The future of newspapers – ABC podcast

I recorded this interview with Glyn Greensmith of the ABC on the future of newspapers.

All you have to do is click and listen.

Media business as usual after Convergence Review

Dull grey tone: media organisations are “Content service enterprises”, according to the Convergence Review.
AAP

The Convergence Review’s final report is remarkable for its blandness and predictability.

Despite the cries of fear and loathing from the Murdoch stable that the cold hand of government intervention was upon us, the review has explicitly rejected Ray Finkelstein’s suggestion that a statutory News Media Council should be established by legislation.

What we have in this report is an attempt to play regulation catch up with digital convergence, while preserving flexibility to adapt quickly to further change. It is a difficult balance and the report fails to meet the challenge.

The Convergence Review has opted to suggest a set of principles, rather than prescription in order for any new regulatory regime to remain nimble and effective. Unfortunately, the recommendations are weak and in some cases almost totally unworkable.

The Egyptian revolution: progress report provides fascinating insight

We all have that feeling. Coming across a piece of writing that so clearly articulates a deeply-held idea that resonates.

“I wish I’d written that.”

The sweetness of excitement and discovery tinged with the slightest sour of regret and professional jealousy.

I came across just such a moment while reading a great account of the state of play in Egypt over the last few months.

The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is a besetting sin of journalism. Where good ethnography opens up all the fascinating and frustrating contradictions of everyday life as lived by people, journalism summarizes and papers over these differences, subordinating them to the persuasive power of narrative.

There’s a place for both but having been a journalist, I prefer ethnography.

And yet, even after 15 years as an anthropologist, I still find it easier to write narrative like a journalist.

[Egyptian Struggles Continue]

This is from Mark Allen Peterson’s remarkable blog Connected in Cairo. The post is dated 6 February 2012.

Peterson is a  journo-turned-ethnographer. A well-worn path for people moving from a professional life into an academic second-life.

I love the line about the misplaced concreteness of journalism. It is the type of blinkered thinking that leads to ideological blindspots and the pack mentality of political reporting.

It is appropriate to in relation to most of the coverage I’ve seen of the Egyptian revolution.

it’s also why the story of Australian freelance Austin Mackell is important.

Austin and his colleagues were arrested a few days ago by authorities for travelling to Mahalla, a hotbed of trade union activism against the military regime in Cairo. Some trade union activists were also rounded up.

It seems like Mackell is to be released and deported from Egypt, which is a shame because  not many other reporters are getting to the trade union story.

Instead the prefer the misplaced concreteness of what they understand – the parliamentary politics and machinations of the political parties. The heroes of the street – those who made the revolution of a year ago – are now relegated to walk-on parts as props, not actors on the main stage.

Mackell was in Mahalla to interview a trade union leader, but as he explained on ABC’s The World Today, he did not get a chance. Soon after arriving in the city the group was mobbed:

AUSTIN MACKELL: I was totally doing my job as a journalist. I was interviewing a labour union leader. I was only – I was with a masters student, who’s doing his on labour movements in Egypt, and my translator and the driver. And we got out to interview Mr Fayyumi, we had time to shake hands and we were immediately set upon. So there was not chance for us to give any provocation.

SIMON SANTOW: And you were accused of offering money to local youths in order for them to cause chaos?

AUSTIN MACKELL: Yeah, yes. I mean this is the standard line that the people who are protesting, that the people who are fighting for their rights in any regard are actually being paid by foreign agents. This is the line that state TV has run with on a number of occasions in similar cases, and it’s what happened with us as well.

SIMON SANTOW: And you can be absolutely unequivocal that you were there entirely just as a journalist?

AUSTIN MACKELL: Absolutely.

SIMON SANTOW: No crossing of any line?

AUSTIN MACKELL: No crossing of any line.

[The World Today]

It seems the arrest of Mackell is part of the general crackdown on foreigners instigated my the military regime as a way of undermining protest against continuation of the Junta’s anti-democractic policies.

There are reports that the charges against Mackell and the others have been dropped, but I can’t confirm it.

Focus on complaints misses real point of media inquiry

An edited version of this post was published on The Conversation earlier today.

After five days of public hearings and well over 50 submissions the government’s independent media inquiry has retired to deliberate. After absorbing the tenor of some witnesses, I do not envy the judge and the professor the task ahead of them.

It seems that despite their sometimes bitter commercial rivalry the Fairfax and News Limited empires agree on one thing: the Finkelstein inquiry has been a giant waste of time and money.

Both have produced more than one editorial slamming the inquiry unnecessary and asking what is its purpose.

Outgoing News Limited CEO John Hartigan and current Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood sang the same jingle during their appearances at the inquiry this week in Sydney.

The news coverage in the papers of both media companies has been overwhelmingly negative and critical. So what is going to happen next?

My reading of the situation is that there is likely to be a recommendation, or series of recommendations that deal with the issue of the Australian Press Council. At the moment the APC is quasi-independent, but because it is entirely funded by the two major newspaper companies and some smaller publishers, this claim of independence must be questioned.

Two issues arising from the inquiry’s terms of reference have dominated the inquiry and both are to do with the APC’s relationship with its constituent members and the possibility of it taking some over-arching role in complaints handling, with additional funding from government coffers.

It is likely then, given the signals sent by Ray Finkelstein during the public hearings, that some form of ‘super’ APC will emerge; perhaps in spite of complaints from the key media companies. At the end of the day they may well agree to wear such an outcome knowing it won’t really change much in their day-to-day operations.

What we could end up with is something that looks like, smells like and barks like the British Press Complaints Commission. The PCC does not receive any government funding, but the size of the British market perhaps suggests it doesn’t need to. What is clear from the APC’s own submissions to the inquiry and Finkelstein’s generally positive commentary, is that some subsidy from the public purse could be offered.

This point has generated the most heat in the discussion so far. John Hartigan dismissed it outright, even conceding that News Limited and the other council members might have to up their own contributions to keep government ‘interference’ at bay. The argument is that a government subsidy would mean government meddling, because it would require some statutory backing from parliament.

Giving the APC some legislated authority would create something of a hybrid: a cross between the self-regulatory functions of the Press Council (or Complaints Commission) and the statutory regulation of broadcasters provided by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Such a body would be a break with traditition; most Western liberal democracies have historically kept self-regulation of the print media at arms length from government while heavily regulating broadcasters using the argument of ‘spectrum scarcity’.

This argument – scarce bandwidth requires tough controls – is now out-of-date and has been for sometime. The IEEE has described the new situation as a ‘spectrum bonanza‘. What it should mean is that heavy regulation of broadcast media should be lifted, not attempting to drag the print media into the fold.

The media inquiry was tasked with examining the issue of compliance, codes of practice and regulation in the context of digital convergence; but not much was heard about that in the public sessions. In the logic displayed so far by Ray Finkelstein it makes sense to combine complaints handling in one body that is platform neutral. The question raised again and again though, is: How do you get bloggers and so-called citizen-journalists to register and be included in such a regulatory system?

No doubt these are questions that will be ‘hhhmmmmed and hhhaaaed’ over in the next few months. The judge and the professor will have plenty of reading and some interesting conversations to get them through the looming silly season. Their report and recommendations are due to be put to the convergence review in February next year.

However, I would argue that this focus on regulation and complaint management misses the point somewhat.

The existence of the PCC did not prevent the UK’s biggest media scandal in a generation, the now notorious News of the World serial phone-hacking debacle. Streamlining the complaints procedures will not improve the quality of news or journalism.

There are two issues relating to questions of quality that were, at various times, mentioned at the inquiry, but which have been effectively sidelined in the coverage.

The first is the issue of market failure and Australia’s impenetrable duopoly in print news media. While the exact figures are disputed, depending on the measure you use, it is clear that News Limited has a dominant position in metropolitan print markets, closely followed by Fairfax. The situation is not much different in radio, television or magazines.

In this environment how do we ensure a diverse range of media and opinion is available? It is difficult for new players to enter either print or broadcast markets because the cost of plant, equipment and human resources to match the two dominant entities is well into the hundreds of millions. This is despite the write-down of value in the major companies over the past few years, mainly due to the influence of the GFC.

Where public interest players are in the market – in community radio and television – the terms of their licenses are so restrictive that they exist tenuously without adequate funding or commercial income streams.

The smug response from the big two is that anyone is free to launch an online competitor and that the ‘invisible hand‘ of the marketplace will decide the outcome. What this free market myth fails to take into account is that the market is a) not a level playing field because of high entry costs and the advantage of size and first mover, and b) the market itself has failed; it does not deliver the promised outcomes and, in fact, the failure of the market has contributed to the current crisis in both business models and in lack of public trust.

At the heart of this market failure is a contradiction so intense that it is almost insurmountable and unresolvable in the market’s own terms.

The market dictates that competition produces profits for some and losses for others. It is a valorisation of monetary value and the interests of property and shareholders over the value of public interest.

Within the framework of capitalist market relations the private interests of shareholders acting in their self-interest in the marketplace cannot be reconciled with the collective social interest that effective working of the public sphere demands.

In short, I would argue, the marketplace of ideas does not guarantee an effective outcome in the public interest.

This, I feel, also undercuts the argument from News Limited and Fairfax that the media inquiry is an attack on the news media’s right to free speech. In the marketplace of ideas, speech is not free. Speech takes on a commercial and commodified form in the market and the right to freedom of the press claimed by editorialists and CEOs, is effectively a property right.

As such, it is not available to everyone. Unfortunately, apart from my own modest contribution on the first morning of the inquiry in Melbourne last week, these ideas have not been canvassed. Perhaps Stuart Littlemore came closest yesterday when he talked about the festering culture inside some newsrooms to explain how some reporters and editors appear to take perverse delight in venal attacks on and vendettas against certain targets.

Despite the comfortable deniers on mahogany row, there is evidence that the current model is broken and, as senior Fairfax news executive Peter Fray said in his Sydney University lecture earlier this week, journalism has failed us, journalists are guilty of group-think and are seduced by public relations.

The question that was not asked, let alone answered, amid all the bluster and talk of reform of the media inquiry is: What to do about the crisis in news and journalism?

Peter Fray offered one solid suggestion in his First Decade Fellow lecture, which was, unfortunately not repeated during his media inquiry appearance as sidekick to Greg Hywood a day later.

“What I am saying is that we need to become more sophisticated and radical about the way we talk about journalism and its roles.”

I couldn’t agree more, but when sophisticated and radical ideas were raised in front of the professor and the judge last week, they were howled down by a chorus of acrid smoke and noise from those who are charged with living up to the ideals that their bosses espouse.

News 2.0 on the radio

A conversation with Colin Peacock on Mediawatch, 6 February 2011

I like talking to Colin Peacock. He interviewed me about News 2.0 today and it was very lively. I think I did a reasonable job.

 

On Public Address radio with Russell Brown and Damian Christie on 6 February 2011. Can journalism survive the Internet?

I’m going to be LATE for the museum

LATE 04
Innovate: Media
Thursday, 3 June 2010

This month LATE at the Museum asks what a rapidly-changing digital landscape means for broadcasters, policy makers and of course us as audiences?

The evening will ask what is happening, and what needs to happen, to ensure the independence and profitably of content creators in the age of ‘open source’ media.

Is the Internet the friend or enemy of today’s broadcasters and journalists, and how can we sustain quality programming and reporting at a time when newsrooms are shrinking and people expect to read, hear and watch content for free?

Smart Talk

The evening features a panel discussion with Associate Professor of Journalism at AUT University, Dr Martin Hirst and Brent Impey, ex CEO, Mediaworks NZ (TV3, TV4). The discussion will be moderated by former editor of the New Zealand Listener and award-winning columnist Finlay Macdonald.

Great Music

Entertainment on the evening includes Little Bushman who return to the Museum for an encore following their spellbinding performance at our inaugural LATE, plus Jeremy Toy (Opensouls) with special guests.

Updating #media140 day two under way

An update from the Media140 conference in Sydney where I’ve been for the past two days.

Interesting ideas and discussion and for me very pleasing to see that some journalists and media organisations  actually get “it”, without going overboard to claim that journalism is dead – but doesn’t know it’s a corpse – in the way that many social media evangelists twitter on about.

This is just a holding post with some highlights and a link to Jay Rosen’s speaking notes.

Jay Rosen is a professor at NYU and one of the world’s leading social media evangelists (IMHO). He’s just about to start on a feed via Skype, so I’ll be back with a review when he’s finished.

Rebooting the News System in the Age of Social Media

Here are the ten key ideas I plan to share with the Media140/Sydney conference underway right now in Sydney, Australia. I will be speaking to the conference via Skype in a few hours.  The theme of the event is “the future of journalism in the social media age.”  These ten Twitter-able ideas are my contribution to that puzzle.

1. Audience atomization has been overcome. (Link)

2. Open systems don’t work like closed systems. (Link)

3. The sources go direct.  (Dave Winer)

4. When the people formerly known as the audience use the press tools they have to inform one another— that’s citizen journalism. (Link)

5. “There’s no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter failure.” (Clay Shirky)

6. “Do what you do best and link to the rest.” (Jeff Jarvis)

7. “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; I just don’t know which half.” (John Wanamaker)

8. “Here’s where we’re coming from’ is more likely to be trusted than the View from Nowhere. (Link)

9. The hybrid forms will be the strongest forms. (Link)

10. “My readers know more than I do.” (Dan Gillmor)

Bonus notion: You gotta grok it before you can rock it. (Link)

 

Media140  Blog – background on conference & upcoming events

Mark Colvin’s speech about Twitter and Iran

ABC News report

Barry Saunders’ blog on Malcolm Turnbull’s presentation

Barbarians at the gates – Ultimo is smouldering?

Another very good analysis of Mark Scott’s Melbourne Uni speech which I covered yesterday. This from Trevor Cook at Crikey.com

Clueless in Ultimo

In other areas too we may come to see the world of the ‘empowered audience’ as deficient. Comment and opinion are everywhere on media sites these days, but there has been no similar expansion in facts, ideas and analysis, Scott’s much-heralded partnerships with the audience, like the barbarians attacking Rome, may be more suited to producing noise and colour than anything more enduring.

Fourth, it’s likely that the new media will be absorbed into the old media:

As the Western Roman Empire crumbled, the new Germanic rulers who conquered the provinces upheld many Roman laws and traditions. Many of the invading Germanic tribes were already Christianised, though most were followers of Arianism. They quickly converted to Catholicism, gaining more loyalty from the local Roman populations, as well as the recognition and support of the powerful Catholic Church. Although they initially continued to recognise indigenous tribal laws, they were more influenced by Roman Law and gradually incorporated it as well.

The ABC will still be the ABC with just a little more commentary from the audience. Not so much deliverance from the strictures of old media as an opportunity to join the slaves at the Mill.

The absorbtion is happening as we speak.

• CNN’s iReport is IndyMedia on steroids, but without the awkward anarchist politics
• TV on demand was YouTube
• Twitter and Facebook are the cool new marketing tools that are supposed to help legacy media connect with YOOF

There’s a great comment thread on Scott’s speech on Larvatus Prodeo

Media empires, the fall of Rome and the digital sublime

But now, anyone can instantly publish on the web. And as long as they have content people want to see and read they will reach millions. The extent of the revolution could not have been seen – the extent of the transformation.

Mark Scott, The Fall of Rome: Media after Empire, 14 October 2009

A nice thought isn’t it? Anyone can now reach an audience of millions if they have content that people want. It’s pleasant to imagine this world; a place free of the media barons, where simple souls like us can wield the once unassailable power of the moguls.

Too bad it’s just a digital myth at this point.

It is an aspect of what Vincent Mosco calls the “digital sublime”. a mythology that he says is sustained by the “collective belief that cyberspace was opening a new world by transcending what we once knew about time, space and economics” (2004: 3).

It is this mythology that leads many commentators to suggest that citizen journalism, or what I prefer to call “user-generated news-like content” is going to transcend and eventually replace the news industry of the 20th century.

But you know what, the media empire is an adaptive beast and while Rome wasn’t built in a day, it didn’t collapse overnight either.

No Future! A pessimistic and money-grubbing view of journalism

The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over. The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph.

Rupert Murdoch, Beijing, October 2009

The writing is on the wall…but actually the content creators were not in Beijing with Rupert Murdoch; they’re scattered across the globe and Murdoch wants their content, he just doesn’t want to pay for it.

Can you imagine a future without journalism: a time in which journalists are replaced by “content directors” and amateurs?

As journalist and commentator Peter Kirwan put it in Wired magazine:

If traditional journalism is too expensive, and if user-generated content really is “good enough”, the way forward seems obvious.

For some news industry managers, this is a happy prospect: they can legitimately get rid of the expensive journalists, take your amateur copy for free and rake in the profits.