[newspapers, new media & monetization]

Thanks to a link from @jayrosen_nyu I've seen this interesting article on how to obtain value from (or rather, monetize) online content. Zachary M. Seward notes that the meeting of industry execs held on Thursday was aptly titled "Models to Lawfully Monetize Content."

The report itself outlines five key changes (or "doctrines" according to Rick Edmonds).

• True Value. Establish that news content online has value by charging for it. Begin "massive experimentation with several of the most promising options."
• Fair Use. Maintain the value of professionally produced and edited content by "aggressively enforcing copyright, fair use and the right to profit from original work."
• Fair Share. Negotiate a higher price for content produced by the news industry that is aggregated and redistributed by others.
• Digital Deliverance. "Invest in technologies, platforms and systems that provide content-based e-commerce, data-sharing and other revenue generating solutions."
• Consumer Centric. Refocus on consumers and users. Shift revenue strategies from those focused on advertisers.

Why the interest in monetizing online content...to protect the print newspapers.

Paid content wall would protect print subscriptions

The report also suggests a paid content wall would help retain print subscribers, citing a recent USC Annenberg survey finding that 22 percent of online news readers said that they had dropped print subscriptions because they could most of the same content free online.

But is charging for online content the best way to generate revenue? Hard-hitting sales tactics doesn't seem synonymous with loyal readership. In James Warren's words: "collecting enhanced online newspaper user data across newspaper properties and mining that data to aggressively sell target content to specific audience segments across the network (e.g. golf enthusiasts)."

Newspapers need to get creative. Leverage some of the amazing web 2.0 tools to generate interest. Perhaps online versions might offer something for the long tail too which won't be present in the print versions (I know some newspapers are already doing this).



Note: The Huffington Post, having "reinvented the American newspaper," seems to do quite well (without a print version) though only 6% of it's news stories are original content.

[pulitzer prize clarifications]

The other day I blogged about changes to the Pulitzer prize terms; now included are online-only news organisations (rather than demanding that online-content only be accepted from organisations that also had a print version). Since then Simon Owens has drawn my attention to some developments . Simon was able to interview Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler for a PBS article and then speak with Salon, Slate and ProPublica to gauge their reaction to the news.

From the PBS article:

"I spoke to Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler to find out what kind of entrants the Pulitzer Board is looking for. He told me that a special committee had made recommendations for the changes earlier this year and in November the board adopted them.

"We're not about the business of looking around the country to identify specific organizations," Gissler said. "We leave it up to the entrants to meet our criteria."

In other words, the burden of proof lies on the news organization to provide ample evidence that it meets all the qualifications for the award. Each entrant must submit a detailed cover letter with each entry, and Gissler said that the organization would have to make the case that it adheres to strict journalistic standards and engages in original reporting.

Pressing further, I asked whether sites like Salon, Slate and the Huffington Post would qualify.

"I'm not sure if they all qualify," he replied. "I think you have to determine if they're primarily original news reporting. We're really trying to push the burden on the entrants and not try to sit here and speculate about an entry that may or may not be let in."

He did, however, confirm that a blog could hypothetically qualify. If one or two people call their website a text-based newspaper, would it be eligible?" he said. "Blogs tend to fall into three categories. There are news reporting blogs, there are commentary blogs, and there's a hybrid version of the two. If they're text-based and meet our criteria, then they probably could compete. But it would be up to them to satisfy the criteria."

[...]

"NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen showed similar skepticism in a series of posts on his Twitter account. In a message to me he asked if a blogger known for insightful opinion could win the award for commentary even though she doesn't engage in original reporting. When I responded that she probably wouldn't qualify, he replied, "Oh, I see. If it's commentary at a reporting based news organization, [you're] golden. [It's] the derivation that counts."


Read the entire article here where Simon develops the conversation and presents some interesting responses from other key people involved in journalism. You can also join the conversation by answering some of Simon's questions:

"What do you think about the new eligibility for Pulitzer Prizes in journalism? Are they open enough or should they include more entrants? How would you define who should be eligible for Pulitzers?"

[pulitzer prize now includes online writings]

Pulitzer Prizes Broadened to Include Online-Only Publications Primarily Devoted to Original News Reporting




Via Netwurker Mez on Facebook.

[ALT-X Press ------ Illogic of Sense: The Gregory L. Ulmer Remix]

BOULDER, Colorado, May 10, 2007

The Alt-X Online Network, a space "where the digerati meet the literati" and on the Internet since 1993, announces the release of a new Alt-X Press ebook entitled "Illogic of Sense: The Gregory Ulmer Remix" edited by Darren Tofts and Lisa Gye, and designed by artist Joel Swanson of hippocrit.com.

Illogic of Sense: The Gregory L. Ulmer RemixEdited by Darren Tofts and Lisa GyeDesign by Joel Swansonhttp://www.altx.com/ebooks/ulmer.html

Contributors include Niall Lucy, Jon McKenzie, Linda Marie Walker, Craig Saper, Rowan Wilken, Marcel O'Gorman, Teri Hoskin, and Michael Jarrett, with an introduction by editors Tofts and Gye.

"Illogic of Sense: The Gregory L. Ulmer Remix" is an exciting new ebook publication that employs theorist Gregory Ulmer's invocation to invent new forms of electronic writing. As the ebook's editors, Darren Tofts and Lisa Gye, write in their brilliant introduction, "Ulmer has been at the forefront of thinking about new cultural formations as the paradigm of literacy converges with digital culture." Ulmer's work has been central to contemporary thinking on the future of writing and his international presence as one of the leading figures in media arts discourse has influenced a multitude of disciplines from electronic literature and Internet art to critical theory, communications studies, and art history. The ebook features a diverse group of artists, theorists, and creative writers who develop new forms of hybridized "digital rhetoric." Their inventive and audacious experiments take advantage of recent developments in the field of new media studies, and as part of Alt-X's mission to participate in the creative commons provided by the Web, are available for free download.

This provocative collection of multi-tracked writing puts into play many of Ulmer's breakthrough theories summed up in his most recognized hot-button terms: applied grammatology, heuretics, post(e)-pedagogy, textshop, mystory, and choragraphy. Encouraged by the example of Ulmer's own hyperrhetorical writing style, the authors incorporate collaged imagery, mp3 soundtracks, and QuickTime movies into their innovative multimedia mix while exploring how these same extensions of "writerly performance" explode the false barrier between academic discourse and spontaneous poetics, narrative and rhetoric, and autobiography and fiction. Positing an "illogic of sense" to reclaim what Ulmer calls an "anticipatory consciousness," designed to utilize the force of intuition as a way to invent emergent forms of knowledge, this grouping of hypermedia texts showcase how interdisciplinary writers can remix the methodological approach of an avant-garde philosophy propelled by Ulmer, one that prioritizes an ongoing process of discovery and media arts assemblage.

The ebook is beautifully designed by artist Joel Swanson of hippocrit.com, who crosses his visionary design sensibility with state of the art technology to produce an original work of ebook-art that many will view as finally fulfilling the long-promised potential of online publishing to use stimulating visual arrangement, media hybridization, and typographical ingenuity to blur the distinction between publication, exhibition, and design performance.

"Simultaneously celebrating and expanding on the writing performances located in Gregory Ulmer's rich oeuvre of totally remixable source material, the collection of essays in 'Illogic of Sense' adhere to an experiential approach to creative/critical writing and in so doing teach us how to write a theory of poetics that will help us invent a new field of study that I would call interdisciplinary digital humanities." - Mark Amerika, series editor, Alt-X Press; author of "META/DATA: A Digital Poetics" (MIT Press, 2007)

You can download "Illogic of Sense: The Gregory L. Ulmer Remix" ebook as well as other Alt-X ebooks for free at http://www.altx.com/ebooks/

[blogging pedagogy]

I've just joined this blog hosted by the Computer Writing & Research Lab at University of Texas at Austin. The blog caught my eye because it's about (go figure) "pedagogy and English studies. It is a space to share resources, stories, successes, and failures." Jim Brown, (who seems to be the site govna) writes an interesting post on Fora.tv:

FORA delivers discourse, discussions and debates on the world's most interesting political, social and cultural issues, and enables viewers to join the conversation. It provides deep, unfiltered content, tools for self-expression and a place for the interactive community to gather online.

The interactivity seems to come in the form of posting comments, tagging videos, or even posting your own video content. Essentially it's YouTube with less Numa Numa kid and more Noam Chomsky.

From the fora.tv site for those slightly dense but still interested in breaking "discourse, discussion and events" there is this explanation:

"The word fora is simply the plural of "forum." The dictionary definition of forum is: the public square or marketplace of an ancient Roman city that was the assembly place for judicial activity and public business."

Whew....I was like so wondering what that was...

I did a bit of a search and found this recording of a journalism conference: "The Coming Media Monopoly. Here is the blurb:

Jun 1st, 2006: Society of Professional Journalists and Media Alliance - San Francisco, CA

The Society of Professional Journalists and Media Alliance presents a panel examining The Coming Media Monopoly: Concentration of Press Ownership and Its Effects featuring moderator Erna Smith and panelists Linda Foley, Tim Redmond, Stephen Buel, Brad Westerhold, and Sandy Close.

The last year has seen dramatic shifts in Bay Area media ownership:

MediaNews, the new owner of the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, will soon control nearly two-thirds of local daily newspaper circulation; the two largest weekly newspaper chains, Village Voice and New Times, merged; and there's been an escalating scramble by several large media companies to control the expanding market for ethnic and foreign-language readers.

Can journalism survive in an era of Wall Street mergers and acquisitions?

What about public service and community needs?

What can be done in response to these trends to strengthen the quality of our news media workplaces?

Hear from journalists and media reformers who are responding creatively to the evolving media landscape.

Fast forward to about 8:00 minutes in and you'll hear Linda Foley (president of The Newspaper Guild) firstly give thanks that the conference is taking place in "the heart of America where people actually think about what matters" (8:50 minutes). Then at 10:56 minutes Foley argues that a pressing challenge in this "digital media age we're in" comes down to the worry that "journalism just becomes blogging." Someone shouts out something (unclear in this video) so Foley explains, "by blogging I mean if it just becomes free blogging..." This is detrimental because then "we won't have an umm...ahhh...system of providing credible information" (11:14) (emphasis mine) (You'll be using the fast forward button as umms and ahhs abound). Hrm....and apparently blogging is just opinion while reporting is "just the facts"...really? Are journalists not human then... (I know some would beg to argue).

Personal Note: annoyed it had to be a woman...



The video link is here.


NB: after fast forwarding this video a few times I managed to crash explorer and then the fora site itself seemed to go down (update for clarity: as in I couldn't get to the site: "cannot find server, the page cannot be displayed)...don't think it's really going to be competing with youtube.