We Media '05, Part 2
First, you can download the *.mp3 here.
This session, "We News," was intended to enlighten us as to how Big Media is adopting to/co-opting/exploiting/what-have-you citizen journalism. My thoughts are below the fold, in thoroughly disjointed shorthand fashion.
Larry Kramer, CBS Digital Media, was, I think, trying to convince the audience that CBS "gets it" now. He talked about how every CBS News employee now works for the Web site (as well as the TV newscasts). He talked about how they're thinking about news stories as a loop: Reporter reports, story goes up on the Web, readers respond, story follows those responses wherever they lead, follow-up goes up on the Web, lather, rinse repeat. OK, I think, you've got the concept down, but do you execute? (For that matter, do we? Not as well as we should, yet.) He said the Web site has three full-time employees searching the Web daily for commentary on/criticism of CBS News coverage. He talked about CBS News' "Public Eye" blog, which is supposed to turn a critical eye on its own network's news practices. (Example in which its efforts are applauded here, example in which the public is not so impressed here.) My own take is that after the 2004 Dan Rather fiasco, CBS has a ways to go to rebuild its credibility, but I'm old enough to remember then-Sen. Jesse Helms' call after the 1984 elections for conservatives to buy up CBS stock and make its newscasts more reflective of their viewpoing, so I'm guessing there's a significant chunk of people out there whom CBS will never satisfy.
That position feeds directly into a point made by Richard Sambrooke, head of the BBC's global-news division: Any media organization only exists on the quality and depth of its relationship with the public. And the BBC has that: In the first 24 hours after the July 7 Underground bombings in London, he said, the Beeb received more than 300 e-mailed photos, about 20 video clips and more than 20,000 e-mails related to the explosions. The July 8 6 p.m. news, the network's flagship program, was led by a package of reports and visuals contributed entirely by regular folks. Our job, Sambrooke said, is to make connections with and between different audiences. When a photo taken by a British citizen with a cell phone becomes the worldwide, iconic emblem of the 7/7 bombings because the BBC distributed it, I'd say the BBC is doing its job quite well.
Sambrooke called this trend a fundamental realignment in the relationship between big media and the public, adding that big media bring accessibility, a process of verification and the skills of analysis, context-providing and explanation to the partnership.
My notes don't make clear the context of this remark, but Tom Curley, president and CEO of The Associated Press, said that the AP has tried to make itself more responsive in part by showing employees what's in it for them, primarily wider exposure. Traditionally, AP has filed first for its newspaper clients, he said; now, AP files first for the Web and TV, playing to the immediacy of those media. He also stressed the importance of harnessing, rather than frustrating, employees' sense of mission. He didn't offer any suggestions as to how. I recall thinking of one: Equip your employees like you're as serious about their mission as they are. These days, at newspapers the size of ours, reporters are more likely to be overheard complaining about the lack of equipment than about their pay (though they still complain about that, too).
Farai Chideya, a kind of New Media Renaissance woman who founded PopAndPolitics.com, talked about National Public Radio's efforts to embrace new media, including podcasts. She said NPR handed out digital audio recorders to people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and will edit and broadcast that audio. She suggested that the best hope for legacy media outlets trying to reach a younger audience might be to develop a network of peer-to-peer journalism and then broaden the best of that content to a wider audience. (The N&R's "The 'Boro" might be seen as a small step in that direction.) She also said that PopAndPolitics.com will create a "media community" of content from people who were displaced from New Orleans' 9th Ward neighborhood by Katrina.
A question from the audience about how media can engage people who are less literate and/or more graphics-oriented prompted what I think is a key observation from Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN correspondent who now runs a global citizen-journalism site based at Harvard. Most of today's biggest stories, she said, are happening to people on the caboose of the digital train. I would add to that observation that the kind of story that she is talking about is one the traditional news media historically have been years late on ... and will continue to be without applying their powers of analysis to the kinds of anecdotal stories that citizen journalism can provide.
I don't remember what led to this point, but Curley criticized the state of American media infrastructure, particularly wireless infrastructure. (I have some personal insight into that issue: A cousin of mine recently spent some time in Africa with a schoolmate who runs a company installing wireless infrastructure there. Because the client countries are starting from scratch, they're building state-of-the-art networks with state-of-the-art equipment, in the process creating networks markedly superior to ours.) "The lobbyists have held sway," Curley said. "We're gotten behind (in infrastructure), and it's ridiculous."
Well, amen to that, anyway.
