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January 31, 2007 • 8:37 pm 0

Bumpy ride for BBC downloads

The BBC has finally got the go-ahead to offer its programmes for download over the internet.

But it has not got everything it wanted. The BBC Trust only greenlighted the iPlayer project after imposting some significant restrictions. The reason, concerns about the market impact. In other words, it listened to the BBC’s commercial competitors.

Some of the limitations make sense, such as only letting people store a programme for 30 days instead of 13 weeks. A longer window would have obvious implications for DVD sales and for rebroadcast on commerical channels.

And the trust also insisted that the BBC work to offer its download service with other operating systems, like OS X or Linux, rather than just Microsoft.

Some of other restrictions just don’t add up. Only programmes “with a distinct run, with a beginning and end, and a narrative arc or those which are landmark series with exceptionally high impact”, will be able to be “stacked”.

What this means is that the some shows will be able to remain on a computer beyond the standard seven-day window. Every episode of a “stacked” series would be made available until a week after transmission of the final installment.

But download an episode of Eastenders or Top Gear and you’ll have to watch it within seven days of transmission. This is bound to just cause confusion about the public.

And the BBC Trust has ruled that the corporation will not be able to offer free podcasts of classical music concerts. This despite the fact that there is an appetite from the public – a trial in 2005 offering Beethoven’s symphonies were downloaded more than a million times.

As more broadcasters look to offer their programmes on-demand, the BBC is going into this battle with one hand tied behind its back.

The BBC Trust needs to accept that the internet has created a whole new medium. The BBC needs to be allowed to be progressive and aggressive in establishing a presence in this new medium, or risk being irrelevant in the future.

Filed under: BBC, broadcast, internet

January 30, 2007 • 9:09 pm 0

Taking the Web 2.0 to Canada

More hints about the direction CBC is taking online. A memo to staff from CBC TV executive Richard Stursberg talks about moving to a Web 2.0 environment.

Among the ideas in the memo are allowing the audience to comment and to send in user-generated content. This all sounds similar to what CBC editorial head honcho Tony Burman outlined in an article to The National Post:

We’ll be looking for more user-generated content and more interactivity with our audiences. In turn, Canadians will be able to self-select the news and information programming they want from us.

Vancouver has been chosen as the “incubator” to try out how the CBC should evolve. In some ways the CBC is following the example of the BBC, which is in the process of reinventing itself.

Talk of change is easy. The difficult part is steering an organisation like the BBC or CBC in a new direction. Both public broadcasters need to rethink how why do things. Changing the culture of a corporation the size of the BBC or CBC is the hard part.

Filed under: Canada, broadcast, citizen journalism, internet

January 29, 2007 • 4:47 pm 0

TV station replaces reporters with ‘citizen journalists’

As news organisations grapple with the concept of citizen journalism, one US TV station has decided to fire most of its staff and rely instead on user-generated content.

The Santa Rosa station, KFTY-TV Channel 50, is replacing its nightly newscasts with material from viewers. In the words of the station’s general manager John Burgess:

We want viewers to tell us and supply us with the content that they want. It’s much like having a bunch of citizen journalists. Frankly, I think we’re going to do a much better job of covering local issues than we are doing right now.

The concept of a viewer-driven station might seem forward-thinking at a time when videos on YouTube are taking eyeballs away from the TV screen. But in this case the motivation is more about money, with Burgess explaining that the station was “no longer in a position to access the advertiser base required to maintain two long form newscasts”.

Is this a case of a TV station doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? I have doubts that the station can survive by user media alone. As Howard Owens says in his blog:

I think the conversation is important, and I think what drives good conversation are paid staff who know what they’re doing.

I would suggest that embracing user generated content requires more, rather than fewer, resources. This has been the experience at the BBC.

Filed under: broadcast, citizen journalism, new media

January 26, 2007 • 6:29 pm 0

Get the news on the Nintendo Wii

Nintendo Wii News ChannelHow do you reach a generation who plays video games and doesn’t read newspapers? Easy. Bring the news to them.

This is what Nintendo and AP are doing in what PaidContent describes as “an interesting though not-a-game-changing deal.”

Gamers who have snapped up Nintendo’s new Wii console will be able to read national and international news, sports, arts and entertainment, business, science/health and technology.

In the words of Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime:

“What Wii has done for video gaming, we hope it will also accomplish for news. Just by pointing at your TV screen, you become your own interactive editor, instantly accessing the latest headline stories, whether they originate in Kansas City or Kyoto.”

The most interesting aspect of this is how gamers will be able to access the news. Instead of opting for a list or text-based interface, the news feed has a “Globe” function. It means you can use the Wii remote to point and zip around the globe to get to stories.

It seems a good way of making news accessible to a point and click generation who has been reared on a diet of visual stimulation.

Filed under: interactive journalism, internet, multimedia

January 24, 2007 • 8:58 pm 0

Trial by web for the LA Times

There are likely to be lots of column inches about the plans announced by the Los Angeles Times to to shift its priorities from print to the web.

The key points from the memo to staff from publisher David Hiller are:

  • Accelerate our growth on the web by allocating more resources, and speeding product development, to improve the site and grow our online audience.
  • Re-orient/re-tool the whole company to think and operate across multiple media.
  • Develop online, but also change the print newspaper to better meet the changing needs of print users.
  • In all media – focus, focus, focus on growing local audience.

Turning around an institution like the LA Times with hundreds of reporters is going to be tough. It is going to start by putting everyone on a crash course to learn about filing and posting to the web.

But this is more than learning a little HTML or how to use a content management system. It is about changing the mindset of a generation of journalists.

This is the greatest challenge, not only for the LA Times, but to every other newspaper trying something similar. And this is the greatest obstacle to success.

Latimes.com has a lot of catching up to do. The site has 18 people working on it, compared the 200 employees at the Washington Post and the 50 employed by the New York Times.

But it has no option but to evolve and adapt. And the journalists at the LA Times need to take this on board and be part of the process.

Filed under: internet, multimedia, newspapers, publishing

• 3:38 pm 0

The shift towards a visual culture

Over at Poynter Online, there is an interesting tidbit of news. It reports on futurist John Naisbitt’s address at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich.

He discussed how the world is moving towards a more visual culture and the impact on text media such as newspapers:

Newspapers and magazines have to reinvent themselves, as people are reading less, especially young people. Then again, you have all the visual images coming up.

The way we consume information has been shifting since the invention of television. The difference is that the internet has accelerated this trend.

I have long believed that the internet is a visual, rather than a text, medium, consumed via a screen, just like TV.

This is why so many newspapers have struggled online, viewing the internet as just another version of the print product. This is now changing but it is surprising how long it has taken newspapers to shake off their print legacy.

Filed under: internet, multimedia, newspapers

January 23, 2007 • 12:33 pm 0

Prepare for the newsroom of the future

As a former BBC journalist now teaching multiplatform journalism in Canada, I am struck by the attitudes of students to new media.

Some embrace the potential wholeheartedly, while others are more circumspect. Mindy McAdams highlights this issue in a post about the response to an earlier entry about getting a job in journalism.

Some of the journalism students who commented on her post are harking back to the days of “congested newsrooms, telephones that ring off the hook, rough drafts bleeding red ink, dramatic editor-writer discrepencies”, as one of them put it.

This might be the romanticised notion perpetuated by Hollywood movies. But how often does Hollywood reflect reality accurately?

In any case, journalism students should be looking to gain the skills to survive in the newsrooms of the future, not the past.

We don’t know yet what those newsrooms are going to be like. But we can be sure that journalists will have to be multi-skilled and be able to work across multiple mediums.

Filed under: education, interactive journalism, internet, multiplatform journalism, newspapers

January 22, 2007 • 2:01 pm 0

Farewell printing press, hello internet

Nieman ReportsA heads-up to everyone who is interested in the changes taking place in journalism. Harvard University’s Neiman Foundation for Journalism has released the winter 2006 issue of Neiman Reports, entitled “Goodbye Gutenberg.”

There is a rich wealth of material on how the impact the internet is having on journalism.

Having read just a couple of the articles, this struck me from Jon Palfreman’s piece:

Before the Web, storytelling was platform specific. Newspapers and magazines focused on text and photos, radio told stories with audio, and television dealt with moving pictures and sounds. Each platform has its tools and specialized skill sets, advantages and disadvantages. The Web forces these platforms to integrate. Today’s best media Web sites are multimedia productions combining text, stills, audio and video.

This is exactly what news organisations should be thinking about. And it is what journalism schools should be doing – preparing students for the newsrooms of the future.

Not only will journalists need to be familiar with multimedia production techniques, more importantly, they will need to be able to think in multiple media.

Multiplatform journalism is as much a state of mind, as it is a set of skills.

(Via the Berkman Center for Internet and Society)

Unfortunately, there isn’t a PDF of the report available to download just yet.

Filed under: interactive journalism, internet, multimedia, multiplatform journalism, new media, newspapers, online

January 20, 2007 • 9:05 pm 0

Regulating news on the net

One of the issues about online journalism is who regulates what is published on the net.

In the UK, newspapers have agreed to have the press watchdog regulate audio and video on their websites.

The head of the Press Complaints Commission, Christopher Meyer, described this as an extension of the organisation’s remit to regulate the electronic version of newspapers.

The agreement hasn’t been officially announced yet. But it is an interesting development in the area of official oversight online news publishers.

Filed under: news, newspapers, online

January 19, 2007 • 11:16 am 0

Is the Time ‘bloodbath’ about journalism or profits?

The world of multimedia, multiplatform journalism should be creating a wave of new jobs in the media. Instead, established media organisations are retrenching, with Time being the latest.

It is cutting 289 jobs – 172 from the editorial side and 117 from the business side across all its magazines, including Time and People.

The job losses are needed to help Time “move quickly into a future of flexible, multiplatform content,” according to a memo from John Huey, editor in chief of Time Inc.

News organisations need to be rethinking what they do. Instead of being defined by the means of distribution, i.e. newspapers or magazines, they need to be defined by what they do, journalism.

But these job losses have been described as a bloodbath.

I can’t help thinking that the cuts are more aimed at maintaining the company’s profit margin of around 18 percent, than improving its journalism in a digital age.

Filed under: multiplatform journalism

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Alfred Hermida
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