Journalism in the new digital age
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.
From our audience, with our audience, to our audience
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.
Winging it digital stylie
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…
