Tag: media

Twitter and the future of journalism

twitter logo On Friday, David Schlesinger from Reuters posted an entry to his blog discussing Twitter and the future of journalism. David had been tweeting from the World Economic Forum, and found that his updates beat the Reuters newswire. No big surprise, but it prompted a bunch of questions:

Is it journalism?

Is it dangerous?

Is it embarrassing that my tweets even beat the Reuters newswire?

Am I destroying Reuters standards by encouraging tweeting or blogging?

David’s answers are: Yes, Potentially, No, and No. I love that someone in the “mainstream” media is able to answer these questions honestly and openly!

His entire post is filled with wonderful quotes, such as:

I have no idea what journalism will look like in five years except that it will be different than it is now. That’s a great thing, I believe.

Fantastic outlook on things, in my opinion. Twitter is changing journalism and news media for the better. Ignore it at your own peril. I can’t say it any better than David himself:

If I don’t beat the Reuters wire with a live tweet because I deliberately hold back, someone else will. If I don’t beat the Reuters wire because I’m slow or inattentive, someone else will.

There’s something to be said for holding back, providing context, and thoughtfully articulating a story or idea. But when you’re talking about breaking and spreading the news, speed is the name of the game, and nothing at the moment does it faster or more effectively than Twitter.

Another way to look at it is chunking. Give me bite-sized chunks as the news happens, and when I have time later, I’ll explore the topic in more detail. Twitter is perfect for chunking news.

Take a couple minutes and read the entire post. I’m looking forward to reading it again in a year – I suspect it won’t seem so unique and refreshing by then!

Ups and Downs for Podcast Hosting in 2008

podcasting Back in October, Dickson and I announced that we were shutting down our hosting service Podcast Spot. At the end of November, we disabled uploading and are now in the final transition phase for downloads and RSS feeds. In February 2009, the site will be taken offline completely.

We’re not the only podcast hosting service that shutdown in 2008 – at least two other services also called it quits recently:

The most visible of these services was Podango, so news of its demise created some discussion over the holidays. From Podcasting News:

While Smith attributes Podango’s state to the effects of the financial market, Podango and other podcast hosting services have not demonstrated that there’s much of a need for podcast-specific Web hosting services.

Podcango’s situation raises the question: Is there a real need for podcast-specific hosting services?

It’s a good question, and one I have thought about quite a bit in the latter half of 2008. For the vast majority of people, YouTube, Flickr, and similar tools are good enough. If they want to share some audio or (more likely) video, these services make it easy to do so. Increasingly, video cameras come with built-in support for YouTube, so the user doesn’t really have to do anything but record. This was the curve we attempted to get ahead of with Podcast Spot.

For a smaller number of people, something more advanced is required. Maybe they want to sell advertising, or have more control over production quality, or gain access to better statistics. I think this group can be split into two – the DIY crowd, and the use-a-hosting-service crowd. So yes, there is a need for podcast-specific hosting services, but perhaps the market is a lot smaller than everyone thought.

It wasn’t all bad news for podcast hosting in 2008 though. Some familiar services still appear to be going strong: Libsyn, Podbean, and Podkive to name just a few. Back in July, RawVoice announced they were entering the market with Blubrry. In August, Wizzard Software announced increased revenues and decreased expenses and losses. And on October 21st, Blip.tv announced they had raised another round of investment.

I’d expect 2009 to be similar – a mix of ups and downs for podcast hosting services.

It’s important to realize that we’re talking about podcast hosting here. I don’t think the demise of Podango or any other service should be taken to mean that podcasting itself is in trouble. As Paul Colligan said:

Podango’s problems say as little about the future of Podcasting as GM’s problems say about the future of cars.

Podcasting is all about communication, and the need for that hasn’t gone away. Podcasting itself is doing just fine.

Old & New Media: Why can’t we work together?

This morning I attended a press event at NAIT where the winner of the 2008 novaNAIT challenge was announced. Congratulations to Stephane Contre who won first place with his crime forecasting software. You can read more in my post at Techvibes.

There was an impressive number of media people present – perhaps, as one of the NAIT representatives remarked, because everyone is sick of doing Christmas stories. Or maybe they were there simply because it’s their job to be there. While I was standing around, I happened to overhear a conversation between a couple of the camera guys. One guy did most of the talking, and though I only heard part of it, I think I caught enough:

“Why would you put this on the web? No one cares about this kind of story. You basically have to force-feed it to them during the evening news.”

Not word-for-word, but that’s the gist of it. I’m not sure who he is or which organization he’s from, so his job is safe (not that I’d name names anyway). If I were his boss however, I’d have fired him on the spot had I overheard that remark. He clearly doesn’t get it.

novaNAIT Challenge 2008

Why wouldn’t you put this story online? Give me almost any topic, and I’ll find you a community of people who care about it on the web. That’s one of the greatest things about the web – it makes it easy for small, geographically separated groups of people with similar interests to come together. And when they do, they’re not so small anymore.

Anyway, I don’t know what he was talking about. Technology and entrepreneurship, especially together, are topics that tons of people care about. Such as the community of people that read Techvibes.

Here’s a better question – why bother sending that camera guy for a story like this? I arrived with a point-and-shoot and my Flip video camera. The media guys all had DSLRs and large fancy video cameras, complete with lighting and microphones and other equipment. Obviously they acquired some higher quality content, suitable for broadcasting, but one camera could have done that – half a dozen wasn’t necessary. Heck, give one guy a Nikon D90 and he could have recorded high quality stills and HD video for the evening news. It seems like an incredible waste of resources the way news is gathered now.

Basically, what many people have been saying became real for me today. Local media organizations should be doing what they do best, and linking to the rest. This wasn’t a “breaking news” kind of story – why not let the citizen journalists gather the news and use the organization’s resources for something else? Why can’t we work together?

Of course, most local news organizations don’t know the meaning of the word link. They can’t even be bothered to hyperlink the URLs they include inside their own stories!

Here’s the funniest part of all this. This story will probably get a sixty second spot on the evening news, and the folks who are interested will fire up Google to find out more (I remain unconvinced that anyone uses those annoying “links in the news” sections of TV station websites). And guess where they’ll end up? Potentially here, and definitely at Techvibes (and they can then follow a link to all my photos and videos from the event). Heck, four of the top ten results in Google for “novaNAIT challenge” were created by me and all I did is write a couple of posts and upload some photos. So, thanks in advance camera guy!

Northern Voice 2009 Speaker Submission: Examining Twitter’s Impact on News Media

artwork by basco5I’ll be making my way to Vancouver once again this February for Northern Voice – Canada’s blogging and social media conference. I’ve attended every year since the event started in 2005, with varying levels of participation. In that first year, I was on a media panel. In 2006 and 2007, I did some recording and podcasting of the sessions. And last year, I was just a regular attendee. This year, I’d like to throw my hat in the ring to be a speaker. What would I like to talk about? Why, Twitter of course!

The deadline for speaker submissions is Friday. My intent with this post is to get some feedback – do you think what I’m pitching here would be an interesting and worthwhile session? Here’s what I’m thinking:

Examining Twitter’s Impact on News Media

Whether you “get it” or not, Twitter has changed news media forever. The microblogging service continues its push into the mainstream, and is wreaking all kinds of havoc along the way!

In this session we’re going to see how Twitter is impacting news media around the world. We’ll take a look at some notable examples from 2008, with particular focus placed on the American and Canadian political events. We’ll see why Twitter is the best place for breaking news, and how large news media organizations are starting to take advantage of the service – both for broadcasting and listening.

Local news is also being greatly affected by Twitter. We’ll examine one Canadian city in particular, Edmonton, to see how Twitter is used throughout the month of January 2009. Using data retrieved primarily from Twitter Search, we’ll examine the statistics (such as number of tweets posted, what time of day is most active, etc.) to identify trends and to help us correlate tweets with the local events and news of the month.

Finally, we’ll quickly examine how Twitter’s impact on news media translates to other industries – no one is safe!

I’d love to hear any comments or feedback you might have, as well as any suggestions on how to improve the session. Leave a comment below, or email me if that’s more your thing. I’d also encourage you to keep an eye on the Northern Voice site for updates! Thank you in advance!

Social Media and Local News in Edmonton

My favorite media/journalism/news blogger is Jeff Jarvis. His blog, BuzzMachine, is a treasure trove of information and insight on how the web is transforming the world of news media. Jeff has spent a lot of time thinking about local news specifically, a topic I am very interested in. Yesterday he wrote a post summarizing his thoughts on where local news might go. These are the highlights for me:

“The next generation of local (news) won’t be about news organizations but about their communities.”

“News will emerge from networks.”

“Do what you do best and link to the rest will be a foundation of the future architecture of news.”

“News will find new forms past the article, which will include any media, wiki snapshots of knowledge, live reports, crowd reports, aggregation, curation, data bases, and other forms not yet created.”

I encourage you to read the entire post, it’s definitely worth it.

Thinking about Jeff’s post made me wonder what local news organizations here in Edmonton are doing to prepare for the future. Are they focused on communities? Are they creating networks? Are they specializing and linking elsewhere? Are they supporting news beyond the article?

In general, I think the answer to those questions is no. An examination of how local news organizations are using social media is somewhat encouraging, however. Why look at social media? Generally speaking, I think blogs, social networks, etc., address all four areas – communities, networks, linking & sharing, and life beyond the article.

These are some of the traditional sources for local news here in Edmonton, with links to their social media activities:

As you can see, there are quite a few organizations that still haven’t gotten their feet wet with social media (unless I missed some links – one thing all these sites have in common is that they are terribly messy and hard to navigate). The Journal appears to be the most active, with a Facebook application, Twitter account, and blogs and podcasts on its site. The relatively new iNews880 is similarly active. All the organizations offer RSS feeds except for Global Edmonton, Citytv Edmonton, and SEE Magazine (the Edmonton Sun recently added feeds).

These days, I get most of my local news from four main sources:

The trend I have noticed is that breaking news starts with the traditional organizations but is spread by individuals through services like Twitter, Connect2Edmonton, and Facebook (and good old-fashioned word of mouth too). Organizations like The Journal have people dedicated to gathering the news, so it makes sense that they’d be the ones to break the news (most of the time). They could definitely be doing a better job of interacting with the community and forming networks online to spread that news, however. And they pretty much do nothing beyond the article, at least at the moment (heck the Journal won’t even hyperlink URLs inside their articles).

Take yesterday’s story about the new arena concept, for instance. I first heard about the news on C2E. I understand that Citytv was the first traditional source to pick up on the story. I spread the news via Twitter and my blog, and others did the same. Today articles appeared in The Journal, on CBC Edmonton’s site, and elsewhere, but they didn’t really offer anything new, and they didn’t provide links to the images, video, maps, or other bits of information readers might be interested in.

I like the vision for local news that Jeff Jarvis has suggested, but it seems to me that the local organizations aren’t leading the way into that future. Instead, individuals are dragging them into it. I wonder if that will always be the case?

Five new radio stations approved in Edmonton

mic Believe it or not, the CRTC has approved five applications for new FM radio stations in Edmonton. According to the official decision, that would bring the total number of commercial radio stations in the Edmonton Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) to 21, though Wikipedia already lists 25 stations (I suppose some are considered non-commercial). Here are a few other highlights from the document:

  • From 2003 to 2007, total revenues grew at a compound annual rate of 9.8% in the Edmonton radio market, compared to 9.9% for the province of Alberta and 6% for all of Canada over the same period.
  • In 2007, the Edmonton radio market recorded a profit before interest and tax (PBIT) of 26.7%, slightly above Alberta’s PBIT of 26.4% in 2007 and well above Canada’s 2007 PBIT of 20%.
  • An economic outlook for 2008 released by the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation (EEDC) in November 2007 predicts continued strong economic growth in the region.

Though it might seem crowded, the radio market in Edmonton appears to be doing quite well. It should be noted that 14 applications were submitted, so 9 of those were rejected by the CRTC. The approved stations include an Aboriginal language station covering all of Alberta, as well as Adult Contemporary, Adult Album Alternative, Essential Alternative and Young Music stations. I’m pretty sure that John Yerxa’s New 107 FM was the first of the new stations with a website.

It’s also worth taking a look at the Summer 2008 ratings book, by the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement. As usual, last link on the left has all of the details:

When they’re not spinning tunes or tales, most radio folk will say a summer book is a lightweight and not truly indicative of the market. However, total listenership was up, reaching 1,647,000 compared to 1,631,000 in the previous book, suggesting BBM diary-keeping was done in earnest.

The top radio station for the period was The Bear (100.3 FM), with 630 CHED taking second place and CISN Country (103.9 FM) in third. Corus’ new station, iNews 880, placed 16th. You can read the full report in PDF format. The Fall 2008 ratings book will be released on November 27th.

I don’t listen to much radio myself – CDs and my iPod work well for me. When I do listen, it’s to either 630 CHED or The Bounce (91.7 FM, which placed 4th in the Summer 2008 book). Very rarely do I “station surf” so I doubt I’ll hear much of the new stations first hand.

Podcast Spot is shutting down

podcast spot As some of you undoubtedly know by now, Dickson and I recently made the decision to take Podcast Spot offline. We started notifying our users a couple weeks ago, and today made it public on the website. Here’s our message to users:

We regret to inform you that after two years of helping you share your creativity with the world, we have made the decision to cease Podcast Spot operations beginning on November 30th, 2008.

We’d like to reassure you that we’re not just flipping the switch – our plan is to shut the service down in phases. Starting December 1st, 2008 you will no longer be able to upload files to Podcast Spot, but your domain, downloads, and RSS feed will continue to operate through February 2009. During that time we’ll work with you to redirect users to your new site and feed. Beginning March 1st, 2009 Podcast Spot will be taken offline completely.

We are doing our best to ensure that the entire process is handled as smoothly as possible, and in a manner that is professional and courteous. I know if I was one of the podcasters I’d want lots of notice – so that’s what we’ve done by not taking the site down completely until next year.

Recently we’ve been in touch with Libsyn, and they have agreed to help migrate our users to their system (on an opt-in basis). That’ll be a great help for a number of our podcasters, because it means they don’t really have to do anything – we’ll work with Libsyn to make sure everything happens seamlessly. Thanks to Rob and his team for making that happen.

One other thing I should mention is that I’ve taken the Paramagnus Blog offline – it now redirects to the Paramagnus category here. I’ll post about the reasons why and what I have learned some other time, but the gist of it is that we never updated that blog anyway.

We’ve got more details up on the site, and we’ll post further updates there.

The first question we’ve generally been asked after breaking the news is “why?” Obvious question, but difficult to answer. There are lots of reasons which I’m sure I’ll explore over the next while. Dickson and I didn’t make this decision on a whim, we put a lot of thought into what would be best for us and for our users.

Even though we’re confident this is the right decision, I am still finding it hard to swallow. We put a lot of time, sweat, and money into Podcast Spot and we remain incredibly proud of what we’ve built. I know we’ve both learned an enormous amount from the whole experience. Still, I can’t help but be a little sad.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more about this in the future, but for now, I’d just like to say thank you. To our customers, to our friends and family, and to everyone we’ve met along the way, thank you for supporting Podcast Spot.

Text messaging is not dangerous, get over it

cell phoneThe people who create violent video games must be breathing a sigh of relief at the moment – text messaging is the new enemy. Increasingly the media has been publishing fluff pieces about the apparent danger that text messaging poses. With news that the train engineer at the centre of the crash in California last week was text messaging at the time of the accident, things are only getting worse for the technology.

Maybe it’s just the natural progression of things – become popular enough and you’ll undoubtedly gain enemies. Text messaging is more popular than ever, with over 75 billion messages sent in the US in the month of June alone. That’s an awful lot of messages! In fact, Nielsen Mobile estimates that more Americans send text messages than make phone calls. I would guess the numbers are similar here in Canada and elsewhere in the world.

Of course, there are no facts that prove text messaging is dangerous:

Though there are no official casualty statistics, there is much anecdotal evidence that the number of fatal accidents stemming from texting while driving, crossing the street or engaging in other activities is on the rise.

“The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points,” said Paul Saffo, a technology trend forecaster in Silicon Valley.

I am sure Saffo is completely qualified to make such a statement as a “trend forecaster” so let me make a few statements of my own. I would venture to say that you lose I.Q. points while using the good old fashioned voice functionality of your phone. You probably lose 10 I.Q. points while rocking out to music on your iPod. You undoubtedly lose I.Q. points while stirring your Frappuccino as you cross the street too.

My point is that text messaging is no different than any other distraction. You’ve always got to remember to pay attention to the task at hand.

Canadians celebrate new Xbox 360 dashboard, long for Netflix-like partnership

xbox 360Xbox 360 owners should be excited about the announcements Microsoft made today at E3! A number of new games were shown, including Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, and Resident Evil 5 (interesting that the most anticipated games are all sequels). They announced a bunch of new downloadable games, and will finally make community-designed games available in the next update. They’re enabling “play from hard drive” functionality, and have added a few new display support options.

Other new features include the ability to browse Xbox Live Marketplace content on the web, and the Xbox Live Party System which enables up to eight friends to connect to watch a movie, play a game, or share photos. Related to that feature are the new avatars, an extension to gamertags akin to Nintendo’s Mii.

And then there’s the two biggest announcements of all: the dashboard is getting a makeover, and Live Gold members will soon have access to Netflix streaming. When I heard about the dashboard update I thought, “finally”:

“When people turn on their Xbox 360s this fall, they’ll get an entirely new interface and Dashboard, an entirely new Xbox through the magic of software,” said John Schappert, head of Live services.

Microsoft is a software company after all, it’s about time they take advantage of that to do some cool new things with the console.

When I heard about the Netflix streaming feature, I thought “cool”. I agreed right away with MG Siegler:

With one fell swoop, Microsoft may have dealt its strongest blow in the consumer market to Apple in years.

Then I realized I live in Canada.

Netflix only serves U.S. customers at the moment, and as far as I know plans to expand to Canada and the UK were shelved a long time ago. The amount of content on Xbox Live for Canadians is already far behind our American counterparts, and this announcement just means we’re even further behind. As Mathew Ingram says:

If what you like is anything made by the CBC and the occasional CTV show like Little Mosque on the Prairie, then you are probably going to be in heaven. Otherwise, you are out of luck.

Sad, but true. I’m excited for the new dashboard and other features, but once again disappointed that as a Canadian my access to media via the Internet is severely limited.

Another troubled Newcap station rebrands: K-Rock is K-97 once again

K-97 Back in March, Edmonton radio station Big Earl 96.3 switched formats to become Capital FM. The station (CKRA-FM) had been in decline for quite a while, prompting owner Newcap to try something new. Now they’re at it again, this time with K-Rock (officially CIRK-FM). Tune your radio dial to 97.3 FM and you’ll now hear K-97, classic rock.

Here’s what the Edmonton Radio Ratings site had to say in the Spring 2008 book:

While the return of popular morning man Terry Evans was hailed as the second coming (or the fourth or fifth instalment of his career), the station seems to be suffering from the effects of past damage done.

Once a top-three station, the blame of K-Rock’s 11th place showing can’t be solely put on on Evans’ inability to spark interest in the station (he only works mornings, after all). Look instead to a demographic that’s aging, shrinking and growing tired of the same old.

According to Wikipedia, this rebranding is actually a return to the station’s roots:

CIRK signed on the air in 1979 as K-97 and became an Edmonton favourite during the 1980’s. In 1997 the station was rebranded as K-Rock.

More detailed rating information can be found here (PDF link). The next ratings should be released next week, on July 14th. Time will tell if the new (old) name has any effect on Edmonton radio listeners.