Tuesday
May262009
Thinking Macro
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 09:41PM
"Old media" and "new media" are such throw away buzz terms. What do they even mean? "Old media" seems to refer to video tape, talking heads, stuffy, stodgy, one-way news dissemination, while "new media" is Flip Cams, live streams, Twitter and social networks. But so what? Has the information evolved just because I can live stream myself blow drying my hair? Is social media a gimmick that gives the viewer the illusion of interaction with the news?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I take on new projects. I've heard several "old media" reporters mull this over and say things like "brand recognition" and "network loyalty" and "viewer interaction." Okay. So how do we evolve our broadcasts beyond simply reading Twitter? I think you'll agree with me that so much of that seems forced. For instance, the YouTube questions that CNN used during the presidential debates were questions they most certainly could have come up with themselves. And when a news network uses Twitter, they read responses that they most certainly could have received over email. How is this groundbreaking?
I have been writing a pilot for a new Webcast on CBSNews.com. We will be running tests of this broadcast for the next few weeks until we figure out a working format. I am struggling with these questions:
I want my new broadcast to be something you watch while you are sitting at home with your laptop in your lap at night, either answering emails, playing games, surfing Facebook, or sitting with your spouse while they watch some embarrassing reality show. I want you to watch it, absorb the days' news, engage with it, learn from it, and talk back to to it. Live, of course. I want you to hear and be heard. But I am so deathly afraid of the gimmick trap. I don't want to use YouTube videos just because it sounds cool. I'm not going to rely on Twitter just because it is the new black. But I do want to incorporate all of that. So I ask you, dear reader, what do you think? What do YOU want? I know you don't want a talking head just spitting the news out to you as he/she reads a TelePrompTer. I know you don't want to watch me read Twitter and tell you "This is what you think!" I know you don't want extreme political opinions. And I know that adding 6-8 pundits to a broadcast does not make it 6-8 times more interesting. But what does make it more interesting?
Incidentally, the broadcast I am working on is not a technology newscast. It is a general newscast. I am not moving out of technology news. I am just attempting to expand my horizons beyond my regular beat. In a high-tech way of course!
Earlier this afternoon I Tweeted that I was feeling overwhelmed. Maybe it was because I was hurting my brain in thinking so macro. (Or maybe it was because I was hungry.) I said that I might ask for your help and now I am. I am crowdsourcing the questions above. Please have a two-page double-spaced synthesis paper on my desk by morning. Or a simple blog comment will do.
Thank you!
I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I take on new projects. I've heard several "old media" reporters mull this over and say things like "brand recognition" and "network loyalty" and "viewer interaction." Okay. So how do we evolve our broadcasts beyond simply reading Twitter? I think you'll agree with me that so much of that seems forced. For instance, the YouTube questions that CNN used during the presidential debates were questions they most certainly could have come up with themselves. And when a news network uses Twitter, they read responses that they most certainly could have received over email. How is this groundbreaking?
I have been writing a pilot for a new Webcast on CBSNews.com. We will be running tests of this broadcast for the next few weeks until we figure out a working format. I am struggling with these questions:
- How much does the viewer want to interact with their broadcast and how much do they fall victim to the spiral of silence?
- How much does the viewer have to say about the days' news?
- What does the viewer want from a broadcast that they are not getting?
- What are the things that make a Web-savvy news junkie dismiss a broadcast as "old media?"
- Does the viewer care about "new media" gimmicks in their news broadcast?
I want my new broadcast to be something you watch while you are sitting at home with your laptop in your lap at night, either answering emails, playing games, surfing Facebook, or sitting with your spouse while they watch some embarrassing reality show. I want you to watch it, absorb the days' news, engage with it, learn from it, and talk back to to it. Live, of course. I want you to hear and be heard. But I am so deathly afraid of the gimmick trap. I don't want to use YouTube videos just because it sounds cool. I'm not going to rely on Twitter just because it is the new black. But I do want to incorporate all of that. So I ask you, dear reader, what do you think? What do YOU want? I know you don't want a talking head just spitting the news out to you as he/she reads a TelePrompTer. I know you don't want to watch me read Twitter and tell you "This is what you think!" I know you don't want extreme political opinions. And I know that adding 6-8 pundits to a broadcast does not make it 6-8 times more interesting. But what does make it more interesting?
Incidentally, the broadcast I am working on is not a technology newscast. It is a general newscast. I am not moving out of technology news. I am just attempting to expand my horizons beyond my regular beat. In a high-tech way of course!
Earlier this afternoon I Tweeted that I was feeling overwhelmed. Maybe it was because I was hurting my brain in thinking so macro. (Or maybe it was because I was hungry.) I said that I might ask for your help and now I am. I am crowdsourcing the questions above. Please have a two-page double-spaced synthesis paper on my desk by morning. Or a simple blog comment will do.
Thank you!
Reader Comments (56)
Good News is good writing no matter the way it is reported. A problem is today's 1440 minute per day news cycle. News outlets must fill each minute of the day with something and most of it is muddle. There is just not that much news to report. So, to fill up the day they embellish, poll, and get opinions from the guy/gal on the street.
Today News is entertainment. That is what sells ads and attracts eyeballs. Enough said.
If you can find some copies, take a look for The Screen Savers. Not the junk that G4 put on after they purchased Tech-TV, but the later Tech-TV years with Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton specifically 2000-2004. The show at that time was very good at being informitive, entertaining and interactive. Off the start they would bring up some subjects that seemed to them the most important of they day, have a small discussion between themselves about them, ask for people to call, go to break, come back and continue the discussion with callers.
The main thing that made them great were that they did not treat the viewers/callers as idiots, but as a friend with an opinion.
Far too many of the shows on TV talk down at thier viewers. While they ask for opinions. They have already decided what viewpoint they want to project and tend to lecture the callers as to why this view is the only correct one, or are dismissive of them. My point is, that if you want to build an interactive audience, treat them as you would if you were talking to your sister or best friend on the phone. Not as a professor talking to a student.
One other thing to note, there are 8 minute segments and the like on YouTube etc, but if you can, find a good sampling of the full 90 min broadcasts of TSS...
One of the things I miss about new media (as opposed to old media) is that it tends to act as an amplification device rather than encouraging 'feet on the ground' work to uncover stories that are really new. I read multiple online sources and I tend to see the same headlines again and again as different news organizations pull down the same feeds from Reuters and AP. I am not making a new argument when I say that 'google' and 'search' have become synonyms so much so that it's easy to forget what investigation and research used to be - there used to be a lot more traveling and talking and a lot less pointing and clicking. (Important aside: I also laugh every time I see the local news imply superiority by having lots of live coverage when the live coverage is shot from a highway on-ramp (covering traffic) or some other completely common-place location that adds nothing to the story but does increase the number of hours of live coverage they can claim.)
When 'new media' is used to refer to an e-stream from vox populi, it gets old fast and often misses the mark. Just like having one pundit from the left battle it out with one pundit from the right is predictable, reading real-time comments on broadcast news is gets boring because it is so often predictable. What comes off the top of most heads in response to a substantive news story is often intellectually impoverished, especially when it's limited to 140 characters.
New media can extend the reach of old media, especially as old media contracts and there are fewer journalists on the ground. When commenters and other digital citizens are adding relevant content - like, say, when they are sending in pictures and av feeds of protests following an election in a country with few independent journalists - that does add value. When commenters are just applying partisan politics or predictable opinions to the news of the day - meh, not so exciting.
One thing that might be worth thinking through further is how to find good sources of investigative work if the networks and newspapers can't afford to do as much as they used to do. There are universities full of paid researchers out there - maybe having a closer relationship to the academy would help break from the older stock of pundits to fresh faces and novel perspectives. The trick is that it's easy to go to the same academics again and again resulting in viewer fatigue with the same talking heads popping up every week. But using new people all the time runs the risk of airing folks who aren't comfortable in front of the camera or quick on their feet. No easy answers here, either.
Full disclosure: I am an academic-in-training so that could be why I think it's interesting to see what academics have to say. I also watch all my tv over the internet - but I am fine with a fairly standard broadcast format.
Natalie, the fact that you are asking fully contextualized questions of your internet audience is, in itself, a good use of new media.
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very interestingly ...