yes!!! Joe Biden is my friend!Also hooray for health care reformFrom: Joe Biden
A few weeks ago, Marquette University brought me out to Wisconsin to join journalists from Fox, MSNBC, CBS and others to discuss the future of journalism. While out there, I tought an intro class on media studies, met with the campus chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and headlined a campus comedy show. It was a great trip!
Among all this greatness, however, a highlight was getting to hang out with Gideon Yago, formerly of MTV News. One of the journalism panelists commented something along the lines of "Why are we getting schooled on journalism by the guys from MTV and The Onion?"
Gideon and I got to share the mic in a fun interview on "Lake Effect" hosted by Mitch Teich of Milwaukee Public Radio. Their description of the segment is below:
We talk with two journalists about whether entertainment has eclipsed news coverage. Gideon Yago was born in Madison, but raised in New York. He worked as a correspondent for MTV News, winning awards for his coverage of the war in Iraq. More recently, he has worked as a screenwriter. Baratunde Thurston is the director of digital for The Onion. They spoke with Mitch Teich while they were in Milwaukee for a forum at Marquette University about whether entertainment has eclipsed news.
Considering how tuned in I have been to Al Jazeera through multiple screens, devices and twitter accounts, this is an amazing moment to get behind the scenes. Speaking to us via Skype is Riyaad Minty (@riy)
- Iran's "Twitter Revolution" consisted of tweets from only a few accounts, not representative of the masses. Mostly in English broadcasting what is going on. No class diversity. Mostly upper class. What's going on in Tunisia, Egypt is different. In local languages. Talking to each other. Wide range of classes and regions represented.
- Finding sources: we get in touch with people early on through social media but follow up via phone a lot. Not just focused on digital and social networks
- Official reporters: we get them to as many places as possible but can't be everywhere.
- "We don't consider this 'new media' anymore. This is media."
- Any resistance from traditional journalists at Al Jazeera? We've been around almost five years, three of those educating senior execs and others on the value of these tools. We showcase a lot of case studies. When they see the value, they're more open. Especially since Iran
- "I want to stay away from letting technology hijack the revolution. It's the people's revolution"
- On the promoted tweet campaign AJE bought: for terms like Mubarak, Egypt Jan25 you'd get a latest update from AJE with link to our website. One of the largest referrers to our website throughout this protest. Livestream link was most tweeted during #egypt
- Website traffic has spiked by 2,500% since #egypt. 75% of traffic is referral from Facebook and Twitter
- Public perception of Al Jazeera brand has switched overnight.
- #DemandAlJazeera Feb 4 Twitter campaign. "People should have the choice of what they want to watch and what news organization... Do they want to hear the latest speech by Charlie Sheen or the latest speech by Gaddafi." Over 45,000 emails sent to US MSOs
- What process do you use to verify citizen journalism reports? 1) We ID people before as verified sources on the ground. 2) Incoming reports require lots of data with them: phone number, time of submission, email address. Phone tells us location and we call to followup 3) Is the story replicated by another source or just one person?
Kevin Anderson just used this video in his talk here at Digital Directions. "In the 20th century, Ruper Murdoch built an empire based on scarcity," said Anderson. Anderson's talk is about the combination of abundance with journalism. Salient points mixed with my own extension.
- We're losing the battle for attention. People weren't necessarily more civically engaged in the past. There was just less competition for their time. "We're not just fighting against other news sites. We're fighting against every other site on the Internet," and the same is true for apps
- More content is leading to lower revenues. Excess of inventory drove CPMs way down
- We're overwhelming audiences into inaction.
- Minutes per month on news sites ~4 minutes per user. On Facebook it's 375 minutes!
- Young (18-24) turn to celebrity and car crash news because they can no longer follow long, complicated stories with updates.
- We're moving from mass to relevance. Size is less important than context, relevance, curation
- Growth of social media publishing. Check out this AllFacebook.com post including profiles of paper.li, Flipboard and Newsbook
- Networked journalism. Not just about distributing across platforms (flickr, twitter, facebook) but also cultivating sources
- Real-time and real-space curation. A bit of information where people are physically. Gave example of WSJ post to Foursquare via a shout at Times Square about evacuation
I'm a huge Kevin Anderson fan now. Follow him on Twitter. Holy Jesus-who-wasn't-killed-by-the-Jews-afterall-thanks-Pope.
It was an inspired moment as I waited in line with friends who wanted to be the first with their hands on the iPad: go inside with them, exist after them, pretend to have bought the device so as to receive undeserved acclaim from Apple employees and fanboys.
I consider it one of my greatest Internet actions. God, I wish I could sell commemorative plates of the moment. Be sure to check out the YouTube comments as they transition from what I did to a debate about communism
First thing I noticed was the TV cut off. Then I realized my laptop was no longer charging. Then I noticed the lights had gone down. Inside this well-lit room at the Shangri-La hotel in Sydney Australia, that latter point was easy to miss, but when I opened the door to the hallway only the emergency exit lights were active. It wasn't just my room. The entire hotel was dark.
Before I headed out to see how far things had spread, I made sure my room key still worked. It's an electronic keycard, and I wasn't about the get stranded with nothing but socks and a bathrobe on. The card worked, but still I propped the door open with a hanger.
Then I realized I had an LED light in my backpack. This is the Victorinox backpack that goes everywhere and is always loaded with toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, multiple macbook pro video adapters and, apparently, an LED flashlight.
So off I wandered around the 15th floor. I ran into some maintenance people and asked if it was just the building or the entire neighborhood. They didn't know. I checked the elevators: dead. I found the fire stairs in case this lasted a while and I needed to head out. Worrying observation: there are no emergency lights in the fire stairs! Back in my room, the phone still worked as did my fully charged Nexus One and iPhone.
That's when I decided to make this short video. Overall, low drama but a bit of fun. I'm off to shower up and head out for some radio interviews. Oh yeah, I'm in town until Monday for the Digital Directions conference. Might become analog directions if the power situation remains uncertain.
