US-Media: Tales from the Battlefield
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re:publica 20101 / 60
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Data Encryption StandardChi-squared distributionUniverse (mathematics)HypermediaState of matterProcess (computing)Business modelText editorWebsiteDegree (graph theory)Disk read-and-write headEvent horizonMultiplication signBranch (computer science)Lecture/Conference
02:07
Projective planeNumberHypermediaMultiplication signShift operatorIntranetTwitterHost Identity ProtocolVideoconferencingText editorBusiness modelVideo gameLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Speech synthesisMultiplication signMereologyHypermediaPosition operatorTwitterLine (geometry)Point (geometry)Hybrid computerView (database)Data modelException handlingSource codeWaveInformationGroup actionInternetworkingBlogMixed realityTowerDemosceneGoodness of fitVideoconferencingDifferent (Kate Ryan album)PlastikkarteLoginCASE <Informatik>Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Metropolitan area networkBlogHypermediaRevision controlRight angleTraffic reportingData modelPhysical systemBusiness modelOnline-MedienMeeting/Interview
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InformationContent (media)HypermediaLetterpress printingExtreme programmingWordLecture/Conference
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Pointer (computer programming)InformationSource codeHand fanSelf-organizationHypermediaInheritance (object-oriented programming)WebsiteSound effectLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Metropolitan area networkGoodness of fitDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Business modelHypermediaBit rateWebsitePoint (geometry)Revision controlRight angleView (database)AlgorithmProcess (computing)Enterprise architectureInformationText editorWhiteboardCorrespondence (mathematics)Lattice (order)MereologyConnected spaceCovering spaceGroup actionRange (statistics)Line (geometry)Pay televisionNeuroinformatikHand fanDependent and independent variablesFourier seriesIndependence (probability theory)EmailArithmetic meanCycle (graph theory)Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Metropolitan area networkLetterpress printingLocal ringData modelBlogDigitizingHypercubeAreaPosition operatorArchaeological field surveyOnline helpTraffic reportingForm (programming)PlastikkarteSource codeText editorStaff (military)WebsiteInternetworkingService (economics)Projective planeMereologyNumberWater vaporDigital photographyOnline-MedienWordMeeting/Interview
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Different (Kate Ryan album)HypermediaData modelBitGoodness of fitData conversionGroup actionShift operatorInformation privacyForm (programming)Letterpress printingBusiness modelInformationFacebookTwitterRight angleWordMultiplication signLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Film editingHypermediaComputer scienceGroup actionDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Process (computing)DigitizingMathematicsSelf-organizationMultimediaPerspective (visual)Letterpress printingBootingComputer configurationDecision theoryUniform resource locatorField (computer science)1 (number)Classical physicsBitPoint (geometry)Multiplication signChainDegree (graph theory)MereologyPattern recognitionInformationFigurate numberWave packetMedical imagingLocal ringWebsiteWordAreaDigital mediaCASE <Informatik>Perturbation theoryStudent's t-testBlogVideoconferencingUniverse (mathematics)NeuroinformatikLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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NumberLetterpress printingInternetworkingRevision controlHand fanBootingLaptopDigital photographyHypermediaVideoconferencingShared memoryBitLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Web 2.0HypermediaDependent and independent variablesFacebookPoint (geometry)Classical physicsWebsiteDecision theoryTwitterYouTubeMathematicsReal numberLecture/Conference
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Interactive televisionProduct (business)Dependent and independent variablesBitWorkstation <Musikinstrument>MathematicsView (database)Point (geometry)Web 2.0State of matterData managementPower (physics)HypermediaGoodness of fitLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Data managementOntologyLoginTheory of relativityAuthorizationTwitterLecture/Conference
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Lecture/Conference
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:01
OK, you're sitting. Hello, everybody. Tales from the Battlefields, the next session. And we're very proud to announce Mark Glaser here on stage. We have seen a lot of unrest in the United States media landscape, as well as in the European media landscape.
00:23
And a lot of newspapers died, and some more will follow. So we all know stories like from the San Francisco Chronicle, where Craigslist took away a lot of business from the old newspapers. There was a report that about $50 million
00:43
were taken away by the business of Craigslist in the business of job advertisement alone. And there's a lot of other examples for this in the United States. At the same time, we see a lot of business models emerging
01:03
that try to deal with the fact that the old business models seem not to work as well anymore. And this is the topic we want to discuss on this panel. On the panel we have Kristin Zeier.
01:21
Kristin is in charge of the English online and radio teams at Deutsche Welle. And she was born in the United States and joined Deutsche Welle in 2001. She helped form the online team and then headed the English team of the online branch.
01:40
She has a degree from Ohio State University. And please welcome Kristin Zeier. Also on the panel we have Wolfgang Glau. He's chief editor of Zeit Online. And he came back from the United States in 2008 to take that job.
02:00
Before that, he spent about 10 years in the United States covering, as a freelance journalist, issues such as technology, trends, internet, and media shift as well. Before that, and during the same time, he helped establish a number of projects in Germany with German media.
02:21
For example, he launched the first audio, the first podcast of a bigger German media, which was a joint thing with Deutsche Welle and ZTF. Please welcome Wolfgang Glauf.
02:43
Also we have Mark Glaser. He's the executive editor of PBS Media Shift and PBS Idea Lab. And he also worked for a long time as a freelance journalist covering issues such as hip hop, video gaming, fun columns.
03:03
Travel. So you've been around in different issues. And you have a bachelor in journalism and a bachelor of arts from the University of Missouri at Columbia. And you live in San Francisco with your son. Welcome, Mark Glaser.
03:21
Thank you. So now I want to hand the mic to Kristin to start the show. OK. Mark, thanks for coming. I think what's really interesting for the audience is that we have an opportunity to really hear from you a firsthand account of the media
03:40
situation in the United States. We hear a lot in Germany and Europe that we see the headlines, that it's a pretty dire situation. Maybe you could just quickly, before we get into the discussion, going to look more at the future business models, but really quickly highlight some of the trends where media is going right now in the United States. What makes it in a position on the verge of shifting
04:03
to something else? What could that be? But right now, where are we standing here? OK, sure. I think that's a really good idea. I think it's funny that the first time I'm speaking in Berlin, it's at a comedy club. So I hope that you guys can at least take me seriously somewhat or part of the time.
04:21
So it's not going to all be, there's no laugh lines all the time. Anyway, I think that there is this perception that in the US and in a lot of the media that there's a crisis. I always hear about the crisis and everything is dying and there won't be journalism. It's just horrible. And I really take exception to that because I actually believe that this
04:40
is a great time in journalism. It's kind of a transitional time and that there's going to be this rebirthing of a journalism that's different and actually better than what there was before and different. And so I sometimes feel like I'm the only optimist when I write about these things. But I really believe that the reason that is
05:02
is because we have the internet as a democratization, as a way of giving more people a voice in journalism. And we have blogs, we have podcasts, we have people doing their own videos, we have people on the scene Twittering. And I think in the past in the US,
05:20
and I'm sure that happens here too, there's this whole battle between the people who have been doing media and the traditional journalists and then the kind of new wave of bloggers and all these people who are kind of coming up. And there's always been this kind of old battle between them. And what excites me is the idea that you could actually work together, that the people who are the traditional journalists who have a lot of good work, who've
05:41
done great work over the years, I don't think that should be thrown out. I think that's always been a misconception that the new will come up and replace the old. And I don't think that's the case at all. I think what has to happen is the best of the old needs to be integrated with the best of the new and that those together will actually create something better. That there'll be this hybrid model of people
06:01
who are doing traditional journalism but also taking the new wave and the new sources of information and helping to filter that and helping be smart guys to what's going on. So while there is this crisis for the people who have been doing it for as long as they've been doing it, the crisis is that they need to actually get on board
06:21
and try to learn new ways of doing things. They need to adapt. They need to kind of evolve or die. They need to really, you know, basically understand a new way of doing things. And that means respecting all the new voices that are coming up, respecting the audience, the people who they used to talk to
06:40
from the tower of the truth saying, we know the truth and this story is the truth and you will take that and you will accept it. Now we all know we can go online and do our own research and find out a lot more information. We have access to information around the world and a lot more voices. So when we hear that kind of voice of truth where people are much more skeptical in the US,
07:02
now the mainstream media probably is at its lowest trust point in its history because, and it's not only because of the mistakes they've made but also because people have access to seeing so many other points of view and feel like they can get information from other sources that they might trust as well. So I think it is a difficult time
07:21
for the mainstream media in the US, but they are adapting and we are seeing them start to do experiments and we are seeing the bloggers become more professional and start to make money and there's this kind of interesting mix of bloggers becoming more professional and doing more journalism and journalists doing more blogging
07:40
and becoming more human. And so, well, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, they're a byline. For people who are in journalism, they know each other, but to a lot of people, they're just a talking head or they're a byline, they're not really human. So I think online, blogging, all these things, social media can make journalists more human.
08:02
Mark, to be the devil's advocate, I totally agree with your assessment that there is really not a crisis of journalism, that journalism is entering a new golden age for all these new possibilities that are there, but that it is much more a crisis of journalistic business models. Yet the question remains,
08:20
are there new business models in the US? Are there new profitable online journalistic venues that you can tell us about? Because I see other conflicts on the rise. Yes, I know about ProPublica and things like that, but I also don't like the NPR system where pharmaceutical companies are sponsoring reports about health and things like that. Right, you know, I think it's tricky.
08:42
Well, we can talk about public media, we can talk about that model too, but as far as what the mainstream media is doing, I mean, let's start with maybe paid content. And that's a big topic right now in the US. Rupert Murdoch is pushing this, you're gonna pay for everything no matter where it is.
09:01
If you get the Wall Street Journal newspaper in the US, you pay for the print edition and then you pay for the online, totally separate. And if you want an iPad app, you pay for that. If you want the mobile app, you pay for that. There isn't a one, you know, cost. They're literally wanting to charge for everything. I think that's kind of extreme and this is also business information.
09:21
So I think people are looking at what can we charge for? What information do we have that is unique, that we can actually charge for? If it's breaking news that's everywhere else, that might be hard to charge for unless you're the first source of that information. So you really have to look at what are the things that you can charge for? There are newspapers now that are charging for,
09:43
let's say in Wisconsin where there's the Green Bay Packers football team. Everyone thinks their fans actually own the team and they're very rabid fans. And people are there willing to pay, I think it's about $20 a month for access to the inside Green Bay Packers information
10:04
from the newspaper. The newspaper actually created a site and charges these kind of super fans a charge over and above what they would have paid for the newspaper or anything else. Mark, because that's an interesting, it brings up an interesting aspect. You have a company or an organization or an institution behind this,
10:21
basically funding that certain stories be brought into the media. Now that is really interest driven journalism. Is there an ethical discussion going on in the United States about whether that's good or not? To charge for content? No, no, no. Have an institution behind you basically paying to bring certain stories,
10:41
certain issues or certain issue driven topics into the media. Is there a discussion about that at all? Which institution would be paying for it? Well, we had the NPR example here, pharmaceutical companies. Oh, right, you're talking about, okay, sponsors. Yeah, sponsors. Or the Green Bay Packers here. Even though it is fans, they're still fans and they're not the general public.
11:01
Right. They're basically paying to have certain information brought into the media. I don't see the conflict as far as sports information or people paying to get the real inside dirt. There are other places where there are also, Global Post is this new site that is trying some new business models on foreign correspondence for the US because a lot of the newspapers have kind of pulled back all their foreign correspondence.
11:22
And so this site partners with newspapers but it's basically a wide range of people in different countries reporting from an American point of view or what American would be interested in in that place. And they have a premium offering too. That's, I think it's $99 a year and you get access to, you actually get to get into the decision-making process
11:42
on what stories are chosen for them to cover. So you have access to kind of their editorial board meetings and you get these emails about the stories they're working on and people will pay for that. The editors might feel a little strange about that having like this group of people saying, you should cover this, you should cover that. And there might be conflicts as far as who are these people
12:01
who are asking us to cover this and what is their agenda? So there's always the issue and I think online it happens a lot where you have this blending and this blurring of the line between the business, the advertising and the editorial. And it's become blurrier and blurrier. But I think that, you see people, people see a lot of things online
12:22
and they do dig it up and they do realize when there are conflicts, people find out about it and they get upset. Yelp is a site in the U.S. that does its user reviews of restaurants and all the different local businesses. And that's become a really go-to site. If you're gonna decide, I wanna go out to a restaurant tonight, which do I trust? You go and see the ratings from all these users.
12:42
Well, the site had this thing where they had this algorithm that would eliminate some reviews that might be from a competing business or might be the business itself writing it. And there was a whole question as to do you trust these reviews? Who are these users? Is there trust? And they also let the business, if they were an advertiser on the site, they could post, they could basically highlight
13:01
one of the reviews that they liked the most as their favorite review. But if you weren't an advertiser on the site, you couldn't highlight one of the positive reviews. So a lot of businesses actually sued Yelp and said, there's a whole question, there's a conflict in the way you're doing this. You're giving favorite status to certain people who are advertisers. And this is not an editorial, this is not what you consider a journalistic enterprise.
13:22
This is just user reviews. There's still a question of conflict. There's still a question of, how is that business operating? And I think online, you have to be transparent. And when you're not transparent, you get these problems and people question it and they come out and say, there's something wrong with it. So while online is also blurring the lines,
13:40
it also is there's opportunity to be really transparent about what's going on there. Yes, I believe public media has had, I think an issue and I'm in public media. I work for PBS, not as an employee, but as an independent producer. But PBS and NPR, they do have corporate sponsors. And there is a question about the conflict
14:01
and are they really covering those sponsors in an ethical way? And I believe that should be looked at. And ProPublica is this big nonprofit that just started as an investigative journalism outlet. And it's funded by some billionaires who made a lot of money in banking and mortgages.
14:20
And they were behind a lot of the mortgages that ended up causing some of this financial disaster that's happened around the world. And at one point, I was in the room with the ProPublica editor and I said, are you gonna cover these guys who funded you, gave you $10 million to start your site? Will you cover, like, if they're part of this story, shouldn't you be writing about them?
14:41
And they said, if there's something there, we'll cover it. But we don't think there's any connection. We don't think there's a problem. Mark, do you know, because we want this to be a very optimistic event. Do you know of online journalistic projects in the US that are already profitable? I know of BaristaNet, a local blog in New Jersey.
15:02
I heard that Voice of San Diego is profitable. In the German-speaking world, I know that Standart.IT, major European newspaper, is highly profitable to this day, single digit million profit. Are there other examples? And what could we learn from them in the US? Well, I think there are examples like,
15:21
we can talk about SpotUs, which is crowdfunding. And they now are, you know, cashflow positive. You know, I don't know their exact, they're saying they're close to profit. And what they do is they allow freelance journalists to post pitches of what stories they'd like to cover in a certain community. And then they ask the community members to fund that story
15:43
by donating, you know, $25. I think it's limited, actually, to a certain amount, so you can't be one person with one agenda. And a number of people, once they fund that story, then that story gets, the reporter writes it up, gets the money, they have an editor who works on it.
16:00
And then it can be published in any newspaper, any local publication can run it. Or the publication, one newspaper can decide they wanna be the exclusive place for that story, and they can buy out all the funders, and the people get all their money back. So they are one model of kind of crowd funding, where people can actually help the journalists
16:21
get paid to do their work, and also help this site by kind of giving a tip to the site and helping to support it. That also is foundation funded. So there's a question about that. The hyper local sites like BaristaNet, some of those have become profitable. There's one called Sacramento Press in Sacramento, California.
16:41
And what I thought was interesting about them is that they also had this model of being kind of hyper local news about one area. They have their audience help contribute photos, contribute stories, contribute knowledge. And it's kind of a low, they don't have a huge staff. They keep it pretty relatively low. They have kind of some technologists, some editors,
17:02
maybe a promotion person. And what they found is they go out to all these businesses and say, we'd like you to advertise on our site. And the businesses say, well, first of all, they're used to print, they're not really used to being online. It's a hard thing. Maybe they know Google words, the ad words, maybe they know here and there, but they don't really know how do we deal with this internet stuff?
17:22
How do we advertise on your hyper local site? We don't get it. And what they realize is that they could actually become like an ad agency. And one of the services that's actually become profitable for them is to help the businesses figure out how to advertise, not only with them, but even on Google and other ways. They realize they could be kind of this ad agency in a way.
17:44
And I know that people at the Newspaper Association of America have come out and said they did this huge survey of newspapers and said, what are the ways we can make money? And that's actually another form of income that they realize is we could be the smart source for local businesses to explain to them, how do you advertise online?
18:02
I mean, they've helped with creative and print before, but this is more than that. This is saying, not only are we gonna help you with your campaign in print, but also online, and we're gonna help you figure out what keywords you should buy. And it's very complicated to buy to reach people online if you don't understand targeting and all these different things. So they realize that this is an area of expertise
18:22
that a local news source could use to bring in money. Since you just mentioned advertising, of course, maybe for me, running the website of a print newspaper, I have a very strong interest in the future of advertising. And I find a lot of current advertising techniques
18:40
rather boring, to be honest, not very inventive. And we are very interested in new forms of online advertising. What have you seen in the US that could be labeled truly imaginative, creative, new? I think that there are a lot of people trying things that are really interesting. And then it's not always at the local level. There is a new site called minpost.com
19:02
that's similar to Voice of San Diego. It's a local site started by journalists that were laid off and decided they wanna have this local site. They have ads that are kind of real-time Twitter ads. They call them real-time ads. And what they are, there's this kind of sidebar of ads that local businesses can be a part of for pretty cheap.
19:23
And they can basically put their Twitter feed of the business into the ad. So every time someone pulls up the ad, they might see something that is a recent deal that they put on their Twitter feed, like you'll get 10% off for this and it'll be tied to that day or that real time,
19:41
which I thought was really interesting. And they've gotten pretty good uptake on that. There have been more conversational advertising. There have been ways, I see a lot more sponsorship of content, sections and things like that. So that it's not just an ad that's just popping up at random. I know a lot of the newspaper and publishers in the US
20:01
are really focused on behavioral advertising, advertising that is actually targeted to you based on where you've been before. And that's obviously very controversial. The US Congress is looking at that in a really strong way. And is this really right? And it's a little weird. I know myself, I will go around to different sites
20:21
and I keep seeing this ad for University of San Francisco with this guy in the ad. And I'm like, this guy's a fuck. And this guy is, and yeah, well, wherever. First of all, I wouldn't be going to school anyway, but it's just bizarre that this guy just follows me. Wherever site I go to, it's like a different size ad, but it's always this guy. And I'm like, who is he?
20:41
Why is he following me around? Why does he want me to go to the school? But it's clear that it's an ad. Because you said there's a sponsorship of content there. Isn't that transparent in a way? Does the user automatically know this is advertisement, this is sponsored by a certain company? I think it's obvious it's an ad. I'm not seeing the question as far as what's ad, what's not. I see some blogs,
21:00
like if you look at something like paid content, which is a digital media blog, and they'll have these sponsor posts. So you'll see a blog post, blog post, ad, blog post, and the ad kind of looks like a blog post. It's kind of a sponsor post. So that's definitely blurring it. And that I think it's a little questionable, although you get used to it, you understand and you figure it out. And those are really, and those work a lot better,
21:22
but they also blur the line and that's an issue. So yeah, sometimes you're pushing the limit with advertising and other times you're not. There's also this site called TechDirt. And what they decided is they wanted to have these kind of premium things that people could buy. I guess this isn't really in the advertising mode,
21:42
but it's more in the premium mode. But they decided that they would have all these things that they'd give away to people, or not, they would sell to people actually. And it would be like, you can get lunch with the editors or you can get this. And you're basically buying all these kind of premium offerings from the site. That's being part of an exclusive membership club. It's that kind of exclusive thing.
22:02
That's popping up more and more. The New York Times is a wine club. There's been a cruise with the Montreal Gazette that you go on with the editors. So I mean, they're trying to basically say what, I don't know, maybe they have to pay you. FDP just tried that and it didn't fare well. Yeah, yeah.
22:21
It depends on the news outlet. I think NPR, if you could just sit in a room with people that are on NPR in the US, people would pay ungodly amounts of money. But that's also because these journalists aren't just the byline, they're humans. They're really personalized. Exactly. You want to meet the person behind the story. Yeah, so there's a lot of different things they could do and that they are trying to do.
22:42
And these experiments, some of them sound kind of ridiculous, but some work, some don't. And I think the real key is just trying. You're not gonna gain anything without experimenting. So I just give them props for at least trying all these things to see what works. Hopefully, the number one thing is you don't ruin your credibility,
23:01
you don't ruin your trustworthiness, which is already pretty low. So you don't want to do something that's gonna question your integrity. But beyond that, if you can keep that, you should try, I think that people are open to trying a lot of different things. And now some places are selling ads in their Twitter feeds too. They've built these Twitter feeds that have hundreds of thousands,
23:21
sometimes millions of followers. And they just will put in messages, sponsor messages within the feeds. So that's also been a little bit of a controversy. Yeah, that's a danger then that the followers might break away if they're getting ads. Yeah, and no one knows how many ads in the Twitter feed is too much. And if you have ads on your Facebook site,
23:42
how does that work? And I know PBS even, they have bought ads in Facebook to promote their content, which I thought was kind of unusual that you would see. So people are trying all kinds of things with ads. I get ads in Facebook from people who say, from a woman who says, I want a job at PBS, please hire me. And it's like, it's popping up.
24:00
She basically targeted that to all the people at PBS on Facebook, which is brilliant. So people are doing all kinds of things in advertising that's really different that we haven't really seen before. Mark, we are about half-time. Kristen and I would like to take a quick break for our audience here to have a chance to ask questions to Mark, if you have any. There's also a Mike, Christopher's a Mike.
24:22
Or a comment, or an argument, or. I don't believe the question. Okay, yeah. Whether you see the main differences between the US media landscape and the German media landscape, which of the models can be transferred
24:42
to the German market? Where are, in your opinion, the main differences? Well, I'm not as familiar with the German media market. I mean, I've heard from these guys a little bit about it. And I understand that here, from what I see, people love print here. I mean, everywhere I go, I see print newspapers
25:01
just like everywhere. So I don't think it's exactly the same situation, but I think that there are a lot of people using online to get their information. So I think the one thing that can transfer over in a business model is to really just consider different ways of bringing in money online, whether it's paid content,
25:21
whether it's new forms of advertising and conversational advertising, whether it's through Twitter feeds or through Facebook or other ways that you're reaching an audience. So just think of new ways of bringing in money. And work with the audience. I think that's the one way that I think the US has been really good. I don't know if the Germans have been as good, but really listening to the audience
25:42
and really paying attention to them, bringing them into the conversation. Because if you're gonna try these new forms of advertising, there's a good chance you're gonna anger people, right? And people here are very sensitive to privacy issues and behavioral advertising. I'm sure those are really touchy here. So it's really, really important
26:01
that you're clear with your audience and work with them and find out what works for you. Is this gonna work for you? No, we're not gonna do that. Let's be sensitive to what our audience likes and what they can take. If I can comment on that, I think what needs to happen first before we make this transition towards maybe the shift that's taking place in the American media landscape
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is that in Germany, the media really needs to recognize the audience and engage with the audience. We don't have that yet. What Mark described with the legacy media where you need to get out of the tower and you need to speak on a direct human level with your audience, that hasn't made that shift yet. So I think a lot of these modes of advertisement, the business models, aren't quite where we are in Germany
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at the moment where we could adapt those. I think we need to take care of the first section of bringing us down to a level where we communicate and actually engage in a dialogue, take the readers, the audience seriously. Are there more questions? Yes. What impact do all these developments have on PBS?
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Do they change the way you look at your public service remit? How do you actually change possibly your content? Do you think that it really also changes the mission of public service broadcasting? If I may add, Paul Wiedemann, right? Very powerful lady, general secretary
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of Europe's largest broadcaster, ARD. Wow. You better be right. Okay, without pressure. No, being that I'm at PBS, it's really funny because I'm writing about media change and media shift and I'm right inside of something that is experiencing this exact thing.
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So sometimes I feel it's a little ironic that I'm in a place that's really struggling with this and I'm writing about what's going on everywhere else. But I think what's changed with PBS is that I don't think, I think the mission of public service journalism is the same. It's to serve the public, right? That's always been the mission is to engage the public
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and to do things in a non-commercial way and to be able to have the freedom to do the journalism that's in depth, hard hitting, et cetera. That's really not worrying about constraints and just saying we can really do this and we can do it without conflicts, right? I think that in this new phase
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of going from public broadcasting to what there you see as this public media 2.0, there's a lot of talk about public media 2.0. And what that means is that you still do this public service journalism, but it's not, I think often PBS and in the US, it's this we believe the public should have this. This is what's good for you.
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We don't wanna hear what you really want. We wanna tell you this is what you want. We know better than you. We can tell you this is what you need. Oh, you're really curious about pop music or something? No, that's not good for you. You need to have what's good for you. We're gonna get you the broccoli. We're gonna make you eat this. I think what public media, what the opportunity for public media 2.0
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is to actually engage the public, find out what they really want and include them in this process. That's what I think. And PBS and NPR are struggling with this. I think NPR maybe not as much because their radio, their talk, they have people call in. And they're used to that. What I think for PBS is a very difficult thing to say. We've got these multimillion dollar productions
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that we're putting on. How do we kind of lower the bar and include more people in those things? And they now have things during the last election, they did some collaborations. Collaborations has become a huge thing in public media and in regular media where NPR and PBS never worked together at all, fairly.
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And now they collaborated on an election map that they put together. They've done a lot of projects. They do this site called economystory.org where it's NPR, PBS, all the public media got together and decided this is a huge story what's happened to our economy. Let's have a website that has all the stories and let's put it all up there and let's have people send in their own stories.
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Let's have people send in their own videos of what's going on in their lives. So I see them reaching out a lot more to the public and saying, look, we're public media. Of all places, shouldn't we be including the public in what we do and serving them? So to me, I feel like this is a great opportunity for public media because they are the place
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that can say, we're gonna let you come in. We're still gonna have our solid, excellent reporting, but what can you add to that? How can you help us do an even better job? Because you're the public, you're there, we're serving you, how can we help you? That's what I think. And it's a hard change in mind shift in the US.
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I'm not sure about here, but. Not at all. It's very hard, it's very hard, but I think it's starting to change. I can see it and I can see PBS has this Facebook fan page with 150,000 fans. And when something goes up on that page, just like, hey, check out this new show
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that's coming out or this documentary or this story on MediaShift or whatever, people come and people comment and you see so much more engagement from people. And they'll say, hey, we're thinking about doing a story about this or hey, we're thinking about covering this. What do you think about that? And they'll get 100 comments in Facebook. I mean, some of it is kind of junky, of course,
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but you can get an overall feeling of, okay, this is how people feel about something. And the more they reach out to people, the better they're gonna be. Mark, can you give us some advice on the topic of culture change? Because in the end, that's what you're talking about, culture change. I read this blog post by Robin Meyer-Lucht this morning,
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a media expert from Germany, where he suggests a state-funded, something like a night grant for the night challenge, but state-funded. And it sounded reasonable to me. Then I thought, no, money is not the issue really. There's still a lot of money in the media industry. It's something else. It's a mind change and it's a lot of resistance from the whole industry as a whole, some more, some less,
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especially in regards to interacting with readers, with users. For a while, we thought it was about that print editors had to learn how to use video cameras and all these issues. It's not an issue. It's a piece of cake compared to getting editors into engaging with readers, which is also dangerous territory. You can also really get hurt or make severe mistakes.
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Are there media companies in the US that are really unique and innovative in how they help their teams to change their own role model of what it means to be a journalist? I think you see bits and pieces of it. I can't say that there's one organization that has it right yet. I think that you can look at what the New York Times
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has done as an example of trying a lot of things in blogging and in crowdsourcing and in hyperlocal. They've done, they've literally done every experiment out there. But would I say as a news organization, have they really changed their whole mindset? No. I mean, they're still talking about things that,
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they're still, the print people kind of, they have this merger between the print and online. And this is where the culture change happens. A lot of organizations have decided we're not gonna have an online, we're not gonna have a print, we're gonna have this one news organization that does it all, which makes a lot of sense. The problem is that in a lot of these cases, the print people kind of push out the online people
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and the print people kind of decide we're gonna be the ones to decide what goes on online. So there's a question as far as how the innovation is gonna happen in those cases. So I wouldn't say, I don't know that I could say there's one news organization that's got it yet. But I think that there are people within each organization that are, there's a lot, there's reasons to be hopeful
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because there are people who have those ideas and as long as the people at the top can listen to those people and really kind of decentralize and be open to new ideas, that's really where it can work. And I think that they just have this, there's a little stuck, they're stuck a little bit
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because they do have people who just aren't willing to change and they have to figure out how that works and how they either get these people trained and retraining is a huge thing. We can talk about that too. But education also, what's going on in the journalism schools in the United States? Yeah, I mean, the journalism schools in the US are at the same crisis transition point
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as all the traditional media there. They've been teaching a certain way, this is how you do your reporting, this is what you learn and they really are in the exact same boat. They're trying to figure this all out too. Columbia University, which is probably the top journalism graduate school, just came out and said that they're gonna have a new degree in computer science and journalism together
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as one graduate degree, which is a big deal. It's the first time that's happened and it's just a recognition that journalists can do a lot more and that journalists who said, I don't wanna have to do math, I don't wanna have to do that, I just wanna write and this is what I do, that's not gonna work as well in the US now, you have to have the multiple skillset,
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like you talked about video, audio, understand social media, Twitter, all these things, while you also understand traditional ways of doing things and you also might need to understand a little bit more about HTML and coding and things like that. So there is a new kind of a new group of people
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coming up in journalism schools who will go and I've spoken at journalism schools and I say to them, to the students, I say you guys are all scared, like there's no jobs out there for you. But I think for them actually, I'm pretty excited because there are some jobs, there are different kinds of jobs in digital
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and I think they actually have a chance, an opportunity to go into these organizations and make huge change. So I tell them, you guys really are at the forefront, you can go into these places and do a lot because they want you, they need you to come in and bring in a fresh perspective. So there's a challenge in the journalism schools
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and then there's the kind of retraining that's going on. Knight is doing some of this, USC, University of Southern California is doing this, Berkeley, and they're doing it together. There's a thing called the Knight Digital Media Center and they basically have people, mid-career journalists, come in and they give them these kind of multimedia boot camp, learn Final Cut Pro,
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learn how to do video, do audio, basically learn all the different media because when they were in school, they were a print journalist, they were magazine, I was magazine, so everything was separated and now they have to learn all the other fields that they didn't really think about before.
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So Mark, would a classic print journalist have a chance today to get a job in the US? As far as you mean starting out in school as a print journalist? No, I think it would be very difficult. As a starting out, as a print journalist, you might go to a small paper.
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The smaller towns, actually the papers are doing okay, it's a little bit different, it's the metro areas. Why are they doing better? Because in the smaller towns, technology isn't as widespread, people aren't online as much. The newspaper might be possibly locally owned and they're part of the community. I think when it comes to these chain newspapers
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where it's coming from a company that's not local, that's where there's a problem. But when it's actually a locally owned weekly newspaper or something, those are actually doing okay. It's the metro areas, and the national press is doing okay. But it's the metro area papers like in San Francisco Chronicle, like the LA Times, like those papers are suffering
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because they're kind of caught in between. There's so many other options in those towns to get information. There's so many local websites, local blogs, there's just so much competition for them. And the newspapers were never used to competition. They were used to just being a monopoly. They had the news and everyone got it from them. And for them to all of a sudden be in competition with so many other outlets is a change
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and it's scary for them. And how do we do that? So it's hard being this kind of entrenched company in a location trying to compete against these little upstarts that are doing so much. And the Craigslist thing, I mean, it's true that Craigslist has in its way, let's say stolen away the revenues of the media companies,
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but the media companies could, what would have stopped them from starting Google or starting Craigslist or doing it themselves? They had an opportunity to do it and they didn't. And Craig did it and I give him credit for doing that. It's their own fault. If they want to look at who's to blame for losing the revenue, it's themselves.
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They just look in the mirror and see what the problem was because they could have done that. Kristin and I thought that we also would like to speak with you about the hype topic number one, the iPad. Yes. And there's one thing that I observed with a certain portion of worry, which is that the biggest internet skeptics that I know in television, print and radio often happen
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to be the biggest fans of the iPad. Now, how is that? Yeah, I mean, I got to play with an iPad for a couple of weeks and well- But you don't own one yet. I don't own it. And the reason I don't own it is because, you know, I'm not the kind of bleeding edge, like I'm going to get the newest, most expensive thing that doesn't quite work.
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I'm more of the second version person. I'll take your first version. Okay, all right. Well, you know, and so I just wanted to play around with it, so I got a couple of weeks to look at it and I love it. I mean, I think it was, at first I was like, where do I put this thing? You know, I've got an iPhone, I've got a Kindle, I've got a Mac, I've got a laptop. It's like, do I need another one?
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I'm like, this is a different size, where do I put it? But I realized that if you have this thing sitting around your house and you want to show somebody something, photos, your media, a video, something funny, a TV show, whatever, you're like, I want to share something with someone, it turns on immediately.
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It's not like, I got to boot up a laptop to show you this, to do that. It's just like, you turn it on, you show them, it looks amazing. So for me, it's that kind of pick it up, check it out. It's perfect for that. And so I had that little epiphany of like, this is what it's used for. For the media companies, there is this big rush to this is going to save us. In the US, Conde Nast has said,
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they were working on iPad apps before people even knew that iPad existed. And it was this idea that we've been passed by in the web. We didn't really get that right. We kind of are getting mobile. We're a little slow on mobile. We are going to be first for this. We're going to actually get it. We don't even know what it is yet, but we're going to be there, which I think is the right attitude to have.
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But is it right for GQ magazine to charge $4.99 for their iPad edition, which is the exact same price as their newsstand? I mean, that is to me a little bit questionable. Do you get anything more for their iPad? You get some video and you get some interactive features,
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but yeah, and people have argued that it's worth more because you're getting those things. But I still think, I don't know whether the perception is going to catch up to that. I don't know whether people are going to really believe it's worth that much for just one edition. I think no one knows the business model yet. Now, to your point, Wolfgang, about people in the media company who like it,
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I mean, I noticed that the New York Times app on the iPad has no outgoing links. There's no links to anything. I think you wanted to say something. Seven or eight news apps. Yeah, yeah. Those look at a single link out. No outbound links. Yeah, we noticed the two Le Monde as well. Yeah, so you're in this app and you don't have any links to go anywhere else.
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So you're kind of stuck in that app. That's great for the publishing houses. They love that. I guess, I guess. But this goes up against everything that we've learned about the web and being open and linking and comments and interactivity. Is it going to be just this bright, shiny thing that you look at? Or is it going to be something that people want to really get into and dig into?
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That's a real big question mark to me. When you compare these different, excuse me, when you compare these different apps, did you also look for the debate and comment functions? Because it's another thing that's often missing, which I find a step back. But no comments.
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Yeah, I noticed that too. You can share it on Twitter. I noticed that. So isn't that a regression that's on the horizon? It is, but I also think that we haven't seen everything that's going to be done on the iPad. This is so early. I think that, I like it because I think there is potential for a lot more. And I think what the media companies might,
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if they blow it, if they continue to be closed about it, someone else is going to come up and do something more open and everyone's going to go to that. So this is an opportunity for media companies to gain something and maybe get some revenue, but it's an opportunity for a lot more if developers, independent developers, once again, come in and be the innovators in this field.
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So this is an opportunity for them to do something different and better. Whether they do that or not, it remains to be seen. We'll see. Now this is very early. First impressions are important, but I still think that there's a chance for them to change what they're doing and come up with the right business model. I don't think anybody knows what the business model of the iPad apps are because they haven't existed yet.
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So people are going to try all kinds of free this. You can get a free app, but then after a certain amount, you might have to pay after you've seen a few stories. Or you pay per issue. Or you have to look at some ads first that pop up. I noticed that too, that on the New York Times mobile app and on the iPad app, you'll see it.
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You have to look at an ad first before you see content. So no one has really worked that out yet. I think it's an opportunity and it could go to anybody. I mean, it basically will go to the innovator. I think there's a lot of potential on a device like an iPad for something that could be great. You know, that could really kind of blow our minds, but we just haven't seen it yet.
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Getting the X sign here. Any questions? There's a question here, I think, actually. Okay. I wanted to know what you think about the shutdown of the Rocky Mountain News, a media outlet that embraced online and won awards for their pieces, but still they got shut down.
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Isn't it, after all, a game of numbers instead of creativity? Is it numbers in what way? They forced it to shut down rather than not being creative. Because they couldn't figure it out. Yeah, I mean, that shut down. The Seattle Post intelligence are also shut down and went online only. I'm not sure how, you know, the Rocky Mountain News
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had a competitor in the Denver Post, and it's hard to make the transition. It's difficult. And some people can figure it out and some didn't. They did do some online things that were interesting, but did they transition fast enough? Did they figure out? Did they innovate fast enough? I don't think they did.
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They're also part of a larger company. And these large kind of conglomerates and chains look at it from a, you know, how are all of them doing? And this one just isn't holding up. We have to close it. If it's a really locally owned publication that has people in the community involved in it, I think it has a better shot than someone that's trying to do this kind of chain approach.
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So, you know, I don't know the exact reasons other than, like all other newspapers, they're hurting. But I think that these new things like Voice of San Diego, these new sites that are trying to do maybe non-profit, public media models, different types of models, will have a better chance because they don't have the legacy infrastructure that someone
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like Rocky Mountain News had. So we'll see what happens. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer went to online only, and so far with a much smaller staff. And so far they've done pretty well. They have better traffic online than they had before. They have more blogs. They're aggregating information. They're doing pretty well.
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So it depends. Before we conclude with the last question from this gentleman over there, where can people reach you? What is your Twitter address? What's your Facebook address? Oh yeah, I am Media Twit on Twitter. So it's Media Twit, T-W-I-C. And Facebook, you can just go to the,
46:20
I'm usually on the PBS, so it's Facebook.com slash PBS, and you can see all the stuff from, and Media Shift, you can go to PBS.org slash Media Shift to find that site. And PBS.org slash Idealab is a different site that has a lot of experiments and people who got night grants to try to do new ways of community, new forms of community news.
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So I think that's a really, if you wanna see experiments, Idealab site is excellent, because it's basically all the people who got grants and they're writing about what they're doing with their new projects, such as Spot Us, the crowdfunding site, and some places all around the world, actually, that are doing new forms of community news. Hi. Yes, best, hello.
47:01
I have a question coming back to enabling the user, because you were talking about that online journalism or journalism is learning the tools, how to be web 2.0, how to use that. But I think also the user has to learn something. I think there's a responsibility of the user, which is not always transparent
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in YouTube commentary or some stuff. So I think for the community here, which is already quite responsible, has an etiquette, is doing web for 10 years or whatever, we have to think both ways. We have to think that we want from the old, or from the classic media to get taken more serious.
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And if I think of Margaret Ilner, which is a talk show in German public TV, they have a YouTube channel where you can do something and then maybe they show it on their classic TV show. So this is like two years ago when you were talking to people, okay, you need a YouTube channel, a Twitter and a Facebook site,
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but they don't tell you what social media means. So come back to the point is, I think this crowd here has the things, stop evangelizing, start educating, get real and make decisions. I mean, we cannot change everything and we cannot talk to every TV channel. So we have to find what we want to change
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and then we have to interact with this. So that's what I wanted to say, just decide what you want to change, decide which user you want to create, a community which is responsible, active and really create something what is worth to be called social media. And because there's a lot of ugly commentary out there, people who have to learn how to use the web
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really as a human interaction and being polite and being something productive. So I just want to know what you think about that point. Yeah, I think the education of the public is really a responsibility to not have. I think that it's the responsibility of these people here
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on like on Republica to get to realize that we not only have to demand from the powerful TV stations, I mean, we have to do this also, but also we have to demand from the public to get a little bit more serious and responsible by using the web. And I think that is something we have to do maybe together with the old media, because you are already aware
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of some things which happens out there. The next panel is dealing with that question, community management, because we identified it as the biggest challenge in regards to culture change. So please stay. Yeah, good point. That was a really good point. I agree with you. Mark, thank you so much for coming over.
49:42
Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a great pleasure. Thanks, guys. Okay, the next panel here in this room is dealing with community management. We have a special guest from Germany,
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and her name is a blogger, Marcus Beckertal, who is the author of the books online and on Twitter. You can find her on her website, and the next panel is one of them.
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Thank you.