Posts tagged with 'independent media'
New Value Chain of Journalism
Filed under: 
While media organizations are trying many different revenue models, the models that succeed in the long run will find a place in a new value chain of journalism. A “value chain” is a chain of activities, in which each activity adds value to a product or service. The financial success of any business model depends on the ability of an organization to capture value they create. (See graphics below. The value chain is also featured in our Big Thaw slide show.)
Journalism’s old value chain was delineated with clear roles and exchanges of value. The new value chain reflects more roles. One organization often plays multiple roles. In the old model, advertising also had clearly defined roles. It mostly concentrated on publishing and broadcasting. In the new model, advertising is spread across more players. (more…)
Mass Mobile-Media
John Battelle of Federated Media predicted that mobility would become a presumptive aspect of everything on the web by the end of 2009. Mobile phones and netbooks are just the beginning. Companies are building photography, video and audio recording into more than just phones and laptops. Apple’s iPod nano added video recording for the first time in September 2009. (more…)
Human-Centered Design
The next online frontier is how technology adapts to us. When companies are disrupted by new technologies or demographic shifts, their problems still have people at their heart wrote Tim Brown, president and CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO. “They require a human-centered, creative, iterative, and practical approach to finding the best ideas and ultimate solutions. … By [human-centered design], I mean that innovation is powered by a thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what people want and need in their lives and what they like or dislike about the way particular products are made, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported.”
“A human-factors approach assumes that the things we’ll carry in the future are not going to be invented so much as discovered—that the answer to the question of what devices we’ll carry will become obvious as we learn more about human behavior,” explained Claire Tristram in Technology Review. Therefore, as mobile and multisensory devices proliferate and alternative economies grow, media organizations will find the best path forward by following its users. (more…)
Location Aware Mobile
Mobile devices’ ability to detect a user’s exact location will revolutionize how we find, discover, create and interact with information.
The wave of location-based services has barely begun. Latitude on Google Maps and services from other companies such as Loopt already enable a user to broadcast their location and find friends. Location awareness will change how everyone interacts with their offline environment in even more dramatic ways.
People will not consume media primarily as a departure from their offline lives, but they will use it to enhance everything they do. Android and iPhone have augmented reality (AR) browsers that superimpose online information on its screen based on users’ physical surroundings. The devices even know if a user is sitting still or walking. Wikitude, for example, draws from Wikipedia entries when a user is near a landmark. Furthermore, shopping applications such as the iPhone’s LikeThis, G1’s Shop Savvy and some Amazon applications enable users to photograph bar codes or objects to compare prices, retrieve product information and aid mobile search based users’ location. The greatest leaps will come as satellite-positioning (GPS), tilt sensors and compasses become commonplace on most mobile devices.
Location awareness will help news become more relevant to users without any user input needed. Possibilities exist for journalism at many levels. Imagine:
- News alerts sent to people based on their location, for example, when an underground explosion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin caused a power outage for 8,600 residents in June 2009.
- Users scanning products for price comparison and getting news about a company, a health issue or consumer safety.
- An immediate call for volunteers that reach people who happen to be nearby.
- A network of users that enable media outlets to find a trusted source for a breaking news story in a specific area (e.g. Kansas tornado).
- The ability to send news about the Dali Lama to users who have travelled to Tibet.
- Users receiving news based on their friends’ locations? (e.g. New York on 9/11, New Orleans in August 2005).
This blog is an excerpt from The Big Thaw, a guide to the evolution of independent media, written by Tony Deifell of Q Media Labs and produced by The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Learn how your organization can use this report. For more information and recommendations from the study, click here.
Future Possibilities
Many people assume that the of media future is to be predicted rather than created. The future does not simply happen to us; we shape it. This next series of blogs poses important questions for independent media to consider as it shapes the future and nine possible trends that could further change the game.
People interviewed for this project highlighted future possibilities (see graphic below) that add weight and complexity to the new realities described in Vol. 2. Most of these trends are underway. While they have yet to reach game changing scale, many of them will.
In this next series of blogs, we’ll discuss future possibilities in the competitive landscape, including mass mobile-media and multisensory web; distinctive competencies and sources of value; and the new value chain in journalism.
This blog is an excerpt from The Big Thaw, a guide to the evolution of independent media, written by Tony Deifell of Q Media Labs and produced by The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Learn how your organization can use this report. For more information and recommendations from the study, click here.
Declining Institutional Control and Affiliations
Many people today do not depend on institutions in the same way. This has forced media organizations to compete in a more decentralized, open environment. “There is this weird state of disconnect between existing structures and openness,” says Katrin Verclas, co-founder of MobileActive. “Open networks are where things are evolving; yet media organizations are not. There’s not a lot of pro-activeness but a lot of reactiveness.”
Acting Free of Institutions
“People are increasingly acting on their own, free of institutions. They are taking distinct actions on distinct issues online. If I was concerned about an issue in the past, I’d start an organization, open an office, get a bank account in order to organize letter-writing campaigns, do outreach to Congress. But, today, I might start a Facebook group and draw awareness without ever opening an office or a bank account,” says John Bracken of the MacArthur Foundation.
Civic engagement, for example, can no longer be measured by formal affiliations (a basis for past research). In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam claimed a decline in “social capital” by pointing to declining participation in civic organizations. Today, however, affiliations may even be higher—they are simply happening in more informal and decentralized ways. In fact, some research has shown that online social networks have actually increased social capital in many new ways.
The implications for institutions are significant: their relationship with constituents is more casual than what was previously acceptable, traditional organizational hierarchies are flattening, and network effects are amplified independently of institutions. Twitter has succeeded, often in spite formal institution, because of its open platform. The government of Iran couldn’t even shut it down.
Don Tapscott, author of Growing up Digital, says that every institution faces a fundamental transformation. “People can now self-organize like never before. Young people have at their fingertips the most powerful tools, to find out what’s going on, to organize collective responses. Every institution in society is going to be naked and if you’re going to be naked, you better be buff.”
Readers Not Tied to Publishers
Today’s online users, particularly casual newsreaders, increasingly receive news from direct referrals and links from their social networks. Only approximately one quarter of casual newsreaders, who comprise most of Americans, say they trust a few news sources more than others. In contrast, two- thirds of hard-core newsreaders feel that way, which indicates the value of trustworthy sources remains high for at least a small segment of consumers. Furthermore, people increasingly consume news from multiple sources. A 2008 Pew Research Center survey asked news consumers to list their most frequented online news sites. The results mostly included portals and TV news sites, yet revealed considerable fragmentation across the board. Only eight websites were mentioned by more than 2% of respondents. Only Google and Yahoo! increased their perceived trustworthiness as news sources, compared to the center’s 2006 survey.
As a result, publication-centered news may continue to face greater challenges in turning readers’ fragmenting attention into a steady return of visits. Michael Hirschorn went as far as saying that, “The Internet has done much to encourage lazy news consumption, while virtually eradicating the meaningful distinctions among newspaper brands.”
The new rules of online engagement, according to Verclas, mean that there will be no central control. “It mutates and adapts; it’s flexible and agile,” she says. “We have no idea in the media how to do this. With the principles of decentralization, profits go away.”
This blog is an excerpt from The Big Thaw, a guide to the evolution of independent media, written by Tony Deifell of Q Media Labs and produced by The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Learn how your organization can use this report. For more information and recommendations from the study, click here.
Device Proliferation, Convergence & Their Effects
“The future of media for me would be the type of content that I want anytime, anywhere, on any device,” says Ashish Soni, who directs the Information Technology Program at the University of Southern California. One trend that has become very clear in the last few years: Consumers want complete control of the content they consume and access to it on all their devices, platforms and services. As a result, media content no longer falls neatly along the lines that used to separate print, radio, TV or film. (more…)
New Abundances and Their Effects
As physical limitations for how media is distributed and consumed decline, the competitive landscape changes fundamentally. In short, new abundances have turned the economics of distribution on its head.
For example, “loss-leader strategies” are inverted. (For more information about “loss-leaders,” a product sold below costs to create other sales, download Vol. 2, Chapter 4 of The Big Thaw.) Companies used to give away 1% of a product, such as perfume, to get the samplers to buy the other 99%. Now, companies such as Flickr or Skype give away 99% (often called a “freemium”) to sell 1% in the form of premium purchases. For example, Flickr Pro costs $25 per year. This flip has generated new abundances of products. (more…)
Journalism’s Old Paradigm: Are We Facing a Glacier or a Flood?
“If no paradigm is right,” Donella Meadows, a pioneering environmental scientist and respected systems thinker, pointed out, “you can choose whatever one will help to achieve your purpose.” The best strategy will stem from asking: “So, what? What will media do for people?” says Amy Gahran of the Poynter Institute. By strengthening the collective agreement about independent media’s ultimate aim, The Media Consortium (TMC) can help its members shift paradigms more easily, choose the most effective game changers and better weather any industry shifts to come.
While changes to the news industry advanced at a glacial pace for many years, as Clay Shirky claimed, transition often comes as quickly as the levees that broke in New Orleans. Trigger events can cause sudden floods before new a system is in place to prevent it. (more…)
Executive Summary: Journalism’s New and Emerging Realities
Four strategic questions frame the new challenges and opportunities for media organizations (outlined in the diagram below).
