Monetizing UGNC: Is this how the news industry will survive?

I’m in that usual happy-anxious phase that authors get into when their manuscript is in the production process, but the first pages have not come back with editor’s queries and comments.

It’s a double-edged feeling because you are happy to have the MSS off your hands, but anxious because you don’t really know what the editor thinks and, even worse, stuff keeps happening. Stuff that would be good in the book. “Damn!”

This is really obvious in the world of News 2.0. The rate of change has not slowed, just because I’ve reached my contracted word length.

However, I’m also feeling a little smug (dangerous, hubris inducing, I know) because I see evidence again that one of my key theses is correct.

In my exposition about why I’m arguing for the term User Generated News-like Content (UGNC), rather than “citizen journalism”,  I make the point that the once radical posture of Indymedia and citizen journalism and the innovative use of collaborative technologies has been superceded by the MSM’s attempts to monetize the stream of cheap and free content they get from consumers – iReport on CNN is the best example, but not the only one.

Now I am a bit disappointed, but not surprised, that one of the world’s leading media and journalism research institutes is touting a conference for news executive at which they can learn how to exploit UGNC for profitable ends.

Stretching your news budget with user content will be at Poynter’s HQ in St Petersburg Florida and no doubt it will be a fun-filled affair.

Participatory journalism. Crowdsourcing. Pro-am. Whatever you call it, you’re probably debating how to create or expand user content for your organization.
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Explore the benefits (and drawbacks) of enlisting volunteers or semi-professionals to cover the stories your professional team can’t. Learn how to maximize impact and create a system that makes sense for your newsroom.

Another interesting development from Poynter is a scheme to give some training to these UGNC newsroom volunteers.

Yes, lift your jaw up off the floor. It’s actually about training them to a level so that they can attain a Poynter Institute “certificate of understanding of journalism basics and skills”.

That is, turning them into real “journalists”. Perhaps not, it will be a low value qualification; probably more aimed at making your volunteer feel special and to not really mind being exploited.

In News 2.0 I suggest that monetizing and exploiting UGNC is going to become more common and that it totally undercuts any suggestions that UGNC will be a real defining challenge to the mainstream.

The MSM is fighting for its survival – this is no more than the dynamic of global capitalism – and it will do so by any means necessary.