MediaVidea

Foxnewsification: Everyone is a troll

Labels: news, trends

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:31 PM 0 Comments

R.I.P.: Michael Hart, Inventor of ebooks, Founder of Project Gutenberg

Labels: ebooks, news, obituary

posted by Pramit Singh @ 7:06 PM 0 Comments

Will the Arab Spring turn into an Arab Winter?

Labels: graphics, muslim, news

posted by Pramit Singh @ 2:22 PM 0 Comments

Self-written death notice of a pioneering hyperlocal reporter

Labels: journalist, news

posted by Pramit Singh @ 5:40 PM 0 Comments

Why is everyone so worked up on NYT's paywall? Because NYT is the fuel of all aggregators and most bloggers

Labels: news, online news

posted by Pramit Singh @ 5:14 PM 0 Comments

The four models for paying journalists

I will try to summarize the three main models of paying journalists for the news they bring to the public:

1. Regular Pay: The safest option. Alas, the print advertising money that paid your salary is shrinking under the onslaught of the internet.

The problem is acute enough so that even journalism teachers are starting to question this noble profession.

2. Micropayments: Where your readers pay you on each article read basis. Micropayment was once believed to offer reader and the writer a more flexible option than subscriptions. However, so far, no one has found a hassle free method of making micropayments.

3. Public Support: This method is currently in vogue. Web sites such as Newassignment.net have come up, channelizing outside funding to journalists who want to do investigative reporting.

Although, it appears sound (and noble as well) in nature, the big problem is:

Who gets the money?

Since there can be an indeterminate number of people in any ongoing investigation, proportioning money can be hard. Harder than doing the investigative work itself :-)

4. Advertising: Many journalists (Oma Malik, Rafat Ali) who have left their mainstream media jobs to start their own largely blog-based news sites and blog networks find the ad model appealing.

This is something that they can easily implement - book a domain, set up wordpress, add all the necessary accessories, sign up for Google Adsense, paste the code provided by Google and Voila! You are set.

However, since the ad model is the easiest, it is also the hardest to stand you from the huge crowd.

To succeed using the ad model, you will need to:
Find a profitable niche, develop a unique voice and work hours building and nurturing your target audience - commenting on other blogs, participating on forums etc. It is a long slog.

I am sure there are other models to pay journalists. Please share.

{Note: Model No. 1, the Pay Model is thriving here in India, where the print media is projected to make more money as a booming economy and a young, upwardly mobile demographic means that more Indians have access to reading matter than ever before. More on this, later]

Labels: adsense, blogging, citizen journalism, journalism, news, news business, online journalism

posted by Pramit Singh @ 2:47 PM 0 Comments

Newspapers are dead, long live the news

The reader is less concerned with the future of newspapers than what happens to news itself.

Faced with onslaught with the internet, the newspapers are in a self-flageling deep funk ,what reporters would like to term as a ‘transitional phase’.

Once when they are through this difficult period, having adopted technology on a huge scale and seen off non-working existing brands, the focus will once again be on the quality of the news itself.

1. Focus will be on the next generation newspapers’ connection with their readers.

Veteran technology journalist Dean Takahashi muses,

“All newspapers thought they were in the newspaper business…they overlooked that what they are doing is communicating with people and that's the broader business.”

2. There is a huge elephant sitting in every newsroom, past and future, immortalized by the incomparable “Citizen Kane”: The Owner.

Simon Jenkins writes about the myth of “golden age of the press”.
Media Moguls, from Hearst to Murdock have always sought control of the editorial voice and the news has suffered as a result.

In this web 2.0 era, when Digg Mobs rule, blog network owners diss their rivals and companies like Google own a wide variety of online properties, the issue of control will be more intensely fought.

The company that indexes this article may also one day own the wireless spectrum and bandwidth facilities.

The mob versus the big corporation:
if either wins, news loses.

3. The quality problem (or variety, depends on who’s complaining).

- Will we see a news economy dependent on the likes of Britney Spears and celebrity circus to make money?
- Is more investigative journalism, aided by creatively funded Crowd journalism (newassignment.net) going to show the way to better news?

4. The ‘most appropriate’ news business model.

The choice is between non-profit Trusts (BBC, Guradina) versus For-profit Conglomerates (News Corp) or Family-owned outfits (New York Times, Times of India)

Whatever the future, remember guru Jeff Jarvis' words,
“There will be more news and there will be more news reporters”.

Long live the news.

Labels: news, news business

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:35 PM 1 Comments

Fact of the day: the Space smells like sweet welding fumes

An astronaut writes,

It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space.

Labels: news, space

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:31 PM 0 Comments

Not everyone plays the media game

Doris Lessing, the 88 year old celebrated author, having won almost all other awards and long been in the running for the Nobel prize is 2007 Nobel prize winner for literature and as someone who championed feminist ideals long before it came into fashion, was characteristically quiet about the it all:

Oh Christ! ... I couldn't care less.

In these times, when even the winner of a reality shows for second rate celebrities is hailed as a hero and when politicians think image before performance, it is refreshing to see real achievers not getting caught up in the act.

Doris Lessing also added that that the Nobel Prize prize "doesn't mean anything artistically."

But, the media will be, well…media.

When Amartrya Sen won the Nobel Prize for Economics and an Indian journalist asked him did he feel proud as an Indian to have won something so big, the great man was pretty annoyed about this Nationalistic spin to things.

Labels: news, trends

posted by Pramit Singh @ 12:45 PM 0 Comments

A very short guide to Media Cliches

Why do we have so many clichés and buzzwords running amuck among our daily communication?

Unintentional or otherwise, clichés can drown the message (another cliché, see how bad things are?)

Seth Godin explains thus:

(Cliches/buzzwords) exist for one reason: to hide. By obfuscating, lying, confusing or just plain avoiding the issue, business people can avoid communicating. Do you have the guts to stop using cliches?

I searched Google news for ‘revolution’ and found more than 100 results from articles posted within past 2 hours.

Media clichés are an old problem. This article is from 1995 and is titled, “Downpour Of Media Cliches Threatens To Flood Nation”

Prorev has analyzed how some ‘top cliches’ of r time have fared on Google over a three-month period.

According to Prorev, the Top 20 phrase clichés are:

Real time - 359 million
Prior to - 341 million
In terms of - 333 million
Next generation - 224 million
Best practices - 191 million
State of the art - 168 million
In accordance with - 159 million
All new - 110 million UP 42 MILLION
World class - 110 million
Cutting edge - 95 million
Check it out - 90 million
Support services - 87 million
Sustainable development 80 million
Mission statement - 72 million
No problem - 67 million
Bottom line - 67 million
On the ground - 48 million
Civil society - 47 million
Period of time - 47 million
Strategic planning [plan] 37 million

Some of my other favorites from what is a long and interesting list.

The fact is
Welcome your feedback
Reality check
As a matter of fact
Tipping point
Having said that
Silver bullet
Make no mistake
Now more than ever
Window of opportunity
The rest is history
Sooner rather than later
Like, you know
No doubt in my mind
Resident expert
End of the world as we know it
Money shot
Recent studies have shown
New normal
Breaking down silos

How many times have we seen these phrases being used all over the blogosphere? (damn, a cliché, again)

Tom Mangan' tracks News Media Cliches on almost daily basis.

Here is Abe Rosenberg’s list of TV news clichés.
Abe on another word we use quite liberally:

Reportedly - Do you know anyone, anywhere on the planet, who uses “reportedly” in normal conversation? If someone is reporting something, say so.

From Gawker’s list of blog clichés:

• Best. [ultimate thing or experience.] Ever/Evar.
• [undesirable counter-example], not so much.
• FTW, O RLY, lol, FTL, OMG, FWIW, btw, PWND, ROTFL, etc.
• [negative experience, situation, or description]; I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.
• [purposefully non-ghetto statement], yo.
• [undesirable conclusion]. Oy.
• [amazed paraphrase of opposing position]. Seriously? Seriously?
• What's next? [outlandish scenario]?
• I'm looking at you, [example of complaint].
• Um, [condescension]?
• [Argument], wait for it, [rhetorical flourish].
• [Undesirable experience] made my [sensory organ] bleed.
• [adjective]-y goodness
• [any word]-gasm
• [x] is the new [y].

From The Guardian, this is a link to a Pdf document containing clichés often found in British Media.

Factiva did the research and here are the toppers from the Factiva Cliché Index:
1. "at the end of the day"
(This phrase is in many people’s top clichés list. A Bollywood Film producer, replying to charges of copying from Hollywood, used this phrase so many times during a short TV interview that I could hear the reporter getting a tinkle on the side)
2. "in the red"
3. "in the black"
4. "level playing field"
5. "time and again"
6. "wealth of experience"

Curiously, most of these are used by the Financial Press.

I think there are two kind of media clichés:
1. Terminology Cliches, which fade away with time – remember “the information superhighway”?
2. The Language clichés – phrases such as “actually”, “basically”, “at the end of the day” and so on.

An interesting discussion on Media Clichés goes on here.

Before we forget the art of putting our message across, time to look at George Orwell's advice on English Language:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Related links
The Plain English Campaign

Complete List of Banished Words at Lake Superior University

The Book of Clichés

On a side note, Seth Godin has started an Encyclopedia of Business Cliches on Squidoo

Labels: cliches, news, trends

posted by Pramit Singh @ 11:49 AM 1 Comments

The most annoying thing with modern media: equal time for nutjobs

Drew Curtis founded Fark.com (a cooler Digg) and is the author of ‘ It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News’.

The title is self explanatory – Drew Curtis is not happy at the current state of news media – there is too much frivolity.

In an interview with Tim Ferriss, he responds thus when asked about what media pattern he found most annoying:

Equal Time for Nutjobs. It's all funny when you talk about people not believing in moon landings, or who think an alien crash-landed in Texas in 1897, or who believe that there was once an ancient Mediterranean civilization in Florida. It's another thing entirely when people start to believe that denying the Holocaust is a valid opinion.

Maybe, we ought to start a wikipedia for nutjobs - Paris Hilton, first entry?
:-)

Labels: fark, news, paris hilton

posted by Pramit Singh @ 2:12 PM 0 Comments

Three Things I don't like about the BBC

The BBC is the benchmark as far as news quality and coverage go for quite a long time and there is nothing that can be added to this account. However, there have been times when the Beeb has been over the board while covering the news.

I have been a long watcher of the channel and the local cable operator will vouch for my testy feistiness when I don’t get the signal, as was the case when BBC World went completely digital and turned Pay.

1. The Queen and Brand Britain: There is too much of the ‘royal focus’ and may be it is because the royals are Britain’s primary global branding weapon. That said, it becomes a bit heavy to learn about Prince William’s latest girlfriend.

2. Religion: BBC is renown for its objective reporting but it can’t help itself from covering the Pope’s visit, and at times it can too Catholic for its own good.

3. Using the ‘Great’ attribute liberally: Although not in huge doses like other news channels, the BBC uses the ‘Great’ attribute liberally when covering events such as auctions – the Beatles and Andy Warhol may have been icons for the Baby Boomers but they are blips for rest of us – why not call the truth and say that the Looter businessmen of Russia and the newly rich in Asia can’t make a difference between Warhol and Damien Hearst, art being nothing more than wallpaper/Trophies at the Mantlepiece.

A case may be pointed for Britain becoming the playground for the newly rich from all the sad parts of the world and the news media is loosing the objectivity over it.

Labels: BBC, news, TV

posted by Pramit Singh @ 2:43 PM 1 Comments

Virginia Tech shootings and the news media’s job

Should the news media publish or show everything?

A debate has sprung up about whether the U.S. TV channels were right in showing the Virginia Tech shooter an armed Cho Seung-Hui in full form.

Were the channels right?

Those who support airing the videos:

Washington Post’s Marc Fisher, who says,

Journalists do not have the right to hide material that is so clearly essential to a full understanding of a major public issue. ...Especially in a case as emotionally difficult as this one, the public has a right to see key evidence that helps us understand just how detached from reality this guy was, and just what kinds of social ills are reflected in his particular psychosis.

Those who oppose such practices:

CBC News editor-in-chief Tony Burman, who says,

… I think their handling of these tapes was a mistake. As I watched them last night, sickened as I'm sure most viewers were, I imagined what kind of impact this broadcast would have on similarly deranged people. ... I had this awful and sad feeling that there were parents watching these excerpts on NBC who were unaware they will lose their children in some future copycat killing triggered by these broadcasts.

(both links via Romenesco)

Deborah Jones at the Canadian Journalist blog rounds up the situation with the headline, “On giving a killer what he wants."

There is too much media.
To make money and to stand out, these ‘corporation’ would go to any lengths, justifying things with the usual ‘it was our duty’ routine.

Too many channels, too many banalities.
We can make a sound case for the trivializing of the mass media.

If the aim was to go inside the mind of a troubled man, they should have gone ahead, built a documentary, a movie, National Geographic special, expert panel discussions, among other things.

Going inside the mind of a troubled mind – this reminds me of the anchor asking a journalist standing in traffic jam on a crowded, hot and dusty junction in New Delhi, "How do you feel?"

Too many channels, too much redundant behavior.

Cho Seung-Hui was a troubled person who committed meaningless crimes.
Why put more meaning to it than necessary?

Giving attention is giving importance.
That is the media secret.

Labels: news

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:46 PM 2 Comments

State of Media according to man who published the Mohammad cartoons

Flemming Rose is the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published the ‘infamous’ cartoons on the Prophet Mohammed.

It was Mr. Rose who commissioned the cartoons. About that, he says this:

what I wrote commissioning them was not, “Draw cartoons making fun of the prophet,” but “Draw Mohammad as you see him,” which is very neutral.

Elaborating on the topic, he says in a recent interview in CJR,

It is an act of love and inclusion to satirize people. There is some kind of recognition in that, to know you can laugh and make fun of one another.

Why did he did what he did

Mr. Rose claims he solicited the cartoons to assert freedom of speech.

He also wanted to fight against the self-censorship, something he says is ‘crippling the West’ when it comes to “accommodating Muslim sensitivities.”

On U.S. Media’s decision not publish the cartoons
He says he understands the Americans’ concerns as they have people living and working in many ‘sensitive’ parts of the world.

Dangerous ‘experts’
Mr. Rose says the media is making experts out of people just because they have a particular religious or political leaning.

Most importantly, Mr. Rose suggests we should explain from ‘where this person is speaking, if it’s an institution or university with a certain tradition or whatever’.

Labels: controversey, news

posted by Pramit Singh @ 2:28 PM 1 Comments

Media dystopia: it isn’t happening

JD Lasica at Social Media, co-founder of Ourmedia among other notable things, links to videos of Dan Gillmore talking about 1. the future of newspapers and 2. about the dangers from Telcos and cable companies.

Here is what I think.

1. Are we losing professional journalists as newspapers die?

That is a scary thought. Commenting on the negative aspects of Wikinews, Jimmy Wales once said that where Wikinews and other Citizen Media lagged behind traditional ones such as The New York Times was traditional hardcore investigative reporting, on the spot reporting and related stuff, which the trained journalist is perhaps better trained to do.

Taking an idea from the Future of news article on this blog, IMHO, professional journalists will need support in terms of donation drives (NPR), Pro-Am ventures (Assignment Zero), support from big guns (Craig Newmark funded New Assignment), support from Non-profits established especially to fund quality journalism.

Idea: Maybe, Bill Gates can do PR one-up on Google by creating a Citizen Media foundation with a $1 billion corpus aimed to fund local level quality journalism.

2. The influence of cable companies and Telcos who may control what we see.
We read about similar stuff during the Internet rising of 1993-onwards, when talks of 500 channels, controlling the last mile were entering the lexicon.

Think of it this way: after cheap PCs & server space which is fueling the so called Web 2.0 startup boom, bandwidth and access charges are next in line to crash.

Moreover, disruptive technologies including Wimax, Bluetooth-enabled local P2P servers, Open source mobile phones and others will soon start creating headaches for the big guns.

Rather, the main challenge for many publishers will be to keep calm, adapt fast and continue creating great pieces of journalism.

There will be many other changes and I am sure things are not as bad as they are. This is not the first time an industry has cried out in agony over the incredible pace of changes.

Link to Dan's Videos

Labels: citizen journalism, news

posted by Pramit Singh @ 5:01 PM 1 Comments

What not to learn from the world's largest English-language broadsheet newspaper

This is part two of the earlier MediaVidea story on the future of news. I want to draw readers' attention towards the lower end of the journalism fulcrum, of markets where there is less news and more noise, of markets where newspapers are forging ahead instead of folding up operations, of readerships that lap up sensation, mistaking it for news because of the TINA factor (There Is No Alternative).

The Times of India newspaper today sells 2.7 million copies daily, and has an average issue readership in excess of 8.4 million.

I have never worked for TOI or any other paper. What I am going to point out is what I don't like as an avid reader of newspapers and I think media can bring in positive changes in a developing society such as India. Living in a country where corruption, mis-governance, pervasive feudal structures, a VIP culture go hand in hand, I think and maybe this may seem wrong to some, that rather than write about the yet another rape/miscarriage of justice type story, you might educate people to how to go about - in this case, why not run 1 minute shorts about basic self-defense, basic law and related useful information?

The things that are wrong with TOI may also be said of many other papers in these parts of the world.

I had written down some points to say about what I felt was wrong with the paper that is more than 100 years old but Wikipedia made it easy.

The Wikipedia article says the same things that all media folks in India know but rarely dare to say it out.
Reason: The ‘Lady from Boribunder’ can be a generous paymaster and going by its reputation, it can stifle dissent quickly.

- Many accuse that The Times of India does not always acknowledge its Indian news sources.

- Many readers say the paper has modelled sections of the newspaper upon fashion tabloids.

- Stories of management interference in editorial policy are common. In fact, even I don't know who edits TOI nowadays. t

- The policy of selling paid news: The Times Group has a scheme called "medianet", which other firms can use to purchase editorial coverage in the daily.

- More recently, the Times Group has started a focused practice on acquiring clients under a program named "Private Treaties", in which PR and advertisements are provided in return for purchase of client's company shares.

- The newspaper unabashedly promotes its inhouse brands owned by its parent company, M/s Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd, (such as Times Internet, Femina, Radio Mirchi, Planet M, Times Music).

- The city supplements issued with the newspaper usually features some games, jokes, a fortune teller and television guide. The coverage is skewed towards glamor, fashion, life style articles and 'filmy' issues , which often contribute more than 75% of the entire supplement. You can credit TOI to bringing in the so-called Page 3 society and related coverage, like the Page 6 of New York papers, creating people who are famous for being famous. Director Madhur Bhandarkar even made a satirical film on the issue, called what else but, 'Page 3'.

- Overly sensationalizing news stories. The paper, celebrates the consumerist boom with the usual rhetoric of "Young India", a favorite subject with every other publication and electronic media outlets.

- Less of 'Hows and Whys, the cornerstones of reportage. The paper offers no solutions to the problems it seemingly highlights. You can say the same about most other media properties in this country.

A Simple Guide to the Indian Newspaper Market
The monopoly of the big two newspaper groups in India shuts out competition. I do not know about other newspaper markets in other countries but TOI and HT (Hindustan Times) sell their papers for almost 1/5 of their printing and distribution costs.

Thus only well-funded people can think of entering the news business in India. According to some estimates, it would cost upwards of Rs. 2 billion and upwards to launch a newspaper in India.

It is no surprise that print newspapers will continue to thrive in India for more than in Western Countries as PC and Internet penetration is still abysmal.

A bit of Newspaper economics: Cigarettes, newspapers and more...
A pack of Camel cigarettes cost around $3.32 in the United States; whereas, a 1 week subscription to the NYT might cost around $12.

In India, a big pack of Gold Flake costs around Rs. 38 whereas; a one month subscription to TOI costs Rs. 78.

I am no economist expert or anything but these figures do give you an idea about the Indian Newspaper market.
Idea: Somebody ought to create the Media version the Economist's Big MAC index.


Your typical Indian reader might spend Rs. 3-5 on a cigarette stick or a cup of tea; he won’t spend it on a newspaper.

He is spoiled silly by the low prices offered by the big newspaper companies.

You would find it surprising that the people living in the poor hinterlands were happy paying around Rs 3-4 for a paper whereas the city people paid only Rs. 1.50.

Now, with the increasing media consolidation in India, the big paper companies are offering lower prices to beat out competition. The core of this media expansion into the Indian hinterland is the stringer, who is paid around Rs. 1500 per month to submit stories. That is less than what even a laborer earns and so the idea of great news reporting goes for a six.

So, what do we learn from the world's largest newspaper?
Nothing.

News is news. Period.

Think better, think positive.

Labels: Media, news

posted by Pramit Singh @ 6:49 PM 4 Comments