Blogworldexpo Keynote panel “The death and rebirth of journalism”
The death and rebirth of journalism (A panel on future of journalism and the news)
[disclaimer: liveblogging]
Brian Solis (Moderator), Don Lemon, Hugh Hewitt, Jay Rosen, Joanna Drake Earl (google them)
(can’t assign comments to people since can’t see from the back row 
)
Start with some data: “how is new media comparing to traditional media”
monthly – 400 million tweets; weekly – facebook – 2 billion pieces of content shared; 2008 – 16,000 job cuts in US news. twitter.com outperforms CNN. Then again, NYT is growing too.
Comment – twitter big, yes, but a lot of it is links to big media or spreading of the word.
Evolution of new media – Jay Rosen (NYU) – blogworld in 2003 to now “we have built around that system (RSS blogs, etc) the live web – everyone is connected to the news system as a whole – old media and new media wired into the same ecosystem – more complex, more aggregators, more fights for attention” “we didn’t anticipate the live web, which is represented by twitter” “lot more competitive for attention” – 2003 – people who blogged were like those with own magazines; now it has transformed into something much broader”.
Lemon (CNN)- the key to blogosphere/twitter now is immediacy – old media can’t keep up with people’s thirst for information.
Hewitt. – the real change now is the massive amplification of the desire to be noticed and to gain attention.
Question from Hewiit to audience – how many aspire to be journalists? – There will be too many of ‘you’ to be employed as journalists -[ this is completely the wrong question and the wrong answer. Journalists are not employed only; they are the citizens who do it; bloggers and pro-bloggers are not wanting to be journalists! More old media hubris?]
Jay Rosen and Don Lemon arguing about fact checking – Rosen asserts old media doesn’t report ‘factual news’ in the way that they claim – sure, it’s accurate to some extent, but it’s not objective – this is not argument between facts and opinion, but different views. Rosen emphasises that participants now can directly report their experiences, without relying on journalists; but his key point is that this kind of reporting connects with (doesn’t replace) the journalistic reporting, adds new layers. Rosen demands that bloggers pick up the ethics of journalism; but also says, journalism, news ALSO needs to recommit to news ethics.
Lemon, in answer to another question, returns back to the profession of journalism – we need resources, fact checking, trained people to “look into” things. But “social media has upped my game” – because if he doesn’t get it right, he’s going to be hammered in tweet-world. Strong emphasis on the interrelationship between big and social media – big media
Rosen – cites the scene from the film Network – Beale shout out the windows “mad as hell” – audience is isolated from one another, ppl couldn’t share horizontally; today, Rosen says, it’s different – people are still watching Tv, reading papers, but through the Internet they are connected across as well as vertically in society. They can share news with each other as easily as they can get it from the mainstream. More people shared Obama’s race speech than who watched it. Over the Internet, people can find each other if they disagree with what they see; the Internet is a powershift, it has already happened – people can inform themselves. [Lemon responds - clear dynamic here between him and Rosen - polite agonistics of the media].
Hewitt – excellent comment – the people who are trusted in social media world will become the key sources for the traditional media. [It is an accurate representation from within media of how they see the social media world]. Social media ‘increases’ the opportunity for media to find those in society who know what they are talking about; social media is a test of credibility.
Rosen – calling for a mutual relationship between information professionals and their audiences / networks which is based more on human connection than expertise and skill. Value of more and more people gaining a sense of ownership of news; if we collectively believe we own the news, then there’s a bigger stake in taking care of it, caring about it, and using it.
Lemon – there is not the accountability in social media and cannot be; journalists feel exposed, bloggers are not (eg to legal action). Asserts in such a manner that it is a definining difference between trad and social media.
Do we still need Journalism Schools?
Hewitt – students are getting “completely irrelevant skill sets”
Rosen – used to teach journalism around platforms; now that doesn’t work. Now use ‘studio’ approach (eg model from design, art etc) – how will you build a new news system embedded in the program – build intellectual capital, hook students into the news business as innovators. News can’t innovate.
Side notes
Claim that people thirst for immediate information: is this a media industry construction? – does connectivity create a VOID which can only be filled by immediate, endless streaming of information. Do we hold to a notion of humans as infovores? or is the thirst for information actually a thirst for meaning in connectivity – without meaning connections through twitter, blogging etc feels empty? Perhaps it is also a dominant theme of the moment that one ought to be information hungry – a kind of postmodern version of the ‘improve oneself through knowledge’ of modernity (think Workingmen’s Educational Association in 19thC GB)? Ultimately, there is an affective as well as intellectual relationship between humans and information; we need to ask what the search for, acquisition of, information signifies in and of itself, regardless of that; then ask how modalities of information change meaning.There’s no mention here of Google – new media/old media divide works well around things like twitter and blogging, but there is limited understanding of the informatic basis for news and so on – no mention of mining twitter for example.
My take: Top social media commenters will become new ‘sources’ for ‘Old Media’ (of course, some may already be sources, via other means); bloggers, Tweeters etc. need to get ethics, Rosen says – but most probably won’t; 16K job loss in ‘old media’ isn’t contextualized, i.e., how much is recession, how much is debt overhead, how much is losses to new media, etc. (My answer: at least half is recession or debt load; let’s not shovel too much dirt on ‘old media.’)
There is a reason why dirt gets dumped on social media; it’s because new media types need to do this, for self-valorisation, but also for significant corporate reasons – go back to O’reilly and web 2.0 – this was a move to get investment into ‘new/not’ media away from trad media / telcos. Nice point though – traditional media is as easy to simplistically caricature from this side of the screen, as new media is from the anchor desk. thanks