Digital Media Musings

Objectivity: An impossible to attain and outmoded ideal that's dragging down traditional news.

2009-03-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of years I've been thinking about the journalistic doctrine of objectivity and how difficult it is to put into practice. It's been a pillar of journalistic training since the profession recovered from the yellow journalism era in the early phase of mass media in the last century. But, maybe its time to be honest and admit that its impossible to achieve and is no longer what the audience is looking for.

Providing objective reporting of stories, in principle, meant that reporters insured that they kept their opinions to themselves and that both sides of an issue were equally covered. What an altruistic and lofty goal. In reality, however, I don't think its humanely possible to be totally objective about anything. No matter what, our life experiences, gender, education, neighborhood and a myriad of other things effect how we perceive the world and how we define objectivity in regard to any story.

In today's media world, the readers, viewers and listeners of news, having spent their entire lifetimes as consumers of news and information, realize that the journalist's cloak of objectivity is an illusion. Journalist's continued preaching of their commitment to objectivity, when the news consumer senses that they aren't, contributes, I believe, to why many feel journalists and news organizations are biased.

I also think that much of the writing that is typical of objective reporting, when it comes down to it, is boring. The personality of the reporter is missing. What the story means to them and how they interpret the story is subverted. In today's world, with all the competing sources of information, I think people are looking for interpretation and the perspective of the reporter.

If news organizations and the journalists who work for them want to be relevant in today's world I recommend that they let go of the "objectivity" ideal. Be clear that you are not objective, that you are interpreting what a story means, that you have a perspective. If a news organization wants to cover the various sides of an issue, then have multiple authors, each reporting from their view of a story.

Being honest about not being objective is more truthful than purporting to be objective when you aren't.

So it's time to accept that "objectivity" was a core part of American journalism's history and not the foundation of its future.

Newspaper Death Watch

2009-03-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

I just found out about a blog called the "Newspaper Death Watch". It has interesting commentary on what's happening in the newspaper industry and updates on the cutbacks as various newspapers.

The future of newspapers: Will the local weekly thrive while the metro papers die?

2009-03-22T15:31:00.000-07:00

Are the financial problems occurring in the newspaper industry tied more to large metro papers than to the smaller community weeklies?

I'm wondering if weeklies, because they are hyper local in focus, are more relevant to their communities. They cover what's going on in a community of people who may actually know each other and are interested in what the paper covers because it covers their life. In a large metropolitan area you seldom see anyone you know in the paper, which also tends to focus more on the nation, state and region than your neighborhood. And those news beats are covered by many other sources, on air and online, so that you don't need the newspaper to provide that information.

This may be another variation on targeting a niche audience, in this case its based on the neighborhood where you live.

LateUpdate.com - Is this the future of local news online?

2009-03-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

I just found out about this Website, Late Update.com. Its an online news site for the Fresno community, edited by a young journalist with roots at FCC's Rampage, Fresno State's Collegian, and the Fresno Business Journal.

Maybe this is an example of how we'll get our local news instead of through a local newspaper.

Will Television News Be The Last Man Standing

2009-03-18T16:40:00.000-07:00

It seems that newspapers in their traditional form are dropping like flies. The Seattle Post Intelligencer's printing of their final issue yesterday, March 17, is the most recent example. Their Website lives on and even captures the memories of 147 years of publishing a printed newspaper. Locally, someone closely effected by the recent layoffs at the Fresno Bee described the Bee as "imploding".

We knew newspapers were in a period of transition to a greater focus on online news presentation. But, the situation has gone from a seemingly orderly evolution to the online model to newspapers gasping for life, with their online presence being the last hope for survival.

For a while, it seemed that newspapers were leading the way in exploring the potential of the Web compared to local broadcast TV. I thought the TV stations had missed the boat with the newspapers, at least those with vision, providing video coverage of local news and other multimedia features online.

But who would have guessed that many newspapers would so quickly go from lucrative profit margins to bankruptcy. In the meantime, TV stations, also tightening their belts, are doing better at retaining an audience and providing a meaningful outlet for those who still have advertising dollars.

I'm not a fan of big media conglomerates, but I'm beginning to think that the laws and regulations need to be changed so that local TV, newspaper and radio news operations can be consolidated. I'd rather have one local news organization that distributes content across the mediums of radio, TV, the Web and print than limited to no coverage of local news.

Contemplating Medium As a Discriptor for Mass Media

2007-10-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

I think the word medium has taken on new meaning in the mass media field. I'm in the middle of thiking about this. I'll report back with more later. [I'm demoing blogging to my class so have to have something to type.]

Discussing Blogs In MCJ 178 Class

2007-10-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

This is a demonstration of how easy it is to blog. The problem is having something to say.

Feeding the Blog Monster

2007-10-02T11:59:00.000-07:00

I love this medium, but I don't know how some folks keep up with regular posts.

Newspaper Next Workshop Tries to Keep Newspapers Alive

2007-02-12T11:32:00.000-08:00

On Friday, February 9, I attended the “Newspaper Next” workshop at UC Berkeley. The workshop is a training offered by the American Press Institute (API) aimed at publishers, news executives, editors and ad managers. The training discussed the eroding of the newspaper market and provided a framework for using innovation to change this trend.

The most interesting aspect of the workshop was the discussion of disruptive innovations which is based on Clayton Christensen’s book “The Innovator’s Solution”. The concept is that new disruptive innovations address needs and problems of markets not served by the traditional business, in this case newspapers. They capture this market with solutions that are good enough but don’t require tremendous capital outlay. Over time they continue to further innovate and grow in market size until they start taking away the existing customers of the traditional business. By then the traditional business is in trouble and on the decline, eventually fading away. DEC computers was given as an example. They were the provider of business mini mainframe computers in the 80’s and the PC came along for personal use and eventually took over business computing forcing DEC out of business.

A key point of the workshop was what can traditional newspaper publishing businesses do to compete with the disruptive innovations occurring online? The recommendation was to create there own disruptive innovations that target new markets they have not served in the past. The second half of the day focused on methods for developing innovative ideas and a process for pursuing promising opportunities.

So the morning was all about showing how Christensen’s book predicts that newspaper businesses are going to fade away, overtaken by new disruptive innovations such as Yahoo News, YouTube, RSS newsfeeds and MySpace. And the afternoon was a sales pitch for onsite training at $11K to help the newspapers attending learn and implement the API’s N2 program so they can stay alive.

My guess is that a few of the newspaper publishers that attend these workshops around the country will adopt the ideas and come up with some innovative ways to stay viable. But most will get mired in internal resistance to change and will decline, while disruptive innovations become the dominant sources of information.

Oldline media battle misses today's opportunity

2007-02-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

Over the last year I've often wondered why newspapers implementing online video focus on training photographers to be videographers instead of hiring experienced TV/video journalists. I found the answer a few weeks ago at a presentation by a local newspaper executive. When asked how newspaper Websites with video compared to television station Websites, she passionately expressed how the newspaper's online news was better than TV. It was an us against them reaction and she was going to beat TV at video.

For me this was an "ah ha" moment. This explains why many newspapers aren't taking advantage of getting experts in shooting and editing news stories from TV. Newspaper people feel they are better than TV journalists and so don't see them as a source of expertise that they could take advantage of. I think this is a missed opportunity. Telling stories with video is not a trivial task. Over time some photographers are becoming good videographers. However, I continually marvel at the newbie approach to using video exhibited by the online newspapers. Experienced video storytellers have a far larger palette of creative methods for telling stories. I think the newspaper folks have a limited view of broadcast news which is the traditional evening TV newscast, delivered by their sworn enemy. What they are missing is this larger palette of creative styles of video storytelling which people trained in video know, but haven't been using in traditional TV news.

While traditional newspaper and TV news executives fight an old battle in a new world, there are opportunities for forward thinking news and information organizations who forget the traditional and find expertise across all media, as well as the new online media, and create a new way of presenting news and information.

Consequences of HDTV Conversion

2006-12-17T10:16:00.000-08:00

Latley I've been thinking alot about what will happen to the braodcast industry when the conversion to HDTV broadcasting is completed in February 2009.

Still Americans are uninformed about the fact that analog TV goes dark in 2009. When I cover HDTV in my college courses, students are surprised to know that there is a date in the near future when their analog TV's will no longer be able to pick up TV broadcasts unassisted. Of course most of them watch TV through a cable or satellite service so they aren't receiving any programming via a TV antenna. At the same time they, like most of the audience, are more likely to watch a cable-exclusive channel, as opposed to the local TV station carried via cable.

Given the continuing erosion of broadcasting's audience, the coming date when all TV broadcasts will be in HD, and the emerging availability of network TV shows via download, I'm speculating that local TV will be in trouble in 2009. The audience will be able to get their favorite TV show via iTunes or the network's website so when they can no longer receive their old analog TV channels, and they will be surprised and angry when this happens, they will no longer be watching local TV stations. Since many are not watching them now, the shutdown of analog will likely push even more people to go with cable or satellite.

For sure, we are in an interesting period in American TV broadcasting, where new technologies create change and old ways of doing business no longer work.

Demonstrating Blogging In My Class

2006-10-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

Today we're discussing blogs and their impact on society. The September Business 2.0, "Blogging For Dollars" actually mentioned that the user numbers are up to 50 million. That's a lot of blogging for a communication approach that some don't take seriously.

Blog was off-line

2006-09-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

For some reason the blog was not available for the past few days. I'm republishing it and hopefully this solves the problem.

Ain't technology grand!

Web-Centric Seminar Links

2006-09-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

Today we're hosting a day of seminars about journalism in the Internet Age. This mornings session is "The Web-Centric Newsroom and the Multimedia Reporter: Get Ready Now!" with Jane Ellen Stevens of the Knight New Media Center at UC Berkeley.

Jane uses a number of Website examples in her presentation. Below are links to the sites she mentions:

The same story (Ivory-billed woodpecker), three ways:
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg§ion=News&storyid=114980

Nature Conservancy
http://www.nature.org/ivorybill/

Why Files
http://whyfiles.org/224presumed_extinct/

The same event story (Kentucky Derby), two ways:
Churchill Downs
http://www.kentuckyderby.com/2006/

Louisville Courier-Journal
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SPORTS0801

Good examples of multimedia storytelling
Touching Hearts – series story package (turn off pop-up blocker)
http://www.heraldsun.com/heart/

The Fair -- a columnist’s take on the fair
http://transom.org/shows/2004/200404_fair.html

Freeing Sex Slaves – oped by NYTimes Nicholas Kristof and Naka Nathaniel
http://nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2005/01/29/opinion/20050129_CAMBODIA_FEATURE.html

Web Shells

Story shells:
Touching Hearts – series story package (turn off pop-up blocker)
http://www.heraldsun.com/heart/

Bend to Baja
http://www.patagonia.com/bendtobaja/index2.html

Curating the City
http://www.curatingthecity.org/map.jsp

Issue shells:
BBC Iraq shell
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2002/conflict_with_iraq/default.stm

NYTimes Iraq shell
http://nytimes.com/pages/world/worldspecial/index.html

BBC London bombing shell
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2005/london_explosions/default.stm

Beat shells:
Seattle Post Intelligencer’s transportation beat shell
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/

KUSports.com – local college sports site
http://www.kusports.com

News organizations’ family of Web sites World Publishing --
LJWorld.com – main site
http://www.ljworld.com/

Lawrence.com – youth/entertainment site
http://www.lawrence.com/

KUSports.com – local college sports site
http://www.kusports.com

Bakersfield Californian --
http://www.bakersfield.com/

Northwest Voice.com
http://www.northwestvoice.com/home/

Bakotopia
http://www.bakotopia.com/home/index.php

Katie Couric on CBS News

2006-09-08T10:16:00.001-07:00

The bigs news for CBS was that they had the best ratings on the debut night for Katie Couric since 1998. I wonder how that compared to Dan Rather's in the 1980's? Not too good I'd imagine since ratings have dropped tremendously?

Katie Couric on CBS News

2006-09-08T10:16:00.000-07:00

Day 5 Multimedia Seminar

2006-05-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had an intro to Flash and the creation of a photo slide show with text, music and video. We then launched fully into producing our multimedia story. We were ambitious and decided we wanted to do our project entirely in Flash.

My team 's story was called "Prof-casting." It's about UC Berkeley's recent effort to provide a number of courses via podcast, free to the public.

Last night we split in to two groups with Tom and Joel working on audio clips and the scripts. Genetta and I worked on the intro Flash. Today we quickly realized that we were too ambitious and needed to scale things back to working on just one of the story segments, "On Campus". That took us all day. We were able to add text, photos, audio files and two video clips. We then had assistance in bringing the segment into the intro Flash movie so that you can click on the link and the "On Campus" segment plays. We also got the "home" link active, but the remaining ones were pipedreams.

To see our finished project (or as finished as we could do in the time we had) you'll go to http://journalism.berkeley.edu/multimedia/projects/ . The link to our project isn't availabe yet, but all of the May 2006 projects will be up soon.

This was a great training experience. I recommend it to any journalist or professor who wants to learn to do multimedia storytelling.

The Knight New Media Center (Formerly Western Knight Center for Specialized Media)

Day Three

2006-05-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

In the morning we had a great session on the voice with Marilyn Pittman. She's a professional voice artist who works with newscasters and radio announcers. She shared her tips sheet, "Talk Better Radio: Four dynamics of good vocal variety. The four dynamics are:

Pitch
Volume
Tempo
Rhythm

These are used on operative words, key words that tell the story. When abridged to the operative words, you still know the key details.

She also showed us how to mark a script, underling the operative words and adding slash marks where to take breaths.

Following the voice session we focused on the software. Photo preparation for the Web and basic image editing were presented in a crash course in using Photoshop. This was followed by a session on editing using Final Cut Pro. We covered drag and drop editing, setting audio levels and adding text and dissolves. In the evening capturing footage was covered and we began capturing footage from our first video interview.

At lunch we had a speaker from Internet Broadcasting, Phil Numrich. He spoke about online advertising for TV stations. Now I know why TV station news Website suck. Most are p;roduced by organizations like Internet Broadcasting, who hires the people to write the news around their online ads.

Day Two at the Seminar

2006-05-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at the multimedia seminar was all about learning how to use the technology.

One session focused on audio and a tutorial on using a mini disc recorder. There was some discussion about moving to using flash recorders. One advantage being the ease of just taking the flash card and inserting it into the reader on a computer. There's no conversion or capture. Berkeley will be converting to this in the future.

Still photography was also covered. One of the challenges was the variation in how individual camera models describe and locate functions.

We also went out in the field to shoot video and audio for our podcasting story. We had two on-camera interviews, one with Andrew Keating, the grad assistant for a history professor who's course was podcast, and the other with Mara Hancock, the associate director of educational technology at Berkeley.

Some of the concepts discussed on Monday came up. For example, the placement of the camera for the first interview was a bit above the subject. This was done to move some distracting horizontal lines into a better position in the background. Then when we set up for Mara, the background led to the placing of the camera very low to the subject. Fortunately, Joel questioned the angle early in the recording, so he and I decided to stop the interview and reposition. We then raised the camera to a level that matched better with the first interview.

Having taught video for several years, it was interesting to be reminded of the various constraints that arise in the field. Despite knowing principles and techniques, you still have compromises due to lack of time, equipment, and location issues. You have to decide which to deal with and which to let go. In our case, the psychological impression of the subject was deemed more important, rightfully so than background imperfections.

Day 1 Seminar Photos

2006-05-22T21:55:00.000-07:00

Highlights from day one of the Multimedia Seminar at the Western Knight Center.

Ellen Seidler was the instructor for over 3 1/2 hours of training on field video. Using Sony 3 CCD mini DV cameras she showed the group the funtions and operation of the camera. In addition to the camera she went through the field equipment kit which included hand and lapel mics, headphones and tripod.

At left she demonstrates how to load the mini DV tape which requires gentlyl pushing a specific button to properly close the tape door.

Paul Grabowicz, one of the instructors, shows my teammates, Tom Honig, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, and Joel Rose, WHYY radio, how to set up the camera on the tripod.

A nice feature of the Sony-made tripod is a pan handle with remote zoom and record button. To work it has a cable connected to the camera's LINC connector.

Today at the Multimedia Reporting Seminar

2006-05-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

Story Shells
We started today with a discussion of multimedia story shells. These shells are a way to package a variety of content elements that cover various aspects of a story. Jane Stevens explained several types of shells and gave these examples:
- Site shell - Greenpeace http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/
- Beat shell - Kansas Legislature http://www.cjonline.com/legislature
- Issue shell - Conflict in Iraq http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2002/conflict_with_iraq/default.stm
- Story shell - Touching Hearts http://www.heraldsun.com/heart/better.html

Jane began the discussion of how to storyboard a multimedia story shell with the Touching Hearts story mentioned above. The process involves pre-planning the basic sections of the story. I equate this to coming up with the topics or themes that are anticipated to be covered when out shooting the story.

In the Touching Hearts story, the main sections were the mission, stories, and people. Some of this could be researched and known ahead of time. For example, the mission would cover the history and background of the doctors going to Nicaragua to do heart surgery on children. Some of the people involved, such as the doctors could be known in advance. The stories would be discovered while covering the story, though it would be expected that there would be some stories on the children treated.

Multimedia Reporting at the Western Knight Center

2006-05-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

So I'm at UC Berkeley this week as a fellow in the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism's seminar on multimedia reporting. The primary instructor is Jane Ellen Stevens who I reported on in a February post. I am joined by 15 colleagues who are working journalists from organizations like Newsday, the Washington Post, the Tampa Tribune, and the Orange County Register. I'm the only academic.

I'm hoping to further enhance my technical and content skills in creating multimedia stories. I'm also interested in what my colleagues are doing at their news organizations regarding convergence. Finally, I'm looking for ideas for teaching these skills.

Yesterday Michael Skoler from Minnisota Public Radio presented a brilliant approach to involving audience members as story sources. They've created "Public Insight Journalism". Audience members register with PIJ and indicate areas of interest and expertise. They now have over 18,000 registered in their network. Through a custome database, quieries are sent to those with interest/expertise in a topic area that has a survey. The responses are then analyzed for use in stories, sometimes including interviews. This has lead to many stories that use them as sources.

Next year they plan to make their custome software available for free to other news organizations.

Journalistic Arrogance

2006-05-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

At the end of April I attended the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) conference that occurs at the end of the NAB. The conference theme was "Convergence Shockwave: Change, Challenge and Opportunity " so there where a number of sessions related to convergence and the changes taking place in broadcasting and journalism.

The first panel I attended gave a nice overview of the changing nature of journalism. Interesting discussion points included how in the online world audience members are active participants and with Web logs news organizations can know what information interests their audience and then tailor news to match audience interests.

One professor in the audience was concerned about the negative impact on our democracy when professional journalists were not the arbitures of truth. He had a problem with allowing the audience to choose what they were most interested in and have that influence the news given to them. He implied that journalists were best able to determine what citizens needed to know. What arrogance. How arrogant and hypocritical to mention the press's role in upholding democracy and in the same breath imply that journalists need to tell the citizenry what they should know. In other words, we (journalists) must control (gatekeep) information for your own good. Hmm, that's not democracy that's an authoritarian approach trying to maintain the illusion of the people's participation.

The Web has been around long enough that Americans have developed the ability to sort through the information and do a respectable job of finding valid information that serves their needs. Certainly, some get mislead sometimes, but so do journalists. In fact, we've found through our own online information resources, that journalists sometimes mislead us too.

Past time to feed the blog

2006-05-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

It's tough to feed the blogging beast. First, I didn't have anything I wanted to say after my last post. And then I did, but had no time to get to it. Now I'm at a week long workshop on multimedia reporting with wireless access, so I hope to post a few times this week.

Multimedia Reporting Seminar: Jane Ellen Stevens

2006-03-14T16:30:00.000-08:00

CNPA Multimedia Reporting Seminar

Today I attended a three hour seminar on Multimedia Reporting given by Jane Ellen Stevens, Berkeley Multimedia Reporting & Convergence http://journalism.berkeley.edu/multimedia/course/choose/. The seminar, sponsored by the California Newspaper Publishers Association, was aimed at getting journalists ready to become multimedia reporters.

Jane stressed the need for newspapers to engage in a 2 year plan to become web-centric. She said, “journalism is entering a dicey time right now.” Pointing out that, as journalists, “our role is changing a lot.”

Given the changes occurring in online journalism, she emphasized that “Everybody must be a multimedia reporter.” That includes reporters and photographers. They must be able to tell a story using any or all elements: video, audio, photos, graphics, then text.

She identified three characteristics of online news: immediacy, context and continuity. The Web allows 24/7 updating of news; no need to have the timing of news presentation dictated by when the press runs. The Web also allows providing additional information that gives the user related information enabling background and in-depth context to accompany the latest story. This can then be updated over time providing users with a continually evolving coverage of a story.

Jane listed a number of things that news organizations must do to adapt to new media:

Disentangle from Wall street. Profit margins have gone down, no more 30 to 50%

8 to 15% profits for local papers is enough.

Don’t think of profit first, journalism first, profit supports journalism

A Web-centric newsroom. Web first, spin off materials to other mediums – print, TV, radio…

Publish paper version only 3 or 4 days a week

Distributed newsroom

In coffee shops and community locations, more access with community

Everybody is a multimedia reporter

Local first, state second, a little national and international as applies locally

Most stories in context (Web shells). Hold as much related info as possible, member contribution area

News is a conversation, not one way.

Blogs from community members. http://www.lawrence.com/

Journalists’ roles are changing

Managers of information

Trusted source, select shell information

Relevant links to related information

Her message to newspapers: “If local newspapers haven’t made the transition [to Web-centric news] in two years, there’s not much hope, you’ll be marginalized.”

Good and Bad Coverage Examples
Ivory Billed Woodpecker Multimedia coverage

Done well http://www.nature.org/ivorybill/http://whyflies.com/ivorybilled/

Missed opportunity http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/115709

Rethinking Journalism Education: Blogging is another form of communication

2006-02-28T12:37:00.000-08:00

I posted this commentary at the "Rethinking Journalism" conference blog in reaction to a posting that called blogs "blah-g". Rethinking Journalism Education: Blogging is another form of communication

The negative side of constant connectivity and ubiquitous computing

2006-02-23T12:44:00.000-08:00

As you can see its been awhile since I last wrote an entry. With everything I'm working on I find it hard to write regularly in a blog. How do the active bloggers do it?

On one hand I have all of this tremendous access to information and communication tools. And on the other hand I'm drowning in information and overwhelmed by the constant demand for my digital attention.

I could do a great job with this blog, posting daily or more, if this blog was all I had to do. But its one of three blogs, 15 Websites, 4 college courses and multiple multimedia projects that I'm responsible for. Around all that I also have to keep up with the various technologies associated with those endeavors, like the week-long Apple training I attended last week on the Final Cut Pro editing suite. Oh yeah, and I have a personal life I value, too.

My reaction is to pull the plug. On weekends and during evenings I rarely look at email and I seldom have my cell phone on unless I'm making a call. Now this irritates family, friends, students and colleagues at the times they want instant response, 24/7. I'm beginning to think that that's just too bad. Closing the door electronically and pulling the shades so others can't see you is not unreasonable. We all need down time, and I forsee that there will be more of us who decide not to be constantly available.

Okay, so this message was posted by a digital curmudgeon.

From Convergence to Techvergence

2005-11-22T15:42:00.000-08:00

Convergence is a term that’s been used to refer to what’s happening in the media, news in particular, as techniques and technology bring content, tools and techniques together online. In my October 14, 2005 blog entry on James Brady, the executive editor of washingtonpost.com, I described his view that there are four types of convergence: technical, audience, competitive and information. Competitive convergence, the merging of the approaches and tools of competing mediums in the online world (newspaper websites using video and sound elements or collaborating with a TV station to produce stories in both mediums), was where I began my exploration of this concept. That’s seeing the concept from an “old world” perspective, shoveling traditional approaches to media into the new container of the Web.

More recently, I’ve become more intrigued by convergence of technology, than traditional media. I’m calling this techvergence. The most graphic example of this at the moment is the cell phone. Smart phones are combining a multitude of technologies so that one device has the functionality of a cell phone, a digital camera, a media player (MP3 audio and video), and a PDA style computer. The Sony Ericsson Walkman phone is an example of this http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000030046498/. If you think about it we’ve added all kinds of technology to what was once considered a fairly everyday item, the telephone.

If you’re old enough to remember when phones came in two colors, black and tan, and had a rotary dial, then you might remember them as a functional, but mundane, electronic device. They had one function an that was to connect you to another person so you could have a two-way conversation in real time. If you weren’t home you missed the call and had no way of knowing. This meant that when you’d applied for a job you were stuck waiting anxiously at home near your phone for days on end so you’d be home if called for an interview. Because we’d all had experiences or known someone who wasn’t home, missed that important call, and thus missed a life changing opportunity. Fast forward to 2005 and a small device that fits in your pocket allows you to make or receive a phone call anytime and nearly anywhere. It takes messages, keeps your calendar, gives an alarm when you’ve got a meeting coming up, lets you listen to your favorite song or watch a video clip, provides you access to the Internet and enables you to work on a written report.

If someone would have proclaimed in 1965 that all these things would be done by that mundane black device with the rotary dial that sat on your kitchen counter, most of us would never have been able to envision it. This led me to think what currently everyday items might get the techvergence treatment.

So I created a game for my students where I came up with a list of everyday items — shoe, toothbrush, eye glasses, power drill, ink pen, etc. — and technology enhancements such as an LCD screen, speaker, MP3 player, computer processor, hard drive, etc. I let a team randomly choose a card with an everyday item and 2 technology cards. It’s called the Techvergence game and students were charged to combine the item and technologies, add other functions and technology and create an innovative device that served the needs of a target audience. The students came up with some interesting devices, some funny and some with potential. The attack pack got me laughing so hard I cried. It basically took a water bottle, pressurized it, combined it with a computer processor and keypad, put them all in a back pack with a hose that fed through your sleeve. You then used the controller to protect yourself with it set to a water cannon intensity, reduced the intensity for splashing your friends, or set it to drink mode if you were thirsty.

Journalism student dives into the digital sea

2005-11-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

One of my students is seeing the future of journalism and for him its digital, online and multimedia. He's focusing his energies in exploring the various media tools (photography, video, audio, blogs, etc.) available to journalists. He's just started a blog, Solo Mojo, to talk about his "fascination with the converging forms of single-person, digital multimedia journalism, recently nicknamed 'backpack journalism' or 'solo-jo'". He has an interesting perspective and I encourage anyone musing over what's happening in journalism and where its headed to read his blog at http://solomojo.blogspot.com/

Digital Broadcast TV Deadline

2005-10-27T16:58:00.000-07:00

As the deadline for analog TV broadcasting to end gets nearer, the December 31, 2006 date for the cut off doesn't appear to be feasible. The original legislation had the caveat that 85% of American households needed to have adopted. We won't reach that point in a year and two months so Congress is working on legislation to extend the deadline. Yesterday the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a bill that would extend the analog go dark date to the end of 2008.

The original legislation was low on the radar for the average american TV viewer. Hopefully, news of this new bill will make more aware that their analog TV won't receive over-the-air broradcasts in another couple of years.

Not everyone sees the need to spend the money for a new HD television set. What they have works just fine. I actually went out and bought a new 32" analog set a couple years ago intending to avoid getting a HD set. Since I'm a digital satellite users this will work fine for me. At leasts until Direct TV decides to force users to upgrade to all digital boxes. Hopefully, they'll be smart enough not to force that but encourage it.

I still think there will be some surprised and shocked viewers on January 1, 2009, when they can't watch the Super Bowl on broadcast TV. Talk of governmental rebates sounds nice, but the economic reality of giving American TV viewers the money to cover the cost of getting a digital conversion device seems unrealistic. I predict that instead this will be a great boon to cable and satellite whose boxes do the conversion and you get all those channels.

I've been wondering what will happen to broadcast TV as it continues to lose audience over time. Now I'm interested to see what happens if the audience drastically goes down in one day. Yeah you can get local channels on cable and satellite, but they cost more, at least on satellite, and with all the other programming in competition, local and network doesn't attract my attention anymore. I can't remember the last time I watched a network prime time TV show. I stopped doing so several summers ago when reruns ran me right to some interesting cable channels and I've never returned.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years. Stay tuned.

Digital Movie Theaters: Too Little Too Late?

2005-10-26T10:09:00.000-07:00

In my New Information Technology class we’ve been discussing digital cinema. As part of this topic we’ve looked at the movement toward digital projection in movie theaters. With this summer’s agreement on the technical specs for the equipment and systems to project movies digitally (see http://www.dcimovies.com/press/07-27-05.tt2), the serious implementation of digital movie theaters is underway. Recently Christie/AIX, the funding arm for Christie digital projection, began the rollout of, a planned, 4000 digital theaters across the next couple of years (see http://www.dcinematoday.com/dc/pr.aspx?newsID=329). This has been followed by, first, Disney and then Twentieth Century Fox quickly jumping on board to provide movies in the digital format needed for digital theater projection.

So, finally, the film industry is ready to let go of a 117 year old method of projecting movies. That is, some are ready. While filmmakers like George Lucas and Jim Cameron are serious proponents of shooting movies digitally, there are many who aren’t quite ready to let go of exposing celluloid. The savings, though, on the cost of movie prints and their distribution has made digital distribution and theaters a significant cost-cutting strategy.

In discussing the benefits of digital theaters, my students pointed out that while this benefits the theaters and studios, what’s going to be the benefit to theater goers? If the movie industry is saving money are they going to pass it along by lowering ticket prices? This is a key point. If there’s no perceived benefit to the ticket buyer, the students feel the conversion to digital theaters does little to get them to go to the movies. The movie industry saves money in distribution, but over time, if attendance continues to decline the industry continues to lose revenue. We’re already down to only 9 % of Americans describing themselves as regular movie goers according to a 2004 Ipsos poll reported on by Paul Hodgins in the Orange County Register (Sept. 29, 2005). The question then is what can the movie industry do to keep theater attendance alive?

Its All About Time Shifting

2005-10-17T17:54:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Utah and the idea of time shifting is what resonates from my experience with podcasting. Before I went to Utah, Joe Moore, our campus radio station manager spoke to my classes about podcasting. He likened it to TIVO for radio. In other words, podcasting is a way to time shift audio content for enjoyment whenever and where ever the listener desires. And that's what audiences want.

Ever since the VCR let us record programs to watch at another time, audiences have found time-shifting of programming desireable. If you grew up before the VCR existed you remember the frustration of having to pick which one of two favorite programs to watch if they aired at the same time. As an audience member we were manipulated by the networks to stay with network X and we had to be home when our favorite program aired. I remember watching the "Rich Man Poor Man" mini series and having to miss an espisode because of a school activity. So along comes the VCR and we can record one program while watching another and then view it at our convenience. For my first TV news job I worked the night shift, so I had separate tapes for each night of the week where I recorded the prime time shows and then watched them the next morning before work.

I think one of the things people like about the Internet is the 24/7 access. I can get information when I want it all over the world.

Now the video iPod adds another option. I can download TV shows to watch at my convenience. This may be another viable revenue stream for networks TV and cable. Download only what I want and without commercials. $1.99 seems cheap to get what I want. Hmm, this makes an iPod more interesting to me. I also like all the storage for my own video files.

If I can get my radio and TV ala carte via Internet downloads, what role do the broadcast and cable networks play in the near future of TV?

James Brady of WashingtonPost.com on convergence

2005-10-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

Last night James Brady Executive Editor of Washington Post.com was the key note speaker for the Media Convergence conference at Brigham Young University. He shared his perspective on digital convergence with conference participants and BYU students. (Get his presenteation podcast at http://feeds.feedburner.com/convergence/.)

Brady had some interesting points. I liked his perspective that there are 4 types of digital convergence: technical, audience, competitive and information.

Technical - Multi-function, converged devices like the new video iPods and smart cell phones.
Audience - The audience is now part of the news process. Blogs and wikis are recent examples. An interesting quote was that audience convergence is "turn[ing] the media business from lecture into a conversation."
Competitive - Traditional media using production and delivery methods from other mediums. For example, WashingtonPost.com has videographers who produced video news stories for their Website. This is leading to telling the story in various multimedia ways, whatevere are the best way to tell the story(s).
Information - Pulling Web-based information from multiple sources to suit the audience members interests. RSS subscription feeds for news headlines, blogs and podcasting are examples. Other creative examples are Web developers who are scraping publically available info such as crime statistics and creating interactive maps that show what crimes are happening where in a community.

Another interesting concept was disaggregation of the Web. The idea here is that people use multiple Web sites for specific tasks. This is enabled by using search engines, blogs, RSS feeds, etc. to find the specific info within a Web site without entering from the site's home page. Basically, users go right to what they're interested in and may never see any other part of a Web site. This means the home page is no longer as important in directing users to information in a site. There's no guarantee that information on the home page will be see. That changes the dynamic within organizations where everyone fights to get their link or blurb on the home page.

In the case of WashingtonPost.com, most people come to their site to read a specific article that they found via a search engine, link in a blog or an RSS feed. For Brady that means that each article page has to do a good job of convincing the user to go deeper into the site to look at related information. His strategies are to get people engaged are:

Links to blogs about this article
Adding comments links to all articles (coming shortly)
Byline linking to the reporter
Creation of topics pages (I presume with links to related information)
Multimedia video player

The above are intended to get users deeper in the site. He also talked about the need for strategies to increase the frequency of visits (blogs, message boards), increase time at the site (multimedia content, Web tools), and increase habitual use (opinions area, user-generated content).

I found this an informative and thought-provoking presentation from someone in the trenches. I also think his operation, with 100 employees (wow), is leading the evolution of convergence in the newspaper area. Definitely an operation to one's eye on.

Web Documentaries Presentation

2005-10-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

I just gave my presentation, "Exploring Convergence and the Web Documentary", at the Media Convergence Conference. The presentation, and those of others presenting, is available as a podcast at http://feeds.feedburner.com/convergence/.

There seemed to be interest in my presentation. An interesting comment/question was about my position that a Web documentary is the personal vision of the author. The questioner felt this went against the nature of the Web as a place where many should participate in authoring. My response was that while that approach, maybe through a wiki site, is one way to do this, that the Web allows many approaches including a personal Web documentary. I had one gentleman come up aftewards and tell me he agreed with my approach and the idea of carrying over some of the approaches from traditional video documentary.

The facilitating of individual voices via the Web and a variety of approaches is one of the powerful aspects of the Web. Anyone can publish and experiment with the communication form. I think its shortsighted to think in terms of only new Web-specific approaches. Every new technology is built on and draws from earlier ones. All are viable and possible on the Web. Bottomline is the Web site communicating effectively to its audience whatever way it does so.

The Website demonstrated as part of the presentation is "TowerReflections: A Web Documentary".

Competing Mediums Encroaching on Each Other

2005-10-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I read an article in the "Convergence Newsletter" about a photojournalist who is now an online video journalist. ("Making the Transition from Photojournalist to Vlogger: Convergence in Practice",by Colin Mulvany.) What struct me was that someone with 17 years of still photo experience has jumped in to producing a video blog, he calls it a vlog, for his newspaper, the Spokesman-Review. To do this he's had to learn all about the equipment and video production process. I'm thinking as I read, wouldn't having someone who has 17 years of TV news videography experience been a better way to go? Telling stories with moving images and sound is quite a bit different than capturing the quitessential image that expresses the essence of the story.

Today at the Media Convergence Conference at BYU we discussed podcasting and it was mentioned that newspapers and other media are podcasting, as well as radio stations. What strikes me is that the various traditional mediums are reaching out to use techniques from the others in there foray's into online news. So newspapers are doing multimedia stories with video and TV stations are blogging.

Where is this going? I think that as this continues we'll blur the difference between the mediums of newspaper, TV and radio news. And what I predict is there will be a merging, a form of the converging we've been talking about at the conference, where large media organizations remove the walls of traditional mediums and just do it virtually. Forget the traditional separate enterprises we have now, who are tentatively partnering, but still in competition with each other. And wouldn't it be funny if something like Google made it happen outside traditional media. (This is a reference to the futuristic online video that satirises the future of news as a Google media property.)

An Inspiration Hits

2005-10-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here at Brigham Young University attending the Media Convergence conference. While eating lunch, mulling over ideas I'm having about where the new technologies are driving the mass media, it dawns on me that I should be capturing my thoughts via a blog. So presto, I log on to my Blogger account, create a new blog, which takes all of 5 minutes, and here I am demonstrating one of the new technologies that's changing the news media.