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Media Re:public wrap-up

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Some interesting points from Persephone Miel’s short presentation on the findings of the year-long Media Re:public study and some personal comments:

-Usage of the term “legacy media” as opposed to “traditional media” and “citizen media” instead of “participatory media.” I find the term “citizen media” however, somewhat misleading, because the news generated on blogs or other open news sites does not necessarily represent views from a citizen’s perspective. To me, the concept of a “citizen” brings with it more responsibilities than we see being executed on the web.

-Credibility is more of an issue than ever, as can be seen in still-high readership/viewership for media that have good reputations, such as the NY Times or CNN.

-Democracy is a relative term, and large populations are unrepresented on the web. One of the most recent examples in South Korea was the U.S. beef issue. Representation on the web drastically leaned towards one side, with a hostile atmosphere disabling people of other opinions to voice their thoughts. One would think that the web gives people more freedom of speech, but due to the aggressiveness of people with strong opinions, opposing their ideas makes it easier for them to harass you.

-Market failure: failure of advertising-based models is causing legacy media to downsize and shift scope of original reporting, yet this is creating a vicious circle in which more gaps are created in reporting and less media is becoming involved in in-depth investigative reporting. Perhaps we should examine new business models (such as spot.us, a community-funded news site)

I think that what with the floods of wire services and individual bloggers these days, news organizations need to focus more on quality, exclusive content. (But then, missing out on press briefings and other public events makes one lose a sense of what’s going on in the field. )

-Objectivity: Regarding objectivity, quoting B.D. Colen, “There is no such thing as objectivity [in news]. The best we can do is be fair.”

A more detailed summary is on Ethan Zuckerman’s blog, which I’m linking for future reference.

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Bad links and information loss

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Although the internet is being touted as a next-generation library, I don’t think it should be considered so until someone solves the problem of extinct web sites.

More often than naught, I am faced with the frustration of bad links. They point to web sites that have been shut down, or whose content has changed and no longer contain the information I’m looking for. It’s easier to retrieve that information if the original site has merely changed its server, but in many cases, the site is gone altogether.

I suppose it’s not fair to say that information in libraries is safe: if a library burns down or is physically destroyed, it will no longer be a reliable information source. However, it is at least more permanent than information floating around on the web.

I am thinking more about the problem of bad links because news articles are increasingly adding hyperlinks. In a print-oriented world, a reporter would have to describe each element, but now, links are taking the place of descriptions, keeping the article compact yet abling the reader to pursue further information of choice by clicking on the links. It certainly works well with technical or medical terms, organizations, websites, and so forth (for instance, when writing about embryonic stem cells, I would just put a link on the term instead of spending a paragraph explaining what it is).

Relying too much on links, however, is dangerous, because when you are looking through articles that are older, many of the links no longer exist.

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Translating and Journalism

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

The following is a comment I made to Ethan Zuckerman’s post on Financial models for “difficult” journalism.

Translation, I believe is a profitable service, whether it be an English media seeking foreign news or foreign media seeking English news. Many news companies in Korea attract readers through translation of specific foreign news (Daum, for instance, translates Wired). The translating team at Reuters Korea is larger than the reporting team.

But while translation serves as a revenue source, I don’t think a model where reporters serve as translators would work out.

At the JoongAng Daily (an English daily newspaper that is a sister paper to the IHT and run by a media mogul), reporters were translating as a side job because the salary of a reporter never was (and as we perceived never would be) enough for us to carry out the lifestyles that we wished. Reporters make very good translators because they have command of both languages; translating is quite profitable because there is always a consistent demand and not everyone has the expertise.

When the company, however, tried to get reporters to do translating work as part of the job, most were very opposed to doing so. It was not just because translating for the company would not create side revenue for the reporter (although that was certainly one of the reasons). It was more because reporters had pride in what they considered to be the role of a journalist. In the end, full-time or part time translators were hired. It was interesting that while a part-time translator would earn more money, reporters who were able to do that job opted to be a reporter and not a translator. I suppose I am still old-school in that I believe that journalists, like firefighters, are not (or should not) be in it for the money. In that sense, I support the 5% model.

Going back to translation, I think it is a good source of generating revenue (such as hosting marathons). More than a decade ago, the Korea Herald operated for a long time a translation company that was quite profitable; the people there, however, all left and created their own company.

(cross-posted on arcticpenguin)

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AV content in newspapers?

Monday, May 12th, 2008

In the ongoing quest to find a good model of newspapers in the digital age, I want to address two failed brainchilds: the audio slideshow and the narrated video.

According to a reliable inside source who cannot be named, apparently many newspapers think that audio slideshows and narrated videos are the way to go in terms of producing digital content. An easy way to note this trend would be to go to nytimes.com or boston.com.

I think they are wrong. I mean, I don’t think it’s bad to make audio slideshows and narrated (edited) videos, but compared to the labor and time involved, it isn’t worth it. I know I shouldn’t base things on my preferences, but even I don’t look at the audio slideshows. When it comes to demographics, I’m probably more interested in news and spending more time on newspaper websites than the normal person, so if I don’t want to spend time listening to an audio slideshow, I think that says a lot.

It’s the same with narrated videos. The videos produced by newspapers are still crappy compared with TV and with both slideshows and videos, they rarely stand alone, being only complementary to the main (text) article content.

Solutions? People want more AV content, it’s true, but we want to eat by ourselves, not be fed with a spoon. Instead of wasting time making a slideshow, newspapers should just provide a captioned photo gallery where people can flip through the photos at their own pace.

Poor quality videos are discouraged. And what is with using reporters who just can’t speak? I’m sure some people like it, but I’d prefer a narrator who has more experience. The only reason I’d want to waste/spend time watching a video would be for a travel narrative (like Seth Kugel giving a tour of Brooklyn). What I would like to see (and it really isn’t out there) is behind footage of the reporting process for major articles, but that would probably take a lot of resources and extensive editing.

(cross-posted in arcticpenguin)

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