Intro to New Media
Newspapers moving slowly
The Audit Bureau showed that average weekday
circulation at 635 newspapers declined 5
percent from April-September 2010 compared
with the same six months last year. The
decline last year was more than twice that,
10.6 percent.
Reinventing the wheel
How are we getting news today?
Digital delivery is now well established as a part
of most Americans daily news consumption.
Six in 10 Americans get some news online in a
typical day—and most of these also get news
from other media platforms as well.
From the State of the Media, 2010, Pew Project
Excellence in Journalism
Many publications, including former print
publications, are now online only.
Online only : the Seattle PI and The Daily Beast
The past couple of years proved important for social
media establishing themselves as a part of the
media ecosystem. The power here had less to do
with reporting than serving as a place for people
to quickly come together around an issue that
they feel passionately about to share concerns,
pass along information, offer financial
contributions and in several cases bring about
change. Think Osama Bin Laden, Haiti
earthquake, Egypt, Ghadafi, Occupy Wall Street.
From: Media Scrambles
“And news organizations that broke the momentous news first over
Twitter, like the New York Times in a tweet by reporter Jeff Zeleny,
quickly shifted to an online piece while re-imagining a print edition for
posterity. The Times had to rip up Monday’s front page to
accommodate a six-column headline that did the huge story justice.
But hours before the Times or other newspapers hit the streets
Monday, the news filtered out over a variety of media platforms. On
Facebook, users described where they first heard the bin Laden news,
citing Twitter, major broadcast and cable networks or via their iPhones.
NBC anchor Brian Williams, speaking over a live shot of a euphoric,
spontaneous gathering in front of the White House, noted that “social
media and everyone’s electronic device broke the word, at about the
same time, across this country.”
Consumers meanwhile, are quickly moving on to
even newer forms of communication. Blogging
is declining in frequency while 26% of
Americans now get news on their cell phones,
and half of online news consumers with social
networking sites use those pages for news.
One thing that is becoming clearer is the way
people use digital technology to acquire news.
The American news consumer is increasingly
becoming a grazer, across both online and offline
platforms. On a typical day, nearly half of
Americans now get news from four to six
different platforms—from online to TV to print
and more, according to new research from PEJ
and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
What are we talking about?
• In 2009, PEJ launched a new weekly analysis
of the top news stories discussed and linked to
on blogs and social media.
• The stories and issues that draw the most attention in
blogs and on Twitter differ substantially from the
mainstream press. In the 47 weeks studied during
2009, blogs and the mainstream press shared the top
story just 13 times. And in Twitter only 4 times.
• Among the two social media platforms, Twitter users
strayed the farthest from the mainstream press. Blogs
were a bit more traditional, at least in the sources they
drew on. On both platforms, though, one clear
characteristic was the ability of new media to quickly
trigger and concentrate passionate debate and activity
around a specific issue
• Blogs often filled the role adding analysis or debate when
highlighting these stories. Following the shootings at Fort
Hood, for instance, bloggers linked to straight news
accounts, with some then expressing condolences to the
families of the victims, while others quickly pivoted to
discuss the role that the suspect’s religion may have played.
• The vast majority of Tweets were not opinionated or
analytical at all, and this went beyond the fact that Twitter
is limited to 140 characters. Most of the Twitter posts were
designed to alert people to something interesting, to pass
along information. Of those Twitter feeds that contained
news links, the vast majority tended to simply repeat the
headline from a website.
How are businesses using social
media?
The Global Social Media Check-up 2010, some
interesting facts.
And locally, how are businesses using social
media?
How success is measured now: Social influence
marketing scores
“Use it to engage your customers in a
conversation, not just sell your services.”
Source
“A good portion of my tweets are conversational
just to stay in front of my followers as much as
possible. However, I also use it gauge interest
about new products, run specials, and get the
word out about events,” Joe Woelfe, small
business owner.
• Citizen journalism continued to play a role as well. Here,
new research added to the sense that citizen media at this
point still are not in a position to replace or provide the
same type of coverage as traditional outlets. They just
don’t have the resources to do so. New research
conducted by a team of academics finds that some top
citizen news sites average less than one new story a day.
• Instead, many in that field see a different kind of role –
partnering with news, helping to fill in gaps where news
outlets no longer go and even joining forces with one
another to increase their offerings.
• Example
In this class we hope to achieve some
of the:
8 Must Have Traits of Tomorrow’s Journalists
Advice for Journalism Students Now
Mobile Journalism Reporting Tools Guide