The Digital Wing

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….

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.

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?

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.

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…

Today I’ll be presenting at the Journalism in the 21st Century Conference at the University of Melbourne.

Here’s my powerpoint presentation in case anyone wanted it – full text of the presentation is below.

Edit – the audio of the whole session is up here - thanks to Pavla Hulova and SBS radio for the recording.

Apologies if it sounded a bit quick – I was initially told I had t15 minutes to fill but when I got there I was told it was only 7 minutes!

Future of Journalism conferece – July 16th 2009

PLENARY DISCUSSION
Journalism in the New Digital Age: New Directions for National and International Media Outlets

(FIRST SLIDE – COVER SLIDE)

Good afternoon,

My name is Valerio Veo and I’m the Executive Producer of News & Current Affairs online at SBS. I’m responsible for the online and digital presence of World News Australia, Dateline, Insight & Living Black.

This topic about the future of journalism is something I hold very dear to me – I’m a traditional radio & TV hack who was lured to online six years ago by the promise of new technologies and a rapidly changing media environment.

(SLIDE 2 – ‘END IS NIGH’)

Unlike many traditional newspaper and broadcast journalists we don’t believe the end is nigh – the advent of digital platforms has given us a wonderful opportunity to tell stories in new and engaging ways, while interacting with our audiences in a completely new manner.

While dozens of newspaper closures and the loss of thousands of jobs appears on the surface to signal the death of an industry – I subscribe to the notion that what we’re seeing is the death of a business model.

I won’t go into the debate about business models and funding for journalism as I think it’s the topic of an entirely different session – and it’s yet to be fully worked out.

(SLIDE 3 – OLD MEDIA vs. NEW MEDIA)

But from our perspective the media is changing fundamentally – not only in the way it is consumed but also the way it interacts with its audiences.

The media as we know it has been traditionally defined by a ‘one to many’ model of communication – delivered via the mass media vehicles of newspapers, radio and television.

(SLIDE 4 – Infinite choice)

But with the advent of Pay-TV and the Internet we’re seeing that mass media market fragment into thousands of niches.

The demise of so many newspapers is a product of freefalling ad revenues as a result of this fundamental change – not a dying interest in quality journalism.

The true challenge lies with these traditional media outlets and their journalists and whether they are prepared to not only meet the demands of this changing media landscape but also redefine their roles as journalists and engage with their audiences in entirely new ways.

(SLIDE 5 – It’s all journalism)

The art of story-telling in the digital age has given us opportunity to mix the strengths of images, audio, video and interactive graphics to enormous effect on digital platforms.

You only have to see the incredible work being done by groups such as the Interactive Newsroom Technologies team at the New York Times & Mediastorm to see moving stories being told in unique new ways.

(SLIDE 6 & 7– New York Times screengrab – Jackson charts)

For example the New York Times told a very simple yet effective tale of Michael Jackson’s career through a series of graphs tracking his chart successes in the 70s, 80s & 90s. And this is probably one of it’s most lo-fi, multimedia features that was built within hours of the pop icon’s death.

(SLIDE 8 – MARLBORO MARINE)

Organisations like Media Storm have showcased how seamlessly photos, audio and video can be combined to tell a story in an utterly compelling and entirely new way.

(SLIDE 9 – SBS TOUR TRACKER)

At SBS we’re currently incredibly proud of our Tour de France Tour Tracker – which combines a live video feed of the race, a map tracking where the cyclists are placed, current rankings of all the cyclists, as finally the opportunity to chat in real time with other cycling fans – all in the one window. You should check it out – trust me – it IS addictive.

So sure there’s cool technology – but why should we put the cart before the horse? Isn’t it all still about TV, radio & newspapers?

That may be true right at this instant, but it won’t be for long… and that day is coming much sooner than many who work in the industry realise.

As these audiences fragment, their media habits are also changing rapidly.

(SLIDE 10 – Social media grabs and devices)

Audiences are gathering in huge numbers on new and largely untapped platforms.

Facebook has 20% of the world’s Internet population as members – that’s 200 million people. Incidentally Facebook was this week valued at $6.5 billion – more than CBS.

Twitter – while still considered tiny – already has more than 35 million members and continues to grow rapidly.

Then there’s the mobile generation, glued to their mobile phones, iPods, Kindles … it’s a market that has yet to really tap into the rich vein of people who want their content on the go.

And of course there’s the much more mundane yet equally competitive behaviour of spending your evenings on the couch with a laptop on your lap and the TV on in the background.

These new media behaviours are having a profound effect on media organisations and the very nature of journalism – and it’s undoubtedly time to deliver news on their terms, instead of ours.

To clarify – I like to use a quote from a New York College Student who was interviewed as part of a research project last year:

(SLIDE 11 – quote)

“If news is important – I expect it to find me”

Smart media outlets are reaching out on these platforms – redefining themselves not just as newspapers or TV stations … or even as broader online entities – but as multi-platform media organisations who can service their audiences 24/7, wherever they may be.

(SLIDE 12 – The Guardian homepage)

One good example of this re-invention is The Guardian – a traditional UK newspaper that – in my opinion – has redefined itself as a global content brand.

I look at the Guardian website sometimes – not daily – but I have developed a very personal relationship with the brand though several of its podcasts – which I listen to religiously while stuck in peak-hour traffic in Sydney.

(SLIDE 13 – The Guardian social networks)

This relationship is reinforced through Facebook groups and Twitter feeds which keep popping up as I go about my day.

The notion of The Guardian as a newspaper with a website is pretty much the last thing on my mind – but the voice of the brand is speaking to me louder than ever.

(SLIDE 14 – PEOPLE FENCING)

So what are the new rules of engagement now that we’ve met these audiences on their own turf?

Along with this shifting landscape we’re also seeing a fundamental shift in the way news is gathered – one that sits uncomfortably with so many in the industry used to the traditional ‘one to many’ communication model.

Initially coined ‘user-generated’ content, then ‘citizen journalism’ or ‘crowd sourcing’ – I think the term that best describes it is ‘collaborative journalism’ – call it what you will but the underlying trends and behaviours are the same.

(SLIDE 15 – CNN iReport)

Suddenly the audiences who traditionally consumed our news are becoming the best source of information for the increasingly hungry and never-ending news cycle.

The skill of the journalist is changing from a single-voice of trusted information into a curator of trusted information. The skills are the same – journalists are needed to verify, challenge and update information – then create a clear narrative from this ‘many-to-many’ conversation taking place on the internet.

Smart news organisations are embracing this change – others fear it. For many rusted-on hacks the tried and tested methods of sourcing information has changed virtually overnight.

There are many recent examples of this collaborative journalism – recent events in Iran being the most dramatic.

(SLIDE 16 – Montage of Iran pics or an Iran video)

You would all know the story by now:

- News organisations either thrown out or banned from covering protests

– Young, tech-savvy population used technology like YouTube and Twitter to get their messages out despite best efforts of the government to prevent just that.

News organisations who embraced the change spent their days vetting, verifying and curating…

(SLIDE 17 – HUFFINGTON POST)

For me The Huffington Post provided excellent coverage of the Iran protests and gave some method to the madness made up of millions of tweets, thousands of YouTube videos and very little ‘verified information’.

(SLIDE 18 – HUFFINGTON POST)

The protests & cyclone in Burma, the terror attacks in Mumbai, that famous plane crash in the Hudson River in New York – the examples keep growing by the week.

Our online news team regularly trawls for content on breaking news stories in social spaces including Twitter & YouTube.

It doesn’t apply to all stories and verification is often an issue – but overall the benefits outweigh the negatives by a huge margin.

(SLIDE 19 – DEMONIX)

Some are turning this crowdsourcing into a business model – here we see Demotix – a news agency providing photos, text and footage – all gathered by budding amateurs.

The power of this content and the fact we can even see it at all in many cases, is undoubtedly a positive development for the media.

We’re also trying to embrace this collaborative style through our Current Affairs properties – using social networks and platforms to communicate directly with our audiences where they gather instead of expecting them to always come to us.

(SLIDE 20 – INSIGHT)

This perfectly suits a forum program such as Insight, where we use Twitter during live shows to communicate with our audience and inject their feedback into our debates … while our live online chats have been hugely popular with our audience and even the guests themselves.

For the audience it’s about acknowledging their needs and their online behaviour and ensuring we’re relevant. For us it’s a nil-cost, high-yield way of getting our content onto new platforms and ensuring relevancy to this new market of a thousand niches.

(SLIDE 21 – GUARDIAN MP EXPENSES)

A fantastic recent example is The Guardian’s crowdsourcing experiment – where they asked their readers to trawl through more than 450-thousand pages of receipts to investigate MP expenses.

As you can see the stats are amazing – 22-thousand people have already reviewed almost 200-thousad pages of documents. 170-thousand within the first 80 hours at a staggering participation rate of 56 per cent.

The cost to The Guardian? One full week from a software developer, a few days’ help from others in his department, and £50 to rent temporary servers.

(SLIDE 22 – the end of the beginning)

The end of the beginning

What I’ve shown you today is barely a fraction of some of the amazing work that is being done by intrepid news organisations who see this changing media environment for what it is – a land of opportunity.

It’s time for the media in this country to grasp that with both hands.

It’s time for journalists to stop focussing on just one medium – they’re no longer feature writers, TV journalists, photographers – they are individual story-tellers who are media entrepreneurs all on their own and need to acknowledge that the audience wants to interact with them, not just listen to them, in new and wonderful ways.

A story is no longer a destination, but a point on a timeline and technology is allowing journalism to grow organically with input from its audiences.

It’s journalism – but not as you know it.

Thank you.

I love my job. The media and the profession of journalism is changing in enormous and fundamental ways right under our noses and I feel like I have a front row seat.

The nature of what we do is changing rapidly, and our future of journalists as those who deliver news will soon be hand-in-hand with the very people who want it – our audience.

The events of Iran and the death of Michael Jackson have both been a perfect case-in-point. Events – that while starkly different in nature – have been driven by the very news-hungry audiences that we’re meant to be feeding.

In Iran – protesters turned to Twitter to get information out to the world as news outlets were effectively barred from from covering massive anti-government protests. In those first few days after the election result a search of #iranelection uncovered a huge amount of information, photos, YouTube videos and other information on events in Iran (I even saw a scan of the resignation letter of the dean of a major university who quit in disgust after Iranian militia rampaged through his campus).

Some nights SBS relied almost entirely on these grainy video-clips to tell the story of what was reportedly happening on the streets of Tehran -but there’s little doubt it told a compelling and sometimes horrifying tale of a brutal government crackdown on its own citizens.

“But what of the craft of journalism?!” I hear you old-timers cry. How do we as journalists verify these reports – how do we know what is truth and what is spin?

Relax – your profession is safe – in fact more needed than ever. During the uprising in Iran I closely followed events in Iran via the live rolling blog by The Huffington Post – which provided possibly the best coverage of Iran I saw anywhere.

One of my favourite bloggers – Jeff Jarvis -  explains it best in this blog post – I’ve taken the liberty of ripping off one key paragraph:

“Journalists end up playing new roles in the news ecosystem … they performed new functions: curating, vetting, adding context, adding comment, seeking information, filling out the story, correcting misinformation. They worked with social media, quoting and distributing and reporting using it.

“The journalists added considerable value. But this wasn’t product journalism: polishing a story once a day from inside the black box. This was process journalism and that ensured it was also collaborative journalism – social journalism, if you like.”

What we do as a profession is changing – and faster than most people in this industry care to admit or even acknowledge. But it’s a change of a million opportunities, not of an attack on what we hold on the highest pedestal – truth and integrity.

Look at Michael Jackson’s death – news that was spread by audiences via Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks faster than any newsroom.

But to be honest it actually frees us up as journalists to tell the story of his stunning career, bizarre life and shock death in far more entertaining and unique ways.

Here at SBS we celebrated his life and dug up some of his best performances, The New York Times built a unique application that graphed his successes against other major music artists.

Sure Twitter sounds like a fad and Facebook seems like a good platform for changing photos – but these are just tools for a much deeper, long-standing behaviour of audiences – our audiences – and we all need to acknowledge that this is the way people want to get their news, or we will lose them to someone who does.

Right – so here we are.

After postulating and pretending to know what I’m all about in this digital sphere I’ve decided to finally put my money where my mouth is and actually put virtual pen to virtual paper to talk about media, the digital space and anything else that comes my way.

It’s been a while since I last wrote a blog with any sort of regularity – 2006 in fact – when I was fortunate enough to be sent to Germany to cover the 2006 World Cup for ninemsn. Unsurprisingly there was plenty to talk about back then!

Since then its been head down – I’ve spent the last 2 1/2 years at SBS building the online team for the News & Current Affairs sites – World News Australia, Dateline, Insight & Living Black – and funnily enough, my increasing interest in Twitter has also inspired me to get back into the blogosphere.

Don’t panic – you won’t see a lot of narcissistic, self-promotion here. I just find myself reading and coming across so much new and interesting developments in what is undoubtedly the most exciting time in media in decades – so I think its worth sharing – and I’m really hoping for your feedback too.

OK better get back to work … more to come…