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]]> http://www.bostonmedianext.com/?feed=rss2&p=87 0 http://www.bostonmedianext.com/?p=84 http://www.bostonmedianext.com/?p=84#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:41:59 +0000 Steve Safran http://www.bostonmedianext.com/?p=84

Jeff Santos

We’re seeing more and more outlets embrace a right- or left-leaning bias as part of their programming. This is especially true on radio, where conservatives have long ruled the commercial airwaves. But there’s a station in Boston that is trying to offer counter-programming — WWZN 1510 AM is gunning for the left. The Boston Globe’s Johnny Diaz profiles WWZN radio host Jeff Santos, who offers progressive talk weekday mornings. Santos has his work cut out for him – the station’s audience is too low for Arbitron to measure. The history of liberal radio isn’t strong — Santos came out of Air America, which failed after two years. So why is it that liberal broadcasters can’t capture an audience the same way conservatives do? Is it true, as conservative hosts say, that they are “the antidote” for the “liberal media,” so there’s no need for liberal radio?

As we continue to examine the idea of a Native News startup, the question is: should it have a political leaning from the get-go?

Globe Reader

The newspapers continue their quest to find a paid online subscription model, and this week the Boston Globe is rolling out its paid offering. GlobeReader is comes with e-reader software that allows people to read a digital version of the Globe, presented in a “print format” style.

The cost is $4.98 a week for new subscribers (it’s free to existing print subs). But you can read the Globe online for free right now at boston.com/globe. So what are you paying for? Formatting? GlobeReader is decidedly unwebby, and seems to spring from the business side as opposed to the consumer side. This really goes against the concept of “Native News” – the idea that your online offerings have to spring up from the utility of the Web and that you can’t impose an old-model structure upon it.

The Future of News summit is an interactive day-long discussion that will define the role regional organizations play in the solution to the news crisis. Local, regional and national leaders—in journalism, commercial and public media, government, business and philanthropy—will contemplate the design of a new model for regional journalism and a path to restoring the independent and robust fourth estate America requires.

Here’s a framegrab:

From The Future of News Summit

One of the things that always concerns me at these “Future of News” summits is that there’s too much “contemplating” and not enough resolution. We’ve been talking about “the future” for quite a while. I’m hopeful this – and other summits – come up with some good, practical advice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15FOB-Phenomenon-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

The Austin American-Statesman has started as a dedicated feed just for stories about the Fort Hood tragedy, and it’s a good move. The paper has recognized the enormity of the story, and by grabbing the Twitter URL quickly, the paper is showing a real dedication to giving people streams of information around topics and not just brands.

Why dedicate a separate feed to one story? Because of the audience. I’m following the Fort Hood story, but I’m not especially interested in the other stories coming from the paper/website. To get information about the story that interests me, I’d like to see the local reporting on the story. It’s a big plus for me to be able to opt-in to this one story. I can’t speak for locals in Austin, but I’ll bet they appreciate being able to break out this one story from the others the paper may cover in a given day.

Poynter’s Craig Kanelley talked with Robert Quigley, the social media editor at the Statesman:

“When we heard (the first news about the shootings), we knew we had to get moving and sent out a breaking news alert,” Quigley said in an interview conducted by phone and e-mail. “Within a few minutes, we had a reporter on the phone with Fort Hood and got confirmation. And we turned it around really fast, setting up the Twitter account.” Statesman Editor Fred Zipp first proposed the idea of creating a separate Twitter account to cover the event, according to Quigley. Quigley said he liked the idea and immediately jumped on it, trying different name combinations on Twitter, including “FortHood,” before deciding on “FtHoodShootings” to fit Twitter’s character limit for an account name.

Smart stuff. The instinct was to Think Social. The updates on Twitter are not all about driving traffic to the main site. Some updates have links, others don’t. As of this writing, the paper had sent out 265 Tweets and had garnered 3,300 followers just of this one stream. That’s huge. The paper’s “master” Twitter feed, twitter.com/statesman, has 15,000 followers. To pick up 3,500 just for the one Fort Hood stream – in the space of a week – is an enormous success.

It so happens that the story broke as Twitter introduced a new feature – Twitter Lists. (See next article.) These allow you to curate lists of your favorite feeds, and your friends can decide if they want to follow your lists. Statesman’s Fort Hood Twitter page made it onto 154 lists. This improves the chances that the page and stream will go viral. That, in turn, helps the Statesman become the authority on the story. This is where we want to be.

Lou Dobbs

Lou Dobbs abruptly quit CNN Wednesday night on live TV in a near-Howard Beale-worthy rant. And that has put me in the mind to ask: “Do we even need name-brand broadcasters?” Yes, Fox News has proved a few names can be good for ratings. But on the local front, these people have become ridiculously expensive. Fox 25 and Butch Stearns are parting ways. I don’t know what Butch makes, but I’m sure his salary was the issue (he tells the Herald “…the reason I was let go was not performance-related). We talk a lot about how the “reporters aren’t the story,”  yet that’s exactly how they are treated. I think it’s positive that we’re in a climate that’s more willing to focus on news and less on names. Yes, that change has come about as a result of budget issues, but it’s a welcome one.

Charlie’s manifesto for Native News includes some bold ideas. Note that, among them, is not “let’s pay anchors a ton.” Let Dobbs throw a fit – we’re trying to refocus on the news here.

THE NATIVE NEWS PARADIGM

by Charles Kravetz

News is inextricably bound to its form. Newspapers embrace a form of journalism which is distinct from magazines which is distinct from television. The same must be said of the web. This most powerful and disruptive of technologies cannot long sustain its present role as a secondary distribution source for mainstream media. Journalism which is “native” to the web is inevitable. Native News will begin on the web and be nurtured by it. It will not only embrace the fundamental power of the web, but it will be scaled appropriately to the revenue potential of the web. It will be self-sustaining.

Native news will incorporate the multimedia nature of the internet and the interactive relationship with its audience. It will be regularly updated and digestible on multiple screens: computers, phones, televisions, book readers and whatever new devices emerge in the future.

Native News will proliferate at every level of our society, from the smallest communities to the nation as a whole. It will hold accountable those in power, investigate those who abuse our trust and play an invaluable role in our democracy.

Native News will redefine journalism. It will evolve as the technology and platforms change. And it will become as important and ubiquitous as any form of journalism that preceded it. Those who embrace Native News will discover its power to communicate and enlighten and inform. Those who ignore it do so at their own peril.