Tag Archives: Legacy Media

How Does an Engagement Editor Engage?

Posted on by David Kennedy
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Networking image
Legacy media and other news organizations have begun to take social media more seriously, creating positions that focus on the medium.

However, few have set out to create a position as unique as the the Voice of San Diego.

Its new Engagement Editor, yet to be hired, has people talking. It’s part ombudsman, part new media guru.

Journalists Erik Gable and Steve Buttry wrote recent blog posts about the position and what it means. Mark Luckie over at 10,000 Words created a nice list of what journalists with similar and current positions do with social media.

In his blog post, Gable asked what you would add to his list.

Here’s what I would want to do that are similar to his ideas:

  • Manage the organization’s flagship social media accounts, reader comments and other reader-submitted content.
  • Monitor new technology and teach staff workshops on social media and other new tools that may improve engagement. Help staff determine the best tools to use for different projects.
  • Hold regular workshops for readers and community organizations to encourage new and continued reader-submitted material. Identify the potential regular and occasional correspondents for the Web site.
  • Serve as the point of contact for readers and be the steward for conversations about the voiceofsandiego.org and its stories.

And I’d also like to:

  • Organize and lead discussion forums and live online chats on the site about important events and stories. These could also take the form of a broadcast on UStream or similar site. Bring together community leaders to participate in these discussions in order to promote debate about topics.
  • Create a portal on the site that would help readers better follow the bigger, more complicated stories. Think of it like a giant blog with easily accessed backstory.
  • Establish a more social portal for comments and discussion, through a tool like Ning or BuddyPress.

Like Erik asks, what else would you add?

Image by Clix.

Why the iPad could Cripple the Internet and Newspapers

Posted on by David Kennedy
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Steve Jobs has been quoted as saying he believes in old media companies, and that democracy depends on a free and professional press.

That has put some hope in newspaper executives. After all, Jobs is the guy who reinvented the revenue model for the music industry.

And with the iPad, it’s clear Jobs and company at Apple are up to something.

Hi, we’re closed

However, if the iPad takes off, and other competitors step forward, how many different platforms will newspapers, magazines and book publishers have to create content for? What the iPad and other tools like it could create is a system of closed systems.

Scholar Jonanthan Zittrain speaks to this in his book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. The iPad is an example of a tethered device. “It’s the kind of device that requires special programming knowledge and approval of the device’s creator (Apple).

He and I have nothing against things like the iPad, iPhone, Kindle and Tivo. They are great and have led to some exciting things.

However, they could also lead to a more controlled computing system and less innovation, as he argues.

Balance, please

What’s the answer? Balance – something Zittrain also calls for in his book and in an interview with Charlie Rose.

The Internet has existed as a system that anyone can jump into and play with, so to speak. If you want to create a website for your business, you can do that without knowing everything about how the Internet or computers work.

An Internet dominated by iPad-like devices could wreck that. Developers would have to have more specialized programming knowledge, approval from device creators and other restrictions.

So what should newspapers, magazines and other online storytellers do?

  • Explore all possibilities, but maintain some distance and freedom. Don’t rely on just one solution for distributing content.
  • Embrace both closed systems, like the iPad and open source platforms, like WordPress.
  • Advocate for standards when it comes to devices like the iPad, iPhone and Kindle.

There’s no perfect solution here, but doing these three things will help maintain that balance that Zittrain so smartly calls for as a solution.

What else could newspaper, magazine and book publishers do to help their cause here?

Note: This post is a short assignment for my class in Contemporary Media Issues about the future of the Internet.

The Print vs. New Media Debate

Posted on by David Kennedy
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Newspapers have dominated the news’ lately.

And not for reporting the news, but for being the news. The industry continues to struggle amid declining ad revenues and dwindling audiences.

Last week Tech Crunch’s Erick Schonfeld posted an article about a conversation he had Marc Andreessen, the man who invented Mosaic, the first widely used web browser. In the post, Andreessen advises media companies to “burn the boats,” so to speak and abandon their print products.

Embrace the web. Fully. Before it’s too late and other information competitors have the media industry beat.

Today, Schonfeld wrote a follow-up post to his “Burn the Boats” article. In it, he compared media companies and some journalists to dinosaurs happily munching on plants (advertising) instead of evolving.

The two posts have generated a lot of conversation. And for good reason. The debate here is a lively one, and worth reading for anyone interested in how technology will continue to shape newspapers, and the type of storytelling they practice.

One commenter on the latest post said this:

“I looked around at the people I was sharing the train with.

To a person- everyone that looked to be 40+ was either reading a book, talking on their cell or reading a newspaper/magazine (or sleeping).

The under 40 crowd? Just like me – people were on their cells doing, I am assuming, exactly what I was doing: browsing the web, using facebook, whatever. The point is they WEREN’T reading newspapers.”

And there lies the real issue.

Yes, this is a money issue, but also an audience issue.

I would love to see old media take more chances. Burning the boat sounds so romantic. Fun, even. I’d bet it would spur innovation.

However, until the majority of the audience on that train starts using digital tools to consume news, the media will continue to have to walk the line between burning the boat and just bailing out the water in the sinking ship.

Does Google Help or Hurt Traditional Media?

Posted on by David Kennedy
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Creativity in Progress image
Few tech companies roll off the tongue as easy as Google these days.

The two giant has earned their place in tech lore, thanks to visionary leaders, simple, but useful products and bold moves, among other factors. But does this behemoth of a company help or hurt traditional media?

No News Here

I suppose newspaper executives would argue yes – in a big way. After all, Google News has aggregated much of their content, and as they might say, stolen potential revenue.

Google executives have countered that search helps enhance newspaper content, and that the company has tried to help newspapers, but hasn’t found the perfect solution just yet.

Book publishers and authors have battled Google over its Books portal in the past, and that fight continues today – centered on eBooks. Much of the fight, like the battle with newspapers, has revolved around copyright issues.

The movie and television industry have also faced Google head on over the content it aggregates for search. To that end, the search giant has yanked movie and television shows off its video portal, YouTube.

And that plays into Google’s quest to better monetize YouTube, with the addition of movie rentals earlier this year. However, will that be enough to quiet down the movie studios?

No.

Always About Money

Because this isn’t about just copyright and content. It’s about money. Google has grown more and more since it went public in 2004.

After all, Google isn’t just a tech company – it’s in the advertising business. That’s how traditional media has always made its money. So there lies the conflict.

And it’s a good conflict.

Google has helped traditional media more than it has harmed it.

In the book, Googled by Ken Auletta, Google co-founder Sergey Brin says that many of the company’s ideas may never see the light of day if they always went through proper channels before innovating. For example, asking newspaper publishers if it’s OK that Google aggregate their content.

But the Real Currency Is?

Such is the price of innovation on the web – history’s fastest developing medium of information.

Google will continue to push back on traditional media, effecting its content, the way it tells stories through news, movies, books and more and the way it makes money. That’s a good thing.

Google operates with one currency in mind: information. It has the information of millions of web users via searches, emails, chats and much more.

The products come free, but the cost comes forth in information.

That information leads to products that are more personal and choice-heavy.

Yes, consumers need to be wary of how their information is being used. And traditional media needs to be aware of just how much more personal a user’s experience is with Google products.

A balance here could guide users to a continued improved experience and direct old media to something it has only reacted to, instead of created: innovation.

Image by marganz.

Note: This post is a short assignment for my class in Contemporary Media Issues about Google and the media issues surrounding the company.