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13Nov/090

How Can We Help You?

Jarvis at CUNY's New Biz Models for Local News

Over the last week, I've attended two lively and inspiring gatherings: a meeting of the Navigating Change Media Think Tank in Connecticut, and the New Business Models for (Local) News Hyper Camp at CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism. In both places, I heard the same question: "how can we help you?"

There is a generosity among those of us who are inspired, rather than terrified, by the changes in journalism and media. None of us have this thing figured out, and while there's certainly money to be made for the first ones to get the "answer," it's also simply a time of heightened brain activity. And people want to help. You've got a wild idea? What do you need from us?

Media Big Brain Jeff Jarvis sees the balance shifting, as he writes on his Buzz Machine blog: "the room was filled with people who were, each in his or her own way, building that future and they all recognized that they have to work together to do so. The future of news is also an ecosystem. That’s what became apparent yesterday and that, for me, was the highlight of the event."

And so it is. Rupert Murdoch may want to unplug from Google (best of luck on that), but for the rest of us, the invitations to plug in and connect are limitless. Some of us have ideas, some have connections, some have money. And at Navigating Change and the CUNY Hyper Camp, the cards were exchanged and the ideas were brainstormed. If you're not already in on this, get in on it. If you don't know how, ask me.

How can we help you?

Tagged as: buzz machine, cuny, google, jeff jarvis, navigating change, news innovation, rupert murdoch No Comments

11Nov/090

The Future of Local News: Available Today. Watch this Space.

It's so easy in the run-and-gun world of local news to be far withdrawn from the academic and wonky talk of the future. Especially now that you don't get to tool around in the station car with your photog trying to sneak off to the mall to get a little shopping done while "checking out a tip." These days, your photog's got his own story to shoot, write and edit.

But trust me. While the managers in your newsroom may be telling you it's belt-tightening time and that Action News will find a way to survive the bleak times and return to Number One, there's an army of creative media gurus (many with exactly no background in the Way We Do Things) who are redefining what local news may look like for consumers five years from now, ten years from now, or, in some spots, this afternoon.

In my tireless pursuit to keep you ahead of the curve whether you like it or not, I'll be rubbing elbows with these forward-thinkers today in New York, at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, where some of the brightest minds of new news modeling will gather at a forum--okay, a "HyperCamp" as the kids call conferences these days--entitled "New Business Models for (Local) News."

I'll report back to you here on what I discover. But hey, in a get-your-feet-wet experiment in new news models, why not join me at the HyperCamp right now? I'll be on Twitter and sending out the best stuff I can shoehorn into 140 characters. Follow me at @standupkid for live updates through the day. And I'd love to get your questions as well to direct to some of the smarty pants speakers. (As soon as I know the hashtag for today's event, I'll tweet that)

I'd love to have some LocalNews readers with me for this. It's our future that's on the table. There's no reason not to get excited about it. And since your news director insisted that you tweet all damn day, why not make it work for you?

Tagged as: cuny, jeff jarvis, journalism, local news, mark joyella, twitter No Comments

23Jun/090

Local Newsers: What's It Going to Be? Innovate or Die? (Huh? You Sure You Don't Want to Pick "Innovate?")

3125936268_d71b8a90a1_o If you haven't yet read Jeff Jarvis' excellent book, What Would Google Do?, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.

Jarvis is a new media guru who produces content across multiple platforms (his BuzzMachine blog is required reading, and his new Guardian podcast is fantastic) and teaches digital media at CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism. His book "reverse-engineers" Google to see what secrets we can uncover, and then implement, perhaps fueling a new style of journalism that will keep all of us working into the next decade.

In a discussion of financial models, and how Google transcended them, Jarvis writes: the "winner is likely to be a new player, not one trying to protect old revenue streams and assets." Think about that for a moment. Look at your own company. Is it innovating into the future? Or desperately, blindly, obsessively trying to make what's always worked still work?

In New York last week, News Corp announced its latest round of firings and buyouts, cutting twenty staffers at WNYW and WWOR, cuts that affected traditional news operations and the stations' web team. That jumped out at me. The web, without question, is the future. What does it say about a company making cuts and deciding to pull back on the one area of the business with a clear, huge and critical role in the years ahead?

My answer: they're doing whatever they can do to cut costs and stay alive until the economy improves. Then they'll go back to that internet stuff.

Jeff Jarvis

Jarvis calls this the "Cash Cow in the Coal Mine:" "Cash flow can blind you to the strategic necessity of change, tough decisions, and innovation...How many companies and industries fail to heed the warnings they know are there but refuse to see?"

Local news refuses to see. As Jarvis writes, station owners are losing their "destinies" because they want to "preserve their pasts." And you know it's true. As I've written here, there is incredible innovation happening in the world of video storytelling and news. It's just not being done by television stations. Newspapers are trying new ways of including multimedia content to make their reporting more impactful, interesting and different. In cities across the country, folks are creating web-based newscasts that look nothing like the stuff stations continue to produce--just the way they always have.

Watch this promo for a new Australian newscast that debuts this month. Aside from the cliche-ridden nature of the promo itself, is there anything here that couldn't have been done 25 years ago?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTmNTN5JQXw&feature=player_embedded]

Think about it. What's so different about the six o'clock news? Sure, it starts in some cities at 4. It's shot in HD. And... well, beyond that, it's the same product we've been selling for decades. That reminds me of senior citizens who will buy a new version of the same old car time after time because that's what they like. And looking at the demographics of a lot of news, these are the same reliable viewers keeping some local newscasts alive.

Where's the innovation? What's one new thing that would've been unimaginable to the Action News teams of the 1970's? Doppler radar? That's an improvement of the same old thing. New ways of doing liveshots? What am I missing?

Take the computers out of the newsroom and put typewriters back, replace the cell phones with hard lines, put the AP wire back into a noisy printer in the corner, and go retro with the set, the over-the-shoulder graphics (FIRE!) and men's lapels, and this is the same old cereal in a new box.

It's depressing, when you look at the environment we're in: a once-in-a-career time of change, with a life-or-death incentive to innovate, and yet stations still believe in the tried and true rules of innovation in local news:

1) New Set

2) New Graphics

3) New Anchors

4) New News Director

Seriously, people. News isn't dying. Someone's going to be making money giving our viewers the information they want. But there's no reason to believe it's going to be us.

I guess times are just too tight to risk taking chances. And we'll staff the web team back up when the car dealers start spending again. Sound good? Yeah, that'll work.