2 Conferences: Is the Sun Rising or Setting?
If it’s spring it’s time for . . . another media conference. In fact, if the dean’s travel budget could afford it, we could take to the road for March and April. Some media bloggers seem to do just that, reporting from one meeting after another.
AdAge.com has an interesting look at the Newspaper Association of America’s recent conference. AdAge.com's conclusion: Newspaper publishers, tired of hearing about circulation declines and lost advertising, are “really, really eager to change the subject.” Outgoing NAA President Jay Smith, president of Cox Newspapers, said, “The world changed a lot and we changed a little.” He added, “We need to stop whining and start winning.”
Reports from the cable industry have a much different tone. Clearly the focus at cable’s major convention, the NCTA national show, was on developing new content and new business models. As Comcast COO Steve Burke said, you can wish for the days of basic cable “or you can say, ‘What is the next business model, the next great way to create content and put it out there?’”
Broadcasting & Cable has a number of stories from that convention, and two in particular highlighted aspects of convergence.
In one story major executives from different factions of the cable industry called for cooperation throughout the industry. Broadcasting & Cable reported, “Asserting that cable is a healthy and growing medium, the panelists stressed that the key to their respective successes was sharing a symbiotic relationship, exploiting each other’s services to grow their overall business.”
Comcast Chairman/CEO Brian Roberts said, “There’s never been more new products to sell,” citing Comcast’s 6,000 shows on VOD (video on demand) as an example,
A second report from the final panel on “Converging on Change: What’s in Store and Who’s Behind It,” highlighted some of the ways cable has moved beyond TV—and ahead of their competitor, the telcos—in offering access to content in new ways.
Comcast‘s Burke pointed to the video-on-demand/mobile horror network that Comcast and Sony announced at the show as an example.
And finally a word on engagement from MTV Chairman and CEO Judy McGrath: “If you engage people and they want to share (content), forward it, blog about it, they’re more deeply involved with you. That increases the value chain.”
A Recruit for Citizen Journalism
Pioneering new media columnist Steve Outing has left the Poynter Media Institute to join what he calls “a citizen-media-based startup company, the Enthusiast Group. The company is based in Boulder, Colo., so Outing will face climate and generation shock among other things. (He’s apparently a devotee of mountain biking and his new group’s first site is about biking.)
Outing’s farewell gift is a group of six articles on citJ, i.e., citizen journalism. Among the topics he deals with are the growing acceptance of citizen journalism by the traditional media and business models for the citizen journalist. Together the acticles provide a good rundown on where citJ stand today.
What's Web 2.0?
We’ve mentioned the MediaShift blog previously, and Rosemary DuMont has posted material from it. The blog is written by Mark Glaser and posted on the PBS Website.