Reportr.net

Several chapters from Charlie Beckett’s forthcoming book, SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World, are available online.

The core of the book, published by Blackwell books on May 20, is the idea of Networked Journalism, which Beckett describes as:

Networked Journalism is a description and an aspiration. It reaffirms the value of the core functions of journalism. It celebrates the demand for journalism and its remarkable social utility. But it insists on a new process and fresh possibilities. It means a kind of journalism where the rigid distinctions of the past, between professional and amateur, producer and product, audience and participation, are deliberately broken down. It embraces permeability and multi-dimensionality

It is clear that, as Beckett argues, journalism is an unique moment. In his introduction, he sets out the context for journalism:

• News information has never been more plentiful and journalism has never been more abundant
• Journalists have never had more resources to reach people, anytime, anyplace, anywhere – and the audience has unprecedented accessibility to the news media
• Journalism has never been more necessary to the functioning of our lives as individuals and societies and for the healthy functioning of global social, economic, and political relationships
• There is the technological, educational, and economic potential for a vast expansion of journalism’s impact and for that impact to be beneficial

In this context, I would argue that the nature of news changes, from being a destination to a journey. Networked journalism is not just about the means of production, but also about how people get their news.

As I have written before, a piece of journalism is one stop on a journey of distributed information.

I’m looking forward to reading Beckett’s book.

Headlines for the web need to make sense on their own, as people often access sites via RSS feeds.

I wonder how many people were puzzled, amused, shocked or disappointed by the headline on this BBC science story:

Perhaps it is no surprise that at the time of writing, this was the most e-mailed and most read story on BBCNews.com.

• How Little Do Users Read? (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
  Less is more: “On average, users will have time to read 28% of the words if they devote all of their time to reading. More realistically, users will read about 20% of the text on the average page.”
  (tags: online metrics media internet reference research stats usability)

My request to find out how much the BBC has made in advertising revenue since it started putting ads on the international version of its news site, BBC.com, has been rejected (PDF).

I filed a Freedom of Information request using the WhatDoTheyKnow site.

In its reply, BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, argued that:

Disclosure would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of both the BBC and BBC Worldwide Limited. The BBC believes that release is likely to prejudice BBC Worldwide’s relationships in the future with existing and potential advertisers which would adversely impact upon the future revenues/profit of the bbc.com business. This is likely to prejudice the commercial interests of BBC Worldwide and the BBC because less profit from bbc.com would reduce BBC Worldwide’s annual total profit and, consequently, the dividend paid to its shareholder the BBC.

Worldwide acknowledged there was a public interest in information about the corporation’s commercial activities.

But it argued that withholding specific details about advertising revenue was also in the public interest as “advertising on BBC.com will generate significant funds for reinvestment into the BBC which is clearly in the interest of the UK licence fee paying public. It is also in the public interest that this opportunity is not jeopardised by releasing commercially sensitive information.”

I can understand that this is a commercially sensitive issue and that Worldwide would not want to reveal its advertising rates. But there is a public interest in finding out how much revenue online advertising is generating.

Some of this information will be in the forthcoming BBC Worldwide annual report, due out in the summer. Let’s hope that the accounts provide a breakdown of the sources of revenues in the interests of transparency and accountability.

The findings of the News Barometer survey of newspaper editors has been extensively covered, so I just wanted to pick up on a few of items from it.

• “35 percent believe print will reign supreme”. This is a spurious question. Editors should not worry which form of media will reign supreme, but rather which is the most suitable format to use for a story, considering the audience for that story.
• “Half believe that shareholders and advertisers present threats to editorial independence”. Perhaps the future lies in non-profits, trusts and family ownership, rather than commercial interests seeking to maintain profits as high as possible for as long as possible.
• “Two-thirds believe opinion and analysis pages will grow in importance”. This could be seen as a reaction to the rise of blogs and the challenge they pose to the traditional op-ed and analysis pages in a newspaper.
• “One in ten say mobile devices will be the most common platform, while 7 percent cite e-paper. And two out of 10 respondents say it will be technologies that are still in the emerging stage”. Essentially we simply don’t know what kind of devices or formats will become the primary vehicle for journalism. Chances are, these will be nothing like we envisioned.
• “Training journalists in new media is cited most often by editors as a priority to increase editorial quality”. Good news for journalism profs like myself who are creating new courses in multiplatform story-telling.

What’s your take on the survey? Please add your thoughts in a comment.

Here are the top news and information online properties in Canada for March 2008, according to comScore Media Metrix, in terms of unique visitors.

Google sites - 22,436,000
Microsoft sites - 22,341,000
Yahoo! sites -16,215,000
Wikipedia sites - 11,222,000
AOL - 10,123,000
Canoe Network - 8,391,000
Fox Interactive Media - 7,769, 000
The Weather Network - 7,717,000
CTVglobemedia - 7,655,000
CNET Networks - 7,197,000
New York Times Digital - 7,056,000
CBC-Radio Canada sites - 5,647,000
Canwest Digital - 4,840,000

Media in Canada has a complete list of the top 25 properties overall.

(Cross-post from Newslab.ca)

• Journalism.co.uk :: Dutch citizen journalism site Skoeps closes
  Dutch citizen journalism site Skoeps is closing after failing to find a viable financial model for the site.
• Old media needs to wake up, or die
  Traditional media companies that refuse to invest in the Internet and withdraw into old business models are destined to fade away, opening the door for entrepreneurs to take advantage of the lack of innovation.
  (tags: news internet innovation)

• Social Media » SlideShare
  The hows and whys of social media
  (tags: 2.0 newmedia online socialmedia social_media)

I’m speaking at a couple of conferences in Vancouver this week, discussing how public service broadcasters can sustaining citizenship and civil society in an internet age.

In particular, I will be looking at the rise and fall of the BBC’s Action Network and propose new ways of moving forward as the BBC prepares its digital democracy project.

Friday May 2: When Citizens Decide: The Challenge of Large Scale Public Engagement (PDF), organised by the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions and taking place at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC.

Saturday May 3: The Future of Public Institutions - New Media, The Press, and the Museum, organised by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and also taking place at the Liu Institute.

Please drop by if you can.

The citizen journalism beat has a new kid on the block in the shape of VancouverIAM.

As you might have guessed from the name, it is a citmedia site about Vancouver, based in Vancouver. The site describes itself as:

The destination for people who want to know what’s going on in Vancouver. It gives you the tools and support to become a video journalist, internet TV and film producer and an active commentator on local politics and everyday issues about life in Vancouver.

The focus is very much on Internet TV, both in terms of hosting and offering tools for people to produce video journalism. The site already provides video channels to local organisations such as the Vancouver Film School and the Vancouver Whitecaps soccer team.

But it also aggregates what it calls the cream of blogs about Vancouver

The site is the first of several planned, with Toronto and Seattle up next. This sounds much like what Backfence tried to do in the US.

For a new online project, it has adopted an old PR model, sending me a paper new release and branded water bottle in the post. Perhaps this was because it is based in Vancouver.

It joins other citizen media efforts housed in the city, NowPublic.com and Orato.com. Interestingly, VancouverIAM has been using NowPublic to promote itself, at least from October last year when it had a soft launch.

The site does not have any advertising at the moment and the release makes no mention of its business model. It does talk about having funding available for a video journalism program.

The parent company is SoMedia Networks, an investor-backed Web 2.0 startup owned by George Fleming, a dot.com veteran who made his mark starting in the mid-90’s with firms such as eCharge and broadband network Evolution USA.