When anyone can be a media mogul, someone will – and what that means to mainstream media

Tuija Aalto, Head of New Media Development, Finnish Broadcasting Company

20.10.2009

Contents

• About YLE

• Actors of the future media landscape• Niche publishers and their significance to mainstream media

• Social media• YLE’s social media strategy

• Social web as a collaborative environment for journalists

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YLE – The Finnish Broadcasting Company

• Since 1926

• Funding: Television fee (224€) paid by 2 million households

• No advertising

• 99.9% state-owned

• Operates under the Act on Yleisradio Oy

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YLE Channels and services

• Four national television channels

• Share of daily television viewing 44.5% (2008)

• Six radio channels (25 regional radio programmes)

• Share of radio listening 52% (2008)

• Online service Yle.fi: News, sports, program guide, science, culture, music

• Web TV & radio ”YLE Areena”

• Reach: 1 Million weekly visitors

• TV, radio and online reach 99%

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YLE New Media, Future Lab

• Future media environment

• Media use habits

• Innovation strategy for YLE

• Networking

• Online visibility (blogs, podcasts)

• Co-operation with active users

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38% read blogs

5% write a blog

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New actors in the media field

ProsumersProducer + Consumer = Prosumer

Pro AmsProfessional Amateurs

Bloggers, podcasters, citizen journalists

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Blogs

• Self-expression

• Knitting, fashion, food

• Fun with friends

• Community

• Small audiences

• Minimal cost of operation

• Experimenting with new business models

• Examples: Fashion blogs• MouMouMouruaa

• Colour me!

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Podcasts

• Self-expression

• Fun with friends

• Community

• Small audiences

• Minimal cost of operation

• Experimenting with new business models

• In pictures• Live at Finnish podcasters´

meeting

• Hessun Kahvila podcast

20.10.2009In touch with the audience. Foto: Erkka Piirainen CC-licence

Vodcasts

• Self-expression

• Fun with friends

• Community

• Small audiences

• Minimal cost of operation

• Experimenting with new business models

• Examples• Digitytöt – womens

magazine = vlogazine

• Bisnesmiehet -vodcast

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Case: Sukellus.fi tsunami-list

• Diving website Sukellus.fi received the State Award for Public Information

• Fast and reliable information dissemination during the tsunami catastrophe (2004 Indian Ocean earthquake)

• Published names of tsunami survivors online

• Foreign ministry and the press did not serve citizens with the information they needed

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Wikimedia Commons

masa.net/pics

Case: Eyewitness video

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• Finnish examples of citizen’s producing and publishing widely interesting material

• Indepencence day parade 2006, veteran commits suicide

• Mall in Helsinki, passer-by shoots with his mobile as guards use unnecessary force

YouTube

YouTube

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Case: Mobile streaming

• With a smartphone, anyone can setup a tv station

• Erkka Piirainen, a student of University of Jyväskylä, broadcast a local news event just to show he could

• A historical decision was being made in Jyväskylä in February 2008: three municipalities were fusing into one

• Mainstream media or the municipalities did not offer live video from the meetings Erkka Piirainen

New actors´ significance to mainstream media

• Steals attention away from mainstream media?

• More interesting content produced by peers?

• There are not only threats, there are possibilities

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YLE New Media Strategy

Where we stand?

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Where we stand

Together with their partners the

public service companies are

powerful generators and packagers

of content.

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Where we are aiming to be?

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Where we are aiming to be

The networked content of public services

will be found packaged under various

brands throughout the Internet on the

websites of various businesses and private

individuals.

Public service content will be adapted to all

Internet-based user interfaces.

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The future?

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The future

The public service companies will freely

release all content on the Internet for use in

any manner and for further public domain

distribution.

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The future

Special groups will develop their own

applications using open source public

service products to meet their own

specific needs.

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The future

Extensively indexed, public access

archives will encourage a more profound

historical awareness in society.

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The future

The public service companies will invigorate the

networked community and motivate innovation.

And innovators will invigorate the public service

companies.

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Journalistic work needs to go online

• Journalists will be spending more time online both researching stories and publishing them

• New tools, new formats and journalistic innovations are the challenge

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Serve smaller audience streams at a time

• We need to start serving smaller niche audiences, using online as publishing medium better

• We need to enable and support those members of the audience who produce content online • To help and teach storytelling

• To offer fresh news footage and archive material for reuse

• To provide a publishing platform for the publics own stories within the YLE website, as a choice for foreign platforms

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Social media

• We understand social media as a process where people – citizens and consumers - engage in interactions and discussions online, informing and entertaining each other, using open public platforms available for all

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YLE’s social media strategy

• YLE the Finnish Broadcasting company is present in social media in three ways: it’s

1) content

2) services

3) employees

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Main principles of YLE’s social media strategy

• Being active in social media means we accept more openness, more dialogue and less control of out brand and content

• It is about interaction with people, not just publishing

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1. Content

• Easy to link to

• Easy to gather around to discuss

• Take it away (rss feeds, widgets)

• Rights to give the content to the public to use – to remix and republish - at their convenience

• Offer our audiences a platform to publish

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2. Openness of services

• We should offer open API’s (application programming interfaces) so that outside developers may utilize our content when developing new services and applications

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3. Our presence online

• The YLE staff will join online networks as part of their job• Programme makers have the skills and the guts to use

all kinds of online tools in developing journalistic expression

• Programme makers open their work processes and engage in discussion about their programmes.

• Those audiences who are interested in co-operating with our journalists are invited to do so

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What journalists can do online

• Information gathering

• Filtering and distribution of gathered information

• Discussion, engagement in communities, hosting and moderating

• Online content production and publishing

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Fields of the online environment for journalists

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Great openness of journalistic process

Very low openness of journalistic process

Low profile

online A high profile

online personality