NEWSPAPERS: The effect of online technology

•   Over the last decade, the UK’s daily newspapers have lost some 2.25 million readers.    
• In the last 10 years, advertising revenues have fallen by about 20%.
• Within the next 10 years we could even see one or two of Britain’s biggest daily newspapers close (some predict).

According to Sull, who writes a blog for the Financial Times, there are five reasons why the newspaper industry is in a deeper crisis than it should be:

1. Ignoring Signs of Change: Since the early 1980’s, institutions have been able to access real time news through networks.  This was more than a decade before the Internet took off.  Most newspaper executives ignored these early signs of changes in news gathering techniques.

2. Dismissing unconventional competitors: Newspapers ignored a steady stream of innovations that they might have imitated to enhance their own business model, e.g. distributing news through multiple media (terminals, television, Internet, and periodicals)

3. Experimenting too narrowly: Some newspapers did spot the rise of digital technology early and experiment with alternatives.  However, most of these companies limited the scope of their experimentation to replicating their paper offering on-line rather than encouraging audience interaction.

4. Giving up on promising experiments too quickly: Promising business models take time to become successful in many cases and the process entails many setbacks.  Some newspapers did not give new ideas time to build.

5. Embarking on a ‘crash course’: Many institutions felt they were not embracing technology quickly enough and pushed for mergers which did not work.

Rupert Murdoch-“expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision,” he also said the scope of the BBC’s activities and ambitions was “chilling” and that news on the web provided by the BBC made it “incredibly difficult” for private news organisations to ask people to pay for their news.  “It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it.”

NewsCorp- Profit making firm

BBC- Public Service Broadcaster

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of NewsCorp states; “The internet has given readers much more power.  Everybody wants choice and thanks to the personal computer, people are taking charge of their own lives and they read what they want to read or what they are interested in and young people today are living on their computers.  The world is changing and newspapers have to adapt to that.”

Global editor of multimedia at Reuters, Chris Cramer said:

“These days journalists rarely break the story, most compelling pictures come from eyewitnesses, and not from journalists.  Curating news is as important as news gathering, because citizen journalism is not a fab or an intriguing addition to traditional journalism, but here to stay.  Social media is the news gathering of the first report..... Passive audiences are gone forever.  Today, media owners need to embrace the ‘digital conversations’ with their new, activist, audiences.” 

Cramer’s comments highlight several things:

• Advances in technology mean that audiences can chronicle news and offer it to news institutions as a means of creating a story.
• New institutions have to recognise the validity of eye-witness audience accounts if they are to be successful.
• The journalist’s role has to be about the checking and verifying the content of an active audience rather than researching and relating the news themselves.  This will have implication for journalism as a profession.  This calls into question precisely what the role of a journalist should be in the future.

‘News revolution’-nature of news production is changing and large media organisations are having to adapt.

Weekly News

APPY DAYS

The rise of smartphone and tablet apps means that fewer people are turning to their desktop computers to use search engines.

 

Microsoft saw its revenue fall by 8% and income fall by 26%, as a slowdown in the PC business (ahead of next week's launch of Windows 8) took hold. Windows saw its revenues and profits drop, by 8% and 26% respectively.

Smartphones have been outselling PCs since the end of 2010, and the amount of tablets are shooting up.

"Pay per click (PPC)"- where advertisers pay the publisher (typically a website owner) when the ad is clicked, has been dropping for the past year, after rising for the previous 2 years. 

Why? People aren't using desktops or laptops so much; they're using smartphones, and mobile isn't such a great advertising platform for search. 

People are now more interested at in their smartphones, or swiping around on tablets, and sometimes even in preference to firing up a laptop. 

Even worse is that "search" isn't so important on mobile. People use apps: if they want train times they'll get an app that tells them, rather than searching. If they want to find a restaurant, they might search or use a restaurant app such as Yelp.

The fact that tablets are for the main part just cheaper, have longer battery life, do much of the same jobs (email, web browsing, spreadsheets, document composition and reading) and can include mobile broadband connections (something most laptops still don't).

It's as though we've been driving around in trucks, and suddenly someone discovered how to build cars, instead. But for Microsoft, which (if we extend the metaphor) has been making the fuel for those trucks, the change is a problem. 

Only Samsung and Apple are making major profits; HTC is keeping its head above water, just about, but even it is troubled.

Nokia and RIM (developer of BB) had smartphones, or smartphone functionality, well before Apple and Android. Yet both have been left behind by the rapid changes, similar fate could follow Google and Microsoft if they do not adapt to change.

MY OPINION

I agree about ‘Peak Search’ e.g. Facebook overtook Google as the most popular website some time ago. Apps have enabled users to skip the use of Google and directly go to their required websites. An example of this would be the Facebook app itself, in which you no longer need to search Facebook on a browser you are directly there. Some apps can only be accessed via smartphones has not helped Google’s cause an example of this would be Instagram which can only be accessed via smartphones. Apple has also created its own maps instead of using Google maps for Apple products.

 

Weekly News

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner smashed a number of records with his edge of space stunt including for live streaming.

More than 8 million people tuned in to watch Felix Baumgartner break the speed of sound live on YouTube. It is the largest number of concurrent live streams in the website's history, Google UK confirmed to the BBC. The 43year old broke the record for the highest freefall (24 miles; 39km). Felix plummeted at an estimated 833.9mph (1,343km/h).

"On the step, I felt that the whole world is watching," Mr Baumgartner said after the jump.

• Highest jump from a platform: 128,100 feet
• Longest distance freefall: 119,846 feet
• Maximum vertical velocity: 833.9 mph (Mach 1.24)

My View

New media has allowed us to watch history in the making for free. I was one out of the 8 million who watched it live and witnessing history before my very eyes. It is great that Google’s YouTube allowed us to watch this even and knowing you were a part of that 8 million also makes you feel as if you are a part of history. It is not very often you get to see history in the making live online and maybe this is just the beginning. This form of broadcasting major events may become more popular in the future and instead of only 8 million viewers, next time maybe the whole world could be watch…who knows?

Essay (WWW & EBI).

WWW: Very concise writing, Pranjal with a good command of examples and very good refrencing to theories/commentators.

EBI: You need to cover UGC/citizen journalism more explicitly: write two additional paragraphs about this, with theory/debate.

The internet has allowed UGC (user generated content) to blossom into a world of its own. It has allowed users to express their creativity and make good use of their freedom. Some individuals have actually made a living this way. A good example of UGC online would be Google’s YouTube which has given “Everyone a chance to be seen” as said by Chad Hurley. Some individuals such as Ray William Johnson and Ryan Higa have made a living off YouTube by video-blogging, also known as ‘vlogging’. It has allowed users to become producers and provided everyone with an extra ordinary opportunity to express their talent.

New media has allowed the blossoming of citizen journalists to the world. Citizen journalists are ‘ordinary people’ that generate the news, they can also be known as ‘grassroots journalists’ or even ‘accidental journalists’. Many portable devices now allow users to record, this had lead to owners filming live events occurring before their very eyes. There are many examples of this, from the Asian tsunami on boxing day to the beating of Rodney King. The footage they provide is raw and uncompromising. This first-hand view, rather than professionally shot footage from behind police lines, is often more hard-hitting and emotive.

 

The Rise & Rise of UGC

1. What is meant by the term ‘citizen journalist’?

A citizen journalist is an ‘ordinary person’ that generates the news, they can also be known as ‘grassroots journalists’ or even ‘accidental journalists’.

2. What was one of the first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people’?

One of the first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people’ would be George Holiday recording the beating of Rodney King by four Los Angeles police officers from his apartment window. Having caught Rodney King, an African-American, after a high speed chase, the officers surrounded him, tasered him and beat him with clubs. The four officers were charged with assault and use of excessive force however, in 1992 they were found not guilty. This sparked huge civil unrest in which there was 6 days of riots, 53 people died, and around 4000 people were injured.

3. List some of the formats for participation that are now offered by news organisations. 

Most news organisations include formats for participation: message boards, chat rooms, Q&A, polls, have your says, and blogs with comments enabled.

4. What is one of the main differences between professionally shot footage and that taken first-hand (UGC)?

The footage they provid is raw and uncompromising. This first-hand view, rather than professionally shot footage from behind police lines, is often more hard-hitting and emotive.

5. What is a gatekeeper?

Gatekeepers are who decide what is new and what is not, and what will and what won’t be broadcast.

6. How has the role of a gatekeeper changed?
7. What is one of the primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC?

Journalists fear that in the future there will be fewer and fewer permanent trained staff at news organisations. Some believe that the mediators and moderators might eventually disappear too. This can lead to the world being unmediated hence, sites could be overrun by bigots or fools.