Archive for Media
How to stop your audience from feeling used
August 9th, 2008 • Journalism, Media
The virtuous circle from Digitaldickinson on Vimeo.
I spent two days last month discussing the future of journalism at the University of Central Lancashire with a group with representatives of all corners of the UK media scene. Fascinating two days, not least for the wealth of disagreement (no bad thing).
It’ll come as zero surprise to know that the way in which journalists deal with an audience that can instantly react (and even begin steering the news agenda) swallowed much of the 48 hours.
One of their esteemed tutors, Andy Dickinson, has just posted The Virtuous Circle depicting his version of how it should work.
Wordpress for iPhone hits the Store
July 22nd, 2008 • Media, Mobile
The theory is that the new iPhone 3G is not a converged mobile at all, but the world’s first truly personal computer.
And here’s some evidence that this is true - my first post using the brand new Wordpress App.
It took under 30 seconds to set up. And if you can see this, it works.
BBC News: old dog to learn new tricks
March 26th, 2008 • Design, Journalism, Media
Tags: bbc
Something momentous will happen next week - the BBC will revamp its News site. Alright, so it’s hardly in the same league as the collapse of capitalism, but look at it this way - BBC News is my home page, the thing that greets me every time I launch my browser.
It’s so much a part of my life that I’ve been given to Victor Meldrew-ish outbursts when they make the slightest change (remember when they introduced those God-awful drop-downs for ‘Video and Audio News’? I grumbled to anyone dumb enough to listen to me for a week).
I know every pixel of the home page’s real estate - the ‘wacky’ Also In The News feature centre right, the sports headline just beneath it, the speed-scan block of blue headlines top right. I can see the damn thing with my eyes closed.
But why worry? The BBC can afford some of the best pixel-pushers on the planet, and can organise user testing sessions that would make lesser companies gulp. P’raps it’s because I cannot wrap my mind around the new BBC.co.uk home page, which has the sniff of tricksiness about it.
Or maybe I should just accept that I’m becoming offensively conservative, and shut the hell up.
Media 2.0 = Snowballs
January 19th, 2008 • Internet, Media, Video
Tags: Music, Video
According to Yahoo’s VP of Video and Media Applications, the revolution has already happened. Ian Rodgers reckons the only option left for the music and video business is in ‘leveraging the scale of the web’. Read more »
CoverItLive: blogging goes real time
January 14th, 2008 • Best sites, Media
God knows how many people will use it, but huge credit to the Einsteins behind CoverItLive.
Sign up for an account (which is free, by the way), and you have instant access to a turbo-charged blogging tool that blurs the line between blog and instant messaging.
All you do is add a line of code to your site that embeds the CoverItLive console into your page. Read more »
Dilbert creator predicts the end of news print
October 8th, 2007 • 1 comment Internet, Media
Tags: magazines, newspapers, publishing
…And it all rests on the evolution of the iPhone, apparently.
I predict that the end of printed newspapers will happen in the time it takes for most people to upgrade their cell phones two more times. The iPhone, and its inevitable copycats, (let’s call them iClones) are newspaper killers.
When you have a web browser in your pocket, a printed newspaper is redundant. Eventually, all cell phones will have Internet browsing built in. You might not have a web browser on your next cell phone, but the one after that will have it as a standard feature.
The definition of Web 3.0
October 4th, 2007 • Media
Tags: web2.0, web3.0
So here it is… the defining statement that says goodbye to Web 2.0, and hello to a new generation. Or not. Either, Jason Calacanis (all-round web entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Weblogs Inc.), has had a stab at giving a dictionary definition of Web 3.0:
Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.
Web 3.0, the official definition.I can grasp that. I’ve watched Facebook and the like grab headlines, but wondered what will happen once they become everyday. So you can now share your thoughts and habits with friends, and find new ones. Read more »
A complete history of the first time things happened
October 3rd, 2007 • 1 comment Life, Media
Tags: asides, great sites
Oh, now I’m a happy boy. This is the sort of stuff you could lose years of your life to… The First Time News Was Fit To Print is a compilation of the first mentions in the New York Times of famous people, places, things and terms.Sound dull? You need to get out more…mental_floss magazine - Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix
Blogs become ‘media properties’
October 2nd, 2007 • Media
Tags: blogging, publishing, web2.0
A new chart shows the power of blog-powered technology sites against traditional online media, with several home-spun players now giving the BBC and CNet a run for their dollar.If you’re a habitual consumer of technology sites, none of the findings will come as a shock. To my eyes, the real interest comes in the comment over at Read/Write Web…
I’ve been referring to Read/WriteWeb as a “media business” or a “media property”. R/WW used to be a blog, back when I was the only writer and I blogged in the evenings. But sometime last year, it became my full-time job. Then it became a business, and now it’s a media property. Let me clarify one thing though - I’m still a “blogger”, as are Marshall and Josh and the other R/WW writers. But Read/WriteWeb has evolved into something different than a blog, which is traditionally thought of as the voice of a single person.Dave Winer, one of the pioneers of blogging, also says that the voice must be unedited. This is clearly not the case with R/WW, which has multiple bloggers and also a strong editorial stance. The same is true at Techcrunch, Gigaom, PaidContent et al.
Beyond Blogs: Old & New Media Converge
As an employee of an established publisher making its way in a new landscape (quite successfully, I should add), I find the fledging steps being taken by the New Blogs fascinating. The term ‘blog’ must be replaced soon: it is still tainted with the image of a loner in an attic recounting adventures with his Airfix kit to an audience of zero.
The New Wave is far closer in cut to traditional sources: the likes of ValleyWag and Read/Write Web are investigative and authoritative. Their writers live in their markets, and show care in providing a sound service for the reader. They are far closer to being specialist news services than they are blogs.
On a purely physical level, one thing that defines them as such is their page structures: a multi-post landing page, followed by linked single pages (unlike CNet or the Beeb, which are driven by industrial strength databases). I don’t doubt that the New Wave will ditch their restrictive formats, as soon as money allows.
There’s one other factor that distances them from traditional sources, namely the more pervasive inclusion of analysis. Perhaps there’s a lesson here for the mainstream press: the bloggers hitting prime time have kept their conversational approach, preferring to inject some of themselves into their tales.
At their worst, they vanish into internal debates that have no relevance to the audience. But at their best, they offer a narrative that purely objective news delivery cannot equal.
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