WELCOME TO THE BLOGOSPHEREFara Warner

Comm 439

COURSE OUTLINE

What is a LEO? Walk through syllabus Questions? What class will look like:

4 to 5 or 5:30 p.m.: Lecture and discussion of readings and blogs

Break 5:45 to 6 p.m. Working “snack”: Students will

present website critiques. 6 to 7 p.m. Technical assignments/Individual

work

STUDENT INTRODUCTIONS

Who are you? Reason for taking the course? Expectations—what do you want to learn? How do you think journalism is changing?

How does that change advertising, marketing and public relations?

SOME STUDENT WORK (MORE ON THE COURSE WEBSITE)

The Bucket List AceDeuceOffSuited 439Website Entertaining Michigan The Underground Student UM Economy

WHERE IS JOURNALISM HEADED?Time Inc.’s Tablet

FRONTLINE: A MULTIMEDIA TREASUREBad Voodoo War

Digital Nation

A QUICK HISTORY OF THE INTERNETAided by open source lecture site SlideShare.net and

http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/carlson/

WHAT IS THE INTERNET? And what did it do to

journalism?

TWO DEFINITIONS

A network of networks, joining many government, university and private computers together and providing an infrastructure for the use of E-mail, bulletin boards, file archives, hypertext documents, databases and other computational resources

The vast collection of computer networks which form and act as a single huge network for transport of data and messages across distances which can be anywhere from the same office to anywhere in the world.

Source: William F. Slater, III, 1996, President of the Chicago Chapter of the Internet Society

A LONGER HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html

http://www.historyoftheinternet.com/contents.html

OR MORE AMUSING AND/OR INTERESTING VIEWS OF THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

The History of the Internet The History of the Internet—Monty Python

Style History of Online Journalism

A QUICK AND PERSONAL HISTORY—1968 TO 1984

1968 - DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) contracts with BBN (Bolt, Beranek & Newman) to create ARPAnet, for higher education purposes. I am 2 years old

1970 - First five nodes: UCLA Stanford UC Santa Barbara U of Utah, and BBN 1974 - TCP specification by Vint Cerf 1984 – On January 1, the Internet with its

1000 hosts converts en masse to using TCP/IP for its messaging. I graduate from high school

(source: the Internet Society)

1984-1992

William Gibson's Book Neuromancer introduces the term "Cyberspace.”

I use my first Apple computer while working at my college newspaper

First electronic typesetting: sending the entire paper via the “phone” in 1988

At the same time Mark Andreesen is creating Mosaic, the precursor to Netscape at the University of Illinois in Champagne Urbana

Tim Berners-Lee is creating HTML Many of you are about two years old. I start my first job after Columbia at the Associated

Press where a ticker still ran with headlines, news stories, and updates. There was no Yahoo! News

Prodigy—a web service from IBM and Sears--goes live

1984 TO 1992

In 1990, the Rocky Mountain News starts a computer-based videotext service called Ala Carte. It shuts down after three months…and almost two decades later the Rocky goes out of business.

In 1991, Chicago Tribune offers Chicago Online, a city version of AOL. Seventeen years later, the Tribune will file for bankruptcy.

In 1992, AOL begins trading on the NASDAQ. Almost decade later it will buy Time-Warner. A look at the Time-Warner/AOL merger a decade later

The word PDA comes into usage with Apple’s “Newton” product.

1992-2001 The U.S. government ends restrictions for the use

of the Internet for commercial purposes We now have the beginnings of the backbone

that will become a sprawling multimedia landscape

Mosaic—which becomes Netscape—which is then bought by AOL in 1998—helps us navigate the web

HTML—makes it easy for us to create stuff on the web

I use the Internet for the first time at WSJ in 1994 with a personal compuserve.com account to look at Buick advertising

But so far, traditional journalism appears unaffected by this new medium.

It is mostly about commerce—buying and selling. Ebay, Amazon, Pets.com, WebVan.com

1992-2001 (CONTINUED) In 1993, Bill Clinton sends the first email

from a head of state. Fifteen years later, Barack Obama will be considered the first president to use the Internet effectively in a presidential campaign.

In 1994, Jerry Yang and Dave Filo create Yahoo! in their campus trailer as a way to find things on the increasingly complex Internet. Yahoo! stands for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”

In 1994, Google does not exist, but Larry Page and Sergei Brin are working on something in their spare time

In 1995, I move to Singapore taking with me my Yahoo! email address. It becomes my lifeline back to the U.S. once I find a service provider. There is no such thing as “wifi.”

1992-2001 In 1993, John Markoff of the New York Times

writes what is considered the first article about the “Web.”

The Palo Alto Weekly, considered the first paper to publish regularly on the Web, begins twice weekly postings. Price: Free

In 1995, Salon.com goes live. In 1996, Slate.com goes live…both seek to

offer what magazines and newspapers already do—but online. Both offer content for free, but also now have “Premium” paid content.

In 1995, USA Today puts up its content on the Web. Price: Free

That same year, Editor & Publisher estimates that there are 330 newspapers online. Late last year E&P shuts down.

1992 TO 2001 In January 1996, the New York Times goes

online. Required registration, but content is free.

The Times creates a new newsroom and advertising staff to run the place. My assumption? They want to get in on the IPO craze of the dot.com era.

In May 1996, the WSJ (where I work at the time) starts WSJ.com, charging $49.95 for access.

In 1997, the Pulitzer Board opens competition to online articles in the public service area…but you have to submit the article via CD-ROM.

1992 TO 2001 In Sept. 7, 1998, Google goes live. I move to

Michigan where the auto industry can’t get enough of the Internet…or figure out how to control it. The Blueovalnews fiasco.

In 1999, Craigslist is founded—four years after the New York Times experimented with putting its classifieds online.

In 1999, Editor & Publisher says that one-quarter of newspaper online sites are profitable. Hmmm..so what happened in 10 years…

1992 TO 2001 In 2000, AOL buys Time Warner in a $160

billion deal. I go to work at Fast Company where Internet advertising turns it into a “bible of ecommerce” each month—400-500 pages

In 2000, Michael Bloomberg (then running Bloomberg news service not New York City) claims that Yahoo! has a bigger market cap than the six top newspapers combined.

In 2000, surveys show that fewer consumers are clicking on ads. Search is growing as a major force in advertising—and driving readers to websites.

In 2001, I meet the Google folks—trying to understand just what this thing will mean for advertising, marketing, journalism. I don’t see all the ramifications…

2001—A TURNING POINT YEAR? According to Pew Internet, the 9/11 attacks

generate the most traffic to traditional websites in the history of the Internet

Without a television, I turn to the ‘Net and radio to learn about the attacks.

Others begin to put up eyewitness accounts, videos, photos—the beginning of citizen journalism.

According to the WSJ, 63 percent of American households have computers and almost all of them have access to the Internet

But with the dot.com bust, newspapers start laying off online journalists.

Apple introduces the iPod

2002-2007

YouTube goes live http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2NQiVcdZRY Blogging enters our vernacular January 2004: My Space—bought by News Corp.

(which also bought the Wall Street Journal) in 2005 for $580 million

February 2004: Facebook goes live with investments from Microsoft and venture capital firms including Accel and Greylock Partners

Traditional journalism still doesn’t quite get what it is facing because of free content, GoogleNews, link journalism and search journalism.

2007—THE PACE OF CHANGE QUICKENS

In 2007, graphic designer Erica Smith starts blogging about the demise of journalism jobs, effectively putting magazines like Editor and Publisher out of business. From June to December, 2,112-plus journalists lose

their jobs.

The Huffington Post begins to make a name for itself as the Obama presidential campaign takes off. HuffPost claims that it is a major driver of traffic to

sites such as the New York Times and CNN and dubs itself the Internet newspaper.

A year later, it begins hiring its own reporters

2007

Sam Zell buys the Tribune Companies—painted as a debt-heavy takeover to take the traditional newspaper business digital. The company will declare bankruptcy a year later

Rupert Murdoch buys the Wall Street Journal, considers changing the paper’s website to a free model. Paul Steiger, managing editor departs to become

head of ProPublica, a new investigative journalism site with a new business model

2008

Madison, Wisconsin’s Capital Times goes all digital Sets the stage for other digital transformations

including Ann Arbor News and the Detroit newspapers digital experiements

Papercuts blog estimates that 15,977 journalists lost their jobs last year Seven-fold increase in job losses over the

previous year

2009

Steve Brill, founder of American Lawyer and Court TV, starts Journalism Online as a way to make the likes of Google and Yahoo! pay for the news they use.

Content doesn’t want to be free: It wants to be cheap and easy

The Associated Press starts using software to track where its stories appear in a bid to get those who link to pay

By August 2009, Papercuts blog estimated that 13,463 journalists had been laid off—just 2,000 jobs less than all of 2008.

WHAT WILL 2010 BRING?That’s the question we will seek to answer during the course of this term…and what will your role be in shaping the blogosphere, journalism, marketing, etc.

SO NOW WHAT?FROM THEM MEDIA TO ME MEDIA TO WE MEDIA

The Internet begins as a chaotic, uncontrolled group of sites that quickly become corporatized—Them Media

Corporations realize that we didn’t just want old media moved online…so we move to “me” media…more personalization “MyTimes”

But we also wanted to create our own media and our own messages—moving to “we” media or “citizen journalism” or blogging or something

Explore “we” media as we create our own websites and our blogs.

IS GOOGLE “EPIC?”Epic video—life in 2015

BREAKAnnArbor.com

FOR TUESDAY JAN 19

Week Two: Lecture and Discussion: From Old to New Media—Is Traditional

Journalism and its Business Models Still Relevant in the Age of the Blogosphere?

Discussion Reading Assignment: Chapters 1-6 in “Free” by Chris Anderson

Break (student website critique) Technical lesson: Reading and Writing Blogs. Write second blog

entry that includes link journalism and crowd sourcing; find and research a blog that tracks an issue you want to explore for final news story and add to your blog. Extra credit: set up Twitter account

Technical reading assignment: Chapters 2 through 5 in “Journalism Next”; “Emily,” from the New York Times Magazine on course website; other course readings TBA on website.

(Note: Final project groups assigned will be assigned by Jan. 15. Please use these groups as your blog reading circle and comment on each other’s post by Monday evenings at 9 p.m.)

Technical exercise

Begin thinking about what you want to blog about during the semester. Examples: student veterans, politics, the economy, art,

food, fashion, etc. Blog handout. Please follow instructions on

handout to set up Blogger.com accounts. Add blogs to the course website following

instructions Watch for an email from me and then following

“adding readers” to your blogs. Blogs are due 9 p.m. on Tuesdays Blog comments are due 9 p.m. on Mondays prior

to class in which we discuss blogs.