Old to New

Update on the Future of Radio News

 

 

CHRIS: Today Sky will become the sole supplier of the UK’s 340 commercial radio stations. The three year contract awarded to Sky will include Classic FM, Capital FM and Clyde Radio. These stations were formally provided by IRN which is part of ITN.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/26/sky-news-main-player-commercial-radio

 

Before today there were eighty stations who were already getting their news from Sky. The new stations will now be provided with a mixture of bulletins and packages for radio output, and video and stories for their website. The 340 stations will also be able to rip audio directly from the Sky news channels.

 

Although the content may be improved, there is once again a limited amount of rivalry being generated through the contract. This seems to have been an issue repeated throughout the media spectrum, with ITN’s regional output being recently cut. Competition is healthy in any business and I feel the loss in this area will have an affect on the long term output.

 

The life of a 21st century multimedia journalist…

I’ve written a very quick script for the live “life of a multimedia journalist”. Let me know what you guys think – I thought we could involve everyone in a bit of am-dram acting to liven it up…

ALARM GOES OFF           SWITCH ON RADIO       TURN ON LAPTOP, TV?   GET DRESSED     “AT WORK”: NEWS MEETING WITH ALL OF US?                           GRAB M AUDIO, CAMERA, PHONE       “SOME TIME LATER” – EDITING?

This is the life of a modern journalist.   This is almost certainly the sort of day we’ll be having when we go into the workplace.   First thing to do: listen to the Today programme to catch up with breaking news.   But then there’s also TV news, local radio, the internet: there’s just so much to take in. And that’s before you even start work.   R: We need to do the new homes story. S: Yes, definitely, it can be for TV. But we need it for radio too. Rachel, do a two-way we can run on the drivetime show. C: Yeah, and it’d be a good online story. When you get back can you write a bit for the website? J: Also, can you get some mobile content uploaded? R: Er, I guess, but when am I gonna research and edit it? S: Don’t panic, you don’t need to talk to anyone, just grab a quick interview.   S: And don’t forget to Twitter while you’re there!   R: God, so much to do, so little time. I want to talk to the Environment Agency but I have to update the website. And it’d be good to talk to some local people, but I’ve got to do the drivetime two-way. I’m not properly handling the story, but I haven’t got time. And now my package looks rubbish cos I didn’t have time to edit it. I really don’t feel like a proper journalist any more.

Multi-platform Journalists – Regulation and ethics

 

CHRIS: As we’ve discussed during the blog, journalists are expected to multi task in the way the obtain and produce content for different types of media. But does this mean that ethical standards are being affected by the increased for demand of content and the ability to learn about technological advances?

Both BBC Somerset’s Journalist and the CNN Reporter have commented on the lack of time they have. The issue of checking sources and even proof reading your own work are things that may be placed to the side if journalist’s responsibilities increase. This could cast a dark cloud over the profession, if several cases do get highlighted.

Although there has been few current examples, we are at the beginning of this new world in which we will (hopefully) be working in – a media world, that previous journalists have not worked in. I think ethics and regulations should still be of up most importance when writing content for whatever media – otherwise our reliability and reputation is at risk, as a profession.

AUDIENCE

An interesting comment made by John Lilley today after Live @5 regarding the future of content for different audiences. The BBC and other broadcasters should be aware of different treatments for the variety of audiences. For example an internet treatment would be substantially different to a local feature of BBC Radio. This is should be kept in mind, when re-working a feature/story for different media platform.

BBC audio for the presentation

 

Hey guys – I have edited the audio and saved it on the H Drive – Audio – Chris Ellis – BBC Presentation (it’s 2’15)

It covers – How multi-platform effects journalists, how new tech has an influence and how the journalist’s role as evolved.

‘Video killed the radio star’ but are new forms of media going to kill the future of radio?

 

CHRIS: The future of radio looks reasonably good in comparison to other media such as magazine, newspapers and even regional television, if you were to believe recent statistics and headlines. Although does radio really have a place in the future? The switch over to digital radios is slowly happening, and this as well as the web and digital tv is helping to attract more people to all stations whether they are on AM of FM.

Oliver Thylmann is a former editor of BeNews (a leading news website between 1998 – 2000) and his blog expresses similar comments to my opinion, many of which overlap conventions that are already being seen on other media platforms. He wants the content, he wishes to hear, when he wants – on demand re-occurs multiple times during these blog entries!

Despite being slightly bias towards the NPR (National Public Radio in the USA), the principles of web based radio, podcasts and consumer choice on-demand are all features that will determine the success of the medium. I think this has been reflected by NPR, as they offer ten years of archived radio footage, podcasts and hourly newscasts, similar interactive tools are also available by the BBC, whereas commercial stations are struggling to keep up. Pirate FM for example only have the listen live feature, with no podcast, listen again or additional on demand features, except a news page. Could this be the end for some struggling stations which can’t keep up with the technological advances and in turn loose out of a share of the audience?

Broadcast Now, interviewed radio experts about the future, below I have collated the most useful findings.

Ben Cooper, Head of Radio One – The principles of radio haven’t changed, it’s just the tools we have to work with that have. The combining of all media is the future, hense gigs being placed on the website and aired on radio, although the material on the additional media platforms must be used to enhance the brand rather than damage it.

Andrew Harrison, Chief Executive, Radio Centre – Despite music being obtained in new ways, through MP3, i-tunes and podcasts listeners still rely on broadcasters to advice them on music choices. Radio is the keydriver for music sales and downloads (85% of people say they still find new music through the radio).

Grant Goddard, Radio Analyst – As our lives are increasingly busy, the medium of radio is most secure in a time of change. Radio has changed from “they do it for us” to a social network we share with each other.

Mark Friend, BBC Audio and Music – Since 2004 radio listening has fallen by 6%. Radio must invest in great content, interactivity, capture the younger audience who use the internet for as their first resource and embracing digital is key.

Print Journalism must survive

Following the rise of the Internet, newspapers around the world have seen revenues rapidly decline as more and more readers get news for free on the web. The rapid decline of traditional daily newspapers has led to increasing concern over the future of print journalism in the era of instant communications.

In a recent editorial entitled “How to Save Your Newspaper” published in Time magazine, the magazine’s former managing editor Walter Isaacson called on Internet surfers to overcome their opposition to paying for news content. Isaacson correctly noted that webizens have gradually managed to overcome their reluctance to pay for music and electronic books. According to Isaacson, relying on Internet advertising alone to keep traditional news organizations in business will not succeed. As he pointed out, news organizations that tradtionally relied on three sources of income — sales, subscriptions and advertising — now mostly rely on advertising to stay afloat.

While readership for news content producers has continued to grow, reliance on only one of these three sources of income has made news organizations more beholden to advertisers. And since much of the Internet advertising revenue has to be shared with search engines and other web hosts, relying on banner ads and pop-ups alone is not sufficient to support the high costs of running traditional print news outlets.

Isaacson has suggested perfecting a new kind of system of paying for content that would allow web surfers to quickly and easily pay small amounts for the content they consume. We agree that a system enabling users to easily hand over pennies for the content they want to see would go a long way toward persuading Internet surfers that paying for news content is worthwhile. But until such a system is up and running, print news organizations, and especially newspapers, will continue struggling just to survive. As Isaacson noted in his editorial, more Americans got their news online for free last year than they did paying for it by purchasing newspapers or magazines.

We also agree that traditional print reporting urgently needs to find a new source of revenue in order to avoid becoming beholden to advertisers, or worse, going out of business. We believe that many of the arguments raging about free news content over the Internet had also been made in the early days of radio and television news reporting.

With the exception of minimal fees that cable TV subscribers pay for basic cable services or satellite radio fees that subscribers in countries like the U.S. pay, the vast majority of people listening to radio news or watching news on television still do not pay a cent for the content they are receiving.

Nonetheless, broadcast journalism has managed to flourish over recent decades, carving out its own niche at the expense of traditional print journalism outlets. However, the current situation still differs from the 20th century emergence of broadcasting. With the advent of the Internet and the “cut-and-paste” culture that surrounds its use, we are seeing more and more of the same content being “printed” and “re-printed” over and over again on countless web sites.

Even though the public has access to more news media outlets today than ever before, the content being carried on these outlets generally originates from just a few sources, mostly wire services and a small handful of influential newspapers. If the public wants to continue to enjoy access to adequate local news and first-hand quality reporting from bureaus around the world, this will simply not be possible in an era where Internet sites merely regurgitate content originating out of just a few resources.

But until web surfers are persuaded that they need to pay for news content, and until better ways are worked out for revenue-generating advertising not to annoy Internet news consumers, the future for news content producers will continue to be bleak. In the end, we would like to see an “easy pay” system established making it easy and painless for readers to pay in small amounts as they surf around for content. But even setting aside the revenue problem, we also worry that Internet news sources make it all too easy for readers to filter out undesirable news.

The traditional role that newspapers have played in setting the news agenda is being rapidly eroded as users frequently only read the kinds of news that they want to read. This is leading toward increased political polarization, as people tend to read the kinds of stories they are interested in or agree with, while all but ignoring events that don’t match their taste buds. Other people are simply becoming isolated, unaware of important events that fail to turn up on their radar screens.

While TV and radio remain important, newspapers have traditionally played the most important role in setting the news agenda, as printed stories tend to contain more content and depth than their broadcast counterparts. If the world is made to go without the wisdom and depth of print reporting, news consumers will be left with a “dumbed down” understanding of the world. A new and practical means simply must be worked out to keep print journalism alive.

Andrew Marr’s prediction – the future of journalism

You could argue that British journalism is about to enter a golden age in this new century. After all, it is now a trade almost entirely composed of university-trained graduates, policed by watchdogs, which still sells far more papers and makes more broadcast news bulletins than any comparable European rival. WIth the internet, it has access to more information, faster, than any journalism has ever had before. Because modern communications are so fast and so easy to use, it is probably harder to lie in journalism than it used to be, too… The trouble is, it isn’t working. Newspaper sales have crashed over the past three decades. Paid-for nationals are a million down in the past five years. The audiences for mainstream TV bulletins have fallen too, and the new twenty-four-hour digital news services have not filled the listening and viewing gap.’ (My Trade / Pan Macmillan 2004)

Although it was written four years ago, I think Andrew Marr has a point here- but as with most crystal-ball gazers, simultaneously misses the point. If we look back at the past few years, we’ve seen the beginnings of a new sort of journalism; I believe even in the past two years. It’s all to do with the internet. If you work in an office, you will be in front of a computer. This will give you access to the news; in video, radio, textual or televisual format. All in one, all mere fingertips away. Not only this, but from an inconcievably wide variety of sources as well.

2007 saw the rise of social networking, it was the year of facebook. I remember in that year that facebook was such a phenomena it frequently was the news. First there was the comment on how great it was from columnists, social commentary on how people hooked up with old flames and friends, then came worries over addiction and finally the news started to come in that it was costing businesses money as their workers spent all day poking each other, chatting idly to distant friends and commenting on drunk-night-out photos. Then the businesses banned facebook… before embracing more productive social media ventures such as linked-in.

My point is that around this time people started to seriously ‘live’ online. Socialising in this way created new etiquettes and ways of communicating- and as journalism is based on communication this cannot go un-noticed. The problem is, I don’t believe that people have yet found a way it can truly work. Before you even start thinking about the in-depth analysis and commentary provided by journalists and how that role has to change to embrace the new online life, you have to work out ways in which that becomes financially viable. I wrote about this in my first blog but I really believe that is the problem facing journalism- could the role of the journalist potentially change so much with the rise of citizen journalism that paid ‘career’ journalists simply won’t exist? Journalists could become coders… web designers… funnels for information or something else that just hasn’t been invented yet. Access to media production hardware is becoming cheap to the point where anyone can do it- and they do. Could the future be hyper-local citizen journalists with camera phones, feeding into a global network of news? I think this might have been unforseeable in 2004 when Andrew Marr wrote ‘My Trade’ but is becoming more and more viable by the day. You just can’t predict the future.

Presentation notes from the other day

Video 1: – what multimedia’s available? – day in the life of a journalist in the 21st c? – how do we cope? – things have advanced in the past few decades in the way we get our news. – speeded up recently: first, the internet, then, thanks to that, news to your phone, Twitter, social networking sites, digital radio, online TV, stuff on demand on every medium, traditional journalists becoming video journos, coding etc. – journalists are in competition to get people to read/hear/watch their news. This means they have to be constantly updating.

Shot list: RACHEL – hands typing – hands switching on the radio – turning on telly – voice on R4 sending people to website – screen caps of websites with embedded video etc – screen caps of Twitter – Channel 4, Radio 4’s twitter feeds – phones: Dan’s iPhone! – BBC News channel, multiscreen with news, sport and weather.

Day in the life: CHRIS AND JOSH – wake up with Radio 4 in the background. Switch on BBC Breakfast, check emails and online for Sky, Al Jazeera, CNN etc. – get to the office: talk to editor and find out top stories. Research online; update Twitter feed, online with new stories. – go out with film camera, stills camera, Blackberry etc. Film report; update website on Blackberry. Take pictures for site. Write script for radio report; record when back in studio. – back in newsroom: edit package, send out online newsletter (à la Snowmail) to subscribers. – next story: no time to go out and film/talk to people to get bigger picture, so must use archive footage and get quick interview with resident expert. Keep updating Twitter. NB! Have Day in the Life first? Then go to shots of all different multimedia, ending on pic of stressed journo.

Thoughts on multimedia platforms from those in the industry

I found a really interesting piece on the Press Gazette website with the thoughts of those already in the industry. We could use it in our presentation to kick off the discussion, along with quotes from big-name journalists. The piece itself is quite long so here are a few excerpts…

Andy Cowles, editorial director, IPC Media

Good journalism is always going to be with us. Understanding the reader, a sense of timing and good ideas are timeless skills. A compelling story is still going to get read and talked about.

What will be different is the variety of platforms on which that story will appear, and how journalists can retain control of it.

Charlie Beckett, director, Polis, the journalism think-tank at the London School of Economics

In a world of ever-increasing media manipulation by government and business, it is even more vital for investigative journalists to use technology to reveal hidden truths.

Networked journalists are open, interactive and share the process. Instead of gatekeepers they are facilitators; the public become producers.

John Ryley, Executive editor, Sky News

Digital technology enables television journalists to take the best of what print has traditionally done – using space to provide analysis, context and comment – and, crucially, to combine it with video on several different platforms at the same time.

Kevin Anderson, blogs editor, The Guardian

I am interested in how to tell compelling stories through multimedia. What is the best way to tell this story? Which part is text; which part sound and which part pictures, either moving or still? New “pro-sumer” equipment (consumer technology approaching the level of professional) in audio-video undercuts the cost of traditional broadcast equipment, and it’s easier and cheaper than ever to file even video stories. What’s more, I can also interact and engage with readers and viewers directly through blogs and comments.

Nick Wrenn, managing editor, CNN International EMEA

In these days of multi-platform mayhem, do not ignore the basics. Accuracy, speed and persistence, combined with an ability to listen and learn, are the best platform, no matter how many gadgets your story appears on.