The News is History
The Future of News forum was nothing but a discussion about the past and present. You had a panel that discussed afghanistan, CBC’s failure to report against the Liberals and how the news model was broken. There was no discussion of the future. 4 bloggers in a group at Phog, talked more about the future of News in 1 minute than this panel did in 2 1/2 hours.
I don’t have the time to rehash everything but there were a few points.
When asked how to monetize (the term for generating revenue) the Web, the panel said no one had an answer. The Windsor Star who has the best Web content of any news outlet in Windsor could not really discuss it other than making the point that there was a discussion about micro-charges of 5c per article.
The Windsor Star showed an amazing clip from a photographer that forgot a video camera of the Guiness book of world records Kickboxing attempt. What I wanted to know was what they were planning to do to let anyone, yes anyone, aware that this clip existed on their website. If this clip fell in the forest and nobody heard, did it really fall?
No one could discuss the effects of social networking and citizen journalism or their role in the future of news. You could feel the contempt in the air when discussing citizen journalists although there was one example about the footage provided in a news story by a citizen journalist.
I have a question, if a trained professional journalist writes a blog independant of a news organization, does he cease to become a professional journalist?
What will be the future of news if journalist graduate who can’t find jobs start working on the net? Will news organizations still be able to sneer at them? This year they mentioned 1700 jobs lost in the News. In my view that means 1700 citizen journalists could potentially be unleashed upon us. How will the quality of their work be judged?
The only remotely interesting speaker was from the Real News, now he knew the future lied in the internet but you got the feeling that he didn’t truly understand it but relied on others. Apparently the Real News will open an outlet in Windsor/Detroit soon and include citizen journalist Story boards where citizen journalists can tap into a story before it is written.
Other questions I have, this was a CBC love in but no one talked about whether CBC’s public funding contributes to A-Channel’s demise. If CBC is entitled to so much public funding as most in this forum believe. Why can’t A-Channel charge viewers a mandatory .50c per person charge on basic cable???
Paul Synnot brought up a good point about a Hamilton example where the local news wants 25 million to continue. While that will be rejected, there may be no problem providing another company 35 million to run it as a public company.
The moderator couldn’t stop people from using question period for standing on a soap box, he used clip art in his flyer (how 1991) and he had no idea how to live stream the event (I suggest he check out ustream), he mentioned a podcast might be available in a week (will anyone even remember this event by then?)
The future of the news may be that with the collective understanding of this panel and moderator, the News is history.
Post Feedback
Thanks for your honest feedback (all feedback, good and bad, is truly much appreciated). This first public event event for the Media Justice Project (www.MediaJustice.ca), “The Future of News: In Windsor and Beyond” was an attempt to start (not end) a discussion of the current state and future of news. As this will be webcasted/podcasted (soon) from our website, it could serve as foundation from which to build future discussions and actions for an improved news media (in all its forms) future. It would have been wonderful if the comments many bloggers are making here and elsewhere (the day after) could have been made last night as it truly was meant to be a community discussion. Granted, I could have done things to mitigate your criticisms (a shorter panel list, a blogger rep etc..). But I’m/we’re not perfect. Im a busy/absent-minded professor who’s trying to do something to contribute to the community (beyond the ivory tower). The Media Justice Project is also instrumental in trying to bring a Real News (www.therealnews.com) branch/bureau/production hub to windsor. The blogger community could be a vital part of this new project to expand/amplify your voices and serve the people of greater Windsor. Please join-in. The invitation is open to all who’s interested in building a better media system and society (please drop me an email at [email protected] if you’re interested). And again keep criticising/discussing as it does indeed seem that my goal was reached in terms of starting a community discussion. It’s up to you, and all of us to get this energy focussed on improving things. peace. paul boin.
Paul, I wouldn’t have missed it. I didn’t mean my critisicm to be negative, just point out what was missing. You couldn’t control what the panelists would say and none of their statements addressed the future, only the past and present.
I hope that my comments will be considered in your next event and know that there are many who would have like to have volunteered to work with you to make this a better event.
Call Paul Synnott or Tom Lucier next time and ask for their help. I am sure you will be impressed with what they can contribute.
Oh, heck, but what do I know, I’m just a blogger.
P.S. lose the clip art flyers.
I’m currently uploading the audio from last night and will post it on my site soon. Sorry I didn’t do it last night. I’m grateful all the people on the panel took the time to talk last night, but I do wish we were given more time to talk.
So what is the future of news, Mr. Boscariol?
That’s a question we were all hoping to investigate together at the forum, Chris. Needless to say, we all left scratching our heads as to why the forum was called “”The Future Of News”
I don’t know, I’m asking the questions, only because I was looking to this panel for answers. My point is that no one on this panel understood the questions, let alone knew the answers.
What I do know is that the future of knews isn’t going to be a toxic blogger whose beholden to a single company and simply frames every story based on that bias.
P.S. I’m not referring to you Mr. Schnurr, can I just call you Chris. BTW, I’m Mark
Mr. Schnurr will do just fine. Thanks.
Yes sir, Mr. Schnurr.
Audio from last night’s talk should be available for download at this link where I uploaded it.
https://www.yousendit.com/download/UmNKR0lWeWEzeUpFQlE9PQ
I wanted to go to this event, but your review suggests there wasn’t much being offered. On the other hand, maybe I could have added something to the discussion.
The professional vs. citizen journalist debate is interesting in context with the issue of contempt. “Professional” as a moniker only applies if you can say the bulk of your income is derived from that source. Not everybody is lucky enough to earn a living in the field of their chosen expertise, and these media layoffs are going to prove quite humbling to many people who might feel contemptuous of citizen journalists and bloggers currently.
As for the debate over funding CBC vs private media, one of the main reasons for CBC to exist is to act as a publicly funded watchdog to keep the government accountable. It also exists to provide government and citizens with a consistent, reliable National system to distribute unbiased information. The CBC is Canada’s public address system, and is very important to the stability of our country. It makes sense to fund the system so long as it remains unbiased and functional. Private for-profit media systems have different agendas, they are not bound to perform any sort of social service, but are mandated by capitalistic needs.
There are many reasons to support CBC, but the most important one in my mind, is to maintain a national media that is not driven by profit. That our Federal government is considering giving bailouts to CTV, CanWest and Global - privately funded media corporations - in the very same breath that they’re declining a bridge loan to CBC is hypocritical and duplicitous.
What does it mean to us as citizens, when our Prime Minister shuns and undermines our national Public broadcaster, yet gleefully turns to Fox News to distribute his message? As Canadians should we really be getting any message from our top elected official via a foreign media group that’s well noted for its rigidly conservative, “U.S.A. First” viewpoint? There are important questions of sovereignty and integrity involved with maintaining a national public broadcaster, that are in danger of being ignored in the melee of internal media finger pointing.
Thanks for posting your thoughts & considering mine,
rw
An interesting bit of information given last night was the amount of funding given to different public broadcasting agencies. In Germany, $184.00 per citizen per year went to their public broadcaster. In England, the number was $138.00. And here in Canada? $36.00 and the government thinks that’s too much!
And we wonder why CBC has to whore itself out by bidding on programs like The Wheel of Fortune to subsidize other, more worthy programs of national interest?
I didn’t mean to diss, CBC, as I think they are important. However the Real News was on them like a fat kid on a smartie. He talked about their fear of reporting about the reasons we’re in afghanistan, how they would report on Adscam or the SPosnorship scandal until the Globe and Mail broke the STory.
What my point would be is that can’t you be both pro public media and pro private media at the same time. Why not let A-channel get 50c from every cable subscriber in order to keep them. Why can’t we have both
I agree Mark, both public and private have roles to play. I don’t understand cable at all frankly - we pay cable to get millions of useless channels, yet the ones we want to see get shut down - and the ads have nothing to do with life as I choose to experience it.
Did anybody talk about the movement for TV media to go digital online - pay for the channels you want based on your own subscription needs? CBC does that with many of their shows, the BBC does it, Comedy Network… actually I think most of the media giants in the US are going that way or eyeing possibilities. Many US newspapers are shutting down presses in favour of online content - the Seattle Intelligencer has no more print edition - Detroit Free Press debuted its revamped online service today & has reduced it’s weekly delivery etc.
As for generating ad revenue - why don’t people get that the internet already has this in spades? If google can cherry-pick words from my gmail & post links to services right next to my letter from auntie Ida, why can’t news outlets figure out that it would be a good idea to post ads relating to the content of whichever story I might be reading?
Targeted browsing through services like Twitter are another media opportunity I’d like to hear discussed. I don’t spend much time actually browsing sites anymore, but rely on my twitter feed to deliver content from sites and writers that interest me enough to follow. There are ads on most of those links, generating money for somebody. Media groups that want profit from ads can get direct results per article and will get to know which writers have larger readerships just by counting the visitor hits. Revenue neutral groups like the CBC will have to evolve differently… but there are plenty of options at this point.
rw
Mark…no worries…all criticism is good criticism…and yah…all this will be taken into consideration as i/we move forward with contributing towards improving Windsor’s (and beyond’s) media landscape.
Darren. I hope it’s ok that I just linked our website (www.MediaJustice.ca) to your audio file (at least temporarily). If it’s not please let me know ([email protected]). Thanks.
Hi Paul, It’s the first time I’ve used that site for sending large files, so I don’t mind. I just hope it will continue to let people download and listen. They said it will remain active for 7 days. I’m still glad that I was able to attend though. Looking forward to more talk in the future. It’s wonderful CBC will be broadcasting The National live tonight from the AGW. They did some great coverage of Detroit last night on The National.
Peace
Personally I don’t think the CBC should get any of my tax dollars. What is my return?
For the most part CBC shows are dismal on a good day! Sure The National is a pretty darn good news cast but all I ever see is the conservative bashing or the liberal slant to the news, every single day! Where is the unbiased portion of the news? Where is the journalistic integrity that used to exist?
It seems to me that the CBC and for the most part news media has become a part of the news. They create so much of it and have rarely checked facts (The Iraq war had great support because of this very thing, check out Jason Burk’s The Road to Kandahar to see what I mean). Again, where is the journalistic integrity?
I get most of my news todya from bloggers and the net and then sort through what may be true and what may not. For the most part, good quality bloggers such as BlogWindsor, Schnurr’s Sound Off and Scaledown offer me the most insight without the bias.= yet they are not even considered news media.
We now see the effects of this with so many newspapers going out of business (Chicago Times-Tribune just filed for bankruptcy) and tv stations like A-channel going bust (Canwest is in a heap of trouble…). Is CBC next? It should have been years ago! The bloated bureacracy that is CBC is partly to blame! Nowif you want to look at real broadcasting take a look at the BBC. It was what the CBC was supposed to be modeled after until the bureaucrats took hold. Good riddance!
Dave, you get your news from Blog Windsor? That blog hasn’t been updated since December 2008.
The only people that say the CBC sucks are those that don’t watch it. It absolutely could be better and needs some fat trimmed, but if we all have to rely on bloggers (no accountability) or American news (right-wing propaganda) or Canadian private news (again, right-wing propaganda), than whats the sense of having any news. Why not just leave everything to the market like the neo-cons and neoliberals want. Everytime any of the corporate media reports on things published by think tanks, they have to say “left-wing” for the progressive ones (like the CCPA), and say nothing to properly describe the truly right-wing think tanks such as the C.D. Howe, Fraser, CCCE, and the Manning Institute. To say that the CBC is pro-liberal and anti-conservative is like saying the NDP is a socialist party (they broke free from the CCF in the waffle movement in 1970 and officially became liberal-lite). Same old conservative propaganda. Give me a break!
BTW there will be a “FUTURE OF NEWS 2.0″ community discussion that I’ll gladly organize for the Fall (October 2009) which will definitely have representation from the dynamic blogger community, as well as some future of the Internet/new media thinkers (any suggestions email me at [email protected]).
I thought Gary Cuncliffe from the CBC made the most interesting observation when he described the 1.5 million “one man band independent tv stations” on the internet in Korea and Japan.
I confess though, that I didn’t stick around to ask him if he thought such an explosion of news gathering blogs could happen here.
Darren, sorry it should have read CityblogWindsor
or better yet WindsorcityBlog…a bit dyslexic today. No offense to dyslexic people around the world
Private news in Canada is right-wing? My gosh what planet may I aks you are from?
Even if it were right-wing does that mean tax dollars should go a socialist agenda news media? That make absolutely no sense!
Are you really stating that the the NDP is not socialist? Out of the 4 parties are they not the furthest left-leaning party where they distribute wealth how they see fit?
I am all for social safety-nets but in reality the NDP’s economic agendas would be devestating to Canada. I could list it all but why bother. Keep drinking the kool-aid.
A comment I read here: “For the most part, good quality bloggers such as BlogWindsor, Schnurr’s Sound Off and Scaledown offer me the most insight without the bias.= yet they are not even considered news media.”
Insight, sure. No Bias? Please. Schnurr will just go against anything the city does, even if it is a good idea. Don’t get me wrong, I read his blog too, but you have to take some of his comments with a couple teaspoons of salt. I do not think the average-joe reader can distinguish between opinions and fact.
And Windsor Blog? PLEASE That guy worked for (and maybe still works for) Moroun himself! No wonder he supports the Ambassador Bridge Co with such passion, he is financially linked to the company. How can you call that news? That blog is a poison to the city.
As for news: News needs to have reliable and citable sources. Sources must be from published works, or peer-reviewed works. That is why we have established news media like the CBC. We should be more focused on news media from a variety of REPUTABLE sources, from journalists that are professionals and stand to lose their job if they publish biased or false information.
JMD
I’m curious, is the private news left wing because its more profitable, or is it more profitable because the left wing news is monopolized by public organizations.