For those without an iPad, you can get the same stream ‘digest’ via email.

I’m yet to get beyond opening the app and authorising my Twitter account (it’s Good Friday!), but the recommended/featured users for me to follow were very digital news media centric. That’s great if the app has picked up on my area of interest already, based on my bio and who I follow.

I imagine it’s more than a glorified Twitter stream. It should be! You can get that through Flipboard, Zite, and numerous other great apps without paying a $1.19 per week subscription ($0.99 in US).

Read the full email from news.me below:

News.me for iPad launched today! It’s available in the App Store for download: http://on.news.me/app-download.

News.me is a different kind of social news experience that shows you not just
what your friends are sharing on Twitter, but also what they are reading—a great opportunity to read over the proverbial shoulders of close friends and mega-interesting writers and thinkers alike. All you need is an iPad and a Twitter account to get started!

If you don’t have an iPad, you can still use News.me – just sign up to receive a daily email digest of the most interesting news flowing through your Twitter stream: http://www.news.me/email

Want to read more about News.me, how it started and who’s behind it?
http://www.borthwick.com/weblog/2011/02/21/news-me/

Thanks and let us know what you think!

Team News.me

twitter.com/newsdotme
feedback@news.me

The central argument, that users need to pay for news to recoup costs, is an effective raising of the white flag. It’s an admission that, unlike at Google, the media industry is bereft of ideas about how to make online advertising profitable. This extends to the entire industry, all of whom are discussing the merits and timetables of a user-pays model. It just so happens that the News Ltd announcement has thrust that model back into the spotlight.

It reminds me of a rant from David Cross in the outtakes of Arrested Development: “If you can’t market that kind of show and get better ratings, then maybe the problem doesn’t lie here, maybe it lies with marketing”.

In The Australian’s Media and Marketing section on August 10, Mark Day said a paywall would allow newspapers to wrest back control of their business model. How? The way the music industry did, through the “grim enforcement of copyright, uniform action by the music companies and technological advances such as the iTunes micro-payment systems”. The music industry business model was all but destroyed by online, and rather than bludgeoning users to return to the good old days, they instead bow to the consumer who is willing to pay, but demands to control how, when, and what they pay for.

I disagree completely that “the [music] industry was able to wrest back control of its product”. The music industry was dragged kicking and screaming to its knees, finally relinquishing control to a micro-payment model after consumer outrage put a gun to their head and forced the issue. Introducing a user-pays model isn’t about wresting back control of the news product at all, and you could not pick a worse example of an industry to emulate than the music business.

As an aside, in the music industry consumers have always paid for the product. In the news industry, consumers have never paid for the product, advertising has. The cover price of a newspaper wouldn’t cover the cost of the ink on its pages.

Surprisingly there were a few things I agreed with Mark Day about (despite the column’s title, Bloggers may howl, but cash for content makes sense), like his examples of the three strands of news (happening, manufactured, investigated) and what kind of news people might be willing to pay for. It’s a valid argument, and one industry people are having everywhere, but I do wonder if it’s the sense of inevitibility that is now driving the debate. Now that the introduction of pay-per-view content seems inevitable, everyone is expending cognitive energy on the issue, speculating about how the paywall could work, or what content people are willing to pay for. This, instead of developing a model where advertising still pays for news.

Whether it was the classified “rivers of gold” or advertising on the page, the news industry has for some reason given up on that model working online. I find it inexplicable that nobody in the news industry, across the globe, can figure out how to make advertising work online. Google are just smarter, I guess.

No less than the president of media at Thomson Reuters, Chris Ahearn, recently penned a piece titled, Why I believe in the link economy

Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works.

From Mark Day’s Bloggers may howl, but cash for content makes sense

It is clear a free internet has the power to wreck the economic model of newspapers and news-gathering itself. But the irony is, if that were to happen, the most valuable elements of news — that which is investigated, tested and credible — would disappear because of a lack of funding. Ultimately, that serves no one. Society would be the loser.

We do a disservice to society by making that valuable and important news inaccessible, by telling society that, unless you pay, we will withhold the information that informs your understanding of the machinations of government and the economy.

Related reading:

I first started writing this post over a week ago. The biggest addition since then is the Associated Press plan for content charging online, assessed by Nieman Journalism Lab after they got hold an internal AP document labeled, “AP CONFIDENTIAL — NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION.”

• AP’s Online Strategy » Nieman Journalism Lab
• Why I believe in the link economy (Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters)
• Will Rupert Murdoch Lead Way for Paid Online Content? – TIME
  ["the pay wall would have destroyed them. Or cured them"]
• Economics for CEO dummies – The Future of Journalism – Open Salon
  ["He made an unfortunately apt comparison between a stale bagel and his newspapers"]
• Pitfalls of the pay wall | Knight Digital Media Center
  ["Before they jump into charging for content, news organizations must bypass the quality journalism argument and answer these five questions instead"]
• Rupert Murdoch’s move to charge for content opens doors for competitors | Media | The Guardian
• Economists on pay-per-view online print news – Terry Flew from QUT

UPDATE:
Last week I tweeted about an article that literally took the words out of my mouth in relation to this blog post.
Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing | SPLICETODAY.COM
The first point there illustrates this post:
1. Consumers don’t pay for news. They have never paid for news.

I made the fatal mistake of messing with the code on my live site, and have somehow broken the relevant post, Australia’s Top 100 Journalists and News Media People on Twitter.

Thinking I would make a minor change to the comments.php file last week, I have somehow managed to block out the most visited post on the site. It’s still there, you just can’t see it, and I haven’t worked out how to fix it.

I’ve already tried reposting, only to see the same effect. I’m convinced the problem is in the paged comments part of the code, but have either not restored to the original, or have but to no effect.

In the interim…
In other news, I’ve been catching up on some podcasts and just listened to a great Pods and Blogs episode from April 7. One of the things mentiond in the podcast was a live streaming news centre that was set up by some students to cover G20.

From the PodcastDirectory show description:

This week Jamillah talks to the students who created a news streaming page from the middle of the G20 protests when many reporters were unable to get in, or out, of the thick of it.

Some of what they did sounds awesome but I was put off, and disagree completely, with one of the students interviewed. They suggested what they had done could not necessarily be done by members of the public, that they were trained in the technology, and knew how to speak to the camera as a journalist.

As I said, I completely disagree. There are plenty of people all over the world who are better trained (and self-trained), who could do a better job of framing the story on video. Or with their voice, or a still image, a piece of art, a song, or a line of code that generates a visualisation.

People tell stories every day in different ways, to all sorts of other people

I rant. You can find the podcast on Pods and Blogs, BBC Radio Five Live.

I’ve also been catching up on Dave Winer and Jay Rosen‘s regular fireside chat, which they’ve named Rebooting the News. I’ve started from the beginning and only made it to about number four, but there has already been some good listening. Check it out.

Stephanie Sword, a Griffith University communications student, asked me a few questions for an assignment. Below are Stephanie’s questions and my answers about Citizen Journalism: read on to see my comments on the term itself, and generally where I think the “citizen” fits in the evolving media environment.

Stephanie: As a professional journalist, how do you feel citizen journalism is radically reforming/challenging traditional journalism?

Dave: I’ve said this elsewhere, but I think citizen journalism is both a challenge and a benefit to traditional journalism. The traditional journalist/s can’t be everywhere. Not only can they not be everywhere in physical location, but they also can’t be everywhere in terms of local/inside knowledge about the players and/or access to them. While it might take professional journalists to distil the news into something short and consumable, citizen journalists can either be there more quickly, or are already there because they are simply involved in the story.

In the age of media convergence, how does the role of a ‘citizen journalist’ differ from that of a professional journalist?

Defining a citizen journalist is going to be difficult. Is the citizen journalist the person who calls themselves that, and makes an attempt to get to stories, find stories and produce content about those stories? I would argue that if someone calls themselves a “citizen journalist”, and makes an attempt to be at stories, or cover news, then they are going to be more of a freelance journalist. The difference is that Citizen Journalists don’t do “journalism” or “news” reporting as their job. They have real jobs.

I would say the citizen journalist is the person who just happens to be there and records an event occurring, whether by photo/video/audio or text. Instantaneous “text” citizen journalism might be something like Twitter updates, so include the Denver plane crash, the Hudson River plane crash or the Mumbai bombings, where someone has posted text online (in these cases on Twitter).  At the same time instantaneously there can be images posted online (via Twitter-based services or Flickr). [Yes, those links are shamelessly only to News Ltd content].

So the role difference is huge. Citizen journalists are likely to simply be recording an event they have witnessed or been involved in, and generally making that content available online. When they make it available online, it’s most likely to be in the same way they share their lives online with family and friends through a variety of social networks. Putting it online won’t be for the purpose of being citizen journalists, and I can’t imagine anyone would want to call themselves citizen journalists.

Should media outlets actively encourage citizens to become amateur reporters by using new digital media technologies? What are the benefits of soliciting viewer input into news programs?

I don’t think they should encourage people to become “amateur reporters”, they should encourage people to share their content for some of the reasons already mentioned – they’re there when mainstream media can’t be, and they’re the people the story is happening to. People will be amateur reporters if they want to be, but I’d say there are very few people who would want to describe themselves as that. It’s semantics, but I think that specific terminology would likely turn people off. The benefit of soliciting public content is that it is content the news program or site would not have, and it’s also newsworthy content that otherwise might have never been seen by the wider public.

There is always going to be a struggle with mainstream media not just using that sort of content because it’s available (although not freely available, it’s still subject to copyright) and published on the web, but also having the hubris to decide which of it is the most important to show. Naturally, advocates of the semantic web argue that if the content is already going to be made available on the web, mainstream media shouldn’t have to “aggregate” it, because suitable information systems will be in place that will automatically present individually relevant information. But we’re not there, and mainstream media will continue to present to the public what it thinks is important, interesting, and/or will make them money.

What are some of the issues of relying on public eyewitness accounts as news suitable for broadcast? Can you clarify the difference between a citizen journalist and an eyewitness?

The issue of relying on public eyewitness accounts for news for broadcast is that you might have no way of verifying the person knows what they’re talking about, was even present when the incident occurred, or has not manufactured a fake news event. Similarly there’s the chance, and it will happen, that PR will move into the realm and submit subtle marketing or positive spin material (see my co. If you’re asking about relying on public content (user generated content) for broadcast, the actual provision of UGC is fairly infrequent, so can’t be relied on as a basis for news. In terms of relying on UGC as “broadcast quality”, like grainy video from a phone, I don’t think it’s an issue. No matter how bad the “quality” of the content, if it’s compelling you use it.
I don’t know if I can clarify the difference, but I think I can suggest the difference between a citizen journalist and an eyewitness is that a citizen journalist has recorded the event in some fashion – audio, video, or still image. An eyewitness is perhaps just that, someone who has seen an event but not recorded it in any other way, so can only relay what they have seen. The difference then is that you listen to a first-hand account as it is told by an eyewitness. A citizen journalist can still do that, but I would think they would also present some kind of material to go along with that. Again, as in the last question, I don’t know about media using the term “citizen journalist”. If someone who provides content wants to think of themselves as a “citizen journalist” and call themselves that, let them claim that.

There was a fifth question, but I’ve asked Stephanie for an explanation of what the question is going for. I may update this post at some point if I have an answer for that question.

Stephanie asked me for the interview because, in her words, “you represent the next generation of journalists, where these approaches are much-more integrated with your work than say my generation (journalism was very different when I was first in uni in the late 80s, early 90s)”.

Thanks Stephanie! Also, this was an email exchange interview.

Related articles by Zemanta

• User generated content and citizen journalism (Online Journalism lesson #4) (onlinejournalismblog.com)

The experience curve was simple and powerful. But it had one troublesome characteristic. Every experience curve was in the end a diminishing returns curve. The more experience accumulated in a specific industry, the longer it took to get the next increment of performance improvement.

Does the Experience Curve Matter Today? The Big Shift – Harvard Business

Just shut up and do your bit as a piece in the small cog, until you have the experience that warrants having an opinion worth listening to. Of course people need experience, but demanding institutionalised experience over any other kind of experience could snuff out the next round of innovation and performance improvement. Maybe that really is what’s killing the news today.

Can institutionalised experience bring about the breath of life, and innovation, that the news media needs? If not, where will that innovation come from? Am I being unfair? Let me know in the comments.

Who else can have an opinion on Clay Shirky’s Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable? Me, apparently, but maybe I’m coming at it from a different angle. When thinking of a business model destroyed, the first thing that came to mind was recent discussions about the individual as a brand. Specifically Andy Dickinson’s contribution to the Carnival of Journalism in December 2008, where he said 2009 is the year of the individual journalist. I’m not suggesting I have any answers, but here’s one of those fanciful theories: Maybe the individual as a brand can sustain news beyond “The Unthinkable”.

The December 2009 Carnival of Journalism host was Spot.us founder David Cohn and, ever the optimist, the topic of discussion leading into 2009 was Positive new media predictions for the year 2009. It was in this context, looking for the good in the approaching storm, that Dickinson predicted the rise of the individually branded journalist.

This post began as a comment on Ben Wilks’ blog, and is here expanded.

As “fixes” for the news industry go none have been found, and Clay Shirky suggests none will be found.  I’m in agreement with some of what Shirky says, that there is no single solution that will be able to be successfully applied to every newspaper or traditional media operation.

As someone who occasionally muses about the future of journalism, I no longer try to think of a panacea for the news industry, but rather about new approaches that might help the individual survive, whether they be content maker, distributor, or distiller. That leads to the question of what now defines a “journalist”, but I won’t go there now.

When applying to myself that consideration about what is best for the individual I don’t see it as selfish at all. If I can discover something that will financially sustain me as an individual journalist and, by extension, my family, it may also prove useful to others. Through my “brand” – be that this website, my other social networking homes, or my employer – I can distribute that information to others, and from there my success or failure can be adopted in full, copied, edited or mashed up to create a new, better solution.

As much as I dislike engaging in marketing-speak, I think it entirely plausible that the individual as a “brand” can be self-sustaining in niche reporting. Not only that, the individual can more quickly adapt as and when required to new technologies or techniques. If innovation is a faster process at the individual level, a higher volume and speed of experimentation allows ineffectual ideas to be sooner discarded and, for the optimist, a good chance of sooner solving their corner of the puzzle.

Any experiment, though, designed to provide new models for journalism is going to be an improvement over hiding from the real, especially in a year when, for many papers, the unthinkable future is already in the past.

Clay Shirky, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

Finally, if the individual creates something sustainable perhaps its form will successfully translate to larger groups. Maybe, just maybe, the sustainability discovered by and for just one person can eventually return full circle to a business model that can work for mainstream media.

If you haven’t read it, Shirky’s Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (which, for a differing view, has been well critiqued by Adrian Monck) suggests the current situation newspapers are facing is similar to that of the introduction of the printing press around 1400. There was literary history before the printing press, where books were unknown, and literary history after the introduction of the printing press, where the old, impractical forms of reading were left behind. Shirky suggests the history people forget is that of transition, a time of wild experimentation and epic failure, where nobody could possibly know what a successful product was supposed to look like.

It is that history of revolutionary transition Shirky suggests newspaper journalism should consider itself to now be in. The “unthinkable” is that prospect that nobody wants to talk about, a business model that has so irrevocably changed that there is no going back to what was there before.

Further Reading:

Excellent post by Dave Cohn about “branding”:It is NOT personal branding – it’s Just living your life online.

Some Australian Twitter examples from Tiphereth: What’s in a name? More on building brand You.

PANPA - Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association

Based on a survey of six students, they listed Facebook as the media outlet most accessed.

They asked for feedback, so I provided it. Basically, the survey would be interesting if it was expanded to as many students as possible, and actually ask questions about what aspects of social networking use they consider to be news consumption, or news related.

My comment:

Not disagreeing, just interested to know if Facebook was chosen as a media outlet or just a site visited (as top five media outlets).

Saw what was written re: Facebook, so by gossip did you mean gossip/entertainment news was being seen through Facebook, or was hard(er) news also looked at?
And how are students accessing that news through Facebook (news RSS apps/widgets, media outlet fan pages, wall posts, link recommendations from friends, etc)?

In a wider survey of the 18-25 demographic that would be interesting, but also moving the question beyond just Facebook, to social networking in general and other specific sites people might use.

Whether the news was gossip and entertainment, or more serious news, is somewhat less important at this point than how it is being accessed. I’m sure a study like this has been done. If not I challenge someone in academia, whose job it is to study how people interact with and share news media online, to conduct that survey and share its results.

A practical look at how different demographics interact and share news online can, at the very least, help inform decisions about more effective news distribution online, whether for large corporations or individual journalists trying to get a story seen.

If such a survey or report has been done and is old news, apologies, and a link to the study in the comments would be much appreciated!
—————

Slightly unrelated:
PANPA also have a “podcast” on their site which I have yet to listen to, having seen it just a few hours ago. My only problem is, I would argue that a podcast requires the ability to automatically download new updates using something like iTunes. That would require RSS to be present.

There are quite a few very good interviewees listed, which I will download to listen to, but it’s not immediately apparent how old, or new, the interviews are.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Facebook usage – dominated by young audience, despite older demographics growing quickly (nickburcher.com)
• Social Networking That pays (myventurepad.com)

Image via Wikipedia

• Deconstructing the “real journalism” argument
  Terry Heaton takes a shot at the unending “woe, the internetz!” cries of mainstream media.
  “we’d get a lot further in the reinvention of professional journalism if we could get away from the belief that its an entitlement, one that’s necessary for the survival of the species [...]
  “Who do we think we are? Surely our hubris has blinded us, for professional journalism never was God’s gift to culture [...] We have done some good things, but our arrogance was our undoing. That arrogance is behind the notions that ‘real journalism’ can’t be practiced outside the paradigm of contemporary professional news.”
  (tags: online mediaindustry journalism media)
• Why media companies are hosed
  “Wal-Mart is a media site in that it sells its reach to advertisers, a reach that vastly exceeds two of the top newspaper sites in the world. This is why I keep harping on everybody that the future for local media companies lies beyond their own walled garden websites, and those who refuse to hear that (like, everybody) are sprinting to the tar pits.”

  And an interesting viewpoint in the comments, suggesting QR codes could be the way of the future for cut-sized newspapers, providing direct mobile links to the full content.

  “Sooner or later, some newspaper people are going to figure out that the way to go is a 16- 24 page paper that mostly serves as a table of contents for info on the web.”
  (tags: mediaindustry future mobile qrcodes)

• Tools for News
  A huge collection of “Tool kits” for everything you need for online content creation, whether you call yourself a digital journalist, online journalist, or you create content for family, friends or any other community you’re a part of.
  Check it out and get creative.
  (tags: digital howto newmedia tools reporting tutorial)

Originally from my auto-posting daily Delicious links, I have cut this back to just a few links I have added comment to and that I think particularly useful. I have also retitled the post. This is in preparation for a blog redesign, where I no longer want posts titled “links for YYYY-MM-DD”. A live stream of Delicious links will also always be available in a sidebar widget and/or stand-alone page.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Future of Print Media: QR Codes and Customizable Mailings
• Roy Greenslade: Memo to Society of Editors – redefine journalism

Image via Wikipedia

• A new business model for news? How-to: Affiliate Marketing
  If the news business model is broken, and 2009 is the year of the (individual) journalist – read Andy Dickinson – then will this be a new business model for the individual journalist? And will hackles be raised at the ethical implications for the “unbiased” news media?

  “to make money in a world saturated by media, marketers need your help getting attention for their goods. Attention – eyeballs, ears, minds – is one of those intangible things that has huge value to companies needing to sell stuff. One of the quickest ways to start making money … is to do affiliate marketing. “

  (tags: future business marketing affiliatemarketing)

Originally from my auto-posting daily Delicious links, I have cut this back to just the link I have added comment to. This is in preparation for a blog redesign, where I no longer want posts titled “links for YYYY-MM-DD”. A live stream of Delicious links will also always be available in a sidebar widget and/or stand-alone page.

Image by Nimages DR via Flickr

Originally from my auto-posting daily Delicious links, I have cut this back to just the link I have added comment to. This is in preparation for a blog redesign, where I no longer want posts titled “links for YYYY-MM-DD”. A live stream of Delicious links will also always be available in a sidebar widget and/or stand-alone page.

You can also read through the live Future of Journalism tweets from various people on the day.

What I’m providing here is just a quick video of a question I asked of news.com.au editor David Higgins about the use of social networking tools for newsgathering.

Video after the jump…

About the conference itself, there wasn’t really a great deal suggested in the way of what the future might actually hold for ‘journalism’. Although for newspapers, a comment by David Higgins is worth noting. He said that more morning commuters were moving to mobile phones for their news instead of newspapers, and suggested the future of the weekday paper in physical form could be in doubt.

“Monday to Friday, I don’t think the outlook’s very good,” he said.

In the process of asking a question from the floor earlier David said that, since they started promoting news.com.au as an iPhone optimised site, traffic was up by more than 50,000 hits per month.

Image by mushon via Flickr

• How to save local newspapers: Cellphones
  I’m all for mobile news-particularly as it relates to providing information in developing countries-but at this early stage I would say mobile is going to be part of a resurrection of local news providers.Uptake could be too slow to save the paper
  (tags: lojo mojo mobile local-news socialmedia)
• Question to Readers: How Do I Describe My Blog?
  Help Dave Cohn take “Journalism” out of his blog description.
  “I don’t care about that word ["Journalism"] persay. What I care about is the open and honest exchange of information, as I believe THAT’S what is needed to keep a democracy strong.”
  (tags: journalism future)
• Comments add value to newspaper Web sites
  I somewhat agree-I just can’t see chiefs of staff seeing it as anything other than a waste of time – could also be legal issues.
  “Each reporter should take responsibility for the comments on[their]stories and[.]be encouraged to actively participate[.]“
  (tags: blogging comments community newssites newspapers socialmedia journalists)
• Multimedia Journalism: Theory v. Practicality
  Training then needs implementation.
  “The best multimedia journalists are sometimes those who take it upon themselves to learn [...] The online revolution[.]will never happen unless [...] organizations make a financial commitment to training their existing staff”
  (tags: multimedia journalism online newmedia)
• Moving news video to the long tail
  Video has archive value too-don’t hide it!
  “archive video to create a long-tail business[.]Broadcasting is so accustomed to the idea of instant obsolescence (what we do today doesn’t matter tomorrow) that we miss opportunities for niche videos”
  (tags: video videojournalism online newssites)

Originally from my auto-posting daily Delicious links, I have cut this back to just a few links I have added comment to or that I think particularly useful. I have also retitled the post. This is in preparation for a blog redesign, where I no longer want posts titled “links for YYYY-MM-DD”. A live stream of Delicious links will also always be available in a sidebar widget and/or stand-alone page.

Image by Bill on Capitol Hill via Flickr

• Ready, set change!
  “we MUST understand and then embrace the notion that print is no longer our primary focus.
  ..reporters chained to desks working with large desktop computers..so last century..Transition them to laptops..get them out of the newsroom and into the community”
  (tags: journalism videojournalism newmedia future)
• Cool visualizations with ManyEyes
  How important is comprehensible data presentation to new journalism?
  “visualisation is a way to turn usually a lot of numbers into images, so you can look at all the data that you have at the same time and try to see patterns – or interesting trends…”
  (tags: database-reporting newmedia manyeyes)

Originally from my auto-posting daily Delicious links, I have cut this back to just a few links I have added comment to and that I think particularly useful. I have also retitled the post. This is in preparation for a blog redesign, where I no longer want posts titled “links for YYYY-MM-DD”. A live stream of Delicious links will also always be available in a sidebar widget and/or stand-alone page.

Originally from my auto-posting daily Delicious links, I have cut this back to just a few links I have added comment to and those I think particularly useful. I have also retitled the post. This is in preparation for a blog redesign, where I no longer want posts titled “links for YYYY-MM-DD”. A live stream of Delicious links will also always be available in a sidebar widget and/or stand-alone page.