How did journalism serve society in the past? How is technology changing journalism and us?

1. Journalism,
Technology &
the Web
Reshaping each other and us

2. I. Journalism

3. 18th century France
First Estate — Clergy
Second Estate — Nobility
Third Estate — Commoners
Fourth Estate — Popular Press
with its capacity of advocacy and to
serve as a check against abuse of power

4. Roles of Journalism
Observe
•
Filter the observed
•
Serve as the conscience of society
•
Protect the lower castes from the upper
•
castes
Provide more signal than noise
•

5. PEJ – Committee of Concerned Journalists
1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth
2. Its first loyalty is to citizens
3. Its essence is a discipline of verification
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those
they cover
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal
conscience
Source: http://www.journalism.org/resources/principles

6. Today
Fifth Estate — media in opposition to
mainstream (Fourth Estate) media.
• non-traditional or emerging media
• bloggers
• alternative media
• citizen journalists

8. II. Technology

9. First Internet Connection
Oct. 29. 1969 – Failed after sending “lo”
from first message: login

10. Source: Ray Kurzweil

11. Source: Ray Kurzweil

12. Source: Ray Kurzweil

13. Source: Ray Kurzweil

14. Intel’s Gordon E. Moore postulated
Moore’s Law -- that technology tends to
demonstrate a constant, exponential rate
of improvement on an annual basis.
Meaning: we can perform the same tasks
with technology, doing more with less –
smaller, faster, and cheaper.
Every year.

15. Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired magazine asks
quot;What does technology want?quot;
His observation that technology’s consistent
movement toward ubiquity and complexity is
much like the evolution of all living things.
Without an external disruption (large asteroid?),
in our current cultural context, we can expect
on an ever-increasing role of ever-evolving
technology in our daily lives.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_how_technology_evolves.html

17. III. Web

18. Communicate
Content
Context
Collaborate
Coordinate
Cooperate
Compete
Community

19. We collect and communicate
content, coordinating across
many competing online
contexts by collaborating in ad
hoc, cooperative web
communities.

20. Source: Ray Kurzweil

21. Change
accelerating incessantly,
exponentially

22. Commons-based peer production
is a term coined by Harvard Law School
professor Yochai Benkler to describe a new
model of economic production in which the
creative energy of large numbers of people
is coordinated (usually with the aid of the
internet) into large, meaningful projects,
mostly without traditional hierarchical
organization or financial compensation.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons-based_peer_production

24. IV. Observed Effects

25. PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“...the biggest problem facing traditional
media has less to do with where people get
information than how to pay for it. [...]
“The crisis in journalism, [...] may not strictly
be loss of audience. It may, more
fundamentally, be the decoupling of news and
advertising.”

26. PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“News is shifting from being a product
— today’s newspaper, Web site or
newscast — to becoming a service:
how can you help me, even empower
me? There is no single or finished news
product anymore.”

27. PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“A news organization and a news Web
site are no longer final destinations.”
“Now they must move toward also being
stops along the way, gateways to other
places, and a means to drill deeper, all ideas
that connect to service rather than
product.”

28. PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“The prospects for user-created
content, once thought possibly central
to the next era of journalism, for now
appear more limited, even among
‘citizen’ sites and blogs.”
“News people report the most promising
parts of citizen input currently are new
ideas, sources, comments and to some
extent pictures and video.”

29. PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“Increasingly, the newsroom is
perceived as the more innovative and
experimental part of the news
industry.”

30. PEJ – The State of the News Media 2008
“The agenda of the American news media
continues to narrow, not broaden.”
“A firm grip on this is difficult but the trends
seem inescapable. A comprehensive audit of
coverage shows that in 2007, two overriding
stories — the war in Iraq and the 2008 campaign
— filled more than a quarter of the newshole
and seemed to consume much of the media’s
energy and resources.”

31. The State of the News Media 2008
“Madison Avenue, rather than pushing
change, appears to be having trouble
keeping up with it.”
“New media offer the promise of more
detailed knowledge of consumer behavior,
but the metrics are still evolving and
empirical data have not yet delivered a clear
path.”