Tuesday, July 14, 2009

News Innovation-some thoughts

If we define journalism as a rag bag of what we cannot do then we will define ourselves out of a job.
The words of the Guardian's Kevin Anderson speaking at last Friday's News Innovation.

At the beginning of May,I attended Paul Bradshaw's excellent JeeCamp and it would not be unkind to say that the mood there was rather downbeat when it came to the future of journalism and in particular that of journalists.

I saw though amid the gloom that there were opportunities for the profession to innovate grasping the new technology tools and new working practices.

Last Friday's News Innovation hosted by the Media standards trust,built on some of that hope and I left with a sense of optimism.

Community was the buzzword and there were a number of presentations in which enthused individuals were building a network around a community,maybe filling the gaps that the cutbacks in local media are producing.

Amongst those initiatives Will Perrin's Talk about local, a project to give people in their communities a powerful online voice.

The London SE1 site described by the same Will Perrin as the best hyper local site in the UK,the Kings Cross Forum,the Sheffield Forum and Parwich.org

The problem is how to monetise this content.One way is Rick Waghorn's Addiply and Rick was keen to demonstrate its potential using the Lichfield Blog which had just that morning taken a advert from its local MP Michael Fabricant.

As Rick quite rightly said, it is time for central and local government advertising ,which has supported local newspapers in the past, to gravitate to these new hyper local sites.

But back to Kevin Anderson whose remarks at the beginning of this piece set out the challenges for this new journalism.

For Kevin,the old model must change

Engagement in traditional media he explained was about in his words

getting people so pissed off that they get enraged
Instead a

sustainable model will centre around relevance and relationship
Food for thought for today's journalists?

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