When joy comes to town

There were many things I was unprepared for when coming to Africa’s World Cup.

After experiencing the surprising friendliness and cool efficiency of Germany in 2006, when I learnt I was off to South Africa my mind immediately turned to issues of practicality.

How the hell was I going to get decent internet speeds to do my job? Am I going to get robbed blind when I get off the plane? How the hell will I be able to juggle TV producing, online reporting, radio interviews … and sleep?

Sure the Internet issue is an ongoing drama but all the rest appear to be completely completely baseless.

But what I was totally unprepared for?  The unbridled, joyous, passionate nature of South Africans and how I know they’re going to put on a stunning World Cup, even before a ball is kicked.

I spent three hours shooting my story in the centre of Cape Town today – where there was a free concert to open proceedings before tomorrow’s first World Cup match.

Locals warned me not to walk around carrying two DSLRs and a video camera as I’d be a target. I was asked several times by our local crew if I had a fixer. I went expecting a good concert but I was a little cagey about being robbed. Now all I feel is this joy rubbing off on me, usually from people who, by our standards, have almost nothing.

Tens of thousands of people crammed into the city – only 25,000 fit into the official FIFA fan fest. There they danced, they laughed, they all wore South Africa’s rainbow flag and the gold of their football team – and they beamed with pride.

Here in Cape Town there was no Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Black Eyed Peas or Shakira – they’re performing in Johannesburg as I type. Local acts entertained the crowd, and it appeared to me that’s just the way they liked it. Young and old welcomed the world with huge smiles, young children flocked to my camera, teenagers hung around just to watch what I was doing. If people caught me filming them as they danced, they just danced better, prouder, with even more dignity.

This is a nation that is re-birthing – slowly and with plenty of growing pains – but underlying it all is a deep sense of self-belief and hope for the future.

While so much of our time in media is spent looking at the costs, benefits, winners & losers in any given World Cup – there’s always a massive social and cultural impact that you simple can’t understand unless you go.

In Germany it was the return of a sense of nationalism – where Germans could again be proud of their great nation and fly the flag of Deutschland without fear or shame.

South Africa is exploding in a cacophony of chaotic joy, passion, excitement and pride – and while there are mountains to climb, this nation is ready to climb them without fear nor favour.

As I sit in my apartment hearing the African beats and vuvuzelas waft over from the Waterfront, I’m strapping myself in for one hell of a ride for the next month…

It’s lekker bru! A guide to South African lexicon

While I can’t take credit for this piece it’s a surprisingly useful guide to South African words and phrases.

To be honest I thought the ‘howzit bru?!’ was about as South African as ‘throw another shrimp on the barbie’ is Australian – but I was way wrong. This IS how South Africans speak to each other, and I must admit, it’s contagious!

I’ll leave the rest to AFP:

Want to have a lekker time at the World Cup, chomping boerewors at a braai on the Veld or downing a rooibos at the shebeen next to the robot?

Here’s a newcomer’s guide to some uniquely South African words and phrases for football fans heading to the month-long tournament.

• Howzit: A universal greeting, a short-form version of “How is it going?”
• Bru: Abbreviation of “brother” used to address friends and colleagues as in “Howzit bru?”
• Yebo: The Zulu word for Yes which is now used across the board.
• Sharp: A sign-off signalling an agreement as well as farewell, often said twice.
• Ag shame: An expression of sympathy or annoyance.
• Eish!: An exclamation expressing exasperation.
• Lekker: An Afrikaans word meaning superb or fantastic which is applied equally to a person, object or event.
• Braai: An originally Afrikaans word for barbecue, which often features a sizzling boerewors, a curled spiced sausage.
• Biltong: Dried meat – usually beef but also from other animals as ostrich, antelope or buffalo – which is eaten as a snack, often accompanied by a beer or glass of wine.
• Rooibos: Red bush tea, South Africa’s unofficial national brew which is grown in the southwestern Cape region.
• Shebeens: Makeshift bars in the townships which sell often super strength homemade brews.
• Muti: A traditional tree or plant-based medicine. Its practioners are known as nyangas.
• Sangoma: Traditional Zulu healers or sorcerers who often summon ancestral spirits to foretell the future.
• Townships: Black-only neighbourhoods under apartheid that were once mainly shantytowns but now include middle-class areas. The most famous is Soweto, short-form for SOuth WEst TOwnships, near Johannesburg.
• Jozi: The abbreviation for the largest city of Johannesburg which is also known as Joburg.
• Veld or Veldt: An Afrikaans words meaning shrubland, it now generally refers to the countryside as a whole.
• Robot: Traffic lights.

Lekker eh? I’ll see you in the Veld for a Braai, eh bru?

A visit to Blikkiesdorp

While the World Cup promises riches and ongoing social benefits to South Africa’s fledgling democracy, all it takes is a 30 minute drive from the centre of Cape Town to see how much work is left to be done.

After a day of glorious sunshine cold and gloomy weather set in across the city, in what would be a fitting backdrop for a visit to Blikkiesdorp.

A visit to Blikkiesdorp from Valerio Veo on Vimeo.

Blikkiesdorp – also known as Tin Can Camp – is the new home of some 3000 impoverished Cape Town residents moved out of World Cup areas by a government promising a better roof over their heads.

While Townships and shanty towns are still in abundance in the area, Blikkiesdorp has with it a feel of oppression as well as abject poverty.

For a quarter-of-a-mile surrounded by high steel fences, rows and rows of tiny one room tin shacks line up on the dirt, with only crudely sprayed on numbers telling them apart.

On this day in mid-winter, a biting wind rattled through the camp. Residents are wrapped up against the cold both inside and out of poorly built homes.

I met with Blikkiesdorp community representative Jane Roberts aka ‘Aunty Jane’, who politely asked me to wait so she could invite others from the community to hear our interview. That way, she said, they would be assured she was properly representing the views of her neighbours.

She and her grandson share one of the tiny shacks, with only a gas bottle stove, a TV with rabbit ears and a few personal belongings crammed inside.

There’s no sink, no toilet, and no heating. Despite this, she wears a bright red jumper with her hair all wrapped up and looks distinguished beyond her financial situation.

Aunty Jane says residents were lured here by the government with the promise of a proper home, but no most people are desperate to leave.

Tuberculosis and HIV are rife. Unemployment is high but there’s no transport nearby to help people get to and from a job. She says the police are rude and beat people at night regularly if they try to leave.

Jane says it’s like a concentration camp and she feels little has changed since Apartheid.

The World Cup is of no interest to her as it will only benefit FIFA and the rich, while the poor get poorer.

The story of Blikkiesdorp is not unique. The Western Cape anti-eviction campaign tells of thousands of forced evictions and the regular introduction of new by-laws that limit the rights of the poor.

Spokesman Ashraf Cassiem says bread and transport are getting more expensive, access to water increasingly requires pre-paid vouchers, and forced evictions will continue even after the World Cup.

“The money they used to build the one stadium in Green Point, could have resolved the housing issue in the Western Cape, in a good meaningful way”.

My driver Ahmed, a Cape Coloured who grew up in the notorious District Six, says in some ways this fledgling democracy is simply applying a ‘reverse Apartheid’.

“It used to be first the whites, then the coloured, then the blacks,” he tells me.

“Now it’s the blacks, then the whites, and last the Coloured”.

While most expect lasting benefits from this World Cup, there’s remains a great deal to be done to realise the South African dream of a true Rainbow Nation.

Cape Town banks on the FIFA hype

Considering the world’s eyes have been cast on South Africa, you could be forgiven for thinking that Cape Town has been left off the World Cup map.

Cape Town looks like a party host that forgot to invite guests. The city has never looked fresher or been cleaner, with a redeveloped airport, new shopping districts and entire apartment developments all ready for the influx of the world’s football community.

But local business owners and taxi drivers are worried that the reality may not live up to the hype. Several locals have remarked Cape town is quieter than usual, with the usual winter visitors giving the city a wide berth. But with less than a week to go before kickoff, the city remains surprisingly quiet.

Many people are actually a little surprised to speak to a foreign journalist – few have arrived in the city so far. And with the media centre not open until Sunday, I’m yet to see many either.

Every taxi driver I meet hands me their number in a bid to secure repeat business. The restaurants and bars I’ve wandered past are still quiet, as more temporary venues go up around the touristy Waterfront district.

I may be getting well ahead of myself – after all Cape Town is probably the jewel of all South African cities. After a gloomy first day, the sun shone brilliantly and Table Mountain emerged to impose itself over the city – truly a stunning sight.

But I do worry that all the billions invested across the country may fall a little flat. Few Australian friends genuinely considered the trip to South Africa, frightened off by security concerns and the imposing cost. In fact the official Fanatics tour group is less than a quarter of the size of the one that went to Germany 2006, and that’s not counting all the European based Aussies who made their own way there.

But ironically most of those concerns appear unfounded, particularly on this side of the country. Once you’re on the ground its relatively cheap to eat out at the myriad of excellent restaurants Cape Town has to offer, and security is incredibly tight, even though most Capetonians feel safe here (especially compared to Jo’Burg).

But tomorrow I throw off the tourist/media shackles and head to Blikkiesdorp – also known as Tin Can Camp – as so-called camp for ‘undesirables’ supposedly moved out of the city for the tournament. There I’m due to meet ‘Aunty Jane’, a community representative, who will give me a sense for the other side of South Africa, one that FIFA probably doesn’t want you to see.

I just hope enough comes of this tournament to help build this fledgling democracy and improve the standard of living for the millions of poor and unemployed South Africans who are yet to bask in the sunshine of this hugely wealthy tournament.

Stay tuned.

Putting my money where my mouth is…

I gotta admit, I’m one lucky son-of-a-bitch.

I’ve been given the enviable job of heading to Cape Town in South Africa for the duration of the World Cup as part of the SBS broadcast team. My main job will be as the producer of sports news reader Craig Foster each morning, ensuring he gets all the scripts and background information needed to go to air.

But once that is done (by 11.30am Cape Town time) – I’m putting my money where my mouth is as a multi-platform, mobile journalist, filing for online, radio & TV.

Coming with me is a veritable feast of gadgets and prosumer equipment, and there’s little doubt I’m going to be extremely busy for the 6 weeks in South Africa, with requests already piling up.

Here’s what’s coming with me:

- MacBook Pro 13″ with Photoshop CS4 & FinalCut Pro

- JVC HM100E video camera

- Canon 7D DSLR

- Canon 400D DSLR

- Canon 70-200mm f2.8 zoom lens (camera buffs drool now…)

- Canon 16-35mm f2.8 lens

- Canon 18-135mm f3.5 zoom lens

- Canon 85mm f1.8 prime lens

- Gorillapod Focus

- Velbon CX480 fluid-head tripod

- Flash Microphone

- FlipHD Mino

- iPhone 16GB laden with content producing apps.

With it I hope to spend my days shooting video for TV, filing interviews and doing live crosses for radio, photo galleries for The World Game & World News Australia online and a couple of other bits and pieces I can’t really discuss yet

With today’s incredible and cheap equipment and with a bit of technical nous, I’m hoping to prove the point that truly mobile journalism is possible and can still be of the high quality, despite he claims of many traditional media journalists (including many workmates) that new media is killing off quality journalism.

I’ve laboured the point a million times before, but I’ll labour it again. Quality journalism isn’t only the domain of 2,000 word feature articles or 25 minute mini-documentaries, especially in the new media world. With media outlets facing such dogged competition from all platforms, the true skill of a quality journalist is telling stories in an engaging way for their audiences.

This requires journalism to evolve, to grow, and to adapt to the new breed of media audience that demands more from their media outlets.

Just have a look at the list of online news winners from this year’s Pulitzer Prize. Or the fact that, for the first time, an online-only publication won one of the prestigious awards.

Isn’t it time we all started moving past online as a ‘value-add’ for newspapers & TV? Here in Australia we may be bombarded with tabloid reporting in our biggest online publications, but as the saying goes, you are what you eat. It’s out there, you just need to look for it…

Here’s hoping I can contribute in a positive way to finally ending this debate over online as a legitimate journalistic endeavour.

Five ways paid content can work

A couple of days ago I outlined five reasons why the paid content model will fail in response to plans by Rupert Murdoch to lead the charge consumers to read their news online.

But that’s not to say people simply won’t pay for any online content – I just think it requires a new type of thinking and a different business model to the one being bandied about by commentators (what Murdoch and other publishers actually plan to roll out remains largely a mystery).

So here’s a few ideas I think newspaper publishers need to keep in mind when they hunker down to thrash out the details of the paid content model.

1. Don’t charge for what’s free somewhere else

   OK - forget charging for breaking news or news headlines. The audience simply won’t value it enough to pay when they can find another site that will give it away for free. Sure micropayments work well for iTunes but you get to keep a song forever. News is a fleeting, constantly evolving commodity that waxes and wanes in value from one day to the next. Concentrate on hitting the right audiences and content that people can’t get somewhere else.

2. Conquer your niche audiences

   Newspaper publishers love to tout the success of the Wall Street Journal and The Economist as examples that the paid content model can work. But these properties serve niche markets (ie people who make money from this information) or serve up unique content to a highly-engaged and cashed-up audience. Then there’s the elephant in the room – the huge number of corporate subscriptions or personal subscriptions that end up on corporate credit cards – these don’t cost the end user a cent. That model cannot be simply applied across the board to all mastheads to a general audience. But there are highly engaged niche audiences who will value content if its relevant to them. In an earlier blog entry I looked at an early proposal for a New York Times subscription model and applied it to a niche – food (no surprise I wrote this shortly after MasterChef finished to record ratings). If you look at Fairfax – an obvious working subscription model could be some kind of ‘foodie’ subscription leveraging all the recipes, restaurant & bar reviews and tied in with the Good Food Guides in Sydney and Melbourne. That model could work across Murdoch and Fairfax  properties by building new brands serving niche audiences – instead of trawling through the huge archives of a raft of newspaper sites to dig up info of your interest. It would work for sport, politics, business & finance (AFR access debarcle notwithstanding) and several lifestyle areas. Publishers need to come up with new content or new ways of packaging up content – not just expect people to suddenly start paying for something they’ve had for free for the past decade.

3. Build loyalty through services as well as content

   The text story is dead … long live the text story! OK I’m being facetious, but no longer can media organisations rest on their laurels of dishing up a 1500-word text story or a nightly news video as the be-all and end-all of their output. It’s time to build your online presence through various platforms, and across all the mediums offered in the online world. The Guardian’s podcast network has built huge and loyal audiences through its webby-award winning podcast network, which remains oddly ad-free, despite being a sleeping revenue giant. Add video to the mix, throw in a few PC or TV widgets, iPhone apps and other use-on-the-go services, and suddenly your content is looking like a valuable – and revenue raising – product. It’s about thinking outside the square and for God’s sake, not thinking of news/content delivery in old media terms. Do that and you’ll be just fine…

4. Let your audience dictate the news

   Personalisation and interaction with your audiences are becoming an essential part of responsible and relevant publishing – and can play a major role in raising your profile and credibility via in this social-media connected world. Tap into that rich vein of conversation and allow your audience to have a hand in what they want to view online. Wrap this personalisation up as part of your services/content strategy – convince the conversation-starters and online influencers (yes, including those pesky bloggers) and it will do the work of an entire marketing department… with credibility to boot. Then charge for it!

5. Turn your reporters into entrepreneurs

   Journalists can no longer exist solely as writers , TV reporters or photographers. The days of the one-trick pony are over… and look over your shoulder there, buddy, every bright young thing under the age of 25 knows it. Journalists need to embrace this new media world as the new playing field and, put simply, do more. You have to be taking photos, writing blogs, working with your online people to build multimedia applications, and unfortunately, at times when you are your busiest. And you shouldn’t be paid extra for it either. On the flipside there are enormous benefits from doing this. You are now your own brand, one that can exist out from under the umbrella of your media organisation. A brand that can grow from organisation to organisation. One that can earn you money via Google Ad sense, get you invites to speak at conferences, make you worth more to your employer. In the US several bloggers are making up to $200,000 in revenue a year. You’re more likely to recoup costs and maybe get some pocket money – but at least you’ll feel it’s worth the effort.
   Your bosses will be happy – they can use this great personal content to help sell their content (if it’s good enough). They can help you raise your profile by exposing you to your readers, your viewers. They may even pay you more or give you a promotion.
   It’s a win win – got onto it. And tell your online editor I said hi….

Of course now that I’ve listed all these ideas I can’t for a moment guarantee it will work. The paid content debate will continue to rage until someone – apparently Rupert Murdoch – throws down the gauntlet and put his money (a lot of money) where his mouth is. It will either be a spectacular financial train-wreck, or it will surprise the hell out of everyone and actually work. Somehow I don’t think there will be a middle ground.
Let the games begin….

Five reasons why the paid content model will fail

Let the great paid content experiment begin.

After months of hints, guarded comments and innuendo from publishers around the globe, it was the big kid in the playground, Rupert Murdoch, who has ended the speculation in one foul swoop with plans to charge for all the online content of his newspapers and television news channels.

In a rare move by the savvy media mogul, Mr Murdoch clearly outlined his plans to begin charging for online news following the success of the Wall Street Journal, which keeps much of its content behind a pay-wall, and was acquired by News Corp in 2007. Obviously it’s hoped that dozens of other global publishers will see the move as an open invitation to follow the huge stable of Murdoch mastheads into what they hope is a river of cash (come on in, the water is green!), or at least enough to stave off the wolves at the door.

Here in Australia, Fairfax have opened the door to charge for content via a two-tiered system, claiming “we can’t afford to keep the big newsroom staffs we have”.

Can it work? Sure – it can work – and in my next entry I’ll show you five ways how.

But will it? Here are my five reasons why I think it won’t…

1. News is a commodity

   The reality about many online newsrooms is there is almost no discernible difference between much of the wire-driven copy from one masthead to another – just plug a breaking news story into Google news and click on a few results. Short, text-based breaking news simply doesn’t have enough value to exist behind a paywall, especially as there are competitors in every market who are willing or even keen to give it away for free. Sure newspapers are the repository of some of the world’s best journalists who are able to craft articles or comment pieces of incredible insight and clarity, but in this fast moving world of 24/7 news, are they able to keep up with the demand in time. And what about the rapidly growing notion of news a service instead of a destination? How will you charge to get your news onto the platforms where your audiences are gathering (Facebook, Twitter, mobile phones) when news starts to find them.

2. Net natives don’t have masthead loyalty

   The idea that new media audiences will continue to flock to a masthead simply because it’s an old-guard newspaper or broadcaster is, put simply, delusional. Not only is the credibility of these organisations drying up at a rate of knots, but Net Natives are going to respond to new news organisations that reflect their needs via the thousands of niche sites who represent them. It’s time to respect the audience and deliver news on their terms, not ours.

3. Journalism is not a profit-making exercise

   It’s pretty simple really. Newspapers made their money from classifieds and advertising, not from charging at the news-stand. Unfortunately thanks to the internet that business model is broken. But without the cost of printing and distribution, it’s going to be a tough sell to charge on the basis of the content. Slapping a membership or a micropayment system on an existing infrastructure will result in disaster. It’s time the business model was pushed aside for a whole new type of thinking.

4. Online shouldn’t prop up bloated newsrooms

   As a journalist, this will get me into trouble, but it’s time we all acknowledged the elephant in the room. Newsrooms are cumbersome and over-staffed with journalists filling up dozens of sections that barely get lip-service in a daily newspaper. It’s time to make decisions based on what audiences want, not what advertisers want. Do that and suddenly  a whole crop of new business models and niche markets will unfold before your eyes.

5. Blogs are a credible alternative source of comment

   Another furphy of old-school thinking by old-media journalists – that bloggers simply can’t do the job of trained journalists when it comes to commentary and analysis. The notion of bloggers as over-opinionated, ignorant raving lunatics is as out-dated as the newspaper model itself. Today’s blogs are a collection of professionals or passionate observers whose expertise often circumvents the knowledge of their so called professional peers. To denigrate The Daily Beast, Talking Points Memo, The Huffington Post, Mashable (for all things social media) and individuals like Jeff Jarvis, is akin to ignoring a dozen new competitors opening up within a block of your retail store. And unlike newspapers, they want to give away their product for free.

Don’t get me wrong – despite the gloomy points listed above, I do think the great paid content debate can be resolved by a compromised, workable solution. But it requires far more thought than simply throwing a bunch of content perceived to have value by old newspaper hacks behind a paywall.

What’s needed is a far more considered and somewhat sophisticated approach that treats consumers of new media with a lot more respect than is traditionally given by the old-media guard of newspapers and TV broadcasters.

In the next day or two I’ll give you five ways the paywall can work – but it will require media organisations to tear down the notion of what’s valuable and rebuild it from scratch.

What paid content might look like

Since Rupert Murdoch recently threw his support behind the paid content model a few months back suddenly a few news organisations seem prepared to give the previously failed model another chance.

I came across this interesting article via Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab – which gives a tantalising look at what the big media groups hope could save the staggering newspaper business overseas.

According to the survey allegedly filled out by this tipster – and duly shoveled online in its entirety – The New York Times is floating a couple of classic VIP membership models to access premium content – NYT Silver & NYT Gold. I’ll give you a bullet point sneak-peek – but you can see these models in detail here.

NYT Silver – $50 a year

- Backstory & Firstlook: Video of reporters discussing their stories, while Firstlook promises the chance to read content before it hits the news-stand or even the website

- Timeswire: Just that – a breaking news wire of everything that hits the website as its published – a NY Times ’stream of conciousness’ if you will.

- Timesmachine: Cute title this. The entire NY Times archive available online from front page to back – right back to 1851.

- Goodie bag: Lovingly referred to as ’swag’ in the US – think a free NY Times mug, baseball cap, style guide etc.

- Discounts from the NY Times store

- Crossword puzzle membership & first chance to get tickets to NY Times talks & other events.

NYT Gold – $150 a year

Take all of the goodies from the silver membership plus….

- TimesEvents – exclusive access to NY Times events and access to NY Times leading journalists (think having dinner with a film critic during the Tribeca film festival)

- TimesInsider – A tour of the NY Times including the newsroom.

Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty told Gawker the plans are far from final:

“It’s very early in the process. We are still in the data collection phase.”

Regardless – it’s a fascinating plan – mainly because the key content of the site – the news – appears to remain free to all comers, which would maintain the huge user base and millions of Page Views the site serves up every day.

Will it save the newspaper business? I doubt it.

Sure, these packages would attract a hard-core base of passionate NY Times supporters, but I’d suspect that they still buy the paper at least once or twice a week. Importantly it does nothing to attract the younger demographic of people, cutely coined ‘net natives’ who are developing enormous media consumption habits without ever opening a newspaper.

Are there any Australian newspapers that you’d be so attached to that you’d even want to tour their newsroom or be invited to their events early? I can’t think of any.

Newspaper businesses should be chasing the niche audience segments of their audiences … think a ‘Fairfax Foodie’ membership offering a first look at the Good Food Guide in Sydney/Melbourne and tickets to the awards dinner, a first look at The Sydney Food & Wine Festival and the chance to take part in ‘meet the chef’ sessions. Off the back of the success of Masterchef it’s not too hard to imagine is it?

I appreciate the issues faced by the newspaper business – News Limited CEO John Hartigan made a salient point when he said a few weeks ago that “for every reader we lose from the paper we need to pick up 10 online”. But it seems to me this is a wider issue with the advertising model that should be worked through by the market (do you like the way I fixed that huge issue with a wave of my hand?!).

Seriously though – as digital content inexorably becomes the predominant medium for news & entertainment, we’re likely to see better ad models measured by engagement, not just the numbers of pages served up.

But until then – we’re just as likely to see a few more of these ‘VIP’ news models rolled out – will be fascinating to see if any get a foothold in the market.

What do you think – could any of these models work?

The Guradian’s crowdsourcing experiment

Yesterday at the University of Melbourne’s Future of Journalism conference I used the Guardian’s experiment to use their audience to investigate MPs expenses as an example of crowdsourcing at work.

Thanks to the release of 450,000 pages of receipts in pdf format the overwhelming task of uploding all these documents online was made simple – the whole thing took a week from a software developer, a few days work from others in the department, and a mere 50 pounds to rent temporary servers.

Within the first 80 hours the Guardian audience has investigated 170,000 documents with a staggering participation rate of 56 %. That has slowed but even now 23,000 readers have trawled through 199,000 pages of documents – with the Guardian continually updating the story with new material.

Importantly it’s worth reading this article from the Niemen Journalism Lab on why it worked – as it’s not just a matter of whacking up the documents and letting the audience run riot.

The developer behind the project – Simon Willison – offered four big tips on making it work:

1. Your workers are unpaid, so make it fun.
2. Public attention is fickle, so launch immediately.
3. Speed is mandatory, so use a framework.
4. Participation will come in one big burst, so have servers ready.

He goes into details on all these so make sure you check out the story behind the story – but it’s a stunning example of using simple media technology for citizen journalism and the rich rewards you can reap as a result.

The politics of blogging

Edit: been wanting to write this for a couple of weeks but its been crazy … so as they say ‘better late than never’!

Last week’s The National Press Club address by News Limited Chairman & CEO John Hartigan a couple of weeks back has set the cat among the pigeons in some pretty high-profile areas of Australia’s media – particularly after he took aim at blogs, labelling them ‘all eyeballs and no insight’.

You can see full text of the speech here, but I’ve taken the liberty of pulling out some of the more contentious quotes that had many bloggers and independent media outlets frothing at the mouth.

On news commentary sites such as The Huffington Post, Newser, The Daily Beast, Crikey and Mumbrella:

Most of the content on these sites is commentary and opinion on media coverage produced by the major outlets.  These sites are covered in links to wire stories or mainstream mastheads. Typically, less than 10% of their content is original reporting.  The sites that produce a high proportion of original content aren’t making a profit. Almost anyone can start one of these sites, with very little capital, no training or qualifications.

On Bloggers:

In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for – something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.

And the punchline on bloggers:

Like Keating’s famous “all tip and no iceberg”, it could be said that the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insight.

Hartigan also played the company line – throwing his support behind the notion that people will pay for quality content online.

Then just moments after deriding blogs he heaped praise upon News Limited’s own blogging venture The Punch.

The Punch has taken off like a rocket since it was launched in May – our target was to achieve traffic of 80,000 users in the first month. It’s actually achieved almost 200,000.

I know it’s early days. But I think the success of The Punch is because it’s different; it’s surprising, it’s entertaining and it’s relevant.

It’s a pretty big investment in something completely new in Australian journalism.

Unsurprisingly the blogosphere struck back pretty swiftly – Crikey leading the pack by first describing News Limited as the old Soviet Union, then backing it up with an article listing all of the ‘quality journalism’ they’d like to see behind a paywall.

Others like Lavartus Prodeo just sat back and enjoyed the sh*t storm as it unfolded via editorial pieces including this show of support by Mark Day in the News Corp owned The Australian.

While I admit I was a little fired up that News Limited could so obviously ignore the rise of these alternative, independent media outlets – with the benefit of reflection it’s pretty obvious that there is an agenda at work here.

Hartigan made some salient points in his speech – pointing out Australian newspapers continue to do well in the Australian market. But the real clue to the motives behind his attacks was his point on the tiny ad revenues generated in online:

The problem is, an online reader generates about 10% of the revenue we can make from a newspaper reader.

So, for every reader we lose from the paper we need to pick up 10 online.

Bottom line – online needs a better revenue stream as the newspaper business would crumble faster than a Mike Tyson opponent if all the readers abandoned the paper for the PC en masse. And News Corp reckons it has the content to attract the payments.

It’s a critical issue in this whole old media vs new media model and one that hasn’t been worked out yet. If anyone could make paid content work it would be News Corp with its huge resources.

Personally – I don’t think it will fly. It’s obvious we do need a new business model for online as the idea of ad impressions and the tiny revenue they deliver per thousand is hardly big fish.

I wonder whether a kindle-type device could garner monthly subscriptions – combining the best of the web with the best of the paper in a fantastic multimedia experience. But maybe its pie in the sky?

My speech to the Uni of Melbourne’s Future of Journalism conference goes into detail on how I see the role of journalists changing – I think it’s up to the Australian media to embrace this with open arms and start engaging with their audiences instead of just talking at them…

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