gatewatching

(Cross-posted from snurb.info.)

So, last Saturday I went to the Future of Journalism event in Brisbane (and spoke on one of the panels). Contrary to my usual practice, I didn’t live-blog the event - panel-based events are notoriously difficult to blog. Here, then, are some reflections on what I saw - adding to comments already posted by Mark Bahnisch, Marian Edmunds, Cameron Reilly, and Bronwen Clune, among others.

The event began well, with Margaret Simons setting the theme with her usual insightful comments. Her observations about the troubled economic future for the journalism industry (and here, especially newspapers) are perhaps nothing new to most of us (though still not necessarily fully appreciated by many journalists themselves), and the bleak future that this malaise points to especially for in-depth, costly, quality investigative journalism has been discussed in some detail already (including by Jason, Barry and me in the Club Bloggery series), but it was a useful framing for the panels to follow.

Two key points Margaret made bear repeating, however. On the one hand, that the link between the business of media and the practice of journalism is gradually being severed - it is increasingly possible for some forms of journalism to take place outside of the business environment (indeed, the best future for investigative journalism may now lie in funding by taxpayers, NGOs, or philanthropists, while quality political commentary in Australia is now found in citizen journalism sites more so than newspapers), while there is also a chance for journalists to extract themselves from employment by mainstream media organisations and set up shop on their own (something Margaret herself is currently attempting to do, of course).

On the other hand, then, this also requires journalists (and especially journalism students), to develop skills well beyond the standard journalistic craft. Margaret stressed quite strongly that journalism students would be well advised to learn about business plans, and to seek a possible professional future in alternative ventures rather than relying on the availability of employment in the mainstream industry.

Read more…

Brisbane, MEAA, blogging, citizen journalism, conferences, futures, journalism, newspapers

Another quickie, related to a couple of recent post from me about the monetisation of blogging, and “tipping points” which might mean more people making a living from their political commentary. I spied a couple of pieces today suggesting that Australia’s online ad market - though it’s slowed lately - is projected to grow substantially over the next little while.

It’s pretty boring when bloggers boast and obsess about their traffic, but for those who wish to monetise their work, it might be worth having a chat to the ad agencies who can connect bloggers with this spend. Again, it’s an indication that we’re getting closer to the point where independent “content-makers” may be able to viably make at least part of their living from ad revenue.

If, as its suggested in those pieces, the increasing spend online is coming at the expense of traditional advertising outlets, it may be more bad news for newspaper journalism. Talking about changing shares of a finite advertising spend is maybe the only context where the dumb “bloggers versus journalists” framing of “future of journalism” debates has any application. Even so, while some bloggers may be claiming a small proportion of the advertising spend that used to go to more traditional outlets, but newspapers’ problems are much more extensive than this.

UPDATE: The Oz has picked up on this story, too.

advertising

Just a quick one, but I thought it worth noting that Crikey has snagged some of Australia’s best, and some of my favourite bloggers. You can see the line-up on the Crikey blogs page. The great psephs, Possum Comitatus and William Bowe, have now gone full time over to Crikey from their respectiveformer haunts. Andrew Bartlett seems to be there at least part-time, and other bloggers represented include Crikey editor Jonathan Green, Charlie Happel (on sport) and Crikey’s incomparable cartoonist First Dog on the Moon.

It seems like the psephs have successfully taken their audiences with them. I don’t know the details, but I’d wager there might be a retainer in it for the head-counters, and rightly so. Possum has been very productive since arriving at the new site, pumping out more posts than usual, and the Poll Bludger’s comments threads are still in the hundreds.

I posted a little while back about a possible “tipping-point”, where bloggers were perhaps starting to turn over enough dough to make at least part of a living. Obviously Crikey has seen the potential for monetising these bloggers’ audiences, and they have done a great job of putting them on the Crikey site, using Wordpress for a blogging platform.

It’s a much more sympathetic use of blogging than we’ve had so far from any of the big media organisations. It figures. Crikey are much closer to the groundswell of expert political blogging, and have had Possum and William Bowe writing in the newsletter over a long period. They also have more to gain by getting this right. While sometimes its easy to feel like big media are attempting to co-opt bloggers, Crikey has every reason to promote these voices, to develop their audience, and associate them with the Crikey brand.

Anyhow - good luck to all concerned. To one observer at least, it seems a positive, and potentially important development in Australia’s political blogosphere.

Andrew Bartlett, Crikey, Poll Bludger, Possum Comitatus

(Crossposted from snurb.info.)

The Media and Entertainment Arts Alliance (the key union for Australian media workers) has recently begun to organise a series of events titled “The Future of Journalism”, bringing together industry and citizen journalists, academics, and other media experts to explore future developments in the news media. The first of these was held in Sydney in May, covered by Jason Wilson at Gatewatching and Rachel Hills at New Matilda, and now it’s Brisbane’s turn - at QUT’s Gardens Theatre on 13 September 2008.

For more information, and to register, see the MEAA’s Future of Journalism site. In the afternoon, I’ll be part of a panel titled “Bloggers: Amateur Netizens or Professionals of the Future?” alongside Mark Bahnisch and Marian Edmunds, and I think the first point I’m going to make is that the amateur/professional dichotomy (usually mapped on a parallel blogger/journalist dichotomy) is of course no longer sustainable today. In fact, it’s nothing more than the result of the classic approach in journalistic writing which reduces any conflict ultimately to a struggle between two opposite stereotypes - amateurs vs. professionals, youth vs. establishment, poor vs. rich, left vs. right, good vs. evil.

Read more…

Brisbane, MEAA, blogging, citizen journalism, conferences, journalism

A bit of overdue housekeeping on some research progress in the project. Even though I’m now at GetUp! almost full time, I’m still engaged with research collaboration at QUT, and I hope to publish something on the experience of building an e-democracy project in the not-too-distant future.

For now, the news is that a few weeks back, Professor Terry Flew and I submitted a paper to an international journalism journal, based on the youdecide2007 experience. It’s called “Journalism as Social Networking: The Australian youdecide project and the 2007 Federal election.” (Obligatory colon ahoy!) You can go to the QUT eprints archive to download it. Academic publishing being what it is, it may be awhile before it appears in a published form, but everyone should feel free to read and discuss this preprint version.

We’re pretty happy with it at this point - basically it combines the stuff I’ve banged on about concerning the four dimensions of the work of the “preditor” - the emerging professional role of facilitating citizen journalism - with a whole lot of context concerning the state of journalism, the state of news media in Australia, and the changing role of journalism education.

The paper feels well-timed, given the consternation and discussion around the future of media careers and institutions in Australia at the moment. (I heard some fascinating versions of this at the “Media in the Pub” event last week in Sydney.)

Anyway, let’s see what the peer reviewers say! Enjoy.

Terry Flew, citizen journalism, journalism, media, youdecide2007

As already mentioned on this blog, I left QUT a couple of months ago to help out GetUp! with some e-democracy projects. The first iteration of the biggie, Project Democracy, is now live.

Especially over the last couple of weeks, there have been a lot of long days and nights with the awesome team I’ve been working with - Darren Loasby (GetUp!’s online director), James Ferguson and Charles Lee. A major component of the project - the technology that parses Hansard so that you can keep track of individual parliamentarians - was developed by some hardworking volunteers at OpenAustralia. And the whole GetUp! team have contributed endless ideas and support.

We’ve focussed initially on the Senate - partly because the finely-balanced Senate is a current focus for everyone concerned with Australian politics. But it’s also nice because it’s GetUp!’s third birthday, and the very first GetUp! campaign focussed on the Senate. A little bit of poetry there.

Alongside GetUp!’s traditional campaigning activities, Project Democracy represents a move towards facilitating democratic engagement - we want to help people communicate more directly with their representatives, and to understand better what they do. There’s a lot of functionality embedded in the site - people can follow their Senators’ parliamentary performances, track them in the media with tailored newsfeeds, see the whole chamber or their State’s senators at a glance, or contact their senators directly.

Also - and this is where it’s continuous with earlier projects I’ve worked on - people can sound off about how they think their senators are going on our Action Blogs. The whole thing is an experiment in combining existing capacities in a form which - I hope - will enhance political engagement and social capital.

Having said all of that, we’re really looking for feedback on the whole site, and information on the sort of functions people would like to see on the site in future, especially when we roll out the House of Reps component soon. Gatewatching readers should feel free to discuss it here, but we’re also happy to get feedback through the PD site. I think that we’ll be integrating a whole range of things, but people probably know that my interest is in building community at the hyperlocal level. Watch this space.

I’ll keep posting about this over the next little while. For now, I’m looking forward to a weekend of sleeping in, and the Cowboys at Shark Park on Saturday night.

GetUp!, Project Democracy, Senate, e-democracy