Post on 29-Nov-2014
description
Journalism, Technology &
the Web
Reshaping each other and us
I. Journalism
First Estate — Clergy
Second Estate — Nobility
Third Estate — Commoners
Fourth Estate — Popular Presswith its capacity of advocacy and to serve as a check against abuse of power
18th century France
• Observe
• Filter the observed
• Serve as the conscience of society
• Protect the lower castes from the upper castes
• Provide more signal than noise
Roles of Journalism
1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth
2. Its first loyalty is to citizens
3. Its essence is a discipline of verification
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience
PEJ – Committee of Concerned Journalists
Source: http://www.journalism.org/resources/principles
Today
Fifth Estate — media in opposition to mainstream (Fourth Estate) media.
• non-traditional or emerging media
• bloggers
• alternative media
• citizen journalists
II. Technology
First Internet Connection
Oct. 29. 1969 – Failed after sending “lo” from first message: login
Source: Ray Kurzweil
Source: Ray Kurzweil
Source: Ray Kurzweil
Source: Ray Kurzweil
Intel’s Gordon E. Moore postulated Moore’s Law -- that technology tends to demonstrate a constant, exponential rate of improvement on an annual basis.
Meaning: we can perform the same tasks with technology, doing more with less – smaller, faster, and cheaper.
Every year.
Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired magazine asks "What does technology want?"
His observation that technology’s consistent movement toward ubiquity and complexity is much like the evolution of all living things.
Without an external disruption (large asteroid?), in our current cultural context, we can expect on an ever-increasing role of ever-evolving technology in our daily lives.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_how_technology_evolves.html
III. Web
Communicate
Content
Context
Collaborate
Coordinate
Cooperate
Compete
Community
We collect and communicate
content, coordinating across
many competing online
contexts by collaborating in ad
hoc, cooperative web
communities.
Source: Ray Kurzweil
Change
accelerating incessantly,exponentially
Commons-based peer production is a term coined by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler to describe a new model of economic production in which the creative energy of large numbers of people is coordinated (usually with the aid of the internet) into large, meaningful projects, mostly without traditional hierarchical organization or financial compensation.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons-based_peer_production
IV. Observed Effects
PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“...the biggest problem facing traditional media has less to do with where people get information than how to pay for it. [...]
“The crisis in journalism, [...] may not strictly be loss of audience. It may, more fundamentally, be the decoupling of news and advertising.”
PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“News is shifting from being a product — today’s newspaper, Web site or newscast — to becoming a service: how can you help me, even empower me? There is no single or finished news product anymore.”
PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations.”
“Now they must move toward also being stops along the way, gateways to other places, and a means to drill deeper, all ideas that connect to service rather than product.”
PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“The prospects for user-created content, once thought possibly central to the next era of journalism, for now appear more limited, even among ‘citizen’ sites and blogs.”
“News people report the most promising parts of citizen input currently are new ideas, sources, comments and to some extent pictures and video.”
PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“Increasingly, the newsroom is perceived as the more innovative and experimental part of the news industry.”
PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“The agenda of the American news media continues to narrow, not broaden.”
“A firm grip on this is difficult but the trends seem inescapable. A comprehensive audit of coverage shows that in 2007, two overriding stories — the war in Iraq and the 2008 campaign — filled more than a quarter of the newshole and seemed to consume much of the media’s energy and resources.”
The State of the News Media 2008
“Madison Avenue, rather than pushing change, appears to be having trouble keeping up with it.”
“New media offer the promise of more detailed knowledge of consumer behavior, but the metrics are still evolving and empirical data have not yet delivered a clear path.”