Trent’s “i’ve read Convergent Journalism readings” Blog

- media in the future see tv networks dish out content with immediacy, news, sport, live content because the ’superdistribition’ of the net (bit torrent) will take over for other programming

- until an itunes like service comes out for video, people will pirate it through bit torrent. a consistent and easy to use interface is required

- word of mouth, or adhoc social networks currently help us choose which media to consume (watercooler talk) this is also needed for digital media along with advertising

- talks of using a mobile phone to ‘rate’ a movie, so it can be shared with friends. this sounds good in theory but isn’t the fun of talking about a movie, the experience of actually talking to a real person?

- news organisations now have many people at each end (camera man, reporter, editor, anchor person etc) so does that change how news is perceived?

- napster lost out, but P2P has expanded

- buying a song (or any form of media) should allow you to remix it, ringtone it etc for your own non commercial purposes

- looks at how to research online, the pitfalls involved and who you can trust (and how to indentify who you can trust)

- gives practical examples on how to find, extrapolate and organise data

- explains how to access all publicly accessible information, in great detail

- information on how to prepare articles, plan stories and organise yourself

- poses many interesting questions for many different story types

- censorship software proves to be ineffective, blocking sites that aren’t inappropriate and letting ones that are through

- ukplus ISP has it’s on portal service that filters all bad information - any bad news stories!

- China is over-censored blocking such sites as CNN, and not letting users communicate ’secret’ information online

- Some countries like Tunisia redirect users from the site they want (ie, amnesty.org) to their own version with edited propaganda content

- does online writing vary in style because of the more targetted niche audience many sites serve? ie, a tech site reporting only tech news, where the readers understand the content thoroughly can be more informal about the facts

- add this to many sites not being run by ‘professional’ journalists, they feel they can write how they wish and don’t have the training to write ‘properly’

- while newspapers stick to the facts, online writing is often full of opinions, with a style where emphasis is achieved with *stars* or CAPS

- the web has a ‘rolling deadline’ where the story always needs to be written and published ASAP

- online news allows for multimedia elements to help tell the story

- rocketboom, video (b)logging what is it? (tied in with citizen journalism?)
- culture of shoutwire and digg
- paul green - mobile content/news or point to the right person to talk to
- adrian miles - blogging

- presented with 3 choices from the first menu, wireless to web, the fifth estate and changing images

- each section starts with introductory text and a video of a media academic introducing us to the topic

- this video is Flash based, and is incorporated into the site. the video doesn’t load in a separate window. a video icon appears wherever video content is available and is an easy way to locate such video.  however the slider which would normally let you move freely through the video doesn’t work. also there isn’t a separate sound control

- it makes extensive use of such video, with constant use of video helping to bring the narrative of the project together and provide voice

- along with video, the site is rich in images and photos, giving the appropriate look and feel to each era as we progress through time

- Flash animation transitions bind the site together, creating a consistent look and feel

- additional information on images is hidden to try and prevent clutter with an (i) symbol

- uses various navigation formats, but is consistent in each area. However it is confusing how for example the timeline moves from the bottom of the screen to the top

- it’s always possible to access the main menu through a drop-down button called ‘Site Menu’

- the sub sections of each section are presented in chronological order, however sometimes they are listed by year and sometimes name

- each sub section allows you to read more with an additional navigation area appearing on the left, the sheer amount of content it is a little daunting at first

New word: oligopoly - A market condition in which sellers are so few that the actions of any one of them will materially affect price and have a measurable impact on competitors.

CH 6

- newpaper readership in decline
- quality journalism is supported by taxpayers (ABC) or by classifieds cashcow or ‘rivers of gold’
- so what’s happening to classified ads with the internet, especially ebay? is this the end of quality journalism?

CH 7

- communications companies such as Telstra branching out into content, Sensis, Foxtel, online AFL rights etc
- will privitisation of Telstra make profit number one over service to rural Australi?
- 25,000 Telstra job cuts in 90s to be more internationally competitive

CH 15

- internet use on the way up (duh)
- existing brands (like ninemsn) used to make browsing (who uses the term surfing or cyber anymore anyway?) easier and less daunting for new users
- new cultures emerged from the internet, chatting, blogging, photo sharing, video sharing, netcelebs

CH 18

- new media allows for interactivity, control of content, brings with it a new set of standards and rules for different technologies: for example most blogs follow similar structure in posts, once something has a label people behave to the constraints of that label to accepted norms
- is new media one form of media, or is it in fact too much of an umbrella term encompassing many forms of separate media? is even the web too much of a blanket term in reguards to the radically different types of websites and web ‘platforms’ out there? is flickr in a world of it’s own? how about youtube?
- do users develop the culture and then it’s marketed back at users or do the corporations come up with the culture and market it to the users, or is it a bit of both? why has WAP failed and SMS succeeded?

Okay I know these names suck, but it’s all I could come up with.

Future Journalism (futurejournalism.com) - simple and basic, but clean and to the point

MOTIF -  Media Of The Immediate Future (motif.com, which is taken!) ((an attempt to make a catchy acronym)

JOTIF - Journalism of The Immediate Future (jotif.com)

Centre for Forthcoming Journalistic Practices (yeah couldnt think of a good domain name for that one!)

But now we have some ideas to throw around, lookn forward to seeing what other people have come up with who are more creative

- ‘The term convergence originally comes from the world of science and mathematics’

- It was then used, possibly for the first time, in 1983 by Ithiel de Sola Pool in connection with communications technologies.

- In the 90’s TV stations and newspapers started cross promoting each other, with some being owned by the one parent company.

Convergence in media technology

Content Creation - Although stored digitally, not fully accessible due to format restrictions
Content Distribution - Based on 2001 figures in the US before the explosion of broadband, mentions that the net is not used anywhere near as much as the TV
Content Consumption - Besides for the PC, people aren’t using other digital terminals to access information

Convergence

Ownership - A conglomorate owning multiple content or distribution channels
Tactics - Sharing resources and cross-promoting a TV station and newspaper, whether owned by one company or not. This brought in issues of bias/fair reporting and different ideology in reporting news.
Structure - Mainly remained the same, the newspaper people did their job, etc, some new positions made to oversee, or to specialise in multimedia
Information Gathering - The backpack journalist gathering the news in all different formats
Presentation (Storytelling) - Can now have unlimited space (columns) and time (minutes), immediate publishing, communication (blogging/feedback), multi-format, interactive (user decides what/when to view/read/listen)
Implications - Journalists not wanting change, new job requirements

Can wikinews, a site based on the successful model of the wikipedia, be an independent and objective source of news?

- Citizen journalists report first hand at disaster scenes, uploading images directly from the scene
- News related blogging - random acts of journalism?
- Discussion pages on wikinews are there to debate if news is newsworthy (for editorial reasons)
- Blogs are temporal - wikinews is more spacial in structure (hard to work out recently updated pages)
- As wikipedia has articles at en endpoint with multiple points of views, traditionally news is the start of a debate for different perspectives - not an endpoint. The wiki model prevents this by design