN recentlyannounced a new section on its website where citizens can submit photos and videos of newsworthy events, something the ever-popular Youtube has been allowing users to do for some time. CNN’s citizen-posted videos, however, will be subject to editorial review by the network.
The cellular device is the most immediate, interactive and personalized medium to retrieve news. Journalists may feel threatened about the intrusion of ordinary citizens into their space, but in truth, ordinary citizens are covering MORE space. In addition, the interactivity their achieving is greater due to their presence on the ground. Most people in this day in age have a cell phone, not an iPad nor an ipod. Though American citizens are constantly foaming at the mouth for the new apple gadget, other countries are less dependent upon Steve Jobs’s digital dynasty. Why aren’t more people carrying an iPad, playing SNOOD (an game application offered on the iPad) while walking their dogs? Because one, these gadgets are not as portable as cellphones, and two, These devices are expensive and are only available to an exclusive largely affluent community. Microsoft software comes installed in DELL products, and these products supply a majority of the international community.
The citizen journalist must give thanks to the cellular device. Paul Bass had it right when he posed the question what is news? Is news about New Haven’s controversial local bicyclist laws found in a youtube video of a livid woman shrieking it at a bicyclist in her sidewalk path? Or is it a full hour of watching the attractive Anderson Cooper tell us about the 2 week countdown until the upcoming Royal Wedding. As professional news becomes flooded with this kind of entertainment news, I think it will be more in the hands of the citizen journalist. Or at least the job of the citizen journalist to steer the professional institutions in the right direction of what news is or rather what is vital to the people. The journalist’s future position will represent an array of minute operations starting from the ground up. Though large networks and mega news business institutions might effectively run the business operation itself, there will be more responsibility on the individual citizen to direct the content.
The future of news will rely heavily upon this citizen’s responsibility. So citizens of the world, it’s time to start setting your ringers on LOUD.
April 20th, 2011 by Rey-Hanna Vakili | Uncategorized
In a bookstore at Sydney Airport I stumbled across a bestseller entitled A Golden Age of Freedom. When the shop assistant informed me that it was not available on Amazon and only sold in bookstores across Australia I felt compelled to buy it. Its a book based on Rupert Murdoch’s Boyer Lectures in which he details his rise to media moguldom and offers his predictions for the future of the news media industry.
I’m about three chapters in, and I find I can’t stop thinking about the remarkable man behind the news. His News Corporation holdings extend from The Australian and The New York Post, to Fox News and most recently The Wall Street Journal.
Murdoch’s personal fortune now amounts to an estimated $9 billion dollars, ranking him in amongst Forbes Richest, and making him arguably the single most influential figure in the media world. He began building his empire at the budding age of 22, when he took over the family business after his father’s death. Beginning with one newspaper in Adelaide, Murdoch proceeded to expand his empire through the acquisition of other publications first in Australia, including the Sunday Times in Perth and Sydney’s The Daily Mirror, and then expanding News Corporation into the UK, the USA and Asia. Today he owns over 100 newspapers worldwide, the Fox movie studio and television networks, Harper Collins publishing house, and…believe it or not…MySpace?
With the rise of the digi-industry and the steady decline in newspaper circulation and revenue the newspaper enterprise, which Murdoch has spent the past six decades building up, is at risk of collapsing to the dust. You would think that the man who owns the news would be buckling at the knees. But not Rupert Murdoch. In fact, Murdoch looks at the digi-revolution with more optimism than any other in his industry. He believes that “winging about technology will get you nowhere, the more serious challenge is the complacency and condescension that festers at the heart of some newsrooms.” Rather than viewing the Internet as a rival, he likes to see it as a potential partner. The key to success in the digital future is to adapt to changing times. Rupert Murdoch is clearly doing something right because of the ten biggest newspapers, only his Wall Street Journal increased circulations and online subscriptions in 2011. Murdoch really must be the media’s miracle man.
The concept that many news organizations seem to have difficulty grasping is that newspapers need not become extinct; they must merely change the medium through which they communicate their message. Just because people don’t want the tactile experience of reading a newspaper anymore does not mean that they do not want the information they gain from inside of those black and white pages. News is a commodity that will never cease to be demanded. The question that must be asked is how do you make yourself relevant to a generation that has been weaned off the web?
The first step is to reevaluate the values of consumers and understand that people today expect different things to what they did in the past. Today we want news on demand, news that caters to our specific tastes, news that is continuously updated… not just once a day, or once an hour but as it breaks. We expect not just the facts but a point of view that comments on the news that we receive. It’s not enough to know about the war in the Middle East, we need to know how this war affects the economic market, the price of gas and how it extends into our very own household. More than that, we was to be able to interact with the wider community, to debate, to ask questions, to remark on issues that are important to us at the click of a button.
Traditionally, technology has been a friend to the media industry, not as it is now being painted, its foe. It facilitated the news not only in production, printing and delivery, but also in news aggregation and fact collecting of journalists. Why should the Internet be perceived any differently today? If anything, news can be enhanced through this new technological development. In his speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Murdoch was quoted to have said:
“Today, the newspaper is just a paper. Tomorrow, it can be a destination… the challenge for us is to create an Internet presence that is compelling enough for users to make us their home page. Just as people traditionally started their day with coffee and the newspaper, in the future, our hope should be that for those who start their day online, it will be with coffee and our website”
He goes on to stress the importance of refashioning the web presence of the news through innovative thinking. You cannot simply repackage print content online because people now expect more. Highly localized news, interactive news with commentary and debate, visually entertaining news with videos, these are all features that can make the product more appealing and provide deeper and more relevant coverage for consumers.
Another way for news corporations to stay afloat is to strengthen their branding identity. Murdoch affirms that media is “moving from newspapers to news brands.” The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the London Times… these enterprises are all known for what they are, as media institutions rather than papers. The need to strengthen the brand has become more important than ever in the Internet age because the new technology has made the cost of entry into market easier and cheaper than ever before. The result? A significant increase competition. The Huffington Post is one such venture that is fast on track to developing a brand identity and undermining the institutional memory of media giants like News Corporation as a result of dropping barriers for entry into the market. In being the more reliable and trusted source through an established brand identity, news conglomerates may be able to protect themselves. According to a recent report published by the Carnegie Corporation however, only 9 percent of youth describe newspapers as trustworthy sources and only 8 percent find them useful. Thus, these corporations will need to do a better job in gaining readers trust. In this equation, design and presentation are essential in communicating the feel of the brand through a new digital medium without the tangible advantages of paper.
What about government intervention? Many have referenced it as the sole way to save the media industry. If the news is perceived as a public good, which I believe it must be, then is it not the government’s responsibility to safeguard it and ensure its survival? If we do nothing, we run the risk of losing some of the best-trained journalists to the open market of online aggregation and dissemination. Given that we bail out banks and auto-industries, should we not bail out the newspapers too? Murdoch thinks, and I am in complete accord with him, that this would be an extremely dangerous precedent to set. Free and competitive press is a central tenet of democracy and government dollars hampers the objectivity of the information we receive. Paywalls are by far the more effective option, so long as we can persuade consumers that high quality, reliable information does not come free.
For all his talk of objectivity and free press, there is something to be said about a man who has a virtual monopoly over Western press, owning over 100 newspapers worldwide and numerous television networks. Perhaps there should be a cap on the number of media institutions he can acquire? At 80 years of age however, Murdoch is undoubtedly nearing the end of his career. His legacy will live on not only in the empire that he has built, but also in his insightful predictions for the future of the news and newspapers.
What takes a social forum, like Facebook, from an outlet for college students to meet up, hook up, and measure their “coolness” based on a specific number of friends – to a forum that enabled a group of Egyptian rebels to take down their government? The answer: communication. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, although not originally invented for political uses, act as a vehicle for political communication because of the ease with which they allow anyone to communicate with anyone else. Further, the number of mediums through which people can express themselves within these forums, such as links, posts, photos, etc increases with everyday. But these forums are built on the idea of creating and enriching a digital identity for oneself, and communicating with an increasing number of people is at the core of “acceptance” in this digital society. Thus, for politicians and their supporters it is essential that they succeed in these media, and reach as many people as possible with their digital identity. Many people respond to politicians’ Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and YouTube clips because they believe their digital image can have an impact, and that it is important that they correlate their digital identity with different political beliefs and candidates.
On a more obvious level, these forums bring together an enormous number of unrelated individuals from all over the world with extraordinary efficiency. But what about this idea of no boundaries – the concept that there is no barrier to anyone joining these groups or viewing these pages? Facebook, something that was created to form exclusive and elite groups, is now one of the most inclusive forums in the world. Although political campaigns and Egyptian rebel media forums (like Facebook and Twitter) are directed at a certain group of people in a specific geographical area – their beliefs and information are on display for everyone in the world, allowing anyone to join. Thus, even though these campaigns and groups are directed at a certain niche, there is still a level of artificiality in the fact that anyone can support, critique, comment, abuse, and replicate any of these geographically focused forums. It is plausible that the future will hold a shrinking world of media where there is a physical border and filter created by one’s location and surrounding radius. People will not be excluded because of things like political views or lifestyle choices, but because of where (physically) they are using an application. One can foresee a new era of location-based communication.
The movement towards geographic based media forums is most apparent in the app world. For instance, three new attempts at location-based interactions, MessageParty, Color and Geo-blogging, provide a look into the struggles and triumphs of these future forums. The original purpose of MessageParty was to create a chat room for users in a general geographic vicinity. Individuals generally choose to remain anonymous, and thus MessageParty could provide a forum for complete strangers, sometimes with nothing in common other than the same bus stop, to partake in conversation about whatever interests them at that moment. The homepage points out that some everyday uses for MessageParty could include telling a secret, writing a poem, sharing a link or finding a bathroom. The app Color also provides a forum for complete strangers to share experiences and important moments, but instead of exchanging conversation Color exchanges photos between strangers in the same general vicinity. Color advertises that it allows participants to “simultaneously use multiple iPhones and Androids to capture photos, videos, and conversations in a group album. There’s no attaching, uploading, or friending to do.” The goal of Color is to create a photo album from the images generated from one’s own photos and those taken by others, thereby exposing viewers to new people and sights in one’s vicinity. For example, even if I am in the nosebleed section of a Lady Gaga concert with my mom and dad (ugh), Color can provide me with photos taken by others at the concert that make me feel like I am front row hanging out with the cool kids (that don’t go to Lady Gaga concerts with their parents.)
Although color has around $40 million in funding, it and MessageParty have struggled because users of the applications simply can’t find other users. Nothing is worse than putting one’s photos out on display or sending out a chat message and receiving no response. These apps rely heavily on having a robust group of users, but are still struggling to pin down that very first group that would likely lead to a steady growth of users. Their success might also be impeded by the likelihood that some people have reluctance chatting with, or revealing photos to, complete strangers in the vicinity even if there is theoretical anonymity. In my opinion, these apps must go to great lengths to develop an initial group of loyal users, even if they must resort to a dramatic increase in advertising or free trials. Once a critical core of people become more comfortable with the idea of interacting with strangers we may be on our way to a new chapter in social media of focused on location based communication.
The Geo-blogging updated version of Message-party is anticipated to be more successful but also less personal. Geo-blogging is similar to blogging in that it takes a collection of media (links, photos, stories, notes etc) and assigns it to a specific location rather than assigning it to a specific person. Upon opening the app, one can immediately see what messages have been posted in that their geographic area. Having spoken with one of the creators of MessageParty and Geo-blogging (Jason Gavris), there is more hope for this app because it is not so heavily reliant on a large base group of costumers who are using the apps around the clock.
So what are the implications of these new steps toward location based communication? For one thing, there is the possibility of totally new and unexpected exposure. Many apps and websites like Twitter and Facebook try to pin down who you are and what you like. Those apps study who your friends are and what seems to interest you, and then they make suggestions that they think you will enjoy. In contrast, the location-based apps are all about exposing you to new people and places and informing you about events and ideas going on within your community. Yes, of course, these apps are very specific because they are catering to where you are, but they are significantly expanding your horizons within your vicinity. New voices could be heard during chats on MessageParty at town meetings. Photos could expose unsanitary school lunchrooms or unsafe potholes through Color. Upcoming local campaign events and charity services could be advertised by local political candidates through Geo-blogging.
I believe the greatest implication of location based communication is that it is taking us closer to a media world where we are able to actually progress as a community. The ability of communities to use these media forums to create something real and tangible for their members was illustrated by the Egyptain rebels use of Facebook and Twitter during the uprisings. Now, we are starting to move toward forums that cater toward this specific niche – community building. One does not have to overthrow a local government with these tools, but could instead create a closer and more aware community. Whether one uses MessageParty to strike up a friendly conversation with a group of people in line at Starbucks about the upcoming tax increases to build a new fire station, or uses Geo-blogging to figure out where the next yard sale will be, communities are growing closer and more conscious of what is actually going on around them. Although Twitter may report that Justin Bieber had a PB&J for lunch, these new geographically aware apps create real, tangible environments for people to build and develop their communities.
I was surfing the web last night and came across a pretty humorous post on Andrew Malcolm’s Top of the Ticket political blog in the Washington Post. He wrote about how last Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee had a hearing with Supreme Court Justices Breyer and Kennedy regarding the impact of social media on the third branch of government. Unlike the elected officials in the US government, judges are held to a higher standard of ethics that regulates the disclosure of their political views and opinions. Technically, they don’t speak for themselves, but rather for the impartial law (though this point is certainly one of contention). Regardless, it was interesting to note how Justice Breyer, seen in the video below, seemed just as fascinated by “the tweeterer’s” coverage of the Iranian revolution as we were.
