#neiman lab

[thefutureofnews]

“Where are the people getting their negative impressions of their new leader? They are getting them from the same press they say they do not trust.”

[radioyo]

[millennialbusinessassociation]

Free content isn’t free; it’s subsidized by advertisers, who want to get their messages in front of users. But increasingly, users say, they’re the ones paying for the ads: with their privacy, their patience, and their mobile bandwidth.

To fight ad blocking, build better ads.

[technologyshapeshistory]

WATCH/LISTEN/READ for Saturday, March 7

WATCH

Everything good everyone says about this Best Picture winner is true. Emma Stone's monologue brought me to tears. The improvised jazz drum soundtrack is amazing. It is a metaphor for the future of the film industry as described by Jack White during the opening ceremony at the Oscars. It's still in theaters.

LISTEN

"How Safe is Your Job?" from Freakonomics. Most days, I am excited to go to work and do the job I do - helping nonprofits and social causes share their stories with people who care about them. Other days, especially on nasty cold Chicago says, I just want to lay in bed and watch Shameless and eat Trader Joe's horseradish chips. This quote from the podcast made me reframe my thinking about the impact work has on my own well being, making me realize I would probably hate life without work: "I think people need an organizing purpose to their lives.  It doesn’t have to be paid employment, but they need something...an objective in life that imbues their life with some meaning and purpose. And I don’t think pure just pleasure can be that. It’s got to be something that requires more ambition than that." Listen on Stitcher. 

READ

The Nieman Lab Daily Email Updates. From the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, this daily email shares the best and most interesting news at the intersection of publishing and digital media. A career idol of mine said six years ago she checks the Nieman website more than she checks Facebook, and I've been subscribed ever since.

[this-is-legit-for-school]

NeimanLab: Predictions on the Future of Journalism

It is evident on all forms of social media that the stories we as consumers tend to see and read are the articles with a personal touch.  I cannot remember the last time I clicked on a link to an article from the NYT or WSJ that wasn't an op ed piece.  S. Mitra Kalita believes this is the direction journalism will be heading.  It is more and more what the consumers wants, and how buys the news papers, the public.  Kalita suggests that the uninhibited nature of the web will make it's way into print.  I think this is an interesting concept in terms of getting a younger generation reading the newspaper and maybe even catching some bylines that are not based on the intimate details of a story subject's life - as most information that gets disseminated today is in that form i.e Facebook updates, tweets et cetera.  I think one of the biggest problem with this in real world terms is personal bias infiltrating newspaper articles in what is supposed to be a facts only line of work.  Then again, most newspapers do lean to the left or right and it can be hard to separate fact from opinion.  If articles were bluntly written with a personal narrative it would be much easier to separate the bias from the evidence and therefore easier for a reader to process information.  Kalita finishes off her prediction on a very important note though.  And that is the the most memorable pieces of journalism that stick with her beyond a retweet were the articles that did not depend on the crutch of intimate detail but rather "...relied on rich details, shoe-leather reporting, and grounded expertise."  It is important to note that while trends come and go, there are the classics for a reason.

On a positive note, readership is up among millennials, albeit in a mobile discourse.  From 2013 to 2014 mobile news readership was up 19% for 18-34 year olds.  According to Cory Haik, journalism should be focusing more and more on this mobile platform.  Consumers are willing to spend their time or money on news commodities.  Haik suggest shifting the focus of the producers - the newspaper - to the digital age.  This doesn't have to mean doing away with traditional journalism and focusing on more op-ed style pieces as Kalita predicted. Rather Haik suggests translating successful aspects of the digital age into the newspapers which seem to a a thing only grandparents read.  Social media is all about knowing, connecting, and maintaining an ongoing presence.  In the context of journalism switching over to mobile media Haik believes newspapers will begin streamlining their content and experience for consumers; providing good content and experience to keep loyal users, prioritizing topics and aiming content at a specific audience.  I think this is going to be a huge key to getting consumers, especially young consumers to engage in good, valuable content.

Another trend which I find very relevant presently is the way in news organizations give over their news stories.  Producers of media understand their consumer in the social media age in 2 ways.  One being, news organizations simply show the viewers what they ant to show without consideration into what the audience wants and two, trading coverage for softer, more easily understood news.  Rachel Davis Mersey in observing this trend offers some successful alternatives to traditional news media such as theSkimm, AJ+, Vice News.  As a subscriber to theSkimm I can personally vouch for this type of media.  I read the newspaper when it is available to me and theSkimm is perfect keeping me up to date and breaking down the news in a catchy, quick understandable manner.  I agree with Mersey that media producers should adopt an audience-centric approach to news.  She outlines a clean approach to what is happening now and what could serve the consumer well if welcomed with open arms.    

Here is a link to the Nieman Lab Site if you would like to read about the many other brilliant trends in journalism coming our way.

[emmaleighk]

Riptide

If you haven't read this yet, you must. (But carve out a whole evening or a Sunday morning: there are 15 chapters.) It is an incredibly rich and beautifully presented "oral history of the collision between journalism and digital technology from 1980 to today," from Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Features over 60 interviews with shakers like Tim Berners-Lee, Eric Schmidt, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Arianna Huffington, Clay Christensen, Dick Costolo, Nick Denton, Andrew Sullivan, Don Graham, and more.

Essay + Interviews + Documents + Blog

[cultivatedwit]

Read, Watch, Play: Something smart, something stupid & a Harlem Shake to see you through the weekend

It's not just Friday, it's Whiskey Friday. Before we begin pouring that magical elixir of life over cubes of frozen water, we wanted to share a few good links to carry you into the weekend. 

READ: Our friends at the Nieman Journalism Lab posted this interesting piece yesterday on making tools vs. finding tools. We could go on and on about what's in there, but instead we'll just say if you work in journalism (or media in general) and consider yourself a progressive thinker when it comes to tech and where the industry is headed, give it a read.

WATCH: You thought we'd be above posting a Harlem Shake video, didn't you. Yeah... we thought we'd be above that, too. But then our hilarious and maybe-slightly-just-a-little-bit twisted friends at Thing X made their version. It's got gas masks and humping and just watch it.  

PLAY: To achieve your weekend quota in page refreshing, play around with Plooky a little bit. It's all the strangest Wikipedia pages in one refreshable machine. Among our first few pages loaded were the 1957 BBC spaghetti tree hoax, extreme ironing, and this annoying 452 sq. inch public park in Portland. 

And with that, merry Whiskey Friday to you all!

[themediaieat]

Device dictates

This study found that devices essentially dictate how overwhelmed people become when consuming their news sources. For example, as Nieman points out, 40 tabs on your laptop and in your browser is much more overwhelming then cycling through articles and readers on your iPad or iPhone or whatever smart device you read on the bus.

That makes sense. I feel much more relaxed when flipping through Zite -- for instances -- on my phone than sitting in front of a screen with dozens of tabs and trying to get through each story. It's much more daunting, it's much more pressure, and it feels like work. I enjoy my phone much more than those 40 tabs.

Check out the study and the piece on the above links.

But, before you go, this graph was interesting. Between 2010 and now, consumption has changed so much that the study is (some might argue) out of date. In two years these researchers went from current to antiquated.

The mention of netbooks — that declining form factor — raises an important factor about the study: Its survey took place in 2010, which was like another world when it comes to news consumption platforms. The iPad was brand new; Android was just starting its rapid growth. The kind of early(ish) adopter who was using Twitter or a Kindle in 2010 is likely to be different from the broader user base those platforms have in 2012.