I did something the other day I haven’t done in a long time. I turned on the TV.
Some of you may still be familiar with this ritual, but I can honestly say in the last three years, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve even bothered to find the remote.
It’s not that I’m accessing TV shows through other nefarious time-shifted means, though I’m not denying that I have engaged in such acts, but rather that I find TV quite a solitary experience.
Unless you’re watching football, there’s pretty much an unspoken rule NOT TO SPEAK. And yes, before you all collectively scream at me, I know you don’t talk during the replays. Established that one the hard way.
So just who do you screech at when at Courtney produces sub-par pesto? #masterfchef
Why, Twitter ofcourse.
In fact, Twitter is bringing TV to life in a way that time-shifting will never be able to compete with.
Twitter brings a huge collective audience together to watch TV. If you’re yet to experience the magic of Twitter TV, you can’t go past Eurovision to fully appreciate its value. And you don’t have long to wait. Highlight 25, 27 & 29 May, 2010 in your calendar.
A few Australian programs have cottoned on to the this.
Mark Pesce (@mpesce), who has a healthy Twitter following, was one of the early pioneers of rounding up the troops on Twitter to watch the New Inventors, for which he is a panelist from time to time.
Then there was the infamous #nudierun on Media Watch, where twitterers said they would run around their neighbourhoods naked if Johnathon Holmes said “pwned” on TV. He did and there were some sightings of naked bottoms. Silly? Yes, but quite empowering for the audience all the same (not to mentioned damned funny). I think Holmes even cracked a wry smile.
Sally Jackson, who writes for the Media section for The Australian, tweeted recently that Q&A receives between 5000 and 10000 tweets per episode. That’s a very impressive statistic, which indicates if nothing else, that people enjoy having their say. It’s not even that these tweets need to become part of the show, though that is fantastic where appropriate, but rather that people enjoy being able to watch TV together. Quietly, but not alone.
Which begs the question why TV execs don’t announce a Twitter hashtag at the beginning of every show.
And I don’t think it’s something that can only apply to TV. Every major news article too, should carry a hashtag on it. Same for radio.
It would bring those conversations together in a clever, simple way.
Encouraging conversation is a function of the media. And this is an almost accidental chance for media to do that in a way not entirely possible before.
So, that’s my free advice to media execs.
Show us your hashtags and we’ll come to the party.

It’s great to see so many journalists here who are on Twitter and I think if anything it’s provided a great forum for some robust debate about issues facing media.

Perhaps many journalist’s natural curiosity has been piqued by the fact that they are in danger of becoming largely irrelevant?

I’m not anti-journalist, I’m not pro-blogger, I’m pro-journalism and it’s core function to inform. I didn’t say inform the masses on purpose there. Who performs that function is less relevant to me.

The way I see it, and for the purposes of this discussion, there are two main issues that remain largely misunderstood by journalists working in news organisations when it comes to engaging in social media.

The first pertains to the issue of control, or loss of control and the second is around transparency.

I don’t talk about old media and new media – I think it’s unconstructive and divisive.

But there has been a shift and I’m not averse to calling it a revolution. The revolution in media has largely been about loss of control and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

I use the term ‘control media’ to describe the mindset we have had until the internet came along and disrupted that.

I think it’s an important part of understanding how things like Twitter have turned media-as-we-know-it on its head. It’s also important for journalists in social media communities to fully understand the enormity of this change.

Until recently we’ve lived in a control media environment – the ability to report and share information was limited to those that controlled the technology that made it possible – those who owned the printing presses, radio and TV licences. But more importantly news was controlled by those in charge of deciding who /what /why and when something was newsworthy.

Twitter is an example of almost the exact opposite of “control media” because journalists are not in control the flow of information anymore.

It wasn’t journalists who covered the recent Iran uprising.

It wasn’t journalists who broke the news of the last major earthquake in China. in fact the previous earthquake of a similar magnitude was reported three months after the event and the Chinese Government still tried to deny it ever happened.

It wasn’t a journalist’s twitpic – that’s a picture posted to Twitter – I saw 3 minutes after the cable snapped on the bay Bridge in San Francisco – just over a week ago.

Participatory media doesn’t mean you letting your audience participate in the creation of news, it about acknowledging that you participate in news creation along with your audience.

It still astounds me how many journalists on Twitter, many of whom have spoken here today (I know because I checked) only follow other journalists – and who are the first ones to complain that the internet is an echo chamber?

My second point about journalists using Twitter is the need for full transparency, which can run counter to the notion of objectivity.

How can you be honest and open about things – or have a personal opinion – when it might align you with one party in a story over another? It was something Mark Colvin and Leigh Sales touched on in their talks with regard to being cautious in letting their opinions on a subject known. I believe that if we knew where journalists stood on a matter, it would in fact increase their credibility and create a greater trust with their audiences.

As journalist Amy Gahran put it “when journos pretend to have NO opinions/biases, it *undermines* their credibility.”

The Washington Post recently published some guidelines for their journalists in using social networks like Twitter and Facebook, in which it said, and I quote:

All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens. Post journalists must recognize that any content associated with them in an online social network is, for practical purposes, the equivalent of what appears beneath their bylines in the newspaper or on our website.

It’s quite alarming really. Instead of finding ways to encourage engagement, these guidelines are in fact doing just the opposite.

Its important in this time of change, that journalists are encouraged to have open conversations, not have restrictions placed on those.

Truth is, objectivity as an ideal was always somewhat flawed, and in part is responsible for the large cynicism that exists among audiences today.

I subscribe to the disclosure of personal views and opinions whenever and wherever possible, rather than a pretense that they don’t exist. And I encourage all journalists to do the same.

Can journalists do it better?

We’ve heard Jay Rosen’s quote here a few times today about “the people formerly known as the audience.” To which I’d like to add:

Journalists are the audience formerly known as the media.

I have set up a Google group that is free for people in the industry, or those with an interest in media, to join. It is an open group at present, but depending on how it is used (or abused) we could close the group (and we will!) I want it to be an open and intelligent space for us to throw around ideas on what we can do to save the things that are good about journalism and work on those things that need improving.

I’ve set the group up so that replies are sent to the whole group – I’m on another email group and this seems like a good way to make the discussion useful for everyone. I can always adjust settings as we go along.

So please help me spread the word, it would be great to get a large pool of working journalists on the list as well – from a variety of news organisations, as well as those working independently.

You can join the group here. All posts from a new member are moderated to control spam. I’m guessing that falls on me as the one who set up the group and I’ll try to keep on top of it as best I can. I think others can be given this duty as well, so let me know if you can help and I’ll see what I can do in the settings.

Lastly, please take a minute to fill out your profile on the group as I think it will make it a more useful experience for others.

Again, thanks and help spread the word!

Just a few hours ago I was having a very interesting discussion on Twitter about whether paywall could work for news. Without Twitter the conversation could not have taken place, we had @julie_posetti in Canberra, @jason_a_w in Woolongong, @natecochrane in Sydney, @Mediamum in Colorado, @barrysaunders in Sydney, @GreenJ Melbourne and me in Perth – there may have been others chiming in that I’ve missed. The point is, we are all people with some industry insight who, limited by geography/time/connectivity, would not have had that conversation otherwise.

It was one of the most intelligent and informed conversations I’d seen on the subject too, with input from many people in a thoughtful way.

I wish I could direct you to it, but I can’t. And that is Twitter’s biggest failure (bigger than the FAIL WHALE). Our conversations, insights and comments are unarchivable, unsearchable and lost the moment after they finish. Twitter search only goes back three weeks at the moment and then it’s still hard to track a conversation with so many involved, replying to different points and different people. Even if we’d used a hashtag (which we didn’t) the conversation would not be there after a month in Twitter search. Who is to know it ever happened?

The same goes when people comment about a blog post through Twitter. Those comments are gone in a moment.

Over the three years I’ve been on Twitter it’s become an easy habit to let my thoughts be known through Twitter over posting on my blog, my archive is testament to that fact – and the same goes for a lot of us I suspect. But 13, 493 tweets later, I’m starting to wonder if Twitter is actually a f**ked place for us to have these conversations. Thoughts?

Twitter
There is no quicker way to get news out of something happening other than Twitter – *by default it is one of the most important developments in citizen journalism.
*By default, because who would have thought a site that asked simply “What are you doing” and limited it to 140 characters would become one of the most powerful news “networks” we have ever seen.
I use Tweetie, but as far as I can tell there is no reason why Tweetdeck or any other of the myriad of iPhone apps for Twitter wouldn’t do as good a job. The power of Twitter has more to do with its real-time news reporting abilities than people’s preference for an app. But if you can think of a reason one Twitter app would be better over another for the purposes of citizen journalism let me know in the comments.

Audioboo
Audioboo records audio as an MP3 and posts it to its own site, but can also autopost to Twitter. Its potential is in its simplicity. I’ve seen it used for impromptu interviews or reports from the scene of something. It’s fast, is good quality and the app is dead simple to use. Audio can be up to three minutes long and you can add titles and include a pic as well as locate where the recording was made. It’s free and you don’t need to sign up to Audioboo to start using it, but I’d recommend it to keep track of your recordings.

Twitpic
Twitpic is one of the many ways to upload pics quickly to Twitter. I like the way the Twitpic app is very simple and it’s been my photo service of choice on Twitter for a while. I actually have it integrated with Tweetie so I can post from there. Others may find the app easier.

12 seconds
The iPhone 3GS officially brings video to the iPhone (though a hack to the 3G also made it possible). Not everything requires a long video, and 12 seconds has a lot of great uses as an easy way to make a quick video update on a situation that requires a bit more than a photo. Like a lot of the other apps I’ve mentioned it is integrated with Twitter and you can set 12 seconds updates to go to Twitter if you choose. 12 seconds videos are also easily shared on other sites, an important feature when it comes to disseminating information.

YouTube
The inbuilt YouTube app on the new 3GS comes with an easy way to upload longer videos to your YouTube account. It’s simple and easy to use once you have set it up.

The top Cit J iPhone App that’s missing
The biggest way in which the iPhone fails as a mobile reporting device is that you are unable to livestream video from it because Apple won’t allow any apps that livestream from your phone – the reason is understood to be related to the deal they have with AT &T in the US as the network could not handle large amounts of livestreaming video. 3G users got around this with a hack, but this is not supported on the 3GS. Qik, which was built as a livestreaming service has an iPhone App, but it doesn’t allow for livestreaming. Hopefully Apple will do something about this soon, as it’s a major drawback in the capabilities of the iPhone as a truly breakthrough Cit J device and gives the upcoming Android a big heads up in this space.

The Foundation has been set up with help from the  Swinburne University’s Institute for Social Research, which has been exploring new models for journalism. This is a big part of that experimentation.

From the press release we put out when the board was announced:

The foundation will support investigative, interactive journalism while exploring ways of making good journalism sustainable in the new media age.

The board members are:

Professor Michael Bromley: Head of the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland.

Ms Bronwen Clune: Director of Norg Media (http://www.norg.com.au/)

Mr Chris Graham: Co-founder and editor of the National Indigenous Times newspaper.

Mr Jonathan Green: Editor, Crikey

Mr Steve Harris: Strategic consultant

Mrs Elaine Henry OAM: Chief Executive Officer, The Smith Family,

Mr Chris Masters : Freelance reporter and author, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland

Mr Gerard Noonan: Freelance business journalist, chair of Media Super, and active in the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors and the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees.

Professor Julianne Schultz AM: Founding editor of Griffith REVIEW, and a professor at Griffith’s Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, a member of the board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Arts Minister’s Creative Australia Advisory Group.

Dr Margaret Simons: Freelance journalist, author and lecturer at Swinburne University, Simons has published seven books and numerous essays and articles over her 29 year career as a professional journalist.

Ms Melissa Sweet
Freelance journalist and author, with adjunct positions at University of Sydney School of Public Health and University of Notre Dame’s medical school (Sydney campus)

Professor Julian Thomas
Director of the Institute for Social Research and Professor of Media and Communications at Swinburne University.

Dr Margaret Simons has been appointed interim chair of the board, and Melissa Sweet is the interim secretary.

Simons said there had been more than 40 nominations for the Board positions, suggesting that there is great public and professional interest in developing vigorous new models of journalism.

In addition to the board members, Dr Simons said she was delighted that many other journalists, academics and community members had volunteered to lend their expertise and experience to advising the Board.

“We look forward to drawing upon a large pool of talent to assist with the Board’s work,” she said.

“We expect the new board will hold its first meeting next month, and that its priorities will include establishing a website and work-plan, as well as developing fundraising strategies,

“We will be seeking support from philanthropic organisations and individuals who appreciate the importance of a healthy, active media for our society.”

Donations will be tax deductible.

The foundation will fund worthy journalism projects initiated by either members of the public or practising journalists. Its first project will be to establish a website through which members of the public and journalists can come together to organise journalistic projects without the intervention of Big Media. This will be partly modelled on USA experiments such as www.spot.us

And if you’re still wondering how to eat burritos – the trick is not to eat the butt, it’s the biggest part of the burrito and tends to be messy and fills you up just that “bit too much”. It’s just gluttony. And we all know where that ended for Big Media

“Quality journalism is not cheap,” Mr Murdoch said. “An industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting.”

The Punch (owned by News Corp) looked at the issue of paid content with a few pieces, one by Paul Colgan Psst, Twitter:  You might want to help save Big Media, another by Leslie Nassar (better known as fake Stephen Conroy) Not all media dinosaurs have small brains and  some comment from UTS journalism students about how they see the future of journalism.

David Penberthy also asked readers if they would pay for content.

Of the 177 comments (at the time I wrote this) on the Punch  thread, most people  say they would NOT pay for content, and Penberthy conceded that “we don’t have the answers,” which is probably why he asked the question in the first place. Still I think it’s an honest admission, because nobody knows if paid content will work.

Of course the argument for paid content is about defending commercial news organisations and not journalism. Problem is the two aren’t mutually exclusive anymore.

For starters, it excludes the competition from government subsidised media – SBS and ABC - who probably can’t wait for News Corp and Fairfax to start charging for their content. A senior news person at SBS told me just yesterday that he “WANTS those sites to charge!” – not because he believes in paid content, he doesn’t, but because it certainly brightens his future.

James Murdoch (son of Rupert), made a similar, but misguided, point on the weekend with regard to the BBC saying that it inhibited the ability of commercial competitors to invest in news and implied it could put newspapers out of business. But News Corporation (of which James is chairman and chief executive) has only increased the threat of sites like the BBC and even ABC and SBS by deciding to put its content behind a paywall. The issue is not about good journalism, which the BBC, ABC and SBS have proved they can do well online, but about saving “Big Media” (a point Colgan made in the heading of his Punch piece.)

The question then is what is the value proposition of news sites like theage.com.au, smh.com.au and news.com.au. What can they do better than anyone else? The answer in their CURRENT form is not much. That’s exactly why most people would not be willing to pay for what they can essentially find elsewhere for free. Quite simply their product isn’t good enough. This isn’t bad news for journalism.

The issue of paid content  has led to some internal questions about ways news organisations can better what they offer their readers. And if news sites had any doubts about how they are “valued” by their readers, I think the Punch comments should go someway in cementing the fact that it’s not very high.

It’s not all bad news though.

I think there is commercial value in a number of niche sites that news rooms are still in a strong position, in Australia at least, to make an impact on. Advertising has proved successful on a number of these sites overseas – advertising is highly relevant to their audiences, which means a higher CPM (the current ad standard of measuring per thousand impressions). And because I could never imagine doing it any better, I think the Niche Manifesto is one of the best pieces written on this area,  in fact on media. Ever. Read it.

As Umair Haque so eloquently puts it:

“The 21st century’s great challenge isn’t selling the same old “product” better: it’s learning to make radically better stuff in the first place.”

As for whether paid content will work or not remains to be seen. There is still the question about the ethics of it. And journalists do like bang that drum when they need to.

Do we really want a world where knowledge is a privilege for a few willing and able to pay for content? Don’t we all have the right to be informed?  A point BBC business editor Robert Preston made earlier this year when he asked whether it was desirable we have news only available to those who will pay for it.

Free online news has increased our democratic value, why would we the Fourth Estate want to take that right to be informed away from us now? What are we protecting ? Journalism or big media?

Disclaimer: I’ve written a few pieces for The Punch. I don’t get paid, which only adds a whole new layer of irony. As long as people are willing to produce good content for free, news organisations are stuffed. I’ll save that for another day

Besides the odd look over my shoulder in the mirror, I’m quite happy not to be really know what others are seeing, or more precisely what you don’t know won’t hurt you. I have enough complexes about the parts I can see already.

Everybody knows the standard answer to the question “Does my bum look big in this?” is somewhere between NO and “it looks like two peaches on a windowsill,” so why mess with convention?

Enter Jeans West and their decision to install butt cameras in its change rooms so that customers can easily see what their touche looks like in a new pair of jeans.
Apparently here’s the advantage:

“The camera snaps an image of your backside on your own personal screen in the changeroom so you no longer have to venture into the main store and run the gauntlet of unflattering light and mirrors.”

It’s not like you get to see it that often, but now they make you stare at it in the most vulnerable of moments – jeans shopping?

Any good shop understands the delicacy of trying on new jeans and thoughtfully installs low-lighting and quality (tilted slightly upwards) mirrors.

Until they develop the technology to give me a bum-lift at the same time, I’ll be keeping cameras out of my changeroom.