Convergence: Print, Broadcast
& Online Hand in Hand
Rosental Calmon Alves
University of Texas at Austin
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
General Membership Meeting
London 4-7, 2005
The first decade
After 10 years of Web journalism, where are we?
The audience has reached critical mass.
Online journalism became indispensable for
virtually all “well-informed” people almost
everywhere.
Online advertising has grown fast and will
sustain high levels of growth.
The Internet is taking audience from
newspapers and television.
From “The Vanishing Newspaper,” by Philip Meyer:
In the study “Abandoning the News” (spring 2005) the
Carnegie Corporation of New York shows how young
Americans (ages 18-34) are distancing themselves from
the traditional media and moving to the Internet as a
main source of news.
The next two slides are from that study and can be
found at: www.carnegie.org/pdf/AbandoningTheNews.ppt.
From “Abandoning the News” – Carnegie Foundation survey of consumers ages 18-34
From “Abandoning the News” – Carnegie Foundation survey of consumers ages 18-34
The first decade
Newspapers in general have more of an
audience daily for their Web site than daily print
circulation.
Instead of circulation figures, newspapers now
refer to “audience”, to include the Web users
and argue that the Internet is only strengthening
its outreach.
In the US, the audience keeps declining for the
traditional evening newscasts and lately also for
cable news.
The investments for the Web, however, are still
small compared with its audience and strategic
importance for the survival of any media
company.
Trends of the second decade
The media are losing control to the consumers
and to the advertisers.
Consumers have more options to find
information and are abandoning bundled
products.
We are entering an era of an I-centric media: the
content I want, where I want, in the format I
want, but just when I want it.
And also an era when the audience has a voice
and wants to be heard.
Trends of the second decade
“Journalism used to be a lecture, now it is a
conversation,” say Dan Gillmor and others from the
Citizen Journalism or Participatory Journalism
movement.
Phenomena such as Ohmynews.com and WikiNews
cannot be ignored.
Blogs have grown fast (around 30 million now, a new
one every second, creating challenges for journalism…)
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) changes the
relationship between consumers and the news media.
Podcasting proliferates and shows that new ways (and
platforms) for journalism distribution are on the horizon.
Trends of the second decade
The media are losing control to the advertisers
also.
Advertisers depend less from the traditional
media, since they have now other ways to reach
consumers.
The commercial equation that finances
journalism has been undermined by the new
media.
Internet advertising is more precisely targeted…
And much cheaper.
The bulk of the online ads goes to companies
with little or no commitment to journalism.
The Keller memo
The executive editor of the NY Times wrote this week a
memo to the staff announcing the merging of the print
newsroom and the Web site:
“Over the past ten years the newsroom of Nytimes.com
and the newsroom on 43rd Street have been partners at
a distance…
“But in those ten years, the world has changed. The
digital news operation is now grown up and strong, ready
to enlarge its ambitions…
“We have concluded that our best chance of meeting
that challenge is to integrate the two newsrooms into
one. This will enable us to fully tap the creative energy of
this organization and thus raise digital journalism to the
next level.”
The Keller memo
“The change embodied in this integration will be gradual
but important. For quite a few years now, we've sworn
allegiance to the modern-sounding doctrine of "platform
neutrality…
“By integrating the newsrooms we plan to diminish and
eventually eliminate the difference between newspaper
journalists and Web journalists -- to reorganize our
structures and our minds to make Web journalism, in
forms that are both familiar and yet-to-be-invented, as
natural to us as writing and editing, and to do all of this
without losing the essential qualities that make us The
Times.
“Our readers are moving, and so are we”.
From shovelware to pre-purposing
The Times announcement radically changes the
way the newspaper views the Web and will be
followed by other papers that will become more
Web-centric (classifieds are already Webcentric).
All news organizations adopted Web sites.
Many have been lost in cyberspace, making
their sites just a just-in-case-place-holder.
News content was shoveled from the traditional
medium to the Web.
From shovelware, we evolved to re-purposing (a
little adaptation to the new medium).
That time is over… Pre-purposing is the name of
the game.
From shovelware to pre-purposing
Pre-purposing means the integration Bill Keller
wants in that historical memo.
It will not be the story of the New York Times
formatted to fit in the Nytimes.com…
It will be the first version of the story for the
online edition (and maybe the second and third
versions as well), plus the print edition
consolidated version.
It means an involvement of the online in the
news production process since the very
beginning.
A journalism under construction
While journalism as we know it is dying, a new
kind (or new kinds) of journalism is under
construction.
The next few years it will shape up on the
Internet, on mobile phones, on PDAs, on MP3
players, on Interactive TV, on new platforms that
will be launched.
Investigative journalism finds in this new world a
fertile terrain.
The new style is multimedia, multiplatform and
has unique capabilities that facilitate the
publication of investigative/in-depth pieces.
“Our readers are moving, and so are we”.
Bill Keller, Executive Editor, The New York Times
Martin Nisenholtz, CEO, New York Times Digital
August 2, 2005
Are you moving? Are you moving? Are you
moving? Are you moving? Are you moving?
Are you moving? Are you moving? Are you
moving? Are you moving? Are you moving?
Are you moving? Are you moving? Are you
moving? Are you moving? Are you moving?
Are you moving? Are you moving? Are you
moving? Are you moving? Are you moving?
Thank you very much indeed!
And, by the way, Are you moving?