Location aware, voice recognition search? That’s Googlewang!

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Joanna

I was impressed with Locly when shown it by a friend, but Google has really blown that out the water with this.

I always nodded when people said to me that mobile was the next step for the web. I understood what they meant in theory, but I have now shifted up a gear after seeing this. It is, in many ways, a completely different dimension for data to exist in.

It has got me thinking about how news might fit into this new environment. My instant thought – although perhaps not useful as a product to make money – is that stories can now exist not just in a moment of time, but also in a defined space.

One way (or indeed my madcap way) to get to grips with the concept is to visualise stories as hanging from threads that touch you as you walk by them. Why that might be useful – apart for getting some background research on the local area you’re walking through – I’m not sure. It’s an interesting thought though that stories could now be ranked on “proximity to current location”, as well as by most recent.

Quick, incoherent thought #3: “ambient” distribution

Posted on November 13, 2008 by Joanna

Just been reading a post by Jonathan Kay that suggests the two biggest factors in the decline of print are the death of spare time and the death of community (thanks to Markmedia for the link).

The former struck a chord with me. I am a Radio 4 addict because I can listen to it while I’m doing other things (cleaning the house, commuting to work). I pick up the headlines whilst doing other things.

If time is becoming increasingly squeezed then I suspect the reasons behind someone dedicating half-an-hour of their time to reading a newspaper have to been even more compelling. Being on public transport and having a paper available for free is one of those reasons.

Even if the newspaper is a great product, with fantastic stories, it may not be something that fits into a person’s life easily.

So, when we look at how we can use technology to appeal to new audiences, perhaps we should be thinking media in terms of how much of a person’s time they consume.

Would the ideal be to make distribution ambient? This would mean stories would come to a person because they were part of their surroundings, rather than because they expressly decided to sit down and consume news.

The market and the internet don’t care if you make money

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Joanna

I think, from feedback I have received beyond this blog, that there is some confusion with regards to the importance I attach to journalism.

I want to clear this up now. I think a free press is massively important as a tool to help preserve democracy and to keep people informed about issues that they feel are relevant to their lives. My concern is finding ways to fund journalists in the future.

The thing is the act of journalism and the business that sustains it are two different things.

The business aspect has occupied my thoughts because I may care about journalism, but that doesn’t mean the market does. It is this point that has been put across very eloquently by Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0:

The web is the most disruptive force in the history of media, by many orders of magnitude, destroying every assumption on which traditional media businesses are based.

But the market should care, you say. What would happen if we didn’t have the newspapers playing their Fourth Estate watch dog role?

Here’s the bitter truth — the feared loss of civic value is not the basis for a BUSINESS.

The problem with the newspaper industry, as with the music industry before it, is the sense of ENTITLEMENT. What we do is valuable. Therefore we have the right to make money.

Nobody has the right to a business model.

Ask not what the market can do for you, but what you can do for the market.

This is the best analysis and assessment of the disruptive nature of digital that I have seen yet.

Roy Greenslade: What Editors Should Be Talking About Today

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Joanna

Really enjoyed Roy Greenslade’s post on his Guardian blog yesterday. It was a message to the Society of Editors as they meet in Bristol this week.

I often find Roy’s blog makes depressing reading and, in the past, I have had to ban myself from reading it for a few weeks because it brought me down too much.

This post still has a “prophet of doom” element to it, with stark warnings about the future of the industry. But he also stresses the need to innovate and explore the opportunities that the digital age presents.

Unless journalists start thinking, debating and innovating in order to explore new methods, they will contribute not only to the collapse of their newspapers – and their own careers – but also to the failure of journalism itself.

Worth a read.

What is journalism and is it really that essential?

Posted on November 6, 2008 by Joanna

This is a comment I wrote for an earlier post about the role of journalists. I hope you don’t mind but I’ve copied it into a post because it is actually longer than most things I write and the debate is moving on. Let me know what you think!

I think one of the things that seems to be misunderstood between commenters is the thorny issue of the importance of journalism.

I think there are two areas that need to be unwoven in this debate:

One is making sure we understand what we mean when we talk about journalism.

The second is making sure when we talk about journalism being essential, we understand what we think it is essential for.

OK, so trying to define journalism is an essay in itself and I know I’m going to fall far short with this attempt, but here goes:

Journalism seems to be a catch-all for many types of writing that is triggered by current or relevant events.

Continue reading →

Newspaper brands – “crucial as records of facts”?

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Joanna

I just wanted to quickly and shamelessly point out again that a rather fantastic debate has broken out underneath my post about how most news doesn’t need journalism.

It has prompted a very considered and interesting comment from Steve Dyson – editor of the Birmingham Mail and the Sunday Mercury.

An extract:

Local newspaper brands have great reputations for reporting trusted facts. Let’s not dilute this too quickly without knowing what we’re diluting it with. Yes, add interaction, online and in print, but let’s clearly label what is what.

There is more, including comments disagreeing with his stance.

Brand identifiers – or what’s important about how you get your news?

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Joanna

On my last post a mini-debate has broken out about whether our exisiting news organisations really need journalists to investigate stories.

A debate also broke out on Twitter between myself and Bobbie “I probably have one of the coolest jobs in the world and get to live in San Fransciso” Johnson of The Guardian.

He was arguing that having investigative journalism was, in a way, a form of marketing for a news brand – a way to identify the product as being better than its competition.

An interesting point that got me thinking.

Russell Brand & Jonanathan Ross, the US elections, the Congo, Gordon Brown shaking hands with Al Qaida suspects – all of these are news stories and all of them have been covered by the UK’s media outlets in one form or another over the last week.

So, what are the things that make you choose to get your news from one organisation rather than another? I tried to make a list: Continue reading →

Quick, incoherent thought #2: Why most news doesn’t need journos

Posted on October 28, 2008 by Joanna

The world does not need journalists to communicate the vast majority of information that is defined as news.

Most of the news that comes out of media organisations on a daily basis is information that others either WANT people to know or HAVE to admit to. It is just re-written or re-presented in a format that fits that platform.

So, instead of journos, the world needs the generators of this information to communicate it better and to allow for redress to what they say.

So is there somewhere the paid journalist can fit into all this then? Well, I guess journalists should be doing what they’re supposed to do – find out the information that organisations don’t want people to know.

But they can’t do that until they are freed up from the current information processing that they have to do, and that means those that provide information start doing so in formats that are usuable and on a platform that allows redress.

A thing I have just learnt: PR & audience awareness

Posted on October 22, 2008 by Joanna

One thing that came out of my impromptu birthday drinks last night was that I needed to record more of what I have been learning in my role as development editor of The Post.

I always think I never have time to write blog posts, but I have been assured two or three paragraphs is enough.

So here is something I have learnt in the last few minutes.

Whilst PR and advertising companies seem to have started to grasp that blogs are a good way to get your message online, they don’t seem to understand that the value in blogs is not the platform per se but the audience they develop around them.

There doesn’t really seem to be an understanding of the value of existing blogs that have a loyal and defined audience that can be tapped into.

I am seeing way too many orgnaisations that are building blogs from scratch (often as an add-on to expensive and unnecessary websites) and then expecting that people will come to them to find the information.

This means many PRs undervalue the benefits of established blogs and expect that (with a freebie trial of their product at most) they can get their message to people in these carefully nurtured communities without paying.

Joanna Geary

If content is king, collaboration is queen.

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