NDM News: The future of journalism
1) Go to the Nieman Lab webpage (part of Harvard university) and watch the video of Clay Shirky presenting to Harvard students.
2) Play the clip AND read along with the transcript below to ensure you are following the argument. You need to watch from the beginning to 29.35 (the end of Shirky's presentation).
3) Why does Clay Shirky argue that 'accountability journalism' is so important and what example does he give of this?
He references the Boston Globe published story on John Geoghan, a pedophile who had been employed by the catholic church since the 1960's and abused 100's of boys in his care.
He references this story because of the sheer impact it had on such a large audience, that even their parent company 'the new york times' references the investigation. Moreover, they managed boost the growth on organisations set up to counteract abuse by priests eg. SNAP which grew by 3 times, as well as informing us that investigative journalism allows for reports to put in lengthy efforts to uncover the truth, yet now that thus journalism is shrinking it means that the accountability is decreasing.
4) What does Shirky say about the relationship between newspapers and advertisers? Which websites does he mention as having replaced major revenue-generators for newspapers (e.g. jobs, personal ads etc.)?
In the past, especially in the US, ad-supported news papers used to produce accountability journalism and served as a public good thus making a profit and producing valuabe public content. However, this had changed now, e.g. "Best Buy was not willing to support the Baghdad bureau because Best Buy cared about news from Baghdad. They just didn’t have any other good choices."
Now, its not enough for newspaper to run a profit through commercial success. Because in the past advertisers had to over pay for the services they used as they didn't have many alternatives however now their are a lot of alternatives.
This is said to be due to the fact that now media content seesm to be made by demand rrather than supply ie. printing takes place because the public wants it, not in advance. Thus also leading to a decrease in advertising prices. So now, advertising is charged at its 'real value' rather than what they were used to.
"The institutions harrying newspapers — Monster and Matchand Craigslist — all have the logic that if you want to list a job or sell a bike, you don’t go to the place that’s printing news from Antananarivo and the crossword puzzle."
5) Shirky talks about the 'unbundling of content'. This means people are reading newspapers in a different way. How does he suggest audiences are consuming news stories in the digital age?
Newspapers are no longer intellectual, they're industrial so e.g. if someome likes a cross word they fdo on your news website, you show them more cross words rather than more important news. This isn't want audiences truely want, print news paper budles could do this better. So... "the aggregation of news sources has gone from being a server-side to a client-side operation "
News papers have almost become echo chambers. The overall online readership eg. for the times, decreases as we go straight to the stories rather than the sight as we most likely came across the link on social media and went straight to the story ; we don't see the other relevant material.
So civil curruption, without journalists going something, it will carry on increasing.
6) Shirky also talks about the power of shareable media. How does he suggest the child abuse scandal with the Catholic Church may have been different if the internet had been widespread in 1992?
public reuse of the documents ease now compared to then. Audiences could just now send a chain email and be viewed by thousands of people thus helping the awareness of the campaign.
7) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls?
It adds restrictions to a public good, a good which is meant to be encouraged not hindered to audiences. The extra charge makes it seem to product is scarce, news shouldn't be and isn't scarce. It could also hinder the accountability of journalism due to the many price restrictions to an organisation, audiences want to be able to reuse again.
8) What is a 'social good'? In what way is journalism a 'social good'?
public goods are goods that benefit society as a whole, a thing which is encouraged in terms of production and consumption. Social goods can be more of a service than a tangible good. News doesn't use models that use market or managerial culture, instead the opposite. The public model of news is more effective at being a social good than the internet/ commercial model which is now being used. It helps to avoid complete capitalism. The change is putting producers at risk, something that should't be happening.
9) Shirky says newspapers are in terminal decline. How does he suggest we can replace the important role in society newspapers play? What is the short-term danger to this solution that he describes?
"We need a class of institutions or models, whether they’re endowments or crowdsourced or what have you — we need a model that produces five percent of accountability journalism."
when he whole society is accountable even though we might want to distant ourselves from these
10) Look at the first question and answer regarding institutional power. Give us your own opinion: how important is it that major media brands such as the New York Times or the Guardian continue to stay in business and provide news?
Very important because they can afford professional quality journalists, present news in a good consumer satisfactory way, and have the contacts to make enquirers, etc. They have power and money which allows for good news as they can fund it, if they are driven by the need to serve informative news to the public they aid the public on a large scale, they would reach masses of audiences and therefore be a platform where the news can be let without too much of a bias and unprofessional view due to their reules and regulations as well as due to their PR
2) Play the clip AND read along with the transcript below to ensure you are following the argument. You need to watch from the beginning to 29.35 (the end of Shirky's presentation).
3) Why does Clay Shirky argue that 'accountability journalism' is so important and what example does he give of this?
He references the Boston Globe published story on John Geoghan, a pedophile who had been employed by the catholic church since the 1960's and abused 100's of boys in his care.
He references this story because of the sheer impact it had on such a large audience, that even their parent company 'the new york times' references the investigation. Moreover, they managed boost the growth on organisations set up to counteract abuse by priests eg. SNAP which grew by 3 times, as well as informing us that investigative journalism allows for reports to put in lengthy efforts to uncover the truth, yet now that thus journalism is shrinking it means that the accountability is decreasing.
4) What does Shirky say about the relationship between newspapers and advertisers? Which websites does he mention as having replaced major revenue-generators for newspapers (e.g. jobs, personal ads etc.)?
In the past, especially in the US, ad-supported news papers used to produce accountability journalism and served as a public good thus making a profit and producing valuabe public content. However, this had changed now, e.g. "Best Buy was not willing to support the Baghdad bureau because Best Buy cared about news from Baghdad. They just didn’t have any other good choices."
Now, its not enough for newspaper to run a profit through commercial success. Because in the past advertisers had to over pay for the services they used as they didn't have many alternatives however now their are a lot of alternatives.
This is said to be due to the fact that now media content seesm to be made by demand rrather than supply ie. printing takes place because the public wants it, not in advance. Thus also leading to a decrease in advertising prices. So now, advertising is charged at its 'real value' rather than what they were used to.
"The institutions harrying newspapers — Monster and Matchand Craigslist — all have the logic that if you want to list a job or sell a bike, you don’t go to the place that’s printing news from Antananarivo and the crossword puzzle."
5) Shirky talks about the 'unbundling of content'. This means people are reading newspapers in a different way. How does he suggest audiences are consuming news stories in the digital age?
Newspapers are no longer intellectual, they're industrial so e.g. if someome likes a cross word they fdo on your news website, you show them more cross words rather than more important news. This isn't want audiences truely want, print news paper budles could do this better. So... "the aggregation of news sources has gone from being a server-side to a client-side operation "
News papers have almost become echo chambers. The overall online readership eg. for the times, decreases as we go straight to the stories rather than the sight as we most likely came across the link on social media and went straight to the story ; we don't see the other relevant material.
So civil curruption, without journalists going something, it will carry on increasing.
6) Shirky also talks about the power of shareable media. How does he suggest the child abuse scandal with the Catholic Church may have been different if the internet had been widespread in 1992?
public reuse of the documents ease now compared to then. Audiences could just now send a chain email and be viewed by thousands of people thus helping the awareness of the campaign.
7) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls?
It adds restrictions to a public good, a good which is meant to be encouraged not hindered to audiences. The extra charge makes it seem to product is scarce, news shouldn't be and isn't scarce. It could also hinder the accountability of journalism due to the many price restrictions to an organisation, audiences want to be able to reuse again.
8) What is a 'social good'? In what way is journalism a 'social good'?
public goods are goods that benefit society as a whole, a thing which is encouraged in terms of production and consumption. Social goods can be more of a service than a tangible good. News doesn't use models that use market or managerial culture, instead the opposite. The public model of news is more effective at being a social good than the internet/ commercial model which is now being used. It helps to avoid complete capitalism. The change is putting producers at risk, something that should't be happening.
9) Shirky says newspapers are in terminal decline. How does he suggest we can replace the important role in society newspapers play? What is the short-term danger to this solution that he describes?
"We need a class of institutions or models, whether they’re endowments or crowdsourced or what have you — we need a model that produces five percent of accountability journalism."
when he whole society is accountable even though we might want to distant ourselves from these
10) Look at the first question and answer regarding institutional power. Give us your own opinion: how important is it that major media brands such as the New York Times or the Guardian continue to stay in business and provide news?
Very important because they can afford professional quality journalists, present news in a good consumer satisfactory way, and have the contacts to make enquirers, etc. They have power and money which allows for good news as they can fund it, if they are driven by the need to serve informative news to the public they aid the public on a large scale, they would reach masses of audiences and therefore be a platform where the news can be let without too much of a bias and unprofessional view due to their reules and regulations as well as due to their PR
Comments
Post a Comment