We Media Conference: Some notes from my observations
I've finally found some time to put together my notes from this conference. It was an interesting event, populated by 'old'( read TV & newspaper editors & journalists') and
'new media' folk from Yahoo, Google, Craigslist, and a bunch of entrepreneurs mainly from California who are doing pretty exciting stuff such as relevant search.
The keynote address by Al Gore was interesting, but drew its share of snorts especially at his claim that TV is the primary medium of information for the bulk of Americans, & will continue to be so for the next decade, despite the burgeoning of the web. His rationale for this predominance of TV was the fact that full-motion video is possible only through TV, and that in turn ensures glued eyeballs. I would tend to believe that TV is truly the top source of news & information for the masses, and video may be just one part of it; I'd like to think it has more to do with ease-of-use: all you need to do is press a button to power it up, & then press 1, 2, 3, 4 (don't worry, there's only 10 buttons here:) The passivity & the simplicity may be a big part of the allure too. On the other hand, take web surfing: firstly, one has to be moderately computer-literate to even begin, then one has a variety of browsers & document types to deal with; reading is always harder than listening; the much-touted interactivity demands periodic responses from the user, and we all know we'd rather be left alone at times :)...
So anyways, next there was a little discussion about bloggers: their phenomenal growth, but that only a few blogs are surfacing enough to be read, & so on. There was an interesting panel discussion among folks from a combination of new & old media: old media companies (CBS in this case) were questioned about their feeble response to new media challenges, that the only response they & similar old media giants could garner up to challenge digital news providers was to set up a digital media division. This thread came up again in the Citizen Journalism discussion, & here's the bottom line that emerged:
Tags: we media, collaboration, social software
'new media' folk from Yahoo, Google, Craigslist, and a bunch of entrepreneurs mainly from California who are doing pretty exciting stuff such as relevant search.
The keynote address by Al Gore was interesting, but drew its share of snorts especially at his claim that TV is the primary medium of information for the bulk of Americans, & will continue to be so for the next decade, despite the burgeoning of the web. His rationale for this predominance of TV was the fact that full-motion video is possible only through TV, and that in turn ensures glued eyeballs. I would tend to believe that TV is truly the top source of news & information for the masses, and video may be just one part of it; I'd like to think it has more to do with ease-of-use: all you need to do is press a button to power it up, & then press 1, 2, 3, 4 (don't worry, there's only 10 buttons here:) The passivity & the simplicity may be a big part of the allure too. On the other hand, take web surfing: firstly, one has to be moderately computer-literate to even begin, then one has a variety of browsers & document types to deal with; reading is always harder than listening; the much-touted interactivity demands periodic responses from the user, and we all know we'd rather be left alone at times :)...
So anyways, next there was a little discussion about bloggers: their phenomenal growth, but that only a few blogs are surfacing enough to be read, & so on. There was an interesting panel discussion among folks from a combination of new & old media: old media companies (CBS in this case) were questioned about their feeble response to new media challenges, that the only response they & similar old media giants could garner up to challenge digital news providers was to set up a digital media division. This thread came up again in the Citizen Journalism discussion, & here's the bottom line that emerged:
- that despite the events of the past few months where blogging & citizen participation in news production have exploded, the noise-to-signal ration is still too high.
- what old media companies have over fledgling citizen journalist content is credibility & authenticity. After all, one may read a blog or two for amusement or the individual style of the writer, but to get credible news, one will very likely go to the established professional players.
- Now what happens when you combine the two: that is what Yahoo is attempting with their Hot Zones experiment (http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs1186). They have teamed up with Kevin Sites, a blogger who independently covers regions such as Iraq & now Rwanda; he is given full editorial rights, Yahoo claims, to cover & report on events as he sees fit. To my mind, this is great, & brings to mind how, in these uncertain, unchartered spaces, experimentation & agility might yield interesting results.
- The theme of trust & authenticity in the online space, like I mentioned earlier, rightly bubbled to the surface every now & then during the course of the day. It was brought up that so far, internet news providers have not displayed the quality of reporting & journalistic standards that traditional media has.
Tags: we media, collaboration, social software
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