New.Journalism.Review

The Independent asks whether Google News is killing-off newspaper journalism. (http://ping.fm/9pZzp), as Rupert Murdoch has been arguing.

Murdoch sees three evils preventing him from dominating the entire world (!)  – 1) The BBC (see previous posts) 2) Freebie 'newspapers' and lastly,  Google News. 

The Independent also has concerns about Google – it states in the leader:

"Google and other websites make big money from the audiences they attract for their content, which is Hoovered up from countless news sources all around the world. The creators of that content, meanwhile, earn not a bean from such aggregators – they often do not even give their permission for it to be taken – and are unable to sell it for themselves online because it has already been made freely available."

Google, on the face of it, contribute nothing to supporting quality journalism. It employs no journalists, just a massive database which pinches headlines from newspaper websites and prioritizes them to form a news page. We have no idea what its news biases are. Editorial selections are based on some top-secret algorithm. 

But it's wrong to suggest that Google's influence on journalism is entirely negative. What Google do, rather well, is direct shed loads of traffic to news sites, at least that's the general idea. Problems arise if Google allows its users to read entire stories on its own website rather than encouraging people to click-through. 

Google's dominance of search (dare I say, 'near monopoly') which is the problem here. We live in a world where few people care to use Yahoo!, Bing (or Bling! or Blip! or Blah! – whatever it's called), Ask or AltaVista. 

Newspaper sites can easily remove their content from Google. Or they could simply put it behind a 'pay wall'. But as The Independent newspaper knows from bitter experience, 'pay walls' simply don't work for general news.

So if 'pay walls' have failed and sites need lots of traffic to generate  ad revenue -  what then? Shouldn't they be paying Google to carry news headlines? I think that probably summarises the debate as it stands today. 

In an ideal world, it would be better to see some competition in search aggregation. Perhaps we should all start to use UK-based NewsNow (http://ping.fm/ok1sE) instead.

Until then, newspapers can learn from Google in so far as audiences these days want news content which is tailored to their individual interests. That's why paying £2 for a Sunday newspaper, only to chuck half of its supplements away into the recycle bin, just seems seems a bit of an odd activity in 2009.

A minor-storm erupted last week regarding the launch of the MA in Social Media by Birmingham City University.

Described inaccurately by the  Daily Mail as
a  "Masters degree in Facebook" this was a cue for references to
"Mickey Mouse degrees", "ex-Poly students" and "tax payers money +
drains" etc etc……[Feel free to complete].

My favourite comment on the Daily Mail site was from "Paul", who (apparently) lives in Los Angeles. So incensed by the launch of an MA (not even from a university in his own country), that "Paul"  forgot how to spell…

"Paul from Los Angeles" is clearly an idiot (where are those moderators when you need them?). And whilst the Daily Mail's reporting could easily be dismissed as "lazy journalism", sadly, it reflects a wider misunderstanding of the role of higher education in the mainstream media which dates back to the 70s when universities were attacked for teaching sociology.  

The reality is that  an MA in Social Media is relevant to anyone who communicates with audiences online or needs an understanding of the importance of online communities. So that could include people who work in the: computer games industry, PR, marketing and just about any business with a website. 

I'm no expert, but there has been a lot of interesting academic material on the rise of online communities, crowd-sourcing and the formation of social relationships coming out of the US and Australia in the past year. It is early days, but this is a subject that has a proper academic underpinning.

Whilst the volume of academic material and research is astonishing, one of the most common errors that students tend to make when discussing  the Internet is to assume its impact is the same in all countries. In reality, whilst the Internet is (obviously) global in nature, its impact is not homogeneous. That's to say, for example, a young person in the UK does not always have the same experience of Internet communities as someone in the US, Singapore, Germany or perhaps China. We interpret online actions differently.

Some more comments from Daily Mail contributors…

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In short, we desperately need a UK (or perhaps European) perspective on things. This is where the academics at Birmingham City University are leading the way.

I teach on a journalism degree course and often have friends in the industry ask me whether there is "enough" to say about journalism to fill a three year course.

The reality is that we're not short of things to teach. We obviously teach the basic writing skills, as we have always done. But there is also more technology to understand, ethics, law and business skills to learn. This is a sector that is changing beyond all recognition and we need to equip our students to understand this.

The same will be true for an MA in Social Media which lasts just one year. There will be a lot of academic theory to assimilate, as well as the practical development of new and, hopefully, groundbreaking online applications.I would be really excited to be a student on such a course.

I do have some criticisms. Birmingham City University says that the course comes from the angle of cultural
studies, but I doubt if this will be enough. Running courses
cross-faculty is always very difficult, but from my experience students want to know how things work from a technical stance. It can be tricky to decide where the cut-off point is, but it would be wise to make links with the computing department  (as
they have done on the excellent MA in Electronic Publishin  at City University in
London, which is run by two faculties). 

But  social media is a) important to the UK economy and b)  something worthy of academic study. So let's drop references to "Yak excremnet" (whatever that is?) and the rather tiresome discussion of "Mickey Mouse degrees" (much loved by tabloid journalists) and lets have a serious debate about the impact of social media.

Guardian Media Group (GMG) say “The BBC and BBC Worldwide are encroaching into online areas where
commercially funded players could provide the content required.” [Yahoo Pans Ofcom’s Search Plan, Says BBC.co.uk May Be Too Big - PaidContentUK]

The report also states, rather too vaguely for my liking, Yahoo! has “joined the growing ranks grumbling about the BBC’s scale.”

Really? Who the f***k are these grumblers?

The only sound of grumbling I hear (apart from that coming from gastro pubs in Farringdon) is from the British Internet Publisher’s Alliance (BIPA). This rather secretive organisation is bankrolled by large media companies, including  Rupert Murdoch’s News International (no surprise) and, oddly, the ever-so liberal – Guardian newspaper.

So whenever you read a news story or opinion in a broadsheet newspaper regarding the BBC, it’s worth checking whether its publisher declares its membership of BIPA [Check its membership list NOW!]

Those that wish to curb the power of the BBC are in a minority in the UK. Unfortunately, they are a minority who happen to work in publishing, have massive public influence and tend be vocal sods.

The Guardian has the facility to spread the BIPA anti-BBC message to the great and the good using its well-read Monday media section.

It also now has a new platform  – PaidContent – which GMG bought recently. Can the Guardian possibly resist the temptation to dominate the online news funding debate using its new baby as a tool?

BIPA would like to see a ‘level playing field in the online news environment’ – sounds okay, right? In reality, many would like to see funding withdrawn for key BBC services enjoyed by millions. At the extreme end, some even would like to see the large and very popular news site pulled completely.

Commercially, The Guardian would find it very, very, handy if license fee funding for BBC.co.uk was abolished or it service significantly scaled back – not just in the UK, but USA. BBC News is a massive player in  the US online market, a market which The Guardian is hoping to also dominate.

The reality is that BBC.co.uk is a fantastic site and the on-demand, iPlayer, stuff is great. As it does with TV and radio, the BBC sets the standard in online journalism in the UK.

It is enjoyed and relied upon to give honest and accurate information by millions of people around the world, but this means nothing to those commercial rivals at BIPA who will do anything to attack the BBC.

I suspect that many Guardian readers enjoy the BBC site and see it for
what it is – a fantastic resource which is an absolute bargain in terms of what we pay for it per a month. They would be shocked to hear that their respected newspaper is privately lobbying against it.

Commercial rivals need to get real. Work out how to raise your game and compete. Quit complaining into your chardonnay and DO NOT INSIST ON FURTHER CRIPPLING REGULATION THAT WILL EVENTUALLY KILL THE BBC.

But competing in a poor economic climate is difficult and that’s why we can expect the grumbling from commercial rivals to get louder and more frequent in the pages of newspapers like The Guardian.

The Guardian, the producers of Media Talk and the Sony Award nominated Islamophonic, has revealed some impressive download stats for its range of podcasts.

Some stats:
1.5m – downloads for its 12 Guardian pods in December.
80-100,000 downloads of it’s Football Weekly pod a week [Proving that football and cricket analysis has a massive, global, audience - but we don't need to tell The Times or Telegraph this].
15-20,000: MediaTalk downloads a week.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

To put these figures in some kind of perspective BBC London, a local radio station, pulls in weekly audience of around 500,000 a week for its entire output.

Assuming the other Guardian pods not mentioned above are getting an average of around 10,000 downloads per week each, it appears its investment in pod studio technology is finally paying off and the service should become profitable soon.

But how easy is to generate revenue from podcasts? On paper, they have a lot going for them. If you look at the ludicrous way traditional radio figures are counted in the UK by Rajar [Rajar reissues listening figures], you can be far more precise with measurements. Evidence from Edison in the US suggests podcasts audiences are upmarket, I also feel podcast audiences really do listen.They’ve bothered to download the file after all. But whilst the market is expanding, it is still relatively small. Rajar estimated around 15-20% of those with MP3 players have downloaded podcasts,  this is broadly matched by figures from the US.

But I’m not entirely sure how The Guardian plan to integrate the adverts into the broadcast. It has tried sponsorship before on the Media Talk pod, but I just fast forwarded through it.

It would be less annoying if sponsorship messages or adverts appeared on the screen of your iPod or Zen Micro, rather than having to listen to it.

But hopefully these stats will give a much needed boost to UK podcasts. It would be nice to see some successful independent and home produced pods coming through, as has happened in the US. But we need the big guys to prove a revenue model first.

The NME’s deputy editor, Krissi Murison, gave a superb guest lecture this week. The journalism students asked some good questions about possible advertiser influence in the NME (apparently it’s not a problem), role of women in music (it’s still an issue), the bust-up with Morrissey (no comment – the court case is pending) and a nice little anecdote about a boozy night out with Amy Winehouse (apparently she plays a wicked game of pool). She also spoke about the massive success of NME.com, which really begged further questions about how long the the paper product can last with its disappointing ABCs.

But most students were looking for tips about getting that first job in journalism. She had three main bits of advice: Firstly, Blog: Krissi revealed that the legendary music mag was seeking new opinion writers. Whilst they had their eye on a few established names, they were also actively searching out opinionated new talent. She said that running a blog was also handy for getting into gigs for free and generally getting noticed. We mention this to the students all the time, but it was good for them to also hear it from an industry person. 

Work experience: Really important obviously. It takes some early planning (the NME is booked up with workies until Jan 2009).  But she expressed disappointment with the attitudes of some students that got placements. Her advice – make the most of it.

Send in ideas speculatively via email: Writers that continually send in good ideas do get noticed.

All sound advice…