Salim Ismail is the executive director of Singularity University. He explains that the U researches how to understand non-linear phenomena. I ask him whether that understanding has to be emergent.
With the turn of the decade, the news media are seeing shifts from hyper competition to collaboration. News organizations are partnering to produce the news, while journalists are working with the audience to bring them content that they demand.
Media mavens too are hoping for more collaboration in the coming year, perhaps with more action from media executives as well. And though old media may be slow to change, there are a few glimpses of tools, partnerships and models that show how news media are becoming more collaborative.
1. Curating and Filtering the Stream
We’ve already talked about the importance of journalists being curators and contextualizers using collaborative tools like Publish2. News consumers have created a social link economy from sources that they trust: their friends. The editor has been replaced by a friend on Facebook or someone you trust and follow on Twitter.
Lyn Headley and Steve Farrell developed The Hourly Press, which uses Twitter’s API to track popular stories of the hour based on link sharing from a “publisher’s” or user’s select group of “editors” that they follow on Twitter. It helps filter the noise and see what the people of your choosing find important.
“We’re at the intersection of a more traditional, top-down editorial model and a direct democracy or crowd-edited approach,” Headley said.
The Hourly Press also gives the user a way to catch up on news they might have missed without having to read a lot of tweets, Headley said. Because “editors” are selected by a user, it lets people know who the influential people are in a community. Right now Hourly Press is available per request.
2. Working With the Audience
Journalists are relying on the former audience more than ever to create content and curate the news stream. But perhaps a move toward creating a more established collaborative relationship with the audience is in order.
Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at NYU, sketched out an idea for ExplainThis.org, where readers ask questions that can be answered by journalists through reporting. This isn’t just a search or a Yahoo! Answers kind of service, but ones that take “real journalism” to answer the question well, Rosen said in his outline. Users would not only be asking the questions, but part of the process. This is also content that is completely based on what users want and are looking for.
3. Collaborative Tools like Google Wave
Google Wave is beginning to change the way newsrooms create news and the way we consume it. But it is also allowing the ability for news organizations to collaborate with the “former audience.” Robert Quigley, the social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman, said he sees comments on stories becoming a “living, breathing thing with people jumping into a breaking story with live updates and thoughts.” He said he’s big on Google Wave, in part, because waves can be embedded and have the potential to serve as live wikis.
Mathew Ingram, the communities editor at the Globe and Mail, said Google Wave is another tool that makes it easier for people “formerly known as the audience” to take part in the news gathering process.
To drive collaboration as a point, I used Google Wave to collaborate, interview and discuss some of these ideas (and others) with most of those mentioned in this post. I outlined some starting discussions of trends that are emerging, which served as a launching point for discussion. The Wave generated more than 100 wavelets, or messages. The format worked well (aside from Wave crashing several times).
4. Social News Partnerships
One form of collaboration that is becoming more prevalent is news organizations partnering with other companies or institutions, including social sites. We’ve seen this with the MSNBC deal with the @BreakingNews Twitter account and a partnership between Fark and USA Today.
These partnerships, in part, stem from news organizations realizing what they do well and collaborating on the rest, said David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us.
“Could USA Today build its own Fark-esque site? Yes. Would that be ‘doing what it does best?’ No. Hence, they should work together,” Cohn said.
Andrew Nystrom, social media editor at the Los Angeles Times, said that Fark partnered with their news organization too because they decided they weren’t very good at reporting “straight, hard news,” and so they worked with the LA Times on a custom feed of the funniest LA Times headlines.
5. Large News Partnering With Blogs
We’re also seeing more larger news organizations partnering with smaller organizations that cover specific subjects or communities really well. News organizations are hungry for more content and are trying to move further into covering local communities.
Paul Bradshaw, course director of the MA Online Journalism program at Birmingham City University noted the example of the Guardian’s move to build up its local news coverage by hiring local bloggers and sites like MySociety.
6. Local News Organizations Team Up
Local news organizations are also beginning to work together as they cut back on budgets and look for ways to fill in the gap in content. We’ve seen this between local TV stations and newspapers, but now there are examples of longtime newspaper competitors sharing sports coverage and news organizations sharing one another’s space and resources. There’s also the example of the Miami Herald creating a network of community news sources and republishing the stories on one another’s sites.
In some cases news organizations are even pooling resources to contribute to social media. Eleven international news media, for example, joined to collaborate on updating a Facebook page dedicated to covering United Nation’s climate conference in Copenhagen.
7. University Partnerships
University journalism programs are also playing a bigger role than just educating journalists, but producing content creators while they are still in school. Carrie Brown-Smith, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Memphis, also points to the collaborative efforts between universities and news organizations, such as the Bay Area News Project, a partnership between Berkley’s Graduate School of Journalism and a public radio station.
“However, I’ve found that, understandably, ceding even a modicum of control to students/professors does not come easily, even when news organizations are facing down a situation in which there are a serious deficit of boots on the ground,” Brown-Smith said.
More journalism resources from Mashable:
- 10 News Media Content Trends to Watch in 2010
- 8 Must-Have Traits of Tomorrow’s Journalist
- 10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media
- The Journalist’s Guide to Twitter
- Why NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media
- Social Journalism: Past, Present, and Future
- Everything I Need to Know About Twitter I learned in J School
- 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Warchi
Reviews: Facebook, Google Wave, Twitter, iStockphoto, news
Tags: business, collaboration, journalism, media, News
First Twitter, then Foursquare, now the Weather Channel? People are broadcasting their wedding proposals all over the place these days.
That’s right, the other night Weather Channel meteorologist Kim Perez’s beau, police Sgt. Marty Cunningham (best name EVER), asked her to marry him during a routine forecast. Good thing she said yes, otherwise Cunningham’s disposition would have been cloudy with a serious chance of all-out mortification.
Social media and viral videos have taken the place of the jumbotron when it comes to marriage proposals, allowing one to sound one’s not-so barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. In today’s look-at-me society, public proposals are probably the least offensive byproduct. Meaning that even the most hardened of cynics can admit that they’re kind of sweet.
Check out Cunningham’s proposal below (I personally enjoy that the weather map reads “ringing in the New Year”), and then dive right into our list of even more social media wooers. What’s next? Entire domains dedicated to popping the question?
More Wedding Bells and Whistles
CONGRATS: Mashable Marriage Proposal Live at #SocialGood [Video]
Man Proposes Marriage via Foursquare Check-In
Did We Just Witness a Twitter Marriage Proposal?
Successful Marriage Proposal on Twitter Today: We #blamedrewscancer
Just Married: Groom Changes Facebook Relationship Status at the Altar [VIDEO]
Tags: facebook, foursquare, twitter, viral video
Jos Schuurmans usefully coins “Amplification is the new circulation.” And then he usefully worries about how to handle the fact that with each amplification, the link to the source becomes more tenuous. The problem is that the amplification metaphor only captures part of the phenomenon. Yes, a post from a low-traffic site that gets re-broadcast by a big honking site has had its signal amplified. But the amplification happens by being passed through more hands, with each transfer potentially introducing noise, as in the archetypical game of “telephone” or “gossip.” On the other hand, because this is not mere signal-passing, each transfer can also introduce more meaning; the signal/noise framing doesn’t actually work very well here.
Remember me?
Sorry for lack of posts. Happy to report I am very busy on both the pressDOOH and Preset fronts, and seeing a lot of airports (but dodging storms).
Anyway, there is encouraging news on the Adobe Flash licensing beat - with a senior Adobe guy promising: Adobe will make an unambiguous statement in the new year.
This was from the Director of Adobe’s Open Screen Project, which is Adobe’s big cross-platform initiative. He found me through another Adobe guy who conceded the company’s position was confusing, and promised to look into it. He found me through Stephen Randall of Locamoda. So if we do get clarity, finally, Stephen gets a gold star.
Nate Kidwell of DS newcomer Ludicast, which uses Flash extensively, has also been a big help, and pointed me (among other things) to a post on a Flash developer’s blog, called ickydime.
The comments are the interesting part of the post, as it drew in some Adobe people.
One noted:
Anyone can install Adobe Flash Player from adobe.com. But to *redistribute* Player in your own device requires agreements with Adobe — otherwise anything might get called “Player”. The Open Screen Project doesn’t require cash licensing, but does require certain capabilities such as the ability to update.
The developer/blogger then responded:
From your recap, it sounds as though you can install the Runtime if the device goes to Adobe.com for the installation AND if the device has the ability to update the player.
Another Adobe person chimed in, noting first that the end user licensing agreement is getting old:
If you check the date, the EULA is from Feb of 2008.
Also, keep in mind that Adobe may not be the ones distributing the player binaries. Through Open Screen Project, partners can license source for porting in which case the EULA does not come from Adobe.
Also note that OSP royalty free terms are for open systems with the goal of providing a consistent runtime for web browsing and applications. Closed systems do not qualify for royalty free licensing.
So … the issue is at least now on the Adobe radar, though it would be great to read something, from someone, that is not burdened by licensing-speak. What I get from these exchanges is a sense - repeat sense - that everything is peachy if the digital signage playback software you develop and distribute does not include Flash right in the build. The PC being used as the playback engine needs to go out to the Internet cloud to fetch the latest version and install it on the box, and then sit, deployed, in the field, able to go back to Adobe to get updates and patches to the Flash player.
If the Flash player is part of the build and offer to customers, you need to get licensing. I think.
Stay tuned.
Loopt was one of the first applications to socialize location-sharing from mobile devices. As of late, however, its service has been eclipsed by the buzz generated by relative newbies like Foursquare and Gowalla, who’ve thrown a social gaming twist into the location mix.
To compensate, Loopt is migrating more towards these apps in functionality: A new tool —Tips — was included in an update to their iPhone app [iTunes link] last night.
Tips is fairly straightforward — and almost a direct replica of Foursquare in terms of function — allowing users to add their personal recommendations to places.
Tips appear in a few different touch points, so you can add a tip to a place page and your Loopt check-in message can double up as a tip as well. While convenient at times, the “share your check-in publicly as a tip” option is default for Loopt check-in messages, which means that tips could easily be diluted with less-than-helpful status updates.
The thing about Foursquare tips that make them so handy is that they’re location-aware. Say someone entered a tip about the amazing salad at the restaurant next door to you, when you check in on Foursquare, you’ll be greeted with a push notification that includes that tip. Clearly there’s an advantage to discovering a tip as opposed to having to search for one, but for now it looks as if Loopt’s tips are static to place pages.
Loopt still lacks the gaming features that the new kids on the location block boast, but in our Foursquare and Gowalla head-to-head we noted that CEO Sam Altman has previously stated, “It’s probably a safe assumption that we’ll add some gaming elements.”
Should Loopt want to compete with Foursquare and Gowala on a gaming front, it definitely has its work cut out for it.
Reviews: Foursquare, iPhone
Tags: location-based service, loopt, Mobile 2.0
It’s been a very good year for content marketing. In fact, visitors searching our site for the phrase “content marketing” increased by 85% in 2009 over 2008.
Social media certainly loomed larger in the past 12 months but interest in content marketing strategy accounted for the majority of the most popular posts.
Here is the [...]
