Recent Events and Surviving Pain for Botswana Orphans

February 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Orphan1

A lot has changed for me in the past few months. Since I last posted on the blog I have scored a job as a News Librarian at Network Ten News in Melbourne. It was completely unexpected but also incredibly exciting. It came around the same time I was interviewed by the Herald Sun after attending the Melbourne Writers Festival. To be honest I’m glad I ended up with the job at Ten over working for the Herald Sun. Working in the News Library often means looking through old archive tapes and trying to find the best footage to use for a particular story. It’s interesting work and as someone relatively new to Melbourne it has helped to rapidly give me an idea of who the important people are and what the major issues have been. This time in the News Library will no doubt help me with my journalism into the future.

In October last year I also completed my honours project on using mobile technology to change the media. I believe it was a success and it has changed the way I perceive and approach media organisations. Since spending so much time performing academic research I am far more skeptical about many aspects of journalism. While I have not changed by views on many major topics, including how journalism should change, I did gain a very good instinct for how to annoy academics. My work came back with good grades. I scored 78% from both of my examiners, which was far higher then I expected considering I was trying to push the boundaries. Watch out for an upcoming post on www.Media140.com where you will be able to download a copy.

Anyway, since finishing my project, life has just been busy. Most importantly (besides work that is), I’ve been training hard to complete a 300km bicycle ride along the Great Ocean Road from Geelong to Warrnambool raising money for charity. The charity I have chosen to support is the Botswana Orphan Project. As part of the training, for the past three weeks I have ridden up Mt Macedon, north-west of Melbourne. My final ride, completed on sunday, was a 63km ride, starting in New Gisborne, and then riding up the front face of Macedon and back down through Woodend and Gisborne. All I can say is… it was hard work!! The worst part is that the first day of our ride is double that! We will likely die. But I can’t think of a better way to go then by raising money for such a great cause. Botswana has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world and average life expectancy has been plummeting to the point where people are not expected to live past the age of 40. This leaves an increasingly young population which needs help… and I want to help!

You can support me in my ride by donating here: http://www.mycause.com.au/mycause/raise_money/fundraise.php?id=5190

Filed Under: Job Hunt, Journalism, Life, Melbourne Tagged With: , , , ,

Re-inventing Journalism: Why Innovation Is The Only Way To Save The Media

June 18, 2010 By 3 Comments
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Image by theonlyone

No matter what your interest is in the media it’s hard to escape talk about the possible demise of the journalism industry. Once powerful newspaper companies are now struggling to stay afloat in a market that has primarily moved online. But with an ever expanding and socially driven marketplace the only way to survive will be to innovate. This innovation must be driven by the mobile space and deliver news content in a way users want to read it. A new journalism model must be interactive, it must be engaging, it must be social, and it must be different.

While most companies have shifted their reporting efforts towards the online market it has not come without significant restructuring and downsizing in an attempt to maximise profits from a dwindling advertising market.1 No matter the size of the company, or the significance of their online presence, they have all been affected. The New York Times, for instance, has shed hundreds of staff since 20082 and also restructured the editing of its news service.3 These company wide cuts are despite The New York Times website receiving around 20 million unique visitors every month4. The website alone simply can’t sustain all the resources which the print edition has built up. Other major companies like The Los Angeles Times have also shed staff with almost half of their once 1200 strong workforce axed in the past 9 years.5 Another casualty is the American television network news giant ABC, which has been planning to cut up to 400 jobs from its 1500 strong staff this year.6

The big problem for news companies is that they are still thinking about how money was made during the golden years of print and broadcast. Advertising has always, for most media companies, funded quality news and investigative journalism. News is expensive but these models of journalism and revenue making cannot be directly shifted to the internet without modifying them. They must be modified to make the most of the technology available. Some websites have tried to create the ideal blend by integrating multimedia and social features but these integrations are often only surface repairs, masking an archaic structure. Adding extra content and features has often been merely an afterthought but not the focus of how the websites were designed. Most of these integrated news websites are still funded by advertising with a few exceptions. The Wall Street Journal, successfully use a subscription-based pay-wall system to fund their efforts, and others like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation are funded entirely by Government; but these are the exceptions. For other sites the ads used are still similar to the past just having taken a new form with a combination of banner, video, pop-up, viral, and text. Often these ads can crowd the layout of a website leaving only a small amount of room for journalistic content. This content is often just a replica of a story already published in another medium or has been used entirely from a newswire service. Such poor designs and approaches to online news development may explain why many news websites are seeing rapid declines in the time users spend on their sites.7

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Show 7 footnotes

  1. Rupert Neate, “Times Newspapers loses £88m as advertising drops,” Telegraph.co.uk, March 23, 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/7500527/Times-Newspapers-loses-88m-as-advertising-drops.html. ↩
  2. David Folkenflik, “’New York Times’ To Make Deeper Staff Cuts,” NPR, October 19, 2009, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113942218. ↩
  3. Richard Pérez-peña, “New York Times News Service to Cut Jobs and Relocate,” The New York Times, November 13, 2009, sec. Business / Media & Advertising, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/business/media/13times.html?_r=1. ↩
  4. Zachary Seward, “Top 15 newspaper sites of 2008,” Nieman Journalism Lab, February 19, 2009, http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/02/top-15-newspaper-sites-of-2008/. ↩
  5. John Koblin, “Los Angeles Times Cuts Staff for Third Time This Year; 10 Percent of Newsroom Let Go,” The New York Observer, October 27, 2008, http://www.observer.com/2008/media/l-times-cuts-staff-third-time-year-10-percent-newsroom-let-go. ↩
  6. Brian Stelter and Bill Carter, “ABC News to Cut Hundreds of Staff,” The New York Times, February 24, 2010, sec. Business / Media & Advertising, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/business/media/24abc.html. ↩
  7. Jean Chainon, “US: Time spent on top 30 newspaper sites tends to decrease – Editors Weblog,” EditorsWeblog.org, February 20, 2008, http://www.editorsweblog.org/multimedia/2008/02/us_time_spent_on_top_30_newspaper_sites.php. ↩
Filed Under: Future, Journalism, Newspapers, Research, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

What Links Blogs And Academic Research? – Credibility

March 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The first few weeks of honours has really been about getting our heads around research. One of our classes is specifically on the research methodologies and covers many different aspects of how to go about research in relation to our honours project. Two weeks ago in this class Adrian (the honours coordinator) asked us to pick an essay, out of the ten or so he had, have a read and write a blog post about it. I chose one on the role of blogs in academia and I must say that is was more interesting then I first thought it would be.

The essay ‘Blending blogging into an academic text’ was written by Lilia Efimova and talked about how she was doing research on blogs but at the same time decided to run her own blog. Initially I thought this might put her into a very difficult situation because academia and blogging do not necessarily go together. Regardless of this I was interested in how Efimova talks about integrating these blogs within academic documents like essays. She uses the techniques she found and inserts blog posts throughout the essay, and surprisingly I think they fit rather well. That however is not what I found most interesting from the text.

While the actual content and focus of the essay is interesting on an academic level, I certainly would love to intertwine my blog posts in an essay, there is a far more important aspect of the essay which links blogging to academic work. The links are some important similarities between academia and blogging ideologies and practice.

There are a few links which the article discusses but I really want to touch on just one of these. That is accountability.

Many people who take their blogs seriously are interested in both being credible but also in being accurate. Because of this bloggers will often make themselves accountable to their work by making sure it is referenced. They will quote other bloggers with attribution, they will source their articles, reference photos that have been used, keep other bloggers in check, and they don’t like to censor comments made about their posts. It is almost a built in function of a blogger to be as accurate, referenced, and credible as possible. This is the same as in academic research.

Academic research is about credibility first and foremost. Unless all your work is referenced, unless you have a good balance of sources (books, internet, journals, etc), and unless you are willing to declare that your work is original then you risk having research struck off.

So while what bloggers and academics may often say things in a very different way… both are interested in one thing… credibility.

Filed Under: Honours, Research Tagged With: , ,

Tips For Keeping Newspapers Alive Digitally

March 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

In my efforts to re-invent journalism I have already begun the process of scouring the web and academic resources for articles and journals which might help inform my ideas. While I have already said I don’t like the process of academic research I am already surprised at some of the resources which I have found.

Today I came across an article published in the Winter 2008, Nieman Reports, by Edward Roussel (@edwardroussel) who is the Digital Editor for Telegraph.co.uk.

The article is entitled ‘To Prepare for the Future, Skip the Present’ and it outlines 10 ways in which newspapers can shift their focus to the digital realm. Many of the tips I think are still very relevant, So in the spirit of sharing information I wanted to share his tips with you. I have tried to add my own take on what Roussel meant by each tip, so here we go.

1. Narrow the focus

Media organisations need to focus on providing content which differs from everyone else. They need to be prepared to spend time and money on providing this exclusive/premium content so they can differentiate themselves from the competition.

2. Plug into a network

Papers need to look at the content they provide and decide what they do well in covering and what they don’t. Once they find the key areas which they fail to provide good coverage in they should link across to someone who provides exceptional coverage. Users will love this.

3. Rolling news with views

Focusing on the readers is important to making content work. Look for when your audience is mostly visiting your site and then focus on providing content during those times. Remember that deadlines for papers always suited publishers but in the digital realm it is the readers who define what you do. Ignore 24hr news coverage and leave this to a wire service allowing you to focus on your readers.

4. Engage with your readers

Encourage your readers to interact with you through comments, forums, or social media. This keeps them interested and makes them feel involved in the news gathering process.

5. Bottom up, not top down

Focus on your reporting staff as they are in the best position to engage with your readers. They are most likely to know what readers are interested in and they should be placed in charge of areas of your site, like blogs, which will get readers talking.

6. Embrace Multimedia

Run workshops to teach your staff the importance of using multimedia resources along with their stories. Multimedia can not only enhance a resource but also keep visitors interested in your online presence. You can also use multimedia very effectively to sell the most important stories you cover. Make sure your editors especially know the importance.

7. Nimble, low cost structures

Look at your costs and consider outsourcing parts of the business which you don’t do well to someone who does. Don’t spend time on advertising if you are not good at selling your ads, consider using Google or another ad-network if they can do a better job. However don’t let this shift your focus from your editorial content as this is what you should be doing well.

8. Invest in the web

If you plan to survive digitally you need to make sure that your web infrastructure can handle it. Push serious money into your website so that it can become the backbone of your new digital news organisation. Your website needs to reflect your new digital focus.

9. Shake up leadership

Get rid of key people who cling too tightly to printed newspapers. They will disrupt your ability to move digital and may become a hindrance to your survival. You don’t need them if they won’t innovate.

10. Experiment

To be at the forefront you need to be constantly in development and trying new things. Look for opportunities and don’t be afraid to try them out.

Filed Under: Journalism, Newspapers, Research Tagged With: , , ,

Getting My Head Around Honours Research

March 18, 2010 By 3 Comments

It just doesn’t make much sense to me….. research that is. As a journalist usually we are trying to be as anti-academia as possible, yet this year I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place because there is no avoiding it.

Today Adrian was talking us through different research methodologies and how although our research might not be very specific we all have a different approach to how we do research. While I’m sure that many of the other students have had more experience with actual research than me this point did resonate, albeit only slightly.

Ok, so I understand that everyone researches differently, and I may be an encyclopedic person knowing many different snippets of knowledge but that doesn’t change the fact that research and journalism clash head-on.

All of my university based study up until now has been very practical. Even when there were requirements occasionally in my course to write essays the actual essay content was limited. Now I find myself needing to write over 15,000 words in essays in first semester alone. I just don’t get how all my journalism experience can be used in a research arena. Practically I get it, but I am still struggling to link the practical aspects of my honours project with the whole idea of researching. I don’t understand the purpose of trawling through academic journals… I don’t understand how that helps me in my quest to re-invent journalism.

On the whole I find the research process, as I understand it, to be completely backwards, disruptive, and non-progressive. But I’m a journalist and this year for me is about completing an excellent project not for complaining about the research.

Filed Under: Honours, Journalism, Research Tagged With: , ,

Re-Inventing Journalism: Can It Be Done In One Year?

March 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

It will be a hard topic to cover in just one year but during 2010 I will be attempting to re-invent journalism as if it were just being invented for the first time. That means I will be examining the current resources available on and offline which could all be combined together to make a brand new 21st century journalism model.

To kick-start my honours research we were asked to come up with a 4 line abstract of our project. The abstract covers 4 key points and can be used to give a guide for why you are attempting the project and how you will do it.

Here is the structure of the 4 lines.

  1. The problem.
  2. This matters because.
  3. I propose or think that…
  4. And this will make a difference (or this matters) because…

Initially I struggled with this and my abstract may need some work over the coming weeks but here it is.

  1. Media companies are stuck in the industrial age unable to fully realise the potential of new technology.
  2. This is causing many companies to fail to think about the best journalistic practice in the 21st century.
  3. I propose to re-invent journalism as if it were to be invented for the first time in 2010.
  4. This will allow the journalism industry to realise the full potential of technology and innovation hopefully open the door for journalism to become a profitable and dynamic industry.

What do you think?? Is my task to big? Can I really just re-invent journalism?

Filed Under: Honours, Journalism, Research Tagged With: , , ,