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.

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

(Crossposted from snurb.info - for full coverage of the CCi conference, see here.)

Brisbane.
The third and last day of the CCi conference starts with a keynote by the fabulous Mark Deuze, author of Media Work. He begins by pointing to Henry Jenkins’s work on convergence culture, and reminds us of the magnitude of that trend. Why is this happening, what is the context for this - how do media professionals work in this environment?

Media organisations are very well positioned to make sense of this from a production perspective - they are well placed to find new ways to tell stories across multiple (new) platforms, but in doing so reproduce mainly what they did before. We need to move forward beyond this approach, though: how do we start from scratch in developing new content forms and forms of participation which are native to the new (media) environment, characterised as it is by niche communities and diverse interests? (Mark’s upcoming book Beyond Journalism tells this story for the journalistic environment.)

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media academic, conferences, futures, journalism, media

Alcopops, petrol tax holidays, who leaked emails from whom… Sometimes its difficult to get serious policy discussion in the MSM (unless, like me, you’re a Fin junkie).

The best way to find out about major policy developments that impact on your areas of concern is through your RSS reader. I thought I’d try to start sharing some of what I get on a semi-regular basis on the blog. We’ve posted about policy matters before, but at the moment there is important stuff coming out pretty well every week that has a direct bearing on citizen journalism and politics online. I thought I might as well stick it all together for readers now and again.

With all the reviews and inquiries going on just now, there will be a mass of reporting coming along shortly which will be informing big policy initiatives. Also, notwithstanding some MSM narratives of the first six months, I’m with Mark Bahnisch and Possum in holding that there is actually a fair bit going on already - you just have to look around in a clear-eyed fashion. There are some fundamental policy shifts slowly being put in place, particularly in the communications area, but for whatever reason it’s not being picked up on by the big outlets. I guess that’s one area where bloggers come into their own.

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ACMA, Steven Conroy, Telstra, blogging, broadband, media literacy, regulation ACMA, blogging, broadband, futures, infrastructure, media literacy, policy, regulation, Steven Conroy, Telstra