The business of gathering, editing and disseminating news is undergoing fundamental transformation on several fronts.
The web is becoming central to consuming news - as both a first port of call and source of additional information. As the second generation of this shift, people are starting to compile their news reading in different ways: alerts, RSS, even ‘wisdom of crowds’ style filtering (eg: Digg, Newsvine).
The rise of the web as a news platform is also enabling people to tap into many more sources - from international publishers they otherwise wouldn't have ready access to (eg: the New York Times in London), as well as news via blogs and anyone else who cares to create a website.
The poster child for this so-called "citizen journalism" is OhMyNews in Korea - a news website that's as influential as any newspaper - but it's affecting news journalism to different degrees all over the place.
"Anyone can submit an article to OhmyNews and about three-quarters of the stories on the site are the work of the network's 40,000 non-professional contributors. The rest come from about 50 in-house writers and editors, who also vet the public material to decide what is printed" - link.
News websites encourage people to comment on individual articles... and they do in droves, far more so than ever wrote "letters to the editor". Bloggers blog about every topic under the sun, and thanks to the power of search, RSS and new filtering techniques, their voices are able to be heard alongside traditional news.
Grainy mobile phone pictures and video, home camcorder movies, are now routinely picked up by 'official' news channels - TV, newspapers and their associated websites. There are even bureaus set up to facilitate it - eg: Scoopt. We've now reached a point where, should a disaster happen - and assuming there's nothing you can do to help - it is almost your civic duty to take photos, video on your phone, whereas only 2-3 years ago it would have been seen as voyeuristic and somehow 'wrong'. (Of course, in some situations I'd argue it is still wrong - invasion of privacy, etc, but that's a different topic. The point I'm trying to make is that most people won't look at you askance for filming an accident scene now, whereas once they would have).
In parallel, what is considered to be news in consumer’s eyes is also changing: expanding to include more niche, more local, more populist. People are able to personalise their news to an ever increasing extent - not only where/when/what form it comes in, but the topics covered and reporting style/slant.
These developments raise some interesting societal questions. What happens when people self-select their news to such an extent that they’re not exposed to competing points of view? What about news that you don’t seek out, but to which you have an obligation to know about as part of society? In a world where anyone can report anything, what happens to truth? What happens to privacy?
They also pose some challenging strategic questions for traditional news organisations. To what extent should the trend for user-generated content be embraced? How best to manage the trade-off between being open enough online to be part of the conversation vs. being closed for commercial reasons and thus cut off? How should editors evolve the nature of the content they produce in light of these changes?
Even the role that mainstream news media fulfil in this new era needs to be re-examined. For example, is it to:
- Be among the first port of call?
- Be a trusted source, provide an assurance of quality? (accuracy, style, consistency…)
- Seed conversations? Set the agenda for public debate?
- Provide guidance via editorial judgment / filtering?
- Serve as a point of reference; “cultural memory”?
--What’s the relationship between an online news site and its offline counterparts? What roles do each fulfil?
I could go on, but no time right now. Maybe tomorrow. :-) Suffice to say, we live in interesting times! In the meantime here's a few more slides:
