Making sense of the intersection between media, society and technology
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
How 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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
In: education|interactive journalism|internet|multiplatform journalism|newspapers
23 Jan 2007As 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 [...]
In: interactive journalism|internet|multimedia|multiplatform journalism|new media|newspapers|online
22 Jan 2007A 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 [...]
In: news|newspapers|online
20 Jan 2007One 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 [...]
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 [...]
This blog is run by Professor Alfred Hermida, an award-winning online news pioneer, digital media scholar and journalism educator.